Now Sound Favorites, May 2023

Recent favorites from Chicago, Brooklyn, New Zealand, Basque, Amsterdam, Munich, Tokyo, and Sweden.

Each week the global listening community gets bombarded with new releases, reissues and restocks. As music freaks who read these missives and are attuned to the bounty regularly arriving, we love sharing great sounds. Below are some particularly crucial new arrivals, a number of which will soon be available in the In Sheep’s Clothing shop.

Natural Information Society – Since Time is Gravity

The opening track on the Chicago bassist and bandleader Joshua Abrams-led Natural Information Society big band opens with rhythm: Abrams thrumming his double-bass strings while percussionists Hamid Drake and Mikel Patrick Avery build a heavy, busy beat. Abrams (Exploding Star Orchestra, the Alan Licht/Loren Mazzacane-Connors Ensemble, the Cairo Gang, the Roots) has been a constant presence in Chicago jazz clubs for going on three decades, and has built a band from within that community that’s as solid as a brick of silver. Think Sun Ra’s Arkestra, Charlie Haden’s Liberation Orchestra, late-period Lounge Lizards, or the Mingus Big Band: A dozen locked-in players — including six horn and woodwind players moving in drunken unison on standout piece “Is” — on a singular mission. Play this loud and gusts of heavenly sounds will storm your psyche.

Hysterical Love Project – Lashes

One of the most anticipated records of the year (in certain circles), Lashes is the debut album from New Zealand-based duo Hysterical Love Project. Suggesting ambient trip-hop, downtempo shoegaze, outsider dream pop, etc., these songs draw from the best of the late ‘80s/early ‘90s rock/electronic scenes, suspending time with a tranquil stillness that’s equally somber and blissed-out. A Bandcamp user referred to the group as “the hottest husband and wife duo since everything but the girl,” and we’re inclined to agree! Expect to have this one on repeat for a long time…

Available now: https://insheepsclothinghifi.com/product/hysterical-love-project-lashes-cd/

Angel Bat Dawid – Requiem for Jazz

“Jazz is the musical expression of the triumph of the Negroes Spirit.” The latest from rising Chicago-based composer, clarinetist, singer, and educator Angel Bat Dawid is a glorious 12-movement Afrofuturist suite inspired in part by dialogue from Edward O. Bland’s 1959 film The Cry of Jazz. Jazz is dead? Clearly not, with Dawid and others like Matana Roberts, Makaya McCraven, Jeff Parker, and Isaiah Collier carrying the torch. Boundlessly creative, Requiem for Jazz isn’t your typical jazz album and very much leads with more of an avant-garde approach, with electronic trap beats and spoken word sections interspersed between black spirituals and 15-piece chamber orchestral compositions. The album’s final movement includes contributions from Sun Ra Arkestra’s Marshall Allen and Knoel Scott, which were recorded remotely at the historic Arkestral Institute of Sun Ra in Philadelphia.

Alberto Lizarralde – Haizetxe

The credits tell part of the story: Basque musician Alberto Lizarralde on Haizetxe plays a Sequential Circuits Prophet 5, a Sequential Circuits Six Track, a Roland D-110, a Waldorf Microwave XT rack-mount synth, a Marantz CD player, Lexicon LPX-1 effects processor, and a Fostex 260 multitrack recorder. Recorded between the mid-1980s and ’90s, this music is unlike anything else out there, an oblong, mostly instrumental collection of fifteen relatively brief pieces. Notes cite Eno, Suso Saiz, Jon Hassel, and Harold Budd as touchstones, which is accurate. But Lizarralde’s accents are so unique, his palette so distinctive, that Haizetxe seems to vibrate on its own wavelength. He samples big choirs, then slyly sneaks them into the arrangements of rhythm tracks. Lizarralde’s love of repetition at times recalls the work of Steve Reich and Philip Glass, but with more playfulness.

Joanne Robertson – Blue Car

Frequent Dean Blunt collaborator Joanne Robertson follows up 2020 favorite Painting Stupid Girls with Blue Car, a collection of delicate folk songs pulled from the Blackpool-raised singer-songwriter’s unreleased solo archives. Recorded across ten years with just guitar and voice, the songs offer a window into Robertson’s world with ambient noise and sounds of running water flowing naturally along with her gentle plucking and soaring vocals. As release notes explain, “These tracks attempt to record the moment, and where she was at emotionally that day, similar to diary entries.”

Available now: https://insheepsclothinghifi.com/product/joanne-robertson-blue-car-lp/

Anton Pieete – Brains

Amsterdam-based deejay and producer Anton Pieete aka Darling returns with his debut album under his given name. Released on Orpheu the Wizard’s excellent Wake Dream imprint, Brains strips away the hard techno beats of Pieete’s previous releases in favor of a quiter, more introspective sound “filled with emotion, some sweet and hopeful, some gloomy and restless,” per release notes. Guitar, bass, and drum kit feature prominently across the album, hinting at Pieete’s early years in rock bands. While the producer-to-instrumental-music path has been well-traveled at this point, Pieete’s take on it comes off completely organic and more of a natural progression of a lifetime of musicality than a tired artist following trends. Recommended for fans of Suzanne Kraft, Andras Fox, and Last Resort.

Satoshi – Ambivalent ( Selected Works 1994-2022)

Satoshi (1/2 of CZ5000 masters Satoshi & Makoto) releases his first solo album via Japan’s Soundofspeed Records. While the lush soundscapes are not too far off from Satoshi’s work with Makoto (the CZ is clearly still the main instrument), Ambivalent has just a slightly more raw and energetic feeling to it, and the addition of Nicky Benedek (PPU, L.I.E.S. Second Circle) on guitar and Kuniyuki Takahashi on percussion adds a wonderful new dimension to the Satoshi & Makoto sound we’ve come to know so well.

Paul St. Hilaire – Tikiman Vol​.​ 1

Rhythm & Sound collaborator Paul St. Hillaire aka Tikiman delivers his first solo album in over a decade with the future classic Tikiman Vol​.​1. One of dance music’s quietly legendary figures, the singer, producer and multi-instrumentalist has explored genres from ambient dub to avant-jazz and lush techno to lovers rock, along the way appearing on records with Deadbeat, Rhauder, Larry Heard aka Mr. Fingers, Modeselektor, and Stereotyp, among others. Vol​.​ 1 collects recordings from across 30 years of solo recordings, diving into the mind, life, and personal histories of one of the few longstanding Black producers living in Berlin. Immensely deep, headphones or subwoofer highly recommended!

Rachika Nayar – fragments (expanded)

Release notes issued by label RVNG call Brooklyn multi-instrumentalist Rachika Nayar’s fragments “a collection of sonic miniatures.” This new version augments the original release with seven previously unissued pieces, each of which is built with layers of clean, undistorted electric guitar. Produced in her bedroom, her work, described by RVNG as “a collision of midwestern emo and post-rock influences with virtuosic minimalist guitar,” is mesmerizing. She knows a kinetic melody and when she lands on a good one, she shape-shifts it through repetition, looping, and harmonics. Think the Penguin Cafe Orchestra as played by a team of precise electric guitarists.

Available now: https://insheepsclothinghifi.com/product/rachika-nayar-fragments-lp/

Julian Klaas – Impromptu

The latest from Munich’s Squama Records is a debut from multi-instrumentalist Julian Klaas. Centered around an old Wurlitzer piano gifted from his sister, Klaas’ Impromptu is a quiet offering perfectly suited for early mornings or solitary nights. The 12 tracks feel more like vignettes than compositions (in a good way) and have a wonderfully improvisational feel to them, with Klaas taking his time, not sticking to rigid tempos, and taking light pauses throughout, almost as if he himself were waiting for the next notes to arrive. The bits of tape manipulation, glitches, and field recordings add to the overall warmth of this lovely record. Recommended for fans of Ryuichi Sakamoto, Ulla Strauss, and Roedelius’ Selbstportrait series.

Available now: https://insheepsclothinghifi.com/product/julian-klaas-impromptu-lp/

Various Artists – Music Perspective Vol. 1

Justin Tripp (1/2 of Georgia) and Simon Gabriel (formerly 2 Bridges Music Arts) present the first volume of their Music Perspective series featuring experimental artists from across the sonic spectrum, including Lolina aka Inga Copeland, Moscow-based electronic pop Тальник, and Zebrablood of Blazer Sound System. A CD-only release (no digital), the compilation traces a global outsider music perspective through “disarming and timely cornucopia of stateless, off-kilter tendencies, cryptic puzzle of pop, tech, noise, bangers and outsiders, nu-digital folklore, disembodied voices, MIDI caprices…”

Listen: https://music-perspective.com/

Secret Circuit – Green Mirror

LA legend Eddie Ruscha V makes a triumphant return to his Secret Circuit alias with Green Mirror, a collection of 21 warm, bubbling hardware jams with that signature tropical, cosmic psych sound for which Ruscha has become known. Beautifully arranged, each track seems to move through multiple different worlds and moods with a diverse range of sounds appearing across the album alongside the usual modular and classic synths including sitar, saxophone, guitar, vocoder, and various live percussion. We imagine it must’ve been quite an undertaking deciding which tracks to include from Ruscha’s surely massive demo pool, but the end result is stellar, and some of Ruscha’s best work yet.

Fire! Orchestra – Echoes

A beefed-up collective of Fire!, the trio of Nordic jazz musicians Mats Gustafsson (sax), Johan Berthling (bass guitar), and Andreas Werlin (drums), the Fire! Orchestra was born a decade ago when the three musicians hired 28 players from the Scandinavian jazz, improv, and experimental music scene for a Stockholm concert. The gig was recorded and released on the great Rune Grammofon label as Exit! in 2014. Echoes is the fourth Orchestra record, and is as massive and propellant as anything they’ve done. Mixing the vibe of European film scores (Nino Rota, Ennio Morricone) with the energy of big band jazz, a ton of percussion, and washes of Curtis Mayfield-suggestive strings, Echoes will resonate in your psyche until you can’t help but to listen to it again.