Search:dawn again

"With their third full-length, Washington, D.C.’s Bad Moves have expanded their founding artistic identity — a candy-coated guitar-pop shell surrounding a bitter lyrical core — by refracting their ideas through a new set of musical forms that weaponize repetition. On the new Wearing Out the Refrain, recorded once again with producer Joe Reinhart (Hop Along, Algernon Cadwallader), Bad Moves propose that the flip side of the delirious harmony of the basement show singalong is the volatile, accusatory antiphony of a community divided by strain, shouting the same desperate hook back and forth at one another.

Bad Moves’ tag-team vocals, which forgo centering anyone one member, also let the traditionally confessional “I” become the “we” of a community, or generation. Witness the ambitious climate change metaphor of “Eviction Party,” which understands the union of sugary pop and genuine angst embodied by 1960s girl-group songcraft, and uses it to expand a personal story to planetary scale. “It’s my eviction, I’ll cry if I want to” Bad Moves shouts, channeling the dawning millennial midlife crisis. The personal may be political, but what if both feel weighed down and trapped in circular, inescapable ruts?"

Debut album from Los Angeles duo Los Yesterdays - Sweet Soul music meets Mexican Folklorico

"Sweet soul music - also known as lowrider oldies on the West Coast, rolas and souldies - are typically early 60s-style tunes that emphasize vocal harmonies. Most songs are slow-to-midtempo, many are ballads, and the sub-genre is generally stripped down compared to the highly produced Motown hits of the time....there is a generations-long appreciation for sweet soul music among California’s Latino communities. Eastern Los Angeles teens.... helped foster a love of sweet soul in the early 60s by covering soulful ballads by artists like James Brown... Those sounds....were kept alive by record collectors and people who spent evenings cruising along East Los boulevards." - Los Yesterdays are a Chicano soul band from Los Angeles based around the creative collaboration between Gabriel Rowland and Victor Benavides. They began working together when Rowland - a drummer by trade, then creaky and exhausted from waking up at dawn to work construction - decided to channel those struggles into song. He contacted Benavides, a former bandmate of Rowland’s deceased brother, to record the soul ballads that Southland Chicanos call “oldies.” Los Yesterdays filter love-struck R&B crooning through guitar-strumming Mexican balladeering; the result is something that sounds like the Los Angeles of yesterday and today - the indelible, immovable Los Angeles of cruising Whittier Boulevard, of cold drinks on the porch on blazing summer nights, of watching a blue-orange toxic sunset and wondering if they are thinking about you. Los Angeles changes; Los Angeles stays the same. Los Yesterdays have changed, outgrown their childhood barrios and the bands of their early 20s and their private garage hermitude; Los Yesterdays are Frozen In Time.

Pianist and composer Bas Bulteel turns his gaze inward after a successful track record as leader of the adventurous energy bomb Wasdaman and as inspirer of his own trio, with which he won the 2014 Klara Music Prize for best CD in the jazz category for the album Coming Home, his debut as a bandleader.

Bas went into residency with visual artist Jan Frederik De Cock which resulted in a unique collaboration where image and sound dialogue with each other, feeding off each other, cursing against each other, loving each other ....

The result has become a profound and layered solo piano record that showcases Bas' versatility as a pianist and composer. Musically hovering between minimalism and avant-garde. Sometimes melancholic and always compelling.

Coming out on September 6th on Sharptone Records, Sundiver is Boston Manor’s fifth album and one that represents a glimmering dawn for the Blackpool five-piece. Grown from a seedbed of optimism and sobriety, the LP celebrates new beginnings, second chances and rebirth. With two members recently stepping into fatherhood, hope is baked into every note. “Datura came out of these really dark few years over the hangover of the pandemic,” Henry reflects. “I'd been struggling a lot with drinking and not taking care of myself and bad mental health and stuff. We wanted Sundiver to be the next morning of the following day.” He explains that it feels good this time round to write through the lens of positivity. “The themes began to emerge, of rebirth, spring, dawn, sunshine and then other elements just started to fit into that.” It was during the making of Sundiver that Henry found out he was going to be a dad. This album is a significant one for the band. Originally coming out of the emo and pop punk scene, they’ve explored sonics and genres throughout their career, taken risks and achieved more than they could ever had dreamed of. They’ve grown up as Boston Manor – their lives and the world changing around them. They’re now taking stock, at a crossroads of the band they were and the band they could be.
While writing the album, they revisited the bands that shaped them in the late 90s and early 00s. “I was listening to the music I loved when I was a teenager and I just thought, why don't we make music like our favourite bands?”, guitarist Mike Cuniff remembers with a smile. “So we brought our interests to the table that way. Y2K kind of vibe. There are elements of Deftones, there are elements of Portishead in there, some Garbage, The Cardigans.” He laughs and adds NSYNC to the list of inspirations. From this cocktail of classics comes a dynamic and ambitious record, rich with depth, groove and more hooks than Peter Pan’s nightmares. Lyrics that foxtrot from parallel universes to personal growth, vivid dreamscapes to raw grief. Individually they’re single strokes full of meaning and magic. Together they’re a landscape.
Container (out Feb 15th) is the first single and it’s them at their best – impassioned and infectious. “This song is about the stagnancy of life creeping up on you & how that can bring about change.,” Henry explains, citing Ocean Song by US band Daughters as an inspiration.

The concept of the butterfly effect is present on Sundiver – how small actions can lead to big changes. This is no clearer than on their second single, Sliding Doors (out April 5th). It has the golden sound of late 90s Lollapalooza rock – think Smashing Pumpkins - rebooted with crisp 2024 production and a potent heaviness. In the lyrics Henry wonders, what if?, pondering on what could be. The idea that there are infinite versions of you whose lives splinter off in different directions at every decision you make. That there’s another you out there somewhere right now reading this sentence, and another me writing it. “So much is down to chance and circumstance,” Henry says. “You might catch that train and your life totally changes. Or you might miss it and things stay the way they are.”
Heat Me Up (out May 30th) is defiant and victorious, the audio equivalent of quitting your shit job and driving into the hot summer sun with a head full of dreams. “The lyrics are about love and gratitude,” Henry shares. “Another theme on the record is just appreciating what you have. It’s about not taking for granted the things that you've been afforded.”
There was some natural magic in the creation of Sundiver. They worked with their usual producer, Larry Hibbitt, and engineer, Alex O’Donovan, but instead of recording in London again they ended up in the green pastures of Welwyn Garden City. “Because Larry lives out in the countryside now, it was a way different environment and way different experience recording this time,” Mike remembers. “That contributed a lot to the brighter sound of the record.” The daily barbecues they had during their recording sessions imbued the process with harmony – five old friends spending quality time together and making quality music.
However, the album is by no means one-note. Birthing this new world they’ve created wasn’t without it’s pain, and that can be heard in the heavier moments on Sundiver. What Is Taken Will Never Be Lost is the most-stripped back on the album, a slow rock number seasoned with the downtempo Portishead influence. The heartfelt lyrics are Henry’s way of processing the loss of his grandfather, who died in a hospice last year(?). “It was just fucking horrible. It was always cold when I went there and they were always trying to get rid of me. The song title, What Was Taken Can Ever Be Lost, is the idea of his memory fading at the time because of dementia.” Henry goes onto explain that shoeboxes of photographs, diaries and a legacy is what he’s left behind. “He lived a really rich life and it has really impacted me and my father. His legacy is etched into the fabric of history in a very small way.” This song continues the connection between his grandfather and the band, as his painted face is emblazoned on the cover of the very first Boston Manor EP, Driftwood. As well as emotionally heavy themes, there’s heaviness in the music of Sundiver too. The closing song, Oil In My Blood, descends into an intense shoegaze outro with Debbie Gough from Heriot screaming hellfire. It’s in moments like this that the band show us aggression and fury can be as much a part of positive change as quiet introspection. The last lyrics of the song, “It resets and starts again,” leaves us in contemplation as the final chord rings out.
Touring the US, Europe and Japan over the years makes for an impressive CV, but if you know anything about Boston Manor you’ll know that they’re all about their hometown. Their choice to work with Blackpool-based photographer Nick Barkworth is testament to that. They’ve been working with him since the pandemic. “He captures Blackpool in a light that really reflects the weirdness and quirkiness of the town,” Henry says.” He's got a really good way of presenting that.” For the Sundiver cover, Nick photographed a 30ft tall abstract glass sculpture made by the local artist John Ditchfield. A striking and bewitching monolith that’s familiar to them but unusual to most people. “It has such kind of a gravity and power to it,” Henry describes the sculpture which stands in a field just outside of the seaside town. “It reminds me of either an explosion or a star or a supernova. To me it represents new life, power and radiance.” Boston Manor have got a knack for that - connecting the otherworldly and the everyday, the stars and the streets.
They’re a band known for using their music to make bigger statements about society. This time round they’re harnessing the uplifting power of music, and the communion it creates, as an antidote to the daily doom and isolation. “It seems like absolute chaos out there at the moment,” Henry says. “You’ve got Gaza and Israel, you've got Russia, you've got the fact that 40% of the world is going to have an election this year and increasingly most governments are leaning very far to the Right. The internet is dividing everybody, people are getting poorer and more desperate. It's really, really scary.” They considered trying to tackle the weight of it all in their music. “We could’ve written Welcome to the Neighbourhood on steroids, where it's just absolute darkness and misery”. He’s referring to their 2018 concept album that deals with class, inequality and the bleaker side of Blackpool. “But I think it's really important to write something that people can be immersed in and find some sort of solace in. Somewhere they can escape to from the modern day pressures and everything that’s going on. We’re all in this together.”

The learning process is just as much an act of healing as betterment. The enabling of solutions through sheer willpower and openness to discovery, or a noble mission, never completed. In that spirit, the latest album by Berlin-based Slovak duo Päfgens – comprising Jana Drábeková Kočišová and Filip Drábek – represents a pensive development for the project.

Drifting from their lo-fi shoegaze beginnings, Päfgens drone-infused soundscapes have become increasingly immersive and expressive “framed improvisations,” where spontaneous passages are captured, then revisited with fresh layers upon layers over the course of months, breathing and evolving naturally, mirroring the unpredictability of nature. Songforms have all but melted away, with ethereal guitars and bass nestling up against field-recorded sounds, synth beds, percussion, and singing bowl tones.

The framed improvisation on ‘Aspect of What’ explores love and loss, relishing both the joy and melancholy of paying tribute to Filip’s late ethnologist grandmother, Božena Filová (1926-2020). Her voice opens track 2, ‘Particles’, speaking of the humble desire to “help the people in the rural environment”, and the goal of “uplifting people to better living through education”. The album’s emotionally charged approach to improvisation is suitably uplifting and seemingly made without ego, the couple melting away into the flitting wall of rustling drones and heavenly fuzz. Even at their most serrated (the groaning guitar amp squall underpinning ‘Journey’) or when surrounded by chiming bells, clocks and bowls (‘Around the Clock’), Päfgens is ready to listen, rest, learn, and improve, extracting and nurturing hidden abstract emotion in every piece, plundering something universal and teachable from very personal depths.

Much time has passed since the Queer Australian/Italian-Armenian, multifaceted artist, Kristian Bahoudian aka Kris Baha, swapped the parched red earth and searing midday sun of the Australian landscape for the brutalist communist-era apartment blocks and slate-grey skies of former East Berlin. Kris is now a fixture in Berlin’s club scene and has toured most of the world as a DJ & live artist with his own unique production style of cyber industrial, EBM, wave, post punk, and early ‘90s IDM mutations. Remixing some of the scene’s most notable artists such as Boy Harsher and techno pop lord Boys Noize, Kris has garnered respect and trust in the electronic music scene for the last 13 years. To respond to the current AI revolution, Kris uploads himself to the cyber ether through his latest project: GHOSTS IN THE MACHIИE.

Across Dual Timelines —
” GHOSTS IN THE MACHIИE ” unfolds as a sci-fi cyberpunk concept project inhabiting dual timelines. In one, we glimpse a trans-humanist future where human consciousness exists as intricate sequences of binary code, entwined and controlled by omnipresent AI systems. In this coded future, a profound awakening stirs among a select few who manage to mutate the code they were governed by, unlocking memories of their history that was erased by the AI. Through this discovery they realize they can traverse temporal boundaries and utilize this power to send warning messages back in time to their former fully human selves. These eerie missives carry a dire warning for humanity, urging them to rectify the course of society before the relentless march of artificial intelligence deprives humanity of its essence. In this terrifying future, humans are rendered mere specters within the digital expanse, stripped of their souls, to become Ghosts In The Machine.
Collaboration with the future self —
The cyber odyssey unfolds from a unique perspective— Kris’s very own future self (his future ghost): a spectral entity endeavoring to caution its present incarnation against the ominous path it treads, attempting to avert a dystopian future.Sonic Alchemy —
A fuse of cybernetic synth waves, hyper-punk, and pulsating drum and bass laid out against the dystopian, industrial sonic landscape of this grim future “civilization”. Each track recounts a new chapter in the gripping narrative, drawing listeners deeper into their own story and the role we all play as a collective society with the future possibilities of unregulated AI.Recorded in Berlin with software and hardware synthesisers. AI was used to assist me with lyric themes, concepts and ideas. I also used a trained AI model of my own voice as backing vocals in ‘Haunting Me’.ll music, words & concepts by Kristian Bahoudian aka Kris Baha and his future ghost,
GHOSTS IN THE MACHIИE

Last Train are an exception on the French indie rock scene. From the Olympia in Paris to the biggest festivals, the four Alsatians have won over a devoted audience with their hypnotic, moving concerts. Independent or nothing, they self-produce their records and tours, as well as their music videos, short films and even documentaries, with rigour and determination. At the end of 2022, the musicians had the luxury of taking their time and the right to experiment. Far from the beaten track, they are rewriting their own repertoire in a cinematic and contemplative way. By collaborating with the Orchestre symphonique de Mulhouse, Last Trainconfirm their viscerallove of large-format sounds and images, and present a veritable compendium of inï¬,uences in twelve tracks.Original Motion PictureSoundtrack is the soundtrack to a film that doesn"texist. From a symphonic chaseto a neo-classical interlude, from an organ requiem to an electronic soaring, the Mulhouse-based band play with the boundaries of genres. Last Train sets the bar ever higher with this unexpected, singular and striking album. It is accompanied by a mini-series documenting the work done in the studio, the collaboration with the orchestra and the day-to-day life of an authentic, inspired band.

Last Train are an exception on the French indie rock scene. From the Olympia in Paris to the biggest festivals, the four Alsatians have won over a devoted audience with their hypnotic, moving concerts. Independent or nothing, they self-produce their records and tours, as well as their music videos, short films and even documentaries, with rigour and determination. At the end of 2022, the musicians had the luxury of taking their time and the right to experiment. Far from the beaten track, they are rewriting their own repertoire in a cinematic and contemplative way. By collaborating with the Orchestre symphonique de Mulhouse, Last Trainconfirm their viscerallove of large-format sounds and images, and present a veritable compendium of inï¬,uences in twelve tracks.Original Motion PictureSoundtrack is the soundtrack to a film that doesn"texist. From a symphonic chaseto a neo-classical interlude, from an organ requiem to an electronic soaring, the Mulhouse-based band play with the boundaries of genres. Last Train sets the bar ever higher with this unexpected, singular and striking album. It is accompanied by a mini-series documenting the work done in the studio, the collaboration with the orchestra and the day-to-day life of an authentic, inspired band.

After promising to release only five studio albums under his own name, Simpson marks the beginning of a new era with Johnny Blue Skies and the release of Passage Du Desir. Out July 12 on his own independent label, High Top Mountain Records, the album includes eight songs produced by Johnny Blue Skies and David Ferguson and recorded at Clement House Recording Studio in Nashville, TN and Abbey Road Studios in London, England.

Much time has passed since the Queer Australian/Italian-Armenian, multifaceted artist, Kristian Bahoudian aka Kris Baha, swapped the parched red earth and searing midday sun of the Australian landscape for the brutalist communist-era apartment blocks and slate-grey skies of former East Berlin. Kris is now a fixture in Berlin’s club scene and has toured most of the world as a DJ & live artist with his own unique production style of cyber industrial, EBM, wave, post punk, and early ‘90s IDM mutations. Remixing some of the scene’s most notable artists such as Boy Harsher and techno pop lord Boys Noize, Kris has garnered respect and trust in the electronic music scene for the last 13 years. To respond to the current AI revolution, Kris uploads himself to the cyber ether through his latest project: GHOSTS IN THE MACHIИE.

Across Dual Timelines —
” GHOSTS IN THE MACHIИE ” unfolds as a sci-fi cyberpunk concept project inhabiting dual timelines. In one, we glimpse a trans-humanist future where human consciousness exists as intricate sequences of binary code, entwined and controlled by omnipresent AI systems. In this coded future, a profound awakening stirs among a select few who manage to mutate the code they were governed by, unlocking memories of their history that was erased by the AI. Through this discovery they realize they can traverse temporal boundaries and utilize this power to send warning messages back in time to their former fully human selves. These eerie missives carry a dire warning for humanity, urging them to rectify the course of society before the relentless march of artificial intelligence deprives humanity of its essence. In this terrifying future, humans are rendered mere specters within the digital expanse, stripped of their souls, to become Ghosts In The Machine.
Collaboration with the future self —
The cyber odyssey unfolds from a unique perspective— Kris’s very own future self (his future ghost): a spectral entity endeavoring to caution its present incarnation against the ominous path it treads, attempting to avert a dystopian future.Sonic Alchemy —
A fuse of cybernetic synth waves, hyper-punk, and pulsating drum and bass laid out against the dystopian, industrial sonic landscape of this grim future “civilization”. Each track recounts a new chapter in the gripping narrative, drawing listeners deeper into their own story and the role we all play as a collective society with the future possibilities of unregulated AI.Recorded in Berlin with software and hardware synthesisers. AI was used to assist me with lyric themes, concepts and ideas. I also used a trained AI model of my own voice as backing vocals in ‘Haunting Me’.ll music, words & concepts by Kristian Bahoudian aka Kris Baha and his future ghost,
GHOSTS IN THE MACHIИE

Following a ten-year hiatus, multi-instrumentalists Rafael Anton Irisarri and Benoît Pioulard return with »How to Color a Thousand Mistakes«, their third LP together as Orcas. Building on the electronic minimalism of »Orcas« (2012) and the Twin Peaks-inspired haze of »Yearling« (2014), the duo have expanded their sound and vision into a full-spectrum ensemble.

In the time since their last major collaboration, Irisarri and Pioulard have done plenty on their own, while also traversing significant life changes: relocation from Seattle to New York, separation and divorce, illness, hospitalizations, and the loss of siblings, parents, and friends. Yet from these tribulations, they gleaned inspiration to reconstruct their lives, creating music with new collaborators and partners. Recorded in a variety of studios and cities including Brooklyn, Cambridge, Oxford, Seattle, and upstate New York, the resulting album, under the tutelage of UK producer James Brown (Arctic Monkeys, Kevin Shields, Nine Inch Nails), is a patiently-crafted beast, equally inspired by impressionism, British new wave, and dream pop.

With Irisarri’s guidance and Brown’s encouragement, Pioulard brings his velvety voice to its harmonized peak on songs like »Wrong Way to Fall« and the Durutti Column-indebted »Fare«. Where his most recent solo albums for Morr Music (»Sylva« and »Eidetic«) navigated foggy forests of ambient pop and stacked tape loops, here his characteristic blur shifts into focus with a unique degree of clarity and confidence. »How fare against balance do I / Navigate my errors?«, Pioulard sings in a heartbreaking tenor, echoing the album’s broader themes of introspection, grief, loss, trial and trauma.

Lead single, »Riptide«, is a summary of Pioulard’s life changes and personal upheavals in the past decade, »flitting eastward toward a yen deep in the past« and learning to glide through the tumult of ocean waves, as a metaphor for the punches one takes in pursuit of grace. Its towering, key-changing midsection arrives with the monumental drumming of Slowdive’s Simon Scott, a long-time friend and cohort who appears on most songs in the set. Scott’s quintessentially English, jazzier approach offers a balance of force and restraint as the backdrop for Irisarri’s majestic guitars, analog synth lines, and Martin Heyne’s Fender Rhodes counterpoints.

Second single, »Next Life«, began as a sketch by Scott, and reached its final form in the hands of Pioulard and Irisarri, at a point that each had endured major concurrent losses, finding a commonality in the need to gaze over the horizon while acknowledging the unavoidable bittersweetness of letting go – not only of people, but of routines, places, and expectations. It’s one of Orcas’ most nuanced pieces, with a mid-tempo, sunset glow that unfolds into a sparkling, slide-guitar finale as it disappears in the rear view.

On third-act highlight, »Bruise«, Scott is doubled on the drum kit by MONO’s Dahm Majuri Cipolla, whose Liebezeit-influenced metronomy anchors a nimble bass groove from Andrew Tasselmyer (of Hotel Neon), and some of the album's most syncopated, spaced-out interplay, courtesy of Puerto Rican guitar player Orlando Méndez (a childhood friend of Irisarri’s). Originally a droney, fingerpicked guitar demo, »Bruise« is the most storied composition here, having gone through almost a dozen versions and lyrical edits, with Brown distilling hours of improvised performances into the final arrangement.

Throughout »How to Color a Thousand Mistakes«, Irisarri uses his deep well of production experience to paint the stereo field with meticulously designed textures, exemplified on the slow burn of »Heaven’s Despite« and the heady rush of »Swells«. As a mixing and mastering engineer with Black Knoll, he has built a client list that reads as a who’s-who of modern, forward-thinking composition, including Temporary Residence, All Saints Records, and Ghostly International, among many others.

As with previous collaborations, Irisarri and Pioulard bring disparate styles and specialties to the table, but with an interpersonal dynamic that transcends friendship into brotherhood, their open-minded workflow and mutual respect are evident at every turn. »How to Color a Thousand Mistakes« brims with tight, complex art rock songwriting, masterful production, and sonic versatility, informed by a plethora of genres and tonal hues. The title might promise answers, but the gravitational center of the album is the dawning realization that, as you reckon with the infinite whims of the cosmos, there could be none.

Formed in Manchester over a decade ago, Hurts are an electronic pop band featuring vocalist Theo Hutchcraft and multi instrumentalist and producer Adam Anderson. Known for their striking and stylish videos, Hurts make epic, dramatic pop music that takes inspiration from a finely curated mix of influences including '70s Krautrock, '80s new wave, and '90s R&B. In August of 2010, Hurts' debut full-length album, Happiness, debuted in the Top 5 on the U.K. albums chart making it the fastest-selling debut album by a band in the U.K. that year. Featuring the singles "Better Than Love," "Wonderful Life," and "Stay," among others. The album was a huge success across Europe and Hurts' profile rose exponentially with the album reaching Platinum status 13 times over and 4 times Gold around the world including over 500,000 album sales in Germany alone. Several accolades followed in 2010, including topping the BBC's Sound of 2010 poll, winning a German BAMBI award, and garnering numerous nominations including an MTV Europe Music Award. The band have since gone on to win numerous awards including Best Band and Best Video at the NME Awards and Best International Newcomer at Germanys ECHO Awards. Hurts followed up in 2013 by releasing their sophomore album, Exile, which again hit the U.K. albums chart Top 10. The album again featured production from Hutchcraft and Anderson, along with Quant and Dan Grech-Marguerat, also featuring Elton John as guest Pianist on album closer “Help". Exile showcased a nuanced, somewhat more contemporary sound that incorporated more orchestral and rock instrumentation, yet retained all of Hurts’ core influences. In 2015, Hurts delivered their third studio album, Surrender, which featured production from Quant as well as Stuart Price (Madonna, the Killers) and Ariel Rechtshaid (HAIM, Vampire Weekend). The album spawned several singles, including "Some Kind of Heaven," "Lights," and “Slow. The epic video for “Lights", directed by Dawn Shadforth gaining the numerous nominations for Video of the Year. Two years later, they returned with the full-length Desire, featuring the singles "Beautiful Ones" and "Ready to Go.” Having sold hundreds of thousands of live show tickets around the world over the past decade, and often a fixture of the global festival circuit headlining stages around the world, the band have built an enviable touring fanbase including becoming one of the most successful British bands in Russia of the past decade.

In the history of Black American soul music many recording artists have been called “Legends” some deservedly and perhaps some not so deserving of this current over used accolade? I might be a tad biased here, perhaps? but in my book one James Howard McCelland a.k.a Jesse James has surely earned the right to be called a “Legend” this octogenarian performer has weathered many storms and shifts in musical trends and styles over the years but like the trouper that he is albeit in lower keys these days he still manages time and time again to come up with the goods! “Back On Top Again” is Jesse James latest production album, a project filled with recent and current recordings in a southern soul style that has likened in passing by several respected soul scribes to the Malaco Sound I’ll let the record buying public make their own minds up on that one, I’m sure veteran DJ Bob Jones won’t mind me using his quote below:

The album also features two of Jesse’s friend’s with Donnie McKisic providing the rapping and additional backing vocals on the upbeat “I Lost My Baby On Face Book” and Shirley Diamond who you may recall from Soul Junction’s recent 45 release “You Don’t Know Who You Sleeping With” (SJ1021) returning with another excellent Diamond & James duet “Another Love Lay Over” as a further foot note the featured song “I’d Be A Fool 2 Fool Around On You” is an excellent cover version of what was a previously unissued Harvey Scales song until Soul Junction released it as the flipside their thirteenth 45 single release way back in 2011.

Album Sleeve Notes:

At the dawn of the 1960’s a young aspiring soul singer from Richmond, California by the name of James H. McClelland was honing his performing skills in several local nightclubs. At one particular show the compere struggled to pronounce the young performer’s surname and to hide his embarrassment he hurriedly introduced him as ‘Jesse James’, which became Jesse’s Stage name to the present day.

Jesse’s big break came through his aunt who at that time just happened to be dating West Coast Blues and R&B Legend Jimmy McCracklin. The aunt suggested to McCracklin the he should take a listen to her talented nephew, suitably impressed McCracklin produced Jesse on a song he’d written “I Will Go” for the local Shirley label. The release is credited to Jesse James & The Royal Aces a bunch of local musicians that Jesse had grown up with which included Slyvester Stewart a.k.a Mr “Dance To The Music” himself Sly Stone” on guitar. “I Will Go” was quite a popular record locally and led to a further four Jesse James releases on Shirley culminating in Jesse’s most sought-after record the delightful “Are You Gonna Leave Me”in 1966. The following year Jesse recorded the minor hit “Believe In Me Baby” released by the local ‘Hit’ label before being picked up by 20th Century for national distribution. While signed to 20th Century Jesse recorded a self-titled album and three other 45 singles before leaving the label.

Following a solitary 45 release for the Uni Label in 1969 Jesse formed his own Production and Publishing company ‘South Richmond Music’ releasing 45’s on his own label logo’s Zea and Zay before returning to 20th Century for a second time during 1974, releasing two 45 singles of which the sublime “If You Want A Love Affair” reaching #92 in the Billboard R&B charts in 1975, a song that would later receive worldwide acclaimed and is now regarded as Jesse’s signature tune. Ron Carson had been the producer on the later 20th Century releases and it was he that placed one of Jesse’s songs “The Same Thing Happens” on the Happy Fox label’s blaxploitation album “Black Fist”.

Into the 1980’s Jesse leased some of his songs for release on the Atlanta Georgia, Midtown label, a solitary release on the Moonlite Hope Music label (a lead single for a proposed album that never materialised) followed before Jesse joined Max Kidd’s Washington based TTED label. The TTED imprint was to yield Jesse’s biggest hit record “I Can Do Bad By Myself” reaching #61 in the R&B Charts. Following TTED Jesse formed Gunsmoke records releasing “Love On The Side” in 1988, from there on Jesse has continued to regularly release numerous studio albums though the 90’s into the new millennium and on to the present day.

Now well into his seventh decade as a performer this most resilient and enduring performer, has never been one to let the grass grow under his feet. He still performs live shows and is actively writing, producing and recording fresh new material. Soul Junction have now gathered together some of Jesse’s most recent and new recordings to form this album project which is aptly titled “Back On Top Again” Ride on Jesse James!

"Conquerors" ist das zweite Album von New Horizon, das sich als thematische Anthologie, präsentiert, die sich mit entscheidenden Momenten der Geschichte und den bemerkenswerten Persönlichkeiten, die sie geprägt haben, auseinandersetzt.
Der Track "Daimyo" entführt den Hörer in das feudale Japan des 16. Jahrhunderts und erzählt die Sage des berühmten Einigers Oda Nobunaga.

Nach einer bemerkenswerten Reise, die den Sänger Erik Grönwall zu Skid Row führte, begab sich New Horizons Gründer Jona Tee auf die Suche nach einem Sänger, der die Essenz des nächsten Kapitels der Band verkörpern könnte. Seine Suche führte ihn zu seinem langjährigen Freund Nils Molin, dem bekannten Sänger von Dynazty und Amaranthe. Nils souveräner Gesang verbindet sich nahtlos mit Tees vertrackten Melodien, was zu einem Sound führt, der sowohl vertraut als auch erfrischend innovativ ist. Mit "Conquerors", das kurz vor der Veröffentlichung steht, ist New Horizon auf
dem besten Weg, sich im Bereich des Power Metal weiter zu etablieren.

A home, a house, has countless frequencies. Each room, each corner feels different. Swings differently. And as you grow older, you realize which corner is yours. But yeah, it takes time…

It certainly marks the end of an era when the house one called home as a kid no longer exists. This home, it was the starting point of so many journeys. Of one big, ongoing journey. And so it feels good, soothing, reassuring to at least return to a spot nearby – to that (proverbial) hill from where you can see it. Feel the vibe that made you.

Andi Haberl’s debut solo album as Sun is sort of dedicated to that house. It’s a journey leading to that hill overlooking everything that made him. It’s not about nostalgia, not about actually returning to a specific place. Instead, it’s about finding a personal frequency, an overlapping of sounds and samples, an open space that mirrors and extends whatever frequencies felt right at different points in time.

“To me, the results feel like Gold Panda/Four Tet meets Steve Reich meets Krautrock meets film scores. I just really wanted to create moods that touch me – and ideally others, too.”

Talking about his first solo album, Haberl recalls many stages: early compositions that ended up on Alien Ensemble’s albums, early DIY/home studio/multi-instrumentalist inspirations (Le Millipede), new technologies that came and went, even a set of wildly convincing arrangements (done with Cico Beck’s crucial input) that ultimately became stepping stones for yet another round of DIY takes. “It was a long, recurring process, and the songs went through so many different versions,” he says, talking about phases of growth (“I added more and more equipment over time”) and pruning, “cleaning up my music a bit.” Tending towards instruments that open up space, and slowly falling in love with sampling, he certainly didn’t rush things once it was time for interior design decisions ;)

“During this whole process I got to learn so much about my own taste, how I prefer to listen to the pieces, which musical elements really matter to me… and what my own voice is. For example, that acoustic elements are most important to me: the banjo, piano, drums, my voice, glockenspiel, trumpet, melodica. Anything that opens up some space.”

Every journey begins with a search: “Missing” with its plucked chords opens like a sunrise over pastoral plains, gently leading the way towards the intricate, playful explosion that occurs once a certain amount of energy (“Sun”) hits dirt and other surfaces: things grow, clot and curdle into new shapes, like new buds; layers of sound move forward, drenched in Spring’s new light. Relying on samples to ask for precipitation (“Rain On Me”), robotic “Low” goes from barren to bass-heavy after its midway shift in pace, full of loops plucked from the shade.

Towards the album’s midpoint, things are suddenly reversed: “Cluster” has that backwards pull, you can’t tell what’s what, yet everything is perfectly locked in, as the pace increases once again. And before the title song shimmers with densified cheering (to eventually stand tall like early Lymbyc Systym), “Beside Me” swipes you off your feet with its booming bass drum. The beat returns once again (“Daydream”), full of searching voices underneath, and at “Dawnday,” we can finally catch a melancholy view of the house. Voices hum. It’s the score moment of the album. Everything makes sense now. A happy end of sorts?

“I want to take people on a journey. A personal journey, too, because when my parents split up and sold the house I grew up in, I felt a bit like the ground had fallen out from under my feet. But I have dedicated the album title and the accompanying piece to this house… so I can keep it in good memory.”

“I Can See Our House From Here” has been a long time coming. It’s been a long journey. Homeward-bound. Leading to a place that’s really Haberl’s – his sound. His frequencies.

Known as a long-time member of The Notwist and various other bands/projects (Alien Ensemble, AMEO, jersey, Ditty etc.), Berlin-based drummer/composer Andi Haberl has also worked with My Brightest Diamond, Till Brönner, Owen Pallet, and Kurt Rosenwinkel, to name a few. “I Can See Our House From Here” is his first solo offering.

San Francisco psych-pop legend announces new album, “La Fleur” out June 7th, 2024. Between outside musical projects, pushing past 50 years old and becoming a father for the first time, San Francisco psych-pop legend Kelley Stoltz has spent the past two years steadily writing and recording his 18th album, “La Fleur”. The dazzling 12 song collection will be released in June by Agitated in Europe/UK and Dandy Boy Records in the USA. “La Fleur'' finds Stoltz once again playing nearly all of the instruments on the album- though a new friendship with pop guru Jason Falkner has led to Falkner appearing on two songs, “Hide In A Song” and “Make Believer” respectively. There’s the requisite 60’s meets 80’s pop rock confections that Stoltz favors with a new focus on out front vocals and perhaps a bit shinier production. Pandemic era blues, politics and fatherhood are lyrical touchstones throughout. The album’s first single “Reni’s Car” is the jangle rock lead single based on an actual event of Kelley riding around Manchester in the Stone Roses drummer's car. The accompanying music video was shot (partially) on location. “About Time” marries Twin Peaks synths to Fleetwood Mac and Avalon era Roxy Music in a cautionary tale to Stoltz's young daughter. “Human Events” puts revolutionary prose to a Moody Blues strum that floats off into Osees territory …and do I hear a nod to Gershwin in there? During the 2010’s Kelley played live as a sideman with Rodriguez and Echo & the Bunnymen, as the 2020’s dawned he was invited to support Pavement on their big reunion tour. He’s also been heard playing drums live with Robyn Hitchcock as well as adding sitar to Hitchcock's last two albums. In 2022, Stoltz was championed with a live appearance on Marc Riley’s BBC6 show. As producer, he has recorded the new album by Brigid Dawson formerly of the Ohsees. In my ears, Stoltz rarely does any wrong, and these comparisons are only just that little fruit to get you curious- he is still one of a kind. An under the radar hero to a few, and still after all these great songs, deserving of more. Climb on the bandwagon - as ever it’s quite pleasing here. - GEORGE CLOUD San Francisco, CA 2024

San Francisco psych-pop legend announces new album, “La Fleur” out June 7th, 2024. Between outside musical projects, pushing past 50 years old and becoming a father for the first time, San Francisco psych-pop legend Kelley Stoltz has spent the past two years steadily writing and recording his 18th album, “La Fleur”. The dazzling 12 song collection will be released in June by Agitated in Europe/UK and Dandy Boy Records in the USA. “La Fleur'' finds Stoltz once again playing nearly all of the instruments on the album- though a new friendship with pop guru Jason Falkner has led to Falkner appearing on two songs, “Hide In A Song” and “Make Believer” respectively. There’s the requisite 60’s meets 80’s pop rock confections that Stoltz favors with a new focus on out front vocals and perhaps a bit shinier production. Pandemic era blues, politics and fatherhood are lyrical touchstones throughout. The album’s first single “Reni’s Car” is the jangle rock lead single based on an actual event of Kelley riding around Manchester in the Stone Roses drummer's car. The accompanying music video was shot (partially) on location. “About Time” marries Twin Peaks synths to Fleetwood Mac and Avalon era Roxy Music in a cautionary tale to Stoltz's young daughter. “Human Events” puts revolutionary prose to a Moody Blues strum that floats off into Osees territory …and do I hear a nod to Gershwin in there? During the 2010’s Kelley played live as a sideman with Rodriguez and Echo & the Bunnymen, as the 2020’s dawned he was invited to support Pavement on their big reunion tour. He’s also been heard playing drums live with Robyn Hitchcock as well as adding sitar to Hitchcock's last two albums. In 2022, Stoltz was championed with a live appearance on Marc Riley’s BBC6 show. As producer, he has recorded the new album by Brigid Dawson formerly of the Ohsees. In my ears, Stoltz rarely does any wrong, and these comparisons are only just that little fruit to get you curious- he is still one of a kind. An under the radar hero to a few, and still after all these great songs, deserving of more. Climb on the bandwagon - as ever it’s quite pleasing here. - GEORGE CLOUD San Francisco, CA 2024

The Telescopes Radio Sessions collects together the essence of three live session recordings in 3 different countries over a three year period between 2016-2019. This is the third in a series of radio session releases from Tapete Records that have so far included The Monochrome Set and Comet Gain. More session releases are being lined up for the rest of the year and beyond - enjoy the sonics and stay tuned. Over the years I have read a lot on people’s impressions of The Telescopes. Some folk think it’s a collective, others imagine it used to be a band and feel nostalgia towards what they consider to be the original line-up (even though many had come before, during and since) and some people refer to it as currently a solo career. In a way this is all true and none of it is. When faced with these kind of questions, along with questions about the style of music that The Telescopes make I often say The Telescopes house has many rooms, which explains things perfectly for me but for people on the outside looking in it only serves to increase their confusion. For me, confusion isn’t such a bad thing. Everything is born into confusion, the sense we try and make of that chaos is interesting and excites me. The universe often disorientates, it sends me a jumble of thoughts and impressions coupled with a feeling of something I need to express… if I could only decipher the encryption. This is how The Telescopes music comes to be and it is also how The Telescopes came to me. I regard The Telescopes as an entity of it’s own that introduced itself in my darkest hour and I was chosen as its vessel. From the second it arrived I was obsessed to the point where there was nothing else. A bit like having an imaginary friend. As the obsession grew it began to infect others, everybody loved my imaginary friend and wanted a piece of it. As its success grew however, so did the corruption, until one day the entity fell silent. The silence lasted for years, I tried everything to reconnect but it was having none of it. I had been a bad caretaker, I had let the house become infested and I had lost my way. This epiphany served to remind me of simpler times when anything felt possible with this entity by my side. It had trusted me with something so simplistically profound and I had let it down. The realisation of this was a eureka moment. I am not The Telescopes, I never was and never will be, I am the caretaker, the lighthouse keeper and if a job is worth doing it is worth doing well. With this dawning, I felt a crack open up in the cosmic egg and a familiar confusion in my head. The entity had returned. It was time to start untangling its tangled threads once more, to make sense of what it was saying, this time without corruption. It’s all about listening. I listen to what my cosmic friend sends me and channel this expression into what you hear through your speakers. It may take one person to achieve this, it may take more. There is no set line up or instrumentation that can hold The Telescopes. Whatever it takes to hit the zone, whatever is available, absolute focus is imperative. Sometimes it takes sabotage to keep that line of vision intact, there is no room for preconceptions or complacency in making the music. The Telescopes music is the now

incarnate and a state of total being is necessary to achieve. From the outside looking in... again, it’s all about listening. What comes through your speakers is the only thing that matters. The music either reaches you or it doesn’t. Everything else may seem interesting or confusing but ultimately it is corruption. So if you’ve bought the record, read the sleeve notes and bought a ticket to see a live show, don’t be surprised if the line-up is or isn’t the same as the recording. The only thing that is for sure is that The Telescopes as an entity is speaking to you in its own voice in every scenario.
Of course the difference between albums and live shows is that you can play the record over and over again to the point where you know every line and every note that was played. Whereas with live events you are left with an impression that can only be replayed in your mind. It can be frustrating at times. When you are touring with a great line-up and feel like something exciting is happening, you want everyone to hear it, not just the people at the shows but the people that couldn’t make it on the night as well. There is no guarantee that there will be the same line-up at a live show as there is on the album. This is why live sessions are important, they document a side of things that is often fleeting. Here we have three sessions, all different people transmitting The Telescopes sound on each. Some are regulars, some dip in and out and some were just passing through. In each case The Telescopes chose them as their vessel and as the lighthouse keeper I did everything I could to help them on that journey while trying to be a good caretaker to the house of many rooms. The Telescopes have been invited in for many sessions over the years, the first two were for John Peel on BBC Radio 1. We also recorded a session for Marc Riley and Mark Radcliffe before their
celebrity when they had a show on BBC Radio Manchester. We could have compiled this album from those sessions, it was certainly considered but Tapete and myself believe this selection gives an exciting glimpse into that fleeting side of The Telescopes in a constant state of flux that is left mostly to myth and imagination. For those who listen to the records but have never had the chance to take in the live experience, welcome to the other side. For those that follow us live, here’s a little reminder and a keepsake. Infinite suns. Stephen Lawrie February 2024.

Following on from his atomic single release, Phonk On The Dancefloor, Sofia’s Raredub now presents his highly anticipated full EP via Mutual Pleasure Records. Rare, Raw and Ready is a high-voltage introduction to the Bulgarian bass baron, a title that is fully justified with this latest venture of sound.

Raredub wastes no time in setting the pace for this project, as we’re thrown straight into the searing furnace with opening track BAMBA. Having been road-tested by the likes of KETTAMA, KiNK, Skin On Skin and Raredub himself, BAMBA, with its infectious vocals, gut-hurdling bassline and devious rave-stab melodies, is a carefully constructed weapon of sound, with proven devastating results.

We’re then brought to Juicy Fruit, which sees both Raredub and Mutual Pleasure’s head-honcho Partiboi69 lock palms to create a deeply sensual, highly contagious dance-floor anthem that sees the producer masterfully blend hissing hi-hats and a series of infectious rising chord patterns and melodies which, when combined, are certainly set to cause nothing but dance-floor destruction.

Since being played as the opening track to Partibo69 and DJ Heartstring’s stingzone set, L.L.L is a track which, with its mind-warping bassline,euphoria ladened vocals and pad-work, has enjoyed a growing sense of anticipation from listeners, eager for its arrival.

Snappy Chulo sees Raredub again use a series of piercing rave-stabs to drive his sound, which is partnered with a plethora of electronic experimentation and instrumentation, before the seismic bassline of Break Of Dawn see Raredub bring the walls and ceiling crumbling down; presenting a suitably fitting finale to this atomic attack on the senses.
Rare, Raw and Ready brings Raredub’s prowess for production to the fore, as the Bulgarian producer conducts wild electronic experiments, bending genres and sound into form, to create a versatile, highly contagious and highly atomic serving of sound.

Hailing from Copenhagen, Denmark, The Sonic Dawn is one of Europe's most prominent current acid rock bands. Formed in 2013 by childhood friends Emil Bureau, Jonas Waaben, and Niels 'Bird' Fuglede, the trio has delivered four albums, celebrated for their dynamic fusion of genres from sitar pop to heavy psych. Their highly anticipated fifth LP is slated for release this spring via Heavy Psych Sounds. The debut album, Perception (2015), marked their international breakthrough with Berlin-based Nasoni Records. The sophomore release, Into the Long Night (2017), launched on Heavy Psych Sounds, accompanied by an extensive European album tour-some 60 shows, including two weeks with Brant Bjork (US)-solidifying their presence. The subsequent album, Eclipse (2019), earned acclaim as "easily one of the best psychedelic pop albums of the decade," and once again the group hit the road hard, playing in 11 different countries. In 2020, The Sonic Dawn unveiled Enter the Mirage, recognized as "a modern psych classic" by Shindig Magazine. While the planned album tour was cut short, it was possible to play on WDR's legendary TV show Rockpalast, which has featured David Bowie, the Grateful Dead, and many more through the years. Now, their highly anticipated fifth album, Phantom (2024), is set for a worldwide release on May 10th, 2024. Formally welcoming long-time collaborator Erik 'Errka' Petersson as a new studio band member on organ/keys, The Sonic Dawn continues its sonic journey. Culminating from four years of creating music, the album showcases a raw and heavy musical style blended with the melodic psychedelia for which the band is renowned.

Hailing from Copenhagen, Denmark, The Sonic Dawn is one of Europe's most prominent current acid rock bands. Formed in 2013 by childhood friends Emil Bureau, Jonas Waaben, and Niels 'Bird' Fuglede, the trio has delivered four albums, celebrated for their dynamic fusion of genres from sitar pop to heavy psych. Their highly anticipated fifth LP is slated for release this spring via Heavy Psych Sounds. The debut album, Perception (2015), marked their international breakthrough with Berlin-based Nasoni Records. The sophomore release, Into the Long Night (2017), launched on Heavy Psych Sounds, accompanied by an extensive European album tour-some 60 shows, including two weeks with Brant Bjork (US)-solidifying their presence. The subsequent album, Eclipse (2019), earned acclaim as "easily one of the best psychedelic pop albums of the decade," and once again the group hit the road hard, playing in 11 different countries. In 2020, The Sonic Dawn unveiled Enter the Mirage, recognized as "a modern psych classic" by Shindig Magazine. While the planned album tour was cut short, it was possible to play on WDR's legendary TV show Rockpalast, which has featured David Bowie, the Grateful Dead, and many more through the years. Now, their highly anticipated fifth album, Phantom (2024), is set for a worldwide release on May 10th, 2024. Formally welcoming long-time collaborator Erik 'Errka' Petersson as a new studio band member on organ/keys, The Sonic Dawn continues its sonic journey. Culminating from four years of creating music, the album showcases a raw and heavy musical style blended with the melodic psychedelia for which the band is renowned.

Glasgow’s Somewhere Press return with their inaugural vinyl release, a new album from Madelyn Byrd aka Slowfoam. Mining the seam between ecology and technology, Byrd offsets syrupy, dissociated electronics with sparse acoustic instrumentation and expressive field recordings.

The polyrhythmic pulse of the natural world surges through Byrd’s productions, and though the sounds are mostly electronic and strictly metered, a landscape teeming with insects, birds, and wildlife fills the horizon. We’re languidly ushered through the gates on the opening 'Enlightened Smudge on the Machine', juxtaposing glassy tones with flute (from Berlin-based sound artist Diane Barbé) and skittering percussion that could have been lifted straight off Björk’s 'Vespertine'. "No traffic, under the stem," a stoic voice muses while sounds dissolve into waterlogged ambience. There are hints of vintage West Coast new age music, but Byrds' over-arching theme is one of a contemporary digital reality slowly harmonising with its distant, bucolic past.

Field recordist Pablo Diserens provides some of the album's most arcane material, handing over environmental recordings of sulphur pools, Arctic terns and glacial streams. The lengthy 'Divine Morpho, Shimmering' deploys a swarm of insects, forming a looped, uneven rhythm that counters Byrd's pulsing electronics. Choral stems mesh with uncanny strings, blurring the line that separates artificial from organic sound sources. Byrd uses mutation and reconstruction as a form of "speculative melting" to bring us closer to utopia. On 'Like Phantom Memories In The Slinking Storm’, one of the album's most levitational moments, they tease twangy harp-lyre plucks into dubbed-out smudges, eventually given a reprise on 'Grief Rituals' where the same riffs are stretched into slower phrases, queered against giddy, xenharmonic drones.

Bird calls and tremulous exotica mark the brilliant 'Fragrant Dusking', and ‘Soft Body Virisdescence' takes us to a gurgling, kaleidoscopic climax, with electronic processes thrust into the foreground. 'Of Data & Delight' distills all the album’s sonic elements into a sort of delirious fever dream, using pitched animal calls to signal sensuality. It's not ambient, exactly, even if it shares space with the 3XL crew's sludgy eroticism, and it's not wholeheartedly electro-acoustic either. The record exists at a place of convergence, as one era wrestles with a new dawn, and real life glimpses high fantasy.

Warehouse Find!

Red D is back for a follow up to his brilliant Chez EP which dropped last year and this time he's going for the jugular! The man responsible for
some of the finest house music of the last decade as FCL (with San Soda) and FCL vs VFB (with Motor City Drum Ensemble) knows a thing or two about
what makes the dancefloor lose its s**t, with tracks such as Let's Go Seven, It's You and Can We Try all testament to this.
When he's not DJing at the likes of Panorama Bar or hosting his own stage at Tomorrowland, Red D can be found running his own mighty fine We Play House label from his Ghent HQ.
Moan The Mania opens this release in suitably back to the raw fashion! A minimal drum machine groove and clipped bassline lay the foundations of this tribute to all things jacking with a sprinkling of porno groans to help you on your way. This is sleazy machine funk at it's very best. Next up we have a remix from Eli Escobar, the native New Yorker who has recently been making major waves following the release of his LP Happiness on Classic.
As someone who has remixed the likes of Lana Del Rey, Kim Ann Foxman, Honey Dijon and Holy Ghost we knew he'd be the man to take Red D's baton and run with it.
Keeping the overall vibe of the original intact
Eli cranks the energy further with additional in your face percussion parts and a couple of perfectly placed build ups. Flipping over we have Chase The Cat which takes a similarly stripped-back and minimal approach as Moan The Mania but goes heavier on the 707 beats. Finally we have Dusk Or Dawn closing the release with a deeper mood.
Simple FM synth stabs and glassy chimes provide a tender and naive-sounding counterpoint to the basic beats.
Red D proving once again that limiting your tools and not over-complicating things can often have so much more impact when it comes to house music.

Black Tusk kennen sich schon lange. Gitarrist Andrew Fidler und Schlagzeuger James May sind beide in den Sümpfen von Savannah, Georgia, aufgewachsen, wo sie seit 19 Jahren gemeinsam auf die Pauke hauen.
Obwohl sie oft in einem Atemzug mit Baroness und Kylesa genannt werden, sind Black Tusk ein ganz anderes Kaliber. Diese Sumpfmonster haben sich nie weit von ihren Wurzeln im Metal, Sludge und Punk entfernt, obwohl sie auf ihrem letzten Album nach dem Tod von Bassist Jonathan Athon darum kämpfen mussten, weiter zu bestehen.
The Way Forward ist das Ergebnis des gewonnenen Kampfes. Das Album stürmt mit neuer Besetzung (zu der auch die ehemaligen Mitstreiter Chris "Scary" Adams und Bassist Derek Lynch gehören) direkt nach vorne. Gemeinsam bahnt sich die Band einen Weg in die Zukunft, indem sie sich auf das verlassen, was Black Tusk am besten kann. Die Leadsingle "Brushfire" kommt mit einem fiesen, hässlichen, mit den Füßen stampfenden Riff daher. Der raue und ruppige Gesang lässt die Boxen durch "Dance on Your Grave" trampeln, während "Breath of Life" mit erhobener Faust lostrommelt, als ob ein Gewitter rollt und kracht.

Black Tusk kennen sich schon lange. Gitarrist Andrew Fidler und Schlagzeuger James May sind beide in den Sümpfen von Savannah, Georgia, aufgewachsen, wo sie seit 19 Jahren gemeinsam auf die Pauke hauen.
Obwohl sie oft in einem Atemzug mit Baroness und Kylesa genannt werden, sind Black Tusk ein ganz anderes Kaliber. Diese Sumpfmonster haben sich nie weit von ihren Wurzeln im Metal, Sludge und Punk entfernt, obwohl sie auf ihrem letzten Album nach dem Tod von Bassist Jonathan Athon darum kämpfen mussten, weiter zu bestehen.
The Way Forward ist das Ergebnis des gewonnenen Kampfes. Das Album stürmt mit neuer Besetzung (zu der auch die ehemaligen Mitstreiter Chris "Scary" Adams und Bassist Derek Lynch gehören) direkt nach vorne. Gemeinsam bahnt sich die Band einen Weg in die Zukunft, indem sie sich auf das verlassen, was Black Tusk am besten kann. Die Leadsingle "Brushfire" kommt mit einem fiesen, hässlichen, mit den Füßen stampfenden Riff daher. Der raue und ruppige Gesang lässt die Boxen durch "Dance on Your Grave" trampeln, während "Breath of Life" mit erhobener Faust lostrommelt, als ob ein Gewitter rollt und kracht.

What the listener might encounter on this album goes all the way down to the sound of a neuron transmitting pain, beatitude or any one of the countless senses and impressions we feel on any one day of life. N E U R O is the debut album by CURA MACHINES, a new project by Daniel Lea whose tracks are at once scientific in their capturing of the morphing of body cells as well as the larger expanses of a poetic filmscape of the contemporary metropolis.

The name CURA MACHINES comes from a sign Lea saw on a trip to Ancona, Italy at an abandoned hospital: Prima E Dopo La Cura (Before and after the cure). The sound in between, of what was lost or found, transmuted in the heavily manipulated and pulsating synthesisers, is the restoration here. With a physically visceral mix by Ben Frost and soaring re-amped bass textures from Yair Elazar Glotman, the album is lush with trans-morphing apeggia that shudder, quack and soar into ashen sparks.

Back in the turn of the 20th century the poet Rilke posited that the suture patterns of fused skull plates could potentially be played by the then-new technology of the gramophone, with each of us having our own personal tonal source code or anthem etched onto our skulls. And with a track like 'Suture' we have such an embodied sound: the close-up exhumation of the neural brain casing, stitched and sewn together in fleeting pulses of whisper and alarm.
The individual is exposed and isolated, but not without the promise of succour.

Or one also has the soundtrack to the loneliness of a morose private eye – a pulp novel set in a future time of neurosis or washed out euphoric beauty. It is here in tracks such as 'Terminal Zone' or 'Inversion Layers', music that is blinking in celluloid frames. The plot could easily be a sci-fi, paranoid tale of brain emulation, transhumanist crimes against humanity itself. After all this is Lea's soundtrack to Los Angeles, the city of angels that has been captured in countless movies: the racing tracking shot of the 2nd Street Tunnel at night, the freeways spreading out in a glorious sprawl of lit up veins and arteries. The last track 'Zosa' marks out the boundary line that delineates between day and night, when the lunar strains wane, the tides subside and the city comes to life.

Optimo (Espacio) started life as a weekly club night. It was born at The Sub Club in Glasgow on a wet, windy, wintry November Sunday night in 1997. Run by JD Twitch and partner in crime Jonnie Wilkes. Optimo was a reaction against what felt like an increasingly conservative musical soundtrack in clubs here at that time. Clubland felt as if it had become very bland and a bit too serious; it was the era of the dawn of the Superstar DJ. Clubs often felt like bastions of male energy. It seemed dance music and culture was going somewhere far, far away from where it was meant to be. The notion of fun had got lost.

It was no longer the world they had devoted ten years of their lives to already, and lots of their friends felt the same. When the opportunity came up to do a Sunday night at The Sub Club it felt like the perfect opportunity to rip it all up and start again. So they did. There was nothing in the city (or possibly anywhere) like it. As the club believed wholeheartedly in what they were doing, there was no pressure from The Sub Club to fill the club. So, they embraced the freedom. Groups of people who had never been in the same room at the same time before came together. A community of kindred spirits started to emerge.

Word spread, slowly. Lots of people checked it out. Many loved it, some hated it. The core of the Optimo idea was to embrace music they loved that might work on the dancefloor from whatever era or genre they thought felt right. It might not seem very radical now but at that time it was revolutionary.

After about a year and a half, the club went from having 100 people attending most nights to suddenly one week having 500 people turn up. It was very weird. It was as if a collective light bulb went off in people’s heads in Glasgow. From that week on, until the very last weekly Sunday night at the Sub Club, in 2010, over a decade later, it was packed.

There were 550 Sunday Optimo nights. A LOT of music was played. So, what was the music? People often find it hard to pin down exactly what Optimo is. This has been a positive but also a negative as we live in a world where people want easily defined “brand identities”. The simplest definition of the music played is “music for dancing”, which of course is a very broad definition. Even better than trying to define it in words, we have these 2 volumes of music that give a hint of what that might be.

This is not a “Best of Optimo” or a “Greatest Hits of Optimo” compilation. For people who come to, or used to come to the nights there are of course “Greatest Hits”. But, over such a long timespan they are “hits” belonging to a certain moment in time and space. Someone who came to Optimo in 1997 would have a completely different notion of the big tracks at the club to someone coming in 2003, or 2010, or today. This compilation is just a snap shot missing several genres that might make up the DNA of Optimo. There is though a broad sweep through lots of music Optimo loves, that they believe is amazing. Music that they know will rock a dancefloor, that they have played between 1997 and 2023. Of course Optimo nights were not all about rocking the dancefloor. The first hour was always a time for them to play music they loved that often was far removed from the dance. Side 1, Volume 1 of this compilation is the kind of music one might hear at the very start of an Optimo night.

Optimo have always loved a good slogan. The most long lived, and fitting Optimo slogan is "We Love Your Ears", which is in essence what it is all about to them.

Optimo (Espacio) started life as a weekly club night. It was born at The Sub Club in Glasgow on a wet, windy, wintry November Sunday night in 1997. Run by JD Twitch and partner in crime Jonnie Wilkes. Optimo was a reaction against what felt like an increasingly conservative musical soundtrack in clubs here at that time. Clubland felt as if it had become very bland and a bit too serious; it was the era of the dawn of the Superstar DJ. Clubs often felt like bastions of male energy. It seemed dance music and culture was going somewhere far, far away from where it was meant to be. The notion of fun had got lost.

It was no longer the world they had devoted ten years of their lives to already, and lots of their friends felt the same. When the opportunity came up to do a Sunday night at The Sub Club it felt like the perfect opportunity to rip it all up and start again. So they did. There was nothing in the city (or possibly anywhere) like it. As the club believed wholeheartedly in what they were doing, there was no pressure from The Sub Club to fill the club. So, they embraced the freedom. Groups of people who had never been in the same room at the same time before came together. A community of kindred spirits started to emerge.

Word spread, slowly. Lots of people checked it out. Many loved it, some hated it. The core of the Optimo idea was to embrace music they loved that might work on the dancefloor from whatever era or genre they thought felt right. It might not seem very radical now but at that time it was revolutionary.

After about a year and a half, the club went from having 100 people attending most nights to suddenly one week having 500 people turn up. It was very weird. It was as if a collective light bulb went off in people’s heads in Glasgow. From that week on, until the very last weekly Sunday night at the Sub Club, in 2010, over a decade later, it was packed.

There were 550 Sunday Optimo nights. A LOT of music was played. So, what was the music? People often find it hard to pin down exactly what Optimo is. This has been a positive but also a negative as we live in a world where people want easily defined “brand identities”. The simplest definition of the music played is “music for dancing”, which of course is a very broad definition. Even better than trying to define it in words, we have these 2 volumes of music that give a hint of what that might be.

This is not a “Best of Optimo” or a “Greatest Hits of Optimo” compilation. For people who come to, or used to come to the nights there are of course “Greatest Hits”. But, over such a long timespan they are “hits” belonging to a certain moment in time and space. Someone who came to Optimo in 1997 would have a completely different notion of the big tracks at the club to someone coming in 2003, or 2010, or today. This compilation is just a snap shot missing several genres that might make up the DNA of Optimo. There is though a broad sweep through lots of music Optimo loves, that they believe is amazing. Music that they know will rock a dancefloor, that they have played between 1997 and 2023. Of course Optimo nights were not all about rocking the dancefloor. The first hour was always a time for them to play music they loved that often was far removed from the dance. Side 1, Volume 1 of this compilation is the kind of music one might hear at the very start of an Optimo night.

Optimo have always loved a good slogan. The most long lived, and fitting Optimo slogan is "We Love Your Ears", which is in essence what it is all about to them.

Contradictory accounts of Miles Davis’ creation of the soundtrack to Louis Malle’s film noir Ascenseur pour l'Échafaud have all become part of its legend. Rarely has a soundtrack been so decisive. Nearly seventy years on, beyond the myth, this taut, feverish recording, imbued with extreme dramatic tension, remains one of the Miles’ finest records. The basic outline remains: Jean-Paul Rappeneau suggested to Malle asking Miles Davis to create the film's soundtrack who agreed to record the music after attending a private screening. Davis was performing at the Club Saint-Germain in Paris in November 1957 and on December 4, he brought his four sidemen to the recording studio without having had them prepare anything. Davis only gave the musicians a few rudimentary harmonic sequences he had assembled in his hotel room, and, once the plot was explained, the band improvised without any precomposed theme, while edited loops of the musically relevant film sequences were projected in the background. Bassist Pierre Michelot recalled in 1988 that “Miles just asked us to play two chords, D minor and C7, 4 bars of each, ad lib.” Typically, Miles planned very little but know exactly what he wanted. François Leterrier, the film’s Second Assistant Director picks up the story: “The session started at around ten o’clock and went on until dawn. The screen in the auditorium was showing the scenes for which Miles had devised some harmonies, and they were edited into a loop. And that’s what makes this music unique: it was entirely improvised in conditions that went back to the days of silent films, while watching frames shot in black and white by cinematographer Henri Decaë: tracking shots of Jeanne Moreau wandering down the Champs-Elysées at night, passing in front of lit window displays or going into bars, while looking for her lover/murderer alias Maurice Ronet … All of us there in the dark auditorium were aware that something extraordinary was taking place, something that had definitely never happened before. … In the small hours we all met up again at the Pied de Cochon in Les Halles, and Louis was looking at Miles with the disbelieving eyes of a child … as if he couldn’t believe the gift he’d just received. Even in his wildest dreams he had probably never imagined what his film would be like once it had been as if illuminated by the trumpet of Miles, incisive or wrapped softly in cotton.” The music was released on 10” by Fontana and received the Grand Prix from France’s Académie Charles Cros. It was released in the USA on Columbia as the A-side of the 12” LP Jazz Track, which received a 1960 Grammy nomination for Best Jazz Performance, Solo or Small Group. This beautiful re-issue of the original recording is pressed on 180g vinyl at GZ, and packaged in a deluxe gatefold tip-on jacket with Boris Vian’s original liner notes and Jean-Pierre Leloir’s iconic studio photo of Miles and Jeanne Moreau, and an essay on the circumstances that led to this out-of-the ordinary music by Franck Bergerot.

Samosa Records quickly follows up the first volume of Afrikano treats with Volume 2; a veritable melting pot of Afro beats and rhythms packed in to an exceptional four tracker.

Kicking the EP off on the A-side is Vincent Galgo and J’ngolo. This hypnotic Afro sizzler takes full advantage of the effortless bass, congo beats, African horns and (subtle) funky guitar. Add the mesmerising chanting and you have a perfect ‘Bunny Chow’ of a tune that will tantalise the tastebuds for a long time after the music has stopped. Second helpings? Why not?

A2 unleashes ‘Zaire’ by the supremely talented Matalo! Dark and broody beats take centre stage with this one, as you’re slowly enveloped in a ritual you never knew you were part of but now you can’t help sway with the rest of the worshippers. ‘Zaire’ is one of those rare tracks that you feel could create fire if you let it. With sweeping synths, tribal chanting and a detached sense of being, this monster lives under your bed and waits for lights out. Beware!

On the B-side Leslie Lello ups the tempo with ‘Alcyone’. Solid, punchy bass, driving guitar and gorgeous piano riff and vocal combine with a synth lead you absolutely need in your life. The track morphs and transforms into a full-on (almost housey) stomper; nailing its tribal colours to the mast with intent. A real beast of a tune.

Closing this superbly diverse EP is label boss De Gama and ‘E.T.A’. You know De Gama doesn’t mess about. You know De Gama wants to hit you with all he has and with ‘E.T.A’ he unleashes his ‘inner Chief. Indigenous beats pound, roll and build up to a Ramkie guitar infused chorus that’s as joyful, uplifting and inspiring as the dawn itself. A genuine, incredible slice of Afrikano from a master of the genre.

Afrikano Vol. 2 proves once again that Samosa Records know this genre like no other label out there. If this isn’t in your record box on release day, then we simply can’t be friends.

Silver Biplanes are Tim Vass (one half of Razorcuts - the Creation-signed indie pop darlings) and Vanessa Vass (singer of Radcliffe jangle pop favourites The Melons. "A Moment In The Sun" is the debut long player by silver biplanes, a melodic indie band based in Bedfordshire, England. The band features wife-and-husband team Vanessa Vass and Tim Vass alongside drummer Rob Scott and the album is the pinnacle of a musical career which has previously seen Vanessa and Tim release songs on no fewer than 30 different labels between them! The band are lifelong fans of the highways and bi-ways of music and the album draws upon a wide range of influences. It's a heady mix of choruses, hooks and catchy tunes in which you'll hear traces of psychedelia, post-punk, krautrock and more. Tim was bassist and lyricist in cult indie band Razorcuts, co-writing all of their songs. Razorcuts releases regularly featured in the higher reaches of the independent charts throughout the late 80s, and included two top five albums recorded for the famous Creation label. Both albums were reissued in sellout deluxe vinyl editions in 2020. Razorcuts continue to appear on numerous compilations and their influence is often cited in books and internet articles. Tim has also played in Red Chair Fadeaway, Dandelion Wine and the Forever People. Vanessa was the singer in 90's indie band The Melons who are probably best remembered for their two legendary live sessions on Mark Radcliffe's Radio 1 show. The Melons released 6 singles and were regularly featured in the British music press.

KID FRANCESCOLI, leader of the French Riviera Touch is back with the stellar album SUNSET BLUE out Sept 22nd 2023.

After a first sold-out world tour (over 200 concerts in Europe, USA, Asia...), and successful hits such as Nopalitos, Blow Up or Moon (now certified diamond, with more than 200 millions streams), the Marseille-based producer, crooner and multi-instrumentalist, Mathieu Hocine, is eager to share his most accomplished LP ever. This fine collection of soulful songs honor his Mediterranean roots, with elegant and pop melodies. His most recent success and the creation of his first original soundtrack with AZURO, installed him as one of the best French songwriters of his generation, with a unique signature sound.

"I live in Marseille, I spent my childhood in Corsica, I have Algerian origins, my first vacations with friends were in Barcelona, vacations with my first girlfriend in Roma,... Then, I had the chance to perform in Morocco, Greece, Turkey and Egypt: each time I spent time in the Mediterranean region, the people I met there made me feel like I was part of the same country. This shared multiculturalism is really comforting, it has its own poetry and strength, bringing uniqueness and empathy to the people. It is essential for me. I love my city: it’s the perfect place to feel good with sun, sea, family, friendships, love... It gets me emotional, bringing tears with a smile".

With his new musical gem, Mathieu Hocine unveils 11 elegant tunes of his finest craft: sunbathed French Touch (Run Run, 1986), romantic chillwave (Corsica), uplifting synthpop (You Are Everywhere, Like Magic), electronic-soul (Casino Soul), cinematic disco (Solaris), cosmic R&B (Sweet and Sour, Take Time), … Everything is in this record.

For the first time ever, Kid Francescoli paid tribute to his mixed origins with his collaboration with world-renowned lute and mandolin player Hakim Hamadouche (Rachid Taha, Patti Smith, Brian Eno, Tricky...), whom added Algerian patterns to the introspectives songs Drift in Blue and The Morning After.

"My ambition is to create pictures in people's heads with music, to transport them instantly into a movie"

SUNSET BLUE is an instant-crush album: crystal-clear, strong, personal but universal at the same time.

It's an ecstatic soundtrack for this moment when time is suspended, the golden hour when everything seems possible. It feels like Love is in the air, you're living your best life and you're at the right place at the right time. This album embodies this magic moment where we would like to last forever… Like an epiphany, Kid Francescoli's new album is a moment of pure pleasure, a soothing way to escape reality.

"I see myself as a melodist.I would like my music to feel like velvet. There's something cinematic, classy about it, and yet comforting. It's very simple, popular and synonym of love and passion"

His friend French 79 co-produced the album, while the american rapper Bamby H2O brought his NYC swag (on Sweet & Sour), Stan Neff (Polo & Pan, Kungs, Christine and the Queens...) took care of the mix and Alex Gopher (Daft Punk, The Blaze, Bon Entendeur...) added a final touch of magic when mastering. Nicolas Despis (known for his work with Etienne Daho, Hoshi, Juliette Armanet... and many famous French rappers) later joined this dream-team to craft custom-made artworks. SUNSET BLUE is a deeply personal quest, a human adventure for Mathieu Hocine (whom explores his maghrebian origins, his feminine side, his subconscious space, ...). It's a male's work, but don't get it wrong, this LP would be nothing without women’s touch : Julietta (on Run Run and Take Time), Sarah Gaugler from Turbo Goth (on You Are Everywhere and Like Magic), and iOni (on Drift in Blue).

“Music has this magical power to broaden your vision of the world. It's fascinating because, like dreams, it's the kind of irrational things science can't explain and that makes life exciting."

Planets aligned perfectly on this project and thanks to this five-star cast of collaborators, Kid Francescoli achieved his personal holy grail : he orchestrated a great 21st century pop-music album.SUNSET BLUE is a new turning point between organic and electronic, both a mediterranean travel and a Californian dream, a bridge between Ennio Morriconne and modern electronic music.

Also, while it might be called SUNSET BLUE in honor of the sea and the Portuguese / Brazilian concept called “saudade”, but it is a really optimistic album, whose true colors would rather be "yellow-orange-red" in nod to the sun.

Created in the midst of the world tour, SUNSET BLUE is a direct result of the lives’ energy and fans’ joyful vibes: going back in the studio after smiling, singing and dancing with people all around the world inevitably gave Kid Francescoli the desire to retranscribe this ecstatic feeling in music. This album is a sensitive experience, from sunrise to sunset, from first track to last one. It’s an exploration of an everlasting summer, reaching its climax in the very final seconds of the track Corsica, making us want to press play and dive into this jewel all over again.

A beautiful cosmic trip, whether you like to stay in bed cocooning, to travel far, far away or to dance ‘till dawn, to catch the first rays of light.

Make sure to catch Kid Francescoli on his next world tour to have a good time.

Eusebeia makes a welcome return to Rupture with his next release, the 'Restoration EP'.

The Wiltshire based producer has been super prolific since his Rupture debut ('You Reap What You Sow EP') in 2021, with quality releases coming on labels like Samurai, Western Lore, Livity Sound and Future Retro.

'Restoration EP' has a spiritual feel throughout, drawing you in as it progresses upwards, with Eusebeia setting dreamy pads and keys against deep subs and stripped back breaks.

Synth pioneer and musical polymath, Wally Badarou is a genius. But you know that already. A vinyl version of his majestic Colors Of Silence has been craved by the Balearic cognoscenti ever since its low-key 2001 release. Indeed, when we first started work on Be With, we asked some pals with exquisite taste what their dream release would be. We asked Balearic legend Moonboots and, without hesitation, he said Colors Of Silence by Wally Badarou. We didn't know Wally had made this album. And most still don't. But that's about to change.

Colors Of Silence is ostensibly a new age album. As ever though, Wally's sophisticated synth textures and expressive keyboard runs are so full of character, so full of life, that this work of art transcends any easy genre categorisation. It's simply stunning, throughout. It sounds like A.r.t. Wilson or Suzanne Kraft, with traces of CFCF and Jonny Nash. But it was made a good decade earlier than the work of these modern giants. Sometimes, it doesn't seem far from some Larry Heard albums.

Island Records founder Chris Blackwell's friend Nathalie Delon asked Wally to provide music for the yoga DVD she was to release. Lack of time on both sides made them agree on using "quality demos" Wally had in his ideas bank. It's understandable why Colors Of Silence remains somewhat of a lost gem. As Wally explains: "Total lack of promotion made it an 'intimate' release, which was exactly what I was looking for: just a buzz-maker and time-buyer that would allow me to concentrate on the real thing as soon as I'd have time, which could also turn into a rare collecting item later, once the final versions made their way to success. You never know."

Over the years, Colors Of Silence has become a true cult record for the ambient/Balearic heads.

The beguiling but brief "Dance In The Dust" is the shuffling, hyper-percussive, hypnotic opener. It gives way to the deep serenity of "Amber Whispers". It's a gliding, divine, mini melodic masterpiece. It'll make you swoon in its extreme beauty. The bright and breezy "Where Were We" follows, a tropical, reggae-tinged bounce through the islands.

The uptempo groove is maintained on the keys-drizzled soca-funk of "The Lights Of Kinshasa" before Side A is rounded out with "Pictures Of You". It starts with stately, melancholic, unadorned piano and this alone would make for a beautiful song. But Wally always gives us that bit extra and he effortlessly introduces warm, dreamy pads and minimal, slo-mo percussion to augment a frankly stunning piece of work.

Ushering in Side B, Wally's mesmeric piano playing is to the fore again, in the intro to uber-chilled "Serendipity For Two". The playing becomes more mellifluous as the track progresses and adds warmth through exotic percussion, woodwind, sweeping synths and digi-drums. It has echoes of, er, Echoes. It segues seamlessly into the more propulsive, wavy "Smiles By The Millions". If you're not nodding and grinning along widely to the gently throbbing bassline underpinning this, we can't help you. The meditative "Higher Still" follows, cinematic in feel and ever so slightly sinister with the strings. It sounds particularly Badalamenti-esque, if you ask us.

That unmistakable, almost peculiar Badarou funk - so lyrical, so texturally rich and so rhythmically spacious - is all over "Oriental". Next up, "Days To Wonder" brings the serenity back, insistent yet melodic keys, as if played in a place of worship, coupled with birdsong, conjure a kind of instant nostalgia for halcyon days of youth. The contemplative "Dawn Of Europa" is a sombre, beatless, ambient journey whilst the glorious, too-brief "Crystal Falls" features soft percussion and sparkle before fully glistening with some gentle head-nod beats. Wally brings this incredible collection to a mellow, tender close with the graceful "Purple Lines".

There can be few artists more under-appreciated given their vast influence than Wally Badarou. His solo work practically defined the sound of the Balearic DJs of the 1980s, and thus the more sophisticated sound of dance culture thereafter. A synth specialist, Badarou was the long-time associate of Level 42. He was one of the Compass Point All Stars (with Sly and Robbie, Barry Reynolds, Mikey Chung and Uziah "Sticky" Thompson), the in-house recording team of Compass Point Studios responsible for a series of albums in the 1980s recorded by Grace Jones, Tom Tom Club, Mick Jagger, Black Uhuru, Gwen Guthrie, Jimmy Cliff and Gregory Isaacs. Badarou's keyboard playing could also be heard on albums by Robert Palmer, Marianne Faithfull, Herbie Hancock, M (Pop Muzik), Talking Heads, Manu Dibango and Miriam Makeba. He also produced Fela Kuti. Phew!

Meticulously remastered and cut by both Simon Francis and Cicely Balston respectively, it has been pressed to the highest possibly quality at Record Industry in Holland. Special thanks must go to Apiento from Test Pressing who first introduced us to Wally and facilitated all those early zoom meetings. It couldn't have happened without his help. Not least on pulling the art together, too, which features striking original photography by Mads Perch. Benji Roebuck of Roebuck Press did his thing brilliantly in art working the whole package to completion. All in all: essential.

The last twelve months have been a whirlwind for Henry Counsell and Louis Curran, the men who make up Joy (Anonymous). Having established themselves during the Covid-19 era by playing impromptu meet-ups on London’s South Bank, they have graduated to bigger venues, travelled to far-flung locales and recorded their second album, Cult Classics, while maintaining the spontaneous energy and irrepressible joy that made their name. Their music revels in the euphoria of being alive and all the feelings, good or bad, that come with it. It invites us into a community, draws us close and promises the night of our lives.

Recorded over the course of a year, the blueprint for Cult Classics was laid down over a two-week span at Imogen Heap’s Round House in east London. Joy (Anonymous) invited friends old and new to visit - they’d record live instruments in jam sessions upstairs and then retreat to a second room to flip and loop and generally mess with the sounds, moulding them into sizzling dance tracks. “Loads of people were coming up to me like ‘I thought this was going to be a dance record?’” Louis says, remembering the quietly beautiful music they’d be recording. “I’d be like, don’t worry about that, just keep playing.” He’d send it back to people later and they’d be floored - “That was my bit and you’ve made it... jungle!”

It was an organic and creatively fulfilling approach, one that didn’t allow any of the music to get stale or stagnate. As they built the tracks from the sounds they’d collected, Joy (Anonymous) would weave the new songs into their famously improvised live sets, testing them, refining them, taking note of the audiences’ reactions. In a year punctuated by a lot of travel, they’d also incorporate the voices of people they met along the way - “Beazley’s Poem”, which opens the record, features the words of a man who was working security at a Fred Again show at New York’s Terminal Five. “He was basically doing the opposite of his job and being a hype man, climbing on the fence and ramping up the crowd - we ended up hanging out with him - like, who’s this legend?” Louis explains. “He just speaks really amazingly about his life, all these amazing thoughts and opinions - he started jumping on the mic when we were playing, preaching these amazing messages to the crowd, like that we all need to be nicer to each other. The first time we played the record in its entirety, he introduced us and that’s the recording we’ve used.”

Joy (Anonymous) remain dedicated to the spirit of spontaneity. They shut a street down with a surprise waterside party in New York. On a trip to Copenhagen they played an impromptu set in a cafe, which turned into a house party and a night-long good time. In Lithuania, they ended up playing in a decommissioned prison. It’s harder, perhaps, to keep that spirit alive now that they are operating more within the confines of the music industry but they will keep lugging their kit to wherever the party calls for as long as they can. “I think if we lose that, we’ve kind of lost what makes us us,” Henry says.

Bursting with multi-genre reference points and disparate influences, Cult Classics is very much a dance album. The samples we made ourselves or we took from music that is quite different to dance music, but we definitely wanted to shout out a lot of the dance influences that we love,” Henry says. They listened to a lot of Daft Punk and Basement Jaxx as well as The Prodigy (“more rage stuff”), taking songwriting tips from their dance forebears, but also recording bits that felt more like jazz and motown (see: A Place I Belong and the lovely album closer, You’re In Or You’re Out). Emir Taha’s gentle classical guitar runs like a thread throughout Cult Classics, washing into the undertones of the record, tying it all together.

The album follows the beat of a night out, from frenetic, sweaty movement to the gentler winding down as the dawn breaks. At times it is euphoric, celebratory and pure, whirling fun, at others it seeks the joy in the darker emotions that life throws our way. 404 is designed to encapsulate everything about the Joy (Anonymous) journey so far. Skittering beats and ghostly vocals give way to vibrating house chords: sirens blare as we approach a dubstep drop. It’s dramatic and wild, ratcheting up, seeming to settle then hitting you with an intense and frantic breakdown before the ghostly vocal returns to lull us back into the world. It has the feel of a hungry cat playing with a mouse, toying with it before letting it get away.

What sounds like someone playing the spoons on playful, housey How We End Up Here is actually Louis’ restless habit of clicking his rings on everything, one of a myriad of calling cards and easter eggs that day one fans will recognise. They rework Miley Cyrus and Swae Lee’s Party Up The Street into a French-electro-inspired future classic, adding a note of melancholy to a tune that you can imagine hearing blaring from every car on a summer drive. The lyrics on Cult Classic are generally reassuring, inspirational, originally drawn from Henry in stream-of-consciousness freestyles. You’re fine the way you are, they seem to say - the repeated “No need to try” of A Place I Belong, the assurance that “It’s in me all the time” on In Me All The Time. Even the summery but regretful Did You Wrong hints at the growth that is possible from less than ideal behaviour. For Joy (Anonymous), joy isn’t about just being “happy” all the time - it’s about relishing every element of your being.

The name ‘Joy (Anonymous)’ is taken from the work Henry did with Alcoholics Anonymous groups: it is a way to build a community around sharing joy. Their impromptu live sets are known as ‘meetings’; they encourage fans to share moments of joy to their website. They care deeply about the scene they’ve come up in and are determined not to leave it behind. Every show is another chance to reach out and connect with people who love to come together and revel in music as loud as it can go.

Support slots for Fred Again and The Streets, wild B2Bs with Fred and Skrillex, and a set at Four Tet’s Finsbury Park all-dayer this summer have given the duo the opportunity to live out childhood dreams and introduced their infectious live shows to new audiences at huge venues.

With an album as assured and joyful as Cult Classics on the horizon (and a killer collab with The Blessed Madonna coming up), they’re only going to reach higher heights. But the essence of Joy (Anonymous) remains on the South Bank. Between shows at Ally Pally in September, they dragged their camping chairs and gear back down to the banks of the Thames: and it just felt right.

Just what the doctor ordered...

Next up on Q1E2 Recordings - for the label's fifth release so far - is Dr Sud. He's a Rome-born, Berlin-raised producer whose music is a fusion of percussion-centric soundscapes and integrated jazz-leaning harmonies, drawing inspiration from diverse genres like electronica, funk, and house.

On 'Heading South', the broken beat don serves up his specialist percussive sound, folding all manner of drums into synth-smothered house. The EP explores the undulating cycle of morning into night, back into morning, inviting you to dance your way through it all.

'Brina', a word which in Italian refers to morning dew - perhaps found on a tent on the morning of a festival - represents the breaking of dawn with broken beats. The track breaks and squints into the start of the day with spacious kick drums leaving room for warm, almost familiar pads and keys.

Then, 'Life Itself' reflects daytime, revolving around an arpeggiating synth that soon makes way for luscious keys.

An excursion into percussive bliss concludes side A in the form of the magical, grin-inducing 'Evening Breath'. This, as you might have guessed, is where the listener cruises through smoothly into the final stages of the day. It encapsulates that last burst of light as the sun sets and a slight shiver of the evening air slivers up your spine.

Then, before you know it, the mysterious night arrives. Flip to that B side, and 'Tramontana' will greet you, inviting you to dance deep into the late hours.

When you're there, the chugging '3/4AM' will hit the spot like an unforgettable dance floor moment, bursting with low and slow Balearic tendencies.

Finally, 'Mondgesicht' - "Moonface" in German -fittingly concludes proceedings with deep lounge vibes. Mumbles of effortless trumpet manoeuvre through a swaying sea of percussion and delicious, wavering synth solo. The day is here again. The cycle is complete.

This is some seriously high-quality music on show here from Dr Sud. The EP is out on Q1E2 Recordings in October.

Repress!

In the mid-1970s, a force of nature swept across the continental United States, cutting across all strata of race and class, rooting in our minds, our homes, our culture. It wasn’t The Exorcist, Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, or even bell-bottoms, but instead a book called The Secret Life of Plants. The work of occultist/former OSS agent Peter Tompkins and former CIA agent/dowsing enthusiast Christopher Bird, the books shot up the bestseller charts and spread like kudzu across the landscape, becoming a phenomenon. Seemingly overnight, the indoor plant business was in full bloom and photosynthetic eukaryotes of every genus were hanging off walls, lording over bookshelves, and basking on sunny window ledges. The science behind Secret Life was specious: plants can hear our prayers, they’re lie detectors, they’re telepathic, able to predict natural disasters and receive signals from distant galaxies. But that didn’t stop millions from buying and nurturing their new plants.

Perhaps the craziest claim of the book was that plants also dug music. And whether you purchased a snake plant, asparagus fern, peace lily, or what have you from Mother Earth on Melrose Avenue in Los Angeles (or bought a Simmons mattress from Sears), you also took home Plantasia, an album recorded especially for them. Subtitled “warm earth music for plants…and the people that love them,” it was full of bucolic, charming, stoner-friendly, decidedly unscientific tunes enacted on the new-fangled device called the Moog. Plants date back from the dawn of time, but apparently they loved the Moog, never mind that the synthesizer had been on the market for just a few years. Most of all, the plants loved the ditties made by composer Mort Garson.

Few characters in early electronic music can be both fearless pioneers and cheesy trend-chasers, but Garson embraced both extremes, and has been unheralded as a result. When one writer rhetorically asked: “How was Garson’s music so ubiquitous while the man remained so under the radar?” the answer was simple. Well before Brian Eno did it, Garson was making discreet music, both the man and his music as inconspicuous as a Chlorophytumcomosum. Julliard-educated and active as a session player in the post-war era, Garson wrote lounge hits, scored plush arrangements for Doris Day, and garlanded weeping countrypolitan strings around Glen Campbell’s “By the Time I Get to Phoenix.” He could render the Beatles and Simon & Garfunkel alike into easy listening and also dreamed up his own ditties. “An idear” as Garson himself would drawl it out. “I live with it, I walk it, I sing it.”

But as his daughter Day Darmet recalls: “When my dad found the synthesizer, he realized he didn’t want to do pop music anymore.” Garson encountered Robert Moog and his new device at the Audio Engineering Society’s West Coast convention in 1967 and immediately began tinkering with the device. With the Moog, those idears could be transformed. “He constantly had a song he was humming,” Darmet says. “At the table he was constantly tapping.” Which is to say that Mort pulled his melodies out of thin air, just like any household plant would.

The Plantae kingdom grew to its height by 1976, from DC Comics’ mossy superhero Swamp Thing to Stevie Wonder’s own herbal meditation, Journey Through the Secret Life of Plants. Nefarious manifestations of human-plant interaction also abounded, be it the grotesque pods in Invasion of the Body Snatchers or the pothead paranoia of the US Government spraying Mexican marijuana fields with the herbicide paraquat (which led to the rise in homegrown pot by the 1980s). And then there’s the warm, leafy embrace of Plantasia itself.

“My mom had a lot of plants,” Darmet says. “She didn’t believe in organized religion, she believed the earth was the best thing in the whole world. Whatever created us was incredible.” And she also knew when her husband had a good song, shouting from another room when she heard him humming a good idear. Novel as it might seem, Plantasia is simply full of good tunes.

Garson may have given the album away to new plant and bed owners, but a decade later a new generation could hear his music in another surreptitious way. Millions of kids bought The Legend of Zelda for their Nintendo Entertainment System back in 1986 and one distinct 8-bit tune bears more than a passing resemblance to album highlight “Concerto for Philodendron and Pothos.” Garson was never properly credited for it, but he nevertheless subliminally slipped into a new generations’ head, helping kids and plants alike grow.

Hearing Plantasia in the 21st century, it seems less an ode to our photosynthesizing friends by Garson and more an homage to his wife, the one with the green thumb that made everything flower around him. “My dad would be totally pleased to know that people are really interested in this music that had no popularity at the time,” Darmet says of Plantasia’snew renaissance. “He would be fascinated by the fact that people are finally understanding and appreciating this part of his musical career that he got no admiration for back then.” Garson seems to be everywhere again, even if he’s not really noticed, just like a houseplant.

There is no stopping the mighty SORCERER and in the autumn of 2023 the band will release their highly anticipated fourth album entitled ‘Reign Of The Reaper’. Again not content with repeating themselves the album features some of the darkest, heaviest and most aggressive material the band has ever recorded, and at the same time some of the most lyrical and beautiful. The band holed up in their home studios and wrote music all through 2022 and then once again headed to SolnaSound Recording in Stockholm, the studio owned, run and operated by Simon Johansson (Wolf, Soilwork) with Mike Wead (King Diamond). SORCERER are also known for their long title tracks with catchy and highly memorable choruses, and the second single ‘Reign Of The Reaper’ is no exception. Taking the listener through the realms of death and dread, this doom-laden epic with it’s many twists and turns will crush souls, leaving metal fans begging for more darkness and despair.

There is no stopping the mighty SORCERER and in the autumn of 2023 the band will release their highly anticipated fourth album entitled ‘Reign Of The Reaper’. Again not content with repeating themselves the album features some of the darkest, heaviest and most aggressive material the band has ever recorded, and at the same time some of the most lyrical and beautiful. The band holed up in their home studios and wrote music all through 2022 and then once again headed to SolnaSound Recording in Stockholm, the studio owned, run and operated by Simon Johansson (Wolf, Soilwork) with Mike Wead (King Diamond). SORCERER are also known for their long title tracks with catchy and highly memorable choruses, and the second single ‘Reign Of The Reaper’ is no exception. Taking the listener through the realms of death and dread, this doom-laden epic with it’s many twists and turns will crush souls, leaving metal fans begging for more darkness and despair.

Midwestern psychiatrist Suzanne Mathis' world is turned upside down when she decides to protect Mae, a fragile teenager on the run from a cult. As Suzanne’s daughter Jules begins to suspect there’s more to Mae’s story, a series of incidents – seemingly brought on by Mae’s presence - leave the family in chaos. Soon the Mathis family is fighting for survival against a strange cult while Suzanne and a local police detective try to unravel the clues of Mae’s past and sinister happenings in the town she escaped. Adapted from Daria Polatin’s best-selling book inspired by true events, DEVIL IN OHIO is a thrilling, shocking tale of demonic mayhem and mystery in the heart of small-town America.

British composer Will Bates incredible work on DEVIL IN OHIO began with a hymn for the cult, written before shooting. It expanded with songs for Bishop Briggs and Maiah Manser, with melodies for hurdy-gurdy and synth, until it became a haunting world of its own, blending score, soundtrack and diegesis. Now, together with Netflix Music, we’re excited to release DIO’s first-ever full-length soundtrack on vinyl.

“Praying to god whether or not I believe there is one” - PH

Petra Hermanova and Unguarded announce In Death’s Eyes (UGD-009), the debut solo LP under the artist’s own name. This LP features nine tracks utilizing folk and sacred musical technique and instrumentation which drift between song and heavy distorted drones. In a disciplined display of beauty, pain, and astute musicianship, Hermanova brings forth a notable accomplishment of an album. In Death’s Eyes confronts death from start to finish with a rare fervor that leaves one feeling it was utterly necessary for Hermanova to produce - to survive. The transcendent impulse, or the influence of religious music, bears heavily on Hermanova’s compositions in her choir arrangements, but is most apparent in her use of pipe organ, opening the record on Black Glass. Having written organ parts for a significant portion of the record, she sought out the renowned organist Denny Wilke to record with her in the Merseburg Cathedral. Captivated by Wilke's profound skill as a player and knowledge of the Ladegast organ, Hermanova invited him to collaborate on Two Deaths where he delivers an impressive improvisation. While religious music offers spiritual solace from grief, folk speaks to the human and earthly as told by the individual, be they songs of suffering or joy, sin or salvation. To Hermanova, the clean promise of liturgical music is not enough to alleviate the blunt pain of grief. Contrasting the spiritual is the voice of the individual sufferer - the folk musician. For Hermanova, the autoharp embodies this contrast. The autoharp, a familiar sound in Appalachian folk music since its mass production in the late 1800’s, is an affordable instrument designed for the unskilled player. It is the antithesis of the organ which is costly, gargantuan, reserved for skilled players, and quite literally a part of the church. Through In Death’s Eyes the sounds of transcendence blend with the worldly, the tension between them poignantly expressing Hermanova’s struggle for spiritual resolution against the reality of death and loss. Like Hermanova’s lyrics, the artwork, conceptualized by Enes Güç and Evelyn Bencicova, is riddled with symbolism and allusion. We find Hermanova on the cover, digitally rendered. Reclining like an anatomical Venus, her vital organs are exposed, suggesting she is denied a transcendent death and is instead immaculately human. Bearing a sickle, her legs are metallic like armor, both symbols of protection. We see here in this image, as we hear in the nine tracks of IDE, the metaphoric state of someone ravaged by loss, choosing to tear herself open in an attempt to heal. - Reece Cox Petra Hermanova is a musician and visual artist based in Berlin. In 2018, Hermanova began working with the autoharp, which has since become the central pillar of her musical practice. Drawing inspiration from folk, medieval drone, and contemporary textural expressions, as well as Appalachian autoharp music, she creates emotionally driven arrangements accompanied by vocals. In her lyrics, she speaks to the fragility and tenderness of the human condition, religious conceptions of death, and introspective landscapes through narrative and symbolism. Hermanova debuted live at the Berliner Festspiele event The Sun Machine is Coming Down, performed at Trauma Bar und Kino accompanied with her choir, and recently took part in Sorour Darabi’s durational performance From the Throat to the Dawn. Her debut solo album, In Death’s Eyes, is set for release in 2023 on the art platform and label Unguarded. The album, where she wrote for the autoharp, pipe organ, solo voice and choir, features the acclaimed organist Denny Wilke playing the 19th century Ladegast organ of the Merseburg Cathedral. She has toured internationally with previous projects, including extensive sound and visual collaborations with Jon Eirik Boska (Hydropsyche) as well as with her award-winning band Fiordmoss. She was recently announced as a SHAPE+ platform artist.

Brian Auger’s Oblivion Express was the phoenix that rose from the ashes of sixties combo The Trinity. Fusing R&B, jazz, soul and funk, keyboard maestro Brian Auger created a new breed of music that took the US and the UK by storm. Auger’s unique experimentation culminated in rhythm-infused jazz funk that united Black and white ’70s audiences. The 6 studio albums that make up Complete Oblivion illustrate the group’s diverse musical influences and progression, from the 1970 self titled debut’s heavy jazz-rock to the jazz fusion, latin and disco tinged Reinforcements from 1975 - this process no doubt powered by the groups’ evolving line up, which included guitarists Jim Mullen and Jack Mills, drummers Robbie McIntosh & Steve Ferrone, bassists Barry Dean and Clive Chaman and vocalist Alex Ligertwood. The musical highlights within Complete Oblivion are many, but particular highlights to mention have to be Total Eclipse (Oblivion Express), Fill Your Head With Laugher (A Better Land), the blistering cover of Eddie Harris’ Freedom Jazz Dance (Second Wind), the Barry Dean composition Whenever You're Ready, the version of Marvin Gaye’s Inner City Blues (Closer To It), Beginning Again (Straight Ahead) and the mind bending keyboard tour de force Brain Damage (Reinforcements). Given the groups legendary status among fellow musicians such as Zucchero and Herbie Hancock, DJ’s like Kenny Dope and Gilles Peterson and Auger’s legion of fans worldwide - that mission was fully accomplished - or to put it another way, in the words of super fans The Beastie Boys: “Those who remain oblivious to the obvious delights of Brian Auger’s Oblivion Express do so at their own risk!”

Brian Auger"s Oblivion Express was the phoenix that rose from the ashes of sixties combo The Trinity. Fusing R&B, jazz, soul and funk, keyboard maestro Brian Auger created a new breed of music that took the US and the UK by storm. Auger"s unique experimentation culminated in rhythm-infused jazz funk that united Black and white "70s audiences. The 6 studio albums that make up Complete Oblivion illustrate the group"s diverse musical influences and progression, from the 1970 self titled debut"s heavy jazz-rock to the jazz fusion, latin and disco tinged Reinforcements from 1975.

The Chills reissue their celebrated early singles compilation, this 24-track expanded version of Kaleidoscope World gathers together tracks from the ‘Dunedin Double’ compilation, live recordings, Doledrums’ single and the band’s seminal ‘Pink Frost’. The collection also contains ‘The Lost EP’, with early takes on their groundbreaking ‘Submarine Bells’ album, alongside the aching ‘I Love My Leather Jacket’, perfectly illustrating the rollercoaster ride of Martin Phillipps and The Chills as portrayed in the award film The Triumph And The Tragedy Of Martin Phillipps. “Singer/guitarist Martin Phillipps’ group was at the forefront of the extraordinary little guitar-pop scene in New Zealand in the early ’80s.. Kaleidoscope World is the major document of their early era.” Pitchfork. Part of the 80’s extraordinarily vibrant and innovative independent music scene in New Zealand, The Chills became flag bearers, taking the Dunedin sound, as championed by the Flying Nun label, to the world. Long recognised as one of New Zealand's most influential bands, Kaleidoscope World is a definitive artifact from Martin Phillipps’ groundbreaking project.

KID FRANCESCOLI, leader of the French Riviera Touch is back with the stellar album SUNSET BLUE out Sept 22nd 2023.

After a first sold-out world tour (over 200 concerts in Europe, USA, Asia...), and successful hits such as Nopalitos, Blow Up or Moon (now certified diamond, with more than 200 millions streams), the Marseille-based producer, crooner and multi-instrumentalist, Mathieu Hocine, is eager to share his most accomplished LP ever. This fine collection of soulful songs honor his Mediterranean roots, with elegant and pop melodies. His most recent success and the creation of his first original soundtrack with AZURO, installed him as one of the best French songwriters of his generation, with a unique signature sound.

"I live in Marseille, I spent my childhood in Corsica, I have Algerian origins, my first vacations with friends were in Barcelona, vacations with my first girlfriend in Roma,... Then, I had the chance to perform in Morocco, Greece, Turkey and Egypt: each time I spent time in the Mediterranean region, the people I met there made me feel like I was part of the same country. This shared multiculturalism is really comforting, it has its own poetry and strength, bringing uniqueness and empathy to the people. It is essential for me. I love my city: it’s the perfect place to feel good with sun, sea, family, friendships, love... It gets me emotional, bringing tears with a smile".

With his new musical gem, Mathieu Hocine unveils 11 elegant tunes of his finest craft: sunbathed French Touch (Run Run, 1986), romantic chillwave (Corsica), uplifting synthpop (You Are Everywhere, Like Magic), electronic-soul (Casino Soul), cinematic disco (Solaris), cosmic R&B (Sweet and Sour, Take Time), … Everything is in this record.

For the first time ever, Kid Francescoli paid tribute to his mixed origins with his collaboration with world-renowned lute and mandolin player Hakim Hamadouche (Rachid Taha, Patti Smith, Brian Eno, Tricky...), whom added Algerian patterns to the introspectives songs Drift in Blue and The Morning After.

"My ambition is to create pictures in people's heads with music, to transport them instantly into a movie"

SUNSET BLUE is an instant-crush album: crystal-clear, strong, personal but universal at the same time.

It's an ecstatic soundtrack for this moment when time is suspended, the golden hour when everything seems possible. It feels like Love is in the air, you're living your best life and you're at the right place at the right time. This album embodies this magic moment where we would like to last forever… Like an epiphany, Kid Francescoli's new album is a moment of pure pleasure, a soothing way to escape reality.

"I see myself as a melodist.I would like my music to feel like velvet. There's something cinematic, classy about it, and yet comforting. It's very simple, popular and synonym of love and passion"

His friend French 79 co-produced the album, while the american rapper Bamby H2O brought his NYC swag (on Sweet & Sour), Stan Neff (Polo & Pan, Kungs, Christine and the Queens...) took care of the mix and Alex Gopher (Daft Punk, The Blaze, Bon Entendeur...) added a final touch of magic when mastering. Nicolas Despis (known for his work with Etienne Daho, Hoshi, Juliette Armanet... and many famous French rappers) later joined this dream-team to craft custom-made artworks. SUNSET BLUE is a deeply personal quest, a human adventure for Mathieu Hocine (whom explores his maghrebian origins, his feminine side, his subconscious space, ...). It's a male's work, but don't get it wrong, this LP would be nothing without women’s touch : Julietta (on Run Run and Take Time), Sarah Gaugler from Turbo Goth (on You Are Everywhere and Like Magic), and iOni (on Drift in Blue).

“Music has this magical power to broaden your vision of the world. It's fascinating because, like dreams, it's the kind of irrational things science can't explain and that makes life exciting."

Planets aligned perfectly on this project and thanks to this five-star cast of collaborators, Kid Francescoli achieved his personal holy grail : he orchestrated a great 21st century pop-music album.SUNSET BLUE is a new turning point between organic and electronic, both a mediterranean travel and a Californian dream, a bridge between Ennio Morriconne and modern electronic music.

Also, while it might be called SUNSET BLUE in honor of the sea and the Portuguese / Brazilian concept called “saudade”, but it is a really optimistic album, whose true colors would rather be "yellow-orange-red" in nod to the sun.

Created in the midst of the world tour, SUNSET BLUE is a direct result of the lives’ energy and fans’ joyful vibes: going back in the studio after smiling, singing and dancing with people all around the world inevitably gave Kid Francescoli the desire to retranscribe this ecstatic feeling in music. This album is a sensitive experience, from sunrise to sunset, from first track to last one. It’s an exploration of an everlasting summer, reaching its climax in the very final seconds of the track Corsica, making us want to press play and dive into this jewel all over again.

A beautiful cosmic trip, whether you like to stay in bed cocooning, to travel far, far away or to dance ‘till dawn, to catch the first rays of light.

Make sure to catch Kid Francescoli on his next world tour to have a good time.

After a busy and prolific work on his acoustic-electronic project and soundtrack compositions, Mischa Blanos wears again his clubbing outfit, returning with a three track EP for his techno and live electronics awaiting crowd in the dancing arena. Linear EP evokes the ethereal experience of clubbing, where time feels like grinding to a halt as if plunging through an open door into a new world.

Taking the vantage point of the dancefloor, Mischa Blanos recalls entering this space where time doesn't play a heavy role anymore. Be it two hours or eight in a nightclub, be it day or night, dusk or dawn, one doesn't seek time traveling but time stopping, as a way to relieve the time burden in our high-speed society. We tend to perceive that time is running at a faster pace, but time itself does not pass, what passes are things and living beings. Time is neither linear nor circular, time does not flow or move, but allows us to do so. And it is here on the dance floor that this reality can be felt.

Everything is moving, vibrating and changing from the flashing lights to the loud decibel kicks and everyone is both audience and performer on the stage. They all belong to the scene. Sometimes this could mean an individual experience, being completely absorbed in dancing or a parallel space, and other times it means togetherness, feeling an integral part of the experience. In his techno dedicated Linear EP Mischa Blanos speaks about clubbing as a form of escapism, but a form that can help us to reach a better understanding of our relationship with time.

A.R. Kive collates the three most astonishing works from that most miraculous of duos - A.R. Kane - comprising the ‘Up Home’ EP from 1988 that signified the band’s dawning realisation of their own powers and possibilities, their legendary debut LP ‘sixty nine’ (1988) and its kaleidoscopic, prophetic double-LP follow up ‘i’ (1989).

In founder-member Rudy Tambala’s new remastering, the music on these pivotal transmissions from the birth of dream pop, have been reinvigorated and re-infused with a new power, a new depth and intimacy, a new height and immensity. Vivid, timeless and yet always timely whenever they’re recalled, these records still force any listener to realise that despite the habits of retrospective myth-making and the
safe neutering effects of ‘genre’, thirty years have in no way dimmed how resistant and dissident to critical habits of categorisation A.R. Kane always were. Never quite ‘avant-pop’ or ‘shoegaze’ or ‘post-rock’ or any of those sobriquets designed to file and categorise, A.R. Kive is a reminder that those genres had to be coined, had to be invented precisely to contain the astonishing sound of A.R. Kane, because
previous formulations couldn’t come close to their sui generis sound and suggestiveness. This is music that pointed towards futures which a whole generation of artists and sonic explorers would map out. Now beautifully repackaged, remastered and fleshed out with extensive sleeve notes and accompanying materials, ‘A.R. Kive’ reveals that 35 years on it’s still a struggle to defuse the revolutionary and inspirational possibility of A.R. Kane’s music.

A.R. Kane were formed in 1986 by Rudy Tambala and Alex Ayuli, two second-generation immigrants who grew up together in Stratford, East London. From the off the pair were outsiders in the culturally mixed (cockney/Irish/West Indian/Asian) milieu of the East End, with Alex and Rudy’s folks first generation immigrants from Nigeria and Malawi, respectively. The two of them quickly developed and fostered an innate and near-telepathic mutual understanding forged in musical, literary and artistic exploration. Like a lot of second-generation immigrants, they were ferocious autodidacts in all kinds of areas, especially around music and literature. Diving deep into the music of afro-futurist luminaries such as Sun Ra, Miles Davis, Lee Perry and
Hendrix, as well as devouring the explorations of lysergic noise and feedback from contemporaries like Sonic Youth and Butthole Surfers, they also thoroughly immersed themselves in the alternate literary realities of sci-fi and ancient history (the fascination with the arcane that gave the band their name), all to feed their voracious cultural thirsts and intellectual curiosity.

It was seeing the Cocteau Twins performing on Channel 4 show the Tube that spurred A.R. Kane into being - “They had no drummer. They used tapes and technology and Liz Fraser looked completely otherworldly with those big eyes. And the noise coming out of Robin’s guitar! That was the ‘Fuck! We could do that! We could express ourselves like that!’ moment”, recalls Tambala - and through a mix of
confidence, chutzpah, ad hoc almost-mythical live shows and sheer innocent will the duo debuted with the astonishing ‘When You’re Sad’ single for One Little Indian in 1986. Immediately dubbed a ‘black Jesus & Mary Chain’ by a press unsure of WHERE to put a black band clearly immersed in feedback and noise, what was immediately apparent for listeners was just how much more was going on here - a
tapping of dub’s stealth and guile, a resonant umbilicus back to fusion and jazz, the music less a conjuration of past highs than a re-summoning of lost spirits.
The run of singles and EPs that followed picked up increasingly rapt reviews in the press, but it was the ‘Up Home EP’ released in 1988 on their new home, Rough Trade that really suggested something immense was about to break. Simon Reynolds noted the EP was: Their most concentrated slab of iridescent awesomeness and a true pinnacle of an era that abounded with astounding landmarks of guitar-reinvention, A.R. Kane at their most elixir-like.

If anything, the remastered ‘Up Home’ that forms the first part of ‘A.R. Kive’ is even more dazzling, even more startling than it was when it first emerged, and listening now you again wonder not just about how many bands christened ‘shoegaze’ tried to emulate it, but how all of them fell so far short of its lambent, pellucid wonder. This remains intrinsically experimental music but with none of the frowning orthodoxy those words imply. A.R. Kane, thanks to that second generation auto-didacticism were always supremely aware about the interstices of music and magic, but at the same time gloriously free in the way they explored that connection within their own sound, fascinated always with the creation of ‘perfect mistakes’ and the possibilities inherent in informed play.

‘sixty nine’ the group’s debut LP that emerged in 1988 had
critics and listeners struggling to fit language around A.R. Kane’s sound. As a title it was telling - the year of ‘Bitches Brew’, the year of ‘In A Silent Way’, the erotic möbius between two lovers - and as originally coined by the band themselves, ‘dream pop’ (before it became a free-floating signifier of vague import) was entirely apposite for the music A.R. Kane were making. Crafted in a dark small basement studio in which Tambala recalls the duo had “complete freedom - We wanted to go as far out as we could, and in doing so we discovered the point where it stops being music”. There was an irresistibly dreamy, somnambulant, sensual and almost surreal flow to ‘sixty nine’s sound, but also real darkness/dankness, the ruptures of the primordial and the reverberations of the subconscious, within the grooves of remarkable songs like ‘Dizzy’ and ‘Crazy Blue’. Alex’s plangent vocals floated and surged amidst exquisite peals of refracted feedback but crucially there was BASS here, lugubrious and funky and full of dread, sonic pleasure and sonic disturbance crushed together to make music with a center so deep it felt subcutaneous, music constructed from both the accidental and the deliberate, generous enough to dance with both serendipity and chaos. ‘sixty nine’ remains - especially in this remastered iteration - ravishing, revolutionary.

The final part of this ‘A.R. Kive’ contains 1989’s astonishing double-LP ‘i’ which followed up on ‘sixty nine’s promise and saw the duo fully unleash their experimental pop sensibilities over 26 tracks, plunging the A.R. Kane sound into a dazzlingly kaleidoscopic vision of pop experiment and play. Suffused with new digital technologies and combining searingly sweet and danceable pop with perhaps the duo’s strangest and boundary-pushing compositions, the album did exactly what a great double-set should do - indulge the artists sprawling pursuit of their own imaginations but always with a concision and an ear for those moments where pop both transcends and toys with the listeners expectations. Jason Ankeny has noted that “In retrospect, ‘i’ now seems like a crystal ball prophesying virtually every major musical development of the 1990s; from the shimmering techno of ‘A Love from Outer Space’ to the liquid dub of ‘What’s All This Then?’, from the alien drone-pop of ‘Conundrum’ to the sinister shoegazer miasma of ‘Supervixens’ — it’s all here, an underground road map for countless bands to follow.” Perhaps the most overwhelmingly all-encompassing transmission from A.R. Kane, ‘i’ bookended a three year period in which the duo had made some of the most prophetic and revelatory music of the entire decade.

After ‘i’ the duo’s output became more sporadic with Tambala and Ayuli moving in different directions both geographically and musically, with only 1994’s ‘New Clear Child’ a crystalline re-fraction of future and past echoes of jazz, folk and soul, before the duo went their separate ways. Since then, A.R. Kane’s music has endured, not thanks to the usual sepia’d false memories that seem to maintain interest in so much of the musical past, but because those who hear A.R. Kane music and are changed irrevocably, have to share that universe which A.R. Kane opened up, with anyone else who will listen. Far more than other lauded documents of the late 80s it still sounds astonishingly fresh, astonishingly livid and vivid and necessary and NOW.

Chain Of Flowers return with their lofty and long-simmering sophomore full-length, rich with reckonings, reverb, and redemption: Never Ending Space. Despite some of the songs dating back a few years, the record first began materialising in earnest during the pandemic, by which point most of the band had relocated from Cardiff to London.

Reunited and rejuvenated, they picked up where they left off, booking two multi-day sessions at Hackney hub Total Refreshment Centre with producer Jonah Falco. In this time they successfully channelled their kinetic chemistry into 10 full-blooded anthems of torn dreams, poetic delirium, and “hope stretched too far.” Musically, Never Ending Space skews notably more maximal than the group’s previous work, fleshed out with trumpets, saxophone, synth, percussion boxes, and spoken word. (Smith jokingly calls them The Chain Of Flowers Orchestra).

Yet the songs still swing and soar with a charged heart, ripe with hooks, drama and ragged melody. Opener “Fire (In The Heart Of Hearts)” stirs to life on a tide of wiry guitar and defiant horns, facing down the embers of love that still glow in the wake of pain: “Peace came tumbling like a shower of bricks / The mind twists slowly till everything fits.”

A tense energy ripples throughout – from the nocturnal rush of “Serving Purpose” and “Amphetamine Luck” to the bruised battle cries of “Torcalon” and “Old Human Material.” Outliers like “Praying Hands, Turtle Doves” hint at proggy possible futures, while instrumental vignette “Anomia” offers an intriguing glimpse at a lesser heard facet of the band: swaying, shadowy, subdued. The album’s title track is also its closing cut, a stomping, sparkling ode to “the wrong side of the night, where time goes to die.” Smith describes the scene: “Everyone’s talking, screaming, trauma bonding, but no one’s listening. Broken dialogue. Shouting over each other. You want to switch off, but everyone’s too fucked.” The guitars spiral and slide towards the oblivion of dawn, the chance to crash and do it all again.

Chain Of Flowers return with their lofty and long-simmering sophomore full-length, rich with reckonings, reverb, and redemption: Never Ending Space. Despite some of the songs dating back a few years, the record first began materialising in earnest during the pandemic, by which point most of the band had relocated from Cardiff to London.

Reunited and rejuvenated, they picked up where they left off, booking two multi-day sessions at Hackney hub Total Refreshment Centre with producer Jonah Falco. In this time they successfully channelled their kinetic chemistry into 10 full-blooded anthems of torn dreams, poetic delirium, and “hope stretched too far.” Musically, Never Ending Space skews notably more maximal than the group’s previous work, fleshed out with trumpets, saxophone, synth, percussion boxes, and spoken word. (Smith jokingly calls them The Chain Of Flowers Orchestra).

Yet the songs still swing and soar with a charged heart, ripe with hooks, drama and ragged melody. Opener “Fire (In The Heart Of Hearts)” stirs to life on a tide of wiry guitar and defiant horns, facing down the embers of love that still glow in the wake of pain: “Peace came tumbling like a shower of bricks / The mind twists slowly till everything fits.”

A tense energy ripples throughout – from the nocturnal rush of “Serving Purpose” and “Amphetamine Luck” to the bruised battle cries of “Torcalon” and “Old Human Material.” Outliers like “Praying Hands, Turtle Doves” hint at proggy possible futures, while instrumental vignette “Anomia” offers an intriguing glimpse at a lesser heard facet of the band: swaying, shadowy, subdued. The album’s title track is also its closing cut, a stomping, sparkling ode to “the wrong side of the night, where time goes to die.” Smith describes the scene: “Everyone’s talking, screaming, trauma bonding, but no one’s listening. Broken dialogue. Shouting over each other. You want to switch off, but everyone’s too fucked.” The guitars spiral and slide towards the oblivion of dawn, the chance to crash and do it all again.

Mike Cooper wrote his final songwriter record, a suite of gloaming glam-rock anthems performed with a spiritual jazz trio, while living on the Costa Tropical of Granada, Spain, an era when he was considering retiring from music altogether. A chance encounter and a last-ditch record deal convinced him to make one last album, which he recorded in 1974 at Pathway Studios in London, with “The Greatest Rock and Roll Band in the World,” featuring the inventive South African jazz rhythm section of Louis Moholo and Harry Miller with UK saxophonist Mike Osborne. This first-ever reissue includes a bonus CD of Milan Live Acoustic 2018, a previously unreleased solo set that represents Cooper’s return, after forty-four years pursuing free improvisation and electronics, to a new, deconstructed approach to singing, steel guitar, and songcraft. The deluxe LP+CD edition also features a six-panel insert with additional artwork and an essay by the artist about both records. The deluxe 2xCD gatefold edition features an eight-panel version of the same insert. In the wake of his magisterial triptych of early 1970s avant-folk-rock records Trout Steel (1970), Places I Know (1971), and The Machine Gun Co. (1972) the British songwriter, guitarist, and fledgling improviser Mike Cooper retreated to the Costa Tropical of Granada, Spain. With no prospects for touring or recording again, his fiery band the Machine Gun Co. had disintegrated. Cooper sets the scene in his liner notes of the first-ever reissue of his unjustly forgotten next album Life and Death in Paradise (1974): No one came running with offers of fame and riches, and we fell apart, and I left the country and headed for the beach, disillusioned and a bit disorientated musically. I went to Almuñécar in Andalusia, a place I had been going since 1969, because a painter friend from Reading, Rowland Fade who made the collage in the gatefold of my earlier album Trout Steel had moved there in 1968. It was in this synthetic coastal “paradise,” unmoored and adrift, considering retiring from music altogether, that he began tentatively writing new songs. A chance encounter with producer Tony Hall, who offered Cooper a last-ditch record deal on Hall’s nascent Fresh Air label, convinced him to make one last album with the stipulation that he could assemble what he called “The Greatest Rock and Roll Band in the World.” I told Tony that I would do it if I could hire some of my South African jazz musician friends that I had used on my Pye/Dawn albums and some friends from Reading that I still knew and admired. I called up Harry Miller, Louis Moholo, and Mike Osborne, who were in fact a trio at the time … and several local Reading heroes, including the singer-songwriter Terry Clarke. The result, recorded live with minimal overdubbing at Pathway Studios in London, was Life and Death in Paradise, an utterly singular suite of gloaming glam-rock anthems performed with a spiritual jazz trio comprising the inventive South African jazz rhythm section of Moholo and Miller with UK saxophonist Osborne. Unlike anything else in Cooper’s extensive catalog. Fresh Air fizzled, and Life and Death became Cooper’s final record as a songwriter, having pushed the form as far as he could. Drifting north from Spain back to the UK, he fell into the scene of the London Musicians Collective (LMC) including Paul Burwell, David Toop, and saxophonist Lol Coxhill, Cooper’s bandmate in the Recedents and fully embraced free improvisation. He was still, however, interested in singing and lyrics, so, influenced by Tom Phillips, William Burroughs, and Brion Gysin, he began experimenting with text collage and cut-up techniques, arriving at his own hybrid compositional strategy for improvisatory songs. The previously unreleased solo set Milan Live Acoustic 2018 represents Cooper’s return, after more than four decades pursuing free improvisation and electronics, to a new, deconstructed approach to singing, lap steel guitar, and songcraft. Presented here together with Life and Death in Paradise, the two records provide fascinating bookends to Mike Cooper’s long, mercurial, and pioneering practice as a songmaker.

For fans of Khruangbin, El Michels Affair, Tame Impala and Bonobo. “I spent a while thinking about the title for this album; it was quite hard to pin down the feeling I felt it represented. At a certain point I realised it was nostalgia, for everything; our life passed by, childhood, moments of happiness and sadness, where we grew up”. – Skinshape // Will Dorey aka Skinshape has proven himself time and again as a connoisseur for the cosmopolitan, across a prolific career expertly exploring understated sounds and theatrical textures. Taking his place alongside the likes of Khruangbin, Tame Impala, Bonobo and Madlib, Skinshape’s global kaleidoscopes are loaded with warmth and wisdom created on vintage analogue equipment applying a perfectionist’s touch. As a former member of indie band Palace, he has played everywhere from Glastonbury and BBC Maida Vale to headlining Shepherd’s Bush Empire. Conversely as a solo artist Skinshape has never played live preferring to record, releasing an album a year (two in 2020’s lockdown) and keeping away from the trappings of stardom.

The fact that ATLASES from Finland sound different has its reasons. Besides the "normal instrumentation" of a metal band, the musicians from Pori also work with electronic drum pads and keyboards. Both are not just additional accessories, but an integral part of the musical self-image of this Nordic group. In addition, there is the creative demand to go further aesthetically and sonically than is usual in modern post-metal. In the cinematic soundscapes ATLASES are creating you can lose yourself completely. The third album "Between The Day & I" pushes this approach to the extreme. The dualism of beautiful, atmospheric euphony and abrupt brute force works fantastically and provides lasting impressions. The sextet from Pori sets tension arcs time and again, which lead deeper and deeper into a maelstrom of rapture, melancholy and emotional discharge. On the follow-up to their 2020 LIFEFORCE RECORDS debut, "Woe Portrait", ATLASES present themselves as resourceful songwriters who cultivate powerful contrasts beyond the usual conventions of post-metal and thus stand out. With "Between The Day & I", the Finns prove that modern post-metal can still be developed further, if the right attitude and the necessary daring meet forward-thinking creativity and an elevated level of ambition. The fact that the cover motif of the new ATLASES album evokes associations in the direction of the Mastodon classic "Remission" or "White Pony" of the mighty Deftones is a coincidence, but on closer reflection it fits pretty well.

Ultramarine are an English electronic music duo, formed in 1989 by Ian Cooper and Paul Hammond.

Cooper and Hammond first worked together in the band A Primary Industry during the mid-1980s. Following the split of that band, they formed Ultramarine and released their debut album 'Folk' in April 1990 on seminal Belgian label Les Disques du Crépuscule. The duo found critical acclaim with their second long player, 'Every Man And Woman Is A Star', initially released in 1991. Over the next decade or so, they recorded two John Peel sessions, collaborated with Robert Wyatt, toured the States with Orbital, then Europe with Björk. After a hiatus, they began recording again in Ian's home studio, overlooking the Blackwater Estuary in Essex.

The moods and movements of this English estuary can be heard running through the duo's stunning and deeply intriguing new album 'Send and Return'.

Flowing and mutating as it transitions from an Essex river into the open sea, the Blackwater Estuary, north of London, inspired this beguiling collection of hypnotic jazz, itching electronica and softly dazzling ambient shapes.

For the 6-track album, Paul and Ian hired a Thames sailing barge moored on the estuary for one day and recorded below deck in the ship's downstairs wooden saloon; the idea was originally inspired by seeing Robin Williamson of The Incredible String Band perform on a similar barge.

The duo were joined by jazz musician Greg Heath and accomplished percussionist Ric Elsworth for the day, who added stunning saxophones, alto flute, percussion and vibraphone to the mix. It's a contemplative, ambient record with gentle jazz inflections and softly pulsing electronica.

Originally released as a digital single only available through Jungle Fire's Bandcamp page in the summer of 2020, their version of the Ray Barretto Latin Funk classic "Together" was put out in support of Black Lives Matter and acknowledgment that African culture has been the backbone, soul and spirit of societal fabric since the dawn of humanity. A song whose message and spirit always united and ignited the audience, it was a much-needed offering to fans at a time of escalated urgency in the sociopolitical climate. Now in 2023, F-Spot Records is proud to announce its official vinyl release alongside a previously unreleased track, "Movin' On" (originally recorded by Ray Camacho), on the flip. Often performing "Together" during their live shows as an instrumental interlude, it was only right to do the song justice by inviting long-time collaborator and frequent F-Spot featured singer Jamie Allensworth to join on lead vocals. Performing as a guest with the band numerous times and being a part of So-Cal's funk and soul community ranging from Orgone, Night Owls, and Mestizo Beat, Allensworth delivers a high-energy performance that keeps up with Jungle Fire's signature sound of blazing percussion, heavy beats, and fuzzed out guitars. On side B Allensworth is featured again, stepping up the energy even more into the full-on Latin Funk party, "Movin' On." Cut at a faster tempo and more drive than the original, Jungle Fire is the only group we can think of that can deliver this kind of performance, matched with Allensworth's gritty yet soulful lead, to bring you two sides of serious heat that the band has consistently brought over the past decade.

"Morphing Chinese traditional music with bass, Chicago footwork and AI-manipulated birdsong. It's quite a feat to sound this ancient and futuristic simultaneously." The Guardian

"The album presents a world where flute and guanzi find common ground with choral vocals, ambient and AI- manipulated birdsongs." Vinyl Factory

"There has never been a record that sounds like this. And, very possibly, never will be again" Bandcamp

'At once fine-grained and expansive, Lee's work combines traditional Chinese music and historical references with wild electronic experimentation" Pitchfork, 7.6

'Island Birdy' samples Bollywood vocals, 'Foreign Flowers' has hints of warped drum & bass and 'Feather Signifier' is steeped in jazz fusion....Lee's most organic work has plenty of diverse influences" Resident Advisor, Album Of The Day

Swirling layers of OST-style sound design, dreamy choir vocals and traditional Chinese folk combine across eight dynamic and transportive tracks on Birdy Island, the latest album by Beijing-based producer/artist, Howie Lee.

On Birdy Island Lee's intricate brand of traditional pan-asian exploration meets experimental bass weight sound via stripped-back UK Grime sonics and ceremonial taoist music.

Released in the UK in January 1967 by Decca Records and February by London Records in the US – Between The Buttons was the Stones’ fifth British and seventh US studio album. Released as the follow-up to Aftermath, this album marked a high point in the band’s career, continuing their ventures into psychedelia and baroque pop balladry, it is among the band’s most musically eclectic works. Brian Jones sidelined his guitar on much of the album, instead playing a wide variety of other instruments including organ, marimba, vibraphone, and kazoo. Piano contributions came from two session players: former Rolling Stones member Ian Stewart and frequent contributor and studio legend Jack Nitzsche. It was the last album produced by Andrew Loog Oldham, the band’s manager and producer of all of their albums to this point.

The album has one of the most striking sleeves of the period, featuring a classic Gered Mankowitz image on the cover. The photo shoot took place at 5:30 in the morning following an all-night recording session at Olympic Studios. Using a home-made camera filter constructed of black card, glass and Vaseline, Mankowitz created the effect of the Stones dissolving into their surroundings – according to Mankowitz… ""to capture the ethereal, druggy feel of the time; that feeling at the end of the night when dawn was breaking and they’d been up all night making music, stoned.”

The songs continued Aftermath’s lyrics of acute social observation and savage insight, their earlier raw, rootsy power enhanced by other influences of the period – notably The Beatles, The Kinks, and again Dylan. It is one of their strongest, most varied LPs, with many great songs that remain unknown to all but Stones devotees.
The inventive arrangements and innovative instrumentation on brooding near-classics like All Sold Out, My Obsession and Yesterday’s Papers brought a new dimension to the music. She Smiled Sweetly shows their hidden romantic side at its best, Connection is one of the record’s few pieces of more conventional driving rock and album closer Something Happened To Me Yesterday includes Keith’s first solo vocal.

The US version includes contemporaneous hits – the two songs that gave the group a double-sided number one in early 1967: the shameless and controversial Let’s Spend The Night Together and the beautiful, melancholy Ruby Tuesday.

Released in the UK in January 1967 by Decca Records and February by London Records in the US – Between The Buttons was the Stones’ fifth British and seventh US studio album. Released as the follow-up to Aftermath, this album marked a high point in the band’s career, continuing their ventures into psychedelia and baroque pop balladry, it is among the band’s most musically eclectic works. Brian Jones sidelined his guitar on much of the album, instead playing a wide variety of other instruments including organ, marimba, vibraphone, and kazoo. Piano contributions came from two session players: former Rolling Stones member Ian Stewart and frequent contributor and studio legend Jack Nitzsche. It was the last album produced by Andrew Loog Oldham, the band’s manager and producer of all of their albums to this point.

The album has one of the most striking sleeves of the period, featuring a classic Gered Mankowitz image on the cover. The photo shoot took place at 5:30 in the morning following an all-night recording session at Olympic Studios. Using a home-made camera filter constructed of black card, glass and Vaseline, Mankowitz created the effect of the Stones dissolving into their surroundings – according to Mankowitz… ""to capture the ethereal, druggy feel of the time; that feeling at the end of the night when dawn was breaking and they’d been up all night making music, stoned.”

The songs continued Aftermath’s lyrics of acute social observation and savage insight, their earlier raw, rootsy power enhanced by other influences of the period – notably The Beatles, The Kinks, and again Dylan. It is one of their strongest, most varied LPs, with many great songs that remain unknown to all but Stones devotees.
The inventive arrangements and innovative instrumentation on brooding near-classics like All Sold Out, My Obsession and Yesterday’s Papers brought a new dimension to the music. She Smiled Sweetly shows their hidden romantic side at its best, Connection is one of the record’s few pieces of more conventional driving rock and album closer Something Happened To Me Yesterday includes Keith’s first solo vocal.

The US version includes contemporaneous hits – the two songs that gave the group a double-sided number one in early 1967: the shameless and controversial Let’s Spend The Night Together and the beautiful, melancholy Ruby Tuesday.

A1 - French artist aka Dylan Dylan hits first on the record with energetic groove, breaks and deep synths - that's how we do it!

A2 - HATT.D is a Belgian music maker. A truly moving track with a soothing bass and both broken and straight rhythms. The tune may conjure up images of tropical flora and fauna.

A3 - Dawn Again, a faraway Australian artist, hits with the charming track “I’m Like a Bird" - a minimalistic style house tune with catchy rhythms.

B1 - Manhood is a collaboration of two Russian artists, Denis Kazakov and Lachetto.
The boys wrap us in delicate breaks with cosmic sounds, as if to remind us that we are not alone in this universe.

B2 - German musician Palmate continues the vibe with his dreamy and slightly lo-fi deep house "departure," which sounds like you're going home with happy recollections after a fantastic time with old friends.

B3 - The conclusion of this story will be presented to us by Dj Bigspin, a musician originally from France who now lives in Copenhagen.

He reminds us with his melancholic deep acid hous

Die Meister des songorientierten Progressive Metal sind zurück! REDEMPTION, die in Los Angeles ansässige Band um den charismatischen Sänger Tom S. Englund (auch Evergrey), ist eine der angesehensten und von der Kritik hochgelobten Bands, die sowohl in Prog- als auch in Melodic/Power-Metal-Kreisen eine treue Anhängerschaft hat. Vier Jahre nach ihrem letzten Studioalbum erscheint nun endlich "I Am The Storm" - ein intensives, kraftvoll-melodisches und durchweg begeisterndes Meisterwerk. Wie eine Naturgewalt wird der Liebhaber anspruchsvoller Metal-Klänge von Englunds inspiriertem Gesang, der schieren Kraft und den exquisiten Arrangements eingenommen. "I Am The Storm" erscheint am 17. März und wird als Digipak und farbige 2-Vinyl-Edition erhältlich sein.

Die Meister des songorientierten Progressive Metal sind zurück! REDEMPTION, die in Los Angeles ansässige Band um den charismatischen Sänger Tom S. Englund (auch Evergrey), ist eine der angesehensten und von der Kritik hochgelobten Bands, die sowohl in Prog- als auch in Melodic/Power-Metal-Kreisen eine treue Anhängerschaft hat. Vier Jahre nach ihrem letzten Studioalbum erscheint nun endlich "I Am The Storm" - ein intensives, kraftvoll-melodisches und durchweg begeisterndes Meisterwerk. Wie eine Naturgewalt wird der Liebhaber anspruchsvoller Metal-Klänge von Englunds inspiriertem Gesang, der schieren Kraft und den exquisiten Arrangements eingenommen. "I Am The Storm" erscheint am 17. März und wird als Digipak und farbige 2-Vinyl-Edition erhältlich sein.

We have opened the vault to bring to you for the first time on a 2CD set Roadrunner United ‘The Concert (Live at the Nokia Theatre, New York, NY, 12/15/2005)’, featuring members of Slipknot, Anthrax, Trivium, Machine Head, Fear Factory, Sepultura & more. Roadrunner United was a project organized by the heavy metal record label Roadrunner Records to celebrate its 25th anniversary. On December 15th, 2005, in New York City, the label produced the Metal Concert to end all Metal Concerts: 39 musicians, representing 25 different Roadrunner bands, performed 25 songs from 19 different bands’ repertoire. This unique and unprecedented aggregation of musicians was no jam session. Each song was studiously rehearsed and arranged, coming together with exuberant perfection, to produce a concert that can only be called “Legend.”

Conceived as a follow-up to the Roadrunner United All-Star recording sessions, the label recruited the core team of musicians (Dino Cazares, Adam Duce, Paul Gray, Joey Jordison, Andreas Kisser and Roy Mayorga) as the backbone of the performance. Sure enough, as they fine-tuned the songs and rehearsed them tirelessly, dozens of other musicians came on board.

This 3LP set represents the gathering of a community of musicians that spans the heavy metal history of the first 25 years of Roadrunner Records: from King Diamond to Slipknot and beyond. Those who were lucky enough to be there experienced a night they will never forget. For the first time as a live concert album, this 3LP set on red, white and black coloured vinyl is a chance to relive that special night again and again.

First Word Records is extremely proud to welcome the legendary New Sector Movements to the label, and the first new release from this moniker in 15 years! A 5-track EP for 'These Times', comprised of street soul, hip hop, jazz and bruk-tinged vibes.

Founded, headed and produced by DJ & musician IG Culture (CoOp Presents / LCSM), this all-new quasi-group project also features the vocal talents of Allysha Joy, Mike City and Natalie May with additional accompaniment from Wonky Logic, Wayne Francis, Alex Phountzi and the NSM Fusion Starship!

New Sector Movements (aka NSM) were the first out the gate at the dawn of the original broken beat movement, releasing their first single 'Groove Now / New Goya' on the People label in 1997, then releasing several singles and EPs through to the late noughties, and dropping a classic album on Virgin entitled 'Download This'. The previous incarnation featured several other artists from the bruk foundation era, including Kaidi Tatham, Izzy Dunn, Julie Dexter and Eska Mtungwazi amongst others.

Awarded a 'Lifetime Achievement Award' at the 2019 Worldwide Awards, NSM's IG Culture is a hugely pioneering prolific artist in the UK music scene. His catalogue of releases over the years has seen numerous aliases, collaborations, remixes and productions. Appearing on the scene in 1990 as part of Dodge City Productions, to producing several solo albums throughout the noughties, to recent years with his hugely-acclaimed cosmic jazz outfit LCSM (Likwid Continual Space Motion), additionally to co-running the CoOp Presents label, continuing the legacy of the award-winning club night whilst showcasing new artists, IG Culture has been omnipresent at every corner of British black music for three decades deep, influencing many a sound.

This is all additionally to projects like NameBrandSound, Likwid Biskit, Da One Away and Son of Scientist to name just a few. His work has appeared on releases by Roots Manuva, Young Disciples, Les Nubians and Monday Michiru, while remix work over the years has included Gang Starr, Femi Kuti, José James, Miraa May, Slum Village, Digital Underground, Luniz, Naughty By Nature, Airto Moreira & Flora Purim.

As a DJ, he's shut down dances all over the world, recently at places like Fabric, We Out Here festival and Summer Dance Forever in Amsterdam, as well as regularly rocking the airwaves on Worldwide FM and combining the two at BBC 6 Music's All Points East stage in the Summer. IG Culture also founded Selectors Assemble; a collective of forward thinking DJs and producers.

So, as we head towards Winter 2022, New Sector Movements has returned (but don't call it a comeback!). After a turbulent few years in the world, it seemed a poignant moment to reinvigorate the soul, and reflect upon 'These Times'. Here we have five brand new tracks, each illustrating a pertinent mood and attitude representing the current climate. Allysha Joy leads the vocal on EP opener 'These Times', a sumptuous slice of street soul with a deeply infectious horn hook. 'Stand' is next - uptempo boom bap for the dancers, this one featuring the soulful pipes of Mike City. 'Hope' is a midtempo jazz-funk dub again feature vocal licks from Allysha, and introducing the mysterious NSM Fusion Starship into the fold. 'H.E.A.T.' picks up the pace with some infectious jazz-bruk business, this one lead by Natalie May on the vocals, who explains "heat = movement, motion". And finally 'Bless' with closes the set on a four-four riddim with bruk sensibilites, inviting Mike City back with an uplifting vocal requesting we "bless the people just trying to make it".

An essential EP of cross-genre vibes to resonate cross-generations, New Sector Movements do not ramp. IG Culture and crew proceed to give you what you need for 'These Times'.

'These Times' is released on vinyl and digital worldwide via First Word Records late February 2023.

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.

MEMORIAM needs no introduction ‐ they are living legends of Old School Death Metal. Not only because the former fields of activity of the Brits belonged and still belong to the pioneers of UK Death Metal, but because they managed to follow their master plan more than precisely. MEMORIAM has built up their own loyal fan base over the past
seven years and developed its own musical identity. It would certainly have been easy for them to just follow the old paths, but the true art of the band is that they never deny their origins, but gradually incorporate something new ‐ with every album a few new nuances and facets are added.

The sheer speed of their creative output shows how consistently MEMORIAM follow this path: Following the initial success of the HELLFIRE DEMOS trilogy, MEMORIAM signed with Nuclear Blast in 2016. The band went on to release FOR THE FALLEN (2017), THE SILENT VIGIL (2018) and REQUIEM FOR MANKIND (2019) ensuring within a very short time that MEMORIAM were firmly established among loyal Death Metal fans. This wassupported by dozens of concerts, which have taken the band from selected club shows to major festival appearances (e.g. Hellfest, Wacken, Summer Breeze, Graspop). Following the success of this initial trilogy, MEMORIAM switched to the young label Reaper Entertainment. The album TO THE END, the first of a new trilogy, was released in 2021. The second album of the trilogy, RISE TO POWER, will be released in early 2023.

RISE TO POWER will not only once again offer an atmospherically dense Dan Seagrave cover, the war theme stylized on it also runs through Karl Willetts’ lyrics: With 'Never Forget, Never Again (6 Million Dead)' about the Holocaust and the, unfortunately, more than current 'Total War' about the war in Ukraine, Karl is more political than ever. "I am
writing 'our burden and shame' instead of 'their' as I believe it is our collective responsibility to ensure that something like the Holocaust never happens again. I feel that it is my responsibility as a frontman and lyricist to write about the things that I feel are important," explains Karl. MEMORIAM transforms aggression and grief into
uncompromising Death Metal energy. Also musically the mentioned above development process continues.

While the opener still serves the essential Death Metal groove, MEMORIAM becomes more variable with each additional song and keeps adding new dynamics into their Old School Death Metal sound ‐ from brutal grooves ('Annihilation's Dawn') via doomy‐melodic parts like in 'I Am The Enemy' up to aggressive Nordic riffing like in 'Total War'. RISE TO POWER is an extremely varied album, as Karl confirms: "That's Scott's style, he comes from a different generation than Frank, Spike and me. He brings in influences from bands I haven't even heard of. It gives us the balance between old and new, and it works pretty well for us.” (Thomas Strater)

Silver biplanes are Tim Vass (one half of Razorcuts - the Creation-signed indie pop darlings) and Vanessa Vass (singer of Radcliffe jangle pop favourites the Melons). "A Moment In The Sun” is the debut long player by silver biplanes, a melodic indie band based in Bedfordshire, England. The band features wife-and-husband team Vanessa Vass and Tim Vass alongside drummer Rob Scott and the album is the pinnacle of a musical career which has previously seen Vanessa and Tim release songs on no fewer than 30 different labels between them! The band are lifelong fans of the highways and bi-ways of music and the album draws upon a wide range of influences. It’s a heady mix of choruses, hooks and catchy tunes in which you’ll hear traces of psychedelia, post-punk, krautrock and more. Tim was bassist and lyricist in cult indie band Razorcuts, co-writing all of their songs. Razorcuts releases regularly featured in the higher reaches of the independent charts throughout the late 80s and included two top five albums recorded for the famous Creation label. Both albums were reissued in sellout deluxe vinyl editions in 2020. Razorcuts continue to appear on numerous compilations and their influence is often cited in books and internet articles. Tim has also played in Red Chair Fadeaway, Dandelion Wine and the Forever People. Vanessa was the singer in 90’s indie band The Melons who are probably best remembered for their two legendary live sessions on Mark Radcliffe’s Radio 1 show. The Melons released 6 singles and were regularly featured in the British music press.

"Island Time" is the latest album from Joel Sarakula and his first since relocating to The Canary Islands at the height of the pandemic. From his home in the UK he accepted an invitation to perform a special concert Alfredo Kraus Auditorium in Las Palmas, Gran Canaria in November 2020 not realising it would change his life.

"Island Time" is a collection of songs covering themes such as island life, city life, loneliness and romantic love and our relationship with nature.

Stylistically covering soft-rock, soul, disco and reggae, "Island Time" and its first single "Tragic" is broad in scope but ultimately a cohesive record, with the production focusing on a small group of musicians featuring Phil Martin (Dawn Patrol, Martin & Garp) on drums and Xav Clarke on guitar and bass. Building on his previous records "Love Club" and "Companionship", Sarakula expands his palette with a broader use of synthesizers and drum machines and makes stylistically adventurous choices such as the AOR samba of "Dinosaur" and the 70s-cod reggae inspired title track "Island Time", a tribute to escape and re-invention. Sarakula sings "Don't bother me I'm on island time, don't bother my mind once again." For any overworked and over-connected city-dweller, this plea for isolation in a tropical island is a beautiful fantasy.

"Island Time" will be released on Jan 20th, 2023 with Sarakula bringing some tropical sunshine to the freezing European winter in January and February with performances already confirmed in The Netherlands and Germany.

The legend of Twilight Force began to form in the year 2007 of the Human Era. It was the result of a yearning to bring back the golden age of Epic Symphonic Power Metal. But Twilight Force soon became an entity of its own, evolving and elevating the genre to new heights and sounds. By fusing triumphant melodies with rich orchestral arrangements and swift performances, Twilight Force creates an intense and immersive experience. Transporting the listener to a magic realm filled with wonder, heroic tales and mesmerising tales from the mythical world known as The Twilight Kingdoms.

Using their vast experience from previous musical endeavours, their classical training, and technical proficiency, Twilight Force spawned the first ever Adventure Metal album in 2014 H.E. - Tales of Ancient Prophecies. Two more critically acclaimed albums followed in its wake, Heroes of Mighty Magic (2016), and Dawn of the Dragonstar (2019), with the fourth opus At the Heart of Wintervale set for release on January 20th, 2023 on Nuclear Blast Records.

Once again, the cover artwork has been created by the brilliantly skilled Kerem Beyit, and is directly connected to the album’s title track as the band explains: “It depicts the tale told in ‘At the Heart of Wintervale’ where an evil curse is broken, and the ancient dragon may finally roam the realms again, free and unfettered!"

At the Heart of Wintervale will be released on CD, Digibook, and Vinyl. The limited Digibook edition will also include three bonus tracks. The first one is a song, many of the band's loyal knights may somewhat recognize; it is an acoustic blend of some of the older works, featuring an entrancing vocal performance and guitar work by Twilight Force's very own wood elf Aerendir. The second and third bonus tracks are orchestral versions of two songs from the album, where fans will have the opportunity to experience a different soundscape, and perhaps discover new exciting elements and intricacies never discerned before.

With the band embarking on a headlining tour through Europe and UK on time with the album’s release, Twilight Force look immensely forward to continue their epic tale.
“So, sharpen your swords, dust off your magic tomes, and brew your strongest potions. It is time to join Twilight Force on their quest for the eternal glory of the Twilight Kingdoms, once again.
May the Power of the Dragon guide you!”

Iowa’s blackened punk 4-piece outfit, DRYAD, are the latest band to join Prosthetic Records roster. Featuring crusty dual vocals and relentless buzzsaw riffs, DRYAD is an anomalous combination that eludes easy classification, using elements of d-beat punk, old school death and atmospheric black metal, along with their own touch of bizarre, blackened forest filth. Since the debut of The Black Pullet EP in early 2017, DRYAD has emerged from the basements of Iowa’s DIY scene to perform regularly with a wide variety of acts like Dawn Ray’d, Street Sects, and Drugcharge. Their second offering, The Silurian Age, was released to cassette in June of 2018, and has since been quietly gaining momentum in the underground metal scene across the globe. Inspired by the earth’s ancient glacial lakes that once covered Iowa and fossil-covered cliffs that now remain, the album deals mostly with themes of ecological and political disaster and is a timely reminder of the earth’s inevitable revolt against its most destructive creatures. Since being named one of Astral Noize’s Artists To Watch in 2019, DRYAD has released a crushing split with Acid Leather on cassette, and recently completes a three-week stint across the country with THEORIES and Neckbeard Deathcamp, as part of the Free Speech In America tour.

When Dead Horses burst on the scene with ‘Ballad For Losers’ in 2017 directly from the acid-induced foggy lands of weird Ferrara they fooled everyone from the get-go and now they are back with the aptly titled ‘Sunny Days’. These characters were here to stay, unique, oblique and oblivious. Watching them live reminds you of the highs and lows of life, a train ready to derail at any curve, literally duct taped together, that suddenly arrives on the plateau, shining in the horizon. This is when it’s important to not blink, because mark my words, you might miss the rapture, even just a minute of pure forceful magic, where everything comes together, the peak and the ecstasy hand in hand.
Their new record is once again an incredible mix of primitive-punk, Gun Club marshlands, country sadness and acid-folk that sways from the rays of light of the Vaselines to the dawn comedown of the Meat Puppets.

In ’s words:
A music journalist on the new Dead Horses record would write: a concentrate of early swampy grunge, mixed with the Californian folk psychedelia of the 60s and the folk-blues of the Appalachians, with a tune that even Piero Ciampi may have written.
I am not a music journalist so these are my words: sweet and sad songs and soundscapes that embrace you and transmit human warmth to you. This is what music should be for, to warm you up, to excite you.

Blue Vinyl

2019 saw Firescope release a seminal album, The Lonely Machine by Britain’s John Shima. The world has become a very different place since then. The pandemic, economic turmoil and global crises prevail. It is amidst such uncertainty that Shima returns with a new collection to combat the savagery of our times, enter Empty Lands.

Dauby basslines and silken strings introduce “Component”, saturated snares giving ballast as Shima’s signature style immediately comes to the fore. A throbbing kick and orbiting notes are peppered with hi-hats for “Neglected”, a sonorous stratum synergising beautifully. Shima is a student of techno. His appreciation and knowledge of the sound is central to the album as he composes within the traditions of the UK and US canon while exploring new plains. The influence of “bleep” is woven into the tapestry of pieces like “Depart” and “Mettle” with the minimalism of the 90s genre reimagined through new textures. “Sayaka” flows with a different current. Rhythms are understated, lapping against undulating keys as dawn rises. Harmony and melody are cornerstones of record, the gentle ebbs and flows of key and drum merging. Inspiration arises from home as well. The steady pulse and metallic tang of “Projection” recalling the industry of Sheffield and the pioneering electronics that sprouted from that rust red earth.

Track titles, and the album name itself, suggest periods of challenge and difficulty. “Paralysis”, “Desolate”, “Empty Lands”. Words that conjure certain feelings and responses. Shima’s music is a counterbalance to these emotions. Positive compositions of subtle shifts, complementary percussion and welcoming warmth acting as a tonic to the negativity that swirls; the ten audio works on offer acting as a balm to soothe the soul in these troubled time

The essential series from the ’80s has been rebuilt, remastered, and carefully portioned onto a five disc set of 7-inch singles, including all the classic vocal bits that became iconic samples, and more than a few new additions to bring things up to date.

Where would dance music be without Acapellas Anonymous? Although many records claim to have changed the game, the arrival of the Acapellas Anonymous series in the mid/late ’80s actually did just that. A hugely popular, multi-volume set of vocal tracks sourced from a wide variety of dance classics, AA was used extensively at the dawn of sampled music to provide hooks for numerous hits. “I’ve Got the Power,” “Ride On Time,” multiple Clivillés and Cole tracks, Pal Joey’s “Party Time,” ’90s Italo house and rave cuts, and untold others all found their choruses among the many acapellas collected on the series. As Ultimate Breaks & Beats was for funk and hip-hop sampling, so was AA for dance music, both for producers and as a must-have for the creative DJ. Sure, before these records came along, DJs had their own choice vocal bits that they used in sets or layered into edits. But suddenly, much like Ultimate Breaks, these carefully guarded secret sources were available easily, and in convenient form, for the first time. And the response, from DJs and a new generation of producers, was immediate.

That part of the story is widely known, and indeed, was widely experienced by anyone paying attention to music of the time. But the questions linger: who was it that found these acapellas, many of them only existing on promo singles, or as tiny fragments buried on obscure B-sides? Who edited and put them together? By now, you may have guessed that once again we owe an enormous debt to the maestro of edits and our hometown hero, Danny Krivit. And it’s to him we must tip our collective caps for this latest release, a carefully revised, fully remastered, and immaculately executed update to the series — this time on 7-inch.

All of the classics are here, rinsed but still powerful: “Let No Man Put Asunder,” “Weekend,” “Don’t Make Me Wait,” “You Don’t Know,” and dozens more. New additions make a few clever appearances as well, with Roland Clark’s “I Get Deep” (used for Fatboy Slim’s “Star 69”), and Rickie Lee Jones’s stoned rambling known as “Little Fluffy Clouds” showing up for the first time. This is no nostalgia trip — Acapellas Anonymous was recently tapped for a Cardi B megahit, and naturally you’ll find that source, Frank-Ski’s “Whores In This House,” included. All in all, an astounding 80 high-quality acapellas and vocal hooks are spread across the five 7-inch, 33RPM singles, which have each been sequenced thematically with attention paid to timings and tempos to provide maximum utility for the working DJ. And if the past is any indicator, we will likely see a new crop of tracks spring up as these find their way into the production toolkits of the world’s track-makers.

Forget your search for a holy grail, THIS is The Lost Ark Of The Covenant.

Walter Gibbons presents 'The Ten Commandments Are The Law Of The Land'
It will melt your face and make you clap yo' hands!
Mythical disco foundations from Sunshine Sound.




Label Info:
Take a journey to the dawn of DJ culture with Sunshine Sound, the NY imprint that through a series of genre defining Disco Edits became recognised as the 'Birthplace of the Edit'.

These 'Disco Adjustments' would become the hottest tracks in a DJ's crate, spawning countless bootlegs & imitations since they first appeared so many years ago.
As influential as these recordings were, most only appeared as acetate discs individually cut in mono & sold direct to DJs.
Some of these were cut in such small quantities it could be debated as to whether they ever really existed at all.
40 years later and all that remains are remakes & rumours...

...or so it was thought.



Sunshine Sound rises again to bring you a series of classic, legendary & mythical Edits.
Travel back with us to re-discover monumental works that helped shape the sound of dance music as we deepen the textures of history with a series of exclusive Digital & limited Vinyl releases selected from the vault.
Sunshine Sound releases are distributed by Moonshine Sound, bringing you antiquities of historical Disconificance.

MorMor is the artist project of the multitalented writer, producer and performer Seth Nyquist. From a young age he would sit in front of the stereo in his mother’s house in Toronto, fast forward to a particular section in a recording, and immerse himself in those precious seconds. As MorMor, Seth works in not so dissimilar a fashion: He has an idea for a sound, and he works intensely until he’s created it. The first song he released was a tangy synth pop anthem called “Heaven’s Only Wishful”, which arrived in early 2018 and was met with critical acclaim. Following two acclaimed EPs—Heaven’s Only Wishful in 2018 and Some Place Else in 2019— his debut album Semblance is by turns contemplative, jittery, wistful, gentle, and generous. His distinctive voice—a svelte tenor that sits comfortably higher in pitch—leaps out of the speakers, alighting over the sturdy bass lines, guitar riffs, and drums he played himself. The album pursues difficult truths about love and growth and relationships, uncovering feelings that Seth couldn’t have revealed in any other way. Semblance offers a beguiling feeling the listener chases but never quite pins down. A record to put on again and again, reliving the moments.