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A long-in-the-works project of ours, here comes A Tribe Called Kotori's first foray into full-length territories, as the immensely talented Rampue takes us on a melancholy-riddled ride across his phantasmatic mindscapes. A true sound explorer, deftly steering his ship down the junction of electronica, abstract and balearic-infused prog house, the Berlin-based vibist has us transfixed and elevated throughout the twelve cuts that form the backbone to this lushly textured promenade in sound - at times understatedly euphoric, at others rivetingly exotic.

Of the creative process that lead to 'Bubblebath Trance', Rampue explains "It all started and ended in the same moment: my cherished feline companion, my laptop awash with an unintended bath, and alas, a dearth of backups. The resultant calamity, an echo of chaotic tranquility." Under the generous layer of irony lies some unaltered truth about Rampue's debut long-player for A Tribe Called Kotori: this sense of serenity that goes with stepping into this warm and bubbling primitive chaos of sorts infuses the listening experience far and wide. Distantly emulating the "euphonious strains" of iconic PS1 video games soundtracks from his youth days, the album has us surfing a constant paradox of emotions, wistful but not abandoning itself to sorrow, dynamic yet suspended in some sort of mind-expanding stasis. As if you were looking at the world beneath you in exploded view, conscious of all thing, slowly moving up the many layers of our atmosphere towards uncharted skies.

A paragon of Rampue's most poignant take on classic electronica tropes, 'Harmonie' blazes with a poetic fire that engulfs about everything in its wake. Just figure yourself riding a chocobo across the sand-covered expanse of North Corel (toasting to the FFVII nerds here) as this blasts out in the distance. From this trancey bubblebath emerge lots of musical shades and nuances, from the nicely dubbed-out, brass-heavy coastal jazz of 'Schattenschranz' to the choppy, trip-hop-adjacent future electronics of 'Inside', via the exuberantly joyous mess of faux-organic number 'Tripomatic' and cinematic charisma of 'Ich hasse Sonne' high-flying orchestrations.

Connecting the dots between that trance-indebted ebullience and further downtempo-friendly attraction, 'Verfahren' perhaps encompasses best what 'Bubblebath Trance' is about: gracefully walking the tightrope in-limbo nostalgia-soaked inner movements and a powerful outward thrust, burning to let the feelings ooze out from the shell that holds them.Clad in purely 90s-compatible breaksy motion, 'Salz' is another attempt to reconcile emotional and physical dissonance, like kneading all states - solid, liquid and vaporous - into an impossible mega-vibe of its own; malleable, strong and enveloping in equal measure. Borrowing from two-step and UK garage, 'Take Away' is a definite high in Rampue's master unfolding of musical twists and turns, summoning a Boarder Community-esque atmosphere and clashing it alongside floor-ready footwork motifs to fascinating effect.

An ode to his studio companion, 'Buchla Trip' finds Rampue's exploring his machinic friend's quirky yet soulful array of electronic potentialities - making it sound like a conversation you'd have with R2-D2 in the heart of a Sandcrawler, whereas 'Kajal' beams us up to a fragmented headspace, halfway altered PC-Pop and arps-loaded electronica on amphetamines. Effusive and transporting, the title-track 'Bubblebath Trance' could well figure as the album's no.1 medley in essence: a bountiful lucid dream of dancing forms, colours and sentiments to wrap your head around, confidently drifting from a liminal state of consciousness down the rapids of one's troubled inner workings.

Rounding off the package, the languid ambient finale of 'Die Leiden des hungrigen Fruehstuecks' rubber-stamps the feeling that 'Bubblebath Trance' belongs to that rare category of albums. The ones that mint their own alphabet aside from typical norms and expectations, teaching you the ropes of their new language as it unreels between your ears - real and unreal, elusive to any other meaning than the one your guts and brains will be inclined to give it to, in real time. A crystal-pure object if you will, that shall not reveal its secrets, even after a thousand listens and just as many wowing moments.

Ltd grey vinyl LP! Manchester's/Berlin's The Underground Youth have built an impressive back catalogue of seven full-length albums. Now again their highly sought-after album Mademoiselle is being given a physical release by Fuzz Club. The story of Mademoiselle is a testament to the power of great music being able to reach an audience, regardless of the fact the artist might be unsigned, underground and almost unheard of. Originally released in 2010 and only available online, Mademoiselle has piled up millions of views on YouTube, and saw The Underground Youth acquire a cult following at a ferocious pace. The album has continued to endear audiences with its bluesy psychedelic-leaning, based on beautifully crafted lyricism and a sculpted sound. Layers of reverb-drenched, folk-indebted guitars and forlorn vocals bleed over hypnotising, monolithic drums to create a record that is 46 minutes of lethargic, lo-fi psych mastery.

After the thematic albums 'True' (2012 inspired by Berlin and David Bowie).

'Desire' (2015, an instrumental opera about longing), 'Goldbrun' (2017 a homage to Europe and Honing's interest in European art music) and 'Bluebeard' (2020, a dark album mainly inspired by the 300-year-old fairy tale of the same name), there is now 'Heaven on my mind'.An album on which the quartet's now decade- long existence undoubtedly pays off. Not only is the almost telepathic way the band members communicate with each other an important feature; this fifth quartet album also clearly shows Honing's love for Charles Lloyd, Pharoah Sanders and the freer acoustic jazz that emerged along with the 1960s hippie movement.

On this album, his third work published on Umor Rex, the french producer Alexandre Bazin takes what he started in Four Steps (Umor Rex 2022) to the maximum point. However, on Innervision, there is no longer that discreet flirtation towards the dance floor. Instead, the ten cuts that make up the album are influenced by musical research and the UK and Berlin electronic scene. Bazin's new proposal revolves around sound textures, saturations, feedback, autosampling, and cut and tuned sounds, allowing new melodic elements to emerge in the process, akin to a live act. While maintaining his minimalist exploration and obsession with melody and structure, Innervision undoubtedly marks a turning point in Bazin's discography. It is epic, compelling, euphoric, utterly enjoyable, and at times violently beautiful.

The album was composed and mixed by Alexandre Bazin at Château Rouge, Paris, and mastered by Rafael Anton Irisarri at Black Knoll, New York. François Desmoulins played the acoustic drums on Four Steps (Remix). The artwork for the album was created by Daniel Castrejón in Mexico City.

Minor Science—aka UK-born, Berlin-based musician Angus Finlayson—makes his Balmat debut with Absent Friends Vol. III, the third installment in a shape-shifting series across a variety of formats and platforms. And with it, he pushes forward his vision of ambient music as neither static vista or merely mood-setting atmosphere, but rather a dynamic matrix of textures, sensations, and even rhythms.

The first two Absent Friends—a 2014 set for Blowing Up the Workshop, and a 2017 cassette and web player for Whities (now AD93)—were hybrid affairs, part DJ mix and part collage, mostly featuring music made by other people. Then, in 2020-21, Finlayson developed the project into a live show of his own material. Armed with hundreds of bespoke stems created in his studio—idiosyncratic FX chains, feedback loops through cheap rack gear, heavily post-processed field recordings, found voices, etc.—he would improvise on four CDJs, mixer, FX, and live synths, extending techniques he learned as a club DJ into a live context, accompanied by visuals by Stockholm-based artist Paul Witherden.

Absent Friends Vol. III is an album of studio versions of the music developed for the live show. But in Minor Science’s world, even a category as simple as “studio versions” is slightly opaque. “Most of these tracks weren’t ‘composed’ in the studio,” Finlayson explains: “The sounds started out as stems and source material for the live show, and might not have been intended to go together—but then through performance, they settled into shapes that worked. I then recreated those performances in the studio.” That organic process of ideation and realization might help explain the unusual coherence of the album, in which sounds and textures flow seamlessly from one to the next, sometimes seeming to stand still, and sometimes looping back. There are virtually no melodies, few recognizable motifs or riffs, yet the eight-track album nevertheless moves with a distinctive logic and a determined sense of purpose, from the frozen-in-time shimmer of the opening “Introduction” through the early cuts’ studies of space and light; from the seemingly autobiographical “Summer Diary” through the rushing trance (yes, trance) arpeggios of “Contingency” and on to the dulcet denouement of the closing “Gather Your Party (Dispersed Mix).”

Germany's DJ bwin returns to First Second Label with a sub heavy offering of experimentational dubstep, bass, techno and trap for the dark smoke filled room in your brain. Moritz Paul aka Leibniz and Alex Hoppe aka CIO known for their label Hundert (alongside Felix Paul) has seen them pushing the boundaries of these sounds and Cell Phone pushes their sound even further with 3 tracks that would give any system a heavy workout.

Accompanied by a blissed out vibration filled remix from Berlin residing Cork born power house ELLLL this puts the icing on the cake for this already wobble heavy 12". The artwork, a combination of photography, paint and textiles is an extract from a cloth print by Irish artist and designer Shauna McGowan.

London based label Natural Selection present their forthcoming release in the form of a 4-track 12" EP, courtesy of Versalife (aka Conforce), entitled "Genetic Cluster EP". Mastered by Dadub Studios, Berlin and cut by Simon at The Exchange Vinyl.

Based in Rotterdam, Versalife has seen his music released by the most highly esteemed of Electro labels such as Frustrated Funk, Clone, Delsin & TRUST. Versalife returns to Natural Selection after releasing with the label via their inaugral VA compilation release "NS001" in 2021, with his track "Nostalgia", which has gained support by some of the most respected DJ's worldwide, inc. Dave Clarke, Plant43 & more.

Genetic Cluster is an impeccably crafted Electro release that maintains bite and aggression, whilst its textures and atmospheres spiral into the ether, taking the listener on an unpredictable emotional journey.

After forming a close connection to Natural Selection in recent years, Versalife has now cemented himself as one of the main front-line artists within the London based imprint.

Repress!

Oliver Dollar debuts on Rekids with disco-fuelled three tracker, ‘Strings for Life’ EP.

Initially appearing on Rekids as a remixer in 2012, Berlin-based Oliver Dollar returns to Radio Slave’s imprint with the Spring-time funk of his ‘Strings for Life’ EP this April.

The rich, stirring strings of the title track open ‘Strings for Life’ with real soul. Warm, euphoric and built atop a rocksteady discoid groove, it’s a track that’s familiar, new and classic all at the same time. ‘School Daze’ follows with rhythmic shakers, funk-infused chopped guitar and bass licks while nifty vocal samples and cosseting chords provide the hooks. Closing out is ‘Sophisticated Funk’ which sees Dollar double down on the disco with an epic, emotive beatdown.

With releases from Radio Slave, Eddie Fowlkes, Cromby, Dave Angel, Star B and Alinka on Rekids in
recent months, Matt Edward’s imprint is as fresh as ever and Oliver Dollar’s ‘Strings of Life’ EP joins the catalogue in fine style.

After his woozy dark disco EP debut on NEIN records, Clouzer returns with LMNTL, a fine collection boasting 4 massive tracks tailored for the “big room” stage. Listening to Clouzer’s cosmic textures, layered abstractions and futuristic soundscapes on LMNTL feels like connecting to an extraterrestrial world.

The Berlin-based musician blends electro, broken beats and dirty bass lines, creating immersive and hypnotic environments for people to dwell in. The EP also features a beautiful remix by Sestrica, one of the most vibrant and unique female live acts on the Breakbeat scene.

Madben's superb Troisième Sens album is remixed again, as new mixes from Josh Wink and AVNU join previous offerings from Alinka and Avision on this standout EP.

Kicking off this fantastic package is Ukraine-born but Berlin-based Alinka. She is now right at the cutting edge of the scene after big releases on the likes of Rekids and Live at Robert Johnson. She is a regular at iconic spots like Berghain/Panorama Bar, Circoloco and Smart Bar and flips 'Addicted' into a heavy house cut with thumping drums and lithe baselines. Acid sprays about over warmer synths to make for a real peak-time weapon. Next up is Josh Wink, a legendary electronic artist who heads up the Ovum label and has consistently crafted some of house and techno's biggest tracks. He flips '1AM At A Rave' into seven-plus minutes of scintillating electronic deepness with trippy leads and real synth intensity building to an explosive peak.

NYC DJ and producer Avision has released EPs such as ‘Innocence’ on this label while also getting support for his new school techno from Adam Beyer and Chris Liebing. His remix of 'Circuit Breaker' is a chunky and textural affair with seriously weighty drums. Stark synths rise up through the mix next to bubbling acid to make for a heart-of-the-dance-floor classic. Scottish artist AVNU is another label regular who dropped his ‘Tough To Love But Worth The Effort’ album here last year. He flips '1AM At A Rave' into a dark and atmospheric cut with flashes of strobe-lit synth and zippy leads that rip up the crunchy electro-tinged drums.

This is a vital package of varied reworks that bring plenty of new direction to the superb source material.

Repress

Tresor Records is fortunate enough to be sitting on a catalogue of past releases that no other label in electronic music would turn down.

Three of the finest in this collection were contributed by Surgeon; "Basictonalvocabulary", "Balance" and "Force + Form" all originally came out on the Berlin institution between 1997 and 1999.

Surgeon's inimitable combination of Detroit techno and post-industrial sounds emanating from his British homeland found its fullest expression in these masterful trio of releases on Tresor.

The new LP by Krefeld-born, Berlin-based artist Philipp Otterbach entitled 'The Dahlem Diaries'.

Recorded in a little-visited corner of the German capital, 'The Dahlem Diaries' is a convergence of ideas, sketches and tracks, both old and new, most of which were produced between 2020-2022. Whilst eerie atmospheres, electronics and drums have played a pivotal role in Philipp’s earlier releases, his latest is a rather more introspective affair, in which the guitar takes a leading role. A role Otterbach uses to quietly bring light and hope to his music.

Speaking about his writing process, Philipp explains that, based around his original compositions, “Friends were nice enough to contribute additional parts on their instruments which I then reworked, put together and re-contextualized. The recordings encapsulate a very specific moment in time, one that would have sounded perhaps very different the day before or after.”

Combined with a strong use of effects and field recordings, 'The Dahlem Diaries' feels somewhat like a scene or fragment from a story, in which the narrative remains undefined. It is a playful album that is something of a blurred underwater adventure, sounding as bright as it is hazy, even psychedelic at times, yet with an almost melancholic positivity. In Philipp’s own words: “It could be an album about friendship and being at one with myself, whilst at the same time bringing a certain seriousness to my music, but not necessarily to myself; there is also a playful humour hidden in there. ”

In 1972, a foursome of design students set out to make a record. This was, in many ways, a strictly creative endeavor. The quartet — composed of Dave Pescod, Alan Lewis, Phil Rawle, and Ted Rockley — were all trained, not as musicians, but as creatives. Art school heavyweights, the four were well-versed in the methodology of intentional experimentation, in the delicate balance of pushing the limits without completely unmooring oneself from a guiding creative intention. Emboldened by a high-brow familiarity with thoughtful experimentation and all the non-conviction of non-musicians, Bowes Road Band’s stint in the world of popular music yielded a record that is as much mind-melting as it is a direct product of its time. Their sprawling LP “Back in the HCA” embodies the exigence “art for art’s sake,” but it is for art’s sake that this record, however off the deep end it seems to travel (hear: “Doctor, Doctor”), remains a unified, and stunning, body of work. The LP’s do-ityourself garage rock noisemaking meets highfalutin creative processes. “Back in the HCA” is warbling psychedelic freakout (“Two Fingers,” “Doctor, Doctor”), Donovan-esque English countryside folk stylings (“Inside My Head,” “Goodbye to Rosie”), and avant-garde jazz improvisions (“Grass is Grass,” “Tomorrow’s Truth”) in one luminous release.

Originally an 9-track LP, Jakarta, Uno Loop, and Bowes Road Band decided to mine the six most cohesive tracks for the reissue, though the extras may be released somewhere down the line. Cohesion efforts aside, “Back in the HCA” stands alone in its singular conception of a genre-bending continuum — it evades definition. That said, the LP can easily be situated in the sonic environment in which it was conceived. By the end of the 60s, England was crawling with blues-based rock outfits that were starting to venture into prog rock territory. You can hear this popular dint cast over the folkier side of the LP. But Bowes Road Band was armed with their non-musicianship: they existed completely liberated from the motivating yet ultimately paralyzing lust for stardom. Enjoying this liberation, Bowes Road Band was utterly free to make noise. This freedom meant drawn out sax interludes amidst sweetly folk stylings (“Grass is Grass”) and Shaggs-like fuzzed-out freakouts that spiral into a void (Doctor, Doctor). This freedom also meant straight-forward tuneful cuts like “Goodbye Rosie” that conspicuously introduce heavily distorted auto-organ accompaniment mid-track amidst poignant lyricism. Bowes Road Band crafts a unified sound and then cracks it open.

With a completely off-the-radar status, Bowes Road Band could only press 50 copies of the record — 10 for each of them and 10 for the school. The band’s lifespan was to end there, or so they thought. “Back in the HCA” was the accidental fruit of a Berlin flea market treasure hunt by Jannis Stürtz, DJ and co-founder of Habibi Funk and Jakarta Records. After finding and sharing the LP with a few colleagues, Stürtz managed to get in touch with the band, get ahold of the master tapes collecting dust in Ted Rockley’s attic, and start the reissuing process. The record is still adorned with its original cover art designed by Alan Pescod, both reminiscent of bygone school days and the Zoom calls of yesterday — in short, reunion. Its re-discovery was happenstance and ought to be listened to as such. That is, “Back in the HCA” was not made to be listened to on a broad scale, or, at least, was not made with this goal in mind; it is neither in its time nor of its time. Of course, the group explicitly cites the folk tunes of the English countryside, the distorted rock groups that reigned during the record’s conception, and the fringes of psychedelic music that only the uber-underground might recognize (e.g., “Dreaming of Alice”). Yet still with these obvious influences, “Back in the HCA” always existed beyond the domain of both traditional musicianship and conventional commodification. Bowes Road Band’s DIY musicality beams through in technicolor across “Back in the HCA.” The vinyl includes an 8-page booklet detailing the albums creation and interviews with the band.

Lead single “Grass is Grass,” out July 14 along with album pre-order, encapsulates the record’s range: the track unfurls into a sprawling sax-driven trip following a sundrenched, Donovan-esque intro w/ lyrics “naively about parks and gardens, not marijuana!” The keyed-down folk cut “Goodbye to Rosie” is single 2 and elevates stripped-down acoustics with golden tinges, out August 4th. Focus track “Tomorrow’s Truth” constructs the fuzzed-out underbelly of acid folk. Listen for echoes of late Beatles, Mark Fry, and Donovan (if they were armed by an unshakabele willful naiveté). Like Sgt. Pepper’s on a shoestring budget—take a trip to the underground with LP “Back in the HCA,” available everywhere physically and digitally on September 1st via Jakarta Records and Uno Loop.

Besides online promotion from label profiles, the album will be further promoted by external agencies within the UK and US.

Doppel-LP im Klappcover mit zwei bedruckten Innersleeves, 140 Gramm Vinyl. Was tun, wenn die Welt stehen bleibt? März 2020 ist der Moment, als die deutsche Schauspielerin Melanie Wiegmann auf der kleinen maltesischen Insel Gozo landet, um dort ihren Lebensgefährten, den Musiker Carl Carlton, zu besuchen. Pandemie, Quarantäne, Reisebeschränkungen - nichts geht mehr. Carl, international vernetzter und bekannter Rockgitarrist, ist gezwungen, sämtliche musikalischen Projekte auf Eis zu legen. Auch für Melanie wird die Reise zur Zäsur. Sie bricht Brücken ab und verlässt die laufende Produktion der ARD-Telenovela "Sturm der Liebe", mit der sie zum Star wurde. Aus ihrem ursprünglich geplanten Vier-Tage-Trip werden schließlich drei Jahre. Das Paar nutzt die Zwangspause auf der Mittelmeerinsel, um sich der Musik zu widmen. Im Vordergrund stehen der Spaß und die gemeinsame Liebe zu den Songs, an eine kommerzielle Verwertung denkt niemand. Der rote Faden, der sämtliche Songs verbindet: das ewige Thema Liebe - mit allen Schattierungen. Melanie und Carl entwickeln Arrangements und stellen fest, dass nicht nur ihre Stimmen, sondern auch ihre Geschmäcker harmonieren. Das Great Americana Songbook bildet die Grundlage. Neben Genre-Klassikern wie "Love Hurts" und "If I Needed You" kommen auch die Beatles ("Here, There And Everywhere") und Perlen aus den Katalogen großer Songwriter wie Leonard Cohen ("Dance Me To The End Of Love"), Tom Petty ("Wildflowers") und John Prine ("Long Monday") oder Bob Dylan ("I'll Be Your Baby Tonight") ins Spiel. Als Reisen endlich wieder möglich ist, packen die beiden die Koffer, um Carls weltweit verzweigte Musikerfamilie zu besuchen. Die Aufnahmen der Songs entstehen in Irland, Berlin und schließlich auf Malta. Den Feinschliff für das Album gab es in New York von Mastering-Legende Fred Kevorkian. Mit "Glory Of Love" ist ein warmherziges musikalisches Tagebuch entstanden, das mit eigenwilliger Songauswahl, unprätentiösen Arrangements und natürlichem Charme überzeugt. Die vielleicht schönste Überraschung: Hier haben sich nicht nur zwei Seelen, sondern auch zwei wundervoll harmonierende Stimmen gefunden.

Die gefeierte dänische Singer-Songwriterin eee gee veröffentlicht ihr zweites Albums ”SHE-REX”.

Das elegante Universum von eee gee ist eines der Paradoxe und Kontraste. Ein Ort, an dem sich die komplexe Welt einer jungen Frau, die versucht, ihren Weg im Leben zu finden, in Form von magischen
musikalischen Momenten und fesselnden Geschichten entfaltet. Oder wie eee gee einfach sagt: ”Ich mache Musik für Introvertierte, die ständig in die unbequeme extrovertierte Art, wie die Welt funktioniert, gedrängt werden.”

Nachdem eee gee sich 2022 in ihrem Heimatland als eine der besten jungen dänischen Songwriterinnen etabliert hatte, legte die Künstlerin 2023 mit einem atemberaubenden Auftritt beim Eurosonic richtig los -
gefolgt von einem Auftritt bei The Great Escape (UK), wo sie als Support von Arlo Parks spielte. Diesen Sommer stehen noch eine Reihe von Festivals in ganz Europa an, darunter das Lollapalooza in Berlin, das Roskilde Festival in Dänemark und das BBK Festival in Bilbao sowie das Pitchfork Festival in Paris und London.

Perc Trax's Forever series returns with another forward facing selection of Perc Trax regulars and artists that are new to the label. Now in its fourth edition this time Tham, Perc, Tassid and Dahryl serve up a varied mix of tracks from across the techno
spectrum.

Opening up the release is Tassid, who returns to the label after his recent festival wrecking remix of Perc's own 'Resistor' and his continued work for Stay Up Forever and his own Skuxx imprint. Here he gives us 'Quantum Entanglement', taking dance floors on a twisting psychedelic journey built on a classic rock solid Tassid warehouse foundation.

Closing the A-side is label boss man Perc, returning to the Forever series after this Dirt release for Perc Trax and his Wave Cannon EP for Scalameriya's new Void+1 label. 'Fireball XTC' hits you with a swarm of jabbing vocal shouts pushed forward by rolling percussion rhythms for a typically epic Perc work out. Flip over the vinyl and Synoid cofounder and Driller label head Tham makes his Perc Trax debut with 'Put The Screws On' showcasing a fusion of modern Berlin techno and classic electro synth sounds.

Last up is Elements & Green Fetish producer Dahryl closes the vinyl with 'Just Do It' a grinding slab of main room techno featuring the biggest drop of the release which has been in Perc's sets for months now.

Remastered for its 10th Anniversary, the newly cut vinyl edition of Ripely Pine features the bonus track “Up In The Rafters,” long a live favorite that really should have been on the album in the first place. More than anything, Aly Spaltro has 20,000 second-hand DVDs to thank for her first album. Despite being recorded at a proper studio in her recently adopted home of Brooklyn, Ripely Pine showcases songs conceived during her tenure at Bart’s & Greg’s DVD Explosion in Brunswick, Maine. Little did customers know, the same store they’d drop off their Transformers movies was providing the ideal four-year cocoon for the development of a major musical talent. Spaltro worked the 3:00 PM to 11:00 PM shift. Each night, after locking up, she’d walk past Drama and Horror, pull out her music gear from behind a wall of movies, and write and record songs until morning broke. She did this every day, drawing strength from the monotony of her routine and testing out multiple techniques, approaches and instrumentation. Anger, confusion, love, happiness and sadness reigned, and the songs ran rampant, with little form or structure. Isolated for those many hours, Spaltro let melodies morph together, break apart and pair up. This is how she taught herself to write music and sing. Taking the name Lady Lamb the Beekeeper, Spaltro became one of the most beloved musicians in Portland. Her live shows were unhinged, as melodies followed an internal logic only apparent to Spaltro herself. She sang and played guitar, and the songs offered a vivid yet brief snapshot of her expansive world. At 23, with years of writing and performing music already under her belt, she ventured to the next milestone—recording an album. This would be the first time she did so in a professional studio and the first time she shared the process with anyone else. Luckily, she met Nadim Issa at Let ’Em Music in Brooklyn. He was taken enough by her abilities to dedicate nine full months toward the recording of Ripely Pine, and she with his producing abilities to ease comfortably into making him a part of her recording process. She wrote everything—all the songs, all the arrangements. And the two of them assembled an album that finally fit what existed in Spaltro’s mind. Keeping the songs’ stark rawness, the record is a pure representation of her sound. Ripely Pine shouts the introduction of a new talent from every groove. These recordings come as close as possible to conveying the intense majesty of her live shows, and, much like those performances, a narrative breathes through the record’s progression. The album opens with urgency and anger, settles into reconciliation and reciprocation, and ultimately reaches toward resolution, realizing infatuation leads to a loss of self; instead, embracing one’s own strengths is the most powerful thing of all.

In 2020, electronic musician Nina Pixel was offered a track on a compilation album of songs from the Liptov region. What started as a rearrangement of a single folk song eventually grew in scope and size, eventually becoming a series of releases. Titled Ancestral Archaeology, the series counts two self-released EPs, an audiovisual show in co-operation with Adrián Kriška, and now, after two years, a double LP published by Weltschmerzen. In this definitive form of an album, Ancestral Archaeology reveals itself as a musical reimagination of traditional historical Slovak culture at large.

Nina Pixel averts the perils of lapsing into inauthentic fakelore by building her music with, rather than on, the ethnographic riches of Slovakia. With the eagerness of a genuine archeological prospector, Ancestral Archaeology invokes the always present but seldom perceived linchpins of folklore culture: the desperate clinging to the memory of pre-Christian paganism and witchcraft, songs with narratives of beautiful innate wyrdness that is utterly unfit for mass culture, and superstition as the most serious longing for the balance between sense and irrationality.

If we acknowledge the truism of folklore as the shared way of expression in rural society, the techno music on Ancestral Archeology proposes that, in the urban society of ours, this role is served by raves. The argument isn't as much declared as it's implied // in music and in the spoken-word lyrics that are rife with historical and contemporary sources. An 18th-century recipe by the writer and priest Juraj Fándly proposes snorting the grounded flowers of the medicinal weed Valerian as a way of curing bad vision. "It is a proven remedy!" we are repeatedly assured, and it's not hard imagining Fándly and his parishioners, strung out on Valerian, moving almost involuntarily to the rhythms of their era just as we can move to Ancestral Archeology.

Nina Pixel is a Slovak music artist based in Berlin. Lyrics are inspired by Slovak folklore traditions, songs and shared beliefs.



Manifestation tools: cello, overtone flute koncovka, fujara, gong, metal bowls, sheep bell, field recordings of Slovak forests, Andreas's tom and various drum machines.

The show, which rolled over the open-air stage of the Greek Theatre night after night in the late summer of 1963, attracted fans as if on a pilgrimage to the mountains of Hollywood. Many who could not get hold of a map climbed the surrounding trees to be able to admire the Calypso man at least from a distance.

Also on the lookout and with sound equipment at the ready were the people of the company RCA, which released the eagerly awaited album the following year. Some of the songs like the wriggling "Zombie Jamboree", "Look Over Yonder" and the wonderfully dripping Schmonzette "Try To Remember" were previously only available as studio versions. Most of the other numbers were brand new and sounded for the first time in a sparkling live atmosphere, which is authentically reproduced on this record.

Here a laugh as a receipt for a casual saying, there a rumble of boards, then again concentrated silence of a spellbound listening audience - something like this only happens on stage.

For Belafonte connoisseurs, these recordings are regarded as the crowning glory of the artistically highly productive phase of the years 1959 to 1963. Of the many good albums, this is one of the best.

Personnel: Harry Belafonte (voc); Howard Roberts (cond); William Eaton (clavietta); Ernest Calabria, Jay Berliner (g); John Cartwright (b); Percy Brice (dr); Ralph MacDonald (perc), choir and orchestra

When picturing the German techno scene, one likely imagines the concrete monoliths of its capital city Berlin rather than the vineyards and valleys of the enchanting city of Stuttgart in the southwest. But small cities lack the oversaturation and noise of the metropolis, allowing them to develop their own inspired and distinctive subcultural visions. Stuttgart’s David Löhlein exemplifies this potential, manifesting a singular style of sight and sound through his Vision Ektase project and residency at Lehmann Club. Now, Löhlein’s warm-blooded techno is slinking, slithering and seducing its way through BNR, with the upcoming Hotel Pool EP release.

There’s no hesitation before plunging into the EP’s titular track, with its rushing fingered basslines and rolling polyrhythms. Löhlein cites solo travels in Columbia as the source of his Latin influences, and one hears them throughout “Hotel Pool” in vocal and percussive samples. Elements more commonly found in Latin and tribal house feel uncommonly fresh once Löhlein recontextualizes them within a 144 bpm techno foundation. The words “groovy” and “sexy” are usually reserved for the stuff of Buddha Bar compilations, but “Hotel Pool” is exhilarating because it serves both of the former and none of the latter.

A stream of hedonism flows beneath all of the four-tracker, but if the opener is erotic, A2 “La Piscina” is psychedelic. The bass flutters like a mescaline come-up, as infinite loops of chattering voices and deep bamboo pipe notes mesmerize. Again, Löhlein takes certain genre tropes - in this case from psytrance - and transposes them through his own stylistic signature with thrilling results. Ask Löhlein if he likes psytrance and the answer might be “Yes, when it’s techno.”

Leading the flip, “Cuando Vengas” heats up around a dark and sticky loop of ambiguous, organic origin. Here Löhlein’s masterful sample and drum programming is clearly on display, with vocal chops and subtle rhythmic variations leading the dancefloor to shivering bliss. The EP closes with “I Just Want,” a sparse, cold, and bitcrushed stalker of a track that seems to answer Baudrillard’s famed question “What are you doing after the orgy?” That the Hotel Pool EP’s wild romp ends in the Berlin oeuvre perhaps proves the city’s primacy in the German techno scene, but after a few listens one begins to wonder what rare pleasures they’ve been missing in David Löhlein’s Stuttgart.