Buscar:brigh

The Juan Maclean returns to DFA with ‘What Do You Feel Free About?,’ an electro-disco club cut paired with a remix by Man Power (ESP Institute, Correspondant).

The new single is sparse and anchored by a relentlessly catchy, bouncing bass line. Nancy Whang’s vocals carry a sense of urgency and directness as she advises to “keep your emotions secure / when you don’t, it gets personal.” Rave whistles, cowbell breakdowns and handclaps further ensure the track’s place as a key song for the summertime. The remix from Man Power remix reformats the track for the club with a dubbed out, layered vocal arrangement that adds a touch more drama to the track.

The single was produced by Juan Maclean in Brooklyn, New York in the spring of 2018. The song was co-written by live band member Monika Heidemann, who also contributed backup vocals.

Juan Maclean is a Brooklyn-based DJ and producer who has been a mainstay of the New York club scene, as well as maintaining a rigorous international touring schedule, since the release of his first records on DFA in 2002. He’s released an extensive catalogue of 12” singles and LPs for the label with vocalist Nancy Whang (most recently, 2014’s In A Dream LP, and last year’s 12” single ‘The Brighter The Light’). They are currently at work on their fourth album.

Sunfear is a project from Turkish multidisciplinary artist Eylul Deniz who now returns to Dark Entries with her sophomore album. Deniz has been making waves in sound since 2017 when she debuted her blend of ambient and experimental music using piano, guitar, voice and synths as tools for storytelling and self-expression. Inspired by Dante's Love That Moves the Sun and Other Stars, Pessoa's poems and Turkish poet Lale Muldur, this darker follow-up to Octopus channels some of her own personal loss and grief. Tracks like 'Above' pair sparse guitar riffs with swirling electronics, 'Bright and Wild' contrasts lush drones with jagged feedback and there are also hints of hope in the likes of 'Form Changed.' A great return.

The more you recall a particular memory, the more it distorts and plays on your sense of narrative continuity. In this way, the vividly textured layers of Secret Recess – the debut Dauw LP from Luke Entelis aka Viul – comprise a sacred experience that leaves a unique emotional residue with each listen. Some pieces feature delicate melodies curling over themselves, while others offer gradually evolving loops underpinned by subtle guitar plucking, distant found sounds and obscured voices at half-speed. All are crafted meticulously with analogue sources and sifted through soft-edged tape processes that reward a dedicated headphone session, conjuring the solitary space promised in the album’s title.

From a home studio replete with analog synthesizers, guitars, effects and tape machines, Secret Recess emerged slowly across an era when most of us turned inward by necessity, drawing upon a library’s worth of sketches, recombinations and lightning strikes. Entelis also cites in particular a road trip to the national parks of the southwestern US that significantly informed the hazy, spacious atmospheres of the work that followed; by his account, “the desert wind was too intense for field recording,” but you can still feel it drifting across compositions like “Taurum” and “Eighties”. Such a union of urban huddle and open-sky expanse allows the album to take on new colours anywhere it’s heard.

Whether fully formed in one brief spell or developed over months of revisitation and refinement, each facet of the Viul catalogue conveys a rare, sweet melancholy pulled from thoughtful circuitry and the core artistic impulse to simply document the ephemeral – those moments in existence that you have to accept losing, but which replay endlessly once the day unravels.

“In the depths of the recording process I often feel simultaneously in touch with past and future versions of myself, which is strange, but good, I think.” (Viul)

Viul has been the primary project of Brooklyn’s Luke Entelis for nearly twenty years, but only in the last half-dozen has it come to fruition beyond the ears of friends and family. The albums Bright Decline (Disques d’Honoré, 2019) and Outside the Dream World (Past Inside the Present, 2019) beautifully justified this patient arc, and the collaboration Konec with Benoît Pioulard (A Strangely Isolated Place, 2022) entwined the two artists’ sensibilities into one of the most notable ambient/experimental collections of the year.

The great deep house maestro Alton Miller is one of the most underrated names in the game if you ask us. The long-time innovator still turns out supremely designed sounds as this one on Mister Bear evidences. 'Afrika Alright' opens with smoky, soulful vocals and lovely flute melodies next to wispy synth explorations, 'Dub Afrika' pads it out with some extra pillowy low ends, then 'Hang On' brings some bright xylophone melodies and jumbled percussion to a more Afro tinged house shuffler. Last of all is 'Super Hero' with its whimsical synth leads and interesting sound designs adding rich detail to a dusty deep house groove. Timeless stuff as always from Miller.

2025 Repress

With Moving Pressure 02, Rene Wise allows us to dip into a psychedelic undercurrent, yet maintaining a very grounded mentality. Its an effortlessly rolling type of minimalism, but lets be clear; its a type of minimalistic spirit backed up by a rich, kaleidoscopic sound design. MP02 is an immersive batch of mystical dance floor journeys which, in four steps, navigates the realms of gaseous sound design to more subaquatic dynamics, working with a palette of serpentine rhythms that pull us into his distinctive, subtly hypnotic world.

A1 Silo Cybin opens the release with the artists unmistakable kick drum pattern, the heartbeat of his sound. Theres a trippy, swampy energy here, enhanced by robotic vocals and broken claps that weave polyrhythms into the track. The minimalist core pulses with playful energy, while detailed textural elements softly emerge like a waves bubbling foam. Up next we have Complicated, which offers a more minimalist composition, yet injected with rich rhythmic structures. Small circular modulations swirl in the background, filling the air with a delicate yet persistent energy, while his signature vocal snippets further enhance the groove. On the B side, Rough Escorts taps into a brighter psychedelic dimension, conjuring the ethos and trademark of Moving Pressure as a whole. Listen closely a fine connection to Wises previous work on MP01 shines through, maintaining the sonic coherence of the project while pushing further into a lush space. B2 Bleep Police, dives into dystopian bleep territory. Here, the artist strips techno down to its essence, intertwining bleeps with percussion into a hyper rhythmic whole.

A living organism composed of intricately layered sonic structures. A variegated interplay of texture and rhythm. Multi dimensional sound. Welcome to Moving Pressure 02.

Belt of Orion by Stockholm-based Isak Edberg is the composer's second solo release on XKatedral, and his first to focus solely on instrumental music in the form of two pieces of extended duration for solo piano. Isak Edberg is a composer of electronic and acoustic music as exemplified by Ondulations from 2017 and Lamé written in 2010 and released in 2022, both on XKatedral. Edberg was also a member of Golden Offense Orchestra, active from 2012 to 2014. Edberg writes that his music is informed by an enchantment of being and a search for holiness, rapture and transcendence through stillness, contemplation, dreaming and an attempt to uphold the present. Edberg regards his music to be an adornment of time. The two works presented here were composed in the south of France and in Stockholm during a period spanning the years 2016-2018. The music was inspired by the cold winds, starry nights and desolate, palely bright landscape of the provençal autumn, as well as reflections during a time of escapism and isolation in the life of the composer. More concretely, this music grew out of hours of improvised playing on an old piano while living alone on the countryside, during which harmonic structures and gestures were slowly worked out by means of performing and listening, assessing and balancing sounds and silences. Stylistically, the music draws on a range of sources, such as Feldman's use of space and resonance as projected through both harmonic and temporal distance, the ritualistic gestural repetitions of Satie, as well as Messiaen's resonant harmony, together with some of the harmonic lushness of Scriabin's late work. Belt of Orion is a piece that explores the contrast of two musical textures, the one being fluid, airy and progressive, the other being static, steady and repetitive. The music sequences through a series of harmonic tensions in search of a place of peace, exposing a rift in the weave of time where everything momentarily stands still. In Vestiges repetitive and rhythmic materials form a major part of the musical structure, while sections of sparse, floating harmonies temporarily interrupt with reflective pauses of stillness. The music thus employs two different and contrasting kinds of musical hypnosis, with the aim of cradling the listener into a dark and perhaps unsettling sleep. The music on this recording was performed by the renowned Swedish pianist Mats Persson, who has for many decades been a legend in the art music scene of Stockholm. Through his languid yet distinct interpretations the delicacy and intimacy of these works are elegantly brought to the fore. The recordings heard here were made over the course of two evenings at Fylkingen in Stockholm. Isak Edberg's music moves slowly through the seemingly endless world that is harmonic sound. In his practice he uses heavily reduced and carefully controlled materials to create states of maximum clarity.

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.

Welcome to the 4th instalment of Juuz Records vinyl only series: VA JUUZ004.

The A side contains two collaboration tracks, featuring Silat Beksi, Soyro, RWN and Zlatnichi. This is the bright side of the record, featuring a little bit of vocals and a clear, happy daytime atmosphere.

The B side is a bit darker, catering to the taste of night creatures. Last Pines starts in with their usual but not boring heavy groovy style, and Fedo finishes up the VA with a gem aimed to shake up the dancefloors.

Zlatnichis mastering ensures balanced clarity, warmth, and punch, with dynamic kick-bass relations and sparkling air for a vibrant vinyl sound.

While she was waiting for her last album 'Pripyat' to be released, Catalan composer and producer Marina Herlop was restless. She was concerned about her (by then) uncertain music career, and felt emotionally unmoored. "Some days I used to sit on the balcony of my flat to catch some sun," she explains, "I would close my eyes and start visualizing myself as a gardener, pulling out purple weeds from the soil, every bad memory or emotion I wanted to expulse being one of the plants." As the days dragged on, the fantasy deepened, and Herlop discovered that parts of the garden was withering; the energy she had been putting into the non-musical side of her life had seeped into her creative pasture and poisoned it. She knew what she needed to do to overcome the blight: plant some seeds and tend to her art to help it blossom and bloom once again. 'Nekkuja' is a place for Herlop's warmest, sweetest sentiments to rise to the surface and crack through the topsoil. She describes the record as a way for her to seek and affirm inner light, and it's undoubtedly her brightest, poppiest statement to date. The forward-thinking, experimental touches that nourished 'Pripyat' are still present, but blessed with a level of positivity that's rare to find in a scene so entranced by darkness and melancholy. Skittering fragments of ornate acoustic instrumentation provide a serene welcome to 'Busa', punctuated by precise electronic processes that shuttle the sound towards abstraction and fantasy. Herlop's voice grows over the tangle of sounds from a childish giggle into a layered, matted mantra, sounding passionate, hopeful and full of energy. The vitality spills over into 'Cosset', where she wraps powerful motifs around ricocheting beats and dramatic piano rolls. Herlop's garden opens up dramatically on 'Karada' when bucolic field recordings crack like sunlight over harp plucks and willowy vocals. Her voice seems to bend around the whooshing streams and chittering of birds as if she's singing to the manicured land itself - a utopian paradise that Herlop employs as a metaphor for the creative process. In contrast to the view that an artist is an isolated genius or an idol to be worshipped, Herlop believes that the garden helps us see the process as closer to devotion or perseverance. A gardener brings order to the wild chaos of the outdoors, collaborating with nature to arrange something vibrant and enduring. Blending familiar sounds with fanciful concepts, Herlop traces an imaginary garden, imploring us to wander and wonder. And by the album's billowing final track 'Babel', it's flowered into a flush of pruned vocal phrases and delicately groomed orchestral rushes, painted in orange, green, blue and red.

Compilation selected from the etiopiques CD series.
"A few years ago the world discovered a unique sound coming from the distant Ethiopian capital Addis Abeba. The emotional blow was only matched by the brightness of this original and magnificent discovery. The Ethiopiques series directed by Francis Falcetto and edited by Buda Musique provides a comprehensive landscape of this subtle musical universe where local and western cultures do magnify each other. This new Ethiopian Urban Modern Music release follows the first Soul & Groove installment and keeps revealing some essential parts of the modern Ethiopian puzzle. An unequalled soul funk signature until today."

*Avant-garde Pop. Mixing meditation, sacred-geometry, searching for meaning behind the notes, Emika lost her mind trying to escape the reality of the lock-downs. Creativity in overdrive, determined to discover new dimensions: She produced VEGA. Named after the second brightest star after the Sun, VEGA is in the northern constellation of Lyra; one of the most beautiful sounding- instruments in Greek mythology. Vocals. Electronic. Classical. Collabs with Horace Andy (Massive Attack) +more.

The Official Vinyl Release from The Dreamworks Animated Feature Film
Deluxe 2xLP Crystal Clear with Blue Orb & Green, Mint, Blue, and Black Splatter
Heavyweight Gatefold Packaging with Matte Satin Coating
Exclusive Director and Composer Liner Notes
12 Page Booklet with Artwork from The Film

In partnership with Back Lot Music, Waxwork Records is thrilled to release THE WILD ROBOT Original Motion Picture Soundtrack Music by Kris Bowers.
The soundtrack also features two songs performed by Maren Morris titled Kiss The Sky and Even When I'm Not.
Waxwork Records is ecstatic to release THE WILD ROBOT Original Motion Picture Soundtrack Music by Kris Bowers as a deluxe double LP
featuring crystal clear vinyl with blue orb and green, mint, and black splatter housed in a heavyweight gatefold jacket with matte satin coating.
Also included is a 12-page booklet with exclusive liner notes by director Chris Sanders and composer Kris Bowers alongside artwork from the film.

3 tracks of Pumping funky Acid Techno, with vocals from Berise and Maskk – classic Don’t Panik on bright orange vinyl

Like the morning sun penetrating a Winter sky, a shimmering frost flecks the brightness of “Message to Nowhere”.

The four tracker showcases the sound of Ruben Benabou’s Hyperstellar nom de plume, a sound that draws inspiration from sci-fi soundtracks and the warmer currents of electro. Refracted bleeps introduce the title piece, shorn beats cutting through glowing synthlines as the EP takes flight. Tight terse drum patterns are the launchpad from which melodies sail and swoop in “Words in a Void”, bittersweet strings and warbling pads bending and shifting above juddering basslines. Fellow Frenchman, and all-round electro virtuoso, The Hacker remixes “Message to Nowhere”. Pulling the track toward the centre of the floor, scissoring snares slice through echoing notes and silken shrouds in this machine funk remake. Temperatures rise for the close. Bold key changes and snapping rhythms gather in “A Thousand Nights”, a lively late evening close to a quartet of sheer quality.

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.

Ashram Sun’, Surya Botofasina's much-anticipated album follows his hugely acclaimed debut ‘Everyone’s Children’ and his first offering since his contribution to ‘New Blue Sun’ and global touring alongside André 3000. It is an ode to Surya’s upbringing and musical teachings in the tradition of Swamini Turiyasangitananda - aka Alice Coltrane, by the spiritual jazz colossus Herself, at Her Sai Anantam Ashram in California. ‘Ashram Sun’ is a deep listening, spiritual masterpiece with close collaborators Carlos Niño and Nate Mercereau, and is produced by the prolific Carlos Niño, whose vision has become a pivotal point for contemporary progressive jazz music.

Ashram Sun features appearances from musical luminaries, including multi-instrumentalist Angel Bat Dawid, Los Angeles saxophonist Randal Fisher, vocalist Mia Doi Todd, as well as collaborations with vocalist MidnightRoba and acclaimed harpist and vocalist Radha Botofasina, among others. The album continues to expand on and conversate with the innovative spiritual-jazz configurations of recent works by Shabaka Hutchings, André 3000 and Carlos Niño —all of which Surya plays on. This evolution follows from his debut album ‘Everyone’s Children’, also produced by Niño, which was one of the earliest offerings of this fresh, spiritual approach. As the keyboardist on André 3000’s New Blue Sun and an integral member of André’s touring group, Surya has already directly brought the legacy of Alice Coltrane/Turiyasangitananda into this rich new current in creative music.

The music on Ashram Sun is tuned into these wavelengths, consolidating a new jazz lineage with energies directly from the source. The album blends improvisation in the creative music tradition with washes of cleanly spiritualised keyboard work, atmospheric percussion, and sanctified vocalisation. As Surya Botofasina explains, "Swamini (Alice Coltrane) and the Ashram have taught me that the only place worth going to, is within… I am always going to be an Ashram Sun."

Back in 2018, Argentinian producer Fernando Pulichino released ‘Search of Indigo’ on Leng, a shuffling slab of colourful, Balearic-adjacent dub disco featuring his own distinctive lead vocals and backing vocals from Luca Gasparini. Six years on, the track returns renewed and refreshed thanks to a string of new floor-friendly reworks by LTJ Xperience and Pulichino himself. Fernando kicks off the EP with his ‘AM Mix’, an inspired re-invention that re-frames the song as a hard-wired, acid-fired chugger – all restless, razor-sharp TB-303 lines, low-slung bass guitar and sparkling piano riffs. On the digital version of the EP Pulichino has also offered up his ‘PM Mix’, a deliciously Balearic disco dub rich in colourful synth sounds, elastic bass, flanged guitars and sun-bright piano licks. It's LTJ Xperience’s trio of remixes that lie at the heart of the EP though. The Italian producer, real name Luca Trevisi, initially made his name as a downtempo and nu-jazz producer before perfecting a trademark style of chugging, slow-motion hedonism that draws influence from both deep house and nu-disco. His main Remix foregrounds many of these trademark elements, in the process delivering a bongo-rich chugger laden with delayheavy bass guitar sounds, head-nodding drums, heady guitar loops and echoing vocal snippets. On the Dirty Mix, Trevisi reaches for tight, short TB-303 ‘acid’ loops, a more sparse and heavy rhythm track offering a more heads-down, dubbed-out affair that should delight those who love late night and early morning hypnotism with flashes of wide-eyed sonic bliss. Then, to round things off, Trevisi delivers a heady, atmospheric and spaced-out Dub full of jazz guitar licks, bubbling electronics, vocal snippets and effects-laden bass. It’s a winning combination.

Die schwedischen Rocker Devil's Cigarette präsentieren ihr Debütalbum 'I Wanna Be On TV'! Beeinflusst von Rock-Ikonen wie The Stooges, MC5, The Beatles, The Hives, The Soundtrack Of Our Lives und The Hellacopters, kreieren Devil's Cigarette eine einzigartige Mischung aus energiegeladenem, düsterem und rasantem Rock 'n' Roll.