No Format HHV Records 19 Items

Release: 2021 / EU – Original

Genre: Pop

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Mogoya White Vinyl Edition

Oumou Sangare

LP | 2017 | EU | Original (No Format)

Release: 2017 / EU – Original

Genre: Organic Grooves

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LP | 2023 | EU | Original (No Format)

Msaki X Tubatsi

Synthetic Hearts

LP | 2023 | EU | Original (No Format)

Release: 2023 / EU – Original

Genre: Rock & Indie

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With Synthetic Hearts, Tubatsi Mpho Moloi, Msaki and Clément Petit issue an invitation to the listener and lover to journey to another place. Here, hearts, experiences, and sounds meet, shift and evolve across an inventive nine track album. Experimental, playful and complex, the project merges voices, instruments and sounds, across geographies and genres, creating sparse, yet lush atmospherics that spin on the universal themes of love. As skilled musical shapeshifters, Synthetic Hearts melds Msaki and Moloi"s folk sensibilities with electronic elements, as Petit teases out distinct textures from his cello across the record. On Synthetic Hearts, love, longing, confusion, sorrow, despondency and queries are opened up and negotiated in songs that vibrate with their naked, honest and tender vulnerability.

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Lucas Santtana

O Paraíso

LP | 2022 | EU | Original (No Format)

Release: 2023 / EU – Original

Genre: Organic Grooves

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With this new solar album, Brazilian singer-songwriter Lucas Santtana wishes to re-enchant our life on earth.For his ninth album "O Paraíso" (Paradise), the free heir of the Brazilian tropicália intends to redefine our idea of Paradise. "It is in front of us, we must open our eyes and learn to contemplate it in depth," he explains. The Earth is a living organism also called "biosphere", a unique planet in the solar system where all the conditions are gathered to welcome life. Lucas places life at the heart of his songs and celebrates the collective forces that resist to preserve it. His guitar-vocal songs with bossa nova sounds are mixed with organic sounding percussions, enriched with electronic orchestrations and textures. The Brazilian composer gets closer to his French audience by collaborating with Flavia Coelho, Flore Benguigui (from the band L"Impératrice) or the saxophonist Laurent Bardaine, and by even trying his hand at French on one of his tracks. It"s a festive new album, which helps us better understand where we live and with whom we share this heavenly home.

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Kouyaté-Neerman

Skyscrapers & Deities

LP | 2022 | EU | Original (No Format)

Release: 2022 / EU – Original

Genre: Rock & Indie

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Kouyaté without Neerman is Lansiné Kouyaté. A Parisian griot, a balafon virtuoso from the region of Kangaba in Mali, a child born among musicians, an early musical prodigy who learned the ropes with the National Orchestra of Mali before playing with the stars of world music (Salif Keita, Mory Kanté, Omar Sosa, Cheick Tidiane Seck.). Neerman without Kouyaté is David Neerman. A French musician who expanded on his training (classical percussion and the piano) by choosing an instrument that is both keyboard and percussion, the vibraphone, who meandered through various eclectic projects (jazz, world, electro, noise, with Youn Sun Nah, Anthony Joseph, Alice Lewis, Krystle Warren.), as long as they smelled of adventure. With Kangaba, their first album (recorded with a rythm section), released in the summer of 2008 they created a glorious future for themselves. Well received by critics, the record gave the opportunity to the duet to tour alot and as such, to strengthen their performance, provide more substance to their music and discover new energies. Skyscrapers & Deities, their second album recorded last fall in an analog studio in the Parisian suburbs, is the result of this evolution. Lansiné still plays like he's stirring up tropical rains on water lilies and David has still plugged (or even more) his vibraphone on bizarre pedal effects (distortions, wah-wah). The duo is backed up by a new rhythm section, that accompanied them on tour : Antoine Simoni on the double bass and David Aknin on the drums, two musicians open to the rythms of rock and hip-hop. The name of the album, Skyscrapers and Deities comes from the spoken-word lyrics of special guest and only voice on the album Anthony Joseph on the track 'Haiti'. The other guest on the album is the legendary kora player Ballaké Sissoko, long time friend of Lansiné, since the days of the National Orchestra of Mali. Skyscapers inspire modernity, altitude and a panoramic point of view. Deities inspire ancestral magic, spirits, be they from the forest or the clouds. The album floats in between all these things, between the horizon and vertigo, technology and spiritualism.

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Trio Sr9

Déjà Vu

Release: 2022 / EU – Original

Genre: Pop

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With their ability to move seamlessly from the triangle to the donkey jaw, cymbals to Chinese gong, vibraphone to wind machine, percussionists are undoubtedly the most atypical members of the classical orchestra. Paul Changarnier, Nicolas Cousin and Alexandre Esperet are a case in point. Having set their sights on the marimba - Latin American xylophone, cousin of the African balafon - they decided to use it as the main vehicle for their artistic dreams. With the label No Format, they embarked on a project which would see them taking on pop hits of the kind that are produced in mega studios on the other side of the Atlantic and dazzle with a thousand lights and special effects. But they wanted to do it without leaving France or their beloved instruments. They wanted to make pop without machines, guitars, bass or synths.They ended up finding a hitherto unknown instrumental formula that belongs to them and them only, one conceived as the perfect fit for the voices from the well-known French artists that were called upon to interpret the songs. Camille, with her extraordinary energy, makes Rihanna"s "Don"t Stop the Music" waltz in a new organic mode; Blick Bassy redecorates Ariana Grande"s "One Last Time" in the colours of Bassa; Malik Djoudi envelopes Frank Ocean"s "Super Rich Kids" with a subtle ethereal texture; Camélia Jordana made her mark on this bonanza of reinvention by slowing down the tempo of "Dance Monkey"; The voice of Sandra Nkaké, imbued Lana del Rey"s "Video Games" with a solemn and sublime mystery.Like an old love that"s rediscovered with new eyes, an air that comes back from far away but could have been born today, somehow familiar but never seen before. Déjà vu but never heard until now.Déjà Vu: the name of this magnificent, unprecedented experience, this unidentifiable flying platter.

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Ballake Sissoko

DJourou

Release: 2021 / EU – Original

Genre: Organic Grooves

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Urban Village

Udondolo

Release: 2021 / EU – Original

Genre: Organic Grooves

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The latest signing to Parisian label No Format! (home to Oumou Sangaré, Blick Bassy and Mélissa Laveaux), Soweto-based 4 piece band Urban Village will release their debut album "Udondolo". Marrying the day-to-day experiences of black South Africans with ebullient elements from traditional Zulu music, Urban Village is the alias of four experimental musicians all born & raised in the township of Soweto at the tail end of apartheid; Urban Village release music under a name which specifically references the blend of cultures, music & rites which were assimilated into the now 1 million strong population of Soweto, when black South Africans from multiple provinces were brought to the area during the establishment of apartheid, under strict segregation from Johannesburg's white suburbs.Born for the most part in the last years of apartheid, whilst growing up the band plunged happily into house and dance music that turned the page of a heavy past. Guitarist Lerato came across older Zulu musicians and their style of maskandi playing. Lerato has since mixed styles from homelands and rural areas, sharpened in club jam sessions (where he went on to meet Tubatsi and form Urban Village) during which spoken word, hip-hop and jazz rub shoulders freely."Udondolo" - partially recorded at legendary Downtown Studios in the heart of Johannesburg and at Figure of 8 studios in the leafy suburbs of Randburg - is a journey through all the colours of Soweto. This is where it draws its consistency, strength & identity. That of Soweto itself - a dormitory town designed to monitor those who were sent there, it has become a laboratory of music where the hopes of an entire people resonate, even today.

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Nicolas Repac

Rhapsodic

LP | 2020 | EU | Original (No Format)

Release: 2021 / EU – Original

Genre: Organic Grooves

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With his new album Rhapsodic, Nicolas Repac gives life to the archives of the hunter-gatherer of sounds: Charles Duvelle Nicolas Repac is pursuing the dreamlike magic of his art of sampling with his new album "Rhapsodic". The musician plunged into musicologist Charles Duvelle's pioneering field recordings, in order to deconstruct and revisit rare music archives gleaned from all over the world. Repac ventures into the craziest sonic and stylistic pileups - adding voices, rhythms and traditional music from "every world". He offers some "Rhapsodies" of multicoloured sounds and instrumentals, revisited through the prism of electronic music.He liberates himself from all ethnomusicological coherence to speak directly to the soul and imagination of his listeners - beyond the frontiers of time and space. Grafting heady grooves of traditional percussion from Benin onto sub-Saharan violin refrains, interweaving them with Mongolian morin khuur on a bed of pygmy mouth-bow, Nicolas Repac leads us on the most captivating of immobile journeys, to the heart of the most intimate impulses, the most human pulse.

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Oumou Sangare

Acoustic

LP | 2020 | EU | Original (No Format)

Release: 2020 / EU – Original

Genre: Rock & Indie

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Oumou Sangaré releases acoustic album, 'Acoustic', on No Format. Re-imagining her much-praised 2017 release 'Mogoya' totally unplugged, in live sessions recorded over just two days, 'Acoustic' is the final chapter in a trio of related projects, following 2018's 'Mogoya Re-mixed' edition, which saw Sangaré's compositions retooled by high-profile fans including Sampha, Spoek Mathambo and St Germain.'Acoustic' consolidates Sangaré's position as Mali's leading opinion-maker, established with her 250,000-selling 1989 debut Moussolou, which did much for the feminist cause in West Africa. Oumou's capacity to confront suffering whilst preserving her connection to Malian values is reflected in two additional tracks added to 'Acoustic'. 'Saa Magni', which laments the passing of Amadou Ba Guindo (member of the Orchestre National Badema), and 'Diaraby Nene' (lifted from Mous-solou) in which Sangaré's lyrics dared to detail her first physical encounters.The release of 'Mogoya' in 2017 signalled the return of Oumou Sangaré after 8 years, during which she had been managing her numerous businesses (including agriculture & pisciculture). With that album, the woman who'd swapped selling water on the streets of Bamako for global stardom reconnected with her audience. Balancing the traditional music of Wassoulou and a forwards-facing curiosity, Malian instruments were augmented by electric guitar, bass and synths, with Tony Allen on drums. Oumou was painted by Congolese artist JP Mika for the front cover, and more recently sampled by Beyoncé (who used 'Diaraby Nene' without permission on 'mood 4 Eva'). Never before had Sangaré appeared so far removed from her home country - it's a dynamic that 'Acoustic' redresses, with Oumou embodying the same freedom & audacity of her debut, 30 years ago. It's the fighter, the undefeated rebel that you find here on this snapshot of an album.

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Koki Nakano

Pre-Choreographed

21,99 €*

O Céu É Velho Há Muito Tempo

Release: 2020 / EU – Original

Genre: Organic Grooves

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Koki Nakano has spent time in the worlds of both classical music and electro-rock (with his band Gas Law). After training at the prestigious Toho Gakuen music school and the Tokyo University of the Arts, he embarked on his career with the strength and serenity of a man who had already ditched all those qualms about identity and heritage that often hobble young musicians.It was back in 2016 that Koki Nakano first came to the attention of those who hunger for the wondrous and unprecedented. The nine pieces on his first album Lift, recorded for No Format! with help from cellist and admirer Vincent Segal, revealed a composer of singular talents. His work displayed a subtle versatility, a high-wire delight in floating above established musical genres. The title of the album evokes a move well-known to ballet dancers: the porté, and conveys the deep relationship, both physical and spiritual, that Koki's music maintains with dance, a bond he's been cultivating ever since he moved to Paris in 2015.Pre-Choreographed is the sequel to that beautiful opening chapter, a new episode in No Format's adventures with the emancipated genii of the piano, which began fifteen years ago with the release of Chilly Gonzales's classic Solo Piano. This project evokes the strong "saudade" for the era when the music and the dance were very close to each other, when they used to function congenially in the society. It also means the state of the music such as "awaiting" or even "missing" the choreography. That is to say, the character of the music is yet very "raw", no direction is given. Koki Nakano's basic intention resides in the urge to re-transcribe the intimate topography of a man's life, whilst remaining deliberately detached from fashions, slogans, from a binary vision of the history of music in which modernity and past, avant-garde and classicism, new and old stand in opposition to each other as a matter of principle. For that reason, his creations never emit the dusty odour of schools and lecture halls, or the perfum...

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Lucas Santtana

LP | 2019 | EU | Original (No Format)

LP | 2019 | EU | Original (No Format)

Release: 2019 / EU – Original

Genre: Organic Grooves

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For his eighth album, Lucas Santtana returns to guitar-voice simplicity, in the spirit of his tropicalist peers (Gilberto Gil, Tom Zé or Caetano Veloso). At a time when everyone shouts very loudly, when no one wants to listen to the other, he decides to whisper in people's ears. He looks for the points of intersection between the intimate and the political and social situation, very degraded in Brazil since the election of the populist president of the extreme right Jair Bolsonaro. Surrounded by a young creative guard(Jaloo, Linn da Quebrada, DUDA BEAT)and Juçara Marçal (Meta Meta), he offers a peaceful album in the face of the profound disruptions of retrograde societies and ideas. He thus delivers a free, airy, poetic record, because "even if the times are obscure, they will pass, because everything is cyclical. Hence the name of the disc: "the sky has been old for a long time".

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Blick Bassy

1958

Release: 2019 / EU – Original

Genre: Pop

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LP | 2018 | EU | Original (No Format)

Toto Bona Lokua

Bondeko

Release: 2018 / EU – Original

Genre: Organic Grooves

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Piers Faccini & Vincent Segal

Songs Of Time Lost

LP | 2014 | EU | Original (No Format)

Release: 2014 / EU – Original

Genre: Rock & Indie

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LP | 2013 | EU | Original (No Format)

Melissa Laveaux

Dying Is A Wild Night

LP | 2017 | EU | Original (No Format)

Release: 2013 / EU – Original

Genre: Rock & Indie

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Follow up to Melissa's debut on No Format "Camphor And Copper"!

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Koki Nakano

Lift

Release: 2017 / EU – Original

Genre: Classical Music

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LP | 2024 | EU | Original (No Format)

Natascha Rogers

Onaida

Release: 2024 / EU – Original

Genre: Organic Grooves

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LP | 2023 | EU | Original (No Format)

Asynchrone

Plastic Bamboo