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Three-time Grammy nominees, the San Antonio, Texas-based quartet NOTHING MORE return with their highly awaited seventh album, 'SPIRITS'. It features thirteen focused, adventurous and intense songs, uniting introspective philosophical lyrics with unapologetically massive anthems, including the in-your-face 'TURN IT UP LIKE (Stand In The Fire)', their most recent Top 10 Billboard Active Rock radio single 'TIRED OF WINNING'. Since emerging in 2003, NOTHING MORE has made rock radio chart history with no. 1 singles for both 'This is the Time (Ballast)' and 'Go To War', while they also have seven Active Rock Radio Top 10 singles in their repertoire. 'SPIRITS' further proves their expertise in the rock genre and beyond. It documents the tumultuous time the world experienced over the past two years capturing the desperation and isolation of lockdown, the spiral of substance abuse, the pain of broken relationships and survival in self-reliance while summarizing the overall story and mission of NOTHING MORE: Reflect, Provoke, Inspire.

Luuk van Dijk has unveiled his hotly-anticipated debut album First Contact, out 11th November on his own Dark Side Of The Sun label. The Dutch DJ and producer’s maiden LP is the end result of a long and intense voyage of discovery.

Years in the making, it’s a project that Luuk can fully stand behind and be proud of. Next to a search for his own identity and his own place in music, it has also become a passage
through time.

By far his largest body of work to date, the 13-track release kicks off with the suitably-titled ‘Cosmiq’, a deep, grooving sonic exploration that immediately sets the tone. “Because of this
track I wanted to make an album to showcase my other kind of music that people won’t maybe expect of me,” Luuk explains.

Next up is the shimmering, ethereal sounds of ‘Love You’, a track that features the irresistible vocals of US singer-songwriter Dawn Richard and will be released as a single in October. “She really brought this track to a whole new level,” says Luuk. “I couldn’t be more happy with the result.”

Further collaborations come in the form of ‘Wolf’, a majestic, strings-led house cut featuring Steve Burton of oneofmanysteves; ‘Master Plug’, a deep, jackin’ number with Chicago artist
Kid Enigma; and the Detroit-indebted ‘Together We Rise’, punctuated by the spiritual vocals of MC Roga. “I tried making a track the way they used to make music,” Luuk says of the latter.

“With as few machines as possible, just a mixer, sampler and some synths.” Additional highlights include the enchanting ‘Let The Bass Kick’, orchestral ‘Lightning
Striking’ and hypnotic ‘Hot Stuff’, before ‘Knowing How To Love’ closes things out on a peculiarly wistful note. “The last track of the album, also a track that started as an interlude and
ended up being a full song,” says Luuk.

“This song basically sums up how I’ve been feeling the years 2020 and 2021, very emotional, sad, but also hopeful. Everything will be alright.”

One of the hottest new names coming out of Amsterdam’s bustling club scene, Luuk van Dijk is currently making waves in international waters with his infectious take on spirited house
music.

He has already released on labels like Hot Creations, Cuttin’ Headz, Solid Grooves Records and Eastenderz have established his name as a house music prodigy.

He launched Dark Side Of The Sun in 2020 with the aim of exploring a broader approach to his signature style.

First Contact represents a vivid sonic snapshot of one of electronic music’s brightest young talents.

Early DJ Support :

Jamie Jones
Marco Faraone
Carl Craig
Yuksek
Sasch BBC
CamelPhat
Paco Osuna
Stacey Pullen
Tocadisco

Dressed in a powder blue suit with the frilly shirt to match, DJ Yoda invites you to be his +1 for ‘Prom Nite’, his new album promising retro Americana full of daydreaming reverie, international megastar guests, trip hop acknowledging the likes of Morcheeba and Nightmares on Wax, and the turntable extraordinaire’s bread and butter of cuts, beats and rhymes.

Certainly no stranger to retro sounds having famously peppered his DJ and AV sets with the unexpected the world over, and his ‘How to Cut n Paste’ mix series going all the way back to the 30s, Yoda’s harp-laden puppy love vibe spreads from the sweet and mellow sound of 2019’s ‘Home Cooking’, an album described as ‘boundary-breaking’ by Mojo upon slotting nicely into the UK’s blooming jazz canon. Think deliciously harmonised doo-wop murmuring ‘Goodnight Sweetheart’ with an eye for dreamboats en route to Makeout Point – on ‘My Energy’, Eva Lazarus takes the form of an earth angel, with Yoda on jukebox cut-ups, taking it back to starry-eyed, clean cut days of wonder (or more recently, Little Mix’s ‘Love Me Like You’).

Beginning enigmatically with the assistance of Hollywood A-lister (and former next-door neighbour) Lily James, ‘Breathe’ demonstrate Yoda’s continued evolution as a musician (not to mention shrewd decision maker), with James’ vocal confidence - a little Lana del Rey to her breathiness - returning on the velvet-smooth ‘Airplane Mode’. It’s a smartly executed soundclash accentuated by LA rapper Choosey, the star of the album’s straightest hip-hop shooter ‘Harder I Rock’. Homeboy Sandman adds some kick to the prom punch with typical wordplay sent down ‘Coconut Grove’, and Liam Bailey is perfectly cast for the darkly cinematic sway of ‘Don’t Even Try It’.

On an album of many talking points, the LP’s crowning glory is opening single ‘Feel Like Home’: featuring the vocal comforts of the House Gospel Choir, it’s your go–to pick-me-up when the chips are down, targeting the hairs on the backs of necks like a softer focus version of Jamie xx’s ‘Loud Places’. Extended into an alternative, equally uplifting form by Beardyman’s ‘Don’t Mean Thing’, summer festival season already has its homecoming anthem.

With tongues wagging, the twists and turns step away from Heartbreak Ridge when O Love tucks into the mouthwatering shopping list funk of ‘Way Home’; and ‘Lesson 1956’, featuring Jamie Cullum and DJ Woody, jauntily pays homage to classic Cut Chemist alchemy, Yoda’s celebrated turntable tomfoolery back in full effect and extending the flavours found in ‘Home Cooking’.

Again maximising the experience and enjoyment gained from recording live instruments and prioritising songs over beats, Yoda continues to progress with a mixture of risk-taking, elite musicianship, nostalgia brought bang up to date, and ultimately, good clean fun capable of stirring your soul, making ‘Prom Nite’ a date to remember.

Magpie artwork supplied by London’s ENDLESS, whose signature style has tagged Liberty and Lagerfeld as but two high profile clients, Yoda again maximises the experience and enjoyment gained from recording live instruments and prioritising songs over beats. His continued progress mixes risk-taking, elite musicianship, nostalgia brought bang up to date, and ultimately, good clean fun capable of stirring your soul, making ‘Prom Nite’ a date to remember.

Featured 7” Vinyl singles:
Feel Like Home (feat. The House Gospel Choir)/ Don’t Mean A Thing (feat. Beardyman)
My Energy (feat. Eva Lazarus)/Lesson 1956 (feat. Jamie Cullum & DJ Woody)

Twisted and irreverent, The Rabbits combined ear-splitting guitar shrapnel with one of punk’s greatest-ever snot-nosed vocalists. With hints of PIL or Chrome, but beamed in from a parallel dimension and filtered through the warped lens of visionary loner Syoichi Miyazawa. First-ever vinyl release, fully remastered from the band’s original early ’80s cassette releases, and housed in a sturdy tip-on sleeve. Includes a double-sided, printed insert. Edition of 500

Singer-songwriter Syoichi Miyazawa’s tale is a confounding one.

He grew up in a small town in Yamagata Prefecture (in northern Japan), loved Dylan and The Beatles, and had very little exposure to, or interest in, underground music. And yet, shortly after 24-year-old Miyazawa arrived in Tokyo in 1978, he began performing solo shows at tiny clubs in the city, singing and playing guitar. His performances quicky devolved from brisk acoustic jaunts to lengthy, heavy dirges sung in a snot-nosed wail over a blown-out electric guitar detuned to produce a kind of sonic sludge.

At one of his earliest gigs, a mutual friend introduced him to Endo Michiro, who would soon become the legendary front man of Japanese punk icons The Stalin. It turned out Miyazawa and Endo had attended Yamagata University at the same time just a few years earlier, but hadn’t known each other at school. In Tokyo, they became fast friends, moved into the same apartment building, and for years were inseparable. Endo played guitar and drums on Miyazawa’s debut release, the “Christ Was Born in a Stable” flexi disc. But while Endo was social and outgoing, Miyazawa preferred to be alone, avoiding concerts unless he was performing.

Despite these antisocial tendencies, Miyazawa came to despise playing solo. In 1982, an eccentric high school student named Chika introduced herself at one of Miyazawa’s gigs, and Miyazawa asked if she’d play bass. She agreed and drafted two of her friends to play second guitar and drums. The Rabbits were born.

Miyazawa wrote the tunes, and had a clear vision for the group, but struggled to get the sound he wanted from the other members. His second guitarist was more of a fusion player, and Miyazawa took great pains to get him to tone down the shredding. The group quickly went through multiple line-up changes. Frustrated with the sound of their first proper recording (self-released as the “X1(x)” cassette), Miyazawa spent a full year mixing their second cassette, “Winter Songs,” on his own.

The hard work paid off — the sound of “Winter Songs” is striking, and unlike anything the band’s peers produced. There’s liberal use of delay on the vocals, giving the music a psychedelic feel, but the guitars are caustic, cutting through the mix like metal shrapnel. The rhythm section seems on the verge of teetering out of control throughout, an overdriven and pummeling current below abrasive slabs of guitar and vocals. Even at their most aggressive, though, The Rabbits had strong pop sensibilities, complete with cooing backing vocals and the occasional harmonica solo. Miyazawa delivers his borderline nonsensical lyrics with equal amounts of menace and gaiety, consistently riding that fine line as only a natural oddball can. At times, the band sounds like a distant cousin of PiL, Chrome or The Homosexuals, but beamed in from a parallel dimension and filtered through Miyazawa’s warped lens.

Although The Rabbits briskly sold all 500 copies of the "Winter Songs" tape, live audiences at the time seemed dumbfounded by the group, and would stare at them in silence. After two years together, The Rabbits called it quits in 1984.

When asked if any of the many legendary groups (Les Rallizes Desnudes, G.I.S.M., etc.) he shared stages with left an impression, Miyazawa recently revealed that he always left the venue as soon as he finished performing, so he never caught any of the other bands…

All of which is to say —

The Rabbits are one of the great punk bands of the early ’80s, but their leader had no interest in the punk scene and always thought he was making “normal” music. They rubbed shoulders with a slew of notable groups of the era, and their singer was best friends with arguably the most famous Japanese punk of all time, but Miyazawa shunned fraternization and purposefully distanced himself from his peers.

Could this be why so few underground music fans are familiar with the group, even in Japan? Why they seem to have been written out of the official history of Japanese punk? One can never know for sure, but Mesh-Key hopes to remedy this travesty by offering this compilation, the first-ever official LP by The Rabbits, to a new generation of punk and psychedelic music connoisseurs.
credits

Ingredient is the elegant collaboration of Toronto poets, composers, producers and dear friends Ian Daniel Kehoe and Luka Kuplowsky. Their self-titled release is an enigmatic electronic avant-pop record attuned to the micro and macro perspectives of the natural world. Ingredient is an album whose lyrics are more poem than lyric, and whose songs exist in a merger of house music, philosophically-minded lyricism and contemporary R&B. One might recall electronic and art-pop luminaries such as Yukihiro Takahashi, The Blue Nile, and Arthur Russell, or connect it to contemporaries like Nite Jewel, Westerman and Blood Orange. A distinct world of dance, of questions, of secrecy and ultimate softness.

Eight years of friendship forges strange telepathy.

In the summer of 2020, Ian Daniel Kehoe was entrenched in a new feeling of heaviness; psychosomatic symptoms had started to proliferate; stress made new pores across the body, bending sensitivity into pain. His days were met with confusion, detachment, sleeplessness and pain without causation. Disfigured, he felt that what had been central and centering was blown out to the periphery of things. In a moment of self-preservation he reached out to his dear friend Luka Kuplowsky to make an album together. For Kehoe, it was an instinctual grasp for the anchoring truthfulness of deep friendship and the potential for a dedicated creative collaboration. Kuplowsky’s presence was light, supportful and curious, eager to explore musically the sounds they were mutually drawn to: house music, ambient pop, dub. The duality between Kuplowsky and Kehoe – between the Aflight and the Unmoored – is a portrait of a friendship whose exchanges came easy and produced an outpouring of song. Creation and therapy crisscross. In email correspondence that catalogs their process of collaboration, affection abounds: “feels bare without the Luka Licks”, or “Love you so much”, or “Kinda just overwhelmed with deadliness coming in at all angles.” When their voices first come in together on “Wolf,” that harmony arrives in a dramatic avant-pop sound that is bold and wondrous.

Kuplowsky and Kehoe both arrive at Ingredient as established artists whose works are committed to language’s propensity to provoke and mystify. Kuplowsky’s 2020 album Stardust is an idiosyncratic and otherworldly blend of pop and jazz romanticism grounded by Cohen-esque vocals and a stirring philosophical curiosity. Kehoe’s entrance into the new decade has hatched four records of pop experimentation, most recently 2022’s Yes Very So, a euphoric and bold album of poetic synth-pop and meditative ambient instrumentals. Kuplowsky and Kehoe’s union as Ingredient is a beautiful and unusual chemistry that integrates their distinct approaches while bringing forth a newness: a sound that alternates between cinematic technicolor and dubbed out fogginess; a lyricism that exchanges their lucid and clear poetics for a playful and obtuse verse. The album intuitively taps into the opposing emotional states of Kuplowsky and Kehoe during the conception of the record, contrasting the buoyancy of trumpeting keyboards (“Resurface”), angelic synthesized voices (“Come”), and rolling bass (“Photo”) with the record’s underlying darkness of whirring buzzsaw textures (“Transmission”), whooping sirens (“Wolf”) and murky ambience (“Illumination”). Lyrically, this duality arises in the record’s flux between openness (“Variation”, “Raindrop”) and existential dread (“Wolf”). “Illumination” most clearly crystalizes this opposition, reconciling the verses’ neurotic yearning for enlightenment with the chorus’ liberating doctrine of negation: “no more devotion… no more delusion”. Amidst the gradations of light and dark, Kuplowsky and Kehoe trade indelible, lush melodies as though their voices are made of a substance that melts easily one into the other. The harmony of poetry, sound, and texture cuts through your brain fog like a wet diamond.

Ingredient’s self-titled record was assembled by Kuplowsky and Kehoe over the course of six months in a home studio they frequented daily. Amidst synthesizers and drum machines they composed, re-composed, and workshopped a wide array of music, ultimately focusing on a set of eight songs that lived in a shared musical and philosophical world. Recording days often ended in basketball games at a local court or a rooftop commune over a pot of tulsi tea and a crossword puzzle. Kuplowsky brought in the Blue Cliff Record – the classic anthology of Chan Buddhism – whose inscrutable and sublime insights remained constant throughout the recording process as an activator of reorientation and reflection. While Kehoe was frequently rendered physically immobile by bouts of anxiety, a patience and mutual caring governed the pace of their creation; rest, stretching and meditation became equally important as the act of arrangement. Invited into their intimate circle of composition was Thom Gill, whose heavenly voice uplifts “Variation” and “Raindrop,” and Karen Ng, whose alto sax simmers and dances around the funky strut of “Raindrop.”

The lyrics on Ingredient reflect the persistence of change, the infinite variability of nature where randomness and divergence are no accidents. In Daoism, duality, in the form of Yin and Yang, is not contradictory as it is in Western idealist philosophy, but rather composes the eternal and lived paradox of our changeless-changing universe: changeless because all is change, and changing because the dynamism of the Dao makes each moment transformational. Kuplowsky and Kehoe refract this way of seeing the world, as in Variation: “Variation in the natural world / there it is.” Ingredient is an experience of the manifold ways of saying there it is of the transformational world, and there it is, unfolding. Elsewhere, change and ephemerality is addressed through the record’s preoccupation with non-human perspectives, reorienting the listener to the wolf, the mouse, the emerald frog, the centipede, the bird, the fly in the lamp. The album cover visualizes this fascination with the striking image of a reddish-orange frog atop a defamiliarized landscape of dark green leaves. Mirroring the exploratory process of the record’s collaboration, the frog also signals the amphibian’s natural inclination to leap into boundless potential. Kuplowsky and Kehoe’s lyrics manifest philosopher and ecologist Timothy Morton’s concept of “the mesh,” drawing attention to the “vast, entangled web” of interconnectedness that connects all life forms and interweaving the songwriters’ shared wonder into the Animal’s unknowability. As Luka narrates in the breakdown of the dance-floor ready “Photo,” “the closer we observe things, the further they retreat into abstraction.” In Ingredient’s ecosystem, perception is a reversible fractal where the world’s minutest details mirror the shape of the cosmos.

According to the Dao, the path to healing starts by reorienting perception away from the self and toward the self’s subsumption in Totality. For Kehoe, collaborating with Kuplowsky became the reorientation necessary for the self-preservation he was seeking, opening up a shared creative practice to navigate and soften the complexity of his psychological shattering. The album begins with Kuplowsky intoning “colossal faith” which bounces around the stereo field in a cloud of echo, and it is the enormity of “faith” that centers both Kuplowsky and Kehoe’s collaboration and their inquisitiveness in the vast mysteries of our very being. Truth in Ingredient is not an essential nugget, but a bending of the light – it is the equivocal entanglement of how we are in nature as nature, but with a plea or prayer under our breath that marks our felt distance from what we are a part of: “carry me towards the mountains of my birth / returning to the nest / the silence of the earth.”

After highly acclaimed releases from OK EG and Donald’s House, Wax’o Paradiso Recordings proudly welcomes Naarm/Melbourne producer Midnight Tenderness (Ryan Hunter) to the fold. Over four tracks the ‘Hydrosphere EP’ continues the label’s narrative of platforming contemporary antipodean psychedelia with three masterful productions and a remix from Boorloo/Perth’s Hame DJ.

As a producer with influences rooted in dub, street soul, boogie and the DNA of UK club music, Ryan draws down on the Middy T sound with the title track ‘Hydrosphere’, a blend of broken machine funk, glistening synth lines and beautiful crisp drum programming. ‘Rain Vibe’ takes the sound palette further adding a hefty wub for good measure. ‘Catamaran’ transports us back to the golden era on the Balearic isles, with the original evoking Ibizan sunset cruises whilst Hame DJ’s remix brings some Madchester chug to the mix.

Italian The Villains Inc. moves up a gear with its fourth release to date and already the second in less than a year!

Conscious “Time To Go Back EP” introduces the exclusive collaboration between label owner Gab.Gato (Dominance Electricity, Drivecom, SolarOne) and his partner in crime Jack Bags (La Sabbia) from Milan.
Together, they drop an untouchable dancefloor oriented five tracker based upon a terrific concept.
Coming from the year 2106 with a preventive message to save Earth from manhandled destruction, scientist Dr Boomer understands how much it’s too late to prevent the planet from Armageddon.

A side opens with insane “Man Of The Future”: a pure analogical time machine merging whispers a la Egyptian Lover to heading vocoder sequences over a sharp 808 programming.
Luminous and hypnotizing at the same, this oldschool anthem is instantly followed by enthusiastic “No Permission”.

A groovy bassline melt with acidic loops turns the song into a masterpiece enhanced by funny vocal scanding “You Have No Permission To Get Into My Head”.
Top notch! With its fierce rhythm and relentless beats, title track “Time To Go Back” coming next signs an ode to the glorious days of West Coast electro sound.
Vintage sonorities fuse into cutting-edge drums while a funky atmosphere will propel you through time and space. Ace!

The flipside goes deeper into the realm serving up what appears as the climax of the EP. Combining gloomy strings to progressive swirls and ethereal chords, well named “Darkness” delivers a scary yet prophetic message from the future that will spread guilty feelings to any listener: “There Will Be No Light, No Hope…”. You have been warned! Last cut “The Bad Place” concludes the 12” on a soulful note regarding the state of our world controlled by government and technology.
Completed by a fantastic comic style artwork, awaken and despair “Time To Go Back EP” offers an outstanding retrofuturist release from which no one will come out unscathed.

One of the best outings in The Villains Inc. so far, rush on it!

Die UK Thrasher Onslaught sind mittlerweile zu einer der Bands geworden, die für die Brillanz und Ausdauer der aktuellen "Thrash Metal"-Szene stehen. Jedes Mal, wenn die Briten die Veröffentlichung einer neuen Platte ankündigen, ist die Begeisterung bei Fans und Kritikern rund um den Globus groß. 2020 ist es endlich wieder soweit. Angeführt von Gründungsmitglied Nige Rockett stehen Onslaught in den Startlöchern, um die Welt mit einem der heftigsten Thrash-Metal-Alben der vergangenen Jahre in Brand zu setzen: »Generation Antichrist«! Oder einfacher gesagt: Wer Metal extrem und brutal mag, der wird dieses Album definitiv lieben.

Sunshine Only Sometimes: Archives Vol. 2, 1972–1975 continues Anthology Recordings’ excavation, and exploration, of southern singer, songwriter, and psychedelic serviceman Robert Lester Folsom’s bountiful archives. Recorded across Georgia in various bedrooms, a barn, and a motel room with a reel-to-reel and a revolving cast of whip smart studio musicians in the first half of a dazed and confused decade, Sunshine Only Sometimes furthers Folsom’s place in the canon of long lost but eventually found independently spirited, high-flying American folk rock. When Anthology’s reissue of Music and Dreams, the sole contemporaneous album released in 1976 by Folsom, surfaced in 2010, little else was known of Folsom’s nearly five-decade deep archive of unreleased demos and fully formed studio recordings.

POWERWOLF, one of the most successful current metal bands, have returned with the tour edition of their successful latest album, Call Of The Wild and Missa Cantorem II, out November 11, 2022 via Napalm Records. Just in time for the start of their European headline tour, which will take the Wolves - with their greatest production ever – through the big halls in Europe, the two releases will be released in a bundle format and individually. Following the very successful and critically acclaimed streaming event The Monumental Mass: A Cinemtaic Metal Event (#1 on the Official German Album Charts), POWERWOLF once again makes a strong impact on the international music scene. Right on time for the Wolfsnächte 2022 headline tour, the band is releasing their successful album, Call Of The Wild, as a tour edition with new artwork, once again created by the great Zsofia Dankova. In addition, the band is releasing the vocal cover album Missa Cantorem II, on which eleven well-known international singers reinterpret the eleven songs of Call Of The Wild. The releases will be available both individually and in a bundle, as CD or in different vinyl versions with additional A1 poster. Missa Cantorem II forms a sonic alliance with some of the best singers in metal, including Blind Guardian’s Hansi Kürsch, Sabaton’s & Majestica’s Tommy Johansson, Kissin' Dynamite’s Hannes Braun and Amaranthe’s and Dynatzty’s Nils Molin, who pay befitting homage to the 2021 hit album Call Of The Wild. Each song of the album is honored by its own vocal cover, which allows all songs on the album to shine in a new light. Title track “Call Of The Wild” is newly sung on Missa Cantorem II by none other than the legendary Hansi Kürsch. The result is a perfect interplay of his unmistakable voice and the iconic POWERWOLF sound. One of the album's biggest hits, the live anthem "Dancing With The Dead", is refined by Kissin' Dynamite singer Hannes Braun with his versatile and distinctive voice, while the Amaranthe and Dynatzty singer Nils Molin makes "Alive or Undead" his own, and Sabaton string wizard and Majestica singer Tommy Johansson gives "Sermon Of Swords" a fresh coat of paint. On the Wolfsnächte 2022 tour, POWERWOLF will once again prove that they have truly earned their outstanding status in the metal scene

A wise character once reminded her to tread the heavy ground with light feet. After a whirlwind two years since moving back to Hong Kong and starting from scratch, Xiaolin has re-emerged from the depths of her studio stronger than ever with a second EP - her first vinyl release to date.

Inspired by the Tower card from the Tarot, Tower Moment EP is a cosmic journey through four stages of healing: darkness, acceptance, transformation and freedom.

The record begins with “Dark Night” (of the Soul), followed by the gentle comfort of “Safe With Me”, a nostalgic electro ballad. On Side B: a chuggy tune layered with textures and samples, “Lemuria”, transports listeners to a surreal land of self-discovery, while Blue Hour completes the experience with his anthemic “Elevator” remix.

With her signature mix of 909 kicks and 808 breaks blended with acid bass lines, subtle percussion and ethereal melodies, Xiaolin’s organic approach to techno and electro showcases her colourful palette and sensitivity as a musician, along with a love for jazz and warm synth sounds from the early 90’s era.

HDIGH (acronym for How Did I Get Here) by Dave East x Mike & Keys is now available on vinyl format. The album was produced entirely by frequent East collaborators Mike & Keys and features Method Man, Musiq Soulchild, Anthony Hamilton, Benny The Butcher, Trae Tha Truth and Steven Young. On HDIGH, Mike & Keys bring their “A-Game”, incorporating heavy boom bap and smooth melodic instrumentation into their production throughout the album, providing the perfect backdrop for East to spit his patented braggadocios bars. HDIGH is the first project to come from the East Harlem rapper since he linked up with Harry Fraud in 2021 for HOFFA, and has East reflecting on his upbringing and rise in the music industry.

HDIGH is available in your choice of a blue and pink splatter or black vinyl pressing

HDIGH (acronym for How Did I Get Here) by Dave East x Mike & Keys is now available on vinyl format. The album was produced entirely by frequent East collaborators Mike & Keys and features Method Man, Musiq Soulchild, Anthony Hamilton, Benny The Butcher, Trae Tha Truth and Steven Young. On HDIGH, Mike & Keys bring their “A-Game”, incorporating heavy boom bap and smooth melodic instrumentation into their production throughout the album, providing the perfect backdrop for East to spit his patented braggadocios bars. HDIGH is the first project to come from the East Harlem rapper since he linked up with Harry Fraud in 2021 for HOFFA, and has East reflecting on his upbringing and rise in the music industry.

HDIGH is available in your choice of a blue and pink splatter or black vinyl pressing

dreamcastmoe is the recording project of singer, songwriter, producer, and DJ Davon Bryant, a lifelong resident of Washington, DC. His music moves freely between moods and modes, hypnotic, romantic, traversing electronic, R&B, funk, soul, and hip-hop... Resident Advisor dubs it "soulful, cross-genre dance music." This ability to adapt and finesse, to twist in different directions while staying true and coherent in vision, can be traced to his home city and its complex cultural history. "Most Black kids in DC don't ever get to this point," he says. "This is what I am making this music for, in the DC tradition of soul and empathy and love that is rooted in this city. My music is for real people dealing with shit every day." A versatile, modern artist and collaborator, dreamcastmoe has thrived in the underground since his first uploads to Soundcloud and Bandcamp in 2017 and subsequent releases with labels like People's Potential Unlimited, Trading Places, and In Real Life Music. Bryant's laid-back personality, emotional honesty, and infectious energy shine through his work and how he talks about it, as Crack Magazine notes in their 2021 Rising feature: "a steady combination of confidence, creativity, and calmness." He grew up playing drums in church; he's worked dead-end jobs, had ups and downs, even sold off all his gear one time, but never stopped reinvesting in himself. He is quick to praise his co-producers, rattle off influences _ the visual feel of NBA 2K, the comedic timing of Bernie Mac, the savvy legacy of Duke Ellington, for starters _ and credit resourceful DC breakouts like Ankhlejohn that showed him the roadmap. His voice, a steady instrument, seemingly connects it all, capable of slow falsetto flow, swaggering talk-rap, and outright croon. His storytelling style is choppy yet fluid, like a mixtape, which is how Bryant sees Sound Is Like Water, his debut on Ghostly's International's freeform label, Spectral Sound. The two-part project culminates as a full-length LP release in November 2022. The first side, released as Part I, opens on the blurred beats of "El Dorado," which dreamcastmoe dedicates to his journey. It's a head-nodder, an off-kilter earworm co-produced by Max D (Future Times, RVNG Intl, etc.), with Bryant harmonizing hooks with synth jabs and a pitched-down presence. "Complicated" is the slow jam, delivered smoothly from a Saturday night crossroads. dreamcastmoe is contemplative and committed... gliding and locking ad-libs into skittering rhythms courtesy of co-producer Zackary Dawson _ but also willing to let something go, "acknowledging that everything in life IS NOT easy." "RU Ready" takes off from the jump as a tribute, challenge, and promise to his partner and his city ("The times you sat with me when I needed you the most / Told me the things that I needed to see / Young black man, really trying to be what I can be / And I'm really from DC). In its potent two-plus minutes, the sonics (co-produced by ZDBT) press the message, all cymbal crashes, breakbeats, and serrated synth lines. "Cloudy Weather, Wear Boots" is a blitzing dance-punk track made in collaboration with Jordan GCZ on Bryant's first trip to Amsterdam. The album's flipside opens on "Much More," the first of two synth-and-beat ballads co-produced by ZDBT. Later on "Long Songz," he claims, "I'm not writing love songs no more," prioritizing the vibe with "all my day ones." He calls it "a cry for more normal moments. Everything doesn't have to be a fantasy love story, more time spent getting to the money, growing, and making a way." He saves two of his most propulsive cuts for the finale, co-produced by Sami, co-founder of DC dance label 1432 R. As their titles suggest, "Take A Moment" and "Make Ya Mind" operate as anthems for movement, with Bryant free-flowing commands above wildly-styled percussion. Per Bryant, the latter is both "wake & bake jam" and a "dance floor bomb." His parting line: "Action / You got to show me action / Reaction." The world of dreamcastmoe straddles virtual reality and the realness of DC, images both imagined and lived-in. Bryant has a knack for unexpected melodies but what makes his music so exciting is his capacity to defy the expectations of genre and image. A fluid ingenuity and vulnerability bottled by Sound Is Like Water, and this is just the beginning.

Einige Größen der florierenden Post-Punk- und Hardcore-Szene, Gitarrist Frank Iero (My Chemical Romance), Gitarrist Travis Stever (Coheed and Cambria), Sänger Anthony Green (Circa Survive), Bassist
Tim Payne (Thursday) und Schlagzeuger Tucker Rule (Thursday/Yellowcard) haben sich zusammengetan
und L.S. DUNES gegründet
Die neue Band wird ihr Debütalbum Past Lives am 11.11.22 über Fantasy Records veröffentlichen.
Losgelöst von den Erwartungen und der Ästhetik ihrer bereits erfolgreichen Karrieren, kombinieren L.S.
DUNES ihre hymnischen Songs mit einer Menge Punk-Energie zu einem Sound, der mit nichts vergleichbar ist, was es bisher gab. Vom fesselnden, dramatischen Opener ”2022” über den knackigen, treibenden
Ohrwurm ”Like Forever” bis hin zum stampfenden, ausladenden ”Permanent Rebellion” und dem abschließenden, ”Sleep Cult” ist ”Past Lives” ein emotionaler und mitreißender Ritt.

Laurel Premo's latest solo work presents original and traditional music
voiced on finger-style electric guitar and lap steel
Perhaps by its most honest classification "roots guitar," the sonic vocabulary of
'Golden Loam' is informed by guitar's antecedents in American traditions - fiddle
and banjo, the rhythms, melody and intonation therein, as well as that music's
relationship to movement. Glowing, droning, tugging, scraping, revolving, Premo
bears renewed electric dirt, the golden loam layered by centuries of folk.
Following 'The Iron Trios' (2019), Premo's sophomore release builds on the dark
roots world she arranged, with seeking, untethered delivery and a masterful use
of space, on a dynamic wave of warm, gritty sustain. Laurel's vocals on two
pieces "Hop High" and "I Am A Pilgrim" are traditional calls beaconing the guitar's
response, and fold in timberly like additional instrumental lines sustaining the
drone. 'Golden Loam' was self produced and recorded during the pandemic
lockdown of summer/fall 2020. The majority of the record is solo performance,
but two featured collaborators are woven in to this embodied rhythmic collection.
Percussive dancer Nic Gareiss (Michigan) appears on tracks 5 & 9, and bones
player Eric Breton (Quebec) on track 3. Laurel Premo is a Michigan-based artist
who has been writing, arranging music and touring since 2009 with vocal and
instrumental roots acts. She is internationally known from her duo Red Tail Ring.

For some, melancholy is the joy of being sad. But for A Rocket In Dub, the reawakened project of Düsseldorf producer Stefan Schwander, also known under pseudonyms like Antonelli Electr. or Harmonious Thelonious, Viktor Hugo's famous saying always applies. Two years ago, the Düsseldorf producer and musician released a 4x 7" box set on Krachladen Dub, his first release after a break of 17 years at the time. Now, two years later, 9 new tracks follow as a longplayer on double vinyl and music cassette. Even more experimental, more playful, more hypnotic and with a trombone! Monotony is nice! The rocket is back in the club, teaching genres like house and minimal Jamaican dub deepness again.

Exzellente Live-LP zum Jahrestag des letzten Nightmares On Wax-Studioalbums 'Shout Out! To Freedom...', aufgenommen mit vollständiger Band und dem New Yorker Vokalisten Haile Supreme im legendären Pikes auf Ibiza im Oktober 2021.

Nightmares on Wax spricht darüber, wie das Live-Album zustande kam: "Dieses Live-Album fängt wirklich die Momente ein, in denen wir aus dem Lockdown herauskamen und alle wieder zusammen sein und auftreten konnten, während wir die Möglichkeit hatten, all das auszudrücken, was wir bei der Entstehung des Albums fühlten. Wir spielten es live mit allen Musikern aus Ibiza, Haile Supreme kam aus New York City, nachdem wir lange Zeit keinen Kontakt zu ihm hatten, und wir konnten im legendären Pikes Ibiza auftreten. Es war unser erster Gig während der ganzen Pandemie und es war ein ganz besonderes Gefühl. Teil der Geschichte in diesen Mauern zu sein, ist etwas ganz Besonderes und liegt mir sehr am Herzen, denn Ibiza ist meine Heimat. Dieses Live-Album fängt diese Energie und Stimmung ein, ebenso wie all die wunderbaren Menschen, die ausgewählt wurden, um uns bei diesem Ereignis zu begleiten."

Mit einer Band bestehend aus George Evelyn alias DJ E.A.S.E, Haile Supreme, Michael Alcaras, Antonie Blakstad, Marlon Lopez, Omar Alcaide, Alessandro Doretto und Kwake Bass.

Cosmopolitanism is creeping into the bedroom studios of producers worldwide. Romanski is another agent evolving transcultural hybrids, which blend from retained folkways to modern aged club grooves. A mixture of electronic beats in a rigid machine order and handmade organic moments woven together to form an eclectic sound. With a bit of drama, the hamburg based dj & producer Romanski, invites you on a diverse journey with his unique vision of club music. Balearic groove patterns accompanied by repetitive bongo motives & dimmed synth themes flow along the 4 tracks (2 of them featured on 7" vinyl) of this EP. The title track "Karma Calling" is a passionate homage to Mulatu Astatke, "Tagh Tagh" is surrounded by an iranian children’s song, "Gaugin" features a tahitian vocoder line about the french painter and on "Ants" Romanski reflects on lyrics that came to him when resident at a sanatorium years ago. Romanski is using his custom sound range & tools to express his downbeat grooves in this well balanced release. Hide below or turn around the umbrella with devotion and delight.

16)- return with their heaviest and most devastating record to date, Into Dust. The new album, a collection of cautionary tales of survival and redemption, is set to an amalgamation of sludge, punk, metal, hardcore, and stoner riffs, that could only be built through 30 years of commitment to their dark sonic craft, which -(16)- continues to improve upon. From the frantic opening of "Misfortune Teller" to the undeniable pounding and swagger of "Scrape the Rocks", Into Dust lives up to its name, as -(16)- beat the listener into submission through the lowest of ends and the sour, palpable malaise prevalent throughout the album's dozen tracks. "There's a story arc in the lyrics that start with an eviction notice served amid the ruins of Hurricane Irma in the Florida Keys, to running aground metaphorically and drowning in midlife, bearing witness to the modern suffering of hunger and poverty on the Mexico California border," guitarist and vocalist Bobby Ferry says. The negativity persists on tracks aptly titled "Null and Eternal Void", and the dizzying, pill-induced "The Floor Wins". Elsewhere, "Born on a Bar Stool" sends the listener off with a sobering album closer; ending on a foggy and rainy jazz-tinged San Francisco night, with an anti-drinking drinking song, proclaiming "Raise your glass all things pass".

Hate Propaganda's far too overlooked 2019 debut EP "World War 666" sees a much needed reissue on vinyl, remastered and enhanced by brand new artwork commissioned for the purpose by Xerox master P. Van Trigt. When it was first released on cassette tape back in 2019 by War Arts Productions, this war-torn debut offering of primeval warnoise by the mysterious Portuguese war criminals stood out immediately as a crown jewel debut for the genre and as one of the year's most definitive and underrated manifestations of extreme metal's most hateful and berserk fringe. Packing in nineteen minutes of absolute hatred, the annihilating MLP manifests as a nightmare hallucination of complete violence and negativity, evoking eons of perennial apocalyptic global planetary war and terror on the wings of its nefarious design of achieving maximum annihilation in the shortest amount of time possible. To harness this bleak pantheon of ruin, the Portuguese conquerors have assembled a weaponized and uncontrolled sonic chain reaction where grindcore, black metal, death metal and hardcore punk are all accelerated and instigated into an inescapable payload of death aimed straight at the vital sinews of humanity. A sonic maelstrom churned into shape by an onslaught of obscure violent riffs, psychotic leads and ominous laughter which, parallel to a pulverizing drum performance, emanates from oblivion with an antediluvian, negative aura. Comparisons to bands like Diocletian, Heresiarch, Tetragrammacide and Nuclearhammer will run abound, yet these would be only easy superficial conjectures as this is a manifestation of sonic extremism which dwells on a plain of excellence entirely its own. Its uniqueness transpires particularly in the maniacal drumming which underlines the band's hardcore and punk influences, and is exalted further by an unusually crystalline production and by a masterful onslaught of uber-audible riffs hiding behind nothing and seemingly going in the opposite direction of the homogenous and indiscernible sensorial smothering the genre usually opts to go in. Tracklisting: 1. World War 666 2. Neverending Mass Graves 3. Violent Nature of Human Annihilation 4. Welcoming the Nuclear War With Open Arms 5. Let the Sirens Signal the End of Times

Ron Carter and Richard Galliano decided to risk intercontinental
collaboration for the second time after 1990, when they recorded their
acclaimed album "Panamanhattan" in Paris
Here the French accordion master, whose fingers fly over the keyboard with
acrobatic ease and can make the instrument weep in melancholy or rejoice with
joy. There the American bass wonder, whose deeply tuned strings enhance more
than 2,500 (!) recordings and are among the cornerstones of the complete artistic
works of Miles Davis, Eric Dolphy, Archie Shepp, Herbie Hancock, Aretha Franklin,
Roberta Flack and Antonio Carlos Jobim. Two who have already gained hero
status in their own worlds and can actually only lose when they transgress into
each other's terrain. "Believe me, there is nothing more real than to go on stage
with a gambler," Carter raved about the refreshed liaison with his Gallic buddy.
The two rediscovered the once lost central thread in March 2016 at Jazz Week in
Burghausen as a short intermezzo during a joint appearance with the WDR Big
Band. The provisional climax was then the recording made in Theaterstu?bchen
in Kassel on October 29. Galliano recalled: "Before we got going, I said to him:
"Can you believe it? Twenty- seven years have passed, we are still the same and
I'm still playing the same accordion. To which Ron just responded: "And we have
still same fingers!" With these 20 nimble tools, the two protagonists of the
musical joint venture interact without fear of contact. Neither remains in his
accustomed position. Like two intrepid mountaineers, they balance over a
yawning abyss, perform daring maneuvers and clear the way for each other time
and again. The longer the intimate wanderings of subtle nuances and sensitive,
dancing elegance last, the greater the familiarity seems to be. "Richard really
seizes every rhythmic and harmonic chance," the American marveled about his
French partner. And he replies gallantly: "Ron still looks so young, fresh and
elegant like three decades ago. And he is still enthusiastic, straightforward and
comes straight to the point." An often thoughtlessly used image rarely fits better
than on this very special evening: Ron Carter and Richard Galliano create a
universal musical language, whose vocabulary consists of notes. Risk- free
enjoyment

There's a certain winking resignation to the title of Nick Lowe's At My
Age, as if it were designed to be spoken with a soft, knowing sigh
Now in his late fifties, Lowe is hardly running away from his advancing years --
quite the contrary, the singer/songwriter is comfortable in his skin and his years.
Certainly, he's comfortable in his music, since At My Age marks the fourth time
that he's mined the intimate, well-worn country-rock vibe of The Impossible Bird,
and if at this point it no longer is a revelation, it's hardly lost its appeal, either. Part
of that lies in Lowe's ever-potent charm, and to overlook an album as exquisitely
crafted as At My Age is to be a fool, because nobody does this kind of relaxed
Americana as well as Lowe, who is still writing songs that stand proudly
alongside his previous classics. For instance, there's "I Trained Her to Love Me," a
song as wickedly witty and bitterly self- loathing as "Cruel to Be Kind" or "The
Beast in Me," a tune that's balanced by the wry new-love anthem "Hope for Us All,"
which has its share of gently funny lines but is nevertheless a ringing, sincere
endorsement of love, worthy of the man who wrote "(What's So Funny 'Bout)
Peace, Love and Understanding?" And that's always been one of Lowe's greatest
gifts, that he is possessed with rare humor but also a big heart, which is what
gives his music great resonance. This 15th anniversary edition of At My Age is
pressed on silver vinyl and limited to 2,500 copies worldwide. This marks the first
time this long- out- of- print classic has ever been available on color
vinyl.Packaging; LP jacket; silver vinyl

Rare & unreleased 80's bangers from Sao Tome e Principe's most iconic singer !

Bongo Joe pursues their work with friend DJ Tom B and are sharing the fourth effort in their São Tomé & Principe series : “Recordar é viver”, the first volume of an anthology dedicated to the one and only Pedro Lima, , "A voz do povo de São Tomé" (the people's voice of Sao Tomé).

“Recordar é viver: Antologia Vol. 1” features some previously unreleased tracks and gives a comprehensive look into the discography of one of the islands’ biggest stars, known for his political outspokenness as much as for his soft voice, delicate rumbas, and high-energy puxas.

With his band Os Leonenses he built a brand new genre around the strong rhythms and infectious energy of Sao-Toméan Samba Socopé ("only with the feet” in Portuguese), but with the influence of Congolese soukous, Cape Verdean Coladeira, elements from French West-Indies Cadence/Compas, and Brazilian Afoxé, it soon developed into the infectiously danceable style known as “puxa”. The band kept playing together up until Pedro’s death in 2019, performing at large events around the islands and on the continent.

But Pedro shined also on his own. Alone, he demonstrated his compositional skills and ability to balance the band’s powerful rhythm section with São Tomé & Principe’s harmonic backing vocal traditions, creating strong, dance floor ready puxas or melodic, delicate rumbas.

Pedro Lima died in 2019, leaving behind the 23 children he fathered, with thousands of mourners accompanying him to his final resting place. The public funeral, paid for by ex-president Pinto da Costa, was one of the biggest the islands have ever seen. Lima, "O cantor do povo” (“The people’s singer”), was buried with his wireless microphone, so his powerful voice would always be heard.

In 2016 lutenist Sofie Vanden Eynde put her instrument aside for nine
months in order to recover from a severe burnout
Five years later, she felt the need to look back. Would it be possible, she
wondered, to use the intense, shared concentration between musician and
listener to convey sensations of over- stimulation, contrast, excess, stagnation,
emptiness, beauty and movement? Would it be possible to articulate the inner
reality of a burnout musically: to make a burnout audible, tangible,
understandable and, who knows, avoidable? The result is Vanishing Point /
Verdwijntijd, an autobiographical recital, a musical narrative, a journey:
somewhere between fragile comfort and cautious happiness. Writer Annemarie
Peeters drew on her interviews with Sofie to write a text that reflects the three
phases of a burnout. The run- up, the phase of total stagnation during, and the
cautious way out. Three colours, three seasons, three ways of being. Lurking
beneath Sofie's personal story are experiences that many will recognize: the
craving for efficiency, the sudden faltering, the unfamiliar and at the same time
disconcerting sense of emptiness, and the tentative search for a new balance.
But also the questions Sofie asked herself – about the connection between her
own little story and the big world that surrounds her – evoke wide recognition. Is
burnout a personal failure or a social symptom?
Sofie went in search of pieces from the solo lute repertoire that she intuitively
associated with the various phases of the text. This resulted in a recital with a
surprising palette of colours, styles and atmospheres. At times she chose the
rich, powerful sound of the theorbo. At others she chose the fragile, hushed
sound of the Renaissance lute. The Prelude by the French baroque composer
Robert de Visee combines phrases full of grandeur with breathing pauses filled
with intimate doubt. The music of John Dowland draws on the typically English
penchant for melancholy. In the fantasias and ricercars of Francesco da Milano, it
is not only the bright colours of the Italian Renaissance that resound, but also the
constant search for a new beginning. Luis de Narvaez's Cancion del emperador is
an arrangement for lute of the famous chanson Mille Regretz by Josquin Desprez,
a song that emanates serene regret for everything that is not. And in Robert de
Visee's Chaconne the same chord sequence revolves around its own axis. Hope,
tenderness, revolt and acceptance each step to the fore in turn.
At Sofie's request, Vladimir Gorlinsky created a new composition, one which
reflects the state of mind in the middle of a burnout. Vanishing Point balances on
the edge of total emptiness, a stagnation that at times is hard to bear. Vanishing
Point starts out from this stagnation to explore the different facets of burnout:
resistance and acceptance, fear and hope, stagnation and movement, absolute
solitude and the desire to interact again with the surrounding world. Vanishing
Point / Verdwijntijd can be listened to in different ways: not only as a lute recital,
but also as a radio play with voice, lute and soundscapes. Annemarie Peeters'
text was recorded by actress Katelijne Damen (NL) and voice artist Caroline
Daish (EN). Vladimir Gorlinsky created soundscapes based on the sounds of the
lute, which were magnified as if under a microscope. The soundscapes weave
themselves between the text and the lute music. Jo Thielemans created the
sound design and provided the live electronics.

First Time On Black vinyl. A lot has happened to the Magic Castles since this was released in April 2021 this release took over a year to be manufactured, the band have toured with the Brian Jonestown Massacre & the Warlocks in the USA in 2022 & the the track “Lost Dimension” was used in the HBO series “Succession” so not a bad 2022 for the band. Sun Reign is the band’s fourth release on Anton Newcombe's label ‘A’ Recordings Ltd. Ironically similar to BJM, the Magic Castles have been plagued by lineup changes over the years. In November of 2019, tragedy struck and Edmonds was seriously injured in a car accident that required hospitalization and surgery. Friends started a Go Fund Me that raised over $20k USD for the uninsured musician’s hospital bills, showing an incredible outpouring of love and support for him and his family. Fortunately, Edmonds has made a complete recovery from his injuries and has bounced back remarkably well. In early 2020, Edmonds managed to finish the remaining work on the album “Sun Reign”, including a previously unreleased song, “Surmise'' penned by guitarist Jermiah Doering, and a rare cover of a moody 1966 garage rock song “Ode to the Wind” by Danny and the Counts. Edmonds also began working with a booking agency, planning a return tour to Europe with the band to support the new album. Unfortunately, it was not to be. Due to the global pandemic crisis of Covid-19, the album was delayed until 2021, and the promising tour was cancelled. In May of 2020, Minneapolis police killed George Floyd two blocks from Edmonds’ home, which incited riots across the country. The protests led to the burning of Minneapolis, where a long time music venue and many other buildings were lost. Edmonds’ studio was not destroyed although many nearby buildings were. Edmonds is a known supporter of Black Lives Matter Tracklisting:- 1) Sunburst , 2) Lost Dimension , 3) Ode to the Wind , 4) Asuras , 5) World of Time , 6) Valley of Nysa , 7) Magna Mater , 8) Surmise , 9) Gates of the Sun , 10 ) Relax Your Mind

Rare Italo disco pop project Galvanica gets a beautiful re-issue! This is what the label writes about the release; "Galvanica, a voice with unusual qualities, refined, balanced, also high-pitched, sensual, embellished by an orgasmic inspiration with fluid and spaced solo's in hypnotic rhythms that often change scenery. 'Nightlights in Japan': an extraordinary piece of pure and profound creativity where each version seems to have been built apart and where the West meets the East. A splendid interpreter for a truly stunning piece, as fresh and far-sighted as the day it was recorded in Calenzano at Studio Emme by Marzio Benelli with the Yamaha DX7 synth and Linn 9000 drum sequencer that are at the base of the piece, made and re-interpreted in the four original versions, all sung in the Eastern Asian pentatonic scale. 'Nightlights in Japan' was also written by Massimiliano Orfei, at the time collaborator in the advertising projects from label Smash One Music of Pino Toma, the producer who drew new inspiration to venture into the record market which in 1987 became every day more difficult and this song was considered out of fashion, even if each version of this song was expertly arranged by the talented Giorgio Costantini. We've clarified as to whom Galvanica's velopendulus belongs, in order to be able to rightly consider this artist as a contributive voice of disco music, despite being part of the "second wave" of the Italo-Disco scene, has strongly contributed to it as Otero, Belen Thomas, Angelby and previously with the disco-project Plustwo creating 'Melody' (which after 40 years gets a new extraordinary success with over 134 million plays on TikTok and around 18 million streaming). However, it's clear as day that the gorgeous artist behind Galvanica was Antonella Bianchi and that Giorgio Costantini was not only her producer and composer - as in 1985 for 'I Know', a sweet synth-pop ballad sung with her stage name 'Angel', but above all her ... 'guardian angel'. For many artists using a stage name is a custom. The absolute record of pseudonyms as a true equalizer of identity is held by Stendhal having used 350 throughout his career. This multifaceted artist who, until now has never used so many 'a.k.a.', in a wonderful game of musical mirrors, has represented an opportunity to challenge the market, a trait of non-acceptance of the role that the discography attributes to certain artists. So also Galvanica was an invitation to reflect, with a pinch of provocation, a behavior that Antonella Bianchi has in the DNA of her family. Ultimately, Best Record is not at all worried about the modernization that surrounds it, sure that 'Nightlights in Japan' will be one of the most coveted vinyl reissues in the second half of 2022.

White Vinyl LP. RIYL: Aldous Harding, Jenny Hval, Marlon Williams, Joni Mitchell, Leonard Cohen. Revered Sydney songwriter Laura Jean returns with new album Amateurs, her first record since the much-celebrated Devotion in 2018. Amateurs is a stunning, string-laden album, set at a mystical midway point between the deep synth-pop of Devotion and the folkier sounds of Laura’s earlier work. The album features backing vocals from Aldous Harding and Marlon Williams on three songs (Teenager Again, Amateurs and Folk Festival). Laura worked with producer Tim Bruniges around Sydney’s long 2020-2021 lockdowns. Erkki Veltheim (Gurrumul, Cat Power) arranged gorgeous strings for the album, which were recorded in Melbourne by Devotion producer John Lee. Amateurs is an album about anti-art and anti-intellectual culture in Australia (but applies equally to other parts of the world). It sees Laura questioning her role as a songwriter and examining the reality of her choices to prioritise art over other parts of her life. It is also a warm hearted, humorous and sonically breathtaking album. “Amateurs means to do something for love, not money, and somehow it’s become a dirty word, shorthand for a failure,” says Laura. “These songs arise from my acceptance that I will always be an ‘amateur’.” 2018 album Devotion had superlative reviews from Pitchfork, Gorilla Vs Bear and elsewhere, and made it into end of year lists for Spin, Idolator, Apple Music and more. Laura also acquired some high-profile fans such as Lorde and actor Brie Larson. She did two UK/Europe tours in 2018-19 with Courtney Barnett and Aldous Harding. Laura has twice been shortlisted for the Australian Music Prize and has recorded with Jenny Hval as well as Aussie icons Paul Kelly, The Drones, and Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever. “Maybe the sharpest communication of the spooky, all-consuming nature of feminine love” – Lorde. Selling Points: Backing vocals on three tracks from Aldous Harding and Marlon Williams. Sumptuous string arrangements from Errki Veltheim, who has played with everyone from Cat Power to Mike Patton. Laura featured on Jenny Hval's 2019 album The Practice Of Love, and Jenny sang on Laura's self-titled album from 2014.

Michele Manzo is an esteemed producer, musician and DJ who has collaborated with a fine list of globally recognised talents such as Omar Lye-Fook, Georgia Anne Muldrow and Declaime, and Yancey Boys, amongst many others. His new EP on Detroit don Wajeed's Dirt Tech Rack label showcases his original house style with opener 'Around Brasilia' bring that South American flair. The bird claps, shuffling samba beats and lively percussion all bring the heat. Wajeed then remixes it into a tougher, more drum lead rhythm. The flip side offers the deep but metallic percussive workout that is 'A Minha Vida' and the soul drenched grooves of 'Brilhante's Anthem.'

Two decades at the highest level in this industry is a landmark really reached. Pig&Dan celebrate this major milestone with an immense, twenty-track album project ‘20 Years: Pig&Dan’ of which this eight track, 2 X 12” vinyl sampler cherry-picks some of the finest moments.

Released via their long-standing record label ELEVATE, the album delivers some of the duo's most forward-thinking techno productions to date. It is a remarkable opus of intelligent, cutting-edge dance music from two artists who came together back in 2002 to form what would become one of the most prolific and globally revered acts in electronic music.

Unyielding in their commitment to originality, eclecticism and tradition, the album will feature an array of brand-new Pig&Dan productions, alongside a selection of new 'update mixes' of some of the duo's most celebrated anthems.

Speaking about the twentieth-anniversary project Pig&Dan commented:

"It's almost hard to take in that we are celebrating a 20-year milestone of producing and performing together. This project features an array of fresh unreleased euphoric productions that hold a sound that we hope represents our growth in sound. We've also included a selection of new, updated 2022 versions of some of our more celebrated productions from the last two decades. We really see it as more of a statement than an album, hence the fact there's a track that represents every year on our musical journey."

Beatservice Records are thrilled to present the hotly-anticipated third album from Oslo-based production maestro, Third Attempt. 'The Novel Sound' follows on from the widely acclaimed 'Beats From The Quarantine' album released in April 2021, and further compliments the young artist's deserved reputation as one of the dance underground's most exciting talents to emerge in recent years.

Third Attempt (aka Torje Fagertun Spilde) has been dazzling us with his far-reaching music since arriving in the Beatservice fold with 'Shoreline' back in 2018, and since then his ever-evolving repertoire has continued to serve up immaculate sonic surprises. The fast-rising 23-year old artist has wasted no time making his indelible mark, displaying a frenetic work rate alongside an impeccable ear for constructing compelling leftfield grooves.

'The Novel Sound' opens with the rolling deviance of 'Freak Out', where a dusty string sample makes way for vocal samples, scratches, and searing sirens permeating a bass-heavy groove, setting the tone magnificently for the music that's primed to unfold. Next, we arrive in the mid-tempo chug of 'Age Of Steam'. Evolving over a crisp, club-ready rhythm, heavy funk guitars, dancing keys and distant vocal stabs cascade over driving bass before soaring strings herald the arrival of a slick breakdown section. The icing on the cake arrives as bubbling acid joins sensational horn motifs, breaking down once again for a starry-eyed beatless passage that leaves us yearning for a reprise.

'My Girl' features amorous vocal samples hovering over an irresistible disco beat, with alluring rhythm guitars and dreamy e-piano chords setting the scene for rousing horns to blast off into blissful summer skies. Before we've found time to catch our breath, 'Nu Funk' arrives with snappy hip hop samples scratched over tight beats and a delectable bass guitar hook. The groove pauses for dubbed-out space delays to echo into the night before a singing lead guitar joins the rhythm elements to burst back into life, with flute motifs, elegant strings, and otherworldly sweeps elegantly meandering across the panorama.

Set over a groove that arrives like a cool summer breeze, 'Sunbeam Symphony' drifts over soul-soothing chords, weighted bass and slick, rolling beats. Hypnotic keys guide us into position as the drums build energy and the bass notes power us forward. Third Attempt's dextrous keyboard solo dazzles momentarily before subsiding for a dub-infused break, with spaced-out vocal chops and rising sweeps building tension before the groove resumes and the virtuoso solo once again majestically soars. Maintaining the sun-kissed meditations, 'Definite' effortlessly floats through waves of thick bass, funk guitar chops and elegantly fused samples, with seductive chords, hypnotic horns and laser-tight drums combining to create a near overpowering dream state.

The heavy trip-hop rhythms of 'Nightfall' enrapture the listener as rich chords discreetly beckon, with cascading congas, mysterious melodies and exotic refrains building before the glorious lead vocal appears like a hyper-luminous flash of light. The chords disappear into the nothingness, before the carefully selected sample of 'Working Man' drifts in to fill the empty space. Smokey drums soon arrive, joined by weighted bass, foggy chords and an enigmatic whistle lead, fusing to conjure a half-lit world lifted from the pages of an evocative film noir novel.

The enlivening tablas, glitchy effects and saucer-eyed sweeps of 'Greed' hide subliminal messages casting a knowing eye over the consumer-driven society and self-help culture that pervade our society, before we arrive at the album's charmed finale. 'Last Winter Of My Childhood' yet again manages to transport the listener into a gently hallucinatory realm, with drowsy bass notes, tripped out pads and emotive strings building to a profound and rush-inducing crescendo.

'The Novel Sound' once again sees Third Attempt dextrously merging expansive musical aesthetics that fuse trip-hop, funk, soul and disco to deliver a sound that – although endowed with vintage sensibilities – feels proudly up to date. Continuing his breathtaking development in dazzling style, the album feels destined to echo over blissed-out sunsets, back-room excursions and twilight skies for many years to come.

We would like to present Paloma's seventh release: Tom feat. Rose - Lose Yourself EP
Throughout club music history, the combination of vocals and groove remains a vital element. Countless anthems have prompted singing on the floor, and have raised arms in the air. There might have been times where vocals mattered less, but right now they are probably more needed than ever.
Tom & Rose are well aware of all that, and they were willing to place themselves and their music in a tradition of dancefloor euphoria, universal messages and also a bit of bittersweetness.
Tom is a DJ, producer and mix engineer, and also a booker and resident at Paloma. Rose is an Irish singer and producer. Together they created these tunes, a testament to better times gone and ahead."How Wrong" is the sound of heartbreak, albeit locked in a UKG tinged sureshot that swings back and forth with ease between jubilant piano bliss and monolithic bass weight, and it kicks like a mule. "Lose Yourself" is both an ageless acid slam and a joyful paean dedicated to all nights that should never end. There is a pumping dub too,
equally designed to be the soundtrack to blowing a nocturnal kiss to everyday sorrows.
Also included: complementary remixes by Eluize and Massimiliano Pagliara that come up with a different take, but a similar vision.
Enjoy the music, and stay safe!

6 face-melting gurners for the 21st Century’s, wilted and jilted generation.

Glasgow’s Lady Neptune follows her New Gorbals Gabber cassette E.P. with her debut vinyl release NOZ. Over the course of 23 bloody fisted minutes, Lady Neptune’s – aka Moema Meade - hyper destructed take on Gabber and Happy Hardcore breaks down the genre tropes before rebuilding them as a new pop music. If 2020’s New Gorbals Gabber showed an artist building their own language from fragments of different genres, 2022’s NOZ goes harder into the cyberpunk-ass future and takes no prisoners. Recorded and mixed at Glasgow’s legendary Green Door Studios and mastered by Rashad Becker, here Lady Neptune evolves into a monster.

With the classic weapons of Dutch Gabber – distorted 909 kick drums, bursts of noise and world-eating Rave-O- Matic hoovering synth riffs, Lady Neptune’s 6 tracks constantly threaten to careen off the speaker into the sweatiest, most gibbering, messy corners of the club. The two years since her debut has seen Meade destroying festival dancefloors, training for the full assault that is NOZ. Live performances have seen foam guns, tequila-pistols, neon stage dancers and a full, maxed-out orgy of fast-as-hell BPM, rave music burning up the cones. The experience reaps rewards from the outset on recorded form here. APOCOLYPS begins with monstrous vocals and the all-consuming kick, pulled back and taut for launch. The arsenal builds; warbling synths and high-pitched synth-strings before dropping into Bald Terror-sized hoovers and stuttering 4/4s. It quickly bleeds into MASTERER, with a looped, pitched up vocal intersecting with the synth riff. The aesthetics might be Happy Hardcore but the dynamic feels like a synthetic, evil Nu Metal-influenced Industrial music. Constantly evolving and twisting with its own natural drama, the drop at 2:15 is pure ecstatic release. fusing Meade’s inclination for pop hooks with the first out-and-out 180BPM (ish, who’s counting?) anthemic melter of the E.P., TELL ME has THE big catchy chorus, used sparingly and sung by Meade with angelic devilishness, coming at you in waves of XTC. It’s a repeater.

It’s then massive fists in the air for the ruthless Side B opener WIT. In the Welsh-Brazilian artist’s adopted home of Glasgow it translates directly as WHAT!? Itt makes sense. g. Sharp, weaponised, rhythmic punishment abounds before OH responds. Pitched up vocals and another mid-frequency synth hook wipes the slate clean. Like the best Gabber, the tension and release dynamic is used to full effect by Meade, with the thunderous low end kick -expertly tweaked in the mastering by Rashad Becker – slipping into the ghostly cavern. Industrialized 4/4 and noise-snares propel onwards to be utterly squashed by that bloody synth, stinging and horribly brilliant. Proving her genius for a ridiculous A-N-T-H-E-M, TIME 2 MAKE U FEEL GOOD closes the 23 minutes of ragged, drugged glory with a festival-slamming chorus built from the wreckage. It’s a song that does that thing we all know and love but can’t put our finger on. Sad, happy, tragedy, ecstasy, joy, horror...There’s big, minor chord changes (yes there’s some CHORDS on this slammer), the kick is submerged in layers of pads and Meade’s actual secret weapon: her vocal and knack for writing a chorus line. In the listener’s mind it’s over before it’s begun, a track destined for the big rewind.

NOZ is a breathless, E-number riddled eternal ecstasy.

For most of us, life is a series of human interactions; some good, some bad, some happy, some sad. But what would life be without those peripheral characters who plant themselves into our worlds through the sheer force of their presence? Whether we speak to them or not, those vibrant contrasts to the everyday tide of ordinary people are a magical part of the human experience. Oddballs and misfits, flamboyant instigators or low-key game changers, we all clock them on our own hectic journeys, and they make the day a little brighter. Everyone has their favourite people.

Following the runaway success of their first one-shot single in 2020, Favourite People reconvene for a full-length of blues-tinged cuts stemming from sessions at Selva Studios in Brooklyn. The project’s roots predate the studio, from scattered jams and sweaty nights in New York nightspots to impromptu recordings on cruise ships, but the flashpoint of inspiration that truly set the album in motion was the arrival of a blonde 1960s Fender Telecaster. From there, the motley crew of sharp-shooting string slingers and sticks men set about crafting paeans to those striking souls who make the world a more colourful place.

The emphasis here is on the kind of forward-facing, electrically charged mix you felt (whether you realised it or not) hearing early Sabbath or Priest for the first time. With their undeniable bias towards vintage soul, Favourite People are far from heavy metal, but the same lineage of blues and by extension jazz informs the music, while the tonal crunch of that 70s era guides the sound. Feasting on tasteful overdrive and leaning on the unmistakable flavour of tape for much of the recording, the deal was sealed on this purposeful exercise in vibe thanks to the near-mythical texture of Guy Davie’s EMI Nigeria console at Electric Mastering.

Across the album there are mellow shades and bursts of good-time get-down exuberance, but the lead singles capture the essence of the band in no uncertain terms.

‘Promise Of Nibbles’ brings the Favourite People MO into sharp relief with a low-slung, hard swinging blues confection full of overheating organ and duelling guitars in pursuit of Southern-stewed boogie (im)perfection.

‘We’ll Be Late To The Party’ turns up the tempo and dials in the fuzz, striking an anthemic note which lands somewhere between urgent highway escapism and euphoric communal revelation.

‘Mass and Mustiness’ leans in on the funk dimension of the group’s sound with the sweetest licks and chops on that fabled telecaster backed up by an acutely angled beat and the slinkiest of b-lines.

These are but three of the vibrant vignettes laid down by this quietly unassuming collective of heads down jammers, loose groovers and vintage sound freaks –heavy grooving instrumentals pulled from their own moments of pure musical magic and captured on disc for your listening, dancing, living, loving pleasure.

Standing firm on a steady driving rhythmic section, Over The Leap symbolizes the awakening of the life on Earth, the arrival of the morning sun. A deep chord brings in the necessary warmth to prepare the ground for the life on earth to emerge, a bright uplifting pad signs in the beginning of a new day as the light surely gains intensity. Steve O Sullivan adds his signature steady sound to the original track. Emphasizing the comfort and warmth of the early hours of a summer day; extending time as if to focus the attention on the beauty of a world not yet awakened but ready to be. Original hovering over, remix going deep into the leap that the world is about to take every single day when the birds sing. Original Behold, Begin will be available as free download, which offer the necessary well deserved space to Heavenchord to fully express his deeper interpretation of it, giving a massive push to the Jazz influences of the track to then introduce to the audience the depth of a reshape that could only come from one of the most profound artists that Dub Techno has in store today. A release aiming to bring together the two principles of life according to ancient Philosophy : ground the feet on the soil, extend to the sky, and come back to being with a deeper focus on the feeling of being alive.

Wganda Kenya was ahead of its time, anticipating current contemporary Afro-Latin-funk trends in a prescient way that has inspired a legion of fans across the globe. As part of that legacy, "Africa 5.000" (1975) has a legendary reputation as one of Discos Fuentes' best hard-to-find Afro Caribbean funk records and is a highly prized collector's piece. This LP features several classic dance floor gems as well as some lesser-known nuggets and a non-album bonus cut, plus informative notes. "Africa 5.000" (1975) has a legendary reputation as one of Colombia's best hard-to-find Afro-funk records and is a highly prized collector's piece today. The epic 'La torta' ('The Cake') kicks things off with a lively Colombian interpretation of Haitian compas. The tune is still remembered as a big picó (amplified sound system) hit at the verbenas (outdoor dance parties). 'Fiebre de lepra' ('Leprosy Fever') was also released as a 45 single and is certainly one of Wganda Kenya's wilder tracks. Funky wah-wah guitar, makossa style bass, manic organ, and feverishly insane vocals (from Wilson "Saoko" Manyoma and Joe Arroyo) indicate that Fruko and his pals were having a ball goofing around in the studio. If for no other reason, "Africa 5.000" is sought after for being the album containing Fruko and Javier García's outrageously funky and off-kilter 'Tifit hayed', which has become a tropical dance floor favorite in recent years. Again the "kitchen sink" approach is employed, including massive Latin bass lines, tasty Farfisa organ stabs, a bluesy, jazzy piano solo, and plenty of humorous vocal sound effects (including animal noises and lip burbling). However, it's the stomping break beats and cowbell counterpoint that has kept dance floors busy. Side B leaps out of the speakers with the heavy, strutting 'El caterete', which was the flip side to the 'Fiebre de lepra' single and is based on the 1970 song 'Cateretê' by Brazilian singer/songwriter Marku Ribas. Like its sibling Fuentes studio band Afrosound, Wganda Kenya was ahead of its time, anticipating current contemporary Afro-Latin-funk trends in a prescient way that has inspired a legion of fans across the globe, and this reissue of "Africa 5.000" will only serve to further cement the band's growing reputation amongst today's diggers of tropical psychedelia. First time reissue.

Deron Miller gives his life to the riff. Unrestrained by industry expectations and genre limitations, the boundlessly prolific guitarist and voice behind multiple beloved projects is best known as the founder, frontman, and songwriter in CKY. His authentic and effortlessly hooky heavy rock obsession returns with 96 BITTER BEINGS. Reinvigorated and ready to rumble all over again, Miller roars back with the same reverence for riffage that made underground hits out of CKY anthems like “Flesh Into Gear,” “Escape from Hellview,” and “Disengage the Simulator” from 1998 till 2011.

The familiar warmth, feel, groove, and unapologetic honesty which drove the song “96 Quite Bitter Beings” to 54 million streams (on Spotify alone) permeates the pair of albums unleashed by 96BB.

A successful crowdfunding campaign saw Miller, guitarist Kenneth Hunter, bassist Shaun Luera and Shaun’s brother, drummer Tim, conjure up 2018’s Camp Pain in limited release. North American and European touring followed, wrapping up shortly before the COVID-19 shutdowns.

“After CKY and a short break, I decided to continue, without changing the sound,” Miller explains. “Because that’s what I do. It’s what I love to do and what people say I do well. All of the guys who got in the band with me are great musicians. And each of them is hungry. They have priorities and ambitions about being in a rock band, no matter the grim state of pop music out there. If we can bring rock and metal back to the mainstream, in some way, that’s the dream.”

In 2022, 96 BITTER BEINGS unleash the long-awaited Synergy Restored, 11 songs of relentless power and vibe. Four-on-the-floor, fuzzy and visceral, proper rock n’ roll made by an actual band, rather than a bunch of overprocessed samples and otherwise stale shenanigans. Songs like “Vaudeville’s Revenge,” “90 Car Pile-Up,” and “Wish Me Dead” offer vivid reminders of the truth-telling prowess of guitars, bass, and drums. Miller is on fire, weaponizing the same knack for memorable musical epiphanies behind projects like Foreign Objects, World Under Blood, and CKY.
Miller co-founded Foreign Objects and later Camp Kill Yourself (a name born of his love of VHS slasher classics) in West Chester, Pennsylvania, in the ‘90s. Written by Miller, 1999’s Volume 1 appealed to metalheads, skaters, stoners, and punks. The album led to a stint on Warped Tour and a deal with Island Def Jam Music Group, which issued Infiltrate•Destroy•Rebuild• in 2002. Axl Rose chose CKY to support the ill-fated Chinese Democracy tour, and they also played with Metallica.
An Answer Can Be Found followed in 2005, producing the Billboard Mainstream Rock Top 40 single “Familiar Realm.” Extensive touring with Avenged Sevenfold and the like-minded Clutch followed. Carver City, in 2009, would prove to be Miller’s last album with the group he created and led. Across the four albums, Miller indulged his love of everything from ‘80s thrash metal to doom, as CKY blended high-octane ruckus with occasional bursts of Moog synths and cinematic storytelling.
Miller never stopped creating, with a handful of full albums written and released, a foray into horror movies, and parenting three children with his wife, scream queen actress Felissa Rose. Like Galactic Prey, the most recent Foreign Objects album, the 96BB records were recorded and produced by Miller and Hunter at Manifest Productions. Camp Pain was explicitly made for diehard fans who supported the creation of both albums through 96BB’s Indiegogo campaign. Synergy Restored was always intended for wider release, which it sees now via Nuclear Blast.
“I want my work taken seriously. I thank God every day that I was never overexposed, or even exposed enough commercially, to where I’m resigned to a specific moment,” Miller says. “I would rather have my self-respect, the respect of the audience, and a dedicated cult following.”

“Every time I go out, I see Nirvana, Metallica, and Misfits t-shirts. These kids may not know the music, but at least they are displaying a visual interest,” he adds. “Corporations spend millions of dollars promoting certain styles of music, but history proves that true rock will always sneak in.”

Der sich über mehr als drei Jahrzehnte erstreckende musikalische Erfolg von Tiken Jah Fakoly ist auf vier Eckpfeilern begründet, deren Fundament für seinen klaren und kompromisslosen Reggae steht und sich ebenso klar und unmissverständlich in den Texten des beliebten afrikanischen Musikers widerspiegelt. Sei es als Verteidiger der Unterdrückten oder als steter Daumen in der Wunde der von ihm benannten Tyrannen. Schon zu Beginn der 90er Jahre, mit seiner ersten Band 'Djélys" in Odienné, einer Stadt im Nordwesten der Elfenbeinküste, fiel Tiken Jah mit seiner tiefen, eindringlichen Stimme auf. Ein großer Erfolg und der erste der starken Eckpfeiler war jedoch sein in Abidjan entstandenes Debut Album unter seinem Namen, 'Mangercratie" (1999). Es erschütterte sowohl die lokale Reggae-Szene, vor allem aber auch die Machthaber, die dekadente Oberschicht, die "alten Fressäcke", wie er sie betitelte, die die Zeichen der Zeit ignorierten und sich an die Macht klammerten. Den zweiten Grundstein legte er in Paris, dem zentralen Nerv Frankreichs, mit seinem dritten Album 'Françafrique" (2002), einem Begriff, der informell für das - wie Tiken Jah in seinen Texten anprangerte - antiquierte politische System Frankreichs und dessen mafiöse Strukturen steht. Im selben Jahr wurde sein Land, die Elfenbeinküste, von einem Bürgerkrieg zerrissen. Seine Landsleute hatten "den Verstand verloren", wie er es schon zuvor in einem seiner Liedtexte prophezeit hatte. Fakoly suchte Unterschlupf in Bamako, ohne sich jedoch wie ein Flüchtling zu fühlen, denn "Africa is united", Afrika ist vereint, wie er schon immer verkündet hatte. In Bamako legte er mit dem treffend benannten 'L"Africain" (seinem fünften Album, 2007) den dritten Eckpfeiler, gefolgt von dem vierten Eckpfeiler, dem großartigen 'African Revolution" (2010), seinem siebten Album, welches das endgültige Fundament bildete: Ein revolutionärer Schrei, ein direkter politischer Aufruf, der sich in den bloßen, schlichten Reggae-Rhythmen entlädt, unangekündigt und dafür umso schöner und machtvoller. Sein elftes und neuestes Album 'Braquage de pouvoir" (Raub der Macht) setzt diesen Weg fort. Das Album trifft den Nerv auf den Punkt, denn es begnügt sich nicht damit, Tiken Jahs musikalische und politische Errungenschaften zusammenzufassen, sondern offenbart in Gänze das Wesen des fakolianischen Stils - ein Adjektiv, das wir zu erfinden wagen, so wie Tiken Jah Fakoly es wagte, diese starken Pfeiler zu erschaffen.