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Dialect on Atlas of Green

“I wanted to make it feel quite handmade. To try and make something beautiful out of these sort of discarded fragments.”

Andrew PM Hunt, aka Dialect, gives us a look inside the process of making his new album, atlas of green. the full mini-doc is streaming now on the RVNG YouTube page.

Atlas of Green marks another ambitious step forward for the Liverpool based musician and composer’s long standing solo effort. As concerned with memory as it is with what lies ahead, the album arc follows the story of a young musician named green, toiling in the dawn of an unspecified future where signals and blips from the technologies of times past arrive in vibrant, musical fragmentations .

Atlas of Green is available now in a special artist vinyl edition with screen-printed covers, “standard” vinyl, and Japanese import CD.

Dylan Moon's Only the Blues Turns Five

A knell from Dylan Moon’s “Death Warmed,” in light of the recent five-year anniversary of Only the Blues.

At this juncture in his trajectory, Moon’s music, at its core, followed a folk tradition being extracted and explored by Alex G, Courtney Barnett , and others at the time. While the confessional application of those traditions are apparent Moon’s debut album, the songs here come as if through a fog, charting winding roads wherein lucidity and meaning become clear through feeling rather than precise detail. To Moon, obfuscation becomes its own kind of confession.

Recorded in bedrooms across Los Angeles and Boston, an intimate anxiety colors the album. Songs arrive ornately fashioned and bursting with ideas, feeling uniquely unwieldy and alive. This sense of motion and unplaceable time is mirrored in the video for “Death Warmed,” directed by Dylan himself.

Colin Self Announces respite ∞ levity for the nameless ghost in crisis

Put on respite ∞ levity for the nameless ghost in crisis in darkness and prepare to find yourself amongst unfamiliar companions. Colin Self travels to and from one realm to another on r∞L4nGc, the Berlin and New York-based artist’s third album, conjuring uncanny voices through their own singular singing style. Material and immaterial, fixities and fluidities, bodies and souls: such distinctions matter little in the looping, ever-crossing world of r∞L4nGc, where radiant, limitless beauty and boundless, inescapable terror are one and the same.

Incorporating Self’s long standing practice of dollmaking, and drawing upon a conscious exile that allowed the artist to settle into conversation with lost souls on other planes of existence, r∞L4nGc is an integrated vision of the artist’s eclectic practice. Singing in Polari, a forgotten form of slantwise English used by queer subcultures for centuries to evade detection, Self performs for our departed teachers and friends, and for the rest of us, ready to commune with uncanny spirits. There’s a beauty to Self’s voice that is inescapable, a shining sun cutting across uncertain emotions.

Yet on “respite for the tulpamancer,” Self is unafraid to let a ghostly chill pass through the familiar magic they conjure vocally, aware that true insight often occurs in the shadows, where doubt finds a body. Invoking the idea of the tulpamancer, a Buddhist notion of someone capable of giving form to a spectral, sentient force with a will of its own, Self sets the tone for r∞L4nGc: be prepared to hear from plenty of others finding their own way into this world, with Self serving as a collaborator to myriad ghostly figures.

Self and collaborator Bobbi Salvör Menuez created a video for “respite for the tulpamancer,” filmed in Vevey and the mountain of Le Moléson, Switzerland. Find that just below, alongside everything else you need to know about r∞L4nGc.

The Invisible Road - Out Now!

In the world today, The Invisible Road: Original Recordings, 1985–1990, a collection of unheard, unreleased material by Sussan Deyhim and Richard Horowitz. The vinyl edition available direct from RVNG + Freedom To Spend and your fave indie store, streaming wherever streams are sold.

An investment of several years of time, energy, resource, and love, the early seeds of this project were planted not long after we completed work in 2017 on Freedom To Spend’s reissues of Richard’s 1981 album Eros in Arabia. On a visit to Los Angeles, where Sussan and Richard (both creative and life partners) had lived since moving from New York City in the early 00s, Richard invited us to their storage space in The Valley, where years of their individual and shared works were archived across media formats. Needless to say, with several decades of work between the two artists, there was a staggering amount of material to contemplate.

Being the completist, control freaks that we are, no stone, reel-to-reel, DAT, or cassette reference would remain unturned, and thus began the huge effort to transfer and audition a seemingly limitless flow of music that Sussan and Richard collaborated on. This limitlessness, while simultaneously intoxicating and daunting, spoke literally and liberally to the depth of Sussan and Richard’s relationship. There was no better way to know Sussan and Richard than to experience every inch of reel, and every corner of the rehearsal cassettes where the two musicians elaborated upon their creative impulses through sound and conversation. Needless to say, this process took some time.

And then there was the process of mixing the multi-track takes that felt fit to leave this nest of obscurity for new, appreciative ears. Major props to John Also Bennett, aka JAB, for stepping in at that crucial juncture. For those familiar with Sussan and Richard’s 1986 collaboration album Desert Equations: Azax Attra on the legendary Crammed Discs (alongside Lovely Music Ltd. and Dischord, the label that has meant the most to ours), JAB’s effort bringing these pieces up to sonic snuff rivals those recordings. For those unfamiliar with that album, or Sussan and Richard’s collaboration, we are envious of your first encounter. This is globally, cosmically minded music, and it truly honors the intention that compelled Sussan and Richard’s collaboration to create “free of any specific cultural reference, with a personal musical signature.”

While we were turning the corner on the last leg of this collection, Richard’s health was taking a turn for the worse. Sussan and his daughter, Tamara (namesake of the “interdimensional travel agent” who appears on Richard’s Eros in Arabia, for nerds, like us, keeping score), relocated him to Marrakech, Morrocco, his spiritual home, for closer care within a familiar, familial environment. Richard passed away this past April, and with this collection we hope to honor his legacy and celebrate Sussan’s career that remains staggeringly prolific to this day.

So much love to Sussan, pictured above, for her involvement and her strength. Please make note of her upcoming shows in New York in Los Angeles; these will be very special engagements. We love you, Richard.

Sussan Deyhim & Richard Horowitz "Smelting Loop 6"

Ahead of this Friday’s release of The Invisible Road: Original Recordings, 1985–1990, the forthcoming album from Sussan Deyhim and Richard Horowitz, we share a final single in the form of “Smelting Loop 6,” accompanied by a video compiled from archival photography of Deyhim and Horowitz.

“Smelting Loop 6” is transcendent sonic scripture. A steady futuristic rhythm is enveloped by sounds of the natural world and faintly layered vocals – the song builds and blooms in panoramic rapture.

Listen to “Smelting Loop 6” from The Invisible Road below, and be sure to note Sussan’s upcoming performances in New York City at Roulette and Los Angeles at The Nimoy.

The Invisible Road: Original Recordings, 1985-1990 - Out Friday!

In the 1980s, New Music America was the largest festival of experimental music in the world.

The nomadic ten day festival began in 1979 in New York at The Kitchen as “New Music New York.” After the success of New Music New York, The festival became New Music America and took place in a different city each year for the next 11 years. With the mission of illuminating the shadows of popular music and breaking the barriers of genres and critical classification, NMA became one of the most important platforms for avant-garde and new music during the ’80s and early ’90s.

Consistently growing in size and scope, NMA was organized by the New Music Alliance, a committee formed by the visionary composers and performers of the festival including Laurie Anderson, Harold Budd, John Cage, Brian Eno, Philip Glass, Jon Hassell, Meredith Monk, Pauline Oliveros, Sun Ra, Steve Reich, Terry Riley, Yoshi Wada, La Monte Young. The list truly goes on and on.

This week 39 years ago, Alliance members, Sussan Deyhim and Richard Horowitz performed at New Music America in Los Angeles. The Invisible Road: Original Recordings, 1985-1990, our forthcoming archival collection captures their never before heard, vital work during this period. Pre-order your copy here ahead of this Friday’s release date.