{"title":"Mushroom Hour Half Hour","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eFounded in 2012 as a vinyl-only show on a friend’s pirate radio station, \u003ci\u003eMushroom Hour Half Hour\u003c\/i\u003e has since evolved into a unique Johannesburg-based, Experimental Recording Imprint.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe label began as a passion project, showcasing the best of underground music through their radio show. Over time, they expanded their reach and started releasing their own music. With an emphasis on experimentation and pushing boundaries, \u003ci\u003eMushroom Hour Half Hour\u003c\/i\u003e quickly gained recognition for their innovative sound.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eToday, the label is home to a diverse roster of talented artists who are constantly challenging conventions and exploring new sonic territories. From ambient electronic to avant-garde jazz, \u003ci\u003eMushroom Hour Half Hour\u003c\/i\u003e offers a wide range of genres that cater to the eclectic tastes of music enthusiasts worldwide.\u003c\/p\u003e","products":[{"product_id":"buffering-juju","title":"buffering juju","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003ebuffering juju,\u003c\/i\u003e the title of dumama + kechou’s debut album, relates to the process of “excavating spiritually charged content from within”. The duo’s textural sound, driven by cyclical song structures and chant making, not only captures the angst of the modern world but mines this state of affairs for regenerative potential.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003edumama (vocalist and uhadi player) + kechou (multiinstrumentalist with a focus on indigenous African instruments and handmade instruments) met in Cape Town in 2017. There was an instinctive pulse to the initial clutch of shows they played together, blowing open vast sonic and conceptual possibilities. “I guess we were in similar places with our music processes in trying to push healing music to the edges and be more experimental with it,” says dumama. The narrative of the album unravels as a piece of magical realism informed by South African folklore and reality, detailing a woman’s liberation story where the characters shift shape and traverse multiple realms, deploying various iterations of their power or lack thereof. “It has an organic, natural, cyber and modern kind of energy - all rooted in African aesthetics of sound and storytelling,” says kechou. All of this sits on a bed of the duo’s unique musical language, one that, although applied electronically in the form of looping and soundscaping, is founded on approaches to string, vocal and percussion tones that reflect a merger between Northern and Southern African heritage.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eRecorded primarily in Cape Town and Johannesburg over the first quarter of 2019, buffering juju is a conduit to a past we were not necessarily present for, and a future where threatened indigenous technologies thrive in an increasingly digitised world\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Mushroom Hour Half Hour","offers":[{"title":"LP","offer_id":50455653581131,"sku":"1086716","price":22.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/3099dd18-68e2-4810-b48e-120e8eb4ff46_thumbnail_4096.jpg?v=1727193232"},{"product_id":"group-theory-black-music","title":"Group Theory: Black Music","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eGroup Theory: Black Music\u003c\/i\u003e is a stunning new statement from South African drummer and composer Tumi Mogorosi. Standing in the lineage of South African greats such as Louis MoholoMoholo, Makaya Ntshoko and Ayanda Sikade, Mogorosi is one of the foremost drummers working anywhere in the world, with a flexible, powerful style that brings a distinctive South African inflection to the polyrhythmic tradition of Elvin Jones, Max Roach and Art Blakey. Since his international debut on Jazzman Records in 2014 with Project ELO, Mogorosi has been in the vanguard of the South African creative music scene’s burgeoning outernational dimension, taking the drummer’s chair in both Shabaka Hutchings’ Shabaka and The Ancestors formation and with avant-garde noiseniks The Wretched, who featured on Brownswood’s acclaimed South African showcase, Indaba Is.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWhere \u003ci\u003eGroup Theory: Black Music\u003c\/i\u003e moves an established format dramatically forward is in the addition of a nine-person choir. Their massed voices soar powerfully above every track as a collective instrument of human breath and body, and enter the album into the small but significant number of radical recordings to have used the voice in this way, such as Max Roach’s It’s Time, Andrew Hill’s Lift Every Voice, Billy Harper’s Capra Black, and Donald Byrd’s I’m Trying To Get Home.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Mushroom Hour Half Hour","offers":[{"title":"Black | LP","offer_id":50481595875659,"sku":"1154743","price":22.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"CD","offer_id":50481596563787,"sku":"1154742","price":12.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/51acf87a-287c-4953-9e21-b8d8259ac5ef_thumbnail_4096.jpg?v=1727541732"},{"product_id":"on-our-own-clock","title":"On Our Own Clock","description":"\u003cp\u003ePre-pandemic, there was a plan. The plan was for musicians from South Africa and Senegal to travel to London’s influential Total Refreshment Centre to make an album with musical kindred spirits in the UK. Like so many plans, it had to be adapted.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eDuring the first wave of COVID-19 lockdowns, groups of heavy-hitting musicians met for a day of intense recording in their home cities then sent the music to their compadres across the oceans. They returned to the studio a month later to respond to the music they’d been sent. The result is \u003ci\u003eOn Our Own Clock\u003c\/i\u003e, a sonic testament to trenchant and collaborative creativity which digs into layers of South African jazz, traditional Senegalese instrumental music and London’s rich diaspora-informed musicality. Individually these are powerful strands of music. Collectively, they are super-sized.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eThe 14 players are individually stellar and include tuba don Theon Cross; Alabaster dePlume, whose album \u003ci\u003eTo Cy and Lee\u003c\/i\u003e has been a pandemic panacea to so many people (including Bon Iver, who sampled it); top South African players including Siya Makuzeni (SPAZA), Zoe Molelekwa and Asher Gamedze, who appears on Angel Bat Dawid’s critically-acclaimed ‘The Oracle’ and whose debut album, ‘Dialectic Soul’, received universal acclaim upon its release in 2020; The Comet Is Coming’s Danalogue; Senegal’s highlyrespected Kora player, Tarang Cissoko as well as Balimaya Project’s Yahael Camara Onono. Collectively they’ve ascended their individual brilliance into an album that is variously warm and layered, full of tuff grooves, and steeped in moments of reflective transcendence.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Mushroom Hour Half Hour","offers":[{"title":"Black | LP","offer_id":50525896606027,"sku":"1128582","price":27.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/dee32d77-2283-4de9-a528-8714945a1186_thumbnail_4096.jpg?v=1728037411"},{"product_id":"umdali","title":"Umdali","description":"\u003cp\u003eOperating from the fringes of the South African jazz scene, the enigmatic yet charismatic trombonist and pianist Malcolm Jiyane delivers a major contribution to the canon - one shaped around dedications to key figures in his personal and professional life. Several years ago, Jiyane was dealing with the death of a band member, the birth of a daughter and the passing of his beloved mentor Johnny Mekoa, founder of the Music Academy of Gauteng, which Jiyane attended from a young age. These life-altering events give shape to the music’s emotional register and its thematic concerns.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eIn Black Music, his book of essays and critiques, Amiri Baraka makes the point that jazz musicians, be it in the construction of solos or in other aspects of composition, always draw on the works of their contemporaries or elders. How much outsiders pick up on that is really dependent on how au fait they are with the music. In this album, Jiyane finds comfort in this well-trodden path. Two songs make for great examples. Umkhumbi kaMa, a jazzfunk track celebrating the creative force as inhabited by women, the motif to Herbie Hancock’s Ostinato (Suite for Angela) is a clear reference, connecting in one swift move, not only the musical traditions of the Black Atlantic but also the struggles and triumphs of women across space and time. On the same note, the free-form Solomon, Tsietsi and Khotso, conjured in the same jam session that yielded Spaza’s Uprize!, appears here in a more fleshed out form as Senzo seNkosi; a tender dedication to Malcolm Jiyane Tree-O bass player Senzo Nxumalo.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eJiyane’s path to the realisation of his debut album as frontman is more than merely one individual’s breakthrough. Workshopped and recorded within two days in Johannesburg, \u003ci\u003eUmdali,\u003c\/i\u003e not unlike Miles Davis’ landmark \u003ci\u003eKind of Blue\u003c\/i\u003e, stretches our idea of what it means to improvise within the context of jazz.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Mushroom Hour Half Hour","offers":[{"title":"CD","offer_id":50903956226379,"sku":"1156745","price":8.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/0d6d02b4-4c7a-44cd-8302-73c71478662f_thumbnail_4096.jpg?v=1732812057"}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/collections\/test_2e393c83_thumbnail_4096_b09c0350-5a91-412f-a3fb-9acf50392179.jpg?v=1727193212","url":"https:\/\/shop.roughtrade.com\/fr\/collections\/mushroom-hour-half-hour.oembed","provider":"Rough Trade","version":"1.0","type":"link"}