Relaunching Slow Dance’s outlet for even weirder releases than usual, the single anticipates a full album to come in 2024.

With the release of the new single ‘Kolosseum / War N.d’ by the n.o. Art Ensemble, Slow Dance Records relaunch a new branch dedicated to releases that focus on experimental, instrumental and outsider works. It formalises a tendency written into the label, perhaps better established for their catalogue of forward-thinking, experimental pop, to also nurture the projects that play with the fabrics of music. It is these, after all, that feed back into the development of more streamlined, conventional projects.

Combining elements of art music, folk and post-rock, the new release heralds a debut album to come next year from the n.o. Art Ensemble. Their resumé already notes a performance of Tony Conrad’s ‘Outside the Dream Syndicate’ and the staging of an original experimental opera with a 50-piece orchestra.

‘Kolloseum’ opens with abrasive overlapping tones, a mix of acoustic and synthetic sounds that loosely suggest a harmony between a mechanical saw and a series of party streamers. The offputting quality of these sounds is arresting, yet the way they burst in and out forms a kind of fragile symphonic call to prayer. This evocation of holiness is deepened as the opening section melts into a vocal chorus accompanied by bells, which compete with the rougher tones. This epic, reaching quality, hard-earned as it is here, is a strength of art music, established in this case through long sustained notes that seem to create space as they prevail over any nagging improvisational flourishes.

Side two, ‘War, N.d’ also clashes organic and synthetic sounds, this time in a more pronounced way. A long loop of acoustic guitar refrain, which summons that overlap between folk and post-rock, opens the track, establishing the theme before being alternately backed and contradicted by a raggedly distorted electric. Mumbling vocals suggest the development of a more predictable song form, before starship bursts of synth and guitar send the song skyward, sounds flying out from the centre in every direction. Then all of a sudden, everything runs silent again, only to be punctuated by the light tapping of a drum.

An exciting, Janus-faced opening statement, we look forward with anticipation to the full album, ‘E V ER Y RU N G O N TH I S L AD D E R TO G OD.’