Airto’s second album, and second and last release for the Buddah label, brought back largely the same crew that appeared on his debut record Natural Feelings (also reissued by Real Gone): vocalist (and wife) Flora Purim, composer and multi-instrumentalist Hermeto Pascoal, and bassist Ron Carter, with contributions from Dom Um Ramão (who later replaced Airto in Weather Report) and Severino De Oliveira a.k.a. Sivuca. Given Airto’s connections to Miles Davis, Weather Report, and Return to
Forever, Seeds on the Ground could easily get lumped into the jazz fusion category. But that would be a mistake. This totally unclassifiable (and, by the way, exceedingly rare) album was no mere blend of rock and jazz influences. Instead, Seeds on the Ground was truly a fusion, an ecstatic melding of bossa nova, psychedelic rock, Brazilian folk, Latin jazz, free jazz, and what we call nowadays “world music.”
If that sounds a bit calculated or intimidating, it’s not; what makes this album so compelling is how organic and intimate it all sounds. Airto played with probably the three most legendary fusion groups in jazz history, and later released a bunch of albums, many for the CTI label.
Muun Bato materialized in the summer of 2018 when Joe Werner (First Communion Afterparty, Driftwood Pyre, Bridge Club) & Andy Iwanin (Basement Apartment, The Pitchafits) were rehearsing for a one-time collaboration show in Minneapolis. Both perfect strangers, they found themselves playing improvised guitar & drums that could well have been finished songs. The chemistry was perfect, sprouting an insatiable appetite to write songs together.
Birthed from Arizona’s regaled Ascetic House collective, Body of Light is a dark synth-pop outfit comprised of young brothers Andrew and Alexander Jarson. What began as a vehicle for their exploration of noise and sound during their early teens has evolved into an established production over the last decade, as Body of Light continues to carve out their own style of complex, structured, and moving dancefloor electronics.
Their music is not only individually personal, but drawn from experiences shared between the two brothers – and calls on elements of new wave, freestyle, goth, and techno to create timeless and singular tracks without fear of trend or passing fashion.
DAIS Records releases VR SEX’s debut album “Human Traffic Jam” on digital, vinyl LP (packaged in a thick matte stock jacket with a printed inner eurosleeve with lyrics and download card in various colored vinyl variants), as well as compact disc, housed in a digipack with lyric insert and features the bonus track “Corridor (Epilogue)”. Cover art by Brooklyn based artist Adam Helms. Package design by Nathaniel Young.
Technology was meant to be humanity’s tool to combat famine, disease, confusion, and to facilitate life, culture, and innovation. Instead, we’re mired in a digital labyrinth that few care to navigate or even solve. Perhaps it’s not a ruse and the matrices coded by keyboard maestros are a path to liberation, but without querying the constructs we cannot ruminate on their affectations on humanity.
VR SEX are audio/visual provocateurs who transpose the identifiers of death rock, synth punk, post-punk, ambient, and ethereal soundscapes into an audit on technology and its imprint on our collective psyche. Comprised of visionary mercenaries Noel Skum (Andrew Clinco of Drab Majesty), Z. Oro (Aaron Montaigne of Antioch Arrow/Heroin/DBC) on vocals and drums, and Mico Frost (Brian Tarney of Guardian) on synths and electric bass.
Their debut tome, Human Traffic Jam, focuses on lyrical themes that probe the possibilities of loss of autonomy through social media, the decline of human interaction, and celebrity favoritism. Skum believes in the stabilization of society and preservation of our planet by reducing its amount of procreators.
Through PSRS or Procreation Simulation Reproduction Stimulation, humans can act on their hedonistic desires and not face the responsibilities and consequences that come with being an ill-prepared guardian. The future of our offspring will exist in virtual realms and population growth in turn will be stabilized. VR SEX is the cure to most societal ills.
Thematically condensed into an eight song album, Human Traffic Jam was written and demoed by Skum in a flat in Athens, Greece during the winter of 2017. During a rigorous week long session at Figure 8 studios with experimental and dimensional production extraordinaire Ben Greenberg (Uniform/The Men), Skum solely committed all the instrumentation present on Human Traffic Jam.
Rather than being emblematic of influences, each song on the LP infuses a dire tension that cuts shimmer with fetid frequencies, never establishing an aural hierarchy or urgency. Instead, we’re lead into punchy capsules of “dour pop”; the balance of saccharine and sour so emblematic of the VR SEX hive mind.
On Immortal,For Today‘s fourth full length LP, the band worked with producer Will Putney (Lamb Of God, Suicide Silence) who previously worked on Breaker, their 2010 release. They recently confirmed the Vans Warped Tour for this summer, and are kicking off 2012 with the nationwide headlining Fight The Silence Tour. As forthcoming about their faith as they are about their musical prowess, For Today have become widely known as one of modern metal’s most technically proficient bands.
This pressing is limited to three color variants — gray, white, and cyan blue; and it streets on May 29.
