★Maple Death Records
Karakoz
Mai Mai Mai’s artistic path has never rested on laurels, it’s been a constant evolution, a profound and poetic research, a dark and dusty journey through awareness and collaborations where the heart of the process has always been about building connections and understanding people and their rituals. Mai Mai Mai’s new album ‘Karakoz’ was mostly recorded in Palestine (Ramallah and Bethlehem) in 2024 during an ongoing genocide and follows his acclaimed Southern Gothic double-album ‘Rimorso’. The al…
Naebula
Devotional music most often gets distilled into earthy chants and ancient folklore, it doesn't always ascend to the sky like Julinko’s ‘Naebula’ an album that from the first organ note clearly trades in terrestrial dreams for ethereal visions. A feverish quality permeates the whole record, as if a ritualistic performance was being captured from start to finish, a collection of hallucinatory doom, synthetic neo-folk hymns and ghostly art-rock. Julinko, stage name for Giulia Parin Zecchin, has lon…
Le Città di Pianura
After ‘Requiescat In Plavem’ and ‘Lentius Profundius Suavius’, Krano returns with another curveball in his discography, a kolossal double-album and his first original soundtrack for the movie ‘Le Città di Pianura’ (The Last One For The Road), directed by Francesco Sossai and presented at the Cannes Film Festival (Un Certain Regard), a rollicking, bittersweet journey through the Venetian countryside, where memory and mischief ride shotgun, a road-movie through a territory undergoing great transfo…
Erica
A collection of photographs of everyday life, just passing by, on a constant search for those minimal hidden details, mysterious, yet full of awareness, meditative yet bristling with fervor. Mira’s debut for Maple Death ‘Erica’ reveals the artist’s constant transformation, a dense collection of six melancholy vignettes that spin cinematic neo-classical minimalism into slow-tranced lullabies and ancient folklore chants. Based between Rome and Torino the violinist and composer is a beloved figure …
Rosa di Luce
When you’re immersed into something you never actually realize if the essence will project as bright as the efforts, as deep as the process and as loud as the intentions. WOW, the Roma Est duo of China and Leo Non, have never had to create magic or delve into mystique along their meandering path, it’s just been a long solemn wait for what life throws at them and actually sticks. Cause and reaction, because the essence is quietly there when the clamour fades away. Their new album ‘Rosa di Luce’ i…
GHSTING
Tense from the first note and decisively uncompromising ‘GHSTING’ is the debut collaboration by Polish artists Alex Freiheit and Aleksandra Słyż, an incredibly unique piece of work that mixes fiction, spoken word poetry, theatrical antics, dense synthesis, acoustic ensemble and dark landscapes all set within the backdrop of a sinister Eastern Europe hotel. The resulting sound is menacing, humorous, harmonious, tumultuous, and at times quietly erotic. Alex Freiheit, a poet and vocalist, is widely…
Flowers Are Blooming In Antarctica
Delivering a career-defining statement from the Italian electroacoustic composer and saxophone player, Laura Agnusdei, Maple Death returns with “Flowers are Blooming in Antarctica” - a startling, multifaceted journey through imagistic sonorous worlds resting at the juncture of spiritual jazz, fourth-world minimalism, tropical electronics, tribal futurism, and rigorous electroacoustic experimentalism - rooted in thrilling ecological ideas, that marks the launch of Opale, a new suite of releases c…
Chamaerops
Shrouded in mystery just like their magical compositions Torino’s collective Heart Of Snake are joined by Mira for their first release in six years, the enchanted ragged vibration of ‘Chamareops’, a 40 minute opus that just like the cold-hardy palm that lends its name to the album, blends classical guitar, desert folk, meditative exotica and distant island lullabies that withstand the test of time.
Originally led by Vincenzo Marando (Movie Star Junkies, Krano, Similou), Alberto Danzi (I Residen…
The Flip Side
Sometimes records reflect life with an unsettling precision, your own breath sticking to a mirror, confounding or transforming reality. J.H. Guraj, real name Dominique Vaccaro, is back with ‘The Flip Side’, an accomplished work of grace and sprawling elegance documenting struggle and a near-death experience that summons ghosts of Western primitive masters, rollicking free folk, minimalist orchestrations, weeping guitars and smooth psychedelics.
Time stopped for J.H. Guraj in 2021 following a br…
Transition
After four EPs of skeletal kraut-punk and slimmed down post-motorik alienage Milan’s Tv Dust are back with an entirely different beast, their proper debut ‘Transition’, an incredible collection of no-jazz, breakneck rhythms, mutant-wave, trance-funk, shredded sax jags and furious, yet mysterious assaults.
Tv Dust run a tight ship, they jam econo, with the album strongly based around the incredible interplay of drums (Sergio Tringali), bass (Filippo Aloisi) and sax/synth (newest member Gaetano Pa…
Viator
“Viator” is as skeletal as it is instantly recognizable. Following the inception of the unmistakable post-power electronics cubist-Latin-blues that kept Adrián de Alfonso busy during his Don The Tiger days, the first album under his own name is a ruthless step forward into a new form of avant-garde balladry, raw and stripped down, poetic yet enchanting, anchored in a sort of stubborn and repetitive primitivism, which synthesizes the future rituals of a stateless tradition. "Viator" consists main…
Così Dentro Come Fuori
The fragmented mind can sometimes lead in two directions, a complete reconstruction based on a new hypothesis or a leap into the unknown, that divine breath that permeates all. Porta d’Oro, Giacomo Stefanini’s musical journey and therapy, lives on both lines, meditative sketchings that dig deep and beg for ascension. From abstract dub, to post-punk rumblings and bedroom classics Giacomo Stefanini (also member of Kobra and the Milan Sentiero Futuro collective) has been slowly building his own wor…
Psiche Liberata
Fera’s trajectory sticks out like a sore thumb, you need to invest time, carefully divided between body & mind, to truly take a deep dive into his audacious output. After the acclaimed ‘Stupidamutaforma’ and ‘Corpo Senza Carne’, Fera is back with ‘Psiche Liberata’, an oblique, imperfect and broken record, in other words, exactly the type of magical voyage you want to be on. The mind, finally liberated.
Fabulous Soundtracks
Fabulous Soundtracks, the fourth studio album by reclusive Los Angeles musician Jack Name, is an homage to the IRL world and its twisted and varied romance with the worlds of our minds, in a wild collection of "soundtracks'', each a sonic re-construction dedicated to a distinct scene. Both musically and lyrically, this is Name's most adventurous and genre-defying album. Elements of acid, dance, folk, micro-tonal weirdness, horror, sensuality, impressionism, and bursts of rock fuse with Name's mo…
Unknown City
*300 copies limited release* Creeping through an imaginary border, sidesteppin’ through the night like cyber phantoms eavesdropping on early morning machinery shifts, an industrial solstice for pagan mystics. After five years Torino’s mysterious SabaSaba are back with ‘Unknown City’ an imaginary soundtrack for a dystopian city: digital raga, horror Exotica, half-speed techno, metallic dub and organic electronics. The duo of Andrea Marini (synth, guitar, electronics, tapes) and Gabriele Maggiorot…
No Dub
*200 copies limited release* Some folks use the phrase ‘no place like home’ when referring to Roma Est’s beloved venue Fanfulla, four walls that have single handedly delivered some of the most unique and vital music from the peninsula’s underground community. Trans Upper Egypt are maybe one of the most vivid representations of that legacy with their dazzling blend of motorik syncopation, punchy extensive basslines, spaced out twirling organs and scorched phased out vocals.
On their 4th album ‘No…
Spiralis Aurea Trio
Everything about Stefano Pilia’s spiritual journey always seemed to point directly towards ‘Spiralis Aurea’, his astounding 2022 release for Die Schachtel, a deeply resonating piece of art that intertwines traces of sacred geometry, collective experience and elusive connections between nature and human kind. ‘Spiralis Aurea Trio’ out in January on Maple Death Records, showcases the electric guitar ensemble formed by Stefano Pilia, Alessandra Novaga and Adrian Utley (Portishead) during three live…
Sprecato
First album in seven years from Maple Death Records founder James Jonathan Clancy (Italy/Canada), and the first under his birth name following previous ensembles His Clancyness (Fat Cat, Maple Death) and Brutal Birthday (Total Punk, Improved Sequence). In the interim between those projects and this latest, ‘Sprecato’, Clancy has refined and honed his vision —steadily and carefully drawing from a host of disparate influences to create a new kind of singer-songwriter album that bridges the divide …
Moving
*100 copies limited edition* There’s a raw hypnotic quality in Jerome’s output, a perceived facility to summon heavy bass, circular mantras and elastic shadowy beats. Over the last three years they have refined and cultivated their unique dystopian mixture of industrial, techno and dark electronics and their new EP ‘Moving’ is a fascinating snapshot of their ever-changing journey.
Based in Bristol, UK and Athens, Greece the Italian/Swedish/Greek duo of Annalisa Iembo and Stella Mathioudakis have…