Legendary Milanese combo Calibro 35 continue their journey into the world of cinematic jazz-funk with their new album “Exploration.” Set for worldwide release on June 6, “Exploration” marks their return to independent label Record Kicks after their last studio album “Nouvelle Aventures” released on Universal Music in 2023. The band picks up from their latest EP, “Jazzploitation,” released on Record Kicks last October.
“Exploration” is a deep dive into the universe of cinematic jazz-funk, showcasing both the band’s reinterpretations of timeless classics such as Roy Ayers’ “Coffy” or Bob James “Nautilus” and original compositions by the band such us the lead single “Reptile Strut”, the jazz-funk stormer “The Twang” and the soulful cinematic number “Pied De Poule”. An exploration and a new journey for the Milanese combo that a long its way pays homage to artists such as Lalo Schifrin (Mission Impossible), Herbie Hancock (Chamelon) Italian Maestro Piero Umiliani (Discomania and Gassman Blues)
In the late-1990s, after a successful career as an MTV-era music video director, Peter “Sleazy” Christopherson moved with Jhonn Balance – his partner in life and in Coil – from London to the rural Weston-super-Mare, creating an environment for all things “musick, musick, musick!” with a revolving door of new members, including Thighpaulsandra. This eruption in activity saw Coil’s discography nearly double, and during this fruitful period, Thighpaulsandra asked the simple question: why doesn’t Coil play live? After a 16-year wait, thanks to the rapid technological advancement in the form of MacBooks, DAWs, VSTs and plugins, Coil were able bring their music to the stage as always envisioned. In live performance, they could embrace the risks and freedoms of real time sonic manipulation, as noted by Sleazy: “Reshape the show minute by minute… the direction is very spontaneous, not so much in the way of like jazz improvisation but in a kind stream of consciousness… Thighpaulsandra brought us his wisdom, and he was able to convince us we could do it.”
From 1999 to 2003, Coil was “like a snake shedding its skin,” transforming every six months into something “completely different.” Their evolution was documented in real time through the recent advent of lower-cost CD-R manufacture, on limited edition albums including ‘Constant Shallowness Leads To Evil’ and ‘Queens of the Circulating Library.’ In preparing for 2004’s “Even an Evil Fatigue” live series, Coil began work on their next period-defining masterpiece, ‘Black Antlers.’
‘Black Antlers’ showcases late-period Coil at their purest: stripped down, tighter, and leaner. The music became more rhythmic, with a greater emphasis on beats: “the songs we did tend to be more… not rock in any sense of a word, but you know, more conventional in terms of structure, but now what we’re doing is sort of within an ‘electronic’ genre.” The sound of ‘Black Antlers’ is of an intoxicating energy, combining Thighpaulsandra’s advanced synthesis, Balance’s poetic lyricism and Christopherson’s flirtations with jazz and Ableton-aided PowerBook maximalism. Rounding out the trio were renowned hurdy-gurdy player Cliff Stapleton on a “specifically commissioned” electric variant, to merge into the band’s “strange and other-worldly music”; Royal Academy of Music trained percussionist Tom Edwards (who also appeared with Thighpaulsandra in Spiritualized’s live band); and European and Near East winds specialist Mike York on pipes, bombarde, duduk and balalaika. Initially released as an “album-in-progress” in June 2004, a post on the Threshold House website noted, “Please remember that September will see Coil recording the album “Black Antlers (Proper)”.” Jhonn Balance passed away that November; Christopherson would reunite with ‘Love’s Secret Domain’ collaborator Danny Hyde to complete ‘Black Antlers’ by May 2006.
Revitalized energy marked ‘Black Antlers”s recording, paired with the group’s signature wordplay and humor (the name came from a series of imagined adult film titles). At their “Evil Fatigue” tour opener in Paris, Jhonn Balance presented the revised “Teenage Lightning (10th Birthday Version)” as, “an updated version of one of our older-never ‘hits.'” The song, about the energy generated by “two teenagers, or old age pensioners” rapidly pulses, with Edwards’s marimbas electronically modified and arpeggiated by Christopherson. Album opener “The Gimp (Sometimes)” is hypnotic and hallucinatory, recalling Coil’s 90s period, with a potentially uneasy air, filled with repetition, distorted vocals, and Thighpaulsandra’s modulated drone. “Sex With Sun Ra (Part One – Saturnalia)” reveals the potentials of the 2004 lineup, as it writhes and glides through an imagined conversation with the legendary composer, building into overdrive. On the complementary piece, Christopherson & Hyde’s “Sex With Sun Ra (Part Two – Sigillaricia)”, the song evolves into a throbbing ouroboros of glitches and free flowing energy, with York’s pipe samples reverberating almost filmically. One highlight is “The Wraiths And Strays Of Paris”, an expansion of the song’s first release (as “Wraiths And Strays (From Montreal)”, available as a downloadable bonus track). “Of Paris” takes Thighpaulsandra synthesized warmth and Christopherson’s PowerBook manipulations & stylizations from the original, adding samples taken from multi-track recordings of the full live band – including Balance’s vocals from the Paris show – fully realizing Christopherson’s desire of “taking the (electronic) genre to a place that people would find unexpected, and more challenging.” Adding to the unexpected, and building upon their own uncompromising legacy, Coil delicately cover the traditional African American lullaby (and “friend’s song”) “All The Pretty Little Horses”, with Balance’s vocals soothing the listener in an almost hushed whisper.
For Christopherson, following Jhonn’s death, the relevance and power of Coil’s creative output changed. He had one goal in mind: “to maintain the availability of the archive for future generations.” In original form, ‘Black Antlers’ represented the possibilities of a new era for the group, built from the momentum of live performance, new sounds and ideas. For the final version, ‘Black Antlers’ reunited Coil members from over the decades, collaborating across the boundaries of fixed time. There would be no more new Coil, only the completion of unfinished projects, bringing them to a standard which Balance would “have loved and approved of.”
Dais Records would like to thank Thighpaulsandra and Danny Hyde for their collaboration on this reissue.
The Dais reissue presents Coil’s 2006 version ‘Black Antlers’ with 2004’s “Wraiths And Strays (From Montreal)” available as a downloadable bonus track.
Tracks 1-7: All songs by Coil except “All the Pretty Little Horses” (trad.) and “Where’s Your Child” (Bam Bam). Most versions of “Wraiths and Strays” feature a sample from the King of Woolworths’ track “Montparnasse” now used with permission. A shorter version of tracks 1-6 were originally released on cd-r format by Threshold House, to accompany Coil’s 2004 “Even an Evil Fatigue” live series in: Paris, Leipzig, Amsterdam, Rome, Fano, London. Tracks 7-9 were written, produced & mixed May 2006 by Peter Christopherson & Danny Hyde for the 2006 cd release.
Coil were: Jhonn Balance Peter Christopherson Tom Edwards Cliff Stapleton Thighpaulsandra Mike York
Artwork by Ian Johnstone & Jhonn Balance. Remastered by Josh Bonati. Layout & artwork restoration by Vinnie Massimino.
In April of this year, A.L.N. released something new – Alluvion, the Mizmor and Hell collaboration. Now in June, A.L.N. brings you something old… or rather, renewed. Mnemonic: Ambient Mosaic is comprised of ten of A.L.N.’s earliest recordings, transformed into nostalgic drone-scapes. The artist has been making solo music under multiple monikers consistently since age 13 (ie: The Zarconiac, 2004) and the recordings selected for this record date back almost as far.
“To create Mnemonic, I unearthed a selection of old recordings from both The Zarconiac and my eponymous hymns [2011] and repurposed them into ambient tracks, just like I did with the Mizmor song ‘Pareidolia’ (Wit’s End, 2022). I realized that there were many lamentful melodies in my old songs that I still love, despite the lo-fi quality. The idea was to create a nostalgic soundscape of inverted hymns, allowing the listener to explore the sounds of my past, obscured though they may be.” Drafts of these songs were originally published to Mizmor’s Patreon (currently inactive), one each month of the year 2024. The 12 songs were then edited down into the 10 that comprise this LP.”
About the aforementioned hymns, A.L.N. explains, “In my time as a Christian [2010-2012], I created an EP of original hymns. The life of this project was short and catalogued simply under my given name. I can count the number of people who have heard these songs on one hand. These were worship songs, but not in the traditional sense. These songs were full of melancholy, pleas of help to God. It was from precisely this prayerful place that the first Mizmor album was written not long after, when I lost my faith.”
Mnemonic: Ambient Mosaic releases June 27th on Profound Lore Records in a limited edition of 500 vinyl records and a limited edition of 100 hand-numbered cassettes (independently released by A.L.N.). Digital download and streaming will also be available.
Label Description: Tunes recorded to Fostex 280 4-track in Leeds between 1992 and 1994. Mastered by Antony Ryan at RedRedPaw in 2025. Cover art by Jermaine Legg.
Vestigial Returns from the Abyss with New Album “Descending Vastness”.
Italy’s Vestigial Breaks Years of Silence with a Hauntingly Cathartic Journey Into the Inner Void.
After years of dormancy, the enigmatic Italian project re-emerges with the long-awaited new album, a profound and immersive exploration of the human condition through sound. This album marks a visceral return to form, channeling the raw essence of inner torment and transcendence.
Though the project has remained largely silent, Vestigial has never truly ceased to exist. In moments when the spirit was haunted by helplessness, a spark of catharsis inevitably ignited. That spark has now coalesced into Descending Vastness—an atavistic, liberating chant echoing through the oppressive ruins of contemporary society. It is both a confrontation and a requiem, composed at the intersection of horror and serenity, destruction and renewal.
The album is a descent, a journey inward, into the deepest shadows of self and structure, where the grotesque and the sublime coexist. Yet within this vast inner descent lies a paradoxical glimpse of peace. That elusive serenity, always on the horizon, hints at an inevitable ascent: a transcendence beyond the constraints of human nature.
“Descending Vastness” is forged from fragments of time. Some tracks were written years ago; others have been reimagined, while many were reconstructed from remnants of vanished sessions. Despite, or because of, this fractured process, each composition stands as a vital part of the descent and a precursor to the ascent that follows.
Sonically, the album oscillates between moments of seraphic contemplation and devastating force. It is an immersive experience of contrasting extremes: ambient stillness disrupted by cataclysmic power, subtle textures giving way to monolithic intensity.
“Descending Vastness” is not merely an album, it is an invocation, a mirror, a ritual.
CD edition of 300 copies in 6 panel Digisleeve. 7 Tracks. Running Time 41:11
(Artefacts (Equations (Replicas))) is the third volume of the four part series.
The audio archaeology of the TLO archive continues. Outtakes, experiments and live jams from the past six years have been collaged together to form new works that are free from the conceptual restraints of the more focused album projects. A more intimate, playful and perhaps more emotional side is on display across the series. Collect them all!
Music For The Rest Of Us 