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After the 2020 album "Lieder Für Geometrische Stunden", Sankt Otten finally make us happy again with a new release at the beginning of 2022. "Symmetrie Und Wahnsinn" (Symmetry and madness) fits here skillfully, both creatively and musically, in an album series with geometric context.

The album starts unusually buoyant with "Hymne Der Melancholischen Programmierer" (Hymn for sentimental programmers). A Kraut-Pop pearl, which could go on forever with its Motorik swing and with its catchy melody the track doesn't come across as melancholic as the song title predicts. You have to listen twice to not succumb to the illusion that it was composed in Düsseldorf at the end of the seventies. Here (and on the track "Sei Symmetrisch Zu Mir"), Sankt Otten were supported in the studio by drummer friend DIRK PELLMANN.

The drum machine in rumbling funky mode. "Die Glücklichen Unglücklichen", the secret hit of the album? They bend the beat into geometric shapes, let the bass play in circles and cover the song with ghostly choirs. The echo of a spinett-like sound overlays the sound, spitting out a deceptively cuddly dream world.

The 10 minute long "Die Ordnung Des Lärms" could be called an Ambient-Kraut symphony without hesitation. An enormous swelling to ecstasy, a guitar sings distantly in the background. Silence. Synthetic strings pave the way and are supported by choirs. A crackle that suggests a rhythm until it is taken over by a drum computer in the main part of the track. Bombastic mountains of synthesizers pile up and yet a catchy melody finds its way through this mishmash of hypnotic electronics. Fourth movement - Kosmische-choirs in suspension over a bass synth and an Ebow guitar. Is this already Prog-Rock? The question doesn't arise, in the end everything merges into reverb. "Luftspiegelung Der Sentimentalitäten" begins cautiously with a gentle sequence and a discreet kick drum. The mini-Moog sounds like a guitar. Anyway. A surface floats by and returns, layers and shapes build up. At last, everything melts into perfect harmony with a plaintive-sounding synth. This track was composed as a stripped back reprise of the first track from the last album "Sentimentale Sequenzen". A hypnotic Motorik-beat of an 808 that encourages head nodding and could almost be danceable. True to style with warm analog 80s electronic sounds and a loose echo guitar. This is "Angekommen In Der letzten Reihe". Man and machine hand in hand as a homogeneous musical unit and the connection of tradition and vision.

Sankt Otten like images of infinity. In the religious sense of meditative mantras, or also in the mathematical sense of an elongated curve that eventually returns to its starting point. "Bis Das Helle Licht Uns Holt" goes exactly in this direction with its classical use of sequencers and a sound carpet of choirs. Sound worlds that, through a clever repetitiveness, barely noticeably guard the constant changes in the compositional mesh like a secret and only reveal what is to be discovered by listening closely and letting it be seen. Such a thing is probably called Berlin School?

The Osnabrück duo Sankt Otten, founded in 1999, has been releasing on Denovali since 2009. With their now 12th album they give us again a gem of timeless instrumental music. The holy trinity of Krautrock, Ambient and contemporary Electronics, but always stylistically confident and unmistakable Sankt Otten. For the mastering New York based RAFAEL ANTON IRISARRI could be won. Also with the cover layout again good taste is proven. As part two of a cover series, this extraordinary die-cut cover artwork was again created by designer DANIEL CASTREJÓN.

After a 7 year hiatus Myor are finally back with the fourth instalment of their Tropical Heat series. The formula: 6 tracks by 6 different producers, spanning a wide array of styles and genres.

Motëm and Light Club both provide the half tempo vibes, harking back to the label's skweee and hip hop roots.

Breda native Muxi gets dusty and wobbly on a PO-33 tip with his off-kilter shuffler Strung, whereas Alex Lay-Far lays down some serious mid tempo breakbeat heat, giving praise to early 90s hardcore and golden era trip hop alike.

Finally, new school jungle wizard Sempra and label head honcho Coco Bryce come correct with some 160 cuteness on Touch and Closer respectively.

On their third album »Constant Connection«, West Australian-based Erasers create hypnotic compositions of synth, guitar and voice, evoking the vast expanse of their native landscape and the shrouded emotions behind the senses. Comprising of vocalist, synth player Rebecca Orchard and Rupert Thomas on guitar and synths, Erasers have developed their earthly kosmische music into an open language based on drone, variation in repetition and minimal song structures. Based in Perth, regarded one of the most isolated cities in the world, Orchard and Thomas’s music has brewed in the city’s vibrant DIY/Outsider community and evolved into a meditation on landscape, power, the shadow-world of human emotions and stream of consciousness. »Constant Connection«, with its waves of sound and chant-like vocals evokes a trance that suggests an infinity just beyond the senses.

At the heart of each Erasers composition is the interplay between the instrumentation, played with stoic restraint and recorded directly with minimal effects and the transcendental states induced in the listener. It’s a magic that is performed in plain sight and all the more powerful for it. The recognisable vibrato of Fender Rhodes keyboards and simple drum machine loops, the subtle strands of analog synth melodies that snake in and out of the ear, above all the towering encantations of Rebecca Orchard’s undeniably Australian-accented hymns; all of this is presented with minimal ostentation and yet it instantly engenders a dream state, hints at an infinity beyond the material.

Shades of John Cale’s 70s work with Nico, early 70s German synthesists Kluster and even fellow Australians Fabulous Diamonds can be seen as stylistic touchstones for Constant Connection. Where Nico hinted at the macabre and gothic, Rebecca Orchard’s similarly gliding vocal is more zoned in to a kind of oceanic openness, with words becoming chants and spells that suggested themselves to the singer during recording sessions. It’s this hidden hand of improvisatory, automatic writing that lends a sense of expanse to the music. On opener I Understand, while the lyrics might hint at discontent the emotional spectrum it opens up is far more rich and complex, as layered as the waves of droning chords that are the bedrock of each Erasers track. The title track talks of flow, continuum and balance, the protagonist in the song seemingly weightless, gently pulled through a walking reality that borders on dream. In Erasers’ world, it seems, the borders between reality and dream, consciousness and sub-consciousness are blurred and eroded.

On Constant Connection, Erasers’ music might be deeply evocative of landscape but it’s never clear which one. The vast, open terrain that surrounds Perth is dusty, burned by the sun into desert and Constant Connection feels like the product of the heat and relative isolation, the altered states these elements can create. But it’s these altered states of mind that appear to be the real landscape described by Erasers. It’s a landscape that’s hazy, in-and-out of focus, with emotional undertows pushing and pulling you into a weightlessness. On album closer Easy To See the band dispense with percussion all together, field recordings of the water at the edge of their native city ushering in two duetting synths. Orchard’s vocal undulates with the flow, viewing both the geographical and psychological landscape from the perspective of a consciousness not bound by bodies and from a timescale measured in millennia. The album ends as it begins, with field recordings of the real world that the music seeps out from, temporarily, before regressing back into the other realm it feels like it belongs to.

Between these two recorded hints of reality, Erasers manifest a deeply sensual dreamscape that constantly feels like it’s dissolving at its seams. A desert psychedelia emanating from a real world that might not be that real in the first place.

Elders is the debut release from Ensemble Nist-Nah, a nine-piece percussion group led by Nantes-based Australian drummer and percussionist Will Guthrie. The diverse group of French musicians that make up Ensemble Nist-Nah – whose collective experience encompasses traditional Gamelan performance, contemporary composition, noise, jazz, and everything in between – perform on drum kits, traditional and junk percussion, and a complete set of Javanese Gamelan instruments. Though building on the foundations of Guthrie’s solo work with Gamelan instruments (Nist-Nah, BT057) and primarily performing his compositions, Ensemble Nist-Nah is a collective endeavour, propelled by a breathtaking enthusiasm that has seen the ensemble manage to rehearse, perform, and even tour Europe during the Covid-19 pandemic.

From the first seconds of opening track ‘Geni / Tirta’, it becomes immediately obvious that this is no dry academic exercise or exotic indulgence. Rapid arpeggiated figures are propelled by manically busy kit drumming while slow-motion melodic lines float above. After a series of abrupt tempo changes and fragmented unison passages that crossbreed the rhythmic intensity of the Balinese Kecak with the joyride of an Ornette Coleman head, the music slows to a monumental groove, equal parts Javanese court music and Dark Magus. Another sequence of thrilling divagations leads us to the unexpected guest appearance of acclaimed vocalist Jessica Kenney, who elaborates a haunting Javanese Bedhaya across a spacious backdrop of massive gong hits, shimmering cymbals, rustling bells, and gritty textures.

The remaining pieces that make up Elders explore a dizzying variety of approaches, from the shifting rapid-fire muted textures of ‘Overtime’ to the ghostly bowed tones and ominous swells of the title piece (developed from a track on Guthrie’s solo Nist-Nah release), which gradually builds into waves of shuddering low resonance and asynchronous percussive clicks like a haunted clock mechanism. On the aptly titled ‘Rollin’, virtuosic twin drum kits criss-cross errant metallophone patterns in propulsive polyrhythms, while ‘Planeker’ manages to achieve a bizarrely effective fusion of Harry Partch and Autechre. Arriving bedecked in beautiful monochrome images of gongs drawn by ensemble member Charles Dubois, Elders is a feast for the ears: music that burrows deep into timbral and rhythmic possibility while possessing an intoxicating physicality and revelling in the joy of collective performance.

The LP includes a bonus track taken from the actual movie soundtrack, but not present on the original LP. The track feature Audrey Hepburn on vocals with orchestral backing. "This effervescent soundtrack for Blake Edwards' adaption of Truman Capote's wistful novella propelled Mancini into the major league of Hollywood composers. Though there were other jazz-oriented arrangers working
in Hollywood at the time, none possessed Mancini's imagination and skill in orchestration." - All Music

I’m gonna love you from the soft spot
Where the fruit begins to rot

“This area of the throat,” says Chelsea Jade, resting three fingers roughly where her neck meets her chest. “It’s particularly soft, and it's connected ... it's halfway between the heart and the mouth. And that's an interesting place of vulnerability.”

Soft Spot, the Los Angeles-based New Zealand artist’s second album, dwells somewhere between feeling and expression, certainty and doubt. It ventures beyond the exploration of delusions of grandeur that formed the focus of the critically acclaimed Personal Best (2018), and simultaneously promotes and undermines romance, specifically, in a more solemn way.

“Less glib,” offers Jade, who has opened for Lorde and Cat Power among others. Still deliciously glib in places: “Give your worst my best,” she sings on the wryly antagonizing, bass-heavy “Tantrum in Duet.” Soft Spot’s big pop tracks go hard on the interpersonal, physical and amorous, inviting the listener to entertain flirtation, lust, sex, even the experience, rare during its recording in 2020, of being in a room with more than three other people.

With the reinforcement of composition and arrangement by Leroy James Clampitt (Justin Bieber) and production by Brad Hale (Now, Now), Jade conjures up atmospheres conducive to feelings of place and potential. Created during a once-in-a-century pandemic, the album is an evocative assembly of found parts: recordings of sentences and asides delivered by friends, the sound of rain in LA, or the distant voice of bureaucracy against a backdrop of hold music. Seeming choruses were produced to give that impression, layered submission by individual vocal submission. On “Best Behavior,” the record’s danciest track, this illusory energy reaches its euphoric height.

The record transports the listener from speaker-side at a club, to wandering a party, to sitting at an open window with a pianist nearby. It shifts effortlessly from expansive sold-out-show sound to ethereal, twinkling detail. The writing on Soft Spot outwits even its clever, resourceful production, the lyrics a testament to the multi award-winning songwriter’s belief in the pop format as a venue for prose.

Neil Young announces the release of the fourth installment in his Official Release Series (ORS): a box set that includes his classic ‘80s records Hawks & Doves, Re•ac•tor, and This Note’s for You, as well as his Eldorado EP, previously released only in Japan and Australia. Both vinyl and CD box sets will be available for pre-order today and out on April 29th.

The ORS Vol 4 collects an eclectic set of decade-spanning sounds. Hawks & Doves (1980) revisits his folk roots and explores some of his most country-leaning offerings; the blistering Re•ac•tor (1981) showcases a stomping set of heavy, overdriven rock with Crazy Horse; and This Note’s for You (1988) casts Young as a big band leader, belting out intricately arranged blues. The Eldorado EP (1989) is full of feral distortion and earthy crunch featuring Young backed by The Restless (Chad Cromwell and Rick Rosas). It includes two thundering tracks — “Cocaine Eyes” and “Heavy Love”— not available on any other album.

ORS Vol 4 collects a large swath of his diverse and compelling ‘80s work, testifying to the legendary songwriter’s gift for sonic shape-shifting.

A year from his latest release on Figure, Arthur Robert clocks back in with two full EPs.

The first one is a jam-packed 5-tracker, sporting full-on peak time thrill rides such as electrifying elated opener Mastermind or its more brawny brother, the bellowing beast that is stab-driven roller Relentless. But x31 features also Robert’s more introspective side, be it the glowing experimental excursion of What We Do With Our Time or the dreamy half-time stepper Cosmic Traveler. Fans of his more hypnotic techno productions will find joy in the modular magic of Rising, hinting at what’s to come on x32…

Swiss musician Delia Meshlir didn’t realize what her voice could do when she started out playing music. Through such groups as the drudge-rock Cheyenne and experimental Primitive Trails, Meshlir let the music lead her singing along. It wasn’t until she began writing the songs for Calling The Unknown that she started allowing her vocals to preside. Unbounded by structure, Delia Meshlir’s first full-length under her name brings layers of beauty, intensity and strength, all coming to a head with her striking vocal delivery.

Having acquired a stocking job at Irascible, a label based in Lausanne, Switzerland, dedicated to promoting local talent, Meshlir had the ideal launching point for her music. Now, in coordination with Irascible, Ba Da Bing will be releasing Calling The Unknown in North America.

Meshlir lost her grandmother while preparing the album, and many of the tracks reflect seeking a path through grief with love. On “A River”, she explores where feelings can exist when they are for someone who has passed. She sings: “I’m calling the unknown / but no one remains.” As the first song on the album, it serves as a perfect introduction, with refined drumming, reverb-wrapped guitars and tasteful saxophone lines. At command of a full band, Meshlir never abuses the opportunity, often having members hold back in restraint and add mere touches of color to her songs. However, when more urgency is required, she adapts beautifully, as on the raw and driven track “Dirty Colors”. Ultimately, the album is an invitation to peace after suffering.

Delia Meshlir is a trained visual artist who is creating her own videos and doing her own artwork for Calling The Unknown. It is a singular artistic work with stunning breadth.

2022 Repress

After His 12" On Oye Black Label Martin Georgi Is Back On His Own Imprint Quiet Elegance. Two Sampled Based Deep House Tracks With His Unique Mpc Style. Vocal Parts Combined With Dusty Beat Programming Brings The Perfect Soulful House Flavor. 9 To 5 Is Killing Me!

Frankel & Harper deliver the appropriately named "Return EP" on their council work imprint. following on from the "Crouching Tiger EP", CWR005 sticks to the signature Council Work sound, bringing together a fusion of UK Garage, Drum 'n Bass, Breakbeat, Dub and many other flavours. The 3 original tracks feature in the shape of Counter Strike, Armshouse and Return, with the release rounded off with an infectious, stripped back remix of the title track from Trule head honcho Al Wootton. From all out dance floor destroyers, to deeper and more cinematic textures, this collection of beats should easily find a home in many record bags.

Toro y Moi siebtes Studioalbum MAHAL ist die bisher wohl kühnste und faszinierendste Reise des musikalischen Masterminds Chaz Bear. Mit einer weiten Spannbreite zwischen Genres und Sounds - vom zotteligen Psychedelic Rock der 1960er & 1970er hin zum luftigen Sound des Mod-Post-Punks der 90er-Jahre - nimmt das Album die Hörer*innen mit auf eine musikalische Expedition, in der sie im Rücksitz von Bears philippinischen Jeepney, der auch das Albumcover ziert, Platz nehmen können. So ist MAHAL ein unverwechselbares Toro y Moi-Erlebnis, welches in Verbindung zu seinen vorigen Werken steht und dennoch einen ganz neuen Weg einschlägt, wie es nur Bear tun kann. Seit der Veröffentlichung des bahnbrechenden Electronic Pop-Albums Causers Of This 2009, hat Toro y Mois Alben stets die Idee, was sein Sound sein könnte, weiterentwickelt. Dennoch findet sich in Bears Backkatalog nur wenig, das einen auf die Deep Groove-Exkursion auf seinem bisher vielfältigsten Album MAHAL vorbereiten könnte. Mit den ersten Tönen des Albums werden wir direkt in den Beifahrersitz gesetzt, umgeben von den Motorengeräuschen des Jeeps und bereit für die Fahrt, die Chaz und seine Gefährten für uns geplant haben. Einige der 13 Tracks auf MAHAL - das Wort für Liebe in der auf den Philippinen gesprochenen Sprache Tagalog - finden ihre Anfänge in der Zeit um das deutlich rockigere What For? aus dem Jahr 2015. So liefert das neue Album eine ganz klare Antwort und spannt den Bogen: What For? - For Love. MAHAL wurde größtenteils letztes Jahr in Bears Studio in Oakland in Kollaboration mit Künstler*innen wie Sofie Royer, Unknown Mortal Orchestras Ruban Neilson, Alan Palomeo von Neon Indian sowie The Mattson 2 fertiggestellt. "I wanted to make a record that featured more musicians on it than any other record of mine," erklärt Bear. "To have them live on that record feels grounded, bringing a communal perspective to the table." Im Resultat ist MAHAL üppig und voller Überraschungen - sei es durch das locker lässige "The Loop", das an Sly and The Family Stones erinnern lässt oder dem elastischen Psych-Rock bei "Foreplay" sowie der schwindelerregenden Mulatu Astatke-Anlehnung bei "Last Year".

Toro y Moi siebtes Studioalbum MAHAL ist die bisher wohl kühnste und faszinierendste Reise des musikalischen Masterminds Chaz Bear. Mit einer weiten Spannbreite zwischen Genres und Sounds - vom zotteligen Psychedelic Rock der 1960er & 1970er hin zum luftigen Sound des Mod-Post-Punks der 90er-Jahre - nimmt das Album die Hörer*innen mit auf eine musikalische Expedition, in der sie im Rücksitz von Bears philippinischen Jeepney, der auch das Albumcover ziert, Platz nehmen können. So ist MAHAL ein unverwechselbares Toro y Moi-Erlebnis, welches in Verbindung zu seinen vorigen Werken steht und dennoch einen ganz neuen Weg einschlägt, wie es nur Bear tun kann. Seit der Veröffentlichung des bahnbrechenden Electronic Pop-Albums Causers Of This 2009, hat Toro y Mois Alben stets die Idee, was sein Sound sein könnte, weiterentwickelt. Dennoch findet sich in Bears Backkatalog nur wenig, das einen auf die Deep Groove-Exkursion auf seinem bisher vielfältigsten Album MAHAL vorbereiten könnte. Mit den ersten Tönen des Albums werden wir direkt in den Beifahrersitz gesetzt, umgeben von den Motorengeräuschen des Jeeps und bereit für die Fahrt, die Chaz und seine Gefährten für uns geplant haben. Einige der 13 Tracks auf MAHAL - das Wort für Liebe in der auf den Philippinen gesprochenen Sprache Tagalog - finden ihre Anfänge in der Zeit um das deutlich rockigere What For? aus dem Jahr 2015. So liefert das neue Album eine ganz klare Antwort und spannt den Bogen: What For? - For Love. MAHAL wurde größtenteils letztes Jahr in Bears Studio in Oakland in Kollaboration mit Künstler*innen wie Sofie Royer, Unknown Mortal Orchestras Ruban Neilson, Alan Palomeo von Neon Indian sowie The Mattson 2 fertiggestellt. "I wanted to make a record that featured more musicians on it than any other record of mine," erklärt Bear. "To have them live on that record feels grounded, bringing a communal perspective to the table." Im Resultat ist MAHAL üppig und voller Überraschungen - sei es durch das locker lässige "The Loop", das an Sly and The Family Stones erinnern lässt oder dem elastischen Psych-Rock bei "Foreplay" sowie der schwindelerregenden Mulatu Astatke-Anlehnung bei "Last Year".

Drawing on a diverse range of influences, Quimbie’s debut album ‘Sunday Fiction’ is a sophisticated journey through myriad grooves. From dancefloor to home listening vibes, it’s a riot of warm chords, dusty samples, booming bass and infectious rhythms. The mysterious producer has managed that difficult feat of crafting a ‘dance’ record that works outside of a club context, imbuing his tracks with a charisma and vibrancy that appeals to the mind as much as the body.

A perfect complement of analog synths and drum machines make the perfect bed for Quimbie’s magpie-like sample selection, and the overall effect is a wistful, engrossing record that you’ll want to come back to again and again.

Mall Girl: «Superstar» Jansen Records 2022 «Superstar», the debut record from Norwegian art-pop outfit Mall Girl, represents an exciting new chapter for the buzzed-about band. The release follows a string of successful singles, including their 2018 track “Slay Queen,” which introduced them as an act to watch in the alt-pop arena. The chaotic year of 2020 brought a string of infectious, vibey singles, including “My Sweet Mall Girl” and the fierce “Bad Girl." Members Iver Armand Tandsether, Hannah Veslemøy Narvesen, Eskild Myrvoll and Bethany Forseth-Reichberg were forced to get creative when the pandemic hit, sidelining best-laid plans to flesh out some songs before heading into the studio together. "Because of COVID regulations and the four of us living in two different cities, we changed the way we worked with the songs quite radically in the months leading up to the studio recording,” Narvesen says. "We’ve always been very oriented towards the live performance of the songs, including when we compose them together in our rehearsal space. That way of working has led to some challenges when recording, as you end up listening to the songs in a different manner and might figure out you should have done everything differently." While others put their creative endeavors on hold, Mall Girl opted to try something different. Many of the songs on «Superstar» were tracks that the band regularly performed, but they wanted to seize the opportunity to evolve their sound even more. “We actually ended up ‘remote composing’ big parts of the album, with everyone working from their own home studio and bouncing ideas back and forth,” Narvesen explains. "This was a very welcome change of workflow for us, and it lead to us making some songs which probably wouldn’t have turned out that way had we been together in the same room." This experimental shift in their creative process led to the creation of songs bursting with infectious hooks, hypnotizing grooves and punchy lyrics.

The Line Is A Curve is about letting go. The core of the record is that the pressures we face do not always have to be heavy burdens, but can be reframed; the more pressure a person is under, the greater the possibility for release.

The album plays like a chronicle of pressures - the mind-numbing pursuit of a comfortable life, the eternal striving for more, the pressures of the city, the country, the times. The pressures of maintaining relationships, of battling illness, addiction, poor mental health, the vacuous life of our online selves. As we move through these chronicles though, the mood brightens. The musicality becomes more expansive as the lyrical horizon broadens and we glimpse coastlines, high streets, scrap yards, train stations in the rain; the entire album begins to let go. We encounter the contributions of artists who I love and admire, guest vocalists and instrumentalists, and so we defeat the sense of isolation felt in the opening track with a sense of deeply connected community. More Pressure, the penultimate song, is the essence of the whole album and the epiphany that leads to Grace, which is a prayer, a surrendering; ‘Please move me, please move through me, please unscrew me, please loosen me up.’ But once we get to the end of Grace, and the album, we loop back to the start – to ‘Kiss off the day with a mute mouth. Pass the commute like I can die faster than you.’ Because no matter how much a person grapples with, realises, deeply understands, about life and their place in it, we still wake up in the morning back to square one. Life isn’t solved the minute you figure something out about it. It’s a daily operation to increase your resilience, cultivate a deeper acceptance, let go of what’s chasing you and lean in to the pressures. It’s cyclical, as I believe all things are. And instead of trying to fight the cycles, this album asks us to surrender to them. To let go.

These general themes, of acceptance, resilience, surrender are also about where I’m at in my personal life, in my journey towards a greater acceptance of myself as an artist and as a human being. Being more honest with the world and my community about who I am and letting go of some heavy heavy shame, which is a glorious thing.

This album has a beautiful heart, there is so much love running through it and I can’t wait for people to experience it.

Limited to 200 copies!! hand-numbered

Back with his second release on DEMO TEST, Roy Vision explores the different layers of an original, raw and multidisciplinary house music.
“4” represents 4 variation styles that the producer fell for many years ago. The selected tracks were produced between 2017 and 2019, with dance in his sight, as demonstrated by the success of the track “La Danse Groove” in the eyes of House Dance lovers.

"Nina’s Talk" give off strong and mastered rhythmics; the energy of the tracks sends us directly to New Jersey of the 90’s. “Feelings” stays geographically close since it crawls in underground New York, where jazz and house music met.

“LL Tribute” is a spiritual connection between Chicago and NYC. It’s a hidden tribute to one of the main characters of the underground New York scene, between The Loft and Paradise Garage, where all social and cultural background were blending, dreaming of a passionate freedom.

The Nitecap EP is the first collection of music created by jazz multi-instrumentalist Marquinn Mason and FWM Entertainment mastermind Stefan Ringer. This 6 track EP is striking to say the least. One can tell from the artwork this is something different.

The stand out track for the DJs is “The Light”. This one is straight forward space funk in a dance track. It has that big room sound reminscent of “Sexual Obsession”. The title track “Nitecap” has to be the true stand out. Mason’s jazz influence stands out over the organic broken beat rhythm section. The tone of this one is deep and introspective. “Pulling Closer” and “Falling Notes” are both unique cuts in their own right.

Both tunes really show a different take on rhythm, bounce and energy and how those elements interact with melody to create something unlike most music you hear in the dance music space. The last two cuts, “Tiny Keys” and “Cocomango” are down tempo grooves with some soul and sauce thrown in. Perfect for background vibes for a kickback or just listening around the house.

After the impact of Exist in Ramallah festival back in 2019, and how relationships between the artists got established and the attendees contribution that helped to shape the identity and the vision of the project itself. Exist decided to take the next step and expand the project with a label that is runned between Amman based and festival founder Odai Masri and Amsterdam based and label co-founder Chafik Chennouf with the same ethics that the festival is standing for. Some of the main principles Exist upholds include resistance to homophobia, and the ongoing colonization of various parts of the world by state actors or multi-national oligarchs. In turn, we think that this colonization leaves no one free, and that it especially targets communities (human and non-human) that are most marginalized by capital and historical racial and ethnic structures. The first release 'Marks of Existence' is a collection of mind-melds with some of the scene's most continuously exciting and refreshing artists: Drew McDowall, Muqata'a, CASKO, Adel Poursamadi & Tegh. The Scottish, NYC-based experimental musician, Drew McDowall, has been subverting the formula for many years now, having clocked up storied work with Coil and Psychic TV back in the day. His track 'Conceal the Wound' is a stunning, exquisitely chiselled piece of synth music. It's like waking from a dream, only to return to its febrile clutches. Ramallah's Muqata'a came through flawless with his cut 'Administrative Detention', a blast of chaotic chopped breaks and lurching neo-beat tape MPC programming. The breakcore influence in combination with referencing crimes against humanity makes the tune an intense headmelter. The ideal soundtrack for unorganized resistance from a firsthand perspective. ‘The Price You Pay To Be Unattached Flesh’ sees CASKO push the hi-tech dirt of his Opal Tapes, Leyla Records and Voidance releases down darker ginnels to claustrophobic, anxiety-raising effect in a collection of brilliantly neon explosions of colour and exuberance floating on a sleazy and slow beat with bags of North-African swagger. Experimental electronic musicians from Iran have marked their prints on the face of the universal experimental music scene for some time now, though the manner in which their status went from "non-existent" to "present" and from "silent" to "noisy" might somehow seem "unpredictable" to the naked eye. Tegh, known for his work on Opal Tapes joined forces with Adel Poursamadi to come up with a beautifully bittersweet synthetic orchestration in a staggering fashion to close this EP with.

Tape

You can’t keep a good thing down: 99 marks the triumphant and long overdue return of Matthew Edwards’ Rekid project. More than just Radio Slave records slowed down, his alter ego preferably ploughs the field between ambient excursions, downtempo hypnotism, sample sculptures and the general space in between raves.

Since its first appearance with the Lost Star EP for Classic in 2004 and the still breathtaking follow up Made In Menorca opus on Soul Jazz Records, Edwards firmly established himself as a producer of many, if not all trades. Thought of, produced and conceived during the first lockdown of 2020, 99 is conceptual (with the tempo firmly set at that tempo), concise (34 minutes and 34 seconds long) and content with exploring the possibilities of limitation (one track a day, live takes, no editing).

Without departing the original Rekid ethos of glacial music, it presents a modernized and contemporary version of IDM tropes, chill out topics and a capturing sound of mesmerizing materiality.

After a while, it all made sense to Edwards as one piece, was presented to Running Back, where the A& R department thought the same and is now available as a continuous cassette mix and a separated vinyl single album as well as for streaming and downloads.

Jeep music for ballet dancers.