Cerca:chants

Horizon is the first official album by the italo-moroccan producer Issam Dahmani, also known with the alias NNatn. Issam's style flows between deep-house, balearic and afro influences, the perfect blend for a sunset aperitivo on the italian coast.

“Valsadeira” is a pulsing uptempo excursion from the African island nation of Cabo Verde, with driving percussion, impassioned vocals, and tasty synth work. Sung in Portuguese, the track begins on a romantic note which builds toward a dramatic flip halfway through that gives way to a hypnotic tropical vamp. The drum tool extends the rhythmic breaks of the song into a useful standalone percussion jam. Odo Kakra Sika Kakra is a bouncy and joyous slice of Ghanaian highlife. With crisp 90s-era production and sweet vocal melodies, JKriv edited this one with love for maximum booty shaking and smiles. "Batonga" is a mid tempo slice of Afrofunk with a mid 1980s downtown NYC feel, led by angular and funky guitars, layered synths, and a female vocal with African chants. The drum break features a textured beat including big electronic drums, percussions and an interlocking kalimba line.

Formed in Liverpool in 1985, the Revolutionary Army of the Infant Jesus is a unique experimental ensemble whose work goes beyond music. For over thirty-five years the band’s cult following has grown. Their mesmerising recorded material is influenced by diverse cultural perspectives and stimulates a deeply personal and subjective awakening. Ethereal vocals, ambient compositions, chants, acoustic instrumentation and field recordings generate beautiful and emotionally intense soundscapes. ‘The Dream We Carry’ is the band’s fifth album and perhaps their most coherent body of work to date. It captures echoes and fragile remnants of the lived experience. The emotional traces that affect us. The joys and sorrows we hold. The dreams that we carry. Founder member Leslie Hampson said: “The RAIJ is a project in pursuit of beauty; we have tried to jettison anything that doesn’t address that. We’ve been active for a long time and this album represents another phase in our work. We’re not trying to reinvent ourselves or be something we’re not. We’ve never done that. We only ever try to be more of ourselves.”

Formed in Liverpool in 1985, the Revolutionary Army of the Infant Jesus is a unique experimental ensemble whose work goes beyond music. For over thirty-five years the band’s cult following has grown. Their mesmerising recorded material is influenced by diverse cultural perspectives and stimulates a deeply personal and subjective awakening. Ethereal vocals, ambient compositions, chants, acoustic instrumentation and field recordings generate beautiful and emotionally intense soundscapes. ‘The Dream We Carry’ is the band’s fifth album and perhaps their most coherent body of work to date. It captures echoes and fragile remnants of the lived experience. The emotional traces that affect us. The joys and sorrows we hold. The dreams that we carry. Founder member Leslie Hampson said: “The RAIJ is a project in pursuit of beauty; we have tried to jettison anything that doesn’t address that. We’ve been active for a long time and this album represents another phase in our work. We’re not trying to reinvent ourselves or be something we’re not. We’ve never done that. We only ever try to be more of ourselves.”

repressed!

Kerri Chandler delivers ‘Lost & Found Vol.1’ this March, a four-track collection of revisited, unreleased archive cuts, including Kerri’s own Grampa, Calvin Reed Sr. as a featuring artist on the opening track.

New Jersey’s Kerri Chandler has been at the forefront of house music since the beginning of his career in the early 90’s. Over the past three decades he’s released an extensive back catalogue of material including several albums on his own Madhouse and Kaoz Theory imprints as well as the likes of DJ Deep’s Deeply Rooted, Apollonia, Jerome Sydenham’s Ibadan and Watergate Records.

Here we see Kerri dig up some never before heard archived material from the 90’s and early 2000’s for this four-track EP. Up first is ‘What Will We Do ft Grampa’, featuring spoken word and vocal lines from Kerri’s Grandfather Calvin Reed St. atop gritty swinging drums, organ lines and rounded subs. ‘Tonight’ follows and tips focus over to airy chord sequences, choppy bass notes, dreamy arpeggio lines and dynamic drums.

‘Into The Night’ opens the b-side next, bringing a raw bass hook, tension building strings and vocal chants of the track’s title into the forefront while bumpy stripped-back drums keep things driving. ‘This and That’ then rounds out the release, bringing twitchy resonant synths and phaser sweeps into the mix alongside stuttering drum programming for a funk-infused, loop driven eight minute workout.

DJ Feedback:

Honey Dijon - Classic
Kerri still has his A Game intact! Great Ep!

Laurent Garnier - Kompakt, MCDE, F Communications
PURE LOOOOOOOOOVE

Jimpster - Freerange, Delusions Of Grandeur
Kerri!!!! Classic tracks with that inimitable groove and production which makes him such an icon. Big ups!!

Terry Farley - Junior Boys Own
BACK 2 DA RAW

Fouk - Heist, House of Disco, Razor N Tape
Super hard to pick a fav as each track has its own vibe! LOVE THIS <3

Enzo Siragusa - Fuse London, InFuse
Quality as always from Kerri!

Harvey Sutherland - MCDE, PPU, This Thing
always.

Roy Davis Jnr
Full support.

Jason Kendig Honey Sound System
Always fire tracks from kerri!

DJ Bone - Subject, Metroplex
Love the entire release!

Politics of Dancing (Guillaume & David)
one love for Kerry as always :)

Joyce Muniz - Exploited Ghetto, 20:20 Vision
Nice Ep!

Massimiliano Pagliara - Panorama Bar, Ostgut Ton
groovy!

Shadow Child
king.

Tobi Neumann - What Came First
Brutally good House Music. This one I wanna have on vinyl. Thanks master Chandler for the music!

Chrissy - Chiwax, The Nite Owl Diner
Very excited for this one

Halo Varga - All Inn Music, Surface, Inmotion Music
Kerri is GOD

Mutiny - Azuli, Skint
Kerri on that deep classic vibe..Love

Alinka - Permanent Vacation, Twirl!
Brilliant as always

Diz - Robsoul
90's freshness!!!

Fish Go Deep - Innervisions, Defected
The long-awaited follow up to She's Crazy! Beautifully done. The other tracks also slamming, packed with dancefloor drive and emotion. Can't wait to play loud.

Art Of Tones, Llorca
Superb EP !

Lupe
The Grampa one, instant cult hit, very endearing! Great stuff

BD1982 - Diskotopia, Tokyo
Classic material from an absolute legend

Johannes Albert - Need Want, Mirau, Berlin Bass
vibes for days!

Joseph G. Bendavid
kerri can't fail, always bomb tracks

Terry Grant
Stone. Cold. Legend.

Harri - Sub Club
Lovely

Severino - Horse Meat Disco
oh yes quality

DJ Support: Kerri Chandler, Prunk, M-High, Archie Hamilton, Mr.V, Alexi Delano, Laurent Garnier, Okain, Mystic Bill

Dutch House maestro Dennis Quin makes a welcome return to PIV this July with his ‘Treat You Right’ EP, comprising four originals, one of which features LA’s Cheshy on vocals. Over the past ten years Amsterdam’s Dennis Quin has moved from strength to strength and has become globally revered and respected for his raw and powerful productions, racking up releases on Cécille, Ibadan, Dungeon Meat, Eastenderz and of course the leading light of his hometown scene, PIV, where he returns with his latest EP.

Up first on the package is the original mix of title-cut ‘Treat You Right’ which sees Dennis team up with Los Angeles based Cheshy, delivering a composition that personifies the quintessential House sound, crisp 909 drums, fluttering stab sequences and a bumpy bass hook run in unison with Cheshy’s soulful vocal stylings, cinematic strings and shimmering synth lines. ‘Impressions’ follows next and showcases a different aesthetic with a swinging low-slung rhythm section, jazzy leads, marimba lines and bouncy subs to create a more Parisian deep house feel.

Further showcasing Quin’s dynamism as a producer ‘Touched’ then shifts up gears to a saturated skippy drum groove, vacillating synth stabs, a heavy dose of low-end drive and hypnotic vocal chants. Lastly to round out the release, Dennis offers up a ‘Classy Dub’ of the title-track, as the name would suggest stripping out a large portion of the vocals and reshaping the structure of some of the original elements and stirring some additional jazzy elements into the mix.

‘Danse Cette Zik!’ by Parbleu is the debut LP from this enigmatic group of musicians and is a multi-cultural fever dream, wherein energized expanses of dynamic disco, futuristic funk, and cinematic jazz fusion are colored over by warming vibes of Caribbean dub, Latin tropicalia, and sunshine Afrobeat. Evocative instrumentals intertwine with breathtaking vocal performances, which move between sleepy-eyed soul serenades, mystical melodic chants, and expressive diva enchantments while pads swell in support—sometimes sparkling like ocean glass, other times raining down like a Morricone symphony.

Pianos and guitars converse via funk flourishes, reggae riffs, and jazz rock solos as blazing fusion synthesizers set the air aflame. Drums move between kinetic dancefloor urgency and islander rhythm relaxation and hand percussions both organic and electronic evoke rainforest ceremonials while basslines revel in 70s fusion fire and Italo synth-funk squelch. And the entire experience has been expertly captured and magically crafted by the sorcerers of sound at the West Hill Studio, resulting in a thrilling adventure of imagined exotica, one equally adept at scoring coastal paradises, filmic deserts, riviera cruises, or nightclubs sweltering in the light of a mediterranean moon.

(Words by Octagon Eyes)

Campo Amaro is the fourth album by Rosso Polare, the Milan-based duo of Cesare Lopopolo and Anna Vezzosi. These compositions were inspired by observing the waterways that surround the fields of various Italian regions, the so-called ditches (fossi), bodies of water that are often polluted, but may also be full of flora and wildlife, lined with bitter and edible herbs.

Throughout this land, small and distant chants emerge, twisted traditional songs of resistance or made-up tunes of revolution. There are small local legends that survive thanks to anonymous monuments placed in indiscreet contexts, rescued here through the vivid storytelling of Lopopolo and Vezzosi.

Written and performed by Cesare Lopopolo & Anna Vezzosi
Recorded between Milan and Brescia, 2022-2023
Mixed and produced by Cesare Lopopolo
Mastered by Angelo Harmsworth
Album art by Anna Vezzosi
Design by Josh Mason

Miquel Brown released "So Many Men – So Little Time" in the summer of 1983 and remains a club staple. Welcome to the Oculus Disco …



On the A Side “SO MANY MEN” is a twisted version of the original. Featuring sets of stabs and a reimagined melody, an extended breakdown with shortened count-down, this edit opens 4 perfect mix points to the original!



On the B Side “SO LITTLE TIME” is stripped of its former glam to reveal a tougher tone. Claps emphasis a darker vibe that dumps directly into an acidic rhythm. No vocals, chants, or breakdowns - this DJ friendly cut is suitable for Disco, House, and Rave settings.

Sounds as diverse as Tropical Disco, Afro Funk, Highlife, Juju, Disco, Soukous & more combine effortlessly on the Debut full LP from Bosq & Kaleta. Brilliant songwriter and former member of legendary African groups like Fela Kuti’s Egypt 80 & King Sunny Ade’s African Beats, Kaleta helms the vocal duties with his signature chants in a mixture of Yoruba, Goun, French, English & Fon.

Bosq brings his renowned balance of organic & electronic production to give the album a current but timeless feel. A fantastic cast of guest musicians from as far and wide as Colombias Choco region on the Pacific Coast, to Brooklyn, to Port Novo, Benin & Lagos Nigeria bring a depth of musicianship & musical histories to the beautiful group of tracks.

Colored edition : Black & Silver vinyl. Standard edition is sold out.

Official reissue. New remastering vinyl of the 1979 LP by Colin Potter + "silver edition" Gatefold cover + complete NWW list on Gatefold inner


Chance Meeting on a Dissecting Table of a Sewing Machine and an Umbrella is the debut album by British experimental unusual and absurd music group Nurse With Wound, released on their own United Dairies label in 1979. An unusual record which blends noise and jamming.

The album's equally unusual title is a quote from the surreal, poetic novel Les Chants de Maldoror by Uruguayan-born French author Isidore-Lucien Ducasse, written under the pseudonym Comte de Lautréamont.It has been included in the "100 Records That Set the World on Fire (While No One Was Listening)" by TheWire in 1998, and is one of the records that have had a lasting impact on avant-garde, experimental and psychedelic music.It was on this record that the famous "NWW list" appeared for the first time, featuring dozens of names of musicians and groups who had influenced Nurse With Wound - a list that now serves as a treasure map for many collectors of the genre and fans of outsider music. It's been replicated here in the innersleeve of the gatefold.

Deluxe 180g vinyl. Art Edition LP includes set of six 12”x12” art cards.



The follow-up to Kee Avil's acclaimed 2022 debut Crease: "A stunning debut" (The Quietus); "A whiplash style of uninhibited exploration" (The Wire); "Kee Avil's debut is a force" (Foxy Digitalis); "A work of Frankensteinian wonder" (Electronic Sound); "A tightly coiled, finely wrought vision of avant-pop" (Exclaim); "A debut of fiendish creativity" (Bandcamp Album Of The Day / Albums Of The Year) Kee Avil's music is both adventurous and intimate, intellectually challenging and emotionally resonant. The Montréal guitarist and producer's 2022 debut LP Crease garnered plaudits from outlets like The Wire, The Quietus, Mojo and Foxy Digitalis, picking up a Canadian Juno Award nomination and Bandcamp Album Of The Day and Albums Of The Year along the way. Its intricate construction, unnerving atmospheres, and knife-edge take on avant-pop prompted comparisons to early PJ Harvey, This Heat, and Gazelle Twin. A remix EP with work by claire rousay, Ami Dang, Cecile Believe, and Pelada brought collaborative perspectives to four Crease tracks, offering new pathways within those songs. With Spine, Kee Avil strips back her heavily textured compositions, opening up a much rawer sound. She calls it folk… and while traditionalists might scoff, this is urgent music that reflects the precarity of modern life, as well as the jarring mixture of electronic and real-world interactions that have become the fabric of our day-to-day experiences. There's a hypnotic post-punk somnambulance to it all, using the repetition and fracturing of melodic phrases interwoven with delicate electronics to create curious and persistent hooks. While not a concept album, themes of time's passage, remembrance, and decay crop up across multiple tracks. Each track intentionally only has four elements - guitar, electronics, and two other instruments, with Kee's voice and guitar pushed to the front. Within this minimalist framework, the juxtaposition of beauty and discomfort that is key to the Kee Avil sound stands out in skin-prickling relief. "We're shaped by many versions of ourselves," says Avil. "I was looking back at these versions of myself and what could have been, what didn't end up being and what did end up being, and going back like that through time. Seeing the future, the past." Spine was written in Kee Avil's home studio after a lapse in writing while touring Crease and working on other projects. She is a well-known and respected member of the Montréal experimental scene, and formerly ran Concrete Sound Studio with Zach Scholes, who continues to work with her as a producer on Spine. Compared to the three years that went into making her debut, Spine emerged in a matter of months - a process that may also be a factor in its intensity and sharpness: "This record was much harder, like it was really discovering everything from scratch." In her desire to not simply replicate or extend the sound of Crease, she felt she had to rip up the rule book, write in a different way, and pare back songs against her usual instincts. Sometimes, when we work against our ingrained habits, we get to the core of who we really are. Spine is an exercise in that process. Without over-intellectualizing or being didactic, it hits immediately and emotionally, especially if you are a person who has spent much time in the process of self-examination. Kee's voice hisses, whispers, and chants; her guitar bends and rings; electronics skitter and crackle; violin creaks like a door in the wind. There is something so evocative about the atmospheres she creates that it's easy to overlay one's own feelings onto her work, but to do that wholly would be to overlook one of the most important things about Spine: Kee Avil's clear and thoughtful vision. This isn't just the next step forward in her artistic trajectory; it's a stunner of a record that stands on its own, a bracing and thrilling listen that has much to reveal about the contradictions inherent in being human. - jj skolnik

Hailing from South Korea, the mind & body trained on the raves of Seoul, and across the country we have Jesse You. The gifted producer has embodied 3 original cuts which are showcasing a hefty range of electronic sound. Describing it using standard words would be too banal, so would prefer to say it is interstellar, from dark to funk and served at absolutely correct temperature. Because it is important not to melt the vinyl but to melt the gooey part inside the head. Jesse is no stranger to sound production and have proved this with “Tone Select” a disc that requires shoes which can stand the test of time on the dancefloor.

On the remix duties its Z@P, resident of many prestigious electronic music communities all over the world and one of the hardest working producers of our time. He has applied a deep burner vision on the original track which allows to dissolve in space time continuum given a correct, as well as an incorrect setting. This 12” Vinyl performs many tasks, some of those you know and some of those you have yet to discover, just select the tone.

OTTO is back with a Maximal Super Sound Maxi 12″ on Eine Welt. The label, run by Alexander Arpeggio concludes this 12″ series with an obscure banger by the Berlin-based Organ Band OTTO. On the A-side: Obscure uptempo Italo Madness, bassline-heavy, and featuring dirty vocoder Ansagen.

On the other A-side: a driving and full of surprises midtempo groover with mysterious german voodoo ritual chants. Get a copy of this limited 12″ and get your fun fair ceremony started. Limited 300 Copies only – special cover finish with metallic look.

2024 Repress
Tooflie keeps up deep-vein research instinct to remake and remodel the hidden gems of the worldwide archive quirks to tomorrow's dancefloor. Label's best-kept secret anonymous producers return with a highly anticipated funk-driven four-tracker voyage to pan-Asian crates, from Bollywood to China with a journey to Uzbekistan and Southeast Asia. They're here to take you on a gleeful joyride around their collective musical imagination: the A side sweeps in with a hypnotic feel via psychedelic swells, tension-building textures, and a bumpy, hardy rhythm, while the next cut is softening sharp edges of Bollywood original and adding sophisticated melodic expression into dancefloor territory. Do the flip to find two more bright refixes' of Chinese and Uzbekistan tunes. The bubbling 303-driven rhythms of the 'B1' are packed with sleazed-up keys, thumping bass injections, and resonant chants. The latest cut goes full-on ecstatic disco mode and finishes the release with a clean, floor-filling edit of a rare uplifting slice of Uzbekistan's celestial magic. Vinyl-only and in a very limited quantities as usual!

Originally released on tape by SicSic in 2014, Aprilnacht commemorates a decade of music from Brannten Schnüre and marked the spring in a tetralogy of albums about the four seasons when it came out. Back then the Würzburg-based project consisted solely of Christian Schoppik, who later welcomed Katie Rich to take over the vocals. He used to perform as Agnes Beil, but dropped the name when, while making this album realized his music was becoming "much gentler and more fragile". Aprilnacht already captured the particular musical ideas that Schoppik would thoroughly keep exploring, delving deeper and deeper into the use and manipulation of samplers from sources so diverging as to wander between the five continents to post-war German family television and cult cinema. Heir of the ritualistic intensity of Coil, of the intricate sampler assemblies of Ghédalia Tazartès', and of the dusty, dismal old ballads from around the world, Brannten Schnüre manages to make these paths cross in a territory that is as inherent as it is uncanny; sieged by the past and intimate as a hearth. An organic approach to folk, ambient, and sound collage, where ethereal yet thoroughly textured pieces coalesce in enthralling, delicate, and innermost musical rituals.

The album cover paintings reveal the temper: dreary old towns where shadows come to dim the slow passage of crepuscular colors, a soft area of reanimation where wind and light come close and foresee the night of spring. Aprilnacht was inspired by the stories of German philosopher and writer Friedrich Alfred Schmid Noerr, whose work exhaustively examines the conflict between paganism and Christianity, safeguarding myth in a way that Schoppik describes as boldly modern, humorous and unpredictable in its variations of the Germanic folklore motifs. "I wanted to do the same with the music," he states, and the music here could as well be suitable for a night when household deities welcome wandering will-o'-the-wisps, water nymphs, and gyrovagues to discuss Perchta's leadership of The Wild Hunt, but this album is not a folk tale, it's not an elegy to worlds already gone, hidden in years; it's an intersection of routes that open mysteriously before our ears like a congregation of vapors. Aprilnacht is a gathering of voices; "There are too many children, and none of them keeps quiet," reads the last verse of «Requiem für eine Ringelnatter.»

Sensuality drips over the music to celebrate both the voluptuousness and tragic quality of nature; "It's raining on me, urine from your flowers," Schoppik sings in «Urin deiner Blüten» and later on, faced with a snake's erotic features, as if he wanted to be embraced by it: "Your quick, sharp tongue and your warm venom; that's what the pond is missing." Orality is where this profusion of contents thrives. When the voices get closer and condense, the words reveal the saliva employed to pronounce them; we feel the mouth and the tongue, but when breath envelops them in sorrow and softens their edges, they sound distant, diffused in the atmosphere, letting go of the body that held them. These two vocal facets oscillate permanently and interact naturally with the fertile assembly of samplers and instruments that develop throughout the album, which condense and disperse impersonating each other, interweaving to search for a specific syntax. Tangled whisperings of enigmatic phrases, timid voices that stick out to check the scene but hide away quickly, shivering trance chants and monastic ambiances, distant screams and clamors in between chaos and warfare swirl until bursting into subtle songs where even Mother Mary comes forth softly. Soothed by foggy atmospheres and crackling punctuations, these voices shape a vulnerable crowd, an occasion of fragility. Along this swarm of songs thrown into thin air, accordions sound like heavy-breathing lungs; clarinets sigh like curtains shaking; violin solos wander around like bees; Gjallarhorns cries distend like fleeing cattle; glockenspiels evoke remote music boxes and inherited toys; backward emanations emerge like slender waves retreating. On the banks of stretching loops and ember textures is where the songs slowly nest, collecting the words to find their tone.

A poem by Jorge Teillier says, "To talk with the dead you have to choose words that they recognize as easily as their hands recognized the fur of their dogs in the dark. To talk with the dead you have to know how to wait: they are fearful like the first steps of a child. But if we are patient one day they will answer us with a flame that suddenly revives in the fireplace." This may be Brannten Schnüre's main purpose: To find the voice to speak to those of whom we were a vision. Not in mourning, but acknowledging the obscure and volatile nature of spring's regenerative force, searching for the treasure of balance, as evidenced in the lyrics of «Requiem für ein Schwalbennest,» "Its nest was destroyed so many times before it was finished, and despite that, the shallow builds as if it is infatuated." The same idea is here in the words of Schmid Noerr, who made poetry an act of resistance to the horror of Nazism; "Since having seen the ability of a brilliant spirit to die, with a calm mouth that everyone saw, health is true again and we affirm it, even if rivers of blood flow." And as we call for the dusk's kindness, waiting to return home and eat with our kin by the stove, our ears become used to the games of the night. We feel like we're rowing on wetlands, while the "moon musick" keeps us vigilant against the slightest movement of water or sweet moan because eeriness here is imperative for survival. Do not succumb to the insipid howl of death, for nothing may last but mutability. You see, the rock has moved a little during the night; the rest is just wind fleeing from the void.

Kee Avil's music is both adventurous and intimate, intellectually challenging and emotionally resonant. The Montréal guitarist and producer's 2022 debut LP Crease garnered plaudits from outlets like The Wire, The Quietus, Mojo and Foxy Digitalis, picking up a Canadian Juno Award nomination and Bandcamp Album Of The Day and Albums Of The Year along the way. Its intricate construction, unnerving atmospheres, and knife-edge take on avant-pop prompted comparisons to early PJ Harvey, This Heat, and Gazelle Twin. A remix EP with work by claire rousay, Ami Dang, Cecile Believe, and Pelada brought collaborative perspectives to four Crease tracks, offering new pathways within those songs. With Spine, Kee Avil strips back her heavily textured compositions, opening up a much rawer sound. She calls it folk—and while traditionalists might scoff, this is urgent music that reflects the precarity of modern life, as well as the jarring mixture of electronic and real-world interactions that have become the fabric of our day-to-day experiences. There's a hypnotic post-punk somnambulance to it all, using the repetition and fracturing of melodic phrases interwoven with delicate electronics to create curious and persistent hooks. While not a concept album, themes of time's passage, remembrance, and decay crop up across multiple tracks. Each track intentionally only has four elements—guitar, electronics, and two other instruments, with Kee's voice and guitar pushed to the front. Within this minimalist framework, the juxtaposition of beauty and discomfort that is key to the Kee Avil sound stands out in skin-prickling relief. "We're shaped by many versions of ourselves," says Avil. "I was looking back at these versions of myself and what could have been, what didn't end up being and what did end up being, and going back like that through time. Seeing the future, the past." Spine was written in Kee Avil's home studio after a lapse in writing while touring Crease and working on other projects. She is a well-known and respected member of the Montréal experimental scene, and formerly ran Concrete Sound Studio with Zach Scholes, who continues to work with her as a producer on Spine. Compared to the three years that went into making her debut, Spine emerged in a matter of months—a process that may also be a factor in its intensity and sharpness: "This record was much harder, like it was really discovering everything from scratch." In her desire to not simply replicate or extend the sound of Crease, she felt she had to rip up the rule book, write in a different way, and pare back songs against her usual instincts. Sometimes, when we work against our ingrained habits, we get to the core of who we really are. Spine is an exercise in that process. Without over-intellectualizing or being didactic, it hits immediately and emotionally, especially if you are a person who has spent much time in the process of self-examination. Kee's voice hisses, whispers, and chants; her guitar bends and rings; electronics skitter and crackle; violin creaks like a door in the wind. There is something so evocative about the atmospheres she creates that it's easy to overlay one's own feelings onto her work, but to do that wholly would be to overlook one of the most important things about Spine: Kee Avil's clear and thoughtful vision. This isn't just the next step forward in her artistic trajectory; it's a stunner of a record that stands on its own, a bracing and thrilling listen that has much to reveal about the contradictions inherent in being human. — jj skolnik.

Toaster Jah Thomas began his career on the west Kingston sound systems of the mid-1970s, making a massive splash with ‘Midnight Rock’ in 1976. After a debut LP for Channel One, his self-produced Dance On The Corner raised the bar several levels. Voiced at King Tubby’s studio, mixed by Tubby, Jammy and Scientist and edited by the King himself, the album has Thomas chatting over hard Roots Radics rhythms earlier used by Barrington Levy – the perfect platform for Thomas’ relaxed chants, vexed rants, and commentaries on Jamaican life. This is Jah Thomas at his best – a must for all fans of reggae, dub, deejay, and dancehall!

FRN Dancehall might have emerged in Jamaica, but over the last few decades the popular genre's tendrils have stretched out across the globe. In Kampala, Ratigan Era is adding a distinct Ugandan twist to dancehall, fusing it with East African humor and hyper-melodic afrobeats elements imported from Ghana and Nigeria. The versatile MC grew up listening to Jamaican music like Vybz Kartel, Busy Signal and Mavado - in his hometown of Kawempe there was almost no way to avoid it - and it blurred into the background, blending with local church music, US hip-hop and radio pop. He developed this diverse range of influences into a completely unique Afro-dancehall flow that simmers between Luganda, patois, Spanish and English, reflecting the melting pot of cultures and dialects that characterizes contemporary Africa. Ratigan broke out with a memorable feature on Pallaso's Ugandan hit 'Nsaba', a track that echoed throughout the country booming from nightclubs, motorcycle loudspeakers or from convenience stores. Now he's assembled his first album "Era", a furiously inventive interweaving of rubbery vocals and memorable chants backed by futuristic beats from Hakuna Kulala's most boundary-pushing producers. Congolese producer Chrisman takes the reins on 'Gorilla Attack', providing a downtempo groove that echoes recent Jamaican chop deployments from breakthrough artists like Skillibeng and Skeng. For his part, Ratigan ducks and dives between Chrisman's gqom-inspired low end womps and corrosive synths, commanding attention with his smart, dextrous flow and tongue-twisting lyrics.The Modern Institute and Golden Teacher's Richard McMaster handles 'Top Strike Force' leaving space in his wiry, minimal beats for Ratigan to flit between anthemic repetitions and ice-cold AutoTuned wails. On stand-out track 'Badman Style', Ratigan's guttural patois is measured against a dizzy trap-dancehall hybrid beat from HHY & The Kampala Unit's Jonathan Uliel Saldanha, aka Lithium Beats, while on the surreal 'Drop it Down', Japanese mad scientist Scotch Rolex brings out Ratigan's cheeky sense of humor with toytown bleeps and laser zaps. MC Yallah collaborator Debmaster appears on 'Gan Dem', meeting Ratigan's double-time raps with soundsystem destroying rolling subs, and veteran US noisemaker Kush Aurora sprinkles magic dust on 'Cool and Deadly', galvanizing the link between global bass mutations, Jamaica and East Africa.And despite the grab-bag of producers and inspirations, "Ratigan" is a strikingly coherent listening experience that accurately snapshots Kampala's colorful froth of sounds and phrases. Ratigan's outsized personality is welcoming and captivating, providing the sights, sounds and smells of the city with a frenetic rhythm that's as intimate and local as it is far-reaching. It might just be the future we so desperately need.

SAICOBAB channels the vital energy of living music traditions through ecstatic performance. NRTYA, Sanskrit for "dance", explores the shared roots of Japanese and Indian spiritual practices in a tangible, intoxicating form. YoshimiO"s experiments in this field are well documented and legendary from her work in OOIOO to her work in the Boredoms. Multi-instrumentalist Yoshida Daikiti reveals the human hand that shapes living traditions, as much through his fluid playing as his own collection of handmade instruments, while percussionist and multi-instrumentalist Motoyuki "Hama" Hamamoto embodies the metaphysical power of rhythm. YoshimiO"s wild vocal acrobatics and inimitable range shift from hypnotic chants to ethereal atmospherics and darting melodies, ducking and weaving around Daikiti"s serpentine sitar figures and basslines. Hama"s solid rhythmic architectures and deft polyrhythms are here enhanced by additional drums from Taketawa Yo2ro, slipping from subtle pulses to thundering grooves that drive the music. SAICOBAB"s music exudes a true reverence for living musical traditions while remaining unbound by orthodoxy. The electrifying energy of the quartet"s performance is palpable in every track, eliminating established hierarchies with performer and listener alike entwined in the same cosmic dance.