Back catalogue: Leftfield

Notes: We always expect high-grade aesthetics from Alva Noto and Ryuichi Sakamoto to match their exacting, elevated musical collaborations. The VIRUS series is their most recent run of works, encompassing five albums - Vrioon, Insen, Revep, Utp_, and Summvs (reMASTER), but up until now the albums have existed as separate nodes of crisp electronic expression. Organised record hoarders rejoice, because now Noton are releasing a slip case to house all the editions, presented in an eco-friendly, cream shaded Muken paper. Note, there’s no music in here - it’s purely a vessel for the music contained within.

Review: You can always count on Depeche Mode to do things differently. Never content to play it safe despite their position as a global superstars, as the 80s turned into the 90s they collaborated with celebrated filmmaker Anton Corbijn on the music videos from their albums Music For The Masses and Violator. The first set were gathered together at Strange in 1988, with the follow-up released as Strange Too in 1990. In between the music videos for megahits like ‘Personal Jesus’ and ‘Enjoy The Silence’ were additional vignettes and incidentals, all filmed by Corbijn on his trusty Super 8, and the end results have become synonymous with the Mode’s visual aesthetic. Now both films have been gathered together in one handy Blu Ray package, digitally remastered without losing that all-important grainy finish.

Review: When Depeche Mode teamed up with Anton Corbijn to make some music videos, few could have predicted the end results. If you ever thought there’s an artful consistency to the Mode’s music videos from the late 80s and early 90s, it’s because Corbijn filmed them all on a shoestring budget on his trusty Super 8 camera. The resulting pieces were strung together as vignettes forming a larger cinematic experience which was released in two instalments - Strange and Strange Too. Originally released on VHS and Laserdisc, the films have finally been bundled together, digitally restored and presented in this DVD box set with bonus material.

Review: The 78 Project is on a journey across America to make one-of-a-kind 78rpm records with musicians in their hometowns using a 1930s Presto direct-to-disc recorder. With one microphone. With one blank disc. In one 3-minute take.

Along the way, a kaleidoscope of technologists, historians and craftsmen from every facet of field recording - Grammy-winning producers, 78 collectors, curators from the Library of Congress and Smithsonian - provide insights and history. In Tennessee, Mississippi, California, Louisiana, the folk singers, punk rockers, Gospel and Cajun singers in the film share their lives through intimate performances, and find in that adventure a new connection to our cultural legacy.

With musical performances by Reverend John Wilkins (Como, MS), Louis Michot, Corey Ledet & Ashlee Michot (Arnaudville, LA), Victoria Williams (Los Angeles, CA), John Doe (Fairfax, CA), Dawn Landes (Brooklyn, NY), Holly Williams w/ Chris Coleman (Nashville, TN), John Reilly & Tom Brosseau (Pasadena, CA), Gaby Moreno & Adam Levy (Los Angeles, CA), Jaron Lanier (Berkeley, CA), Ella Mae Bowen (Franklin, TN), Dylan LeBlanc (Franklin, TN), Coati Mundi (Murrieta, CA), The Bo-Keys w/ Percy Wiggins (Memphis, TN), John Paul Keith (Memphis, TN), Ben Vaughn (Wonder Valley, CA), Sea of Bees (Sacramento, CA), The Easy Leaves (Santa Rosa, CA) and Little Wings (Topanga Canyon, CA)

And featuring:
Todd Harvey (Library of Congress, Washington, DC), Jeff Place (Smithsonian, Washington, DC), Richard Matthews (Leeds Radio, Brooklyn, NY), Wayne Cory (Apollo Masters, Banning, CA), Joe Bussard (Frederick, MD), Bob Saliba (Randolph, NJ), Alan Graves (Port Tobacco, MD) and Matt Barton & Brad McCoy (Library of Congress, Culpeper, VA)

Notes: Originally shown in 1998, Big Train was the eagerly awaited follow-up to Father Ted from writers Graham Linehan and Arthur Matthews. Resisting the pressure to make another sitcom, Big Train is, instead, a sketch show in the best Monty Python tradition, updated with influences from arch-surrealist Chris Morris as well as the contemporary The Fast Show. The sketches can be joyously odd--Pythonesque firefighting showjumpers, the evil hypnotist, and the outrageous onanistic office workers, for example--but the show never neglects to keep the punchlines coming thick and fast (though the animated staring contest does rather drag after a while). The cast comprises some of the best new names in comedy, including Kevin Eldon, Simon Pegg, Mark Heap, Julia Davis and Amelia Bullmore (who went on to become Alan Partridge's Ukrainian girlfriend).

Series 2 didn't pull into the platform until 2002, by which time Graham Linehan was absent writing Black Books. But Arthur Matthews maintains the quality of the first series on the whole--the man with oversized hands, the creepy cult questionnaire, the zookeeper's recruitment agency--adding some spot-on French art house cinema spoofs and other movie-style take offs somewhat in the manner of Spaced, which Pegg and Heap had gone on to make. That duo return here for more silliness along with new cast members Rebecca Front (The Day Today, Knowing Me, Knowing You) and Tracey-Ann Oberman (better known now as Chrissie Watts in Eastenders).

On the DVD: Big Train belatedly arrives on DVD in a two-disc set which includes a plethora of deleted scenes for both Series 1 and 2. There are cast biogs plus three of the sketches as performed on a German TV sketch show. Commentary on the first series is by both writers, though happily Pegg, Heap and Eldon gatecrash halfway through. Matthews and Eldon join director and producer for the somewhat more straight-faced commentary on the second disc. Menu options thankfully include the treasurable "Play all" facility. --Mark Walker

Region 1 NTSC format. Will only play on multiregion DVD players.

Notes: "Entering the Forbidden Zone" is a film by Conor McGrady, edited by John Buckley, with the soundtrack, "The Dream of Reason Brings Forth Monsters" by Nurse With Wound. The film was originally developed as a video projection for Nurse With Wound performances scheduled for Russia and for the Shepherds Bush Empire, London, but which were not able to take place due to the onset of the pandemic in 2020. The duration of the film corresponds with the duration of the planned performances.

Imagery is taken from Conor McGrady's artworks probing aspects of power or control. These often stark images have been combined with film footage to create a loose narrative journey into the dark, violent underbelly of contemporary society, generating a sense of unease or disquiet.

Conor McGrady is an artist who has exhibited in New York, Chicago, Atlanta and Zagreb, Croatia. In 2022 his first solo museum exhibition "Entering the Control Zone" took place at the Museum of Fine Art, Split, Croatia. "Entering the Forbidden Zone" was premiered in conjunction with this exhibition.

Entering the Forbidden Zone

A Film by Conor McGrady

DVD

Youtube access code alternative also provided

Edited by John Buckley

Soundtrack: "The Dream of Reason Brings Forth Monsters" - Nurse With Wound

Film Stills by John Buckley. Artwork Photography by Tom Flanagan and Sarah Stapleton

Special thanks to Egg, John Buckley, Steven Stapleton & Sarah Stapleton

2022

Signed on request by Steven and Conor.

Notes: These are the first and last sentences from Charbel Haber's latest offering, A Common Misunderstanding of the Speed of Light: a multi-media musing on the chronic and the chronological, the subversive nature of time. This combination of a record and book observes the slow passing of life and the illusion of retrogradation in his every day. Simply by documenting - via image, text and tune - Haber assigns value to everything that is cast in amber by this project. There's an acceptance and appreciation of the destitution he witnesses, it is an homage given in overlapping forms.

ACMOTSOL has two parts. The book, paperback in an embossed orange, features photographs and texts taken from Haber's personal digital diary spanning from 2020 to the start of 2022. Broken into six chapters - named for the six tracks on the record - the entries are an artist's log of sorts during a peculiar period of global hyper stagnation and navigating the aftermath of the Beirut explosions. The 96 pages highlight Haber's interest in decay, negative space and the temporality of the human condition. Instead of presenting the images and texts as they were originally paired online, they're reordered and recontextualized in the book. New connections are formed, as tenuous and fleeting as the content they surround. The images interrupt the texts in many instances, forcing pauses and inviting distraction.

At the centre of the book is a sudden burst of orange pages, with stylized pluckings of the text framing a QR-code that grants access to the record. With the brilliant orange covers and matching innards, pregnant with the music at the core, it's almost as if these central pages act as a way to turn the book inside out. There, the book's purpose is altered, fixated on a mirror image of itself. It forms a self-completing arc for the project, a loop.

ACMOTSO's second half is that mirrored album. Six tracks totalling just under 52 minutes. The music could be a continuation of his solo albums Of Palm Trees and Decompositions (2016) and It Ended Up Being a Good Day Mr. Allende (2012), an exploration into the expansiveness of seemingly simple loops of a lilting guitar. Careful electronic effects add dimensions or reground the listener. There's a swelling of sound, the illusion of the push of space before it retracts back into itself or fades into the distance. Much like the images and texts the music complements, the songs challenge the purity of cycles. Endings are beginnings, beginnings are endings or is everything just the middle? Haber is quietly and elegantly grappling with the troublesome act of place-making. In music, in words and in visual storytelling.

ACMOTSOL is a work that can be calming or disorienting, depending on what is requested of it. Similar to the way loops and cycles can signify both meditation and mania. The tendrils of Haber's past - his home of Beirut, fictional and real characters encountered, authors read, films watched, composers listened, walks taken - knit themselves together for a presentation of our immediate present. An evidence of a happening. A considered project of time.

All photographs, texts and music by Charbel Haber. Album mixed by Radwan Ghazi Moumneh. Design by Maziyar Pahlevan. Printed by Albe De Coker in Belgium.

This dual-part project will be released on November 11 2022 on 'Other People.'

Description by Nereya Otieno.

86 images
6 songs
52 minutes
96 pages
86 texts

Notes: Written by Spiral Tribe's co-founder and visual artist, Mark Angelo Harrison, A Darker Electricity charts the infamous sound system's nomadic journey and the rapid escalation of their popularity - and notoriety.

From small squat-scene parties in early 90s London to enormous warehouse raves and free festivals. The undercover police operation against them. The record deal with Youth. The creation of their community recording studio. The government stitch-up and their prosecution. The escape to Europe and the start of the teknival scene.

Notes: Conversations with the avant-garde's leading lights--from Suicide to Anohni -- by experimental music's go-to interviewer, guitarist and sound artist Alan Licht. For the past 30 years, Alan Licht has been a performer, programmer and chronicler of New York's art and music scenes. His dry wit, deep erudition and unique perspective -- informed by decades of experience as a touring and recording guitarist in the worlds of experimental music and underground rock -- have distinguished him as the go-to writer for profiles of adventurous artists across genres. A precocious scholar and improvisor, by the time he graduated from Vassar College in 1990 Licht had already authored important articles on minimalist composers La Monte Young, Tony Conrad and Charlemagne Palestine, and recorded with luminaries such as Rashied Ali and Thurston Moore. In 1999 he became a regular contributor to the British experimental music magazine the Wire while continuing to publish in a wide array of periodicals, ranging from the artworld glossies to underground fanzines. Common Tones gathers a selection of never-before-published interviews, many conducted during the writing of Licht's groundbreaking profiles, alongside extended versions of his celebrated conversations with artists, previously untranscribed public exchanges and new dialogues held on the occasion of this collection. Even Lou Reed, a notoriously difficult interviewee, was impressed. Interviews by Alan Licht with Vito Acconci, ANOHNI, Cory Arcangel, Matthew Barney, Glenn Branca, Rhys Chatham, Tony Conrad, the Dream Syndicate's Karl Precoda, Richard Foreman, Henry Flynt, Milford Graves, Adris Hoyos, Ken Jacobs, Jutta Koether, Christian Marclay, Phill Niblock, Alessandra Novaga, Tony Oursler, Lou Reed, Kelly Reichardt, The Sea and Cake, Suicide, Michael Snow, Greg Tate, Tom Verlaine, Rudy Wurlitzer and Yo La Tengo's Georgia Hubley and Ira Kaplan. Introduction by Jay Sanders.

Notes: 260 page, full colour, hardback book full of previously unseen photographs from Mika Vainio's archive and the Vainio family scrapbook, plus contributions from his musical associates, friends and family, unseen texts, a full discography of everything Vainio ever released on his own and in collaboration with others and much much more - including a CD of previously unreleased material.

The book contains a heart-wrenching collection of photographs from the Vainio family archive, a broad range of artistic contributions (text, photographic and visual remembrances) from Mika's artist friends and collaborators, an Updated and exhaustive Mika discography, Jennifer Lucy Allen's unedited transcript for her The Wire magazine 2013 "Invisible Jukebox' - one of Mika's most animated media responses, a variety of Pansonic ephemera from Paul Smith's own Blast First archives, and an album length exclusive CD of previously unreleased Pansonic performance recordings - "Turku Moai - live on Rapa Nui"."

Notes: 160 Pages Book (Boodk/Auduio Combination sold as "Merch Item"), containing 13 QR codes to download 13 songs.

Aho Ssan debuts on Other People with second solo album and book 'Rhizomes' featuring Nicolas Jaar, Moor Mother, Angel Bat Dawid, clipping., Blackhaine and more.

Paris based composer Aho Ssan, the artist moniker of Niamke Desire, presents his new full-length 'Rhizomes' on the Other People label following his debut LP 'Simulacrum' (2020) and collaborative record 'Limen' (2022) with fellow musician KMRU.

'Rhizomes' draws inspiration from a concept coined and developed between Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guatarri. The idea of an ever evolving structural model, constantly in motion and spreading out in all directions at once. It has no beginning and no end, but always remains in a middle, through which it grows and overflows.

"The root thought is the one that kills everything around itself while the rhizome is the root that stretches out to meet other roots," Desire explains considering the works of French writer Edouard Glissant who addresses questions of identity, crossbreeding of cultures and its evolution.

Much like the name it borrows, Aho Ssan's 'Rhizomes' is a multimedia project that embarks on a myriad of disparate, unique musical and artistic partnerships. This piece adapts this concept to explore the influence of sound materials on creation, the appropriation of a sound object, and the collaborative nature of a composition that responds to modernity.

"Rhizome represents an underground stem system that fosters connections between various organisms and allows them to flourish collectively. It's an album that celebrates collaboration and brings together a diverse group of talented artists," Desire continues.

Aho Ssan collaborated with a comprehensive cast of artists to create a musical rhizome including Nyokabi Kariuki, Josefa Ntjam, Blackhaine, Nicolas Jaar, Resina, R?n C?p ?uoi, Richie Culver, clipping., Lafawndah, 9T Antiope, James Ginzburg, Exzald S, Valentina Magaletti, Moor Mother, Angel Bat Dawid and Mondkopf. Cooperation and community are at the root of this project and the lens through which all the compositions can be understood through.

Aho Ssan will present 'Rhizomes' AV show together with visual artist Sevi Iko Domochevsky at Berlin Atonal 2023. 'Rhizomes' received a Honorary Mention at Prix Ars Electronica 2023 Digital Music

In conjunction with the album, 'Rhizomes' comes complete with a set of illustrations by Kim Grano in a book release. The drawings become a hybrid language, each an emotional response to the musical half. The book contains an extended version of the album with 3 additional songs and 2 longer versions of the album songs. It also includes a sample pack by Aho Ssan and a collection of solo tracks by Elliot Blaise, KMRU, Lamin Fofana, Brodinski & Se?bastien Forrester, Valence Drake, 9T Antiope, Exzald S and Valentina Magaletti. The extended version package is only accessible through the QR codes in the book.

Notes: The history of India's first electronic music studio founded in 1969 at the National Institute of Design in Ahmedabad by David Tudor.

A book companion to the compilation album The NID Tapes: Electronic Music in India 1969-1972 released by State51.

Subcontinental Synthesis explores the history of India's first electronic music studio, founded in 1969 at the National Institute of Design in Ahmedabad with the support of the composer David Tudor. The essays and writings unravel the narrative and context surrounding the studio as well as the work of the Indian composers who created groundbreaking recordings during its four years of activity.

The texts reflect on the role of electronic music within a post-independence India, considering its interconnections with experimental design, radical pedagogies, and the international avant-garde, as well as the encircling conditions of Western ideological soft power within the global expansion of Modernism.

Contributors:

Geeta Dayal, Alannah Chance, Matt Williams, Shilpa Das, Jinraj Joshipura, You Nakai, Rahila Haque, and Paul Purgas. Foreword by Budhaditya Chattopadhyay

Notes: Following "Vintage Music T-shirt Scrap", The long-awaited third instalment of the scrap series is Jazz!

Focusing on jazz, focusing on original vintage posters, From flyers to booklets, calendars, and magazines of performances at the time!

There are many jazz record jacket books in the world, but this is the first poster book in the world.

Ide started by searching for materials for his autobiographical book "Rolling On The Road". Ninety percent of the items in the collection were collected intensively by Ide over a period of about a year and a half. "

Binding: 376 pages / A5 format