featured

Says Braddock, “I was inspired by Nigel Gavin who had recorded improvised loops every day for a year and chosen the best for his album, Music For Flem Vol. II (released by Monkey Records). I didn’t have any recording software or hardware back then so I borrowed a friend’s loop pedal and a mini disc player for a few days and recorded a bunch of loops. I made a few cassettes of the resulting tracks and sent them to friends but I always had the idea in the back of my mind to do something more with them one day. In 2012, not long after I moved to Berlin, I bought a piano and decided to add piano parts to two of the tracks. You can actually hear my son coming in on the piece Letting Go while I was playing and saying “music, music” when he was about 18 months old.

Predictably I got sidetracked again and I only finished the tracks in early 2021 while recovering from a bout of covid. My mood was quite sombre as I was feeling very isolated so it was the perfect time to come back to these pieces which are all quite melancholy. Because the original loops were recorded without a click track, the overdubs were all done pretty much live, no cut and paste, which adds a more organic feel to the tracks. There’s also unusual phrasing, for example the original loop for Worms is five bars which gives the track a feel of uneasiness. This is entirely appropriate given the track is named after a nightmare I once had of being dead and buried in the ground but still conscious while worms and other insects devoured my flesh. The tracks are mostly instrumental but track two features vocals from Kathryn van Beek who I was in a band with called Peachy Keen at the time.”

In Love With These Hills is the first of six planned EPs for the coming year which will chart Broad Oak’s progress as a composer and musician over the last twenty years. Since the founding of his label he has been making his own music but always ended up prioritising other artists over his own output. That all changed in 2019 when, faced with ever dwindling returns from streaming, he decided not to sign any new artists to the label and concentrate on his own material and collaborations. He now has eight different musical projects underway including a band with his son (Cosmo and the Cosmonaut), a project with a rapper from New York (The Mung Beings) and an upcoming solo piano album.

Braddock is also very interested in collaborating with AI and the cover for the EP comes from online AI art generator DALL-E. The AI generated music video by WZRD for Worms Ate My Flesh, the first single from the EP, has been selected for fourteen film festivals and recently scooped the Best Music Video and Best AI graphics at the AI International Film Festival.

Lazy Boy is the third single from NY/Berlin-based band The Mung Beings and is a dub-inflected protest song against racism.

Saadiah Fowlkes, the rapper/vocalist from the band had this to say about the song:

“Lazy Boy is, essentially a coming of age story, detailing how painful It was for me growing up as a black boy in America. I talk about how, as a result of the systemic racism that is still all too pervasive in America, I would often feel thwarted in my efforts to live up to my full potential. How it felt to be unseen, unheard, and misunderstood. How frustrating it was for people not to see the fullness of my being, and how harmful it is to a person’s self-esteem when they are reduced to a stereotype. Ultimately, I would say that the message of the song is that there is only one race, the human race, and we should not allow ourselves to be reduced to stereotypes. I feel that the song is especially relevant, particularly in light of the BLM movement and the worldwide protests against police brutality in America. There’s even some footage in the video of me marching at one of the many protests that took place here in my hometown of Brooklyn. So my hope is that the song will resonate with POCs, for whom racism is a part of their daily experience, and promote empathy and understanding amongst non-POCs, many of whom are only beginning to understand what it feels like to inhabit the skin I’m in.”

The video features photos of Saad from his childhood interspersed with footage from Black Lives Matter protests and a psychedelic video montage from fellow band member Allan Thomasson.

A Berlin-based father and son electronic music duo, Cosmo and the Cosmonaut released their debut album, Ultra Mega, in August 2019.

Featuring songs about climate change, the stupidity of war and not wanting to go to school, Ultra Mega addresses some of the most important issues facing kids (and adults) today. It’s not all about serious topics though; Ultra Mega Yum Yum is a celebration of their favourite food and I Like Water is a gargled anthem to H2O.

“A couple of songs also function as a form of therapy, for example the Shut Up Song”, explains the Cosmonaut. “Cosmo was going through a phase of telling me to shut up so I said, hey let’s write a song about that and you can tell me to shut up as much as you like. Now he gets the satisfaction of telling me to shut up a bunch of times whenever we play that song. We Are the Dumbheads was a reaction to a situation where Cosmo ended up feeling bad and calling himself a dumbhead and I said no, I’m the dumbhead for not anticipating that situation (which I should have). In the song, being a dumbhead becomes something positive and silly.”

Regarding the inspiration for the songs, “A lot of them began while riding our bikes around our neighbourhood. I would sing the bassline or do some beatboxing and Cosmo would rap on top. In the beginning, I was writing most of the music and lyrics but towards the end, Cosmo was coming up with some great ideas. He also plays keyboards and recorder on a couple of tracks.”

The Cosmonaut is a musician and producer and just happens to have a recording studio set up in his lounge so recording was an uncomplicated affair. “There was always a mic set up ready to go for whenever we felt creatively inspired”, says the Cosmonaut. Recording of the second album is already well underway. “We’re planning to release an album a year.”
It’s no coincidence that the Ultra Mega album begins with the words of 15 year old climate activist Greta Thunberg, “You’re never too small to make a difference”. “She made a big impression on us,” says the Cosmonaut, “and we thought if we record these songs and even if just one person hears them and makes some positive changes, then we will have made a difference.”

In the closing song of the album, This Is the End, eight year old Cosmo and his dad sing “Be kind to all, that’s our message.” Sounds like a mantra worth repeating.