quête:between you

HTRK step into their 21st year on reflective terms, launching a series of collaborations, covers/remixes, installations, and performances alongside the new repress of their full-length debut, Marry Me Tonight. First released in 2009 via Blast First Petite, the album saw its first vinyl pressing in 2015 via Ghostly International and has since been out of stock. In late 2024, Marry Me Tonight becomes available in limited edition pink and black vinyl, also finally on streaming services. Few groups in history elevate mood to such singular, smoldering supremacy as the Australian duo of Jonnine Standish and Nigel Yang, aka HTRK (or "hate rock" if informed). Across two decades of work and wounds, HTRK's sound has shape-shifted between densities and intensities, noise and nakedness, but never wavered in its delicate poetic gravity. In HTRK's sound world, cavernous reverberations of dub techno are mixed with frosted post-punk motifs and the gravelly imperfections of industrial, reimagined in the setting of a dingy basement. Like all HTRK albums, Marry Me Tonight was singular in sound and circumstance. It's the only album the outfit recorded from start to finish as a trio, and it's the only HTRK record that bears the co-production stamp of Rowland S. Howard. Breathy, caustic, and rife with contradiction, Marry Me Tonight took the raw material recorded on 2005's Nostalgia and transformed it into a pop record _ pop that buckled and warped beneath the glare of Howard, fellow producer Lindsay Gravina, and the HTRK trio: Jonnine Standish, Nigel Yang and Sean Stewart. Howard died at the end of 2009; Stewart died the year after. Things would never be the same. The band would carry on and reach new heights despite it all, but as a trio, this is their definitive document.

Repress 2026

THE WORLD OF HANS ZIMMER - PART II: A NEW DIMENSION ist die mit Spannung erwartete Fortsetzung des Erfolgsalbums The World of Hans Zimmer - A Symphonic Celebration von 2019. Dafür hat Hans Zimmer neue, klangmalerische Orchestersuiten komponiert, die auf vielen weiteren seiner ikonischen Soundtracks basieren. Höhepunkte des über zwei Stunden Musik umfassenden Doppelalbums sind die wie ein Cellokonzert angelegte Suite von No Time to Die, das elegische A Time of Quiet Between the Storms aus Dune II oder die epische Orchestersuite von The Prince of Egypt. Darüber hinaus können sich Fans über eine einzigartige neue Version von The Rock freuen - einem der großen Hans Zimmer Klassiker aus den 90er Jahren. Auf THE WORLD OF HANS ZIMMER - PART II: A NEW DIMENSION versammelt Hans Zimmer ein herausragendes Ensemble von Solist*Innen. Darunter die Sänger*Innen Lebo M, Lisa Gerrard, Gan-ya Ben-gur Akselrod und Nokukhanya Dlamini, der Multi-Holzbläser Pedro Eustache, Bassist Juan García-Herreros, Gitarrist Alexios Anest, Pianistin Eliane Correa, Cellistin Mariko Muranaka, Violinistin Rusanda Panfili sowie die Percussionisten Aleksandra Šuklar, Luis Ribeiro und Lucy Landymore. Diese spielen gemeinsam mit dem Odessa Orchestra & Friends und dem Nairobi Chamber Choir unter der Leitung von Dirigent Gavin Greenaway.Part 1 Man of Steel SuiteDriving (Miss Daisy) SuiteThe Rock SuiteNo Time To Die Suite Interstellar Suite Dune II SuiteThe Prince of Egypt SuiteWonder Woman SuiteSherlock Holmes SuiteInception SuitePart 2The Dark Knight SuiteGladiator SuitePearl Harbor SuiteKung Fu Panda SuitePower of One: Mother AfricaThe Lion King SuitePirates of the Caribbean Suite

With I recognize you from my sketches, Tabbal further refines his signature sound, delving into the spaces between memory, identity, and personal growth. This album is a meditation on the emotional disconnect between who we aspire to be and the person we ultimately become, captured through a minimalist and emotionally charged sonic landscape

Between records like Relentless and Show `Em How, Pentagram have never wanted for self-awareness in terms of album titles. The gauntlet thrown down by Lightning in a Bottle is very much in this tradition. The 10th Pentagram album sees founding frontman and doom figurehead Bobby Liebling leading a new cast of players that includes guitarist/producer Tony Reed (Mos Generator, Big Scenic Nowhere, etc.), drummer Henry Vasquez (Legions of Doom, Saint Vitus, Blood of the Sun, etc.) and bassist Scooter Haslip (Mos Generator, Saltine). It would be hard to overstate the energy the new band brings to songs like "Live Again," "Solve the Puzzle" or "In the Panic Room," but Lightning in a Bottle is unmistakably a Pentagram record, of course in Liebling's unremittingly charismatic performance and the groove conjured to back it. Recorded with Reed at the helm, Lightning in a Bottle recalls the best of what has allowed Pentagram to cast an influence across decades and generations of musicians, bands, and worshippers of Riff, and as just their third studio release in the last 15 years, it's not a moment to neglect as they dig into a cut like "Dull Pain" or "Lady Heroin," the latter of which is a naked reconciliation on the part of Liebling with a lifelong addiction to opiates that's become an inextricable part of the Pentagram story. As he wonders in the lyrics, "Lady Heroin, have I seen the last of you?" it becomes difficult to know whether the separation would be through sobriety or death, and that ambiguity becomes part of what makes the song so striking.

Deluxe Edition, Double LP, Gatefold, alternative Cover. Comes with three bonus tracks. Between records like Relentless and Show `Em How, Pentagram have never wanted for self-awareness in terms of album titles. The gauntlet thrown down by Lightning in a Bottle is very much in this tradition. The 10th Pentagram album sees founding frontman and doom figurehead Bobby Liebling leading a new cast of players that includes guitarist/producer Tony Reed (Mos Generator, Big Scenic Nowhere, etc.), drummer Henry Vasquez (Legions of Doom, Saint Vitus, Blood of the Sun, etc.) and bassist Scooter Haslip (Mos Generator, Saltine). It would be hard to overstate the energy the new band brings to songs like "Live Again," "Solve the Puzzle" or "In the Panic Room," but Lightning in a Bottle is unmistakably a Pentagram record, of course in Liebling's unremittingly charismatic performance and the groove conjured to back it. Recorded with Reed at the helm, Lightning in a Bottle recalls the best of what has allowed Pentagram to cast an influence across decades and generations of musicians, bands, and worshippers of Riff, and as just their third studio release in the last 15 years, it's not a moment to neglect as they dig into a cut like "Dull Pain" or "Lady Heroin," the latter of which is a naked reconciliation on the part of Liebling with a lifelong addiction to opiates that's become an inextricable part of the Pentagram story. As he wonders in the lyrics, "Lady Heroin, have I seen the last of you?" it becomes difficult to know whether the separation would be through sobriety or death, and that ambiguity becomes part of what makes the song so striking.

Aqua Blue Vinyl, limited to 500 copies. Between records like Relentless and Show `Em How, Pentagram have never wanted for self-awareness in terms of album titles. The gauntlet thrown down by Lightning in a Bottle is very much in this tradition. The 10th Pentagram album sees founding frontman and doom figurehead Bobby Liebling leading a new cast of players that includes guitarist/producer Tony Reed (Mos Generator, Big Scenic Nowhere, etc.), drummer Henry Vasquez (Legions of Doom, Saint Vitus, Blood of the Sun, etc.) and bassist Scooter Haslip (Mos Generator, Saltine). It would be hard to overstate the energy the new band brings to songs like "Live Again," "Solve the Puzzle" or "In the Panic Room," but Lightning in a Bottle is unmistakably a Pentagram record, of course in Liebling's unremittingly charismatic performance and the groove conjured to back it. Recorded with Reed at the helm, Lightning in a Bottle recalls the best of what has allowed Pentagram to cast an influence across decades and generations of musicians, bands, and worshippers of Riff, and as just their third studio release in the last 15 years, it's not a moment to neglect as they dig into a cut like "Dull Pain" or "Lady Heroin," the latter of which is a naked reconciliation on the part of Liebling with a lifelong addiction to opiates that's become an inextricable part of the Pentagram story. As he wonders in the lyrics, "Lady Heroin, have I seen the last of you?" it becomes difficult to know whether the separation would be through sobriety or death, and that ambiguity becomes part of what makes the song so striking.

Deep purple vinyl, limited to 500 copies. Between records like Relentless and Show `Em How, Pentagram have never wanted for self-awareness in terms of album titles. The gauntlet thrown down by Lightning in a Bottle is very much in this tradition. The 10th Pentagram album sees founding frontman and doom figurehead Bobby Liebling leading a new cast of players that includes guitarist/producer Tony Reed (Mos Generator, Big Scenic Nowhere, etc.), drummer Henry Vasquez (Legions of Doom, Saint Vitus, Blood of the Sun, etc.) and bassist Scooter Haslip (Mos Generator, Saltine). It would be hard to overstate the energy the new band brings to songs like "Live Again," "Solve the Puzzle" or "In the Panic Room," but Lightning in a Bottle is unmistakably a Pentagram record, of course in Liebling's unremittingly charismatic performance and the groove conjured to back it. Recorded with Reed at the helm, Lightning in a Bottle recalls the best of what has allowed Pentagram to cast an influence across decades and generations of musicians, bands, and worshippers of Riff, and as just their third studio release in the last 15 years, it's not a moment to neglect as they dig into a cut like "Dull Pain" or "Lady Heroin," the latter of which is a naked reconciliation on the part of Liebling with a lifelong addiction to opiates that's become an inextricable part of the Pentagram story. As he wonders in the lyrics, "Lady Heroin, have I seen the last of you?" it becomes difficult to know whether the separation would be through sobriety or death, and that ambiguity becomes part of what makes the song so striking.

Deluxe Edition, 2LP, Gatefold, alternative Cover. Plus three bonus tracks. Between records like Relentless and Show `Em How, Pentagram have never wanted for self-awareness in terms of album titles. The gauntlet thrown down by Lightning in a Bottle is very much in this tradition. The 10th Pentagram album sees founding frontman and doom figurehead Bobby Liebling leading a new cast of players that includes guitarist/producer Tony Reed (Mos Generator, Big Scenic Nowhere, etc.), drummer Henry Vasquez (Legions of Doom, Saint Vitus, Blood of the Sun, etc.) and bassist Scooter Haslip (Mos Generator, Saltine). It would be hard to overstate the energy the new band brings to songs like "Live Again," "Solve the Puzzle" or "In the Panic Room," but Lightning in a Bottle is unmistakably a Pentagram record, of course in Liebling's unremittingly charismatic performance and the groove conjured to back it. Recorded with Reed at the helm, Lightning in a Bottle recalls the best of what has allowed Pentagram to cast an influence across decades and generations of musicians, bands, and worshippers of Riff, and as just their third studio release in the last 15 years, it's not a moment to neglect as they dig into a cut like "Dull Pain" or "Lady Heroin," the latter of which is a naked reconciliation on the part of Liebling with a lifelong addiction to opiates that's become an inextricable part of the Pentagram story. As he wonders in the lyrics, "Lady Heroin, have I seen the last of you?" it becomes difficult to know whether the separation would be through sobriety or death, and that ambiguity becomes part of what makes the song so striking.

Color-In-Color Transp. Yellow / Pink Neon Splatter Black Vinyl Limited to 150 copies. Between records like Relentless and Show `Em How, Pentagram have never wanted for self-awareness in terms of album titles. The gauntlet thrown down by Lightning in a Bottle is very much in this tradition. The 10th Pentagram album sees founding frontman and doom figurehead Bobby Liebling leading a new cast of players that includes guitarist/producer Tony Reed (Mos Generator, Big Scenic Nowhere, etc.), drummer Henry Vasquez (Legions of Doom, Saint Vitus, Blood of the Sun, etc.) and bassist Scooter Haslip (Mos Generator, Saltine). It would be hard to overstate the energy the new band brings to songs like "Live Again," "Solve the Puzzle" or "In the Panic Room," but Lightning in a Bottle is unmistakably a Pentagram record, of course in Liebling's unremittingly charismatic performance and the groove conjured to back it. Recorded with Reed at the helm, Lightning in a Bottle recalls the best of what has allowed Pentagram to cast an influence across decades and generations of musicians, bands, and worshippers of Riff, and as just their third studio release in the last 15 years, it's not a moment to neglect as they dig into a cut like "Dull Pain" or "Lady Heroin," the latter of which is a naked reconciliation on the part of Liebling with a lifelong addiction to opiates that's become an inextricable part of the Pentagram story. As he wonders in the lyrics, "Lady Heroin, have I seen the last of you?" it becomes difficult to know whether the separation would be through sobriety or death, and that ambiguity becomes part of what makes the song so striking.

“Deep Meaning” is the debut album by Maria Wildeis, a Cologne-based artist and expert in real-time sound design for installations.

The tracks on “Deep Meaning” oscillate between club and experimental music and are characterized by a lightness unique to debut works. Particularly notable is the inventive use of synthetic, organic, and sampled vocal elements. Voices constantly morph into melodies and back; words become notes, chords turn into text. Maria’s real-time approach to composing is evident throughout, making this album an unscripted adventure. Before you uncover the deep meaning, it has already swept you away.

Maria Wildeis researches spatial aspects in art and music, working with digital sound modeling and procedural sound synthesis. She also runs Gemeinde Köln, an art space in Cologne, Germany, which she founded in 2018.

Recorded in Cologne. Music by Maria Wildeis. Tracks 2,4 co-written by Daniel Ansorge. Additional production by Daniel Ansorge and Jens-Uwe Beyer. Mixed and mastered by Daniel Ansorge at Magazine Studio Cologne. Supported by the Cultural Office Cologne.

F.U.N. Is Now Available In A Limited Frosted Shadow Colored Vinyl Pressing!

The latest full length album from Detroit mainstays Slum Village, F.U.N., has now made its way to vinyl. The 12-track project is their first album in nearly ten years and includes fresh collaborations with Larry June, Cordae, Eric Roberson, Robert Glasper , Karriem Riggins, Abstract Orchestra, Sango, Phat Kat, Daru Jones, Earlly Mac, The Dramatics and more. 2015's critically acclaimed Yes! further cemented T3 and Young RJ's ability to effectively carry on the legacy of the seminal rap group, retaining its essence while evolving its sound with fresh new energy. However, with last year's sold out tour in Europe, and the release of the Larry June and The Dramatics-assisted "Just Like You", it was revealed that the duo was back in the lab together working on a new Slum Village album. F.U.N. finds Slum Village expanding on their signature certain sound, but still staying close to their hometown roots: Young RJ explains- “We wanted to just try something new, so we focused on making Disco-inspired music,” and T3 notes that the recording process all “began with collecting old Disco records.” For fans who wonder why the sonic shift, and why the long hiatus between proper albums, T3 says “Slum is still here. We’re still relevant and we’re still trying to push the envelope. Sometimes people put too many rules on music, and without sounding cliche, we wanted to just have fun with this album.” F.U.N., indeed.

First Word Records is extremely proud to welcome aboard Takuya Kuroda.

A highly-respected trumpeter born in Kobe, Japan, Takuya is a forward-thinking musician that has developed a unique hybrid sound, blending soulful jazz, funk, post-bop, fusion and hip hop music.

After following the footsteps of his trombonist brother playing in big bands, he relocated to New York to study jazz & contemporary music at The New School in Union Square; a course he graduated from in the mid-noughties. It was here that Takuya met vocalist José James, with whom he worked on the 'Blackmagic' and 'No Beginning No End' projects.

Following graduation, Takuya established himself further in the NYC jazz scene, performing with the likes of Akoya Afrobeat and in recent years with DJ Premier's BADDER band (also including acclaimed bass player, Brady Watt). Premier said "The BADDER Band project was put together by my manager, and an agent I've known since the beginning of my Gang Starr career. He said, 'What if you put a band together that revolved around a trumpet player from Japan named Takuya Kuroda? He's got a hip-hop perspective and respect in the jazz field…"

Takuya Kuroda is already incredibly prolific, releasing five albums in the past decade and fortifying a solid reputation in the global jazz scene. 2011 saw the release of Takuya's independently-produced debut album, 'Edge', followed by 'Bitter and High' the following year and 'Six Aces' on P-Vine in 2013. Takuya was signed to the legendary Blue Note Records in 2014 for his album 'Rising Son', as well as appearing on their 2019 cover versions project, 'Blue Note Voyage'. He released his 5th album 'Zigzagger' on Concord in 2016, which also featured Antibalas on a reimagining of the Donald Byrd classic 'Think Twice'.

Late Summer 2020, Takuya Kuroda returns with his sixth album 'Fly Moon Die Soon'.

In his words, "this album is about the irony between the greatness of nature and the beautiful obsceneness of humanity. Melodies and grooves fly back and forth from being spiritual to being vulgar."

It took two years to make this album. In 2018, I decided I just couldn't make albums the same way I had been in the past anymore. As a birthday treat to myself, I booked a studio in Brooklyn for two days, with only myself and an engineer, Todd Carder. I brought along some tracks I'd been building at home to see if we could complete them within that time. We began replacing sounds and adding texture, sampling noises from all over the studio; me sipping coffee, hitting a 26" kick drum, speeding up snares. At the end of the two days we were like "wow, I didn't know we could make tracks this good in this way". This is how the process of the full album started. Everything was based on my beats I made at home, inviting musicians in one by one, adding or replacing parts. I was very careful when developing these tracks; just note by note, part by part. I wanted to make the music effectively from a blend of two different recording methods; one very slickly produced part and one very organic part played by live musicians. I remember mixtapes from when I was kid, and wanted to make an album that wasn't just a bunch of flashy singles, trying to catch people's attention in the first 30 seconds, or full of guest features. Instead, I'm essentially just trying to let the grooves breath."

The album consists of nine tracks of excellence. The uptempo jazz-funk of 'ABC' and 'Moody' sit alongside soulful jazz cuts like 'Fade' and 'CHANGE', also featuring Corey King on vocals. The title track is a downtempo groove lead by a heavy Moog bassline, whilst 'Do No Why' contains an infectious piano riff throughout. Aside from Takuya's original compositions, he revisits two classics from Ohio Players ('Sweet Sticky Thing' featuring Alina Engibaryan on vocals) and Herbie Hancock ('Tell Me A Bedtime Story') whilst the album closes with the epic 'TKBK'.

Takuya adds "this special cover was inspired by the Golden Moon I saw during a photoshoot in Death Valley with my homie Hiroyuki Seo".

Takuya Kuroda is a truly unique talent, and this album is a realisation of the evolution of his sound.

'Fly Moon Die Soon' is released on Worldwide Award-winning UK label First Word Records on vinyl & digital in September 2020.

Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductee, two-time Grammy® Award-winning Hip-Hop icon, Kennedy Center Honoree, actor, author, NAACP Image Award winner, entrepreneur, philanthropist, and founder/CEO of Rock The Bells, LL COOL J continues his trailblazing career with upcoming album 'The FORCE'.

LL’s highly anticipated 14th studio album The FORCE (Frequencies of Real Creative Energy) set for release September 6th follows over a decade long hiatus. The record was executive produced by Hip-Hop innovator and Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductee Q-Tip, of A Tribe Called Quest. With this album, LL will help celebrate the 40th anniversary of the creation of Def Jam Recordings. As LL was the label’s first release, there is no better way to represent the legacy of Def Jam Recordings on its 40th year

Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductee, two-time Grammy® Award-winning Hip-Hop icon, Kennedy Center Honoree, actor, author, NAACP Image Award winner, entrepreneur, philanthropist, and founder and CEO of Rock The Bells, LL COOL J has created one of the most multifaceted careers and brands in entertainment and continues to display his wide range of talents with every project.

Four decades after he first burst onto the scene, LL COOL J continues his vibrant, trailblazing career. LL COOL J helped elevate the burgeoning rap and Hip-Hop scene of the 80’s, which developed into the musical and cultural phenomenon that is Hip-Hop as we know it today. Of LL’s many contributions to the culture, he also is credited with the creation of the acronym “G.O.A.T.” - short for “Greatest of All Time.”

First introduced to the world in 1984 as a Def Jam Recordings’ flagship artist, LL is the first rap artist to amass ten consecutive platinum-plus selling albums, including his critically-acclaimed debut album, RADIO, and the international, timeless anthem and album of the same name, MAMA SAID KNOCK YOU OUT. LL’s hit singles include “Going Back to Cali,” “Doin’ It,” “Around the Way Girl,” “Loungin’”, “Headsprung,” and Hip-Hop’s first rap ballad “I Need Love.”

Up next, this fall LL is back to make his latest artistic contribution and continue to elevate Hip-Hop culture after over a decade long hiatus with the release of his highly anticipated new album, The FORCE (Frequencies of Real Creative Energy), executive produced by Hip-Hop innovator and Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductee Q-Tip, of A Tribe Called Quest. With this album, LL will help celebrate the 40th anniversary of the creation of Def Jam Recordings.

In December 2017, LL became the first rapper to earn the prestigious Kennedy Center Honor, which is America’s highest achievement for any performer. In addition, he received his star on the world-renowned Hollywood Walk of Fame on January 21, 2016.
In March 2018, LL launched his own SiriusXM timeless Hip-Hop channel entitled “LL COOL J's Rock The Bells Radio,” garnering millions of daily listeners. The channel features a wide range of innovative and timeless Hip-Hop content, music, interviews, and in-depth retrospectives curated, programmed, and presented by the award-winning artist himself. Since founding the radio station, Rock The Bells has developed into a global platform that has become the preeminent voice for timeless Hip-Hop. Rock The Bells focuses on content, commerce and experiences that honor the CULTURE and the core elements of Hip-Hop – MCs, DJs, Breakers, Graffiti Artists – and more. Rock The Bells hosted its inaugural eponymous music festival in Queens, New York in August 2022, which sold out back-to-back years in 2022 and 2023, where LL headlined both festivals.

LL COOL J was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame on October 30, 2021, in Cleveland, Ohio for the 36th annual induction ceremony. Considered by most as the crowning achievement for one’s musical career, the ceremony was a celebration of LL’s lasting impact on Hip-Hop and the music industry.

In Summer 2023, LL COOL J, Rock The Bells, and Live Nation Urban kicked off his first arena tour in 30 years across North America called The F.O.R.C.E. Tour, inspired by the name of LL’s forthcoming album. Living up to the acronym for Frequencies of Real Creative Energy, the lineup for this tour was personally curated by LL COOL J. Building off their amazing performance together on the GRAMMY® Awards earlier that year celebrating the 50th Anniversary of Hip-Hop, all dates featured collaborative live performances with preeminent Award-winning Hip-Hop band The Roots, the legendary DJ Jazzy Jeff, and DJ Z-Trip.

LL hosted the GRAMMY® Awards for an unprecedented five years in a row from 2012-2016, for which he earned rave reviews. In addition, he hosted and produced the GRAMMY® Nominations Concert Live Special for seven years and has also been a presenter at the Emmy®, Golden Globe® and SAG Awards. Most recently, at the end of 2023, LL helped produce CBS’ live concert special A GRAMMY Salute To 50 Years Of Hip-Hop, which celebrated the 50th anniversary of Hip-Hop and was nominated for an NAACP Image Award.

LL has always been an avid philanthropist involved in numerous causes, including literacy for kids as well as music and arts programs in schools. Founded in 2005, LL’s charity “Jump & Ball” – which takes place every August in his hometown of Queens, New York – aims to give back to his local community by offering an athletic and team building program dedicated to bringing wholesome fun to young people.

Between being a musician, actor, philanthropist and entrepreneur, LL COOL J is the ultimate multi-hyphenate whose career continues to expand and where he remains one of the most beloved and innovative brands in entertainment. He currently resides in both New York and Los Angeles.

Pinkman is proud to present the debut album of darkwave artist Skelesys. Across nine evocative tracks, "Fading Echoes" navigates the tension between nostalgia and self-discovery, weaving together a moody blend of synth-pop, post-punk, and goth influences. The result is an atmospheric exploration of memory, heartache, and resilience--a soundtrack for those moments when the past refuses to stay buried, and the future feels uncertain. From the cold, creeping synths to the mournful guitar lines that echo like distant whispers, Fading Echoes immerses the listener in a soundscape where shadows and light coexist. The album has a distinct cinematic quality, evoking the smoky allure of neon-lit cityscapes and rain-slicked streets, where every track feels like a chapter in a film noir tale of introspection and escape. There's a sense of longing that runs through the album, a desire to hold onto something beautiful, even as it slips through your fingers.

"Recorded in Jeremy Loops' home studio in Cape Town, South Africa ‘Feathers and Stone’ is an organic response to a world increasingly shaped by digital and artificial sounds, and showcases Jeremy's depth as an artist and a songwriter.

Following on from critically acclaimed albums Trading Change (2014), Critical As Water (2018) and Heard You Got Love (2022), ‘Feathers and Stone’ reflects the balance between heaviness and lightness by mixing both uplifting melodious music with melancholic moments, sophisticated guitar licks and vocal turns. Produced by Will Hicks (Ed Sheeran, Lilly Allen, Bastille), Loops hopes that listeners will feel the depth and honesty in all eleven tracks on the record.

After previous collaborations with industry luminaries like Ed Sheeran, Steve Mac and Edd Holloway, this album includes collaborations with South African choral group and five time Grammy Award Winners, Ladysmith Black Mombazo on the single ‘Coming Home’ and prolific German born folk/pop duo, Amistat on ‘Loveblood’, a powerful and euphoric track which found its feet while they toured through Europe and South Africa with Jeremy.

Previously, Jeremy Loops carved a niche for himself through electrifying live performances, progressing from small bars to selling out 5000-seat arenas globally and earning him accolades and awards at the South African Music Awards and MTV Africa's Best Alternative Artist award and & Best Pop Album."

"Recorded in Jeremy Loops' home studio in Cape Town, South Africa ‘Feathers and Stone’ is an organic response to a world increasingly shaped by digital and artificial sounds, and showcases Jeremy's depth as an artist and a songwriter.

Following on from critically acclaimed albums Trading Change (2014), Critical As Water (2018) and Heard You Got Love (2022), ‘Feathers and Stone’ reflects the balance between heaviness and lightness by mixing both uplifting melodious music with melancholic moments, sophisticated guitar licks and vocal turns. Produced by Will Hicks (Ed Sheeran, Lilly Allen, Bastille), Loops hopes that listeners will feel the depth and honesty in all eleven tracks on the record.

After previous collaborations with industry luminaries like Ed Sheeran, Steve Mac and Edd Holloway, this album includes collaborations with South African choral group and five time Grammy Award Winners, Ladysmith Black Mombazo on the single ‘Coming Home’ and prolific German born folk/pop duo, Amistat on ‘Loveblood’, a powerful and euphoric track which found its feet while they toured through Europe and South Africa with Jeremy.

Previously, Jeremy Loops carved a niche for himself through electrifying live performances, progressing from small bars to selling out 5000-seat arenas globally and earning him accolades and awards at the South African Music Awards and MTV Africa's Best Alternative Artist award and & Best Pop Album."

The latest House of Underground 12" presents a brilliant collaboration between UK legend DMX KREW and French young blood DVDE. including 2 vocal featurings by none other than the iconic Fingers vocalist Robert Owens!

The next release in Now Again's Memphis Rap series is Breakin Da Law presented on vinyl for the first time ever. This is Gangsta Blac's first, a swaggering and drawling gangster rap outing from hot and humid South Memphis. This is part of Now Again Records multiple LP series on the History of Memphis Rap, which attempts to capture Memphis and its underground rap scene as it began to produce some of the most distinctive music of the 90s. This was a unique hip-hop strain - visceral and often vicious. It was a local, low-fi, cassette-tape based movement - yet it went on to change the course of rap music. These albums have never been pressed on vinyl - until now. From Skinny Pimp and Carmike to Gangsta Blac and Shawty Pimp, these albums have been relegated to the proverbial bins of history and bootlegged, with unofficial copies still fetching top dollar on the secondary market. These albums were all licensed directly from their original creators, and come on limited edition colored vinyl with artist-approved imagery for their first LP iterations. You can read the story of the Memphis Rap scene in a 12-page, oversized booklet with notes by Torii MacAdams. It captures the story of Memphis rap starting with the city’s founding and ending with an auto supply shop that sold these albums over the counter, with all points in between.

Balli - Marraffa - Balli - Marraffa - Balli... is the new code to tune in to the 8 bit-jazz revolution, dial it on every device you might have to start its ringtone made of sax solos counterpointed by Game-Boy melodies. Once inside the Balli - Marraffa - Balli TRIO the trick wil be to identify the many videogames soundtracks hidden in this free-chiptune ep between the wildest reeds butchery and the Game-Boy gabba. Of course 'Super Mario Supreme', 'Grand Theft Auto Jazz Club', 'A kind of Arashi' and more to be detected inside "8 bit-Jazz Furlough" 10" vinyl digital.

Beirut Birds (طيور بيروت) is a sonic memory capsule honoring (inter)personal stories of migration, displacement, and the cyclical turbulent circumstances in Lebanon. Transforming her multi-year project, multidisciplinary artist and composer Nour Sokhon crystallizes the performance Beirut Birds (طيور بيروت) into her long-awaited debut album. When presented and performed live, it is accompanied by juxtaposed images of the Lebanese capital’s city life and avian migration across the Mediterranean Sea, representing themes strongly woven into the music.

In her variegated artistic process, Nour has undertaken and recorded interviews with diasporas and repatriates to commemorate, share, heal, and envision. These source materials become the album’s core elements that loop, narrate, and return throughout time, with Nour responding with both instruments and her voice. Chanting in dialogue with the interviewees, crafting near-mantras, Nour further congregates these materially-rooted soundscapes by including field recordings that she gleaned during 2018–2021 in Lebanon and her subsequent move to Berlin.

Embedded within the composition are manipulated sounds from objects that symbolize migration, such as office bells, a luggage wheel, car parts, and bureaucratic paperwork. Musically, the songs are enriched by Nour’s improvisations on classical piano, electronics, synthesizers, violin, and various percussion instruments. As time is sculpted and the layers blur, words become specters, while an entropic orchestra of drums and melody rises, giving shape to an in-between space for those who have left, and stayed.

Music and artistic research by Nour Sokhon, 2018–2024. Recording, editing, and mixing by Rabih Beaini at Morphine Raum, Berlin. Mastered by Rashad Becker at Clunk.

Legendary House don Harry Romero joins Rekids for the first time with the ‘Nice To Meet You’ EP comprising two massive tracks with classic NY House DNA with the sort of modern twist Romero’s become synonymous with throughout his two-decade-plus career. The Bambossa Records founder now lands on Radio Slave’s flagship label following an impressive 2024, which featured releases on Faith, Nu-Groove, and Defected.

After his appearance on Rekids’ podcast series in August, House hero Harry Romero starts the label’s 2025 with the ‘Nice To Meet You’ EP. First up is the title track, a uniquely hypnotic cut with a bold kazoo melody and raw, club-ready low-end that shines on the breakdowns and high-impact drops. ‘Danny’s Groove’ is next, a track with real Romero energy, its rhythm carefully layered with an organic drum shuffle at the centre, an ear-catching whistle melody in the back, and plenty of synth hits in between - the ‘Nice To Meet You’ EP is a masterclass in building and releasing energy on the dancefloor.

Radio Slave’s Rekids imprint was founded in 2006 and has since spawned successful offshoots with the Techno-focused Rekids Special Projects in 2017 and its newest sublabel, REK’D, in 2024. With Matt Edwards as the sole A&R, Rekids has been crucial in developing early artist careers and has become a haven for established acts operating in House and adjacent genres, having recently featured the likes of Hilit Kolet, William Kiss, Bushwacka, Mathias Kaden, Katerina, Sean Johnston, and many more.

With Human Drift, TUKAN continues to explore human connections through music. This album marks a new phase in their journey, after years of performing on international stages and resonating with an ever more diverse audience. Human Drift embodies this collective movement, this human drift where the individual is swept away by a force larger than themselves.

In a world leaning towards isolation and individualism, Human Drift is a celebration of connection. Each track blends electronic grooves with instrumental melodies to highlight how music can transcend language and create authentic bonds between people. They want their audience to feel, through every note, the raw and organic energy they experience on stage.

Echoing their music, the visual universe of this album also focuses on the human element. It's all about bodies in motion, imperfections that reveal the authenticity of the moment. Just like on stage, they aim to capture sweat, emotions, and communion. Every detail matters: wrinkles, smiles, flashes of light in the dark. They seek to show the beauty of disorder and the unexpected.

Human Drift was composed with the idea of what music can provoke in a collective space: transformation. It's an album that encourages letting go, immediate connection, where each sound is an invitation to surrender and drift together towards unforeseen horizons.

Human Drift is a human experience, an album that embodies the spirit of community, celebration, and sharing. They hope that, like them, you'll let yourself be carried away by the drift.

Repress!

PPU 12" release from Evans Pyramid aka Blood Deep featuring "Where Love Lives" an unreleased accelerated funk anthem from the late 80s, bridging the gaps between boogie, soul and house. The B side is a proper 12" pressing of Evon's side project Royale's "I Want Your Body". Comes in full color jacket

Keziah Jones is back with a new concept album entitled "Alive & Kicking" , recorded live in Lagos at Clout Africa Studio. Not only all his classics revisited 'live in studio" but including 2 brand new singles (studio) "Melissa" & "Rainy Saturday" , his first ones since 2013. And as bonus 2 covers (of Ricky James 'Below The Funk (Pass The J) & Police's 'The Bed's Too Big Without You).

Keziah Jones was born and raised in Lagos, Nigeria. Then has been living between Paris - he's been an established & cult musical brand in France - , London and Lagos. He is since the early 90's the creator of the blufunk movement, "a fusion between raw blues elements and hard, edgy funk rhythms. His catalog includes iconic songs such as Rhythm Is Love, Million Miles from Home… Keziah is known for his distinctive style of guitar playing, including his percussive right-hand technique.

Linking music and literature, building a bridge between the written and the sung – only the greats have managed to do this in the past. Leonard Cohen, Scott Walker, and Patti Smith were just some of the shining stars that Anna B Savage orientated herself towards as a teenager. Born on the anniversary of Bach’s death, the young musician spent her birthday every year in the Green Room of the Royal Albert Hall watching her parents perform compositions by the grand master. That shaped her. Today, thanks to albums such as her debut, “A Common Turn” (2021), and the incredibly sensual art-pop opus “in|FLUX” (2023), the singer-songwriter is one of the truly exceptional talents on the British independent scene. In her music, otherworldly vocals nestle up against chamber orchestral compositions, delicate arrangements rise up and blow away, and the musician’s highly eclectic sound grows song by song into an experience that lingers for days and weeks. Potentially life-changing.
A sense of rootedness is at the heart of Anna B Savage’s third record You and i are Earth, a record that is as much about healing as it is an unbowed sense of curiosity, and, more simply, “a love letter to a man and to Ireland.” Following on from her critically acclaimed records A Common Turn and in|FLUX, You and i are Earth manages to convey a sense of intimacy, while also being open-ended. Gentleness is as radiant a touchstone on the record as earthiness, something that Savage attributes to the place she finds herself at present, both geographically and emotionally. And quite literally the record bears witness to a particular piece of earth - Ireland, and Savage’s relationship to it as her new home. That process is brilliantly rendered on Agnes, a complicated piece of work featuring Anna Mieke that turns on tropes of duality and transformation. It mirrors an unsettling experience that Savage had through meditation, which ultimately ended in an immersive, beautiful feeling, “I felt like I was part of the earth, completely connected to the mycelium network, I felt like I was where I was meant to be.” In many ways, that experience framed the album’s artwork, a photograph taken in some woodlands in Co. Sligo, with Savage looking up at the trees, their fractals reflected in her eyes, mirroring something she had felt in her meditation, bringing us back full circle, and to that sense that we are essentially in unison, or at least striving to be, that “you and I are earth”.

Linking music and literature, building a bridge between the written and the sung – only the greats have managed to do this in the past. Leonard Cohen, Scott Walker, and Patti Smith were just some of the shining stars that Anna B Savage orientated herself towards as a teenager. Born on the anniversary of Bach’s death, the young musician spent her birthday every year in the Green Room of the Royal Albert Hall watching her parents perform compositions by the grand master. That shaped her. Today, thanks to albums such as her debut, “A Common Turn” (2021), and the incredibly sensual art-pop opus “in|FLUX” (2023), the singer-songwriter is one of the truly exceptional talents on the British independent scene. In her music, otherworldly vocals nestle up against chamber orchestral compositions, delicate arrangements rise up and blow away, and the musician’s highly eclectic sound grows song by song into an experience that lingers for days and weeks. Potentially life-changing.
A sense of rootedness is at the heart of Anna B Savage’s third record You and i are Earth, a record that is as much about healing as it is an unbowed sense of curiosity, and, more simply, “a love letter to a man and to Ireland.” Following on from her critically acclaimed records A Common Turn and in|FLUX, You and i are Earth manages to convey a sense of intimacy, while also being open-ended. Gentleness is as radiant a touchstone on the record as earthiness, something that Savage attributes to the place she finds herself at present, both geographically and emotionally. And quite literally the record bears witness to a particular piece of earth - Ireland, and Savage’s relationship to it as her new home. That process is brilliantly rendered on Agnes, a complicated piece of work featuring Anna Mieke that turns on tropes of duality and transformation. It mirrors an unsettling experience that Savage had through meditation, which ultimately ended in an immersive, beautiful feeling, “I felt like I was part of the earth, completely connected to the mycelium network, I felt like I was where I was meant to be.” In many ways, that experience framed the album’s artwork, a photograph taken in some woodlands in Co. Sligo, with Savage looking up at the trees, their fractals reflected in her eyes, mirroring something she had felt in her meditation, bringing us back full circle, and to that sense that we are essentially in unison, or at least striving to be, that “you and I are earth”.

A new album by four-piece band District Five from Zurich is always a good moment to reassess one’s own expectations. After Burnt Sugar 2022 and Pause 2023, Come Closer is the third album by Vojko Huter, Paul Amereller, Tapiwa Svosve and Xaver Rüegg, which mixes a wide range of references without ever being bothered by the commitment to one genre only. Imagine the band as something like a catalyst, through which its members constantly process what they are influenced by. And these influences are in constant motion: derived from the old-fashioned and amicable interest of collaboratively making music, the band comes together in their weekly ritual, dedicated to this synthesis of interests. At one point, this unrestricted game was called jazz, but even a generous concept can become too narrow. Which is why the genre remains an important influence, but not the only point of reference. Rather, its qualities are the root system from which everything else grows.

Case in point for this expansion of possibilities is the first track on Come Closer, which, and here comes a genre attribution after all, moves the album into the vicinity of dream pop. “Another One” centers the voice, evoking old and new memories alike. Accompanied by an adequately slowed-down guitar riff and rhythm, the musical framework remains stable before collapsing in a nervous, shimmering manner. Ready to be assembled anew. On the following seven tracks, District Five takes on this task, referencing post-punk motifs as well as progressive, meandering song structures. Condensed and expansive at the same time, driven by a desire for collective play.

This trusting cooperation between District Five’s members is ultimately the constant of Come Closer. Although the four musicians seem determined to find a different way to organize themselves as a band on almost every song, this conversational approach holds the album together on an intuitive level. And in the end, the only question that remains is: is it the members that influence the band, or is it the other way around?

Studio, the influential project of Swedish musicians Dan Lissvik and Rasmus Hägg, presents their legendary 2006 debut in remastered form, in partnership with Ghostly International. Available in limited edition "Fog Machine Vinyl", CD, and cassette. "One of the finest pieces of electronic music you'll hear this year.” - The Guardian (2006). Included in year-end best-of write-ups by Pitchfork, FACT Magazine, and Rough Trade. Physical copies have long been out of print for West Coast, and the album has also been notably absent from most streaming services until now.

“Somehow, I knew I wanted to make a conceptual record that, although only imaginary at that point, could represent or define how our city sounded,” says Lissvik of Gothenburg's influence on West Coast. Some called Studio, the project of Swedish musicians Dan Lissvik and Rasmus Hägg, “the missing link between The Cure and Lindstrøm,” Pitchfork heard Durutti Column and Can, as the duo’s story became swept up in a loosely developing scene — adjacent first to the label Service (Jens Lekman, The Whitest Boy Alive) and later Sincerely Yours (The Tough Alliance, jj) — and a precursor to the 2010s boom at the axis of electronic and psychedelic music guided by indie greats like Caribou, Four Tet, and Darkside.

West Coast, their seminal 2006 debut, captured a faraway romanticism of Balearic brushed up against Krautrock, disco, dub, and afrobeat, with pop lyricism lifted from new wave, all made modern by two art school grads in Gothenburg. First pressed in a small vinyl-only run via their own Information label, the album has been notably absent from most streaming services, and the internet’s record of its initial impact is all but fossilized from a bygone blog era, while its sound is simply untraceable to any one moment in music.

Outside of three 7” releases, they’d keep the music to themselves for several more years. In 2005, Hägg remembers, “We got our degrees and were kicked out of our studio spaces so all these recordings were just piled up. A year later we dusted them off and started to deconstruct and assemble them in a more drawn-out fashion.” In the same breadth, they cite DJ Screw, J Dilla, and Joy Division, along with early ‘80s European live DJ sets from the likes of Beppe Loda, Dj Mozart, and Baldelli as reference points.

“The anything-goes mentality was very encouraging and was a big cornerstone to the Studio sound,” says Hägg. “But there’s so much more to the picture, we were not that young then and had lots of musical baggage in our suitcases, the new thing was that we finally let it all come through, not bound by any borders that was often the case with music identity in Sweden during the 90s.” In the afterglow of the record’s 2007 reception, Studio receded from view, clouded behind a mountain of remix requests (including one for Kylie Minogue that saw release) and label bureaucracy. “It’s easy to wish we would have done some proper recordings of our own instead,” Hägg reflects. But both artists, now well into respective careers beyond Studio, have come to peace with West Coast as their most enduring effort together. Lissvik adds, “It serves as a good reminder for me to keep to that decision and promise and to continue exploring and growing

I first saw Hugh and Jackson play together at Good God’s ‘Soft Future Piano Bar’ at the Sydney Opera House in 2017. That year was a fruitful year for the two as artists and for the Sydney music community in general. I remember that all of us, along with Greville and Brad, hosted a DIY party in a tunnel under a highway somewhere near Sydney Airport. Is that the same tunnel that Tunnel Dancers derived their name from? 7 years after that first meeting at the Sydney Opera House, Hugh and Jackson have released an album. Listening to these songs there is an audible patience and understanding between two musicians. They probably could have released something else a long time ago, but chose to wait - instead enjoying bowls of laksa on their lunch breaks and sharing long, quiet conversations at The Babylon Sauna & Spa. When the next warm bowl of noodle soup arrives on your table, how long will you let it sit before you dive in? Soup first or noodle first? If you learn from these songs, perhaps you will know to first observe the whole bowl. Observing in this way, the moment settles and hovers and remains for much longer than a moment.

Back in stock due to popular demand, the 18th release in our signature Brazil 45’s series saw Elys Camargo’s ‘Taieiras’ and ‘Não Aguento Você’ by Trio Esperança issued for the first time on 7”.

First up, ‘Taieiras’ from Elys Camargo’s 1972 album Cantos Da Minha Gente on RCA. An infectious, folk-leaning, call and response number that transports you instantly to Brazil. Although Elys recorded 12 albums between 1960 and 1983, little is known about her. DJ Yoda sampled ‘Taieiras’ in his 2012 track ‘U No Likey Like That’ featuring Roots Manuva and Kid Creole & The Coconuts.

On the B side, ‘Não Aguento Você’ by Trio Esperança. A Rio vocal trio formed by siblings Mário, Regina and Evinha Correia José Maria (the latter of which recorded the stunning classic, ‘Esperar Pra Ver’), whose three older brothers we’re The Golden Boys.

‘Não Aguento Você’ is a sun-kissed, psychedelic stunner, taken from their self-titled 1971 album. The original line up recorded seven albums for Odeon Brazil between 1963 and 1975.

Velvet Vault is the title of a collection that combine jazz standards with jazz reworks of pop classics plus two songs co-written by Karen herself.

LP limited to 500 LP copies. Nina Garcia ’s first solo record widely available via international distribution. Nina has collaborated with artists like Stephen O’Malley, Sophie Agnel, Fred Frith, Antoine Chessex, Louis Schild, Leila Bordreuil, and supported for bands like Sonic Youth, SUNN O))). After a decade of performing concerts under the Mariachi guise, Nina Garcia has finally unveiled her unique approach in Bye Bye Bird, her first album under her name. Bye Bye Bird is her second solo album. With no pretence or demonstration, the album is a captivating blend of chiaroscuro, melodies, and raw emotion. Nina Garcia’s album takes on an almost documentary-like quality by adopting a simple approach to gesture and sound recording. It offers a candid portrayal of a moment, a lack, a state, and a breathtaking energy. With ostinato as her only credo, Nina Garcia’s music is an experiment in freedom, where the peaks answer the abysses, and the power of movement and the emotion of sound serves as her compass. From very short (01:28) to never very long (07:34), the eight tracks that make up this set explore a moment, a space, a mechanism, an intention or a way of doing things. As a common feature of almost all these pieces (all but one, the last), Nina Garcia explores a new technique. She adds to her instrumentation, reduced to the essentials (a guitar, a pedal and an amp), an electromagnetic microphone which, when held in hand, makes it possible to listen in on the exact zones where the vibration of the string creates a sound amid vast spaces of silence. The guitar is unplugged, and the body/instrument relationship changes in dimension. In this series of variations, you can get caught up in masses of noise seen from very, very close up, evocations of melodies in the making, feedback on ridgelines, pulsations that hold their own, modulations weakened by exhaustion and harmonic bursts that hint at better days to come. Neither hopelessly chthonic nor beatifically ethereal, Bye Bye Bird is a sum of musical pieces that make a whole and give voice to echoes of what has been, the presence of what is and the hope of what will be, a record movement in the form of flight and salvation. Since 2015, Nina Garcia has been researching and creating around the electric guitar, halfway between improvised music and noise. On numerous stages in Europe and North America, she has played occasionally with Stephen O’Malley, Sophie Agnel, Fred Frith, Antoine Chessex, Louis Schild or with Luke Stewart and Leila Bordreuil’s Feedback Ensemble, in addition to more regular formations in which she participates, such as the ensemble Le Un, mamiedaragon, Autoreverse (with Arnaud Rivière), duets with trombonist Maria Bertel and percussionist Camille Émaille, and the installation piece De Haut En Bas, De Bas En Haut Et Latéralement (with Christophe Cardoen, Jennifer Caubet, Etienne Foyer, Anna Gaïotti and Romain Simon). “Nina Garcia has been actively moving the art of noise guitar into surprising and intriguing new spaces. She has been at it for some time now, a bit of a secret weapon all the while hiding in plain sight. As I listen to her music and ruminate upon seeing her perform it brings me to a realization which I have with very few musicians: the ego inherent in making art can be transcended through a purity of direct action. At least that’s the feeling I have when experiencing Nina’s music which comes across as serious and radical and wholly engaged in the moment of its creative impulse.

Born and raised in Argentina, Morita Vargas is an experimental artist and producer based in Buenos Aires. She manipulates her voice through reverbs, delays and whispers, singing in a self-invented 'language'. The sound of Morita’s voice is a portal into her thriving, dreamlike world brimming, shimmering and beating with unrefined natural sensations which stimulate something primordial yet strangely contemporary.

As far back as 2014 she began work on her first productions - early sketches which later became the basis for ‘8’. It all started off as voice memos on her phone (recorded while roaming the streets and riding the trains of Greater Buenos Aires). Later on, Morita introduced various instruments into her vision: kalimba, harmonica, keyboard, flute, tambourine, chajchas, and cajón. Composed and performed from that period until its original release in 2018, ’8’ features 10 original voice-led compositions that in scope recall evocative portraits of synthesized landscapes and rainforests, attuned to a vibrant modern pulse and enchanting vocals. Morita Vargas “8” has achieved a kind of polyphonic soundscape which evokes unfamiliar realities through voyages within and between the realms of ambient and experimental music.

In numerology the number 8 symbolizes the transition between heaven and earth, the illumination of our infinite capacity for various metamorphoses. Tackling ideas of transformation, mutation, cyclical processes, death, creation, melancholy, and joy, the album you are holding is a monumental and deeply personal statement. You are invited to walk barefoot down the mystical path and indulge in the process of spiritual expulsion and renewal that is ‘8’. The path lies along the route of infinite meanings, somewhere on the border between dream and reality.

Who doesn't love a bit of sophisticated soul? We certainly do and it's always good to hear some reworks of the soul great's finest cuts for the dancefloor. And that's what we have here on a new 7" that opens with a disco version of 'Cherish the Day' and doesn't go hard, instead building in some gentle drums and lo-fi melodies, swooning vocals and a mystical late night sense of romance. On the flip, we get a lovers rock version of 'Nothing Can Come Between Us' which adds plenty of lovely guitar lines to bring that island vibe while the shuffling drums lock you in gently.

On his third album as Etelin, Alex Cobb explores the intricacies of separation and belonging using field recordings and electronics, reconfiguring the dividing line between what is artificial and natural in the process. Maintaining a sense of playful reverence and lurking melancholy in its glitchy pastoralism, Patio User Manual hums with a meticulous and singular energy. From the loops and static pulses of "The Chemistry of Cobalt" to the tension and release of "Electrical Sailing," the listener is pulled into a sound world at once ambivalent and radiant, reaching its denouement in the lovely melody that closes the final track, "Picnic at Gas Station Park". Although the album might bring to mind the nuanced and imaginative ambient music published by labels such as Mille Plateaux, Sonig, and Silent Records in the 1990s, it is, in the end, a world of its own and very much of today. The patio as a stage for alienated life, pyrrhic in its isolation, deceptive in its promise of distinction. Orientation as disorientation, often unseen inside the frame but felt in the bones. What is out there, anyway, other than the thing we fear the most?



"Another day of weird weather and screens. What type of perfume did Philip Johnson wear when he designed Glass House? Is it actually possible to flee to the country when you’ve internalized a lifetime of intellectualized urban living? When you buy a DIY patio kit, you get instructions for how best to embed concrete or brick or flagstone into the natural world. The patio will make you enjoy your environment more. It will become yours. You can stand on it and think “this is Mine.” The structuralists talked about the importance of fixed camera position, but didn’t properly interrogate it because to do so would be impossible. It’s hard to believe that it really wasn’t long ago that computer music seemed exciting, novel, even radical. We’re now thoroughly estranged from eating what’s in season. Walking around the woods in southern Ohio in spring, I thought about the curious imperative of the patio, how my kids get excited about picking oyster mushrooms, the dynamics of switched capacitor filters, and how adequacy is tethered to doubt." - AC, May 2024

Wonder what happens when 4 friends occasionally link up and make a few cheeky house tunes in between talking about pizza, footy, and kick drums? Cheek Inc!
Wonder what music 4 people (Nic/Rafael from !!! and Preslav/Adam from PTA) who’ve released music on Warp, Good Looking Records, Freerange, Pittsburgh Tracks, and Dischord would write? Cheek Inc!
Wonder why? Cheek Inc! “Jacqueline” is the debut EP by Cheek Inc: a vocal house 12” with 3 mixes to make you feel like you’ve always known why you have to just keep going. The A side brings flavors of classic piano house, adding a huge sub bassline, soaring synth pads and leads. The B1 “303” mix strips things down with a hypnotic bass groove, rhodes chords that keeps the pace, and an insistent 303 line that runs in and out like you know who. The B2 “Still Life” mix takes it deep by cutting up the vocal, with a sliding, playful lead line, bouncy chords, and a drum groove that shuffles and swings while THAT string line never quite goes away. Cheek Inc!

Limited edition 180g audiophile pressing
This outstanding LP contains all of Ray Charles' top-10 Billboard hits between
1953 and 1959 for Atlantic Records, a seminal period in the legendary career of
one of the most influential musicians of the 20th Century.

he initial seed for this project was planted in 2020 when Nicolás Jaar wrote the song “Piedras” for a concert at the Museum of Memory & Human Rights in Santiago, Chile, which commemorates the victims of human rights violations during the military dictatorship led by Augusto Pinochet between 1973 and 1990. Between 2022-2023 it took on a new form as a radio play entitled 'Archivos de Radio Piedras', which was shared on a dedicated Telegram channel. In 2024, the play was converted into a 24 channel installation at the University Museum of Mexico City (MUAC), where it was exhibited for 5 months.

Piedras 1 and 2 is a collection of the tracks featured within the play, all new music by Jaar, but partly presented within the play as the music of Salinas Hasbún (the name a composite homage to Jaar's grandmothers, Graciela Salinas and Miriam Hasbún).

The play follows two friends mourning the disappearance of Salinas Hasbún, a musician and writer who vanished in the early 2020s. Although they live in a future where technology is advanced, they
resort to DIY radio methods because the anonymous group “Las 0cho” has launched a worldwide attack on undersea internet cables, causing a global internet blackout.

The play's central theme revolves around the idea that truths, memories and identities speak from the cracks (“rasgaduras”), or the "in-between" spaces ("en el entre"). This concept is supported by the
way much of the narration unfolds - in the liminal spaces between radio frequencies. The instability and transitory nature of a constantly shifting radio dial becomes not just a metaphor but the structure of the play itself. It’s in these moments of noise, static and interference that the deeper revelations of the story emerge. This disjointed, ever-changing medium mirrors the way memory and trauma operate within the play - non-linear, slipping through the gaps, found in fragments or ordinary moments, rather than direct transmissions of “official” historical accounts.

This notion reaches its climax at the end of the narrative, when a text is discovered in which Salinas speaks of finding a new number in a small pond in a cave mentioned in the first episodes of the radio play. This pond, inside the “cochlea of the world”, is seen as a way to introduce real-life randomness to computation. Embodied in the salt lakes of northern Chile, home to the world’s oldest bacteria, this randomness disrupts the rigid order of binary code, paving the way for a transformation of digital life.

First solo release by Nicolás Jaar since 2020’s Telas and Cenizas.

Cannonball Adderley Quintet in Chicago is revered among jazz aficionados as an essential document of late 1950s hard bop

It captures two of the greatest saxophonists in jazz, Adderley and Coltrane, at a time when they were both at a creative peak. The album is a vital recording from a golden era in jazz, featuring a rare and electric partnership between two saxophone giants. Its hard bop foundation, infused with hints of modal jazz, places it among the most important recordings of its time. The album was recorded the February 3, 1959 during a time when Adderley was playing as part of Miles Davis' group, and it captures the quintet during a pivotal moment in jazz history. On Cannonball Adderley Quintet in Chicago, you can hear Coltrane at a transitional stage, balancing between his earlier bebop style and the modal, more avant-garde approaches he would later pursue. His interaction with Adderley is fascinating because it blends his dense harmonic language with Adderley's more traditional, bluesy approach.Cannonball Adderley had been recruited by Miles Davis in 1957, joining what would become one of the most influential jazz groups of all time. Adderley's style was deeply rooted in the blues, and he brought a strong sense of soulfulness and swing to the Davis group. While Davis' style was often cool and restrained, Adderley's alto saxophone was the opposite: robust, fiery, and emotional. Adderley's command of the instrument was remarkable, and his ability to balance technical prowess with a highly accessible, bluesy feel is on full display throughout Cannonball Adderley Quintet in Chicago . His solos are expressive and lyrical, often imbued with a sense of joy and exuberance. This makes for a perfect contrast to Coltrane's playing, which at this point was becoming more dense and harmonically complex

Brigid Mae Power’s latest release, Songs for You, is a heartfelt collection of cover songs dedicated to her father. This album features her unique interpretations of tracks written by legendary artists like Roy Orbison, Tom Verlaine, Neil Young, and Cass McCombs, among others.

With a minimalist yet emotionally resonant sound, Songs for You offers a fresh take on these timeless songs while remaining deeply personal. Brigid Mae Power’s ethereal vocals and atmospheric arrangements bring a sense of nostalgia, reflection, and heartfelt tribute, making this album a powerful bridge between memory and music.

While many of the songs are performed solo, Brigid is joined by Ryan Jewell on drums and Shahzad Ismaily on bass, with Brigid herself playing vocals, guitar, electric guitar, organ, and accordion. Tracks 1, 3, 4, 7, and 8 were recorded at Analogue Catalogue by Julie McLarnon, while tracks 2, 5, 6, and 9 were recorded at home. The album was expertly mixed by Sean McErlaine and mastered by Brian Pyle.

Singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Victoria Canal releases her long awaited debut album, Slowly, It Dawns via Parlophone Records.

Slowly, It Dawns finds Canal embarking on a path that mirrors the unravelling of the human experience. “Life does feel like the sun rising,” she shares of the record’s evocative title. “You come into the world with very little clarity on the way things are – everything's a little hazy and confusing. Then, as you get older, your eyes adjust to what life is; it gets messy and complicated, then spiritual and expansive.”

Written over the course of the past three years and recorded between London and Los Angeles, the album captures this sentiment as much musically as it does lyrically. From the sun-kissed indie pop of ‘June Baby’ and cuban-inflected sizzle of ‘California Sober’, to the meditative instrumentals of ‘Totally Fucking Fine’ and the cinematic desperation of ‘Cake’, Canal’s stunning range is on full display across 12 revealing tracks.

"The Flock is the debut album of the band with the same name, originally released in 1969. The band consists of members Fred Glickstein, Jerry Goodman, Rick Canoff, Tom Webb, Frank Posa, Jerry Smith and Ron Karpman. The eponymous debut studio album focuses on classical violinist Jerry Goodman, with counter point performed by a horn section, and guitarist Fred Glickstein. It is a blend of different genres, varying between rock, classical, jazz, blues, and even soul. Jerry Goodman later joined John McLaughlin's Mahavishnu Orchestra. The Flock is available as a limited edition on silver coloured vinyl and includes an insert."

Coincidental five year anniversary vinyl edition of Helado Negro's landmark 2019 album This Is How You Smile featuring new artwork and a high count of smile-inducing vibes. Helado Negro's This Is How You Smile, freely flickers between clarity and obscurity, past and present geographies, bright and unhurried seasons. A landmark release, This Is How You Smile embraces a personal and universal exploration of aura - seen, felt, and emitted - and showcases Roberto Carlos Lange's breezy, beautiful songwriting at its absolute best.

'Floating' by Monika Linges should be repressed due to its enduring popularity and influence in the jazz fusion genre. Original copies are rare and highly sought after by collectors, with the only repress coming in 1992 and now selling between £30 and £60. The repress aims to make this classic album accessible to new audiences and satisfy the demand from djs who have had this in their wants list for a long time. Repackaging the album in a limited lilac vinyl, with liner notes written by German DJ and tastemaker Rainer Trueby

On (ii), London & Vienna-based duo Bara & Isa present their singular version of devotional music. After meeting at an experimental choir in Café OTO, the duo started collaborating, mostly by exchanging files (initially during the pandemic and now between London and Vienna). (ii) is their debut album which follows a handful of self-released singles and an EP.

Described by the duo as a "sort of document of personal development, and also the struggles of everyday motions", this is music which embraces contradictions. Themes of reflection, acceptance and care sit side by side with notions of spiralling and falling, as Bara & Isa explore the nuances and complexities of quotidian life. Working with a rich sound palette of organ pipes, electric organ, voice notes, field recordings, vocals, harp, chimes, tuning forks, singing bowls, bells and flute, the duo slow-cooked and composed these beautiful songs between 2021 and 2024, mostly by exchanging files. And that's exactly what this music sounds like: a digital call with a loved one, glitching, slowed down, disembodied, yet heartwarming and comforting. Mesmerizing, inviting and bewildering all at once.

“Their music toys with proximity and intimacy, it carries a romanticism which feels forged from a struggle for connection in an isolating world. Tender, precarious folk ballads for a time which struggles to stay in sync.”
Daryl Worthington — The Quietus

“Late Junction 3 airplay”
Jennifer Lucy Allan — BBC Radio 3

"‘Where The Light Gets In' is the debut album from actor & singer songwriter Ben Barnes. The title of the album reflects the hopefulness of the songs, and the perspective earned through lived experience. Ben’s personal hope for these songs is that they encourage finding clarity when life feels sombre, feeling powerful when pain tells you you're vulnerable and lovable when the world tries to tell you that you're not enough as you are. The album is about the different stages of a relationship; beginnings, tension, sorrow, sex, love, endings... nostalgia. It's about how our history and our scars configure to make us who we are in this moment. If a part of us has ever felt broken, we can mend... transforming ourselves into something moreprecious than we were before.

The album was recorded at Apogee Studios in Santa Monica with the band all together, including James Valentine and Sam Farrar (Maroon 5) who also produced the record along with drummer/manager, Paul Hamilton."

In 2019, Resistencia Sonora was launched as a collaborative project where urban resistances and ethnic-peasant rural resistances converge in the greater area of Montes de Maria, situated in Colombia's western Caribbean region. This initiative originates in one of the musical epicenters of ancestral sounds that have fostered a now global recognition for styles such as gaita, cumbia, bullerengue, son palenque and son de negro, as well as Sabanero accordion music like porros and pajaritos.

The aim of this extensive project has been to serve as a rare living archive of festive gatherings, conversations, knowledge exchange, and co-creative processes that have spawned specifically from the municipality of Ovejas, which sits in the Sucre Department of Montes de Maria. Resistencia Sonora's documentation in Ovejas is more than just a musical recording, rather an all-encompassing snapshot of a very real folkloric life within neighborhoods such as El Bolsillo, El Corea and La Ciudadela. The initial inspiration of the project can be credited to a specific call to arms from composer Andrés Narváez, who expressed the dream to record his own original compositions set amongst this region's local history. Andrés, like many leaders from the old sabanas beyond Montes de Maria, is a social leader and land-rights activist. He proposed not only to record his songs but also to invite other musicians and composers to take part in this documentation, an extended hand to uphold the legacies, knowledge, and traditions of the region's elders.

All songs recorded between 2022-23 on location in Ovejas and Bogotá, Colombia. Mixed in Brooklyn by Names You Can Trust and mastered by Frank Meritt at The Carvery, London. Limited Edition 250 vinyl press with included 12-page booklet and liner notes in English and Spanish.

"I decided to just let myself go," Zzzahara says of their new record, 'Spiral Your Way Out' "I think I finally came to this acceptance that I don't have to be perfect. I want to be a good role model to my fans and stuff like that, but I also don't want to hide who I am." Zzzahara's music wades into the deep waters of love, lust, and self-discovery in a part of the world where artifice and authenticity co-exist. Emerging from the heart of LA's alternative music scene, their sound is raw in feeling and rebellious by nature.

Their 2022 debut album, Liminal Spaces, chronicles a coming- of- age in Highland Park, following painful childhood memories through to late- night, live- fast coping mechanisms, and the changes the neighbourhood has endured over the same period of time. Their 2023 follow- up, Tender, marked a period of slowing down, looking inward, and embracing a softer side of being. 'Spiral Your Way Out' sees Zzzahara evolve again. Emotionally, its foundations are built on scorched earth.

The album finds Zzzahara in the aftermath of a relationship spent trying to fit someone else's mould, being jerked around by indecision, and then hitting "emotional rock bottom." Made in a three-month burst that let all their pent-up frustrations loose, 'Spiral Your Way Out' is in part a work of self-reclamation, swapping there 2nd album Tender's meditative state for something fiery and more assertive. The new album marks another sonic evolution as much as an emotional one. Zzzahara's songs have always come wrapped in a warm glow that reflects how they were written -namely at home in their bedroom.

That glow remains on 'Spiral Your Way Out', but it also packs an ambitious streak and a gutsy punch. Taking a more collaborative approach than usual, Zzzahara worked with a range of producers including Jorge Elbrecht (Japanese Breakfast, No Joy, Sky Ferreira), Sarah Tudzin (boygenius / Cloud Nothings / The Armed), former Ducktails guitarist Alex Craig (Jelani Aryeh / re6ce) and Halsey tour drummer Franco Reid, who helped harness their intimate style of writing and blow it up into something more panoptic. After a year of upheaval, Zzzahara finally feels "calm." The musical equivalent to going several rounds on a punching bag, 'Spiral Your Way Out' finds solace between extremes. It licks its wounds in a place where pain and love, healing and abandon, sit side-by-side. If it has a message, it's one of standing tall in your own shoes - scuffs and all.

"I decided to just let myself go," Zzzahara says of their new record, 'Spiral Your Way Out' "I think I finally came to this acceptance that I don't have to be perfect. I want to be a good role model to my fans and stuff like that, but I also don't want to hide who I am." Zzzahara's music wades into the deep waters of love, lust, and self-discovery in a part of the world where artifice and authenticity co-exist. Emerging from the heart of LA's alternative music scene, their sound is raw in feeling and rebellious by nature.

Their 2022 debut album, Liminal Spaces, chronicles a coming- of- age in Highland Park, following painful childhood memories through to late- night, live- fast coping mechanisms, and the changes the neighbourhood has endured over the same period of time. Their 2023 follow- up, Tender, marked a period of slowing down, looking inward, and embracing a softer side of being. 'Spiral Your Way Out' sees Zzzahara evolve again. Emotionally, its foundations are built on scorched earth.

The album finds Zzzahara in the aftermath of a relationship spent trying to fit someone else's mould, being jerked around by indecision, and then hitting "emotional rock bottom." Made in a three-month burst that let all their pent-up frustrations loose, 'Spiral Your Way Out' is in part a work of self-reclamation, swapping there 2nd album Tender's meditative state for something fiery and more assertive. The new album marks another sonic evolution as much as an emotional one. Zzzahara's songs have always come wrapped in a warm glow that reflects how they were written -namely at home in their bedroom.

That glow remains on 'Spiral Your Way Out', but it also packs an ambitious streak and a gutsy punch. Taking a more collaborative approach than usual, Zzzahara worked with a range of producers including Jorge Elbrecht (Japanese Breakfast, No Joy, Sky Ferreira), Sarah Tudzin (boygenius / Cloud Nothings / The Armed), former Ducktails guitarist Alex Craig (Jelani Aryeh / re6ce) and Halsey tour drummer Franco Reid, who helped harness their intimate style of writing and blow it up into something more panoptic. After a year of upheaval, Zzzahara finally feels "calm." The musical equivalent to going several rounds on a punching bag, 'Spiral Your Way Out' finds solace between extremes. It licks its wounds in a place where pain and love, healing and abandon, sit side-by-side. If it has a message, it's one of standing tall in your own shoes - scuffs and all.

Roger & Brian Eno have revolutionized many concepts of music production and performance, from Brian Eno's groundbreaking treatment of pop music to younger brother Roger Eno's Erik Satie-esque ambient synth/piano recordings. These qualities resonate on this release. Each brings their unerring sense of place and mood to the album. The timbre in each track deepens and opens up with each listen. Concrete yet abstract tracks guide the listener through the collection, which was created over several years in a unique collaboration between the two artists.

Pink Vinyl

Drifting on oceans of thunderous stillness, carried away by endless currents, whipped up by waves of darkness devouring you until you see the light. The first album from Platoo, a collaboration between Michelle Samba and Phil Mills, has an unrelenting cadence that grabs you and refuses to let go. A distinctive combination of calming soundscapes and highly-charged energy fitting any occasion, from dancing like lost souls in the empty halls of ancient barracks to ecstatically tripping on a distant desert planet.

To Phil and Michelle creating Platoo was about being given a sense of freedom and exploration, at once shaking off habits and rediscovering forgotten values. Phil's love of the mesh of ''real'' sounds and electronics, and quest to establish a balance where both would feed off each other saw him abandon convention and standard structures, deviate from the beaten path and let things come to life. Michelle's quest to create, to inspire and be inspired, to draw her conclusions from serendipitous events allowed her to break things open and be at ease with letting herself go to create the breathing space needed for this new sound.

What makes their symbiosis fruitful is a common yearning for the unknown, a search for what works without exactly fathoming why it works. The result is something that indeed meets those needs, a strange and beautiful musical exploration.

The Acidboychair music project started in the early noughties as a commentary on what journalist Simon Reynolds would summarise a few years later as Retromania. Initially conceived by Thomas Baldischwyler and Andreas Diefenbach as a performative revival travesty with large-format drum computers and synthesizers reconstructed from cardboard, everything took a surprising turn when DJ Mooner (the man behind the now defunct Munich music label Erkrankung Durch Musique) took an interest in the adventurous audio material produced by Baldischwyler. In 2005, the LP 1987 (EDM1016), produced almost exclusively with long-forgotten software (SoundEdit 16, RB-338, etc.), was released on Mooner's label. As a result of the growing number of bookings, Baldischwyler had to think about improving the performability of his intentionally amateurish productions. Fortunately, the Ableton Live programme became a DAW with a MIDI sequencer and support for VST plug-ins as early as 2004 - and this made it easier for him to execute his intuitive, error-friendly version of acid house. This can be heard on the first two sample-heavy tracks on the A-side of Come Down Easy, which were recorded in 2005 and 2006 respectively at Acidboychair gigs at Hamburg's Golden Pudel Club and Munich's Registratur. The first two tracks on the B-side (produced sometime between 2006 and 2008) were actually supposed to be part of a solo release on the Acido label run by Dynamo Dreesen, but this never materialised. However, the final tracks and the 133.3 BPM lock grooves that follow are the title and central to this catalogue number TBG123: Through ethno-musicologist Arthur Boto Conley, who had already released a one-sided 12 on his label with material from one of Baldischwyler's audio installations, he met Florian Meyer (Don't DJ) and Marc Matter (Spoken Matter), who introduced him to their collaborative project Institut F?r Feinmotorik (IFFM). Baldischwyler's attempt to approach the sound aesthetics of IFFM led to the tape 60 Minutes Of Barely Modified Lock Grooves (TCCC06), recorded in Rome in 2018. A buyer of this tape introduced him to the Detroit collective Pure Rave, which he immediately contacted and introduced to the work of the IFFM. It was important for Baldischwyler to have an analogue update made and so both the Detroiters and IFFM, who now live in Berlin, were given 8 copies of EDM1016's backstock to remix the material in their own way. At their jam in Detroit, Pure Rave opted for the almost identical material that IFFM had also used for a live performance in the Hamburg project space Beek. The dominant jumps in both arrangements come from the track Eightyseven, produced in the early 2000s for the LP 1987, an awkward remix of the Spacemen 3 track Come Down Easy, which is also referred to in the liner notes on the inner sleeve of TBG123. The almost two-decade-old revival idea thus turns into false memory syndrome and runs into a - in keeping with our times - clean-cut (endless) groove. Kassem Mosse (The KM of MM/KM) on Come Down Easy after a first listening session: I think it all works very well as a mix, no matter where you start it carries you further forward back in the loop. if I understand the liner notes correctly, it's about the music's turn from tradition preservation (doing everything right) to ecstatic delusion (not doing everything right when intoxicated). Now that I'm reading again instead of listening, the titles give me a different understanding of the connections; how the skipping belongs together, which playtime is connected. Now I can name my favourites. Thank you for the journey!

“My introduction to “noise” came from a record shop in Lake Worth, Florida ran by a musician named Kenny 5. Kenny had left Detroit sometime in the mid nineties and had begun selling used records and CD’s from the downtown strip of this tiny southern Florida city in a humble shop sandwiched between a deli and a dog grooming business. Kenny previously was on labels like Amphetamine Reptile and timeSTEREO, and the records and videotapes that would be on repeat at his shop were a vast sonic expanse that spoke to the eclecticism of his experience as a touring musician participating and adjacent to American noise culture through the early to late 90’s. In 1998, I was eleven years old and I would order a pizza with him and watch VHS tapes of Japanese noise and deathmatch bootlegs, as well as any other sonic and subcultural rarities that far outstripped my age to comprehend (notably the RRR “Journey Into Pain” compilation and various Vanilla Tapes videos). This widecast net of information formed an introduction to a reality that did not fall deaf on me, but it took many years later for me to reorient the specific freedoms of what this dense and cathartic sound culture had imparted on my life and would continue onward to.

What does this have to do with this selection of choice recordings from the Secret Boyfriend catalog for the enmossed label? For the uninitiated, Secret Boyfriend is the long running moniker of Ryan Martin, North Carolina musician and label proprietor of the Hot Releases imprint. For over a decade from this writing I have watched Secret Boyfriend, and Hot Releases by extension as a curatorial and archival effort, embodying the multiplanal capacity that noise loosely functions from as an umbrella ideology and formalist avenue for sound creation. For anecdotal purposes, from (before) 2006 until roughly 2023 the East Coast of the United States showcased a vibrant network of eclectic regional festivals that saw wide swaths of artists addressing and negotiating the notion of what qualified “noise” from a conceptual and ideological perspective. Some festivals honed in on particularities in aesthetics and tropes, and others had a kind of “catch-all” implementation that allowed for a salvation of the sort of alienated and singular artistry that was amassing throughout these territories. While clear guidelines had been set from regional predecessors as to how noise with a capital “N” should maneuver, Secret Boyfriend is emblematic in the spirit of fluidity that was either implicitly coupled to the notion of the genre, or grew to evolve towards or devolve from.

Within Secret Boyfriend performances, I have seen and admired a mirroring from a ravenous appreciator of this culture at large back towards itself. Typical of a Secret Boyfriend set is an interchangeable narrative arc wherein blistering feedback laden scrap metal improvisations are forayed into naive ambient or “pop” songs, or skipping CDs, or mixer feedback play, or delayed Roland 707 drum workouts all at once and in a unique hegemony. Secret Boyfriend's stylistic mastery of each endeavor is at once an homage to a history of loving listening and enacting, while a brave step into the realm of actualizing the unique fluidity of his own practice. In performance and the action of network engagement, Secret Boyfriend operates a survey of that which he sought to hear and that which he cultivates around his work. His operations are mirrors, and the project (alongside his other peers) is a reflection on the ethos of his time.

Conversely his recording practice narrows in on these moments and allows for a different kind of intimacy or alienation for the non live listener. This record of selected “pop songs” (let's call them that) is particularly poignant at a time when the culture Martin mirrors is at a strange crossroads with itself. The aforementioned festival networks necessarily change and shift. The onlookers become the artists, the artists find new horizons, and the spaces for these cycles fade into locales of a distant memory. It seems, from my perspective, that audiences currently yearn for a more bottlenecked experience, searching for some ontologically vetted manifestation of an idea, of a sound and less for an experience that functions in opposition to our collective banalities. This makes sense in the face of general global catastrophism that plagues us. We need certainty of what something is somewhere, don’t we? Noise as an idea has expanded and contracted to so many iterations of itself it is hard to tell what it even is, and it is particularly difficult to identify in the absence of solid network activations a moment to reflect on its own complexities and nuances. In the face of so much change, I argue that the language of noise culture at large has on one hand become increasingly didactic and predictable, and laughably inclusive and non linear on the other. Probably has always been this way, but now we are in the midst of a moment of extreme access and indexicality, which somehow cauterizes expansion and naivety and chance.

This record highlights the Secret Boyfriend that obscures didacticism by highlighting output that opens up for more challenging catharsis and emotive signal processing. It provides an entry to the materialism of a cultural field full of ecstatic complexity and beautiful inconsistency. In these muted moments Secret Boyfriend has given us over his career we have an argument for evolving languages that further challenge our notions of what is supposed to happen and how it is supposed to be presented. In his more song oriented expansiveness, we can punctuate the ability to think in new modalities. Listening to these recordings reminds me of the polarity of sitting in the record store as a kid and understanding that His Name Is Alive is on 4AD and (gasp!) timeSTEREO. This trite early impression that nothing is really as different as our imaginations might want them to be, and that we can do whatever we want mostly within the creative realms we work through is an important filter to look through Secret Boyfriend as a project and a vessel. If we can achieve abandon and vulnerability through our artistic endeavors, then we have a sound model for, maybe, new potentialities. If that’s too much projection, or just complete liberal bullshit, I am fine with that. Secret Boyfriend's oeuvre at best offers us moments of reprieve to ponder these complexities, or at least a moment to zone out on a drive through North Carolina Highway 54.

You have one pocket of life that you must do whatever you want to inside of. Secret Boyfriend does it affectionately, in a variety of forms, and always with deep sentimentality. These recordings are a wonderful set of songs to begin further investigation from. Thank you Ryan for allowing as many avenues as possible to continue a broad cultural exchange and conversation that intersect and refract while being the kind of artist that is brave enough to not phone in the effort.”

- Nick Klein , May 2024

The genius of Lord Kitchener has been the mainstay of our series. In this volume devoted to his post-war London recordings, Kitch plays his many roles with signature aplomb and poised subtlety. First there is the hooligan chantwell, up for anything in the hurly-burly of carnival proper; and then the casual reporter, firing off postcards to Trinidad about taxis, flashy booze, fast women and football in Manchester, with homesickness and grievance nestled just behind the optimism, pride and tentative senses of belonging. There is the bearer of news from home, in detailed accounts of murders, tales of stupid local coppers, and reminiscences about food and particular mango trees; the political thinker, considering racism and Africa; and the diarist, with his vivid tales of infidelity, and disclosure of the break-up of his marriage, and his desire to get away. One foot in the UK, the other in Trinidad; but the man himself somewhere in-between. Kitch In The Jungle, nobody around. A ‘diasporic explorer’; a key twentieth-century witness, alongside such hallowed figures as Samuel Selvon and Edward Kamau Braithwaite. Though in frustration Kitch would sometimes take over double-bass duties himself, the musicianship of Rupert Nurse, Fitzroy Coleman and co is top-notch. The original glorious sound is down to Denys Preston, recording for Melodisc, often at Abbey Road Studios (where we transferred and restored the 78s compiled here). Presented in a lovely gatefold sleeve, with a full-size booklet containing superb, specially-commissioned sleevenotes by Kitch biographer Anthony Joseph, and fabulous, previously-unseen photographs.

"We are delighted to be able to bring you these gorgeous field recordings from the Sumedang Province of West Java which, over their 50 minutes, present two distinct sides of Sundanese musical and devotional culture.

Although West Java is a Muslim country, these recordings highlight currents of pre-Islamic animist beliefs and practices that continue to flourish in the small towns and villages of the highlands of West Java. The recordings showcase two forms of trance music that are essential to the spiritual life of the Sundanese people in the highland regions.

Tarawangsa trance music is a traditional ceremonial genre known for its deep spiritual and hypnotic qualities. This music is made using only two instruments, the tarawangsa, a two-stringed fiddle, accompanied by the jentreng, a seven-stringed zither, creating a unique blend of resonant, droning sounds. Historically, tarawangsa music has been performed as part of sacred rituals and agricultural celebrations to honor local deities and ancestors, particularly associated with the Sunda culture. The minimalist, repetitive melodies gradually build, guiding participants and listeners into a meditative, trance-like state, during which dancers can be possessed by the spirits of ancestors or deities from the spirit realm, the music serving as a link between the two worlds.

In stark contrast to the calm, medititive sound of tarawangsa, we also present here two long pieces from Panca Buana Reak Group. Sundanese Reak trance music is like the punk rock of Sunda folk music, combining powerful and driving rhythms played on a number of hand drums and percussion instruments with the buzzing sound of the tarompet, a double reed wind instrument often amplified through whatever mobile speaker system might be at hand. Sometimes the group will play gamelan gongs, as heard on the first piece on the album, although this remains a music that is popular mainly with the working class youth of the rural villages, many of whom will also be fans of Indonesia's burgeoning metal and punk scenes. Reak performances are often wild, anarchic events that feature masked dancers, costumes, public trancing and spirit possession.

These recordings were made by Xenia At during her travels through West Java earlier this year. The tarawangsa recordings were made in a home in the village of Rancakalong on the evening of 17th January 2024, while Panca Buana Reak Group were recorded during rehersals in the village of Cinunuk on 19th and 20th January 2024."

Limited edition of 100 copies.

The musicians:
Overture (played by Panca Buana Reak Group, musicians: Rian Hidayat, Daffa, Rendi, Haswa, Doni, Aconk, Bayu, Zidan, Iwan Uwak, ⁠Mahadewa Sehu, ⁠Bebet, Adi, Bebet).
Reundeu - Master Yayat (kacapi), Tedi Kurniadi (tarawangsa).
Degung - Master Yayat (kacapi), Teguh Permana (tarawangsa).
Pamapag__Gelar Mataram__Panimang__Limbangan - Akbar Nendi (kacapi) & Tedi Kurniadi (tarawangsa).
Reak Lugay Pusaka Pajajaran (played by Panca Buana Reak Group, musicians: Aconk (tong), Rendi (brung), Hendrik (tarompet), Ade (kecrek), Riki (bedug), Doni (talingtit), Adi (badublag).

Xenia would like to extend gratitude to:
Master Yayat, Tedi Kurniadi, Akbar Nendi, and Teguh Permana for their incredible talent that turned this recording into a magical experience.
Ibrahim Adi Surya for technical support.
The Juarta Putra and Panca Buana Reak groups for explaining the cultural significance of local traditions.
Anggun Tresnasari for sharing her deep knowledge of regional music traditions.
Igor Moskalenko, Kate Snap, Stasya Frolova, Roman Gold, Misha Maltsev, Ilona Popychko, Galih Muhammad, Wildan Wiliansyah, Rizalu Ramadhan, Rahi Rahmat, Fahmi Solihin and Muhammad Ismael whose unwavering belief made this project possible.

Hive Mind would like to thank Luigi Monteanni (Artetetra) and Palmer Keen (Aural Archipelago) for their invaluable work and research in this region.

Village Of The Sun return today with the announcement of their highly anticipated debut LP “First Light”. Due out 4th November on heavyweight vinyl via London analogue specialists Gearbox Records, the record follows their widely acclaimed double A-side single “Village Of The Sun / “Ted”. Village Of The Sun is an enigmatic collaboration between UK jazz virtuosos Binker Golding & Moses Boyd and electronic music legend Simon Ratcliffe of Basement Jaxx fame. Born out of a shared passion for improvised instrumental music, the new project sees all three of the artists steps into relatively new territory, combining their respective sensibilities to create something all at once atmospheric and danceable. Evocative of some of Simon’s inspirations such as Alice Coltrane, Airto Moreira and Masters at Work, Village Of The Sun embodies a hybrid of electronic beats, heady jazz improvisation, and sheer, raw energy, breaking ground between pseudo-Samba rhythms, dreamy ambient textures, and explosive sax and percussion. The new single “The Spanish Master” is a total embodiment of what Village Of The Sun is at it’s heart. Combining atmospheric synth lines with percussive electronics, which gently ebb around Boyd’s intricate drumming and Golding’s expressive sax. With tension building around every element the track careens into a movement of frenetic drumming, electronic idiosyncrasies, and fervent sax breakouts, which find the trio performing at their energetic, adrenaline-fuelled best. The album is truly a project of passion and exploration, and one that refuses to follow just one path. Tracks such as “Cesca” and “Tigris” emphasise Ratcliffe’s ability to weave shapeshifting keys and electronics around Golding and Boyd’s interplay, changing the mood and direction of the track at a moment’s notice. Whereas the title track “First Light” channels the sound of the current UK jazz scene with Ratcliffe imbuing a sense of dramatic tension and release with electronic atmospherics and keys that ferment alongside the almost shamanic, semi-free sax lines and uncomprimising drums. As part of one of British dance music’s biggest ever acts, Basement Jaxx, Ratcliffe and collaborator Felix Buxton led the progressive house sound in the 90s/00s with ground-breaking albums Remedy and Rooty, and by releasing a string of Top 10 singles including Red Alert, Rendez-Vu, Romeo, and Where’s Your Head At?. Ratcliffe’s own solo work includes the 1995 EP City Dreams and the 2011 EP Dorus Rijkers - both releases prove his musical versatility and virtuosity. Speaking about the Village of the Sun collaboration, Simon says, “I’ve always liked improvised instrumental music. It has this intensity and eccentricity that takes me places.

From a club-friendly chrysalid onto deploying his wings as a full fledged pop artist in recent years, Saint Petersburgs Kito Jempere has enjoyed a journey unlike any other and his newest album, Part Time Chaos Part Time Calmness live-documents the chameleonic changes / game-changing paradox experienced this year between his life both as a musician and as a family man.

Better known for his work as a house producer which has earned him accolades from prominent dance music outlets throughout well over a decade of intense work both into and outwith the limelights, Kito has for all that never been focussed on writing solely discoid material, throwing as much effort over the years into multi-faceted parallel ventures, far and apart from strictly dance floor-oriented functionality. Yet, from this partition between various projects and mindsets, this is through a radical shift towards downtempo pop and out of the 4x4 loop that Kito got to fully assert himself as a musician, embracing the rejoicing variety of tone and mood of his tender loves, secret and not. The movie Ive never made but have the soundtrack for, Part Time Chaos Part Time Calmness is the fruit of change as much as change itself. A return to the simple means of his young self, his old trusty guitar from his late teens serving as the backbone to Killer Line and Love Myself But I Cant Make It Love, and the natural development to last years Green Monster, which
initiated these deep tectonic movements in Kitos approach to his art, PTCPTC is an intimate trip down the kaleidoscope of his present life. Joined up by an impressive cast of artists, including Jimi Tenor, Adam Evald and Hard Ton, Kito didnt just bin his old persona, he took it back to where it belongs. From the low-slung emotional folk of the opener, Killer Line, to the eerie flamenco-jazz hybrid Before Music Dies. via the broken soulfulness of Put Love Into Your Heart and anthemic 80s balearic breaks meets coastal synthwave vibe of Sounds of Love, the album pulsates with a refreshingly genre-unbound vision. To the naive, laid-back sonic bokeh of Footsteps,
succeeds the left-of-centre cinematic narrative of In The Countryside, which includes some fun nods to fictional brands taken from Tarantinos imaginarium (Red Apple cigarettes) or other movies like High Fidelity, after Nick Hornbys eponymous novel.

Freed from gridlocked programming and impersonal tropes, PTCPTC showcases a wide array of songs, beats, grooves old and new, some dating back to 2018 and improvised sessions with his 9-people Kito Jempere Band, all of which were finished within the same timeframe and with this all-inclusive momentum in mind. Through the epic synths of Absent Ascent. in revamping the universal classic Over The Rainbow with Celebrine, on the appeasing ballad Shorespotting feat. Evald or in the waves-ready closing cut Lovers, Jempere tells a tale of hard-earned emancipation and life-affirming freedom.

From a club-friendly chrysalid onto deploying his wings as a full fledged pop artist in recent years, Saint Petersburgs Kito Jempere has enjoyed a journey unlike any other and his newest album, Part Time Chaos Part Time Calmness live-documents the chameleonic changes / game-changing paradox experienced this year between his life both as a musician and as a family man.

Better known for his work as a house producer which has earned him accolades from prominent dance music outlets throughout well over a decade of intense work both into and outwith the limelights, Kito has for all that never been focussed on writing solely discoid material, throwing as much effort over the years into multi-faceted parallel ventures, far and apart from strictly dance floor-oriented functionality. Yet, from this partition between various projects and mindsets, this is through a radical shift towards downtempo pop and out of the 4x4 loop that Kito got to fully assert himself as a musician, embracing the rejoicing variety of tone and mood of his tender loves, secret and not. The movie Ive never made but have the soundtrack for, Part Time Chaos Part Time Calmness is the fruit of change as much as change itself. A return to the simple means of his young self, his old trusty guitar from his late teens serving as the backbone to Killer Line and Love Myself But I Cant Make It Love, and the natural development to last years Green Monster, which
initiated these deep tectonic movements in Kitos approach to his art, PTCPTC is an intimate trip down the kaleidoscope of his present life. Joined up by an impressive cast of artists, including Jimi Tenor, Adam Evald and Hard Ton, Kito didnt just bin his old persona, he took it back to where it belongs. From the low-slung emotional folk of the opener, Killer Line, to the eerie flamenco-jazz hybrid Before Music Dies. via the broken soulfulness of Put Love Into Your Heart and anthemic 80s balearic breaks meets coastal synthwave vibe of Sounds of Love, the album pulsates with a refreshingly genre-unbound vision. To the naive, laid-back sonic bokeh of Footsteps,
succeeds the left-of-centre cinematic narrative of In The Countryside, which includes some fun nods to fictional brands taken from Tarantinos imaginarium (Red Apple cigarettes) or other movies like High Fidelity, after Nick Hornbys eponymous novel.

Freed from gridlocked programming and impersonal tropes, PTCPTC showcases a wide array of songs, beats, grooves old and new, some dating back to 2018 and improvised sessions with his 9-people Kito Jempere Band, all of which were finished within the same timeframe and with this all-inclusive momentum in mind. Through the epic synths of Absent Ascent. in revamping the universal classic Over The Rainbow with Celebrine, on the appeasing ballad Shorespotting feat. Evald or in the waves-ready closing cut Lovers, Jempere tells a tale of hard-earned emancipation and life-affirming freedom.

Back In Stock!

Fueled By Ramen will be reissuing one seminal album from our 25- year history each month throughout the calendar year of 2021. For July 2021, we will be releasing Panic! At The Disco’s debut studio album ‘A Fever You Can’t Sweat Out’

Cuban music has a new global ambassador: Cimafunk. With a name and image that pays tribute to the Cimarrons – Cubans of African descent that resisted slavery – and music and showmanship that re-embodies funk legends from the last century, the medical-school student turned funk artist has developed into a musical force crafting the sonic future of the island and a global, cultural phenomenon that unites and celebrates blackness across borders, oceans and languages.

After the success of El Alimento, Cimafunk delves even further into his exploration of the intersections between funk and the sounds of the continent and gives us Pa' Tu Cuerpa (Mala Cabeza Records), his most polished and mature production to date. For this occasion, Cimafunk has summoned a constellation of extraordinary artists and musicians.

"Collaboration is something I really enjoy," he confesses. "This album has artists that I had always wanted to work with, of whom I am a fan and of whom I have a lot of influence from them." From the legendary touch of funk master George Clinton, who also appeared on Cimafunk’s last album, to the jazz mastery of top AfroCuban pianist Gonzalo Rubalcaba, through the vibe of Colombian rockstars Monsieur Periné, to the Caribbean rhythms and melodies of Haitian producer Michael Brun, and the youthfulness from Havana’s urban street scene of Cuban newcomer Wampi, each guest works like a piece of clockwork in this masterpiece.

“Cuchi Cuchi” is the track that immediately takes you to the Cimafunk of 2024. Catchy, danceable and super funky, “Cuchi Cuchi,” which is a playful way to say “hooking up,” is a Cuba meets New Orleans mashup ready to explode when performed live. “It’s really funky and you can envision me on stage with my band and feel the way I dress, dance and live life just by playing the track,” says Cimafunk. “My musical director Dr. Zapa is the producer and he’s been with me since the beginning. ‘Cuchi Cuchi’ is Cimafunk & La Tribu after a few years of exploring the world thru festivals, venues, dressing rooms and parties.”

New Orleans – Cimafunk’s new home – jumps out track-after-track on “Pa’ tu cuerpa.” The explosive flow of New Orleans bounce-icon Big Freedia on “Pretty” and the unreplicated, powerful horns of Trombone Shorty on “I don’t care” highlight Cimafunk’s affinity with and full-on embrace of New Orleans music and culture. He’s now a regular performer at the New Orleans Jazz Festival and leads an annual New Orleans – Cuba festival and cultural exchange program, Getting Funky in Havana, that has brought New Orleans top artists and musicians to Cuba to perform for the Cuban people and do work in the schools. The result is a sonic experience as innovative as it is impossible to label; Caribbean but borderless, rooted in Havana but with echoes of Detroit funk and New Orleans bass, horns and street-corner vibes.

‘Music From The Penguin Cafe’ is the first studio album by the Penguin Cafe Orchestra. It was recorded between 1974 and 1976 and released in 1976. The executive producer for the album was Brian Eno, who released this album on his experimental Obscure label, with catalogue number ‘Obscure 7’. The original cover was by John Bonis. The reissue cover painting is by Emily Young.  The album was included in Robert Dimery’s ‘1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die’.
This is the first repress since 1987 and uses the 2008 remaster.
Pressed on blue vinyl

Repress!

Compilation of 80s Turkish-Swiss band Café Türk, featuring selected works from their discography as well as previously unreleased recordings!

Café Türk's unrestrained sonic palette explores new wave, psych, disco and reggae with influences from Anatolia and Azerbaijan.2xLP includes a 4-page booklet with extensive liner notes and photos.

Café Türk are an inimitable Turkish-Swiss band formed in the 1980s, whose genre-bending sonic palette draws from Anatolia, the Caucasus and Western Europe. The group’s frantic trajectory connects Switzerland and the Turkish city of Kars with a background story as rich and unexpected as their sound. After three decades since they disbanded, Zel Zele Records have collaborated with Turkish crate-digger Grup Ses to give the music of Café Türk a new lease of life. This eponym compilation features original album tracks, singles and previously unreleased takes that trace the outline of the group’s history. From the rolling disco of the group’s debut recording “Haydi Yallah”; to the previously unreleased kosmiche of “Yıldızlar”, “Ali Baba From Istanbul”s Azeri grooves and German language vocals, to the psyched-out interpretation of Causaccian folk tune “Şamil”, Café Türk showcases the endless stream of ideas the band had during their time together between 1983 and 1989. Tracks come with an unrestrained spirit, weaving in the crackling energy of new wave, rock, disco and reggae with influences from Turkey and Azerbaijan.

This fascination in pulling different worlds together goes right back to the formative days of Metin Demiral, founder of Café Türk. Metin grew up in Kars, a provincial town in the Northeastern part of Turkey. Kars was once known for its multicultural communities; where you could hear locals speaking a range of languages, from Turkish to Azeri, Russian and Kurdish. In 1983 Café Türk won a contest set for Turkish groups based in Europe, organised by the label Türküola, home to Turkish stars like Cem Karaca, Selda Bağcan and Barış Manço. The resultant recording sessions gave birth to his new band and debut LP, Pizza Funghi. But Metin turned down Türküola’s offer to put the record out and instead self-pressed 1000 copies on his own Sound Concept label - driving as far as Berlin to sell them face-to-face to record shops. The record was picked up by a member of the German city of Nuremburg’s Cultural Department and soon Café Türk were invited to play for the local workers’ unions, many of whom represented immigrants from Turkey. These events only grew in popularity, the group ultimately spending five years touring similar shows in Europe, alongside more conventional tours and festivals. Metin had hoped to bring his new record to audiences in Turkey again, however, he found it impossible to get any of his songs played on state-sponsored radio, something he attributed to the infamously strict supervisory board of TRT, Turkey’s state-funded broadcaster. TRT tended to not accept songs that blended both western and traditional Turkish music in order to avoid “degenerating” Turkish folk music. Cafe Türk tried to fight this conservative mindset, but progressively resigned themselves to the political restrictions of the time

In 1969, producer and boogaloo godfather Bobby Marin conceived this undeservedly obscure funky, psychedelic Latin soul gem. Released on Ralph Lew’s short-lived Dorado label and engineered by Jon Fausty, Bobby was backed by a top-notch studio band that included Ricardo Marrero, Joey Pastrana, Bernard Purdie, Louie Ramirez, Orlando Marin and Ozzie Torrens. Includes liner notes by genre expert Pablo Yglesias telling the story behind the music. 180g vinyl. Generally, when discussing the first wave of Latin soul and boogaloo, it’s the bands and their leaders, the singers and the songs that get all the recognition. But what of the producers, composers, and arrangers? One of the top old-school New York Latin music producers, Bobby Marin, was behind the scenes for some of the best independently produced boogaloo and salsa of the ‘60s and ‘70s. “Saboreando - Pot Full Of Soul”, is the album Bobby created in 1969 for his friend Ralph Lew’s newly launched Dorado label. Fifty-five years later, Bobby confirms that he commemorated his humble Barrio beginnings playing stickball on West 107th Street and singing doo-wop while some kids played percussion on junkyard drums, by christening the band The 107th Street Stickball Team. The 107th Street Stickball Team was basically the same pool of friends as Ricardo Marrero’s group (Bernard Purdie on drums, Mike Viñas on guitar, Ricardo Marrero on vibes), with the addition of Louie Ramirez playing piano and organ, Orlando Marin, Joey Pastrana and Ozzie Torrens on percussion, Mike Viñas handling the electric bass, and Butch Johnson and Danny Agosto on lead vocals for a few numbers. At that time, soul music was seen by the present Latin generation, indeed the youth market in general, as something that was different, that broke with tradition. The record, with Bobby singing several of the best tunes including ‘Mojo Shingaling’ and ‘Rhythm and Soul’, highlights an affinity or connection between African American and Cuban music in a convincing blend that was emblematic of the scene and allowed the young generation to feel they had a fresh kind of music all their own. No wonder the LP notes boast The 107th Stickball Team is “a bunch of groovy youngsters.” We are now happy to make this undeservedly obscure funky, psychedelic Latin soul gem available again!

For the first time ever you can get both Copse EPs 'Mara | Mondrem' and 'Old Belief | New Despair' on limited edition vinyl!Copse began life in 2020 as as an exchanging of musical ideas between guitarists and work colleagues Phil Vernon and Craig Mallard during the lockdowns enforced by the global pandemic

I Will Find You” takes listeners on a journey through Mathame’s greatest inspiration, Franchino, who’s love for electronic music inspired not only the brothers, but the entire nation. As this track reveals itself, the duo’s devotion to creating meaningful music that is deeply rooted in their own influences reverberates throughout as they translate its gripping sonic identity through their own, distinct lens.

Throughout their career, Mathame (brothers Matteo and Amedeo Giovanelli), have been elevating fans to new heights through their sophisticated compositions that infuse cinematic soundscapes with ethereal energies and raw, real emotions that command movement. While Franchino’s version of this track was originally introduced in 1993 and influenced some legends of the italian progressive techno pioneer scene such as Ricky Le Roi and Mauro Picotto, the Mathame record is actually a rework of Clannad’s theme song from the soundtrack of the 1992 film “The Last of Mohicans”, which the duo first incorporated into performances during their 2019 Cercle set in Mexico City.

“I Will Find You” has since become an anthemic and defining element of Mathame's performances, inclusive of the duo’s 2023/2024 world tour, and has already garnered critical acclaim. The release of “I Will Find You” carries a special endorsement from its original composers, Clannad. The Grammy and BAFTA award-winning band has expressed their delight in seeing their music embraced and reinterpreted by not only new generations, but new genres, as the duo breathe new life into the track's legacy.

From the solitude of volcanic Mount Etna to stages around the world, Italian DJ and producer duo Mathame connect audiences around the globe through transportive music that transcends genres, generations and dimensions. More than another DJ duo, Mathame are sonic alchemists whose productions unfold as poignant odysseys that blur the lines between reverie and reality. Defying convention through their sound, the brothers masterfully immerse listeners into the futuristic realms they conjure, pulsating with sensorial magic and ethereal energies that linger in the air akin to candles in a great cathedral. Their first LP, “MEMO” was a technically driven masterpiece, paving the way for colossal collaborations with global talents like Tiësto and John Summit and amassing over 6 Million streams on Spotify and support from the likes of industry authorities such as Forbes’ 15 Best Albums List of 2023.

The arrival of their solo record “I Will Find You” signals a return to their shared artistic vision and will be released in tandem with the announcement of the duo’s Ibiza Residency concept - NEO - at the beloved electronic temple, Amnesia. Born from an inspirational journey in Tokyo, Japan this past year, Mathame will introduce their most groundbreaking concept to date that masterfully blends the worlds of technology, artificial intelligence and their profound performances with a sense of mysticism that dances between what is seen and what is heard. The cinematic experience - complete with a setup, development and climax - will take place at Amnesia under the HORIZON framework from June 7 to July 5, and from September 13 to 27, with each chapter boasting an eclectic lineup of performances from the likes of The Blaze (DJ Set), Mind Against, NTO and more.

New Source gladly welcomes Juan Bozzolasco aka Juan Dairecshion, unveiling a four track in which he confirms his innovative approach to electronic music production. His works, full of creativity and unexpected interactions between elements, are shown here in full display. His music is a result of a life-long exposure to some of the most seminal works of dance-floor oriented electronic music, ranging from Chicago’s and Detroit’s House and Techno passing through mid-century American Jazz and avant garde Latin-American music. House music composed by a techno-head and housey techno for your grooving pleasure are unequivocally found in his release.

Black Truffle is back with a delicious new EP, "Gourmet Edits", which takes you on a four-course adventure through the vintage disco territory, blending Jazz-Funk and Latin elements.
Black Truffle's distinctive style is characterised by skilful reinterpretations of hidden treasures from the 70's with a passionate focus on preserving the essence of the original material...

'Disco Meringue' is a crispy piano-driven appetiser with Latin flavour. Its syncopated piano riffs imbue it with a jazzy vibe that makes it a great tool to seamlessly transition between disco, Latin, and modern deep house in your set.

'Drum Tartar' is a percussive tour de force that oscillates between groovy Jazz-Funk and spicy Bossa-Nova, culminating in a thundering drum break that continues for an impressive third of the track.
'Consomme' is the EP's bread and butter for the dance floor layering pulsing percussion, wailing organ riffs, crunchy guitars, curious vocoders and many sax and organ solos that keep on taking it higher and higher resulting in a sizzling high-energy banger.
For dessert, we have 'Souffle', a fluffy big-band Jazz number with a funky Disco beat that gradually develops into an ecstatic culmination with a choir.

The Holiday Album That Turned Mariah Carey into the Queen of Christmas: Featuring the Standard “All I Want for Christmas Is You,” the Singer’s Blockbuster Merry Christmas Exudes Joy, Spirituality, and Conviction
Sourced from the Original Master Tapes, Presented in Audiophile Sound for the First Time, and Strictly Limited to 3,000 Numbered Copies:

Mobile Fidelity’s UltraDisc One-Step 180g 33RPM LP Set Plays with Superb Detail, Openness, and Definition
1/2" / 30 IPS / Dolby SR analogue master to DSD 256 to analogue console to lathe

Mariah Carey didn’t become the Queen of Christmas just because of her fervent love of the holiday. Or as the result of a brilliant marketing plan. The iconic singer earned her title by way of her blockbuster Merry Christmas, a 1994 album that quickly joined the likes of Bing Crosby’s White Christmas, A Jolly Christmas from Frank Sinatra, and Nat King Cole’s The Christmas Song as an all-time holiday vocal classic. Featuring a balanced mix of inspired originals and well-chosen covers, Carey’s fourth studio record has only grown in stature as new generations discover its magic. Mobile Fidelity’s 30th anniversary edition reissue of Merry Christmas makes her spellbinding performances and upper-tier register come alive like never before.

Sourced from the original master tapes, pressed at Fidelity Record Pressing, and strictly limited to 3,000 numbered copies, the pioneering label’s UltraDisc One-Step 180g 33RPM LP set of Merry Christmas plays with superb detail, depth, and dimensionality. Available in audiophile quality for the first time since its original release three decades ago, and featuring the bonus track “God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen,” the nine-times-platinum set breathes with a newfound openness and transparency that enhance the spirituality, passion, and festive tenor of Carey’s singing.

Benefitting from superb groove definition, a nearly inaudible noise floor, and dead-quiet vinyl surfaces, the music takes on a heightened energy and anticipatory emotion synonymous with the holiday season. Carey’s signature vocals explode with liveliness and dynamics, the full scope of her acrobatic range presented in clear, transparent sound that practically places her on a small stage in your listening room. This collectible version also breathes with the kind of warmth, intimacy, and coziness you want from a landmark vocal album.

Recorded when Carey helped put “diva” back into everyone’s vocabulary, Merry Christmas gave the New York native another smash right out of the box. What nobody knew at the time was the degree of the album’s staying power — and how, many years removed from its initial promotion cycle, its legend would still grow and even spark a 2010 sequel. Having re-entered the Top 200 charts every year since 2019, Merry Christmas ranks as one of the three most commercially successful holiday LPs ever made and, in due time, will likely earn the top distinction in that class. A global blockbuster, it seamlessly ties together Christian, gospel, and secular threads and speaks to a boundless audience, independent of denomination.

Most obviously, the record remains inescapably connected to “All I Want for Christmas Is You,” an uptempo anthem that towers as a holiday standard and one of the biggest-selling singles in history. Punctuated with celesta chimes, sleigh bells, springy keyboards, and joyous beats, the song echoes the simple albeit engaging melodies and doo-wop style of beloved holiday classics of yore — and blends such elements with contagious dance-pop rhythms to create an atmosphere rich in joy, wonder, and excitement. Radiant with golden soulfulness and sincere conviction, Carey’s exuberant singing and on-point phrasing put it all over the top. And how.

The song stands as the only effort in Billboard history to top the Hot 100 chart during at least three separate runs. Carey’s blockbuster has already hit No. 1 during five runs, spanning every year between 2019 and 2024. That’s just one of the many records the singer holds — and only one of the multiple highlights from Merry Christmas, which includes two other Carey-penned originals, “Miss You Most (At Christmas Time)” and “Jesus Born on This Day.”

Though slightly lesser known, Carey’s remarkable rendition of Darlene Love’s “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)” further links her album with the big, lush, Wall of Sound heritage that helped inspire its production. Carey’s heartfelt take and transformation of the traditional “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town” into an animated tune that even adults can believe, as well as her clairon reading of “Joy to the World” — cleverly augmented with bits of Three Dog Night’s 1971 hit of the same name — further reinforce her status as Queen of Christmas.

At the peak of her powers, Carey finds equivalent success when tapping more spiritual veins. Witness the reverence she brings to the timeless carol “Silent Night,” the piousness she invests in “Jesus Oh What a Wonderful Child,” and the sacred feeling she conveys throughout “O Holy Night.” You’ll also never think of “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing” and “Gloria (In Excelsis Deo)” the same way again after hearing Mimi pour her heart and soul into them, and pair the songs together.

Indeed, it’s Carey’s pliable voice, melismatic technique, and five-octave range — on display here in definitive fashion — coupled with her undeniable love for Christmas and understanding of the religious significance of the season that make Merry Christmas a must-have holiday staple. And on Mobile Fidelity’s LP, something you better add to your wish list.

"Because it's the passion for music that drives the person behind the decks, a dj's debut is bound to exude authenticity. It's often themselves they're recounting in music, posing on the slip mats their DNA and what makes them who they are.

When you're just starting out, you're faced with a multitude of routes to take and styles to play. When you know just how devastating it can be to step out of line and empty the dance floor even faster than it filled up, it often takes a lot of audacity to break the unity of a funk evening with a punk track.

Over time, to evolve is to find oneself facing only two roads.

On the first one, to satisfy the greatest number of people and not lose the credit for his fees, the dj adapts to the trend. Whether he likes what he's playing or not, the road has become a freeway and, indeed, a very comfortable one. The audience already knows everything there is to hear and doesn't come to hear anything else. Thirty seconds, or even a minute of each track, is more than enough. Everything has to flow quickly. Everything is marked out and secured. Those who respect the regulations will (normally) make the journey without accident. Several times a week, several times a month, several times a year. Curiosity disappears altogether.

And then there's the other road. Where nothing is expected nor sometimes even ever heard. The road of an unquenchable passion for diggin' and the desire to always know more and more. A passion billed at the price of hours of research-finding spent in the discomfort and possible disappointment of never coming across anything exciting, as well as nights exploring platforms and multiplying clicks resulting in a good old headache. Until that moment of grace happens when, after thousands of fruitless shakes, the nugget stands alone in the sieve, without the slightest doubt as to its quality.

Coming from places never mentioned for their music, sometimes classics of their genre, they are also rarities miraculously saved from total disappearance, as much as current marvels, but threatened to never leave the immensity of the web. Even if the possibility of a text with substance is never excluded, they can tell long stories or be destined solely to make you dance till you're dehydrated. Scintillating with spirituality, some can also vaporize energy and replace it with a pure emotion capable of touching hearts in the bareness of simple percussions.

This road is marked by sincerity, singularity and surprises, but always in a communion between the dj and the audience, who embark on it together, with mutual confidence in the promise of hours of sharing and discovering. "

Music To Varnish Owls By. Does Geoff Bastow have a claim for the best album title of all time? It's certainly up there. It's also one of the hardest to find library funk records. But don't let the eye-catching name fool you into thinking this isn't serious business.

As a key member of Giorgio Moroder's team, the legendary Geoff Bastow shouldn't need any introduction. You'll be familiar with his singular brilliance as the brains behind the much-sampled boogie/disco classics "You Don't Like My Music (Hupendi Muziki Wangu?!)" and "Don't Stop", released by his group, K.I.D.

But 1975's Music To Varnish Owls By is where it all began for our hero.

It's packed with incredibly soulful, soothing music that - despite being utilised a few times by Knxwledge - remains still largely un-mined. So, beat-makers, get cracking. And instead of that hyper-rare original, spend that £300 on something else.

Born in 1949, Bastow was a Munich-based English songwriter and record producer. Originally working as a guitarist and pianist in dance bands around his home county of Yorkshire, he moved to London in the early 1970s and then Munich in around 1976. He was one of the main architects of the Munich disco sound of electronic innovator Giorgio Moroder and also released heaps of killer library records for legendary labels like Bruton (with brother Trevor), Impress, JW Music Library and the Munich-based Sonoton between the 1970s-2000s. Bastow died tragically young, in Berlin, Germany on 16 March 2007, at the age of just 57. But he left behind a truly incredible electronic music legacy. He deserves to be much better known and this reissue should bring him to a fair few more ears. Let's see why...

Light-hearted opener "The Rough With The Smooth" contains a killer open drum break and is basically guitar-drenched flute-laced piano-funk. However, the first genuine highlight, "Beautiful People", is just majestic. Reflective, pastoral and silky smooth - as the title suggests, it's just straight beautiful; a chiming, deeply soulful instrumental that has to be heard to be believed. Sampled by Knxwledge but nobody else of note, which is crazy. Slo-mo soul beat "Tumbleweed" is another stone cold track just desperate to be laced by a skilled MC. Laconic, lysergic funk with nostalgic overtones, the guitar is prominent but the flute and glock really elevate it to perfection.

"Bits And Bats" is clav-enhanced Blaxploitation-esque street-funk with tough bass and crunchy drums that, despite its hardness, manages to flirt with breeziness. All in all, sumptuous, pounding wah-wah brilliance. Another huge one, up next. The insistent piano-funk head-nodder "A Change Of Pace" is a total sleuth-funk jammer, with a wonderfully soft snare and more hypnotic, melancholic flute lines. Man, we'd love to hear Alchemist chop this up. It even sounds a bit like Bastow was keeping things thoro with this one. Closing out Side A, the bright and breezy Bossa of "Janelle" makes it a perfect run of six untouchable gems. As elegant as it is sleazy, it sounds like it could've been on the classic KPM greensleeve, Piano Viberations.

Side B opens with the Ramsey Lewis-inspired "Time And A Half", a deceptively simple bass, drums and piano workout, decorated with stylish percussion with some great chord changes and hints of drama via a great bass solo. The heavy "Supersplash" is a doped-out drama suite with fuzzy wah-wah guitars, electric piano and glock. "Fillet Of Soul" is a catchy wah-wah propelled shuffle with piano and vibes, super dynamic but also incredibly chill.

"Well Above Average" is exactly that, a funky instrumental that serves as a straight ahead guitar-soul workout. Oozing bass-driven class, it gets better with every listen. Some open drums for your delectation, too. The fuzzy clav-and-vibes funk of "The Clan" - also understandably sampled by Knxwledge - is a monster head-nod slow jam whilst, seeing us out, the uber-relaxed "Sing Song" rounds things off in bright fashion with its slow but insistent clav, electric piano and glock greatness. Swoon.

As ever, the audio for Music To Varnish Owls By has been carefully remastered by Be With regular Simon Francis, ensuring it sounds better than ever. Cicely Balston's expert skills have made sure nothing is lost in the cut whilst the records have been pressed to the highest possible standard at Record Industry in Holland. The original, iconic sleeve has been restored here at Be With HQ as the finishing touch to this long overdue re-issue.

A killer fusion of bass, poetry and social consciousness from the King Midas Sound vocalist.

Roger Robinson is one of the most versatile voices in the dub poetry scene today, seamlessly blending the power of the written word with the raw energy of the soundsystem.

Teaming up once again with Dub wizard Disrupt to conclude an album trilogy that began with “Dis Side Ah Town” and “Dog Heart City“, Robinson pulls a wide range of riddims straight from the Jahtari vaults to create “Heavy Vibes“, a killer fusion of bass, poetry, and social consciousness.

With a voice oscillating between soulful falsetto and deep poetry thunder Robinson’s verses hit as hard as the bass, challenging the listener to confront uncomfortable truths, while Disrupt’s richly textured, dub-heavy production ensures the music moves both body and mind. You’ll find yourself dancing, but more importantly, you’ll find yourself thinking.

Coming with stunning cover art by Kiki Hitomi and featuring deadly riddims by Tapes, Naram, Jura Soundsystem, Maffi and Bo Marley, “Heavy Vibes” balances the weight of oppression with a glimmer of hope – the belief that change is possible, that the beat goes on, and that through solidarity and art, new futures can be forged.

"This record explores the relationships between mid century architecture, consumerism and community. The gradual or sometimes brutal removal and change of places in the name of progress. These changes leave traces that people have to deal with on a psychological level but probably never really acknowledge. This record explores loss of community and loss or unsympathetic altering of shopping spaces. When something is unceremoniously knocked down or altered and something else replaces it then the thing before it becomes ghost like and is at risk of being forgotten. Not dissimilar to when the Christian faith built their buildings upon Pagan sites. It has a similar purpose (to pray or to shop in this case) but the older thing becomes dreamlike and is confined to folklore. The community is always fed the propaganda of progress but looking back, I certainly cannot deny the beauty of what has now gone. Maybe there is a sense of dissolution and denial about such matters. The record is also interested in the sense of community of these past spaces and how shopping centres have generally declined mainly due to the rise of neo liberalism and tech giants. When you see old footage of these spaces in their prime, you get a sense of a space age future, everything looks new but paradoxically the people look to be from an older time. Today I can see real poverty and complete disenfranchisement from being in these new spaces. It's not all doom and gloom though as spaces, especially the ones in Plymouth are not that much altered and could be brought back to the architects original dreams."

David A.

Next Polyamore Recs release comes from Capofortuna – brothers Riccardo Cardelli (Funk Rimini) & Francesco Cardelli, and Davide Santandrea (Rame, Pastaboys) – the instrumental funk-jazz trio renowned for their ground-breaking productions and musical soundscapes. Here the Italian trio unveil a fusion of sounds with some heart felt nostalgia on their ‘Punti Di Vista EP’. In true Capofortuna style, this uber classy record pushes boundaries and is a further testament to the band’s constant evolution and commitment to musical innovation, all recorded at their boutique studio in Rimini.

The title cut is a collaboration between Capofortuna and producer Andrea ‘Neve’ Recla, highlighting their experiments with a Casio CZ3000 synth, adding a more futuristic electronic dimension. On ‘Venusian’ you will hear plenty of the Moog Rogue and the Roland JX3P, both machines together paying homage to Rimini’s vibrant arcade culture of the 90s. ‘Pianobar’ takes inspiration from the same musical moments of the 90s, adding melancholic trumpet flourishes played by Jacopo Buda. ‘Acid Basico’ nods its head to the darker sounds of Italo disco and Chicago house, seamlessly blending dub elements to create a genre-defying experience. Reflecting the trio’s shared musical heritage, ‘Punti Di Vista’ showcases Capofortuna’s ability to transcend genres at the same time staying true to their Italo-funk Rimini roots.

Laurant Webb, Dave Coker, Justin Bailey and Dave Pine were the driving forces behind Strange Weather Studios. Based in Southeast London, the studio served as a creative hub, playing a pivotal role in shaping the sound of a groundbreaking genre. Alongside close friends and collaborators, they produced a series of influential records that have left an indelible mark on the music landscape.

This release is a heartfelt tribute to Strange Weather Studios and the talented individuals who brought its magic to life. It also honours the studio’s production partners though iconic projects such as Housey Doingz, 7th Voyage, Space Bunny, Get Fucked and Green Eyed Monster. These projects that were instrumental in forging the signature, original London Tech House sound.

The tracks on this record have been handpicked by Laurant Webb and Yossi Amoyal, meticulously restored and remastered from the rare original DATs.

This release marks a significant milestone for London Tech House, symbolising a collaboration between its key pioneers and a label that evolved alongside the genre. It’s an organic partnership that celebrates the past and looks towards the future. A project we’re incredibly proud to share with you

Mutant, in partnership with Hollywood Records and 20th Century Studios, is proud to present the premiere physical release of Benjamin Wallfisch’s score to ALIEN: ROMULUS.

It is hard to overstate just how successful, on every level, ALIEN: ROMULUS and its score are at returning longtime fans to the world Ridley Scott, Dan O'Bannon, Jerry Goldsmith (and so many other brilliant artists) created back in 1979. But spend just a few minutes with Benjamin Wallfisch's masterful score, and you can feel the attention to detail in the craft of every choice.

Doing the impossible task of bridging the gap between sequels and prequels, Wallfisch takes the dissonant, atonal and truly horrifying soundscapes that Goldsmith defined the genre with and makes peace with the melodies and monsters of subsequent films - all while making his own voice heard throughout, creating a truly remarkable piece of film music.

This limited edition physical release features liner notes by director Fede Álvarez and original artwork by illustrator Kilian Eng, continuing his ongoing ALIEN soundtrack series and is pressed on 2x 140gm black vinyl.

Iconic UK punk band X-Ray Spex co-founder Lora Logic was unexpectedly ousted before the recording of their debut album 'Germ Free Adolescents' in 1977. Undeterred, Lora went on to form and front the post-punk band Essential Logic. With trademark angular sax lines and her unmistakable vocal stylings, she went on to create some of the most liberating and exciting music of the early post-punk era, not only as Essential Logic, but also as a solo artist. 'Beat Rhythm News (Waddle Ya Play?)' is the band's debut studio album. Originally released in December 1979 on the Rough Trade Records label, whose founder Geoff Travis provided enthusiastic encouragement. The album reached number 11 in the UK Indie chart. Lora's solo album 'Pedigree Charm' followed in 1982. Lora and Poly Styrene would later reform X-Ray Spex for the band's sophomore and final studio album 'Conscious Consumer' in 1995. Essential Logic returned from an extended hiatus in 2022 with the 5 x LP boxset 'Logically Yours', including the new studio album 'Land of Kali', co-produced by Lora and Youth (Killing Joke), followed by 2024's remix album thereof - 'Rekalibrated', which enlisted the talents of an ambitious and diverse set, including Grammy Award winner - Dave Audé, Rave-pop legend - Adamski and Scottish Kandy-poppers - bis, amongst others on remixer duties. This 45th Anniversary 'Deluxe' edition compiles the original studio album together with a bonus album containing the complete Essential Logic studio recordings from 1978 - 1983, including the iconic Cells Records debut single 'Aerosol Burns' (1978), the 'Wake Up' EP (1979), included here for the first time on any physical release since its original pressing, together with the non-album b-side 'Flora Force' and 3 post album Rough Trade Records single releases: 'Eugene' (1980), 1981's 'Music Is A Better Noise' and 'Fanfare In The Garden', and their respective b-sides. Repackaged in a high gloss accented, spot varnished sleeve, on 2 x black and white splatter vinyl, foiler stickered, with inner-sleeves including full lyrics and new sleeve notes by Lora. This release also marks the long overdue and highly championed CD debut of the original album and bonus tracks. Following their recent UK tour with fellow punk legends Penetration, featuring Pauline Murray, in November 2024, Essential Logic show no signs of stopping or slowing down as they plan extensive live celebrations of the album throughout 2025 as well as the recording and release of their next studio album. Press Quotes : "Lora's voice is always doing the right, thrilling things...she frets and somersaults in such an intoxicating way" - NME // "A stunning record that remains a benchmark of the punk era" - AllMusic // "Beat Rhythm News suggests an impromptu brainstorming session between Kate Bush, Talking Heads and Captain Beefheart" - Louder Sound // "An intelligent and fluid benchmark for any band willing to dabble in both punk and dance music at the same time" - PopMatters

The mood is dark to melancholic, but also majestic and epic. Hailing from Rome, THE FORESHADOWING are something like the musical equivalent of the city they come from. Founded in 2005, the group can look back on a successful and eventful history. Listeners of gothic, doom and dark metal are very familiar with the quartet's work. THE FORESHADOWING gained popularity in the international scene with four acclaimed albums released between 2007 and 2016: "Days of Nothing" (2007), "Oionos" (2010), "Second World" (2012) and "Seven Heads, Ten Horns" (2016). In 2023, THE FORESHADOWING ended a forced break of several years with the EP "Forsaken Songs" and a European tour with Saturnus and In The Woods. Now, "New Wave Order" is the group's fifth full length album and their debut on LIFEFORCE RECORDS. The formation from Rome emphasizes its strengths on the album and offers cinematic tracks of dark music that is nevertheless immensely catchy and mood-enhancing. While listening to "New Wave Order", you are whisked away into a world full of secrets and allusions. The path is THE FORESHADOWING's goal, which manifests itself in all-encompassing, organically developed musicality. The Italians are outstanding songwriters who create captivating arcs of suspense and also keep an eye on the overarching strands. Nothing else can be expected from this eternal band.

Comprising someof Denmark"s most prominent young musicians, Copenhagen"s trailblazing neo-jazz quintet OTOOTO refer to their innovative blend of jazz tradition and modern indie-pop as "homeshake meets the jazz messengers". Their third studio album"2nd Quake" is set to release on November 8th on April Records. OTOOTO, consisting of Jonas Due (trumpet and flugelhorn), Oilly Wallace (alto sax and flute), Calle Brickman (keys), Andreas Svendsen (drums and percussion), and Matthias Petri (bass), has been a fixture on both the Danish and international jazz scenes since their 2021 debut "This Love Is For You". Their new release marks a new chapter in their journey, reflecting a bold, mature artistic vision that promises to cement their place as leaders in Scandinavian contemporary jazz. "Our mission is to reflect the modern society and put a sound to its vibrations. And through this sound we seek to transmit purity, love, and joy." Navigating through a wide array of inspirations from 70"s rock and European church music, to the pioneering sounds of Jean-Michel Jarre and Vangelis, the five piece - led by trumpeter Jonas Due and saxophonist Oilly Wallace - self describe their sound as"a roaring sea of analogue synths and velvety horns". Featuring eight meticulously composed original pieces, 2nd Quakebalances strong memorable melodies with intricate orchestration, a continuous sense of groove, thick layers of texture and fearless, lyrical improvisations. A collaboration with electronic producer Sofie Birch, the record is an electro-organic sonic exploration of the union between acoustic instrumental timbres and electronic manipulation, spearheaded by the sound of the legendary Juno 106 synth alongside stellar jazz-informed musician-ship.

Danish instrumental collective ALAWARI was founded in 2016, and rapidly garnered a name for themselves on the European jazz scene for their explosive live performances, going on to win Denmark s Young Jazz competition in the same year. A contrast to their eponymous 2022 debut - a cacophonous musical reflection of revolution - their upcoming release is an exploration of spirituality, transformation, and the totality of the human experience. Leviathan oscillates between symphonic grandeur and intimate vulnerability, with moments so delicate that every breath can be felt. In this way, the sextet aims to demonstrate that the path to the divine is found through collective unity unity-a shared experience that transcends the individual. From lamenting melodies on a solo trumpet eventually accompanied by a dense, ominous synth, to hypnotic patterns on a percussive close close-mic d saxophone, to thunderous rhythm section grooves with searing horn harmonies, ALAWARIs innovative and dynamic arrangements offer something brand new and unexpected around every corner. Despite being a six piece, the ensembles sound feels comparable to that of an orchestra or big band, combining through through-composed classical classical-influenced orchestration, intricate interlocking parts, lush waves of texture and a warm, raw, intimate production style to craft a larger larger-thanthan-life listening experience. Leviathan embarks on a profound journey, capturing the divine and spiritual forces that permeate the arts. The album serves as a vessel vessel-slowly navigating like a majestic ship or a steadfast train, embarking on a peaceful yet powerful crusade. It invites listeners to traverse a landscape of sorrow and joy, pain and exaltation, silence and intensity. Through this journey, ALAWARI aims to reveal the primordial truth: that the spirit precedes all, and that the mundane backdrop of everyday life can be transformed and painted anew, if carried by the right vessel.

12 years after their debut release, Klone, hailing from central France, are back with their 6th studio effort: Here Comes The Sun shows a mature rock band whose musical universe has expanded over the years. When you take a closer look at the band's discography, their progress appears like a logical evolution: each album is unique, and each one has served to make the follow-up less predictable. The band's metal roots have slowly but confidently given way to an ethereal rock sound, substantially vintage but modern in sound and delivery; driven by heavy riffing as much as by delay-soaked guitar-reverie and careful vocal melodies... and while nowadays melancholia is the defining paradigm of the band's sound, Klone exploit a much broader emotional spectrum. 2012's The Dreamer's Hideaway already showed more progressive outlines -- with Here Comes The Sun, the six musicians continue along that path and open up a new chapter in their collective musical journey. This time, the bandreally gives each melody time to unfold... and this is where the strength of this album lies: coherence, patience, continuity. The transitions between riffs and songs never feel rushed or forced -- everything is happening at the right time, and for a reason. The music, the lyrics and the artwork reflect upon one another, and suck the listener into a universe revolving around the sun, which is the central theme of the album. With Here Comes The Sun, the band's songwriting, led by the charismatic voice of Yann Ligner, has reached the next level. Klone have opened for bands like Gojira, King's X and Orphaned Land, and have played the main stage at Hellfest. Here Comes The Sun is the album that will see Klone be thrust into the limelight. It's just too good to be ignored - take a listen, and decide for yourself.