There are mainly two reasons why people would go to spas where they allow little bubbles to massage their bottoms or cook their skin up to the point where it nearly falls off the muscles it usually is attached to: to treat yourself and/or for healing purposes. The recently founded Cologne-based label Spa can be of help for both kinds of venture.

On one hand, a certain wellness-component can be attested to Spa’s first release—a compilation called Safe Needing Attention. Its 20 compositions, that were made by artists such as ssaliva, Belia Winnewisser, Swan Meat, Iku, and others, sound relaxing and can—if you let it happen—unfold a comforting effect. Pieces like “Fromga NYC” by Georgia BC, for example, sound lulling in such a way, that one is tempted to categorize it as Muzak.

On the other hand, some of the track titles nod at curing—or at least the longing to cure. Take “Fake Intimacy,” Maxwell Sterling’s contribution: similar to the pieces on his album Hollywood Medieval, which was re-released on The Death Of Rave and marked a highlight of 2017, his contribution to Safe Needing Attention mainly deals with surface(s). This can seem happy, but (if you look underneath the surface) it often is not. If you remember the title—“Fake Intimacy”—while listening to the track, it’s hard to not assume its creator actually is longing for some sort of cure or at least change. Someone, who seems to have found healing, is Emma Palm. She promises under her No Translation-guise “To Resume”—at least in the title of her contribution. Looking at her biography you see the promise redeem itself, however: Palm recently moved from Californian via Montreal to Cologne. There, she resumed her musical practice—which before mainly consisted of songwriting and band projects—to give it a new expression: “To Resume,” the opener of Safe Needing Attention, provides far-away brass players, an embalmed glockenspiel, light drones, a melancholic voice, and soft beats.

If Spa actually was intended as a musical wellness-palace is not clear. At least there was no information provided by the label’s founding members—France ’98 aka DJ Brom, Friday Dunard and Salon des Amateurs-resident Phillip Jondo—, who all contribute to the compilation themselves. Nevertheless, you should be able to give yourself a treat or heal with the music they publish…

No Translation’s “To Resume” can be pre-listened to exclusively here, ahead of Safe Needing Attention’s release on March 11:

https://soundcloud.com/zweikommasieben/pre-listen-no-translation-to-resume-spas-safe-needing-attention-compilation/s-GwT2R

A preview of the whole compilation you find here: