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Syrian wedding singer turned global dance icon Omar Souleyman releases his 4th studio album Shlon via Mad Decent / Because Music.
On Shlon (Arabic for “how,” or literally “which color”), Omar Souleyman presents 6 new techno-meets-dabke songs of romance and love — singing poetry of a woman’s lips as sweet as Hillah’s dates on “Layle”; an intriguing woman he watches from afar whose kiss would be worth 10 million other kisses on “Shlon”; a lover ready to offer his beloved anything she wishes under the sun on “Shi Tridin” (“What Do You Wish For?”); a man in admiration of a woman with green eyes and blonde hair on “Abou Zlilif” (“Her Face is Like The Moon”); a song about love that will last forever on “Mawwal”, a traditional — all superimposed on complex techno arrangements by Hasan Alo, and based on the hi-speed Kurdish and Arabic dabke and baladi styles with the exception of “Mawwal” being presented in its traditionally slower pace. Shlon features double keyboard work from Hasan Alo, a fellow native of the Hasaka region in Northeastern Syria who has recently been active in the vibrant nightlife scene of Dubai. Azad Salih, a young Syrian man currently living in Mardin, Turkey, accompanies on saz, with the lyrics and love poetry written on the spot during the album’s recording session by longtime Omar collaborator Moussa Al Mardood - also currently based in Turkey.
Omar Souleyman, who has collaborated with Björk and Four Tet, began his career as a prolific wedding singer, releasing nearly 500 live albums before civil war broke out in his native Syria in 2011. He then moved to Turkey and in 2013 released his Four Tet-produced debut studio album Wenu Wenu via Ribbon/Domino, which NPR called, "...a jam so visceral, thrilling and intense as to make the mysterious matter of earthly borders seem hardly worth the time to contemplate." His 2015 sophomore album Bahdeni Nami (various producers including Four Tet, Gilles Peterson and Modeselektor) garnered widespread critical praise including The Guardian, who proclaimed "It's so fast that the only appropriate way to engage with it is to wriggle your limbs. Melodies are both abrasive and ebullient, chattering endlessly like raucous birdsong," and 2017’s To Syria, With Love via Mad Decent placing Omar firmly in the canon of global electronic music.
Souleyman has bolstered his growing status as a world and electronic music icon establishing an extensive international following after touring widely and performing at major festivals including Glastonbury, Bonnaroo, Pitchfork Paris and Roskilde. Since its founding in 2013, Souleyman has been an advocate for the charity "Our Heart Aches for Syria," which operates in collaboration with Doctors Without Borders. In that same year, he performed at the Nobel Peace Prize Concert in Norway.

Volume one of a four part solo album set. (Monstruos Y Duendes).
The music of Myrddin goes through marrow and bone and is both complex, passionately rhythmic and profoundly emotional. He fully masters the compás of flamenco, which gives him the freedom to converse with elements of jazz or classical music. His swiftness sometimes seems extraterrestrial, but whoever takes the time to listen intensively to his music will soon find an immense world of pure emotions, beauty and peace. After four CDs and numerous concerts Myrddin proves that great virtuosos of flamenco don’t necessarily have to come from Spain.

Soul Jazz Records new ‘Apala: Apala Groups in Nigeria 1964-69’ is the first ever collection of Apala music ever to be released outside of Nigeria. The album focusses on a wide selection of recordings made in Nigeria in the 1960's, a time when Apala music was at the height of its popularity. Apala is a deeply rhythmical, hypnotic and powerful
musical style that combines the striking nasal-style vocals and traditions of Islamic music, the Agidigbo (thumb piano), and the equally powerful drumming and percussion rhythms and
techniques of the Yoruba of Nigeria.

The most significant figure in Apala music is undoubtedly Haruna Ishola who features throughout this album. Ishola holds an almost mythological status in his role as populariser of Apala music in
Nigeria. Ishola’s singing was believed to be so powerful that, without proper restraint, it could kill the recipient of his music.

Apala is a popular music that also functioned as a form of cultural resistance – Apala music involved no western instrumentation and is sung in the Yoruba language, its aesthetic an implicit cultural
rejection of the British Empire’s colonial rule over Nigeria which lasted from 1901 until independence in 1960. Apala music was popular and widely accepted in Nigeria due to its philosophical and profound
lyrical content alongside the complex rhythmic patterns of this heavily percussive style, which highlighted many of the percussion instruments of south-west Nigeria.

He's one of a number of popular urban styles of music that came out of Nigeria in the 20th century and sits alongside the more well-known (in the West) styles of Fuji, Highlife, Juju and Afrobeat. Of these modern forms Apala remains perhaps the most ‘roots’ style (sometimes described as ‘neo-traditional’) due to the authenticity of its sound. It has similar Islamic roots to other neo-traditional styles of Nigeria – including Waka and Sakara – examples of which are also
included on this collection contextualising the music of Apala.

These recordings were originally made and released locally by Decca and EMI Records as well as a variety of independent labels in Nigeria and have never been released outside of the country before. Soul Jazz Records are releasing this album as a deluxe double gatefold vinyl (download code), CD, slipcase and booklet, both containing full text and photography.

Samuel Rohrer CONTINUAL DECENTERING
With his Arjunamusic label and a growing catalog of categorydefying releases, Samuel Rohrer continues to quietly, yet confidently, make a name for himself as a genuinely unique Gigure within the European electronic music realm. In the current era, talk of blurring boundaries between musical genres and attitudes is more the rule than the exception, but not always something done with any degree of success. Rohrer is one of those rare alchemical explorers to have truly created a hybrid which is all his own, one that does not just exist to melt distinctions for its own sake, but is a natural result of years of experimentation with both the determination of electronic music and the ludic spirit of ‘free improvisation.’ On his newest offering, Continual Decentering, this vision is applied to a set of mostly in real time (live) performed explorations. 
In keeping with his many years’ worth of fruitful collaborations, the tonal palette on this new record is one that is expectedly rich for those familiar with his work, yet still surprising in terms of how exactly the differing tonal colors come together. Representative tracks like Spondee and The Fringe are brimming with dub pulses, noir shivers and blooming timbral variations that are in many places carefully isolated / focused and in other places blended together in vivid fusions. In terms of the emotional atmosphere created here, the pensive and questioning tone hearkens back to the ‘wide open’ state of electronic music in the mid-late 1990s, yet with a greater clarity and maturity of vision that makes this music feel like a possible answer to aesthetic questions being raised at that time. As with Rohrer’s most recent solo work, like the Range of Regularity LP, Continual Decentering showcases the artist’s skill in turning the drum kit into a lead instrument. While the term “lead instrument” denotes a kind of exuberant “Glash,” or a clear separation from the rest of the voices in an ensemble, we can take the term to mean something different throughout this listening program of 13 short vignettes: that is to say, everything else within the audible environment exists to complement the character of the percussive playing rather than to stand apart from it. It helps that Rohrer has, in fact, developed a unique and complex hybrid system in which drum hits trigger modular synthesizer processes, the use of which makes for an incredibly fluid response time between distinct sonic events. In contrast to the previous Range... LP, this new offering is propelled less by interlacing threads of intensity and more by a shared sense of deep listening. As displayed on pieces like All Too Human, there is a profound sense of attention to silences or thoughtful pauses that maybe hints at another crucial aspect of Rohrer’s style: over the course of this program, we tend to hear the player not only playing but listening, an activity which makes perfect sense given the sense of instrumental dialogue already mentioned. All of the above come together to give Continual Decentering a “live”-ness that will easily translate from recorded document to dynamic performance.

Italian cult combo CALIBRO 35 release their highly anticipated 7th studio album "MOMENTUM" on January 24th 2020. "Momentum" follows "DECADE" their previous studio album released in 2018 that had marked 10 years of Calibro 35 and it stands out as a new starting point for the project. In the last 10 years Calibro 35 have dug the golden age of soundtracks and they had been to the future with "S.P.A.C.E.", "Momentum", as the band stated: "represents a look at nowadays and a reflection about making music right in the time that we're living".

Inspired by the work of artists such as Tortoise, Jagajazzist, Dj Shadow, Budos Band, Stelvio Cipriani, Ennio Morricone, Sandro Brugnolini, White Noise, Comet is Coming, JPEGMafia and DJ Signify, compared to the previous Calibro 35's full lengths on the 10 tracks that make up the new album, band's instruments and sounds have increased in number and complexity as well as reality.

The music palette is further extended by incorporating even more synths and electronic sounds, but keeping everything true and 100% real, with all the instruments played live and with no presets or programming. The two featurings on the album serve the cause as well. On the first single "Stan Lee", they collaborated with rapper, producer and songwriter Illa J a former member of super group Slum Village and younger brother of the late legendary hip hop producer and rapper J Dilla.

On "Black Moon", the combo from Milan provided the groove for London-based artist MEI. "If Decade was the sum of everything that the band had felt in the previous ten years", Calibro 35 says, "Momentum is the prequel of what you will hear in the next ten".
To mark the new beginning and come full circle, the recordings took place under the expert hands of usual suspect Tommaso Colliva, in the same studio where Calibro released their self titled debut album twelve years ago.

LP IN STOUGHTON JACKET, PRINTED INNERS, OBI STRIP WITH FOUR OF SAMANTHA KEELY SMITH'S INCREDIBLE CONSCIOUSNESS MEMORY LANDSCAPES GRACING THE ALBUM SLEEVE.

The Pyroclasts album is the result of a daily practice which was regularly performed each morning, or evening during the two week Life Metal sessions at Electrical Audio during July 2018, when all of the days musical participants would gather and work through a 12 minute improvised modal drone at the start and or end of the day’s work. The piece performed was timed with a stopwatch and tracked to two inch tape, it was an exercise and a chance to dig into a deep opening or closing of the days session in a deep musical way with all of the participants. To connect/reconnect, liberate the creative mind a bit and greet each other and the space through the practice of sound immersion. The players across the four pieces of Pyroclasts are Tim Midyett, T.O.S., Hildur Guðnadóttir, and as always Stephen O’Malley & Greg Anderson.

The music on Pyroclasts is inextricably woven to Life Metal. It exists on the very same tape reels, was explicitly recorded by Steve Albini. The brightness and vividity of that glorious session glares through these four tracks, the precision and radiance, prismatic lustrousness of the saturation, the elemental sculptural shapes, the abstract renderings. It is a sister, or perhaps a shadow album. Or perhaps the now apparent miasma or aether. But it also exists in a form of a pause, a time space which exist in between and around the compositional structures of Sunn O)))’s titanic works. 

For the listener or recipient/participant there are deep rewards within the patience of pulling down the walls and letting the music feel, and feel the music. To be immersed will reveal great detail and colour, clarify image, encourage a depth of focus and stillness which may lead to a quite profound experience. Sitting inside the space of time. A deep form of elementalism, even atomism, and connection with presence moment, time and reality.

Sunn O))) would invite their audience to consider these points of perception when experiencing and listening to Pyroclasts. Sunn O))) would also invite and encourage the audience to use Pyroclasts as a lens to review and reexperience the complexity of the Life Metal album, and even to interrupt its sequence with Pyroclasts. This elaboration can bring the astute listener both abyssal, hallowed rewards.

Pyroclasts was recorded and mixed by Steve Albini at Electrical Audio on two inch tape July 2018, and mastered by Matt Colton through all analogue AAA process at Metropolis July 2019.

Stephen & Greg would like to dedicate this album to the memories of Ron Guardipee, Kerstin Daley & Scott Walker.

'Moira', the new album by Monolithe Noir opens it's doors to the voices of a few fellow artists who can easily be described as "peers" - 'ROZI PLAIN' on the spellbinding 'Blinded Folded'.
'PETER BRODERICK' on the intimate 'By Twos' and Belgian Elsie dx on the haunting 'Valslava' - who are fuelled by the same drive not to settle for a single colour or tone.

Unpredictable by nature, surprising by choice, Monolithe Noir's music escapes all the over-used adjectives that divide our record collections but cheerfully digs into clearly distinct repertoires: from prog to ambient segueing into electronica and folk with a dip into the hidden gems of the Italian music library.

... It never hides behind a screen of fake complexity, clearly it speaks straight to us! Hope, you enjoy.

Wah Wah 45's are proud to present "Cages", the third album from southern soul boys The Milk. Having released "Favourite Worry", their critically acclaimed sophomore album and first for independent label Wah Wah 45's, in 2015, the band are able to trace the seeds of the latest LP back to their recording sessions with producer Paul Butler (Andrew Bird, Michael Kiwanuka, Nick Waterhouse) almost five years ago, blending elements of soul, funk and rock together to create their own unique sound, inspired by some of their favourite artists such as Bill Withers, Traffic and the Isley Brothers.

"I can't wait to hear you write songs that look outward" - these words from Paul subconsciously had a lasting impression on the band. To atone for more inward-looking sentiments on "Favourite Worry", there had to be a shift in perspective. During the formative stages of the new album The Milk started pursuing a Nichiren Buddhist practice. The values and principles they discovered during this have informed every aspect of the record.

"We wanted to write an album that looked outside of the walls, to people, society and the environment - embracing real freedom in musical expression by utilising more complex rhythmic structures, extended harmony and dissonance to paint an original and authentic-sounding record" explains If their debut, "Tales from the Thames Delta", was inspired by hedonism and "Favourite Worry" by introspection, "Cages" is an impassioned conversation with the world. Racism and division are all on the rise. British society is being pulled apart by forces that seek to divide us and rip the compassion and empathy from our minds and hearts. We have become distracted from the more urgent challenges of boundless consumerism, climate change, and the mental health emergency reeking havoc on our streets.

We are the birds in the cage, tied by cheap thrills and fake news to a limited world vision that is no longer fit for purpose. The good news? We can all choose to challenge this view. "Cages" is equal parts the dark black shadow of how far we've fallen and the blazing sunlight whose rays of hope can still change the world. Four life-long friends, Ricky Nunn (vocals), Mitch Ayling (drums) Luke Ayling (bass) and Dan Le Gresley (guitar) formed their first band when they were still at school in Essex, playing countless working men's clubs, and finally became The Milk.

The band have built up a following of dedicated fans around the UK, which has resulted in them selling out venues such as Scala, Koko and Shepherds Bush Empire. Keen to get back on the road where they feel most at home and where the guys really shine, the band offer up a compelling set of diverse styles, matched with an ability to effortlessly intertwine songs together, gives their music a continuous feel to it. Since signing to Wah Wah 45's, the band released their second album "Favourite Worry", which became one of BBC 6 Music's albums of the year, sold out London's Union Chapel, toured with the Fun Lovin' Criminals and completed a sell-out UK tour climaxing at London's KOKO in Camden town. ... More live dates coming very soon!

Award-winning bassist Daniel Casimir and vocalist Tess Hirst release their debut album via pioneering London-based record labe Jazz re:freshed. Following the success of Daniel Casimir's critically acclaimed debut EP 'Escapee' which featured Hirst on vocals and fellow rising stars on the scene Moses Boyd, Joe Armon-Jones and Shirley Tetteh, this album - 'These Days' is inspired by the duo's London surroundings, delivering thought-provoking lyricism, neo-soul and modern jazz

Casimir, a former Birmingham Conservatoire student, has collaborated with Julian Joseph, Jason Rebello, Benet McLean, Lonnie Liston Smith, Nathan Facey, Shane Forbes, Chihiro Yamanaka, Ashley Henry, David Lyttle, Nubya Garcia, The Tracey Quintet (Meantime Jubilation), Tom Harrison (Unfolding In Tempo), Jasmine Power (Stories And Rhymes), Camilla George and Art Blakey Jazz Messenger saxophonist, Jean Toussaint.

Named Young Jazz Musician of the Year by the Musicians' Company in 2016, Casimir has received plaudits for his arrangements and recital, while Hirst has made a name for herself with her vocals on the jazz circuit having moved between London, Leeds and LA to hone her craft. What sets Hirst apart as a musician is not only the originality of her music but her perspective of herself as an artist. She is an Ethnomusicology Graduate of SOAS and her writing style walks us through her upbringing in West London and down the halls of academia

Casimir and Hirst fuse traditional jazz sounds into beautiful compositions, narrating their way through a political and cultural landscape across these twelve tracks. The frenzied groove heavy'Security' addresses the need to trust one another and how we protect ourselves personally, while the rich atmospherics of 'Freedom' combined with Hirst's vocals, explore liberation and the rejection of duty - from a female perspective.

At the heart of 'These Days', Casimir plays with a passion and power that resonates throughout each composition. His knack for complex chord changes are highlighted in 'What Did I Do', bringing an energy and enthusiasm to the track while Hirst decries our changing capital. Elsewhere, references to John Agard's poem 'Listen Mr. Oxford Don' in 'The Magic Money Tree', explore the past and its relevance to now while a re-imagining of Charles Mingus' 'Fables Of Faubus' further ensures this theme remains central to the essence of the album.

Daniel Casimir and Tess Hirst have already received radio support from BBC Radio 3, BBC Music Introducing and Jazz FM, along with coverage in the London Evening Standard and Jazzwise Magazine

'Don't Let Them' interpolates elements of 'Fables Of Faubus' written by Charles Mingus (c) 1959. Published by Jazz Workshop Inc. Administered by BMG Rights Management (UK) Ltd. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

A truly special reissue of a fantastic and incredibly rare Afro-disco 12” from 1978, Tumblack - 'Caraiba/Invocation'. Originally released on the seminal French disco label Barclay, you'd be hard pressed to even find an original copy in the UK, let alone for a reasonable price, so it's high time an officially licensed, remastered reissue came around.

Taking the A side of this EP Stefano Ritteri provides a “Spaziale Version” of 'Caraiba' that seamlessly blends elements of African, Afrobeat, Funk and Disco styles, with segments that continually morph and evolve into new tracks. Irresistibly funky and percussive drumming patterns and melodies hypnotise the listener, with only the occasional outbreak of African chanting breaking up the grooves.

The B-side contains the original version of “Invocation” that is effectively one long drum track broken down into 7 segments that never drop a beat alongside the original version of 'Caraiba' in all it's glory. As EP's go, this really does take the listener on a journey to Africa, via 1978 New York, and is a true one of a kind. And for all those sample-spotters out there, there's no end of complex drum patterns and basslines to dive into.

UKNOWY music is back with a new installment on its more house-leaning "Plastic Garment" vinyl series. This time the EP title is "Midnight Impulse" as every track carries the treats of nocturnal life: it's dark, it's fresh and it's open to all possibilities! Starting with Salomo we have a delivery of a definite club banger with "Transform" - devotees of the likes of Kyle Hall or Steven Julien/Funkineven will definitely get their fancy tickled here. Next comes Italian break-beat maestro Sofa Talk with a rhythmically sophisticated yet deep "ALBA", much in the vein of earlier Plastic Garment releases. Munich house duo Rhode & Brown starts the B side with "You & Me" building intricate synth arpeggios over catchy chords. St. Petersburg's very own Dices closes things off with his more dreamy and at the same time incredibly complex and beautiful "See You There" - a track for the listener or the later hours of the night.

Announcing Mad Zach's debut release on MethLab Recordings with his No Past Lives EP, which is available on 12" vinyl and digital formats. The four tracks within unfurl an exquisite and alluring journey into the recesses of the human spirit, circling between nostalgic yearning and a steadfast, driven intensity. No Past Lives will be available on Tuesday, October 1.

An intoxicating myriad of complex soundscapes, Mad Zach stuns yet again with impeccable sound design through four thoughtful tracks. A compelling story through the inner workings of the mind, Mad Zach does not hold back in his enigmatic MethLab debut. Featuring production techniques signature of the prolific producer, Mad Zach’s many influences shine through in No Past Lives; a mix of dub, hip-hop, techno, jungle, and various other styles, No Past Lives is the amalgamation of artistic passion and drive.

We wanted to make a promo text for this release, but then this message by Alphabets Heaven came thru:

Subtitles is my love letter to salsa. A torn, scribbled, badly translated love letter to an old address that the resident left years ago. But fuck it, it's still a love letter.

Every since I heard Larry Harlow's La Cartera about 12 years ago I've been trying to find out as much as I could about salsa. So much of it runs counter to everything I know about dance music, and yet it so clearly bangs. So on and off for the last 10 years I've been buying salsa, trying to work out how many imprints of Fania there were, trying to get my head round the horn arrangements, and generally having a great time with basically no contact with anyone who was actually a part of the culture in anyway. My Spanish is pretty bad as well, so all I really know is quite a few songs are about farmers.

Subtitles is my shot at salsa. My completely uneducated stab at something that's way too complex to just guess at. Not surprisingly, it sounds nothing like salsa. What's weird is that it sounds like pretty much everything else I listen to. I think in many ways it's the most honest thing I've ever made. By completely failing at making salsa I've managed to blend together all the club music, art music and everything else I've loved. You might hear some UK funky, or whatever the 2019 version of that is called. You might hear some minimalism. You might hear some psyched out shit. You also might hear a gigantic fucking mess. Subtitles is a translation to a film done so badly you find out more about the person who translated it than the film. I was trying to tell you about the film, but maybe you'll like the subtitles.

Shout to London Afrobeat Collective for the horns Memotone for the cello Deft for the Woos. Shout out to Scratcha DVA for being Scratcha DVA.

Huren returns to the Zhark Catalogue with his latest fory ‘ELEKTRONISCHE SELBSTDARSTELLUNG’ his first in five years since the ‘MRTVI’ release.
Whith this outing Huren explores further uncompromising Terrain…
While the Signature layers of distrortion and heavy kick drum burials retain his distinct Hardline Approach – with ZHARK032 Huren layeers complex Masses of Sound into Ominous textural electronic compüositions….Drawing interdisciplinary from the works of Marker, Kayn, Ligeti and Penderecki…
Disconcerting and challenging ‘Elektronische Selbstdarstellung’ galvanizes Huren’s place as an artist operating on his own wavelength.

Available for the first time outside Japan, Phosphorescent Dreams is another epic album of symphonic schizophrenic avant-rock from Univers Zéro. Originally released in 2014 - only on CD - through the Japanese label Arcàngelo.

Phosphorescent Dreams presents at the same time, in the same track, even on a single moment, the complex musical schemes and ways of Univers Zéro, ranging from maximalism to minimalism, classical avant-garde with a 2020 vibe in a constant flux.

In a blend of tension constantly emerging from a subtle dialogue between avant-rock and contemporary influences, harmonies and dissonance, Phosphorescent Dreams is a balanced formula of old-school know-how reshaped almost 40 years after the released of the seminal LP Univers Zéro.

Univers Zero represents one of the longest-living bands in Belgium. It was established in 1974. Drummer Daniel Denis had the brilliant idea to gather together a team of professionals sharing the same taste for music. The band has adopted an instrumental progressive style. Over the last couple of decades, the band has also implemented a series of influences from chamber music - most commonly, chamber music from the 20th century. Even if the line-up changes a lot over the years, the overall sound of UZ remained fairly consistent.

The new album 'Aesthesis' from Shapednoise aka Sicilian artist Nino Pedone is out in November 2019 on Numbers.
Over the nine tracks and thirty seven minutes, there’s a controlled collision of noise and metal with rave and hardcore. Pedone’s penchant for the peak energies of gritty techno and modern rap/trap bleed through, with earth-shattering blocks of bass and beats conveyed within his practice of sonic sculpture. ‘Aesthesis’ melts these sounds down, evolving them into something new of his own - a complex, hybrid being designed to be played loud. The first listen, CRx Aureal, is one of the most arresting cuts from the record: a nightmarish thrill embracing a sense of constant movement, with intense shards of sound ricocheting and morphing, forged together through a series of metallic refrains. This flirtation with the extremes of sound has engulfed Shapednoise’s entire creative output and lifestyle - from his albums and EPs over the last decade, to his two labels Cosmo Rhythmatic and REPITCH, having recently dropped critically acclaimed releases by King Midas Sound, Shackleton & VTSS. Pedone describes ‘Aesthesis’ as “informed by a set of key elements that intwine all the tracks together, like steps in a long research process. It is intended as a sensory experience where the senses act as an interface, sound as space.” His experimentation with unorthodox rhythmic structures and radical cinematic design reveals actions grounded in direct experience, but “inspired by a kind of speculative realism”. In seeking to master the wild heights of noise and the weight of subsonic frequencies, Shapednoise aims to “generate a sense of unreal-yet-tangible space and time, where the physicality of the music builds up a place that exists between people and objects, rather than the other way around.”

A series of artistic collaborations are heard throughout the album - from the caustic R&B of album opener 'Intriguing (In The End)' which features vocals from multimedia artist E. Jane's alter ego MHYSA (of NON & Halcyon Veil), to Justin K Broadrick (founding member of Godflesh and ZONAL) on 'Blaze', and album closer 'Moby Dick'; a collaboration with Scottish legend Drew McDowall (ex-Coil and Psychic TV member), and Rabit (founder of Halcyon Veil).

Reissue of this 1976 LP from Zambia. Deep minimal African music, lovely compositions over scarce drum machines and (fuzzy) guitars.. Beautiful music with a deeper message in the lyrics which is explained better in the long review below. Some words from the label. There is music that falls right into place, a perfectly articulated expression of a few distinct influences. Then, there is another kind of median music, something more mysterious, the result of time, place, technology, and alchemy. Zambian writer and musician Smokey Haangala’s Aunka Ma Kwacha (The Money is Gone) released in 1976 is an example of this more mystical metallurgy, falling somewhere between psychedelic Zamrock, US folk, Kalindula, and Sundown Beat (music played after dark) from Tongaland. The unique mix of languages on the album (Bemba, Tonga, Lozi, and English) also suggest this complex cultural crossroads. Underlying the whole album is the insistent beat of a simple drum machine, which was totally unheard of in Zambia at the time, and parallels pioneering experiments by Francis Bebey, Sly Stone, and Shuggie Otis, utilizing a technology which would later come to define dance music. Then there’s the album’s original artwork by Peter Kependa, done in style similar to the infamous Jamaican dancehall illustrator Wilfred Limonious, interpreting the album’s title and primary theme; the burden of financial inequality.

In this sense the album is political, but the theme is extrapolated and explored through its impact on personal life; love, marriage, social status, and diet. The album is full of cautionary tales, folklore and references to magic, aspects of Zambian culture simultaneously mystifying and alluring to outsiders, part of what attracted Western readers to Nigerian writer Amos Tutuola’s hallucinatory Yoruba folktales. After becoming a household name in Zambia for his music, writing, and television appearances, Smokey Haangala died at the age of 38, the very week his book The Black Eye was published, abruptly ending his brilliant and ascending career. We are lucky to have his inimitable work to remember him by, Aunka Ma Kwacha resting comfortably in the pantheon of re-visionary works by Rodriguez, Kissoon Ramasar, TJ Hustler, and William Onyeabor.

Exploration is back! Johannes Volk continues the journey with a new 4 track EP on his own imprint. The title track is a long upbuilding peak time smasher with strong reminiscences of early Detroit Techno. A2 delivering raw and dirty machine madness with a subtle bleep funk around stomping drums. The flip side comes with 2 driving Dub Techno tracks, filled with heavy bass, emotional soundscapes and an complex sound architechture.

Editions Mego is proud to present the latest addition to the compelling discography of Thomas Brinkmann. Throughout his career Brinkmann has focussed on the human operating amongst industry alongside rhythms that manifest as a result of technological advancement. With this new release Brinkmann makes a u-turn, looking back to the early industrial age. Comprised of recordings of various looms, Raupenbahn investigates the sonic properties and consequences of the first automatic loom as constructed by Jacques de Vaucanson in 1745. Thomas Brinkmann once again adheres to his tendency for clarity and simplicity whilst further investigating not only the sound and rhythms of the machines (looms) but also what role they serve in society and what consequences they have on the environment. Raupenbahn presents 21 tracks in total, 11 feature on the vinyl, the remaining 10 as digital bonus tracks. The majority of recordings were undertaken by Brinkmann in 2017 with a Neumann KM 184 stereo set. Additional recordings were sourced with permission from Monika W. recs. from 2014 Central Museum of Textiles Łódź, Poland. Each piece presents a diversity of material which borders on the breathtaking and beautiful in richness and complexity. The various looms unravel rhythms and patterns unexpected from machines of the early industrial age.

The loom holds a significant role in shaping our world being the catalyst for Charles Babbage's Analytical Engine which, alongside the subsequent work of Byron's daughter Ada Lovelace, paved the way for modern computing. There is a linage of the loom that fits succinctly in Brinkmann's overall argument. Here we encounter a parallel between machine driven economies and the music that rose from such places, consider the Sheffield steel industries, the Manchester weaving industry or the Rhineland / Düsseldorf loom and machine industry. Is it a coincidence that the practice of such machines in the environment gave rise to today's predilection for electronic dance music, in pop, soundtracks, etc.

Raupenbahn features no treatment or processing and explicitly displays varying tempo and timbres which ascertain a wide range of acoustic structures. The artwork features Ingrid Wiener, Rosemarie Trockel and Alexandra Bircken, three different generations who would with ideas of fabric weaving, loming and the like. This exceptional release works on a number of levels alongside it's striking sonic palette.


i 9 Günne (Irmscher) BO Möhnesee / D

The Tokyo based producer Yoshinori Hayashi will release his new EP, ‘Y’, on November 8th via Smalltown Supersound. The EP will be his first release since his debut LP, Ambivalence, from last year which received a glowing 4.0 review from Resident Advisor.
Hayashi has studied under Japanese avant-classical composer Mica Nozawa. When not DJing, he works in a record store in Tokyo. Thus far, Hayashi has released a string of 12”s on labels including Going Good Records, Jinn Records, Lovers Rock, Gravity Grafittiand Moscoman’s Disco Halal. Previous work by Hayashi has been called “a complex patchwork of studio gear, live instruments, dusty jazz records and smartly cut library sounds, whose textures are soft and inviting. But its arrangements are constantly ruffled, squeezed, brushed and pinched—which is to say, nothing stays still for long” (Resident Advisor).

Dutch Techno master Orlando Voorn has opened up his archive for the second essential instalment of an ongoing artist focused series brought to you by new imprint Above Board Projects. The compilation will be spread across 2 double 12" volumes and will feature tracks from many of Voorn's pseudonyms including; Fix, Baruka, The Ghetto Brothers, Mute & many more. We are proud to introduce the first of a 2-part archival collection entitled 'Diligence'. Each track featured on the compilation has been carefully selected and programmed in conjunction with Orlando Voorn and the Above Board Projects team. Voorn has an extremely long and storied career in making music and is severely underrated as a producer in our humble opinion. His DJ skills are, of course, legendary, with him winning the prestigious DMC mixing championships in 1986 in his native Holland and making a career as one of the country's leading Hip-Hop DJ's. As a producer he has long been linked to numerous legendary producers and releases, counting labels such as Fragile, Metroplex and more as homes for his output. His association and collaborations with Detroit have been the stuff of legend since day one and some of the music contained within these compilations celebrate that while showcasing some of the more overlooked tracks from the man's more than extensive catalogue. Part 2 opens with the minimalistic bladerunner Techno of Voorn & Juan Atkins' Infiniti classic 'Game One', a true modern classic, also featured is the rolling, paranoia inducing late night groove of 'Dream World' from one of Voorn's more obscure projects Complex, all showcasing a wide variety of styles and sounds. Flawless selections from the early 90's sitting alongside later productions only go to show how diverse and talented an artist Voorn is and how fresh and vital his music still is today. An essential collection for any serious techno lover. All tracks fully licensed and remastered with the full permission of Orlando Voorn. Remastering and lacquers by Curvepusher. Compiled and directed by the Above Board Projects team. Design and layout by atelier Superplus. 2019.

A mind-bending blend of modular synth performance, Anthony Baldino’s dynamic Twelve Twenty Two LP is a treat for all ears. Baldino’s transcendent album is available both digitally and on vinyl on Thursday, October 24 via MethLab Recordings.

“The record focuses heavily on the modular synth as a composition tool and instrument. I originally approached this as a collection of tracks that were recorded straight out of the machine with little to no editing. The work flow of generating a complex patch and then figuring out the overall arch and performance of the piece was really exciting. The Tip Top Audio Circadian Rhythms was a key compositional tool in this process and was used to organize the overall structure of these pieces. It wasn’t until I stumbled upon a patch, the opening synths in ‘Fading Quickly Now,’ that I went back to how I used to write and shifted to harvesting sounds and rhythms from the modular and arranging and editing them in the box. That patch was originally created for a different track on the album, which I’ll let you find, but IH ad accidentally changed the clock rate before tearing the patch down. Hearing it in that new way triggered a whole new thought process and emotional reaction for me.” - Anthony Baldino

Originally approached as a collection of tracks recorded straight out of Baldino’s machine with little editing, Twelve Twenty Two is a complex piece of thoughtful modular work. A truly stunning display of masterful sound design, Baldino’s sound resonates with listeners from first note to last. Existing in a unique space where ambient sounds meet vivacious bass, Baldino seemingly exists in an impressive league of his own, with Twelve Twenty Two standing apart powerfully from the masses. With an already powerful arsenal of artists and releases, MethLab Recordings adds a brilliant 10-track addition to their already wild playbook.

“From the beginning, it was important for me to keep this record musical and emotional and not just an exercise in technicality, so using both the modular and the computer to arrange felt really good both emotionally and sonically and created a different balance to the record that I really liked. Switching the process up a bit halfway through kept things interesting and I think the body of work really benefits from it. This record is split in half with performance based/straight out of the machine tracks and the other half organized in the box. But when listening back, the two approaches overlap so much that it’s hard to tell where one approach ends and the other begins.” - Anthony Baldino


About Anthony Baldino:
Born and raised in New York, Anthony Baldino is an LA-based composer and sound designer whose work spans an enormous range of production avenues. The likelihood that you haven’t heard his world is nearly impossible, with music and sound design in too many trailer campaigns to list, including Prometheus, Interstellar, Ex-Machina, Star Wars: Rogue One, and Avengers: Infinity War and End Game just to name a few. From there, his work ventures to the opposite pole of production with custom sound design based compositions for Dolby Labs mixed in Atmos, beautifully glitched out remixes, and continues on to mind-bending modular synthesizer performances.

With his debut artist release, he delivers a devastatingly beautiful album grounded in IDM that focuses on modular synthesizers/ While a vast amount of modular synth music is currently being released, this album goes far beyond the typical beeps and boops that one may expect when they hear “modular IDM record.” This record is as technical as it is emotive. Tasteful and incredibly detailed, Twelve Twenty Two bridges the gap between sound-design laden beats and cinematic motifs and ambiences. This record does not disappoint and is sure to become a favorite of electronic music fans.

The album opens up with a slowly unfolding melody that seems to be within grasp, but never actually repeats itself. Incredibly tasteful glitchy sound design leads us into a build that one would only expect to be in a movie, and then drops into a full-on sonic assault of impeccable drums and rich synths. From there, the record traverses a wide array of texture, time and technique. Closing with a track that makes you feel like you could actually reach out and touch the sound and float in its space, the sonic landscape created in Twelve Twenty Two is a true treat for ears.

ehind Dosage there is Sayoko, a Japanese woman living in Paris, who works with a rich, organic, yet destabilized musical style, but with a pulsating life that makes her pieces fascinating.

His songs - since they are songs here - on the edge of pop music, are made for re-listening; each passage revealing new secrets hidden in the complex mechanics of his compositions. Evidence is never at the rendezvous, and yet the pleasure of listening, the joy of being carried away by texts that border the surreal without ever complacent, grooves that always seem on the verge of "collapse without ever poking the nose, this pleasure and this joy, unique, do not leave us from one end to the other of this theory of the pink, UFO album, for those who seek this, and to surprise the others too.

Sayoko: voice, piano, bass, electronics;
Buz: battery; Franca Mai: poems;
Dirty_Pink: guitar;
Gaspar Claus: cello;
Vincent Epplay: electronics;
Nicolas Laffererie: guitar;
BN Würtz: electronics, bass, composition;
Simon Takahashi: electronics, composition

‘Synth Expressionism/Rhythmic Cubism’ LP from Chicago’s Jamal Moss aka Hieroglyphic Being is a collection of idioms that have no past and no future, his jarring use of polyrhythmic polyphony imbues a sense of timelessness.

The prolific catalog of Moss’ covers many musical dialects from his hometown and beyond. Never standing in one artistic sphere for too long, this adventure for On the Corner Records sees Hieroglyphic Being exploring a multitude of expressions of the American Avant-garde.

Abstractions Of The Future Past — Afro-Cubism: The Designation, conceived by an African With A Mainframe — An Etude Of Effigy — A Hieroglyphic Being.

Rhythmic Cubism: In this ‘Dissertation Of Disorientation’ Neal Andrew Emil Gustafson temporal considerations are put aside as polyrhythmic propulsion is the current flowing through the work. As prelude the fastidious ‘Rhythmic Cubism’, Moss enacts a flurry of white noise and musical coda as it phases in-and-out of synchronicity.

The disjointed dance of an alternative Black Music, ‘The Spiritual Or ‘Electromagnetic Worlds’ takes the meter down a fraction to exonerate a granular groove of visceral refracted complexity. Sonorus static sits alongside spastic shards of synthesis to reveal a melancholic medley before its conclusion.

‘Apocrypha’ collages distinct rhythmic source materials in an entrancing abstraction of ‘Hypersonic Hemiola’. An assertion of Art Blakey proportions. Perpetually pushed forward through the building of distorted percussion, Moss precludes into syncopated synapsis before and end of reductive symmetry.

Evolving into a studdered off-kilter groove, ‘The Redemption Project’ flows as a dissipating organ medley dissolves into a deluge of layered sonic textures, creating an indiscernible metric center before fading to a distant vanishing point.

Departing with a common-time ‘Timbuk2’ takes off like a classic Chicago Acid track, then makes a left turn towards the center as it drives the rhythmic motion into a dystopian dreamland, as the sax line surges forcing the track to break free from it’s charted course.

The Fragmented Fantasy of The Synth Expressionism/Rhythmic Cubism LP is a conclusive work that has no end, a conundrum of conceptual calculated improvisation. Drifting through time, this fragmented abstraction of Afro-Cubism leaves room for posterity, as each listen summons a new perspective on the suite. Something ever so common in the work of Jamal Moss. Charting new sonic directions, the very nature of its precedent makes it a truly Hieroglyphic affair.

Words By Neal Andrew Emil Gustafson

Destiny is made. Realised. Driven by the acts of vision. Hireroglyphic Being is a seer. Atomic resonance echoing from the big bang defies the conceptual reality of purity. The nuclear static of ‘white noise’ is HBs canvas. Channeling poly rhythms into the universe. Experience, repetition and eternal decay. From purity back to the absolute by way of a deluge of slurry across time. Infinite layers of distortion and refracted complexity. This is HBs canvas. Sound of eternity channelled through a bass bin, represented by its own impure reflection and fragments. Always more than it's whole but never as was before.

This album seeks to reach beyond ideas and emotions, beyond the comprehension of a human archetype. Beyond ultimate history, forwards and back. To ends and a singular beginnings. Timbuk2 is the frenetic intersection where the call and response of these ideas lock and dissipate back into the void.

Carla dal Forno announces her second full-length album, Look Up Sharp , on her own Kallista records.

Dal Forno beckons a bold new era in her peerless output pushing her dub-damaged DIY dispatches to the limits of flawless dream-pop. In a transformative move towards crystal clear vocals and sharpened production, Look Up Sharp is an evolutionary leap from the thick fog and pastoral stillness of her Blackest Ever Black missives, You Know What It’s Like (2016) and The Garden EP (2017). Three years since her plain-speaking debut album, the Melbourne-via-Berlin artist finds herself absorbed in London’s sprawling mess. The small-town dreams and inertia that preoccupied dal Forno’s first album have dissolved into the chaotic city, its shifting identities, far-flung surroundings and blank faces. Look Up Sharp is the story of this life in flux, longing for intimacy, falling short and embracing the unfamiliar. Dal Forno connects with kindred spirits and finds refuge in darkened alleys, secret gardens and wherever else she dares to look.

In her own territory between plaintive pop, folk and post-punk dal Forno conjures the ghosts of AC Marias, Virginia Astley and Broadcast through her brushwork of art-damaged fx and spectral atmospheres. The first half of the record is filled with dubbed-out humid bass lines, which tether stoned hazes of psychedelic synth work as on ‘Took A Long Time’ and ‘No Trace.’ These are contrasted with songs like ‘I’m Conscious and ‘So Much better’ that channel the lilting power of YMG and are clear sequels-in-waiting to dead-eyed classics like ‘Fast Moving Cars.’

The B-side begins with the feverish bass and meandering melody of ‘Don’t Follow Me,’ which takes The Cure’s ‘A Forest’ as its conceptual springboard. It’s the clearest lyrical example since ‘The Garden’ of dal Forno’s unmatched ability to unpick the masculine void of post-punk and new wave nostalgia to reflect contemporary nuance. Look Up Sharp reaches its satisfying conclusion with ‘Push On’ - dal Forno’s most explicit foray into an undiscovered trip hop universe between Massive Attack and Tracey Thorn. The album’s last gasp finds personal validation in fragility: ‘I push on / I’m the Place I’m Going,’ a self discovery lifted by reverberant broken beats and glass-blown vocals.

Adding further depth to Look Up Sharp are the instrumentals, which flow seamlessly between the vocal-led pieces. ‘Hype Sleep’ and ‘Heart of Hearts’ drink from the same stream as The Flying Lizard’s dubbed-out madness and the vivid purple sunsets of Eno’s Another Green World. While ‘Creep Out of Bed’ and ‘Leaving for Japan’ funnel the fourth-world psychedelia of Cyclobe’s industrial-folk into the vortex of Nico’s The Marble Index.

Conceived as a whole, Look Up Sharp is a singular prism in which light, sound and concept bend at all angles. A deeply personal but infinitely relatable album its many surfaces are complex but authentic, enduring but imperfect, hard-edged but delicate. A diamond. Look up sharp or you’ll miss it.

2x12"

Dutch Techno master Orlando Voorn has opened up his archive for the first of what will be an ongoing artist focused series brought to you by new imprint Above Board Projects.The compilation will be spread across 2 double 12" volumes and will feature tracks from many of Voorn's pseudonyms including; Fix, Baruka, The Ghetto Brothers, Mute & many more. We are proud to introduce the first of a 2-part archival collection entitled 'Diligence'. Each track featured on the compilation has been carefully selected and programmed in conjunction with Orlando Voorn and the Above Board Projects team. Voorn has an extremely long and storied career in making music and is severely underrated as a producer in our humble opinion. His DJ skills are, of course, legendary, with him winning the prestigious DMC mixing championships in 1986 in his native Holland and making a career as one of the country's leading Hip-Hop DJ's. As a producer he has long been linked to numerous legendary producers and releases, counting labels such as Fragile, Metroplex and more as homes for his output. His association and collaborations with Detroit have been the stuff of legend since day one and some of the music contained within these compilations celebrate that while showcasing some of the more overlooked tracks from the man's more than extensive catalogue. Part 1 includes some serious rarities and some straight up, futurist Techno heat, take the majestic technoid melodies of comp opener 'Diligent' from one of Voorn's most well loved alias' FIX for example, completely worlds apart from the jacking and sparse Funk of Baruka's killer 'Technision'. Flawless selections from the early 90's sitting alongside later productions only go to show how diverse and talented an artist Voorn is and how fresh and vital his music still is today. An essential collection for any serious techno lover.

We are proud to bring you Random Movement's latest musical works in a new album - "Lost On Purpose". This vinyl pressing contains four tracks from the full-length 15-track album (available for download upon purchase), drawn together with collaborative efforts of fellow producers Anthony Kasper, Jaybee, Dave Owen, and an inspirational vocal performance and lyrics by T.R.A.C. A philosophical journey of personal enlightenment, self-discovery and introspection, this album serves as a defining statement of Random Movement's artistry as a musician. The albums style varies across the board, from ambient soundscapes to heavy bangers, and from soulful, melodic tunes to dark, brooding tracks. Through the heavy influence of jazz, soul, funk and dub styles, Random Movement's sophomore album guides us deep along the yet-to-be-defined path of his ever-maturing and changing sound, with complex melodies, creative sound design, intricate sampling, acute production details and a heavy reliance on instrumental performance. This marks the Flight Pattern imprint's first release of an LP, and we are excited for all of you to hear it, take the journey, and get lost-on purpose.

incl. dl code for full album

VSK is honoured to start the journey of his new imprint with a selection of great artists. “Equilibrio volume 1” is a presentation of the different visions of techno the label wants to focus on. Modernity, deepness and hypnotism, sound design and complex textures will be the key elements of the label.

The first track is a collaboration between VSK himself and the Polish producer Michal Jablonski. X&Y is a combination of Epic drones, glitchy fx and a metallic fm synth line. Speed and fast modulation are the main ingredients for the development of an obsessive groove.

Malaria by the Spanish artist Kwartz, is an hypnotic dance between extreme ranges of frequency ; white noise and rising screams are wonderfully mixed together with an aggressive broken-subbeat.
The surgical touch of Ansome brings with “Operational Amplifier” a really complex sound design and fierce rhythmic programming, while a distorted roar

beats hauntingly the time.
The last cut, Shori by the italian artist Flaminia, is an obscure and elegant march. Cinematic and ethereal strings come together with an aggressive raw beat , providing an excellent techno experience.

Ground is an Osaka native, but his soul is truly that of a nomad, traversing the planet, befriending kindred spirits found in humans, animals and plants. He is exceptionally receptive to the beauty in everything that surrounds him—the incidental music of a city street, the orchestral chaos of a scrambling radio, the syncopated grace of migrating birds, the simplicity of an isolated hand clap—and as his roadmap continuously unfolds, he accumulates a vast catalogue of visceral tools to musically recount his experiences. 'Sunizm' is a cross section of the artist’s process—an array of complex microcosms overlapping to comprise a thematic whole—gathering field recordings, found instruments, jagged electronics, synthesized chanting, and weaving all into a dense narrative that appears obsessively constructed yet divinely improvised. 'Follow Me', the second of two singles surrounding the album, is complimented with a pseudo drum’n’bass treatment by enigmatic Greek artist Jay Glass Dubs, as well as a massively triumphant b-side entitled 'Ozone House', which is exclusive to this single release. Attention all humans, animals and plants, Ground and the ESP Institute present, 'Sunizm'.

"Re-Calibrate", the companion piece to Donoso's 2018 acclaimed album "Calibrate" continues to obfuscate any clear definition of genre or style and continues to push his music into stranger, more complex and extreme territories. Equal parts tender and twisted, cynical and honest, beautiful and obnoxious, ‘Re_Calibrate’ shines through as a major point in the composer’s discography – and provides a glimpse into the new directions being taken. ‘Re_Calibrate’ is a challenging listen; void of any trendy tropes or appeal for consumers of watered down, homogenized and dogmatic electronic music.

“Quicksilver frequencies, gravelly formants and shimmering, mirage-like washes of tone. Sometimes his sounds feel like signals picked up by a radio telescope, or pure electricity poured through a sieve” Pitchfork

Montreal-based Common Holly (Brigitte Naggar) appeared a few years back with the surprisingly accomplished debut album, Playing House. Holding fast to the honesty of her debut, her impending follow-up is a look outward, a submergence into the dark and the dissonant with consolation found in harmony and humour. Like a ticking internal monologue, the nine labyrinthian yet catchy tracks observe the complexities of mental health, the precarity of life and the challenges of finding strength in the face of grave misunderstanding.

Time is Local is a project by Danish collective We like We and sound artist Jacob Kirkegaard built around a 12-hour live sound installation and performance at Thorvaldsen Museum in Copenhagen.

The piece was initiated and performed by the artists during the G((o))ng Tomorrow Festival in 2017. As they slowly wandered the halls and rooms of the museum for a whole day, they performed extended sound compositions for a visiting audience at each of the 12 chambers for a longer session - a haunting experience as the outside world disappeared and the focus was on quiet sonic moments unfolding in midst of the grand, reverberous space. For this album they have collected 12 fragments revolving around the chambers in the museum. Each chamber is being represented by its own handful of tones, instruments and voice. The statues within, depicted by neo-classicist sculptor Bertel Thorvaldsen get their own soundtrack of quiet emanating gusts. Barely heard frequencies reflect through the walls. The marble carved busts of Greek gods that line the museum hallways gaze eternally with a blank stare as decades pass and new audience arrives.

Although We like We should need no introduction to followers of the Sonic Pieces label, the Danish all female sound quartet consists of Katrine Grarup Elbo (violin), Josefine Opsahl (cello), Sara Nigard Rosendal (percussion) and Katinka Fogh Vindelev (voice). Together they have forged a dynamic and intuitional sound beyond genres through the last decade. Only two years ago they released the nordic neo-classical opus Next to the entire All. This time they emerge in collaboration with sound artist Jacob Kirkegaard. Jacob’s works are sonic reflections on complex aspects of the human civilisation, treating themes such as radioactivity, melting ice, border walls and tones emitted by the ears. Through the last decades he has released records and sound documents through labels such as Touch, Important Records and more. As a document of their 12h performance, Time is Local is a beautiful sonic evocation that shines as a bright line of sun through the cracks of a tomb.

Rolf Hansen, who as a guitarist is originally rooted in jazz, has been one of the most in-demand studio and session musician in the Danish rock, pop, and folk scene. Between 2010 and 2017, he toured under the name Il Tempo Gigante as a solo artist and released two albums: »Lost Something Good« (Speed of Sound, 2010) and »Watch It Watch« (Resonans, 2014). With subsequent tours throughout Europe, he made a name for himself in the alternative folk scene.

After a phase of reorientation, he now releases his first purely instrumental record under his real name through the Berlin-based Karaoke Kalk label in September. On his third album »Elektrisk Guitar«, the many different influences Hansen has gathered as a composer, solo performer, session musician and producer shine through.

The concept of limitation - an album composed for and played with solo guitar - is being mirrored in the conception of the album itself. Not only does Hansen resolutely constrain himself to a sole instrument, he also eschews traditional composition techniques and follows an experimental approach.

»Elektrisk Guitar« is an album that enters into a dialogue with its conscious and attentive listener. Pieces whose melancholy is carefully weighed meet complex musical structures that again and again provide new challenges. In just 43 minutes, »Elektrisk Guitar« offers a plethora of ideas, impressions, details, and inspiration. And even more so, it opens up a room for its listeners to explore, precisely because its minimalistic compositions create a lot of space in which to get accommodated in.

Apart from his solo projects, Rolf Hansen has for several years been connected to Donna Regina as well as Anders Mathiasen (formerly Murder, now Vessel, DK) and Henriette Sennenvaldt (formerly Under Byen, DK) through close collaborations.

Limited pressings of analog techno and electronic music .

The project highlights the personal outlook of Gaffarel’s underground sound.

known as Gaffy on his previous singular productions, percussive DJ sets and stupendous live acts, this imprint is a new platform for the Parisian artist to introduce his solo work, collaborations and remixes.

He has skillfully blended forthcoming EP’s with a mix of complex mental grooves, meticulous frequencies, conspicuous themes and textures, capturing a musical universe with remarkable knowledge.

Gil.Barte returns to Neubau with another demonstration of his complex sound, delivering the title track ‚L.i.G‘ as an uncompromising slow-burning tool for the club, while on the B-side ‚AGH‘ gets your nerves twisted. Additionally Lamusa II reinterpreted ‚L.i.G‘ in a more moderate but not less effective way

Created during the harsh winter nights of 2019 at a home studio in the outskirts of Seoul. “​Disfiguring Echos” i​s the first full length album of Korean artist Suggun Jang.

Mesmerizing ambient soundscapes soaked in Jang’s own environment recordings, are subtly layered with contemporary minimalist compositions to form a powerful work that reflects the harsh yet beautiful surroundings and captures the imagination.

Suggun Jang has been making music for more than 15 years, from noise and doom metal beginnings to complex and detailed sound designs for soundtrack projects, and a passion for capturing his surroundings with unique environment recordings.

DE presents the first window into the world of Suggun Jang.

Raised in the multicultural and mind-broadening London borough of Enfield, Loraine James grew up hearing everything from steel pan music to Metallica, from jazz and electronica to drill and grime, and the results of this exposure can be heard on ‘For You And I’. In part the album explores the complexities of being in a queer relationship in London - “I’m in love and wanted to share that in some way … to make songs that reflect layers of my relationship.” – and as a whole ‘For You and I’ is rhythmically free flowing and sprawling, with melodies that evolve into rippling keys, feeling like a live jam session with a jazz mentality, contrasting the delicate and abrasive. Opener ‘Glitch Bitch’ is a warm ear-worm, brandishing swirling textures with undulating keys and compressed percussion, with an introspective theme revisited soon after on third track ‘So Scared’, whose glitched percussion and syncopated dub bassline build to a frantic meltdown melody. On ‘London Ting // Dark As Fuck’, inspired by Dizzee Rascals's ‘Boy In Da Corner', James explores the darker side of her production with her frequent collaborator Le3 BLACK laying verses over the skeletal track. ‘Hand Drops’ is an instrumental, about public displays of affection in a queer relationship. ‘Sensual’ reflects on intimacy with vocals by UK singer Theo, who's lyrics capture love and gentleness over a soft, minimal production of ethereal keys and scattered glitches. The albums’ title track is also the most colourful, it’s ecstatic and effusive chaos driven by fervent synths expressing elation and the joyful side of her relationship, while ‘My Future’ is a more reflective moment, where warping synths wash in and out with compressed kicks, as the artist considers the dangers that may come with her relationship : “I wanna tie the knot / But the rope is dangerous”. ‘For You And I’ is a deeply intimate and personal offering, expressing happiness, anxiety, joy, sensuality and fear through a vivid sound palette and an experimental sense of rhythm.

An outstanding artist since his earliest productions, Pablo Mateo now fully joins the ranks of Figure for his first album. On this versatile LP finally expands his complete creative vision of what techno music truly means to him.

Weird Reflections Beyond The Sky is an album that is accessible to all audiences. When engaged with actively, it holds narratives deeply connected to personal experience, going beyond what words or even images can describe. Confronting the listener with their own complexity and emotions is both its feat and feature. A beautiful use of technology and synthetic sounds as a means to journey far within.

An open invitation to drop all expectations and simply let the mind wander, creating an immersive soundtrack for each individual to explore.

In 1986, Uruguayan vocalist and musician Mariana Ingold took the advice of a storied Uruguayan composer and musicologist and recorded her first album (Todo Depende) for the now legendary label Ayuí/Tacuabé. In the early ’80s, the introduction of the synthesizer fostered an experimental new approach to traditional Candombe rhythms. Ingold’s influence on the scene looms large. Pairing elegant vocals and majestic harmonies with complex arrangements, she pushed the Montevideo-specific sound — loosely termed Candombe fusion — in new directions and thrived working collaboratively with artists including Eduardo Mateo, Jaime Roos, and Hugo Fattoruso.

With the assistance of Chris J. Morris, Left Ear Records has extracted a collection of tracks that encapsulate this period between 1986-1991, lifting from her albums Todo Depende, Cambio de Clima, and Haace Calor. Full liner notes translated in English and Spanish with archival photos included.

Techno workhorse Dustmite demonstrates once again why he’s appreciated for his uniquely deep and diverse production styles. “Warpath”, the 6th release on Supervoid Records, is a palette of contrasting elements that are sure to strike a notable chord in listeners’ minds.
The titular track opens with determination. Heavy kicks drive a syncopated rhythm as momentous explosions decompress into oily murk. The polyrhythmic synth stabs of “Weaving” evoke imagery of complex machinery calibrated in near- perfect synchronicity. The hard offbeat shuffle of “Flares” conjures a primal response with scattered dissociative flashes. A foreboding mood descends over the listener in “Caustics.” Increasing tension and a pensive ambience.

Inner atmos and next time – rain into rivers, rivers to rain.

Sequence is subjective, irrelevant – it’s where we stand. Out of order, we dissolve and reform, coming together to come undone. There is no first, no now, no next – just precision points in the wide deep sky.

Another bang, another – it’s the reading which is important. Repeating in parallel, the natural loop is healing; repair, resonance, return. We live in a fragment; soft light and clouds drift like dreams into memory, showing movement in the mirror.

“Here the performer becomes free like the playful clouds high above the world of pain, suffering, happiness, ecstasy, disappointment, greed and ambition of human life”

In this present, we are touched to have unreleased business from Memphis. In unlocking the stoic DAT tapes we open a direct channel from 1993 to this now; three tracks which are meditative, essential rhythm with direct, organic charge. It’s Dream Night Dance Music and Osram 509, with RHK, En-Trance, and Microgravity.

More poetry in remembering our first release was also Memphis. Big complex loops and inner paths. Who’s been here before? All of us, one of us, none of us.

The latest addition to Furanum's discography arrives as an EP entitled "White Cold Skin" that simultaneously marks the emergence onto the scene of Beuthen OS. In keeping with the central ethos of the label, the figure behind the guise interrogates and ably materializes the industrial aesthetics of raw power and dystopic bleakness within the confines four diverse yet thematically coherent compositions.

The exploration of said dichotomy is cogently on display within the eponymous track, where an immediately evident presence of inordinate subsonic force is gradually complemented by the imposing throes of harsh yet carefully crafted analog cyclicality. Linearly hurtling toward its final destination, it relentlessly batters the listener with exhilaratory waves of cold sweat in its wake.

In contrast, "J131" and "Porobieni" present far more dispersed and unorthodox rhythmical structures as they maintain the omnipresent sense of part thrilling, part foreboding unease that permeates the record. Propelled by a pervasive pendulatory sway, the former radiates barely repressed power as it exerts its existential narrative, while the latter seems to speak to the ritualistic submission of willing bodies continually broken on the rhythmic wheel of a self-perpetuating cycle of sonic gratification.

Finally, recorded live and serving as an apt epilogue, a beatless yet by no means any less compelling droning rendition closes out the record. Whereas overt melodic content was hitherto eschewed in favor of rhythmic complexity, the piece more than delivers on this front, thrusting the audience into an ever encompassing and vividly visceral collage of throbbing textures as it progresses towards the revelatory unconcealment of a recondite core.

Mastered & cut by Kassian Troyer at Berlin's Dubplates & Mastering,

Heady, deep dive into techno's more psychedelic spaces, true to form, "Dimensions Doors" EP kicks off with the rolling kicks of "Portal Opening", a trippy exploration of shifting ambiances and rhythmic noise, punctuated by a siren tone. AWB steps up with a broken beat remix of "Portal Opening", layering Clotur's ambiances over low-slung percussion. "Hyperspace Travel" brings up the energy with galloping kicks and rippling resonant synths. BLNDR follows up with a pounding remix, building Clotur's sweeping textures into trippy loops circling over a monolithic kick. "Irregular Frequencies" pulls even further into the portal, with a relentless, rubbery synth squelching along over driving, percussion. Clotur lays a gentle, but uneasy atmosphere over this trippy tool. He brings us back down with "Forbidden Level", another complex rhythmic track featuring glitchy percs and robotic warping over a tough low-end workout.

Philippe Cam is the Thomas Pynchon of the electronic music world. Little is known about him and only a couple of pictures have been put online since he emerged on this planet to write his first and only album18 years ago. We know he worked as a sailor and that’s it. If you dig deeper you might find out that he worked as a DJ in the beginning of the 90ies in Brussels and began to study electronic music there and also began to write music for theaters and ballets.

The American distributor Forced Exposure once wrote that about him: „Philipe Cam is a star in his own field. He is among the few people who have succeeded to write hypnotic dance music without a conventional beat still conveying a thrilling, dramatic feel. Cam has developed an accurate, intense and complex formula of modulation-techno. Starting with music similar to Pan Sonic in 1996, his music turned towards a more elegant form of minimal music. Abstract soundtracks lead to an organic form of music, which was equally influenced by modern techno as Wolfgang Voigt's Studio 1/Gas or Basic Channel/Maurizio. Cam's music corresponds heavily to the Cologne scene, where his music is appreciated and played throughout the clubs by the likes of Michael Mayer, Tobias Thomas and various other DJs as well as experimental djs from the A-musik corner.“

So what’s new with his music? Basically the art of filtering is still his passion. Maybe he can be less associated with techno and the themes of his new tracks emerge in a more distinctive pattern? Well that’s hard to say, we would comment the energy of his early techno days in Brussels have returned here in a fierce way with some oft he tracks. The rhythmic movements are classy and stick with you. Whereas other tracks look for a distinctive relaxation of some kind.

We are releasing the album as a double clear vinyl with cover art by Yvette Klein who also designed the cover for his Philippe Cam’s album 18 years ago. Graphics for "Rotterdam" come from Cologne designer Daniela Thiel. We also would like to thank the cultural department of Cologne for supporting us to finance the album and to see the artistic value in this piece of minimalism.

The album kicks off with the mellow and soothing "Cocoa Beach". A Gentle beat that moves like bodies swaying in the hot summer sun. The clock moves a step forward and then a step backward as evolution takes a rest.

"Manga" feels like an acceleration to the moon, the contemplative moments come in spurts and hide in the intervals of the chords which are on the loose. Philippe Cam is the most energetic person in the world when it comes to core activity, this is head banging stuff for the ambient lounge.

"Short Summer" is a heavy and violent recognition. As intensive as it is it knows when to stop and disappear. In the ear and brain of the listeners it leaves an indisputable echo which lingers on for minutes. We suggest not to make a pause but jump directly into "Vermillions Sands".

What can be said about into "Vermillions Sands"? Be prepared some Terry Riley might lure around the corner to offer you some oranges on a silver plate, but don’t eat them. This is luring and beautiful at the same time. Maybe the best ambient track ever written and yet who can ever venture to say that without making a fool of himself. "Vermillions Sands" comes in waves and they could be longer we think.

"Rotterdam" the home of Philippe Cam for a long time but not anymore. He moved away. So that changes the perspective. But when was the track written? "Rotterdam" seems mechanical and rusty and spooky and divided. This arrangement is very different to all the other tracks so far and is almost dub in style but way more fractured. A steady stop and go emerges. But the longer it runs the better it gets. At minute 6 the brain resets itself and tries to grasp what has happened so far, reconstruction as a result of its own phantasmic imagination and hardly true at all, wonderful. Applause included!

Here comes "Bis", a short episode of a track and before we can comment on it, it is already over.

"The Game" is a mule of a track. It has a quiet stubborn sequence that bites and kicks you in the back without any change in near sight. We can hear a voice whispering, which sounds like a miniature vocoder featuring the voice of a child calling out - never stopping. This is treadmill to some extend but starts to breathe towards the middle of the track and slowly changes perspective. In fact there are some changes taking place here which go beyond a sound design that works heavily on the stereo image. Stick with it and the experience will be a great one.

"Ultimate Fly For Halloway" somehow orchestrates how you might feel after you climbed a 8000 meter high mountain and reached the top. A rejoicing off a special kind. Lava for the ears. No cheerleader murder plot sorry.

"Last Track" is a perfect example of a true minimalistic pice of music that manages to make contact with other genres and does this with elegance, determination and a lot of soul.

key selling points: The key selling point is the fact that Philippe Cam once was referred to as one of the main protagonists of the minimal music scene along with Wolfgang Voigt's Studio 1/Gas and Basic Channel/Maurizio. A true artist with a vision which is very rare.

Philippe Cam has picked up the sound he was famous for but has developed it further without selling out to any genre and expectation that rules our daily business.

Exactly this is the strength of the album to create a vivid world of impressions by using instruments in a whole different way than all software developers would suggest.

"Rotterdam" is a piece of art that can set off a firework when you listen to it and it owes nothing to anyone.

Like a fine 40-year old whisky, the layers on this record and influences are complex, nuanced & Layered. You might taste something different but here are my tasting notes...

The Nose - Notes of Bobby Cauldwell, Steely Dan, David Crosby a definite Sun Drenched yacht folk dram.

The Body - I can taste strong notes of Jimmy Webb and Aztec Camera not present on the nose, this a much deeper dram than initially nosed, I can see myself enjoying this in front of a warm fire.

Finish - Long finish on this one, I can taste the Miami tarmac, the Beach and salt water, the nightclubs and linen clothing, Don Johnson's dirty washing.

Whisky tasting over, both the albums this LP was compiled from were recorded at Coconuts recording Studio in Miami, notable for Miami Sound Machine recordings and Blood, Sweat and Tears. I have been into these for a long time and whilst not the rarest AOTN re-issue to date (although that may change now the words out) they deserve to be recognised for the solid LPs that they are. Just buy it and float away.

* Back on vinyl officially for the first time since 1973

* Reissue of this RARE Nigerian landmark Psy-funk album

* Comes with insert containing exclusive liner notes

* Strictly limited to 500 copies worldwide, comes with obi-strip


Tidal Waves Music now proudly presents the first OFFICIAL reissue of this landmark Nigerian album. This RARE classic (original copies tend to go for large amounts on the secondary market) is now finally back available as a limited vinyl edition (500 copies) complete with the original artwork and exclusive liner notes/pictures provided by Ofege's founding member 'Melvin Ukachi' who also supervised this reissue.



Ofege was formed in the early 1970s by a bunch of teenagers at the St. Gregory's College in Lagos Nigeria. They were largely influenced by the guitar solos of Carlos Santana, Jeff Beck & Jimmy Page while closer to home, they were influenced by the music of 'BLO' (Berkley Jones, Laolu Akins and Mike Odumosu), 'Monomono' (led by Joni Haastrup), The Funkees, and Ofo The Black Company.

Due to their vibrant combo of sweet harmonies, hooks & fuzz, Ofege would become one of the most legendary Nigerian groups of all time, with expressive sales and national stardom. At the turn of the century (and because of tracks appearing on various psychedelic music compilations) Ofege would receive international acknowledgment for being the first of their kind and the ultimate West-African psychedelic funk band!

Their first album was recorded while the band members were still in high school (average age of 16), Ofege's debut album 'Try And Love' was originally recorded and released in 1973 on EMI Nigeria.

'Try And Love' is wild and uncompromising blend of soul, funk and rock with complex and groovy rhythms. Ofege succeeded in creating a debut album drenced with fuzzy guitars, plaintive/wailing vocals and a backbeat as influenced by James Brown as it is by Fela Kuti. It's a unique, raw and beautiful take on the psychedelic sound. The ingenuity allied with the inexperience of its members makes this album a real treasure.

In the early eighties, Edmond Mondésir, professor of philosophy and Léon Bertide, trade unionist, founded the Bèlènou group. They were actors of the great agricultural strike of 1974, which resulted in the death of two workers (Ilmany and Marie-Louise) and left many wounded. Activists of the patriotic movement Asé Pléré An Nou Lité (Stop crying, Fight), they were part of the identity and the cultural affirmation la revendication identitaire et culturelle of the time. Like the Guadeloupean musician Gérard Lockel and his work on the Gwo Ka, they put the Bèlè, in its traditional form, back in the spotlight during Swaré Bèlè (Bèlè nights).Minimalist and spiritual, a true rural ancestral art from Martinique, the Bèlè combines dance and music from responsorial monodies, which is a choir that responds to the lead singer (Respondè / La vwa dèyè), on codified drum rhythms and ti-bwa (2 sticks that hit the back of the drum or a piece of bamboo). It comes in a series of collective choreographies, working up into the trance. The texts are simple, short and tell the story of everyday life and struggle. While preserving the emotion and the drum’s central place, the fundamental contribution of Bèlènou is to keep the traditional form of Bèlè while adding a modern instrumentation: bass, guitar, saxophone, drums...
Emosyon Tambou-a (Emotion of the Drum) was released in 1990. This third opus of the band expands the musical spectrum in harmonies, arrangements and influences to create a contemporary music anchored in the Bèlè matrix, while keeping the beat, the energy and ancestral roots of music. Bèlènou adapts some classic rhythms: Bélya, Gran Bèlè, Bèlè Pitjé or Ting-Bang rewritten here for an orchestra.With the appearance of long couplets and a complex harmonization of the choruses, Bèlènou's music brings a form of modernity, it opens notably to jazz territory as well as to other forms of music and grooves. Also, Bèlènou leaves the musicians with space for improvisation: not only on the saxophone or the guitar, but also with the drums (cleverly adaptating traditional rhythms to the drums).

The texts sung in Creole are of a social nature, appealing to the solidarity and self-denial of the people (Bélya pou péyi-a, Tout pèp-la sanblé), to the struggle for political emancipation towards a new democracy (Wi ny ké rivé, Ni dé jou, Démokrasi); land protection (Sové tè-a); finally, to the vitality of the Bèlè culture ... (Emosyon Tambou-a, Dansé Ting-Bang)...Culture participates, according to the expression of Aimé Césaire, as "Miraculous Weapons". Bèlènou sings a project of a new and united society. A precursor group, experimental in the its early years, Bèlènou reconciles with talent tradition, modernity and cultural identity.

Lovely crafted tip-on sleeve. Remastered. 700 copies

‘One of our favourites’ iD Magazine

‘Mesmerizing’ The Guardian

‘Keep an eye on this guy!’ - Gilles Peterson


Catching Flies’ music draws from a wide-ranging palette of influences including jazz, soul, hip-hop, house and electronica and has previously seen him handpicked by Bonobo to provide support on his World Tour. Over the past few years, his music has gathered the support of Gilles Peterson, Annie Mac, Lauren Laverne, Julie Adenuga & Huw Stephens, critical acclaim from the likes of iD Magazine, The Guardian, Dazed & Confused, and Nowness, and a growing fanbase which has seen him perform both Live and DJ sets across the UK, Europe, the USA and Asia. This has culminated in over 60,000,000 streams to date.

Catching Flies is set to release debut album ‘Silver Linings’ on 5th July 2019. Containing shades of house and jazz, to hip-hop and electronica, ‘Silver Linings’ is a melodic mesh of bright electronics and intricate rhythms. It’s a beautiful, moving record, with sounds that unmistakably come straight from the heart.

Producer, multi-instrumentalist and DJ George King began Catching Flies in late 2012, when he recorded and self released his first two EPs. With huge radio and press support around the world - including multiple #1’s on Hype Machine, BBC Radio support from Gilles Peterson, Mary Anne Hobbs, Lauren Laverne, Tom Ravenscroft, Nemone, Annie Mac, Huw Stephens; praise from i-D, Dazed, The Guardian, Complex, Notion, The Line Of Best Fit, Clash, Dummy and more - he’s since attracted millions of listeners.

Against his instincts he signed with a big management agency and got talking to a label: it almost derailed his career. He explains “What I'd found so inspiring originally was the total freedom to make a tune on my own terms and just decide to put it out the next week. There was a hunger that came with that, and a sense of achievement from being the driving force, but as soon as I tampered with that ecosystem, it wasn't as exciting anymore”.

Touring with electronic music giant Bonobo - who also included him on his BBC Radio 1 Essential Mix - allowed him to watch up close someone who had taken a slow and steady path from tiny clubs in Brighton to arenas worldwide, and see it was possible to do without any compromise. After being teased through a succession of warmly received singles this past year, and seven years on from that first EP recorded and released from his bedroom, his debut album ‘Silver Linings’ is now ready to be revealed.

“It's taken me a while because I didn't want to speak until I had something to say. I wanted to make something positive, hopeful and colourful...The world isn't in the best place at the moment, and the last thing it needs is another dark and moody electronic record. I wanted ‘Silver Linings’ to be a scrapbook of the last three years. It’s definitely eclectic, and it’s supposed to be. Over three years a lot changes, your perspectives change, your tastes change; and I wanted to celebrate that by picking tracks that meant the most to me. One of my favourite things about making music is that it takes me right back to where I made it - the keyboard I used, the chair I was sitting on, the room I was in. It kind of teleports you back to a certain point in your life. A bit like a diary entry.”

Recalling those moments brings back a range of memories: ‘Satisfied’ began by being tapped out on a £15 keyboard bought from Kentish Town Cash Converters, ‘Yǔ’ was made in the mountains of China during a few days off from touring, while an evening on Hampstead Heath inspired ‘Kite Hill Theme’. Also featuring on the album is ‘New Gods,’ a collaboration with London’s bright stars Jay Prince and Oscar Jerome and the beautiful and meditative ‘Opals,’ inspired by the likes of Ryuichi Sakamoto and Alva Noto.

Catching Flies is already looking to the future, closing the first chapter in an exciting and inspiring story, ‘Silver Linings’ is only the beginning.

“A few weeks after I finished the album, I moved out of my house I made all the music in, so it feels like the closing of one chapter and the beginning of another. I can’t wait to make the next one now.”

Birthed from Arizona’s regaled Ascetic House collective, Body of Light is a dark synth-pop outfit comprised of young brothers Andrew and Alexander Jarson. What began as a vehicle for their exploration of noise and sound during their early teens has evolved into an established production over the last decade, as Body of Light continues to carve out their own style of complex, structured, and moving dancefloor electronics.

Their music is not only individually personal, but drawn from experiences shared between the two brothers – and calls on elements of new wave, freestyle, goth, and techno to create timeless and singular tracks without fear of trend or passing fashion.

On their third album Time to Kill, Body of Light refines their brand of cold and driving synth pop with a bold pallet of sounds and a focus on uncharted technique and purpose. Like the pale digital stare of the modern devices surrounding our daily lives, the album weaves stories of love and obsession in an era of technical bondage and fleeting exhilaration. Written over a period of intense and profound change, Time to Kill stands as a startling reminder of how important our existence truly is. Haunting keys, swelling pads, and punching rhythms score their work as Alex Jarson presents an alluring and romantic dialogue with confident projection. The title single “Time to Kill” kicks off the album with a merciless signature beat, complimented by distorted sample patterns against an infectious, moving bass groove

This year, First Word Records celebrates its fifteenth year in the game. The year commenced triumphantly with First Word being named "record label of the year" at Gilles Peterson's Worldwide Awards 2019. Over the past six months, we've seen new music from 14KT, Souleance, Myele Manzanza, Teotima, Don Leisure, Children of Zeus and a range of artists across Europe, on the 'Music! Musik! Musique!' compilation.

To commemorate the 15th anniversary, First Word has a series of releases in the works for the second half of the year which see collaborations by artists from the label's current roster. To kick off, we have this special double-AA sided 7" single featuring Darkhouse Family, Kaidi Tatham & Tyler Daley.

Darkhouse Family consists of two Cardiff beatmakers & musicians, Earl Jeffers - founder of Melange Records and producer of 'A Library Excursion' from 2018, and Don Leisure, who recently provided us with 'Halal Cool J', the beat-tape sequel to 2017's 'Shaboo'. Over the years they've had releases, solo & individually, on Fat City, Metalheadz & Earnest Endeavors to name a few, bridging the gaps between various strains of dance music, beats and hip hop, with the organics of jazz and funk. Recently making noise across the UK with their new live band, and production work for the likes of Kamaal Williams, this is their first new release since their highly-acclaimed 2017 debut album 'The Offering' & subsequent remix project which also featured DJ Spinna, and one Kaidi Tatham.

Kaidi Tatham is one of the most revered multi-instrumentalists in the game. His endless contributions have included Bugz In The Attic, Amy Winehouse, Slum Village, Mulatu Astatke, Soul II Soul, Moonchild, Leroy Burgess, Amp Fiddler and loads more. Dubbed by Benji B last year as "the UK's Herbie Hancock", his versatility as a musician is actually more akin to Prince. He can play most things, and play them well. Providing flute duties on this track, he also graces the flipside with a full "flutestrumental" version. Aside from numerous other projects, Kaidi released three EPs on First Word to date, 'Changing Times', 'Hard Times' and 'Serious Times', and an album last year, entitled 'It's A World Before You', which featured daddy of 2000 Black, Dego, son of Jazzy Jeff, Uhmeer and Children of Zeus, Konny Kon & Tyler Daley.

Tyler Daley hails from Manchester, alongside son of Zeus, MC / DJ / beatmaker, Konny Kon. Somewhat of a veteran in the game, Tyler is currently one of the most-recognisable talents in the British soul scene, also lending his talents to dance music royalty along the way, including the likes of Goldie, Zed Bias, DJ Marky & Lenzman. With Children of Zeus, the duo have had a whirlwind 12 months since the release of their debut album 'Travel Light', performing shows across the globe & gaining new fans daily. The record was named "album of the year" by Complex magazine and BBC 6 Music's Huey Morgan, amongst a number of other notable tastemakers & selectors. Hot on the heels of the 'Excess Baggage' EP, Tyler laces this one with his inimitable brand of bars and soul.

A veritable super-group amongst the First Word stable, this low-slung slinky joint sees the guys work up a unique blend of jazz, soul, beats and hip hop - guaranteed to go 'All The Way'…

'All The Way' is released on First Word Records on July 26th 2019, limited 7" vinyl & digital.

Produced & mixed by Darkhouse Family

Vocals by Tyler Daley (Children of Zeus)


b B1. All the Way (Flutestrumental) [feat. Tyler Daley & Kaidi Tatham]


[b] B1 | All the Way (Flutestrumental) [feat. Tyler Daley & Kaidi Tatham]


[b] B1 | All the Way (Flutestrumental) [feat. Tyler Daley & Kaidi Tatham]

As spring dawns, Rhythm Section International go from Local Artist to a pair of very 'local' artists - Peckham's very own Chris Watson + Chris Coupe; otherwise known as FYI CHRIS , who present the 'Back In The Millennium' EP as the labels 5th offering.The EP was born after a rather hazy late night listening session at Rhythm Section HQ, where bossman Bradley Zero was instantly beguiled by the Duo's hypnotic and rhythmically complex arrangements.The record begins abrasively with the trance-inducing mechanical stutter of 'back in the millennium', before shuffling into downbeat number 'Jeru' and then picks things up with the peak time groove of 'need i say more' before bringing us back down to earth with the melancholic acid bump of 'dedication'. Early support from Osunlade, MR.G, Ryan Elliott & Damiano Von Eckhert
Ready for Club Use..

Exactly a year on from 'Travel Light', we release the final single from Children of Zeus' debut album. A dinked 7" single, containing one of the stand-out tracks from the album, 'Hard Work', and a re-vocalled Lover's Rock version of 'The Heart Beat' (a demo version of which appeared on 'The Winter Tape' from Christmas 2018).

'Hard Work' is a term than can easily summarise the past twelve months in the life of Tyler Daley and Konny Kon. They've been busily touring Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Europe and the UK twice in that time, as well as rocking shows at countless festivals across the continent.

'Travel Light' was named "Album of the Year" by Complex Magazine, BBC 6 Music's Huey Morgan and Rinse FM's Jyoty, as well as taking 2nd place at the Worldwide Awards (for which their label First Word was named "Label of the Year") and numerous high-placing's from Fact, Mixmag, The Vinyl Factory, Juno, Bandcamp, Mi-Soul, Wordplay & Piccadilly Records, amongst numerous other notable selectors, blogs, tastemakers and musicians, with fans far & wide from Radio 1's Benji B to Chase & Status, Jazzy Jeff to Lily Allen, Stormzy to Goldie.

The depth of styles & genres included on 'Travel Light' confirmed that Tyler & Konny are not easy to put in a box. Their initial inspirations of Manchester pirate radio in the 80's/90's all make up to form the sonic tapestry of hip hop, soul, r&b, broken beat, jungle and, in this instance, reggae.

One of the album's biggest surprises was this now-anthemic track, 'Hard Work', which sees Tyler Daley effortlessly ride a one-drop riddim drenched in positivity, and is a highlight in their live sets, as anyone who's witnessed will testament to. Meanwhile, the flip-side transforms the quiet storm vibe of 'The Heart Beat' into a heavy, heavy dubwise track, creating an essential accompaniment and fitting sequel to the original lick.

Pressed on a limited edition rustic JA-style dinked 7", this one is, of course, essential for any discerning collector, fan and DJ. Released on First Word Records, July 12th 2019.

Tekvision Volume 1 was a stone cold classic, with Rolling Stone charting it at #3 in their top 20 EDM records of 2017. Two years on, Cornelius ‘Traxman’ Ferguson returns with the second instalment, featuring 7 exceptional new Footwork productions. Traxman is a bonafide OG, with a discography dating back to the halcyon era of Ghetto House in the late 80’s and early 90’s. 30 years on, Traxman is a revered figure in Chicago’s urban music scene, having presided over the evolution from Ghetto House to Juke and from Juke to Footwork culture. Originally released in 1989, Work Dat Mutha Fucker by Steven Poindexter is considered to be one of the most influential tracks from the early days of Ghetto House. Traxman remixes it brilliantly on this release, reworking the stripped back, minimalist drum beat of the original into an upfront Footwork pattern. This sense of continuity is equally evident on Let Me See You Naked feat. DJ Juicy, and Traxman’s remix of To Da Hoooz by DJ Deeon. These productions successfully capture the sexual energy and exuberance of Ghetto House, turbo charged at 160 BPM. Elsewhere on the record, Traxman explores different moods whilst always keeping the dance floor firmly in mind. The opening track It’s Lasting Bass lays an infectious vocal harmony over complex drum patterns and a fearsome bassline. Osaka opens with mellow, sultry keys before introducing a wobbling synth and diced up Orchestal samples. 4 Da Lyfe is a soulful and slightly more meditative track, with a vocal loop expressing solidarity and self-affirmation. Wildcard feat. Jana Rush, stands alone as the only track without a vocal element, instead utilising a piercing and insistent synth to create a powerful sonic intensity. Overall this is triumphant record, and a worthy successor to the original Tekvision release, proving once again that Traxman is an unrivalled exponent of MPC-driven footwork energy.

Where To Now? Records present the debut release from Akiko Haruna. Akiko’s world is one where cacophonic distress lingers, shuffling itself over scapes of percussive damage and driven groove. Akiko presents a fresh take on the current Technoid function through her use of emotive and intentionally disruptive vocal chops and a dizzying ‘wall of sound’ approach to the dancefloor, consuming all yet somehow keeping vibes alive.

Akiko’s artistic background is primarily in Dance, and undoubtedly this performance led background has had an acute impact on her approach to melodic detail & storytelling. Akiko’s tracks rapidly shift & morph states, always restless and searching with fluidity and intent. From the ever present Micro Electronic details to sweeping swathes of Bass flutter the notion of progressive movement remains at the forefront of her sound, minute elements of detail become briefly isolated, intentionally directing the listener to their subtle presence.

‘Delusions’ Leads with ‘A Mother’s Love’ and begins a theme of resentment and dissonance. The Japanase vocal cuts throughout the track roughly translate to “you should die”, here obviously flipping assumed and supposed relationship rules and roles and exposing an inner turmoil, reflected through a continuous anxiety ridden, almost panicked siren detail which pulses over Akiko’s heads down, deep and uniform forward march.

‘Husband Established’ and the opens with the emotive vocal line “I just hate your Voice”. This is the sound of a poisonous & damaging relationship hurtling towards combustion, where Akiko’s elements gather momentum and impact as layer upon layer of detail pummel and puncture this heightened state, pausing and spiralling to evoke a standoff of aggression and imminent outburst. ‘Husband Established’ stands as a frankly stunning piece of sound design, which manages to capture a raw human emotion, and provide release for the associated junk, stress, and occasional banality of Relationship angst.

‘Hetero’ picks up where ‘Husband Established’ finished, further exploring societal character types and submissive gender tropes that are thrust into our sub consciousness from day to day. The concept of Hyperreality and its themes are continuously explored within Akiko’s practice and It would perhaps be fair to say that these themic explorations within her Music are Akiko’s own outlet for traversing human relationships within a complex, heightened, & layered reality, and it is certainly Akiko’s intention for her audience to feel some kind of relief and release within her sound world. Sonically ‘Hetero’ is a much sparser, subtler affair, where swathes of sampled voice & machine swing in and out of focus, against a weightless backdrop of affecting isolated electronics.

The EP closes with ‘Ripehus Alley’, seemingly void of any deeper meaning or message this serves more as a dreamlike parting song to what is otherwise a highly charged collection. Floating itself away from a frantic & incomprehensible world into a calmer space for final thought and reflection. ‘Delusions’ is a complex, exploratory trip, one which fans of Logos, Fis, Alva Noto, Jlin, Jesse Osborne-Lanthier etc will relish exploring.

Milan-based imprint Just This present Cristalli Ionici, a four-track EP from Italian duo Abstrakt featuring a Marcel Fengler remix.

Abstrakt is a collaborative project from Luca Rambelli and Filippo Scorcucchi concerned with the intense study of spatial timbres - a psychedelic trip represented as a sonic aesthetic.

A relatively new endeavour, their debut on Just This offers an expertly crafted voyage into the outer reaches of the imagination. Sonically, the EP files under ambient techno, brandishing swirling textures and tangible effects to create a blissful meditative state.

For his remix of the title track, Marcel Fengler places the subtle complexion of the original and places it inside a driving rhythmic pattern of syncopated percussion and unrestrained energy.

In a landscape increasingly dominated by surface-level sonics and a lack of true organic – man-made-machine-driven - sound, the newly found and London-based Gaia Tones project rises with an unforgiving grasp over the science of improvisation and mystery. Like a gust of wind from Mother Nature herself, the duo comprised of John Swing and David Soleil-Mon breathe a new, highly perceptible form of life into the UK’s long ‘dub and ‘bass’ dynasty.

Contrary to the consumer plastics found across much of the ‘digital’ musical spectrum, the two artists impose their own vision and aesthetic to a framework of sound that has somehow always existed but never fully explored before. Heady, stoned-out and surely emanating from physical matter, their two debut tracks are set to redefine the standards going into the next decade.

The A-side “Lychees”, stutters its own brand of dread paranoia over a sea of complex, morphing percussion that together create a whole new palette of exploratory sound, loosely tied up into a hazy, nomadic groove. On the flip, “Wonkadonk” feels like its natural extension, evolving that familiarly off-kilter assembly of drums to work around a devotedly dystopian swell of bass that pushes further and further out into the ether.

In the end, the universe tends to unfold as it should.

Label artwork by Egidio Sterpa

A cryptical presence hiding behind many different aliases spread across a range of underground labels: co-owner of LiveJam Records alongside EMG, John Swing begins producing with a live and spontaneous approach that pushes the boundaries and general conceptions of club music while digging deeper into the techniques of the past.

The production process through ananlog equipment that John Swing so strongly supports with an uncompromising attitude is the key to his underground success and esteem.
With a back catalogue of over seventy releases including collaborations with established artists such as Mr. G and Ben Sims, the London based talent has been receiving recognition by established artists including Floating Points, Gerd Janson, Levon Vincent, Theo Parrish and many others.

Inspired by London's Plastic People and it's bonding vibes, through a well refined spectrum of musical knowledge John Swing engages with the dance floor in a physical yet emotional way: the strength and power of pure house is blended with black soul music in a constant crossover between underground aesthetics and cherry-picked funk and disco. His subtle understanding of the dance floor guarantees a deep-rooted experience for the mind, body and soul.

“Acid Sensible EP” released by Johnkôôl Records is a compilation of tracks composed by french producer Botine (already seen on Acid Avengers Records) along those formative years. It is truly the fruit of back-and-forths between the stage and studio environment from 2013 to 2016.

The term Acid Sensible first appeared in Clément’s graphic work as he developed his musical adventures. It’s a tale in which pets, organized in a micro-society produce music that will free them from humans and their alienating lifestyle. Acid Sensible is how they name that musical genre they created and that Botine appropriated himself. Built on a complex mix of influences, Acid Sensible is a careful and melodious pop balance between new-beat rhythms and meditative sounds sourced from IDM, Braindance, Psychedelic Rock and Krautrock.

Most of the tracks on the EP were composed on analog devices. The recording was done in one take only, thus preserving its powerful esthetic sourced from the live environment.

Hailing from the heartland of British techno, Sheffield’s John Shima is one of the leading lights of UK electronics. His beautifully crafted sounds have graced a host of imprints including Distant Worlds, Exalt Records and, of course, FireScope. It is to the latter that Shima returns with his long awaiting debut album, The Lonely Machine.

John Shima is a master melody weaver, with this first LP attesting to his deftness of touch. Celestial chords and star gazing synthwork permeate this ten track odyssey. The musical heritage of Shima’s hometown, the elegance, majesty and subtlety of British electronics, is invoked from the needle drop. A range of influences come to the fore in this 2LP. Skirting around the edges of astral ambience and tonal texture are nods to industrial history, the rasp and resonance of rhythms in “Empires”, with the inspiration of Detroit surfacing in the future funk of “Phase Distortion” and “Linear.” Dreamscapes are painted in delicate hues, the fragile movements of “Accepting”, with brooding works adopting thicker basslines and ruffled notes as with “Distrust.” Nevertheless, it is the incandescent brightness of Lonely Machine that truly shines. Radiant pieces of elating electronics, complex and joyful compositions that chime with unbridled hope and open-hearted optimism.

Aleqs Notal's introduction to the Sistrum family, 2017's Ascending Nodes, offered a taste of his capacity for jazzy undertones and rhythmically complex percussion. His return to the label, the LYU EP, takes his propensity for drums a step further. Heavy hand percussion drives the release across all three cuts, with a fourth mix that's stripped down to just its bare bones parts.

Henrik Schwarz & Alma Quartet present CCMYK, a new album on Henrik's own label Between Buttons. Produced in collaboration with the Alma String Quartet, it's a free conversation between classical and electronic music, carefully transformed into a set of astonishing tracks, ready for club or concert hall. Though based on free improvisations between Laptop and String Instruments, CCMYK is not a record of bumbling jams. Rather, it's a record of startling density, control and emotional complexity. This is the sound of open conversation between piercing intellects, taking their individual instruments and musical backgrounds to create a new universe of sound. The vinyl comes in a unique, handmade, limited 4 colour CMYK pressing. Every record is unique! Black is available as well.

Picture Vinyl "A balance between things that you know people will like and things that you think people will like" is what John Peel had to say on his BBC homepage about Apparat's music programming concept. Apparat then appeared at the Peel Session in May of 2004 substituting like with die for in JP's statement. Indeed, it's sad but true: John Peel passed away a few months later to a heart attack while vacationing in Peru. Apparat could only find a more fitting farewell mood with the rerecording of his session: a sonic dedication to the huge mentor John Peel from Shitkatapult and their people.

Apparat is known as a fluctuating mood-maker by way of his computer companion. In this case he leaves his garb behind. Apparat swings the composer's stick with emotion to give yearning its segway by conducting pieces of lonely melancholic beauty with godly discretion. New strings are thanks to the violin and cello of Kathrin Pfänder and Lisa Stepf aka Complexácord, whose soul-drenched expression lets your mind sway.

The trio harmonizes with dream-like perfection. It reminds one once again of the experimental modus operandi combining classical instruments with electronic music. Singer Raz Ohara and clarinet/sax player Hormel Eastwood find their chosen virtuous and emotional space on this promising cloud. What remains are warm dark drops of elegiac pop the pour down the back of your heart.

This Apparat John Peel Session was remastered by Bo Kondren at Calyx Studios in February 2019 incl. the digital bonus track - Komponent as Telefon Tel Aviv Remix.
The physical appears as picture disc featuring the wonderful original design by Hanna Zeckau & Carsten Aermes on vinyl.
The original release from 2005 (Strike 153) also contained more Remixes by Bus, Rechenzentrum and Apparat himself.

Stellar new EP on the way from Dutch producer Qindek. The rising star has been on the up as of late having released on labels on such Wolfskin Records and Invite's Choice Records. This time he's releasing on vinyl only label Dreiklang who have had some scintillating cuts from Edit-Select (who appears as one of the remixers on this EP) and Claudio PRC.
Qindek has really been honing his skills and is known as much for his flowing DJ sets as he is for his masterful live sets. This level of technique is truly standing to the artist as we can see from his comfortability with hardware shine through on this project.
'Come Closer' will be the fifth release from the label: it features the original mix Come Closer and three remixes from VOLTMAR, Edit-Select, and KUF, which show the different facades of the track. The original cut is a primal, tribal number merged with club elements. It enters with a bongo-like drum that is followed by a hi-hat for some pace. A surreptitious synth floats in and levitates back and forth, which is coupled with fluctuating keys and toms. It's a mesmerizing number with an understated tempo, bringing the forest to the club.
Cologne based artist VOLTMAR takes the first remix. Known as a DJ for many years now, he has performed in clubs across Europe. He tends to enjoy a deeper sound and this is prevalent in his take on the cut. The percussions are deeper and more hollowed, which creates a different kind of sway. It feels more tribal, with more jungle elements to it. It has less synth and more of a heavy bassline, designed to connect people on a primal level.
Next to feature is none other than Edit-Select. The British native is well established in the club scene and does not disappoint with this remix. A more complex sound, he takes the track and elongates it. It's a consistent sound with underground elements and a slight bit of tempo. It has this divine gothic synth that oscillates with a certain lilt to it. The beat is enchanting as the cut slowly diminishes.
The last stand is by Swedish artist Kuf. Known for his energetic sound, this cut does not disappoint. It's a high-velocity all-out assault club banger. It has rolling beats, speedy hi-hats and a tempo that is driven forward by hand claps. It has a skeleton aspect to it, whereas instead of using builds, they add and subtract elements inject an ever-changing pace.

As a visual artist and ambient composer, Tor Lundvall's work often recontextualizes the familiarity of everyday life through abstraction and space. Starting with the snapshot of a moment, Lundvall extracts its underlying complexity of the seemingly mundane and gives sleeping suggestion a presence and purpose. Mainly working sans vocals, Lundvall returned to voice exploration for 2018's A Dark Place, a somber, dark synth album that merged his mastery of textural ambience with traditional pop structures.

Rescued from old DAT tapes A Strangeness In Motion: Early Pop Recordings 1989-1999 are some of Lundvall's earliest completed synth pop works which have remained unreleased until now.

Though Lundvall's work throughout the collection has the recognizable ambient bones and sensibilities he has refined throughout his career, many of the tracks call back to the synth-driven pop of Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark, The Human League and New Order, with the common thread being the sparse density and mood created by reservation and the lonely impulse to twist convention, not to rip it up and repurpose it. Rather than 10 disparate ideas, Lundvall's curation of A Strangeness In Motion: Early Pop Recordings 1989-1999 feels like excerpts from a broader work, allowing the listener to fill in the holes and ladder up to his larger themes and concepts, perhaps coloring his prior works in new hues and tones.

'For years I dismissed these songs as naive and youthful relics, but I've grown much fonder of them in recent years along with the memories they evoke,' he says of the decade spanning collection of tracks, many of which were sketched out in his duo with Drew Sullivan, After The Outing. 'Original One', 'Procession Day', 'The Clearing', and 'The Melting Hour' are present here as solo reworkings, originally culled from his sessions with Sullivan. The remaining songs were ideas originally considered for Passing Through Alone (1997) and its proposed follow up, provisionally and playfully titled Femalamania.

'The title was summing up my girl problems at the time and also a silly word spin on Robyn Hitchcock's Fegmania!' he says. 'Sadly, the project was abandoned—a rare decision for me and perhaps the only time I've scrapped an album entirely.'

Idiosyncratic producer DMX Krew offers up four playful acid-tinged tracks for the Malekko Phase Mod EP, released through eclectic Spanish label/club night/promotion agency, Fanzine Records. The vinyl-only release is the first output of 2019 for the Coruna based imprint currently celebrating their 10th anniversary and is the follow up to C44's bizarro-techno Res Publica Populi Romani EP, and Dijuma's dubby and atmospheric Cold Tracks EP.

For DMX Krew's first Fanzine release the eccentric producer adopts a much lighter and brighter sound, in line with his recent records on Hypercolour and his classic output on Aphex Twin's Rephlex Records. The EP also comes hot on the heels of the prolific producer's latest album, Glad To Be Sad - twelve wavey cuts of vigorous electronic funk released in March through Hypercolour.

Kicking off the A-side with "Maleko Phase Mod", DMX Krew immediately conjures an effortlessly enjoyable mood. From the opening bars, a bouncing synth line is met with a classic acid house beat - prominently featuring the requisite skipping snares, rustic rimshots and phasing percussion that gives this track its distinctly Chicago feel. Meanwhile, shimmering chords fill the track with sunny warmth and enthusiastic energy.

Next up, "Smoke Stack" matches a groovy acid bassline with vintage drums, clusters of claps and a mischievous marimba-esque lead. Don't let the whimsy fool you, however, DMX Krew is a master craftsman at sequencing intricate synth lines and programming complex drum patterns.

On the flip, "Low Star" imbues DMX Krew's familiar elements bubbling bass, sparkling synths, and a pumping groove with a twisted 80s lo-fi essence. Crunchy claps, distorted hats, and tumbling toms keep the track bouncing at a frenetic pace, while a glossy lead contrasts with solemn pads to create a mood at once exuberant and earnest.

Closing track "Suspicion Ruff Mix" once again finds the producer riding a classic jacking 80s house beat, filling any gaps in the groove with crashing cymbals, rolling snares, and cascading claps. With his squelchy bass, vibrant lead, and oddball melody, DMX Krew concludes the Malekko Phase Mod EP with a sense of effervescent joy undeniably his own.

Black Truffle is honoured to announce the first ever vinyl reissue of David Rosenboom’s legendary Brainwave Music, originally released on A.R.C. Records in 1975 and here expanded to a double LP with the addition of over 40 minutes of contemporaneous material. Pioneer of live electronics, innovator in music education, collaborator with artists as diverse as Jon Hassell, Jacqueline Humbert, Terry Riley and Anthony Braxton, Rosenboom is renowned for his ground-breaking experiments with the use of brain biofeedback to control live electronic systems.

Each of the three pieces that make up the original Brainwave Music LP integrates biofeedback with musical technology in different ways. In the side-long opening piece “Portable Gold and Philosophers’ Stones”, four performers have electrodes and monitoring devices attached to their bodies to receive information about brainwaves, temperature, and galvanic skin response. This information is analysed and fed into a complex set of frequency dividers and filters, manned by Rosenboom, but essentially played by each of the performers through their psychophysiological responses to the situation. The result is a slowly unfolding web of filtered electronic tones over a tanpura-esque fundamental, possessing the unhurried, stately grandeur of an electronic raga. In “Chilean Drought”, three different variations of a text about a drought in Chile, each read by a different voice in a different style, are associated with the Beta, Alpha, and Theta brainwave bands. Alongside an insistent piano accompaniment, we hear a constantly shifting combination of the three vocal recordings controlled by the relative preponderance of each of the brainwave bands in the soloist whose brainwaves are being monitored. “Piano Etude I (Alpha)”, the earliest piece included here, is based on research into the link between Alpha brain wave production and the execution of repetitive motor tasks. As Rosenboom plays a very rapid, incessantly repeated pattern in both hands – deliberately designed to be difficult to execute without being in an alert, non-thinking state similar to that associated with strong Alpha brainwave production – two filters controlled by monitoring his brainwaves process the piano sound, moving gradually higher in frequency as the average Alpha amplitude increases, resulting in a hypnotic, constantly shifting blur of repeated notes reflected through the shimmering, watery lights of the filters. For this reissue, the original LP is supplemented with an additional LP containing an unreleased 1977 live recording of Rosenboom’s “On Being Invisible”, in which the composer himself performs on an array of electronics that are fed information from his brainwaves. Stretching out over 40 minutes, the piece begins in similar territory to “Portable Gold and Philosophers’ Stones” but eventually becomes far wilder, building up to pointillistic bleeps and dense layers of electronic fizz that unexpectedly cut to near-silence. As Rosenboom explains, the piece creates a situation in which the ‘performer’s active imaginative listening became one of the ways to play their instrument, as well as an active agent in how self-organizing musical forms might emerge.’ Enriched with archival images and new notes from the composer, this expanded reissue of Brainwave Music is essential listening for anyone interested in the history of live electronic music and alive to the possibilities it might still contain.

2 x LP Gatefold

Zohar's debut EP contains a wide spectrum of sound structures and complex moods. The 5 track industrial experiment variates from club driven breaks, electronics, ambient to dub.

For its first release of 2019, Sol Power Sound is pleased to welcome back Nenor -- formally Obas Nenor-- to the label family. Since his now-classic Color Soul EP on Sol Power Sound back in 2015, Nenor has gone on to release a string of hugely successful EPs on Heist, Whiskey Disco, and on his own imprint, Nenorion Music.

With the Future Ancestor EP, Nenor revisits the African-inspired textures that made the Color Soul EP unforgettable, but ventures further into the subterranean reaches. On "Tike Ye Ya Kende", Nenor teams up with Congolese-born vocalist Natalie Wamba for a rousing dancefloor heat-rock, with pulsing marimbas and hazy synths.

"Nova Man" is a straight-up banger with huge chugging bass, dubby vocal samples, and thrilling atmospherics.

"Ibe" dives head-first into the deep with tripped-out arpeggios, complex, layered percussion, and more of those gritty signature Nenor synths.

"Knwo" speeds ahead on a bruk-n-bass trajectory as a frenetic stomper that will inspire late-night dancers to throw crazy shapes.

With early support from Simbad, Soul Clap, Jacques Renault and more, the Future Ancestor EP is sure to be another staple in ever-growing Nenor and Sol Power Sound catalogs and will keep dark rooms ablaze all summer long.

As a winemaker hailing from the Palatinate, Florian Hollerith understands a thing or two about vintage. It's something that also comes through when you sample his music - rich, full bodied with just the right level of acidity. 2018 was already a good year with Ohrenzirkus featuring on both Sven Väth's Sound of the 19th Season mix CD as well as this year's Dots and Pearls vol. 5 compilation. Florian certainly announced his arrival on the scene in style, so it's only fair that he gets the chance to demonstrate his full range of skills on his very own Cocoon Recordings release. 2019 however, has a darker, more complex flavour...

Florian certainly knows a hookline when he finds one. On the EP's title track Perlas, he's working from the inside out with complex layers creating a vortex of sound. This dense sonic mesh is playful yet dangerous, with ethereal voices and jagged chants adding to the disorientation of the opening exchanges until the congas and skipping bassline give us something to hold onto. The dance floor melts under our feet as a raw, tripped out groove takes hold before the bass suddenly morphs into a brassy acid line that spreads its wings and soars. It's music for the headstrong, a celebration of the timeless tribal ceremonies that have come to define us.

Love Summer adds a contemporary twist to the melodic joys that drenched the early nineties in pure ecstasy. The soulful vocals soothe the mind as horn stabs punctuate the sensual groove, generating power and passion in equal measures. It's a straightforward approach, revolving around a familiar yet eminently seductive riff that just keeps on rolling, propelled forward by the force of its own momentum. There's no need to fuss when you hit on a winning formula like this.

More retro futurism abounds on Electro Indianer as arpeggiated bleeps usher in another vast, sprawling soundscape designed to induce a collective trance on the dance floor. Whistling, circular effects wash back and forth increasing the tension notch by notch as we're led deeper into the wormhole. Finally, the track deconstructs slightly, creating enough space for classic Casio-style bleeps and percussion to embellish a beautiful blissed out ending that trails off into the sun rise, as ancient Native American pipes pick out a haunting melody in the distance.

"Mattheis and Amandra collaborate for Ahrpe on their Ventriloquist Chant EP. While the Nous'klaer affiliated artist is commonly known for his tension building synth lines and rich atmospheres, the Ahrpe co-founder has turned his percussion and complex bass line programming into its very own distinctive art form. Their debut EP consists of four tracks, exploring the spectrum of their approach on synths and percussions, and displaying the result of a collaboration between two established artists that yet sound like they were meant to cross each other's paths.

Winner of the 2018 BASCA British Composer Award for Solo or Duo

"Bloody hell that was good" Tim McKinney, BBC Radio 3

Dominic Murcott – The Harmonic Canon

A music project featuring a specifically design half-tonne double bell, an array of rare percussion and two highly virtuosic percussionists.

Dominic Murcott is a composer, percussionist, curator and educator based in London. Much of his work combines acoustic instruments with computers, film and other media. He has a continuing interest in work that is personalised for specific performers and has created acoustic/electronic pieces for trumpeter Noel Langley, percussionist Joby Burgess, clarinetist Joan Enric Lluna, harpist Sioned Williams and the Elysian String Quartet among many others. He has taken an unusual path to his current position, starting out as a self taught musician, his early career included playing drums with no-wave pioneers 'Blurt' and composing for the highly successful V-Tol Dance Company throughout their ten-year history. Changing from drums to vibraphone he became a member of art-pop band The High Llamas and has played on records by many influential artists including Stereolab and Pavement.

Created in collaboration with sculptor Marcus Vergette, The Harmonic Canon is both the name of the piece and the double bell that was custom-made for it. Comprising of two bells tuned a semitone apart, the bell was created using Finite Element Analysis, a type of structural analysis that determines the vibration patterns of the bell, manipulating its harmonic series to create a complex series of frequencies that make up a note. Part One is made up of rapid, high energy, virtuosic passages, articulated with the ominous striking of the bell while the second part contrasts with a single resonant tone that evolves and shifts over time. This is part of nonclassical's 21 Minutes series, a new project commissioning 21-minute pieces.

The piece won the BASCA British Composer Award for Solo or Duo. Premiered in 2018, the piece has had radio play on BBC Radio 3, broadcast from Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival.

Following on from big recent releases from Neue Grafik & Oliver Night, CoOp Presents Sivey, with an all-new double-header of heat, 'Nobody Else' and 'Somebody Samebody'.

For those that don't know, Manchester-based Sivey became a player in the future beats scene a couple years back, releasing music with the LA-based collective Soulection, as a solo artist and via collaborations with Evil Needle, which came to fruition after a series of online beat battles, as well as releases and remixes with labels like Astral Black and Ninja Tune.

His last wave of output was greeted with enthusiasm by fans of soulful beats championed by artist collectives such as HW&W and Darker Than Wax, and saw Sivey subsequently spinning at events across the UK, and perform shows as far afield as Los Angeles and Tokyo.

Rooted in hip hop production, Sivey's largely instrumental tracks have brought together elements of millennial R&B, neo-soul, UK garage, jazz and 80s funk. In the few years since his previous releases, Sivey has continued to experiment with new ways of exploiting his diverse influences in his productions. As his listening habits became increasingly orientated around jazz and obscure 70s fusion records, his own productions began to reflect the shift.

The recent resurgence of the broken beat movement was something that also inspired him, admiring the balance between musicality and danceability of the genre. He made his first experiments with bruk in 2017 and found that it mixed perfectly with what he'd already been creating. Eager to share the results with the world, it made perfect sense for his first offerings of this ilk to find a home here with us at CoOp Presents.

These two tracks exemplify the ever-evolving progression of Sivey's sonics; the familiar deep keys and synth sounds of his previous productions are there, but nestled alongside more uptempo grooves, and the lush rhythmic complexity of bruk. Tied in with his love for jazz fusion, 'Somebody Samebody' sees Sivey reinterpret a late 70's track by Japanese guitarist, Kazumi Watanabe; this one also enlisting the help of Trian Kayhatu on keys. As well as the original tracks, prolific Selectors Assemble crew member Danvers adds in his own tasty heads-down version of 'Nobody Else', and label co-founder IG Culture (who recently received a Worldwide Award for 'lifetime achievement'!) provides a dope bruk-funk flip of 'Somebody Samebody' to close out the set.

Koryu Budo Records is a new techno label based in Madrid. This is their second release, as for the first release, it will only be released on vinyl (300 copies).

This EP named ‘The Last Gift’ has been written and produced by HD Substance, the Spanish producer, DJ, journalist, owner of SUBtl recordings and teacher at The Bass Valley. 2018 marks his 30 year anniversary in electronic music and he keeps on playing techno all over the world, releasing techno in a constant basis, teaching techno at The Bass Valley, writing techno for Beatburguer, Clubbingspain, Pole Group or Falling Ethics and releasing other people’s techno in his own label SUBtl.

The EP opens with "No Body Cares", a complex and timeless track, an orgy of analog psychedelia, the sequences that seem extracted from old clocks are mixed together to offer a hypnotic and enveloping sensation.

In second place, we find "Red Lady", pure and raw techno that is nourished with a devilish bass line, that immerses us in a sinister and dark universe. Direct simplicity.

"Red Lady_Sarcoma version" follows the line of the original track, though the main bass line disappears and in its replaced by syncopated sounds that take away some of the aggressiveness of the track but nourish it with more groove.

A work of great maturity, which shows this producer as one of the great names of techno.

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1
Breach One
9' 36''
2
Interlude One
3' 26''
3
Breach Two
7' 05''
4
Breach Three
9' 32''
5
Interlude Two
2' 29''
6
Breach Four
7' 34''
Breach dives into chaotic systems and reflects on the recent events of protests and riots in the world, exploring the build up and release of tension and energy in a new form of pitch black metal electronics and polyrhythmic structures.

Zeno van den Broek is a Dutch-born, Copenhagen-based composer and artist. Van den Broek works in a multi-sensory way to research and express physical, social and acoustic notions. He utilises audiovisual means to create site and concept specific works. This trans-disciplinary method has a strong conceptual foundation, originating from a background in architecture, which enables Zeno to comprehend and reveal the richness and complexity of spatial, visceral and physical perception. He works with a characteristic artistic language based on minimalist and fundamental elements such as sine waves, lines, noise and grids.

Italian electronic music mastermind ABYSSY and the Marseille underground hero DONARRA, share for the ALLEY VERSION's 4th release the split E.P. "CLOSE".

ABYSSY aka Mayo Soulomon has, over the years, released records of great interest for Mathematics, New Interplanetary Melodies and many other labels, marked by Detroit and Chicago influences reworked in his personal complex cut.
DONARRA comes to ALLEY VERSION after two beautiful E.P. for Skylax Records and La Chinerie, and recently spotted with its synth-dark-industrial-punk moniker Cardinal & Nun, on L.I.E.S.

The opening ABYSSY's "Close To Me", an obscure rough track totally jacked with the legendary rhythm sampler E-MU SP1200, is an instant cult.
In the following "Lower Michigan Ave", a hypnotic dark plot of analog synthesizers runs on a leftfield rhythm cut, while a whiny female voice condenses the air.

First track of DONARRA's side, "Nostalgie Futuriste", is a surreal sound voyage where are merged Chicago House and Zen atmospheres.
In the culminating Detroit style banger "Rivières Lumineuses", the trippy movements of percussions and synthetic melodies are pure magic.

Exclusively on limited 12" vinyl.

For the second release on the Galaxiid imprint, a label of electronic music archeology and quality, we are transported to the strange sonic world of an elusive 90s pioneer. Solar X's 1997 album X-Rated will be released for the first time on vinyl, as well as reissued digitally, with new artwork by the Japanese artist Keiichi Tanaami. Two worlds connecting sonically, visually and culturally.

Solar X enjoyed a burgeoning career in post-Perestroika Moscow making playful, low-tech electronica from Soviet analogue instruments, which he masterfully configured to forge animated compositions and dancefloor rarities. Fascinated by chaos and complexity, his music explores the ways in which our minds can be manipulated by structure - an endeavour quite plausibly linked to his other career as a lecturer and researcher of AI, information theory and cognitive science, his interest in which was in turn triggered by his young experiments in computer music.

Solar X gained international attention at a time when Russia was (quite unfairly) seen as a vacuum for electronic music, but was exploding in the period of piracy, poverty and freedom following the collapse of the USSR. Young Russians had benefited from the soviet education system and there was a strong DIY computer programming and music scene, fuelled by hackers, gear freaks and party animals. Viewed from today, the album is reborn at a time of further political and social strife, which many see as fuelling the huge creativity and radical thinking of modern Russia's young creatives.

X-Rated treats tempo and form as fluid concepts, administering sudden changes to its sonic landscape with disorienting effect, underlain with a subtle dose of humour and experimentation. Downtempo trip-hop sits alongside frenetic IDM and blistering electro, all bound together by peculiar melodic inflections and lively distortions. Warm, trippy harmonies and robotic synths are offset with angular drums, shifting erratically through moods and genres with cunning intent. Much like his contemporaries from the era, it's his ability to breathe life into a humble production setup that makes his music so compelling some twenty one years later.

The track titles are from a book of call girl cards in London phone booths, that reached the artist in Moscow in 1995. "I liked the titles from these cards, which were self-promoting and offering pleasure (e.g. "Mistress awaits you"). So, I thought since my tracks also offered some kind of pleasure, they might as well advertise this through their titles.'

Label head Nina Kraviz was introduced to the work of the 83 year old sensei Keiichi Tanaami by Ukawa Naoshiro, founder of Dommune in Tokyo, one of the brightest figureheads for the arts in Japan, responsible for the graphic design of the cover. In September 2017 Nina played for the opening of Tanaami-san's first exhibition in Moscow at Gary Tatintsian Gallery. Nina performed a live sound palette, to accompany the looping 7 minute animation, of experimental music from the Soviet Union, Russian pioneers of electronic music like Species Of Fishes and SolarX, Soviet-time pioneer Lev Termen, Kuryochin, avant-guard rock mixed with some Stockhausen and just pure abstract sounds, as well as treasured artists like Biogen.

Tanaami's illustrative work has strong sexual elements, so out of the five art pieces Nina selected and commissioned for Galaxiid, the first fits perfectly for 'X-rated'. The vertical line of text on the left is the traditional form for Japanese covers of foreign releases. The cover, together with the accompanying poster and sticker, are printed in Japan to ensure the highest print quality and purity of the colours.

Anadol is a psychedelic synth folk project by Gözen Atila, a Turkish sound artist and photographer based in Berlin. Her third album Uzun Havalar is based on collective improvisations of middle eastern folk songs called „uzun hava“. They turn out as rich, atmospheric synth ballads. A diverse roster of improvising musicians creates their fascinating complexity. Anadol recorded them during extensive sessions in Istanbul. You can hear drummers laughing and playing guitars, composers howling, announcements in French and screams in no language, record collectors playing oscillators, and trumpets through spacious echoes. Anadol represents Gözen Atila’s liberation from a rather academic approach to electronic composition which she pursued during her music technology studies in Istanbul. She calls her education the „darkness of serious music“ where she first tried to belong, then to break free with the help of lo-fi synth pop. As a producer of radio plays and an expert field recording artist she has developed a distinct sense of timing, editing and sound design. Her Anadol project walks in the footsteps of lone synth experimentalists like Bruce Haack and The Space Lady with their childlike curiosity for electronic sounds, pushing the boundaries of minimal equipment. On Uzun Havalar she translates her experimental background into these floating folk ballads. The album was originally released on tape via Kinship in 2018.

Alex Jann returns to Censor for the label’s second excursion into the unknown with three direct communications and a mix of the title track from Rotterdam’s Animistic Beliefs.

The EP’s title track Computoid.Transmission.X is a pulsating drum workout laced with dystopian pads, laser-cut leads, anxious bass lines and an evocative mutant vocal from an A.I. system gaining consciousness.

Animistic Beliefs create a darker texture in their Electric Eye Mix of the title track, sending the vocal and lead sound straight through the stratosphere via complex bass and arp phrases that filter and stalk around the lead bringing a deeper and more contrasting A2.

Firewall Culture comes as an intoxicating trip on the B1 with off-world FX, feral acid lines and a spacetime-defying style of vocal that haunt Alex’s work.

Jupiter Storms on the B2 ascends the EP to a higher plane with deep washes created from evolving pads adding space and movement to the final track of the release, all accented with glacial micro drops, syncopated beats and tight trickling synth sections. The release was mastered by Keith Tenniswood at Curve Pusher.

Architectural returns to Wolfskuil Records with 4 exceptional cuts on his 'Beautiful Life After Death' twelve inch. Complex sound design and a warm and open atmosphere go hand in hand with the Spanish studio wizzard's sonic world. From lush ambient in the title track, the addictive groove in 'Piedras' to wobbly modular bass excursions in 'Luminous Path' and moody textures from the abyss in 'Gris'. Architectural covers a lot of ground in just 4 tracks. Diverse and coherent at the same time, few artists have such a recognizable sound signature as the Barcelona artist.

Electronic Body Music, abbreviated as EBM, is a term whose origin stems from the Belgian group Front 242, chosen to describe their electronic music; cold and dancing, free of the dominant influences of the time. Powerful, cold and minimalist electronic rhythms were the hallmarks of this new genre.

The movement quickly garnered followers with the British group Nitzer Ebb but also in the rest of Europe, with the likes of Borghesia and The Neon Judgment, later signed to labels like PIAS, Antler- Subway, Wax Trax!, Mute, Off Beat, Zoth Ommog, Pendragon and Metropolis.

EBM’s popularity grew rapidly in the underground scene during the 1980s and early 1990s, especially in Europe, before breaking through in the rest of the world, also influencing the subsequent electro-industrial scene.
‘Dancing In Darkness: EBM, Black Synth & Dark Beats From The 80s’ - to give it its full title - is a compilation of some of these bands; bands that changed contemporary music in terms of ideology, politics and aesthetics.

CD version in digipack with poster booklet. 2LP version in gatefold sleeve.

oe Budden is one of the mainstays of rap. Originally hailing from New Jersey, Budden entered the game after heating up the streets via mixtapes that made the rounds, and eventually caught the attention of Def Jam recordings. After a successful stint there, and a Grammy Award for “Best Male Rap solo Performance” for “Pump It Up”, Budden parted ways and soon after formed the supergroup, “Slaughterhouse” alongside Royce Da 5’9”,Joell Ortiz, Crooked I, which were signed to Eminem’s, Shady Records. After a slew of releases and starring 2 successful shows on VH1; “Love & Hip-Hop: New York”, and “Couples Therapy”, Joe Budden’s brand has never been bigger. Throughout the summer he dominated headlines and timelines via an open and running dialogue with Drake, a dialogue that has resulted in millions of Soundcloud and Youtube streams. With momentum at its peak, Joe Budden returns with his highly anticipated new solo album Rage & The Machine.

Rage and the Machine, is produced entirely by super producer, AraabMuzik and features the likes of Tory Lanez, Fabulous, Joell Ortiz, and more. The music, as Joe describes it is for listeners who still appreciate lyricism with an updated twist. Backed by AraabMuzik’s sonic landscape, the album delves into Joe’s life, thoughts, and perspectives. Budden, never one to shy away from the spotlight announced the album via Complex by jumping out of a plane.