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• This is Gene’s second studio album released in 1997
• Singles include ‘Where Are They Now?’ (no.22 UK Charts), ‘Speak To Me Someone’ and ‘Fighting Fit’
• Double LP pressed on 180g Heavyweight vinyl, with original artwork,
presented in a gatefold sleeve with printed inner sleeves
• Inspired by the songs of The Smiths, The Jam and The Faces, Martin
Rossiter’s literate vocals and Steve Mason’s fluid guitar lines were perfectly complemented by the intuitive rhythm section of Kevin Miles and Matt James. They released four studio albums and a collection of B-sides and radio demos between 1995 and 2001, were named Best New Act at the inaugural NME awards in 1995, and went on to score 10 Top 40 hits.

• Libertine is Gene’s final studio album released in 2001
• Highlights include the single ‘Is It Over?’ and ‘O Lover’
• Double LP pressed on 180g Heavyweight vinyl with original artwork and printed inner sleeve
• Inspired by the songs of The Smiths, The Jam and The Faces, Martin Rossiter’s literate vocals and Steve Mason’s fluid guitar lines were perfectly complemented by the intuitive rhythm section of Kevin Miles and Matt James. They released four studio albums and a collection of B-sides and radio demos between 1995 and 2001, were named Best New Act at the inaugural NME awards in 1995, and went on to score 10 Top 40 hits.

Metal is a collaborative endeavor between Bristol and London artists Jamie Paton and Mike Bourne of Cage & Aviary and Teeth Of The Sea, respectively. A shared love for modular synthesis brought the two together in 2018 for a series of improvised live performances and the tracks featured on this EP were born from rehearsals for those sessions. What draws ESP to this music is its paradigmatic nature. The tracks are exercises in improvisation yet there is a level of control in which the performance slowly comes alive. Jam sessions allow for artistic gratification, a freedom of form often at the expense of the listener, but when artists set forth exacting parameters, there grows an opportunity for alternate forms of fulfillment on both sides of the experience. As is typical among stylistic prototypes, a reduction of tools frees the artist to narrow their focus and explore more singular modes of performance.

Jamie and Mike chose texture as a concept, namely Metal, and following the aforementioned methods, minimized their instrumentation toward the aesthetic representation of that element. Operating in a void without the convenience and advantages of the infinite tools we’re now accustomed to, they exhausted a short list of granular details, honing their concept to a fine point. Throughout these three iterations on the theme, we hear timbres that depict metal literally, but moreover we gain a view into the duo’s visceral attachment to its materiality, abstractions of its surfaces, and an overall transgression from conventional constructs of beauty. The idea is simple, designed with discipline to romanticize both the crudeness and elegance in one of Earth’s most industrious and enigmatic elements. Metal.

Buenos Aires’ Santiago Garcia joins Upercent in his native Valencia, candidly integrating their own unique approaches to music and harmonizing artistries to render an unpretentious glimpse into the process of building a home, both literally and figuratively. Unveiling the birth of their new label, Interpret, the talented DJ/Producers draw on their personal and artistic connection, versatility on and off decks and penchant for metaphors to foster a safe space for interpretation and canvas for symphonic expression. INT01 is storytelling in its fine, sincere and genuine form, segmented into four distinctive and equally compelling tracks that naturally occurred upon graciously pushing sounds and nurturing instincts.

Carrer Bonaire EP is a mosaic of sounds traversing an infinite spectrum of emotions, handwoven by Interpret masterminds, Upercent and Santiago Garcia, with meticulous detail and quintessence through to the EP’s finish. But not to fret, Interpret is not only off to a good start, the label is here to stay, til imaginations run dry.

SUMMER OF SEVENTEEN are MONIKA KHOT (NORDRA, ZEN MOTHER), WILLIAM FOWLER COLLINS, DANIEL MENCHE, FAITH COLOCCIA (MAMIFFER), and AARON TURNER. (SUMAC, SPLIT CRANIUM).

Wildfires plagued Washington state during the summer of 2017, their smoke drifting westward toward the Seattle area and toxifying the air. Shortly before that trauma, MONIKA KHOT, WILLIAM FOWLER COLLINS, DANIEL MENCHE, FAITH COLOCCIA, and AARON TURNER had gathered at the latter two musicians' House Of Low Culture studio on idyllic Vashon Island with revered producer RANDALL DUNN. There they cut eight songs that capture the makeshift band's feelings of what COLOCCIA calls "a kind of doomsday lurking in the background." It's as if these highly attuned players had a premonition.

"Summer Of Seventeen" -which was edited and arranged by MONIKA KHOT, who records apocalyptic music solo as NORDRA and plays in the avant-rock band ZEN MOTHER—is a nuanced admixture of these musicians' sounds and a culmination of all of their previous collaborations. COLOCCIA and TURNER have created eldritch folk and chamber rock for over a decade in MAMIFFER while engaging in various solo and group projects that explore their profound spirituality in sound. MENCHE has been a fixture on the abstract composition scene for 31 years and COLLINS is a savvy explorer of drone and ambient forms. Their ephemeral summit meeting has yielded a masterwork for the ages.

A heaven/hell and beauty/beastliness dichotomy pervades the album—as if a titanic struggle was transpiring in that small studio. The fearsome trumpet fanfare that starts "Chorus Of The Innocents" heralds a baleful fate. With a subliminal industrial rhythm bristling beneath the eerie exhalations, the song submerges us in a slow-motion maelstrom, a horror-film facsimile of MILES DAVIS' "Bitches Brew". "Perceived Slight" threads death-metal screams through a stark, suspenseful atmosphere, with austere glints of guitar and beats like fists on a casket lid intensifying the dread.

Angelic chants and celestial drones perfume the air in several of the songs on "Summer Of Seventeen", countered with muted blast beats, serrated hums, jagged glitches, simulacra of grinding gears and lightning. It's as if no good deed goes unpunished. "Spirits Of Redeemer" could be an elegy for the human race while "Cultural Orphan" sounds like a symphony for a malfunctioning factory. The album ends with "Theatre Needs An Audience," a harrowing ballad somewhere between EINSTÜRZENDE NEUBAUTEN and MERZBOW; it's a savage rent in the space-time continuum.

"Thinking about this record now," COLOCCIA recalls, "it seems like we were all sort of anticipating something like this current pandemic happening, although we were thinking about it as fire in the hands of man (literal fire, and also gunfire) that would overturn the normal running of things and reveal the current false beliefs systems holding up most of America."

That grave aura infiltrates "Summer Of Seventeen", However, a hopefulness bubbles beneath the foreboding architecture of sound and noise summoned here. The bunker is the new penthouse.

-Dave Segal, April 2020

Don’t you realise that it’s getting warmer and warmer by the minute, that DJ JA’s “Warm”EP for hundert is just the beginning of something new while things continue to heat up?
Just think about hearing it on the news, that feeling of your skin crawling, shrivelling, theshrill alarm sounds ringing inside your head and you trying to keep your cool while theheat is rising. Just relax though, consider the Y2K panic – how everyone breathed a
breath of relief on the 1st of January once the clock had struck midnight and everything just stayed the same. After all, that’s maybe what we really need to be doing instead: wait for things and nature and this planet to settle this on their own terms. Wasn’t it all just a
hazy craze back then, and isn’t the same happening now? Aren’t we all susceptible for either apathy or paranoia, that bittersweet ambivalence also at the core of this EP, which navigates between harsh and nervous sounds, providing both heat and the (figurative and literal) chilling cool that we so desperately long for? Remember to stay calm when you can and that nature couldn’t give a fuck about whether or not we start acting only when it’s far too late; just consider your own insignificance while the melodies stretch out beyond the horizon and into the aether. May we suggest however that you wake up, take the first letter of each sentence, put them all together in order to see through the heat of the moment and the chilling anxiety in order to feel what’s true, real, and present?

First timer ever Best Of Mano Negra on vinyl ! Double black 140G vinyl edition. 24 sons – all their hits : "King Kong Five", "Mala Vida" , "Pas assez de toi" , "Out of time man", "King of Bongo", "Sidi H'Bibi", “Santa Maradona”, “Senor Matenza”… Mano Negra are the legendary French alternative rock band whose leader was Manu Chao. Singing in French, Spanish, English & even Arabic. They toured throughout the world and recorded 4 studio albums : “Patchanka”, “Puta’s fever”, “King of Bongo” & “Casa Babylon” & a live album “In the hell of Patchinko” , all reissued by Because Music and still available on CD & Vinyl. After their split, Manu Chao started a solo carreer in 1998 with the classic “Clandestino” album.

In the horror genre, sequels are perfunctory. As the insufferable film bro Randy explains in Scream 2, "There are certain rules that one must abide by in order to create a successful sequel. Number one: the body count is always bigger. Number two: the death scenes are always much more elaborate-more blood, more gore. Carnage candy. And number three: never, ever, under any circumstances, assume the killer is dead." Last Halloween, Los Angeles experimental rap mainstays Clipping ended their three-year silence with the horrorcore-inspired album There Existed an Addiction to Blood. This October, rapper Daveed Diggs, and producers Jonathan Snipes and William Hutson return with an even higher body count, more elaborate kills, and monsters that just won't stay dead. Visions of Bodies Being Burned is less a sequel than it is the second half of a planned diptych. It turns out, Clipping took to the thematic material of horrorcore like vampires to grave soil. Before the release of There Existed an Addiction to Blood, Clipping and Sub Pop Records divided the material up into two albums, designed to be released only months apart. However, a global pandemic and multiple cancelled tours pushed the release of the project's "part two" until the following Halloween season. Visions of Bodies Being Burned contains sixteen more scary stories disguised as rap songs, incorporating as much influence from Ernest Dickerson, Clive Barker, and Shirley Jackson as it does from Three 6 Mafia, Bone Thugs-N-Harmony, and Brotha Lynch Hung. Clipping's angular, shattered interpretations of existing musical styles are always deferential, driven by fandom for the object of study rather than disdain for it. Clipping reimagine horrorcore-the purposely absurdist hip-hop subgenre that flourished in the 1990s-the way Jordan Peele does horror cinema: by twisting beloved tropes to make explicit their own radical politics of monstrosity, fear, and the uncanny. The album features a host of collaborators: Inglewood's Cam & China, fellow noise-rap pioneers Ho99o9, Tortoise guitar genius Jeff Parker, and experimental LA drummer Ted Byrnes. The final track, "Secret Piece," is a performance of a Yoko Ono text score from 1953 that instructs the players to "Decide on one note that you want to play/Play it with the following accompaniment: the woods from 5am to 8am in summer," and features nearly all of the musicians who appeared on both albums. Since their last album, Daveed Diggs-the group's Tony and Grammy Award-winning rapper-has starred in the TNT science fiction series, Snowpiercer, voiced a character in Pixar's Soul, and portrayed Frederick Douglass in Showtime's The Good Lord Bird. Writer Rivers Solomon's novella based on Clipping's Hugo-nominated song "The Deep" has been nominated for the Nebula, Hugo, and Locus Awards, and won the Lambda Literary Award for best LGBTQ SF/Fantasy/Horror novel. Clipping's song "Chapter 319"-a tribute to George Floyd (AKA Big Floyd) the former DJ-Screw affiliated rapper who was murdered by police officers in May of 2020-was released on Bandcamp on June 19th and raised over $20,000 for racial justice charities. A clip of the song also became a popular meme on TikTok, generating over 50,000 videos in which teenagers rapped the song's lyrics ("Donald Trump is a white supremacist, full stop_") directly into the frowning faces of their conservative parents. The band also contributed a Skinny Puppy-esque rework of J-Kwon's "Tipsy" to Save Stereogum: An '00s Covers Comp.

John Winston Ono Lennon would have been 80 on October 9th 2020. In celebration of his life and the incredible pleasure his music has brought to millions in his lifetime, a new Best Of will be released. A multi-format collection, entitled GIMME SOME TRUTH., this set has been personally curated by the Lennon estate and mixes the biggest hits like the classic and timeless “Imagine” with campaigning songs such as “Give Peace A Chance” and the evergreen classics like “Happy Christmas (War Is Over)” and is culled from all of his solo albums including the posthumous “Milk And Honey”.

John Lennon is simply one of the most recognised and respected musicians of the modern era. As one half of perhaps the most successful songwriting partnerships of all time he deserves his place in history. That this partnership was with Paul McCartney in The Beatles means that he is also one of the most successful recording artists in history. With every succeeding generation falling for their genius, their legend continues to grow and they dominate the pop landscape.

Their split in 1970 allowed each of the band members, by now literally some of the most famous people on the planet, to find their own voice as solo artists and to grow beyond the confines of the band. For John Lennon, this meant throwing himself headlong into life with his new wife, Yoko Ono and eventually a new life in New York City.

Being a solo artist meant that he could delve deep within himself and realise music that was both deeply personal and challenging and which sometimes required a commitment from the audience too. His songs during his solo career mixed accessible pop melodies with sometimes stark and heart-rending simplicity and all points inbetween. His lyrics ranged from deep introspection and self-analysis to subjects that were more concerned with politics (of self, of relationships, of the campaign for peace, of the place of mankind as well as global politics). After a first rush of creativity, he took a step back from the limelight to care for his son, Sean, at home in New York, but when he was ready he returned to recording with one of his most successful and impactful albums. Double Fantasy, preceded by the single (Just Like) Starting Over had been released the month before his life was tragically cut short on 8th December 1980. But this album joins the rest of his solo canon as testament to one of the truly great and truly iconoclastic musicians and personalities of the era.

MEET THE CHOIR THAT HOUSE BUILT

The late great Frankie Knuckles once called house music: “church for people that have fallen from grace.” Anyone who has been caught up in the rapture of a true house classic can testify to its power to unify and uplift.

HGC is an electrifying House meets Gospel experience that never fails to get audiences clapping, dancing and singing along. HGC shows bring together a group of outstanding singers, a full house band and DJ, creating an effortless live fusion of the biggest house and gospel tunes that never fail to raise the roof!

House Gospel Choir’s magic is their ear for production, thanks to the songwriters, producers, vocal arrangers and selectors who make up the collective. The choir have been bubbling away in studios across London, working with a roll call of iconic dance music producers, from global house icons Todd Terry, DJ Spen, Grammy Award winner Alex Metric, to Toddla T and UK gospel icon Nicky Brown. Their monthly public Mass Choir open rehearsal, at Rich Mix in East London, has featured guest appearances from house and techno icon The Black Madonna, and electro pop singer Georgia.

The current House Gospel Choir has grown to over 150 members of all religions and backgrounds. They take us to church, literally and metaphorically and remind us, whatever spiritual inclination we may have, of the sonic swells in our ribcage that truly great harmonies can inspire.

We Are One has become the choirs mantra, Founder & Creative Director Natalie Maddix explains “We can’t all speak at the same time and have our voices heard, but we can sing together as one voice and be understood”.

“The choir have a really unique energy. Beyond the uplifting vibes of Gospel Music…they’re like family” Annie Mac

“I’m so crazy about them” – THE BLACK MADONNA

In the horror genre, sequels are perfunctory. As the insufferable film bro Randy explains in Scream 2, "There are certain rules that one must abide by in order to create a successful sequel. Number one: the body count is always bigger. Number two: the death scenes are always much more elaborate-more blood, more gore. Carnage candy. And number three: never, ever, under any circumstances, assume the killer is dead." Last Halloween, Los Angeles experimental rap mainstays Clipping ended their three-year silence with the horrorcore-inspired album There Existed an Addiction to Blood. This October, rapper Daveed Diggs, and producers Jonathan Snipes and William Hutson return with an even higher body count, more elaborate kills, and monsters that just won't stay dead. Visions of Bodies Being Burned is less a sequel than it is the second half of a planned diptych. It turns out, Clipping took to the thematic material of horrorcore like vampires to grave soil. Before the release of There Existed an Addiction to Blood, Clipping and Sub Pop Records divided the material up into two albums, designed to be released only months apart. However, a global pandemic and multiple cancelled tours pushed the release of the project's "part two" until the following Halloween season. Visions of Bodies Being Burned contains sixteen more scary stories disguised as rap songs, incorporating as much influence from Ernest Dickerson, Clive Barker, and Shirley Jackson as it does from Three 6 Mafia, Bone Thugs-N-Harmony, and Brotha Lynch Hung. Clipping's angular, shattered interpretations of existing musical styles are always deferential, driven by fandom for the object of study rather than disdain for it. Clipping reimagine horrorcore-the purposely absurdist hip-hop subgenre that flourished in the 1990s-the way Jordan Peele does horror cinema: by twisting beloved tropes to make explicit their own radical politics of monstrosity, fear, and the uncanny. The album features a host of collaborators: Inglewood's Cam & China, fellow noise-rap pioneers Ho99o9, Tortoise guitar genius Jeff Parker, and experimental LA drummer Ted Byrnes. The final track, "Secret Piece," is a performance of a Yoko Ono text score from 1953 that instructs the players to "Decide on one note that you want to play/Play it with the following accompaniment: the woods from 5am to 8am in summer," and features nearly all of the musicians who appeared on both albums. Since their last album, Daveed Diggs-the group's Tony and Grammy Award-winning rapper-has starred in the TNT science fiction series, Snowpiercer, voiced a character in Pixar's Soul, and portrayed Frederick Douglass in Showtime's The Good Lord Bird. Writer Rivers Solomon's novella based on Clipping's Hugo-nominated song "The Deep" has been nominated for the Nebula, Hugo, and Locus Awards, and won the Lambda Literary Award for best LGBTQ SF/Fantasy/Horror novel. Clipping's song "Chapter 319"-a tribute to George Floyd (AKA Big Floyd) the former DJ-Screw affiliated rapper who was murdered by police officers in May of 2020-was released on Bandcamp on June 19th and raised over $20,000 for racial justice charities. A clip of the song also became a popular meme on TikTok, generating over 50,000 videos in which teenagers rapped the song's lyrics ("Donald Trump is a white supremacist, full stop_") directly into the frowning faces of their conservative parents. The band also contributed a Skinny Puppy-esque rework of J-Kwon's "Tipsy" to Save Stereogum: An '00s Covers Comp.

GES: Anthology of American Pop Music

Six great pop standards remembered: five pop songs are dissected by sampler, stretched, compressed, and re-collaged. In this way, their identity is lost. What remains is a vague concreteness: flashes of déjà vu and remote echoes that evoke the original.
GES (Gesellschaft zur Emanzipation des Samples)
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Active members: Helmut Schmidt, Jan Jelinek
Founded: 2009
Headquarters: Federal Court of Justice, Karlsruhe, Germany
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GES Glossary

Acoustic Surveillance Series

A 7-inch vinyl record series curated by GES focussing on historical methods of acoustic surveillance. Each record introduces a surveillance system from the past. Starting with Uguisubari in 2017, the series will continue with the release of Orecchio di Dionisio in 2021. GES is open to further suggestions on this subject.

Bundesgerichtshof (German Federal Court of Justice), Karlsruhe

“The use of audio samples as artistic practice may justify the infringement of copyright and intellectual property rights.” (ruling of the German Federal Court of Justice pertaining to Metall auf Metall II, 2016). The court is also the official headquarters of GES.
Circulations

What happens to copyright claims when music from a passing car is captured in a street recording? Is it legal to use this recording freely or is it necessary to obtain licensing rights? Circulations re-enacts this recording situation: audio players are placed in public spaces, where they reproduce the desired sample material. The acoustically choreographed space is then recorded, creating a field recording in which everyday noises circulate together with seemingly incidental music.

Emancipation of Sampling

Fuelled by its criminalization, the act of sampling existing recordings forfeited some of its artistic prestige (see Sampling). GES wishes to rehabilitate and re-emancipate the practice of sampling as a form of art in its own right. Strategy: 1. Name samples and sources explicitly. 2. Choose samples that are as popular and as recognizable as possible (Beatles, Carpenters, etc.). 3. The editing and manipulation of the sample must not compromise its recognizability (negotiable). 4. Use as many samples as possible. 5. Always name more sample sources than were actually used in the composition.

Field Recording

A compositional practice widely used in sound art and ethnomusicology that involves the recording of natural acoustical phenomena. Two additional requirements are usually imposed: The recording process should take place outside a studio environment, i.e. outdoors. And the person recording does not generate any of the acoustic material him/herself. GES expands this definition by introducing the concept of choreographed public space (see Circulations).

Gambling

An acoustic event favoured by GES, already used in numerous sound collages (must take place in public). The most popular option is thimblerig, a cup and ball gambling game commonly played in the street. Compositional instruction by GES: Place an audio playback device in the proximity of a thimblerigger. Play works for orchestra (by Debussy or Mahler). Move slowly towards the gamblers with a microphone.

Helmut Schmidt

Multiple identity and fictional character devised by GES. Figures variously within the semiotic system of GES as member, guest artist or public representative. Following the historical example of Subcommandante Marcos (EZLN).

Kraftwerk

The German band founded by electropop musicians Florian Schneider-Esleben and Ralf Hütter (a.k.a. Die Prozessoren) is the natural enemy of GES. Protected by computer-generated avatars, Kraftwerk operates a quote-hostile cultural hegemony. Their strategy: Install a special brand in the collective consciousness by means of a sophisticated system of quotations and references that may in turn not be quoted by anyone else. Other bands with such delusions of omnipotence: U2, Metallica.

Marcel Duchamp

As the inventor of the readymade, Duchamp may be viewed as a precursor to the art of sampling. However, the artist is appreciated above all for his sonorous qualities, as his vocal silence has often been sampled and processed. It was the inspiration for Jelinek's radio play Zwischen.

Orecchio di Dionisio

This 65-meter-deep limestone cave in the Sicilian town of Syracuse, carved out of a hillside in ancient times, has exceptional acoustics: A person standing at the cave entrance can hear every word whispered deep down inside it. The painter Michelangelo da Caravaggio gave it its name (The Ear of Dionysius) in 1608. The cave indeed resembles an ear and – according to Caravaggio – had a specific function: The tyrant Dionysius I imprisoned his political prisoners in the cave in order to spy on them. Orecchio di Dionisio will be featured in the Acoustic Surveillance Series in the near future.

Sampling

Compositional practice whereby recorded music is fragmented, turned into sound collages and transferred into different contexts of meaning. Since the advent of affordable sampling technology in the 1990s, the music industry has been trying to criminalize and/or promote the practice. Both strategies are driven by the same principle: Profit.

Uguisubari

Sound-making floorboards in Japanese temple and castle complexes, featured in the Acoustic Surveillance Series in 2017. In the Edo period, the “nightingale floor” (literal translation of uguisubari) was a popular acoustic warning system. The principle was straightforward: When someone stepped onto the boards, nails would rub against metal clamps beneath the floor, creating a tell-tale squeaky sound that was said to resemble the chirping of the Japanese nightingale.

Wind

A generator of acoustic events and an amplifier/transmitter of existing sounds. A meteorological form of energy appreciated by the GES on account of its unpredictability. A series about wind as an acoustic phenomenon is planned. Working title: Hotel Corridors.

Zwischen (Between)

Radio play by GES member Jan Jelinek based on recordings of various public interview situations. From the speech of the interviewees (all of them eloquent personalities) the pauses between coherent utterances were extracted and assembled. What we hear is an archaic body language: modes of breathing, word particles and onomatopoeic turmoil. A key question for GES: Which comes first, personal rights or artistic freedom? For Zwischen, Jelinek used only recordings by public figures that were already available to the public.

Reissue of this long lost funky Afrobeat/Reggae classic from 1978
For fans of Fela Kuti, Peter Tosh, Bob Marley, Segun Bucknor

The year is 1978 and one hot thing from the musical underground is Reggae music from Jamaica, the USA or the UK, where most of the acts had musicians of Caribbean descent. Reggae had the groove, the rebel spirit, and the relaxed attitude all in one, to enchant a big part of the world’s inhabitants. And while at least Jamaica as a relatively poor and so-called "Third World“ country proved to spawn Reggae acts of the highest quality, literally nobody dared to look further and dig deeper into the underground except of a few maniacs who were not satisfied with spinning Marley over and over again. And maybe they stumbled over the 1970s Afro Beat sound from countries like Zambia or Nigeria and then got interested. What did they find in the simmering metropolises of this still mysterious continent? Somewhere in Nigeria, they would have certainly caught a glimpse of mind-blowing performances of The Sea Lions, a six-piece group mixing the then hip Reggae and Afro Beat styles to generate fresh and furious music with a hypnotizing atmosphere.



Polyrhythmic beat patterns build the foundation, the utterly fruitful soil for the heartwarming melodies wailed out by the guitars and the commanding vocals with their conjuring charm. Great organ work builds the link between the groove section and the melody instruments. You can imagine what a pleasant experience this band might have been live back in 1978 when their sole album "Free The People“ got released. And this album, of which copies in only good conditions already fetch prices of $450, while nice clean pieces might go up to $1200, lives up to the expectations one might have from watching a live show by the Sea Lions. The sound is vivid, transparent, powerful, and clean enough to make the music a real pleasure listening to, but earthy enough to present nothing but the band going wild here. The songs all have a similar pace, not too fast, but swinging and pulsating to spread their energy to and among the listeners. The melodies are simple but come from the depth of the heart. This feels typical for African 70s music and despite being kind of reduced, these melodies keep haunting you still even hours after the record been taken off the turntable and put back into its sleeve. They bring images of an ever pulsating city by night, warm climate, palm trees, people at the bar, a witches cauldron of sounds, smells, voice, and pictures. And you feel the magic floating through the air while this groove will not let you go so easily.

You can either dance your soul out to this ultimate reissue or you can sit down, listen and let the music tell you a story of the dark corners of the big city, the narrow alleys that lead you into a boiling labyrinth of mystical dreams. And in songs like "You Can Make It If You Try“ you will find the whole magic of the African world, a world so fascinating for us Europeans but still so unapproachable in some ways and dangerous for the weak. Do not try to resist, this is your pleasure. Grab a copy and the Sea Lions will carry you off to their place. I haven’t heard such a killer Afro Beat and Reggae album with songs this exciting and wild in a long time. If you equally love Peter Tosh, Bob Marley, Segun Bucknor, and Fela Kuti, look no further. Here is the spiritual essence of all these great artists merged into one giant act.

An exchange between several voices of African artists (the Congolese Flamme on guitar, the late Cameroonian Hilaire Penda on bass, the Beninese Angélique Kidjo on vocals, and the dj singer producer
from South Africa Mo Laudi on the mike) gathered for the dance and celebration of this World Heritage work. The most popular anthem of classical music revisited in Afro Pop mode for crowds around the world. About this project, the producer Philippe Cohen Solal (ex-Gotan Project) tells: « When Mo Laudi, a Paris-based South African DJ, joined me in the studio, he delivered a great rap full of positive energy and geopolitical rhymes, from Patrice Lumumba to Biko and from Congo to São Paolo. Then Queen Angelique Kidjo, like a divine diva, fervently sang her hymn "Lonlon" in the Mina language, where the Afro literally meets the Bolero. We will not forget the fine team that allowed me to concoct this sacred cocktail: Flamme Kapaya,
outstanding Congolese guitarist, the Parisian DJ-beatmaker Lazy Flow and the late Hilaire Penda, Cameroonian bass player who unfortunately left us since. Benin, South Africa, Congo and Cameroon meet in Paname, the capital of World Sound, but the musical adventure did not stop there. The remixes take us straight to London with Poté, to Berlin with Daniel Haaksman and to Johannesburg with the super-group Batuk formed by the godfather of the African electro Spoek Mathambo, the kwaito maestro Aero Manyelo and the Mozambican singer Manteiga. At a time when travel is prohibited or
not recommended, let us be glad that music does not need certificates or passports and knows no borders ».

It's been three years since the last vinyl by Ntogn was unveiled and now we're glad to share with you the result of his venture through the recent winter.

'Smedjan' is inspired by the dwarven craftsmanship of Norse mythology. It is made completely with organic sounds gathered from, and recorded in, the forests of Bålsta which is rich with northern heritage. Everything you hear is either processed textures of birch wood blocks, layers of a custom made Ukrainian artisan mouth harp or the artist's own voice.

There is no synthesis in this record. The kick drums are made by hitting these pieces of wood against each other with contact microphones. Bass layers are extracted from bark scraping against bark. Hi hats are crafted by recorded fire of the same wood logs burning and ambiance is built from the forests where the trees grew and from the woodshed where the artist chopped the wood during winter to keep his cabin warm. The rhythms and sounds in this shed is what inspired the making of this record.

By shaping these sounds of wood and metal Ntogn strives to create a sonic experience that connects the listener to the old Norse stories of the dwarven craftsmanship of Svartalfheim. It is they who made the famous trinkets and weapons that empower the gods of Asgård through stories of trickery and despair which has later inspired tales and literature for over a thousand years.

The record has been distilled from material that was meant to become a two-hour live set specifically made for Mo:dem festival which was unfortunately cancelled due to the corona pandemic. It was also the foundation of the artist's thesis at the university of sound design where he made a study of the effects of organic sound on an electronic expression such as techno music.

It will be released digitally and as a 200 copy limited edition black vinyl adorned with an artwork drawn by the artist's partner Gabriella Holmström using the ashes of the same birch wood blocks that was used to make the sonic content.

The record has received early support from Francois X, Takaaki Itoh, Abstract Division, BLNDR and Rambadu to name a few.

*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧

Ntogn en'togg-n is a conceptual electro-acoustic project developed by Hypnus Records' founder and sound design graduate Michel Iseneld (b. 1988, Sweden). It aims to breath life into a fascination for magic with the use of contemporary and classic sound design techniques. This has resulted in what Resident Advisor's William Lynch describes as 'fierce, artistic techno that sounds like little else out there' and a discography ranging from earth-shattering techno to dark, throbbing ambient excursions.

After spending nearly three years in isolation, deeply lost in literature on history, philosophy, occultism and epic fairy-tales; Michel developed an inner world which eventually found an outlet through the means of music in 2013. By the use of field recordings and various samplings of his voice and surroundings, something peculiar sprouted as his inner images started to manifest and mature into an organic sound inspired by the emerging hypnotic deep techno scene.

Today, all music is released on his own imprint Tome in order to preserve the projects' artistic freedom and originality. After two years of sound design studies at the university and a new-found passion for modular synthesis; there's plenty of music in store aimed to satiate the curious minds.

We are thrilled to welcome Phaction back to the label for a follow up to last years debut Metalheadz EP, one which garnered support far and wide.

This time jumping over to Metalheadz Platinum for the 'Ubiquitous EP', Phaction has conjured up 4 uncompromising solo cuts that combine his passion for creativity and discernible production talents. The Cypriot-born producer has taken the word 'ubiquitous' quite literally with an overarching soundscape bound to fit the dancefloor as much as anywhere else, constructing a body of work that impresses from start to finish.

Lysergic DIY acid house from Estonia, ca. 1995/1996. Cheap machines, romantic literary inspirations (the record is actually inspired by Saint-Exupéry), not a lot of air in the room but enough to keep on dreaming. Loud pressing for serious brain melting. For fans of Irdial, Stroom, rubber hammers and queens that are simply lost in fog or drowned in dust.

A dramatic, string-drenched epic, James Ralph Bailey’s Just Me ’N’ You has been a sought-after soul masterpiece for decades. A lush suite of beautiful songs, it was conceived as a concept album; a sophisticated paean to love.

Originally released by MAM Records in 1974, Just Me ’N’ You is a breathtaking jazzy soul album. It’s similar in style to Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On - particularly the performances, orchestrations and chord progressions - but dealing with a different universal subject matter. If What’s Going On was about romance instead of politics, it would sound like this.

Fans of Marvin, Leon Ware, Donny Hathaway, Leroy Hutson and Willie Hutch will love this record. Not as well known - this is definitely an underrated gem - the work of James Ralph Bailey is no less mind-blowing. It’s got to be one of the best soul albums of all time.

The original productions were made on a basic home tape machine and enhanced with strings, rhythmic overdubs and a variety of other instrumentation. These are beautiful arrangements of strings and jazzy horns. Rhythm guitars and bouncy bass serve as the groove foundation, congas provide a Latin feel whilst the vibraphone and harmonica add colour. And then of course there’s JR’s voice.

His style recalls Hathaway, with a delivery akin to Marvin at the time. As he scats and sings, accompanying himself in sweet harmonies, there is still a rawness of pain and longing in his voice, the rawness familiar to all deep soul.

As an album, Just Me ’N’ You is no mere collection of songs. The tender, smooth tunes flow perfectly together into a fluid, single artistic statement. This is one where it’s hard to pick out any standouts. You may have heard the soaring title track before, maybe on Gilles Peterson’s Digs America compilation. The opening track “After Hours” sounds as fresh now as it ever was and segues beautifully into the majestic “Heaven On Earth”. Recorded by Hathaway the previous year, Bailey’s original of “Love Love Love” is incredible and arguably the definitive version. The powerful, dreamy, sax-and-harmony-laced “All Strung Out Over You” has echoes of the Chi-Lites, it’s that good. Goosebumps. And we could go on.

Mastered by Simon Francis, cut by Pete Norman and pressed at Record Industry, this Be With edition of Just Me ’N’ You sounds every bit as brilliant as it should. A joyous celebration of love, this album is perfect in every way. If you don’t already own a copy then now is the time.

Comet Records presents the Tony Allen & Africa 70 reissue series with the classic late seventies first four solo albums of Tony Allen remastered and restored: Jealousy, Progress, No Accomodation for Lagos & No Discrimination, all coming in an heavy Deluxe Tip-On Jacket.

Recorded with Afrika 70 at the height of their power as Fela Kuti’s band, these are seminal recordings in the pantheon of Afrobeat history. Once again, Comet Records has the opportunity to shine a light on the sheer musicality and originality of the humble drumming giant. Tony Allen’s passing in April 2020 sent a shockwave across the world, as fans and collaborators from Lagos to Brooklyn and everywhere in between mourned the loss of a generous and powerful being, the kind of being we thought would live forever. Thankfully, we have the gift of Tony’s timeless music, starting with these four special solo albums, through which his musical voice guides our dancing feet and full hearts forever.

Produced by Fela Kuti in 1975, Tony Allen’s first solo album with Afrika 70, Jealousy, is like the man himself: light on its feet yet deeply settled, spacious yet bursting with magical talent. On the title track “Jealousy,” Tony is joyously in his element, conducting one of the mightiest bands in the world - he is the head chef, and the band is cooking. The second track, “Hustler,” features one of the most iconic solos in drumming history, a rare glimpse into Tony’s gift of musical phrasing - it is possibly the best example of Tony’s ability to literally
speak through his beloved drumset.

Tony Allen possessed magic within him, which he spent his entire life sharing with us through his drumming hands, tapping feet and generous heart. That magic is ever-present and strong on these formative solo albums - they are must-haves for Afrobeat fans across the globe.

For Farsight, California’s bucolic San Geronimo Valley was the space that allowed for the creation of this handpicked selection of artistic output. Following a period of deep interest in abstract painting and its relationship to music, the artist found this lush and sparsely populated region to be an ideal location for contemplation and composition.

Although the majority of the work was executed in the first two months of 2020 in this forested setting, some of the pieces were based upon drafts created as early as Summer 2017. United in their eclecticism, the six cuts that comprise “Not Here, But Somewhere'' reveal a broad spectrum of musical influences. They are statements in an age in which influence is omni-directional, and in which the pace of artistic invention outstrips the ability of observers to identify and reify sub-genres. Although each track presents a unique approach, “Cadena,” “Sans Titre,” and “Door to the River'' reflect the continuing global suffusion of Latin American and Carribean styles such as reggaeton and dancehall. Simultaneously, the duo of “While” and “Hot Half” suggest the ongoing dialogue of techno, electro, and industrial music and the interstices between them. “Mid-Winter Burning Sun”
invokes the intensity of American trap music with its booming bass while touching equally upon the feel of early dubstep.

Ultimately, the idea that there is a “space for each artist” can be taken both in a literal sense— One’s physical environment— And also in the figurative sense that there is room enough for the ideas of all artists, who are kindred spirits in the endeavor of radical self-expression. In this way, “Not Here, But Somewhere” exists as an acknowledgement and gesture of goodwill towards every artist daring enough to explore the unknown.