New Music | Maetar

A great album unfolds like a journey to a place you’ve never been. From the early anticipation as you pack up the bus, to the trials and tribulations along the way, the story unfolds as your own. And so we sit back and cue up Love Dub & The Abstract One Drop form the Los Angeles band Maetar (may'-tar).

Brothers Itai Disraeli and Hagai Lev-Shalem Izraeli grew up on the pastoral Kibutz Mishmar Haemak in Israel, which their grandfather co-founded in the 1920s in the valley of Megido. In their childhoods, it was ‘a place of wonder" - a verdant valley of fertile fields, fruit trees, and pine forests. They were taught to speak both Hebrew and Arabic, and to live in peace with their neighbors. They began making music at the respective ages of six and four as their whole family gathered for weekly jams around their grandfather’s table. In addition to his official forestry work, their grandfather was a gifted natural musician and a popular poet whose work is part of the canon of early Israeli folk music to this day.

Richard Fultineer landed in Los Angeles from his native Pennsylvania in the 1990s, just as a vibrant worldbeat scene was beginning to flower in the local clubs. He met African musicians, master drummers, kora players, brass players, and traditional dancers. He studied Yoruban drumming with master talking drummer Frances Awe, and toured with him in South Korea, Canada and the U.S. for music cultural exchange programs and performances.

With a central ethos of freedom and flow in music, Maetar effortlessly traverse vast stylistic ground as they marry smart jazz grooves with imaginative, challenging sonic explorations in psychedelia, funk, ambience, and electronica, as well as subtle classical references and world music flavors. The three musicians are virtuosic, commanding their instruments with mastery and innovation, but the true essence of Maetar is the profound connection, respect, and chemistry they share -- the spaces they leave for each other, and their deeply intuitive interplay.

Love Dub & The Abstract One Drop is out now, with the full Double collector’s CD available now. We recommend that you set aside some time for the journey, without consideration of the final destination.

New Music | Steve Dyer

Our fresh new collab with AfricArise kicks off with a legendary elder of the South African music scene. Steve Dyer was born in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa, and after his music education he joined others in refusing military subscription and lived in Botswana. It was there that he came into contact with the exile sounds blowing through the horns of Hugh Masekela and Jonas Gwangwa. In 1990 he joined the Amandla cultural ensemble of the ANC on a 7 week tour of Japan. With South African democracy on the horizon Dyer returned to South Africa in 1993.

‘Steve Dyer believes that no single culture owns the monopoly on human wisdom.  Every human life born into whatever culture, ethnicity or spiritual belief system has the same value.’

Steve Dyer has released 9 albums, including the critically acclaimed “Genesis of a Different World” in 2019. He conceptualised the Southern African supergroup Mahube, and has extensive producing experience including 6 albums for Oliver Mtukudzi (1998-2002) including the seminal Tuku music, as well as directing large and small scale concerts on the African continent and abroad.

Steve Dyer brings real experience in the journey of composing and performing music through turbulent times, keeping a steady eye and hand on the true nature of music and its importance for humanity. His new album is titled Enhlizweni - song stories from my Heartland, a chronicle of his commitment to the culture that helped forge his path. His album is the first in our partnership with City Of Gold Arts and AfricArise - an organization committed to celebrating and advocating for the music of Africa.

New Music | SNBS

Mad Dream, the fourth Sued Nandayapa Bergmann Saunders album on Ropeadope Sur, is unmistakably a counterweight to their pandemic-era third album While it Lasts, an album that was somehow completely crafted through distance recording and email threads. Convening in person for the first time in three years, the band could once again play concerts and record music together. The improvisation-focused group dynamic, having recently been carefully simulated (albeit with fascinating results) through audio production massage tactics, returned—via this reengagement with proximity and simultaneity—to being a regular old group dynamic. Enjoying each other’s musical company—again making sounds together in comfortable spaces—the members of the ensemble resumed their natural scope of activity: trying things and experiencing (in real time) the consequences of their shared artistic impulses.

Sometimes the jams land. A string of concerts across Texas in November of 2022 were recorded. Most of the songs—each intended, primarily, as a vessel for conversation and exploration—were recorded several times. This album captures the favorite takes from this period—a collection of one-time events and morphologies.

New Music | Gegè Telesforo

The man, the legend that brought us one of our all time favorite albums - Fun Slow Ride - is back in the game. As a curator of quality music and people, Gegè Telesforo has consistently brought together some of the finest players in Jazz and R & B, and now he’s back at it with some of the top young guns in Italy and a brand new album dubbed Big Mama Legacy.

‘With this new album, I wanted to finally celebrate my passion for the blues, to express my gratitude by producing an album with original compositions, perhaps more blues in spirit rather than in substance. "Big Mama" is Mother Africa with all its rhythms, its voices, its sound spices and all its beautiful diversities. It is the Blues with its joyful and heartbreaking sound at the same time, as well as the universal language of Jazz.’

Big Mama Legacy swings, it howls, it cries and laughs - all with a very comfortable groove. This is the blues through a seasoned, sophisticated lens, with players that can handle every twist and turn. The core band is Gegè with Giovanni Cutello, Matteo Cutello, Vittorio Solimene, Christian Mascetta, Luca Bulgarelli, and Michele Santoleri, with special guests Greta Panettieri, and Domenico Sanna. Big Mama Legacy is due out on March 1!