Agenda 2019

The most notorious black metal band of all times is back! By the power of darkness and the might of black-hearted will, no two Mayhem albums have been or will be the same. Thus, the newest offering Daemon is unto itself. It’s not the next chapter but rather the next tome in Mayhem’s authoritative oeuvre. Composed and decomposed with the same lineup—Necrobutcher (bass), Hellhammer (drums), Attila Csihar (vocals), Teloch (guitars), and Ghul (guitars)—that handled Esoteric Warfare and performed De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas in its entirety over the last few years, Daemon also isn’t a retrofit of classic songs like “Freezing Moon,” “Pagan Fears,” or “Buried by Time and Dust.” That’s what the live album, De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas Alive (2016), was for. Daemon is a chance for change, for new hells to be envisioned and offered.

"Sissoko squared! Two Sissokos? No need to try arithmetic, mental calculations, addition or multiplication: the Sissokos form a whole, one piece, a sum of knowledge, practice, tradition, innovation, creativity rooted in a dynastic heritage. It is a line of griots from Mali who led to the meeting of these two cousins. Cousins in family, cousins in music, cousins in the desire to take their instruments to the borders of the musical encounters. Encounters which were numerous for both until today when the idea of being face to face finally prevailed over the many other projects. This album is an opportunity to relive instruments and dialogues as in their youth, in the early 80s when they were members of the National Instrumental Ensemble of Mali, each taking over the place of his own father. Now, they play again together, in the most natural way, a brotherly encounter, fostering a music of peace that lets the warm winds of West Africa blow to the rest of the world.

Without any obvious keystone event, Biota – who started recording in the late 1970’s as the Mnemonist Orchestra – have quietly become a musical fixture, honoured for their uniquely, abstract, layered, polystylistic approach to musical construction - deaf to fashion or possible sales. And it seems, paradoxically, to have been just this art-orientated commercial indifference that has slowly won them loyal followers and surprisingly respectable sales. Now, for a wider audience - and at a congenial price - this box collects five representative releases that span their discography and track the radical evolution of their crystalline aesthetic – with added documentation, a band history, insights into their work process, and a full-length bonus CD embroidered from their archive of rare and unreleased material. Contents: Funnel to a Thread, Half a True Day, Invisible Map, Object Holder and Gyromancy (recorded as the Mnemonist Orchestra), and the box-only bonus Counterbalance.