Staff Picks - October 2024

Staff Picks - October 2024

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Written by:

Dragoș Rusu & Victor Stutz

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Here's the October music summary, comprising rembetika, electronics, spiritual jazz, experimental music, noise, ambient, and much more. Check out our selection of albums and compilations released last month, both new releases and reissues.

What's new, what's good, what's hot or not, what's obscure or under the radar, music wise, here's the monthly Staff Picks. If you think that we've missed something or want to send a tip, please get in touch.

From AtomTM to DJ Lycox

Arif Sağ - Lambaya Püf De (Anadolu)
Arif Sağ - Lambaya Püf De (Anadolu)
Arif Sağ - Lambaya Püf De (Anadolu)
Arif Sağ (born 1946) is a Turkish singer, bağlama virtuoso, and leading figure in modern Turkish folk music. A former academic, he was also a member of the Turkish parliament from 1987 to 1991. This album was originally released in 1984 by the Turkish label based in Germany, Türküola.

AtomTM - Ethnic Studies (NN)
Uwe H. Schmidt, also known as Atom™, Atom Heart, or Señor Coconut, is a German composer, musician and producer of electronic music. He was active in the development of electrolatino, electrogospel, and aciton music.

Błoto - Grzybnia (Astigmatic Records)
The wait for Błoto's new album is nearly over. As always, autumn signals the arrival of Grzybnia (Mycelium). The metaphor of Grzybnia (Mycelium) emphasizes the importance of cooperation as a fundamental skill that can yield various results (fruits, fungi)—both good and bad. Above all, it underscores the power of collective action beyond divisions. In a complex, unstable modern world that is breaking apart into pieces, the concept of mycelium offers a powerful model. Mycelium thrives in degraded, seemingly lifeless environments created by humans. A key aspect of the broader significance of mycelium is that cooperation benefits all involved parties, where each contributes something and receives something in return. Mycelium is a symbiont, meaning it forms a symbiotic relationship with certain tree species through mycorrhiza, where the roots of the trees and the mycelium exchange essential life-sustaining substances. This results in mutual benefits. The world of mycelium exemplifies cooperation.

Diemajin - Diemajin (Drowned By Locals)
Diemajin is the duo of Berlin-based producer DJ Die Soon (Daisuke Imamura) and Tokyo-based vocalist MA. Their self-titled debut is equal parts scrambled hip-hop, simmering noise and spectral Tokusatsu soundtrack. A set of cursed beats and possessed raps inspired by Japanese sci-fi and supernatural-horror films from the 1960s.



DJ Lycox - Guetto Star (Príncipe)
"Maybe this music can never be quite as massive as other Afro styles. Without sounding pretentious, it avoids simplistic patterns, it demands a bit more mental processing while it certainly aims to loosen the limbs. Universal in vocation, underground at the core, Lycox definitely calls it Batida but for some it is still Ghetto Music. Like DJ Veiga said when describing a previous release for Príncipe, Ghetto is home, though. Lycox adds it is a foundation of personality. Few in our community will recognize your work when you come from the same environment, but once you establish your reputation outside of the neighbourhood and even outside of the country, people will look at you differently, as if you were a star."

Duo Falak - Tira-Tira (TOPOT)
Duo Falak is a project comprising of guitarist Denis Sorokin and percussionist Shohin Qurbon, in which the musicians engage in interpreting Tajik traditional Falak music through improvisation. Falak is a monodic genre usually performed by solo musician accompanied by a dutar or rubab. This music originated on the peaks of the Pamirs in pre-Islamic times - that is why many of its singers in their lyrics appeal to the sky with the eternal questions: who are we, where are we, why are we? Denis and Shokhin improvise falak using unusual instrumentation - on electro-acoustic guitar and doira.
V.A. - Juyungo (Afro-Indigenous Music From The North-Western Andes) (Caife/Honest Jon’s Records)
V.A. - Juyungo (Afro-Indigenous Music From The North-Western Andes) (Caife/Honest Jon’s Records)

From Felinto to KMRU

Felinto - Utopia Milhão (Brokeh Versions)
Felinto is a political agitator and musician at the heart of the São Paulo underground - a movement that confronts the various effects of the capitalist system of racial, sexual, creative and material oppression.

Giorgos Katsaros - Giorgos Katsaros (Mississippi Records)
Steel-string guitar and vocals by the great Giorgos Katsaros, a mythic figure of Greek rembetiko.

V.A. - Golly (Jollies)
Golly is more than a compilation—it’s a collection of moments, an exploration of space, texture, and rhythm from minds that reimagine the world through sound. Not bound by genre or geography, but by the spirit of innovation, this album invites you to lose yourself. Not in a club, not in a genre, but in sound itself—boundless, untamed, and beautifully unpredictable.

V.A. - Juyungo (Afro-Indigenous Music From The North-Western Andes) (Caife/Honest Jon’s Records)
"Juyungo documents significant Esmeraldan artists and bands playing the Afro-Ecuadorian folklore of the province, as well as including some older field recordings. Based mostly on the marimba, whose origins lie partly in the African balafon, partly in Indigenous percussion instruments, the music is laced with call and response chants, ambient insect and bird noise, the filigree finger-styles of the Andean guitar tradition and the panpipes of the mountains. This is resonant insider roots music at its headiest — the mystic revelation of Esmeraldas, gully deep and lustral." Francis Gooding, The Wire.

V.A. - K-E-L (iDEAL Recordings)
Alice Kemp (b. 1972) uses themes as trance, dream and disturbance in her work. Kemp is moving freely between working with sound, performance, drawing, video, object making and installations. Kemp is based in the south of England. Joke Lanz (b. 1965) is a unique sound and visual conceptual artist who lets his music collide with body art and performance. Lanz is connected to the Schimpfluch group and is based in Berlin. Leif Elggren (b. 1950) is a self made king of KREV and is using painting, poetry, installations and composing as his main tools. He is no doubt one of the most important conceptual artists of today. Joachim Nordwall (b. 1975) is running the iDEAL organisation and has his main interest in how electronic music can affect your mind. He started recording and experimenting in 1987.

KMRU - forge (Seil Records)
Joseph Kamaru, better known as KMRU, is an ambient musician. He was born in Nairobi, Kenya, and later relocated to Berlin, Germany.
Rhodri Davies – Live Wound Response [Out.Fest 2013]
Rhodri Davies – Live Wound Response [Out.Fest 2013]

From Nocturnal Emissions to the Necks

Lulenga - Digital Indigenous 08: Aliyuyo Uyoo (Digital Indigenous)
Bonnie Lulenga, born in 1977, is a musician and instrument maker from Kising'a village in Kilolo District, Iringa Region, Tanzania. He belongs to the Lulenga clan, a Hehe clan primarily located in the South-Eastern part of Iringa Region. Kising'a village lies on the slopes of the Udzungwa Mountains. Bonnie who works primarily as a farmer in Kising'a joined the Fahari Yetu artisan business development programme in 2015 and began performing regularly at Iringa Boma – Regional Museum and Cultural Centre in 2016. Bonnie's musical repertoire includes traditional Hehe songs, which he performs using self-manufactured instruments made from local materials. These instruments include drums, whistles, cowbells, bass strings, and mortars. Traditionally, Hehe music consists of singing and dancing accompanied by drums, whistles, and ankle bells. Bonnie has developed a repertoire based on six different styles, which he plays on his various handmade instruments.

Melos Kalpa - Melos Kalpa (Hands In The Dark)
Melos Kalpa formed in 2019 around the vision of Tom Relleen; a quintet of musicians employing unconventional instruments and strategies to make music that exists somewhere at the intersection of improvisation, minimalism and sublimated reverie. Musicians Agathe Max (Abstract Concrete, Papivores, These Towns), Jem Doulton (Thurston Moore Group, Too Many Things), David John Morris (Red River Dialect) and Tom Relleen (Tomaga) perform via the conduit of producer Marta Salogni’s intricate tape preparations, which create rich textures, delays and distortions of their unique instrumental palette (marimba, vibraphone, violin, guitar, mandolin, Buchla Music Easel and more).

Nocturnal Emissions - Invocation of the Beast Gods (No Holiday)
Nocturnal Emissions is Nigel Ayers's sound art project that has released numerous records and CDs in music styles ranging from electro-acoustic, musique concrète, hybridised beats, sound collage, post-industrial music, ambient and noise music.

Pat Thomas and Tim Hill - Under a fig tree (Brazen Head Recordings)
Any profits from the album will be donated to the Red Cross appeal for Gaza.

Rhodri Davies – Live Wound Response [Out.Fest 2013]
“The choice of harp is very limiting – I’ve only got 20 strings, instead of 47 which I’d have on my big harp, and the notes don’t have any key changing possibilities. So that limits me, and of course each time I’m playing really quite aggressively on the strings, a couple of strings break, so eventually it becomes more and more of a challenge to make music. So I’m struggling – in a good way – to make music out of limited means, and then also the rhythms I get into, I don’t stay there too long and the challenge is to move it somewhere else without the whole thing capsizing. Struggle may not be the right word… I’m not trying to play the harp beautifully, necessarily, which the harp does easily, but to create something else.” Rhodri Davies

Surya Botofasina - Ashram Sun (Spiritmuse Records)
Ashram Sun is a transcendent journey toward the inner source of Surya Botofasina’s musical being. Returning to the places and spaces of his spiritual and musical upbringing, the keyboardist and vocalist’s second LP for Spiritmuse after 2022’s acclaimed Everyone’s Children delivers an inspiring meditation on the works and message of his mentor, Swamini Turiyasangitananda, better known as Alice Coltrane, and takes us back to his grounding in the Sai Anantam Ashram – a Vedic ashram built and founded by Coltrane in Santa Monica, California, in 1983. By this time, the spiritual jazz colossus had already taken the name Turiyasangitananda, dedicating Her remaining decades living, teaching, and seeking spiritual enlightenment through prayer, meditation and music. Ashram Sun rises in the light of Her spirit.



Talibam!, Duy Luong / Fabian Neubauer - 40 RPM (self-released)
This short release recorded in 2021 in Moers, Germany, comprises Talibam!’s Matt Mottel on synth and Kevin Shea on drums, alongside Duy Luong on electric bass and Fabian Neubauer on organ.

The Attic - Rodrigo Amado / Goncalo Almeida / Onno Govaert / Eve Risser - La Grande Crue (NoBusiness Records)
Joining Attic Trio, pianist Eve Risser collaborates now with Rodrigo Amado on tenor, Goncalo Almeida on bass, and Onno Govaert on drums, contributing an additional dimension to their elaborate soundscape.

The Necks - Bleed (Northern Spy Records)
Australian minimalist-jazz trio The Necks' new studio album, Bleed explores a sublime language of stillness. With a single, 42-minute composition, The Necks masterfully express the unspeakable beauty of decay and space in yet another totally distinct entry in a vast and stunning body of work.
About the Author

Dragoș Rusu & Victor Stutz

Dragoș Rusu is co-founder and co-editor in chief of The Attic, sound researcher and allround music adventurer, with a keen interest in the anthropology of sound.

Victor Stutz is a sound adventurer and music selector from Bucharest – currently based in Barcelona - with a background in anthropology.

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