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Defamator is the long-time-coming debut project of 24-year-old Chloe Gallardo. It tells a story of betrayal in love and friendship and the painful reality of overcoming love lost and former heartbreak.


Drawing influences from artists such as Broadcast, Grouper & My Bloody Valentine Gallardo adds her own haunting, folk-style vocals and hyper-specific lyrics to create a sonic unique to her. A style that she describes in her words as “dark shoegaze bedroom indie pop”.

Album opener “Bloodline” epitomises this bittersweet modus operandi. 15 seconds into its dainty acoustic strum , Gallardo adamantly sulks “I’m fucked up” - the salvo of a lyric about feeling like a family disappointment. As the track lifts up into a cascading gaze-pop rush, recalling the likes of Bachelor and Snail Mail, we’re blessed with a pristine elegance that belies the song’s raging core.
“I have always written music this way.”, she says of this fundamental contradiction. “It’s funny because I try so hard to write darker sounding songs and they always come out way too pretty. So, I’ve resorted to writing the most gut-wrenching and intense lyrics to compensate.”

Written mostly during peak-pandemic times in Gallardo’s bedroom - (“you can hear how scared and alone I was.”) - the songs that made their way onto Defamator arose from a concerted period of healing. Drawing from the teachings of therapy, the songwriting process gave her the means to channel some deeply entrenched emotional scars.
This venting of anger is implicit throughout the record. The album’s title - Gallardo’s own neologism - uses the concepts of “defamation” and “defamatory speech” to innovate a kind of pejorative accusation. As a result, it is like we are actively listening to Gallardo forcefully take command of her past. Of the title track she explains: “The song Defamator is about someone who spoke untruthful things about me in order to manipulate me and the way people perceived me and I felt that was an underlying theme in most of the album.”

Recorded at Jazzcat Studios in Long Beach California with Jonny Bell (Hanni El Khatib, Adult Books, etc.) Defamator marks Gallardo’s first time in a “legitimate recording studio”. And it shows. Bell’s production is vital moving part here. There’s more stripped back affairs - ‘There Will Be Blood”; ”The Way’ - songs which gently seethe and purr like Grouper’s spectral dream-pop; Gallardo’s fluttering folk-ish voice gloriously pushed to forefront.

First LP from Donna Candy, the bass-vocal-drums trio trawled from the sub genres of experimental rock and busy pushing to the front of heavy music. Nu metal bass riffs, switch-pitched fuzz vocals and big, splashy drums layer over unsettling narratives and extreme loops to bring a bit of the pit to the dancefloor.

Begun as an off the cuff party band with the idea of finding a live sound that would fit between 4am trance sets, the trio soon found themselves addicted to the euphoric sludge they created. Swapping their usual guitar for a bass, JS Donny drives Donna Candy with simple riffs, split half clean and half shredded with Boris / Sunn O))) like distortion. Head-banging the whole way, they’ll switch speed or stop suddenly, bending and drawing out notes to ratchet things up for release. Nadja's vocals tear through the top layer - heavily processed and warped with weird imagery. Together there’s a feeling of what it might be like to see Sightings slowed by codeine but with Elvin Brandi on the mic.

Always set up facing each other, off stage and surrounded by the audience, Donna Candy encourage catharsis - reciprocally transforming energy between themselves and the crowd. They build a queer euphoria that pulls apart metal’s narrow dichotomy of nihilistic machismo vs. hyperfemininity, and begins to make the visceral faux-hybridity of nineties nu metal feel possible this time around. ‘Blooming’ brings us six offerings from the band on a four way split release that speaks for itself - once on board with the DC energy you’ll want to be a part of it.

Die deutsche Rocklegende Phillip Boa und seine Band Phillip Boa and the Voodooclub, in Zusammenarbeit mit Universal Music, freuen sich, anlässlich des 30-jährigen Jubiläums die Wiederveröffentlichung des
bahnbrechenden Albums Boaphenia anzukündigen.

Im Jahr 1993 veröffentlicht, stellte das Album aufgrund ihres musikkritischen so wie kommerziellen Erfolg eine wahre Zäsur in der Karriere der Band dar und gilt heute als Kultklassiker. So erreichte es in den deutschen Albumcharts Platz 25 und war auch in Österreich und der Schweiz in den Charts vertreten.

Boaphenia wird weithin als eines der bedeutendsten Alben der hiesigen Szene angesehen, welches vor allem Phillip Boas einzigartigen Ansatz beim Songwriting und seine Fähigkeit, verschiedene Genres und Stile zu vermischen, eindrucksvoll unter Beweis stellt. Mit seinem innovativen Ansatz zur Rockmusik und den
poetischen Texten etablierte sich die Band als einer der wichtigsten Acts in der deutschen AlternativeRock-Szene. Gleichzeitig reicht ihr Einfluss auch heute noch über deutsche Grenzen hinaus.

Die umfangreiche 30 Jahre Jubiläumsedition fährt mit edler weißer 2LP-Doppelvinyl und einem 2CDMintpack auf, und enthält außerdem ein nie zuvor dagewesenes Earbook, bestehend aus insgesamt vier
CDs, einem Hardcover-Fotobuch über 52 Seiten und einer 10“ Single auf Vinyl. Zudem befinden sich auf dem Release 10 komplett neue, bisher unveröffentlichte Songs.

Essential UK experimental composer Richard Skelton returns to Phantom Limb for new album selenodesy, interweaving his newfound love of electronics and synthesis with mastery of gritty organic texture.

Skelton’s music has always been rooted in landscape, in the loam and grit of the earth: from his 2009 Pennine Moors-inspired modern classic Landings to his more recent Moraine Sequence of geological excavations, his work has been bound inexorably with the stark and untended wilderness of northern landscapes. With this new album, however, Skelton shifts his gaze skyward — in part the result of a move in 2017 to the countryside near the Kielder Observatory, and to a so-called ‘dark sky’ region of the UK. In this remote landscape, light pollution is minimal, allowing the austere majesty of the night sky to be seen with greater clarity.

The resulting album, selenodesy, reveals a new, reverberant spaciousness to Skelton’s use of electronics. It marries the twin worlds of his previous Phantom Limb release - 2020’s These Charms May Be Sung Over A Wound, and its abandoned-factory threnody - with the landscape-revering arcana of his earlier work, which saw him bury instruments in the soil to return months later to recover and record with them, newly imbued with the land they occupied. selenodesy was prefigured by a period of insomnia and the relief found

in stargazing, during which Skelton tried to transcribe his hypnagogic visions: “much of this music came to me in the early hours, in that nowhere state between dreaming and waking. I’d look out the window and the night sky would be swirling with stars. Mars or Venus would be hovering in the corner of the room. I’d lie there and watch the Aurora Borealis dance across the ceiling.”

In selenodesy, we find the lingering, distorted sine waves of album opener “Albedo” that thrum and fizz with an icy, foreboding moonlight, rays of subtle movement that illuminate and darken alternately. Next follows lead single “The Plot of Lunar Phases”, whose passive shrieks echo about a cold, yawning space, reaching an ecstatic crescendo of hissing sonics and swirling celestial drone. Its dynamic range acts like the light of a lunar passage, from utmost darkness to radiant luminosity. Elsewhere, the pulsing, precessional bass of “Faint Ray Systems” gradually opens to reveal mournful, elegiac synthesis that reaches high into the night sky with an unearthly beauty. It is as if, during those long months of lockdown in the Scottish countryside, Skelton tapped into a series of sidereal electromagnetic transmissions, and transposed them into musical form.

Clear Vinyl

* Eomac has injected a new level of consciousness into beat making by recording water drips and drops. This edge of real life and water frequencies feels like opening a door in your mind and taking a rhythmic sound shower, finding tiny minimal melodies within the water itself.

*Distorting reality, in the most beautifully crafted and playful manner, Eomac’s Water Tracks are made with natural sounds of water and they not only make your body want to dance, they are a joy for the minds ear; sound design full of life and character, refreshing for the soul too. If hyper-real Techno was a genre - perhaps Eomac has invented it here - the idea to use micro melodies found in drips, drops and sploshes of water feels clever and inventive, Swimming up-stream against the standardized sound of Techno’s machine-made Electronic presets.

* Eomac is a project from Irish composer and producer Ian McDonnell, releasing genre-spanning electronic music via Planet Mu, The Trilogy Tapes, Bedouin Records, Killekill, Phantom Limb, Emika Records and more. Eomac’s sound draws from obscure samples and raw sound design in a continuing exploration of the furthest reaches of intense, visceral music for body and soul. He digs deep into light and dark mysticism for the dancefloor, as experienced in numerous performances at festivals and clubs across the globe.

Distorting reality, in the most beautifully crafted and playful manner, Eomac’s Water Tracks are made with natural sounds of water and they not only make your body want to dance, they are a joy for the minds ear; sound design full of life and character, refreshing for the soul too. If hyper-real Techno was a genre - perhaps Eomac has invented it here - the idea to use micro melodies found in drips, drops and sploshes of water feels clever and inventive, Swimming up-stream against the standardized sound of Techno’s machine-made Electronic presets.

Tape

The music of Melati ESP aka Melati Malay is a euphoric vision of megacity rhythm and rainforest escape, club breaks and weightless pop, mapping new dreams from the sound of futures passed: hipernatural.

Drawing on the music era of her teenage years growing up in Jakarta – Javanese radio Dangdut, gamelan cassettes, Moving Shadow-era liquid jungle, Japanese chill-out, etc. – as well as her current work in progressive percussion trio Asa Tone, Malay’s solo debut is boldly borderless, bridging worlds and wavelengths into a richly imagined hybrid synthetic utopia.

hipernatural is momentous linguistically, too, as Malay’s first foray into singing in Indonesian, the language of her youth. She characterizes her lyrical mode as “abstract, and a bit broken,” an intuitive collage of diaristic emotion and oblique poetry (“plant me in fleeting twilight / missing home, where is home? / I am another you”). Her voice serves as its own versatile instrument, alternately intimate and alien, sensual and sacred, shaded with the haze of hidden heavens.

Co-produced with long-time collaborator Kaazi (100% Silk, Asa Tone), the album’s 12 tracks are cohesive but eclectic, threading through temple bass music, cyber siren techno, Stereolab drum n bass, new age downtempo, and dial-up rave reveries, flecked with tactile fragments of offworld dialogue, computer hum, bubbling water, and beyond.

Malay’s technique of sampling and processing her voice into an electronic palette which she then performs on generative instruments gives the songs a bewitching artificial intelligence elegance, exquisite but uncanny. Hers is a hybridity both organic and hypermodern, deeply personal yet globally sourced – YouTube rips, nature tapes, cheap sample packs, club bootlegs. hipernatural champions a dynamic new language at the axis of then and now, of east and west

Originally released in 2014, Kero Kero Bonito’s debut mixtape, Intro Bonito, was a monumental success in the underground hyperpop scene bubbling up throughout the band’s hometown of South London. The trio, featuring Gus Lobban, Jamie Bulled, and Sarah Midori Perry, started crafting their unique blend of electronic pop music after school friends Gus & Jamie met Sarah on the internet. With Perry’s unique singing style (featuring lyrics in both Japanese and English), the band went on to write influential tracks such as “Sick Beat,” “I’d Rather Sleep,” “Pocket Crocodile,” and others that were inspired by J-pop, dancehall, and video game music.

The Intro Bonito mixtape paved the way for Kero Kero Bonito’s rise from underground glitch pop wizards to a monumental act within the PC Music scene and beyond. Since its release, the trio has built up a devoted fanbase across the globe, racked up over 500 million streams & video views across multiple albums, EPs, and singles, collaborated with numerous high-profile artists (e.g. 100 gecs, Porter Robinson, Felicita, Soccer Mommy, Ashnikko, etc), and performed at festivals around the world.

For polymath artist Wesley Joseph, writing a song is like shooting a film - he sees in terms of scenes and colors, lighting the proper mood, drawing the right emotional arc. Music and filmmaking are Joseph’s two great loves. Film came first—he started making DIY videos at age 12 to entertain himself and his friends growing up in a small town in the UK. “There wasn’t really much happening,” he remembers, “and from a young age it created this mindset that doing everything myself was the only way to do it.”

But when he moved to London to study as a filmmaker, he discovered something in the freedom and independence of city life that demanded to be captured in song, and found a crew of collaborators—including A.K. Paul, Dave Okumu, Joy Orbison, Leon Vynehall, Lexxx, Loyle Carner and his childhood friend Jorja Smith—to help him do it. The result was his breakthrough single ‘Ghostin’’ and the 2021 debut ULTRAMARINE - released on his own imprint EEVILTWINN - a deeply textured collection of avant-R&B and soulful future-pop that stretched from psychedelic ballads to hard hip-hop bars (often in the span of a single track) and crystallized the mood of a young cohort trying to find love and live their dreams while the world is falling apart. Whilst his collaboration with Loyle Carner on single ‘Blood On My Nikes’ lead to him featuring on the artist’s critically acclaimed - and #3 charting album - earlier this year.

Now the nascent auteur returns with his Secretly Canadian debut GLOW, eight more songs of love, loss, anxiety, and joy about coming of age at a time of unprecedented change. Showcasing his range across songwriting, performing, and production—not to mention his flawless transitions between singing and rapping, between character studies and raw emotional honesty—it’s a stunningly beautiful work that makes it clear Joseph’s on the path to becoming a world-changing talent.

GLOW opens with the title track’s warm analog synths and cascading vocals that channel the harmonious Northern soul Joseph’s dad raised him on, a shimmering bed of clouds for the project’s opening credits. But like any good director, he quickly deepens the mood, drawing together disparate influences and emotions to build a unique sonic world spilling over with synchronicities and juxtapositions. “MONSOON” conjures nocturnal hedonism at the same time as it contemplates grief.

As on previous projects, Joseph is providing his own visual accompaniments for GLOW, creative directing its artwork and adding to his growing filmography as a director—he’s repped by the renowned production company Stink—with its first video. “COLD SUMMER” finds Joseph singing from a supervillain’s perspective over woozy film-score strings, and the concept bleeds over into its video accompaniment, a cryptic post-post-Tarantino film shot in Kazakhstan.

“I've never really seen them separately,” Joseph says of music and film. “They kind of just constantly drift into each other. And when they come together, it's like it was meant to be in my head the whole time.
It’s usually hyperbole to call an artist as young and new as Joseph “visionary,” but it’s undeniable that he has a vision, one that transcends old ideas of genre and medium, one that seems to get bigger and richer every time he steps into a studio or behind a camera. GLOW is one of the deepest and most satisfyingly cinematic listening experiences of the year—and Wesley Joseph is just getting started.

VE ABOULKHEIR - 22/12/2017 GUILIN SYNTHETIC DAYDREAM (2021)

22/12/2017 Guilin Synthetic Daydream is a perceptual trap. Inspired by an experience of intense perceptive disorientation while crossing a market in China, Eve Aboulkheir reinstantiates, in the field of sounds, the swirling and anamorphic universe of thwarted perceptions, surrounding multitudes and shifted sensations. She thus constructs a dreamlike and artificial universe, suspended and hyperactive, which is both an electronic vortex sucking us in and a mechanical ballet developing its arabesques around us, caught and fascinated by these volutes of sound that fracture like a kaleidoscope in which our eyes-ears are immersed. 22/12/2017 Guilin Synthetic Daydream approaches the musical form in the most direct way possible, i.e. through its effects and its empire on our sensorium.

(fr) 22/12/2017 Guilin Synthetic Daydream est un piège à perception. S’inspirant justement d’une expérience de désorientation perceptive intense lors de la traversée d’un marché, en Chine, Eve Aboulkheir réinstancie, dans le champ sonore, l’univers tourbillonnant et anamorphique des perceptions déjouées, des multitudes environnantes, des sensations décalibrées. Elle construit ainsi un univers onirique et artificiel, suspendu et hyperactif, à la fois vortex électronique nous aspirant et ballet mécanique développant ses arabesques autour de nous, piégés et fascinés par ces volutes de sons qui se fractalisent comme un kaléidoscope dans lequel sont plongés nos yeux-oreilles. 22/12/2017 Guilin Synthetic Daydream aborde la forme musicale de la manière la plus directe qui soit, c’est-à-dire à travers ses effets et son empire sur notre sensorium.

LASSE MARHAUG - HOW TO AVOID ANTS (2020)

Using concrète techniques to collect, transform and assemble sounds of various origins (sounds of tree branches, leaves, but also guitars or synthesizers), Lasse Marhaug elaborates a dense and subterranean work, which unfolds through the multiple dimensions induced by the great diversity of its sound material. There is a labyrinthine feeling in this work, a feeling that is better understood when the inspiration for the title of the piece How to avoid ants is revealed, a very practical and then poetic undertaking, that of avoiding the anthills lining the path to the forest camp in the kindergarten to which his little girl, who was then frightened of insects, was going. It is such an activity of circumvention, diversion and byways that Lasse Marhaug uses to create an exploratory and evasive music.

(fr) Utilisant les techniques concrètes pour collecter, transformer et assembler des sons d’origines variés (sons de branches, de feuillages, mais aussi de guitares ou de synthétiseurs), Lasse Marhaug élabore une œuvre dense et souterraine, qui se déploie au travers des multiples dimensions induites par la grande diversité du matériau sonore. Il y a un sentiment labyrinthique dans cette œuvre, sentiment qu’on comprend mieux lorsque se dévoile l’inspiration du titre de la pièce How to avoid ants, entreprise très pratique et devenue poétique, celle d’éviter les fourmilières jalonnant le chemin vers le camp forestier du jardin d’enfant dans lequel se rendait sa petite fille, alors effrayée par les insectes. C’est une telle activité de contournement, de déroute et de chemins de traverse qu’emprunte Lasse Marhaug pour créer une musique exploratoire et évasive.

This much delayed, and therefore much anticipated box set from Moondance, Dope Ammo and Kniteforce finally arrives. Containing too many epic tracks and remixes to mention, this is a truly incredible album of unstoppable music. The album has already streamed over 1/2 a million views, and the anticipation for the vinyl arrival is huge, not only because of the sheer weight of quality music on it, but because it was meant to be here in 2022, and due to the endless delays in vinyl production, has taken until now to land.

DMX Krew announces his return to Peggy Gou's Gudu Records with a new four-track EP, sharing the dreamy, Detroit-inspired title track, ‘Return to Jupiter’.

The full EP - out 14th April 2023 - will be his second release for the label and Gudu’s first release of 2023, set to be the label’s busiest year yet.

Ed DMX made his debut for Gudu with 2019’s Don’t You Wanna Play? EP, becoming the first artist to release on the label outside Peggy herself. Ed and Gudu have retained a regular working relationship ever since: he mastered Indonesian crate-digger Dea’s ‘Glazer Drum’ release for Gudu, contributed a pair of remixes to the reissue of Riff’s South African electro curio ‘Jacks Jive’, and now returns to the label with Return to Jupiter, a new original four-track EP.

Ed has been one of electronic music’s most respected faces for over 25 years. Debuting in the mid-1990s, he released his first decade of music almost exclusively through Grant Wilson-Claridge and Aphex Twin’s Rephlex label and his own Breakin’ imprint, but recent years have seen him ply his trade across a who’s who of dance music’s most respected underground labels: including Hypercolour, Balkan Vinyl, Central Processing Unit and, of course, Gudu.

Inspired by the futurist funk and vivid synthesiser epics of classic Detroit, ‘Return to Jupiter’ is dripping with richness and colour, driven by the sort of thick analogue basslines and distinctive melodies that have come to define Ed’s catalogue. The EP’s title track sets the tone for what’s to follow, introducing a language of sorts for the record - before ‘Altered Chords’ turns the funk up to 11, ‘U Ain’t Down’ aims its distorted kicks and wiggy, manipulated lead straight at peak time dancefloors, and ‘I Love Juan’ closes the EP on a star-gazing tip.

Founded by Peggy Gou in 2019, Gudu releases music from a global roster of artists, including DMX Krew, Maurice Fulton, Hiver, Dea, Mogwaa, Brain de Palma, Dukwa, JRMS and Peggy herself (including the hits ‘Starry Night’, ‘I Go’ and ‘Nabi’). 2023 will see Gudu’s busiest year to date, with new releases scheduled from the current roster and some exciting new faces.

Pink Blue Marbled Vinyl

Angelo is an EP, named after a car, featuring nine songs Brijean have crafted and carried with them through a period of profound change, loss, and relocation. It finds percussionist and singer Brijean Murphy and multi-instrumentalist/producer Doug Stuart processing the impossible the only way they know how: through rhythm and movement. The months surrounding the acclaimed release of Feelings, their full-length Ghostly International debut in 2021 which celebrated tender self-reflection and new possibilities, rang bittersweet with the absence of touring and the sudden passing of Murphy's father and both of Stuart's parents. In a haze of heartache, the duo left the Bay Area to be near family, resetting in four cities in under two years. Their to-go rig became their traveling studio and these tracks, along with Angelo, became their few constants. Whereas Feelings formed over collaborative jams with friends, Angelo's sessions presented Murphy and Stuart a chance to record at their most intimate, "to get us out of our grief and into our bodies," says Murphy. They explored new moods and styles, reaching for effervescent dance tempos and technicolor backdrops, vibrant hues in contrast to their more somber human experiences. Angelo beams with positivity and creative renewal _ a resourceful, collective answer to "what happens now?". Angelo the car is a 1981 Toyota Celica they got off Craigslist during their first stint in Los Angeles, where Murphy and Stuart have since settled. "Such a bro-y, `80s dude car, it's been super fun to drive around in a new town," Murphy says. "He's older than us, he's a classic, he's got a story." It is a spiritual vehicle with a cinematic appeal, first dropping them off in an alleyway for the scene-setting intro, "Which Way To The Club." The question is quickly resolved by "Take A Trip" as a cruising bassline mingles with crowd sounds, hand-claps, cuíca hiccups, whip-cracks, even a horse neigh. Brijean have found some club on this cross-dimensional trip - the kind of imagined space or chamber within one's self capable of "shifting a fraction of who you are," says Murphy. They wrote the track with the simple intention to be "as free as we could be," adds Stuart, likening the flip on the B section to a realm unlocked: "What if the world changed completely? You open the door to a new room." Next is "Shy Guy," a motivational anthem for the wallflowers among us. Murphy sets up the daydream: "We are in junior high, we're on the dance floor, what's going down, who is dancing, who is not, how are we gonna make them dance?" The narrator, the MC, hypes up the room as conga-driven rhythms bounce between languid synth and guitar lines. "Show me how to move...I feel something...I know you feel it too," Murphy sings sweetly, calling back to the opening lines of Feelings, and this time the audience chants it back. It is easy to picture Brijean performing this one - something they only got to do a handful of times until more recently, opening shows for Khruangbin and Washed Out, an experience they found informative. Murphy explains, "It was inspiring to be out there and let loose more. To see how people can expand their expression on stage gave me more liberty with how I viewed my musicianship. My role for so long was to be a backup percussionist, so why would I ever leave the drums, you know? But then after playing all these runs, you see these artists and realize you can, you have permission." "Angelo" and "Ooo La La" deliver the danciest stretch in Brijean's catalog to date. The title track adopts a deep house pulse replete with strings, hi-hats, and kicks. The latter opts for a funkier groove that foregoes verses in favor of warbled hums and extended breakdowns. What follows is perhaps the duo's dreamiest run, a comedown initiated with the honey-hued interlude "Colors" drifting into "Where Do We Go?", a tropicália reverie where Murphy contemplates the passage of time and space. It all culminates in "Caldwell's Way," a fond farewell to their Bay Area community - "a part of my life that I knew couldn't come back," says Murphy. Above shimmering organ sounds, lush strings, and the birdcall of their former neighborhood, she wistfully articulates the uncertainty of moving on by remembering the characters dear to them. There's the wisdom of their neighbor, Santos, who refused payment when helping them move out: "I'd rather have 100 friends than 100 dollars." And the song's namesake, Benjamin Caldwell Brown, a friend and club night cohort for many years. "I'm only miles away, maybe I'm just feeling lonely," the line resigns to warm nostalgia, and "Nostalgia" runs the closing credits to this healing and transportive collection.

Following in the footsteps of "Mind Palace" and "Lost Spirits", respectively issued in 2018 and 2021, Hidden Empire return to Stil vor Talent with their eagerly anticipated third studio full-length, "Momentum". Going the same route that came to define their sound throughout the years, Branko Novakovic and Niklas Schäfers cook a savvy mix of deep electroid flavours and prog techno magnitude which flourishes in the long-playing format. Orbiting the frontier between proper no-nonsense, floor-focussed effectiveness and a trademark exploratory take on electronics, Hidden Empire here delivers one of their most accomplished slices to date, which not only spans the largest span of their many-faceted influences, from tribal anchorage to hypermodern escapology, but breathes a truly epic wind into it.

Draped in luscious, silken envelopes and easternmost ambiences, "Dawn" gets the ball rolling on a mystique-imbued note, halfway meditation-friendly material and square-shouldered club busting wares. Moving into Afro-infused house grounds, "Modesty" finds Branko and Niklas heading for the deeper end of the spectrum, as they pull out a clinically precise blender of rattling percussions, opaque incantations, lush synth swashes and verbed-out machine talk, tailored for nightly boogie rituals in the forest. "Avalanche" opts for a more brooding, deadlier approach. Cutting its path away from prying eyes, this one finds Hidden Empire pulling the stealth weaponry to absolute hypnotic effect - perfect for serious in-between peak time business with its thick, thriller-like tension, mist-shrouded atmosphere and surgical focus. Featuring Felix Raphael on vocals, "Who We Are", is a pop-influenced chugger that perhaps best defines Hidden Empire's ambivalent style, both hi-NRG and innervated with a melancholy that infuses down to the bass and most functional elements. Geared up for big-room traction with its seesawing synths and clinical drumwork, Raphael's moving timbre does more than offer a sensible counterpoint to the track's overall sturdy backbone, it takes it to a whole other dimension completely.

"Repeat The Good" ft. Wolfson balances out a fast-ticking groove with those subtle melodic lines Hidden Empire champion to astounding vibrancy, offering a particularly satisfying glimpse into their vortical imaginarium, whereas "Last Call" has us journeying to straight out Moroder-esque territories, flush with the aptly configured palette of fuzzy space disco bass, fast-paced Italo churn and vocodized talk for good measure. All in breaks and chopped-up euphoria, "Vivid" runs the hoodoo down in muscular fashion and with impressive levels of energy throughout, all set at cranking up the heat one notch further, while "Rebel" provides us with the kind of rough-around-the-edges EBM horsepower and neon-clad synth engineering that'll get the basement in a state of alert. Encompassing all of the pair's idiosyncratic merger of styles - from pop-laced Italo to spaced-out techno wares, through jagged motorik and heavily mecched-out jacking house, "Alright" shows off Hidden Empire's wide arsenal of pyrotechnics under the most compelling of lights. A more openly jagged and quirky weapon that hatches into a full-fledged solar number around the half, "Momentum" roars up the club's highway at full throttle, proving a formidable asset when it comes to plunging dancers into a state of weird, left-of-centre euphoria.

A stroboscopic eclipse is predicted as "Dark Sun" enters the room, deploying its obscure wingspan over the ravers, not quite a bad omen as it lets more light in with every bar, its brittle piano lines and heart-wrenching vocals cutting a path into the crowd's pulsating hearts. Graceful as Hidden Empire's music can be, a moment of utter exhilarating beauty. "Savasana" wraps up the voyage with a pure slab of cyphered 4x4 seduction, as an ASMR-like voice guides us across the soul-questioning haze that blankets our pathway onto a luminous finale. A piece of elusive nature, clearly designed for the club and yet telling a tale of off-piste initiation through twelve fascinating movements, "Momentum" will undoubtedly etch on the listeners' mind as one of the German pair's most strikingly powerful emanations.

Download:
1. Hidden Empire - Dawn Interlude
2. Hidden Empire - Modesty
3. Hidden Empire - Avalanche
4. Hidden Empire & Felix Raphael - Who We Are
5. Hidden Empire & Wolfson - Repeat the Good
6. Hidden Empire - Last Call
7. Hidden Empire - Vivid
8. Hidden Empire - Rebel
9. Hidden Empire - Alright
10. Hidden Empire - Momentum
11. Hidden Empire - Dark Sun
12. Hidden Empire - Savasana
13. Hidden Empire & Felix Raphael - Who We Are (Instrumental)

The endlessly prolific and unpredictable Richard Youngs returns to Black Truffle with Modern Sorrow. As any Youngs fan knows, one of the great pleasures of following his career comes from not being able to predict what the next entry in his inexhaustible string of releases will bring: Unaccompanied voice? Country songs? Shakuhachi? Guitar pieces played with his feet? Shredding fuzz bass over the top of hyper-speed distorted drum machine beats? Continuing in the grand Youngs tradition of exploring new techniques, instrumentation and approaches while bringing to all of them his idiosyncratic touch, Modern Sorrow serves up two sides of twistedly elegiac, radically stark takes on contemporary pop production. The side-long title track is built from a piano sample, synthetic bass notes and organ swells, and an iterative blurt that seems to have wandered out of a 90s jungle track. Eventually joined by a shuffling drum machine, the track moves very slowly through a series of chords, each delayed long enough that its arrival comes as a major event. Over the top, Youngs’ heavily pitch-corrected voice is heard. The processing paints his signature wandering melodic improvisations with shades of contemporary R&B; at the same time, it cuts the natural swoops and glides of Youngs’ melodies into rapid microtonal trills, giving his voice a quavering, middle eastern feel. Unfolding languorously over more than 17 minutes, the piece’s final minutes make room for an extended drumless coda, returning to the stark palette of its opening moments. On the second side, the two parts of ‘Benevolence’ push this minimalism ever further, its first half consisting of nothing more than a remarkably slow drum machine hit, bass-heavy chords and pitch-corrected voice, here so heavily processed that it starts to resemble a shawn solo. In its second part, the harmonic foundation drops out from under the piece while two more voices join; at some moments the voices pause, leaving nothing more than isolated, metronomic drum hits. Though Youngs has explored the sound worlds associated with dance music and contemporary pop in previous work, here these elements are radically reduced, foregrounding a meditative bed of silence with a boldness equal to any more academically inclined contemporary composer. Embracing the accessible digital tools of contemporary music production just as at another moment he would pick up a kazoo, like much of Youngs’ work Modern Sorrow uses simple DIY tools to generous ends, producing formally radical music that remains both free from pretension and deeply moving.

After two decades of releasing music on 12" vinyl under multiple pseudonyms the duo from Even Drones have completed their first LP.
The 20 track double vinyl carries the classic "album era" approach of the 60s and 70s into a modern contemporary work.

Each of the 4 sides of "Ethics" feels like the chapter of a story balanced into a synthesis of counterpoints from piece to piece. Twisted arrangements are stringed together with dance-able tracks and are woven into finespun transmutations of sounds. Sometimes peaceful and regulated, sometimes abstract and complemented with tamed feedback, noises, crackling and delightful patterns.

Like a continuous thread through all titles of the album, the multi instrumentalists somehow managed to harmonize a twisted array of methods and structures into a coherent listening experience.
This full feature-length metamorphosis with no boundaries of styles or genres is released just in time for the 10th anniversary of the band on Freund der Familie.

Woke rhythms and high-spirited grooves from the vaults of two seminal Italian jazz labels, between the 70s and 80s. Intensely curated by Khalab.

Hyperituals is a philological investigation that deeply delves into the possibilities of sound, rhythm, remix, and endless sampling. Inspiring listening, interpretation, and reinterpretation.
This volume is dedicated to the catalogue of the Italian Black Saint. Thanks to a constant, cutting-edge, and meticulous commitment, Black Saint & Soul Note established themself as two of the most important imprints for international jazz. They always placed the artists, their visions, and their music at the centre, giving them total freedom of creative expression. By combining jazz tradition with the political vanguard sentiment of the time, the two labels were able to press and produce more than five hundred records, many of which are by some of the brightest names in creative jazz or the ‘avant-garde’ of the era.
Curated by Khalab, the selection - focused on rhythms, grooves, and Afrocentric traditions - blends moments in which the rhythmic aspect is powerfully explicit, with others in which the kinetic aspect dialogues on different levels with African American cultural contexts.

New year, new energy, new music...

We’re all waiting for that tune to land in our lap, reach up and slap us simultaneously in the ears, feels, souls and feet. That big sonic blast of emotion and inspiration that sets the tone and gets us excited about a new season of shows.

Hard Times Records present ‘All I Need’, a powerful, slab of house music positivity that smacks of ‘first anthem of the year’ vibes and comes courtesy of one of house music’s biggest pioneers AND a certified UK House music institution that permanently changed the face of global club culture over 30 years ago... Steve ‘Silk’ Hurley and Hard Times.

Neither Hurley or Hard Times need any introductions, but both have histories that deserve so much more than this hype-fuelled promo blurb. Steve ‘Silk’ Hurley is a certified legend. As one of the pioneering House music artists to emerge from Chicago’s primordial 80s phenomenon and the first ever to score a UK number one Hit with ‘Jack Your Body’, the multiple Grammy nominated artist has been a powerful source of energy and inspiration ever since as one of the most consistent forefathers of this scene.

Hard Times have played an equally influential role and are arguably responsible for some of the most defining moments in uk House Music. One of the first club nights to import the US titans to UK dancefloors, the Yorkshire brand were instrumental in creating a blueprint in international DJ culture as they invited the biggest pioneers and legends to their events that began in the sleepy town of Mirfield, but eventually sprawled across the UK with line-ups that ranged from Todd Terry to Masters at Work to Deep Dish and every titan in between. A dominant force throughout the 90s, Hard Times wound down in the 2000s as its founder Steve Raine took a break from the industry to become a sheep farmer, which he still does to this day... Safe in the knowledge that he helped to create an ethos for uncompromising underground House Music that remains steadfast to this Day.

The Hard Times label originated back in 1994 And ran alongside the club night, boasting a small but elite catalogue. It’s about to thrive on a whole new level as Hard Times returns as a label with its first new material for over 20 years with ‘All I Need’.

Timeless yet forward-thinking, loaded to the brim with precision groovemanship, glazed with a strong Latin twist and sprinkled with the gorgeous vocals of Sara Garvey, who many will instantly recognise from her Nightmares On Wax collaborations, ‘All I Need’ is a pedigree house anthem-in-waiting. Universal in vibe and spirit, fully transcending trend or flavour-of-the-month fickleness, this taps into the source and has full potential to be the first big boundary-breaking house hit of 2023... 36 years after Steve ‘Silk’ Hurley topped the charts with ‘Jack Your Body’!

It comes complete with a rainbow of remixes from some equally eye-opening heavyweights: Alex Arnout, Eddie Leader, Terry Farley & Kevin Swain and DJ Skip (who runs S&S Records with ‘Hurley) all provide different perspectives on ‘All I Need’, giving it even more scope and depth to slap us simultaneously.

Orange Vinyl
Kero & Steph’s landmark collaboration Syndrome now sees a sumptuous release on vinyl and evocative music video, spinning data into densely layered visual treats.

Steph’s coolly ethereal voice and poignant writing drift in harmonies atop the sliced-up, glitched, hard-hitting precision of Kero’s productions. The unforgettable directness of her compositional sense is here, as her long resume of scores and placements would suggest. It finds an urban-technological counterpart in Kero’s frenetic sounds. The DU label boss is in full force straight from the chilling post-pop of the opening titular cut. “Walk in the park” is a production masterwork, punchy organic percussion against grinding bass. “Who am I to complain” is at once arresting and vulnerable with vocals, but still packs an emotional gut-punch in the accompanying instrumental. “Count down from 7” is more stripped down and urgent, melodic hooks propelled by lo-fi rhythmic mechanism’s menace.

For the remixes, Oberman Knocks unleashes utter digital destruction - computer memory banks dropped through a wormhole. That thoroughly deconstructs Mtch into composite textures -- and opens “Walk in the Park” to near-unrecognizable, yet somehow danceable mayhem.

The new physical and motion elements find a visual language for these sonic strata of imagination and digital construction. From designer Christoph Grünberger, known for his tome The Age of Data: Embracing Algorithms in Art & Design, we get the packed outer sleeve and 2D design. These enshroud a calm-looking Steph in a Shibuya Crossing-style trip inside Defasten’s geometries, opposite a catalog of branching visualizations and glyphs.

Defasten, known for his live AV work fusing virtual reality and performance, here explodes faceted 3D cubes, in the cover and further in the music video. These pulsing crystalline hyper-geometries delve into data as expressive medium, shifting and vibrating with the glowing tones and crisp percussive hits of Kero and Steph’s composition. It’s a rare music video that matches the music in intricacy and form - a world that can only exist in virtual space, but that feels as immersively dreamy as the sound score.

“Sugar coated fabric … in braided covers” and “silver linings” were never so tempting.

- 180 GRAM AUDIOPHILE VINYL
- INCLUDES INSERT
- 30TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE LEGENDARY ALBUM
- REMASTERED AUDIO

Fishbone was one of the most distinctive and eclectic alternative rock bands of the late '80s. With their hyperactive, self-conscious diversity, goofy sense of humor, and sharp social commentary, the group gained a sizable cult following during the late '80s.

Truth and Soul is their second album, originally released in 1988. The album features a wide array of genres including punk, ska, reggae, soul, funk, elements of hard rock and blues. Truth and Soul contains a cover version of Curtis Mayfield's Freddie's Dead', originally from the soundtrack of the film Super Fly and it is the first single of the album.

Three other tracks were released as singles Ma and Pa', with a video directed by Mike Lipscombe, Change' and One Day'.

The album was awarded four-out-of-five stars in 2004's The New Rolling Stone Album Guide. Music critic Tom Moon called the album one of his 1000 Recordings to Hear Before You Die' and Robert Dimery listed it as one of his 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die'.

This year we are celebrating the 30th birthday of Truth and Soul. The album is finally available again on vinyl and includes the original insert with lyrics and liner notes.

2023 Repress

Altamira caves, Santander 34.000 B.C. One of the oldest archeological sites on planet earth, just 30 mins away by car was born and raised P.E.A.R.L. Following the primitivism of those who preceded him, Poor Lord is an act of pure Neanderthal techno, stomping, explosive and classic hardcore flavor, can't wait to elevate Herrensauna peak time pressure with this.

And as if this was Rotterdam records. Dimi forgives that front left 2-step raver facing down with, a small break and a sublime kitsch hardcore line, expertly driving by the solo project of one half of AnD.

After the massive remix for Peder on KAOS04 OnScreenActor comes back with his first solo production. I talk to him via an intermediate and I still have no clue who is the responsible of this music, although I do not care. For me TACHI is the greatest production ever released in KAOS. Finest murky hyperdisko.

u.r.trax was born in this millenium, met her when she was working as artist care of Possession last year, not sure even she had the legal age to go in but her classy and freaky bangers should be definitely sounding in the mighty Paris rave. Folge Mir is just a small showcase of her big talent. Follow her.

This may be the toughest KAOS till date, take it or not. Fear enough.

'Unconscious Collective' is the first album by PS5 - the new ensemble led by Pietro Santangelo (Nu Guinea, Slivovitz, Fitness Forever) - and it will be out for Hyperjazz Records on 21th May 2021.

It's a musical experiment where layered memories and hidden feelings resonate as if they arise directly from the most recondite part of the unconscious and produce a suspension of the stream of consciousness. With the aim to create a state of trance and override the human reason, this is an imaginary round trip across the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean, ideally connecting Naples with North Africa and Latin America.

The arrangements wrote by Santangelo are based on great freedom of improvisation: while the melodic textures of the two saxophones didn't give any clear references, the other musicians followed the rhythmic pulse and its unpredictable ways. The music moves naturally along an imaginary line highlighting the ancestral connection between Jamaica and Ethiopia or between Nigeria and Cuba. In the background, Naples is a synthesis of all the sonic ingredients, mixed and cooked in its own mystical and spicy belly.

Besides Santangelo himself on the tenor and soprano saxophones, the collective is made up of: Paolo Bianconcini, a brilliant Neapolitan percussionist with a very deep Afro-Cuban background; Giuseppe Giroffi, young and talented alto and baritone saxophonist; the bassist Vincenzo Lamagna and the drummer Salvatore Rainone, both loyal members of the former Santangelo's trio.

Recorded live at the Auditorium Novecento in Naples, the legendary studio of Phonotype Records, 'Unconscious Collective' is mixed in analog format by Fabrizio Piccolo, and mastered by Davide Barbarulo at his 20Hz20KHz Studio.

Pietro Santangelo

Pietro was born, lives and plays in Naples. As a saxophonist and composer, he has released five albums with Slivovitz and one with his PS3 trio (Clinamen, Emme records 2017). Graduated in Digital Sound Processing at the Faculty of Physics of Federico II University, he is involved and engaged in the Italian scene of radical improvisation (Franco Ferguson, Elio Martusciello and Officina Arti Soniche, Collettivo NISE).

Multi-instrumentalist since forever, he has collaborated with Nu Guinea, Enzo Avitabile, Fitness Forever, Marzouk Mejri, Dennis Bovell and many others.

He's also author of soundtracks and electronic musician. He appreciates analog photography, loves walking outdoors. He hates biographical notes.

Strawberries ripen in the spring. Or so they used to, in a more reliable world, one that seems to be rapidly receding in our collective rearview mirror. Presently, “spring” is a troubled concept — fraught with anxiety. Our seasons, if they are seasons at all, are paradoxical. Crops fail, or they ripen prematurely, all at once, and into a burst of rot. Impossibly, somehow, the supermarket shelves stay stocked (mostly, for now at least), and there are buckets of strawberries on every corner. But, of course, their nature is suspect. And they don’t taste like they used to. Or maybe that’s just ruinous nostalgia. But somewhere along the way we certainly lost something. Everybody knows.

Strawberry Season (Leaving Records, November 9 2022) responds tenderly to this sorry state of affairs, not with false comfort — nor escapism. Rather, the album conveys, often wordlessly, that there remains an abundance of sweetness amidst our increasing unease. While much of twentieth century American popular and folk music may have dwelt on the beauty and plenitude of the prairie, More Eaze applies a similar Romantic focus to the small bursts of fecundity that now hide in plain sight. Blending found sound, generative music, a knack for elegant, classically-informed melodic arrangement, and a sort of Liz-Fraser-by-way-of-hyperpop approach to vocals, Strawberry Season offers unique solace — providing an occasion for the kind of deep listening that our overstimulated and undernourished spirits require if there is to be any hope at all (and of course there must be hope).

More Eaze (serving as composer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, producer, and sound artist) guides us incrementally to this locus of attentiveness. Strawberry Season begins with the softly sweeping gentle pets. Early intimations of Velvet Underground give way, indeed, to a string arrangement that John Cale might have saved for Paris 1919. The second track, Suped, features a kaleidoscopic swirl of grocery checkout scanners that eventually coalesce and release with the subtle strumming of a harp. On known, in the midst of a nearly elegiac outflow of feeling, a shower starts to run. Someone steps inside, pulling the curtain back, sending the plastic rings clattering. Moments later, the unmistakable sound of the showerer blowing their nose — an inclusion that is at once light-hearted and jarringly, movingly intimate.

Strawberry Season’s second to last song, low resolution at santikos, serves as a sustained meditation on all that has come before it. Building slowly throughout its nine minutes, teetering, at times, on the edge of danceability, it dissipates suddenly, and Strawberry Season concludes with the rustling of clothes, snippets of distant conversation, creaking floorboards, an exhale and a sniff. There is a feeling of having arrived, of temporary reprieve in the face of uncertainty. A hint of a season yet to come, or one that is perhaps only now accessible in dreams.

As rookies in the thriving Brussels scene, jazz fusion quartet LũpḁGangGang have been making waves the last couple of years. After the EPs 'Stalingrad' and 'Urban Detox', they are now releasing their debut album 'Dopamine Overdose' on March 17 via Sdban Ultra.



Lyrically the inspiration for the album comes from growing up in a digital world and the constant dopamine we all have to deal with because of that. Musically their sound is rich, diverse and hard to pin down, looking at Yussef Dayes, BADBADNOTGOOD and even Black Country, New Road for inspiration.



LũpḁGangGang started out as a jazz/funk cover band in 2017. Anton, Miel, Lena and Rob all met at a jam session summer camp while still in school. Over time, the band started writing their own songs and released two EPs to critical acclaim. Due to the band's desire for creative expansion over genres, they have been able to perform on various Belgian stages for the past three years including Ancienne Belgique to Flagey, Gent Jazz and Handelsbeurs in support of label mates, Black Flower.



The album title 'Dopamine Overdose' is a quote from the track 'Dada Data', a track about the influence social media tends to have on our lives. The album's recurring theme is definitely the struggle with today's hyper virtual society and the overwhelming influence tech is having on society. With unbridled enthusiasm the band tackle relevant themes and combine striking observations with a highly contagious and very diverse sound.



From "Out the Light'', a smooth track about being stuck in the image we all try to create of ourselves, to 'Wanderer', a jazzy tune about the road to self-acceptance, and from 'Candy', combining a punk attitude with infectious hand claps, to 'Time Faded', about the difficulty of finishing your artistic work, LũpḁGangGang constantly showcase their genre-defying versatility.



As a whole, the album is a very balanced collection of tracks, ranging from brooding atmospheres to punky explosions with a constant drive, social criticism and an indomitable energy binding it all together. A promising debut, indeed.

As rookies in the thriving Brussels scene, jazz fusion quartet LũpḁGangGang have been making waves the last couple of years. After the EPs ‘Stalingrad’ and ‘Urban Detox’, they are now releasing their debut album ‘Dopamine Overdose’ on March 17 via Sdban Ultra.
Lyricaly the inspiration for the album comes from growing up in a digital world and the constant dopamine we all have to deal with because of that. Musically their sound is rich, diverse and hard to pin down, looking at Yussef Dayes, BADBADNOTGOOD and even Black Country, New Road for inspiration.
LũpḁGangGang started out as a jazz/funk cover band in 2017. Anton, Miel, Lena and Rob all met at a jam session summer camp while still in school. Over time, the band started writing their own songs and released two EPs to critical acclaim. Due to the band’s desire for creative expansion over genres, they have been able to perform on various Belgian stages for the past three years including Ancienne Belgique to Flagey, Gent Jazz and Handelsbeurs in support of label mates, Black Flower.

The album title ‘Dopamine Overdose’ is a quote from the track ‘Dada Data’, a track about the influence social media tends to have on our lives. The album’s recurring theme is definitely the struggle with today’s hyper virtual society and the overwhelming influence tech is having on society. With unbridled enthusiasm the band tackle relevant themes and combine striking observations with a highly contagious and very diverse sound.

From “Out the Light'', a smooth track about being stuck in the image we all try to create of ourselves, to ‘Wanderer’, a jazzy tune about the road to self-acceptance, and from ‘Candy’, combining a punk attitude with infectious hand claps, to ‘Time Faded’, about the difficulty of finishing your artistic work, LũpḁGangGang constantly showcase their genre-defying versatility.

It's hard not to see the hype around BRUIT= as the next big thing in post-rock. While their 2018 EP Monolith provided a promising indication of their son- ic ambition, it was their debut LP The Machine is Burning and Now Everyone Knows It Could Happen Again which really set off the trig- ger. Receiving rave reviews around the globe and selling out the first vinyl pressing of 3.000 copies within less than a year, BRUIT= have no need to prove themselves beyond what they have already achieved so far. Consisting of three musical meditations, Apologie du Temps Perdu Eng. apology for time wasted sees BRUIT= cut down on their massive sound in favour of a more subtle contem- plation. In contrast with their recent streaming single «Parasite (The Boycott Manifesto)» with its direct message for Spotify CEO Daniel Ek and his listeners, the band have seemingly forgone their activist agenda paring back the grand thematic gestures and poignant spoken-word excerpts. Instead, BRUIT= let the music do the talking, reaching an activism which is more visceral, but all the more personal. "This ambient EP is conceived as a comma between our first album and the next one," explains bass player & violinist Cle'ment Libes about the purpose of this record. "It is an invitation to lose time, a parenthesis in the frantic race of our society." Existing somewhere between the grand genius of soundtrack composers like Hans Zim- mer and Ramin Djawadi, and the experimental prowess of fringe pop artists like Radio- head and Darkside, Apologie du Temps Perdu reveals the hidden power of film scores. We all know that moment in which we cease to be conscious of the musical accompani- ment and we become truly absorbed in the story. The music becomes part of scenery, and in this moment we lose track of time. Talking of his own work Ramin Djawadi (Game of Thrones, Westworld) notes: "If you were to turn the picture off, there is a story there and a connection to the characters and the plots." In the same way, through the sweeping strings of «La Sagesse de Nos Ai"eux», the ethereal tape loops of «Re^veur Lucide» and the undu- lating synths of «Les Temps Perdus», worlds are created to get lost in, and we experience the full power of music with our eyes and ears open. RIYL Hans Zimmer, Nils Frahm, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Balmorhea, Max Richter, Olafur Arnalds, A Silver Mount Zion, Boards Of Canada

Following a run with Cherry Red Records that featured a potential major label jump, guitarist Maurice Deebank quitting and rejoining multiple times, several pop stardom carrots just out of reach, mixing battles with Robin Guthrie, and a shocking entry into the record charts, Lawrence (just “Lawrence”, like “Cher” or “Madonna” thank you very much) knew he would be making a change with his band Felt. He would be seeing out his plan of ten albums and ten singles in ten years alongside a new partner in Creation Records. This compilation beautifully captures those years.

Creation was beginning a rapid ascent at the time, with Alan McGee serving as its hyperactive mouthpiece and focal point. McGee was all in on the band. “Lawrence achieved pop perfection, a breathless rush of sensitivity and intelligence. It was too understated to be commercial, too art to go pop, too pop to go art—in other words it was a perfect combination of all the music I loved at the time.” McGee was thrilled to have what he considered a real star on the label, and Lawrence was equally thrilled to have such an enthusiastic cheerleader. He funneled that enthusiasm into some of the most focused songwriting of his career, as well as some of his wildest experiments, all of which are on display here.

Pure Adult are a Brooklyn-based experimental rock duo formed
by Jeremy Snyder and Bianca Abarca. At the centre of their
music is the far-left political ethos and DIY attitude the pair
share.
Having grown up in the unusually sheltered environment of a
church-turned-cult, Snyder has always found himself drawn to
the harsh, dissonant music that was off-limits during his
formative years. In 2017, he and contemporary dancer and
visual artist Bianca Abarca formed Pure Adult, who released
their debut EP, ‘Pure Adult I’, in 2019. Now they are set to
release their debut album, ‘II’, on FatCat Records.
After leaving the church in 2007, Jeremy began studying
religion, philosophy and politics whilst working as a sound
engineer. “I ended up touring with some small pop rock bands,
while my studies brought me through an array of beliefs and a
far-left political worldview. While I’ve identified as a communist
for almost 20 years now, I didn’t fully give up on religious belief
until around 2010. A fundamental element to our belief system
was this sort of unverifiable feeling that must be something and,
because I’ve experienced that feeling, virtually nothing can
make me deny it. And it’s comforting, in a world of quantifiable
uncertainty, a guise of certainty,” he says.
In more recent years, Jeremy has become the engineer of
choice to internationally acclaimed acts such as Mdou Moctar
and IDLES, both of whom are big fans of Pure Adult. IDLES
lead singer Joe Talbot says of the band’s forthcoming album:
“Pungent chaos that serves no pomp, instead it throws around
dark innuendo like a rag doll to the cadence of fury and fucking.
The best album I’ve heard in ages. The best band you haven’t
seen. Go dig, it’s beautiful at its worst.”
As well as the release of their debut album at the start of 2023,
Pure Adult are also preparing to release a collaborative EP with
Gustaf, Thank and Heavy Lungs in the Spring. They will support
Gilla Band on tour in the US early next year.
“Blown-out, hyperactive, aggressive, and danceable rock
informed by punk and post-punk.” - Brooklyn Vegan
“A furious piece of work” - Steve Lamacq, 6 Music

2023 Repress

* Tales of the Inexpressible” was released on Twisted Records in 2001.

It was a much anticipated and well loved successor continuing in the pioneering spirit of the debut album and in this exceptional follow up they gave us plenty more multi-dimensional surprises and new sonic realities to explore and immerse ourselves in.
From the opening sounds on “Dorset Perception”, the first track featuring flamenco guitar and Latin percussion, we can tell we are in for some incredible planetary as well as interplanetary trips on this musical voyage as Si & Raj take us for a spin though their musical worlds, full of influences garnered on their travels to the 4 corners of the earth.

As the Star Shpongled Banner unfurls, the immeasurable beauty of the album is illustriously illustrated with blissful cascades of Indian Flute washing over the minds ear and achingly beautiful synths rippling with dimensional dub effects throughout. As the Shaman’s voice resonates through the digital dream, the Shaman’s drum begins to beat leading us to a vedic celtic crescendo.

By the time Room 23 emanates from the loudspeakers, Shpongle have confirmed their position as the true pioneers once again, shining a light on the deeper development of the Psybient and Psychill sound and unmistakably elevating the consciousness of the listener to previously unheard of heights by bringing the eddying currents of Raj’s magical flute lines and Simons mellifluous keyboard riffs and genius production style together in an extraordinary hallucinogenic mix.

The album holds 9 gems glistening in hyperspace, gems of unmistakable brilliance and radiant beauty in which every composition contains worlds within worlds, as explored by Raja and Simon on their epic voyages into the depths of musical exploration and recounted in these tales.

They have been the soundtrack to innumerable visionary voyages for the neuronaut cognoscenti, because of the multi layered sounds, shapeshifting focus and awe inspiring depths of the advanced Shpongle production techniques. Tales of the inexpressible is quite literally, beyond description and has been a part of creating so many beautiful moments that its absence from our lives is unimaginable. 

Hoshina Anniversary hails from the westside of Tokyo and a place called Hachioj. His musical inspirations though come from an otherworldly place of rhythm, hyper-real melody and off-grid rhythm. This HakkyouShisou album on the mighty US label Constellation Tatsu is a fluid experiment which draws on experimental dance, jazz fusion, electronica and Japanese heritage. The sound design throughout is shiny and futuristic, particularly on the busy melodic patterns and loopy synth madness of 'Karoushi' which sounds like a computer left to its own devices after too much sugar. 'Dakuten' is a tripped out dub with sequenced progressions and lumpy drums, and 'Dareka No Rettoukan Wo Nomikomu' sounds like a house cut from Detroit's Omar S.

“A unique and refreshing release.” — Earmilk
“Stellar… an exciting and surprising release” — Popmatters

Cut Copy’s January Tape, an ambient project originally released in 2016 as a limited-edition run of 400 cassette tapes, comes to vinyl for the first time on January 2023 via Cutters Records and Diggers Factory.

Dan Whitford of Cut Copy said the project took shape after the band took a break from recording the follow-up to 2013’s Free Your Mind. “Having worked for much of the previous 12 months on a new Cut Copy album, we decided in January it was time to give ourselves a well earned break, “Whitford stated. “But instead of retreating to the wilderness or decompressing on a beach somewhere, we spent ten days in the studio making a collection of ambient instrumental works. We wanted to share outtakes from these sessions in all their unedited glory with you, and put them out as an extremely limited edition cassette, available mainly through our webstores.” Now with this limited vinyl release, more fans will be able to grab a hold of a physical copy of the music (the OG cassette’s are now a long-gone and highly coveted collector’s item).

Composed and recorded by Whitford and Cut Copy’s guitarist Tim Hoey, January Tape was accompanied by a short video, January Trip, by Glen Goetze and Brendan MacLeod. The video takes from several parts of the tape, evoking the lush, cinematic and occasionally disparate moods in the music via split screen themed imagery, both man-made and elemental in origin. More meditation than music video, more hypnosis than hype, January Trip works as a harmonious visual companion to the soundscapes in the tape.

Pink Vinyl
Canadian producer Dylan Khotin-Foote has kept his Khotin alias going for the better part of a decade; the impressionistic electronic project shifts with the movements in his life. Sometimes it leads, like when the club-friendly grooves of 2014's Hello World immersed him in the heart of Vancouver's underground dance scene, and sometimes it follows, like 2018's Beautiful You, a downtempo salve for DJ fatigue His melodic sensibility and playful ear for atmosphere remain the rippling core of the project's fingerprint; whether beat-driven or ambient, a foggy smear or a dusted and pristine print, a Khotin track has a distinct and instantly recognizable swirl. During and after the 2020 release of Finds You Well, his second LP on Ghostly International, Khotin-Foote settled back into a slower vibe in his hometown of Ed- monton. Even before the pandemic, his pivots to softer production, and away from DJing, left him with fewer opportunities in Vancouver and club bookings overall, and as a self-identifying introvert, he was fine with that. But the change of pace did open space for Khotin-Foote to grapple with concepts of adulthood and career. At his lowest, he almost walked off this musical path altogether; instead, he doubled down on the craft _ the tone, pacing, and dynamism of new material _ arriving at a definitive full-length. With Release Spirit, Khotin releases himself from the pressure of expectation, fusing and refining everything we know about his music. The warmth and familiarity of Khotin's dreamy, dulcet style meet new ideas and frameworks, a natural progression, a modest revelation; Khotin confirms it is okay to move slowly and he's never sounded better doing it. The album title borrows from the "release spirit" mechanic in the video game World of Warcraft. When players die, they are prompted to release their spirit and return as ghosts to find their corpses and come back to life. Khotin sees it as a worthy metaphor for the impending change his return home presented and the resulting process of purging artistic expectations to find his creative self again. On this go- around, he is freer, more playful, and more intentional within his palette of warped synth, breakbeats, and piano sounds _ including the classic Casio SK-1 presets he's used since the start _ mingling with wistful samples, field recordings, and other abstract snippets. For the first time, he enlisted Nik Kozub to do the mix and assist with sequencing. Khotin-Foote has long worked with the Edmonton-based musician and engineer in the mastering phase, as well as their days co-running the label Normals Welcome, and this time was able to involve his ears earlier given their newfound proximity. "I think it's my best sounding record to date." We begin on "HV Road" or Happy Valley Road, where Khotin-Foote spent time during a family vacation in British Columbia's Okanagan Lake. His plans to record crickets at night are quickly foiled by his younger siblings; the cute exchange orients the listener to a core memory of sorts, setting the tone of universally understood warmth and wonder that has defined some of Khotin's most transportive tracks. Hazy percussion takes hold, and we are swept further into the wisp of "Lovely," a grooving, melodic standout built on the interplay between the beat and human voice-like hums. Khotin knows this zone well; equally suited for a reverie or a club warm-up. The bubbling atmosphere and absurdity of "3 pz" offer a cosmic/comic interlude and also speak to reflections on his family's move to Canada two generations ago, and the audio tutorials they used to learn English. "I can only imagine my grandpar- ents repeating some of the bizarre phrases." "Fountain, Growth" finds Khotin in collaboration with Montreal's Tess Roby (Dawn to Dawn) for the project's first-ever vocal track. Roby's soft cadence echoes atop spiraling air pockets of rhythmic production, lending a breezy, almost shoegaze pop feel. Throughout the single and the album, wind gusts between the compositional layers, akin to the roaming spirits of its namesake, curving around the birdsong of "Life Mask" and seamlessly reaching "Unlimited <3." The latter bumps in slow motion; disembodied whirrs from his Casio collide with 808 drums and sub-bass for a vibe that teeters on trap and instrumental hip-hop. Release Spirit rests in a dream sequence. Oscillating synth lines dance around the heartbeat of "Techno Creep," a hyperactive REM state before the digitized ambient sprawl of "My Same Size." In the final pass, Khotin imagines transcontinental travel from the glow of his screen. He recorded "Sound Gathering Trip" to soundtrack a genre of YouTube videos he's taken to that follows train routes through Europe and Japan. The scene is serene and moving; piano keys warble as static-filled sound design shimmers off the rails, from cityscapes to the countryside, an introspective ride through a world beyond his bedroom. It doubles as an apt parting image for Khotin's project as a whole: dreaming big but happiest when riffing on the details, shaping environments from the inside out. Over the last decade, he has stretched from his core in Edmonton, leaving a trace in Vancouver and beyond; but when all signs point home, he loops back to see it all from a different vantage, revitalized, refined, and free.

Canadian producer Dylan Khotin-Foote has kept his Khotin alias going for the better part of a decade; the impressionistic electronic project shifts with the movements in his life. Sometimes it leads, like when the club-friendly grooves of 2014's Hello World immersed him in the heart of Vancouver's underground dance scene, and sometimes it follows, like 2018's Beautiful You, a downtempo salve for DJ fatigue. His melodic sensibility and playful ear for atmosphere remain the rippling core of the project's fingerprint; whether beat-driven or ambient, a foggy smear or a dusted and pristine print, a Khotin track has a distinct and instantly recognizable swirl. During and after the 2020 release of Finds You Well, his second LP on Ghostly International, Khotin-Foote settled back into a slower vibe in his hometown of Ed- monton. Even before the pandemic, his pivots to softer production, and away from DJing, left him with fewer opportunities in Vancouver and club bookings overall, and as a self-identifying introvert, he was fine with that. But the change of pace did open space for Khotin-Foote to grapple with concepts of adulthood and career. At his lowest, he almost walked off this musical path altogether; instead, he doubled down on the craft _ the tone, pacing, and dynamism of new material _ arriving at a definitive full-length. With Release Spirit, Khotin releases himself from the pressure of expectation, fusing and refining everything we know about his music. The warmth and familiarity of Khotin's dreamy, dulcet style meet new ideas and frameworks, a natural progression, a modest revelation; Khotin confirms it is okay to move slowly and he's never sounded better doing it. The album title borrows from the "release spirit" mechanic in the video game World of Warcraft. When players die, they are prompted to release their spirit and return as ghosts to find their corpses and come back to life. Khotin sees it as a worthy metaphor for the impending change his return home presented and the resulting process of purging artistic expectations to find his creative self again. On this go- around, he is freer, more playful, and more intentional within his palette of warped synth, breakbeats, and piano sounds _ including the classic Casio SK-1 presets he's used since the start _ mingling with wistful samples, field recordings, and other abstract snippets. For the first time, he enlisted Nik Kozub to do the mix and assist with sequencing. Khotin-Foote has long worked with the Edmonton-based musician and engineer in the mastering phase, as well as their days co-running the label Normals Welcome, and this time was able to involve his ears earlier given their newfound proximity. "I think it's my best sounding record to date." We begin on "HV Road" or Happy Valley Road, where Khotin-Foote spent time during a family vacation in British Columbia's Okanagan Lake. His plans to record crickets at night are quickly foiled by his younger siblings; the cute exchange orients the listener to a core memory of sorts, setting the tone of universally understood warmth and wonder that has defined some of Khotin's most transportive tracks. Hazy percussion takes hold, and we are swept further into the wisp of "Lovely," a grooving, melodic standout built on the interplay between the beat and human voice-like hums. Khotin knows this zone well; equally suited for a reverie or a club warm-up. The bubbling atmosphere and absurdity of "3 pz" offer a cosmic/comic interlude and also speak to reflections on his family's move to Canada two generations ago, and the audio tutorials they used to learn English. "I can only imagine my grandpar- ents repeating some of the bizarre phrases." "Fountain, Growth" finds Khotin in collaboration with Montreal's Tess Roby (Dawn to Dawn) for the project's first-ever vocal track. Roby's soft cadence echoes atop spiraling air pockets of rhythmic production, lending a breezy, almost shoegaze pop feel. Throughout the single and the album, wind gusts between the compositional layers, akin to the roaming spirits of its namesake, curving around the birdsong of "Life Mask" and seamlessly reaching "Unlimited <3." The latter bumps in slow motion; disembodied whirrs from his Casio collide with 808 drums and sub-bass for a vibe that teeters on trap and instrumental hip-hop. Release Spirit rests in a dream sequence. Oscillating synth lines dance around the heartbeat of "Techno Creep," a hyperactive REM state before the digitized ambient sprawl of "My Same Size." In the final pass, Khotin imagines transcontinental travel from the glow of his screen. He recorded "Sound Gathering Trip" to soundtrack a genre of YouTube videos he's taken to that follows train routes through Europe and Japan. The scene is serene and moving; piano keys warble as static-filled sound design shimmers off the rails, from cityscapes to the countryside, an introspective ride through a world beyond his bedroom. It doubles as an apt parting image for Khotin's project as a whole: dreaming big but happiest when riffing on the details, shaping environments from the inside out. Over the last decade, he has stretched from his core in Edmonton, leaving a trace in Vancouver and beyond; but when all signs point home, he loops back to see it all from a different vantage, revitalized, refined, and free.

During this period Hassell was inspired by the increasingly innovative production techniques being used in hip-hop, in particular the hyper-collaged sampledelic barrage of the Bomb Squad’s work with Public Enemy, hearing it as a kind of extension of the tape splicing that Teo Macero brought to his work with Miles Davis.

He began to incorporate more of this aesthetic into his own music, playing over loops of his own performances and riffing on angular juxtapositions of noise, rhythm and melody.

The resulting sonic stew is a kind of futuristic sci-fi funk with an appropriately melted production aesthetic - instruments and samples jumping to the forefront then disappearing in the manner of the best dub records.

‘The Living City’ captures the Jon Hassell Group in September 1989, performing as part of an audio-visual installation inside the World Financial Center Winter Garden in New York City, with Brian Eno mixing the band live.

During this period Hassell was inspired by the increasingly innovative production techniques being used in hip-hop, in particular the hyper-collaged sampledelic barrage of the Bomb Squad’s work with Public Enemy, hearing it as a kind of extension of the tape splicing that Teo Macero brought to his work with Miles Davis.
He began to incorporate more of this aesthetic into his own music, playing over loops of his own performances and riffing on angular juxtapositions of noise, rhythm and melody.

The resulting sonic stew is a kind of futuristic sci-fi funk with an appropriately melted production aesthetic - instruments and samples jumping to the forefront then disappearing in the manner of the best dub records.

‘Psychogeography’ is a situationist re-thinking of the 1990 ‘City: Works Of Fiction’ album, a carefully edited sequence of alternate takes, demos and studio jams put together by Jon Hassell in 2014 using Debordian philosophy as his guide.

Feral Five’s dazzling debut album ‘Truth Is The New Gold’, is an evocative voyage through a Feraltropolis style future city, and an offering of sonic elixir for heart, feet and mind. Leading us through secret spaces, changing skies, personal truths and revelations, the Ferals glide seamlessly between bold alt pop, experimental electronica, and cinematic landscapes.

With acclaimed singles, EPs, and radio play from BBC 6 Music and Radio X X-Posure under their belt, the Ferals have now signed with independent label Reckless Yes to take us on a deeper emotional journey in ‘Truth Is The New Gold’.

Across this glittering album Feral Five’s multi-layered songs and hook-laden grooves use a unique palette of tools and instruments, both hyper-modern and ancient. From the AI vocals to live coded sounds, strings, and played quartz crystals, to the skillfully interwoven electronics, synths and guitars. Always reinventing their sound, the Ferals have created their own new sonic world, but one that we can all relate to, examining the challenges of living in a 21st Century that you couldn’t make up.

RSD vinyl now available for everybody and now slightly cheaper too!! "Unavailable on vinyl for decades, Select Records presents 2 Hype in an opaque white pressing exclusive to RSD Black Friday. For a certain generation of hip hop fans, just the mention of Kid ‘n Play brings on a wave of nostalgia. The group released three full-lengths between 1988 and 1991 with a focus on positive lyrics and pop friendly production. The success of the group’s music lead to countless House Party films, a Saturday morning cartoon show and even a series of comic books for Marvel (so, technically speaking, are Kid ‘n Play are part of the Marvel Universe?). It all started here on the 1988 full-length 2 Hype which features “Do The Kid 'n Play Kick Step”, the musical accompaniment to their trademark dance, “Rollin’ With Kid ‘n Play” which hit number 11 on the Billboard R&B Singles chart and of course Kid's now classic hi-top fade haircut, which measured up to over six inches high at its peak. Producer Hurby “Luv Bug” Azor, instrumental in the success of Salt-N-Pepa, was certainly a factor and the full length went on to chart in the Billboard Top 200 and to RIAA certified gold status."

2023 Repress

Marc Acardipane's Pitch-Hiker, originally released under Marc's Pilldriver alias, is without doubt one of the foundation tracks of European hardcore. From the moment it was released in 1995 it caused shockwaves with its stripped down, kick drum focused approach. Gone were the hoovers, sirens, breakbeats and vocal samples of that era's hardcore and instead a stark new minimalism emerged, focusing equally on the kick drum itself and the negative space and air around it.

Like all groundbreaking records it was soon followed by an endless stream of unofficial rip-offs, re-edits and remixes, none of which got close to the perfection of Marc's original. Now for the first time Pitch-Hiker gets officially remixed showing the level of trust Marc has in Perc Trax and Perc's own affection for PitchHiker and for Marc's enduring legacy as an electronic music innovator.

First up is Marc himself with his own take on his classic. Keeping the distinctive reverb soaked kick hits of his 1995 original mix he adds dive-bombing synths and scything hi-hats to increase the energy of the original mix without losing any of its dark charm.

Next label boss Perc adds more weight to the original's unmistakable kick drums, slowly building up the tension until his remix drops into the kind of noise assault not heard on Perc Trax since Tymon's devastating remix of Perc's own 'Hyperlink'. Kick drum specialists Ghost In The Machine step up next and work the original mixes' warping kick drums to the max. Updating and strengthening the track perfectly whilst keeping the sense of space that gave the original mix so much character.

Finally Sissel Wincent and Peder Mannerfelt team up for their Perc Trax debut following on from Perc's remix of 'Sissel & Bass' back in 2019. Flipping the script completely Sissel & Peder add multiple vocal hooks and fuse the original mix's 4/4 kick with half-speed broken beat rhythms to serve up a very different, but still successful interpretation of the original mix.

Kode9's most ambitious work yet as a multi-disciplinary artist, `Escapology' is the soundtrack album to the sonic fiction `Astro-Darien', itself soon to be released on Hyperdub sub-label Flatlines. Already available as a special edition CD and digital album, we now offer a 1000 piece limited pressing on lucent orange vinyl, in spot-gloss sleeve with additional artwork by Optigram. `Escapology' reconfigures `Astro-Darien's tense, off-world atmospheres into slices of high definition, asymmetric club rhythms, woven through thrilling sound design and vertiginous sonics. "A record brimming with ideas and novel sounds, departing from genre exercises to offer something genuinely different." - Album of the Month -DJ Mag "Kode9's most dextrous and intuitive club music yet, full of mind-bending rhythmic nuggets. He's still the brilliant master behind the scenes, quietly one-upping everyone else." - Resident Advisor "The 15 tracks become proper dancefloor scorchers _ `Escapology' builds a futuristic jumble of aesthetics and sound design." - The Wire