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“What Is Not Strange? is dream music. It’s the music of my dreams. I think that’s what I always strive for.”

Tashi Wada on the inner life of What Is Not Strange?, released on RVNG June 7, 2024.

“Often associated with the period between death and rebirth, the tibetan word bardo is more broadly defined as any ‘gap’ or ‘in-between’ experience, with the ‘life in-between’ being the bardo we are all currently traversing. Bearings proposes ongoing states of displacement and precarity—the suspension of one’s bearings—and the search for a foothold within this constant state of flux. In other words, we are always in a bardo because impermanence never takes a break.”

Ka Baird on their multi-dimensional meeting of streams, Bearings: Soundtracks for the Bardos, released by RVNG on March 22, 2024. Pictured here with Nisa, one of several collaborators featured on Bearings.

“Quantum Web is about interconnectivity. The meanings and implications of a ‘web’ are manifold: it is defined as ‘a network of fine threads constructed by a spider…used to catch its prey’ and also ‘a complex system of interconnected elements’ such as the world wide web, or a web of lies. It is simultaneously something we are creating ourselves, and something we are inextricably linked through and tangled up in. A beautiful trap. But also the infinite invisible thing that we are all a part of.”

Discovery Zone, aka JJ Weihl, on her trip through inner + outer space, Quantum Web, released on RVNG March 8, 2024. Inspired by cybernetic philosophy, Quantum Web is but the latest phase in the ongoing continuum that is Discovery Zone.

“Certain elements are indeterminate and left to the whims of individual band members, which lends a sort of tension to the live experience—the possibility of failure/victory over death.”

Horse Lords adopted a sort of non-documentary approach, aiming to capture their own performances as much as the artifice of the live experience itself. The resulting record, As It Happened: Horse Lords Live, released on RVNG March 1, 2024, is a blistering snapshot of the band riding that elusive line.

Thee lords on their first of two us tours this year, with a cameo by formidable tour companion Ka Baird, pictured below.

“It felt like everything we had been circling over the course of the previous couple weeks (and couple years honestly) gelled and became something new and fresh for both of us. I remember that show in particular being a musical highlight of my year. We were lucky that it also just so happened to be the one that was so thoughtfully recorded.”

Having previously melded minds / souls for RVNG on Let the Moon Be a Planet, our inaugural volume of Reflections, David Moore reflects on the contours of collaboration with Steve Gunn at London’s Cafe Oto that resulted in Live in London, released on RVNG february 23, 2024. Pictured below, a warm shot from their show in Lisbon by Iris Cabaça.

“Take it in your hands, make it yours, call it what it is.”

“gajo” b/w “Doll Park Doll Park” are the latest offering from Colin Self’s forthcoming album respite ∞ levity for the nameless ghost in crisis, aka r∞L4nGc.

On “gajo,” the more vocal-centric track of the double a-side single, Self sings out to their companions to create a diversion, escaping danger once more while seeking a moment of grace, the message beamed across a stutter-step beat. Meanwhile, “Doll Park Doll Park” is dance music as manipulated by a marionette’s helter-skelter string sequence, bodies called on by a higher power to move.

For the “Doll Park Doll Park” video, Colin collaborated once again with Bobbi Salvör Menuez to document an ecstatic, erratic “day in the life of” our album’s protagonist and ensemble of friends.

r∞L4nGc is up for pre-order now in an Artist Edition of the LP, including a unique watercolor painting by Colin, standard LP, Iapanese import CD (via Plancha), and all digital formats.