News | Constellation Records

COMING SOON

	TransitAUTOMATISME180gLP / DL
CST135	pre-order

	Plurality TripJOYFULTALK180gLP / DL
CST134	pre-order

OUT NOW

	Bush LadyAlanis ObomsawinCD /180gLP / DL
CST133	order

	QuieterCarla Bozulich180gLP / DL
CST132	order

	Slowly ParadiseEric Chenaux180gLP / DL
CST131	order

	Stand Above The StreamsJason Sharp180gLP / DL
CST130	order

	Pissing StarsEfrim Manuel Menuck180gLP / DL
CST129	order

	Mechanics Of DominionEsmerineCD / 180gLP / DL
CST128	order

	2Off World 180gLP / DL
CST127	order

	"Luciferian Towers"Godspeed You! Black Emperor CD / 180gLP / DL
CST126	order

	SelflessJoni VoidCD / 180gLP / DL
CST125	order

	Pools Of LightJessica MossCD / 180gLP / DL
CST124	order

	A Common TruthSaltlandCD / 180gLP / DL
CST123	order

	The Infected MassThose Who Walk AwayCD / 180gLP / DL
CST122	order

	Pas pire pop, I Love You So MuchAvec Le Soleil Sortant De Sa Bouche CD / 180gLP / DL
CST121	order

	Stubborn Persistent IllusionsDo Make Say ThinkCD / 2x180gLP / DL
CST120	order

RECENT

	A Boat Upon Its BloodJason Sharp CD / 180gLP / DL
CST119	order

	Momentform AccumulationsAutomatisme CD / 180gLP / DL
CST118	order

	1Off World CD / 180gLP / DL
CST117	order

	Lost VoicesEsmerine CD / 180gLP / DL
CST116	order

	Sun Coming DownOught CD / 180gLP / DL
CST115	order

	If He Dies, If If If If If IfJerusalem In My Heart CD / 180gLP / DL
CST114	order

	Never were the way she wasColin Stetson and Sarah Neufeld CD / 180gLP / DL
CST113	order

	SkullsplitterEric Chenaux CD / 180gLP / DL
CST112	order

	'Asunder, Sweet and Other Distress'Godspeed You! Black Emperor CD / 180gLP / DL
CST111	order

	COIN COIN Chapter Three: river run theeMatana Roberts CD / 180gLP / DL
CST110	order

	NervousSiskiyou CD / 180gLP / DL
CST109	order

	Once More With Feeling...Ought 10" / DL
CST108	order

	Last ExLast Ex CD / 180gLP / DL
CST107	order

	Zubberdust!Avec le soleil sortant de sa bouche CD / 180gLP / DL
CST106	order

	Hang On To Each OtherThee SIlver Mt. ZIon Memorial Orchestra 150gEP / DL
CST105	order

	Shortwave NightsHiss Tracts CD / 180gLP / DL
CST104	order

	More Than Any Other DayOught CD / 180gLP / DL
CST103	order

	BoyCarla Bozulich CD / 180gLP / DL
CST102	order

	Spaced Out EPSandro Perri 180gEP / DL
CST101	order

	Fuck Off Get Free We Pour Light On EverythingThee SIlver Mt. ZIon Memorial Orchestra CD / 180gLP / DL
CST099	order

	COIN COIN Chapter Two: Mississippi MoonchileMatana Roberts CD / 180gLP / DL
CST098	order

	The Big MangoLand of Kush CD / 180gLP / DL
CST097	order

	DalmakEsmerine CD / 180gLP / DL
CST096	order

	Hero BrotherSarah Neufeld CD / 180gLP / DL
CST095	order

	I Thought It Was Us But It Was All Of UsSaltland CD / 180gLP / DL
CST094	order

	Mo7it Al-Mo7itJerusalem In My Heart CD / 180gLP / DL
CST093	order

	New History Warfare Vol. 3: To See More LightColin Stetson CD / 2x180gLP / DL
CST092	order

	Transit of VenusHangedup & Tony Conrad 180gLP/ DL
CST091	order

	Affaires ÉtrangèresPacha 180gLP/ DL
CST090	order

	Vamp IreKanada 70 180gLP/ DL
CST089	order

	Guitar & VoiceEric Chenaux CD / 180gLP / DL
CST088	order

	DevastatesElfin Saddle CD / 180gLP / DL
CST087	order

	The Something RainTindersticks CD / 180gLP / DL
CST086	order

	Impossible SpacesSandro Perri CD / 180gLP / DL
CST085	order

	Those Who Didn't RunColin Stetson 10" / DL
CST084	order

	Keep Away the DeadSiskiyou CD / 180gLP / DL
CST083	order

	In Animal TongueEvangelista CD / 180gLP / DL
CST082	order

	'ALLELUJAH! DON'T BEND! ASCEND! Godspeed You! Black Emperor 180gLP+7"/ CD / DL
CST081	order

393

Out Now: Carla Bozulich's Quieter

Carla Bozulich

Quieter

CST132 180gLP / DL Out 11 May 2018

ORDER HERE

Today we celebrate the release of Carla Bozulich's new album Quieter, a finely curated group of songs spanning her rich variety of collaborations over the past several years. Critics are already hailing the record as one of the best of her career - which is really saying something, given the top-notch quality of her extensive back catalog - and we couldn't agree more.

"Her work carries great emotional heft and immediacy, in a way that heady experimentation often struggles with; it often seems to come from some raw rift in the heart, full of the ugliness of loss and grief and alienation... This gorgeous album, which deserves to have time spent with it in the same way all of Bozulich’s work does, will get her one step further to the center of the conversation when it comes to lifetime achievement in the experimental world." - Bandcamp, Album of the Day

"Bozulich has built her reputation by celebrating everything non-traditional for years, often to gloriously resolute and raucous effect, but on Quieter, she lets her mastery of delicate intimacy shine as she taps into an eternal, cold 2AM mood that few can." - Tiny Mix Tapes, 9/10

"Like Bozulich herself, Quieter is larger than life... This is an unforgettable, virtuoso performance." - Exclaim!, 8/10

"Four decades into her consistently overlooked career, Bozulich is at her peak. 2014’s Boy was great, but this is greater: from the blasted torch song opener "Let It Roll," via more fractured, abstract pieces like "Written In Smoke" and "Stained In Grace," to the Marc Ribot duet that closes (where Bozulich channels Julie London and Ute Lemper and you can see the curling cigarette smoke), Quieter doesn’t put a foot wrong." - NARC Magazine, 5/5

"Bozulich is as good as any Nick Cave or Tom Waits, and more than deserves to be revered as much as they are. When even her off-cuts are this good, there shouldn’t be any doubt." - Norman Records

"I am going to return to this record, repeatedly, like a kept promise. Perhaps when the shadows lengthen and the skies grey over again. It will become that record to me. I believe when the tear streaks dry and the dust settles, Quieter will go down as one of my favourite records of the year. It’s durable. It’s lasting. It’s timeless." - Bearded Magazine

ORDER QUIETER @ CST WEBSHOP

ORDER QUIETER @ BANDCAMP

Audiophile 180gram pressing in midnight ultra-black vinyl from Optimal (Germany) comes in a 350gsm jacket with artworked inner sleeve and 12"x24" poster, all printed on uncoated papers and board, with a 320kbps MP3 download card.

TRACKLIST
1. Let It Roll
2. Sha Sha
3. Glass House
4. Stained In Grace
5. Emilia
6. Written In Smoke
7. End Of The World

Release date: 11 May 2018
Running time: 38:11

Eric Chenaux shares new video for "An Abandoned Rose"

Leading up to a series of live dates throughout France, Eric Chenaux is thrilled to share the video for "An Abandoned Rose" from his new album Slowly Paradise. Filmed by longtime collaborator Eric Cazdyn at the Ballaro Street Market, a centre of migrant and refugee activism in Palermo, Italy, it relies on Cazdyn's innovative techniques – including a homemade multi-camera, rotating rig that he calls The Blindspot Machine – to capture the minute interactions of everyday life in a slow and detailed pan that's been spliced with momentary bursts of colour and glimpses into one particular migrant narrative. It's a perfect visual counterpart to "An Abandoned Rose," with its deliberate pacing that matches the tangled guitar and crooning vocals while highlighting the understated compositional beauty that Eric Chenaux has become renowned for.

Watch "An Abandoned Rose"

ERIC CHENAUX SPRING & SUMMER 2018 DATES

DD/MM/YY	PLACE	VENUE
11.05.18	Périgueux, FR	SEspace Culturel François Mitterand
12.05.18	Allemans, FR	Café L'Arsenic
13.05.18	Toulouse, FR	Le Taquin
19.05.18	Sarreguemines, FR	Le Terminus
23.05.18	Berlin, DE	Kiezsalon
02.06.18	Tarbes, FR	Celtic Pub
03.06.18	Labège, FR	Maison Salvan
30.06.18	Poitiers, FR	Le Confort Moderne, Festival Bruisme

Praise for Slowly Paradise:

"This is a remarkable record - it is wildly experimental and as comforting as a soft embrace. The way he takes from the singer-songwriter tradition and from the avant-garde somehow enables him to avoid the pitfalls of both, leaving him free to sculpt his own deeply idiosyncratic vision for songwriting. The most interesting art almost always has a sense of duality, and Slowly Paradise is no different; where it radically differs is in the lack of combat between those opposing forces. Chenaux’s love for Sade, for example, in no way contradicts or confuses his love for Derek Bailey. This all-encompassing spirit coalesces on closing track and highlight ‘Wild Moon’, where Chenaux's voice is at its most rapturous, over Driver's restrained but romantic Hammond organ lines, all interwoven with some of the most perplexing guitar workouts on the record. This album is truly his strongest yet, and this closing song is his zenith." - The Quietus, Lead Album Review

"This voice is perhaps the funnel for this unfurling of thought, where the splay of feeling is consolidated into phrases. His tone is soft, verging on a whisper, as though straddling the boundary between inner thoughts and outward articulation. Sometimes it falls silent, allowing stuttering stylophones or trembling guitars to carry the monologue forth, alternating between the poetry of language and that which spirals away from what the voice can express. I imagine Chenaux to be daydreaming in these moments, as these instrument solos – sometimes chiming like bells, sometimes melting like wax – paint pictures in the air, trying to enact the images that stream through the mind, vivid and beautiful, yet also fluid and unexplainable." - Attn:Magazine

"His sixth for Constellation favours longform songs that highlight both his sweet, unfussy pop voice and its unique relationship to his experimental guitar work, with avant electronics and billowing open spaces...The 11-minute, Robert Wyatt-ish "Wild Moon" - with its woozy keys and extreme fretwork building to a quivering peak - stands out, but sensual beauty abounds." - Uncut

Eric Chenaux
Slowly Paradise

CST131 180gLP • CD • DL

Album Info & Order Link

Drawing from Eric Chenaux's rich history in avant-folk, post-jazz, improvisation and balladry, Slowly Paradise is a lovely collection of mostly long songs guided by soothing, buttery singing and bent, fried fretwork. Chenaux grapples with the relationship between improvisation and structure in unique, idiosyncratic ways, and the resulting juxtaposition of his mellow, dexterous crooning and his highly experimental (and equally dexterous) guitar explorations, explodes even unconventional notions of singing and accompaniment, of tonal and timbral interplay between guitar and voice. This stunning new record, showcasing Chenaux's singular voice and guitar stylings, is being celebrated as the most assured and essential solo work from this inimitable, consummate songwriter.

Joni Void celebrates 1st anniversary of Selfless by sharing previously unreleased album outtakes & digital 12" split with Automatisme

It's tough to believe it's been a full year since the release of Selfless - time flies when you're having fun, right? - but sure enough, the album is celebrating its anniversary this weekend. To commemorate this special occasion, Joni Void is offering up a new batch of carefully-crafted tracks. The prolific Montreal-based artist has been busy churning out new content, both on his own and with various collaborators, and the fruits of his labour are now out in the world for lucky fans to enjoy.

In true JV form, each of these new offerings draws from a particular source and incorporates elements from new creative partnerships. "Défaire le Visage" is based on/samples Natasha Young's "Beauty Is A Capitalist Construct But Then Again What Isn't," rife with samples of beauty products and a subtle excerpt of Luc Ferrari's "Presque Rien Avec Les Filles" in the final section. "Your Selves" is pieced together from a recording of a drum solo by JS, sampled during a rehearsal leading up to the Selfless album launch. The final track, "Ave Maria," was originally slated to be the final track on Selfless. Built from a single piano loop sampled from Clara Rockmore's "Ave Maria" stretched to 10 bpm interspersed with crowd sounds, it's a classic example of Joni Void's masterful processing techniques and his ability to rework tiny musical pieces into a singular, gorgeous whole.

Stream all three outtakes from Selfless in a playlist below:

JV has also been working with fellow Constellation electronic artist Automatisme on a project that finds each of them remixing the other's work for a new digital 12" split. Great things happen when these two creative forces meet, as this collaboration clearly attests:

Finally, Joni Void will be performing in Montréal and Saint-Hyacinthe this spring. For the Delia Derbyshire Day event, he'll be playing the track Li De La. The piece is almost entirely made from samples of Delia Derbyshire's 'Circle Of Light' and 'Shock Chords,' expanding upon the inspiration Joni Void draws from Derbyshire's aesthetics and techniques in a distinctly concrete way.

JONI VOID SPRING 2018 DATES

DD/MM/YY	PLACE	VENUE
05.05.18	Montréal, QC	Concordia University (Delia Derbyshire Day)
12.05.18	Montréal, QC	La lumière collective (with Automatisme)
13.05.18	Saint-Hyacinthe, QC	Librairie St-Germain (with Automatisme)

Joni Void

Selfless

CST131 180gLP • CD • DL

Album Info & Order Link

Acclaim for Selfless:

"Selfless absolutely judders with physicality and viscera." – Pitchfork 7.7

“An endearingly head-spinning debut release of textured, pulsating plunderphonics… It’s quite simply a wildly imaginative ride, one of the most intriguing things we’ve heard on Constellation. Recommended!" – Boomkat

“With sounds that increasingly shatter expectations, Selfless provides an intimate look at a new player on the scene and a portrait of a chameleonic contemporary spirit." – Exclaim 8/10

"Selfless is largely a successful experiment in that it becomes very difficult to tell just where Joni Void ends and his sources and collaborators begin. A fascinating little piece of art." – PopMatters

Matana Roberts Kicks Off OUTLANDS UK Tour and Shares Whitney Residency Footage

Matana Roberts and British sound artist/improviser Kelly Jayne Jones are about to embark on the first in a series of special live shows programmed by OUTLANDS, a new national experimental music touring network.

Roberts and Jones are two artists from disparate backgrounds, finding affinity in practices charged by fiercely personal philosophies on sound. Both artists embrace improvisation, resist accepted narratives of sound, are community-minded and believe in democratic, shared, free-music making that erodes barriers. In other words, they perfectly embody what OUTLANDS is striving for.

Together, the duo will weave their own approaches into live collaborative works informed by deeply expressive playing, tactile electro-acoustic interplay and a broader shared politics of resistance/defiance. As part of the OUTLANDS initiative, this tour will feature an interconnected engagement program that will shine a light on the intriguing artistic processes and personalities involved in adventurous music forms, as well encouraging new audiences to experience this art form.

For more info, see the OUTLANDS Website or Constellation's previous OUTLANDS post.

Photo: Filip Wolak

Leading up to the OUTLANDS, Matana Roberts is thrilled to share unreleased footage from her 2015 residency at the Whitney Museum of American Art. During the residency, Roberts engaged in a series of open-ended public explorations that ultimately resulted in a series of research-based sound excavations entitled i call america. Combining sound, video, and visual scores during a five-day open studio in the theatre, she examined “the perplexities of what it means to be American in the twenty-first century” in her trademark innovative fashion.

For their final event of 2015, the Whitney invited Roberts back with a full band of exceptional players to help ring in the new year. That New Year's Eve celebration is a testament to Matana's strength as a creative leader; in a room full of incredible musical talent, she remains squarely at the helm, steering the course into new territory with exuberance and grace. Watch footage of this stunning performance below:

Carla Bozulich shares new single "Sha Sha"

LISTEN ON SPOTIFY

LISTEN ON APPLE MUSIC

LISTEN ON SOUNDCLOUD

The second track of Carla Bozulich's new album Quieter, "Sha Sha" is a joint effort from the brilliant quartet The Night Porter. Consisting of Carla along with Ches Smith (drums, vibes), Jessica Catron (cello), and Shahzad Ismaily (bass), The Night Porter – which falls between Scarnella and Evangelista in Carla's extensive musical timeline – crafted gorgeously melodic earworms and "Sha Sha" is a fine example of their musical chemistry. Carla describes the group as being "thick as thieves" and one listen to this elegantly spacious yet tightly-crafted track leaves no doubt that this collaboration really is something special.

Quieter is a collection of tracks spanning different stages and collaborations from Carla's rich creative history. From the shimmering "Glass House" to the unflinching opening track "Let It Roll" (which Carla calls the most honest work she's ever done), it's a powerful curated offering from one of the most uncompromising artists in contemporary music.

STREAM THE FIRST TWO ADVANCE SINGLES FROM QUIETER:

"Glass House" (with Freddy Ruppert)

"Let It Roll" (with Marc Ribot)

From the liner notes for Quieter:
"The cover of the album is a cool pic, sure as hell. But to me, it just looks like tour. Tour is just another job where if you do it long enough you get hurt here and there. In 2014 I lost my hearing completely (temporarily) in 1 ear. I kept playing, as always with injury on tour. After all, it is the law of averages. We all know it. Play more than 100 concerts a year doing 90% of the work alone, injuries are occasional. Well, it was a loud tour—a loud set every nite. It was strange for the volume to be cut in half. I cannot play with ear plugs, I was swirling sound every nite like falling but still refusing to behave—sit still—or even cancel. And boy, it was freaky QUIETER. This photo is from one Otolaryngologist I saw in Austria right before the concert in Graz. His treatment was to put me in a 50s Soviet style scalding hot head-heat-box for 20 minutes. After a while I got bored and took some selfies. They came out exactly like this. Thus the cover. It was a Quieter time for me, like—in the van Mats Gustafsson sounded like cherry ice cream. Finally quiet in the fucking van. I couldn’t understand what was happening unless I turned my head. I completely stopped listening to people talk. Strange concerts. Le Guess Who was a highlite—very like thrashing through the air, as the numerous monitors seemed to be alive and spinning. Eventually I cleared it but not after several promoters kindly took me to crackpot doctors who did silly things. This is a nice deaf pic for the Quieter album. To me it just looks pretty like tour: still a fantastic job to have." – CB

Carla Bozulich

Quieter

CST132 180gLP / DL Out 11 May 2018

PREORDER HERE

Legendary art-punk singer, songwriter and sound artist Carla Bozulich (The Geraldine Fibbers, Ethyl Meatplow, Evangelista) follows up her tremendous and acclaimed 2014 album Boy with a new collection of powerful, intensely atmospheric, emotive songs rounded up from various recent collaborations.

Quieter features guest appearances from a wide range of collaborators including Marc Ribot, Sarah Lipstate (Noveller), Shahzad Ismaily, Ches Smith, Freddy Ruppert, Andrea Belfi, and Jhno.

As Carla Bozulich enters her fourth decade of uncompromising, unceasing devotion to art-punk ethics and creativity, the nomadic singer-composer-writer-artist has recently been hanging her hat back in Los Angeles. After years of tireless vagabondage in pursuit of DIY performance opportunities wherever they might take her — and following her extraordinary, widely acclaimed 2014 album Boy — Bozulich has lately found herself a bit more settled in one place, keeping busy with a number of archival and reissue projects.

Her first (and classic) 2003 solo album Red Headed Stranger was re-released by Folktale Records in 2016 and her mid-90s band The Geraldine Fibbers’ equally classic 1995 album Lost Somewhere Between The Earth And My Home was reissued on Jealous Butcher Records in 2017. Carla also penned the devastatingly poetic and powerful rape-survival essay “Thanks, Motherfucker” for The Quietus in 2016. And of course she’s continued playing venues small and large, including OFF Festival in 2017, opening for Godspeed You! Black Emperor in 2015, and for Swans at their farewell NYC shows in 2017.

This recent period has also found Bozulich reflecting on 25+ years of life on the road, the labour and hustle of DIY touring, with its ecstasies, agonies, succour and sacrifice: “still a fantastic job to have” as Carla writes in the liner notes to her new album Quieter.

Quieter is an enchanting collection of previously orphaned and one-off tracks, ranging from the searching, searing opener “Let It Roll” – “the most honest work I’ve ever done” says Carla – to the chiming, deconstructed lullabies of “Glass House” (composed by Ruppert) and “Sha Sha” (with her mid-2000s project The Night Porter) and the album’s sultry closing track “End Of The World” (a duet with Ribot, who penned the song), Quieter is a brilliant addition to Bouzlich’s impressively diverse, adventurous, and unwaveringly authentic body of work. Thanks for listening.

CarlaBozulich2014-JenniferKitnerB

Photo: Jennifer Kitner

Praise for Carla Bozulich's 2014 album Boy:

"It’s another glorious achievement for an artist who has created so much amazing art since arriving into the world fully formed way back in 1982. Long may she run." - Paste

"Perhaps Carla Bozulich's most essential record... Boy is a living, gasping, impassioned/dispassionate grapple with existence. It patiently yet economically moves through melody and rhythm to walking, dancing, convulsing, and fleshing the fuck out." - Tiny Mix Tapes

"Bozulich’s vocals are so forceful and transfixing, in fact, that it's easy to overlook her skill as an arranger and sound artist. Playing the majority of the instruments herself, Bozulich specializes in creating combinations of sounds and textures that continually loosen the songs' moorings... Bozulich uses the vernacular song forms of country, blues, and yes, even “pop”, to tap into something that feels much more elemental, a vein of primitive emotion that feels like it could pre-date the notion of musical genres entirely."
- Pitchfork

"A landscape where Tom Waits and Michael Gira enjoy critical tongue-baths ought to make room for Carla." - NME

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