Professor Roth's debut EP, self-released on his newly formed label Maestro, is music that feels half remembered. Familiar enough to settle into, strange enough to keep shifting beneath your feet, it lives in that sweet spot where groove and abstraction lean into one another. Dusty textures, hazy melodies and understated rhythms never demand attention, yet quietly refuse to let go. Every track feels like another realm of the same dream: warm, weightless and just slightly out of focus.
‘Daydreaming’ is an inviting first step into the haze, opening the door without ever fully revealing what's on the other side. Gentle movement carries drifting melodies that seem to appear and disappear with every listen. An ethereal vocal breakdown creates the feeling of being quietly carried away from its hypnotic groove before pulling you back under its spell. Patient and understated, ‘The Way It Is’ lets the groove do the talking while subtle details gradually come into focus. Dubby percussive chaos is softened by warm, lifelike pads, encouraging your body to move while your mind wanders elsewhere.
As the name suggests, ‘Swells’ arrives in waves. Layers fold over one another, building and dissolving without urgency. There's a beautiful tension between motion and stillness, leaving the track suspended somewhere between the dancefloor and a reverie. ‘Shades’ is a fitting close that blurs the edges even further. Soft, hypnotic and quietly psychedelic, it feels less like an ending and more like waking up slowly. Content to linger in that in-between a little longer, glitchy samples drift through swirling soundscapes, keeping the dancefloor gently spun until the very end.
Always lurking amidst the underground Porto music scene is Spitbender, the most stable moniker of the ever-morphing Francisco Antão. Spin gathers a collection of tracks that demonstrate his experimentalism & coy sonic precision. Spitbender takes cues from Jungle & Hip Hop producers to create his own unique blend of Downtempo. What becomes clear throughout the album is the attention to detail: it is infused as much by Industrial's red-line spectra as it is by the dubplate logic of the Darkside Continuum, yet it does so at its own tripped out speed.
Spin begins with the laid-back but constantly shifting 'Global Overgroove'. Its breakbeat science moves in & out of DSP glitch-work & dub reflections. When its slinky bassline melody arrives, a certain dread sets in.
'Weyward Fold' drops into a driving, hard-edged chug, threaded with snippets of Malcolm X's disobedient pedagogy. The momentum carries into 'Headnod Doctor', where the bass distortion thickens & the cymbal circuit is overloaded, landing somewhere between Hip‑Hop grit & metal weight.
Side A ends with the downtempo roller 'Dogs and Moles (Skylurk Mix)'. The familiar break drifts into new territory, pulled along & wrapped in a slap-back echo. A quirky melody cuts through the haze, giving the track a fresh tilt. The mulch of the track forms a steady, unhurried pulse.
Spitbender's spacious atmospherics & groove-focused approach comes further into focus on 'Nothing Here But the Recordings'. Creating his own chapter in the book of Trip Hop, his minimalist touch is laid out in full.
'Force the Hand Ov Chance' pulls Boom Bap gently into dub mechanics, letting space do the heavy lifting. Its simplicity hides a deep pocket.
Returning to broken-up distortion, 'Mirrors of Flesh (Dub Mix)' finds Spitbender using the mixer as an instrument to push & pull the heavy drums of Benjamin Brejon of Méchanosphere alongside the voice of Rui intoning the title phrase.
Sitting between the album's two poles, 'Out Take Dub' fuses the clipped‑obsession timbres of Spin's heavier moments with its blissed out flow. Feedback & distortion are welcomed & drawn long.
In the end, Spin hits like a fully formed statement—lean, focused, & unmistakably Spitbender. Every track pushes its own angle, but together they land with a clarity that feels earned. It's a sharp marker in his trajectory, & it leaves a charge in the air.
Curió Curió came to flight by chance. Two artists, Rio-born, Austria-based singer and actress Luiza Monteiro and German producer Dustin Braun, had separately reached a fork in their journeys. An opportune encounter soon blossomed into an uplifting, heartfelt Brazilian MPB-groove project shaped by psychedelic disco and studio experimentation. In their own words Curió Curió’s sonic vision “is not straight disco, not straight samba, not strictly old-school but inspired by all of them, creating something contemporary but still nostalgic”.
A modern fusion influenced as much by Gal Costa and Jorge Ben Jor as Say She She and Bala Desejo, their sound deftly plots a course all of its own. A celebration of freedom, movement, love and life, intertwined with introspective moments of reflection. Treating tradition as something alive, migratory and unresolved, the album is not simply bound by a shared love of Brazilian music, but by a deeper question that runs through every track; where does one belong when home becomes plural? As a Brazilian living in Europe, Luiza's lyrics explore themes of identity, culture, and existence. The tracks move between cities and emotional registers without settling, tracing a sense of identity that shifts rather than resolves. Songs like ‘Amor Doente’ and ‘Mar sem Dar Pé’ circle around relationships that resist clarity, while ‘Menina Passarinho’ captures the fear and necessity of committing to music as a path. For Luiza, deepening her commitment to music alongside years in theatre was both inevitable and difficult. Braun’s production follows a similar logic. Initial ideas were often built without obvious reference points, only later incorporating rhythmic and vocal elements that hint at Brazil without reproducing it. Analogue techniques, tape, ribbon microphones and live ensemble recording bring a tactile quality that reflects the duo’s interest in process as much as outcome. Highlights include ‘Bem Querer’, built on an authentic samba street vibe with a super-catchy sing-along chorus, and ‘Vem pra Casa’ with its cosmic-tinged Brazilian boogie flavour. The album closes with ‘A Cor do Meu Sonho’, a quiet act of insistence. A refusal to shrink in unfamiliar environments, and a belief in the strength of difference. It is less a conclusion than a continuation, leaving the central question open. “I started to understand that I can belong to many places at once”, Luiza reflects. “And that can be something to embrace”. Lyrics from the song ‘Raiz’ translate in English to “I value a burning sun and the cold in the air. Constant change is my companion”. With Curió Curió, that idea is lived through sound, story and collaboration. A debut that feels both searching and assured, grounded in heritage yet shaped by distance.
Moving Pressure 03 lands as Rene Wise's third release on his imprint. With a refined approach to rhythm and restraint, the artist once again distills techno to its purest form: hypnotic, percussive, and propulsive. Across four tracks and in line with the label's essence, MP03 thrives on movement-low-end mastery meets tightly coiled grooves, while textural elements shift and evolve with subtle precision.
A1 'Relax' sets the foundation with a mighty sub-base, rolling forward with effortless force. Chopped-up claps ricochet through the mix, while a funky, disembodied vocal repeats a single command: "relax". Then comes 'Chomp Chomp', a denser offering in Wise's sensorial arsenal. Layered with gritty textures, his signature percussion builds a soundscape that is both tactile and weightless, evoking a kinetic dream state where groove and space are in constant conversation. On the flip, 'Cave' plunges into murkier terrain. Swathed in fog and sinister atmospherics, it unfolds through an eerie blend of sci-fi surrealism and grounded physicality. Bleeps hover like distant signals, their sharpness softened by a cavernous, smothering embrace. It's a study in tension-hypnotic and unsettling in equal measure. Closing the release is 'Deep Under', a track that embodies its name with subterranean mystique. The soundscape is rich with detail, an ecosystem of sonic fragments shifting beneath the surface. It's immersive yet elusive, like catching glimpses of something just out of reach-a mirage that flickers between the tangible and the ethereal.
This is minimalism with intent, built for deep immersion. Less, here, is infinitely more.
Turn On The Sunlight is the long-running project of Texas-born, Maui-based musician and producer Jesse Peterson.
Originally formed in New York in the late 2000s, Turn On The Sunlight has evolved into a fluid, location-spanning practice rooted in collaboration, intuition and process. Now based on Maui, Peterson’s work draws together a wide network of musicians and environments, with recordings taking shape across Los Angeles, Tokyo, London, San Miguel de Allende and Haʻikū.
Loosely situated within a framework of organic, ambient-leaning jazz, 'Iseo' unfolds as a series of open, exploratory pieces, with electronics sitting subtly beneath acoustic and environmental elements. Built from layered instrumentation including synthesizers, guitar, zither, flutes, voice and field recordings, Peterson moves between grounded, tactile detail and more expansive, immersive states. A sense of warmth and permeability runs throughout: organic percussion, environmental textures and drifting rhythmic elements lend the record a gently saturated humidity, reflecting Peterson’s base in Hawaii, where the presence of nature is felt as much as it is heard.
Underlying the project is a way of working rooted in gathering, listening and tending. Instruments, ensemble sessions, field recordings and everyday environments are approached with attentiveness, shaped through collecting, refining and allowing things to settle. Relationships, landscape and lived experience shape the sound, giving 'Iseo' a tactile, almost hand-made quality.
Rather than fixed arrangements, the album feels as if it has been organically and lovingly assembled through a process of listening and response, each element finding its place within a wider, evolving whole. This approach reaches a natural centre point in the 15-minute piece 'Medianoche En La Calle Aurora', which unfolds patiently, bending through shifting environments as motifs and textures emerge and dissolve with quiet continuity.
Peterson’s role as both instigator and facilitator is central to the project. Bringing together a diverse group of collaborators including Carlos Niño, Mia Doi Todd, Laraaji, Ko Ishikawa, Luis Pérez Ixoneztli and Miles Spilsbury, he creates space for individual voices to emerge within a shared language. The result is a music defined by openness and generosity.
'Iseo' takes its title from Peterson’s son’s middle name, a word that can be understood to mean ‘one-world life’. The piece itself takes the form of a gentle lullaby, its melody loosely shaped around the syllables of his name and sung to Peterson’s son by Luis Pérez Ixoneztli, a close collaborator whose presence across the record reflects a long-standing relationship that extends beyond the music itself.
Sleeve art and design by Michael Willis.
For thirty years, Alden Tyrell has been at the forefront of electronic music. This analogue alchemist has concocted heady grooves that transmute genres: acid, disco, electro, house, italo and techno; no style left unturned. Under his Tyrell Corporation moniker, he returns to the Bordello with a sound forged for dancefloors. Midnight Machines is a warm embrace that melts electro‑disco with star‑gazing synthlines. “Midnight Machines Pt. 1” balances robust melodies and incising snares with soulful undercurrents and joyous breaks. Past energies are re‑channelled. Arpeggiators rumble as beats throb. Beneath it all, there is a greater consideration of the interplay of elements.
This focus pulsates through speaker cones on the needle‑drop of “Love in Decay.” Elated key changes and bright shifts are tempered by bittersweet moments, early‑morning light piercing fresh mists of grey. Tempos rise on the flip with “Midnight Machines Pt. 2.” Sci‑fi‑scored disco lifts ever higher as scaling notes untether themselves from the floor and soar above vibrant rhythms. Coy and alluring, the bright “Romance Obscura” closes the record. Cowbells and bending wavelengths open into an expansive, intoxicating melody where keys search the horizon as arms fold around celestial bodies.
Still compelled by the space they first opened, Gūsū returns with a second release, “Inhabiting Me”. What began as a shared approach, sprouted from intuition, has grown denser and more defined, holding on to that same fragility and openness. The duo continues to befriend with contrast, friction and proximity, shaping a language that inhabits their uncommon ground.
Vintage drum machines, tape delays and bass guitar widen the sonic ground, adding pulse, grain and instability, while the guzheng holds its place in full clarity. Each sound source becomes each other’s ornament, forming to gesture the next currents.
What emerges is less a fixed composition than a shifting form: precise in detail, impossible to contain. Listeners who have experienced Gūsū’s live performances will recognise this rare quality: a music of great sensitivity that expands with quiet force, drawing them inward rather than confronting them directly. The sound fades, re-enters, and leaves behind the trace of a lighthearted heaviness, echoing back in fragments, reappearing in memory with altered weight and colour.
Time bends inward and tones return altered. Between repetition and resonance, a tensile form begins to emerge. Neither nostalgic nor futuristic, neither static nor loose. Gūsū does not merge its materials into one smooth surface; it lets them stand close enough to sharpen one another.
Gūsū is a transcultural music project born from the confluence of two distinct artistic voices: Xueyan Chen and Nicolas Balmer. Together, they create a complex dialogue of sound that bridges the ancient and the modern, exploring the liminal spaces between tradition and experimentation. Gūsū’s inception was serendipitous, sparked by a shared stage in late 2022. What began as spontaneous improvisations has since evolved into a profound collaboration. The duo has performed under various monikers, finding their ultimate identity in the name Gūsū, a nod to both heritage and transformation.
Following the exploratory framework of Closer Now, Everlasting Flame sees Bartosz Kruczyński aka Earth Trax moving further into introspection, embracing a more experimental language that drifts between ambient abstraction and rhythm-driven forms.
The album unfolds through cold, shimmering atmospheres and submerged low-end structures, navigating a subtle tension between melancholy and propulsion. Its sonic palette remains fluid, shifting between hazy ambient passages, dub-inflected textures and more fractured, bass-driven moments, while maintaining a strong sense of cohesion throughout.
A defining element of the record lies in its contrasts: low, brooding pads and diffused beats are set against piercing high-end details, distant vocal fragments and flashes of raw, distorted intensity. This interplay creates a sound world that feels at once fragile and forceful, intimate yet expansive, with a persistent sense of longing running beneath the surface.
With Everlasting Flame, Earth Trax continues to move beyond strictly club-oriented structures, shaping a body of work that exists in a liminal space between functionality and free-form expression — immersive, textural and emotionally resonant. A record that lingers in the in-between, where rhythm dissolves into atmosphere and emotion takes the lead.
In the evolving landscape of modern Southern hip-hop, the pairing of Starlito and Bandplay stands out as a unique bridge between street-level authenticity and refined, calculated musicality. Their collaborative project, Not The Country You Know, functions less like a standard release and more as a manifesto—a masterclass in the chemistry between a seasoned, introspective lyricist and a producer who possesses an intuitive grasp of the region's pulse. It is an exploration of legacy and adaptation, capturing the tension between where they came from and where the culture is currently headed.
Bandplay, long recognized for sculpting the sonic identity of Memphis icons, brings his signature, trunk-rattling 808s to the project, yet he manages to pivot here. The production feels remarkably expansive, masterfully blending the raw, stripped-back aesthetics of classic Tennessee rap with forward-thinking textures that refuse to be confined to a single sub-genre. Complementing this, Starlito operates with his trademark mix of cynical observation and genuine vulnerability. He navigates these beats with the weary grace of an artist who has weathered the music industry's relentless cycles, treating every bar like a necessary piece of a larger, ongoing story.
The album’s title serves as a direct commentary on these shifting tides. Across the tracklist, the duo investigates the growing disparity between the romanticized South and the cold realities of the streets, alongside the inevitable evolution of the music business itself. There is no frantic chasing of streaming-era trends or algorithmic bait here; instead, the project remains a stubborn, confident assertion of artistic identity. By weaving together Starlito’s "voice-of-reason" flow and Bandplay’s evolving, genre-bending sound, Not The Country You Know challenges the listener to abandon their preconceived notions of the region, offering instead a complex, urgent vision of a South that is as haunting as it is vibrant.
Dewa Alit, master of radical Balinese gamelan, returns to Black Truffle with Baur Bentur. Genetic (2020, BT063) introduced international listeners to the magical sound-world of Alit’s Gamelan Salukat, who perform on instruments tuned to a unique scale derived from modified versions of two traditional Balinese scales. The two pieces heard on Chasing the Phantom (2022, BT093) further demonstrated his radical fusion of tradition and experimentation, with passages where unorthodox techniques make the acoustic ensemble resemble glitching electronics. Baur Bentur now highlights another aspect of Alit’s work, presenting pieces composed in 2024 and 2025 where Gamelan Salukat performs alongside virtuoso pianist Sri Hanuraga. Alit’s music is grounded in deep reflection on the tradition of Balinese gamelan and its place in the contemporary world. His title, ‘Baur Bentur’, which translates as ‘mixing and smashing’, points to his embrace of the intercultural mixture of Eastern and Western elements in the search for innovation. Against the calcification of Balinese music into tourist entertainment, Alit poses his searching, experimental work, which celebrates the communal values and performance practices of traditional gamelan while pushing into startling new directions.
‘Sukat Tacara’ is a study in layered tempos, meters, and polyrhythms, a constantly shifting dialogue between piano and the instruments of Gamelan Salukat. It begins close to a traditional concerto, pairing a brisk sequence of melodic variations from the piano with a spare but propulsive accompaniment of drums and hanging metallophone tones, punctuated by low gong strikes. The piano builds in volume and density across a rapid succession of fragments, at points recalling George Antheil’s ticking wind-up machinery, though Hanuraga’s jazz background shines through in the fluidity with which he navigates the complexities of the score, where chromatic movement co-exists with bluesy phrases. An abrupt change in the piano to patterns of dense clusters introduces a new episode, during which the metallic instruments of the gamelan enter the foreground. The piece dazzles with its inventive rhythms and dynamics, building to a stunning passage featuring the signature heavy muting technique of the Gamelan Salukat metallophones in kinetic patterns that would be at home on a Príncipe release.
The title piece begins at high intensity and rarely lets up, working through bracing unison ensemble melodies and punctuation points where piano and gamelan together seem to become a single, thudding drum. For much of the piece the piano is tightly integrated into the ensemble, the harmonic extensions of the melodic line subsumed into a moving cloud of complex overtones generated by the gamelan instruments. Wildly kinetic on the rhythmic level, the piece swarms with microscopic movements of beating patterns generated by the ‘blend and crush’ of three simultaneous tuning systems: the equal temperament of the piano and the saih cenik (small scale) and saih gede (big scale) used by the gamelan instruments. Accompanied by the composer’s thoughtful liner notes and images of the musicians, Baur Bentur is a stunning next step in Alit’s radical combination of tradition and innovation.
Alina Valentina ignores rule books. When it comes to making music, she bends genres to her own sound and vision. Acid, electro, synth wave, vocoders. All are melted to produce a bracing style that is floor focussed and strikingly individual. It is this distinctive perspective that The Hague based artist brings to Schrödinger’s Box for NPC Dream, eight tracks that map a journey that disregards genre limitations. The intent and mood are immediately set with the fierce “Air Slasher” plunging through the fog as kicks roll and beads of acid bulge. Raw electro is further coarsened by scything keys and vicious vocoder words in the title piece before the technoid mutations and pain-streaked “Echo of Ecco.” The ground is never stable, the direction and ideas darting and shifting to new sonic territory. Punishing and pure, “Mine Cart Madness” is EBM-encrusted cruelty. Tempos shift on the flip, the slow and cinematic atmosphere of “Pixel Swamp” feeding into the sinister and snarling snares of “Wishing Engine.” Paranoia and tension collide in the stabbing chiptune chords and spiking percussion of “Come Get Some”, acid barbs ballooning into a blistering barrage in this warped wrecking ball. “Light Warrior” is cut from the same raucous cloth. Knobs splinter against machined lyrics, sirens blare as kicks thump in this basement lurking beast.
NPC Dream is a relentless record. From the needle drop, Alina Valentina enforces her sound as she teases and taunts styles. Fiery and brimming with energy, this 12” encapsulates the sound of an exciting talent who carves their music with a truly unique ear.
If you’ve been keeping your ears to the ground, chances are this won’t be your first encounter with the glistening, shape-shifting sounds of Yushh. She has spent recent years DJing across the globe and releasing a series of standout tracks and remixes, cementing her status as one of the most vital flag-bearers of the Bristol continuum.
Somehow, it has been three years since her last solo outing. Making up for lost time, we finally welcome Yushh to Timedance for a searing five-track EP, “Full Body AXY”.
Yushh’s sound resists stasis, nothing feels formulaic. Instead, each track moves with an expert sense of detail, striking a rare balance between precision and instinct, dancefloor science and raw emotion. With a natural flair, she bends low-end pressure into something airborne. Heavy sub frequencies dissolve into a feeling of weightlessness that is both physical and elusive.
How can music hit with such precision and still feel like it floats beyond the rules of gravity? Yushh answers in her own language, where tension and release blur, where sounds flicker between density and light, and where the dancefloor becomes a space for both body-centric exploration and emotional catharsis.
Selekt Wax returns with its second vinyl offering, shifting the lens from introspection toward motion. Where its predecessor explored stillness and space, Varginha 96 leans into rhythm with a more fluid, tactile energy.
Loopedeville works within a minimal framework but pushes it toward something more animated. Groove takes the lead, while detail reveals itself gradually. The result is playful but controlled, built for movement while still carrying depth beneath the surface.
Inspired by the 1996 Varginha incident in Brazil, the record carries a subtle sense of the otherworldly. Not in a literal sense, but in texture. Unfamiliar tones, slightly off center moments, and elements that feel just outside of reach.
Etched on the sleeve, a poem sets the tone:
the analog moment is now
but, how? release
free form feelings finding
new places in yourself
a sort of synthesis
of interpretations
crash & collide
into the infinite groove of reality
but, is anything really real?
A1 – Varginha 96
A breakbeat driven opener centered on a looping vocal from the Varginha ‘96 incident. Off kilter synth textures circle the groove, giving it a subtle, otherworldly feel. Simple on the surface, with depth that reveals itself over time.
A2 – Varginha 96 (Ohm Hourani Remix)
Ohm takes it into a more stripped back, hypnotic space. Centered around the same vocal, the track locks into repetition and feel. Hazy, controlled, and built for late hours.
B1 – Thunders in Paradise
A driving groove built on dusty drums and a tightly controlled rhythm. It holds a steady pulse, with understated details and shifting textures giving it quiet depth.
B2 – Never Enough
A fluid, late night groove shaped by Loopedeville’s signature swing. Less driving than the previous cut, but still locked in, with warm tones and an easy bounce that carries through.
"I wanted to travel / Home into somewhere,"Ana Roxanne breathes across an eerie suspended drone on "The Age of Innocence". "I wanted to try / And go very far." These are the first words we hear on Poem 1 and reintroduce an artist who's in a conspicuously different phase of her life than she was when her debut album, Because of a Flower, sprouted nearly six years ago.
Heartbroken and reflective, Roxanne surveys the transformations that followed and displays a new-found boldness. Her voice is naked, vulnerable and alive, no longer shrouded in tape noise or looped and echoed beyond recognition beneath layered electroacoustic textures.
Throughout the course of Poem 1, Roxanne displays her skill as a singer and songwriter in the classic sense, using the limited instrumentation simply to accent her exposed tones. Muted piano phrases and plucked bass notes languidly trail her anguished siren song on "Berceuse in A-flat Minor, Op. 45", making each word count.
On "Keepsake" meanwhile, she sounds as if she's alone in an abandoned bar, stroking the dust off the piano's keys as she inventories her emotional scars. There's a smell of old whisky in the air, but Poem 1 is a remarkably sober album; never wallowing in self pity, Roxanne finds catharsis in the logic of her expressions, twisting out the edges of her memories into surreal, cinematic asides. "Untitled II", the album's pronounced, uninhibited centerpiece, delivers on the Lynchian promise that's been present since her first EP, 2019's ~~~. "
And when she interprets the Robert Schumann's lied "Stille Tränen" on "One Shall Sleep", she turns Justinus Kerner's words into a whispered echo of her own grief, narrating the 19th century poem over syrupy synthesizers and strings. There's a light emerging on the horizon, though; burying her past on the choral standout '"Cover Me", Roxanne shifts the pace and the mood on 'Atonement', lifting her voice into a gentle lilt.
BLK ODYSSY is an Austin-based artist and producer whose boundary-pushing sound blends soul, hip-hop, rock, funk, and pop. Born in Plainfield, New Jersey, and raised in a household steeped in neo-soul, BLK began channeling his voice through music after the unjust killing of his older brother by police at age 12. That life-altering loss and the experience of growing up Black and male in 21st-century America fuels his raw, layered storytelling. His debut album, BLK VINTAGE (2021), written and produced with close collaborators, served as both a celebration and a critique of Black identity in America. It was met with critical acclaim and re-released in 2022 via Empire as BLK VINTAGE: The Reprise, featuring Mereba, Benny the Butcher, George Clinton, and Baby Rose. The project has since amassed over 100 million streams and positioned BLK ODYSSY as a standout voice in modern soul. His 2023 sophomore album, DIAMONDS & FREAKS, continued his ascent, merging surrealism and social commentary with contributions from Rapsody, KIRBY, Bootsy Collins, Cory Henry, and production from The Alchemist. NPR called BLK “a surrealist R&B auteur,” while Pitchfork praised his ability to bend genre into a cinematic sonic experience. In 2024, following a surreal Tiny Desk performance and festival appearances across Europe—including a headline set at North Sea Jazz Festival and Lollapalooza in Chicago—BLK ODYSSY launched a bold new chapter, with his third studio album, 1-800 FANTASY. The first single from the album, “WANT YOU” (co-produced by Tyler Johnson, known for his work with Harry Styles), marked a shift in tone. That was followed by “XXX” featuring Wiz Khalifa, and “STANK ROSE” featuring Joey Bada$$. Now averaging over 1M+ weekly streams, BLK ODYSSY is unleashing his fourth project, MOOD CONTROL, a ten-track album pushing alt-R&B, soul, and funk to new heights. 1xLP, pressed on Green, Brown & White 3 Color A Side B Side Vinyl.
With Black Koyo, Mattias De Craene enters a sound world at once intimate and vast. Born from journeys in Morocco and Brussels, the project traces the rhythms, chants, and spirits of the Gnawa tradition, revealing a quiet resonance that echoes De Craene's own search for depth and presence. Guibri, qraqueb, call-and-response chants, saxophone, loops, and electronics come together in a trance-induced dialogue - ritualistic, elemental, and dreamlike - creating a space where listening becomes immersion, tradition meets imagination, and music unfolds as a shared act of reflection and wonder.
About Mattias De Craene
Mattias De Craene's artistic path is marked by rare coherence. As a central voice in Nordmann and MDC III, he developed a physical, rock-inflected jazz language driven by propulsion, volume, and trance-like collective energy. Over time, a period of personal rupture - burnout, tinnitus, depression - shifted his focus inward. The saxophone became a breathing, textural presence, and in his solo work, he weaves saxophone, electronics, loops, and minimal forms into a cinematic, hushed world where repetition, resonance, and silence slow perception. Rooted in ambient and introspection, his music prizes attention over impact, precision over excess - a quiet intensity recognized with a nomination as Musician for the Music Industry Awards (MIA's).
About Black Koyo
Black Koyo is a Brussels-based ensemble and one of the most compelling voices of the Gnawa tradition outside Morocco. Led by maalem Hicham Bilali, the group brings guibri, qrraqueb, and call-and-response chants to life with trance-like intensity and ritual precision. Their music is both rooted and contemporary, weaving earthbound rhythms and vocal invocations into ecstatic, immersive soundscapes, creating a space where ancestral resonance meets present-day imagination.
About Jan Bang
Jan Bang is a pioneering Norwegian producer and musician, celebrated for his mastery of live sampling and his ability to merge electronics with improvisation, rhythm, and texture in real time. He mixed the album and occasionally joins live performances, bringing his signature approach to sound as co-founder of the influential Punkt Festivaland collaborator with artists such as Jon Hassell, David Sylvian, Arve Henriksen, and ECM Records' roster. As a performer and sound architect, Bang creates immersive, trance-like sonic textures where silence and sound carry equal weight. Within Mattias De Craene ftBlack Koyo, his live sampling becomes an organic instrument, weaving saxophone, electronics, and Gnawa rhythms into hypnotic, physically charged soundscapes.
Line-up & credits
Mattias De Craene - sax, electronics | Hicham Bilali - guibri, vocals, qraqueb |Ismael Akhraz - vocals, qraqueb | Marwan Abantor - vocals, qraqueb
All tracks are original gnawa traditionals played by Black Koyo and arranged by Mattias De Craene.
Album produced & recorded by Mattias De Craene in Essaouira, Morocco and hometown Ghent, Belgium 2025.
Text by Hicham Bilali.
Mixed by Jan Bang at Punkt Studio
Mastered by Lieven Van Pee
Artwork by Marina Sviridova
Design by Benoit Van Geel
Manufactured and distributed by N.E.W.S.
Executive production by W.E.R.F. records
Supported by Flemish Government, Jazzlab, nona, HA Concerts, Aubergine artist Management,
KAAP, La Bestia (Wout Van Putten) & mdcmu.sic vzw.
2026 (c) W.E.R.F. records
Rave-o-lution - Teknology EP (HDK-3)is a manifesto disguised in project.
Forged in the raw energy of the underground, Rave-o-lution - Teknology EP explores the connection between machine, movement and collective consciousness. This is not nostalgia, it’s forward motion. Teknology as a tool, rave as a language, evolution as a necessity.
Across four different versions, the same core signal mutates and adapts, shifting pressure, tempo and density while staying locked to its original frequency. Each version is built for a different moment on the floor, from deep hypnosis to pure mechanical drive.
Sometimes a pad emerges in the break, a moment of suspension where emotion cuts through the structure. A brief opening. A breath inside the system. Proof that even the hardest teknology carries feeling beneath the steel.
HDK-3 is made for soundsystems at full power, bodies in sync, and minds ready to disconnect from the surface and dive deeper.
No compromise.
No decoration.
Just rave — evolved.
We welcome you to the third installment of Scala. Each new release on Scala Muziek reflects the evolving mindset of its founder. For the third chapter, Pascal Benjamin delivers Soul Extension EP, an exploration of movement, mood, and the subtle shifts that define his sound. A1: Almost Fact sets the tone with taut rhythms and shimmering low-end pulses, balancing tension and release in constant motion. A2: Shift Happens dives deeper into modulation, its warped stabs and filtered delays gradually building a shifting, evolving energy. On the flip: B1: Extension expands into rolling grooves and atmospheric layers, blending vintage warmth with modern precision. B2: Phases closes with a sparse, contemplative mood—fragmented voices and echoes creating a hypnotic sense of drift. Soul Extension captures Pascal at a point where artist and label move forward as one, shaping the next chapter of Scala Muziek’s identity.
Blue Hour distills over a decade of artistry into his debut album Selva, unearthing eight tracks inspired by ancient wisdom and forgotten worlds.
Blue Hour is the moniker of Luke Standing, a multifaceted artist, producer, and label owner navigating between past and present electronic dance music. Over more than a decade, Standing has built a career balancing transformative craft with a sharp curatorial approach, earning him respect across the global scene. After years of sonic experimentation, he now releases his debut LP Selva. “I never set out to make an LP – it just wrote itself,” he says. “I followed my intuition, and the music found its own path.”
Born and raised in the UK, Standing grew up in parallel with club culture, moving between Brighton, Bristol and Berlin while running club nights and establishing himself under former aliases Furesshu and Esoteric.
He launched his Blue Hour project in late 2013, shortly after relocating to Berlin. Initially a platform for his own music, Blue Hour quickly became a collaborative hub, blurring the lines between personal output and curation. Over time, Standing has cultivated an international ecosystem of like-minded artists while continuously expanding his own sonic horizons.
Selva marks his first full-length studio album, weaving a lifetime of influences into a cohesive narrative inspired by ancient wisdom and forgotten worlds. The eight-track double LP transforms his inner dialogue into a subconscious story pulling inspiration from a labyrinthine network of influence and experience. “I followed the music obsessively, reflecting and refining until the story revealed itself,” Standing explains.
“To me, the LP evokes Amazonian or Mayan jungles, themes of exploration, the mysteries of the natural world, wisdom passed down through generations. I didn't set out to write about these things consciously,
they just emerged on their own.” he adds.The album was shaped through intensive work in his studio and periods spent in subtropical locations.
Listening closely, Selva unfolds like a modern ceremony: the opening tracks channel his early UK dance influences, shifting into blends of traditional and contemporary techno, then expanding into melodic soundscapes before concluding with transcendental textures and atmospheres. The result is an introspective journey where functionality and emotive storytelling coexist, revealing a depth in Blue Hour we haven’t heard before.
Whether performing, curating, or producing, Standing operates with a deep commitment to sound, culture, and collaboration. More than an artist, he is an architectural thinker of what electronic music could become. “Every release is my own metamorphosis,” he says. “This LP reflects my current form, and I’m curious to see what the next chapter brings.” Few artists can unify a lifetime of genre-spanning influences into a sound as sharp and focused. On Selva, Blue Hour does exactly that, opening a new era of deeper
immersion from his Berlin-based label.
A label long synonymous with raw, off-centre electronics and uncompromising club tools, Bjarki’s bbbbbb recors welcomes a producer whose approach feels cut from the same cloth, London’s Henry Greenleaf. In an era where functionality often outweighs feeling, ‘Brawn’ is a record that doesn’t court approval; it insists on impact. Built for high-pressure systems and low ceilings, it channels force not as spectacle, but as design.
Greenleaf’s catalogue to date, spanning labels such as Par Avion, YUKU, and ARTS, sketches a restless trajectory between precision and collapse. His productions operate where rhythm becomes architecture: kicks land like poured concrete, subs buckle and flex beneath shifting percussive grids, and textures are stretched until they fray at the edges. Sound is treated as a physical material, layered and stress-tested, reshaped until the familiar mutates into something tactile and strange.
Across the EP, that philosophy takes full form. A1 ‘Brawn’ sets the tone with dense, piston-like drums and tightly coiled low-end pressure, balancing brute force with meticulous spatial control. ‘Jump Up To Be’ follows with a more fractured swing, percussive shards ricocheting across a framework that feels perpetually on the verge of rupture. On the flip, ‘Gawk’ strips things back to skeletal components, carving negative space between distorted pulses and menacing, warped rhythmic figures, before ‘UNTUNTUNT’ closes the record in driving fashion, delivering a raw, functional workout that reduces the groove to its bluntest, most hypnotic form.
True to the label’s ethos, ‘Brawn’ doesn’t chase trends or smooth its edges. It folds air and pressure into motion, pares club music down to its working parts, and leaves room for spontaneous chaos to erupt within the grid; moments where structure splinters, energy misbehaves, and control gives way just enough to keep things volatile. Engineered yet unpredictable, utilitarian yet unruly, the EP embodies the tension, unpredictability, and uniqueness that have long defined bbbbbb recors.
