Black Flower Fifth Album released in January

Five-piece hybrid jazz outfit Black Flower are set to release new album ‘Magma’ on the 28th January via the groove-obsessed Belgian label, Sdban Ultra.

Piloted by Brussels-based saxophonist/flutist/composer Nathan Daems (Echoes of Zoo, Dijf Sanders), the quintet is a vibrant, hypnotic mix of Ethio jazz, afrobeat, psychedelia and oriental influences, inspired by Mulatu Astatke, Fela Kuti and varied western musical traditions.

Black Flower is a band at the peak of their creative powers. Having received glowing praise for the 2019 album ‘Future Flora’ from Mojo, Songlines, BBC Radio 6 Music’s Gilles Peterson, BBC Radio 3’s Music Planet, Worldwide FM and Jazz FM among others, forthcoming album ‘Magma’ sees Black Flower embrace new synth and organ sounds from the band’s most recent recruit, Karel Cuelenaere. His influence can be heard from the outset – his keys adding a swirling, mischievousness to album opener and title track ‘Magma’. Elsewhere, the shuffling drum patterns and flighty, flute-propelled ‘O Fogo’ are rich in texture and flow.

Driving rhythms and Eastern influenced melodies serve as a rich source of pleasure that, like magma, become real and solid when finding its way to the surface. It’s the perfect metaphor for this album’s creational process. The pulsating, trance-inducing Deep Dive Down continues the joyous process while singer-songwriter Meskerem Mees (winner of The Montreux Jazz Talent Award 2021) adds, her clear-as-spring-water vocals to the celestial Morning in the Jungle.

With the much-trusted Frederik Segers on production and London-based visual virtuoso Raimund Wong (Total Refreshment Centre) on artwork duties, it all adds up to the psychedelic and exploratory identity of the band and are key elements that helped Magma in its ascension from deep down up to the surface. A creative process solidified into vinyl, just as magma into rock.

Fellow musicians and spiritual henchmen are Jon Birdsong (dEUS, Beck, Calexico) on cornet, Simon Segers (Absynthe Minded, De Beren Gieren, MDCIII) at the drums, Filip Vandebril (Lady Linn, The Valerie Solanas) at the bass and Karel Cuelenaere (John Ghost) on keys.

Sdban Ultra will release Magma on January 24th, 2022

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Hany Mehanna’s Egyptian TV and film scores collected in new compilation

Focusing on his 1973-1980 output.

A new compilation of Hany Mehanna’s work, called Music For Airplanes – A collection of instrumental showpieces and scores for Egyptian films and TV​-​series (1973​-​1980), is being released by Souma Records this December.

While Mehanna began his career playing accordion, organ, and synths in backing orchestras, he later pivoted to working as a successful composer and arranger.

Though Mehanna scored 93 films and 38 TV series across his career, he only published one full length album — The Miracles of the Seven Dances

Music For Airplanes collects music he created during ’73-’80, remastered from Mehanna’s personal reel-to-reel archive.

TRACKLISTING:

A1. Hanady
A2. Haya Ha’ira
A3. Al Qina’ Al Za’ef
A4. Reem
A5. Ta’er Al Layl
B1. Rehala
B2. Walad Wa Bint
B3. Ayni Betrif
B4. Less Al Thulatha
C1. Rehla
C2. Shahr Al Assal
C3. Sympathique
C4. Baya
D1. Ayam Al Marah
D2. Al Nil
D3. Daa Al Omr Ya Walady
D4. Al Dawama (opening theme)
D5. Damat Alam
D6. Dawama (end theme)

Souma Records will release Music For Airplanes on December 3rd, 2021

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Listen: Peter “Sleazy” Christopherson tracks

Stream the Throbbing Gristle and Psychic TV founding member’s 2007 solo album Form Grows Rampant

Musique Pour La Danse has reissued Throbbing Gristle and Psychic TV founding member Peter Christopherson‘s first solo project The Threshold HouseBoys Choir. Form Grows Rampant is the soundtrack of a film shot by Christopherson (a video capture at the GinJae Vegetarian Festival in the south of Thailand), and his first major musical project since the tragic death of John Balance and the subsequent demise of Coil.

The music is a suite of lenghty dense atmospherics that combine shuddering electronics with sampled vocals, eerie digitalia, buried melodies and sinister undercurrents hinting at a gleaming heart of darkness, with a joyful melodic progression that sounds positively triumphant towards the end of the disc. It’s both Coil-esque and quite different, and undoubtedly is the worthy successor of the legendary group that Christopherson created with his partner John Balance.

Released in 2007 as a CD/DVD set, this reissue has been mastered from the original files by Sidney Claire Meyer at former Deutsche Grammophon studios Emil Berliner in Berlin, using the half speed mastering process, and pressed on vinyl for the first time.

Listen to Form Grows Rampant below

Tracklist:

A1. Part One: A Time Of Happening
A2. Part Two: Intimations Of Spring
B. Part Three: So Young It Knows No Maturing
C. Part Four: So Free It Knows No End
D. Part Five: As Doors Open Into Space

Musique Pour La Danse will release Form Grows Rampant on February 18, 2022.

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Monobox returns

Monobox release first album since 2003

You might think that Robert Hood is an artist who is content with the successes he’s achieved via his solo work and those alongside daughter, Lyric (as Floorplan) but this is not a man who easily rests on his laurels so after a long-time in the planning he is set to regenerate his much-loved Monobox alias with a new EP in October followed by an artist album in November.

Originally launched in 1996 his Monobox sound spanned a trio of EPs on his own M-Plant label, culminating in more releases including the Molecule album (in 2003) for French label Logistic, which later spawned a series of remixes including those of Ricardo Villalobos and Matthew Dear. A brief return came in 2014 as part of M-Plant’s 20th anniversary celebrations, which saw the release of a new Monobox 12″, Film / Rectangle. Speaking to RBMA that year for one of their Fireside Chat interviews, Robert said: “Monobox was an alien project. I read this book when I was probably around 13 or 14. It was this ominous black box that came from some other universe, and it was just sort of hovering over the planet, over a cornfield somewhere.”

In Robert’s mind the idea for the new EP and album is that this vessel has been lying dormant for 40 or 50 years and is now beginning to rise up again, or regenerate. Robert’s approach to Monobox was to create techno minimalism, but from an alien futuristic perspective. Returning to the moniker, his forthcoming EP and album encapsulates this raw, bristling and sci-fi tinged techno sound.

M-Plant will release Regenerate on November 26th, 2021

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Jeff Mills collaborate with Rafael Leafar

“Improvisational electronic jazz the way only Detroit can produce.”

Jeff Mills and multi-instrumentalist Rafael Leafar are releasing a new collaborative album, titled The Override Switch, via Mills’ own Axis Records imprint this October.

Aiming to adopt the boundary-pushing approach of artists like John Coltrane, J Dilla, and Kraftwerk, Mills and Leafar crafted an album of “improvisational electronic jazz in the way only Detroit can produce,” as Mills explains.

“The Override Switch reflects on the precise moment people decide in their minds that the only way to improve a situation is to act – to change the scenario and deal with the consequences as they develop to work for a better outcome.”

It follows Mills’ contributions to Tresor’s 30th anniversary compilation Tresor 30, which will be released this October.

TRACKLISTING

A1. Homage
A2. The River Runs Five Ways
B1. Infinite Voyage
B2. Crashing
B3. Soul Filter Buffet
C. The Sun King
D1. Soul Filter (The Dancer)
D2. Trigger Happy (With Safety Off)

Axis Records will release The Override Switch on October 15, 2021.

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Preview Planetary Assault Systems’s new album

Luke Slater will release his seventh Planetary Assault Systems album on Token Records this October.

The iconic British producer, whose last LP arrived via Ostgut Ton in 2016, follows up this year’s Say It Loud on Token with a full length featuring a wealth of brand new material.

A figure who needs little introduction to fans of the genre, but whose consistency in the studio and on the road has repeatedly marked him out as true pioneer of sound design and performance with a singular vision, Slater first minted the PAS alias in ’93. Since then, a slew of singles and LP’s from the industrious artist have made sure Planetary Assault Systems has become a byword for hypnotic, funk-heavy Techno in a purist tradition. Toeing the line between heady, psychedelic material and all out main room fare – Slater’s work as PAS captures the very best facets of the genre, with economically selected parts exquisitely arranged and engineered with a shrewd and uncompromising ear for what really makes people move.

On the new LP, Slater draws on studio material but also components recorded during the PAS live show – and he’s keen to let fans know the focus is well and truly on the dance floor with this one: Sky Scraping is a loud and unabashed celebration of the formative and familiar environments so loved by the electronic music community, the dark clubs and festivals made special by their unique ability to bring like minded people together.

Previews are online for ‘Sky Scraping’, the new album by Planetary Assault Systems.

Token Records will release Sky Scraping on October 15th, 2021.

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