Sunday Sedatives
Classical tickled ambient, cosmic voyaging, kosmische tripping, Brazilian beauty or underground roots and dub reggae. Take your pick.
It’s a beautiful morning in the Minho. The sun has just crept over the distant hills & is starting to warm my still sleepy city. I’m going to pop out in a minute for a walk along the river, through the fishing village and around the castle whilst I have the route to myself. Later on we’re heading up the coast to check out a lovely looking youth hostel/co-work/living space we’ve been meaning to have a nose at for a while, their Christmas open day giving us the perfect excuse.
Consequently I’m going to rattle through today’s fine selection of largely laid back listens and get a life. I’m sure somebody once said Sunday was supposed to be a day of rest. Enjoy.
derrickderrick - happiest in illusion (Shimmering Moods)
Derrickderrick, the ambient artist so good they named him twice. This 22 year old artist started releasing some of his (pretty raw) piano recordings on Bandcamp last year, but seems to have decided light grey cloud shrouded, classical nodding ambient compositions are the way forward. If you need an easy entry to your Sunday start right here.
Seahawks - Time Enough For Love (Cascine)
Seahawks - Jon Tye (Lo Recordings founder) and multi-media artist Pete Fowler, have been making music for the last 15 years. The first half of which were a live and livelier cosmic yacht rocking disco and downtempo vibe, the second half though has leant to dreamier, drifting, more ethereal transmissions.
The new album was recorded in California at a secret synth laboratory, the ideal location to tune into the still resonating cosmic new age frequencies of the hippie dream, which they then blended with the still warm ghosts of late 80’s rave chill out tents. The result is an inward or outward, depending on your mood, voyage into higher states of consciousness. Ideal for the wakers and bakers.
Tarotplane - Between Soil and Sky (Noir Age)
Tarotplane is a true keeper of the kosmische flame and has featured numerous times on TSMM over the years. His new LP sees him polishing his guitar, scouring eBay for tape machine spares and dusting off his synths to go on an epic 57 minute cosmic voyage that drifts and shifts like a bull grazing in a weed shop. If you managed to come back down to earth after the Seahawks LP then this will send you right back and could be the point of no return, you’ve been warned. Oh yeah he’s also a top drawer digger and sharer of music, check out his Substack - Tarotplane
Dora Morelenbaum - Pique (Mr. Bongo)
Oh Brazilian music I love you so. I have a couple of routes to keep tabs on new Brazilian music (there’s a lot) that often isn’t well promoted this side of the Atlantic, but sadly I don’t currently have the time to pursue them. Luckily there are some great UK labels like Mr. Bongo, Mais Um Discos and Far Out who have a strong Brazilian focus, great taste and which are easier to keep tabs on.
So thank you to Mr. Bongo for introducing me to Dora Morelenbaum who, with co-producer and TSMM fave Ana Frango Elétrico, has just released surely one of the debut albums of the year. There’s no real new ground being broken here, but when someone joins the dots between the last 50 years of the country’s music from MPB to bossa through to samba soul, and gives it a modern tickle for good measure then I’m all in. Just wonderful.
Bandcamp is the Music Underground - Reggae Special
More and more artists are eschewing the streaming services, cutting out the middle men (distributors+streamers) and just releasing physical and digital releases on Bandcamp. Here’s a few choice reggae cuts I’ve stumbled across.
Local Dish is a great Toronto label releasing all sorts of local artists on 7” vinyl. Their output is pretty eclectic but their three new releases just happen to be some mighty fine reggae.
Nat Birchall is a jazz saxophonist who’s released some wonderful spiritual jazz LPs the last few years, he’s also got a serious line in deep roots and dub. I pretty much recommend everything he’s ever released and there aren’t many artists I can say that about.
Joe Armon-Jones made his name in London’d new nu-jazz scene as part of Ezra Collective and touring with all the right names, but is developing a killer line in serious as your life, jazz licked roots and dub. Unlike the others, this release is actually available on streaming services, but you really need to know about him
Spotify Wrapped 2024 (F*^k them)
I’ve been having a rant about Spotify on Notes and my social media channels today and the last few days. I’ll go long form on it sometime soon but this image, which I urge you to share, sums up part of my beef with Spotify (not streaming as a whole). Here’s a bit of extra context.
Viana do Castelo really would be the perfect place for The Slow Music Festival 😀