quête:c sound

Oceanine, Jolanda Moletta’s third album and her first for Beacon Sound, is a powerful and ethereal statement of artistic community. Expanding on her previous work, each track represents a collaboration with a different female vocalist, with the foundational elements being generated entirely by her own voice. By turns haunting, enchanting, and inspiring, you won’t want to come up for air once you’ve been pulled under. Representing a
musical practice that is distinctly feminist, this is an album with a longer view in mind, to an age when the altars were to goddesses and women were centered as powerful beings representing the earth’s cycles of regeneration and renewal. Oceanine then, in all its beauty, can be viewed as an album of survival. It is deeply transportive, accessing something that lies within all of us. As the late, great Lithuanian folklorist and archaeologist Marija Gimbutas noted, “We must refocus our collective memory. The necessity for this has never been greater as we discover that the path of 'progress' is extinguishing the very conditions for life on earth.”

Jolanda Moletta is a multimedia artist and one-woman electronic choir. She creates wordless compositions through extended vocal techniques, integrating wearable-controlled live processing, alongside symbolic visuals. Moletta considers her performances to be a collective ritual and creates her Sonic & Visual Spells following the cycles of nature and the moon. Jolanda's 2022 critically acclaimed album Nine Spells was released on the Ambientologist label, followed by Night Caves on Whitelabrecs in 2025. Moletta’s artistic practice is a radical and spiritual journey through sound art, ritual, and the symbolic archaeology of the feminine.

Oceanine is inspired by sirens, water nymphs, and the timeless call of the sea. At its core lies Jolanda’s deep, lifelong connection to the Mediterranean Sea and to the ancient and modern myths and folklore that have emerged from its waters. Growing up by the Mar Ligure, Jolanda was surrounded by stories carried by salt, wind, and waves: legends of sirens, echoes of ancient voices, and the sea as both origin and oracle. This intimate relationship with the Mediterranean is not merely a backdrop, but a living source that shapes Oceanine’s emotional, symbolic, and sonic world.

Each track features a different female vocalist, creating a rich tapestry of voices, styles, and perspectives. This artistic choice not only broadens the album’s sonic palette, but also deepens its narrative core: celebrating the power, beauty, and mystique of feminine energy through myth, history, and sound.

The entire album is built exclusively from the human voice, processed and layered, yet always remaining voice, and nothing else. For each piece, Jolanda invited every vocalist involved to contribute a raw stem: a short, unedited melodic fragment of just a few seconds, inspired by the album’s themes. These intimate vocal seeds became the foundation of each track: the guest artists’ voices appear as brief, melodic stems, while the entire surrounding “orchestral” fabric is created solely from Jolanda’s own layered and processed voice. In this way, Jolanda’s voice becomes the Ocean itself, embracing, absorbing, and carrying the sirens’ calls within a vast, immersive soundscape. Every song is a unique expression of the feminine experience, revealing its depth, complexity, and emotional range, echoing the call of the sea and the many faces of the siren archetype.

The figure of the siren has transformed across centuries. In myths of Ancient Greece and Rome, sirens were hybrid beings, part woman, part bird, whose irresistible songs lured sailors to their doom. During the Middle Ages, the image shifted toward the half-woman, half-fish figure, often associated with temptation and danger. Historically, the voice of women has often been feared. Sirens were considered harbingers of misfortune not simply because they seduced or destroyed, but because they were powerful liminal beings.

In Ancient Greek, sirens functioned as psychopomps: figures who existed between worlds and guided souls, especially between life and death. Their songs were believed to carry forbidden knowledge, including prophetic insight and the ability to reveal truths about fate and the future. The danger of the sirens lay in what they revealed: knowledge that humans were not meant, or ready, to hear.

Oceanine confronts this legacy head-on. The voices heard throughout the album are not merely beautiful: they are dark and luminous, wild and enchanting, magical, soothing, dreamy, and at times fractured or distorted. They whisper, lament, beckon, and enchant. Like sirens, they skim the surface of the water and sink into its depths, hovering on the edge between tenderness and danger, vulnerability and power. They rise toward the sky, dissolve into mist, and return as echoes charged with raw, elemental emotion: voices that seduce, warn, mourn, and remember. They refuse to be reduced to decoration.

Alongside the album’s release in May, Oceanine will also unfold as a visual and performative work through a short art film. The film includes a live session recorded inside a sea cave facing the Mar Ligure, the very coastline where Jolanda spent her childhood, dreaming of sirens and listening to the sea as if it were speaking directly to her. This site-specific performance reconnects the music to its place of origin, allowing the voice to resonate within stone, water, and air, and transforming the cave into both a sanctuary and a threshold between myth and reality.

What if the sirens’ songs were considered dangerous because they carried another truth, an ancient truth long forgotten?

Oceanine embraces the idea that we are still deeply woven into myth. Though we may see ourselves as rational and modern beings, our world is saturated with ancient symbols and archetypes, often distorted, simplified, or stripped of their original meaning. And if those symbols are allowed to shift, if the mirror once held by the siren becomes an invitation to look beyond appearances and into what has been obscured, then we may finally uncover a deeper truth and reclaim the voice that was always ours.

Oceanine is not just an album. It is a reclamation, a spell, and a call from the depths.

We Welcome Ed Longo And His Studio Project The Applied Arts Ensemble Debut On Early Sounds With the Other Fantasy', The Result Of Many Recording Sessions That Took Place In Different Places Around Europe.

Conceived With A Strong Jazz-funk, Fusion And Boogie Sound It Has Been Conceptualized Around The Idea That The Schizophrenia Of The Internet-age, The Visions Of Otherness (the Undiscovered Lands, The Primitive Happiness, The Impossible Love) Permeate The Collective Consciousness And The Idealized "other" Loses Any Correspondence With The Physical World.

2025 Repress

Exploring new approaches of its Mediterranean sound, "Zodyaco" project, founded by Pellegrino, returns with a 7” single and two versions delineating the shape of its Neapolitan melodic disco from the slopes of Vesuvius.
Intimate and intense or exuberant and sensual, depends from which prospective you look at the sea.

Repress.

Step into a journey through time with Lapa Dula's debut album "Agua", proudly presented by the Early Sounds team. “Agua” is a sonic and aesthetic collage, a tribute to the sounds and memories of Naples and its surroundings in the vibrant cultural and social scene of the mid 1980s, not just a reflection of producer’s Alessandro La Padula childhood memories, but also a nod to the myths and legends of Partenope. Written between Rome and Naples and co-produced by label head Pellegrino, "Agua" is the latest addition to the imprint’s distinctive "Mediterranean sound" blending funk, Latin, world music, and disco, with songs like the balearic title track "Agua" and the nostalgic ode to rural life "Sibilla", also inspired by the myth of the Sibyl of Cumae, this album takes you on a journey of emotions and experiences.

From vernacular "Scemanfu", a fun play on the French expression "je m'en fous" (I don't care), to the contemplative "Navigante", dedicated to those who have found solace in the sea or in the virtual world, and the final track "Baibai", inspired by the adventurous and licentious affairs of English nobleman Sir Nathaniel Thorold, who lived on the island of Capri, each song tells a story and adds a piece to this mosaic of sounds, images, and places.

Some words from Nat about the music – “For this recording I composed some songs using more “exotic” (for want of a better word) modes,
which I have always meant to explore in more depth but never really got around to very much. The first song for instance, Red, Gold & Green, uses an Ethiopian scale.
The title comes from the colours of the Ethiopian flag, which is also symbolic in Rastafari so has a kind of double meaning, like a lot of my songs.The title track, Path of Enlightenment, uses several modes,
starting in a major key then moving to the Phrygian mode, then to a minor key. The piano solo is in a 28 bar minor blues form. Menat is based on a mode of the Byzantine scale,
I’m not sure if it has a particular name or not. Amenhotep was the name of several Egyptian pharaohs,
Amenhotep IV being the original given name of Akhenaten.When I was writing this song it put me in mind of my song, Akhenaten, simply because they are both in 5/4 time,
so I decided to give this one a pharaonic name too. Spheshile is a Zulu word (and sometimes name) that means “beautiful gift”, the title was suggested by a friend from South Africa.
All this means nothing of course if the music doesn’t tell a story, I think the unfamiliar modes allowed us to speak of interesting things that may not have come to us otherwise.
Finally, I chose to use the quartet format for this recording because it occurred to me that it tends to make for a more cohesive group sound, and it had been a while since we recorded this way.”

Critically acclaimed American producer Tomu DJ (Pitchfork, Dazed, NPR++) debuts on sound as language with her fourth album, 'antagonist.' Recorded in the artist’s Oakland, California home throughout 2025 using only a digital piano, her intention for the album was to “free myself from conventional notions of electronic music”. This is perhaps seen clearly on standout tracks “loose interpretation” and “careful deliberation”, which in their cinematic splendor evoke the beauty and thoughtfulness of classical music. Even so, 'antagonist' is “not intended to be like classical music, rather a stream of consciousness akin to spoken word poetry”. It is easy to see what she means on tracks like “antagonist” and “dance” which weave familiar elements into personal narratives of loneliness, perseverance and redemption. Despite its specific sonic palette, 'antagonist' fits right in with Tomu DJ’s discography, continuing to build on the musical ecosystem she has thoughtfully tended to over the course of the last decade.

"K8A a.k.a. Kaethe Hostetter is a New York–based violinist. composer, and bandleader, whose work grew out of eleven years living and collaborating in Ethiopia. As a founding member of Debo Band and QWANQWA, Hostetter has been performing Ethiopian music for over two decades, and her solo debut, Woradj Alle, builds on this legacy by reimagining Ethiopian songs through live-looped violin and electronics.
"The album unfolds as a hypnotic, ritual-like performance that expands the instrument into an immersive sonic landscape, that refracts Ethiopian classics through dub, psych rock, and avant improvisation. It is not fusion, but transmission - music that blurs memory, place, and time.
"This collection of musical vignettes is based on my time in Ethiopia, the place I called home for 11 years", Kaethe explains. "The phrase 'Woradj Alle' is one of the first colloquial expressions I learned upon arriving in Addis Ababa, used on public transportation, simply meaning 'let me off right around here'. In choosing this name, I invite you to join me on the rickety minibus journey through my time in Ethiopia, and step off 'the bus' into scenarios, atmospheres, and soundscapes that describe moments I experienced, people I met, and other lasting impressions, striking and mundane."

Obwohl es sich nicht eindeutig einem bestimmten Genre zuordnen lässt, hat ,A Way In" was von Afrobeat, Cumbia, Salsa, Jazz, Reggaeton und Soul - eine Mischung aus kraftvollen Rhythmen und geheimnisvollen Melodien, die Mitchum Yacoubs zweites Album in der Welt der Groove-Musik hervorstechen lässt. Zwischen synkopierten Dance-Tracks, ätherischen Klanglandschaften und gleichmäßigen Backbeats finden sich Geschichten über Angst, Liebe, Aufstand und Heilung. Zehn Tracks, die den menschlichen Geist offenbaren und feiern. Yacoub hat das gesamte Album selbst aufgenommen, produziert und abgemischt und damit den sorgfältig geschichteten Sound sichergestellt, den die Fans seines Debüts ,Living High in the Brass Empire" so schätzen. Wir treffen wieder auf Travis Klein, Bradley Nash und Wesley Etienne, seine unnachahmliche Bläsersektion, die man weder auf Platte noch auf der Bühne verpassen sollte. Mit den aufstrebenden Stimmen von Divina Jasso und Lourdes Iri auf der Hälfte der Tracks mangelt es ,A Way In" nicht an herausragenden Singles, die dich von morgens bis abends begleiten werden.

Phantasy transports back to 1982 for a faithful reissue of the highly sought after ‘Fools Are Friendly’ from Xclusiv, carefully re-mastered from the original tapes.

The alias of sisters Karen and Maxine Berlinski, Xclusiv emerged inconspicuously from the London borough of Croydon with a sophisticated vision of cosmic disco pop, linking the suburbs with Soho’s neon-tinted nightlife. Decades later, and in close collaboration with the sisters, this highly sought-after record arrives lovingly reissued by Phantasy in its original, sensuous form.

Originally self-released on Le Maitre Music, a record label spun-off from their family-run fireworks and pyrotechnics company, ‘Fools Are Friendly’ has the irresistible sense of a radio hit that never was. A brilliant DIY reflection of the disco and soul that dominated the charts of the time, its glossy, primitive electronics echo the synth experiments of Giorgio Moroder or Didier Marouani, pioneers that were transforming pop music.

The extended mix provides an overture to the sisters’ twinned vocals, unfolding with delectable disco drama. In contrast, the Instrumental Mix lets the record’s blend of elements truly breathe, a synthesised version of Xclusiv’s irresistible vocal hook holding court between timeless arpeggios and subtle modulation.

Moom Sound are proud to announce Toomy Disco's second release — a vinyl EP that hits like a proper record should. 'House Commodities' arrives on 3 April 2026, channelling the raw energy of the Buenos Aires underground and the timeless feel of 2000s house. Rolling rhythms, soulful pressure, Toomy's unmistakable disco-leaning touch. This is music built equally for the dancefloor and those deeper moments late into the night — as powerful at sunrise as it is under strobes at 3am

Venturing into “a limbo world between medieval tropes and modern-day decay”, New Orleans musician Urq (half of art punk duo Spllit) returns with a new solo offering. Recorded over a single, intense month, This Dismal Village is a homespun document that sits somewhere between jittery punk, dreary psychedelia, and hooky bedroom pop. Recorded to 4-track, the record embraces limitation as a creative engine, resulting in a sound that is raw, unsettled, and deeply atmospheric.

The album is set not in a fixed point in time or geography, but a liminal environment where dystopic visions and archaic fixtures exist side by side. In the dismal village, kings and witches share space with televisions, skyscrapers, and modern enterprise; organ fanfares echo down streets populated by disgruntled townsfolk and whispered gossip. It is simultaneously the dark ages, 1950s suburbia, and a 21st-century metropolis. Embracing anachronism was central to the project’s identity, an attempt to collapse history into a single, uneasy present.

Sonically and philosophically, the album sits firmly in the tradition of rough and raw cassette rock. Guided By Voices’ Bee Thousand looms large as an influence, particularly its ability to build an entire world through unpolished, first-take recordings. Robert Pollard’s idea of the “four P’s” (psych, punk, prog, and pop) serves as a neat summary of the artist’s musical instincts and each element can be traced right through the heart of This Dismal Village. Further inspiration comes from post-punk’s so-called “Calgary Sound,” a loose movement blending psych pop, post-punk, and math/prog elements with a home-recorded, unpretentious ethos.

The result is an album that unrolls like a place wandered through, uneasy, occasionally familiar, and impossible to pin down in time. All captured on tape before it could disappear like an apparition, like a dream only half-remembered.

Obwohl es sich nicht eindeutig einem bestimmten Genre zuordnen lässt, hat ,A Way In" was von Afrobeat, Cumbia, Salsa, Jazz, Reggaeton und Soul - eine Mischung aus kraftvollen Rhythmen und geheimnisvollen Melodien, die Mitchum Yacoubs zweites Album in der Welt der Groove-Musik hervorstechen lässt. Zwischen synkopierten Dance-Tracks, ätherischen Klanglandschaften und gleichmäßigen Backbeats finden sich Geschichten über Angst, Liebe, Aufstand und Heilung. Zehn Tracks, die den menschlichen Geist offenbaren und feiern. Yacoub hat das gesamte Album selbst aufgenommen, produziert und abgemischt und damit den sorgfältig geschichteten Sound sichergestellt, den die Fans seines Debüts ,Living High in the Brass Empire" so schätzen. Wir treffen wieder auf Travis Klein, Bradley Nash und Wesley Etienne, seine unnachahmliche Bläsersektion, die man weder auf Platte noch auf der Bühne verpassen sollte. Mit den aufstrebenden Stimmen von Divina Jasso und Lourdes Iri auf der Hälfte der Tracks mangelt es ,A Way In" nicht an herausragenden Singles, die dich von morgens bis abends begleiten werden.

Burial Mix numbers 6 to 12: classic after classic, like King In My Empire, Queen In My Empire, We Been Troddin’...

Burnski is back with another fine bit of A&R on his Constant Sound label, this time with Anil Anas stepping up. He is a producer who has made his mark on the likes of PIV and here kicks off with 'Had Enuff', which brings soulful jungle breakbeats to a house framework complete with police sirens, ragga vocals and 90s organs. It's a fresh blend with a big heart and 'Chrystal Glaze' then brings punchy drum funk and spaced out pads. 'House Fever' ups the energy with more textured drums and trippy synth sequences that help with dance floor take off and 'Trigger Path' closes with pure spaced-house drive. A tasty and tasteful EP packed with utility.

American jazz drummer Roy Porter hit a late career high with his first album Jessica. The classic record throngs with intricate rhythms and vigorous drumming that reveal a playful yet ambitious approach. The standout title track 'Jessica' - a long jazz-funk meditation written for his girlfriend - reimagined by the master, Kenny Dope, shimmers with melancholy and colour. Extended breaks and beefed-up drums give the mix extra punch, while the horns retain their jazzy flair and the vocal version on the flips makes it's 7" debut - these cuts have previously been album only and are well worth copping.

LA underground hubs DISCOS XXX aka DX3 and Elbow Grease join forces to proudly present Point Winona Sound Library Vol 1 — featuring 20 distinct artists from the inspired local dance music scene, working under one unified studio roof in various collaborative
formation at the mighty Los Feliz hilltop palace Point Winona, overseeing the city they collectively represent. These timeless warehouse-wrecking tracks all stand on their own, but the compilation as a whole offers a solid geographic sonic statement with shared rhythmic DNA and bold rooted-futurist production blueprints, guided by the champion efforts of studio executive producers/curators Tavish DJ and Dave Aju.
The BPS stage-setting opener evokes crispy A.M. hours with lush Detroit-meets-Cali feels on “Within Reason” — then studio dream team 5 ATMs bring the dubwise floor vibes up a notch on “A Dub Called Mondo” and Chitown-to-LA legend Scott K lays down an FM bass-laced acid house heater with “Tighter & Tighter”. Nashville-born producer Gryph funks things up on the live space boogie bump of “Winona at Sunset” while SSRI, comprised of Underground Resistance’s DJ Dex/Nomadico, Aju, and Black Lodge’s fearless leader Kosmik, drop fierce robo-Italo bliss on “Omnicallora”. Things take a further psychedelic twist with the PW edit of Scotty Coats’ sublime midtempo tripper “Be Work Zone Alert”, then Omakase’s own Gold Code alongside longtime rave brother Aju drop the nasty J Saul-salute “Yolo Jungle”, and Warehouse Preservation Society aka Tavish DJ & TK fully detonate floors inna raucous Wicked Crew stylee with “Data Bliss”. Undisputed LA scene queen Stacy Christine arrives with her shining debut “Smart Move”, where she and Aju trade sly vox lines of party advice over a bouncing tech banger for the ages, before the “Obsesion Romantica (Free Winona Dub)” sees Sisters Of Sound aka Maddy Maia and Tottie's, OG track getting stripped back and fired up to acidic peak time form. Then Dave Aju and SF homies Moniker aka EO & Kenneth Scott unleash wild uptempo melodic bruk heaven on “Chuy Luis”, and Vastir sends us home with the stratospheric drum n bass closer "Turnpike"

aut drum science and steely atmospheres are the order of the day as Terrain deliver a moody, stripped-back four-track EP for Livity Sound. The partnership of Forest Drive West and Voytek has so far yielded sharply-focused releases for Delsin's Mantis series and Vargmal, finding the synergy between lean, intricate drum & bass and heads-down, experimental techno.

On 'Barossa Dub', the pair pitch down to a half-time, dancehall-angled groove to propel a heavily-dubbed soundscape and system-ready bass. 'Nica' maintains the low-slung swagger while steadily ratcheting up the dread. On the flip, 'Scatter' winds the pressure back up with a punchy broken techno workout that teeters on the edge of breakbeat. 'Hive' opts for a brooding, purring techno meditation that thrives on slow release and intricately crafted sound design, capping off a diverse trip through austere club modernism.