Fire!
The Hands

Take a spa day honey!

Heavy psych from Copenhagen!

Since his days as the frontman of the Deadly Snakes, Ethier has cultivated an entirely different artistic practice as an acclaimed contemporary painter. At the same time, he has quietly slipped out a spellbinding body of work as a solo musician, with this album trifecta showcasing his skills as one of Canada’s most vastly underrated songwriters and storytellers. Ethier’s songs are casually played but carefully orchestrated, allowing each element to appear in sharp focus.“These albums are a series using the same palette,” explains Ethier, whose softly coloured paintings also grace the covers of the trilogy. “The tools Sandro and I used on all three of them are similar so that the songs can almost be interchangeable. It’s a way of giving time to a creative relationship so it can blossom, like developing a shorthand with a co-worker. Nurturing that process allows it to grow.”

Are you making yourself a new pair of boots? Put this on and get to work.

Shimizu exploring the intersections of fusion, synthpop, new wave, and jazz. Good stuff._________________________PressAcclaimed saxophonist, producer and composer Yasuaki Shimizu will release Kiren, his unreleased album from 1984, on the Palto Flats record label on February 25, 2022. Liner notes by music historian Chee Shimizu, and credits in both Japanese and English.By the early 1980s Yasuaki Shimizu had established himself on the Japanese new wave scene, producing many important experimental pop records and releasing several albums as the bandleader of Mariah. Following the release of his widely regarded solo classic Kakashi, from 1982, and the otherworldly Utakata No Hibi, by Mariah in 1983, he went into the studio the following year with frequent collaborators, producer Aki Ikuta and Morio Watanabe (bassist of Mariah), to record a mystifying collection of experimental dance music. Utilizing cutting-edge technology and studio trickery, Kiren showcases Shimizu's trademark playfulness, marrying richly layered production techniques to off-kilter, sometimes traditional sounding rhythms and melodies. Portending his work with the Saxophonettes as well as forecasting trends in techno, new wave, and futuristic rhythmic music, this formerly lost album represents an important period of Shimizu's artistic expression, an artist at his peak, while successfully exploring the intersections of fusion, synthpop, new wave, and jazz.As Chee Shimizu (no relation) writes in the liner notes, Kiren, and his concurrent release Latin were “born out of a free environment of collaboration that existed between Yasuaki and Aki Ikuta ... (exemplifying) his most energetic works.” In listening to Kiren, we might share with Yasuaki Shimizu the joy and excitement of experimentalism and movement that went into the making of this album, now released for the first time many years later.

Wonderful Jazzy Moods