Freak Motif Dark Maat'r
TIMEKODE X Vol. 2 - Freak Motif x Dark Maat'r (MTL)

Following my recent phone call with Prof. Benson, I left him to continue his 92nd birthday celebrations with his family. We'd talked about his life, his music, his achievements. Throughout our conversation it struck me what a kind, humble and pleasant man he was. I felt that I was in the presence of greatness – not the egotistical greatness that emanates so often from high achievers, but that of someone who had simply won at life."I was a music teacher. I wasn't trying to make a record to compete, I was trying to make a record so the students would have something to remember the experience that we had... I was doing it for the kids."It was 1973 that Prof. James Benson had self-funded his private press LP for the benefit of the teenage musicians he tutored at Cal Poly, California. The album was a momentous achievement for him and his young protegees, something they were all proud of, and rightly so. Taking inspiration from their recent trip to Africa and blended with the radical jazz associated with the young minds of early '70s black America, the Gow-Dow Experience is a unique foray into the enthusiastic mindset of up-and-coming jazz musicians, as encouraged by their mentor Prof. Benson.We present the album as it was released in 1973 with a heavyweight tip-on jacket and 180g vinyl or on CD. We also include an insert with liner notes and photos provided courtesy of Prof Benson. The LP and CD come with 4 additional tracks taken from the recording session. Until now these tracks have never been heard since the day they were recorded.

Habitat by Leon Louder / Scattered EnsembleMontreal-based composer Leon Louder spent the 2020-21 lockdown period in remote collaboration with four fellow musicians, exploring tones from homemade and traditional instruments and percussion, using a mixture of live sampling and improvisation to create aleatoric tonal landscapes. Inspired by a stay on a remote island in the St-Lawrence River estuary, where the weather can shift dramatically from serene to turbulent at any moment and the dialogue of birds, insects, and seals is omnipresent, Habitat is a sequence of restless sound worlds, an impressionistic depiction of a constantly changing ecosystem that had its parallel in the emotional turmoil of pandemic time.Like the phenomena they approximate, the pieces exist in a continual state of composition and recomposition. Populated with melodic fragments that call and respond, break apart and ricochet, they ask the listener to live in the music as much as to listen to it, accepting discord as equal to harmony, chaos as part of the order.The individual tracks are strikingly varied, not only in their vocabularies of sound but in the moods they create and the hints of environment they evoke. They range from "Full of Light", in which mesmerizing bell and woodwind tones interweave in melodic counterpoint, building to a gently driving train-like rhythm that conjures some sort of Celestial Express -- to "Underpass", whose low dark sounds and simple repeated rhythms carry us down through subterranean strata bored out by primeval life forms, into what feels like a maze of subway tunnels on another planet.The recordings bring into play double bass, vibraphone, homemade zithers, piano, modular synthesizer, and found percussion, and feature collaborators from the Montreal experimental music community: radio artist Martin Rodriguez, multi disciplinary artist Gabrielle Godbout, drummer and electroacoustic composer Samuel Bobony, and multi instrumentalist Rodney Sothmann.

Alva Noto’s award winning score for the 2022 German documentary film ‘This Stolen Country of Mine’ directed by German filmmaker Marc Wiese features nineteen compositions to be released on NOTON in April 2023.The documentary film explores the question of a state's sovereignty in the face of foreign powers. The film portrays Ecuadorian resistance fighters and journalists who oppose the sell-off of an extensive part of the country's resources to Chinese investors.Alva Noto's music subtly accompanies the struggle of a mountain village, immersing us into the film’s narrative and pathos. Across nineteen compositions, the music exposes and holds back when the images and statements of the protagonists speak for themselves, reflecting the dark shadows and the glares of hope of communal resistance.

We are excited to announce the next collaborative release on the WSNWG Label. LAVANDE is the result of a one week long jam session between french producer and live performer UFO95 and label head Rødhåd in January this year.