Ghisly Brown
Let's Talk About It

Important document from Zambia, 1987. A deep treasure this one.Despite notable forays into the global sounds of rock and disco, the local heart and soul of Zambian popular music in the 20th century lies in the Kalindula sound. With it’s ceremonial tribal roots on homespun guitars, traditional double bass and percussion, Kalindula evolved into a modern, electric sound over the course of the Zamrock years in the 1970s and lived it’s golden age as Zambia’s most popular groove in the 1980s. There to document the prodigious outpouring of creativity was Zambia Music Parlour, the independent outfit that had launched the likes of WITCH, Ngozi Family and Amanaz a decade earlier. One of the label’s principal Kalindula talents was the Mashabe Band, led by songwriter James Chisenga. Deeply Afrocentric with a name that refers to mystical spirits, the Mashabe Band often performed in traditional dress with body paint. Of the band’s three albums and numerous singles issued by ZMPL, Mandela from 1987, named to honour the political prisoner who would go on to lead South Africa’s first democratic administration in 1994, is the group’s most compelling point of entry and an excellent primer for the Kalindula style as a whole. Restored from the master tape vault of the Zambia Music Parlour label, Sharp-Flat presents an essential slice of Zambian music history from a period ripe for investigation and rediscovery. Complex African rhythms with crisp electric amplification and tribal roots presentation, the Mashabe Band formula is mesmerising and infectious.

‘Dark Farfisa’ is the debut EP by Bruxula, the studio project of Toronto’s Cosmic JD and Jerusa Leao. Firmly rooted in the city’s music scene, JD runs the Hypnotic Mindscapes parties and label whilst Jerusa works as a singer and multi-instrumentalist exploring traditional and fusion sounds centered around a Brazilian music repertoire. Introduced to us by our mutual friend Raf Reza, the pair began to jam together in the summer of 2020 with JD curious to incorporate Jerusa’s vocals into his often club-focused electronic productions. The results sit somewhere between the dancefloor and the living room, a psychedelic range of rhythm, melody and vocal harmonies that felt like an immediate fit for us.First sharing an early mix of ‘Pala Mo’, the rest of the EP began to form quickly based on further recording sessions and we at 12th Isle are ecstatic to share their work with the world.

High Diamond / Snake Bomb by Chandeliers

Transociety Relics by László HortobágyiThis release includes a pdf booklet with credits, photos and lots of commentary by László Hortobágyi.László Hortobágyi is an electron released in the current world sound system galaxy.His sound art is simultaneously an expanded ethnography of an invented folklore and a way to preserve his acoustic environments for future generations. They are compositions of both terrestrial and spatial sound that present a rich auditory ecology and trace the path from the past to the future. Ancient and futuristic environments interconnected by invisible historical complexities and inhabited by guardians of tradition.Hortobágyi's music, conceptually fascinating, reveals a unique and transitory world of sound carried out in a singular work form that opens as a portal to another musical dimension.“Transociety Relics”, his latest opus, compiles previously unreleased archive material spanning the period 1974 / 2019. Each side of this two-LP set reproduces a specific impulse in László Hortobágyi's long and influential career.