Leaving Electronic & Dance 59 Items

o-founder & head chef of the buzzing fine dining restaurant, LASA, LA's Chad Valencia aka yuk. returns to LEAVING Records leading the ambient lo-fi revolution within LA's beat-scene - heralded historically within the production culture of LEAVING's community.

Speaking sonically & conceptually to the nuanced heritage of yuk.'s Filipino upbringing - the Paraiso EP marks the first of two installments in contemporary works of sound art forthcoming from the experimental beatmaker.

Spiro World (or One Must First Become Aware Of The Body) is the definitive Time Wharp full-length coming of age collection. Unhinged to any particular music scene, Spiro’s (in reference to prescription drug spironolactone) unabashed yet vulnerable all genre album story by its Brooklyn-based artist Kaye Loggins describes somatically profound personal experiences of derealization, the endocrinological mixolydian heaven & pharma hell on earth, and love letters to New York.

Spiro World (or One Must First Become Aware Of The Body) is the definitive Time Wharp full-length coming of age collection. Unhinged to any particular music scene, Spiro’s (in reference to prescription drug spironolactone) unabashed yet vulnerable all genre album story by its Brooklyn-based artist Kaye Loggins describes somatically profound personal experiences of derealization, the endocrinological mixolydian heaven & pharma hell on earth, and love letters to New York.

Tracks recorded around the time of Stimulator's album Exotic Worlds and Masterful Treasures. These were all performed, produced by Stimulator Jones – with "Hold ya Head" co-produced by Jamma Dee – and written by Stimulator Jones, except "Choosey Lover" (Isley Brothers cover) written by Isleys & Chris Jasper, and "Unsatisfied" (Replacements cover) written by Paul Westerberg. Mastered by Jake Viator. Cover by Jeff Jank & Mike Pargas.

Hailing from Osaka, Japan, and owner of the Daytripper label, seiho is a new producer set to join the Leaving Records family with his debut full-length release.

For his sophomore full-length album, LA-based Bassist/Producer/Composer Sam Wilkes is prompted with ten questions from Leaving Records community mentor & facilitator Carlos Niño.

1. Carlos: Prior to gathering and setting up in the Studio for the Recording Sessions that this record is sculpted from, how much did you talk with any of your collaborators? What did you talk about? What kind of direction, inspiration, example, or association did you give, if any?

Wilkes: i told Christian Euman “I want to make a double drum record with you” The thought had occurred to me after seeing a few shows in New Orleans in 2019. I asked “If you could record it with any other drummer who would it be?”

he responded quite instantly: “Greg Webster” (aka Greg Paul)

together in one 4 hour session we recorded 3 different improvisational pieces … and a chart of mine

this album is entirely the 2nd of those 3 improvisations

I spent a lot of time living with that 40 minute musical block of granite, getting to know it, wondering prodding how to connect the frame-able moments

after 5 to 6 months Jacob Mann and Chris Fishman record over the piece separately. I offered very little instruction to them,

then I read an interview of Gerhard Richter & Hans Ulbrich Obrist “Lives of the Artists, Lives of the Architects” excellent use of Helvetica on the cover. They discuss Richter’s process destroying his own work to find something new in it.

I had an epiphany.

the possibility of improvised sonics(?) with the intent of creating contingency through destroying the audio of specific sections of this 40 minute piece to discover new music(s) in the process.

I contacted Ethan Braun: “What other musicians and artists Besides Stockhausen and Cage, got into a similar kind of process?” He sent me: Pierre Schaefer, Kazuo Shiraga, and Butch Morris. I combined with my past research on Phillip Guston, and Richter. I organized and prepared for my process in collaboration with Chris Sorem to see it through -

2. Carlos: What went into your choice to have 2 Trap Drummers on this record? Had Christian and Greg ever met? Had they ever played together before?

Wilkes: New Orleans April 2019 with Jacob Mann. Small bar Fried chicken wings being sold outside. delicious. Brass band performing “for the love of you” by the Isley brothers what an arrangement I am ecstatic Band had 2 drummers playing marching snare drums One drummer on kick and cymbal. I knew. 2 drummers.

Christian and Greg had not played together formally but had always wanted to… It was special to witness . all of our first time playing with others Since, you know. The situation and concept of the session, To do one tune and spend the rest of the time just playing Was a release.. listening back in the control room Delirious -

3. Carlos: How did you come to choose the Studios that you worked in for this record? The Musicians and Instruments?

Wilkes: i’ve always respected loyalty. It feels like a hug. I frequent Nest Recorders and I frequent Lucy’s Meat Market.

I knew Jacob Mann would know what to do After hearing his take I realized this additional opportunity: Chris Fishman on an Arp-2600 -

4. Carlos: Please tell us how you feel about, Richter: "Surprises always emerge,"

Wilkes: how lucky i am to discover for myself that this is true. -

5. Carlos: In what ways did the Improvisations that you and your group played, (that You Produced & Arranged this record from,) begin? A look, a word, a gesture? Something else?

Wilkes: i hit play on a maestro rhythm king. I got lucky with the tempo. I played a chord progression a cell that I had written a few years ago to say to christian and greg: go

Jacob said yes pressed record reacted

Chris Fishman and I together with Pete Min at Lucy’s meat market Chris playing his heart out.

after, we’d drive around my neighborhood 2-3 o’clock in the morning listening to this music discussing the arrangements where to cut the fat, where to chew. Chris Fishman was so important in this album’s completion.

Chris Sorem and me At nest recorders Playing with tape Recklessly Laughing Fighting exhaustion. So much gear set up Only half of it used. Destroying and discovering No time to waste to hear something new -

6.Carlos: What does "One Theme" mean to You?

Wilkes: 8 bar harmonic and melodic passage that repeats. -

7. Carlos: How does this new record make You feel? Wilkes: i see orange! -

8. Carlos: Was everyone set up in the same room, or in multiple rooms within each Studio?

Wilkes: yes & no

Nest Recorders: SW, CE, GP Jacob Mann’s Apartment in Alhambra: JM Lucy’s Meat Market: CF, SW -

9. Carlos: How has your sound, concept, approach been changing, evolving, metamorphosing, from your perspective?

Wilkes: for me to know And you to find out.

I practice everyday still sometimes, I write just as much Sometimes I don’t Sometimes im sculpting chipping away at music Hoping to find something Sometimes I forget Sometimes im tired. Sometimes im watching or reading the lord of the rings Hopefully I’m improving Hopefully I can be present and Grow. I want to be compassionate and not so hard on myself. -

10. Carlos: Please tell us something special, to You, about the making of this record.

Wilkes: The album title is exactly what the album is.

&

i am unbelievably thankful for the people who made this record with me. lucky to collaborate with them. lucky to know them: Christian Euman Greg Paul Jacob Mann Chris Fishman Chris Sorem Pete Min Mark Chalecki

I love you all, thank you

: )

SW 09/26/21 -

Thank You! Love!!! Carlos Niño 092021 Full Harvest Moon

Spells is the debut release by Los Angeles based multi-instrumentalist and composer Nailah Hunter on Leaving Records. Each of the EP’s six tracks represent a spell, a unique sonic place forged by imagination and incantation. Ambient in nature, each spell highlights Hunter’s skills as a composer. “It really started off with me just wanting to kind of reclaim the way that I thought about creating music and then also performing it,” Hunter says. “I was like, okay. I need to get back to the basics of why I like to create and what it does for me … so I set out to make spells, in the sense that each layer is one of the steps in incantation... It became about purpose... the procedure and the ritual, so that when it came to performing it, I wasn’t able to get into my head about it because I was just carrying out these steps. Each track is its own incantation, its own spell, its own world.” Colorful atmospheres permeate Spells, each track offering tranquil, reflective setting. Hunter explains, “Another thing that I always wanted to focus on and through making this project have sort of been able to name is that, I like to create places, songs as locations ...whether there are field recordings [involved] or not.”

Opening track “Soil” is accompanied by a poem: “a seed is sown, a song from silence.” Its beautiful harp and angelic voices establish the album’s mode of beautiful stillness. This is followed by “Ruins,” a tranquil soundscape abetted by insect field recordings and a slightly warped, heaven-bound trajectory, described by Hunter as a love spell. “Another thing that’s really important to me about my relationship with music is synesthesia. It’s all very palette based... For the song “Ruins,” it comes on like magenta and clementine.” On the colors present in the single “White Flower, Dark Hill,” Hunter describes “the idea of the purples and navies of the night sky and the way that shadows appear under full moonlight, the different shades of moonlight, and how it always brings out the color white.” Each track’s nuanced production and big, emotional sounds do carry a charged energy, colorful and magnetic. The shifting phases and sustained drones of “Enter” mimic the feeling of approaching and walking through a rift into a fantastical world. The listener is advanced into album highlight “Quiet Light,” which Hunter states captures, “that feeling of being like golden light in a cold still pool of water, this very specific image and feeling that I just love so much.”

Spells is a powerful opening statement that uses this musician's innate artistic gifts to promote healing and self awareness. Of the album’s inspirations, she adds, “definitely rune magick and just the idea of creating places of rest … sonic places of rest, places to ponder and consider your feelings. Me making music, it’s always been about healing for me and making myself feel better. If other people listen to it and also feel better, then that is delightful.”

Muwosi is the project of Cincinnati-based vocalist & song-writer Monica Windom – her Of Compassion is a now-needed contemporary R&b / Jazz / Hip-Hop / Electronic production that gracefully culminates into the good vibe. The EP is equally due to Muwosi’s musical relationship with the songs of Stevie Wonder as it is with the avant modernity of Solange, and speaks of summer-time with layered vocal harmonies over Rhodes piano that are fine-tuned with the chops of LA producer/keyboardist Lionmilk. Mixed & mastered by rising LA engineer Swarvy slides the cherry on top of this difficult-to-deny glimpse at something larger on the horizon..

Strawberries ripen in the spring. Or so they used to, in a more reliable world, one that seems to be rapidly receding in our collective rearview mirror. Presently, “spring” is a troubled concept — fraught with anxiety. Our seasons, if they are seasons at all, are paradoxical. Crops fail, or they ripen prematurely, all at once, and into a burst of rot. Impossibly, somehow, the supermarket shelves stay stocked (mostly, for now at least), and there are buckets of strawberries on every corner. But, of course, their nature is suspect. And they don’t taste like they used to. Or maybe that’s just ruinous nostalgia. But somewhere along the way we certainly lost something. Everybody knows. Strawberry Season responds tenderly to this sorry state of affairs, not with false comfort — nor escapism. Rather, the album conveys, often wordlessly, that there remains an abundance of sweetness amidst our increasing unease. While much of twentieth century American popular and folk music may have dwelt on the beauty and plenitude of the prairie, More Eaze applies a similar Romantic focus to the small bursts of fecundity that now hide in plain sight. Blending found sound, generative music, a knack for elegant, classically-informed melodic arrangement, and a sort of Liz-Fraser-by-way-of-hyperpop approach to vocals, Strawberry Season offers unique solace — providing an occasion for the kind of deep listening that our overstimulated and undernourished spirits require if there is to be any hope at all (and of course there must be hope). More Eaze (serving as composer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, producer, and sound artist) guides us incrementally to this locus of attentiveness.

“Have you ever really loved a human? Have you ever come across the wisest of them? They will slip right through your fingers, leaving the most unimaginable impression.”

Jupiter’s Purse is the debut EP by Dallas, Texas-based artist Mattie on Leaving Records. Produced in conjunction with fellow Dallasite Black Taffy, Jupiter’s Purse is an expansive and unique work of experimental soul. Featuring 2021’s lauded single “Human Thing,” Jupiter’s Purse broadens a window into the fresh and exciting vision of Mattie. Explaining the EP’s theme, Mattie states, “I’m very fond of the planet Jupiter in the astrological sense because Jupiter represents expansion. It also represents the planet that takes everything that it is that we desire to see for ourselves in this life and it expands it, right? I was inspired to call it Jupiter’s Purse because it also reminded me of a female womb in a sense, the incubation process that happens within the womb, and kind of the purse being the womb of Jupiter. And the planet is basically holding our things and incubating them until it’s time to expand them.”

Of collaborating with Black Taffy, Mattie says, “I felt like his melody and my pen, and the voice that was coming through me and what really wanted to be said through the lyrics, it’s like they just found a home together. And it was so effortless to really just kind of dance with his melodies and write these lyrics and these stories. So that’s basically how we kind of started working together, and yeah, I think we made a baby. A studio baby.” The EP’s five cohesive tracks loosely follow the story of a narrator named Mhuv. Mattie states, “It’s really a story of myself as Mhuv, and how it’s felt for me to be at times identified with the body as a person, and then other times being able to observe the body, and know myself as that as well, and what that has felt like, kind of being in this sense of duality. Jupiter’s Purse is basically a vocal representation of a lot of duality that I experienced. In coming to know my true self, that duality kind of came more to the forefront, so I started to write from that, and to really understand the power in the duality, while returning back to myself as source.”

Director Tramaine Townsend provides visuals for the project. Mattie states, “I wanted it to be clean but experimental, experimental and also clean. I wanted it to have that two-fold. I’ve been listening to a lot of recordings from Virgil Abloh, and he inspired me this year to really appreciate the duality that’s in my work. And even in the visuals, the cleanliness of it, but the experimental aspect. The purist meeting the tourist. The purist being that classic approach to visuals, which I appreciate Tramaine for, and then also allowing me as the tourist, the one that is experimental and that wants to have a different experience… Once you see it, you’ll see the beauty, the continuity of what we’re trying to say.”

Mattie concludes, “I feel like what I realized is that there’s a home in me that is comfortable no matter where I’m at. And my life is based on finding that and remembering that home within myself. And so my focus on the external things, even though I keep them up and I maintain the physical things, but I realize that my only purpose, if there was one, is to really remember myself, as if to remember that home within myself, so that I can be comfortable no matter where I’m at. And my music is an expansion of that, that surrender to that aspect of this experience which is to come home and find that home within myself. The music is about going through what it feels like when you are on the path to remembering yourself. What it feels like, that oiliness, that stickiness, that bulldozer, the big explosions, the feeling of ground zero, the feeling of heightened senses, the feeling of being a giant but then also you feel like you are David, and there’s a Goliath. I plan on moving through, which is why the character’s name is Mhuv in Jupiter’s Purse, because I see ourselves, everyone on the planet, moving through these spaces and them not being intended to be a sticking point for us. And so Jupiter’s Purse is what I would call maybe a gateway, a womb to the other side. Jupiter is going to expand this project, because that’s what Jupiter does, and has blessed this project already, so I know Jupiter’s going to expand it to be another side of this, where we won’t be speaking from duality, but we’ll be speaking from our natural state as wholeness.”

The Mycelium is a vast, subterranean fungal network, through which plant-life, and, by extension, all living beings communicate. Individual mycelia are purported to be the largest organic entities on the planet. However, these networks simultaneously distort and disrupt our pre-existing understanding of individual, discrete organisms. Rather, the mycelium has emerged as empirical proof of longstanding “cliches” about nature and being: namely, that all life is interconnected; that we, as human animals, are porous — indebted to the very earth we tread. Having emerged as a luminary of the Los Angeles Beat Scene, MatthewDavid immersed himself for several years in the rich, neglected, and all-too-often-derided archive of New Age sound/culture, stewarding a kind of New New Age sensibility into being. Mycelium Music constitutes a synthesis of these aesthetics, an alchemical marriage of sorts, in which the digital and the organic, the earthen and the aethereal, the bloom and the rot all collide and coexist.

Having emerged as a luminary of the Los Angeles Beat Scene, MatthewDavid immersed himself for several years in the rich, neglected, and all-too-often-derided archive of New Age sound/culture, stewarding a kind of New New Age sensibility into being. Mycelium Music constitutes a synthesis of these aesthetics, an alchemical marriage of sorts, in which the digital and the organic, the earthen and the aethereal, the bloom and the rot all collide and coexist. How might the Mycelium sing? Where other sound artists might be tempted to capture the phenomena, reaching for a field recorder, MatthewDavid responds with a succinct, impressionistic, and diaristic suite of “songs” (although, as with the mycelium itself, one cannot easily distinguish where one song/organism ends and another begins). Leaving Records founder Matthewdavid announces his new album Mycelium Music, his first proper full-length since 2018. The first single to be taken from the album 'Liquidity', was created as a direct response to ambient pioneer Laraaji encouraging Matthewdavid to innovate zither music. Beautifully textural, Mycelium Music constitutes an alchemical marriage in which the digital and the organic, the earthen and the aethereal, the bloom and the rot all collide and coexist. The record is a product of serious contemplation on the meaning, the problems, and the promises of interdependence.

Low Leaf - "Red Moon" [12" EP] [45 RPM] / Low Leaf is the long-running and multivalent project of Los Angeleno and multi-instrumentalist Angelica-Marie. Riding the wake of 2023's Microdose - melding/channeling free jazz, astrology, hip-hop, eco-spirituality, and geo- political anger - Red Moon is a tight, three-song EP, a snapshot of Low Leaf during an especially dynamic period, opening with a transcendent cover of Alice Coltrane's "Blue Nile." Available on 12" vinyl, 45 RPM.

Part 1 of a 3-part release. Lotus Collage was originally released in 1978. The album was recorded with a freestyle open tuned electric zither and harp. “One of my first home electric zither recordings, recorded live in a Park Slope, Brooklyn living room during my street performer/busker years in the late 1970s.” – Laraaji.

Part 3 of a 3-part release. All in One Peace (Leaving Records). The five movements of “Trance Celestial” are from Laraaji’s 1982 self-release called Rhythm and Blues. Track 6, “Connecting with the Inner Healer Through Music” was created as support listening music for a full-day workshop by the same name at South East Spiritual Conferences (sesc) in Greensboro, NC, 1983.

Best DJ in the world J Rocc gives you six bootleg bangers of electro ecstasy as Flaunt Edwards channeling legendary party people like Ron Hardy, Larry Levan, DJ Harvey, and Kraftwerk.

Green-House is the project of Los Angeles based artist Olive Ardizoni.

Approaching the project with an intentional naivety, they craft songs that find freedom through simplicity. As a non-binary artist, they hope to create a space with fewer barriers as both a performer and a listener.

Their first release as Green-House, “Six songs for Invisible Gardens” (out Jan 15, 2020) was written with the intention of transforming the listening environment and augmenting domestic space. The music is designed as a communication with both plant life and the people who care for them.

Green-House is the project of Los Angeles based artist Olive Ardizoni.

Approaching the project with an intentional naivety, they craft songs that find freedom through simplicity. As a non-binary artist, they hope to create a space with fewer barriers as both a performer and a listener.

Their first release as Green-House, “Six songs for Invisible Gardens” (out Jan 15, 2020) was written with the intention of transforming the listening environment and augmenting domestic space. The music is designed as a communication with both plant life and the people who care for them.

Eurybia is the second solo album by Italian artist Francesca Heart. The result of a compositional process that began in summer 2020.

The work is the product of a series of intimate imaginary projections and aural engagements with a number of geographical sites scattered across the Italian landscape. Places which have resonated with Francesca during various personal travels and pilgrimages, due to their extramundane and often even mystic significance. The most outstanding / iconic being the cloisters and gardens of San Gregorio Armeno’s monastery in Naples and the Nympheum of Villa Giulia in Rome.

Indeed the whole record seems to bring the listener constantly together with the overwhelming, tender presence of the surrounding environment. Seemingly permeated with a feeling of refreshing musky moistures or textured with soft, wet soil, Eurybia reminds us of walking barefoot near the lush architecture of some ancient, overflowing fountain or amidst the continuous flows of shallow rivers’ bedrocks informing the album with strong physical, sensory qualities. Myth, senses, and imagination become anchors of artistic and healing expression as well as forms of romantic escapism from an ever complex world.

On the whole, Eurybia’s seven tracks alternate dense enmeshment of sounds and melodies with sparse, forthright single-instrumental devotional hymns, working as a personal cartography of ephemeral audio monuments to human, transcendental, and mythographic landscapes. Influences connected by means of nuanced ascendance going from classical New Age music and Video Game soundtracks to digital phone ringtones. The fluttering arpeggios used as the main compositional device coalesce together into an experience of relaxing trance which is yet a glaring, audacious work.

This EP was compiled between 2017-2020, during a transition from California back to Oregon, my original home. The album was created entirely with Elektron Digitakt drum computer, Sequential Prophet Rev2/08, Novation Bass Station II, and Roland Gaia Sh-01 synthesizers.