Treading Water

Real deal classic dub sounds, beatific ambient piano, Afrofuturistic visions and transcendent, cosmic electroacoustic fusion. Tune in and drop out.

Apologies to everyone, especially the paid subscribers, for another delay in the newsletter. I’ve been struggling with tiredness, light headedness and occasional dizzy spells for a few weeks, and finally had to admit defeat ten days ago. I reluctantly took a few days off the self employed day job and headed to the doctor, who has seen fit to book me in for top to tail tests.

The Portuguese health system is creaking in so many ways and the delays for non-urgent care, and controversially childbirth last year - a scandal we narrowly avoided, can be worrying, but if they think it might be potentially serious then they pull out all the stops, and it’s at times like this that I give praise to national health systems. I dread to think if I was the other side of the Atlantic how much I would have had to pay just the brain scan, let alone the rest of tests.

To be honest I’m not too worried, suspecting exhaustion after eight months of 4-5am starts, too many late evening or night finishes and too few days off. If it wasn’t for the much maligned Iberian siesta then I might not have lasted this long.

We also hopped on a plane last Saturday to England to show off the little one’s new moves to my parents and put a smile on Granny and Grandad’s faces. She’s now able to scuttle towards plug sockets, sharp edges and the top of stairs with alarming speed, laughing in the face of danger as she goes, and her newfound ability to hurl food Jackson Pollock-like over a wide area is genuinely impressive and the results potentially saleable. Fun times.

As you might suspect I haven’t been on top of my music discovery game, but I’ve unearthed a few gems for you and penned the briefest of thoughts, I hope you enjoy them. Stick with me for a while whilst I work on getting a clean bill of health and start tweaking my live work balance.

Nat Birchall - Drums In Dub (Self Release)

Nat Birchall is back with some more deep reggae sounds, this time with a dub take on the instrumentals from his TSMM recommended Dimension of the Drums LP from last year, deftly repurposing them for maximum sound system pressure.

Remarkably it’s a one man show with Birchall even adding the hand played Nyabinghi percussion and warm bass lines to his trademark sax playing. He also took care of the recording, mixing and mastering, which gave this reggae aficionado the ability not just to recreate the deeply hypnotic riddims and Babylon provoking low frequencies of half a century ago, but also capture the somewhat rawer, somehow warmer sonic aesthetic of those early 70’s dub classics. This isn’t an LP for the dub progressives, but if you want a reggae history lesson then look no further.

Yumiko Morioka & Takashi Kokubo - Gaiaphilia (Metron)

Yumiko Morioka is a classical pianist from Japan who first appeared on my radar in 2020 with the reissue of her Resonance LP on Metron. Takashi Kokubo is a storied new age ambient producer with a 25 year history of communing with, recording and musically celebrating nature in its many forms.

If you need some beatific, fauna rich ambient piano music to help shine some light through the climatic and geopolitical shadows then you should hit play on their new LP, it really is a lovely listen. Kokubo’s impeccable field recordings of natural spaces provide a bucolic and serene backdrop for Morioka to weave her genteel piano lines, which Kokubo further augments with faint ambient electronics, temple chimes and even a monastic vocal finale.

There will be days when I deem the new age vibes too soft edged and the piano too straight ahead for my usually more abstract and out-there preferences, but if you need some genteel, beautifully crafted, earth attuned ambient piano sometimes, then this LP will run and run.

Lonnie Holley - Tonky (Jagjaguwar)

The Lonnie Holley story is an amazing one to say the least, and it’s heartwarming to see this singular artist getting his dues and (hopefully) paid after all these years. I was instantly smitten by his first two, CD/Vinyl only albums (#1 and #2), and they’re two of my most treasured CDs, and possibly the two best examples of far-out Afrofuturism known to man.

Since he got “discovered” he’s been stretching out stylistically, putting out a steady stream of releases, with an A-list of TSMM approved collaborators - Matthew E. White, Jeff Parker, Moor Mother amongst others previously, and Saul Williams, Billy Woods, Open Mike Eagle, Angel Bat Dawid & Mary Lattimore to name just a few on this latest LP - he’s got impeccable taste in collaborators.

To be quite honest the recent material prior to this has been a mixed bag, certainly nothing bad and occasionally brilliant, but this new LP is a start to finish listen both vocally and musically, with the vibes and vision tuned in that much tighter to Holley’s singular, on point and pointed lyrics. Check him out, he’s one of a kind.

Daigos - 桃源郷 (Tougen-Kyo) [Teeth]

I’ve never heard of Daigos, or Daigo Sakuragi before this release, but I’ll be keeping tabs on him for sure. Whilst in Tokyo this composer, guitar player and machine meddler teamed up with bass playing Jinya Ichikawa, stick wielding Kazuya Ooi and sax blowing Shoei Ikeda to bring his compositions to life. Post recording he decamped to London to get a different perspective on the recordings and the result is this transcendent, cosmic electroacoustic fusion.

The LP for London’s Teeth label starts off hallucinating images of an orbiting jacuzzi, the bathers eventually roused by some live hip hop beats before the band embark on some East meets West acid-folk, which in turn paves the way for some heavy jazztronica - the sax soaring over the big system primed drums and low frequencies. Ambient jazz then does battle with jazzy drum and bass with the only winner being the listener. The sounds of nature recorded during temple rituals then raises the spiritual vibe, intertwining with some laid back sax licked beats to wind this remarkable session down and send you back to the start for another listen.

Don’t Forget TSMM’s Playlists.

From ambient sound baths and wellness imbuing new age vibes to underground house via jazz, neoclassical, folk and dub, the twenty TSMM playlists cover a lot of ground.

They’re available on Tidal, Apple Music, Amazon, Youtube Music, Youtube, Deezer, Soundcloud and Spotify (if you don’t worry about them not paying most of the artists on the playlists). Just hit this smartlink to connect to the various services and TSMM profiles.