Since I became an avid music fan (some­thing I would say really started in high school), I’ve advo­cated fol­low­ing and trust­ing labels as much as the artists them­selves. Peo­ple ask me how I find out about new music. Aside from a few mag­a­zines and web­sites, I always say “I fol­low record labels” as one of my pri­mary meth­ods of hear­ing new music. You can’t really do that with the majors, but with smaller labels that have a strongly defined aes­thetic, you are rarely dis­ap­pointed. An early exam­ple of this for me would be Mo’Wax, who never really steered me wrong. A cou­ple years ago it was Morr Music, but as my tastes have changed over the last cou­ple years, I’ve been fol­low­ing Bully Records, Needle­work, Stones Throw, and the one that’s not like the oth­ers, Type Records. Type is run by Xela, an artist I’ve admired for a num­ber of years, and the label shows his wide-ranging and impec­ca­ble taste through­out. I’ve been on an auto­matic buy rou­tine with the label for the past year, and haven’t been dis­ap­pointed yet. With this the­ory of fol­low­ing labels, some­times one puts you onto some­thing that isn’t like the rest of the out­put, and is almost com­pletely in a type of music you are sur­prised to be buy­ing. From the descrip­tion, I wasn’t sure what Night of the Ankou would be like, but I bought it any­way on the strength of the label’s prior, and espe­cially recent, out­put. To be con­fronted with a quiet, somber ambi­ent drone with traces of eth­nic sounds was some­what shock­ing, but I lis­tened to the album 3 times the day I bought it, 3 times since then, and this was only 2 days ago. The North Sea & Rame­ses III is a col­lab­o­ra­tion between one group (Rame­ses III) and one artist (The North Sea aka Dig­i­talis), and as such com­bines two related but dis­parate worlds. Con­sist­ing of two long pieces plus one remix by Xela, Night of the Ankou uses elec­tron­ics and live instru­ments to cre­ate a very atmos­pheric and calm­ing world. Com­bined with the gor­geous pho­tog­ra­phy on the pack­ag­ing, you see in your mind’s eye a night­time walk through a grassy plain unen­cum­bered by the city, some­where untouched and mag­nif­i­cent. As you look up at the stars and breathe the air, a light gui­tar strums in the dis­tance, and you keep walk­ing, know­ing that there is a nat­ural magic around you… I’m link­ing to the mp3 excerpts that Type Records pro­vides on their web­site. I encour­age you to check this album out. You can pur­chase through their web­site, or at Bent Crayon and Boomkat. Enjoy.
“Death of the Ankou” | “Night Blos­soms Writ­ten In San­skrit” | “Return of the Ankou (Xela Remix)” (mp3 excerpts)