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"Touch" is the first new album from the groundbreaking post-everything icons Tortoise since 2016. With "Touch", the Tortoise bandmembers Jeff Parker, Dan Bitney, Douglas McCombs, John Herndon and John McEntire harness their collectivist songwriting approach, a slightly anarchistic but resolutely egalitarian process where ideas triumph over ego towards an abstracted muscularity. While there are still excursions into the dusky, elegantly gnarled jazz ambience that flourished on landmark works like "Millions Now Living Will Never Die" and "TNT", "Touch" is perhaps most remarkable for Tortoise"s unapologetic embrace of grand gesture. Aerodynamically re-engineered Krautrock, hand-cranked techno rave-ups, and pointillist spaghetti western fanfares are all imbued with Tortoise"s now-signature internal logic - equally alluring and confounding, a puzzle to be savored rather than solved. Recorded between the three cities, Los Angeles, Portland, and Chicago, "Touch" is the result of an intentional effort by these five musicians to reconnect, recenter, and reinvigorate their sound for what is perhaps the group"s most diverse release to date.

"Hyperglyph" is the first new album in 11 years from composer/trumpeter/synthesist Rob Mazurek and composer/percussionist Chad Taylor"s long-running Chicago Underground Duo project. Mazurek and Taylor have played music together in a multitude of formations over nearly three decades, including their ongoing partnership in Mazurek"s large-format-skyward-expressionism vehicle Exploding Star Orchestra, in the expanded Chicago Underground Trio, Quartet and Orchestra (all with guitarist Jeff Parker), as well as a plethora of other assemblages. The early albums by the Duo have proven to be embryonic blueprints for the avant-jazz / electronic / indie rock hybridizing of the time, making them majorly important moments in the articulation of the "jazz" dimensionality of the then-burgeoning "post rock" sound. That sound, of course, was being transmitted far and wide due to the success of these groups as well as the Mazurek/Parker project Isotope 217, and the Chicago Underground"s frequently-intersecting collaborators in Tortoise. Just as most of the still-working projects born of that era have evolved, reconfigured, and grown, the Chicago Underground Duo has undergone a number of musical moltings, with the project always in the background of disparate individual aural investigations. The concurrent personal evolutions of Mazurek and Taylor as the Duo project drops off and picks back up makes it a true reflection of their own lives and friendship.

The title of Tom Skinner"s first release (2022) under his own name is a reference to cellist Abdul Wadud"s ultra-rare 1978 solo album By Myself, which Skinner listened to repeatedly during lockdown. Wadud"s album was privately pressed on his own label, Bisharra, and whilst Skinner"s title uses the more conventional spelling of this common Arabic name, they both have the same intention or meaning: it translates as "good news", or "the bringer of good news". The result is a tight, hypnotic and unique 31-minutes of music. Voices of Bishara is sculpted around timeless and deeply emotional music that contains masses of movement and exceptional harmonic depth and texture. It sweeps and soars through soundworlds, rich in musicality and always anchored by the deep doubling of cello and bass. It also, of course, contains Skinner"s percussive magic.

Saul Williams meets Carlos Niño & Friends at TreePeople is the first collaborative album from poet/vocalist Saul Williams and percussionist/producer Carlos Niño. The album was recorded live underneath black oak and walnut trees in Coldwater Canyon Park, Los Angeles, on December 18, 2024. The performance, which was organized by Noah Klein of Living Earth on the grounds of longstanding conservationist organization TreePeople, was the first of its kind for Williams and Niño, who have been friends since the late 1990s.

"Hyperglyph" is the first new album in 11 years from composer/trumpeter/synthesist Rob Mazurek and composer/percussionist Chad Taylor"s long-running Chicago Underground Duo project. Mazurek and Taylor have played music together in a multitude of formations over nearly three decades, including their ongoing partnership in Mazurek"s large-format-skyward-expressionism vehicle Exploding Star Orchestra, in the expanded Chicago Underground Trio, Quartet and Orchestra (all with guitarist Jeff Parker), as well as a plethora of other assemblages. The early albums by the Duo have proven to be embryonic blueprints for the avant-jazz / electronic / indie rock hybridizing of the time, making them majorly important moments in the articulation of the "jazz" dimensionality of the then-burgeoning "post rock" sound. That sound, of course, was being transmitted far and wide due to the success of these groups as well as the Mazurek/Parker project Isotope 217, and the Chicago Underground"s frequently-intersecting collaborators in Tortoise. Just as most of the still-working projects born of that era have evolved, reconfigured, and grown, the Chicago Underground Duo has undergone a number of musical moltings, with the project always in the background of disparate individual aural investigations. The concurrent personal evolutions of Mazurek and Taylor as the Duo project drops off and picks back up makes it a true reflection of their own lives and friendship.

Give It Up Or Turnit a Loose (Edit) by James Brown b/w Web (Edit) by Hampton Hughes / Give It Up or Turnit a Loose (Bonus Breaks) by James Brown| Galaxy Sound Company — GSC45-044, test pressing | The long-running @galaxy_sound_company imprint has been responsible for some superb re-edits over the years, most of which are pleasingly purist in tone — meaning they are pro rearrangements with no added effects but & needless new beats or cheap trickery like so many out there— making any of their releases cop-on-site. & as you can hear from the test pressing, the 44th in the stellar series delivers yet again.

Side A is a masterclass in breakbeat editing of a b-boy classic sample source. Yes, there are many killer JB edits out in the universe, but when you see that the legendary Black Cash & Theo AKA Thelonious Beats take a turn, you know you gotta cop this mutha on site. Here the edit master bravely returns to one of the main sources of the dawn of hip-hop — JB’s comp “In The Jungle Groove” which was released in 1986 to capitalize on it’s popularity in the genre at the time. The comp is named for a breakdown section that appears in “Give It Up Or Turnit a Loose” which is the workout we have here. JB quiets the band down to handclaps, footstomps & congas played by Johnny Griggs. After he raps a little, JB cues legendary drummer Clyde Stubblefield back in, followed by bassist Bootsy Collins & the rest of the band. JB wasn’t intentionally trying to create a perfect batch of hip-hop samples in the late 60s & early 70s, but he couldn’t have succeeded any better if he had been. This edit may enter well-worn territory but he uniquely delivers an edit that showcases why it inspired so many & still delivers the goods to help you get your party started off right & quickly.

Next up on the flipside we are treated to an edit of “Web” by Hampton Hughes, from his 1974 David Axelrod produced & arranged album “Northern Windows”. Heads will recall it as the core sample for “Off the Record” by Hieroglyphics, from the 1998 LP “3rd Eye Vision”. This jazz-funk burner features a stellar line-up:
Piano/keyboards = Hawes
Trumpet = Allen DeRienzo, Snooky Young
Trombone = George Bohanon
Sax/flute = Jackie Kelso, Jay Migliori, William Green
Electric Bass = Carol Kaye
Drums = Spider Webb

But wait, GSC ain’t done yet! We get some bonus beats from the A-side. Another reason why doubles are highly recommended when you need assistance in your set.

Angel Bat Dawid's International Anthem debut The Oracle introduced her multifaceted voice to the world. The response to its modest, initial cassette/digital release in January of 2019 was immediate, and immense. Within a month of its announcement, Dawid was being featured on magazine covers and receiving offers from international festivals; and her subsequent activity marked the beginning of an epic run of creative output (including 2020's LIVE double LP, the same year's EP Transition East, 2021's Hush Harbor Mixtape Vol. 1 Doxology, and the sprawling opus Requiem for Jazz, released in 2023) that continues through the present.

The collection of compositions on The Oracle present a deep blend of powerful and emotive songs alongside heavy and free improvisation. In true DIY fashion, Dawid recorded and mixed the album using only her cell phone.

"Angel's fieldnote approach affirms that the everyday remains a legitimate site of creative production," says South Africa based percussionist, collaborator, and IARC labelmate Asher Gamedze in his liner notes for the album's IA11 Edition. Gamedze - the only other musician to appear on The Oracle besides Dawid, who constructed most of the album's tracks by layering, overdubbing, and arranging lo-fi symphonies of her own voice, wind instruments, percussions, and keyboards - waxes extensively about Dawid's significance in his notes, calling her "a living exemplar and extension of the spacious sonic horizons opened by the likes of the AACM and their refusal of any limitations on their creative vision and the destruction of the demarcation between composer and improviser."
"...a masterpiece, rich with dense improvisation and Afrocentric themes." - Suraya Mohamed, NPR

The "Oganesson Remixes EP" follows the 2025 release of "Oganesson", which was the first new song released by Tortoise since 2016. The EP includes the original version of "Oganesson" alongside five new remixes of the track created by collaborators and friends of the band, including poet and activist Saul Williams, prolific mastering engineer Heba Kadry, Black Keys drummer Patrick Carney, indie music icons Broken Social Scene, and International Anthem labelmate Makaya McCraven. The "Oganesson Remixes EP" is released ahead of a new album by Tortoise, which will be released in fall 2025 via International Anthem.

2025 repress... Recut and remastered from this BOMBASTIC Chemical Brothers soundslike :)

Electronic music, dancefloor and arty... Jazzmen famillies !

Yowzers is a new album by Chicago composer, improvisor, and musical folklorist Ben LaMar Gay. Yowzers features Gay"s working quartet with Tommaso Moretti (drums, percussion, voice), Matthew Davis (tuba, piano, bells, voice), and Will Faber (guitar, ngoni, bells, voice), as well as guest instrumentalist Rob Frye and a mini-choir. The album recalls the high-minded freedom of Liberation Music Orchestra, the glitched-out electronic webs of Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe, the unbridled rhythms and sandpaper bellows of Bukka White, and the harmolodic cartoon glory of Arthur Blythe"s Illusions. It"s all there, filtered through an improvisational approach and a lifetime of secrets embodied. For a man who has inhabited and traveled these continents so extensively, it"s safe to call this work true "Americana", despite what that word might mean to the average person in the United States.

Gilles Peterson presents International Anthem is a compilation chronicling the legendary London-based radio host, DJ, label head, curator and cultural impresario"s long-standing affinity for and interaction with artists and music from the Chicago-born record label International Anthem. The tracks on this compilation were chosen by Peterson via an extensive review of track lists from his broadcasts on BBC Radio 6 Music, Worldwide FM, and various syndicated radio programs. The compilation also includes a previously unreleased track recorded live on the Peterson-founded online radio station Worldwide FM. This album is released via International Anthem as part of their "IA11" series of releases and events - where the label celebrates their eleventh year of existence by looking back on their first ten years while establishing new standards for the next ten years.

Rodina is the project of singer-songwriter Aoife Hearty and partner Joe Tatton, keys-player & co-writer from The New Mastersounds and leader of the Joe Tatton Trio. On Good Company, their first new album in 6 years, the two are joined by other great musicians including guitarist Lucas De Mulder, drummer Luke Flowers, The Filthy Six horns, and members of The Haggis Horns, among others.

Like their previous records there is a strong acid jazz slant to many of the songs, whether interpreted through a modern soul lens such as in opener "Simple Pleasures" or swaying more towards cosmic jazz-funk such as "We Go Out Of Our Way" or "Trust In This Life", which were the first singles lifted from the album.

Throw in some hippy Americana and even a tinge of Gospel and you end up with catchy songs that include both uptempo earworms like the super charged foot stomper "Good People" or the festival anthemic "Inspiration" and some beautiful chilled moments such as "All Over The Sky" and "Flowers".

Recorded at their small countryside recording studio in the Peak District this is the fourth vinyl produced at their studio after The New Mastersounds' Old School and Joe Tatton Trio's Galactico.

The highly sought after 'Tech This Out Pt. 1' by Karizma is back again on Atjazz Record Company. This limited blue vinyl edition will give people a chance who weren’t fortunate enough the first-time round, to now have a copy for themselves. With the first pressing selling for £50 on the second-hand market, this new version will not be around for long. As always, buy or cry.

The In Sound Company returns to Delights with a new comic-themed double-sider.

Shay Landa and Markey Funk reunited with power duo Left for another studio jam and cooked two new cuts of groovy psychsploitation. The A-side "Spaceman Spiff" is a banging ode to the cult comic-within-a-comic intergalactic explorer, led by Rotem Bahar (Şatellites, Itamou) on flute. On the flip, the Company gets heavier and delivers a piece of raging fuzz-meets-synths crime funk - "Stunt Double".

The 2018 live performance captured on Carlos Niño & Miguel Atwood-Ferguson’s Chicago Waves marked another beautiful turning point for International Anthem. The set was recorded at our then HQ, Co-Prosperity, the day after Niño and Ferguson performed as part of Makaya McCraven’s Universal Beings ensemble to celebrate the release of his album by the same name and recreate their contributions to the music on the record’s “LA Side”.

The release of the recording as the Chicago Waves album at the height of the COVID-19 Pandemic drove home the unmistakable sound of togetherness audible in its grooves in a way that only a society trapped in their houses for a year can truly understand. But as that year fades further into the rearview mirror, Chicago Waves still maintains its power. It’s not a mystery—this is what togetherness sounds like.
The IA11 Edition LP features our IARC 2025 obi strip, plus a new 16-page 11x11" insert booklet with additional photos and extensive new liner notes by IARC co-founder Scott McNiece.

James Shinra presents Shinra Electro Company Vol 1, a collection of dancefloor electro tracks showcasing a tougher, more bassy side to his sound. Lead track Poppin has had heavy support from Bicep, including featuring in their Coachella 2024 set.