GLITTERBEAT - Forced Exposure

$15.50 PREORDER RELEASE DATE: 11/12/2021

Kuunatic is a thrilling Tokyo based tribal-psych trio bolstered by diverse global sonics and powerful female vocals. Drawing on the members' different musical and cultural perspectives, their music explores ritual drumming, pulsing bass lines, atmospheric keyboard sounds and Japanese traditional instruments. Gate of Klüna is Kuunatic's much awaited debut album. Produced by Tim DeWit (Gang Gang Dance) the record reveals a mesmerizing soundworld that transcends genres and hemispheres and succeeds in being both boldly experimental and wildly catchy. Kuunatic are: Fumie Kikuchi on keys and vocals, Yuko Araki on drums and vocals, and Shoko Yoshida on bass and vocals.

Although formed in Tokyo in 2016, a city that is very much on this planet, Kuunatic first looked to another heavenly body to shape their project. In interviews the band have cited that their name is drawn from kuu, the Finnish word for the moon; inspired in part by original Finnish guitarist, Sanni. The listener is advised not to cast their net too narrowly, as Kuunatic's music seems to invoke many responses around the world. You might hear echoes of weird off-kilter hybrids and psyched-out chamber music from the likes of Os Mutantes, Basil Kirchin, The Raincoats or Manfred Hübler. But musical interpretations will inevitably circle around their home base on their "other" planet, Japan. Japanese audiences sometimes consider Kuunatic as "amplified" Shinto shrine maidens (miko). Fumie chips in. "Our sound consists of many different kinds of music, but certain unique Japanese instruments and their sounds give a special atmosphere to Kuunatic's world. Japanese traditional music exists in very close proximity to us even if we don't go to see Gagaku (Japanese shrine music) or Kabuki (Japanese traditional theatrical performance). Fumie has been playing the Kagura flute (Japanese shrine music flute) since childhood, Shoko's name includes the Japanese character 笙 which means a Japanese traditional instrument, and Yuko sometimes visits a Homa burning at a temple and listens to their powerful chanting rhythm..." The possibilities to project onto Kuunatic's music are endless. This is because the band has created that rare thing, catchy music that is impossible to pigeonhole. The track "Lava Naksh" is a form of renaissance dance; a pavane, maybe, albeit with Kraftwerk's early organ sound. "Full Moon Spree" could be a ritual version of The Fall's "What You Need". "Raven's War" is a dry-as-dust progressive soundtrack, it could be a lost cut from the Valley of the Dolls record. The transportive elements in all are key: certain beats and near-melismatic melody lines hark back to archaic processional and ritual music.

$24.00 PREORDER RELEASE DATE: 11/12/2021

LP version. Kuunatic is a thrilling Tokyo based tribal-psych trio bolstered by diverse global sonics and powerful female vocals. Drawing on the members' different musical and cultural perspectives, their music explores ritual drumming, pulsing bass lines, atmospheric keyboard sounds and Japanese traditional instruments. Gate of Klüna is Kuunatic's much awaited debut album. Produced by Tim DeWit (Gang Gang Dance) the record reveals a mesmerizing soundworld that transcends genres and hemispheres and succeeds in being both boldly experimental and wildly catchy. Kuunatic are: Fumie Kikuchi on keys and vocals, Yuko Araki on drums and vocals, and Shoko Yoshida on bass and vocals.

Although formed in Tokyo in 2016, a city that is very much on this planet, Kuunatic first looked to another heavenly body to shape their project. In interviews the band have cited that their name is drawn from kuu, the Finnish word for the moon; inspired in part by original Finnish guitarist, Sanni. The listener is advised not to cast their net too narrowly, as Kuunatic's music seems to invoke many responses around the world. You might hear echoes of weird off-kilter hybrids and psyched-out chamber music from the likes of Os Mutantes, Basil Kirchin, The Raincoats or Manfred Hübler. But musical interpretations will inevitably circle around their home base on their "other" planet, Japan. Japanese audiences sometimes consider Kuunatic as "amplified" Shinto shrine maidens (miko). Fumie chips in. "Our sound consists of many different kinds of music, but certain unique Japanese instruments and their sounds give a special atmosphere to Kuunatic's world. Japanese traditional music exists in very close proximity to us even if we don't go to see Gagaku (Japanese shrine music) or Kabuki (Japanese traditional theatrical performance). Fumie has been playing the Kagura flute (Japanese shrine music flute) since childhood, Shoko's name includes the Japanese character 笙 which means a Japanese traditional instrument, and Yuko sometimes visits a Homa burning at a temple and listens to their powerful chanting rhythm..." The possibilities to project onto Kuunatic's music are endless. This is because the band has created that rare thing, catchy music that is impossible to pigeonhole. The track "Lava Naksh" is a form of renaissance dance; a pavane, maybe, albeit with Kraftwerk's early organ sound. "Full Moon Spree" could be a ritual version of The Fall's "What You Need". "Raven's War" is a dry-as-dust progressive soundtrack, it could be a lost cut from the Valley of the Dolls record. The transportive elements in all are key: certain beats and near-melismatic melody lines hark back to archaic processional and ritual music.

$15.50 IN STOCK

Much acclaimed Cyprus-based trio return with a thrilling fourth album. The record pushes their trademark Mediterranean sonics into a deep psychedelic and avant-folk direction. A danceable fever storm of stringed instruments, multi-layered singing and trombone-driven low end. For Cyprus's Monsieur Doumani, those night hours of blackness have lured them in a very different direction for their fourth album, Pissourin. Since their beginning in 2011, the trio have been globally-lauded for their innovative, highly-charged acoustic reinventions of the Cypriot tradition. After eight years, founding member Angelos Ionas had decided to leave the band. To replace him, Andys Skordis, who was already a touring guitarist with the group, joined full-time and began to contribute his own ideas. They were ready to embark on a very different journey. The pissourin (Cypriot dialect for total darkness) "brought us the different elements -- the moon, stars, planets, rivers -- and the creatures that appear in the songs are actors in this quest." It was an idea that stretched Monsieur Doumani past the Cypriot tradition they'd been exploring. It gave them the freedom to draw inspiration from far beyond Cyprus while staying connected to their roots: adding the punch and raw power of rock, the wild colors of Turkish psychedelia, even the hypnotic draw of West African music, which weaves its cord around the melody on "Alavrostishiótis". Monsieur Doumani also went electric. Technology offered the band a vastly broader palette of sound. Pedals also allowed them to think of their instruments in ways that simply hadn't been possible before. They began using the guitar as more than a rhythm or harmonic instrument, letting it provide basslines and work with the trombone. The looper allowed them to make it into a drum. Suddenly Monsieur Doumani had a huge sound. It's startling, a real electric shock. This music they make on Pissourin is overwhelming, a tsunami that surges relentlessly from the very first note of the opening track, "Tiritíchtas". The band's new sound was complex, built from interlocking layers and instrumental filigree. To have the attack the music needed, everything had to be careful and precise. Pissourin isn't just the darkness, but the creatures who inhabit it: Those who find their freedom in the night and the madness it can hold. Beings like the hobgoblins, the "Kalikándjari", and their hypnotic dance that grows in intensity as it progresses.

$24.00 IN STOCK

LP version. Much acclaimed Cyprus-based trio return with a thrilling fourth album. The record pushes their trademark Mediterranean sonics into a deep psychedelic and avant-folk direction. A danceable fever storm of stringed instruments, multi-layered singing and trombone-driven low end. For Cyprus's Monsieur Doumani, those night hours of blackness have lured them in a very different direction for their fourth album, Pissourin. Since their beginning in 2011, the trio have been globally-lauded for their innovative, highly-charged acoustic reinventions of the Cypriot tradition. After eight years, founding member Angelos Ionas had decided to leave the band. To replace him, Andys Skordis, who was already a touring guitarist with the group, joined full-time and began to contribute his own ideas. They were ready to embark on a very different journey. The pissourin (Cypriot dialect for total darkness) "brought us the different elements -- the moon, stars, planets, rivers -- and the creatures that appear in the songs are actors in this quest." It was an idea that stretched Monsieur Doumani past the Cypriot tradition they'd been exploring. It gave them the freedom to draw inspiration from far beyond Cyprus while staying connected to their roots: adding the punch and raw power of rock, the wild colors of Turkish psychedelia, even the hypnotic draw of West African music, which weaves its cord around the melody on "Alavrostishiótis". Monsieur Doumani also went electric. Technology offered the band a vastly broader palette of sound. Pedals also allowed them to think of their instruments in ways that simply hadn't been possible before. They began using the guitar as more than a rhythm or harmonic instrument, letting it provide basslines and work with the trombone. The looper allowed them to make it into a drum. Suddenly Monsieur Doumani had a huge sound. It's startling, a real electric shock. This music they make on Pissourin is overwhelming, a tsunami that surges relentlessly from the very first note of the opening track, "Tiritíchtas". The band's new sound was complex, built from interlocking layers and instrumental filigree. To have the attack the music needed, everything had to be careful and precise. Pissourin isn't just the darkness, but the creatures who inhabit it: Those who find their freedom in the night and the madness it can hold. Beings like the hobgoblins, the "Kalikándjari", and their hypnotic dance that grows in intensity as it progresses.

$15.50 IN STOCK

Sun-baked instrumental meditations played on local string and percussion instruments. Yearning vocals and songs that evoke the mystifying realities of everyday life. Recorded live and outdoors on Grande Comore island by acclaimed producer, Ian Brennan (Tinariwen, Ustad Saami, Zomba Prison Project). The Comoro islands are known locally as the "islands of the moon." We Are An Island, But We're Not Alone is the first album of original songs ever to be released from the region. Volume #8 of Glitterbeat's Hidden Musics series.

Producer Ian Brennan tells the story of how the album came together: "It took us six flights to get to the tiny African island, well sequestered in the Indian Ocean and uninhabited by man until centuries after Christ. It is a nation with no army, only police. A place where women don thick mud-masks for sunblock . . . Shortly after arriving, we inquired about the ndzumara (a double-reed pipe, or primitive oboe), and were sadly informed, 'He died.' The last living player had just passed, the sound of the instrument ostensibly lost forever with him. We were left to only imagine its resonance . . . When searching for music, often the stronger artist is hidden behind another, more famous, but lesser one . . .In this case, a slick and successful man named Hassain led us to another non-musician named Hassain who connected us with a musician who was quite good and he ultimately introduced us to his friend and mentor, and that person, Soubi (and his partner, Mmadi) turned out, at last, to be the real deal."

$15.50 IN STOCK

The legendary Malian singer/guitarist returns with his most personal and immersive album to date. Intimately recorded with a small band, Binga dives deep into Samba Touré's Songhoy roots. During the 15th and 16th centuries the Songhoy people ruled the largest empire in Africa. It stretched across the entire western Sahel, famed for the glory that was Timbuktu. But there's another place that lies a little under a hundred kilometers south of that history. Binga is the region that encompasses the vast space below the Saharan desert in Mali. This is where guitarist and singer Samba Touré grew up, and it still owns his heart -- Binga is the title of his fourth Glitterbeat album. With Binga, Touré has made sure those roots show proud and strong. With his bass player having moved to the US, it was a stripped-down combo of guitar, ngoni, calabash, and other percussion that entered the studio to record Binga. The result captures the lean tautness of the sound. The only addition on a few tracks was harmonica. That paring-back to the bare bones gave the musicians space to create what Touré calls "a communion between the instruments." As always, the groove is the foundation, the circling, mesmerizing riffs of Touré's guitar and the heartbeat rhythm of the calabash. It's relentless, mesmerizing, and the voice and the commentary of the ngoni revolve around it. This is music without embellishment, the very essence of Songhoy. Instrumental flourishes appear, but they're only brief, sharp flashes, like the conversation between guitar and ngoni at the end of "Sambalama". The focus is kept squarely on the power of the songs -- all sung in Sonhgoy, unlike previous albums. Touré has never shied away from describing the realities of life in his homeland. "Sambalama" is a joyful statement of standing tall and hoping for better days to come while on "Kola Cissé" Touré offers a praise song the memory of the late head of the Malian Football Federation. Two old Songhoy pieces bookend the disc, "Tamala" and "Terey Kongo", and both are filled with light, celebrating the history of the Songhoy people. Binga is the music of a realist. It's a cry from the soul, but even more, an affirmation of a nation's history, and Samba Touré's pride in it.

$15.50 LOW STOCK LEVEL

The follow-up to Chuck Johnson's acclaimed Balsams LP (VDSQ 021LP), The Cinder Grove delves further into the compositional possibilities of the pedal steel guitar. This halcyon collection of tracks draws on a wider palette of sounds, adding strings and piano, to dive deeper into the sound bath of Johnson's meditative music. The Cinder Grove is a profound, affecting statement on the nature of loss and irreplaceability as well as a major addition to the canon of Johnson's work. It's a suite of requiems for lost places. Many of the spaces that once fostered affordable living and creative work now only exist in sonic memory, like the echoes of ghosts. Like much of the California landscape in recent years, some of these spaces having succumbed to fire. Others, to the equally inexorable forces of gentrification. While his 2017 LP Balsams was intended to provide the listener with a space for respite and calm -- even healing -- The Cinder Grove seeks to remember what has been lost while celebrating the resilience of the human spirit and the natural world. In making The Cinder Grove, Johnson dug through archival recordings from Oakland DIY performance spaces to digitally extract their reverb and echo qualities. He then applied these effects -- as well as the digitally modeled reverberation of a redwood forest -- to the tracks on The Cinder Grove, allowing the pieces to bask in the lush virtual spaces, and in the process realized that these sonic re-constructions can only ever be approximations. We try to make spaces what we want them to be, whether in memory or in the material present. Chuck Johnson - pedal steel guitar, synthesizers, Yamaha electronic organ, treatments with: Sarah Davachi - piano; Marielle V. Jakobsons - violin; Hilary Lewis - viola and violin; Crystal Pascucci - cello.

$15.50 IN STOCK

Liraz, the highly touted Israeli-Persian singer, returns with a buoyant and border-busting new album. Shimmering electro-pop meets pulsing dance rhythms and retro Persian sonics. Includes clandestine collaborations with Iran-based musicians and composers. For her second album, Zan ("Women" in Farsi), the Israeli- Persian singer collaborated online with composers and musicians from Iran. Everything had to be secretive to avoid the gaze of Tehran's mullahs and secret police. The result is her private revolution, songs with a true message, music to make people dance and smile -- and above all, think. The songs on Zan are the fulfilment of a dream, taking Liraz deep into the soul of the country that fills her heart and populated the stories her parents told her as a child -- but one she's never seen. Her family, Iranian Jews, moved to Tel Aviv in the 1970s. Yet although Liraz was raised in Israel, she's always believed that "my culture is Iranian." The real revelation came when she moved to the US for three years to work as an actress, appearing in several big-budget movies, including A Late Quartet and Fair Game. In Los Angeles she found a huge Iranian community. When making Naz (2018), she wrote and sang in Farsi, the music at times exploring the sounds of pre-revolution Iranian pop music. On Zan, she worked with Iranian musicians, some anonymously, and let her voice and her music resonate further. One of those anonymous players, a female percussionist based in Tehran, features on the opening track, "Zan Bezan," (in English "Women, Sing") alongside Liraz's Israeli band. It's an insistent, catchy piece of electro-pop with heavy musical nods to Iranian pop stars of the 1970s like Googoosh; the message of female empowerment, however, is absolutely contemporary. Another secret Iranian collaborator worked on the powerful earworm that's "Joon Joon," where the dance beats erupt straight from a 1970s Tehran disco, while the big chorus implants itself in the brain and refuses to leave. Zan is an album of contrasts, like "Shab Gerye," the ballad that Liraz knew she needed to include "because the words and music fit so perfectly. It's a love song about reality," or the aching closer, "Lalai." The album continues breaking the walls her mother and aunts began to dismantle. But it does much more: it burrows under borders. It connects countries and cultures. Zan, Liraz insists, is the second chapter of the story that began with Naz. But it's also one that stands alone.

$23.50 IN STOCK

LP version. 180 gram vinyl; includes download code. Liraz, the highly touted Israeli-Persian singer, returns with a buoyant and border-busting new album. Shimmering electro-pop meets pulsing dance rhythms and retro Persian sonics. Includes clandestine collaborations with Iran-based musicians and composers. For her second album, Zan ("Women" in Farsi), the Israeli- Persian singer collaborated online with composers and musicians from Iran. Everything had to be secretive to avoid the gaze of Tehran's mullahs and secret police. The result is her private revolution, songs with a true message, music to make people dance and smile -- and above all, think. The songs on Zan are the fulfilment of a dream, taking Liraz deep into the soul of the country that fills her heart and populated the stories her parents told her as a child -- but one she's never seen. Her family, Iranian Jews, moved to Tel Aviv in the 1970s. Yet although Liraz was raised in Israel, she's always believed that "my culture is Iranian." The real revelation came when she moved to the US for three years to work as an actress, appearing in several big-budget movies, including A Late Quartet and Fair Game. In Los Angeles she found a huge Iranian community. When making Naz (2018), she wrote and sang in Farsi, the music at times exploring the sounds of pre-revolution Iranian pop music. On Zan, she worked with Iranian musicians, some anonymously, and let her voice and her music resonate further. One of those anonymous players, a female percussionist based in Tehran, features on the opening track, "Zan Bezan," (in English "Women, Sing") alongside Liraz's Israeli band. It's an insistent, catchy piece of electro-pop with heavy musical nods to Iranian pop stars of the 1970s like Googoosh; the message of female empowerment, however, is absolutely contemporary. Another secret Iranian collaborator worked on the powerful earworm that's "Joon Joon," where the dance beats erupt straight from a 1970s Tehran disco, while the big chorus implants itself in the brain and refuses to leave. Zan is an album of contrasts, like "Shab Gerye," the ballad that Liraz knew she needed to include "because the words and music fit so perfectly. It's a love song about reality," or the aching closer, "Lalai." The album continues breaking the walls her mother and aunts began to dismantle. But it does much more: it burrows under borders. It connects countries and cultures. Zan, Liraz insists, is the second chapter of the story that began with Naz. But it's also one that stands alone.

$23.50 LOW STOCK LEVEL

LP version. 180 gram vinyl; includes download code. Firmly established as an influential voice in the burgeoning Russian DIY rock scene, Lucidvox's incendiary mixture of atmospheric psych-rock, heavy riffs, and Russian folk mystery has already gained them both critical attention and audience loyalty outside of their hometown of Moscow. We Are (мы есть) is their first international album release and the next element in their rapid rise. Bands in which all or most of the members learn how to play their instruments just to be in the band are something of a special category in the history of popular music. British avant-gardists Wire and American roots hit-makers Creedence Clearwater Revival come to mind, as do, in varying degrees, post-punk legends like The Raincoats and The Slits. The individual player's inexperience becomes an asset -- they are free to create without the burden of past prejudices -- and the sound attains a mysterious balance. Formed in 2013, Lucidvox comprises four women based in Moscow: Alina (vocals/flute), Nadezhda (drums), Galla (guitar), and Anna (bass). The band's original repertoire consisted of cover versions of songs by Sonic Youth, Pixies, White Stripes, and Warpaint. Being in a "girl band" was, from the beginning, an essential and empowering concept. Lucidvox quickly became a tight circle that encouraged musical experimentation, emotional honesty, and future plans. After a year or so of playing covers, the band began to assemble original material, which had its own sonic footprint. And like everything else in Lucidvox, the songwriting process was highly democratic from the start. Unlike the majority of bands, this process allows all of them to contribute lyrics. The lyrics for the most part revolve around intense personal experiences. While Galla notes that the overall sound of the new album is "more powerful, more rock," the band's trademark post-Siouxsie and the Banshees squall is now more nuanced than ever. There is more depth and space, and more sense of the majestic rumble that the band conjures up in a live setting -- an experience in which the ensemble lays down an interlocked, almost krautrock-like groove. Even as their international reputation has grown, they have never considered singing songs in English, and in the band's sonic explorations, there has always been a subtle nod to Russian traditional music and folklore. Lucidvox is at the front of this growing wave, along with Moscow's Glintshake and the fast-rising St Petersburg band Shortparis.

$15.50 IN STOCK

Firmly established as an influential voice in the burgeoning Russian DIY rock scene, Lucidvox's incendiary mixture of atmospheric psych-rock, heavy riffs, and Russian folk mystery has already gained them both critical attention and audience loyalty outside of their hometown of Moscow. We Are (мы есть) is their first international album release and the next element in their rapid rise. Bands in which all or most of the members learn how to play their instruments just to be in the band are something of a special category in the history of popular music. British avant-gardists Wire and American roots hit-makers Creedence Clearwater Revival come to mind, as do, in varying degrees, post-punk legends like The Raincoats and The Slits. The individual player's inexperience becomes an asset -- they are free to create without the burden of past prejudices -- and the sound attains a mysterious balance. Formed in 2013, Lucidvox comprises four women based in Moscow: Alina (vocals/flute), Nadezhda (drums), Galla (guitar), and Anna (bass). The band's original repertoire consisted of cover versions of songs by Sonic Youth, Pixies, White Stripes, and Warpaint. Being in a "girl band" was, from the beginning, an essential and empowering concept. Lucidvox quickly became a tight circle that encouraged musical experimentation, emotional honesty, and future plans. After a year or so of playing covers, the band began to assemble original material, which had its own sonic footprint. And like everything else in Lucidvox, the songwriting process was highly democratic from the start. Unlike the majority of bands, this process allows all of them to contribute lyrics. The lyrics for the most part revolve around intense personal experiences. While Galla notes that the overall sound of the new album is "more powerful, more rock," the band's trademark post-Siouxsie and the Banshees squall is now more nuanced than ever. There is more depth and space, and more sense of the majestic rumble that the band conjures up in a live setting -- an experience in which the ensemble lays down an interlocked, almost krautrock-like groove. Even as their international reputation has grown, they have never considered singing songs in English, and in the band's sonic explorations, there has always been a subtle nod to Russian traditional music and folklore. Lucidvox is at the front of this growing wave, along with Moscow's Glintshake and the fast-rising St Petersburg band Shortparis.

$15.50 IN STOCK

Glitterbeat present the first-ever reissue of The Pace Setters, the classic 1981 debut album from this much revered Ghanaian band Edikanfo. Vibrantly produced by British sound explorer Brian Eno in Accra, Ghana. Highlife meets Afro-funk. Almost four decades after a coup d'état in Ghana prematurely halted their career, Edikanfo's surviving band members are at last gearing up to reissue and tour The Pace Setters. Features exclusive liner notes from Eno and an extensive interview with Edikanfo band leader, Gilbert Amartey Amar. In 1981, London-based E.G. Records released the debut album from a young Ghanaian group called Edikanfo. The eight-piece band was the last group to be managed by the late Faisal Helwani, a charismatic impresario who was based at the popular Napoleon Club in Osu, a suburb in Ghana's teeming capital Accra. Edikanfo quickly rose to international notoriety following the release of The Pace Setters because of the infectious, forward-looking highlife meets Afro-funk synthesis the band committed to tape. But the album also caught an additional wind of publicity due to its producer, the already legendary British musician and sound conceptualist Brian Eno. During that time, Eno was researching and openly propagating West African music. He recently collaborated with Talking Heads on Remain in Light (1980) and with Talking Heads frontman David Byrne on My Life in the Bush of Ghosts (1981). Eno and Edikanfo's work together at Studio One in Accra (Ghana) was yet another inspired morphing of soundworlds and processes and a significant touchstone for both artists. Just when the sky seemed the limit for Edikanfo, the coup d'état in Ghana on the last day of 1981, tragically put the brakes on the band's quickly developing fortunes. For years after that, the country endured enforced curfews at night, which of course ultimately gutted the live music scene in Accra and elsewhere. Because of this and other financial setbacks, the band ceased activity and its members spread out in exile, all over the world. Now, almost four decades later, Edikanfo has returned. And with its surviving members gearing up to reissue and tour their classic 1981 album, The Pace Setters, the band is once again excitedly pointed towards the future. Bassist, songwriter and founding member Gilbert Amartey Amar, popularly known as Chi-Kin-Chee, talked to the label from Accra, Ghana where he is currently rehearsing Edikanfo and preparing for an upcoming European tour -- the group's first ever.

$23.50 IN STOCK

LP version. Includes download code. Glitterbeat present the first-ever reissue of The Pace Setters, the classic 1981 debut album from this much revered Ghanaian band Edikanfo. Vibrantly produced by British sound explorer Brian Eno in Accra, Ghana. Highlife meets Afro-funk. Almost four decades after a coup d'état in Ghana prematurely halted their career, Edikanfo's surviving band members are at last gearing up to reissue and tour The Pace Setters. Features exclusive liner notes from Eno and an extensive interview with Edikanfo band leader, Gilbert Amartey Amar. In 1981, London-based E.G. Records released the debut album from a young Ghanaian group called Edikanfo. The eight-piece band was the last group to be managed by the late Faisal Helwani, a charismatic impresario who was based at the popular Napoleon Club in Osu, a suburb in Ghana's teeming capital Accra. Edikanfo quickly rose to international notoriety following the release of The Pace Setters because of the infectious, forward-looking highlife meets Afro-funk synthesis the band committed to tape. But the album also caught an additional wind of publicity due to its producer, the already legendary British musician and sound conceptualist Brian Eno. During that time, Eno was researching and openly propagating West African music. He recently collaborated with Talking Heads on Remain in Light (1980) and with Talking Heads frontman David Byrne on My Life in the Bush of Ghosts (1981). Eno and Edikanfo's work together at Studio One in Accra (Ghana) was yet another inspired morphing of soundworlds and processes and a significant touchstone for both artists. Just when the sky seemed the limit for Edikanfo, the coup d'état in Ghana on the last day of 1981, tragically put the brakes on the band's quickly developing fortunes. For years after that, the country endured enforced curfews at night, which of course ultimately gutted the live music scene in Accra and elsewhere. Because of this and other financial setbacks, the band ceased activity and its members spread out in exile, all over the world. Now, almost four decades later, Edikanfo has returned. And with its surviving members gearing up to reissue and tour their classic 1981 album, The Pace Setters, the band is once again excitedly pointed towards the future. Bassist, songwriter and founding member Gilbert Amartey Amar, popularly known as Chi-Kin-Chee, talked to the label from Accra, Ghana where he is currently rehearsing Edikanfo and preparing for an upcoming European tour -- the group's first ever.

$15.50 IN STOCK

Following his critically acclaimed debut, God Is Not a Terrorist (GB 067CD/LP, 2019), 49-note scale microtonal vocal master Ustad Saami returns with an epic part two. Pakistan Is for the Peaceful presents an even more immersive work, comprised of just three extended tracks and again produced 100% live at the master's rooftop home in Karachi by Grammy-winner Ian Brennan, with musical accompaniment provided by Ustad's four sons: Rauf (group leader, harmonium, vocals), Urooj (primary response vocalist, tambura number one), Ahmed (tambura number two, vocals), and Azeem (tablas, vocals). Ustad Saami is the last living surti master, a precursor of the ancient Islamic devotional music of qawwali. Despite being under constant threat from Islamic fundamentalists, the master has spent his life as a dedicated practitioner of a vanishing art -- one that has been passed on from generation to generation since the 13th century. The seventh release from Glitterbeat's acclaimed Hidden Musics series.

"At age seventy-six, Ustad still practices from 4 AM to noon most days, drilling himself with exercises. Though his physical hearing has declined and he requires in-ear aids for daily communication, his powers of perception continue to rise. As a child, he was the chosen one from his family and his master forbade him to speak for years. During this period, he was only allowed to express himself vocally, not verbally. He studied for 35 years to perfect this system before he ever even stepped onstage. It was the same trajectory as puff pop-stars, only inverted -- they start performing prematurely and get even more flaccid over time. Instead, Ustad explores the subtlety of human emotion through microtones, an attempt to turn "negatives positive" through the reclamation of those tones deemed out-of-tune. Following Saami's debut album, a World Music expert in Los Angeles was flummoxed that she could not find any reference to the master's system on the internet. Ironically, this absence of reference actually stands as proof rather than refuting his rarity. It cannot be found elsewhere precisely because it is his system -- a customized work of recovery -- with Ustad the only living vocal practitioner." --Ian Brennan

$15.50 IN STOCK

AMMAR 808's previous album Maghreb United (GB 060CD/LP, 2018) -- a powerful mixture of deep TR-808 bass and Pan-Maghreb beats and voices -- received widespread critical acclaim and shook dancefloors throughout Europe, North Africa, and beyond. This time Brussels-based Tunisian electronic producer Sofyann Ben Youssef (aka AMMAR 808) has traveled to the Tamil Nadu region of southern India for a breath-taking new adventure. With a suitcase full of recording equipment, he set up base in the pulsing city of Chennai and undertook a collaborative reimagining of the area's rich and resonant music. Ranging from trance temple sounds to rap-like street theater performance and ending with the mathematical richness of Carnatic music, Ben Youssef's in situ recordings form the foundation of his potent new album: Global Control / Invisible Invasion. He's crafted them from Hindu mythology and created a philosophical jolt of a disc that sweeps him far from his native Maghreb and deep into the ancient Carnatic tradition of South India. While the ideas are timeless, the music leans modern, with AMMAR 808 and his arsenal of analogue electronics and subsonic beats, morphing traditional legends and soundscapes into the future tense. The recording itself only lasted ten days, while even the post-production barely took a month. All those years of thought had laid very firm groundwork. The "invisible invasion" in the album title isn't a contemporary reference to the coronavirus pandemic. The virus flung us all into a dystopian universe. The track "Ey Paavi" comes from the Mahabharata, one of the great Sanskrit epic tales of India, composed over 2000 years ago. The song relates episode where the threats of death and destruction between Bhima and Duryodhana ratchet up and up. Mythology and tradition run all through the record. "Mahaganapatim" is another name for the god Ganesha, for example, while the songs "Marivere Gati" and "Pahi Jagajjanani" both have long roots in the South Indian history. Global Control / Invisible Invasion is an album of songs -- some in the Tamil language which is widely spoken across the region. That's perfectly natural, given the vocal tradition which is the chief thread of Carnatic music (as opposed to North Indian music, which is largely instrumental). It's also quite deliberately very percussive album, another reflection of India itself. Every track resonates with tightly wound passion. Global Control / Invisible Invasion offers a perfect soundtrack for these times.

$15.50 IN STOCK

Sometimes, things fall together as if they're simply fated to exist. Orkesta Mendoza found that; as soon as the songs began to flow for Curandero, their second album for the Glitterbeat label, the stars seemed to align and everything was composed, recorded, and mastered in just a few short months. In 2018, the band began work on new material, but it didn't quite click. The music crosses and re-crosses that fluid border between Mexico and the United States, mixing rock and pop with ranchera and cumbia alongside snatches of mariachi horns. And hovering over everything is the spirit of '60s boogaloo. Band leader Sergio Mendoza was born in Nogales, Arizona (USA) but grew up across the border in Nogales, Sonora (Mexico). Rock arrived in his life after he moved back to the US, when he was still a young child. Inevitably, the different styles simply blended in his mind and fit together in his life. "Eres Oficial" looks back to the 1950s to evoke the ghost of Buddy Holly in its insistent guitar chords, and the production that puts an emphasis on the drumbeat. A stripped-back sound is apparent in cuts like "Head Above Water" and "Little Space." They bristle with hooks and immediacy and the kind of Latin flavors that would have been perfectly at home on old AM radio. Curandero quickly became an album filled with guests, featuring Joey Burns of Calexico, Chetes from the legendary Mexican rock band Zurdok, and Spanish singer Amparo Sánchez. Curandero has a close, intimate feel, but this wasn't a band playing together in a room; all the musicians came in separately to track their parts. The consistency of sound comes having the touring band drummer and bassist on most of the songs, and from Mendoza's production which makes everything seem organic and bright. The album's sole instrumental, the toe-tapping "Bora Bora," sounds like it was recorded in a dark, smoky club, with the feel of a soulful big band fueled by the retro, percussive power of Mambo. A vintage sensibility even takes Orkesta Mendoza back further -- all the way to the 1940s on the closing track. "Hoodoo Voodoo Queen" is the Andrews Sisters on a fantasy trip south of the border. The harmonies of Moira Smilie, Carrie Rodriguez, and Gaby Moreno sparkle over percussion, pedal steel and glorious, honking sax. Curandero is border music, without borders.

$23.50 IN STOCK

LP version. Includes download code. The inventive duo of brothers from the Golan Heights -- Hasan and Rami Nakhleh -- return with an infectious re-imagining of their sound. Jammed full of pop hooks and quarter-tone melodic lines, Migrant Birds unleashes a disco whirlwind that pays homage to the Middle Eastern dancefloor scenes of the '80s. The new synth-powered album from TootArd takes them to the dancefloor, about as far from the spare, guitar-driven desert blues of their highly touted Glitterbeat debut Laissez Passer (GB 054CD/LP, 2017). The '80s may be the catalyst, with the glittering, hedonistic party vibe. But the real roots of the music here run deeper, to musicians like keyboardist Magdi al-Husseini and Ihsan Al-Munzer, who were the first to introduce synthesizers to the Arabic classical style, or Omar Khorshid, who pioneered the addition of electric guitar and worked with the legendary Umm Kulthum. They brought Arabic music firmly into the modern age. Migrant Birds winds all those strands from the past together into a very intricately-crafted whole with a full sound. Under the beats and joy, there's a dark contrast, a sorrow that casts its shadow all across the lyrics. The album's heart is simple idea -- freedom; of being those Migrant Birds and flying away. But perhaps that's as natural as breathing for people who remain officially "undefined" and stateless. Those who are born in the occupied Golan Heights have no passport, depending instead on a document called a laissez passer to be able to cross borders. It is a situation that has existed since the late 1960s when Israel took control of the region. A feeling of leaving, of knowing the emotional distance from where you began, is captured in "Wanderlust" with its Kerouac images of existing on the road. In "Babe," the thoughts of escape come from an Arabic woman, desperate to flee her dominant husband. That sadness which ripples through the lyrics is a perfect fit with the album's two slower tracks, "Ya Ghali" and the stately closer, "Remote Love." All through Migrant Birds, the focus is on songs that have plenty to say. Only one is an instrumental, the enigmatically-titled "Stone Heap Of The Wild Cat." While proudly rooted in the Middle East, Migrant Birds is infectious and globally accessible. But the album embraces a basic pop concept, with short, well-produced songs.

$15.50 IN STOCK

Raw and celebratory funeral music from northern Ghana. Recorded 100% live and outdoors by Ian Brennan. Sixth release from Glitterbeat's acclaimed Hidden Musics series. Ian Brennan is a Grammy award winning producer (Tinariwen, Ustad Saami, Zomba Prison Project, Ramblin' Jack Elliot) and the author of several books, the most recent being: Silenced by Sound: The Music Meritocracy Myth (2019).

"On the dusty-road outskirts of Tamale (Ghana) near the School of Hygiene, the group says they prefer to use the name given to their tribe by colonialists (Fra Fra) rather than being commanded what to correct after the fact. The fra fra trio is led by Small, a man who celebrates his diminutive size rather than seeing it as a lack. He picked the two-string Kologo 'guitar' with dog-tags fastened at the head as rattles. Another hallmark of Fra Fra culture are the tiny bone mouth flutes that they actually call horns, since that is what they are made from. As funeral songs are often done in procession, I took the mics to the group when they seemed reluctant to enter the compound, instead gyrating in circles on the gravel outside. In recording, coverage is more important than precision. Every microphone tells a slightly different version of the truth, so I quickly threw up as many as possible. Far from deathly dirges, these were largely celebrations. Their process of mourning bares more than a passing resemblance to a New Orleans second line marching band. It is challenging to disregard this as mere coincidence given the sad history of the transatlantic slave trade exploiting their very region in the north. Ghana struggles with its own north/south divide . . . This northern zone was a wellspring of the Blues, a land where they emanated and never left. As so often is the case, literacy in no way determined creativity. Small was able to riff almost endlessly. In fact, his performances grew freer and stronger past the ten-minute mark, so much so that songs would become nearly different tunes entirely. Following his flow, I simply let tape roll until things fell apart, but even then, I feared that still greater things may've lay beyond if only the musicians had kept going. When we were through, Small asserted that he could see that music was 'in my blood.' But I protested. Music is in all of us..." --Ian Brennan

$23.50 IN STOCK

LP version. 180 gram vinyl; includes download code. AMMAR 808's previous album Maghreb United (GB 060CD/LP, 2018) -- a powerful mixture of deep TR-808 bass and Pan-Maghreb beats and voices -- received widespread critical acclaim and shook dancefloors throughout Europe, North Africa, and beyond. This time Brussels-based Tunisian electronic producer Sofyann Ben Youssef (aka AMMAR 808) has traveled to the Tamil Nadu region of southern India for a breath-taking new adventure. With a suitcase full of recording equipment, he set up base in the pulsing city of Chennai and undertook a collaborative reimagining of the area's rich and resonant music. Ranging from trance temple sounds to rap-like street theater performance and ending with the mathematical richness of Carnatic music, Ben Youssef's in situ recordings form the foundation of his potent new album: Global Control / Invisible Invasion. He's crafted them from Hindu mythology and created a philosophical jolt of a disc that sweeps him far from his native Maghreb and deep into the ancient Carnatic tradition of South India. While the ideas are timeless, the music leans modern, with AMMAR 808 and his arsenal of analogue electronics and subsonic beats, morphing traditional legends and soundscapes into the future tense. The recording itself only lasted ten days, while even the post-production barely took a month. All those years of thought had laid very firm groundwork. The "invisible invasion" in the album title isn't a contemporary reference to the coronavirus pandemic. The virus flung us all into a dystopian universe. The track "Ey Paavi" comes from the Mahabharata, one of the great Sanskrit epic tales of India, composed over 2000 years ago. The song relates episode where the threats of death and destruction between Bhima and Duryodhana ratchet up and up. Mythology and tradition run all through the record. "Mahaganapatim" is another name for the god Ganesha, for example, while the songs "Marivere Gati" and "Pahi Jagajjanani" both have long roots in the South Indian history. Global Control / Invisible Invasion is an album of songs -- some in the Tamil language which is widely spoken across the region. That's perfectly natural, given the vocal tradition which is the chief thread of Carnatic music (as opposed to North Indian music, which is largely instrumental). It's also quite deliberately very percussive album, another reflection of India itself. Every track resonates with tightly wound passion. Global Control / Invisible Invasion offers a perfect soundtrack for these times.

$23.50 IN STOCK

LP version. Includes download code. Raw and celebratory funeral music from northern Ghana. Recorded 100% live and outdoors by Ian Brennan. Sixth release from Glitterbeat's acclaimed Hidden Musics series. Ian Brennan is a Grammy award winning producer (Tinariwen, Ustad Saami, Zomba Prison Project, Ramblin' Jack Elliot) and the author of several books, the most recent being: Silenced by Sound: The Music Meritocracy Myth (2019).

"On the dusty-road outskirts of Tamale (Ghana) near the School of Hygiene, the group says they prefer to use the name given to their tribe by colonialists (Fra Fra) rather than being commanded what to correct after the fact. The fra fra trio is led by Small, a man who celebrates his diminutive size rather than seeing it as a lack. He picked the two-string Kologo 'guitar' with dog-tags fastened at the head as rattles. Another hallmark of Fra Fra culture are the tiny bone mouth flutes that they actually call horns, since that is what they are made from. As funeral songs are often done in procession, I took the mics to the group when they seemed reluctant to enter the compound, instead gyrating in circles on the gravel outside. In recording, coverage is more important than precision. Every microphone tells a slightly different version of the truth, so I quickly threw up as many as possible. Far from deathly dirges, these were largely celebrations. Their process of mourning bares more than a passing resemblance to a New Orleans second line marching band. It is challenging to disregard this as mere coincidence given the sad history of the transatlantic slave trade exploiting their very region in the north. Ghana struggles with its own north/south divide . . . This northern zone was a wellspring of the Blues, a land where they emanated and never left. As so often is the case, literacy in no way determined creativity. Small was able to riff almost endlessly. In fact, his performances grew freer and stronger past the ten-minute mark, so much so that songs would become nearly different tunes entirely. Following his flow, I simply let tape roll until things fell apart, but even then, I feared that still greater things may've lay beyond if only the musicians had kept going. When we were through, Small asserted that he could see that music was 'in my blood.' But I protested. Music is in all of us..." --Ian Brennan

$23.50 NOT IN STOCK

LP version. 180 gram vinyl; includes download code. Sometimes, things fall together as if they're simply fated to exist. Orkesta Mendoza found that; as soon as the songs began to flow for Curandero, their second album for the Glitterbeat label, the stars seemed to align and everything was composed, recorded, and mastered in just a few short months. In 2018, the band began work on new material, but it didn't quite click. The music crosses and re-crosses that fluid border between Mexico and the United States, mixing rock and pop with ranchera and cumbia alongside snatches of mariachi horns. And hovering over everything is the spirit of '60s boogaloo. Band leader Sergio Mendoza was born in Nogales, Arizona (USA) but grew up across the border in Nogales, Sonora (Mexico). Rock arrived in his life after he moved back to the US, when he was still a young child. Inevitably, the different styles simply blended in his mind and fit together in his life. "Eres Oficial" looks back to the 1950s to evoke the ghost of Buddy Holly in its insistent guitar chords, and the production that puts an emphasis on the drumbeat. A stripped-back sound is apparent in cuts like "Head Above Water" and "Little Space." They bristle with hooks and immediacy and the kind of Latin flavors that would have been perfectly at home on old AM radio. Curandero quickly became an album filled with guests, featuring Joey Burns of Calexico, Chetes from the legendary Mexican rock band Zurdok, and Spanish singer Amparo Sánchez. Curandero has a close, intimate feel, but this wasn't a band playing together in a room; all the musicians came in separately to track their parts. The consistency of sound comes having the touring band drummer and bassist on most of the songs, and from Mendoza's production which makes everything seem organic and bright. The album's sole instrumental, the toe-tapping "Bora Bora," sounds like it was recorded in a dark, smoky club, with the feel of a soulful big band fueled by the retro, percussive power of Mambo. A vintage sensibility even takes Orkesta Mendoza back further -- all the way to the 1940s on the closing track. "Hoodoo Voodoo Queen" is the Andrews Sisters on a fantasy trip south of the border. The harmonies of Moira Smilie, Carrie Rodriguez, and Gaby Moreno sparkle over percussion, pedal steel and glorious, honking sax. Curandero is border music, without borders.

$15.50 IN STOCK

The inventive duo of brothers from the Golan Heights -- Hasan and Rami Nakhleh -- return with an infectious re-imagining of their sound. Jammed full of pop hooks and quarter-tone melodic lines, Migrant Birds unleashes a disco whirlwind that pays homage to the Middle Eastern dancefloor scenes of the '80s. The new synth-powered album from TootArd takes them to the dancefloor, about as far from the spare, guitar-driven desert blues of their highly touted Glitterbeat debut Laissez Passer (GB 054CD/LP, 2017). The '80s may be the catalyst, with the glittering, hedonistic party vibe. But the real roots of the music here run deeper, to musicians like keyboardist Magdi al-Husseini and Ihsan Al-Munzer, who were the first to introduce synthesizers to the Arabic classical style, or Omar Khorshid, who pioneered the addition of electric guitar and worked with the legendary Umm Kulthum. They brought Arabic music firmly into the modern age. Migrant Birds winds all those strands from the past together into a very intricately-crafted whole with a full sound. Under the beats and joy, there's a dark contrast, a sorrow that casts its shadow all across the lyrics. The album's heart is simple idea -- freedom; of being those Migrant Birds and flying away. But perhaps that's as natural as breathing for people who remain officially "undefined" and stateless. Those who are born in the occupied Golan Heights have no passport, depending instead on a document called a laissez passer to be able to cross borders. It is a situation that has existed since the late 1960s when Israel took control of the region. A feeling of leaving, of knowing the emotional distance from where you began, is captured in "Wanderlust" with its Kerouac images of existing on the road. In "Babe," the thoughts of escape come from an Arabic woman, desperate to flee her dominant husband. That sadness which ripples through the lyrics is a perfect fit with the album's two slower tracks, "Ya Ghali" and the stately closer, "Remote Love." All through Migrant Birds, the focus is on songs that have plenty to say. Only one is an instrumental, the enigmatically-titled "Stone Heap Of The Wild Cat." While proudly rooted in the Middle East, Migrant Birds is infectious and globally accessible. But the album embraces a basic pop concept, with short, well-produced songs.

$23.50 IN STOCK

LP version. 180 gram vinyl; included download code. On Tamotaït, Tamikrest's fifth studio album, the music blazes bright and long. With the political situation so volatile and desperate in the Saharan ancestral lands from which Tamikrest come, this is more than an album. Tamotaït means hope for a positive change. Change as in an end to the fighting that's plagued northern Mali and the wider region for the past several years; change such as the chance to prosper within their own homeland -- Azawad -- a proto nation that the nomadic Tuareg (or Kel Tamasheq as they prefer to be called) briefly possessed in 2012. It's assouf, music forged in exile. Because of the toxic regional conflict, for much of the last decade the founding members of Tamikrest have not lived in Kidal, Mali, the desert crossroads town where the band began in 2007. They live in Tamanrasset (Algeria), Paris, and at times along the desolate Algerian/Malian borderlands. Yet, exile can also mean the hope of return, and on "Amzagh" and "As Sastnan Hidjan", the two tracks the group sees as pivotal to understanding the themes of Tamotaït, Tamikrest sing of the possibilities that lie ahead for the Kel Tamasheq people. The music builds and builds, the dual, intertwined guitars of Ag Mossa and Paul Salvagnac relentless and insistent, until it finally all boils over. It also brings light and warmth and comfort, and its glow fills the beautifully aching "Timtarin", where the band is joined by an ideal collaborator, the renowned Moroccan singer Hindi Zahra. Tamotaït is the most expansive and adventurous album that Tamikrest have made, exploring every corner of their sound. There's even music they made far from the Sahara -- in Japan. On tour there, Ag Mossa had been very taken by the sound of their traditional instruments. Tamikrest's plans to record there were almost derailed by a typhoon. But one track does appear on the album: the final cut, "Tabsit", with its atmospheric, gossamer melody. The shamisen and five-string tonkori of guests Atsushi Sakta and Oki Kano glide around the guitars to create a piece where the desert truly does meet the Rising Sun. Most of Tamotaït, though, was recorded in rural France, working with producer David Odlum (Glen Hansard, Gemma Hayes, Tinariwen), stepping up from his mixing role on the band's 2016 release, Kidal (GB 043CD/LP). Tamikrest have become one of the best rock n' roll bands in the world.

$15.50 IN STOCK

On Tamotaït, Tamikrest's fifth studio album, the music blazes bright and long. With the political situation so volatile and desperate in the Saharan ancestral lands from which Tamikrest come, this is more than an album. Tamotaït means hope for a positive change. Change as in an end to the fighting that's plagued northern Mali and the wider region for the past several years; change such as the chance to prosper within their own homeland -- Azawad -- a proto nation that the nomadic Tuareg (or Kel Tamasheq as they prefer to be called) briefly possessed in 2012. It's assouf, music forged in exile. Because of the toxic regional conflict, for much of the last decade the founding members of Tamikrest have not lived in Kidal, Mali, the desert crossroads town where the band began in 2007. They live in Tamanrasset (Algeria), Paris, and at times along the desolate Algerian/Malian borderlands. Yet, exile can also mean the hope of return, and on "Amzagh" and "As Sastnan Hidjan", the two tracks the group sees as pivotal to understanding the themes of Tamotaït, Tamikrest sing of the possibilities that lie ahead for the Kel Tamasheq people. The music builds and builds, the dual, intertwined guitars of Ag Mossa and Paul Salvagnac relentless and insistent, until it finally all boils over. It also brings light and warmth and comfort, and its glow fills the beautifully aching "Timtarin", where the band is joined by an ideal collaborator, the renowned Moroccan singer Hindi Zahra. Tamotaït is the most expansive and adventurous album that Tamikrest have made, exploring every corner of their sound. There's even music they made far from the Sahara -- in Japan. On tour there, Ag Mossa had been very taken by the sound of their traditional instruments. Tamikrest's plans to record there were almost derailed by a typhoon. But one track does appear on the album: the final cut, "Tabsit", with its atmospheric, gossamer melody. The shamisen and five-string tonkori of guests Atsushi Sakta and Oki Kano glide around the guitars to create a piece where the desert truly does meet the Rising Sun. Most of Tamotaït, though, was recorded in rural France, working with producer David Odlum (Glen Hansard, Gemma Hayes, Tinariwen), stepping up from his mixing role on the band's 2016 release, Kidal (GB 043CD/LP). Tamikrest have become one of the best rock n' roll bands in the world.

$23.50 IN STOCK

LP version. 180 gram vinyl; includes download code. Fado rewired and recast. Raül Refree - one of Europe's most innovative producers (Rosalía, Sonic Youth's Lee Ranaldo) -- meets Lina, a Portuguese singer renowned for her haunting interpretations of Amalia's classic repertoire. Analog synths and hushed sonics. Making history by breaking the rules. Shedding the skin. A fresh beginning. That's what singer Lina and producer/multi-instrumentalist Raül Refree have given Portuguese fado on Lina_Raül Refree. They've sloughed off the old trappings and exacting traditions of the country's national music and given it into a perfect fit for the 21st century. Gone are the chiming guitars that were the music's instrumental trademark, and in their place comes piano and analog synths. Lina has a deep background in the music; her family has sung it for two generations and she took it up when she was 15, studied opera and turned to the stage, where she portrayed fado's great queen, Amália Rodrigues, before being invited to become a regular at Lisbon's iconic Clube de Fado. Raül Refree has been widely-praised for his solo work, like the album La Otra Mitad (GB 065CD/LP, 2018), as well as his ground-breaking productions; he'd collaborated with the flamenco incendiary Rosalía on her Los Angeles album (2017), the disc that first made her name. Lina chose the songs, fado classics associated with Amália Rodrigues. It was material she knew and loved deeply. Not being a part of the tradition, Refree was unfamiliar with the originals. That helped him and allowed him to come to the music without the weight of history. Beginning in May 2018, over the course of three sessions, they let the sound take shape. In the world they created, the music embraces and captures the listener via the time-honored songs, the minimalist textures and Lina's performances -- so full of bittersweet hope. Yet there are also some delicious, unexpected moments that add to the majesty, like Lina, multi-tracked, rising out of the mix like a choir on "Barco Negro," or the fragile, quivering of piano notes that take wing on "Gaivota." Throughout, Refree's arrangements are quietly subtle, the analog synths and ambience very sparingly used to keep the voice very much at the heart of everything. It's a perfect balance; the instruments are a frame for Lina as she explores every nuance of sorrow and fleeting joy, feeling every word she sings at the core of her being.