Released in January, Lophae’s ‘Perfect Strangers’ is a brilliantly realised recording of four exceptionally talented musicians locked into one studio room as they improvise and explore bandleader and guitarist Greg Sanders’ beautifully melodic compositions. With the quartet filled out with Ben Brown (Waaju, Mulatu), Tom Herbert (Polar Bear, Acoustic Ladyland) and the gorgeous tenor sax playing of Sam Rapley, the album’s Brazilian, West African and classic jazz stylings are elevated to something extra special. One of the best records of the year no doubt. Read / Listen.
The ridiculously prolific Munich outfit Web Web return to Compost Records with yet another album but this time around, they’ve enlisted the fuzz guitar heroics of JJ Whitefield, ensuring that their hybrid collage of krautrock and revolutionary era jazz has an even more pronounced psychedelic edge. It absolutely works. Read / Listen.
On his seventeenth album, the French dub pioneer Brain Damage has assembled together the Japanese experimentalist Emiko Ota and the British dub-eccentric Mad Professor and made a brilliantly strange record of what he calls ‘Post-Dub’. It is, however, so much more than that title suggests. Each track is named after one of the many mysterious spirits unique to the Japanese imagination - the yōkai - and each song takes on the unfathomable characteristics of these creatures, be they malevolent or benevolent to us mortals. Musically, the album swings from post-punk edge to cavernous digi-dub to curious theatrical vignettes, always with this sense of esoteric wonder. Read / Listen.
Always a thrill to premiere a new track to the world and this fizzing, jazzy krautrocker from the Munich-based jazz outfit Web Web certainly deserves highlighting. From their forthcoming sixth album ‘Plexus Plexus’, special guest JJ Whitefield (The Poets Of Rhythm / Karl Hector & The Malcouns / Syrup) lays down his fuzzed-up guitar line all over ‘Apotheosis’, the end result resembling a focussed mash up of cosmic Neu!, Os Mutantes and the electric Miles Davis energy that permeates the rest of the album. Listen here…
Check out this brand new video revealing the new project from the UK deep house legend Charles Webster and his collaboration with South African artist Muzi. Intimately recorded, we see the process behind their single 'Bakulindele', as good an example of contemporary SA house music as you will find. The single is released today on Kid Fonque’s awesome Stay True Sounds label and it promises much for the album to come! Watch / Read / Listen.
Raúl Monsalve y Los Forajidos return to Olindo Records with an explosive blend of indigenous Afro-Venezuelan rhythms, muscular spiritual jazz, future-funk, afrobeat and psychedelia on their new album ‘SOL’, an already singular band stretching themselves into masterpiece territory. With a distinctly different rhythmic heritage to many other Caribbean and Latin American countries, Raúl’s ethnomusicologist ear is as important as his brilliance as a composer and multi-instrumentalist. Inviting a top tier list of guests that includes Nick ‘Emanative’ Woodmansey, the great Congolese guitarist Kiala Nzavotunga, Tony Allen’s last musical director Yann Jankielewicz and Heliocentrics’ Malcolm Catto to collaborate with his multinational outfit, they manage to convey the complex heritage of Venezuela’s coastal regions with a contemporary, well-travelled energy. A mix of original songs are joined by startlingly new interpretations of numbers by Fela Kuti and John Coltrane, their ambition matched by their talents. Read / Listen.
Is it Spring yet? As usual, a diverse selection this month but I suppose the one thing they all have in common is their fusion of ideas and cultures, a fluidity of influences that creates something new and fresh. Music from Unknown Mortal Orchestra, ESINAM & Sibusile Xaba, Nadeem Din-Gabisi, Céline Dessberg, Ibelisse Guardia Ferragutti & Frank Rosaly, João Leão and Joe Armon-Jones. Enjoy!
At a roaring pace, multi-instrumentalist, composer and producer Dave De Rose has already released two separate musical projects this year and has another on its way. Having finally found a permanent third vertex of their adventurous triangle, the multinational Rave At Your Fictional Borders return with two new groove explorations, recorded and beautifully filmed as they were composed on the fly in a studio in Morocco. We are delighted to video premiere ‘Entanglement’ and being greedy and needy, we also tapped them up for an interview. Read / Listen.
Looking warmly back to Houghton Festival 2024, this mix is a reflection, a mash of memories of the kind of sounds you might hear at Pinters, a zone of musical discovery away from the tougher electronic sonics that pepper the beautiful festival site, Pinters is where the organic, the esoteric and the hilarious (Reggie Watts being all three) converge. Obviously there were loads more DJs and live acts than just our (Truth & Lies) curated bits but the mix I’ve put together is a blend of tracks that I played, some I wished I’d played, some inspired by other DJ’s sets and a sprinkling of artists who performed live over the long weekend including Nik Bärtsch’s Ronin, Sven Figee, Reggie, Harper Trio and Alabaster DePlume.
Recorded live on December 22, 1982, at the Théâtre La Criée in Marseille, this previously unreleased recording sees the ‘Lion of Cameroon’, Manu Dibango at the height of his considerable powers as he and his brilliant eight-piece band roar through a blistering set that showcases his world-beating blend of Cameroonian makossa, Congolese rumba and jazz-funk-fusion. Beautifully captured (and remastered from the original tapes), this is an amazing find from the always exceptional WEWANTSOUNDS label. Read / Listen.