Jagjaguwar HHV Records 152 Items

At once a hazy relic and a digital snapshot of the human experience, Your Day Will Come is the debut album from Chanel Beads, arriving April 19 via Jagjaguwar. The remarkable project announces the arrival of New York-based musician Shane Lavers as a new force in experimental music, capturing the many contradictions of modern existence and the strange infiniteness of the digital world. The songs feel like a memory in which you can't distinguish between what actually happened or what was a false reproduction in your mind - although the burning emotion remains intact. Lavers pushed himself to strip his own sense of ego from “Your Day Will Come”. Throughout, Lavers weaves in contributions from his live bandmates, singer-songwriter Maya McGrory (Colle) and experimental instrumentalist Zachary Paul, who offer their own layers of feeling. As McGrory offers a more full-bodied tone and Lavers often sings with his higher-pitched head voice, the two collaborators meet in the middle; it's an intermingling of identities or a subconscious pining for androgyny. In this slippery space, different perspectives merge together, and there's a sense of empathy and humility that arises from the blending of these voices. These days, Chanel Beads live shows see all three performers weaving together in absolute catharsis. This catharsis is pushed to its peak on "Idea June," which sees McGrory taking over lead vocals to project Lavers' lyrics. As McGrory sings, "The waves wash onto my shore," in a voice that's both earnest and digitally processed, it's as though she's speaking as a separate embodiment of Lavers. In under two minutes, the track of clunky acoustic guitar and gutting strings lands somewhere between detachment and kinship. Similar to the off-kilter structure of "Police Scanner," these songs are strangely affecting in their unfinished and liminal forms. Lavers, who is drawn to poor MP3 rips and transitional moments in DJ mixes, knows that these inexact musical artifacts evoke human imperfection. The title of Your Day Will Come could be read as a promise of the arrival of good karma, or it could be a reminder of one's mortality, said out of spite. Yet as Lavers unpacks the haunting feelings of the past that he must release in order to move into his future, he reminds us that grief and hope might be closer than they seem to the naked eye.

100 copies available at HHV!
On her expansive new album, "Water Made Us," Chicago musician and poet Jamila Woods questions what it means to fully surrender to love. On "Water Made Us," Jamila embraces new genres, playful melodies, and hypnotic wordplay as she wades through the heady turbulence of love wrecks and refuge. While Jamila celebrated her community within the black feminist movement on "heavn" (2017), and on "Legacy! Legacy!" (2019), she processed her life experiences through the stories of black and brown artists, "Water Made Us" is an entirely new kind of self-revelation, making it her most personal album to date. "Water Made Us," which she recorded with LA-based producer McClenney and features longtime Chicago friends Saba and Peter CottonTale, is a sprawling and intimate portrait of self-reflection that deftly reflects the various stages of a relationship: The beginnings of easily compromising, flirting and having fun; the careful negotiation of moments of conflict or hurt; the mourning of something lost; and the tender realization at the end of it all that the person who left never really leaves you, but stays with you while you're ready to try again, refreshed and reassured. The album's title - a line from the album's highlight "Good News" - is a subtle reference to the famous Toni Morrison quote "All water has a perfect memory and is forever trying to get back to where it was." It is this sense - of memory, of place, and of return - that serves as the pillar for the album's arc. "Water Made Us" reminds us that, at its best, love is a warm, still ocean. Deep, shimmering and endless in its wonder. And at its worst, love can be a raging torrent that takes us so far from ourselves that we can barely find our way back, or even know how to swim. And yet Jamila surrenders to this surf - to every wave and every undertow - because perhaps even the most painful ends can be an invitation that calls her back home, back to the shore, back to herself.

The Rock Canon Has Many Anti-Heroes, Black Mountain Being The Latest. In The Past, Can's Tago Mago Established That The Only Rule In Rock And Roll Is That There Are No Rules. Pink Floyd's Prodigious Output In The 70s Showed Us That Architecture Can Be Cool, While Delinquent Proto-Metallers Black Sabbath Demonstrated That You Can Make A Lot From Not That Much. Now Black Mountain Teach Us That You Don't Have To Be Afraid Of The Past To Move Bravely Into The Future, Defining What It Is To Be A Classic Rock Band In The New Millennium. Iv Is An Unapologetically Ambitious Record Made By A Group Of Musicians Who Are At The Peak Of Their Powers.

Ever since childhood, learning to play various instruments in a suburban Cincinnati basement alongside his brother Bryce, Aaron Dessner has consistently sought an emotional outlet and deep human connection through music _ be it as a primary songwriter in The National, a founder and architect of beloved collaboration-driven music festivals, or collaborator on two critically acclaimed and chart-topping Taylor Swift albums recorded in complete pandemic-era isolation at his Long Pond Studio in upstate New York, among many other projects. Through it all, Dessner has brought together an unlikely community of musicians that share his impulse to connect, celebrate and, most of all, process emotion and experience through music. This generous spirit and desire to push music forward has never been more deeply felt than on Big Red Machine's "How Long Do You Think It's Gonna Last?," the second album from Dessner's evermorphing project with Bon Iver's Justin Vernon. In 2008, while assembling material for the charitycompilation "Dark Was the Night," Dessner sent Vernon a song sketch titled "big red machine". Vernon interpreted "big red machine" as a beating heart and finished the song accordingly _ a metaphor Dessner says "still sticks with me today. This project goes to many places and is always on some level about experimentation, but it shines a light on why I make music in the first place, which is an emotional need. It's one of my therapies and one of the ways I interrogate the past." Released in 2018, Big Red Machine's self-titled debut album evolved from improvisation and what Dessner calls "structured experimentalism," with an ear toward building tracks that would work well in a live setting alongside visual elements. When Dessner and Vernon started the Eaux Claires Music Festival in 2015, they staged the original "Big Red Machine" as an improvisation-based performance piece. They later took that show to the People collective's Berlin residency and festival, and to Dessner's Haven Festival in Copenhagen. "Big Red Machine started as this thing we would do for fun, and we fell in love with the feeling of it," says Dessner." Vernon agrees: "I remember it feeling really easy, but we never knew what would happen. It was exciting. As time went on, we just kept doing things together. And our friendship has grown strong, alongside all the collaborative stuff." New Big Red Machine material began taking shape in spring 2019, when Vernon came to visit Dessner at Long Pond. The first week produced songs such as "Reese," "8:22am" and eventual album opener "Latter Days," a haunting number sung by Vernon and Anaïs Mitchell that set the emotional tenor for what was to come. "It was clear to her that the early sketch Justin and I made of Latter Days was about childhood, or loss of innocence and nostalgia for a time before you've grown into adulthood _ before you've hurt people or lost people and made mistakes. Anaïs defined the whole record When she sang that, as these same themes kept appearing again and again," Dessner says. In the ensuing months, Vernon and Dessner would meet up when they could, and in the meantime, Dessner developed the existing material and wrote new instrumental tracks which he sent Vernon, always eager to hear what he would receive back. "Justin is incredibly gifted, but he's also disruptive in the best way," says Dessner, pointing to the first note of the song "Birch" as a prime example. "It's absolutely brilliant, but it was very surprising when I heard it the first time. I can't tell you what that interval is. There are many moments working with him where your head hits the wall in amazement like that." In the early stages of the pandemic, Swift approached Dessner to work with her on what would become the sister albums "folklore" and "evermore." Dessner describes this period as a "creative blur," during which he'd be writing material for Swift and Big Red Machine simultaneously. "I think this was an intense growing period for me, I was learning so much from Taylor and the process. Along the way, I shared all of our unfinished Big Red Machine songs with her and she really found them inspiring and gave me so much positive feedback and encouragement," he says. "I think that helped me realize how connected this Big Red Machine music was to everything else I was doing and that I was always supposed to be chasing these ideas. I was finding new sounds and ways of working through these songs. I just hadn't been able to finish them. So, I did." Beyond Vernon and Swift's encouragement, many of Dessner's previous collaborators and friends show up for him here, continuing the reciprocal exchange of ideas that has come to define his creative community. Songs feature guest vocals and writing contributions from artist friends including Fleet Foxes' Robin Pecknold ("Phoenix"), Ben Howard and This Is The Kit ("June's a River"), Naeem ("Easy to Sabotage'), Sharon Van Etten, Lisa Hannigan and My Brightest Diamond's Shara Nova ("Hutch," a tune inspired by Dessner's late friend, Frightened Rabbit frontman Scott Hutchison) and Swift herself ("Birch" and "Renegade," the latter an instant-classic Taylor earworm summed up by the poignant lyric "Is it insensitive for me to say / get your shit together so I can love you." The song was recorded in Los Angeles at the Kitty Committee studio in March 2021, the same week when Swift and Dessner took home the Grammy for Album of the Year for "folklore.") "This is all music I generated, but it is interesting to hear how different people relate to it, or how different voices collide with it," Dessner says. "That's what makes it special. With everyone that's on this record, there's an openness, a creative generosity and an emotional quality that connects it all together." As he continued writing prolifically on his own, Dessner noticed a theme emerging -- the idea of sitting with the uncomfortability of personal and family darkness from his childhood and reflecting on how emotional issues he dealt with growing up have reverberated through his adult life. It became clear that some of these he'd need to sing himself; songs such as "The Ghost of Cincinnati" and "Magnolia" address the disintegration of marriage and family and mental health, asking pointed questions of himself and those closest to him. "Brycie" is an ode to his aforementioned twin and National bandmate, who picked up on the musical vibes immediately when Dessner played the song for him for the first time backstage at a National show in Washington D.C. "He picked along to it with me and it immediately sounded like Aaron and Bryce playing the guitar in the basement as kids, which was my intent," Dessner remembers. "The words mean a lot to me. It's about my childhood with Bryce, and how I had pretty severe depression in high school. He was the one who kept me going and took care of me until I was back on my feet. I've lost close friends to depression and this song is about how important it was that Bryce was there for me at that time and is still here." In addition to being one of the more lyrically significant tracks on the album, Dessner says singing it himself felt like an important act of self-acceptance. "I always sing under my breath when I write music, but I usually hand it off to [National vocalist] Matt [Berninger] or others" he says. "When you're in a band for so long and somebody else is that person, you come to rely on it and I've always loved Matt's voice and his words. But singing `Brycie' myself helped rewire my brain to realize that maybe Big Red Machine is the project that not only enables me to create songs with other people, but also sometimes finish songs on my own." Recalling sessions at Sonic Ranch in Texas when Dessner recorded his vocal takes, Vernon says, "Aaron showed me `Brycie' a couple years ago now. I was like, this is beautiful, and you should do more singing. Not only would it be good for the future of your songwriting, but your voice sounds really good to me. It was exciting to see him flourish in that way _ to now be a part of that process and realize the hardships in that and also the victories. On this record, he's leading the charge, wholly and completely." Musically, "How Long Do You Think It's Gonna Last?" features what Dessner calls maybe the "clearest distillation" of his varying songwriting and production styles. Songs like "Reese," the Dessner-sung "Magnolia" and the elegiac "Hutch" are built on the kinds of tear-jerking piano melodies millions of fans have come to love from The National, but then move at their own pace toward unusual sonic destinations. "Aaron's greatest gift as a collaborator is his ability to evolve and experiment with the emotional sound that is so natural to him," Vernon says of the material. Elsewhere, the dream-like "Hoping Then" sets layered vocals by Vernon, Dessner and Hannigan ("It's the on the edge of why I can't sleep soundly") atop chopped and phased violin lines, programmed drums and countermelodies played on a rubber bridge guitar. His brother Bryce's orchestration ebbs and flows throughout this song and many others. The main instrumental track of the chugging, groovy "Easy to Sabotage" was stitched together from two different live recordings and later enveloped in warm keyboard textures and the head-nodding vocals of Naeem. "It just feels alive and electric, and it just happened," Dessner says of the song. That sense of shared experience extended to the new album's title, which was coined by Swift after Dessner told her he wasn't sure what to call the new album. Intuitively summing up the themes, she suggested titling it "How Long Do You Think It's Gonna Last?," a question which she pointed out could refer to multiple subjects addressed therein: "childhood, family, marriages, a depression, a losing streak, a winning streak or a creative streak. Taylor saw it all so clearly," Dessner says. "A year ago, we'd never even worked together. It's so cool that this community keeps extending and that everyone who contributed to this album connected so naturally to the emotions at the heart of the music."

At once a hazy relic and a digital snapshot of the human experience, Your Day Will Come is the debut album from Chanel Beads, arriving April 19 via Jagjaguwar. The remarkable project announces the arrival of New York-based musician Shane Lavers as a new force in experimental music, capturing the many contradictions of modern existence and the strange infiniteness of the digital world. The songs feel like a memory in which you can't distinguish between what actually happened or what was a false reproduction in your mind - although the burning emotion remains intact. Lavers pushed himself to strip his own sense of ego from “Your Day Will Come”. Throughout, Lavers weaves in contributions from his live bandmates, singer-songwriter Maya McGrory (Colle) and experimental instrumentalist Zachary Paul, who offer their own layers of feeling. As McGrory offers a more full-bodied tone and Lavers often sings with his higher-pitched head voice, the two collaborators meet in the middle; it's an intermingling of identities or a subconscious pining for androgyny. In this slippery space, different perspectives merge together, and there's a sense of empathy and humility that arises from the blending of these voices. These days, Chanel Beads live shows see all three performers weaving together in absolute catharsis. This catharsis is pushed to its peak on "Idea June," which sees McGrory taking over lead vocals to project Lavers' lyrics. As McGrory sings, "The waves wash onto my shore," in a voice that's both earnest and digitally processed, it's as though she's speaking as a separate embodiment of Lavers. In under two minutes, the track of clunky acoustic guitar and gutting strings lands somewhere between detachment and kinship. Similar to the off-kilter structure of "Police Scanner," these songs are strangely affecting in their unfinished and liminal forms. Lavers, who is drawn to poor MP3 rips and transitional moments in DJ mixes, knows that these inexact musical artifacts evoke human imperfection. The title of Your Day Will Come could be read as a promise of the arrival of good karma, or it could be a reminder of one's mortality, said out of spite. Yet as Lavers unpacks the haunting feelings of the past that he must release in order to move into his future, he reminds us that grief and hope might be closer than they seem to the naked eye.

`Oh Me Oh My' is both elegant and ferocious. It is stirring in one moment and a balm the next. It details histories both global and personal. Lonnie Holley's harrowing youth and young manhood in the Jim Crow South are well-told at this point _ his sale into a different home as a child for just a bottle of whiskey; his abuse at the infamous Mount Meigs correctional facility for boys; the destruction of his art environment by the Birmingham airport expansion. But Holley's music is less a performance of pain endured and more a display of perseverance, of relentless hope. Intricately and lovingly produced by LA's Jacknife Lee (The Cure, REM, Modest Mouse), there is both kinetic, shortwave funk that call to mind Brian Eno's `My Life in the Bush of Ghosts' and the deep space satellite sounds of Eno's ambient works. But it's a tremendous achievement in sonics all its own. It's also an achievement in the refinement of Holley's impressionistic, stream-of-consciousness lyrics. On the title track which deals with mutual human understanding", Holley is able to make a profound point as ever in far fewer phrases: "The deeper we go, the more chances there are, for us to understand the oh-me's and understand the oh-my's." Illustrious collaborators like Michael Stipe, Sharon Van Etten, Moor Mother and Justin Vernon of Bon Iver serve as not only as choirs of angels and co-pilots to give Lonnie's message flight but as proof of Lonnie Holley as a galvanizing, iconoclastic force across the music community.

As Midnight Sister, multi-disciplinary LA artists Juliana Giraffe and Ari Balouzian make motion pictures. Yes, sometimes with moving images _ but most often only with the music they create together. Balouzian's serpentine, string compositions are movie scenes that allow Giraffe, a brilliant character actor, to cloak herself in a new roles and voices. A bit of Jon Brion's score work; some old Hollywood strings; a solid dose of glam and outsider disco from 70s independent cinema. Any perceived artifice is always matched by an indelible human fingerprint, something perfectly off. Giraffe and Balouzian's respective work in fashion, visual art, video and film scoring _ along with the gang of virtuosos with which they surround themselves _ all wonderfully coalesce as Midnight Sister. And if 2017's `Saturn Over Sunset' was their collection of short films about outcast life in The San Fernando Valley, then their new album `Paining the Roses' is the inventive, meta motion picture that cements them as auteurs. `Painting the Roses' is in many ways a fairy tale -- not so much the sweet-and-happyending kind as something richer, packed with imagination and rooted in the complex human messiness beneath a story's artifice. Frontwoman Giraffe describes it as "this tightrope of being real yet synthetic, organic yet staged, light yet dark, logical yet irrational, beautiful yet dilapidated. Joyful nonsense." Here, disguises like masks and paint are not meant to hide but to liberate, to "set a part of us free", and Midnight Sister often embody this themselves, appearing highly stylized, curious, warm and inviting but a little askew. `Painting the Roses' is a story told through the looking glass, one where we examine ourselves in a funhouse mirror but find clarity in its twists. Giraffe traveled to visit family in Argentina during the making of the album and reconnected greatly with that part of her family history, art and culture. Balouzian created the core album opener "Doctor Says" during a session in the desert outside of LA. The guitar, which reminded Giraffe of South America, has a slow, sweltering surf-tango to it, like Dick Dale doing Carlos Gardel. And even though the song was inspired by Giraffe's reconnection with Argentina, the song is about the fading of some close friendships during the making of the album. "Man, you have changed," Giraffe sings, unclear if tis directed to a friend or to herself. Later on the album, "Wednesday Baby" _ named after Giraffe's rescue dog _ is patient, subtly baroque pop. It follows Giraffe through one of those gloomy days spent in tunnelvision doldrums from which only a sunbathing turtle or your canine companion can pull you out. By the time collaborator Max Whipple's saw comes beaming down from heaven in the song's 3rd part, we're hypnotized by the song's charming ennui. The song lands someplace both familiar and aloof, a little slice of timelessness taken straight from The Cake of Perfect Songcraft.

Perth, Minnesota & Calgary get their own songs, it's a good winter in this bad summer!

gatefold cover!

Created between Palm Springs, California and Hilo, Hawai'i, V is the first double album from the Hawaiian-New Zealand singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and producer Ruban Nielson's Unknown Mortal Orchestra band. Designed to play as one continuous movement and road-tested on dry California freeways, V is the definitive Unknown Mortal Orchestra car record. It's also the fifth full-length album Ruban has released in twelve years. Across fourteen sunbleached songs - written solo or with his brother Kody - Ruban draws from the rich traditions of West Coast AOR, yacht rock, weirdo pop and Hawaiian Hapa-haole music. Over a laidback blend of singalong anthems and cinematic instrumentals, he evokes blue skies, afternoons spent lounging by hotel swimming pools and the alluring darkness that lurks below perfect, pristine surfaces. It's a duality expressed in the dilapidated sunset blues and the saltcorroded soul Ruban explores through tracks like `Layla' and `Nadja. ' During the pandemic's early days, Ruban reunited with Kody at a cousin's wedding in Hawai'i. With assistance from their father, Chris Nielson (saxophone/flute) and longstanding Unknown Mortal Orchestra member Jake Portrait, they brought everything Ruban had been thinking about together. The result was V, due for release on March 3, 2023, through Jagjaguwar. When they talked about records that moved them in that spine-shivering manner, Ruban started thinking about the 70s AM radio rock and 80s pop songs that had lurked on the edge of his subconscious mind for most of his life. He wanted to write his version of records like that, leading to the two glorious uptempo singles Unknown Mortal Orchestra released in 2021, `Weekend Run' and `That Life'. However, the golden good times never last forever. Not long after, health issues began to plague his extended family.Putting his recordings aside, he helped his mother and his uncle move home from New Zealand and Portland to Hawai'i, and began dividing his time between Hawai'i and Palm Springs. During this period he reconnected with his relatives, reassessed his past, and started to look at things with fresh eyes. Hawai'i brought back memories of the darker side of his parents' lifestyle as entertainers. On those trips, he heard those classic AM radio rock records everywhere. They were inextricably intertwined with the palm trees, swimming pools, and glamorized hedonism he'd internalized from his childhood. There's a type of music in Hawai'i called Hapa-haole (Half white). You can hear it expressed in signature Unknown Mortal Orchestra style through the humid guitar-led atmosphere of V's penultimate song, `I Killed Captain Cook'. Although the songs are presented in a traditional Hawaiian manner, they're mostly sung in English. Having been influenced by Hawaiian music since Unknown Mortal Orchestra's first album, Ruban saw a space for himself within the tradition. When he reflected on his success, he realised he had the responsibility and platform to represent Hapa-haole music on the global stage.

Artist Edition – exclusive to HHV in Germany.

Created between Palm Springs, California and Hilo, Hawai'i, V is the first double album from the Hawaiian-New Zealand singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and producer Ruban Nielson's Unknown Mortal Orchestra band. Designed to play as one continuous movement and road-tested on dry California freeways, V is the definitive Unknown Mortal Orchestra car record. It's also the fifth full-length album Ruban has released in twelve years. Across fourteen sunbleached songs - written solo or with his brother Kody - Ruban draws from the rich traditions of West Coast AOR, yacht rock, weirdo pop and Hawaiian Hapa-haole music. Over a laidback blend of singalong anthems and cinematic instrumentals, he evokes blue skies, afternoons spent lounging by hotel swimming pools and the alluring darkness that lurks below perfect, pristine surfaces. It's a duality expressed in the dilapidated sunset blues and the saltcorroded soul Ruban explores through tracks like `Layla' and `Nadja. ' During the pandemic's early days, Ruban reunited with Kody at a cousin's wedding in Hawai'i. With assistance from their father, Chris Nielson (saxophone/flute) and longstanding Unknown Mortal Orchestra member Jake Portrait, they brought everything Ruban had been thinking about together. The result was V, due for release on March 3, 2023, through Jagjaguwar. When they talked about records that moved them in that spine-shivering manner, Ruban started thinking about the 70s AM radio rock and 80s pop songs that had lurked on the edge of his subconscious mind for most of his life. He wanted to write his version of records like that, leading to the two glorious uptempo singles Unknown Mortal Orchestra released in 2021, `Weekend Run' and `That Life'. However, the golden good times never last forever. Not long after, health issues began to plague his extended family. Putting his recordings aside, he helped his mother and his uncle move home from New Zealand and Portland to Hawai'i, and began dividing his time between Hawai'i and Palm Springs. During this period he reconnected with his relatives, reassessed his past, and started to look at things with fresh eyes. Hawai'i brought back memories of the darker side of his parents' lifestyle as entertainers. On those trips, he heard those classic AM radio rock records everywhere. They were inextricably intertwined with the palm trees, swimming pools, and glamorized hedonism he'd internalized from his childhood. There's a type of music in Hawai'i called Hapa-haole (Half white). You can hear it expressed in signature Unknown Mortal Orchestra style through the humid guitar-led atmosphere of V's penultimate song, `I Killed Captain Cook'. Although the songs are presented in a traditional Hawaiian manner, they're mostly sung in English. Having been influenced by Hawaiian music since Unknown Mortal Orchestra's first album, Ruban saw a space for himself within the tradition. When he reflected on his success, he realised he had the responsibility and platform to represent Hapa-haole music on the global stage.

"I only started playing the acoustic guitar last year. I'd always preferred the idea that the guitar converts a sound into voltage and then becomes really loud. I thought the acoustic guitar was a little bit too twee for me or something. But after being offered some opportunities to play various acoustic sessions to promote the new record, in situations where it wasn't possible to record the whole band, I decided to treat it like a challenge to try and play acoustic and not have it be lame. After all I was really into Arthur Lee's ability with an acoustic and started wondering if I could make it sound convincing. Anyway, after being somewhat forced to develop some skill on the acoustic through these various radio sessions and things like that I decided to record some songs acoustically an...

Fresh grief, like fresh love, has a way of sharpening our vision and bringing on painful clarifications. No matter how temporary we know these states to be, the vulnerability and transformation they demand can overpower the strongest among us. Then there are the rare, fertile moments when both occur, when mourning and limerence heighten, complicate and explain each other; the songs that comprise Angel Olsen's Big Time were forged in such a whiplash. Big Time is an album about the expansive power of new love, but this brightness and optimism is tempered by a profound and layered sense of loss. During Olsen's process of coming to terms with her queerness and confronting the traumas that had been keeping her from fully accepting herself, she felt it was time to come out to her parents, a hurdle she'd been avoiding for some time. "Finally, at the ripe age of 34, I was free to be me," she said. Three days later, her father died and shortly after her mother passed away. The shards of this grief - the shortening of her chance to finally be seen more fully by her parents - are scattered throughout the album. Three weeks after her mother's funeral she was in the studio, recording this incredibly wise and tender new album. Loss has long been a subject of Olsen's elegiac songs, but few can write elegies with quite the reckless energy as she. If that bursting-at-the-seams, running downhill energy has come to seem intractable to her work, this album proves Olsen is now writing from a more rooted place of clarity. She's working with an elastic, expansive mastery of her voice - both sonically and artistically. These are songs not just about transformational mourning, but of finding freedom and joy in the privations as they come.

If it's really a post-genre world, why does everything sound the same? The two halves of Tampa rap duo They Hate Change_Dre (he/him) and Vonne (they/them)_first came together in front of the apartment complex where they both lived as teens. Dre had just moved down from Rochester, NY; Vonne was trying to sell him bad weed. It was clear from the start that the two listen to music differently from most people_they're sonic omnivores, obsessive deep-divers, lovers of rare and radical sounds. Starting as kids trawling the internet for tracks, they've been collecting music from around the world and across the decades, amassing a shared sonic knowledge so deep that "encyclopedic" barely begins to cover it _ not just the East Coast hip-hop that Dre grew up on, or the hyperlocal bass-music variants like jook (the Gulf Coast's twerkably raunchy answer to house) and crank (think "Miami bass meets Nola bounce"), but also drum `n' bass, Chicago footwork, post-punk, prog (they're, like, seriously into prog), grime, krautrock, emo, and basically any genre on the map. Once they graduated to DJs on the Tampa DIY scene _ which includes everything from punk rock house parties to the black "teen nights" that pop up in rec centers and ballrooms _ they figured out how to pull all these disparate sounds together into a cohesive style. More importantly, they figured out how to make it something people will actually move to. When they made the transition to rapping and making beats, they brought that pleasure-seeking approach to sonic experimentation with them. "With this album, Vonne says, "it's really like, okay, you know how you talk about the internet breaking down borders? Here's what that actually sounds like. It's not just a hip-hop record with a couple more weird sounds. You want homegrown DIY? This is a record that was written, produced, and recorded in a 150-squarefoot bedroom from the least cool city you could think of." Finally, New is what a truly post-genre musical landscape is supposed to be: building deep connections that transcend outdated distinctions between them, spilling over with the joy of exploration and possibility, and daring other artists to think broader, go deeper, take bigger risks. Let the rest of them keep playing by the old rules_They Hate Change will keep changing the game.

Ever since childhood, learning to play various instruments in a suburban Cincinnati basement alongside his brother Bryce, Aaron Dessner has consistently sought an emotional outlet and deep human connection through music _ be it as a primary songwriter in The National, a founder and architect of beloved collaboration-driven music festivals, or collaborator on two critically acclaimed and chart-topping Taylor Swift albums recorded in complete pandemic-era isolation at his Long Pond Studio in upstate New York, among many other projects. Through it all, Dessner has brought together an unlikely community of musicians that share his impulse to connect, celebrate and, most of all, process emotion and experience through music. This generous spirit and desire to push music forward has never been more deeply felt than on Big Red Machine's "How Long Do You Think It's Gonna Last?," the second album from Dessner's evermorphing project with Bon Iver's Justin Vernon. In 2008, while assembling material for the charitycompilation "Dark Was the Night," Dessner sent Vernon a song sketch titled "big red machine". Vernon interpreted "big red machine" as a beating heart and finished the song accordingly _ a metaphor Dessner says "still sticks with me today. This project goes to many places and is always on some level about experimentation, but it shines a light on why I make music in the first place, which is an emotional need. It's one of my therapies and one of the ways I interrogate the past." Released in 2018, Big Red Machine's self-titled debut album evolved from improvisation and what Dessner calls "structured experimentalism," with an ear toward building tracks that would work well in a live setting alongside visual elements. When Dessner and Vernon started the Eaux Claires Music Festival in 2015, they staged the original "Big Red Machine" as an improvisation-based performance piece. They later took that show to the People collective's Berlin residency and festival, and to Dessner's Haven Festival in Copenhagen. "Big Red Machine started as this thing we would do for fun, and we fell in love with the feeling of it," says Dessner." Vernon agrees: "I remember it feeling really easy, but we never knew what would happen. It was exciting. As time went on, we just kept doing things together. And our friendship has grown strong, alongside all the collaborative stuff." New Big Red Machine material began taking shape in spring 2019, when Vernon came to visit Dessner at Long Pond. The first week produced songs such as "Reese," "8:22am" and eventual album opener "Latter Days," a haunting number sung by Vernon and Anaïs Mitchell that set the emotional tenor for what was to come. "It was clear to her that the early sketch Justin and I made of Latter Days was about childhood, or loss of innocence and nostalgia for a time before you've grown into adulthood _ before you've hurt people or lost people and made mistakes. Anaïs defined the whole record When she sang that, as these same themes kept appearing again and again," Dessner says. In the ensuing months, Vernon and Dessner would meet up when they could, and in the meantime, Dessner developed the existing material and wrote new instrumental tracks which he sent Vernon, always eager to hear what he would receive back. "Justin is incredibly gifted, but he's also disruptive in the best way," says Dessner, pointing to the first note of the song "Birch" as a prime example. "It's absolutely brilliant, but it was very surprising when I heard it the first time. I can't tell you what that interval is. There are many moments working with him where your head hits the wall in amazement like that." In the early stages of the pandemic, Swift approached Dessner to work with her on what would become the sister albums "folklore" and "evermore." Dessner describes this period as a "creative blur," during which he'd be writing material for Swift and Big Red Machine simultaneously. "I think this was an intense growing period for me, I was learning so much from Taylor and the process. Along the way, I shared all of our unfinished Big Red Machine songs with her and she really found them inspiring and gave me so much positive feedback and encouragement," he says. "I think that helped me realize how connected this Big Red Machine music was to everything else I was doing and that I was always supposed to be chasing these ideas. I was finding new sounds and ways of working through these songs. I just hadn't been able to finish them. So, I did." Beyond Vernon and Swift's encouragement, many of Dessner's previous collaborators and friends show up for him here, continuing the reciprocal exchange of ideas that has come to define his creative community. Songs feature guest vocals and writing contributions from artist friends including Fleet Foxes' Robin Pecknold ("Phoenix"), Ben Howard and This Is The Kit ("June's a River"), Naeem ("Easy to Sabotage'), Sharon Van Etten, Lisa Hannigan and My Brightest Diamond's Shara Nova ("Hutch," a tune inspired by Dessner's late friend, Frightened Rabbit frontman Scott Hutchison) and Swift herself ("Birch" and "Renegade," the latter an instant-classic Taylor earworm summed up by the poignant lyric "Is it insensitive for me to say / get your shit together so I can love you." The song was recorded in Los Angeles at the Kitty Committee studio in March 2021, the same week when Swift and Dessner took home the Grammy for Album of the Year for "folklore.") "This is all music I generated, but it is interesting to hear how different people relate to it, or how different voices collide with it," Dessner says. "That's what makes it special. With everyone that's on this record, there's an openness, a creative generosity and an emotional quality that connects it all together." As he continued writing prolifically on his own, Dessner noticed a theme emerging -- the idea of sitting with the uncomfortability of personal and family darkness from his childhood and reflecting on how emotional issues he dealt with growing up have reverberated through his adult life. It became clear that some of these he'd need to sing himself; songs such as "The Ghost of Cincinnati" and "Magnolia" address the disintegration of marriage and family and mental health, asking pointed questions of himself and those closest to him. "Brycie" is an ode to his aforementioned twin and National bandmate, who picked up on the musical vibes immediately when Dessner played the song for him for the first time backstage at a National show in Washington D.C. "He picked along to it with me and it immediately sounded like Aaron and Bryce playing the guitar in the basement as kids, which was my intent," Dessner remembers. "The words mean a lot to me. It's about my childhood with Bryce, and how I had pretty severe depression in high school. He was the one who kept me going and took care of me until I was back on my feet. I've lost close friends to depression and this song is about how important it was that Bryce was there for me at that time and is still here." In addition to being one of the more lyrically significant tracks on the album, Dessner says singing it himself felt like an important act of self-acceptance. "I always sing under my breath when I write music, but I usually hand it off to [National vocalist] Matt [Berninger] or others" he says. "When you're in a band for so long and somebody else is that person, you come to rely on it and I've always loved Matt's voice and his words. But singing `Brycie' myself helped rewire my brain to realize that maybe Big Red Machine is the project that not only enables me to create songs with other people, but also sometimes finish songs on my own." Recalling sessions at Sonic Ranch in Texas when Dessner recorded his vocal takes, Vernon says, "Aaron showed me `Brycie' a couple years ago now. I was like, this is beautiful, and you should do more singing. Not only would it be good for the future of your songwriting, but your voice sounds really good to me. It was exciting to see him flourish in that way _ to now be a part of that process and realize the hardships in that and also the victories. On this record, he's leading the charge, wholly and completely." Musically, "How Long Do You Think It's Gonna Last?" features what Dessner calls maybe the "clearest distillation" of his varying songwriting and production styles. Songs like "Reese," the Dessner-sung "Magnolia" and the elegiac "Hutch" are built on the kinds of tear-jerking piano melodies millions of fans have come to love from The National, but then move at their own pace toward unusual sonic destinations. "Aaron's greatest gift as a collaborator is his ability to evolve and experiment with the emotional sound that is so natural to him," Vernon says of the material. Elsewhere, the dream-like "Hoping Then" sets layered vocals by Vernon, Dessner and Hannigan ("It's the on the edge of why I can't sleep soundly") atop chopped and phased violin lines, programmed drums and countermelodies played on a rubber bridge guitar. His brother Bryce's orchestration ebbs and flows throughout this song and many others. The main instrumental track of the chugging, groovy "Easy to Sabotage" was stitched together from two different live recordings and later enveloped in warm keyboard textures and the head-nodding vocals of Naeem. "It just feels alive and electric, and it just happened," Dessner says of the song. That sense of shared experience extended to the new album's title, which was coined by Swift after Dessner told her he wasn't sure what to call the new album. Intuitively summing up the themes, she suggested titling it "How Long Do You Think It's Gonna Last?," a question which she pointed out could refer to multiple subjects addressed therein: "childhood, family, marriages, a depression, a losing streak, a winning streak or a creative streak. Taylor saw it all so clearly," Dessner says. "A year ago, we'd never even worked together. It's so cool that this community keeps extending and that everyone who contributed to this album connected so naturally to the emotions at the heart of the music."

“22, A Million is part love letter, part final resting place of two decades of searching for self-understanding like a religion. And the inner-resolution of maybe never finding that understanding. The album’s 10 poly-fi recordings are a collection of sacred moments, love’s torment and salvation, contexts of intense memories, signs that you can pin meaning onto or disregard as coincidence. If Bon Iver, Bon Iver built a habitat rooted in physical spaces, then 22, A Million is the letting go of that attachment to a place.”

The bulk of the album was recorded and produced at April Base Studios in Fall Creek, Wisconsin with pieces recorded in London, England and just outside Lisbon, Portugal. Collaborators included Colin Stetson, S. Carey, Poliça’s Ryan Olson, and Richard Buckner.

incl. Download Code

On their self-titled debut album, Women embraced sonic brashness that deeper examination revealed to be tinted with sly pop melody.With Public Strain the band honed a sound truthful to that reverb-drenched noise while allowing the pop sensibilities to surface into clearer focus. In fall of 2009, Patrick Flegel (vocals/guitar), Matt Flegel (bass/vocals), Chris Reimer (guitar/vocals), and MichaelWallace (drums) went into the studio with an abundance of ideas,...

Original inner sleeve included. Records are close to VG+.

Darning Woman is an intentional, beautiful, sometimes confrontational album that shreds expectations of DIY, bedroom music, and feminine themes. There's a lushness and maternal instinct at play, as Coope connects the dots between physicality, ephemera, and the ultrafeminine. "I don't really like to deal that much with themes of personal hardships, or heartache and love," says Anastasia Coope. "Ultimately, I work most honestly with the language of what is happening in a moment and the passage of time around it. That, coupled with my reaction to entering the artistic landscape, and my thoughts about what does and doesn't get representation, comprises most of this album." Darning Woman explores, among other things, the meditative aspect of sewing, patching and embellishment, care and repair, collection not as modern, craven consumption but as a counterpoint to materialism. This sort of collection - the good kind, the gathering of things to make a home - can be, in Coope's words, "A very baby way to critique capitalism. Birds make nests, right? It can be a new life for a thing that was made. What you surround yourself with matters." To that end, Anastasia Coope is also the founder and leader of the Bonzo collective and show series, an exciting new home for the type of expansive, profoundly creative scene that New York has been missing for some time. And while Bonzo may well be the ascent of a new community, Darning Woman is the story of Anastasia Coope, herself. It is the sound of Coope entering the world as an artist, acknowledging the tangle of what changes - the gaze of the world, Coope's art in reaction and community to art in general - and what does not: her ideas and her own self.

Darning Woman is an intentional, beautiful, sometimes confrontational album that shreds expectations of DIY, bedroom music, and feminine themes. There's a lushness and maternal instinct at play, as Coope connects the dots between physicality, ephemera, and the ultrafeminine. "I don't really like to deal that much with themes of personal hardships, or heartache and love," says Anastasia Coope. "Ultimately, I work most honestly with the language of what is happening in a moment and the passage of time around it. That, coupled with my reaction to entering the artistic landscape, and my thoughts about what does and doesn't get representation, comprises most of this album." Darning Woman explores, among other things, the meditative aspect of sewing, patching and embellishment, care and repair, collection not as modern, craven consumption but as a counterpoint to materialism. This sort of collection - the good kind, the gathering of things to make a home - can be, in Coope's words, "A very baby way to critique capitalism. Birds make nests, right? It can be a new life for a thing that was made. What you surround yourself with matters." To that end, Anastasia Coope is also the founder and leader of the Bonzo collective and show series, an exciting new home for the type of expansive, profoundly creative scene that New York has been missing for some time. And while Bonzo may well be the ascent of a new community, Darning Woman is the story of Anastasia Coope, herself. It is the sound of Coope entering the world as an artist, acknowledging the tangle of what changes - the gaze of the world, Coope's art in reaction and community to art in general - and what does not: her ideas and her own self.

Last year's Big Time brought Angel Olsen to a deeper, truer sense of self than ever before. Borne from the twin stars of grief and love, the album delivered beautiful sense of certainty, the sure-footed sound of an artist fully, finally at home with herself. But within that wisdom comes the realization that there is no finish line, no destination or static end point to life while you're living it, and Forever Means collects songs from the Big Time sessions that hold this common theme. They are, in Olsen's words, "in search of something else." "I was somewhere traveling," says Olsen, "stopped for a few days and wandering the city, and I was thinking `what does `forever' really mean? What are the things I'm seeking in friendship or love, and how can `forever' be attainable if we're always changing?'" Sitting with the reality of that entropy, Olsen realized "maybe the secret to ongoing love is to embrace change as part of love itself, that forever must have something to do with playing, looking, constantly searching things out for yourself, never letting yourself think you're finished learning or exploring." `Forever'", says Olsen, "remains curious while trying also to be kind and honest." All this packs into the four precious songs that comprise Forever Means, songs from Olsen's roads traveled and the ones ahead. "Nothing's free / like breaking free" Olsen sings, comfortable with the costs of her clarity, her heart and voice fixed on the present, the future, the not-yet-known and the beautifully unknowable.

Last year's Big Time brought Angel Olsen to a deeper, truer sense of self than ever before. Borne from the twin stars of grief and love, the album delivered beautiful sense of certainty, the sure-footed sound of an artist fully, finally at home with herself. But within that wisdom comes the realization that there is no finish line, no destination or static end point to life while you're living it, and Forever Means collects songs from the Big Time sessions that hold this common theme. They are, in Olsen's words, "in search of something else." "I was somewhere traveling," says Olsen, "stopped for a few days and wandering the city, and I was thinking `what does `forever' really mean? What are the things I'm seeking in friendship or love, and how can `forever' be attainable if we're always changing?'" Sitting with the reality of that entropy, Olsen realized "maybe the secret to ongoing love is to embrace change as part of love itself, that forever must have something to do with playing, looking, constantly searching things out for yourself, never letting yourself think you're finished learning or exploring." `Forever'", says Olsen, "remains curious while trying also to be kind and honest." All this packs into the four precious songs that comprise Forever Means, songs from Olsen's roads traveled and the ones ahead. "Nothing's free / like breaking free" Olsen sings, comfortable with the costs of her clarity, her heart and voice fixed on the present, the future, the not-yet-known and the beautifully unknowable.

Dear Reader, About a year or two ago, Naomi Yang (of Galaxie 500) reached out to me after she rediscovered a video that we had made together in 2011, during the making of Tramp, just before the album's release. It was for the song Serpents. The timing was uncanny, approaching the anniversary of Tramp. Thinking about my time in New York while in the bubble of Los Angeles and my home. Thinking about how restless I was, and now settled down and stable. Thinking about how Aaron Dessner took a chance on me after I messaged him with a fury of demos. He could see through the hiss and crappy vocals on my GarageBand demos, and that I had something to say. He gave me the confidence to be loud and to scream my rage and feel founded and justified in my own pain. He gave me more tools to find catharsis in my work. I have carried that with me ever since. Being on the west coast the last two years, I look back on my community in New York and am forever grateful. I had so many friends and peers step up and help me unfold these demos. The album that it became. Doug Keith and Ben Lord from my original touring band, Logan Cole, Peter Silberman from The Antlers, Jessica Larrabee from She Keeps Bees, Thomas Bartlett of Doveman, Rob Moose of yMusic, Jenn Wasner of Wye Oak, Julianna Barwick, Zach Condon of Beirut, Matt Barrick (of the Walkmen), Clarice Jensen, Ben Lanz, Bryce Dessner, and Bryan Devendorf (of The National). I had almost forgotten about a song titled This Is Too Right that didn't make it onto the record. It was one of the first guitar "riffs" I had ever written and Jenn Wasner sang on it with me. A song about not believing how good I had it, like the other shoe was about to drop. I hope everyone that helped make this record and supported it, feel the love and admiration that I continue to hold for all of you. I hope that in sharing this record again, with a new video and this forgotten track, that new listeners are brought into this album and find meaning and relevance in it today. All of the musicians on this album helped me come to life and perform in ways I never had before. May these songs find you well. Sending all my love, Sharon.

Created between Palm Springs, California and Hilo, Hawai'i, V is the first double album from the Hawaiian-New Zealand singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and producer Ruban Nielson's Unknown Mortal Orchestra band. Designed to play as one continuous movement and road-tested on dry California freeways, V is the definitive Unknown Mortal Orchestra car record. It's also the fifth full-length album Ruban has released in twelve years. Across fourteen sunbleached songs - written solo or with his brother Kody - Ruban draws from the rich traditions of West Coast AOR, yacht rock, weirdo pop and Hawaiian Hapa-haole music. Over a laidback blend of singalong anthems and cinematic instrumentals, he evokes blue skies, afternoons spent lounging by hotel swimming pools and the alluring darkness that lurks below perfect, pristine surfaces. It's a duality expressed in the dilapidated sunset blues and the saltcorroded soul Ruban explores through tracks like `Layla' and `Nadja. ' During the pandemic's early days, Ruban reunited with Kody at a cousin's wedding in Hawai'i. With assistance from their father, Chris Nielson (saxophone/flute) and longstanding Unknown Mortal Orchestra member Jake Portrait, they brought everything Ruban had been thinking about together. The result was V, due for release on March 3, 2023, through Jagjaguwar. When they talked about records that moved them in that spine-shivering manner, Ruban started thinking about the 70s AM radio rock and 80s pop songs that had lurked on the edge of his subconscious mind for most of his life. He wanted to write his version of records like that, leading to the two glorious uptempo singles Unknown Mortal Orchestra released in 2021, `Weekend Run' and `That Life'. However, the golden good times never last forever. Not long after, health issues began to plague his extended family.Putting his recordings aside, he helped his mother and his uncle move home from New Zealand and Portland to Hawai'i, and began dividing his time between Hawai'i and Palm Springs. During this period he reconnected with his relatives, reassessed his past, and started to look at things with fresh eyes. Hawai'i brought back memories of the darker side of his parents' lifestyle as entertainers. On those trips, he heard those classic AM radio rock records everywhere. They were inextricably intertwined with the palm trees, swimming pools, and glamorized hedonism he'd internalized from his childhood. There's a type of music in Hawai'i called Hapa-haole (Half white). You can hear it expressed in signature Unknown Mortal Orchestra style through the humid guitar-led atmosphere of V's penultimate song, `I Killed Captain Cook'. Although the songs are presented in a traditional Hawaiian manner, they're mostly sung in English. Having been influenced by Hawaiian music since Unknown Mortal Orchestra's first album, Ruban saw a space for himself within the tradition. When he reflected on his success, he realised he had the responsibility and platform to represent Hapa-haole music on the global stage.

“Maroon Insomnia“ Vinyl in gloss finish gatefold jacket with 4 color printed inner sleeves plus signed artprint.

Sharon Van Etten has always been the kind of artist who helps people make sense of the world around them, and her sixth album, We've Been Going About This All Wrong, concerns itself with how we feel, mourn, and reclaim our agency when we think the world - or at least, our world - might be falling apart. How do we protect the things most precious to us from destructive forces beyond our control? How do we salvage something worthwhile when it seems all is lost? And if we can't, or we don't, have we loved as well as we could in the meantime? Did we try hard enough? In considering these questions and her own vulnerability in the face of them, Van Etten creates a stunning meditation on how life's changes can be both terrifying and transformative. We've Been Going About This All Wrong articulates the beauty and power that can be rescued from our wreckages. We've Been Going About This All Wrong is as much a reflection on how we manage the ending of metaphorical worlds as we do the ending of actual ones: the twin flames of terror and unrelenting love that light up with motherhood; navigating the demands of partnership when your responsibilities have changed; the loss of center and safety that can come with leaving home; how the ghosts of our past can appear without warning in our present; feeling helpless with the violence and racism in the world; and yes, what it means when a global viral outbreak forces us to relinquish control of the things that have always made us feel so human, and seek new forms of connection to replace them. We've Been Going About This All Wrong is intensely personal, exploring themes like motherhood, love, fear, what we can and can't control, and what it means to be human in a world that is wracked by so much trauma. The track "Home To Me," written about Van Etten's son, uses the trademark "dark drums" of her previous work to invoke the sonic impression of a heartbeat. Synths grow in intensity, evoking the passing of time and the terror of what it means to have your child move inevitably toward independence, wanting to hold on to them tightly enough to protect them forever. In contrast, "Come Back" reflects on the desire to reconnect with a partner. Recalling all the optimism of love felt in its infancy, Van Etten begins with the plain beauty of just her voice and a guitar, building the arrangement alongside the call to "come back" to anyone who has lost their way, be it from another person or from themselves. Hovering between darkness and light, "Born" is an exploration of the self that exists when all other labels - mother, partner, friend - are stripped back. Unlike Van Etten's previous albums, there will be no songs off the album released prior to the record coming out. The ten tracks on We've Been Going About This All Wrong are designed to be listened to in order, all at once, so that a much larger story of hope, loss, longing and resilience can be told. This is, in itself, a subtle act of control, but in sharing these songs it remains an optimistic and generous one. There is darkness here but there is light too, and all of it is held together by Van Etten's uncanny ability to both pierce the hearts of her listeners and make them whole again. Things are not dark, she reminds us, only darkish.

Limited Edition.
Translucent Purple Vinyl.
Includes original inner sleeve.

"Even my subconscious is self-conscious," Okay Kaya sings on "Inside Of A Plum", giving us a sense of the mental state she entered while making SAP, an album she wrote, performed, engineered, and produced alone, sometimes spending weeks at a time without social interaction. This is a concept album about consciousness in which Okay Kaya focuses her trademark combination of abstraction and wit on what happens to her mind unaccompanied, on her tendency to feel less like a human and more like the sticky secretion of a tree. After releasing her Spellemann Award winning album Watch This Liquid Pour Itself in January of 2020, Kaya left her home in New York and moved to Europe to create and show her various interdisciplinary exhibitions. Among others, she made an installation that amplified music made underwater and an interactive sculpture based on Jungian sandplay therapy for children. Between her exhibits, Kaya recorded through lockdowns by herself in the loaned studios of generous friends. SAP first grew from the first single "Spinal Tap" about Kaya wandering in Berlin, tree-touching. "Sap reminds me of the bodily functions I need to remember to do, like sleep. One might say it `resinates.'" The album was further inspired by Ketamine Therapy which is discussed in "The Inside Of A Plum." Kaya explains, "The doctor said this treatment grows literal physical branches in your brain." As she experimented with ego death, the subject of her song "Jazzercise", Kaya found herself writing in the voices of fictional characters she'd encountered in other people's stories. In `Jolene From Her Own Perspective,' she imagines Dolly Parton's nemesis responding to her song. In `Origin Story,' Kaya writes as a mythical goddess frustrated with her creation myth. In `I've Spent Forever Planning A Crisis,' Kaya responds to Cassavetes' film A Woman Under The Influence writing from the perspective of the story's children. Okay Kaya's investigations of mind-body come along with sexy dance beats, unpredictable interlocking synths, delicate soft guitars, and close-to-the-mike R&B whispering. But Kaya likes her falsettos cracking and her soul-inspired hooks careening wildly, a beautiful chaos that somehow fits together. When she returned to New York, Kaya was excited to collaborate again, to get friends to "bless the record." She invited friends to Gaia Studios in Greenpoint, Brooklyn to sing or play an instrument. Most songs on the album unfold with guest performances from artists as varied as deem spencer, Taja Cheek of L'Rain and Adam Green of The Moldy Peaches. Just as the recording process began with isolation and ended with friends, SAP starts with the internal and leads outside to romance, to lovers who serve as funhouse mirrors, reflecting Kaya back to herself from different angles. In "Pearl Gurl" Kaya harmonizes with her multi-tracked second self and sings her uncertain conclusion: "If love is not the answer, it's one hell of a question."

"Even my subconscious is self-conscious," Okay Kaya sings on "Inside Of A Plum", giving us a sense of the mental state she entered while making SAP, an album she wrote, performed, engineered, and produced alone, sometimes spending weeks at a time without social interaction. This is a concept album about consciousness in which Okay Kaya focuses her trademark combination of abstraction and wit on what happens to her mind unaccompanied, on her tendency to feel less like a human and more like the sticky secretion of a tree. After releasing her Spellemann Award winning album Watch This Liquid Pour Itself in January of 2020, Kaya left her home in New York and moved to Europe to create and show her various interdisciplinary exhibitions. Among others, she made an installation that amplified music made underwater and an interactive sculpture based on Jungian sandplay therapy for children. Between her exhibits, Kaya recorded through lockdowns by herself in the loaned studios of generous friends. SAP first grew from the first single "Spinal Tap" about Kaya wandering in Berlin, tree-touching. "Sap reminds me of the bodily functions I need to remember to do, like sleep. One might say it `resinates.'" The album was further inspired by Ketamine Therapy which is discussed in "The Inside Of A Plum." Kaya explains, "The doctor said this treatment grows literal physical branches in your brain." As she experimented with ego death, the subject of her song "Jazzercise", Kaya found herself writing in the voices of fictional characters she'd encountered in other people's stories. In `Jolene From Her Own Perspective,' she imagines Dolly Parton's nemesis responding to her song. In `Origin Story,' Kaya writes as a mythical goddess frustrated with her creation myth. In `I've Spent Forever Planning A Crisis,' Kaya responds to Cassavetes' film A Woman Under The Influence writing from the perspective of the story's children. Okay Kaya's investigations of mind-body come along with sexy dance beats, unpredictable interlocking synths, delicate soft guitars, and close-to-the-mike R&B whispering. But Kaya likes her falsettos cracking and her soul-inspired hooks careening wildly, a beautiful chaos that somehow fits together. When she returned to New York, Kaya was excited to collaborate again, to get friends to "bless the record." She invited friends to Gaia Studios in Greenpoint, Brooklyn to sing or play an instrument. Most songs on the album unfold with guest performances from artists as varied as deem spencer, Taja Cheek of L'Rain and Adam Green of The Moldy Peaches. Just as the recording process began with isolation and ended with friends, SAP starts with the internal and leads outside to romance, to lovers who serve as funhouse mirrors, reflecting Kaya back to herself from different angles. In "Pearl Gurl" Kaya harmonizes with her multi-tracked second self and sings her uncertain conclusion: "If love is not the answer, it's one hell of a question."

"Even my subconscious is self-conscious," Okay Kaya sings on "Inside Of A Plum", giving us a sense of the mental state she entered while making SAP, an album she wrote, performed, engineered, and produced alone, sometimes spending weeks at a time without social interaction. This is a concept album about consciousness in which Okay Kaya focuses her trademark combination of abstraction and wit on what happens to her mind unaccompanied, on her tendency to feel less like a human and more like the sticky secretion of a tree. After releasing her Spellemann Award winning album Watch This Liquid Pour Itself in January of 2020, Kaya left her home in New York and moved to Europe to create and show her various interdisciplinary exhibitions. Among others, she made an installation that amplified music made underwater and an interactive sculpture based on Jungian sandplay therapy for children. Between her exhibits, Kaya recorded through lockdowns by herself in the loaned studios of generous friends. SAP first grew from the first single "Spinal Tap" about Kaya wandering in Berlin, tree-touching. "Sap reminds me of the bodily functions I need to remember to do, like sleep. One might say it `resinates.'" The album was further inspired by Ketamine Therapy which is discussed in "The Inside Of A Plum." Kaya explains, "The doctor said this treatment grows literal physical branches in your brain." As she experimented with ego death, the subject of her song "Jazzercise", Kaya found herself writing in the voices of fictional characters she'd encountered in other people's stories. In `Jolene From Her Own Perspective,' she imagines Dolly Parton's nemesis responding to her song. In `Origin Story,' Kaya writes as a mythical goddess frustrated with her creation myth. In `I've Spent Forever Planning A Crisis,' Kaya responds to Cassavetes' film A Woman Under The Influence writing from the perspective of the story's children. Okay Kaya's investigations of mind-body come along with sexy dance beats, unpredictable interlocking synths, delicate soft guitars, and close-to-the-mike R&B whispering. But Kaya likes her falsettos cracking and her soul-inspired hooks careening wildly, a beautiful chaos that somehow fits together. When she returned to New York, Kaya was excited to collaborate again, to get friends to "bless the record." She invited friends to Gaia Studios in Greenpoint, Brooklyn to sing or play an instrument. Most songs on the album unfold with guest performances from artists as varied as deem spencer, Taja Cheek of L'Rain and Adam Green of The Moldy Peaches. Just as the recording process began with isolation and ended with friends, SAP starts with the internal and leads outside to romance, to lovers who serve as funhouse mirrors, reflecting Kaya back to herself from different angles. In "Pearl Gurl" Kaya harmonizes with her multi-tracked second self and sings her uncertain conclusion: "If love is not the answer, it's one hell of a question."