Klaus Schulze
Moondawn

Raï is the music of a youth hungover from Algeria's recent independence. It became a space for a liberated, transgressive dialogue that told the social truths of its time -- an up-front yet poetic voice that covers the taboos and frustrations of daily life, expressing emotion without detour. This voice is heard at weddings, cabarets, in the nightclubs of the Oranese coast, and casually on the street... With the boom of the audio cassette, an avalanche of raï tapes were produced in Oran and diffused all over the world. Both women and men sang and listened to the new sound, as raï is intimately tied to parties, alcohol and the night. With the spontaneous improvisation of its singers as the main part of each song, raï keeps reinventing itself. In this style, Cheb Hasni, along with Cheb Nasro, incarnates a second generation of musicians. With the "love raï", or sentimental raï, Hasni sings about love, passion and its setbacks -- moving away from the bittersweet daily chronicles of the first chebs and chebates. Having recorded nearly 150 cassettes, Cheb Hasni remains one of the most prolific and talented raï singers of his generation. Almost thirty years after his death, this three-volume compilation of rare tracks from his cassette releases on the Oriental Music Production label is a tribute to the lasting legacy of Cheb Hasni -- ya raï! The second volume of three is presented here.CHEB HASNIVol 2Outre National

Comet Records presents from Afrobeat pioneer Tony Allen, N.E.P.A Reissue LP Vinyl remastered and coming in an heavy Deluxe Tip-On Jacket.In 1979, Tony Allen decided to leave Fela Kuti & Africa 70 and moved to London in 1982. Originally Released in 1984 on Earthworks Records, this reissue holds an extra track previously unreleased on vinyl called “Olokun”. N.E.P.A (Never Expect Power Always) is a searing critique of the Nigerian Electric Power Authority, an organisation that governed the use of electricity in Nigeria.It starts out with the title track, with a definite Afro-beat punch. Electro-claps stand as part of the percussion line, adding to a more modern look at what Afro-beat was becoming.This is followed by an even further modernized piece of Afro-beat, as the title track is given a dub mix. “When One Road Close” has a similar pace, and is similarly followed by a dub remix, complete with the necessary space-effects reverb.And to make this reissue extra special the track “Olokun” was never released on vinyl before.Blending the nascent rise of electronica into Afrobeat production, it’s tighter than any Fela album and became a definitive project in shaping Allen’s future sound. Whether it’s the electro beats or the punchier, multilayered arrangement, it instantly stands out in Allen’s vast and expansive discography.

Bless up Omar S! The FXHE man is always happy to repress and reissue some of his earlier records for those that missed out at the time and here he offers a welcome chance to dig into a veritable slab of label history. AOS002 is where it all began for Omar S, first released way back in 2003 as a four track 12" of tunnelling techno and deftly sampled Detroit house. It's been repressed several times over the years with more recent editions featuring a bonus untitled track deep into the B side. The limited 2015 edition now comes in three different colours; orange, red, or brown. Whichever you chose this should be considered an essential addition to your FXHE collection.

Parce qu’il aime s’entourer d’amis pour travailler, le producteur Néerlandais Wantigga est accompagné sur cet EP de 4 chanteurs aussi originaires des Pays Bas : Sascha Vee, Mar, Louis Bordeaux, et Rico Greene. Chaque track et mélodie a été faite et pensée en collaboration avec ces artistes, avec la signature de Wantigga comme fondation. Résultat : quatre morceaux éclectiques qui forment un ensemble sensuel et séduisant.

After a banner year that witnessed Lafawndah release her first album Ancestor Boy, the debut of her soundsystem Fara Fara, and further incursions into film, contemporary art and fashion, the ceaseless artist returns with another plot twist: The Fifth Season.Inspired by her encounter with author NK Jemisin’s Broken Earth trilogy, Lafawndah both pays homage to and extends further the elemental, emotionally charged myths of Jemisin’s books. These are stories where a broken heart can tear apart a continent. In contrast to the precision- tuned industrial productions of Ancestor Boy, The Fifth Season breathes a different kind of volatility. Inviting a new degree of spontaneity and freedom into her process, Lafawndah’s collaborators - Theon Cross (tuba), Nathaniel Cross (trombone), Valentina Magaletti (percussion), and Nick Weiss (keyboards) - encircle her confrontational character studies with iridescent, cinematic chamber-bass moves.These are torch songs for when it rains ash, creation ballads for when the earth turns inside out. Ghosts of Art Ensemble of Chicago and Rahsaan Roland Kirk color the air, yet Lafawndah’s mastery of pop songcraft, vocal production and razor-honed clarity of purpose cut through. In addition to the Lafawndah originals, The Fifth Season features interpretations of hybrid-folk godfather Beverly Glenn Copeland’s “Don’t Despair” and acid-impressionist prodigy Lili Boulanger’s “Old Buddhist Prayer.” Album highlight “You, at the End” deploys a poem by poet-performer Kate Tempest to aching, rift-tearing ends, and french dream-trap wraith Lala &ce features on “Le Malentendu”.The Fifth Season anchors Lafawndah as a descendent of forebearers Brigitte Fontaine and Scott Walker - a born theatric whose acid humor warps the sub-continental undertow of her emotive storytelling. Lafawndah’s elementalism on The Fifth Season finds her imagination more agile than ever, and recent live shows have evinced a drive to push these compositions further out, deeper, and more aflame.

Allen Ravenstine's turbulent futurism behind the synthesizer was a key ingredient in American post-punk innovators Pere Ubu's distinctive sound. Just as Brian Eno's malevolent modulations had adulterated the glam-rock swagger of Roxy Music before him, Ravenstine's corrosive tones oozed through his band's songs like radioactive seepage, illuminating their otherwise guitar-driven landscapes with a strange chemical glow.In addition to playing with them from 1975-1989, he also co-owned the Plaza, a historic apartment complex in Central Cleveland where Pere Ubu members lived and created alongside a vibrant community of other artists. Music took a backseat for Ravenstine afer leaving the group, among other things he obtained his pilot's license and wrote a novel. The invitation to spar with fellow synthesist Robert Wheeler in 2012 for Waveshaper Media's acclaimed synth documentary I Dream Of Wires reignited his dormant sonic interests. Since then, he's unleashed a handful of recordings.The analog abstraction for which he became known remains a significant part of Ravenstine's current sound palette, but recent years have seen him turn increasingly toward outlandish eclecticism as his foundation. 2018's celebrated Waiting for the Bomb (RER Megacorp) bounded freely between disparate styles and instrumentation, all the while managing to convey a cohesive (albeit of-kilter) identity.Ravenstine is now launching his much-anticipated follow-upon Waveshaper—a series of four EPs collectively entitled The Tyranny of Fiction. Materializing as a pair of LPs with one EP per side, or as two double CD sets, these works continue to chronicle the approach unveiled on their predecessor. The cheeky series title hints at a tension that's fundamental to these recordings. Ravenstine's use of genre suggests it's almost a literary device to him—unsurprising, given his forays into the realm prose. Styles will ofen allude to underlying thematic or narrative elements. However, friction begins to arise when this is juxtaposed with his surreal sense of orchestration. He takes pure electronic sound, nuggets of real -world recordings, live instrumentation and the latter's sampled counterparts and stirs them all together vigorously. This makes for decidedly unfaithful reproductions of the various musical idioms his composition cite, leaving the listener to contend with constant dissonance—every feature of the music feels at once completely familiar and utterly inscrutable.Even within the brief span of each installment of The Tyranny of Fiction, Ravenstine gleefully embraces a panoply of modalities. ElectronMusic, the first of the bunch, uses ornery ambient music as its jumping-of point, embarking on excursions into hyperreal chamber music, and swarming sci-fi synthesizer. Shore Leave announces itself with a spartan piano miniature decorated with a sof trickling sound before a meandering into cubist exotica, sinister new age music, and what sound like 21st century nocturnes. A host of other mongrel styles spill forth over the course of Nautilus. Each track weaves its own wayward travelogue amidst stray bits of audio verité and wafting musical fragrances—by turns tropical and foreboding. Rue De Poisson Noir takes cues from its fragmentary companion, slithering between cinematic intrigue, of-brand jazz, avant-garde mischief, and fried electro without batting an eye. At various points throughout, Ravenstine's fried citationality might recall a young generation of Ohioan oddballs, Orange Milk Records. Like many acts on the innovative electronic music imprint, Ravenstine's colorful, innuendo-rich music is restless, playful, inquisitive and most of all evocative—never resorting to irony or other such ploys.