Dumi Maichi Na Chi - Maraire Nyunga Nyunga Mbira
Tichazomuona

Bruno De Angelis and Giovanna Gulinello unwittingly met in London in the late 70’s, after being introduced by a mutual friend. Both Bruno and Giovanna arrived with varying ambitions. Giovanna wanted to learn English or be a painter, while Bruno found work at the Royal Post Office, which he found testing. It wasn’t until Bruno rescued Giovanna from an awkward date that the pair became a couple. At the time, music was just something they did for fun. Bruno already had an acoustic guitar and G bought a bass. Those were the days when you could start a new band, whether you could play or not, and new independent labels were springing up. Rough Trade Records was literally around the corner. In 1981 the pair moved back to Italy and found an apartment in Rome. It’s here that they began to focus on their music and where they started ‘recording’ their tracks. First, they would record the rhythm, maybe add the Gigster (the name of their “cheap drum machine”), the bass, and then, as they made a copy of the first cassette onto a second cassette they would add guitar, more synth, or both at the same time. After that, it was not unusual to copy from the second cassette back into the first cassette adding even more “stuff”. As with many artists during the early 80’s, the Influenza Prods’ sound was the direct result of the accessibility of emerging electronic instruments and the recording equipment available to them. The duo was resourceful and inventive, acquiring new equipment as resources allowed. They recorded dialogue from British Soap Operas on their TV set, which were later added to their tracks, while further making use of their family’s cutlery sets, which were used to fill in certain percussion sections The duo’s homespun recordings found a web of admirers in the unofficial distribution of tape trading and mail-art scenes. Despite the DIY ethos and the fact that most tapes were handmade, the Influenza Prods managed to ‘release’ three tapes which comprised of the Greatest Tits (1983), Cheek-A-Bomba (1984) and Quasi Solo (1985). Bruno and Giovanna were sadly subjected to serious family problems, including the loss of loved ones in their lives and eventually parted ways, concluding the Influenza Prods. However, to this day they remain close friends who keep in touch regularly.

Released in 1983 on a miniscule run of 300-self-financed LP’s, Dennis Taylor’s ‘Dayspring’ remains a lost masterwork of transcendental instrumental guitar.An important missing link between the 60’s folkloric experimentalism of John Fahey and Robbie Basho, and the new age atmospherics mined by William Ackerman and Michael Hedges in the early 80’s.Though Taylor’s guitar playing remains crisply unadorned on these 10 tracks, his technique and his compositions stretch beyond the folk roots of the genre. He crafts a soundworld that is both immersive and familiar. His pastoralism has a spaciousness - a pianistic drift - that feels truly timeless.

Vis-A-Vis - The Best Of Vis-A-Vis In Congo Style by We Are Busy Bodies

ABT036 - CA - 2014Bermuda Waterfall by Sean Nicholas Savage

MIOS by Synergetic Voice Orchestra

Veslemes (aka Felizol) makes his debut on Invisible Inc with this astonishing new album that comes hot on the heels of last year's ground-shaking I Know Where You Live Vangelis!.With Apolithoma film director Yannis Veslemes takes us further into the dark crevices of his psyche.The album's themes are inspired by the dystopian sci-fi of JG Ballard's The Drowned World and The Crystal World: both novels eerily prophetic in their dystopian visions of an irradiated Earth over which a bloated, blinding sun makes living as we know it bearable only within a few hours around dawn and dusk. Sea levels have risen and cities that are not wholly flooded are overgrown with emergent new flora adapting to this new and hostile environment.In more remote locations, overgrown jungles and forests are exhibiting signs of a strange crystallisation: entire swathes of jungle petrified, calcified, crystalized, fauna included...and stories of missing explorers rumoured to themselves have crystalized!An allegory for our times, for sure....but more importantly, the album is as adventurous musically as it is conceptually. Where on the surface we have stories themed around an external dystopian world, the music, like the rising floodwater, presents us with a lens through which to look at the internal world: on one hand a distorted prism into what lurks beneath, yet at the same time a perfect reflection - a mirror into the psyche.At times dark, at times playful, unreservedly psychedelic, the album's wildly different musical styles all capture an atmosphere that is as profound and mystical as it is unique. It's clear too that Veslemes' background in film and OST production has a strong influence making the whole album seem like an imaginary soundtrack to a film that never was. Several of the pieces are strongly reminiscent of the early works of Barry Adamson...but where these faux soundtracks were solely dark and brooding (in particular the classic Moss Side Story) Apolithoma adds mystique, profundity and light which balances the music perfectly.Featuring an assortment of guest musicians on saxophone, clarinet, vibraphones, oboe, guitars and other instruments not often heard in partnership with electronic music, the resulting collection of songs is up there with the best of Invisible Inc.