The Leaf Lab

"In Each And Every One" är Polar Bears femte album och det första nya sedan 2010 års storsäljare "Peepers". Plattan är producerad/mixad av bandledaren Sebastian Rochford och är ett nytt kapitel i Polar Bears framfart som ett av de mest spännande och progressiva banden i sin generation.

Pike Laurence: The Undreamt-Of Centre (Green) [Vinyl LP]

On the face of it, there’s an unbridgeable chasm separating the innovative jazz maven Sebastian Rochford and London-based, Portugal-born rapper Jyager; but as anyone familiar with either artist’s work will appreciate, these are artists for whom categorisations have little meaning. Common Ground is a concise, 25-minute collaborative mini-album, with music almost entirely derived from samples of Polar Bear’s Peepers album.

Finally! The horn-wailing, mic-swinging, percussion-overload, call-and-response explosiveness of the Melt Yourself Down experience is captured on plastic in all its sweat-drenched fury. Recorded at The New Empowering Church in London Fields, in late November 2013, it’s a raw and ragged document of sweet sonic violence in a small room, a strobe-lit snapshot. There is dancing, there is crowd-surfing, there is emancipation. This is Melt Yourself Down laid bare and blowing hard. Warts and all, captured for you. Twisting jazz, punk, funk and Afrobeat into strange and brilliant new shapes, Melt Yourself Down are lead from the front by Kushal Gaya, who delivers here with a finger-jabbing religious fervour usually associated with old time revivalist preachers admonishing their flock of sinful backsliders. “The house band from hell,” live from the house of God.

Bourne Matthew: Moogmemory [Vinyl LP]

Distant Early Warning is the debut solo album by Australian drummer, percussionist and composer Laurence Pike. For the best part of two decades Pike has operated at the cutting edge of the electronic and jazz music worlds, releasing albums to critical acclaim and touring the world with his bands PVT (formerly Pivot), Triosk and Szun Waves, and featuring on numerous albums, tours and soundtracks as a collaborator. On Distant Early Warning he carves himself a moment of reflection. The calm in the eye of the storm. An ominous portent as the rocks appear on the horizon. Originally conceived as a technological and spiritual jazz suite for drums, Distant Early Warning is a series of solo performances for kit and sampler recorded live in a single day. “For a long time I’ve been feeling there’s a central part of my musical voice that didn’t have an outlet,” Pike says. “So this album is definitely a product of inner necessity.”

Holy Spring is the second solo album by Australian percussionist, drummer and composer Laurence Pike - an “article of faith”, expressing the sense that “the ritual of performance can transcend the confines of style, structure and concept to connect with something universal.” The name of the album is beautifully ambiguous, evoking a wellspring, but also rebirth, and more besides. It sounds constantly, effervescently fresh, just as it should when its creation was a series of surprises to its own creator. The listener, just like the musician, are privy to what Pike describes as “the music simply playing itself. Improvisation has played a role throughout Pike’s long and diverse career in music. Whether as part of PVT, Triosk or Szun Waves, or collaborating with Liars, legendary jazz pianist Mike Nock, DD Dumbo or the mighty Bill Callahan, he has long been a responsive musician for whom sensitive listening leads to spontaneous invention.