Swedish death metal legends UNLEASHED are among the undisputed Viking kings of the entire genre. Founded in 1989 by Johnny Hedlund, UNLEASHED have been delivering first-class death metal in the tradition of their Nordic ancestors since day one! The best-of album "Viking Raids" is an impressive collection of works from the band's first creative phase from 1991 to 2004, during which time the band released albums such as "Across the Open Sea", "Vitory", "Warrior" and "Hell's Unleashed". Songs such as "Death Metal Victory", "The Longships Are Coming", "Winterland" or the stomping "Don't Want To Be Born" have long since become genuine classics that have to be played at every metal party. Reaper Entertainment is re-releasing "Viking Raids" on 300 pieces of strictly limited blue splatter vinyl.
Suche:acr
- A1: Ale Hop - Head Transplant
- A2: Daniela Huerta - Tza Tun Tzat
- A3: Debashis Sinha - For The Waters Ever Taste The Heavens Up Parts I-V
- B1: Hexorcismos - ¿Acaso De Veras Se Vive Con Raíz En La Tierra?
- B2: Hexorcismos & El Irreal Veintiuno - Interferencias
- B3: Jessika Khazrik - Gebera
- C1: Khyam Allami - Mix V6
- C2: Kloxii Li - Anhaga
- C3: Kmru - Hidden Options
- C4: Maf - What's Heard Once Entered (Nommo)
- D1: Portrait Xo - Mutualism_151122
- D2: Simina Oprescu - Granularities
- D3: Visions Of Lizard - Barranca Del Muerto
For the last seven years, sound artist, technologist, and electronic musician Moisés Horta Valenzuela (aka Hexorcismos) has been studying artificial intelligence and generative art, wondering how these new technologies might be augmented into his musical process. Born in Tijuana and currently based in Berlin, Hexorcismos has long attempted to break down the permeable borders between musical styles and expressions, using the spaces in between to reinforce his politics and worldview. And on 'MUTALISMX - becoming sonic network', he expands his vision, inviting artists from across the globe to collaborate on work that questions the biases inherent in AI models, offering a collective alternative that could serve as a blueprint for further research.
The majority of AI art at this stage works with "big data", taking ideas from the cultural canon and muddying them with our contemporary reality. But if we accept that mass culture is always politically biased, always swaying towards historical prejudices, then there must be a counter-narrative. Hexorcismos began to develop a bottom-up approach, using "small data" to interrogate his idiosyncratic approach to art; he built a tool called SEMILLA.AI based on neural audio synthesis that could not only mimic his sonic fingerprint but transform it into another. So when he offered the synth to his network of collaborators, he gave them the option of either using only their data or sharing the signatures of each other artist involved in the project, blurring their identities into a mutual voice.
The result is a compilation that unspools with the coherence and fluidity of a single-artist album or adventurous DJ mix, genreless and boundless but unified by a singular message. Hunanese-American artist Kloxii Li for example takes rugged percussion and tense, industrial ambience, smudging her soundscape into a swirling gust of ghostly dissonance. Hexorcismos himself contributes two compositions: the lengthy, hypnotic 'Acaso de veras se vive con raíz en la Tierra', an AI-powered scramble of his pointed tribal guarachero experiments; and 'Interferencias', a collaboration with Mexican club veteran Bryan Dálvez, aka El Irreal Veintiuno that drives intense dancefloor rhythms into a dense haze of frozen drones and radio static. Elsewhere, Berlin-based Lebanese artist and writer Jessika Khazrik dissolves her voice into a mesh of obscured rhythms and dissociated whirrs, blending the organic with the artificial but retaining an overpowering sense of humanity.
Some artists were drawn to the nebulous aspects of the technology, searching for truth in a soup of different sounds, while others, such as KMRU, used Hexorcismos's synthesizer the examine their output. On 'hidden options', the Kenyan sound artist fed his immense catalog into the neural net, bringing out his mannerisms and tendencies in the process. Each track is singular but myriad, prompting both mutual respect and a sonic becoming, a feedback process between the artist and the tool, the individual and the collective. Data sets are made by people, and by engaging directly with musicians, Hexorcismos suggests a new way of utilizing a technology demonized and glorified without careful examination. Each artist owns their AI model, and alongside the album Hexorcismos will release SEMILLA.AI to the public (with custom-made models to start the process), allowing anyone to access this revolutionary technology.
Even the album's artwork reflects the political message, conceptualized by Chilean duo hypereikon, who used AI processes to develop a visual reflection of the technology and its possibilities. Operating outside of academia and capitalist enterprises, MUTUALISMX proposes an alternative future - one without borders that's not beholden to the Western canon, where independent labor can be prioritized and celebrated, and where creativity can truly flourish.
A slightly revised & edited take of Death Is Not The End's Jamaican Gospel special for NTS Radio, originally broadcast for the station back in late 2016. A dusty heap of JA gospel from the 60s and early 70s. Split across two sides - all vinyl and all 45s - played through a touch of delay pedal with crackle aplenty.
Damona ist eine 18 jährige bayrische von Grunge und Classic Rock beeinflusste Sängerin. Kraftvollen Pop Punk gefällig? Damona macht was sie am besten kann. Frech und laut sein, gefolgt von ganz viel Melodie und Talent. Das Ausnahmetalent steht für moderne, unverbrauchte weibliche Gitarren-Pop- Musik. Mit über 2 Millionen Follower/innen allein auf TikTok, die ihren Song-Interpretationen und Demos folgen und über 117.000 Follower/innen auf Instagram, fu?r die sie weit mehr ist als eine "Influencerin", sie ist Vorbild. Nun also endlich der erste physische Tonträger. "Ich finde es so crazy, das ich endlich meine eigene Musik auf meinem Plattenspieler hören kann. Die Platte verewigt die letzen beiden Jahre meines Lebens und ist für mich wie ein ein Fotoalbum, nur in schöner;)". Enthält auch die bisherigen Digitalsingles "Skeleton" und " Girl In A Car".
A collection of unreleased tracks from the early 90's Jumpin' & Pumpin' era, when FSOL hid behind various guises
Warehouse find!
While the German producer Martin Matiske averages a new release under his given name every few years, there was a long stretch of time in which sightings of his Blackploid alias were much more rare. After dropping an EP for Frustrated Funk in 2006, fans found further material hard to come by over the next decade or so. However, Matiske has reinvigorated Blackploid in recent times, with the project making a few compilation appearances and dropping a couple of EPs across 2020.
That run now culminates inCosmic Traveler, a four-track affair which marks Matiske's debut appearance on Sheffield's Central Processing Unit. Given the long wait, it's great just to see Blackploid back among the fray once again. But for the project's CPU curtain-raiser to be an EP of such high-quality techno jams? Now that really is spoiling us.
Cosmic Traveler's title nods towards the sort of stargazing aesthetics one finds in classic Detroit techno. However, while there are undoubtedly ties to the Motor City in this music, the record ultimately steers less towards spacious atmospherics and more towards the taut, lean machine-funk of seminal practitioners like Dopplereffekt.
Matiske sets his stall out from the off. Opener 'Electric Engine' begins with a run of stiff-necked 808 kicks before hissing hi-hats, a grizzly bassline and all manner of futuristic sounds enter to warp the tune into hyperspace. Following cut 'Night Drive' repeats the trick of 'Electric Engine' but adds a pleasingly dinky synth lead in order to nudge itself slightly towards bleep-techno territory.
The two cuts on Cosmic Traveler's B-side are pure late-night goodness, a pair of mid-set heaters primed for dark basements. 'Pleasure Activism' delivers on the promise of its title and then some, pushing the Kraftwerk template to extremes by bringing a load of gnarly synth lines into play over a wobbling acidic chug. Finally, EP closer 'The Race' is reminiscent of both the twisted machine-funk of Gerald Donald's Japanese Telecom project and the playful modern evolutions of artists like fellow CPU high-flyer Jensen Interceptor.
The resurgence of Martin Matiske's Blackploid project continues withCosmic Traveller, an EP of timeless electro-funk and techno.
FFO: Dopplereffekt, Japanese Telecom, Jensen Interceptor, Cardopusher
During the Tang dynasty (around the 9th Century CE), traveling intellectual Li Yuanming would routinely leave home to write and debate poetry with likeminded scholars across China, isolating his wife Cifu for sometimes weeks on end.
Frustrated, she found comfort in the arms of a widowed neighbor, but when Li remained at home for an unexpected stretch of time, Cifu was prompted to develop a method to signal her lover it was safe to approach. She stitched a special green hat that she handed to her husband as he was about to leave town; when Li was wearing the hat, it worked like a traffic signal - green meant go.
But this didn't last for long, during one trip Li returned home early and caught Cifu and their neighbor together, and when the local community caught wind of the story, the green hat became an enduring symbol of infidelity.
On Tzusing's sophomore album the Malaysian-born artist, who lives between Shanghai and Taipei, meditates on China's complicated history of patriarchal heteronormativity, and how these archaic double standards continue to dominate the culture in pervasive, often invisible ways.
The organic minimalism of composer and producer Kirk Barley is collected on his new studio album Marionette, released via Odda Recordings.
Whether drawing from field recordings, found sound, instrumental improvisations or synthetic processes, Barley’s compositions evoke unfolding sound worlds, as simple ideas or motifs are layered and developed into complex set-pieces that reveal themselves over time.
Marionette showcases the breadth and variety of the Yorkshire-born artist’s sound, weaving together familiar and uncanny moods of rural England and its Victorian architecture, as suggested by the gated garden print of the album’s cover. Unfurling between physical textures – the patina of vinyl crackle or gentle rain – and the hyper-real spaces that his music inhabits, Barley describes the compositions as “landscape or static scene paintings,” with many of the album’s tracks taking nature’s rhythms as their compositional cue.
On ‘Seafarer’, this manifests in the repeated synth swells of a boat on rough waters, while title track ‘Marionette’ imagines an eerie scene, were shadows flicker by an open fire. Similarly,‘Lake of Gold’ layers plucked strings at different scales and velocities to create what Barley calls the “rain-like quality” of the rhythm.
Drawing from jazz, minimalism and techno, Barley focuses on the detailed qualities of sound, experimenting with time signatures, temporals and tuning systems. His esoteric alter-ego Bambooman (2013-2018) found a home on Matthew Herbert’s Accidental imprint, releasing the album Whispers in 2017.
In contrast, under the pseudonym Church Andrews (most notably in collaboration with drummer Matt Davies), he produces synthetic, often beat-focused music, using digital synthesis and algorithmic composition techniques, with the live drum performances triggering and modulating Barley’s synths. The duo has recently performed at festivals such as Rewire and Waking Life, filmed sessions for Fact Magazine and Slate & Ash, and recently had their music played out by Aphex Twin.
Under his own name, Barley released his debut album Landscapes in 2019 on 33-33 Records and received support from the likes of NTS Radio and BBC 6 Music. Barley has performed at events across the UK and Europe alongside the likes of Andy Stott, Beatrice Dillon, Jan Jelinek, MF DOOM and Madlib. He has also completed commissioned work for the British Art Show, Camden Arts Centre, MSCTY and the Open Music Archive.
Three years on from the desolate beauty of their debut, Quindi Records is proud to present the second album from Dead Bandit. The ghosts of their past endeavours still haunt their guitars, but on Memory Thirteen the duo's delicately dishevelled Southern gothic feels tonally distinct from their prior outing.
Dead Bandit is Ellis Swan and James Schimpl - the former a noted solo singer-songwriter from Chicago with a penchant for eerie, witching hour murder ballads and the latter an accomplished Canadian multi-instrumentalist with a bias towards heartworn, roaming soundscapes. Their instrumental collaboration has an open, lyrical quality which says as much as any spoken line, and on this album they've especially embraced the power of contrast as we're guided between scenes, sometimes within the confines of one track.
'Peel Me An Orange' is especially instructive in this regard, beginning as a blown-out paean to sonic degradation and the acute sense of hopelessness it projects, only to yield to a lilting tape loop of twanging guitar before entirely widening out in an emphatic burst of post-rock optimism.
Post-rock isn't noted for its banal cheeriness as a genre, and Dead Bandit aren't about to lay down feel-good drive-time anthems, but the sense of pulling at extremes of energy and introspection show Swan and Schimpl to be testing the emotional limits of their weatherbeaten sound. The cautiously sentimental mood of 'Blowing Kisses' hints at the hard-won light which can be encountered while pointedly driving into darkness.
Sometimes noise is a subtle device - a looming bed of unease under the forthright pluck of Swan's distinct guitar tone or the cracking round the edges of a beaten up drum machine. On 'Memory Thirteen' the distortion on the bass becomes a central figure in its haggard waltz, while 'Staircase' and 'Perfume' leave the signal wet until the delay feedback becomes the body of the riff. Either way, the sound is never left untouched as Swan and Schimpl grow more comfortable in their exchange, blurring their respective sonic languages as they expand their shared vocabulary to create an album of depth, difference and devoted distortion.
Sun Yellow LP[21,22 €]
Clear Vinyl
Blue Lake is the musical moniker of American born, Copenhagen based multidisciplinary artist and musician Jason Dungan, who signs to the Tonal Union imprint for the release of his new longform album ‘Sun Arcs’. It follows 2022’s release ‘Stikling’, earning a nomination for ‘Album of the Year’ at the Danish Music Awards plus warm praise from The Hum blog and musicians and DJs alike including Jack Rollo (Time is Away/NTS) and Carla dal Forno. A self taught player, Dungan began freely experimenting with self-built multi-string instruments, preferring to build his own hybrid 48-string zither and working in the realms of left-field ambient music, off kilter folk and improvised acoustic minimalism.
The starting point of ‘Sun Arcs’ saw Jason travel for a week alone to Andersabo, a cabin set in the idyllic Swedish woods just outside of Unnaryd, known also as the music project, festival and residency space which has been run by Dungan since 2016, hosting artists like Sofie Birch, Johan Carøe and Ellen Arkbro. Whilst writing 1-2 pieces per day, a conscious decision was made to leave behind everyday distractions and shut out the outside world to instead focus on the natural passage of time as Dungan recalls: “My only sense of time came from these daily walks out in the woods with my dog, and an awareness of the sun’s path as it moved across the sky each day.”
The album’s immersive world unfolds with the opener ‘Dallas’, an ode to his home state and a musical synthesis of these two disparate spaces (Texas and Denmark), the touchstones of Dungan’s life. A folk-esque single acoustic builds to a flowing arrangement of clarinets, organ and cello drones coupled with percussion. ‘Green-Yellow Field’ chimes in as the first of two solo oriented zither recordings twinned with the dreamlike title track ‘Sun Arcs’, both densely rich as cascading and overlapping harmonic tones resound. ‘Bloom’ emerges with a krautrock psyche before an eruption of cello drones, slide guitar and free-ranging zither playing, ushering in the anticipation of spring. With half of the recordings conceived in Andersabo, Jason returned to Copenhagen to form the album's centre piece ‘Rain Cycle’ which features a tempered Roland drum machine alongside shifting zither improvisations. ‘Writing’ explores the shimmering harp-like qualities of sweeping playing figurations with Dungan mapping out adjusted tuning “zones” on the zither for unconventional but creatively liberating effects. ‘Fur’ captures the feeling of openness and the momentum of time, seeing Dungan perform waves of solo clarinet, often in one takes and embellished with textural drones, a zither solo, and layers of guitar. ‘Wavelength’ the album's closer is fondly inspired by the film works of Michael Snow and Don Cherry’s seminal live album ‘Blue Lake’ (1974), as it builds out from a drone-generated zither chord and features an alto recorder solo. Dungan found a deep connection to Cherry’s stripped back performance ethos, focusing on the core beauty of minimal instrumentation creating a genre-less meeting between folk and jazz. A dialogue is formed between the solo and the bandlike performances, interlinked in a geographical duality with all finding a sense of commonplace as musical sketches of visited landscapes. The bountiful instrumentation ebbs and flows as further layers emerge with Dungan constructing his material much like an artist would, recording and reviewing, adding and subtracting.
Musically it portrays a form of double life led by an American-identifying person living in Scandinavia, and a new found presence in Denmark, seeking out underdeveloped marshlands and barren stretches of beach adrift from other rhythms and distractions. Highlighting their individual and potent importance Dungan concludes: “Both places feel like “me”, I think on some level the music is always some kind of self-portrait.” ‘Sun Arcs’ depicts the intricate balance of nature’s cycles and the paths outlined by the seasons, from a winter dormancy to a warm sun drenched scene. The album scales new glorying heights and further defines Dungan’s musical narrative, inhabiting a unique space in left-field, improvised and experimental music, borning his most accomplished compositions to date. A singular and visionary expression, drawing on an array of instruments and sound worlds with a renewed sense of joy and discovery.
The album's rich tapestry was mixed by Jeff Zeigler (Laraaji, Mary Lattimore, Kurt Vile /Steve Gunn) and mastered by Stephan Mathieu (Kali Malone, KMRU, Félicia Atkinson).
For their first album, Seth Troxler and Phil Moffa joined forces and became multidimensional creative dissidents Lost Souls Of Saturn. This time, even further into the vortex, they’ve metamorphosed into sci-fi AR comic characters John and Frank who’ve explored the galaxy and returned with this perception-melting new LP.
Although ‘Reality’ still possesses the wigged-out conceptual brilliance which garnered installations and performances at Saatchi Gallery (London), Fondation Beyeler (Basel), The Metropolitan Museum of Art (NYC), and Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, plus live sets at Field Day, Glastonbury and Kappa Futur, as its title might suggest, there’s vividness amidst the mind-bending. Where its predecessor was a murky exploration of weird and dark cerebral passageways, this album – though still fathoms deep – has a dazzling clarity of sound, as if listeners are beginning to crack the arcane codes, and reach for enlightenment.
A prime example of these newfound beams of light guiding participants through the maze is their recent single; the chugging cosmic techno synth pop of ‘Mirage’, featuring the voice of Adam Ohr. Also guesting on the album is Lvv Gvn, whose honeyed Billie-Holiday-meets-Rickie-Lee-Jones tones adorn the tranquil pixelated broken beat of ‘Click’, Greg Paulus’s trumpet sessions on ‘Zorg Arrival’ and ‘Scram City’, and Protomartyr’s vocalist Joe Casey and guitarist Greg Ahee, who grace the liminal drifting celestial plane of ‘Lilac Chasers’. Sitarist Rishab Sharma, the last disciple of guru Ravi Shankar, also shreds on ‘Scram City’.
Elsewhere, across the LP’s immensely inventive instrumental passages techno, dub, house, jazz, psych and ambient are vapourised into an expansive yet pleasingly concise series of morphing dream states. Fans of Air Liquide, Ravi Shankar, Ray Manzarek, Carl Craig, Pole, The Orb and ‘Son Of A Lung’ era FSOL should find much to like.
White vinyl, limited to 500 copies. Liam Cromby, known for his work as the lead singer and songwriter of We Are The Ocean until 2017, has today announced his forthcoming debut solo album What Can I Trust, If I Can't Trust True Love, due for release on December 1st 2023, also sharing the title track, available to stream/download worldwide now. "Drawing from my own experiences, this song is a testament to those early, fragile moments of a relationship_where every misstep feels like a fall and every kind gesture feels like flying," he explains. "Choosing to name the album after this song was instinctive, given that it was among the final tracks to be crafted. Even though it came later in the creative journey, it perfectly embodies the central theme of the album." Since revealing the first taste of new music in March, with the release of `Here I Am' - accompanied only by a contemplative, artful film featuring an elaborate dance between two performers - followed by `Breakdown', and last month, `At This Table', this new phase of his career is already off to an impressive start. With early airplay from BBC Introducing and Absolute Radio Country among others, an appearance at The Great Escape festival and sold-out headline shows across the country, Cromby was invited to play at the prestigious Black Deer Festival of Americana, and along with a full-band set, joined Brandy Clark, Drake White, Elles Bailey and Bella White for a Songwriter Session. Although recorded in a matter of days, the project was at least five years in the making.
Repress on cream and black galaxy vinyl, limited to 500 copies. PHOBOPHILIC's abrasive explorations of existentialism and the limits of human consciousness are a welcome feature of the currently thriving US death metal scene. The influence of death metal's forefathers is evident in PHOBOPHILIC's full throttle output, but their gaze is fixed firmly on the future - wherever it may take them... Since their 2016 formation PHOBOPHLIC have steadily accumulated early releases in the shape of two demos, 2019's Undimensioned Identities EP and a split release with Canada's Sedimentum, all the while honing their craft out across the North American touring circuit - featuring live stints with Gatecreeper and Mutilated respectively, as well as appearances at LDB Fest and Philadelphia Death Nexus - positioning themselves among US death metals most intriguing young acts. Across Enveloping Absurdity's runtime PHOBOPHILIC's quest for elucidation is explored in punishingly heavy fashion across tracks such as Those Which Stare Back, Nauseating Despair and Survive in Obscurity. But for all of the Midwestern group's old school death metal artisanship and lyrical angst, there is a fundamental rejection of misplaced nihilism in the form of quieter and reflective passages throughout. No better is this showcased than mid-album track Individuation's calm before the storm, which offers up Enveloping Absurdity's most contemplative moment.
- A1: Lab Technicians - We Gave U Life
- A2: Aural Exciter - U = Euphoria
- A3: Original Clique - "F" (Whistle Mix)
- B1: Pierrepoint - Tonnerre
- B2: A.e.k. - Lick It
- B3: Zubbizerretta - Wake The Town (Somnabulist Mix)
- C1: Estudiantes - Let The Music Into Your Mind
- C2: Zeco - The Witch Trials
- C3: Big Showdown - They're Here
- D1: The Rhythm Squad - Animal House (Original Mix)
- D2: The Rhythm Squad - Manhunt (Instrumental)
- D3: Nine-L - Islands, Part 2
volume II[25,17 €]
Tony Boninsegna: Notes From The Underground 1986-1994 (Volumes 1 and 2) Cold Blow / Musique Pour La Danse
The story of dance music is littered with hidden heroes and underground activists whose immense contributions have been overlooked, ignored and under-documented. Tony Boninsegna, a producer who made and released countless classic cuts and forgotten gems during the acid house and rave era, is one such example.
Melding elements of all that was popular in underground clubs at the time to create his own dancefloor-friendly sound worlds, Boninsegna amassed a huge catalogue between 1986 and '94, while hiding his involvement via an array of oddball aliases and opaque pseudonyms. Boninsegna's story first came to light four years ago when he appeared in Join The Future: Bleep Techno and the Birth of British Bass Music, Matt Anniss's critically acclaimed alternative history of UK dance music in the rave era. Now Cold Blow has joined forces with Musique Pour La Danse to deliver a much-needed anthology of his greatest productions and
co-productions - many rare or hard-to-find - for the first time.
Featuring 24 restored and remastered tracks stretched across two volumes on vinyl and digital, including a handful of previously unreleased tracks and mixes, and accompanied by detailed sleeve notes by Anniss, Notes From The Underground 1986-1994 is a joyful celebration of one of British dance music's most under-appreciated artists. The full breadth and depth of Boninsegna's rave-ready catalogue, as well as an indication of
the sheer volume of aliases he utilised during the period, is explored in detail across the two-part compilation.
Fittingly, volume one features two previously unreleased recordings that mark his earliest explorations of the emerging house sound (both as The Rhythm Squad, with Richard Compton), alongside touchstone releases such as Zeco's 'The Witch Trials' (a 1989 production that marked his first outing on vinyl), celebrated workouts recorded with regular collaborator Mykey Tee (Lab Technicians' bleep-inspired 'We Gave U Life', Big Showdown's epic 'They're Here' and AEK's mind-mangling, bleep & breaks number 'Lick It'), and genuinely overlooked gems (the proto-tribal house of Pierrepoint's acid-smothered 'Tonnerre' and saucer-eyed rush of Estudiantes' 'Let The Music Into Your Mind').
It all adds up to the definitive musical retrospective of a genuine underground, rave-era hero whose time in the spotlight may finally have arrived.
To celebrate the launch of their sold-out US tour, NYC indie pop upstart Jordana and LA-based TV Girl surprise-release a collaborative EP entitled Summer’s Over today. Across its seven songs, the pair mesh TV Girl’s hypnotic, sample-heavy production aesthetic with Jordana’s plaintive-yet-playful vocal to form the perfect ode to the turning of the seasons, and the perfect celebration of their epic trek across America.
COTONETE is back!
After releasing numerous and now collectable standalone singles, plus some now famous collaborations with Dimitri from Paris, 2019 saw Parisian based 8 piece, Cotonete release their first long player in 15 years! Under the guidance of Melik Bencheikh from Paris’ rare record emporium, Heart Beat Vinyl. The dark moody mover "Super-Vilains" came out to great success on Heavenly Sweetness.
After playing some packed live shows around France and the UK, including the acclaimed Sunday at Dingwalls in Camden, hosted by Gilles Peterson and Patrick Forge. Somewhere along this part of the journey, they came across the Brazilian music legend and vocal powerhouse, Di Melo. He softened their souls, and from this love affair came the album "Atemporal". Released on Favourite Recordings, this 8 track album would end up being sampled by Canadian superstar Drake, for his 2023 album ‘For All the Dogs Scary Hours
Edition’.
So now into 2024, and we have Cotonete full length number two. They’ve enlisted the producer Guts to guide them towards sunshine, groove, warmth and all the colours in his rainbow. With their tongues firmly in their cheeks, the album is titled ‘Victoire de la Musique’ - a dig at the annual French music award ceremony. Taking the band deep, producer Guts showed them new and exciting rhythms from all corners of the world. The record’s first example of this is ‘Venezuela’, a track directly inspired by the jazz funk from the great Caribbean nation.
Other key musical exploration on the record can be attributed to the late composer Francis Lai. On ‘Cinq Pour L'aventure’ - an almost 15 minute epic monster showcasing the band’s love for 70's French movies soundtracks. “L’aventure c’est l’aventure”, was a movie by one of the most famous French directors Claude Lelouch The single from the soundtrack was sung by French music superstar Johnny Halliday.
Guests are scattered very tastefully across the album, on the only cover version of the record, the Brazilian master Jorge Ben’s ‘Bebete Vãobora’, Sabrina Malheiros was invited to lend her lungs. The daughter of Azymuth’s Alex Malheiros helps join perfectly the dots from a band that are without a doubt Cotonete’s biggest influence. Brazilian jazz funk, now with an added French touch.
On ‘Day in Day Out’ a powerful performance is given from Leron Thomas on vocals and trumpet. Perhaps also known for his role as the musical director for Iggy Pop and touring member of his band. This track is an already tried and tested dance floor filler, emphasizing just how tight the band really can play - the track even found its way into BBC Music’s Craig Charles’ ‘Track Of The Year’ selection.
No record so soulful would be complete without a trip to the UK. Omar, London’s Godfather of New Soul pops in. Having recorded with artists like; Courtney Pine, Level 42 & Erykah Badu, in his distinctive smooth style, he blesses the track ‘What Did Run You For?’ The final vocal visitor is Gystere Peskine, a Parisian based musical hero, who shows off his retro future funk feels on ‘O Ceu es Preto’ - which literally translates as ‘the sky is black’ - although given the hugely uplifting and almost Gospel Soul of this Russian/Brazilian singer, he
has us seeing things far brighter.
Cotonete have endeavored to build a worldwide rainbow warrior team of merry boys and girls. Fighting the brave fight to shine light towards the fact that music will always win…. "Victoire de la Musique" - a symphony of spring, songs of the new world, a "Victory Of Music”
2024 Repress
* Following on from the success of our 'Liftin Spirit Reloaded' vinyl series, we are pleased to announce our next project in collaboration with Ram Records. 'Ram Reloaded' will be a series of limited 12" vinyl from Ram's early years, re-mastered from the original DATs and presented onto our usual, high quality, heavy weight vinyl.
* In 1994, Shimon made his first appearance in the Ram studio to create two tracks alongside Ant Miles. With additional production from Andy C, and the vocal sampled from the film ‘Predator’, Shimon’s debut track soon fell into place. Highlighting the usual precision tooled breaks, synonymous with the emerging Ram style, Ant Miles’s reversed bass line and stereo oscillating effects had an immediate impact on dancefloors throughout the UK, cementing Shimon as an artist to watch out for in the future. For the flipside to Predator, Ant Miles and Shimon went on a roller jungle vibe with haunting pads and slow time stretched vocals, creating a hypnotic trance state perfectly complimenting the A side.
Promotion across chosen internet websites and Hardcore/Jungle 12” vinyl communities.
- A1: Passage Through The Spheres
- A2: All Life Long (For Organ)
- A3: No Sun To Burn (For Brass)
- B1: Prisoned On Watery Shore
- B2: Retrograde Canon
- B3: Slow Of Faith
- C1: Fastened Maze
- C2: No Sun To Burn (For Organ)
- D1: All Life Long (For Voice)
- D2: Moving Forward
- D3: Formation Flight
- D4: The Unification Of Inner & Outer Life
Kali Malone's anticipated new album "All Life Long" is a collection of music for pipe organ, choir, and brass quintet composed by Kali Malone, 2020 - 2023. Choral music performed by Macadam Ensemble and conducted by Etienne Ferschaud at Chapelle Notre-Dame-de-L'Immaculée-Conception in Nantes. Brass quintet music performed by Anima Brass at The Bunker Studio in New York City. Organ music performed by Kali Malone and Stephen O'Malley on the historical meantone tempered pipe organs at Église Saint-François in Lausanne, Orgelpark in Amsterdam, and Malmö Konstmuseum in Sweden. Kali Malone composes with a rare clarity of vision. Her music is patient and focused, built on a foundation of evolving harmonic cycles that draw out latent emotional resonances. Time is a crucial factor: letting go of expectations of duration and breadth offers a chance to find a space of reflection and contemplation. In her hands, experimental reinterpretations of centuries-old polyphonic compositional methods become portals to new ways of perceiving sound, structure, and introspection. Though awe-inspiring in scope, the most remarkable thing about Malone's music is the intimacy stirred by the close listening it encourages. Malone's new album All Life Long, created between 2020 - 2023, presents her first compositions for organ since 2019's breakthrough album The Sacrificial Code alongside interrelated pieces for voice and brass performed by Macadam Ensemble and Anima Brass. Over the course of twelve pieces, harmonic themes and patterns recur, presented in altered forms and for varied instrumentation. They emerge and reemerge like echoes of their former selves, making the familiar uncanny. Propelled by lungs and breath rather than bellows and oscillators, Malone's compositions for choir and brass take on expressive qualities that complicate the austerity that has defined her work, introducing lyricism and the beauty of human fallibility into music that has been driven by mechanical processes. At the same time, the works for organ, performed by Malone with additional accompaniment by Stephen O'Malley on four different organs dating from the 15th to 17th centuries, underscore the mighty, spectral power that those rigorous operations can achieve. All Life Long simmers in an ever-shifting tension between repetition and variation. The pieces for brass, organ, and voice are alternated asymmetrically, providing nearly continuous timbral fluctuation across its 78-minute runtime even as thematic material reiterates. Each composition's internal framework of fractal pattern permutations has the paradoxical effect of creating anticipated keystone moments of dramatic reverie and lulling the listener into believing in an illusory endlessness. On an even more granular level, the historical meantone tuning systems of each organ used, and the variable intonation of brass and voice, provide further points of emotional excavation within the harmony. The titular composition "All Life Long" appears twice on the album, first as an extended canon for organ and again in the final quarter, compactly arranged for voice In the latter, Malone pairs the music with "The Crying Water" by Arthur Symons, a poem steeped in language of mourning and eternity. For organ, "All Life Long" moves with a patient stateliness, the drama concentrated in moments when shifting tonalities generate and release dissonance and ecstasy. For voice, each word is saturated with feeling, the singers swooping gracefully downward to capture the melancholy of the narrator's relationship to the timeless tears of the sea. "Passage Through The Spheres," the album's opening piece, contains lyrics in Italian pulled from Giorgio Agamban's essay In Praise of Profanation. In it, Agamban defines profanation as, in part, the act of bringing back to communal, secular use that which has been segregated to the realm of the sacred, a process Malone enacts each time she performs on church organs. This is not music of praise, or of spiritual revelation, but it is an artistic enactment of translating the indescribable. It carries the gravity of liturgical chant, and its fixation on the infinite, but draws its weight from the earthly realm of human experience. A music that draws the listener into the present moment where they can discover themselves within the interwoven musical patterns that can come to resemble the passage of days, weeks, years, a lifetime.
Black Screen Records, Lost In Cult Records and Chuhai Labs are proud to tee up, for the first time, this terrific Cursed to Golf vinyl featuring the complete and unabridged soundtrack from the inimitable Mark Sparling! Captured in its grooves are the energetic chiptunes that goaded you on from course to course, as you ascended from Purgatory to become a Golfing Legend. Relive your finest drives or be introduced to this world of caddie-ridden fantasy in this beautiful collection of fearsome hooks and catchy choruses. Mark Sparling shares with us some insight into his aims for the Cursed to Golf soundtrack: "Cursed to Golf was simultaneously some of the funnest and most challenging music I have had to write in a long time. The original pitch for the music was 'Castlevania meets Mario Golf,' and it took me some time to find a good balance that we were happy with. But I'm really proud of the end result!" Enjoy all your favourite tunes across this 2xLP set, presented in a thematic duo of 180g heavy duty records, one golf course green and the other ghostly transparent magenta. Brought to life with art from Crisppyboat, this playful gatefold reinterprets Cursed to Golf's iconography through a joyous new lens.
Dutch synth-wizard Nadia Struiwigh brings her eclectic live approach to Blueprint Records.á On the "Voxis Ohlun EP", Struiwigh reflects her profound command over synthesis and sequencing, crafting upfront techno with a vigorous, nostalgic feel.
Nadia Struiwigh, the Dutch artist rooted in Rotterdam and currently based in Berlin, has carved a unique niche in the electronic music scene.á Her genre-defying compositions, blending ambient, techno and electro, exhibit her signature ethereal and melodious production style, with a discography gracing acclaimed labels like Central Processing Unit, Nous'klaer, Dekmantel, Clone and InFinÒ.á Inspired by the Warp school of electronica, her live performances (ranging from immersive ambient to kinetic techno) are a testament to her technical prowess and emotional connection with her audience.á A versatile DJ and live act, she graces both concert halls and strobe-lit club sessions, curating sets that span from driving techno to deeper, emotive realms, earning her residencies at venues like Tresor.á Her versatile expertise extends beyond music; she collaborates with pioneering music brands such as Roland, Korg, Teenage Engineering, Arturia and others, embodying her reputation as a leading tech enthusiast within the industry.á Her contributions to esteemed platforms like Resident Advisor, Phantasy, Bleep, Slam Radio and Red Light Radio underscore her adaptability and prowess across a wide spectrum of electronic music, further solidifying her multifaceted presence in the field.
"Voxis Ohlun" invites you into a mesmerizing journey through the enchanting landscapes of the '90s, blending diverse musical influences seamlessly.á The focus here is on 4x4 dancefloor music, adorned with a tantalizing hint of breaks and pulsating rhythms, and a sprinkle of fairyland allure.á Crafted using only hardware, predominantly the beloved Korg Electribe MX, the sounds resonate with the essence of that era.á Each track unfolds like a chapter in a wondrous tale, interweaving nostalgia with a contemporary energy, ensuring an immersive experience.




















