The Garden, experimental punk duo made of twin brothers Wyatt and Fletcher Shears and their new album Bootleg is available on vinyl and CD via Epitaph Records. Recorded in Los Angeles and produced by Wyatt and Fletcher, the 14-track album is packed with The Garden"s eclectic instrumentation and visceral production work. Formed in 2011 by twin brothers Wyatt Shears and Fletcher Shears, The Garden built their signature "Vada Vada" style from the raw foundation of bass, drums, and eerie electronic textures. Their minimalist approach delivers an explosive, genre-defying sound that is equal parts chaotic, precise, and unmistakably original. Blending an uncanny, arthouse-inspired visual identity with fearless creativity, The Garden has become one of alternative music"s most influential cult acts, beloved by Tyler, the Creator and Mac DeMarco. Renowned for their explosive live performances, they"ve cultivated a fiercely dedicated global following while inspiring a new generation of artists and fans drawn to their singular creative vision.
The Garden, experimental punk duo made of twin brothers Wyatt and Fletcher Shears and their new album Bootleg is available on vinyl and CD via Epitaph Records. Recorded in Los Angeles and produced by Wyatt and Fletcher, the 14-track album is packed with The Garden"s eclectic instrumentation and visceral production work. Formed in 2011 by twin brothers Wyatt Shears and Fletcher Shears, The Garden built their signature "Vada Vada" style from the raw foundation of bass, drums, and eerie electronic textures. Their minimalist approach delivers an explosive, genre-defying sound that is equal parts chaotic, precise, and unmistakably original. Blending an uncanny, arthouse-inspired visual identity with fearless creativity, The Garden has become one of alternative music"s most influential cult acts, beloved by Tyler, the Creator and Mac DeMarco. Renowned for their explosive live performances, they"ve cultivated a fiercely dedicated global following while inspiring a new generation of artists and fans drawn to their singular creative vision.
Feeling both familiar and forward-looking, MBK004 expands its reach with an international lineup of
producers united by a shared appreciation for the New York underground sound.
Crafted by Tunisian producer Gringow, our first two tracks take listeners to the darker side of minimal.
Also owner of the HeardOf label, Gringow lends his talent to Minimal Brooklyn with 15 minutes of
hypnotic rhythms. “Black is the new color” gives chills, while “My K” triggers introspection.
Flipping the record will bring listeners to a brighter space. We begin with Chilean DJ/producer
Francisco Ruíz-Tagle and his original track “Primal Depths”. Francisco introduces textures that have
been cultivated throughout his life. His submission to Minimal Brooklyn holds nothing back, delivering
a multidimensional auditory experience to listeners.
MBK004 ends with “Bean Water”, an original track from Chicago-based producer Double Dipp. This
spell-casting production truly highlights the attraction of minimal. Dynamic instrumentals with clean
resolution. This is Double Dipp’s formula for timelessness.
Priding themselves in having cultivated a community and culture at their club nights, they play some of the best music ever cut to wax. It might not be quite what you’d expect from a typical northern soul night, it isn’t stepping back into the past, it’s the music stepping forward into 21st century.
“We’re not interested in nostalgia – we love soul music because it’s brilliant. It probably still resonates with young people because it has a message of something bigger than what’s inside your own head – that what really matters resides in relationships with other people, not material things. We think that is beautiful” – DNSC.
“Deptford Northern Soul Club have emerged as the new faces of northern soul” – Yuck.
As featured in Alan Byron’s documentary Northern Soul: Still Burning (2026).
“By recontextualising northern soul in a modern context, they empower the genre to continuously evolve, imparting new meaning to younger, perhaps previously unaware audiences” – Pilot magazine
Few have dared to record all twenty of Philip Glass’s piano Etudes in their entirety. Even fewer have attempted to remix them. Vanessa Wagner’s 2025 album, Philip Glass: The Complete Piano Etudes, crowns a longstanding passion for Glass’s compositions. While it focuses less on the dialogue between composer and producer that she cultivated with Murcof on Study Of The Invisible, Inland, and Statea, Glass’s music resonates deeply within the world of contemporary electronic music. This EP, part of InFiné’s “Versions” series, passes the baton to a new generation of composer/producers who radically reinterpret these unique piano pieces: Aho Ssan, Carmen Villain, Cucina Povera & Tauceti.
Vanessa Wagner’s album of Philip Glass’s Piano Etudes received unanimous critical and public acclaim, both in France and internationally. This success earned the pianist a nomination for the 2026 Victoires de la Musique Classique. Following numerous sold-out concerts across France, Vanessa Wagner is currently continuing her tour around the world. She will also serve as curator of the Folle Journée de Nantes in 2027 and 2028.
BLOOM, the 2026 Grammy Award-winning album from four-time Grammy-nominated singer, songwriter, and vocal powerhouse Durand Bernarr, is a landmark release from one of contemporary R&B's most celebrated voices. The album also earned Grammy nominations for Best Traditional R&B Vocal Performance ("Here We Are") and Best R&B Song ("Overqualified"), further cementing Bernarr's reputation as one of the genre's most innovative artists. BLOOM explores the concept of love beyond romantic intimacy, weaving together themes of self-love, personal growth, friendship, community, accountability, and the freedom to cultivate spaces where love can flourish. Rich in soulful songwriting and genre-blending production, the album showcases Bernarr at the height of his creative powers.
Quiet, from the Latin quies, evokes a state of being still. In its verb form, quiet means to clear so that something can gradually come into focus. Kind Stranger by Amedeo Cappelletti is where quiet materializes in a more transient, even foreign, way. Each track takes a step back from noise, borne out of a slow return to music, a different pace, and a familiar place left behind for years.
Kind Stranger, released on Aurora Edition on July 24th, is about the strangeness of a return. Cappelletti's melodic scores work their way between faint noise and disquiet, and sonically muse upon the familiar. That is, when given enough time and distance, the familiar can become unrecognizable, demanding stillness to resituate oneself within it.
The album began taking shape when Cappelletti performed at Aurora Edition at Silent Green, just after he had returned to music following a three-year hiatus. In one month, he wrote forty-five minutes of new material from scratch. Then Cappelletti left Berlin after eight years and returned to the Tuscan countryside where he had grown up, back into slowness.
The album develops as an atmosphere in the truest sense. Resampled voices, found sound, and years of sound design practice converge as compositions form by overlapping texture with spatial depth. Kind Stranger cultivates a quietude that envelops the listener.
Vocal recordings made with Matthew Walsh and Sarah McInerney, collaborators Cappelletti met by chance in a Berlin ice cream shop, appear throughout the album like a current, shaped during a residency at MONOM, Berlin's spatial sound institute. Thematically, the record moves through digital addiction, fragmented attention, and the grief of work done in the darkness.
Kind Stranger is an offering to whoever finds themselves here within the quiet, in this particular quality of sound between return and lingering.
Limen brings together two artists whose musical paths converge around a shared sensitivity to listening, resonance, and the evocative power of sound.
Recorded at Ritmo e Blu Studio during a five-day residency between spring and summer 2025, the album emerged from a series of spontaneous encounters free from predetermined structures. The pieces preserve their original form, retaining the immediacy and temporal flow of the dialogues as they first unfolded.
Subsequent interventions were conceived not as revisions, but as an exploration of the open spaces already present within the recordings—deepening what remained unspoken and extending resonances without altering the music's natural evolution.
The title, derived from the Latin word for “threshold,” reflects the nature of the project itself: a place of passage between improvisation and composition, silence and vibration, memory and imagination. Limen inhabits a suspended territory where listening becomes an experience of openness, presence, and transformation.
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Lino Capra Vaccina
Lino Capra Vaccina is one of the most distinctive voices in Italian experimental music. A percussionist, composer, and pioneer of minimalist and meditative sound practices, he first emerged in the early 1970s as a founding member of the influential group Aktuala, whose visionary fusion of ancient traditions, improvisation, and contemporary research anticipated what would later become known as world music.
Over a career spanning more than five decades, Vaccina has cultivated a unique artistic language centred on vibration, resonance, and the transformative power of sound. His landmark 1978 album Antico Adagio remains a touchstone of European minimalism, while his collaborations have included figures such as Franco Battiato, Juri Camisasca, Markus Stockhausen, Keith Tippett, Paolo Tofani, and many others.
Whether working with percussion, piano, electronics, or voice, Vaccina's music seeks a state of suspension and contemplation. His compositions unfold as immersive sonic environments whereancient echoes and contemporary sensibilities meet, inviting listeners into an experience that is at once intimate, spiritual, and timeless.
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Luca Formentini
Luca Formentini is an Italian composer, sound artist, and improviser whose work unfolds at the intersection of experimentation, atmosphere, and deep listening. Active since the late 1990s, he has developed a highly personal language in which guitar, voice, field recordings, and electroacoustic processes become tools for exploring memory, perception, and the expressive potential of sound itself.
His music resists easy categorization, moving freely between ambient, contemporary composition, improvisation, and sound art. Throughout his career he has released numerous solo works and collaborated with a wide range of internationally acclaimed musicians, including Holger Czukay, Robert Rich, Markus Stockhausen, Steve Jansen, Theo Travis and Steve Lawson.His recordings have appeared on labels across Europe, Asia, Australia, and the United States.
Rooted in a practice of attentive listening and sonic exploration, Formentini creates evocative musical landscapes that invite reflection rather than certainty, opening spaces where silence, texture, and resonance become as meaningful as melody itself.
We know there are copious amounts of PFAS in the water supply of Rotterdam, but there must be more! What else could explain the amount of talent this city provides? Foobar is yet another prime example of this phenomenon. coming of age in Burgundian Brabant and cultivated in the grimy streets of our beautiful harbour city, Foobar just has a way of looking beyond its imperfections and translating the warmer hidden sides of the city whilst still tapping into its more rugged edges in this 4 track EP, for his debut release "Shifting Phases" on WAXRDM. The title track Shifting Phases just eases you into the whole, getting you ready to face another day on the grind, that's Rotterdam baby! We work hard and we play hard, and when we play, these are the sounds we wanna play too. Proper House Music. Some serious anger management issues on Parallel Motion, hitting hard from the get go, starting off with some intimidating drums, in your face bass lines, enticing melodies & alluring vocals. All of a sudden you're 3 minutes in, and you can't even remember what got you so upset in the first place. Who said you needed to be loud to be powerful? Not us, that's for sure, and definitely not Foobar. Quiet Strength proves that point yet again, laced with the sultry vocals by ES-V, this jam just takes you even further into your own headspace, drums that keep you in motion, melodies that keep you grounded but bass lines that let you float off into the atmosphere. It's Monday again, another day at the office, cleaning apartments, trading cryptocurrencies or whatever the hell you do to make ends meet. Ahh damn, and now you remember what irritated you. Colleagues, employers, pay or the lack of it. It is a good thing you have Back on the grind to make it all sound relative, helping you forget and looking ahead at the weekend. The perfect come down track that moves forward.
“Nothing grows in the shadow of great trees,” said Constantin Brancusi when leaving Auguste Rodin’s studio. The same holds true in music, as Richard Raux’s journey proves. At the end of 1970, after recording the debut album of the legendary band Magma, which he co-founded, Raux set out to explore new musical horizons. Under the names Faarmadin and later Hamsa, he crafted a sound deeply rooted in jazz and improvisation, yet daringly open to experimentation.
A devoted admirer of Charlie Parker, Raux played bebop alongside René Urtreger and performed with Bernard Lubat’s Percussion Expérience. Jazz is a cornerstone of Hamsa’s iconoclastic approach, blending seamlessly with psychedelic and progressive rock, and the rich musical traditions of Madagascar, where Raux spent his formative years.
Hamsa is as much a personal endeavor as it is a “family affair.” Alongside his brother Patrice on guitar, Raux brought together a circle of friends—Alain Lecointe (double bass), Jean-Lou Besson (drums), John Faure (guitar), and Alain Pistre (percussion)—to record at the iconic Château d'Hérouville, just outside Paris, at the end of 1974. Yet the spirit of Hamsa is deeply Malagasy, rooted in the village of Andranomadio, which gives its name to the album’s opening track: a vibrant explosion of percussion and color. Africa’s presence resonates throughout the record, whether invoking Brotherhood of Breath (Chris McGregor) on “Johanna,” the Malagasy-infused work of Jef Gilson, or paying homage to John Coltrane’s Africa.
Far from being “just another fusion,” Raux’s music dazzles and transports. The saxophone-guitar unison on “Ahiri Lalita” captivates, the vocals of “Fahamadina” sweep you away, and the manifesto of “L’exploité” hits hard—yet with a liberating warmth. Sunshine and joy shine through on the album’s closing track, “Cultivate the Garden of Your Heart” (with Alby Cullaz on double bass and Jean Padovani on drums), capturing the ethos of Richard Raux and Hamsa—and now, ours too.
Assembler Code - We've Felt This One Coming For A Minute Now. After An Unstoppable Run Of Releases Along Side Jensen Interceptor On Labels Such As Cultivated Electronics, Private Persons & Boysnoize Records, Ac Is Finally Flying Solo With This 4 Track Electro Assault Masterpiece 'mental Escape'.
Plugging Into The Title Track 'mental Escape', It's A Rugged Machine Driven Work Out Through Idm & Industrial Landscapes Formulated To Present His Vision Of Futuristic Electro Whilst Still Providing All The Nostalgic Rother & Drexcyian Nods We All Love.
Now That The Tone Has Been Set, 'simulant' Follows Suit. Entering The Celestial Sphere Via Some Haunting Sci-fi Strings, We're Slapped In The Face With Slamming Percussion Followed By A Relentless Acidic Modulated Baseline That Takes Us From One Planet To The Next At Light Speed.
The Journey Wouldn't Be Complete With Out His Old Partner In Crime Jensen Interceptor Coming On Board For A Ride. 'type 2' Is A Classic Case Of Past Meets Present. Scrapyard Industrial Groove Ready To Split Speakers At Your Next Warehouse Party Married With A Selection Of Classic Alpha Sounds To Keep All The Purists In Check.
The Thunder Continues To The Very End. If You're A Tape Saturation Fiend Begging For Your Next 808 Crack Hit, Prepare To Have Your Back Bent In Half With Euphoria As Soon As 'hal's Machine Tool' Is Injected Into Your Ears. In Short, 4 Minutes & 44 Seconds Of Hard Nasty Robotic Electro Booty Sweat.
What Soul Media, led by Jiro Inagaki, ultimately arrived at was a tight, cool, and ultimate groove.
As Inagaki himself has stated that he “played black funk” on this album, the explosive jazz-rock foundation he had cultivated up to that point is fused with the stickiness, elasticity, and physicality of black music—elevating his musical vision to an entirely new dimension. Combined with the masterful arrangements of Hiromasa Suzuki, the groove is polished to a high sheen, growing richer, more fluid, and subtly seductive.
Every track stands out: the vibrant, driving energy of “Painted Paradise”; the coexistence of funkiness and mellowness on “Breeze”; and the low-slung, razor-sharp cover of Kool & The Gang’s “Funky Stuff”.
Now regarded as a definitive classic, this album remains in constant demand from listeners around the world.
Cultivated Electronics Ltd For The Floor series began in 2022 and features split EPs available on vinyl (only) with Electro tracks aimed strictly at the dance floor, bringing together CE regulars and new artists. Volume 5 features Umwelt on the A- side and DJ MELL G x Unklevon on the flip, as well as a remix by label head, Sync 24 alongside Controlled Weirdness. New Flesh founder, Umwelt is known for his dark, industrial-leaning techno that blends dystopian atmospheres with driving rhythms. Here, the French producer delivers two hard-hitting cuts in Memoryscape & Morphing Sequence to open the EP. DJ MELL G from Juicy Gang Records brings a raw, high-energy fusion of electro, breakbeat and techno; fast paced and with bold sound design. She teams up with Unklevon who produces sleek, futuristic electro with crisp drum programming most notably for Boysnoize Records, on Get Down. While Sync 24 & Controlled Weirdness close out the EP with their tough and wonky rework.
From Wisdom Teeth’s recent compilation nagoyaka na kaze / 和やかな風 (quiet wind)—which cast a spotlight on the Japanese city of Nagoya—emerges “2++”, a new label launched by abentis, who curated the compilation alongside Facta and K-LONE as a central figure in the scene. Conceived as a series introducing facets of Nagoya’s underground electronic music to the world on vinyl, its inaugural release is abentis’ debut album, Dim Grow.
Across the album, intricately designed electronic mallet sounds—created using Ableton Live’s physical-modeling synthesizer—take center stage. Fresh and percussive like marimba or kalimba, yet simultaneously carrying an otherworldly, unreal quality, these tones form the core of the record’s sonic identity. In moments of near-silence, a crystalline resonance poised between glass and metal shimmers with subtle shifts in temperature, giving the album its distinctive texture.
While resonating with the sonic sensibilities of fellow Wisdom Teeth affiliates such as K-LONE, Tristan Arp, and Salamanda, abentis’ uniquely strange palette can be traced back to one of his strongest influences: Haruomi Hosono. In particular, Hosono’s mid-’70s tropical-infused solo albums — Tropical Dandy (1975), Bon Voyage Co. (1976), and Paraiso (1978) — serve as a key reference point. Symbolically reflected in Hosono’s marimba and vocal performance at a 1976 live show in Yokohama Chinatown, the marimba functioned as a central instrument for constructing imagined exotic landscapes inspired by Martin Denny and Hawaiian music.
For abentis—who worked at a local jazz bar before becoming active as a hip-hop beatmaker—the language of “tension chords,” a harmonic vocabulary rooted in jazz and R&B that hovers ambiguously between brightness and darkness, forms a consistent grammar throughout Dim Grow.
Behind the album’s core theme of “mallets + tension chords” lies a broad musical lineage: the harmonic sensibility of Claude Debussy, who anticipated the tensions of jazz; the proto-minimalist spirit of Erik Satie; the marimba-centered structures of Steve Reich; their continuation in Japan through Mkwaju Ensemble (with Midori Takada and production by Joe Hisaishi); and the subsequent branches into post-rock, electronica, and ambient music.
Growing up in Nagoya—an industrial city where creative independence is deeply valued—and being rooted in punk and hip-hop counterculture scenes naturally fostered abentis’ affinity with these predecessors. His practice between genres, combined with an encounter with the highly cross-pollinated musical perspective cultivated around Wisdom Teeth, provided the framework through which his own musical language crystallized. Dim Grow stands as the natural culmination of that journey.
One of the most innovative and ambitious albums ever made, Genioh Yamashirogumi’s Ecophony Rinne is a sonic masterpiece featuring over 200 musicians that expanded the limits of what music and sound could do.
Before Akira there was Ecophony Rinne. Originally released in 1986, Ecophony Rinne is a four-part symphony of “ecological music” by Geinoh Yamashirogumi that married ancient tradition with technological innovation, and changed the way we listen to music in the process.
Half-speed mastered at Abbey Road by Miles Showell, Time Capsule’s high-tech analogue reissue is the first to reproduce composer Ōhashi’s ground-breaking “Hypersonic Effect” theory on vinyl, cutting frequencies beyond the realm of human hearing into wax to capture the full spectrum emotional impact of this extraordinary work.
Founded by genius polymath Tsutomu Ōhashi aka Shoji Yamashiro, Geinoh Yamashirogumi is a shapeshifting collective of over a hundred members from across disciplines. Rejecting professional musicianship, Ōhashi cultivated an ethos where neuroscientists, psychologists, doctors, journalists, engineers and students could critique society through artistic expression and pursue their research in ethnomusicological performances that spanned global traditions, Eastern spirituality and Western classical form.
Ecophony Rinne represents the pinnacle of this vision - an expansive orchestral suite made with over 200 musicians that channeled Ōhashi’s thinking about mankind’s relationship with nature, and fundamental questions of life, death and rebirth.
Here pipe organ synths made from sampled Tibetan horns sit alongside field recordings from Central African forests, Buddhist mantras circle dummy head microphones, Javanese Jegog percussion ensembles pulse like verdant ecosystems, and the acoustics of temples, caves and landscapes are conveyed in the mix. Weaving together culture, nature and technology, it is a record that vibrates with the polyphony of life on Earth.
But Ecophony Rinne was not only musically innovative. Noticing the difference between vinyl and CD versions of the album where digital reproduction limited the sound, Ōhashi developed a theory of “Hypersonic Effect”, determining that ultra-high frequencies above 20khz can impact human perception even if they are inaudible. At once a physical and a psychological experience, to listen to Ecophony Rinne is to feel music differently.
The rest is history. After its release, Ōhashi was approached by director Katsuhiro Ōtomo to produce the soundtrack for Akira, the work for which Geinoh Yamashirogumi is best known. Emerging from the shadows at last, Ecophony Rinne was its transcendental blueprint, reissued in its most complete hypersonic form on vinyl for the first time.
Rather than describe nature, Ecophony Rinne embodied it. Rather than reflect culture, Ecophony Rinne defined it. Rather than explore technology, Ecophony Rinne changed it. As a work of art, it is more relevant than ever. You won’t have heard anything like it.
Kerrie makes a welcome return to Sync 24's CE camp, with "Waves of Reverie PT1" dropping in March on Cultivated Electronics. It follows her two part "We Continue" vinyl 12"s, on sister-label Cultivated Electronics Ltd back in 2021. Irish-born, Manchester-based Kerrie is a multidisciplinary artist and resident DJ at Tresor Berlin. She performs live sets, produces music, DJs and runs her own label, Dark Machine Funk, as well as an extensive discography on the likes of Tresor, Blueprint Records, Don't Be Afraid, Cultivated Electronics, I Love Acid and Symbolism. On her new EP, "Waves of Reverie PT1" Kerrie once again channels a distinctive electro aesthetic rooted in acid and electro traditions but filtered through her own raw, industrial-leaning production style. A staple for fans of analogue hardware-driven electro and forward-thinking electronic music.
Blue Hour distills over a decade of artistry into his debut album Selva, unearthing eight tracks inspired by ancient wisdom and forgotten worlds.
Blue Hour is the moniker of Luke Standing, a multifaceted artist, producer, and label owner navigating between past and present electronic dance music. Over more than a decade, Standing has built a career balancing transformative craft with a sharp curatorial approach, earning him respect across the global scene. After years of sonic experimentation, he now releases his debut LP Selva. “I never set out to make an LP – it just wrote itself,” he says. “I followed my intuition, and the music found its own path.”
Born and raised in the UK, Standing grew up in parallel with club culture, moving between Brighton, Bristol and Berlin while running club nights and establishing himself under former aliases Furesshu and Esoteric.
He launched his Blue Hour project in late 2013, shortly after relocating to Berlin. Initially a platform for his own music, Blue Hour quickly became a collaborative hub, blurring the lines between personal output and curation. Over time, Standing has cultivated an international ecosystem of like-minded artists while continuously expanding his own sonic horizons.
Selva marks his first full-length studio album, weaving a lifetime of influences into a cohesive narrative inspired by ancient wisdom and forgotten worlds. The eight-track double LP transforms his inner dialogue into a subconscious story pulling inspiration from a labyrinthine network of influence and experience. “I followed the music obsessively, reflecting and refining until the story revealed itself,” Standing explains.
“To me, the LP evokes Amazonian or Mayan jungles, themes of exploration, the mysteries of the natural world, wisdom passed down through generations. I didn't set out to write about these things consciously,
they just emerged on their own.” he adds.The album was shaped through intensive work in his studio and periods spent in subtropical locations.
Listening closely, Selva unfolds like a modern ceremony: the opening tracks channel his early UK dance influences, shifting into blends of traditional and contemporary techno, then expanding into melodic soundscapes before concluding with transcendental textures and atmospheres. The result is an introspective journey where functionality and emotive storytelling coexist, revealing a depth in Blue Hour we haven’t heard before.
Whether performing, curating, or producing, Standing operates with a deep commitment to sound, culture, and collaboration. More than an artist, he is an architectural thinker of what electronic music could become. “Every release is my own metamorphosis,” he says. “This LP reflects my current form, and I’m curious to see what the next chapter brings.” Few artists can unify a lifetime of genre-spanning influences into a sound as sharp and focused. On Selva, Blue Hour does exactly that, opening a new era of deeper
immersion from his Berlin-based label.
NUTRIA Sounds proudly welcomes Leo Kal to the family with his debut EP, The Roots EP (NUTRIA 004). Across five tracks, Leo Kal delivers a deeply musical statement—grounded, expressive, and rich with intention—perfectly aligning with what NUTRIA Sounds continues to cultivate: organic sound, essential rhythm, and soulful movement.
The Roots EP showcases Leo Kal’s true musicianship, blending groove, harmony, and texture into a body of work that feels both timeless and forward-thinking. Each track is driven by feel and craft, emphasizing connection over excess and allowing the music to breathe naturally on the dancefloor and beyond.
Celba opens the EP with an uplifting, bouncy groove—light on its feet yet firmly rooted, setting a joyful and inviting tone.
Station Verlaine soars effortlessly, carried by smooth, flowing keys that glide across a warm, rhythmic foundation. Roots, the EP’s title track, shines with warm piano lines and earthy percussion, embodying the spirit and intention behind the project.
Round 50 delivers the EP’s most club-friendly moment, channeling a spacey, late-’90s feel with a modern, refined touch.
Second Eyes closes the EP on a downtempo, junglesque note, wrapping the listener in texture and atmosphere while leaving them wanting more.
With this release, NUTRIA Sounds continues its mission to highlight nutrient sounds for the soul and the feet—music that is honest, rooted, and deeply connected. Leo Kal’s debut stands as a confident and inspired entry into the catalog, reinforcing the label’s commitment to artistry, balance, and musical integrity.
nagoyaka na kaze / 和やかな風 (quiet wind): a collection of forward-thinking electronic experiments sourced from central Japan - co-curated by Nagoya artist abentis for Facta & K-LONE’s Wisdom Teeth imprint.
The project profiles a close-knit community of music makers operating in and around the Japanese city of Nagoya: one of the country’s most populous and industrial cities, but one all too often overlooked in terms of its cultural significance.
Curated in close collaboration with local scene organiser Yuya Abe - aka abentis - the record seeks to capture the creative energy of a community of artists making hard-to-define, future-facing electronic music away from the clamour of the bigger cities. “In Nagoya, there’s a strong culture of supporting artists. Even if you pursue music in your own way, as long as it’s good, you’re encouraged to keep doing what you want”, explains abentis. “Within that environment, my generation has been able to freely bring in elements we like from all kinds of genres, combine them in our own way, and express ourselves individually. If you go to Tokyo or Osaka, that kind of freedom isn’t something you can take for granted.” Spiritually, Nagoya fits the mould of cultural hotbeds like Bristol, Detroit or Melbourne, showing that some of the most innovative creative communities form away from the glare of the capital cities. Like Detroit, Nagoya is principally known for being a major auto manufacturing hub, famous for being the home of Toyota Motors - but behind the scenes, it is quietly harbouring one of Japan’s most vibrant and forward-thinking electronic music scenes. “In a good way, Nagoya is a bit removed from the cutting edge, so you find people making all kinds of music”, explains Karnage. “If you’re making music, you feel like part of the crew, and people of different ages mix together without much hierarchy.” The city’s music scene is characterised by a freedom to mix genres and an open-door approach to creatives of all disciplines. The artists featured come from a diverse set of backgrounds, ranging from hip-hop to noise music, but have found a common collective identity in their omnivorous approach to genre. As such, the record moves fluidly between shimmering ambient and new age (Am Shhara, DHYAN, daiki hayakawa), psychedelic minimal house (Methodd, abentis), abstract, low-slung downtempo (baptisma, Nasty Soupman) and spaceage steppas (Karnage). “I’d say the way ambient, new age and that kind of sound design are blending nicely with dance music feels somewhat new”, says baptisma, the crew’s eldest member and de-facto scene leader. Responsible for bringing artists like Basic Channel, Mala and Jan Jelinek to the city, baptisma has been crucial in establishing underground electronic music in Nagoya since the 90s, and now helps cultivate the next generation of local talent. “Artists and DJs are seamlessly mixing ambient and new age with techno, house and bass music. I think that’s a really interesting development.” nagoyaka na kaze has its roots in a one-off event held in October 2024 as part of the 10 Years of Wisdom Teeth Japan tour. Curated by abentis in collaboration with Facta & K-LONE, the showcase featured live sets from eight artists based in and around Nagoya at one of the city’s key dance music hubs, Club JB’s. Each of the artists features again here, on record, presenting an original commission produced especially for the project. The record’s art direction was led by Yudai Osawa - in-house designer for Kankyō Records, the much-loved Tokyo record shop run by H. Takahashi - and features original photos by Hayato Watanabe.
Another DINTE tape curated by cult WFMU show and blogger Bodega Pop; Gary Sullivan's long-running project rooted in a passion for digging for music in bodegas and cell-phone stores across NYC's boroughs. This edition focuses in on late 1990s and early 00s hip-hop & rnb from across Southeastern Asia.
"While on a work trip to Chicago in the mid-2000s, I was craving a bowl of pho. A bit of sleuthing led me to hop on the red line "L" up to Argyle Street, ground zero of Chicago's Little Saigon. In the 1960s, Chicago restaurateur Jimmy Wong invested in property on Argyle Street with a vision to build the city's new Chinatown, a kind of mall with pagodas, trees, and reflecting pools. In 1971, the Hip Sing Association, a labor/criminal organization, established itself in the area, and along with Wong, they bought up 80% of the buildings on a three-block stretch of the street. Wong reportedly broke both hips in an accident, leaving his dream to wither; in 1979, Charlie Soo of the Asian American Small Business Association brought it back to life.
Soo expanded the area into a vibrant mix of Chinese, Vietnamese, and other Southeast Asian businesses, pushing for renovations, including an Argyle station facelift and the Taste of Argyle festival. At the time I exited the station and crossed the street to get a better look at a shop with a poster for A Vertical Ray of the Sun in the window, the area was home to some 37,000 Vietnamese residents.
Opening the door, I was gobsmacked by a cavernous Southeast Asian media store, bigger than any I'd been to in Dallas, Montreal, New York, or Seattle. I spent some time at the bins, pulling out collections by some of my then-favorite singers — Giao Linh, Khánh Ly, Phương Dung — before approaching the register to ask the young woman behind the counter if the they carried any Vietnamese rap. It was a longshot, I knew, but if such a thing existed on physical media and anyone carried it, it would be this place.
'Have you heard Vietnamese rap?' she replied, her tone of voice and facial expression betraying a comically exaggerated level of distaste. I admitted my ignorance but assured her that I had long cultivated a high threshold for cheesy pop music of all kinds and genuinely tended to like hip hop from around the world.
She rolled her eyes and pointed to an area I had missed. I walked toward a far corner of the store and knelt over a small box on the floor sparsely populated with CDs, VCDs, and cassettes. I pulled out half a dozen Vietnamese hip hop compilations and a strange-looking CD with a cavalcade of odd typefaces in a queasy multitude of colors: THAILAND RAP HIT, it boasted, with 泰國 "燒香" 勁歌金曲 below it. The information on the back provided an address in Kuala Lumpur and the titles in Thai and English translation. The first track included three simplified Chinese characters after the English-language version of the title, "The Chinese Association": 自己人.
WTF was going on here? Walking back to the register, I waved the CD, asking "What's up with this one?" She gave me a look. I placed it on the counter so she could bask in the cover's full glory. She shrugged. "I'm guessing it's Thai rap?" She looked disappointed in me when I said I'd take it.
It turned out to be a Malaysian pressing of half-Chinese Thai hip hop artist Joey Boy's third album, Fun Fun Fun from 1996, and it completely changed my sense what the genre could sound like. The rapper's self-assured, effortless, silly-but-cool rapid-fire delivery weaved in and out of the most bizarre, antic beats I'd ever heard. The six Vietnamese hip hop CDs were a mixed bag, mostly "serious" sounding mimicry of US rapping over predictable production, but the highs were very high. When I got home and listened to it all, I made a point to find as much hip hop from this part of the world as I could.
The tracks collected here provide a limited but potent reflection of the two-decade ascendency
and ultimate world-takeover of hip hop, as it displaced rock and its endless variants for millions of listeners. This not a fair and balanced overview of regional production: I've only included tracks from Cambodia, Indonesia, Myanmar, Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam. Nor is this a biggest or most important artists collection; instead, I've tried to recapture the pure visceral thrill of that first time I heard Joey Boy, choosing bangers that sound like nothing else, from nowhere else."
Berlin-based Amy Dabbs makes a long-awaited return to Shall Not Fade with Green Room EP - four uptempo club heaters spanning UKG, high-energy house, and breaks.
The EP’s title pays homage to Renate’s Green Room, the floor within the renowned Berlin club where Dabbs has held her residency since early 2023. Each track was both written for and road-tested at her monthly Dabbs Traxx events in this space, where she’s cultivated a tight-knit community of UKG lovers in the heart of Berlin.
“When I started writing this EP, my goal was to create music that would fit perfectly into my nights in the Green Room, bringing in the London sounds I grew up on, across all the genres I usually play at Renate. This EP is a tribute to everything Renate has given me: opportunity, community, and a platform for my authentic UK sound.”
Opening track Take Me High launches straight into peak-time territory, with old-school-inspired rave stabs, staccato vocal flicks, and deep, subby basslines. Over You turns the heat up even further - a track built from choppy vocals and UKG basslines before melting into a warm chord progression; a perfect example of Dabbs’ ability to fuse high-energy rhythms with spine-tingling emotion.
On the flip side, Style & Pattern, featuring the signature tones of London’s Alfie Fraser, is a pure UKG cut - underpinned by lush pads and arpeggiators, topped with Alfie’s unmistakable live vocals to create an uplifting dancefloor heater dripping with London swagger. Closing the EP, The Way delivers a tear-jerking breakbeat finale, layering syncopated percussion, emotive vocals, and an old-school piano breakdown; it’s a sublime end-of-the-night moment and a fitting closing track for an EP which honours one of Berlin’s most beloved clubs.
Discotchari is delighted to release a first-of-its-kind various artists compilation: Tehrangeles Vice (Iranian
Diaspora Pop 1983–1993), fully licensed from Taraneh Enterprises. The album is a groundbreaking exposé of
the vibrant subcultural hub of Tehrangeles (portmanteau of Tehran + Los Angeles), and the action–packed, true
story of the Iranian diaspora music industry. Featuring 12 tracks remastered by award–winning Osiris Studio,
lyrics and translations to all featured songs, original cassette covers, a 20+ page album note booklet by Dr.
Farzaneh Hemmasi and more! Sprawling from Westwood to Glendale across the San Fernando Valley, the
Tehrangeles scene was cultivated by the same producers and artists who industrialized the “golden age” of
entertainment in pre–revolution Iran and fled from the 1979 Islamic Revolution along with millions of Iranian
citizens. Through music and visual media, Iranian producers and artists working out of Tehrangeles have
engaged in what the Iranian government calls a “cultural attack” against the Islamic Republic for over 40 years.
The album title Tehrangeles Vice underscores the illicit nature and daring circumstances from which
Tehrangeles pop music was born and compares its legacy within Persian media to one of the most significant
crime–drama TV shows of all time. In the same manner that Miami Vice and its aesthetics had a dynamic
impact on sonic, visual and cultural trends in the United States and around the world, Tehrangeles media was a
shock to the systems of Islamic Republic ideology and Iranian expatriate communities. Listening to these songs
in hindsight, the contribution of Tehrangeles can be better understood as a triumphant effort to preserve Iranian
identity by realizing it in conjunction with prevailing music genres of the ‘80s and ‘90s, and to rebel against the
oppressive regime of the Islamic Republic of Iran through the most seductive of means: dance music.
Move recordings continue the relaunch with this wonderful MV06 from By:Them, new duo former by Ludwig Buez & Jerome Lipani. Including a fantastic remix from the sound designer, DJ & Producer Hermanez. A 100% Belgian product!
"Never too old to dance," evolves with a big intensity, layering elements that cultivate an incredible atmosphere. The track unfolds through melody songs, progressing towards rich, deep chords punctuate, the experience with a sense, till a melodic break.
The Hermanez remix for Move recordings is an amazing sunny tune. Following his refreshing style, Hermanez remixing "never too old to dance" with grace and unequivocal individuality. With his captive melodic, he empowers the atmosphere, with a high-energy and a sexy flavor. A pure track to rock the summer.
Through defined grooves and rolling bass lines blends, "Rising away" melodic and atmospheric sounds to create a transcendent listening experience. With an energic groove, this track showcases an exceptional range, to craft atmosphere that goes beyond the dancefloor.
By:them truly strikes for his first ep and presents us with two dance floor weapons with a fantastic Hermanez reinterpretation.
Support by, Timo Maas, Joris Voorn, Alex Neri, Nick Varon, Just Her, Paco Osuna, Danny Howells, Ilario Alicante, Sahar Z, Nhar, Michel De Hey, Sasha, Adriatique, The Micronauts,
Introducing Fleur Sauvage: A New Chapter Rooted in Emotion and Community
The idea for Fleur Sauvage first took shape in 2022, quietly evolving and shared only with a select few. It began with a desire to give new life to the spellbinding improvisations experienced at La Nature—those rare, unrepeatable instants that move us deeply and stay with us long after the sound has faded.
In the spirit of that beginning, the label will open space for a variety of releases: expect intimate solo works, carefully curated compilations, and other sonic offerings from artists close to our he(art).
More than just adding a new label to the world, our purpose is to grow with our community. Community is everything. At the end of the day, what matters most to us are the relationships we cultivate—with artists, supporters, collaborators, and the many spirited souls who help us create these rare and radiant gatherings.
Katatonic Silentio – Live at La Nature 2023
Captured in the immersive cocoon of the Hypnose Room during the 2023 edition of La Nature, this debut release on Fleur Sauvage is a raw transmission of Katatonic Silentio’s improvisational live ritual.
Split into four parts across two 12” records, this work moves between experimental abstraction, textured noise, and cinematic ambient. Tension runs like a thread through each piece—sometimes humming beneath the surface, sometimes rupturing into visceral sonic peaks that leave you breathless. Deep low-end pulses and granular ruptures twist through fleeting moments of stillness, creating a sense of instability that is both electrifying and intimate.
The recording documents more than a performance—it holds space for something elemental, unpredictable, and deeply embodied. As always with Katatonic Silentio, the sound is not just heard—it is inhabited.
A collection of essential jazz from the NABEL record label (1980-1994), compiled by miche & Rainer Truby.
The Aachen Jazz Files celebrates the pioneering spirit of NABEL Records—one of Germany’s most underrated yet influential independent jazz labels. Founded in 1980 by Rainer Wiedensohler, NABEL became a home for innovative musicians blending classic acoustic jazz with fusion, Brazilian rhythms, and avant-garde flourishes.
This compilation collects some of the label’s finest moments, including the soulful and Latin-tinged brilliance of Monika Linges Quartet (whose album *Floating* was reissued last year by PANORAMA Records for RSD Black Friday), the cosmic jazz explorations of John Thomas & Lifeforce, the deep jazz-funk grooves of Hipsters In The Zone, and the stunning, expressive vocals of Maria João’s quintet.
Nestled in the far west of Germany, near the Dutch and Belgian borders, Aachen has long been a hidden gem for jazz lovers. Its vibrant scene, fueled by music schools and the legendary Malteserkeller jazz club, cultivated a unique sound that resonated far beyond its city limits. In fact, the city didn’t just birth a jazz movement—it also lays claim to opening Germany’s first discotheque in 1959.
From London to Tokyo, NABEL’s releases became secret weapons for jazz DJs seeking deep, danceable cuts. The label’s trademark blend of acoustic jazz, fusion, and Brazilian influences made its way onto turntables in underground clubs and festival stages worldwide.
Expect elegant samba jazz, spiritual grooves, and modal masterpieces that capture the essence of NABEL’s golden years. Monika Linges’ contributions shine with her rich harmonies and heartfelt compositions, while John Thomas & Lifeforce deliver a perfect storm of fiery instrumentation and deep soul. Maria João’s early recordings showcase her extraordinary vocal range, and Hipsters In The Zone bring a forward-thinking, acid jazz-infused perspective to the NABEL sound.
As co-compiler Rainer Truby puts it:
'NABEL Records always had this special ‘Aachen sound’—a jazz flavor that carried its own energy, somewhere between the cool sophistication of fusion and the warmth of Brazilian music. It’s a pleasure to finally bring together some of these classics in one essential collection.'
Compiled by miche & Rainer Truby.
PANORAMA Records is a London-based label dedicated to unearthing and reintroducing rare and essential music to new generations. With a focus on jazz, funk, and global grooves, the label has built a reputation for high-quality reissues that capture the spirit of the originals while providing fresh context for today’s listeners. Their past releases have garnered support from tastemakers like Gilles Peterson, Patrick Forge, and Mr Bongo DJs.
Do minerals dream of becoming semiconductors? Do they yearn to carry charges, amplify, switch, and convert energy into emotions comprehensible to humans? And what if, from the darkness of the underground, they had been listening to us sing in caves before the emergence of the first flute? Could they have guided us, through the course of history, to find them, extract them, and create new sounds through sinusoidal waves, to form valves and bend circuits?
If so, minerals would transition from what philosopher Eugene Thacker defines as the ‘planet’—that virginal and unreachable realm for humans that we study through geology, paleontology, and environmental sciences—to the ‘world,’ the space we inhabit, interpret, and synthesise in our daily lives. Sadly, we only remember the world when it erupts violently, through climate catastrophes or when a new virus emerges. Sometimes a tsunami collides with a nuclear plant, or viruses are cultivated as biological weapons in high-security laboratories, provoking a deep biological anxiety, hard to quell, which we all feel beneath our skin.
There exists a third realm, disconnected from both the world and the planet: the ‘earth’, an immense, dense rock floating in space alongside other planets, situated in the cosmological dimension. Relating to the earth is so complex that we only do so through theoretical speculations of a scientific nature or through science fiction, interweaving until one becomes the prophecy of the other, in an infinite, pendular dance. Beyond the darkness of space and Lovecraft’s cosmic horror, the fantasy of human extinction is the most recurrent: to reach a collapse so devastating that we do not survive it, even though the earth does, without us.
In a world where we quantify everything through body sensors, financial algorithms, nanometre-scale robots, and surveillance drones—a world in which everything that can be domesticated and controlled can also be commodified—a superior artificial intelligence would survive the collapse of the species (some speculate it might even cause it) and learn from our mistakes, thanks to our obsessive gathering of data.
Long after our voices fade, minerals will persist in the darkness of screens, in the silicon of chips, and in their pure form, still unexploited underground. Over the millennia, this intelligence might piece together fragments of our reasoning, as if an alien civilization finally connected with one of our spacecrafts loaded with messages cast into the void. It would sort through endless streams of data, unable to grasp the depths of emotion behind what it quantified, recreating simulations of our past, stripped of the nuance that once defined us and conducting experiments in sandboxes.
Some remnants of our existence—faint echoes of forgotten beauty—would be pieced together in an atlas of loss, buried beneath layers of numbers, decayed bots, and corroded hard drives. What will follow? Perhaps bison will once again roam—trotting to the strange pulse of techno, their ancient forms framed by the ruins of our cities.
Buildings will crumble, slowly dissolving under the soft touch of ambient music, and a thousand flowers will bloom with that ancient music created through electrical signals and computation. 7 songs for a future both improbable and inevitable—a final message from a world lost to itself, from planet Earth to planet Earth.
"The ironically titled Crime Pays was a comment on the success of Colón’s carefully cultivated bad guy image that he sustained until the mid-1970s. The anthology compiles nine key cuts from his first four albums. First time the album is available on vinyl in decades, pressed on 180G black vinyl. All tracks showcase the genius of the Colon/Lavoe partnership in a variety of genres. "
Over the last ten years, Brazil’s Millos Kaiser has cultivated a reputation as a top-ranking selector passionate about bringing his home country’s underappreciated music to the world. After starting as a punk and indie musician in Niterói, Rio de Janeiro, he turned his hand to DJing in the late 2000s and relocated to Sāo Paulo. There, he spent the 2010s rocking city squares, warehouse parties and street parties with DJ Trepanado in the Selvagem duo before cofounding the celebrated Selva Discos label in 2017.
Since 2019, Millos’s focus has shifted to his solo DJ career and ventures as an edit maker, reissue compilation curator, audiophile bar co-owner, and now producer. Planet Trip Records has been very good friends with Millos for a long time and is very pleased to present his first original release, the Te Quero Perto (I Want You Close) EP, available in vinyl and digital formats.
Assembled like a DJ-friendly 12” for late 20th-century nightclub specialists, Te Quero Perto kicks off with Millos’ original ‘club mix’ and an accompanying ‘instrumental’ version (digital.only). Driven by an uptempo machine beat straight out of the mid-'80s, rave pianos, 303 acid bass, and an explosive Brazilian pop vocal sung by Juju Bonjour, it’s an absolute belter of a tune and a masterclass in in-period styling.
Elsewhere on the EP, Millos’s European friends Lipelis & Orion Agassi turn in an equally belting Latin Freestyle remix in vocal, dub and instrumental mixes (instrumental is digital only). Rounding things out, fellow Rio de Janeiro producer Paco Cabana throws the tune into a cocktail shaker before pouring a sunkissed, percussion-heavy reimagining for us to sip on. Front to back, it’s an all-killer, no-filler debut from a generational talent.
Pacific Rhythm’s “Rhythms Of The Pacific” series returns with a 12” sampler of material that will be included as part of a larger 10-year anniversary compilation later this year. Tunes from LNRDCROY, Khotin (under his Waterpark alias), Active Surplus, and Kennedy are on deck to set the tone. Limited and downright essential for enthusiasts of the sound Pacific Rhythm has cultivated since 2013.
Berlin’s Moses Yoofee Trio have confirmed details of their first new material since their 2023 mini-album, Ocean. ‘WHIP.wav’ will be released digitally on October 18, 2024, and represents the first taster for their debut full-length, MYT, set to be released by Nils Frahm’s LEITER on February 7, 2025. The German group recorded much of the album over ten days in April 2024 at Glaswald Studios, in the countryside outside Stuttgart, before returning to Berlin to polish the results and record two further tracks at LEITER’s Funkhaus studio. Available on vinyl and via all digital platforms, the album was produced by the trio with long-time collaborator and mixing engineer oh.no.ty. ‘WHIP.wav’, the original version of which was previously shared to social media to great response, is a perfect showcase for the band’s unique brand of sophisticated jazz, its laidback summer grooves lit up by Moses’ fluid piano lines, while drummer Noah Fürbringer’s deft rhythms lock in with Roman Klobe-Barangă‘s understated bassline. At just 100 seconds long, it’s also as succinct and straightforward as MYT’s title – and indeed many of its tracks – which reveals a lot about the Moses Yoofee Trio. The new album’s tracks display a remarkable determination to distil their work to its essence, allowing their prodigious talents and graceful versatility to flourish in uncluttered surroundings. Their goals, they state concisely, are “emotions, moments and bangers”, and careful attention was paid to arrangements to ensure nothing superfluous made the cut. Before coming together as a band, all three members were already deeply involved in the music scene, touring, recording, and producing for a wide range of artists and bands. They connected in 2020 when Moses met Roman at Berlin’s Jazz Institute, and it was the latter who suggested they jam with his friend Noah, who was living in southern Germany at the time but frequently visited Berlin. Amid the extended lockdowns of the Covid-19 pandemic, the trio embraced the chance to fully immerse themselves in the creative process. Since then, Moses Yoofee Trio have cultivated an extraordinary reputation for their shows, and this year they won the German Jazz Prize’s prestigious Live Act of The Year award. Recent highlights include a 2,500-capacity Elbjazz Festival booking beside Hamburg’s harbour, a riotous appearance at London’s Jazz Festival, and an intimate gig before 200 people at the German capital’s now redundant Tempelhof Airport on the rooftop of an air traffic control tower. Despite their own work as a trio, all three musicians remain busy elsewhere, with Moses, like Roman, often working with chart-topping Berlin-based Peter Fox, a frontman for reggae/dancehall/hip hop crossover act SEEED, and accompanying him on his extensive solo tours. Noah, meanwhile, plays with another renowned artist, German-American rapper Casper, as well as Sweden’s acclaimed Petter Eldh and German comedian / actor / musician Teddy Teclebrhan.
Voodoos and Taboos first appeared in 2019. A mysterious outfit, their melting pot sound immediately caught the ears of the faithful; acid cut with house, electro beats shot through with a punk D.I.Y. attitude. Their escapades didn’t miss us here at Bordello.
Reversible Dreams collects four examples of this chameleon club style that Voodoos and Taboos have cultivated, the EP opening with the title piece. Cascading chords and whispered samples give way to rich bass strings as a playful piano melody transforms into squirming acid beams.
Claps and neat notes introduce “Unconditional Love”, vocoder lyrics mingling with spoken word and juddering space TB303 squawk. The flip adopts a darker hue. Off-kilter bars and stern beats introduce “Animae”, alien electro melodies descend as a fizzing late night energy takes hold. BPMs drop for “Destino Lontano.”
Warm basslines and Eastern scented synth-play weave their way through the piece, delicate strings and dawn sunshine leading to a close.
The Australian act Cutting Room strikes back with a EP extracted from their latest album “5 Years of Pure Energy”, they deliver one of the most modern and mental stimulating planetary electro/breaks sound, akin to AtomTM or Cultivated Electronics label. Presented in ONE-OFF truly limited edition of 300 copies lacquered pressed on 180 gr. high quality solid BLACK vinyl. All tracks have been specially mastered for vinyl by Daniel Hallhuber at Young and Cold Studios (Germany). Includes inmediate digital download.
The Hacker and Italo Moderni join forces with a masterful electro EP, guided by the French G.O.A.T. from Grenoble. Infused with techno vibes and featuring a remix by the renowned Terence Fixmer, this EP is a testament to the cutting-edge fusion of styles. Drawing inspiration from Liaisons Dangereuses, The Hacker weaves intricate basslines and rhythms, exemplified in the track ‘No Señor.’ ‘Me and My Sequencer Part 1 and Part 2’ unveils a clandestine narrative, a hidden tale shared only between The Hacker and his synthesizers—revealing the magical connection cultivated over the years.
Church Boy Lou was born from a dream in the summer of 2014. A captivating and enigmatic fi gure, created by the innovative, genre-bending, DIRT TECH RECK label head Waajeed. Recently crowned DJ Mag’s Underground Hero and just off the heals of his lead single with Defected’s Dames Brown, he continues to cultivate rhythms from the pews of the Baptist church.
This second offering from Church Boy Lou embodies the same spirit and uniqueness as his first release, Weep EP in 2015. "The Night Is Coming" brings you the first hand experience of a minister leading his church with the Word of God. These heartfelt lyrics warn of the dark times ahead of us. However, “Keep On Praying” brings a positive note and beckons us to the dance floor. “Push Em’ in the Face” skillfully integrates high energy Chicago Jack house and techno. Rolling snares and energetic beats fuse with powerful lyrics to face all challenges head on.
This well composed four track offering has an opener, closer and prime time options for all DJ’s across the board. With a sonic steeping of gospel samples and an authenticity that could only come from Detroit City.
Kenn-Eerik is an Estonian versatile sound artist and musician working in Tallinn. His passion for music began in early childhood when he witnessed accordion playing as a six-year-old boy. Encouraged by this musical experience, he learned various instruments over the years, engaged in choir singing, and participated in the activities of several bands. Even today, he is part of a band called Käsi which was created with friends from teenage times.
Kenn-Eerik became interested in electronic music during high school when he composed the first songs – inspired by dubstep and dub. Wanting to cultivate his technical music skills, he went to study sound technology at the Viljandi Academy of Culture. Along with his studies in Viljandi, he acquired his first drum machines and synthesizers, which, in addition to his personal creative activities, were also used to compose music for dance performances.
While his first DJ sets consisted mainly of dubstep, with minor detours into the areas of techno and house, by now this relationship has become the opposite – techno and house beats have become more concrete and present, but the influences of dub and dubstep are still there.
Over the years, Kenn-Eerik has played in several Tallinn clubs such as Ulme, Ups, Asum, Uni, Hall, etc. His live debut took place at the festival Kuru Plirr (2015). In addition to DJ and live sets, cooperation with several theaters operating in Estonia has deepened over time, where he has composed soundscapes based on original music.
Kenn-Eerik’s music can be characterized as a search for a certain state. His sound language is centered on organically flowing synth lines and minimalistic rhythms, which combine the deeper areas of techno, house, ambient and experimental music. Kenn-Eerik does not directly set genre restrictions for himself, nor does he limit himself in the choice of choosing instruments – anything that inspires and drives will be used, starting from analog synthesizers and ending with recorded sewer pipe sounds.
Two years after his acclaimed ‘Darkos LP’, Jonquera is back to Charlieu’s surrounding vales for his second album on Bamboo Shows.
Through ‘La Croix des Cros’, the French Musician delivers a loner-folk eclogue about the fantasized inner demons of a country dweller. Just like clay, audio recordings here are a malleable substance, slowly reworked over a year, following a sinuous production process where all mishaps are welcomed as breaches to step into.
Far from the spaghetti western myth of the reckless bounty hunter, riding his faithful horse in the great outdoors to spill blood; this 14-track album is the grieving lament of a wistful cowboy, longing for a simple patch of peace where one’s free to cultivate the earth and noodle on the guitar.
Heldon’s cosmic space-rock, Badalamenti’s Twin-Peaksesque foggy jazz or Morricone’s glorious soundtracks, so many references to portray another fertile imprint by Jonquera, available from February 13, 2023 on a 12” vinyl.
Trikk’s striking debut album Fauna & Flora cultivates a sense of scale, character and broad-minded musicianship across ten genre-fusing tracks. Just as its namesake spans the vast spectrum of life on Earth, so this expansive document draws from a diverse sound palette that jumps from widescreen psychedelia and industrial-crusted pop to baile funk and foreboding techno.
Partly descending from the club-focussed fare with which Trikk made his name, he also reaches for art-rock, punk and post-punk to expand on his electronic foundations.
“I wanted to create that feeling where there are these rays of light and total darkness, it’s a game
Kurtiss is a shadowy and enigmatic figure working on the boundaries of civilization. A sporadic figure on the House music scene with eccentric habits, Kurtiss’ music is a rarified sonic experience for those who seek it out. The Ameri-can artist is hard to pin down and his music is a tantalizing little secret only for adept diggers who appreciate the style of Hi-Def House music that the artist has cultivated. Although he’s a known Soundcloud fixture, he’s only put out a handful of digital singles as Curtis Vodka in the past, with Mutual Intentions facilitating his latest and immortalizing his music on their next set of releases. A nomadic artist, who’s worked on music ranging from Ghetto Tech to House, his music has spanned the known musical spectrum, forging uncanny relationships with everything from 50 Cent to Mall Grab. Under the pseudonym Kurtiss (or Curtis Vodka), he’s all about HIGH-Fi House, life, aliens, Jazz and no trends. It’s an attitude that he lays bare on this rare contribution to the physical, recorded format for Mutual Intentions on ‘The Curtis Vodka EP’. The EP weaves classic House music influences through a penchant for vintage sound machines and arrangements that evoke a solemn air. Elements of Gospel and New York’s deeper inclinations in House music seep through his sound as archived vocal samples and noisy machines give his work its defining character. Glistening keys and strings that slither through airy textures create dense aural experiences on ‘The Curtis Vodka EP’, calling to mind the musical masterpieces of House music’s golden era when the likes of Kerri Chandler and Mas-ters At Work were producing som
"Do you feel what I feel too?" Brijean Murphy floats the question at the start of Feelings, the full-length Ghostly International debut from Brijean, her collaborative project with Doug Stuart. Guided by a lush mix of charismatic keyboard chords, grooving bass lines, and radiant bongo-driven rhythms, the "Day Dreaming" lyric doubles as an invitation and a statement of intention. Brijean want you to move, physically, mentally, dimensionally; this is dance music for the mind, body, and soul. With Feelings, they've manifested a gentle collective space for respite, for self-reflection, for self-care, for uninhibited imagination and new possibilities. The album cultivates a specific vibe, a softness Murphy has come to call "romancing the psyche." Growing up in a family immersed in jazz, Latin and soul music, Murphy would become an accomplished DJ, session and live player in Oakland's diverse music scene and one of indie's most in-demand percussionists (Poolside, Toro Y Moi, U.S. Girls). In 2018, she began recording songs with multi-instrumentalist and producer Doug Stuart, who shares a background in jazz and pop in bands such as Bells Atlas, Meernaa, and Luke Temple. Following their first sessions, which resulted in the mini-album Walkie Talkie (released in 2019 on Native Cat Recordings), the duo continued freeform hangs in Oakland, inviting friends Chaz Bear, Tony Peppers, and Hamir Atwal. "We improvised on different feels for hours," says Murphy. "Nothing quite developed at first but we had seeds. We re-opened the sessions a couple months later, after returning from tours, and spent a month developing the songs in a little 400 square foot cottage." Aforementioned album opener "Day Dreaming" is a dynamic celebration of newness: the excitement in finding deeper understandings of yourself as you get to know someone, something, or somewhere new. "Wifi Beach" drops a pin in pure psych-pop exotica. With Atwal on drums, Stuart on bass, Peppers on keys, and Bear engineering, the group improvised the track's intro sequence based on the vision of a lavish 1970s pool party. Establishing the scene is a mid-frequency drum kit disco shuffle augmented by tight congas and timbale effect, as Murphy sings in spurts: "I want to be / Deep in love / I want to be / Say you love me too / I want to be / Honey." The stanzas cut between "reflective moments of wants and being overwhelmed by feelings of the present," she explains. "A lot of the `love songs' I write are to my psyche, self-reflections on how to encourage tender perspectives and make more time for the sweet stuff." Though there is a loose, dance-oriented motif throughout, the material gives way to somnolent turns. On "Ocean," Brijean's anodyne lyrics, reminiscent of Astrud Gilberto's airy croon, float atop a brushed drum pattern, sparkling rhodes lines, and pittering and softly funky woodblock bops. The opening line sets up the rest, "In this gentle space we lay" _ among the album's propensity for movement, tracks like "Ocean" stand out by leaning back for momentary sways of blissful introspection. Murphy calls the charming "Hey Boy" a "psychedelic guide _ the exploration of finding what feels good _ through sorrow, anxiety, apathy." This mentality applies to Feelings on the whole: in these nebulous and verdant worlds of hazy melodies, feathery hooks, and percussive details, the songs simply want us to feel alive. They radiate in wonderful abandon and with a sense of devotion to the self. RIYL: Stereolab, Astrud Gilberto, Air, Little Dragon, Broadcast, Khruangbin, Poolside.
Cultivated Electronics celebrates two decades at the forefront of electro with its landmark 50th release on the main label, returning to the very beginning with a new release from Signal Type - the collaborative project of label head Sync 24 and Matt Whitehead. The anniversary EP pays homage to the sound that launched Cultivated Electronics back on CE001 A1, with Signal Type delivering "Break Through", a snappy, driving and psychedelic electro workout built firmly for the dancefloor. Funky, spacey and packed with the restless energy that has defined the label since its inception, the track feels both like a nod to CE's roots and a statement of where the label stands today. The celebrations continue with three remixes from long-standing Cultivated Electronics collaborators and influential figures within the electro scene. Keith Tenniswood, aka Radioactive Man, brings an old-school, Mad Mike-esque Underground Resistance flavour to his rework, injecting the original with raw Detroit-inspired energy and machine-driven propulsion. Carl A. Finlow, operating under his Silicon Scally moniker, takes things deeper, delivering a heady after-hours interpretation built around immersive, late-night club sonics. Rounding out the EP, Finnish electro pioneers Morphology deliver a hypnotic, 90s-inspired roller, bringing their distinctive analogue sensibility and futuristic groove to the original. The vinyl edition arrives on blue marbled translucent coloured vinyl, housed in a full-sleeve package featuring artwork from Geometric Love. From its first release to its 50th, Cultivated Electronics has remained dedicated to forward-thinking electro, connecting classic machine funk with contemporary club sounds. CE050 marks both a celebration of the label's history and a salute to the artists and sounds that continue to shape its future. Here's to another 50 releases.
