{"title":"Via Parigi","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"catalina-matorral","title":"Catalina Matorral","description":"\u003cp\u003eCatalina Matorral is a duo; Marion Cousin and Borja Flames make up its double head and four hands. At the beginning of the 2010s, they were called June et Jim -- they released some disturbing EPs before joining the label Le Saule (a small, chivalrous table whose holy grail is everything unheard, where folk- singing is avant-garde and avant-garde is synonymous with enchantment). Their first LP, \u003ci\u003eLes Forts \u003c\/i\u003e(2012), evoked the songwriting of indie-hobos inspired by Latin America, contributing to the rejuvenation of French music. \u003ci\u003eNoche Primera\u003c\/i\u003e (2013) went even further by vibrating in various reveries, from African songs to Spanish medieval music, from Purcell to Bach. It blew hot and cold under a psychedelic candlelight. The record in question has been maturing for seven years in eccentric barrels, marinating in the shadow of Marion and Borja's respective evolutions, nourished by their individual obsessions. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eMarion fixated on songs and dances from the Iberian Peninsula. This gave birth to a minimalistic, organic record featuring the cellist Gaspar Claus, where humming trembles among frowning pizzicatos, thin drones and throbbing arpeggios. She went on to release another album with the electronic duo Kaumwald, an oeuvre at the crossroads of vernacular narratives and experimental music, simmering everyday songs in an insolently modern production.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eMeanwhile, Borja leaned towards an intellectual, synthetic and furious pop; made two albums to awaken the dead, somewhere between Moondog and Battiato. They are two conceptual, electrifying and dance-inducing recordings for the phosphorescent masses. ...chimeric narration, heady verses, pop fragments, horizontal synths, distorted technologies. One would think they're listening to an opera composed by Robert Ashley or Laurie Anderson, based on an improbable libretto written by anthropologist Jeanne Favret-Saada, and performed by holograms of Brigitte Fontaine and Areski -- who unexpectedly regurgitate bits of blunt folk, binary jazz, baroque songs and ghostly madrigals. Micro-events, great enchantments\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Via Parigi","offers":[{"title":"CD","offer_id":50503957872971,"sku":"1146746","price":17.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/f9d03e6e-79e1-43f7-8d09-03f6271a2072_thumbnail_4096.jpg?v=1727800361"},{"product_id":"own-affairs-pz","title":"Own Affairs","description":"\u003cp\u003eThis is an album made during a crucial period in South Africa’s history during which there was a palpable feeling of a slow turning towards the collapse of the apartheid state side by side with an increasingly well-organised culture of resistance through the formation of the United Democratic Front (UDF) and various affiliated bodies. However, as a result, there was increased pushback from the state security establishment, a turning to dirty tricks and the formation of hit squads whose members murdered and tortured many of our friends and created chaos throughout South Africa as well as neighbouring countries. This album is situated in this political environment however it took advantage of the new do-it-yourself music technologies available at that time. Technologies that made it possible to make and release records without interference from traditional record company executives. Two musician friends of mine pooled their resources after their respective bands had broken up. Ivan Kadey (National Wake) and Lloyd Ross (Radio Rats) built an 8-track recording studio control room and fitted it out in a second hand caravan and called it Shifty. They parked it in a garage attached to the only house left in a demolished and derelict mining village near Soweto on the outskirts of Johannesburg. All the work on this album was completed there, mainly after hours and mostly alone where I enjoyed an exhilarating freedom to develop a whole new set of musical skills and ideas, incorporating my love of a wide range of music I’d grown up with. Influences of 1970s progressive\/kraut\/and psychedelic rock combined with mbaqanga bass styles, early reggae\/dub and Indian tabla rhythms. Stockhausen, early Zappa and Holgar Czukay were radio text and shredding influences, and Chris Cutler’s band Henry Cow \u0026amp; Art Bears helped me see a way to political expression. Mostly though was the exciting post-punk and no-wave music coming through to us from Europe and America: bands like This Heat, the Mekons, Raincoats, Sonic Youth and Pere Ubu were immensely important to me as was my reading from the period: J.M.Coetzee’s first 3 novels are strong influences on Free State Fence; the stark landscape, superstition, ritual, and sexual repression are in many of his settings. JG Ballard was a constant presence throughout that period, especially whilst living in such a surreal environment, surrounded by mine dumps, but mostly I think the whole French post-modern philosophical movement—Derrida, Foucault and of course, Baudrillard’s Simulacra and Simulation—set out a new sense of possibilities, possible ways to express oneself, ways to think, and ways to try and analyse the political intersection of public and private life. Most important at that time was the influence of sound recordings I had made and experiences garnered from working as a sound recordist on documentary films. These financed my work and later the studio and were consistent employment throughout the 1980s. Film work also enabled me to experience much of South Africa that was hidden from most. The track Independence Day is a good example; drawn from some time spent in the rural homeland of Venda. This then was the first full length Kalahari Surfers album, completed in summer of 1984 it was taken to EMI pressing plant but rejected by the cutting engineer as being \"\"political, pornographic and anti religious\"\". Chris Cutler at Recommended Records took up the challenge and released the album through his label. He wrote the original liner note Warrick Sony, 2025 Johannesburg.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Via Parigi","offers":[{"title":"LP - Black","offer_id":51843996189003,"sku":"R6493-6878","price":27.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/KalahariSurfers.jpg?v=1747667935"},{"product_id":"music-excitement-action-beauty","title":"Music Excitement Action Beauty","description":"\u003cp data-start=\"192\" data-end=\"277\"\u003eMeet Motherfuckers JMB \u0026amp; Co! J is for Jim, M is for Marc, B is for Brian.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"279\" data-end=\"635\"\u003eThe trio’s first full-length album, \u003cem data-start=\"315\" data-end=\"347\"\u003eMusic Excitement Action Beauty\u003c\/em\u003e, is a rocket of rhythm and atmosphere that fearlessly treks into vast sonic spaces. Drumbeats spread into constellations, bass pumps air into the sky, drones flare into clouds. Thick grooves drift in and out of focus, but a central force always guides the way as vapor trails shoot past.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"637\" data-end=\"1232\"\u003eDecades of musical archaeology lurk beneath this rainbow-hued swirl of psych, drone, improvisation, and ritual. Brian Weitz, on hurdy gurdy, brings 25 years of sonic experimentation as Geologist in Animal Collective. Jim Thomson, on drums, helped found Richmond art-metal legends GWAR, played in SST alums Alter-Natives, and currently fuels the rhythmic energy of Time Is Fire. Marc Minsker, handling bass, guitar, and harmonium, began his musical path in the early ’90s with Third Eye Lounge (who backed Eugene Chadbourne), and has since collaborated across the mid-Atlantic experimental scene.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"1234\" data-end=\"1632\"\u003eJMB formed through old-fashioned community connections, rooted in the fertile DIY soil of the DC\/Maryland\/Virginia experimental underground. They recorded \u003cem data-start=\"1389\" data-end=\"1421\"\u003eMusic Excitement Action Beauty\u003c\/em\u003e in a single afternoon at Tonal Park, with lights dimmed and incense and candles lit. Following a three-month break, Weitz returned to the sessions to trim and shape the improvisations into seamless transitions.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"1634\" data-end=\"1963\"\u003eThe album’s seven tracks cascade into one another, blending like melting scoops of ice cream. A communal energy flows through the music—not just from JMB’s bond, but from the broader circles they’ve been part of for years. There’s a reason there’s a “Co.” at the end of their name: this is music made by three, on behalf of many.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"1965\" data-end=\"2251\"\u003eAs Jim Thomson puts it: “Every group I’ve played with was usually organically formed and informed by the community and friendships in some ways. I was very attracted to playing with Marc and Brian because of the promise of repetition, drone, and psychedelia—and it delivered in spades.”\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Via Parigi","offers":[{"title":"LP - Black","offer_id":52301623132491,"sku":"R8964-5539","price":29.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/Screenshot2025-06-17at11.02.57PM.png?v=1750215791"}],"url":"https:\/\/shop.roughtrade.com\/collections\/via-parigi.oembed","provider":"Rough Trade","version":"1.0","type":"link"}