The Other Music Recording Co. is back with our latest dispatch, this time from the lush green lands of central Brazil. How we hooked up with this amazing young group is a story of near-cosmic alignment; a long-lost friend of the shop stumbled on a track from the fledgling band online and passed it to us knowing that we'd fall hard for Boogarins -- and we did, instantly. As Plantas Que Curam is a psych-pop gem, the brainchild of young songwriters Fernando Almeida and Benke Ferraz. Though now a full-fledged, "proper" band, the recordings collected on this album were assembled piece by piece by the teenaged duo in their parents' basements and garages. The ten songs offer a rough-hewn yet sunny and sweet update of Brazil's rich history of psychedelic song craft; while obvious nods to Os Mutantes and the Tropicalia movement at large have already been made in reference to this album, perhaps it runs closer in sound and spirit to the contemporary uprising of new psychedelia that has emerged across the globe. The guitars buzz and sting like agitated hornets, shimmering vocal harmonies shine through the swirling, cosmic atmospheres of these tunes, and Boogarins could be a South American cousin to groups like Tame Impala, Dungen and MGMT; they also flex a keen muscle for dynamics, and most importantly, sweet melody and hooks. There's a relaxed ease to which the duo ascends toward the heavens throughout the album, their casual playfulness at times reminding me of another influential underground psych behemoth, the Soft Boys (the opening guitar line on album highlight "Fim" even hints toward that band's classic "I Got the Hots"!). Overall, this record displays both the exuberance of the duo's youth, but also the impressive chops and finesse that many elder groups take years to hone. As Plantas Que Curam is, all bias aside, a stunning, beautiful album of warm, gently disorienting psychedelia that manages to transcend language barriers (yes, Boogarins sing in Portuguese), and the looming dangers of close to half a century worth of acid-fried cliché. A lovely and original record from a band we're betting (literally) that you'll be hearing a lot more of in the coming years, we couldn't be more thrilled to be releasing their debut. [IQ]

Fans of Daniel Lopatin's Oneohtrix Point Never project know by now that he doesn't like to stay in one place for long. The Brooklyn-based electronic artist made headlines with 2010's brilliant Returnal, leading the local revival of synthesizer-centered, psychedelic-influenced electronica, but that was just the latest turn in a career full of shifts in sounds and styles from the beginning. He's now released nine albums since 2007 under his Oneohtrix moniker (as well as numerous collaborations and other projects he's fronted), and each one has revealed a new facet of his talents and penchant for absorbing and reworking niche sounds from long ago. With R Plus Seven, OPN's debut for Warp (a logical home for Lopatin's vision), he pulls all the stops, releasing one of the year's most ambitious records.

R Plus Seven almost comes off as an electronica 101 primer. He not only goes in new directions on the album, he goes in new directions from track to track, shifting from Krautrock to avant classical to prog and smooth jazz with remarkable felicity. This musical ADD approach can signal lack of focus, but Lopatin beautifully strings together this rapid fire of rich sounds. Take the opener, "Boring Angel," which worried me at first. The track features Vangelis-like chords giving way to choppy piano riffs, choral samples and a church organ. It sounded like a mash-up from some '80s synth pop band. Not my thing. But that's the point, in an odd way. Lopatin throws so much at us that most listeners are bound to find moments that won't square with their tastes. Luckily for me, those moments were few and the highlights are plentiful. My favorite tracks are the prettiest: "Americans," with its lovely synths; the gorgeous, Eno-esque drones of "Still Life"; and "He She," a lovely combination of celestial swaths and lilting keys. But there's more: "Inside World" has a sprightly, Michel Legrand-like soundtrack quality (recommended track for your exercise playlist); "Along" bursts with sunny melodies and flute-like synths, while "Problem Areas" brilliantly weaves together warm vocal samples. R Plus Seven is a deeply involving album, forcing us to stop and pay attention to the ride Lopatin takes us on. This is not just an exercise in electronic eclecticism; the music here is the most emotional and heartfelt in Oneohtrix Point Never's rich canon. [JBr]

Gang Colours' early-2012 debut, The Keychain Collection, was a downtempo, subtle dubstep experiment, innovative and often gloomy electronica a la James Blake. But unlike Blake, Will Ozanne largely kept his own voice out of the mix, and despite the sepia-toned piano on the record cover, the experience was much more electronic than acoustic, with only distant instruments breaking through the beats and blips. Invisible in Your City, on the other hand, takes quite a different course; Ozanne's clear, lilting voice and singsong melodies drive the album forward, and with choir-like harmonies, sparkling notes, and crisp melodies in the style of Majical Cloudz, this is not only a more lighthearted listen, but a more accessible one. Whereas the debut added hints of a singer-songwriter into soothing electronica, this record seems to do the opposite, with innovative production bolstering traditional songwriting. For the most part, this is a plus, as Ozanne's deep drone and falsetto mesh well with the atmosphere-meets-ballad aura that pervades the songs. Highlight "Communal Quo" intermixes these assets admirably; over the fuzzy, starry lullaby, Ozanne's heavily reverbed, lonely croon is positively affecting. "Why Didn't You Call?" forlornly shines with the fusion of a pulsating dance beat, moody piano riffs, and the passionate singing of not only Ozanne, but British soul artist Lulu James. Although the lyrics can be simple and lack real poetry, across the album, vocals do add real emotion; the poignant harmonizing choruses on both "Home" and "Why Didn't You Call?" are the reasons such songs succeed and will have you clicking the repeat button. All in all, Invisible in Your City is a touching album that focuses less on the experiment and more on the songwriting, and is more original and personal for the change. [MM]

Axel Willner's fourth full-length as the Field seems different right from the start, even before you open its sleeve. The  album cover's rhapsody in black tells you almost immediately that this is going to be a different ride, and yet what's truly impressive is how much the record feels both deeply familiar and yet strangely alien at once. Cupid's Head, perhaps, doesn't seem like much of a change upon first play, but like most of Willner's work, its pleasures reveal themselves more overtly with repeated, attentive listens; he's crafting the same lush clouds of intertwining lockstep loops, but there's a deeper amniotic warmth throughout, with much of the album focusing on low-end cushions of thump and skittering, polyrhythmic mid-range flickers of glossolalia. He's making a new form of shoegaze dance music here, crafted from intricately layered, miniscule moebius strips of sound (created entirely, for the first time in his career, without the use of computer software); Willner bends and distorts these sounds in similar ways to that of Kevin Shields of My Bloody Valentine, bending, distorting, and making alien various textures and sources that simultaneously seem familiar and wholly wrong. This is music to be lived in, a pure sonic environment that adapts to your surroundings and responds to the way in which you choose to use it and make it your own; its relentless pulses and the hypnotism of its repetition finds an outside element with which to bond, and the symbiotic relationship it creates with you is lovely and enveloping. I'll admit, in the past, I'd tended to enjoy the Field's records, but they never really grabbed me the way in which they seemed to win over many others; with Cupid's Head, added shadow and noisy, beautiful menace have cloaked me in full appreciation. This album is a total winner, and perhaps his strongest record to date. [IQ]

The newest record from Jace Clayton is somewhat of a departure for the artist commonly known as DJ/rupture; under that name, Clayton's productions have navigated the experimental dance scene towards the outright avant-garde, releasing a slew of boundary-pushing music that is both powerful and mysterious. The use of his proper name for this album gives it the feeling of being something more personal and mature, and where DJ/rupture's world usually thrives on a broadband feed of adventurous underground music from around the globe, Clayton has narrowed his focus here, exploring the compositions of pianist/vocalist/dancer Julius Eastman, a contemporary of Philip Glass, Steve Reich and Albert Ayler, who was a part of the New York minimalist scene during the 1970s and '80s.

Eastman recorded with Peter Maxwell Davies and Meredith Monk, and performed regularly at venues like B.A.M. and the Kitchen. Yet despite his accomplishments, Eastman's life was haunted by demons, eventually slipping into homelessness and addiction, relocating upstate to Buffalo and dying in isolation at the age of 49. Eastman never gained the broader recognition or support achieved by others within that circle, and as a rare black and gay figure amongst the avant-garde elite, with a strong and beautiful aesthetic but an often confrontational and political presence, he frequently found himself marginalized within his own scene. Eastman often reminds me of a black Arthur Russell, if you will, and their stories and lives intersect and parallel one another (Eastman played keyboards and sang on some of Dinosaur L.'s 24->24 Music). Both were outsider, queer, loner, obsessive, avant-garde, and extremely talented, though Eastman was less prolific, and many of his compositions have seemingly been lost to time (many of his scores were famously confiscated by a sheriff).

Clayton found himself hypnotized by Eastman's work and life (as you will be if you pick up the mind-blowing 2005 collection on New World Amsterdam entitled Unjust Malaise) and decided to explore the music deeper. This led to a live performance event, "The Julius Eastman Memorial Dinner," which included video and theatrics, as pianists Emily Manzo and David Friend played new arrangements of Eastman compositions. For the album, The Julius Eastman Memory Depot, Clayton has taken the recordings of the concert and processed them through various studio effects, yet the result is much more than just an 'Eastman in Dub' kind of album. Clayton uses reverb, sweeping filters and delay, with a light touch, keeping his presence minimal throughout, altering the original dual pianos' plinks and pounds, rolls, swirls and strides just enough, leaving the beauty and openness of the original pieces intact yet breathing a new life into the music. The two compositions for piano showcased here are "Gay Guerilla" and "Evil Nigger," two of Eastman's strongest, whose titles alone offer up a glimpse into the haunting methodology and beautiful mythology of the composer. Eastman's work has rarely been looked at, better yet performed, since his death in 1991, and again New World Amsterdam has offered a glimpse into the music of a nearly forgotten son of NYC. Along with the above-mentioned collection, this record is a lifeline to an artist who is too vital not to be remembered. [DG]

After EM Records' stunning overview of the Fourth World post-punk explorations of Spanish group Finis Africae, we're treated to a follow-up addendum that features six extended pieces culled from the same group of albums, but this time focusing upon the band's more ambient and Balearic side. Acoustic guitars, warm beds of synthesizer, gently percolating hand percussion, softly warbling flutes and wind instruments all float atop deep drones and soft pulsating grooves; throughout these environments are interjections from the natural environment itself, as field recordings of flowing water, softly tinkling wind chimes, and the gentle twitter of birdsong add additional psychedelic layers to what are some of the most lush and breathtaking creations of the post-punk era. Fans of Eno, Laraaji, and Jon Hassell really need to grip this ASAP, and anyone who digs the recent upswing in private-press new age alchemy should give this a spin as well; it's less indebted to the trappings of the post-punk era, with little to none of the sonic timestamps that perhaps made the previous collection, as wonderful as it is, a bit too dated for some ears. This is prime music for all of your ambient, chillout, psychedelic explorations, and as is usual with EM's attention to care and detail, it's lovingly packaged and beautifully mastered. [IQ]

Travis Stewart b/k/a Machinedrum has done just about everything a strong player in the electronic music field can do nowadays: he has produced music for a slew of big rising artists like Azealia Banks, remixed anything from Johnny Cash to Solange, created a successful duo with Praveen Sharma under the name Sepalcure, and of course, released a bunch of great singles, EPs and LPs in the past decade or so. But on Vapor City, Stewart's first full-length for Ninja Tune, it seems as though the artist has begun to really come into his own. The first three tracks, including the standout single "Gunshotta," blur the lines between hectic, heart-pumping rave music and peaceful, poignant ambience. This dichotomy, which could have easily been disorienting, comes off as unique more than anything else. The heavy, sprinting bass and cut vocals strongly recall Burial's Archangel, but remain slightly less gloomy and evoke more of an R&B vibe. While a few tracks, namely "Vizion" and "U Still Lie," fall slightly out of place for their attempts at subtlety, the coherence of the album is for the most part there. The most schizophrenic and wild the tracks get, the more effective the result is, and most of the songs are dancefloor-ready as usual, but some of the more solemn and atmospheric cuts yearn a more direct listen. It's clear that Travis Stewart wasn't planning a revolution with this album, as it frequently calls upon his previous work; that said, these refined and meticulous songs are undoubtedly some of the best work that Machinedrum has created thus far, and deserve serious attention. [MM]

Due to a manufacturing error, CDs have been delayed. Only vinyl is available for the time being.

Blackest Ever Black's newest release may just be their most surprising one yet, despite being by an artist already established on their roster. Tropic of Cancer is the alias of Camella Lobo, who had previously released a series of EPs and singles on Ghostly, Blackest Ever, and Downwards, a label started by Regis mainman Karl O'Connor. That last connection is important. After Juan Mendez left Tropic of Cancer to focus on his own work as Silent Servant, Lobo continued solo, and for Restless Idylls, she's asked Regis to step in to co-produce and mix these songs. There's an air of deep introspection throughout, with Lobo prowling throughout foggy, dimly lit, twilight atmospheres, punctuated by funereal drums slowly beating out heartbeat pulsations that gradually build into voodoo invocations. Lobo's guitar playing evokes the thin, wiry textures of single-string, post-punk fretmen like Vini Reilly and Bernard Sumner, enveloped in clouds of acrid dry-ice synth drones.

Unlike much of the pummeling and droning techno with which Blackest Ever Black is most usually associated, Restless Idylls provides a different form of barbed intensity; it's closer to the shadowed lamentations once issued on labels like Crepuscule and Factory Benelux, or the early works of bands like Virgin Prunes and the Cure than any knackered house record. These are SONGS, bleak and barren, but still with a heart beating in their core, as damaged as that heart may be; they sound barren and ravaged on the surface, but as one delves deeper and peels away their layers, they reveal a sensuality and breath that warrants repeated listening. Lobo has done a stellar job stepping out and moving this project into a direction that's both entirely logical and yet still surprising; Regis's subtle production work helps sharpen the edges a bit, giving certain textures and tones a jagged punch that could easily have been lost in the fog. If you've found yourself enraptured by the recent works of Chelsea Wolfe and Zola Jesus, or dig any of the aforementioned sounds, I urge you to grab this and have it accompany your late night street walks. It's one of the most lovely, crushing, and dark albums to emerge from the contemporary wave of gothic sounds, and gets a hearty thumbs up from yours truly. [IQ]

Moin is Raime, Raime is Moin, and though this project shares the same sense of atmosphere as their work as Raime, this first proper studio recording from Moin comes across as much more organic. While the debut Raime LP was edited together from samples of live instrumentation, this EP actually feels like it was played live, with all three tracks featuring angular scrapes of guitar and repetitive, syncopated bass and drum patterns. There is starkness but also a sense of forward motion and subtle development. The overall vibe recalls underappreciated early 4AD groups such as In Camera and Rema Rema, but Moin also invokes Shellac in their sporadic use of shouted phrases over band-as-rhythm-section workouts. A promising start and a nice diversion from Raime. [NN]

Pinkcourtesyphone is one Richard Chartier, a longtime champion of minimalist electronic ambient sound who's recorded for esteemed labels like Raster-Noton, Room40, and Korm Plastics. While usually recording under his own name, his work as Pinkcourtesyphone finds him adopting a more lush, sensual palette that falls somewhere between Leyland Kirby and friend and collaborator William Basinski; soft, slow-moving drones of decayed sonic memory waft like clouds of fog through the stereo field, while spectral, disconnected fragments of female voices sigh, coo, and gently whisper from the shadows, as loops of gently swelling string balladry waltz circles around them. It is, in a sense, a more "pop" version of the methodology explored in Basinski's work, but only via context; there is an eroticism that slowly throbs throughout this breathtaking album's runtime that many records of a similar ilk often attempt with lackluster results. This album gets constant rotation in my home, and its magic lies in its ability to either blend into your surroundings or to completely envelop them. There is no separation between your environment and Chartier's upon listening to this; if you play it softly, it will slowly have you spying the corners of the room, across your shoulder, searching for the breath you swear you'd just felt on the back of your neck. Played loudly, you find yourself moving in slow motion through a warmly glowing twilight, somewhat adrift, somewhat illuminated, possibly damp, possibly drowsy. Chartier's exploration of what feels like a disorienting, lucid wet dream has created one of the best projects of his career, as well as some of the most beautiful ambient music I've ever heard. [IQ]

I'm really baffled at some of the mixed reviews this album is getting; Glow & Behold is not only a terrific release from one of indie rock's finest bands, it's miraculous that the album works at all. After the group's brilliant self-titled debut from two years ago, lead singer and frontman Daniel Blumberg departed, leaving us Yuck fans dejected that the end was near for this London quartet. Instead of calling it quits, the remaining members decided to soldier on, with lead vocal duties going to guitarist Max Bloom. This formula rarely works, especially for a band so new, but it's testimony to Yuck's deep talent and perseverance that Glow & Behold is such a wonderful album. Yuck definitely has a different sound now (how can it not with a new lead singer?); they sound more British, less J Mascis-influenced than with Blumberg at the helm, but the foundation is still there: the strong songwriting, the emotion, the clever coupling of hooks and energy. The fuzzed-out mania of "Middle Sea" will delight all fans of the debut; the MBV-esque "Rebirth" dazzles with its distorted, crunching guitars; while the jangly "Lose My Breath" and the hook-laden, baroque title track have loads of charm. The album may not reach the highs of the near-perfect debut, but Glow & Behold shows that Yuck isn't folding its act anytime soon. [JBr]

Fall is now upon us, and along with the crisper air and changing leaves comes the now-seasonal new album from a project in which San Francisco singer/songwriter/garage rocker/general polymath Ty Segall had a hand. By my count (and including reissues), that makes seven or so album-length releases (including a still-fresh Sleepers that just came out in August) in the past 12-ish months, a breakneck fit of productivity by anyone's standards. As if that weren't enough, Segall and a couple of buddies now unleash the eponymous debut from their band Fuzz. For those of you who might be suffering from a bit of Segall fatigue, fear not: the eight tracks that make up Fuzz's debut attack things from a far heavier angle, trading off the expected garage touches for a full blast of classic, blues-based hard rock.

It's important to note here that Fuzz definitely isn't just Segall's show. Though he sings and helped shape all of the material, he sits behind the drums on this, leaving the guitar duties solely to Charlie Moothart. That proves to be a wise decision, as Moothart more than capably shreds riff after riff of throwback, almost proto-metal-ish leads that push Segall and bassist Roland Cosio to keep up. Together, the three conjure up a more malevolent Blue Cheer vibe (or maybe a hookier, heavier Groundhogs kind of thing) on songs like "Sleigh Ride" and the great, more straight-ahead "What's in My Head?" Things really start to smoke in the album's back half, however, as Moothart gets plenty of space with which to work on tracks like "Loose Sutures" and album closer "One." Though Segall provides a furious counterpart on songs like these, the guitars take center stage, winding through a myriad of dizzying solos that prove Fuzz to be more than just a simple side project. [MC]

Five years in the making, this epic four-LP set of recordings by Japanese experimental music ensemble Marginal Consort is a terribly important document, not only as it provides the first vinyl document of the group's alchemy, but it also attempts to document and transcend in pure form the troubles and contradictions of recorded improvised music. Marginal Consort's lineup consists of a varied assortment of both sound and visual artists, and they eschew traditional song structures and the trappings of free improvisation's communicative response techniques in favor of a more intuitive environmental approach. This set features one three-hour performance at Glasgow's Instal festival, as the group crafts woodwinds, electric guitar, electronic tone generators, and all sorts of percussion and non-musical objects into what can best be described as a physical sonic space; the ensemble not only establishes lovely alien worlds of ambient space, but heads into discordant percussive movements and some occasional pummeling nastiness. The closest contextual precedents I can offer would be the infamous UK group the Music Improvisation Company, which counted Derek Bailey, Hugh Davies, Evan Parker, and King Crimson percussionist Jamie Muir amongst its ranks, and Japan's Taj Majal Travellers, who once included Marginal Consort ringleader Kazuo Imai in its line-up. This is music as a beautiful, free-flowing, intuitive social experience, exploring interpersonal relationships, communicative processes, and physical reactions to sonic interjections. This is music in its most pure, organic form. [IQ]

One of the great byproducts of the current reissue culture is being able to re-contextualize what came before not just in terms of its peers, but in everything that crept out afterwards. In the mid-to-late '80s, Australian farmers-turned-punkers the Cosmic Psychos were but one of many buzzsaw punk-into-rock outfits you could find lingering in the back pages of fanzines and on the turntables of more discerning college radio stations. They proved a bit more thuggish, and maybe less artful, than contemporaries like feedtime or Venom P. Stinger, but made up for it in terms of sheer, balls-out riffing and heaps of noise, which played well across a string of releases on labels like Mr. Spaceman and Survival back home, and Sub Pop and Amphetamine Reptile stateside, over a remarkable 15-year period. Now, of course, transpose this action to 2013, and these records are the equivalent of a butchered steer, dripping red-raw with blood and guts rock and roll so delirious and out of bounds that you can smell it before you hear it. Few if any contemporary bands can kick up this sort of thunder, even less have the heft to back up the noise, and veritably none are as interesting as the members of the Cosmic Psychos, whose tale led them from the agricultural breadbasket of the sub-continent to the S&M dungeons of New York City, and every lurid place in between. Their fascinating story is told in a new documentary called Blokes You Can Trust, their 30th anniversary reunion shows just went down in the States, and now Goner brings these crushing early releases back into the fold. You may have heard Stooges sound-alike's before, but you've never heard any this wild. From "Gangrene Dream" to "Lost Cause," there isn't a stinker in the bunch. [DM]

Mole City, Quasi's new 24-track double LP, is a rollicking good time and a delicious rock and roll romp. After 20-plus years of making music together Sam Coomes and Janet Weiss know how to craft a song, impeccably weaving Weiss' solid, energetic drumming with Coomes' heavy, infectious melodies. From the opening riff of the distorted and bluesy opener, "You Can Stay but You Gotta Go," there is no doubt this duo means business. Influences abound -- there's bright and jangly Beatlesesque pop on "See You on Mars" and "Blasted"; memory stomper "Nostalgia Kills" borrows from gritty Southern rockers like 38 Special; and "Bedbug Town" is a honky tonk ode to getting stuck and going nowhere. Most of the tracks pack a major punch, but the quieter numbers are the real heartbreakers. On "Chumps of Chance," Coomes reluctantly decides, "I guess there ain't nothing wrong/to be just another same old song." The Weiss fronted "R.I.P." opines, "Oh how simple it would be, baby R.I.P." With Mole City, Quasi continues their streak of confident and honest rock music and it's as refreshing as it is impressive. [KB]

Purchase Quasi's new album at Other Music and receive a bonus CD-EP from the band featuring covers of Queen, Black Sabbath, Marvin Gaye and Nick Lowe. While supplies last.

Lonnie Holley is a 63-year-old Alabama-based artist, sculptor and musician who makes some of the most singular music I've had the pleasure of experiencing in a long while. His songs, like his visual art, are raw, unstudied and emotional; in the art world he's known as an outsider folk artist, and his music manages to capture that same unstudied purity and "realness" on record. This is Holley's second LP for Dust-to-Digital (incidentally the only active artist the reissue label has worked with), recorded in various sessions over the last several years, and the sound combines loosely improvised, swirling keyboard work, deep groove percussion, and powerfully soulful singing. Holley's voice, as well as his free-spirited poetry, is simply mesmerizing, drawing on gospel, blues and folk forms, but passed through a prism of pure emotion and free expression. It's supremely weird stuff, not for everyone, but it's also sweetly melodic and accessible, and his vocals are conventionally beautiful in every way. Holley's music has been inching into the indie underground of late, and he's joined on a couple of tracks by Bradford Cox of Deerhunter and Cole Alexander of the Black Lips (he's also currently on tour opening for Bill Callahan) -- but don't hold that against him! This could never be a crude crossover attempt, and somehow the weird association with these obvious fans comes off like just another honest surprise on a record full of them. Deep, soulful stuff, well worth a listen. [JM]

Kassidat: Raw 45s from Morocco is a compilation of obscure traditional music that pops open poetically and trance-like, and doesn't diminish in sheer brilliance throughout its compact thirty-five minutes. With just six tracks pulled from the "golden age" of Morocco's record industry, which ran from the mid-1950s to the late-'70s, this is a highly selective and curated endeavor, and although one could rightly ask why it is not longer and more expansive, it feels by all means complete and completely essential as is. Rather than offering a comprehensive survey, compiler David Murray, who also runs the excellent Haji Maji website, presents an engaging selection on which each track highlights specific characteristics of Moroccan traditional music. This underlying structure turns out to be highly effective, and reveals a sound world where expressions of "authentic" folk music are continually interspersed with hybrid influences from abroad.

Opener "Zine Mlih" by Mohammed Bergam introduces polyrhythmic percussion, repetitive hooks, and staggering melodies, completed with an irresistible female chorus, a strategy that returns in many of the tracks that follow. Singers (or, perhaps better: poets, as "kassidat" means poetry in Arabic and is one of the main components of Moroccan folk music) comment on local political issues and gossip, combining social commentary with personal suffering and provocative satire, a form that runs across musical traditions from medieval bards to much of today's hip-hop. While this analogy might seem somewhat farfetched at first, there is an argument to be made about the innovative ways in which these by definition nomadic musical styles have, each in their own specific way, complexly absorbed a myriad of influences. The music presented here augments Moroccan traditions with Algerian raï in Abdellah el Magana's hypnotizing "Kassidat ek Hakka," as well as continuously fluctuating combinations of African and Arabic influences throughout the rest of the tracks. Kassidat covers a period when independent labels were flourishing after decades of French and Spanish occupation, releasing music from all across the country on the relatively inexpensive vinyl 45 format. In presenting a highly concise selection, this compilation cleverly hints at the impossibility of exhausting such a vast and all-encompassing folk archive in the first place, attempting instead to present a deeper understanding of the complex interplay of musical styles throughout a particularly rich moment in Morocco's musical history. [NVT]

Analog Africa's second volume of Afrobeat Airways collects an hour's worth of deep funk and soul from some of Ghana's best groups and bandleaders of the mid-'70s and '80s. A few familiar names pop up who've seen individual anthologies and reissues of their own in recent years, like Ebo Taylor (backing his son on one of the album's hottest jams!), Rob, and K. Frimpong, but every cut here is a winner, offering up solid, percolating grooves, tight instrumentation, and impassioned vocals. There's a wide array of music included, from tight, militaristic Afrobeat explorations to some loose, wild, and fiery big band funk, some heavy drum-break bangers, and even cuts that sound as though they take inspiration from '60s Nuggets-era garage bands. This ranks up there with the best of Analog Africa's collections, featuring an all-killer, no-filler assortment of some fine funk from Ghana. If you're a fan of this stuff, but was beginning to feel a bit burned out by the seemingly never-ending glut of reissues hitting the market these days, take solace in this one and give the drummer some! [IQ]

A stellar second volume of reworkings of tracks from Violetshaped's debut LP, and this 12" is worth it even if just for the all too rare (these days) appearance of a Keith Fullerton Whitman remix. For more than 13 minutes, Whitman avoids anything related to the dance floor, and instead presents an amazingly chaotic, almost arrhythmic deconstruction. A master at his craft, his version of "Anesthesia" is a psychedelic whirlwind of throbbing bass bouncing all over the stereo field, and modular synthesizer effects panning back and forth. JK Flesh (Justin Broadrick of Godflesh, Techno Animal, Jesu, etc.) offers up a more solid rhythmic affair that builds slowly from churning, gritty half-time beats and searing melodic stabs into full-on jungle. Rounding out the set, Raster-Noton artist Grischa Lichtenberger's version of "Spectral Nightdrive" presents skittery pinprick beats that recall the classic IDM of Autechre. These three reworkings add up to much more than the standard remix 12". Highly recommended! [NN]

The Root Strata label issue a stunning album by composer and pianist Harold Budd, previously released only as a download in 2007 by David Sylvian's Samadhisound imprint, and now available for the first time in physical formats. Perhaps was written and recorded in one uninterrupted performance, in tribute to composer and theorist James Tenney, a close friend of Budd's who passed away in 2006, and its music was performed unaccompanied by Budd at CalArts, the institute at which both men were teachers. The pieces on Perhaps show Budd at his purest, stripping his sound of all excess processing, sonic filtration, and additional instrumentation. It works as a stunning display not only of Budd's melodic and harmonic mastery, but of the emotion which he coaxes from piano keys; recorded and released around the same time as his underrated masterpiece, Avalon Sutra (my personal favorite Budd album by a landslide), this record plays as the stripped-down skeleton to that album's lush, multi-hued garden of delights. Their contrasting sleeves even display this relationship fully; where Avalon Sutra was clothed in beautiful close-ups of tropical flowers, Perhaps' bare white sleeve offers no clues, no assistance, simply the music. His signature of slow, sustained chords, a style dubbed by the composer as "soft pedal," has rarely sounded so intense, and the fact that these pieces were allegedly improvised by the composer is simply astonishing. Even if Budd's music has never grabbed you in the past, Perhaps is a document of gorgeous solo piano of a unique character like that of Debussy, Monk, and Bley, deserving of your full attention. I cannot recommend this album more highly. [IQ]

A fantastic anthology of these '90s German funksters, whose old-school, deep-in-the-pocket grooves certainly pre-dated the modern soul movement spearheaded by the Daptone crew, who are fittingly releasing this great 18-song collection. (The Brooklyn label also reissued the group's 1993 debut, Practice What You Preach, back in 2006.) With every track handpicked by the Daptone staff and the band themselves, this career-spanning compilation is packed with highlights, including the JB's-esque "Funky Train," the spacey jazz-funk of "Discern/Define," and the rarity, "Path of Life," which sees release on vinyl for its very first time. Recommended!

The third Land of Kush full-length, featuring Montreal experimental rock veteran Sam Shalabi who relocated to Cairo back in 2011. Surrounded by the recent turbulent events that engulfed Egypt, Shalabi has called this resulting album a "love letter to Cairo." Recorded in Montreal with a large ensemble of musicians, The Big Mango fuses together a wide array of sounds, with overtones of Middle Eastern music, post-rock, folk, psychedelia and spiritual jazz woven throughout a diverse, swirling set that moves from grooving and joyous to somber and atmospheric.

Leverage Models is the brainchild of musician/producer Shannon Fields who follows up a handful of limited edition cassette releases with this undeniably infectious outing. Featuring guest spots from Sharon Van Etten, Sinkane, and members of LCD Soundsystem and Yeasayer, it's still a mostly one-man show for Fields, who ever so slightly updates the new romantic pop sounds of the early '80s (e.g. Simple Minds, "Let's Dance"-era Bowie, Spandau Ballet, Japan) with a nicely dreamy, digital sheen.

First ever time issued on vinyl, Another Thought finds Arthur Russell in an intimate vocal mode and, in structure, this album exists somewhere between World of Echo and (closest to) Calling Out of Context. Still, Another Thought is a collection culled from various recordings dating from 1982 to 1990, representing all of the elements that splintered off into his other projects, singles, and thoughts. Released shortly after his untimely death in 1992 on Philip Glass' Point label , Another Thought has been a favorite of mine for some time now, and it features some of Russell's best non-dance oriented song writing. That's not to say that his sweet sense of melody, mood and groove isn't present; all of his trademark ingredients are here: cello and effects, guitar, drum machines, keyboards, percussion, horns, and that sincere voice. While some similar lyrics and themes can be heard in various incarnations on the collections released thus far, songs like "This Is How We Walk on the Moon" and this album's version of "In the Light of the Miracle" showcase his style perfectly. Guests include Jennifer Warnes, Julius Eastman, Mustafa Ahmed, and Peter Zummo. It's rare that you find a record where every song is engaging and has something to offer, and here, these tracks are otherworldly meditations which give you a glimpse into this hopeful loner's yearning, searching mind. If you've missed out so far, Another Thought is the perfect entry point into Arthur Russell's organic, charismatic and beautiful outsider world. Without a doubt, recommended. [DG]

THIS WEEK'S CONTRIBUTORS

[KB] Kari Boston
[JBr] James Bradley
[MC] Michael Crumsho
[DG] Daniel Givens
[IQ]Mikey IQ Jones
[JM] Josh Madell
[MM] Matthew Malone
[DM] Doug Mosurock
[NN] Ning Nong
[NVT] Niels Van Tomme



THANKS FOR READING
- all of us at Other Music