Search:a sl

Queer tweemo from the pop fringe of Little Rock, Arkansas's thriving '90s DIY scene. Paper Airplanes, Paper Hearts gathers Everyone Asked About You's complete recorded works, including the Let's Be Enemies LP and their two and a half 7"s released between 1997-2000. Remastered from the original DATs for maximum nostalgic crunch, this deluxe 2xLP is housed in a gatefold tip on sleeve and includes a 20-page book crammed with flyers, photos, lyrics, and an extensive essay on this crucial missing link between midwest emo and the Moog synthesizer.

Following nearly 20 years of working together as a trio, and numerous cross-collaborations in different configuration between them, Ideologic Organ presents Placelessness, the debut full-length by Chris Abrahams, Oren Ambarchi, and Robbie Avenaim, comprising two long-form works at juncture of ambient music, minimalism, rigorous experimentalism and improvisation, and machine music. Having carved distinct pathways across a diverse number of musical idioms for decades, Chris Abrahams, Oren Ambarchi, and Robbie Avenaim are each, respectively, among the most noteworthy and groundbreaking figures to have emerged from Australia's thriving experimental music scene. Ambarchi and Avenaim first encountered Abrahams when seeing the Necks - the project that has served as the primary vehicle for his singular approach to the piano since its founding in 1987 - together during the late 1980s, not long after having met in Sydney's underground music community. The pair's collaborations date back more than 35 years, criss-crossing Ambarchi's pioneering solo and ensemble work for guitar and Avenaim's visionary efforts for SARPS (Semi Automated Robotic Percussion System), robotic and kinetic extensions to his drum kit. In 2004, fate brought the three together in a trio performance at the What Is Music? Festival, the annual touring showcase of experimental music founded and run by Ambarchi and Avenaim between 1994-2012. For the nearly two decades since, Abrahams, Ambarchi, and Avenaim have intermittently reformed in exclusively live contexts, in Australia and abroad, cultivating and refining the fertile ground first tilled in that early meeting. Placelessness is the first album to present this remarkable trio's efforts in recorded form. Placelessness is the joining of three highly individualised streams, working in perfect harmony; the point at which friendship, mutual respect, and decades of creative exploration produce a singular spectrum of sound. Featuring Abrahams on piano, Ambarchi on guitar, and Avenaim on drums, the album's two sides draw on each artist's enduring dedication to long-form composition. Its two pieces, Placelessness I and Placelessness II, initially began as a single, 40 minute work, before being divided and reworked into distinct, complimentary gestures for the corresponding sides of the LP. Beginning with restrained clusters of reverberant piano tones, Placelessness I progresses at an almost glacial pace, with Abrahams' interventions increasing met by sparse responses, darting within vast ambiences, on guitar and percussion by Ambarchi and Avenaim. Remarkably conversational within its convergences of tonal, rhythmic, and textural abstraction, over the work's duration a progressive sense of tension unfurls and contracts, refusing release, as each of the ensemble's members contribute to an increasingly tangled sense of density at its resolve. While an entirely autonomous work, Placelessness II rapidly realises a distillation of the energy hinted at across the length of its predecessor. Following a luring passage of harmonious calm, Abrahams' launches into shimmering lines of repeating arpeggios, complimented at each escalation of tempo by Avenaim's machine gun fire percussion work and Ambarchi's masterful delivery of tonality and texture, as the trio collectively generate dense sheets of pointillistic ambience within which individual identity is almost lost, before slowly unspooling into unexpected abstractions and dissonances that deftly intervene with the work's inner logic and calm. What could easily be termed a maximalist take on Minimalism, Placelessness is a masterstroke of contemporary, real time composition, that blurs the boundaries between ambient music, experimentalism, free improvisation, and machine music. Drawing on Chris Abrahams, Oren Ambarchi, and Robbie Avenaim's decades of respective solo and collaborative practice, and the culmination of nearly twenty years of working together as a trio, it's two durational pieces - Placelessness I and Placelessness II - take form with a startling sense of effortlessness and grace, neither shying away from explicit beauty or rigorously tension within their forms.

Moving to England for its second release, Rant & Rave Records presents a proper EP from South Wales-based producer JoeFarr, known for his dancefloor jams on labels such as: 'SLAM', 'Arts', and his most recent success with 2019's epic 12" 'Death Becomes Us'. On the a-side 'In This Anger', which JoeFarr has written with Louisahhh, an anxiously dark, slowly developing atmosphere menaces behind a slow rolling, broken beat for maximum effect. This is punctuated by dark, slightly distorted female vocals with sporadic lyrics subtly encouraging its dance floors to move.. and think. Signature hard and bouncy grooves with infectious in-yer-face techno riffs dominate the rest of the EP with tracks 'Laced Up', 'You Can See Me' and 'You will See Me (Hardcore)', effortlessly weaving in and out of the pulsating groove with an interesting palette of machine sounding synths and heavily processed vocals.

Auf ihrem vierten Album "Sonic Moons" begeben sich DOMKRAFT auf eine Reise in den inneren Kosmos. Die Schweden düsen mit ihrem Fuzz-Antrieb und einem Treibstoff aus psychedelischen Riffs und Doom Metal durch die Untiefen der galaktischen Psyche in alternative metaphysische Realitäten; auf der Suche nach Flucht, Erholung und Erlösung. DOMKRAFT bleiben ihrem bisherigen musikalischen Kurs treu, wobei das nordische Trio jedoch hörbar gereift und das Songwriting deutlich präziser wirkt. Die markanten Doom-Hymnen sind geblieben, allerdings durch kleine Details und Nuancen leicht in Richtung Heavy Rock verschoben. DOMKRAFT wurde von Sänger und Bassist Martin Wegeland, Gitarrist Martin Widholm und Schlagzeuger Anders Dahlgren gegründet, um ihrer gemeinsamen Liebe zu Bands wie SPACEMEN 3, MONSTER MAGNET, SLEEP und HAWKWIND aktiv Ausdruck zu verleihen. Das Trio entwickelte aus seinen Einflüssen einen Sound, der bewusstseinsverändernde Psychedelik, hypnotischen Minimalismus und emotionale Klagegesänge miteinander verbindet. Dies drückt sich auf DOMKRAFTs monolithischem Debütalbum "The End of Electricity" (2016) ebenso deutlich aus wie auf dem heftigen Nachfolger "Flood" (2018) und dem gefeierten dritten Album "Seeds" (2021). Mit "Sonic Moons" sprengen DOMKRAFT den Fluchttunnel zu den emotional geladenen inneren Räumen des Geistes auf und gleiten durch fantastische neue Sonnensysteme zu unerforschten musikalischen Planeten. Jetzt ist der perfekte Zeitpunkt, um sich mit den Schweden auf die intergalaktische Reise ins Innere zu begeben!

High Roller Records, reissue 2023, bone vinyl, ltd 250, 425gsm heavy cardboard cover, insert, printed inner sleeve, 2 posters, A5 photo, mastered for vinyl by Patrick W. Engel at Temple of Disharmony, original 1984 sound

High Roller Records, reissue 2023, bone vinyl, ltd 250, 425gsm heavy cardboard cover, insert, printed inner sleeve, 2 posters, A5 photo, mastered for vinyl by Patrick W. Engel at Temple of Disharmony, original 1984 sound

Die norwegische Band Kvelertak hat sich in den letzten zehn Jahren zu einer echten Größe in der Metal-Szene entwickelt. Die Band, die von Rolling Stone und Stereogum mit wohlverdienten Auszeichnungen bedacht wurde, hat weltweit Hunderttausende von Fans und über 50 Millionen Streams auf DSP's angehäuft. All dieser Erfolg hat zu mehreren Nummer-eins-Alben und Spellemannprisen Awards (Norwegens Antwort auf die Grammys) in ihrem Heimatland geführt.

Bei früheren Alben arbeitete die Band unter anderem mit der Hardcore-Legende Kurt Ballou (Converge) zusammen und arbeitete mit Musikern wie Troy Sanders (Mastodon) zusammen. Die Band war auch schon mit legendären Bands wie Metallica und Slayer auf Tour.

Auf ihrem fünften Album "Endling" klingen Kvelertak größer und kreativer als je zuvor. Bewaffnet mit massiven Riffs, Black-Metal-Wildheit und ihrer bisher ambitioniertesten Instrumentierung beherrschen sie die Kunst, moderne Metal-Klassiker zu kreieren, die sowohl heftig sind als auch Spaß machen. Nach 15 Jahren in ihrer Karriere sind Kvelertak so unaufhaltsam wie eh und je.

New double-LP edition of a selection from Saltern’s acclaimed collection of recordings surveying the career of renowned, American cellist, Charles Curtis. Selected by Curtis and Tashi Wada from recordings spanning two decades, Performances & Recordings 1999-2018 offers a broad, inclusive view of Curtis’ activities across the diverse worlds of music he inhabits, featuring the music of

The most famous songs of one of the greatest names in the history of Musical in Broadway and who has his star on the Walk of Fame in Hollywood. Including "Cheek To Cheek", "Steppin" out with My Baby"...

Echo Ladies are back with their second album after a quiet spell while the rest of the world turned upside down.
This music has been in development for quite a while, and you still find clear inspiration from some of the shoegaze greats such as Jesus and the Mary Chain, A Place To Bury Strangers, Slowdive, and many more.

This album is built on the same foundation that Echo Ladies curated during their past releases, but with a more unyielding presence. Echo Ladies have always tried to balance two emotions at the same time throughout their songs. While their past songs tried to convey the feeling of nostalgia and hope for the future, mixed with worries and anxieties about defining who you are and what you will become, this album instead tries to balance the emotions of sorrow and loneliness, with anger, frustration, and the determination to make a change for the better.

This album really carries the Echo Ladies mantra that "Nothing Ever Lasts". Good things can come to an end, but bad things will also pass.

Gilberto With Turrentine is an album by Brazilian samba and bossa nova singer Astrud Gilberto and American saxophonist Stanley Turrentine. It features performances recorded in 1971, originally released at CTI Records by Creed Taylor. The album can be described as a blend of jazz, pop, and tropicalia. It was arranged by Eumir Deodato and features appearances by A-list jazz performers including Airto Moreira, Ron Carter, Sam Brown, Hubert Laws, and Toots Thielemans.

Astrud Gilberto gained international fame in the mid-1960s following her recording of the famous bossa nova song "The Girl from Ipanema", while Stanley Turrentine was known for his distinctive work as a jazz musician and his earthy blues style.

Gilberto With Turrentine is available as a limited edition of 1500 individually numbered copies on translucent green coloured vinyl, housed in a gatefold sleeve.

Ghostface Killah reunites with his partner in rhyme Raekwon to bring fans Bulletproof Wallets, which continues Ghost’s winning streak of delivering front to back classic material. Filled with the usual Ghost slang, bass heavy production, Bulletproof Wallets dropped not long after Supreme Clientele without skipping a beat. The fun Ghost & Rae are having on this record is beyond apparent. Bulletproof Wallets is almost like a party album, hit singles and street bangers. “Never Be the Same Again” (with Carl Thomas & Raekwon) and “Ghost Showers” play alongside “Maxine” and “The Forrest” all working off each others energy. Other stand outs like “Walking through the Darkness”, “The Hilton” all bang through the speakers and continues to add to Ghost’s undeniable catalog. On some groundbreaking production from The RZA, Alchemist, Carlos 6 July Broady and Mathmatics, Ghostface shines and the chemistry between Rae and Ghost is incredible!

For over two decades Jonathan Katsav has used his Crave project to fray rap at its fringes, using Memphis and Houston's low-and-slow legacy to inform sounds that have as much in common with Merzbow as they do Tommy Wright III. Working under a variety of different monikers such as Lieu Noir, Sniper Bait and Soul Collector, the French producer is most prolific as Crave, and "Inner War Delirium" is a substantial and broadly cinematic addition to his canon. Katsav approaches each track as if it's a scene from a movie, using real life experiences to explore separate characters and contrasting emotions. Using different narrators and disparate vocal styles, he navigates grim, blown-out landscapes, driving neon drenched trap synths and horror choirs against overdriven kicks and waterlogged industrial atmospheres. Mangled field recordings, squealing static and gurgling synthesized bass opens 'PHYLLIS', goading the cautious with serrated, carnival synths and cacophonous vocals that sway lugubriously between rap and grindcore. The relationship between dark and light, death and rebirth, is at the heart of "Inner War Delirium", rippling through every track's oozing amalgamation of inebriated hip-hop and buzzsaw noise. Katsav's sounds are an attempt to subject us to the physicality of his own life's puzzle, and he cuts them into vignettes like a director. On the album's final track, listeners are swiped from in front of the speakers and bundled into the trunk of a car, rain rattling on the metal and the album playing on in the distance. It's a way for the producer to turn the camera back on the audience and ask them to consider their own complicated reality - it's Crave's story, but everyone's a part of it.

ATA Records are proud to announce this new double A-side from The Sorcerers featuring, on the flip, the first release by The Outer Worlds Jazz Ensemble.

Exit Athens marks the start of a new era for The Sorcerers. Continuing their investigations of Ethio-Jazz and 60s and 70s European library music, the group is now formed around Joost Hendrickx (Kefaya, Shatner's Bassoon, Abstract Orchestra), Richard Ormrod (saxes, flute & keys) and ATA label head, bassist Neil Innes. Exit Athens features a driving funk engine room with exotic percussion, vintage keyboards, and the classic Addis Ababa combination of vibes, flute and horns. The aim is to double-down on previous album successes The Sorcerers and In Search of The Lost City of The Monkey God, expanding their tonal palette whilst tightening their focus, with the intention of producing multiple albums of solid analog cuts, every one of which will appeal equally to DJs and audiophiles alike.

On the AA side, Beg, Borrow, Play marks the debut of The Outer Worlds Jazz Ensemble. The first in an ongoing series of 45s and LP issues, each Outer Worlds release will feature the immaculate grooves of the hard-working, unsung sidemen of the Leeds Funk, Latin and Ethio/Afrobeat scenes. The Outer Worlds series was conceived to feature visiting soloists who have made a beeline to ATA in search of a specific setting for their material, and represents ATA's ambition to encompass the very best in contemporary jazz/club/rare groove/exotica sounds.

Beg, Borrow, Play kicks this off with ATA veteran Chip Wickham on baritone sax, and a slice of jazz exotica that owes as much to New Orleans Street Beat as to the Eastern moods of artists like Yusef Lateef and Ahmed Abdul-Malik. The result is loose and limber, with horns reminiscent of classic Art Ensemble of Chicago, and will appeal to fans of contemporary Afro-Futurist fusions

A long-in-the-works project of ours, here comes A Tribe Called Kotori's first foray into full-length territories, as the immensely talented Rampue takes us on a melancholy-riddled ride across his phantasmatic mindscapes. A true sound explorer, deftly steering his ship down the junction of electronica, abstract and balearic-infused prog house, the Berlin-based vibist has us transfixed and elevated throughout the twelve cuts that form the backbone to this lushly textured promenade in sound - at times understatedly euphoric, at others rivetingly exotic.

Of the creative process that lead to 'Bubblebath Trance', Rampue explains "It all started and ended in the same moment: my cherished feline companion, my laptop awash with an unintended bath, and alas, a dearth of backups. The resultant calamity, an echo of chaotic tranquility." Under the generous layer of irony lies some unaltered truth about Rampue's debut long-player for A Tribe Called Kotori: this sense of serenity that goes with stepping into this warm and bubbling primitive chaos of sorts infuses the listening experience far and wide. Distantly emulating the "euphonious strains" of iconic PS1 video games soundtracks from his youth days, the album has us surfing a constant paradox of emotions, wistful but not abandoning itself to sorrow, dynamic yet suspended in some sort of mind-expanding stasis. As if you were looking at the world beneath you in exploded view, conscious of all thing, slowly moving up the many layers of our atmosphere towards uncharted skies.

A paragon of Rampue's most poignant take on classic electronica tropes, 'Harmonie' blazes with a poetic fire that engulfs about everything in its wake. Just figure yourself riding a chocobo across the sand-covered expanse of North Corel (toasting to the FFVII nerds here) as this blasts out in the distance. From this trancey bubblebath emerge lots of musical shades and nuances, from the nicely dubbed-out, brass-heavy coastal jazz of 'Schattenschranz' to the choppy, trip-hop-adjacent future electronics of 'Inside', via the exuberantly joyous mess of faux-organic number 'Tripomatic' and cinematic charisma of 'Ich hasse Sonne' high-flying orchestrations.

Connecting the dots between that trance-indebted ebullience and further downtempo-friendly attraction, 'Verfahren' perhaps encompasses best what 'Bubblebath Trance' is about: gracefully walking the tightrope in-limbo nostalgia-soaked inner movements and a powerful outward thrust, burning to let the feelings ooze out from the shell that holds them.Clad in purely 90s-compatible breaksy motion, 'Salz' is another attempt to reconcile emotional and physical dissonance, like kneading all states - solid, liquid and vaporous - into an impossible mega-vibe of its own; malleable, strong and enveloping in equal measure. Borrowing from two-step and UK garage, 'Take Away' is a definite high in Rampue's master unfolding of musical twists and turns, summoning a Boarder Community-esque atmosphere and clashing it alongside floor-ready footwork motifs to fascinating effect.

An ode to his studio companion, 'Buchla Trip' finds Rampue's exploring his machinic friend's quirky yet soulful array of electronic potentialities - making it sound like a conversation you'd have with R2-D2 in the heart of a Sandcrawler, whereas 'Kajal' beams us up to a fragmented headspace, halfway altered PC-Pop and arps-loaded electronica on amphetamines. Effusive and transporting, the title-track 'Bubblebath Trance' could well figure as the album's no.1 medley in essence: a bountiful lucid dream of dancing forms, colours and sentiments to wrap your head around, confidently drifting from a liminal state of consciousness down the rapids of one's troubled inner workings.

Rounding off the package, the languid ambient finale of 'Die Leiden des hungrigen Fruehstuecks' rubber-stamps the feeling that 'Bubblebath Trance' belongs to that rare category of albums. The ones that mint their own alphabet aside from typical norms and expectations, teaching you the ropes of their new language as it unreels between your ears - real and unreal, elusive to any other meaning than the one your guts and brains will be inclined to give it to, in real time. A crystal-pure object if you will, that shall not reveal its secrets, even after a thousand listens and just as many wowing moments.

Pressing Info: 180g black vinyl double LP, etched D-side, hand-numbered gatefold sleeve, limited to 500, download card included. Porto-based trio 10 000 Russos will release their new 'Live In Berlin' double LP on March 24th 2023 via Rubber Duck, a new live album imprint by Fuzz Club Records. The record captures the band storming through their subterranean motorik psych-drone live at Berlin's Astra Kulturhaus on October 16th 2021. Recorded whilst out on a European tour, 'Live In Berlin' finds 10 000 Russos performing their 2021 'Superinertia' LP in full the album's five songs expanded and taken to even more transfixing and hedonistic heights in a live setting. These shows were 10 000 Russos' first with the new, more-electronic line-up and sound, with newly-recruited synth player Nils Meisel making his debut on the 'Superinertia' LP and completing the line-up alongside founding members Joao Pimenta (drums/vocals) and Pedro Pestana (guitar). Across the hour-long set, Pimenta's deadpan sprechgesang vocal and machine-like percussion, Pestana cascading psych guitar-loops and Meisel's repetitive synth basslines all combine on a performance that will pull you into a trance at times and get you on your feet at others.

Working with Bat For Lashes producer David Kosten (aka Faultline), the recording of Man Alive was completed mainly in a chapel in North Wales. The album sounded unique. Nothing dates like the future, yet Man Alive sounds dateless, placeless, and as a result, stands up perfectly many years later.

Man Alive was only the beginning of the group's adventures in – to use their words – 'Mismatched styles of music mashed together.' The result is often exhilarating; there are Brazilian drums and a prog guitar breakdown in Schoolin', classical influences, as well. Its subject matter is often way outside the realms of conventional songwriting; MY KZ, UR BF explored the different Americas: the cosy self-centred domesticity of programmes such as Friends versus a foreign policy
based on killing; Qwerty Finger examines imperialism. Anglo Saxon guilt is also present.

The album's artwork was striking – a photograph of a fox by Swiss photographer, Laurent Geslin, reflecting the track Tin (The Manhole) which deals with the theme of depression, through, as the band said in 2010, "the story of an urban fox that ingests all our pollution and grows massively in a sort of dream sequence. We chose photos of an urban fox for this reason, but we partly attacked the code of the digital image to create a glitch distortion . . . a reference to digital manipulation and chaos as well as our modern lives online".

Released in August 2010, Man Alive made the UK Top 20 and was well reviewed.

For example, BBC Music commented that the group "know more than most how to craft a song, how to make an album. They know how to give it depth, light and dark, and they - crucially - know when to stop." Man Alive was shortlisted for the 20th Mercury Music Prize in 2011.

The original LP edition of the album is super- scarce, released before the 'vinyl revival' kicked in, hence the original pressing now selling in the high three figures.

This re-issue is presented with scrupulous attention to the detail of the original UK first pressing, complete with gatefold sleeve, poster and 8 page booklet. It is pressed on 140gm vinyl.

Described as a musician's musician, Allen's sound is built on a foundation of pop, rock, Americana, Roots and Blues influences. Jon Allen has a soulful, whiskeysoaked voice and a striking gift for melody. He has never been content to be pigeonholed, as demonstrated by the eclecticism of his albums to date.Of the album Jon writes ''The last few years have felt like a pressure cooker slowly increasing to boiling point. There is sense of threat and a feeling of impending doom. Living in a large urban centre during a global pandemic brought out a sense of paranoia. We became more aware of our need for space, our need for silence and to be close to nature to get above the noise of a city. I'm absorbing all the time and everything from the famous Will Smith slap to missing people inspired the songs. How close are we all to the tipping point? What are we likely to do in heat of the moment? What will stress do to us when pushed? But light
follows dark, and there are the moments of simplicity and you can count your blessings for the simple things life has to offer".

After releasing a breakout bedroom pop EP Catflap and a dream-jangle LP Telltale Signs that brought international embrace, Sobs now assemble a front- to- back indiepop behemoth - Air Guitar - after a much anticipated three-year wait.

A thirty-minute trip for the post-Internet consumer, Air Guitar calibrates inventive pop hooks for the indie rock lover, instantly accessible yet intricately arranged.

The album draws a line through the history of pop stylistics from 80s new wave ("Last Resort") and 90s power-pop ("Burn Book") to 00s sk8er punk and radio pop ("Air Guitar"). Further informed by the cosmopolitan, culturally astute ethos of PC Music - Sobs connects the uptempo of Shibuya's Advantage Lucy ("Lucked Out"), heart-on-sleeve indie rock of Bettie Serveert and Big Star ("World Implode"), with the eclecticism of New York's Darla Records ("Friday Night") to define the pulse of indiepop then and now.

RIYL: PJ Harvey, Sonic Youth, Dead Can Dance, Black Sabbath, Depeche Mode. In Blood is the group’s 14th album and the follow-up to 2020’s critically acclaimed Dances/Curses (Album Of The Year – The Quietus, Top 10 International Albums – Irish Times). It was typical of a band so well-known for stellar live performances to release their most successful album at a time when they were unable to back it up on the road. As was the case for many, lockdown changed the band’s lives in unexpected ways. Some felt a form of cabin fever at not being able to continue to make music (diverting their energies elsewhere - founding Wrong Speed Records for starters) whereas others relished the peace and quiet, perhaps questioning whether they wanted to return to the life they had before. Gigs (so long the lifeblood of the band) were booked, postponed, and cancelled. Things began to unravel and perhaps for the first time since the band formed in 2003 it was hard to see how it could continue. A plan was hatched to attempt to re-energise and reassemble the band: they would begin work on a new album. They would approach this as though a Somerset version of The Desert Sessions – members old and new and guests would contribute as and when time and restrictions allowed. Lyrically, British folk and ghost mythology provided the starting position for the song themes ranging from mutated stories of grief and loss written in the 14th Century (Perle), spiritual reawakening by ancient apparitions (Avalon) to the growth of nature after devastation (Can’t Feel Around Us, Over Cedar Limb), a metaphor also for spirit and body renewal and rebirth after trauma. The results sound free of any genre shackles and it suits Hey Colossus. They have taken the expansive anything-goes approach that made Dances/Curses so successful and fine-tuned and shaped it into an 8-song single album that never treads water or fills time. The prominent vocals steer the listener through the music, defining it as opposed to punctuating it (or being buried by it). The album is a calling card for the band in their 20th anniversary year. As odd and challenging as long-term fans would expect or hope for, but somehow more accessible and to the point than ever before. It is the closest the group have ever come to a pop record, radiating positivity through the murk like a small ray of light in some very dark and very weird times. Music can never entirely negate these feelings but, like the natural world referenced in the lyrics and sleeve, it invisibly bonds people together, lifting us up if we choose to let it.

An aura of mystery hangs over Jacky Giordano, a studio musician who has mostly worked for library music.He is the one behind the amazing label Freesound (Schifter, Philopsis, Challenger), but as well on Montparnasse 2000 with Pop in Devil's Train (reissued on Le Tres Groove Club), on Timing (Timing N?1 and Timing N?5, under the nickname Jacky Nodaro), on Musax with Boucles Rythmiques (under the nickname Joachim Sherylee, reissued as well on Le Tres Groove Club) or Black Devil Disco Club whose paternity for this record is still disputed between him and Bernard Fevre. Jacky Giordano wasn't an altar boy, far from it, and will have sadly been more known for his troubles with justice than for his music.This is his work for the label l'Illustration Musicale (IM) which can now be rediscovered thanks to this new reissue on Le Tres Groove Club.Organ Plus (IM26) is the sequel to Organ (IM 24), also reissued by Le Tres Groove Club. The title is misleading here, an organ not being preponderant part of the record which honours the Fender Rhodes, string machine, bass synth and clavinet. 'Be Careful', 'Riffologic', 'Twillight' : Jacky Giordano offers slow tempo jazz-funk, without losing his melancholy and low-fi groove that make his tracks immediately recognisable regardless the record label or nickname.

DJ Robert Smith presents his first ever scratch 12” - ‘Double Jabbed’!!
Previously lacing the portablist and 45 spinning community with 2 instant 7” classics,
‘The Kure’ and ‘The Booster’, ‘Double Jabbed’ is ALL that and then some!


Remixed and remastered, Side A contains all 12 of the skip-proof phrases from ‘The Kure’
plus an additional section with these arranged in ultra-pitch. It concludes with a full
phrase containing all of the samples from sides A and B in regular speed, then in
ultra-pitch. Side B contains all 13 of the skip-proof phrases from ‘The Booster’ then again

a section with these as skip-proof ultra-pitch phrases.



Pressed on premium black vinyl, the full colour picture sleeve is again illustrated by skate
industry legend Mark ‘Fos’ Foster (Heroin, Baker, Toy Machine, Santa Cruz, Element and
more).

A.R. Kive collates the three most astonishing works from that most miraculous of duos - A.R. Kane - comprising the ‘Up Home’ EP from 1988 that signified the band’s dawning realisation of their own powers and possibilities, their legendary debut LP ‘sixty nine’ (1988) and its kaleidoscopic, prophetic double-LP follow up ‘i’ (1989).

In founder-member Rudy Tambala’s new remastering, the music on these pivotal transmissions from the birth of dream pop, have been reinvigorated and re-infused with a new power, a new depth and intimacy, a new height and immensity. Vivid, timeless and yet always timely whenever they’re recalled, these records still force any listener to realise that despite the habits of retrospective myth-making and the
safe neutering effects of ‘genre’, thirty years have in no way dimmed how resistant and dissident to critical habits of categorisation A.R. Kane always were. Never quite ‘avant-pop’ or ‘shoegaze’ or ‘post-rock’ or any of those sobriquets designed to file and categorise, A.R. Kive is a reminder that those genres had to be coined, had to be invented precisely to contain the astonishing sound of A.R. Kane, because
previous formulations couldn’t come close to their sui generis sound and suggestiveness. This is music that pointed towards futures which a whole generation of artists and sonic explorers would map out. Now beautifully repackaged, remastered and fleshed out with extensive sleeve notes and accompanying materials, ‘A.R. Kive’ reveals that 35 years on it’s still a struggle to defuse the revolutionary and inspirational possibility of A.R. Kane’s music.

A.R. Kane were formed in 1986 by Rudy Tambala and Alex Ayuli, two second-generation immigrants who grew up together in Stratford, East London. From the off the pair were outsiders in the culturally mixed (cockney/Irish/West Indian/Asian) milieu of the East End, with Alex and Rudy’s folks first generation immigrants from Nigeria and Malawi, respectively. The two of them quickly developed and fostered an innate and near-telepathic mutual understanding forged in musical, literary and artistic exploration. Like a lot of second-generation immigrants, they were ferocious autodidacts in all kinds of areas, especially around music and literature. Diving deep into the music of afro-futurist luminaries such as Sun Ra, Miles Davis, Lee Perry and
Hendrix, as well as devouring the explorations of lysergic noise and feedback from contemporaries like Sonic Youth and Butthole Surfers, they also thoroughly immersed themselves in the alternate literary realities of sci-fi and ancient history (the fascination with the arcane that gave the band their name), all to feed their voracious cultural thirsts and intellectual curiosity.

It was seeing the Cocteau Twins performing on Channel 4 show the Tube that spurred A.R. Kane into being - “They had no drummer. They used tapes and technology and Liz Fraser looked completely otherworldly with those big eyes. And the noise coming out of Robin’s guitar! That was the ‘Fuck! We could do that! We could express ourselves like that!’ moment”, recalls Tambala - and through a mix of
confidence, chutzpah, ad hoc almost-mythical live shows and sheer innocent will the duo debuted with the astonishing ‘When You’re Sad’ single for One Little Indian in 1986. Immediately dubbed a ‘black Jesus & Mary Chain’ by a press unsure of WHERE to put a black band clearly immersed in feedback and noise, what was immediately apparent for listeners was just how much more was going on here - a
tapping of dub’s stealth and guile, a resonant umbilicus back to fusion and jazz, the music less a conjuration of past highs than a re-summoning of lost spirits.
The run of singles and EPs that followed picked up increasingly rapt reviews in the press, but it was the ‘Up Home EP’ released in 1988 on their new home, Rough Trade that really suggested something immense was about to break. Simon Reynolds noted the EP was: Their most concentrated slab of iridescent awesomeness and a true pinnacle of an era that abounded with astounding landmarks of guitar-reinvention, A.R. Kane at their most elixir-like.

If anything, the remastered ‘Up Home’ that forms the first part of ‘A.R. Kive’ is even more dazzling, even more startling than it was when it first emerged, and listening now you again wonder not just about how many bands christened ‘shoegaze’ tried to emulate it, but how all of them fell so far short of its lambent, pellucid wonder. This remains intrinsically experimental music but with none of the frowning orthodoxy those words imply. A.R. Kane, thanks to that second generation auto-didacticism were always supremely aware about the interstices of music and magic, but at the same time gloriously free in the way they explored that connection within their own sound, fascinated always with the creation of ‘perfect mistakes’ and the possibilities inherent in informed play.

‘sixty nine’ the group’s debut LP that emerged in 1988 had
critics and listeners struggling to fit language around A.R. Kane’s sound. As a title it was telling - the year of ‘Bitches Brew’, the year of ‘In A Silent Way’, the erotic möbius between two lovers - and as originally coined by the band themselves, ‘dream pop’ (before it became a free-floating signifier of vague import) was entirely apposite for the music A.R. Kane were making. Crafted in a dark small basement studio in which Tambala recalls the duo had “complete freedom - We wanted to go as far out as we could, and in doing so we discovered the point where it stops being music”. There was an irresistibly dreamy, somnambulant, sensual and almost surreal flow to ‘sixty nine’s sound, but also real darkness/dankness, the ruptures of the primordial and the reverberations of the subconscious, within the grooves of remarkable songs like ‘Dizzy’ and ‘Crazy Blue’. Alex’s plangent vocals floated and surged amidst exquisite peals of refracted feedback but crucially there was BASS here, lugubrious and funky and full of dread, sonic pleasure and sonic disturbance crushed together to make music with a center so deep it felt subcutaneous, music constructed from both the accidental and the deliberate, generous enough to dance with both serendipity and chaos. ‘sixty nine’ remains - especially in this remastered iteration - ravishing, revolutionary.

The final part of this ‘A.R. Kive’ contains 1989’s astonishing double-LP ‘i’ which followed up on ‘sixty nine’s promise and saw the duo fully unleash their experimental pop sensibilities over 26 tracks, plunging the A.R. Kane sound into a dazzlingly kaleidoscopic vision of pop experiment and play. Suffused with new digital technologies and combining searingly sweet and danceable pop with perhaps the duo’s strangest and boundary-pushing compositions, the album did exactly what a great double-set should do - indulge the artists sprawling pursuit of their own imaginations but always with a concision and an ear for those moments where pop both transcends and toys with the listeners expectations. Jason Ankeny has noted that “In retrospect, ‘i’ now seems like a crystal ball prophesying virtually every major musical development of the 1990s; from the shimmering techno of ‘A Love from Outer Space’ to the liquid dub of ‘What’s All This Then?’, from the alien drone-pop of ‘Conundrum’ to the sinister shoegazer miasma of ‘Supervixens’ — it’s all here, an underground road map for countless bands to follow.” Perhaps the most overwhelmingly all-encompassing transmission from A.R. Kane, ‘i’ bookended a three year period in which the duo had made some of the most prophetic and revelatory music of the entire decade.

After ‘i’ the duo’s output became more sporadic with Tambala and Ayuli moving in different directions both geographically and musically, with only 1994’s ‘New Clear Child’ a crystalline re-fraction of future and past echoes of jazz, folk and soul, before the duo went their separate ways. Since then, A.R. Kane’s music has endured, not thanks to the usual sepia’d false memories that seem to maintain interest in so much of the musical past, but because those who hear A.R. Kane music and are changed irrevocably, have to share that universe which A.R. Kane opened up, with anyone else who will listen. Far more than other lauded documents of the late 80s it still sounds astonishingly fresh, astonishingly livid and vivid and necessary and NOW.

Die Gezeiten schwellen an, während die nächste Welle des britischen Metal weiter an Fahrt aufnimmt, angeführt von den Genre-Pionieren SYLOSIS und ihrem brandneuen Werk "A Sign Of Things To Come".
Vom feurigen Modern Thrash des 2008er Debüts "Conclusion Of An Age" und den epischen Nachfolgern "Edge Of The Earth" (2011) und "Monolith" (2012) bis hin zur direkten, ganzheitlichen Brutalität von "Dormant Heart" (2015) und "Cycle Of Suffering" (2020) haben Sylosis mit Stolz die Fahne für anspruchsvollen, aber kompromisslosen Metal hochgehalten. Jetzt, mit neuer Musik bewaffnet, meldet sich Sylosis in der internationalen Metalwelt mächtig zurück!
A Sign Of Things To Come ist nicht nur das bisher kürzeste Sylosis-Album, sondern auch das beste der Band: Vom Thrash-Krieg des Eröffnungsstücks 'Deadwood' und der knurrenden Groove-Metal-Wut von 'Pariahs' über den taumelnden Sludge und den erhabenen Refrain von 'Eye For An Eye' bis hin zu den schimmernden Gothic-Doom-Vibes von 'Thorns' war die Phrase "all killer, no fucking filler" noch nie so zutreffend. Zehn Songs, zehn Triumphe: Mission erfüllt.
Sylosis sind zurück, um alle daran zu erinnern, wie echter Heavy Metal klingt, wenn er von den Besten der Besten gespielt wird. Nachdem ihnen die Chance verwehrt wurde, als Support für Cycle Of Suffering auf Tour zu gehen, ist das Feuer für einen karrierebestimmenden Albumzyklus nun endgültig entfacht!

Their 2018 debut Pink Noise (released on Sonic Cathedral) gained them a spot on Rough Trade's best album of the year list and praise from Drowned in Sound, CLASH Magazine, BBC Radio 6 and more.

This music has been in development for quite a while, and you still find clear inspiration from some of the shoegaze greats such as Jesus and the Mary Chain, A Place To Bury Strangers, Slowdive, and many more. This album is built on the same foundation that Echo Ladies curated during their past releases, but with a more unyielding presence.

Echo Ladies have always tried to balance two emotions at the same time throughout their songs. While their past songs tried to convey the feeling of nostalgia and hope for the future, mixed with worries and anxieties about defining who you are and what you will become, this album instead tries to balance the emotions of sorrow and loneliness, with anger, frustration, and the determination to make a change for the better.

After 25 years of living his dream as one of hip hop’s most respected producers, Hi-Tek is digging back into his roots with a brand new trio of instrumental vinyl LPs in 2023. “Beatbox Studios (1995 MPC 60II)” is the first of the series, each featuring a selection of restored and remastered beats, carefully chosen from an archive of DAT tapes. These LPs manage to both provide a window into Tek’s development and to shine light on the work of an already enormously-talented musician whose beats would’ve sounded right at home on classic releases from the mid-1990s.

Having learned to make beats off of borrowed equipment as a teenager, the aspiring DJ/producer born as Tony Cottrell achieved a break of sorts when he was hired in 1995 to manage one of the rooms at Beatbox Studios, a sprawling complex in the Clifton neighborhood in Cincinnati. It became the go-to-spot in town for emerging talent, giving him a chance to learn about the intricacies of recording and to sharpen his communication skills with artists to maximize their performance The gig also gave Tek plenty of down time to practice on and to master the studio’s Akai MPC 60II while making his own music. It was around this time he began to collaborate with the top rap talent in Cincinnati, and he started regularly visiting New York City to plant seeds for new relationships in the industry.

Though his work eventually evolved far beyond the styles present on “Beatbox Studios,” here you’ll find many signature elements of that era’s contemporary New York sound: some snappy drums reminiscent of A Tribe Called Quest or Easy Mo Bee, plenty of horn stabs a la Pete Rock or Lord Finesse, and the kind of dark pianos and filtered bass lines that producers like the Beatminerz were steadily employing. These were his biggest influences at the time, and that was the sound of 1995. As it turns out, that classic sound remains in demand today, and while Hi-Tek was not a well-known name in hip hop circles at that time, the calibre of beats on “Beatbox Studios” prove that he was a talent to be reckoned with, even then.

Love Love Records are honoured to present two interstellar remixes from the recent album from HENGE, ‘ExoKosm’ which was self-released last year by the band during the pandemic. Acid pioneers and Madchester legends 808 State rework the track ‘Exo’ in their signature ‘acid-house meets rave-hardcore’ big band sound that fits seamlessly amongst their own back catalogue. The second is a heavily clubbed up twist of ‘Goldilocks’ from Brain Rays & Quiet, a spacey slab of sub-slung broken power-house with a sleazy groove like an alien abduction straight to the engine room of the UFO.

For her second release on Northern Electronics, Vallmo (appellation of Melina ?kerman Kvie) strengthens her proficiency towards an electronic elevation with each and every track being a crevice offering kaleidoscopic gleams into a poetic narrative extracted from the slightly autotuned yet softly metallic voice.

What Virgil is to Dante, the piano is to the listener: a fragmented leitmotif and a guiding cicerone into the nimbus that is "Othem". Dual in nature, the album comprises seamless transitions between divergent idioms, figuratively as well as literally.

A false dichotomy conveying the opposing pairs tender and bold, distinct but evading and with a direction every so often forward as inward. "Othem" is an opus in equal parts melancholy, magic and mimesis.

Minor Science—aka UK-born, Berlin-based musician Angus Finlayson—makes his Balmat debut with Absent Friends Vol. III, the third installment in a shape-shifting series across a variety of formats and platforms. And with it, he pushes forward his vision of ambient music as neither static vista or merely mood-setting atmosphere, but rather a dynamic matrix of textures, sensations, and even rhythms.

The first two Absent Friends—a 2014 set for Blowing Up the Workshop, and a 2017 cassette and web player for Whities (now AD93)—were hybrid affairs, part DJ mix and part collage, mostly featuring music made by other people. Then, in 2020-21, Finlayson developed the project into a live show of his own material. Armed with hundreds of bespoke stems created in his studio—idiosyncratic FX chains, feedback loops through cheap rack gear, heavily post-processed field recordings, found voices, etc.—he would improvise on four CDJs, mixer, FX, and live synths, extending techniques he learned as a club DJ into a live context, accompanied by visuals by Stockholm-based artist Paul Witherden.

Absent Friends Vol. III is an album of studio versions of the music developed for the live show. But in Minor Science’s world, even a category as simple as “studio versions” is slightly opaque. “Most of these tracks weren’t ‘composed’ in the studio,” Finlayson explains: “The sounds started out as stems and source material for the live show, and might not have been intended to go together—but then through performance, they settled into shapes that worked. I then recreated those performances in the studio.” That organic process of ideation and realization might help explain the unusual coherence of the album, in which sounds and textures flow seamlessly from one to the next, sometimes seeming to stand still, and sometimes looping back. There are virtually no melodies, few recognizable motifs or riffs, yet the eight-track album nevertheless moves with a distinctive logic and a determined sense of purpose, from the frozen-in-time shimmer of the opening “Introduction” through the early cuts’ studies of space and light; from the seemingly autobiographical “Summer Diary” through the rushing trance (yes, trance) arpeggios of “Contingency” and on to the dulcet denouement of the closing “Gather Your Party (Dispersed Mix).”

On his third album Comité Hypnotisé let you belly flop into his eleven chambers of the Danza Del Piri-Piri: expanding the feral and contagious universe he started to build a lifetime ago. Levitating and shimmering a glistering way through deep old skool 70's sitar vibes and jitterbug grooves. This boogieman aka the Millionaire-mind and part of the Evil Superstars has carved some hot smoked out bass and organ flared cuts on wax, ready to never leave you again. Whether it is with woodchopped kazou sounds stretching into hazy sunshine desire or dazzling basslines blending with interstellar and stuttering kick drums: the Danza Del Piri-Piri flip-flops and slams into a wiggly relentless sonic future.

FFO Sven Wunder, Ennio Morricone, Khruangbin, Flying Lotus, The Meters, Parliament, Edan, The Gaslamp Killer.

Comité Hypnotisé is the brainchild of Tim Vanhamel, frontman of Millionaire and Evil Superstars, two of Belgium's most famous alternative rock bands. In 2013 Tim started creating solo music that only got released in 2021 on his first solo album through the Belgian eclectic Cortizona label

Fierce tracks that cross the bridge between electro and Uk Bass genres. This is the Third chapter in the Unseen Series. As the concept dictates... Another 4-track EP from a hidden source. Let the music do the talking. Limited supplies... don't sleep.

Nous'klaer Audio presents Martinou - Chiral, the follow full-length up to his 2021 album Rift. This time nine tracks across two vinyls. An album flowing 'in a way' like Rift, but it's different: More outspoken, heavier sound design and it peaks on a blissful note. ''Open up the blinds and take me there. We'll break the surface tension. We'll dive in. I'm locked in your devotion. You give an inclination to our demise. It will be our exit. To bliss, we'll be its guardian. Once there was love. Clear as glassy water. No ripples, no waves. I followed while you led. Our arrival was warm. Hot, even. Stunning to a startling degree. Hands intwined, frolicking towards the blue. Hours passed, and white heat cede to an orange hue. We cooled down. Red. We rallied. Black. It began. Into the deep darkness we ran. White sand, it has a tendency to get everywhere. Salt water will only dehydrate you more. Shriveled and dry. Scratchy and coarse. More. And then we were lost. Fingers once locked grew distant. Morning, dear. Where have you gone? We looked. A glimpse from afar. Red. We rallied. Shall we share a bottle of wine? Black, lost again. Afternoon, friend. Where were you? Red. Alone. Black. We rallied. Shall we try somewhere new? Sand and salt. Evening, sir. Reservation for one? Reservations a plenty, I say. Evening, miss. Dining alone? Aren't we all? Dining, miss, not dying. Oh, yes, alone. Black. Sand and salt. I found you. No. No. Wait, do I know you? You feel like a dream. Don't touch me. Move along, sir. Who are you? Leave. Who are you? Where did you go? Keep moving. I am, I will. Time to move on. I'm moving! Leave. Don't touch me. Leave. Why are you? Exit. Purple. Orange. Yellow. White. Blue. Morning, dear. Shall we have breakfast? I think I'll sleep some more. But it's our last day. I know. See you downstairs when you're ready. OK. I open up the blinds. A bird breaks the surface tension. Locked in. To Devotion? No. Demise. An inclination. Reverie. Take me there. Where? Exit (To Bliss) '' Text by Gregory Markus

Noted reggae vocalist Barry Biggs comes under the Emotional Rescue microscope here with celebrated LA digger Patrick Billard aka DJ Duckcomb remixing one of his cuts. First up is the original version of 'Illusion' which has big pianos over the clean digital dub. The soaring vocal is obscured by plenty of lush effects and melodies. After a version twists and contorts the original, the DJ Duckcomb Discomix slows things down and ups the dazzling disco vibes but keeps the dub dubby bottom end to ensure plenty of dance floor impact. This is a classy one as ever from this label.

The follow up to 'Sun Circles' is here: 'Jour De Fete' (French for "day of celebration") is a sweltering slab of festive inner city disco of the highest order. Flip the record for a mighty, extended dub by cult hero Conrad McDonnell of Idjut Boys fame. 'Nuff said.