#leaf label

[nofatclips]

Flicker by Julia Kent from the album Character

[burlveneer-music]

Szun Waves - New Hymn To Freedom

Sometimes in improvised music there can be a distance between listener and players, a sense you’re sitting back and admiring their interplay and abstraction – but with Szun Waves’ second album, you’re right in there with them, inside the playing, experiencing the absolute joy the three musicians feel as they circle around each other, exploring the spaces they’ve opened up. The three members already have sparkling pedigrees of their own. Norfolk’s Luke Abbott is well known for his explorations of the zones between pure ambience and the leftmost fringes of club culture. With Portico Quartet and Circle Traps, Jack Wyllie has been in the vanguard of UK fusions of jazz, classical and club music. Australian drummer Laurence Pike has likewise found a unique voice in improvised and experimental music-making, whether in the bands Triosk or PVT, or as a solo artist. The trio’s musical relationship has grown naturally and steadily, and it shows. From Wyllie adding shimmering sustained sax notes to Abbott’s gorgeous ambient pieces in 2013, Szun Waves emerged when Pike was added to the mix, energising the sound but still keeping its levitational qualities. Their 2016 self-released debut album hit a natural groove – it was a “proof of concept” as Abbott says – and now they’re in a place of pure spontaneity: New Hymn To Freedom is a document of six entirely live improvisations – “no edits or overdubs” – and its title couldn’t be more apt.

Luke Abbott - synths Laurence Pike - drums Jack Wyllie - saxophone

[best-of-contemporary-jazz]

Track: Space Carnival Album: Channel The Spirits Artist: The Comet Is Coming Label: The Leaf Label Year: 2016

[earinfluxion]

Murcof: “Cuerpo Celeste” (Cosmos, Leaf 2007)

Cosmic awesomeness from Fernando Corona a.k.a. Murcof. His last proper solo album under the name was a full ten years ago — will we hear more?

[burlveneer-music]

The Comet Is Coming - Death To The Planet

Death to the world as we know it. Death to preconceived notions of truth. Death to empires built on the rotting concept of hierarchy.

The artist’s role in any age is to reflect the zeitgeist, holding a mirror to the world. This is a time of darkness, requiring an honest expression of our generation’s rage, inertia, hopelessness but most importantly resilience, unity and love. With disparate and insidious manifestations of oppression, loss of agency befalls a generation searching for their role in the resistance. We need more than ever a music to articulate and embody these sentiments and enable the strength to envision change.

The Comet Is Coming, signaling an end to life as we know it, heralding the dawn of a new age. In the inevitable physical destruction of the planet, a space is created where all notions of political, social and economic hierarchy will be at once obliterated and transcended.

We see death as the first stage of rebirth. A chance for new ideas, sounds and ways of interacting to grow. Death as linked to life. Destruction as linked to creation. As a species we must embrace progression and motion as demonstrated by the celestial forces which underpin our ecosystem and enable our evolutionary progress.

Start running.

Betamax Killer, Danalogue The Conqueror and King Shabaka, January 2017

Death To The Planet documents a collaborative approach to composition through spontaneous improvisation, mixed and produced by Danalogue the Conqueror and Betamax Killer.

[best-of-contemporary-jazz]

Track: Start Running Album: Death To The Planet EP Artist: The Comet Is Coming Label: The Leaf Label Year: 2017

[best-of-contemporary-jazz]

Track: Final Eclipse Album: Death To The Planet EP Artist: The Comet Is Coming Label: The Leaf Label Year: 2017

[todays-soundtrack]

Being - Cue

Sounds like Monday. And very familiar too.

This was part of Invisible Soundtracks: Marco 1, a compilation binging together two EPs, Invisible Soundtracks Volume I & II, along with four new tracks and several incidental pieces by Richard Thomas. 

The Invisible Soundtracks series was launched in 1995, with a simple brief: contributors (who include both established and new artists) were asked to produce an evocative piece of music for an imaginary film, in whatever style the musician cared to choose. All tracks are exclusive to the series. The resulting collection works effectively as a whole, open to the listener's own visual interpretation. This is not ambient music, it's atmospheric music to be listened to with the lights down low, suggesting images of the darkened hulls of lost spaceships, cocktail bars on Pacific islands or imperial palaces in the Russian Steppes. Hiding behind the settee may or may not be necessary...