In 2006, the slight buzz of a Brooklyn band called El Michels Affair started to sound a bit more like a swarm of killer bees when their instrumental rendition of Wu-Tang Clan’s “C.R.E.A.M.” was released as a 7” vinyl single. The band’s namesake Leon Michels and his production partner Jeff Silverman dropped the single on their boutique label called Truth & Soul, and it created such commotion that it would spawn an entire album of Wu-based covers. In honor of the 15th anniversary of that LP— “Enter The 37th Chamber”—the single is now getting its first vinyl repress in years.
“C.R.E.A.M.” is featured on Side A, with its prominent guitars and powerful horns complementing the signature baseline and unforgettable piano hook that practically defined an era of New York hip hop. The B-side “Glaciers of Ice” offers a deeper, melancholic interpretation of the hard-driving “Cuban Linx” banger, with a mood consistent to the A-side, as the drums take a comfortable backseat to the melodic guitars and punchy horn lines.
Originally released in 2009, El Michels Affair’s “Enter The 37th Chamber” LP on Fat Beats Records is celebrating its 15th Anniversary in 2024.
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Sepulchral Voice, black vinyl, 4 page insert. Als ob die glorreichsten Tage des Thrash Metal nie aufgehört hätten zu existieren, kommen die chilenischen Aggressoren Mayhemic mit einem Debüt, das äußerste Kraft und Geschwindigkeit mit unglaublicher Musikalität und einem Songwriting von schierer Brillanz verbindet. Wenn du deine weißen, dreckigen High Tops, Skinny Jeans und Lederjacken so scharf wie in den 80ern aufträgst, ist dies der perfekte Soundtrack, um sich den Kopf direkt in die Hölle zu bangen!
Coloured vinyl repress of Penguin Cafe album Rain Before Seven… A sense of optimism infuses Penguin Cafe’s fifth studio album, not the braggadocious, overconfident kind, but more a blithe, self-effacing optimism in keeping with the national character. Even when all signs point to the contrary, it operates within the certainty that things are going to be alright. Probably.
The title comes from an old weather proverb with the rhyming prognostication — fine before eleven — hinting at a happy ending, irrespective of the science: “I found it in a book and I'd never heard it before,” says Arthur Jeffes, leader of Penguin Cafe. “It has faintly optimistic overtones and I quite like it. It's fallen out of usage recently but it does describe English weather patterns coming in off the Atlantic.”
From the widescreen reverie of opener ‘Welcome to London’ with its cheeky nod to Morricone to ‘Goldfinch Yodel’, the self-described “Maypole banger” at the denouement, there’s a welcome sense of sanguinity, always with an undercurrent of exotic rhythmic exuberance. Playfulness pervades, with a titular nod to A Matter of Life... from 2011, the last album title that concluded with an ellipsis. That Penguin Cafe debut is the bridge between the legendary Penguin Cafe Orchestra, led by Arthur’s father Simon Jeffes, and the much- loved descendent, led by Arthur.
“Stylistically it's really satisfying to get back to playful rhythms and instruments,” says the younger Jeffes, who kept the group’s debut from 12 years ago in mind when writing the new album. “Certainly when starting out, I became aware that we’d stopped using quite a few of the textures that had been there at the beginning—and it was certainly there in my dad's earlier stuff. So there's a lot of balafon and textures from completely different parts of the world, musically and geographically: ukuleles, cuatros and melodicas that you can hear.”
Encouraged by co-producer Robert Raths, the rhythmic elements of Rain Before Seven... have never been more to the fore and, at times, even hint at the electronic. ‘Find Your Feet’, for instance, is underpinned with more than just a pulse. Mixed by Tom Chichester-Clark, it brings to the musical melange what Arthur describes as a “near electronic feel”. He adds, excitedly: “There are elements of fun here which we haven't really done with the last three records.” Another ebullient highlight is ‘In Re Budd’, dedicated to the late ambient godfather Harold Budd, who Arthur discovered had died on the day he’d been writing the celebratory ear worm with a deceptively tricky syncopation. Played on an upright piano with some “prepared” felt to accentuate the bounce, Jeffes feels a track with an Afro Cuban Cafe vibe would appeal to Budd’s contrariness.
The opening track to the Alan Parsons Project’s Eye in the Sky remains the most recognized instrumental in sports—fanfare inseparably tied with introducing NBA legend Michael Jordan and his six-time world-champion Chicago Bulls mates before games, and still used by many teams as an energy-raising prelude. Indeed, the subdued grandiosity, cosmic bluster, and lights-out wonder of “Sirius” sets the table for the band’s smash 1982 album, whose hallmark smoothness, lushness, and balance extend to the music’s exquisite song writing, dreamy emotions, and underlying orchestral scope. Credit for the record’s craft, cohesiveness, and accessibility also falls to Alan Parsons and creative partner Eric Woolfson’s knack for recruiting session pros that translate their visions with unquestioned feeling—particularly, vocalists who include former Zombie leader Colin Blunstone and soul singer Lenny Zakatek.
Mastered from the original master tapes, Mobile Fidelity’s RTI pressed 180g 45RPM 2LP version of Eye in the Sky features succulent warmth, magnificent balance, low-end heft, and see-through transparency that take you into the studio with Parsons at Abbey Road Studios. Each note seems perfectly placed, every sequence painstakingly considered. Boasting front-to- back depth, concert-hall-level separation, realistic presence, and bang-on accuracy. This release will test the capabilities of the world’s finest stereo systems. There’s more information, more texture, more nuance— more of everything to be experienced. British progressive rock would never again sound so sophisticated, suave, or steady.
The unstoppable production powerhouse that is Paul Woolford aka Special Request is back with another of his frankly ridiculous run of releases. Never one to just drop a single tune, this year he has several albums on the way off the back of his superb re-imagining of the KLF's cult 'What Time Is Love?' and this Portals Box Set Project is one of them. It is a multi-part collection that "uses today's modern technology to bring you the sound of tomorrow" and each limited edition 12" comes with its own custom artwork by Nic Hamilton. As you should expect, these are all utterly monstrous bangers and this first part has the high-pressure techno bounce of 'Hectic' and 'Pure Potential' to welcome you to the Portal.
Limited edition
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Blame The Mono & Ghost In The Bass join the team for a BANGER melting precious Brekbeat drops and Hard Kickers !
Electro Tekno breakbeat dark sound !
French duo Nabil Vortex is back with fresh sounds! This new record blends hard electronics, acid, and bass music with traditional and popular Algerian music. This EP highlights these underground pioneers, turning their unique style into unforgettable dancefloor bangers.
A side opens with a Jamalski & Empatysm duo, a Hardcore ode to the Underground.
Second tune by Lory PH is a banger with a loooong rise up drop.
On the flip it's a full side Uniko, with a super booster dancefloor and to finish... a very experimental Breakcore noisy Electro tune, in the pure underground tradition !!
This Capsule Corp 14 is a very very good one !!!
The Punishment Of Luxury was Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark's thirteenth studio album, but surprised everyone commercially with the first album since 1991 to reach the UK Top 10. The album continued the sound they created with 2013's English Electric. A sound strongly tied to their roots, but this time a bit more stripped down. As Andy McCluskey describes it: ""There’s a little bit more sort of crunchy industrial sound in a few things, a bit glitchty-er. But you know, the bottom line is that have a sense of melody that we just can’t throw off"". Even after almost 40 years, the band are still able to surprise their fans, making The Punishment Of Luxury a must for all synthpop fans. The Punishment of Luxury is available as a limited edition of 1000 copies on blue coloured vinyl. The record is housed in a jacket with die-cut and includes a printed innersleeve.
Continue As Amery is the debut album by Montreal-based artist Amery. Formerly recording under the moniker Alpen Glow, Continue As Amery sees the songwriter step out into a bold, colourful world full of pop hooks, snagging feelings of abandon and the mornings after. Amery Sandford began releasing as Alpen Glow in 2020 after years playing in punk groups in Newfoundland and as half of Montreal pop duo Born At Midnite (Arbutus). Recorded in Montreal by David Carriere (TOPS, Marci), Patrick Holland, and Kristian North, Continue As Amery is a blast of melodic joie de vivre. On her debut Sandford brings her punk and DIY credentials into sharp focus on 8 perfect pop odes to city living, making mistakes and figuring it out as you go along. Suffuse with powerful imagery and an almost uncanny talent at spinning out hooks brimming with humour and spirit, Amery’s soundworld is informed by friendship, experience and by her day job as a renowned illustrator and visual artist. Beginning Alpen Glow in a spirit of fun and now shedding the alias, Amery’s ready to hotwire the nite. Each song is rich with story. Mountain FM, named for the radio station in Sandford’s home town in the mountains of Alberta, launches into a tale of speeding, blasting the radio too loud, the giddy burning of rubber with no care in the world to slow you down. Featuring live band members Sarah Harris, Jack Bielli, and Frank Climenhage, the singer bristles to get out of her stifling hometown while lamenting the wide eyed adventurer who left for the big city. On Hotwire The Nite, Amery is out on the town, with imagery loaded with the night’s promise. Amery sings “Black candle / Dripping intel / Dagger hanging by an emerald handle / Holy roller that I just can’t have without my hand on an old flame,” diving in and out of fantasy and desire over a pulsating banger. Moments like these feel like a thesis on aural pleasure, with the production sleek and silky playfulness persisting throughout. Spirit Is Broken is a pep talk the artist is giving herself in the mirror. Only Amery could write something so joyous and harmonically glorious while singing about low ebbs. Every line shines with humour, the chorus starting with an exasperated “oh my god, alright” and the refrain nailing the bittersweet feeling of enjoying feeling down. It’s a mood continued on slow groover Ennui, a melter striking out at being stuck; same parties, same faces, daring to dream beyond. As an illustrator and visual artist, Sandford’s images detail dancing instrument-clad animals, party scenes that nod to historical image making heavy hitters like Hieronymus Bosch and Ludwig Bemelmans. On Miracles, Amery deals in bold pop production and her yearning to escape into fantasy, given wings by Korgs and drum machines. On Rocker Blues, originally by French artist FR David, Amery brings the heavy with synth-guitar and an undeniable chorus. C9 is in some ways the album’s centrepiece, a mid tempo funk jam and duet with Montreal stalwart Fireball Kid, it’s the party just out of reach on the horizon. The thing about Cloud 9 is that on the comedown you might get a hella lot of rain. The world Amery builds is intoxicating, rich and most importantly open for anyone to fall into. To be continued…
Following various single releases and remix projects, Benx is back with a strong new EP on their homebase Bouman Records. Slowly building their name, the duo are already receiving help from some of the biggest names on the underground circuit, with vocals by Colonel Redz and some high profile remixes. Techno legend Orlando Voorn provides a banging rework of 'Lets get wild', while DJ Crisps delivers a masterclass in dark & dubby 2step garage with his remix of the title track 'What you want'
Everyone’s favourite Instagram music account is now a label!
Belters4u has been sharing a steady stream of forgotten club bangers over the past few years and now arrives with original material. The inaugural release sees Tre Turner serve up three belting hardware jams straddling 90s euro-house, trance and early prog with a subtle nod to Scotland’s notorious old-school rave scene.
First dropped by Job Jobse at last year’s Nachti Festival, title track" Can’t U Feel" is a feel-good party pumper resplendent with galloping euro bass, gated filter sweeps and catchy pitched vox destined for a festival near you. The two mixes of “Mixed Emotions” on the flip take a hazy, trancier path, keeping the emotion and euphoria running high.
Available on vinyl via One Eye Witness and digitally via all decent platforms.
A song is a song until it isn't, until it's pushed to its limits and beyond to become harder, faster and more dissonant. The music on Oneida's 17th full-length album, Expensive Air, all started as tightly structured, melodic rock songs _ very much in line with the non-stop bangers of Success from 2022 _ but along the way, they changed. Bobby Matador sketched the structures of these songs from his home base in Boston, then sent the demos to Oneida's New York contingent: Kid Millions, Hanoi Jane, Shahin Motia and Barry London. "We were working out the songs in New York without Bobby. We would start out riding the riffs, and then Shahin and Jane would add wild, out-of-tune licks," said Kid Millions. "It seemed so perfect." Oneida has long straddled gray-area boundaries between the NYC punk/psych/rock world and the art/experimental world, playing at gritty rock clubs and elevated cultural institutions, including the Guggenheim, MoMA PS1, ICA London, MassMOCA and the Knoxville Museum of Art. The band has been known for extended live improvisational performances, collaborating onstage with Mike Watt, members of Flaming Lips, Portishead, Boredoms, Yo La Tengo, Dead C, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, and many others. Oneida's members juggle a wide variety of other music projects. Drummer Kid Millions has played with Spiritualized, Royal Trux and Boredoms and releases solo compositions under his own name and as Man Forever. Shahin Motia founded noise - punk's Ex-Models and currently plays in Knyfe Hits. Kid and Fat Bobby perform and release music as People of the North, and Bobby's outside projects New Pope and Nurse & Soldier each released new albums in 2023. Oneida's previous album, Success, came after a four-year hiatus, unleashing the band's pent up creative energy in a set of catchy, accessible, nearly poppy songs. Song structure remained important in the run up towards Expensive Air, but so was the instinctual, improvisatory interplay that has always been a part of Oneida's process. The band had been playing live together for two years, sharpening its attack and pushing its songs to go harder, faster and wilder. Oneida recorded Expensive Air in three sessions scattered across 2023, convening at Colin Marston's Menegroth The Thousand Caves studio in Woodhaven, Queens, whenever they had a few songs ready. Marston and the band mixed the album in February 2024 at Menegroth. The new album expands on what Oneida achieved with Success, but also pushes past it, laying down irresistible song structures then blowing them to psychedelic bits. "I found myself thinking about this record as a darker, looser, louder, counterpart to Success," Bobby explains. "Both records charge forward from the jump and mix the elliptical with the blunt, and longing with self-mockery. But Success is like laughing in a car gunning carelessly through an ice storm, and Expensive Air is how you laugh at yourself as the car spins into the ditch, or a tree. Same trip, but a little closer to the bone."
"La Misma Fuente" is an album that could have only come from the mind of Yemanjo, and the music here reveals producer/musician Ben Harris in the full bloom of his artistic promise.
Translating as "The Same Source", the staggering variety of genre, sound design and featured artists here all relate to the concept that the world's diversity manifests out of an essential unity.
With guest singers and musicians from Mali, Colombia, Argentina, Hungary and beyond, "La Misma Fuente" pulsates with an irresistible combination of cracking electronic beats, hypnotic synths and bass, traditional acoustic instruments and vocals in many languages.
In the title track, Yemanjo's own harmonized Spanish vocals roil over a relentless dembow groove; elsewhere Malian vocalist Mariam Koné shines in both the mid-tempo house track "Juru Fô" and the Reggae-meets-Desert Blues anthem "Janfa". The instrumentals are no less captivating; "Bululú" is a combustible club banger with shades of kuduro, afrohouse and zouk rhythms, "Suena La Quena" is a bouyant uptempo house track with soaring Andean flute melodies, "Baobab" mesmerizes with interlocking ngoni licks, and "Bridge to Bamako" is a spacious trip-hop groove that finishes the record like a breath of fresh air.
Thematically diverse, melodically complex and rhythmically compelling, "La Misma Fuente" is a testament to the relentless wanderlust of its author, and a fine addition to the already legendary catalogue of Wonderwheel Recordings.
Ben Harris: sound design, arrangement, vocals, charango, trumpet, digital percussion
Mariam Koné: vocals on #2, #6
Fredy Velasquez: vocals on #5
Alex Nero: guitar, charango on #7, charango, quena, zampoña on #9
Onanya: ngoni on #2
Cosmic Nomad: ngoni on #4
Julia Gyulai: lead vocals on #8, back vocals on #5
Endre Molnar: guitar on #8, back vocals on #5
Mixed and mastered by Chris Cox at Veritas Mastering
Additional record engineering by Akos Varnai
House of Hits is a vibrant new DJ and production collaboration between Waajeed and LADYMONIX. Their debut EP, "Work That," seamlessly blends LADYMONIX's Baltimore charm with Waajeed's innovative Detroit finesse, creating a sound that's both nostalgically groovy and refreshingly modern.
After a decade of sharing neighboring studios, this long-awaited union delivers a banging 4 track EP that is sure to light up dance floors worldwide. With their exceptional production and dj skills on full display, House of Hits is primed to be a dance-floor favorite.
- A1: Leonard Nimoy – Music To Watch Space Girls By
- A2: Martin Denny – The Enchanted Isle
- A3: Yma Sumac – Gopher
- A4: The Bongolian – B-Boy Toga Party
- A5: Los Bitchos – The Link Is About To Die
- A6: Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass – The Lonely Bull (El Solo Toro)
- A7: Michael Giacchino & Nouvelle Modernica Orchestra – Sidereal Day: 3 (Instrumental)
- B1: Mel Tormé – Sunshine Superman
- B2: Sergio Mendes & Brasil ’66 – Mais Que Nada
- B3: Lalo Schifrin – Lalo's Bossa Nova
- B4: Quincy Jones – Black Orpheus (Manha De Carnaval)
- B5: Les Baxter & 101 Strings Orchestra – Tropicando
- B6: Pizzicato Five - They All Laughed
- B7: Alain Goraguer – Les Hommes
- B8: Hugo Montenegro & His Orchestra – The Good, The Bad And The Ugly
- C1: Mort Garson & The Lords Of Percussion – Geisha Girl
- C2: Arthur Lyman – Quiet Village
- C3: Les Baxter – Voodoo Dreams / Voodoo
- C4: Cal Tjader – The Lady Is A Tramp **
- C5: Martin Denny – The Enchanted Sea
- C6: Ixtahuele – Mareld 2021
- C7: Keith Mansfield – Morning Broadway
- D1: Mel Tormé – Comin' Home Baby
- D2: Dave Pike – Sweet Tater Pie
- D7: Sheila – Bang Bang
- D3: Jack Trombey – Underlay No.3
- D4: Don Sebesky – Guru-Vin **
- D5: Keith Mansfield – Beat Me Till I'm Blue
- D6: Brian Bennett & Keith Mansfield – Mermaid **
black 2x12"[47,35 €]
One mere year after their previous pitch-black sounding album Krypt, LA outfit Male Tears is back with a new full-length and – oh boy – everything is changed.
The used-to-be duo is now a four piece with James Edward as the sole founding member remaining and apparently this new line-up helped the original vocalist to shapeshift again.
Remember their very first debut album from 2021 and those dark synthpop sounds?
With their upcoming fourth album (in only three years), this American electronic-pop act from Southern California doubles the stakes once again and where Krypt was all about being goth and gloomy and disturbingly paroxysmal, Paradisco is somehow quite the opposite.
Eight new tracks of pure italo disco, hi-NRG and freestyle bliss that pick up where the band left off three years ago to pursue much darker realms. Now that the quest for darkness is done, it is time to polish our nails and dress up for the night-out cause there’s more in life than feeling sorry for yourself. Yes you will need to cut out the deadwood but there is no change in stillness.
So join Male Tears and their new arsenal of bangers and floor fillers with assertive titles such as Out of my Life, Regret 4 Nothing and Leave it Alone.
Get yourself wrapped up in one warm cover of delicate nostalgia and reborn romanticism, driven by sounds that pay homage equally to Miko Mission and Ken Laszlo, Lisa Lisa and Exposé and, well yeah, even The Smiths because say what you wanna say but you simply cannot not love The Smiths.
Embrace the vintage vibes that organically propagate from this new record’s grooves and get in the mood for this new course in full-on 1980’s Pop.




















