Rvng Int'l US Vinyl & CDs

Review: Black Decelerant, a collaboration between Khari Lucas (Contour) and Omari Jazz, explores spiritual jazz through modern tones, weaving sonic reflections on Black existence, life and grief, expansion and constraint, and the personal versus the collective. Their eponymous debut album fosters a serene refuge amidst societal turbulence and aims to transcend fleeting moments. Conceived from an intuitive process, the album emerged from remote sessions spanning six months in 2020, bridging South Carolina and Oregon. Improvised instrumentals and sampled productions became conduits for their inner dialogues and offered solace during existential crises amid lockdowns and social unrest in the US.

Review: Meeting in the wonderfully intimidating and disorienting - not to mention disorganised - chaos of downtown Manhattan in the 1980s, Sussan Deyhim and Richard Horowitz struck up a lifelong partnership emotionally and creatively, sharing in a radical vision of what pop could be if it was allowed to break free from the shackles of major labels obsessed with commercial ambition. Together, people often cite them as both singular - certainly in Deyhim's approach to vocalisation - and yet resolutely abstract and varied, always moving into new territories and exploring the idea of musical languages being written rather than read back and repeated. This collection, pieced together with input from the two masterminds themselves, is wonderfully bizarre and beguiling introduction to their world.

Review: Andrew PM Hunt returns once again as Dialect with Atlas Of Green, determinedly expanding the artist's idea-oeuvre with a brand new concept album. The album imagines a young musician named Green, working in a "dawning future era where lost signals and enduring impulses are unearthed from the sediments of technology and time." Its description sounds at once illusive yet still rings out as meaningful, recalling the collective post-apocalyptic utopia outlined in Ursula Le Guin's Always Coming Home; both works deal in themes of recovery, of unearthing old technologies from sedimented layers of workable soil. Green's dozen tracks weave through malfunctioning but still usable scrap metals or "vaporware" of sampled sound, its chirrupy latent folkishness, its sound effects-laden lollops, making up the confluent, but still contingent, cochlear canards of lost - but non-linear and thus still salvageable - time.

Review: A beautiful exploration in Americana, string music and all the emotion that can possibly be wrung from their intersection, Ernest Hood's Back To The Woodlands was recorded in a 10-year period in Western Oregon, beginning with Reagan and ending with Carter; 1972-1982. Hood has gone down in folk music history as a mastermind of the chordophone, a unique experimenter in such hammer-struck string instruments such as the zither, the psaltery and the good ole' guitar (and really, if you look into the history of string instruments, one could argue they're all just zithers). Never before released, this is an extraordinarily emotional album melding the artist's use of field recordings, synths, zither flourishes and guitar harmonies, producing a mini-revolution in sound that expresses the many new possibilities opened up not only by being differently abled, but also awe-inspired by the world around you.

Review: Written and recorded between 1972 and 1982 in Western Oregon, Back to the Woodlands is a previously unreleased, and nearly lost, album made by Ernest Hood during the same era as his near mythical album Neighborhoods. A visionary combination of field recordings, zithers, and synthesizers, Back to the Woodlands offers an unprecedented depth of access to this singular artistic mind.

Review: Isik Kural's Moon in Gemini is a captivating album that blends slow, evocative narratives with symbolic storytelling. While also combining environmental music with folk influences, Isik's vocals float over pastoral sounds, chamber instrumentation and archival recordings which trace a line back through his own diverse musical journey. The album's 14 tracks immerse you in a dreamy, liminal space - 'Moon in Gemini' for example reflects a multi-faceted and nostalgic exploration of Isik's past work by including recordings from Turkey, Miami, Helsinki, and Glasgow. Inspired by artists like Nina Simone and Aldous Harding, Isik experiments with new techniques of theirs to make this album a poetic, naturalistic experience with a portion of proceeds sent to benefit Mor cat? Women's Shelter Foundation.

Review: Rachika Nayar's album 'Fragments' is a collection of sonic miniatures constructed from guitar loops and in the familiar comforts of her own bedroom. First released as a limited edition cassette by RVNG Intl's Commend THERE imprint, it now comes to the main label in full vinyl LP glory, thanks to its sublime working of cyclical, processed, meditative guitar loops into a distinct oeuvre. Nayar is no less than a sonic alchemist, transmuting tactile guitar loops into repeating textures, in a style that seems to continue in the tradition of The Field or Fennesz.