Azu Tiwaline - Vesta EP
How to use the reserve function
If you'd like to purchase items from our site but want to save money on shipping costs, you can use our reserve function to combine your orders over an unlimited period of time, and ship them together for one combined shipping price when you are ready.
Just hit the 'reserve' button at the checkout page as your shipping option when you've finished making your order, and your order will automatically be held in reserve here until you are ready for us to ship everything to you.You can keep as many orders in reserve with us via our site as you like, until you are ready to ship. Just send us an email when you are ready to ship your reserve orders, and we will get in touch with the combined shipping price, or ship for free if you have exceeded the minimum order amount for free shipping to your address.
Can the reserve function be used to get free shipping? Yes - If your combined order total is more than £50 within the UK, over £150 within the EU, or over £225 worldwide, we'll ship your order to you via courier service, for free.
Here's a step by step guide to using it:
1. Click on the account icon to log into your account.
If you don't have an account, please click 'create account' to make one. If you had an account on the old RWDFWD site, please create a new one with the same email address used on the old site - this will ensure your previous orders are brought through to your new account.
2. Add records to your cart as normal.
3. When you're ready to check out, select 'ship'.
4. Then select 'Reserve items' on the shipping method list, then continue to payment.
5. Once payment is complete, your order will show in your account as 'unfulfilled'. We will have put all the products aside in reserve for you to combine with other orders and ship later in bulk.
6. When you're ready to ship all the items you have in reserve, email us on info@rwdfwd.com and we will calculate the shipping due and arrange for payment to be taken.
7. Sit tight and wait for your records to arrive in the post!
Free Shipping?
We offer free shipping on orders over a certain value
UK orders over £50
EU orders over £150
Worldwide over £225
This is automatically applied at checkout and reserve orders also count towards it.
EU Order info
Unfortunately, the UK is no longer part of the EU - This means that certain shipments sent to addresses there from us may be subject to tax and / or import duty - All orders sent from RWDWD are sent ‘DDU’ - That is, duty unpaid - any import tax and/or duty is the sole responsibility of the buyer.
If you would like to use our reserve function to group several orders into one large shipment, we can arrange for it to be sent tax and duty pre-paid so you don’t have to worry about it at a later date - Contact us for more information.
We managed to get our hands on the laaaast import copies of this gem of a record from Tunisia's very own Azu Tiwaline -
Fans of Azu, you'll know what to expect: deep, dubwise techno with a north african rhythm-twist, served with a sleight of hand and precisely tuned. Everyone else, you should take a step into this world, it's immersive.
It was an encounter with one of these fragments that inspired the name for Azu Tiwaline’s latest EP for I.O.T Records, ‘Vesta’, which features tracks that were written and recorded around the same time as ‘Magnetic Service’, her break-through EP for Livity Sound. Holding a piece of Vesta that had been found in the Saharan Desert - already a place of deep significance for her - she felt a sense of wonder, on a cosmic scale. In her hands, was an object so apparently familiar, of the same age and made of the same fundamental materials as the Earth on which she stood, yet from somewhere else entirely. A perfect name for the four tracks that make up ‘Vesta’. And also the perfect source material for the EP’s cover, an electron microscope image of a razor-thin slice of that same cosmic fragment that Azu held in her hand.
‘Vesta’ is familiar, yet distinct. It’s recognisably Azu Tiwaline from the very start, yet the unexpected always finds a way in. A booming, echoing kick opens ‘Lowww’, followed by the rattling, shivering sound of a tanbur hand-drum, courtesy of his regular collaborator, Franco-Iranian percussionist and producer Cinna Peyghamy. But then, tentatively at first, a jazzy synth line emerges, and disappears again, only to reappear later. An another colour to add to Azu Tiwaline’s already rich palette?"
Azu Tiwaline’s music has always explored the dynamics between space and depth, and the contrasts between light and density. ‘Vesta’ often feels like a high-wire act, an exercise in finding space even as the air fills with drum patterns and synth lines. ‘Medium Time’ builds from a chorus of buzzing insects into a thick percussive track across eight minutes, without ever losing that initial wide-open sound of the dusk. ‘Into The Void’ pays homage to her well-worn collection of Rhythm & Sound and Basic Channel 12-inch singles, all swaying dub echoes and languid kick drums. Then mid-track, it pivots in intensity, each element suddenly expanded and magnified: a psychedelic shift. Those who’ve had the chance to see Azu Tiwaline perform in the past few years might get a few flashbacks - it’s been a key part of her live set.
But it’s the final track ‘Deep Theko’ that best fits the EP’s cosmic title. A shape-shifting ‘ambient’ track that never seems to settle, it drifts restlessly, sporadic percussion and synth washes injecting random bursts of activity. A sonic representation of planetary debris floating through space? Here, as with the airless void of space, emptiness enables a certain perspective. If the distances between the stars weren’t so enormous, we wouldn’t be able to gaze upon them in their entirety, after all.