SUN RA AND HIS ARKESTRA - To Those Of Earth...And Other Worlds

"Following up on last year's collection In The Orbit Of Ra, we're diving headfirst back into the vast universe of Sun Ra with a a newly curated set from Ra's immense 125 LP back catalogue, compiled by Gilles Peterson. The BBC 6Music/Worldwide DJ is a long-time champion of Ra's music and the UK's leading tastemaker for jazz-based sounds. It serves as perhaps the best introduction yet to the music of Sun Ra for a whole new generation of converts.

For the CD version, Peterson picks personal favourites, classics and unreleased tracks and weaves them into a flowing piece across 2CDs, showcasing the incredible variety of Ra's work. The 2LP version features full-length versions of selected tracks from the mix (and also includes the full CD mixed version)." - Strut Records

U.S. GIRLS - Half Free

"[Meg Remy's songs] take us into the spaces that are supposed to provide us with solace—home, family, relationships—and make them feel awkward and uncomfortable. (As the dejected narrator of 'Sororal Feelings' declares through a deceptively sunny harmony: 'Now I'm going to hang myself/Hang myself from my family tree.')  

Likewise, Remy's music has always thrived on the conflict between the familiar and foreign. On previous U.S. Girls releases, her pop and experimental sensibilities—part Shangri-Las, part Sun Ra—were often at war with one another. [...] But, by building upon the grotto-bound R&B introduced on 2013's Free Advice Column EP (whose hip-hop-schooled producer, Onakabazien, returns here), Half Free further fortifies the common ground between Remy's diamond-cut melodies and avant-garde urges. The album sounds like your favourite golden-oldies station beamed through a pirate-radio frequency, seamlessly fusing '60s-vintage girl-group serenades and smooth '70s disco into dubby panoramas and horror-movie atmospherics." - Stuart Berman, Pitchfork

JULIA HOLTER - Have You In My Wilderness

"Sometimes listening to Julia Holter is like watching a film of a dream: gauzy, beautiful, the set immaculately dressed and the light in the golden hour haloing the characters’ emotional highs and lows. At other times, her music is like dreaming of a film, something half-remembered or only eerily discernible, as if you're falling asleep in front of the TV as snatches of a classic romance flit around amid your own concerns and passions. Her style is rooted in her classical training, composition degree, and highbrow references, but has always been generous with its visceral delights.

While still dreamlike, Have You in My Wilderness, Holter's fourth album, is something clearly felt—ocean spray on a warm breeze, sun baking exposed limbs, a hand glancing across your skin before drifting away. [...] Her previous work didn’t necessarily require any outside reading to unlock its pleasures, but Have You in My Wilderness cuts extraordinarily quickly to the core." - Consquence of Sound

NICK FRASER - Too Many Continents

"Too Many Continents finds Fraser leading a trio with two heavyweight improvisers who need no introduction: pianist Kris Davis and saxophonist Tony Malaby. On second thought, labeling anyone 'leader' of this date might be inaccurate. The three have been friends for twenty years and seem to communicate their ideas telepathically.

On my second pass through this album, the cover image of The Art Ensemble of Chicago's Nice Guys (ECM, 1979) flickers through my mind. You know, that wonderful black and white shot of the group seated around a gingham-clothed table drinking coffee? Too Many Continents sounds like that photograph. Natural. Comfortable. This is not to suggest that it doesn't take chances or stray from familiar territory. Were the Art Ensemble ever tame or predictable? Neither are Fraser and company. Malaby is in top form, sputtering and bubbling above the others in 'I Needed It Yesterday,' tethered by Davis as Fraser navigates. Davis employs a sustained single note pattern in 'Nostalgia For The Recent Past,' fueling a restless Malaby to launch into a manic discourse. Fraser really seems to bloom at this point in the album, absorbing the energy of his companions, but never overshadowing them. There’s plenty of fire and fury here, bookended between the controlled burn of sensitive ballads." - The Free Jazz Collective

NILS FRAHM - LateNightTales

"Nils Frahm's musical curation of the latest edition of LateNightTales leans on the side of the slow burning, the meditative and the hypnotic; it's a listening experience for those who appreciate subtle complexity. Frahm mixes and layers various genres, especially jazz and electronic, with organic natural sounds and gently humming drones, and a number of the featured compositions have been slowed, to great effect. 

Most notably he not only slowed Boards of Canada's 2000 track 'In a Beautiful Place Out in the Country,' but appears to have emphasized both the beats and the keyboards, transforming it into a narcotic, molasses-slow drip. Perhaps the crowning achievement on this collection is Frahm's ability to seamlessly unite the compositions of a diverse array of artists—Miles Davis, Four Tet, Nina Simone and the glitchy stylings of System, to name but a few—into a cohesive whole. There is never a moment when any of the songs clash or seem otherwise out of place." - Exclaim!

LIZZY MERCIER DESCLOUX - Press Color

"The lower Manhattan music scene circa the late '70s was a bubbling, effervescent confluence of disco, No Wave, jazz and punk. It birthed the careers of Patti Smith, Talking Heads, Television, the Ramones and even Don Was, whose Was (Not Was) band was also a player. Somewhere on the fringes was Lizzy Mercier Descloux, a French import who used music as just one aspect of her artistic avant-garde arsenal which also included poetry and fashion. This reissue of her off-the-radar ZE label debut didn't make much of a splash upon its 1979 release. Regardless, it has come to be regarded as a charming, evocative curio of a time and place that was fleeting and temporal yet fascinating and influential in its ambitious attempt to join jazz, punk and dance.

Originally only eight selections clocking in at under 30 minutes, this reissue more than doubles that tracklist and is still only 46 minutes long. Extensive liner notes by noted critic/scenester Vivien Goldman in a sumptuous 20-page booklet tell the Descloux story in detail with rare photos and quotes from Smith and Richard Hell, both of whom were friends.

These minimalist pieces—many can't be considered songs—were often improvised in the studio and Descloux, who spoke virtually no English, wasn't exactly a driven vocal talent. Nonetheless, it's the air of cool detached ambiance with mostly sung/spoken vocals over a funk/jazz backing that makes this such a mesmerizing time capsule." - American Songwriter

VA - Kollektion 4: Bureau B compiled by Richard Fearless

"I always listen out for music with a sense a space, where compositions are stripped down to the barest components while retaining the power to conjure emotion. It's for this reason that I'm so drawn to dub, techno and German avant-garde minimalist music. To me the bands and labels in the Bureau B archive, current and past, were looking to distant lands, their own 'Neuland,' whether in the future with bands like YOU and Riechmann, or from a more remote past, like medieval folk band Ougenweide. They were creating something radical and experimental, something that didn't draw on the same rhythm and blues, Anglo-American rock that was saturating the airwaves at the time. They were pioneers in every sense of the word. With all due respect for the music that forged these paths, it was on hearing the mental guitar on Faust's 'Herbstimmung' that I knew to look not only at the so-called golden years of this era, but to look at what these artists were doing later, as well as the new bands that were emerging from those schools. Artists who are still creating, still innovating. I hope you enjoy the journey." - Richard Fearless for Bureau B

KARIN KROG - Don't Just Sing - An Anthology: 1963-1999

"The work of Karin Krog may be unfamiliar to much of the world, but in her native Norway and Scandinavia at large, she's practically a household name. This says much about the local enthusiasm for post-bop jazz but also about the tyranny of distribution: until 1994, Krog's albums weren't available in the USA or UK, meaning three decades of recordings were waiting to be discovered. In theory, until now, she hasn't had any regularly distributed albums in the US or the UK—this is certainly the first one even marketed/promoted in here and in England. With this anthology of her best recordings from 1963 to 1999—curated with Krog’s own input—we hope to set the record straight." - Light In The Attic

ARTHUR RUSSELL - Corn

"It's been seven years since Audika Records (the label created for the sole purpose of releasing Russell's work) last issued an album of his material. In that time, Russell's partner, Tom Lee, teamed up with the label's Steve Knutson to compile this nine-track record. Each song is pulled from Russell's original quarter-inch tape masters that were compiled on three separate test pressings in 1985: El Dinosaur, Indian Ocean, and Untitled. The collection is, unsurprisingly, both experimental and pop, noisy and disco, classical and modern.

Corn spends most of its time catering to quasi-classical electronics, the underground New York niche that earned Russell his first fans back in the '70s. Between his 1982 album 24 ->24 Music and his 1983 disco single 'Tell You Today,' he set aside several solo dance numbers not yet rounded by his perfectionism, many of which are alternate versions of Russell staples. 'See My Brother, He's Jumping Out (Let's Go Swimming #2)' speeds into double-time with celebratory horns, while 'This Is How We Walk On The Moon' expands into a twisted version where thin cello plays like a fiddle. Russell's first posthumous release, 2004's staple Calling Out of Context, contained four songs from these sessions, but unlike those, this new collection boasts sharper, rougher tracks. 'Hiding Your Present From You' is riddled with distorted cello, but angelic keyboard and Mustafa Ahmed's buoyant congas keep the pulse thriving, even with three faux fade endings thrown in. It's the type of work that current innovators like Hot Chip and James Murphy routinely cite as an influence." - Consequence of Sound

GODSPEED YOU! BLACK EMPEROR - 'Asunder, Sweet And Other Distress'

"'Asunder, Sweet And Other Distress' is exceptional in the GY!BE canon in a whole heap of ways. Firstly, it's a mere 40 minutes long—which is short by anybody's modern standards, let alone for the band which popularised the 20-minute-plus track time for a whole generation. What's more, the four tracks that make up the album play through as one single suite, resulting in such a potent statement that it's tough to argue against always sitting through in its entirety (as if 'motherfucker=redeemer' had been its own album). The only other release by the band to rival Asunder in its sheer distilled potency is the half-hour Slow Riot For New Zero Kanada EP.

A deceptively meaningful step for Godspeed You! Black Emperor, the occasional soppiness of post-rock, which ultimately rendered it a dirty word in certain circles, has all but disappeared from the work of its godparents, now truly playing the music they were destined to play, and in its purest, weightiest possible form." - The Quietus

KIM GORDON: Girl In A Band

"For 30 years, the band Sonic Youth had, as its core, two main vocalists: Thurston Moore on guitar, and Kim Gordon on bass. They were indie rock's power couple—a shining example of love and loyalty in maybe the environment least conducive to marital bliss. Sonic Youth ended in 2011, with their divorce. Now, Gordon has written a new memoir, Girl In A Band, about her marriage, her music and the origins—and the end—of Sonic Youth." - NPR

"It is in its uncrated reports of what she’s always seen but never said, where Gordon allows herself the grace of believing her own intuition, that Girl In A Band becomes a triumph and a manual for owning one’s pain, sensitivity, cruelness, self-consciousness and instinct. Gordon’s heartbreak and insecurities (about her singing voice, for example) are as prevalent as her notable confidence and ferocity." - National Post

JON HOPKINS - LateNightTales

"LateNightTales welcomes UK producer and musician Jon Hopkins to the fold with a beautiful sequence of songs and music, a requiem for a dreamstate. It's possibly somewhere between heaven, hell and high water, down the Thames Delta towards Eden. It may involve techno and a distorted state, or simply mates sat listening to music together, drifting on the open sea of their minds. This is Jon Hopkins' world, not so much joining the dots as colouring the whole damn picture in.

'Putting this album together was a unique opportunity for me to present music that I have been listening to for years, free from the constraints of a club setting or from trying to stick to one genre. I chose tracks not just because they have been important to me but because of how they sit together, putting as much thought into the transitions and overall narrative as I did into the track choices. I mixed by key and by texture more than anything else, using original sound design, pivot notes, and often recording new synth or piano parts to link things together in a way that flows as naturally as possible. I hope you enjoy it.' -J. H." - LateNightTales

ERIC CHENAUX - Skullsplitter

"Eric Chenaux has emerged as one of the most distinctive, innovative and original voices in what might be called avant-garde balladry, juxtaposing his gorgeously pure and open singing against a guitar sound and style that truly stands alone. Skullsplitter is the impressive new album that confirms Chenaux's singular aesthetic: genuine, natural, unaffected vocals gliding through slow, smoky melodies while electric and nylon-string guitars are deployed with adventurously experimental, dextrous, semi-improvisational technique and texture.

Skullsplitter stands as a welcome and natural evolution from Chenaux's previous song-based album Guitar & Voice (2012), his first properly solo record for Constellation (i.e. made without guest musicians or collaborators), which was widely celebrated as his best work to date, championed by The Wire, Said The Gramophone, Stereophile and others for its unique sensibility and sensitivity. Skullsplitter builds on these strengths and similarly consists solely of Chenaux's voice and guitar." - Constellation

JEFRE CANTU-LEDESMA - A Year With 13 Moons

"This isn't the first time that drum machines turn up in Cantu-Ledesma's music, but they're foregrounded here as never before. That very specific combination of elements—the ringing guitar tones and flat, dry, electronic thwacks—will inevitably suggest comparisons with Durutti Column; Cocteau Twins and Harold Budd's The Moon and the Melodies is another reference point, though Cantu-Ledesma's waterlogged-tape timbres and power-sander effects give the album its own specific mood and feel...If 13 Moons were a sculpture, it would be an abalone shell crusted with battery acid; it would be a broken, bleeding heart ensconced in a burnt-out amplifier. Ultimately, it's hard to decide if this is the year's most fucked up ambient album, or its most bucolic noise record." - Pitchfork

JORDAN DE LA SIERRA - Gymnosphere: Song Of The Rose

"Before New Age hit terra firma at the dawn of the 1980s, the classically-trained Bay Area composer Jordan De La Sierra's consciousness soared with cosmic concepts. With cues and lessons from the great minimalists La Monte Young, Terry Riley, Pandit Pran Nath, and help from the venerable public radio program Hearts of Space, De La Sierra embarked on journey in alternate tunings and resounding reverberations, transporting entranced listeners from the Golden Gates to the intergalactic." - Numero Group

ARIEL KALMA - An Evolutionary Music: Original Recordings 1972-1979

"Ariel Kalma's boundary-blurring electronic music is heard here in radiant detail across a selection of work spanning his early free-jazz and spoken-word trips to his infinite modular synthesizer and analogue rhythm-machine meditations. Kalma's story is one of world travel, musical discovery and ego abandonment. Yet for an artist who often discarded public recognition in favor of the ascetic truths in musicmaking, An Evolutionary Music offers the imprint of an outright auteur.

Born in France, but rarely in one place for long, Kalma's 1970s migrations took flight through the decade's furthest spaces of musical and spiritual invention. As a hired horn for well-known French groups, the young musician toured as far as India in 1972, a place where Kalma found an antidote to rock 'n' roll's glitz and glamour in sacred music traditions. Kalma would later return to India and learn circular breathing techniques enabling him to sustain notes without pause against tape-looping harmonies configured through his homemade effects units.

Those effects evolved from Kalma's loyalty to a beloved dual ReVox setup—two tape machines 'chained' together to form a primitive delay unit. Over looped saxophone melodies, Kalma would mix in all shades of polyphonic color, synthesizing fragments of poetry with ambient space or setting modal flute melodies to rippling drum machine patterns and starlit field recordings. The results collapse distinctions between “electro-acoustic”, “biomusicology” and “ambient” categorization." - RVNG Intl.

A WINGED VICTORY FOR THE SULLEN - ATOMOS

Although composed for a dance work by Wayne McGregor, this music stands on its own. Those enamored with Max Richter's recent boxset (which included Infra, a piece also created for Wayne McGregor) will find much to love in A Winged Victory For The Sullen's ambient/classical washes of sound.

"If Stars of the Lid's music sounds like a hollowed-out 100-piece ensemble with ether for its innards, AWVFTS is the opposite. Made from strings, piano, the occasional horn, and electric guitars processed into ambient washes and scrawls, it's all inner voices coiled together, more classical than drone. The music is recorded in large spaces, so that between natural acoustic and electronic effects, every instrument seems to float in an ocean-sized force field of harmonic resonance. Minimal melodic information carries maximal tone, the few voices somehow resplendently full and forlornly isolated at once." - Pitchfork

VA - Master Mix: Red Hot + Arthur Russell

While this writer's most partial to Lonnie Holley's spaced-out interludes (the one nod to Russell's more exploratory side aside from Blood Orange's medleying of modern composition/disco in nudging "Tower Of Meaning" up against "Is It All Over My Face?"), along with more traditional (yet effectively intimate) covers turned in by Sam Amidon, Devendra Banhart and Alexis Taylor, it's DM Stith-featuring duo The Revival Hour that's the nicest surprise to these ears, whose version of "Hiding Your Present From You" has electronics/beats slowly filling in its initially-conventional folk-pop cracks.

"Russell's understated influence, undeniable innovation, and untimely death explain why Master Mix came about—and why it’s so damn good. His recordings are patently unique, but they’re not ubiquitous; whether imitating or reinventing, Master Mix's cast didn’t have to fear the backlash commonly associated with performing well-known classics. Both approaches work." - Entertainment Weekly

TAPE - Casino

Another round of drifting beauty from the stalwart Häpna trio, with the airy, gently picked/keyed refrains this time out catching this writer's ear more than their last effort, 2011's Revelationes, hewing (slightly) closer to the feel of '08's Luminarium. 

"Tape have been distilling minimalism, experimentalism and pure pop into inimitably ravishing music for fourteen years now. This, their sixth album, is their most luminous to date. The group’s sound has evolved over the years, but its subtlety in artfully blending acoustic and electronic inputs is a constant...Having reverted to an absence of percussion for Casino, the trio’s multi-instrumental approach is further pared to a simple palette of analogue electronics plus guitar and/or piano and electric keys. Each of the album’s seven tracks lasts an even six or seven minutes, and each is gently insistent and acutely melodic; each an instant hit of pure aural pleasure." - Dalston Sound

MAX RICHTER - Retrospective (4CD)

The success of Max Richter's Recomposition of Vivaldi's The Four Seasons, our best-selling classical release of the past five years by a significant margin, has resulted in this repackaging of four of his earlier releases in a stunning box set by Deutsche Grammophon. A beautiful hybrid of ambient, classical and electronic styles.

"Whether it be the Haruki Murakami readings and subtle piano arrangements with the broken synapse electronics flickering in the background on parts of 2006's Songs From Before or the more mechanical effusions that emit a dystopian glow from 2008's 24 Postcards In Full Colour, there is a restless energy percolating beneath the elegance and the elegiac. 2010’s Infra closes out the set, an album that fuses the electronic, the orchestral and the ethereal like no other piece this reviewer’s heard before or since.

By corralling all of Richter's fine works of this period together, Retrospective firmly underscores the belief that music can transcend all boundaries. From the soaring wonders of On The Nature Of Daylight right through to the mournful violin that sees out Infra 8, Richter beckons for the listener to close their eyes and jump into the nebulous abyss of their own imagination. That ability is truly magical." - TheMusic.com.au