Yves De Mey
Bleak Comfort

from the artist's bandcamp: Over the course of nearly a decade of releases, Szarehave have been a mainstay of UK dance music,cementing their reputation through a string of essentialreleases for labels like Horizontal Ground, Idle Hands,Field, Project 13 and Different Circles. We’re extremelyproud to add another name to that list, with this diverse selection of tracks that comprise both new ideas and forgotten loops, re-visited and re-tooled.The first track, Miner, is named after a street in Downtown Stockton, CA. Whilst Miner isn’t directly about the Central Valley of California, the juxtaposed rhythmic and thematic iterations that outline its structure reflect the uncanny incongruence of the environmentthat birthed it. From the opening bar, the rhythms are pounding, frenetic, and totally unhinged… We won’t give away the payoff though; listen to the tune.Cut with Glass - written after a recycling mishap - perfectly encapsulates a vintage side of the Szare sound - minimal, free from ornamentation, and with an approach to uk sound system culture that exhibits a more westward-gazing sound palette than initially meets theeye.Drop Shadow rounds off the package; as much an exploration of concrète as it is bass music, the drop to 100bpm facilitates one of the most controlled and perfectly executed arrangements we’ve ever heard out of Szare. The spasms of noise throughout are used as a fundamental instrument, complimented by pointillist licks of dubbed out vocals andstrings that reach a fever-pitch in the closing third.

Founded in 2015, Tears|Ov are sound artist/self-taught musician Lori E Allen, classically trained cellist/mixed media artist Katie Spafford and illustrator/prison psychotherapist Deborah Wale. The trio first collaborated on Lori E Allen’s ‘Tears of the Material Vulture’ cassette on The Tapeworm, a re-imagination of a brief collaboration with Madame Chaos of cut-up cablecasts, 1995-1996, on Manhattan Neighborhood Network and Television in New York City. That release served to resurrect a hibernating creative practice between the three friends.Their writing process takes the form of structured improvisation. Allen will create a bed of loops, field recordings or a full framework. She then shares this base with Wale and Spafford who embellish or delete, the three building the pieces through long improvised sessions in London, playing late into the night. During these sessions, the feeling of a songs’ words or the emotional tone of a sound can spark sudden mood changes, altering the arc of the compositions. ‘Crucially the music is improvised – it is never the same twice. There are triggers and moments that signal moving to another part of the music, but the timings and lengths largely depend on our moods and interpretation on a given day/performance. Because of this, the album was recorded with ambient mics capturing multiple instruments. It wasn’t possible to record all the instruments separately as we respond to each others improvisation. Even if the changes are very minor, they really affect the emotion of each piece’ Spafford says.

Comfortnoise: ...The answer to Gorgon Sound's four track EP (PengSound003), this release - Gorgon Sound VS. Dubkasm - The Versions (PengSound004) contains a counteraction version to each original title, dubbed straight off the Dubkasm mixing desk.Originally released on 2 x 12" in 2013, and available again, reissued in a limited screenprinted & hand-stamped edition vinyl edition, via our store << RWDFWD.COM >>

boomkat: ...Arguably thee deepest Seekersinternational dive bubbles back up for a necessary new edition with Ossia’s excellent No Corner label, and in a new remastered roots version to bootScrolling back to near ground zero in their widely celebrated catalogue, ‘Rootprinciple’ is foundational SKRS business that appeared on Bristol’s finest in 2014, a few years after their session for the late, great Digitalis, and would pave the way for a run of outstanding turns over the years, garnering praise from all quarters to their borderless, judicious application of dub psychedelia.It’s truly essential listening if you’ve been snagged on their sound and ever tumbled down one of their wormholes, playing it relatively stripped back and breezy compared with some of their wilder shenanigans, with a real focus on sensuality and smoked out atmospheres that’s primed for toking types and late night sessions. The tracklist has been slightly trimmed, but contains all the spirited nutrition of the original, keeping heads and feet off the ground with finely toggled and juggled dub FX that have become their hallmark, filleting and diffusing samples of obscure and classic roots dub records in an endless swirl of shifty subbass hits, vaporous vocal contrails and smudged harmonic horizons that come off like the results of Rhythm & Sound’s imaginary cosmic siblings. Peerless! Crucial! Killer!

smilingc: ...Aset was a feminine goddess of ancient Egypt. She had the magical prowess to cure the sick and bring her husband back from the dead. Over 5,000 years later, a collective of individuals deeply involved in community improvement initiatives and the struggle for justice and equality would gather in the Washington, DC metropolitan area to form a social movement of their own. They named themselves after Aset, the ‘Goddess Of The Immortals’, and their power was diffused through song. They had a unique approach as a record label to incorporate local D.C. youth and give them a space to develop their musical talents.This compilation explores the back-catalog of Aset, anthologizing three distinct projects that they were focusing on from 1986-1988. Aset’s first release was a debut album from Latonya, the niece of one of the Aset members. She was eleven at the time of recording and sang about divorce, dancing, and love. She was set to be the poster child of Aset with a follow-up LP planned, but ultimately, the recording process became too demanding for Latonya and her parents. Moving forward, Aset split their creative energy into two follow-up groups, Treo & Whax. Treo was a trio of high school gals in harmony singing about relationships. Their song ‘Demands Decrease Desire’ discusses the strain we put on our significant others that pushes them away, and the group touched on a romantic-electro sound through their two releases. Whax was Aset’s male counterpart to Treo, they were meant to represent the sillier side of Aset. The group was led by two high school boys who recorded a lone 7” called “Can I Take You Home?”, and we were fortunate to receive an unreleased extended mix of this song that adds a dubby delayed breakdown.Far from commercial, “A Totally New Sound” is a collection of the songs from these three acts that demonstrate how Aset crafted an electro-soul sound that is absolutely their own. All the projects were guided and produced by the label director, Mba Mbulu. He maintains Aset to this day as an online university, one of the first-ever free internet colleges. Mba continues the spirit of Aset as a political writer.Album remastered and restored as a single LP pressed at 33rpm. It comes with a Smiling C logo sticker, and an inner sleeve displaying Aset archival material, and an interview with Mba Mbulu.