Search:area music

Since 2008 our Spiritual Jazz series has presented unlimited horizons. Each album celebrates the rich tradition of African-American songs based on the belief in a higher force than oneself and has also focused on geographical areas, such as Europe or Japan, thus recognizing that these territories have immense cultural riches. Religions, like Islam, whose musical traditions have vivid Arabic and North African resonances, have also been highlighted. The stylistic range of all the above is wide.

Yet historic record labels, from Blue Note and Impulse! to Prestige and Steeplechase, have also featured because their catalogues are musical treasure troves that could not be more relevant to Spiritual Jazz, even though they issued vast amounts of music between the late '30s and present day, that have not been confined to any one school.

Spiritual Jazz 16 is a focus on Riverside and its associated sister labels. Riverside itself was founded in 1953 by Orrin Keepnews and Bill Grauer, and became an important purveyor in that decade and beyond of what would be marketed as of modern jazz. That coinage was itself an amorphous, umbrella term that essentially created a demarcation from the vocabulary of pre-war classic jazz and inter-war big band swing, thus recognizing that improvising artists were breaking new creative ground that would subsequently give rise to a flurry of sub-genres, for example bebop, hard bop, cool, modal and Latin jazz. And it's from this multiplicity of sub-genres that we choose the deepest, most vibrant selections that the vast, pan-generational catalogue of Keepnews & Grauer has to offer

Pitched Peach's inaugural release marks a significant homage to the Bay Area's musical legacy, featuring five tracks from Darwin Chamber, the alter-ego of Mark Greenfield.

Chamber's contributions have been instrumental in shaping the distinctive sound of the ambient house/trip-hop and breakbeat movement that originated in San Francisco during the 1990s. His work offers listeners a timeless experience that represents the essence of electronic music's history. This EP encapsulates the playfulness we seek both as a listening experience and to burn the dance floor, setting the stage for an electrifying future of releases on the label. All tracks have been remastered for the occasion!

OOO002 - second, vinyl-only release debuts dark, galactic grooves featuring heavy bass lines and experimental elements from artists Chad Andrew and Len Lewis.

A1: “Battle 303”
Inspired by the soundscape of the 90’s techno scene, Battle 303’s punchy bass drums hold you captive as its sine wave bounce lures you into hypnosis with a progressive rhythmic beat. The track’s rolling 303, pyramid’s a myriad of elements before awakening you to the crisp subliminal vocal, just shy of the midway point. Battle 303’s multidimensional fury of movement refuses to slow its pace, inducing pure cardio for both the mind and body, inspiring peak dance performance.

A2: “Area 15”
Area 15 intros the swirling ambiance of dark, atmospheric, easy listening as it gradually accelerates into a journey of the unknown. Utilizing distortion effects, eerie drones and chimes, coupled with the rhythmic pattern of arpeggiated synths brings about a sense of intrigue that lends the listener the flexibility to determine their personal musical trajectory and experience.

B1: Battle 303 (Len Lewis S!th Remix)
Battle 303 (Len Lewis S!th Remix) is an introspective, sonic journey that slings you through a brooding origin story of tribal, galactic funk that echoes iconic samplings spanning over 5 decades seamlessly merged into one futuristic bop. Maintaining it’s old school, breakbeat roots with a driven, heavy bassline, claps and snares, Lewis remains true to his S!th style, by altering path and speed with his signature, unexpected musical transitions, highlighted by timely breaks and experimental elements. Be prepared to move and groove as this track reaches hyperspeed early on, stimulating intense movement and journey from start to finish.

B2: Battle 303 (Len Lewis G.H.M. Remix)
Battle 303 (Len Lewis G.H.M. Remix) leads with traditional, minimal components and a suspenseful bassline, laced with piercing elements and garbled synth vocals, creating a sense of awareness and urgency that gradually builds in intensity before throwing you into punchy, sinister darkness.
This groove, set against the backdrop of deep space and all its musical element oddities, mimics the drive of the original 303’s rolling bass line while seamlessly exploring Lewis’ S!thstylings of metallic synth scales and spooky drone effects, keeping you captivated as you strut the dance floor

Mr. K’s series of edits on Most Excellent Unlimited is nothing if not eclectic, and utilitarian — as befits a veteran DJ of Danny Krivit’s stature. For our latest, Krivit pulls two disparate gems out of his bag of tricks and fits them neatly on a single 7-inch piece of vinyl.

In 1972 Ralph Bakshi’s landmark underground animated film Fritz the Cat was released, featuring a soundtrack performed by an all-star cast of San Francisco area musicians associated with the Berkeley-based Fantasy label. Perhaps Fantasy’s biggest artist was the vibes player Cal Tjader, who debuted in 1955 and was still going strong when songs were gathered for the movie’s soundtrack nearly twenty years later. Rather than simply using one of his older, already-recorded tunes, Tjader laid down a completely new version of his earlier hit record “Mamblues.” This time however, he swapped his standard latin percussion accompaniment for a can’t-miss rhythm section of Bernard Purdie, Chuck Rainey, and Arthur Adams. The result was a searing funk workout that took the latin jazz classic to new heights. Mr. K subtly warms this one up by adding a hint of reverb and bringing the tempo down a notch, pushing things from frenetic to funky, and firmly into friendly mixing territory for the DJs.

For our flip side, we turn to an unsung jewel amongst Philadelphia’s many contributions to disco music. Executive Suite released a series of singles in ’74 and ’75 that were recorded at the famed Sigma Sound Studios and had ties to a number of better known disco luminaries, among them the holy trinity of Baker-Harris-Young and, on “You Believed In Me,” the mighty Patrick Adams. Along with his longtime associate Stan Lucas, Adams garnished the vocal quartet’s composition with a driving arrangement and epic, soaring strings. The combined effect produced a vibrant, uplifting club cut that echoes the positive spirit of Curtis Mayfield’s “Move On Up” while being altogether its own thing. For our latest release Mr. K focuses solely on Adams’s instrumental section, returning repeatedly to that addictive string riff and creating a propulsive rhythm track that just doesn’t quit. And we don’t want it to!

As always, these connoisseur’s choice cuts have been remastered and pressed to Most Excellent Unlimited’s standards, and are primed and ready on 7-inch for DJs and home listeners alike.

'The John Carter and Bobby Bradford Quartet/Quintet were critical to the progressive jazz movement around Los Angeles in the late 60s alongside the likes of Horace Tapscott. Both hailed from the Watts area and trumpeter, Bradford played with a woodshedding Ornette Coleman for two years in the early 60s when the legendary free movement leader decided not to record for a while but wanted to hone his trademark sound on the saxophone. Multi-reed player, Carter also worked with Coleman who brought them together to lead their own band.

Their first outing on Flying Dutchman was “Flight For Four” as the Carter Bradford Quartet that was released in 1969. This is the second album they recorded where Carter and Bradford were supported by Tom Williamson (bass), Buzz Freeman (drums) and another uncredited bass player on four extended improvisations – ‘The Sunday Afternoon Jazz Blues Society’, ‘The Eye Of The Storm’, ‘Loneliness’ and ‘Encounter’.'

Detroit artist Julion De’Angelo steps forward into his own with a new musical offering:the inaugural EP from his new imprint, Maybee Hill Music. Named after the street that he grew up on, the label celebrates ancestral guidance and reflecting on the past, so you can move FORWARD!

Can’t Go Askin is an exuberant testament to Black joy, building and shining triumphantly throughout its mesmerising 12-minute runtime.The track centers on a riff that immediately locks you in, as it stretches and expands with a seductive, propulsive groove, with percussion and keys all floating below a soaring and shimmering Juno. This bold and idiosyncratic interplay results in a jam which takes you HIGHER, transcendent in the spirited tradition of Chicago and Detroit.

De’Angelo completely switches gears for the flip side of this musical offering. Reflecting Cancer Moon is an immersive descent into deep dubby waters inspired by a night walk in the woods. A hypnotic, bare-bones meditation with crazy swing, that explodes into a rhythmic swirl of percussion. Dub delay echoes in and out as we journey deeper into the forest with the moon illuminating our way forward. This EP embodies De’Angelo’s restless urge to constantly seek out new sounds and open up new sonic areas for experience and transformation, with two tracks reflecting two sides of the musical spectrum.

Elic, aka Giorgio Di Natale, is a DJ and producer from Bari, Puglia (Italy). He was initiated into electronic music at a young age, when he began attending clubs in the area and working as a PR. Soon after, he discovered, while frequenting the most transgressive Florentine clubs and the Adriatic Riviera, a passion for house music and everything that runs around the world of clubbing.The uncontrollable desire and instinct to listen and buy records to share with friends and people, led him to take up DJing in 1999. With the huge background behind him and the various styles that contaminated him, he decided to let this flow into productions as well, and it was not until 2021 that he entered the world of music production.Thus was born Elic and his label HELICAL. "Retourism" is the label's first EP and collects three tracks ranging from electronic to techno and minimal.

A journey through hypnotic atmospheres, but with an eye always on the dancefloor.

The life of the solo electronic artist is equal parts privilege and loneliness. You hurtle across the sky to spend a few hours in a dark club, behind the decks or on stage at the microphone. A brief grasp at transcendence, then the lights are on. Afterwards, you chat with friends you made last month, last year, or an hour ago. Back on the train, the plane. A couple weeks of this, then home. Repeat. It was against this backdrop that Ana Roxanne and DJ Python (Brian Piñeyro) struck up a singular friendship and collaboration, culminating in the shared musical language of their new project, Natural Wonder Beauty Concept. Brian and Ana met in New York City in the winter of 2020. They’d respectively put out critically acclaimed albums but due to extenuating global circumstances, the real-world implications of those records were yet to be seen. Ana’s debut LP, Because of a Flower, released in fall 2020, trades in both ethereality and directness, stretching timeless pop and R&B forms into shimmering ambient magic. When the Bay Area-born, Mills-trained artist sings, on record or live, time slows down and we enter a languorous yet ecstatic present. The second album from Queens-based deep reggaeton innovator DJ Python, Mas Amable, also subverts easy temporality. Released in spring 2020, Mas Amable floats in liminal space—not quite a dance record, a downtempo record, nor an ambient record—unfurling at a wistful pace, naturally suited for a strange period when each day felt the same yet wildly different.

For this uniquely personal retrospective spread over twelve vinyl discs, Sven Väth takes us back to the early days of his DJ career. On What I Used To Play we meet great pioneers of electronic music, gifted percussionists, obscure wave bands, and innovative producers of a bygone 'new electronic' era. Rough beats and irresistible grooves from the identification stage of house, techno, and acid remind us not just how far electronic music has evolved over the past four decades, but how great it was to dance to EBM, techno, and house for the very first time.

If there is one protagonist of the electronic music scene who has remained curious, innovative and at the very cutting edge of music for over four decades, it's Sven Väth. His multi-layered artist albums and Sound of the Season mix compilations have been defining the genre for over two decades, and even today, he is constantly on the lookout for the next top tune to add to the highlights of his next set. At least, that's the case when he's not producing them himself as an artist or remixer. "Actually, it's always been part of my DNA to think ahead," and nothing had been further from his mind than looking back at his past, but when in spring of 2020 the international DJ circuit had to be scaled down to virtually zero, the 'restless traveler' suddenly had time. Time to stop and reflect on "how it actually was back then, at the very beginning of my career..."

"It was a great trip and with every track, beautiful memories came flooding back".
In the London apartment, he had just moved into, Sven has set up a "little music room", where he cocooned himself for several days, "to look way back for the first time and review my musical journey through the eighties, so to speak."

The interim result was six thematically oriented playlists with a grand total of 120 tracks from 'early 80s' to 'Balearic late 80s', together with excursions into afrobeat, European new wave, and EBM sounds and a few epochal techno/house tracks from the USA in between. From these 'Best of Sven Väth's favorites', the project What I Used To Play crystallized. Sven remembers how the Cocoon team reacted to his proposal: "They found the idea of making a compilation out of it MEGA from the beginning and everyone said 'Sven, go for it', but then, of course, the work really started, namely, to clear the rights and to get clean sounding masters of the up to 40-year-old tracks. There was also disappointment, of course. We couldn't clear certain titles because the rights holders in the USA had fallen out with each other or simply disappeared from the scene. In short, it wasn't easy, but now I can safely say we got the most important tracks."

Finally, after two years of research, curation, design, and administrative fine-tuning, the "little retrospective" from 1981 to 1990 is available. The exquisitely packaged, and three-kilo heavy box set is not only physically impressive, WIUTP is also the definitive record of Sven Väth's musical development. On each of the twenty-four sides of vinyl, you can trace track by track, what influenced him during which phase, and how he took off as a DJ from his parents' Queen's Pub straight into the spotlight at Dorian Gray. There and at Vogue (later OMEN), Sven became the style-defining player in the DJ booth that he still is today.




1981 - 1990: Future Sounds of Now

In the early eighties, the crowd in clubs like Vogue and Dorian Gray danced to what nowadays we call 'dance classics' - mainly disco, funk, soul, and chart pop. It was up to a new generation of DJs, including Sven Väth, the youngest protagonist in the Rhine-Main area at the time, to create their own club-ready music mix. Good new tracks and potential floor-fillers were rarities that had to be sought out and found, in order to prove oneself worthy.
Without MP3s, internet streaming, or other digital download possibilities, music didn't just gravitate to the DJ, instead, it had to be tracked down. In well-stocked record stores in Frankfurt and Wiesbaden or even in Amsterdam, London, or New York, Sven and friends sourced the material for countless magical nights. On WIUTP we can follow Sven's very personal journey through this wild, innovative era in which synth-pop, funk, hip-hop, and disco were successively replaced as 'club music' by house, techno, acid, and breakbeat. By the end of the decade, it was clear to see that these once exotic 'fringe' phenomena would soon become 'mass' phenomena.



Early 80s

Dirty Talk by the Italian-American duo Klein & M.B.O. represents the most innovative phase of the Italo-disco genre in the early eighties like no other track. Mario Boncaldo (I) and Tony Carrasco relied entirely on the original synthetic drum and percussion sounds of the Roland TR-808, coupled with the raunchy vocals of Rossana Casale and guitar accents of Davide Piatto. Of course, other tracks from this period were also influential in style, most notably Unit by Logic System, which worked as the perfect soundtrack to the laser lighting system at the legendary Dorian Gray club. With stomping beats and robotic rap interludes, Bostich by Yello also belongs on Sven's eternal playlist - after all, it caught the attention of Afrikaa Bambaataa, who invited the Swiss duo to perform at the Roxy in New York in 1983.



EBM Wave - Mid 80s

From today's point of view, the almost ten-minute-long, downtempo track Giant by Matt Johnson's band project The The, would probably not be considered an obvious club classic. However, a closer (re)listen reveals the rhythmic intricacies of the percussion overdubs by JG Thirlwell (aka Foetus) on Johnson's composition, and it becomes clear why this exceptional piece of music is one of Sven's absolute favorites. Other classics from this phase include Kaw-Liga by the mysterious The Residents, the hypnotic-synthetic Our Darkness by Anne Clark (and David Harrow), and last but not least, the somber, monotonous anthem Where Are You? by 16Bit, one of Sven Väth's projects together with Michael Münzing, Luca Anzilotti from 1986.



US House - Late 80s

You certainly can't talk about Chicago house without mentioning Frankie Knuckles. The resident DJ at the Warehouse not only gave the name to an entire genre, but also produced epochal floor fillers on the Trax label like the timeless Your Love, sung (and moaned) by Jamie Principle. Acid house protagonists Phuture also hail from Chicago, and on We Are Phuture (also released on Trax) we hear the chirping acid sounds of the legendary Roland TB-303 in full effect. Another featured classic is No UFO's by Detroit's Model 500 aka Juan Atkins, who is rightly considered the 'Godfather of Techno' even if the genre-defining track from 1985 still breathes with the spirit of hip-hop and electro from the first breakdance era.





Afrobeat

Le Serpent, by Algerian-born Abdelmadjid Guemguem, is a track that sounds completely different from everything else on WIUTP. Made in 1978, it's a monumental, rousing groove created without bass or synths, just with five congas! Even though Guem sadly passed away in 2021, his immortal, acoustic beats are understood all over the world and will continue to enrich many thousands of DJ sets for years to come. Another classic that not only Sven appreciates beyond measure is Hugh Masekela's Don't Go Lose it, Baby. In addition to being one of the most important jazz pioneers, the trumpeter and freedom fighter from Johannesburg was very experimental, integrating electronic sounds into his music in later years, in a similar vein to Miles Davis and Herbie Hancock. Dutch jazz pianist Jasper van't Hof's afrobeat project Pili Pili has also aged well. The trance-like, almost sixteen-minute-long track of the same name, manages to fill a whole side on the seventh of twelve vinyl discs in the WIUTP box.



UK-US-Euro - Late 80s

Time for a change of scene, in the truest sense of the word, and from a musical perspective, this section is like landing on another planet. First up is Andrew Weatherall's classic remix of Primal Scream's Loaded, featuring the iconic Peter Fonda sample (lifted from the 1966 biker film Wild Angels) that came to personify the mood triggered by the British Second Summer of Love in the late eighties: "We wanna be free to do what we wanna do, and we wanna get loaded...". This period also saw the emergence of M/A/R/R/S whose only single, 1987's Pump Up The Volume, became a club classic with support from DJ legend CJ Mackintosh. In this most eclectic of sections, we also encounter New York house and reggae producer Bobby Konders and his seminal Nervous Acid.



Balearic - Late 80s

Those who know him, know that Sven had already lost his heart to the 'magic island' of Ibiza as a teenager, so with that in mind, the WIUTP project couldn't end without a Balearic chapter. Inspired by Manuel Göttsching's E2-E4, the immortal, eponymously titled Sueño Latino belongs in there without question. Equally popular on the island was, and still is Break 4 Love by Raze, which thinking about it, would also fit perfectly into the house chapter. Last, but not least, there's an overdue reunion with Sven Väth himself, in his role as frontman of the successful Frankfurt trio OFF. Together with Michael Münzing and Luca Anzilotti (later of Snap!) this 'Organization For Fun' created the off-the-wall club hit Electric Salsa in 1986 which incidentally turned into an international chart smash, putting Sven in the enviable position of having to decide between pop stardom and a DJ career. Well, we all know how that decision turned out and the rest, as they say, is history. A not insignificant part of his story is What I Used To Play. Enjoy!

Bernard Szajner is a French composer, musical theorist, visual artist. He is credited with the invention of the laser harp, which he patented.

Between 1979 and 1983, Szajner released five albums of innovative and Avant-garde electronic music. He became renowned as a light and visual effects technician with artists such as Magma, Gong, Stomu Yamashta and The Who.

During the 1970s, he became a pioneer in the field of using laser technology as an artistic tool. As a measure of his success, he became renowned by his work with companies such as Cartier and Renault. In 1980, inspired by the novel, Nova, by Samuel R. Delany, he first created the laser harp. The laser harp became so successful that Jean-Michel Jarre ordered a version from Bernard Szajner for his tour of China. Despite all this, Szajner would only occasionally use this instrument in his own performances. He has stated that he would rather the public not know him solely for his work on the laser harp, and that it not be allowed to take precedence over his work in musical composition that it enables. This is also why he continues to develop other instruments which use other innovative methods of interaction, such as tactile or holographic.

Towards the end of the 1980s and disgusted with the music industry, he chose to abandon music entirely, and shifted his focus towards digital and visual arts, and theatre.

From Bernard Szajner : “These tracks are my preferred ones .... Ever ! ... For a long time I've been waiting for a record label to release what corresponds to what I like playing these days... Until Sleepers records decided to release this compilation which contains most of the tracks I enjoy playing live on stage ! At last my wish is fulfilled !”

Back in stock soon !

Over the course of her lush, expansive, defiantly sprawling new album, “Sometimes I Might Be Introvert”, released on Age 101, the
Ivor Novelloaward-winning, Mercury nominated Little Simzdelivers an
undeniable modern classic, effortlessly condensing any number of
disparate styles and genres into music which thrillingly broaches the gap between urgent modern treatise and hip hop.

A bold, quantum leap forward from the critically beloved “Grey Area”, this is hardly music aiming simply for the pop charts; rather, it is turbo charged with the kind of fury and potency, confusion and anxiety that make up the modern experience of being Black, British and female at this particular point in time.

This is no mere philosophical exercise, however - the result is her most ambitious and soaring body of work to date, one which operates at the very heights of what rap can be.

CURRENT RAGE - The missing musical link between Athens and Atlanta
To celebrate the 40th Anniversary of the out-of-print forgotten classic, Propeller
Sound Recordings is set to release and remastered and expanded edition of
"Seven Songs". Fully immersed in the do it yourself aesthetic of the early-R.E.M.
era, Current Rage's sole indie record is highly regarded by record collectors
seeking out early eighties DIY releases. The relative scarcity of the original EP
today suggests the item does not circulate on the marketplace very often making
it ripe for reintroduction to the current marketplace with this expanded version.
Anthony DeCurtis of Rolling Stone wrote, "an enviable and impressive explosion
of new music was emerging from the Atlanta Athens area at this time" Current
Rage drew inspiration from Talking Heads, Pylon and R.E.M.

This mini album was originally published on Semantica Records in 2010 as a extremely limited 100 copy only reference. 12 years later we recover this for the Drivecom’s catalogue and fans of the label. This is a re-press edition with a new mastering and cutting, focused in the audio quality more than trying to get a maximum volume or gain. So this is one of the reasons that the side A cutting is trying to keep the tracks in the outside area of the vinyl in the most possible way, trying to avoid distortions or other artifacts from the inner vinyl curvature.

This 12” contains the same tracks on vinyl as the original edition but a couple of bonuses as a digital download. Those tracks called "Axonal Destruction (1999 Rework)" and "Automatic Reconstruction" were never released.

Note: For the people who purchase a physical copy in the shops, please take a picture of your purchase and share it on social networks, then we’ll send you a special download code.

In the musical ­eld, this reference was introduced with minimal and repetitive mental synth lines, mainly triggered from TB303 sequenced lines as the vertebral spinae, slow and progressive cadence rhythms with a touch of experimental electro and vocoders on board, exception is the ­rst tittle “Ultralink” which gives the name to the reference and it’s also the most club-oriented track in the mini album. About the thematic is all surrounded of such as mental driving musical lines so all the tittles were focused in the neuroscience

CURRENT RAGE - The missing musical link between Athens and Atlanta To celebrate the 40th Anniversary of the out-of-print forgotten classic, Propeller Sound Recordings is set to release and remastered and expanded edition of "Seven Songs". Fully immersed in the do it yourself aesthetic of the early-R.E.M.

era, Current Rage's sole indie record is highly regarded by record collectors seeking out early eighties DIY releases. The relative scarcity of the original EP today suggests the item does not circulate on the marketplace very often making it ripe for reintroduction to the current marketplace with this expanded version.

Anthony DeCurtis of Rolling Stone wrote, "an enviable and impressive explosion of new music was emerging from the Atlanta Athens area at this time" Current Rage drew inspiration from Talking Heads, Pylon and R.E.M.

Tropical Disco continue to rewrite the disco handbook as they clock up an impressive quarter century of vinyl releases with a sublime Volume 25 of their series.

Featuring four disco cuts laced with jazz, funk, touches of electro and lots of dancefloor swagger it perfectly continues to build and diversify the sound of the series. Getting in on the party are a trio of Italian disco lovers Musta, an artist whose releases regularly set the disco and house charts alight, alongside the highly rated Corrado Alunni and the mysterious Fun Kool both of whom also hail from Italy.

Opening proceedings, and in stellar form, is co-label boss Sartorial whose ‘Hootin N Tootin’ is a real jazz funk gem. Incessant piano riffs, a groove of a bassline which edges towards acidic in places, guitar licks aplenty and choppy drums all combine for a track which could be played anywhere from a jazz inspired pool party to the funkiest of clubs. ‘Hootin N Tootin’ is as musical as it is dance worthy, two very handy traits which will see it survive the ever onwards march of time.

Musta’s ‘El Matador’ meanwhile has a high energy, fun-filled approach to life. It’s a track which very much defies pigeon holing but which comes from the same effusive family of earworms as Samin’s ‘Heater’ and may well prove to be just as big a breakthrough hit if it lands in the right hands over the summer. It’s very much a track with a big mischievous smile on its sun worshiping face.

Corrado Alunni’s ‘Funk Decision (Dub Mix)’ falls very much into the early Soulfuric camp of Soulful house music, a sound which Tropical Disco has regularly flirted with recently with some fantastic results. Divine live sax, guitar loops and ass shakin’ bass all merge perfectly for a very classy six = minutes of shimmering dancefloor groove.

Fun Kool’s ‘Low Tow’ sees out the EP and takes us off on an 80’s inspired electro journey. Stabby synths, subtle cowbell and Vangelis-esque keys all combine for a track which brings Metro Area’s take on the genre immediately to mind. ‘Low Toe’ deserves all the plaudits which undoubtedly come its way, a future classic for sure.

That Tropical Disco keep conjuring up EP’s of this quality is a major cause for celebration in itself. Disco in 2022 is a progressively more and more interesting place to live given the multifarious avenues which it continues to open up and this EP is a perfect example of the depth, diversity and incredible quality of a genre overflowing with passion. We very much hope that the first 25 volumes are only the beginning.

Jessy Lanza has always made music that perfectly suits the mood - whether it's the heads-down trance of the dancefloor or that hazy, post-club bliss. It's no surprise for an artist that takes electronic music's most intoxicating sensibilities and effortlessly reimagines them as experimental pop and R&B. The Canadian singer, producer and DJ from Hamilton, Ontario, has trodden an inspiring path which led to 2013's boldly minimalist debut Pull My Hair Back, released on revered UK label Hyperdub. Gorgeously complex follow-ups Oh No - shortlisted for Canada's prestigious Polaris Prize - and 2020's All the Time crowned her as a singular talent in the left-of-pop sphere. It's with this genre-bending approach that Jessy Lanza presents her entry for the DJ-Kicks series - a sprawling, club-indebted odyssey that draws you in closer and closer with each listen. Recorded this summer, the mix is an incisive snapshot of her emotional landscape during the past 18 months. In 2020, with nothing but a van, a few personal belongings and her musical gear, Lanza and her partner relocated from New York City to the Bay Area to ride out the pandemic. A change of scenery, buoyed by the slower pace of their new home, gave her a fresh perspective during a worldwide screeching halt. Jessy Lanza's DJ-Kicks mix also arrives as a divine stroke of timing. As the world slowly starts to re-open, it's a portal into the ecstatic energy of the dancefloor; an emblem of genuine healing - both personal and communal - that transports listeners to a state of pure euphoria.

Charlotte de Witte continues her fantastic year with brand new EP, Asura, on her KNTXT label. All three of the tracks on this release will be exclusively included in her BBC Radio 1 Essential Mix, which is scheduled to be broadcasted on 18th of September.

As well as being back on the road and serving up her high-intensity DJ sets at the world's best clubs and festivals, Charlotte has also been busy in other areas. She has forged a new alliance with Apple Music and is now curating multiple exclusive mix series including a monthly KNTXT Residency Mix and KNTXT Active, which sees the Belgian artist and her label further investigate the connections between high-performance music, sports and BPMs. She has recently remixed the hugely influential trance classic 'The Age Of Love' by Age Of Love' alongside Enrico Sangiuliano and continues to A&R essential new tunes for the label.

Says Charlotte of this EP, "with Asura EP I’m trying to give you a little insight into my musical influences by going back to my roots. We’re speaking about a young Charlotte who, about 12 / 13 years ago, got indulged in the world of electronic music by going to her first underground clubs and raves. From electro and techno to acid core and hardcore to psytrance. This EP flirts with the soundscapes of the latter."

This EP finds Charlotte delve deep into her own past in electronic music with plenty of psychedelic influences. Opener Asura is a brightly lit techno track with big chords that bring the colour. They are sleek and metallic and sure to get hands in the air, with acid sounds and rumbling bass all adding extra weight and depth to this fantastic opener. 'Soma' is another dramatic and psychedelic track with hard-edged drums pounding away beneath celestial chords. They are mysterious and emotive and bring colour to the darkness. Last of all comes another big, psytrance-tinged and emotional roller coaster in 'Stigma' with its all-consuming techno groove and bass that sounds like it's fired from a machine gun. After an acidic breakdown, the drums roll again and even the biggest festival crowd is sure to be swept away.

Charlotte de Witte leads from the front once more with her standout new Asura EP.

With Resistance Belgium based Derlich presents his severly stripped down to its essence technoid visions. In avoidance of any irrelevant superstructures RESISTANCE delivers 6 equaly effective Tools ranging from ritual aesthetics with evolving rhythms and variations to unexpected heavy punches and deeply embeded obscurity reminiscent of the early Zhark releases.

Derlich erradicates the lines in genres as industrial, Underground Techno and Dark Ambient Minimalism, heavy strokes clarifies the abstraction of modern life. His passion for art, derelict dark landscapes, and abandoned locations feeds the inspiration to work in his shadowy area of electronic music.

SUMMER OF SEVENTEEN are MONIKA KHOT (NORDRA, ZEN MOTHER), WILLIAM FOWLER COLLINS, DANIEL MENCHE, FAITH COLOCCIA (MAMIFFER), and AARON TURNER. (SUMAC, SPLIT CRANIUM).

Wildfires plagued Washington state during the summer of 2017, their smoke drifting westward toward the Seattle area and toxifying the air. Shortly before that trauma, MONIKA KHOT, WILLIAM FOWLER COLLINS, DANIEL MENCHE, FAITH COLOCCIA, and AARON TURNER had gathered at the latter two musicians' House Of Low Culture studio on idyllic Vashon Island with revered producer RANDALL DUNN. There they cut eight songs that capture the makeshift band's feelings of what COLOCCIA calls "a kind of doomsday lurking in the background." It's as if these highly attuned players had a premonition.

"Summer Of Seventeen" -which was edited and arranged by MONIKA KHOT, who records apocalyptic music solo as NORDRA and plays in the avant-rock band ZEN MOTHER—is a nuanced admixture of these musicians' sounds and a culmination of all of their previous collaborations. COLOCCIA and TURNER have created eldritch folk and chamber rock for over a decade in MAMIFFER while engaging in various solo and group projects that explore their profound spirituality in sound. MENCHE has been a fixture on the abstract composition scene for 31 years and COLLINS is a savvy explorer of drone and ambient forms. Their ephemeral summit meeting has yielded a masterwork for the ages.

A heaven/hell and beauty/beastliness dichotomy pervades the album—as if a titanic struggle was transpiring in that small studio. The fearsome trumpet fanfare that starts "Chorus Of The Innocents" heralds a baleful fate. With a subliminal industrial rhythm bristling beneath the eerie exhalations, the song submerges us in a slow-motion maelstrom, a horror-film facsimile of MILES DAVIS' "Bitches Brew". "Perceived Slight" threads death-metal screams through a stark, suspenseful atmosphere, with austere glints of guitar and beats like fists on a casket lid intensifying the dread.

Angelic chants and celestial drones perfume the air in several of the songs on "Summer Of Seventeen", countered with muted blast beats, serrated hums, jagged glitches, simulacra of grinding gears and lightning. It's as if no good deed goes unpunished. "Spirits Of Redeemer" could be an elegy for the human race while "Cultural Orphan" sounds like a symphony for a malfunctioning factory. The album ends with "Theatre Needs An Audience," a harrowing ballad somewhere between EINSTÜRZENDE NEUBAUTEN and MERZBOW; it's a savage rent in the space-time continuum.

"Thinking about this record now," COLOCCIA recalls, "it seems like we were all sort of anticipating something like this current pandemic happening, although we were thinking about it as fire in the hands of man (literal fire, and also gunfire) that would overturn the normal running of things and reveal the current false beliefs systems holding up most of America."

That grave aura infiltrates "Summer Of Seventeen", However, a hopefulness bubbles beneath the foreboding architecture of sound and noise summoned here. The bunker is the new penthouse.

-Dave Segal, April 2020

Spanish producer Pedro Vian is dreaming of the sea on “Ibillorca”, his third studio album.

Vian, whose Modern Obscure Music label is at the heart of the Barcelona electronic scene, moved to Amsterdam in 2018. While the Dutch capital has embraced this inventive producer and DJ, Vian says the new album is inspired by a feelings of absence and longing for his Mediterranean home. “On this album I explore my feelings of missing the light,” he says. “Ibillorca is a journey to a utopian island, a journey to a new state of mind.”

You can hear this displaced utopia on songs like “Can Mortera”, a dreamy reflection on house music, recorded in Ibiza in summer 2019, that brings to mind Larry Heard at his most meditative; or “Medusa” (featuring artist Rosalie Wammes), which sounds like Tangerine Dream drifting over the sea.

The Quietus called Pedro Vian’s debut album “Beautiful Things You Left Us For Memories” “the soundtrack to walking around the city at night”, while his eponymous second album was both deeply personal and more suited for the dance floor. “Ibillorca” is his Mediterranean album. “I love the Mediterranean sea,” Vian explains. “I come from there and I miss the light, the sun and the smell of the sea, so I dedicated this album to this feeling.” Fittingly, “Ibillorca”’s enigmatic cover art, painted by Spanish artist Blanca Miró, depicts the Mediterranean islands of Ibiza & Mallorca

“Ibillorca” is also Vian’s most varied release to date: “The Destiny Manifest” nods to drum and bass - albeit a touchingly Iberian take on the genre - while “Western Snow” has a hint of Erik Satie’s piano minimalism. Vian’s new home in The Netherlands also played a role in shaping “Ibillorca” .Vian recorded the album during his residency at HetHEM, a new contemporary space in Zandaam, 30 minutes from Amsterdam. “I have my studio at the top of the building, from there I can see all the boats going up and down the river IJ,” Vian says. “The art space is located in an industrial area, everything is grey, also the sky.” All the better, then, for dreaming of the sea.

Comet presents the first release from its new Disco Highlife series, featuring remastered originals by Ghanaian legends Ebo Taylor & Pat Thomas and disco reedits by LeonxLeon and Leo Nanjo.

Founder of Comet Records, Eric Trosset, started working with those great heroes of West African music, back in 2010. Taking on the role of manager/publisher, Comet teamed up with Strut Records
and musician/producer Ben Abarbanel Wolff to revive Ebo Taylor‘s international career with a string of album releases: Love & Death, Appia Kwa Bridge and Life Stories. In 2014, he collaborated with
Pat Thomas & The Kwashibu Area Band on a new album, gathering together the old ‘pals’ (Ebo Taylor, Pat Thomas, Tony Allen) in producer Kwame Yeboah’s studio in Accra.

It is with great pleasure that Comet launches this new series. Let's make this beautiful and timeless music the soundtrack to an unforgettable summer!

On side A, comes “Enye Woa” by Pat Thomas, originally released in 1988 on Nakase Records and taken from the album Me Do Wiase. It’s killer disco cut, and as innovative a piece of highlife as it
was 30 years ago. Paris-based producer LeonxLeon has been cooking up songs in his Parisian home-studio since 2013. He did a remarkable remix of Cerrone's "Funk Makossa" and more recently released his new Rokanbo EP on Cracki Records. His remix of “Enye Woa” is a classy modern disco cut with funky bass and spacey synths.

On side B is “Atwer Abroba” by Ebo Taylor, a stand out up-tempo track from the album Twer Nyame, originally released in 1978 on Philips West African Records. Tokyo-based multi
instrumentalist/producer/arranger Leo Nanjo formed the first Japanese afrobeat group, Kingdom
Afrorocks. Since the band broke up in 2014, Leo has been producing and arranging music with various collaborations, such as DJ Muro, Pushim and Misia. This is a trippy afro-futurist, broken
beat reedit with highlife grooves flying to deep space

After dropping several tracks and performing at select festivals throughout the years, Ólafur Arnalds and Janus Rasmussen dedicated the year 2014 to explore the area in-between Ólafur's more acoustic, piano-based solo work and Janus's synth-heavy electro pop, with their collaborative electronic project Kiasmos.

By focusing solely on their self-titled debut album, Ólafur and Janus have been able to combine and further develop their unique sound aesthetics to complete an album driven by their mutual love for electronic music. Made in Ólafur's newly build studio in Reykjavík, Iceland, a majority of the album was recorded using acoustic instruments next to a variety of synthesisers, drum machines and tape delays. It features a live drummer, string quartet and Ólafur performing on the grand piano, producing an ambient, textured sound, which makes it a perfect home listen and equally danceable record. If you listen closely, you can spot them record the thumb piano, finger snapping and even the sound of the metal grinder of a lighter slowly to replace the usual electronic hi-hat sounds, giving the album a far more intimate and unique atmosphere.

We decided to start almost completely over with this record, so most of the material is written this year with the idea of making a record that can stand as one piece rather than a collection of songs. I am very excited to get a proper record out exploring a different territory than I am used to. I touch a lot on electronic genres in my own music but never have the opportunity to go full out electronic like we do here.' - Ólafur Arnalds

The Kiasmos project has been around since 2007, but because of all our other projects we never really got the time to sit down and write all the tracks we always wanted to. So when we early this year finally found the time to sit down and make a full length album there was so much we wanted to try out. The result surprised us a bit, it's deeper and more emotional than we imagined it to be, but that's the beauty of being able to make an album.' - Janus Rasmussen

Long-term Erased Tapes graphics collaborator Torsten Posselt at Feld Studios in Berlin created the cover artwork. Feld Studios was a natural choice for Kiasmos, seeing he also designed the cover for their Thrown EP, released previously.

Kiasmos is made up of Icelandic BAFTA-winning composer Ólafur Arnalds, known for his unique blend of minimal piano and string compositions with electronic sounds, and Janus Rasmussen from the Faroe Islands, known as the mastermind of the electro-pop outfit Bloodgroup. Based in Reykjavík, Arnalds used to work as a sound engineer, often for Rasmussen's other projects, where the two musicians discovered their common love for minimal, experimental music. They eventually became best friends, often hanging out in their studio, exploring electronic sounds.

Möge es den Menschen im bekannten Universum gefallen, dass das musikalische Ensemble mit zahlreichen Namen, das rechtlich unter dem Namen ,Kay-Bee Funk Music Group" firmiert, sein - alphabetisch gesehen - erstes Album mit dem Titel ,Access All Areas" veröffentlicht. Diese Aufnahmen, die mit der von Karate Boogaloo patentierten ,Lovely Recording Technique" entstanden sind, machen deutlich, dass jeder ein VIP ist, wenn man KB hört. ,Access" war das einzige Wort, das The Old Kar-Boo's bei diesem Projekt philosophisch leitete. Wurde ein Stück zu verworren, landete es im Papierkorb. Nur diejenigen, die von jedem und allen gesummt werden konnten, blieben erhalten. Dieses Sieb kam während des gesamten Prozesses zum Einsatz; Arrangements und Formen wurden straff gehalten, Schnickschnack auf ein Minimum reduziert. War ,Hold Your Horses" aus dem Jahr 2024 noch ein Epos, so ist ,Access All Areas" ein Haiku. Der bewährte Aufnahmeprozess der Band wurde gewissenhaft eingehalten, abgesehen von einer wunderbaren Ergänzung: den großartigen ,Sound Recordings" unter der Leitung ihres Inhabers und außergewöhnlichen Toningenieurs Alex Bennet. Alex, der den 4-Spur-Ampex 440 bei Bedarf abseits der ausgetretenen Pfade steuerte und stets dafür sorgte, dass die Stimmung stimmte, ist ein waschechter Booger. Auch wenn es sich nur wie ein Augenblick anfühlt, sagt uns die Uhr, dass fast 20 Jahre vergangen sind, seit Kay's Bees zum ersten Mal versuchten, die Songs ihrer musikalischen Helden - The Meters, Booker T & The MG's und The JB's, um nur einige zu nennen - zu spielen. Seitdem haben die Famous Flying Karate Boogaloo Brothers einen Schritt nach dem anderen gemacht und ihren eigenen Sound entwickelt - einen, der die Geschichte der instrumentalen Funk- und Soul-Musik respektvoll würdigt und die Zeit widerspiegelt, die sie damit verbracht haben, ihren unverwechselbaren Sound zu entwickeln. So sehr jedes Mitglied auch für sich allein glänzt, ist es doch ein besonderes Ereignis, wenn alle vier Planeten im Booger-System in einer Linie stehen. ,Access All Areas" ist eine solche Finsternis - ein künstlerischer Ausdruck, an dem jedes Mitglied gleichermaßen beteiligt ist und der einen Schatten wirft, der einzigartig für diesen Anlass ist. Jede Sekunde der Musik wurde unter voller Beteiligung aller Mitglieder komponiert und produziert; das Mixing übernahm Henry Jenkins, das Artwork stammte von Hudson Whitlock und Callum Riley, und Darvid Thor vollbrachte Dinge, die man gesehen haben muss, um sie zu glauben. Musik ist ein Mannschaftssport, und es gibt kein ,Ich" im Funk. Das Album erscheint bei den beiden großartigsten Plattenlabels der Galaxie: ,Colemine Records" aus Loveland, USA, und ,College of Knowledge" aus Coburg, Australien. Hören Sie sich bitte das neue Album ,Access All Areas" von Karate Boogaloo an.

Möge es den Menschen im bekannten Universum gefallen, dass das musikalische Ensemble mit zahlreichen Namen, das rechtlich unter dem Namen ,Kay-Bee Funk Music Group" firmiert, sein - alphabetisch gesehen - erstes Album mit dem Titel ,Access All Areas" veröffentlicht. Diese Aufnahmen, die mit der von Karate Boogaloo patentierten ,Lovely Recording Technique" entstanden sind, machen deutlich, dass jeder ein VIP ist, wenn man KB hört. ,Access" war das einzige Wort, das The Old Kar-Boo's bei diesem Projekt philosophisch leitete. Wurde ein Stück zu verworren, landete es im Papierkorb. Nur diejenigen, die von jedem und allen gesummt werden konnten, blieben erhalten. Dieses Sieb kam während des gesamten Prozesses zum Einsatz; Arrangements und Formen wurden straff gehalten, Schnickschnack auf ein Minimum reduziert. War ,Hold Your Horses" aus dem Jahr 2024 noch ein Epos, so ist ,Access All Areas" ein Haiku. Der bewährte Aufnahmeprozess der Band wurde gewissenhaft eingehalten, abgesehen von einer wunderbaren Ergänzung: den großartigen ,Sound Recordings" unter der Leitung ihres Inhabers und außergewöhnlichen Toningenieurs Alex Bennet. Alex, der den 4-Spur-Ampex 440 bei Bedarf abseits der ausgetretenen Pfade steuerte und stets dafür sorgte, dass die Stimmung stimmte, ist ein waschechter Booger. Auch wenn es sich nur wie ein Augenblick anfühlt, sagt uns die Uhr, dass fast 20 Jahre vergangen sind, seit Kay's Bees zum ersten Mal versuchten, die Songs ihrer musikalischen Helden - The Meters, Booker T & The MG's und The JB's, um nur einige zu nennen - zu spielen. Seitdem haben die Famous Flying Karate Boogaloo Brothers einen Schritt nach dem anderen gemacht und ihren eigenen Sound entwickelt - einen, der die Geschichte der instrumentalen Funk- und Soul-Musik respektvoll würdigt und die Zeit widerspiegelt, die sie damit verbracht haben, ihren unverwechselbaren Sound zu entwickeln. So sehr jedes Mitglied auch für sich allein glänzt, ist es doch ein besonderes Ereignis, wenn alle vier Planeten im Booger-System in einer Linie stehen. ,Access All Areas" ist eine solche Finsternis - ein künstlerischer Ausdruck, an dem jedes Mitglied gleichermaßen beteiligt ist und der einen Schatten wirft, der einzigartig für diesen Anlass ist. Jede Sekunde der Musik wurde unter voller Beteiligung aller Mitglieder komponiert und produziert; das Mixing übernahm Henry Jenkins, das Artwork stammte von Hudson Whitlock und Callum Riley, und Darvid Thor vollbrachte Dinge, die man gesehen haben muss, um sie zu glauben. Musik ist ein Mannschaftssport, und es gibt kein ,Ich" im Funk. Das Album erscheint bei den beiden großartigsten Plattenlabels der Galaxie: ,Colemine Records" aus Loveland, USA, und ,College of Knowledge" aus Coburg, Australien. Hören Sie sich bitte das neue Album ,Access All Areas" von Karate Boogaloo an.

Environments are sticky, they stick to whatever happens within them. They can’t help it. And neither can you.

Land of the Few and Far Between / Songs for St. Michel is a collection of musical ‘figures’ written and recorded in 2022 and 2023 using a method Lyckle and Kim call the ‘snelkookpan’, translated as the pressure cooker. The ’snelkookpan’ in essence is trying to write and live-record as many musical figures in a given timeframe in a specific place. For ‘Land of the Few and Far Between’ this was an afternoon and evening in an exhibition Kim had curated about collecting and memory in The Hague. For ‘Songs of St. Michel’ this was 6 days in the basement of an art institution in Maastricht where they were joined by Otto de Jong on guitar. The figures are usually worked out by ear, sometimes improvised, sometimes written down, but often they are simply remembered and soon after recording forgotten. For ‘Land of the Few and Far Between’ they recorded ten figures. For ‘Songs for St. Michel’ fifteen. Of each a selection of five ended up on this seven inch.

F. van Abeelen (one of whom’s drawings is pictured on the sleeve of this seven inch and of whom 750 drawings were part of the exhibition mentioned above) was forced as a boy to hide in a basement for years. Only a small window gave access to the outside world. That sliver was his reality. After these years in hiding he began drawing his sliver of reality obsessively. Daily series of similar drawings that he would meticulously catalogue in an organizer. We never met F. Our friend who discovered the drawings in a closet of psychiatric nursing home Dorestad never met F. We only recorded ten musical figures next to 750 drawings by F.

St. Michel is a house that stands on the outskirts of Maastricht. It is built on the floodplains of the river Maas and living there you see the river change daily. It is a river fed by rain. No rain means a low river. Rain means a river that sometimes comes frighteningly close to flooding. Which it sometimes does. Due to the ebb and flow of the Maas, stuff is deposited in the boggy areas that are its floodplains. A shoe, a CD, a drone, some wood.

Places impress themselves onto what you are doing. You become an unwitting prop in the place’s story.

The first ‘snelkookpan’ happened in 2017 in the water-basin of one of the earliest concrete structures in the Netherlands; a bunker that was part of Amsterdam’s defensive line, built around the 1890’s. Something that used to house water was now empty. For three days Kim and Lyckle recorded improvised music there, which is still alive on a hard drive somewhere. In 2020 they recorded ‘the third of May’ at an old pumping station in Den Helder; an eleven part piece of auditory historical-horror which was released by South of North in 2024. Since 2023 Lyckle and Kim have mainly recorded live shows. With a Clarinet, kawai K1, Ipad, organelle, samplers and a variety of instruments curated for their minimal size or odd sound they’ve made chains of brief and improvised mini compositions inspired by browsing environments (digital and otherwise).

Land of the Few and Far Between / Songs for St. Michel adds to this growing collection of recordings for environments that are somehow sticky.

The unconscious element to the conscious process.

The practice of dub techno and its tendrils is a fundamental for me, both aesthetically and from an engineering perspective.

I start every recording session with a dub inspired jam, the first piece I ever recorded in 1996 was an effort to recreate Phylyps Trak with only a Korg X3 and an Ibanez PUE5 (borrowed from Gary Howell). It was an awesome introduction to jamming, and the footing stones of noise, delay and saturation were explored with my foot hard on the enthusiasm pedal.

These practice jams are in some sense cathartic, the first step taken again & again, which helps me move forwards each session and additionally helps to 'warm the circuits' both of myself and the machines.

After realising the genius of Basic Channel is akin to the genius of peasant food, using every ingredient with nothing left to waste, (up to and including the oft maligned working noise of the machines themselves), this was a watershed moment for my own subjective progression. No longer tied to just emulation of something inspiring, but taking these learned tools into other areas of music helped to break free from a strong current of influence and also to progress into other areas with the new toolbox.

Dub:

The importance of the dub pioneers should never be understated, in modern music and my own practice. Yet with my initial inspiration being two german dudes issuing extreme techno variants with obscured label designs, who then signposted their listeners to their own inspirations (via their Wackies re-issues or nodded to on their Rhythm & Sound/Burial Mix sub-labels), meant that I started late and travelled backwards.

Learning to notice the live mixing of Mikey Dread or Lee Perry when the faders are bleeding through even when turned down, (echoed in BC's Quadrant Dub), or the brash send effects literally thrown into the mix also taught me that 'rough' mixing can inject a recording with life, uniqueness and the most right wrongness. Looking back Basic Channels very few elements helped me realise that the rules to be understood, are also the best ones to be broken.

Push the mixer into the red.

Amp that noise up from the tape delay cos it sounds sick.

Pseudo side-chain effects cos the kicks are way too loud and the mixer can't sum it nicely.

Spam the send knob into the delay units now, now and now.

Carelessness.

Noise:

Once I wrapped my head around the intrinsic 'noise' element that set those records apart, this became a torchlight into the alt noise movements which I was tentatively exploring at the time, and also is evidently a connection or thread into them.

Whether the Industrial/Post Punk UK scene (This Heat, TG, A Tent, F.E.) or the prolific output of the US Noise scene (Wolf Eyes, Live & Shave in LA, and subsequently following the lineage all the way back to Chrome's Alien Soundtracks), I had finally discovered a connection from techno to this 'free for all' corner of music.

This input from the Noise arena of sound is, in my experience, an all important step for a sonic artist, taking it's roots and extending out from Stockhausen/Pierre Henry and utilised/warped/mangled by thousands of adventurous pioneers ever since, I now see the line separating the high brow and the low brow is actually an artery carrying information from the head to the heart.

Vault is a selection of these jams that precede each of my solo recording sessions, for 30 years I've recorded hundreds of these 'workouts'. They are never intended as serious statements, just moments of naive enjoyment, yet most importantly they are time & space captured as practice.

The objective is always a warm up exercise, but sometimes those exercises turn a different corner, with a certain focus or direction dependent on what random samples are left in my machines from the previous session, instead of conscious choices, these unconscious elements can facilitate those 'positive mistakes' that make a piece of sound retain a different feel or colour and thus become special, or at least special to the creator.

I am quite conscious that the 'record everything' aspect of my ethos has been invaluable in cataloguing and saving these jams, while the attitude of carelessness during this process (after all, it's only a warm up jam) invites more enjoyment than seriousness ever could. Even if you don't feel the piece at the time, record it, because some years later it may well fit, or become relevant in a way you never intended.

-Miles

Wow! Chapter 16 of this successful and influential series. This time compiled by Michael Rütten (Soulpatrol) and Michael Reinboth. After 30 years of sharing the love for music and a friendship it‘s about time for these two to get together for a musical trip around the world. Voted one of the best electronic music compilations by music magazines such as Groove, Mixmag, FAZE and DJ mag. With the launch of the series in 1995, it’s fair to say that Michael Reinboth or Compost essentially pioneered and established the future jazz genre. Further info about the artists upon request.

Windy & Carl Meet Optigan Conservatory is a purposefully misleading title for the first collaborative work from four friends who met close to thirty years prior. All active participants in Michigan independent music circles since the early ’90s, Windy & Carl are well-known for their foundational contributions to drift and guitar-born ambient sounds, with songs characterized by deep connections to the natural world and a hard to pin down yet impossible to miss emotional vulnerability.

Optigan Conservatory is another duo, made up of Frank Rotondo (leader of Detroit area free music ensemble Laughing Gas) and Fred Thomas (songwriter and producer most often associated with his band Saturday Looks Good To Me), who have been making minimalistic and time-defiant electro-acoustic sounds since 2016. The album came together almost effortlessly in a very short timeframe, but the idea had been building steam for many a year.

In the last days of 2024, Windy & Carl and Optigan Conservatory got together, falling into a mode of sound creation that was almost hyper-natural. Without any discussion outside of the usual stream of jokes and chatter, the quartet set up and started communicating. Added to Windy & Carl’s hovering augmented chord voicings and vaporous guitar drones were electric piano and synth bedding from Frank & Fred. After the initial sessions, all involved parties took time to consider what they’d made, adding new layers and editing the pieces into more definitive articulations.

A beautiful and hermetic energy larger than the sum of its parts is captured in the process. There are echoes of the earliest releases from Windy & Carl as well as refractions of the same opacity that surfaced in the early kranky catalogue.

There is a pivotal scene in “August in the Water” (dir. Sōgo Ishii, 1995) where the surface of a pool turns into a stone wall. The water that gave the protagonist's life its meaning becomes a threat. As you fall through this stone wall, you appear in a set of underwater coral-reef corridors, and one of the most beautiful musical themes begins to play: Aquatic Ambience, composed by David Wise for Donkey Kong Country (1994). It's a theme that represents the weightless vibe of your new deep-sea life, where you go about your mundane errands, collecting bananas while driving on a swordfish, or, as HerzMayhem put it: "Poor monkey... always swimming, never going anywhere..."

Synthetic Water Music is the second of three compilations, following Synthetic Bird Music and timed to mappa's 10th anniversary. As with the birds, it gathers friends of the label, artists who have released with mappa or played our shows. Most of the music is new, made to measure for this compilation, much of it from Central and Eastern European hands. Birds and water mix well, so please feel invited to play them together, creating your own environments.

Where the birds were in one flock, water is dispersed across four chapters. You live your life as a droppity drop: vapour in the heavens, condensing in clouds, falling into a swamp, trickling into the deepest sea.

Tlālōcān (Cassette 1, Side A)
A place of eternal spring, of aquatic energy that nourishes everything and allows all things to bloom. Bubbly and splishy-sploshy, it is full of dripping sounds and moist caverns (“Emerald Pool” by Pauline Anna Strom), a landscape filled with living fountains (“Oh, to be a Fountain” by Eva Sajanová) and winding streams that flow through the area, forming part of its organic architecture. It is also a paradise reserved for those whose deaths were water-related, where the aquatic and terrestrial beings live in symbiosis and perspectives shift rapidly, from observing a single droplet (Shakali, Lau Nau) to dew (Feronia Wennborg & Lucy Duncombe) and on to flowing currents (Visible Cloaks) that gradually transform into river music (Ursula K. Le Guin & Todd Barton).

Nephelora (Cassette 1, Side B)
A celestial anti-gravity sound world made of evaporation, steam and the formation of clouds, as if looking at “The Sky At The Bottom of the Well” (by Natalia Beylis) or at “The Cloud That Never Rains” (by Henrique Vaz).

If a cloud never rains,
it is not a cloud at all, but a veil that parches the earth with its gaze.
It generates only its own shadow —
a looming mass of suspended longing,
a sky that hoards but never yields,
a reservoir that swallows every river and returns nothing but echoes.

The water in this world is often invisible but sometimes all the more present, as Bint Mbareh describes it: “Recently been obsessed with invisible waters because I come from a place where you have to imagine the water is there even though you cannot see a river, a sea, usually no rain, so water is in the air, the voice and the imaginal realm, drought is imagined to be negotiable.”

Žaboglach Zha-bo-glahch (Cassette 2, Side A)
A fusion of Scottish lochs and Slovak ponds: a misty, foul-smelling, swampy realm, the kind of place that swallowed Artax from The NeverEnding Story. Stagnant waters full of decay become a blooming habitat for sirens (“thereby losing the weightless delight of being swept along with it” by Adam Badí Donoval) and beings straddling the line between fauna and flora, inventing their own communication systems (“Water-lily phase” by Action Pyramid).

R'lyeh (Cassette 2, Side B)
A brooding sunken city at the bottom of the ocean. It’s a journey to get there. Let this chapter guide you, from the shore down to the depths, to the gates of an unexplored world that is inherently dark, unfathomable, and beyond the limits of human perception: starting with seasickness ("Seasick" by Nikolaienko), passing through a classic Poe-esque maelstrom ("Flurry at the Whirl-pull" by Atte Elias Kantonen), a gateway into the darkness and emptiness of the ocean floor, and finally traversing the city itself (“last waves of 2025” by Jules Reidy).
But what is pulling you to a place like this that only a few explore and even fewer leave? Maybe “the darkness that water can contain, the expanse of things we don't know and that can trigger fear instincts even as we try to rationalise them and think we are in control of the rest of nature” (“supercritical fluids” by Diane Barbé).

Dive in and surface wherever you like. Always swimming, never going anywhere. Just don’t forget to take water breaks.

P.S. Birds, then water, can you guess what comes next? Synthetic Soil Music, an elegy for insects and worms? Synthetic Glaciers, or maybe Pollinators? Which sounds would you miss the most if they disappeared? Or what if the third one never comes at all, and somebody, or something, makes Synthetic mappa Music instead. Don't you worry, with the right training data, it can all be replicated, better than the real thing.

Tapper Zuki's debut album 'Man Ah Warrior' was originally released in 1973.It's classic Dee Jay style has been copied by many but bettered by few. An album that more than most shows that raw talent with little resources can still be a great, great thing.
Tapper Zukie (b.1956,David Sinclair , Kingston, Jamaica) was raised in the rough and tough West Kingston area of Jamaica between the districts of Trench Town and Greenwich Farm.
Living pretty much on the streets from an early age the youth including the young Tapper had no choice but to fall into the hands of the political parties that controlled the various ghetto areas of the town.
Fear of landing in even more trouble, a plan was devised by Tapper's Mother ,Brother ,Reggae producer 'Blackbeard' and family friend Bunny 'Striker' Lee .The plan was to send the wayward Tapper to England to cool his ways.
A UK tour with the number 1 Reggae Dee Jay U-Roy was already arranged on his arrival, Bunny Lee got the young Tapper to toast over a Slim Smith rhythm, the London crowd loved it
He also caught the eye of producer Larry Lawrence who took Tapper on and cut his first single 'Jump and Twist'
Nine further tracks were recorded for producer Clement Bushey that would result in this album 'man ah Warrior.
We hope this introduction to Tapper Zukie's music inspires you to look further into his catalogue of great music.
An artist ahead of his time, whose music has influenced many........
as Patti Smith stated 'Music of the Most High'............

Eden Samara grew up in the mountains of western Canada, writing folk songs and performing in the theatre. Following a trip to Europe where she had her first formative clubbing experiences, she relocated to London in 2019 where she’s become a consistent presence and voice in the city’s underground, collaborating with artists like Parris, Ciel and Loraine James and earning praise from The Guardian, Pitchfork, Rolling Stone, Crack and DJ Mag.

2022 saw Eden release her debut album Rough Night on Local Action, blending freaky club-pop, introspective R&B and more while collaborating with leading scene figures TSVI, Call Super and Shanti Celeste. Described by Dazed as ‘an embarrassment of riches’ and by Mixmag as one of the best albums of the year, in Eden’s words it was simply ‘a tragicomedy in seven scenes and an interlude’. She’s downplaying things: to us it was a rich tapestry that explored everything from fleeting moments in smoking areas to the Madonna-whore complex. Both, for better or worse, still make the world go round.

On her second album Odyssey, Eden brings more elements into her ensemble (jungle, choral singing, live harp) while honing her song-writing – it’s an expansion and a tightening at the same time. Inspired by epic literary works like Homer’s Odyssey, The Alchemist and The Picture of Dorian Gray, the album reimagines the archetypal quest through a personal lens: a healing journey amid the collapse of close relationships to addiction, mental illness, and the weight of codependency disguised as love. In Eden’s words: 'This work is a narrative and sonic expedition - part myth, part memoir - that traces my path through the emotional aftermath of watching loved ones struggle with drug addiction and mental health crises, and the impact it
had on my own mental wellbeing. The album addresses substance abuse, toxic relationships, and the internalised belief that love must come through sacrifice, even at the cost of one’s selfhood.'

For this special release, Barcelona’s Lapsus and London’s Local Action join forces for the first time in their respective journeys, reflecting the affinity between both platforms and their shared vision of contemporary electronic music.

Carve is the second full-length by Bay Area artist Kathryn Mohr. Written over the course of five years and recorded over several weeks in a rural singlewide in the Mojave Desert, the album centers on love experienced as a form of grief, not as an aftermath of loss, but as a condition of intimacy itself.

Mohr describes Carve as an album about how memory exists outside the body, embedded in places and landscapes. It is shaped by her first return to the American Southwest since a childhood road trip at age five, and by the experience of moving through terrain that holds emotional weight long after its origins fade. The record considers how intimacy feels after years of isolation, and what it takes to carve out a life that allows for trust, presence, and feeling rather than mere survival. The project took form after a difficult tour that ended in Joshua Tree. Mohr pointed her car into the desert and drove alone, crisscrossing the Mojave on dirt roads. Months later, she returned to record the album, working alone with an acoustic guitar, a field recorder, and limited supplies. Following that period, Mohr began to allow for intimacy and connection. The time she spent recording Carve in the desert did not create isolation so much as mirror it. Working alone out of an old, western-themed jail Airbnb, the physical enclosure reflected the emotional conditions under which much of the record had been written: distance, restraint, and long stretches of stillness. In that context, love was not experienced as escape, but as something inseparable from impermanence and the awareness of loss.

This tension between connection and inevitability sits at the center of Carve. Some of the album’s songs were written earlier, during a prolonged period marked by emotional distance and apathy. Over those four years, Mohr was working through unprocessed childhood memories and their long-term effects on her ability to connect with others. The work was slow and difficult, involving a fundamental reshaping of how she related to herself and to the world. Carve was mixed by Richard Chowenhill of Flenser labelmates Agriculture. Rather than offering resolution, the album documents the act of remaining present within tension. Carve is not about escaping grief, but about accepting it as inseparable from love itself. Kathryn Mohr’s previous effort “Waiting Room” received the coveted ‘Best New Music' designation and a score of 8.4 from Pitchfork.