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“Tubby did three original dub albums, ‘Dub From The Roots’. ‘The Roots of Dub’ and the third is ‘Brass Rockers’ with Tommy McCook ‘pon the flying cymbals. Where he mixed it with the horn going in and out in a dub way and one named ‘Shalom Dub’ you can call Tubby’s too because he mixed the versions as they were off forty fives’’

Bunny ‘Striker’ Lee

King Tubby and Producer Bunny ‘Striker’ Lee are intertwined in the birth of Dub Music. After discovering a mistake that made a ‘serious joke’ (more of which later...) they went on to release the first pressings of this new musical genre namely ‘Dub Music’. Tubby’s vast knowledge of electronics and Bunny’s vast catalogue of rhythms would lay the foundations of what today is taken as a standard... the Remix / Version cuts to an existing vocal tune.

Osbourne ‘King Tubby’ Ruddock was born in Kingston, Jamaica on 28th January 1941 and grew up in the High Holborn Street area of downtown Kingston. He studied electronics at Kingston’s National Technical College and also on two correspondence courses from the U.S.A... When he had qualified Tubby began repairing radios and other electrical appliances in a shack in the back yard of his mother’s home. His work in the early days included winding transformers and building amplifiers for Kingston’s Sound Systems. Tubby built his first Sound System in 1957 playing jazz and Rhythm & Blues at local weddings and birthday parties. His reputation as a man who knew and understood both electronics and music grew steadily and as the sixties drew to a close. Tubby
purchased his own basic two track equipment. He installed this alongside his dub cutting machine, a home-made mixing console, and his impressive collection of jazz albums in the back bedroom of his home at 18 Dromilly Avenue which he christened his music room.

Tubby and Striker were at Treasure Isle Studio’s one day while Ruddy from Spanish Town was working with the engineer Byron Smith....

“Tubby and myself was talking when Ruddy was cutting some dub but Smithy (engineer) made a mistake through we were talking and forgot to put in the voice. It was two track recording in those days. Ruddy said ‘No Man! Make it stay! and so they cut the rhythm. When I went over to Ruddy’s that Saturday night a dance was in progress and when they played the vocal to the tune... then he said we’re going to play ‘Part Two’. They never called it ‘Version’..and then he played the rhythm track. The song was a catchy song and everybody started to sing along and the deejay started to toast so everything went down well. On Monday morning I went up and I said ‘Tubbs the mistake we made was a serious joke.It mash up Spanish Town! The people went wild. So you have to start to do that now ‘cause when the man put on the ‘Part Two’ everyone start singing this song. It played about twenty times. I said you try Tubbs!’...Well the next Saturday night now when Tubby strung up down the farm U Roy said he’s going to play ‘Part Two’ but Tubby did it different now. He started with the voice then dropped it out and let the rhythm run and then he brought in the voice in the middle and from there Tubby started to get really popular.’’
Bunny ‘Striker’ Lee

Dynamic Sounds upgraded to sixteen track recording in 1972 and Tubby purchased, again with the help of a deal brokered by Bunny Lee. The old four track equipment and the MCI console from their Studio B. The four tracks now gave him far wider scope to work with and he began to create a new musical form where the bass and drum parts were brought up while the faders allowed Tubby to ease the vocal and rhythm in and out of the mix. It was only a matter of time before Tubby’s dub plate experiments began to make it on to vinyl and the first ever long-playing King Tubby releases would feature a collection of his mixes to a selection of Strikers rhythms. So please sit back and enjoy this historic set of sounds. Lovingly restored and with a few extra gems added to the CD Editions. These releases were the first to carry the name of King Tubby and the first to credit the great musicians that contributed so much to the rhythms that made these albums possible.

Incl. Andrade Remix

“The blueprint was simple: Hot Chocolate rhythms, George Murray bass lines, classical music instruments with pop sensibilities. We, the architects, however, were complicated.” Paul Simpson, 2025 Needle Mythology, the label founded by music writer, author and broadcaster Pete Paphides, is thrilled to announce the release of the much-mythologised ‘lost’ album by CARE – the group made up of IAN BROUDIE and PAUL SIMPSON Prior to forming Care, Ian and Paul had been very active in the Liverpool post-punk scene. Ian played alongside Holly Johnson, Jayne Casey, Budgie and Bill Drummond in Big In Japan, before joining the Original Mirrors. He also produced several early records by Echo and the Bunnymen, most notably the albums Crocodiles and Porcupine. Paul had played with school friend and future Bunnyman Will Sergeant in Industrial Domestic and the founding line-up of The Teardrop Explodes, before going on to form The Wild Swans. CARE were brought together late in 1982 by mutual friend Will Sergeant, when Paul was looking for someone to play a guitar part for a new song he had written. Ian obliged and asked him to return the favour by singing on one of his songs Tall Ships. When Bunnymen manager Bill Drummond heard the result, now retitled My Boyish Days (Drink To Me), he secured the pair a deal with Arista on the back of it. Care would go on to release three acclaimed singles over the course of a twelve-month period between 1983 and 1984 – My Boyish Days (Drink To Me), Flaming Sword and Whatever Possessed You – before Simpson, still struggling to come to terms with the break-up of his previous band decided not to continue. Although top 40 success eluded Care in the UK, the group quickly found an adoring fanbase in the Philippines, where all three singles became huge hits. Love Crowns and Crucifies marks the first vinyl release of the previously unheard songs gathered together on 1997’s Diamonds and Emeralds CD. Working closely with Paul Simpson and with the approval of Ian Broudie, Needle Mythology has been given access to the original quarter-inch tapes which housed everything that Broudie and Simpson recorded together.

“The blueprint was simple: Hot Chocolate rhythms, George Murray bass lines, classical music instruments with pop sensibilities. We, the architects, however, were complicated.” Paul Simpson, 2025 Needle Mythology, the label founded by music writer, author and broadcaster Pete Paphides, is thrilled to announce the release of the much-mythologised ‘lost’ album by CARE – the group made up of IAN BROUDIE and PAUL SIMPSON Prior to forming Care, Ian and Paul had been very active in the Liverpool post-punk scene. Ian played alongside Holly Johnson, Jayne Casey, Budgie and Bill Drummond in Big In Japan, before joining the Original Mirrors. He also produced several early records by Echo and the Bunnymen, most notably the albums Crocodiles and Porcupine. Paul had played with school friend and future Bunnyman Will Sergeant in Industrial Domestic and the founding line-up of The Teardrop Explodes, before going on to form The Wild Swans. CARE were brought together late in 1982 by mutual friend Will Sergeant, when Paul was looking for someone to play a guitar part for a new song he had written. Ian obliged and asked him to return the favour by singing on one of his songs Tall Ships. When Bunnymen manager Bill Drummond heard the result, now retitled My Boyish Days (Drink To Me), he secured the pair a deal with Arista on the back of it. Care would go on to release three acclaimed singles over the course of a twelve-month period between 1983 and 1984 – My Boyish Days (Drink To Me), Flaming Sword and Whatever Possessed You – before Simpson, still struggling to come to terms with the break-up of his previous band decided not to continue. Although top 40 success eluded Care in the UK, the group quickly found an adoring fanbase in the Philippines, where all three singles became huge hits. Love Crowns and Crucifies marks the first vinyl release of the previously unheard songs gathered together on 1997’s Diamonds and Emeralds CD. Working closely with Paul Simpson and with the approval of Ian Broudie, Needle Mythology has been given access to the original quarter-inch tapes which housed everything that Broudie and Simpson recorded together.

Portland, Oregon dark rock trio HOAXED return with their stunning new album Death Knocks. Three years in the making, the group—featuring vocalist/guitarist Kat Keo, drummer Kim Coffel, and new bassist/vocalist April Dimmick—have honed their stygian craft to perfection. "We've added another element to the writing and collaboration process," says the band. "April comes from a classic heavy metal background, and her influence is in these songs. We've also had experiences on tour that have helped shape these songs. You can hear influence from the bands we toured with and learned from. We played together for three years as we wrote this album, and we learned a lot about our styles, and our sound evolved naturally together on stage. So, when we sat down to write this album, it didn't feel like a departure or a change." Anchored by the witchy spell of opener "Where the Seas Fall Silent," the rock-hardened groove of "Kill Switch," and the dimly lit power pop of "The Family," HOAXED upped the tempo, sawed the edges (Dimmick's raspy menace intimidates), and strengthened their ties to the golden gods of heavy metal. Indeed, cyclical riffs, dynamic rhythms, and bottom-heavy bass propel Death Knocks through its filmic, hard-nosed gloom, but Keo's sorcerous vocal hooks seal the deal. Often smartly paired with Dimmick's angels' n' demons, her performance effuses fragility and potency across the album's alluring expanse. HOAXED recorded Death Knocks at Falcon Recording Studios with producer/engineer Gabe Johnston (Unto Others, Vintersea) and enlisted Arthur Rizk (Power Trip, Kreator, and more,) for mixing and mastering. In total, the group spent eight days in February and March tracking Death Knocks. While most bands spend months ironing their metallic mettle, Hoaxed's expeditious time at Falcon engendered a polished, big-sounding force befitting their larger-than-life songs. Short: Portland, Oregon dark rock trio HOAXED return with their stunning new album Death Knocks. Three years in the making, the group—featuring vocalist/guitarist Kat Keo, drummer Kim Coffel, and new bassist/vocalist April Dimmick—have honed their stygian craft to perfection. FFO: Ghost, Tribulation, Bloody Hammers, Khemmis, Unto Others, GGGOLDDD, Katatonia. Pallbearer

Gemastert und restauriert von den Original-Master-Transfers durch Patrick W. Engel bei TEMPLE OF DISHARMONY im Dezember 2021. Geschnitten von SST Germany auf Neumann-Maschinen für optimale Qualität auf allen Ebenen. Die ultimative audiophile Neuauflage dieses zeitlosen Thrash-Klassikers! Infernäl Mäjesty aus Toronto, Kanada, formierten sich 1986 zunächst unter dem Namen Overlord; ihr erstes Demo brachte ihnen im Underground und bei der einschlägigen Presse gleich genug Bekanntheit ein, um einen Deal mit Roadrunner Records an Land zu ziehen. Das selbstproduzierte Debüt „None Shall Defy“ wurde 1987 veröffentlicht und hat sich seitdem zu einem veritablen Kultklassiker gemausert. Thrasher in der ganzen Welt betrachten „None Shall Defy“ als eines der besten Thrash-Alben überhaupt, und als die beste Kanadische Scheibe auf ihrem Gebiet – sengend, aggressiv und ultra-heavy; trotzdem hat der Infernäl Mäjesty-Erstling bisher nie die gebührende Aufmerksamkeit erfahren. Das muss sich ändern, und dank des Re-release auf High Roller Records gibt es nun die Chance, dieses Stück Thrash-Geschichte (wieder) zu entdecken. Wenn man sich vor Augen hält, dass Infernäl Mäjesty sich nur ein Jahr vor Erscheinen des Albums gegründet hatten, werden seine hohe Qualität, das große musikalische Können und die extrem durchdachten Songstrukturen noch ein Stück beeindruckender. Während der Sound das Albums vielleicht schon auf vorbildliche Weise das Harte, das Klare und das Finstere ausbalanciert, wurde es von Patrick W. Engel (Temple of Disharmony) noch einmal sorgfältig remastered, um das Beste aus “None Shall Defy” herauszuholen. Was Reviewer niemals zu erwähnen vergessen ist, wie unglaublich evil das Album ist; nicht nur was den Sound angeht, sondern auch in der Art und Weise, wie die Band ihre Songs rüberbringt – es ist technisch, aber die Technik ist stets songdienlich; die Riffs werden ohne Ende variiert, es herrscht definitiv kein Mangel an brillanten Ideen, an komplexen Tempiwechseln und an starken Soli.

Darüber hinaus sind die Lyrics schön finster und streckenweise extrem blasphemisch – was will man mehr?

No Fuss is back with a 14th outing that levies up to its name of dealing in only quality, fad-free sounds. Saison kicks off here with 'The Truth' which is a deep, lithe and soulful sound laced with soft acid, before DJ Romain's 'I'm Gonna Love You' taps into 90s New York house depths with neat organ stabs. On the reverse, Manuel Sahagun gets loopy with his bumping and raw 'Rouff' and its deft melodic curlicues while classy house operator Toni Lionni's remix of Deepmore's 'Babe' is a prime slice of serene and gently back-lit deep house hypnosis.

Repress Orange Vinyl

Endlich können die Millionen Fans von "Stranger Things" ihre Leidenschaft für ihre Lieblingsserie durch den Kauf von physischen Produkten (vor allem LPs, aber auch CDs und sogar Kassetten, eine Anspielung auf die 80er Jahre als zentrales Thema der Serie) zum Ausdruck bringen! Noch mehr als in den vorherigen Staffeln spielt die Musik eine wichtige Rolle in der Erzählung, insbesondere das Kate-Bush-Phänomen "Running up that hill", das natürlich im Soundtrack enthalten ist, sowie "Pass The Dutchie" von Musical Youth und "You Spin Me Round" von Dead or Alive, die in den ersten Episoden sehr auffällig waren. Supererwartetes Kultprodukt: Vorbestellungsstart am 1. Juli, wenn die zweite Hälfte von Staffel 4 startet. Enfin les millions de fans de "Stranger Things" vont pouvoir matérialiser leur passion pour leur série préférée en achetant en physique (surtout le LP, mais aussi le CD et même la cassette, clin d'oeil aux 80's thème central de la série) ! Plus encore que pour les saisons précédentes la musique joue un role prépondérant dans la narration avec en particulier le phénomène Kate Bush « Running up that hill » évidemment présent sur la BOF ainsi que Pass The Dutchie de Musical Youth, You Spin Me Round de Dead or Alive très remarqués dans les premiers épisodes. Produit culte super attendu : lancement de précommande à ne pas manquer pour le 1er juillet, date de lancement de la 2e partie de la saison 4.

Swiss artist Lukas Traxel releases his powerful debut album One-Eyed Daruma on We Jazz Records, March 10. The trio features Traxel on double bass, Otis Sandsjö on sax and Moritz Baumgärtner on drums. Compact, deep, and organic to the bone, Traxel & co's sound echoes the innovations of rhythmically driven avantgarde jazz while keeping things moving at all times. There's both drive and freedom to this sound.
ONe-Eyed Daruma features eight new compositions by Traxel, who crafted the outline for the album while dealing with the loss of his father. The group came together after an open invitation from the Zurich jazz club Moods to present a new group. The trio of Traxel, Sandsjö and Baumgärtner creates a full, symphonic, and powerful body of sound despite the instrumentation without a harmony instrument. The trio functions as a collective where the boundaries between composition, melody, and accompaniment are in flux, while keeping the common goal of creating new music together in sight at all times. Traxel reports that after playing bass in various groups with guitar and/or piano, he wanted to create a counterpoint of sorts with his new group and specifically go about it with a more sparse setup. As One-Eyed Drama proves, the idea behind the trio dynamic is a strong one and the unit makes use of their extra space in creating evocative, moody, swinging creative jazz with a distinguishable fingerprint of its own.
Lukas Traxel says:

"The process of composing this music while dealing with the loss of a loved one resulted in a writer's block at first. The notes would just not flow out of my pen until I noticed a mysterious-looking figure in the right upper corner of my piano. It was a daruma, an eyeless figure that in the Japanese tradition brings luck and prosperity. According to the myth, the first eye must be drawn onto the figure while expressing a wish. The second eye can be added only if the wish comes true. My daruma is meant to stay one-eyed as my wish, strongly connected and intertwined with my now gone father, is not meant to be fulfilled. The feeling of unfulfillment and imperfection of life serves as a common thread throughout this album, right down to its title. In a similar fashion, a composition remains incomplete until it is interpreted by musicians, and given form as music. That being said, for me playing together with this trio symbolises the upside: the sense of fulfillment in music and life.

Our musical influences include the American composer and singer Caroline Shaw, Swiss pianist Colin Vallon's trio, and composer/singer-songwriter Gabriel Kahane. In addition, I have listened a lot to the trio albums of Jimmy Guiffre and Sonny Rollins. Besides that, my musical heroes like Charlie Haden, John Coltrane, and Keith Jarrett always flow into the music. Another very important influence in the music is the work of American visual artist Agnes Martin, in whose works the imperfection of a multiplicity of repetitions results in a lively big whole in the end. (See "Wild Flower")

Live, the trio takes a lot of freedom in interpreting this music, yet we have a deeper, almost pop-like attitude towards the live performance as an experience. For me it's always important to build a strong narrative with the band while on stage."

One-Eyed Daruma by Lukas Traxel is released on 10 March 2023 by We Jazz Records on LP/CD/digitally. The LP edition is shelved in an inside-out sleeve and pressed on white vinyl. The CD is housed in a cardboard digisleeve with UV lacquer finish.

Following the release of Deltron 3030, all three members participated in the Gorillaz' self-titled debut album. With Del aka Deltron Zero on vocals, Dan the Automator aka The Cantankerous Captain Aptos on production, and Kid Koala aka Skiznoid the Boy Wonder on turntables, this album takes the listener on a paranoid journey set in a dystopian year 3030 dealing with viruses, the apocalypse, an oppressive government, and a war waged against a huge company called the Corporate Bank of Time that rules the universe, all to the well-crafted and consistent musical backing of the Automator. Appearances by Damon Albarn (The Gorillaz, Blur), Prince Paul, Peanut Butter Wolf, DJ Money Mark, Paul Barman, Mark Bell (Bjork, production), Sean Lennon, and Mr. Lif compliment Del's vocal style and add the right amount of flavor to this classic period piece.

Vintage recording equipment has long been a bit of a fetish, but to sound pioneers Voka Gentle, even the most magical machines are a means to an end. The band, made up of twins Ellie and Imogen Mason, along with Imogen’s husband, William J Stokes, are a family band in the truest sense. Whilst they started as a folk trio, their new album Domestic Bliss is an album of throat-grabbing, avant-garde indie rock songs studded with eccentric choices: a synth with its keys jammed, playing a tune of its own making; field recordings – Morris dancers, motorbikes – captured on binaural headphones.

Domestic Bliss is concerned with power: the abuse of it, being on the cusp of it, and what it really means. The album is
teaming with imaginary people in picaresque scenes that reveal the band’s rich cultural storehouse. The songs draw on history, literature, everyday life and pop culture references (specifically Jude Law’s 1995 Vogue cover), with tracks like Cheddar Man reflecting on climate change and prehistory and Creon I tracing the unease of authority through the lens of Greek mythology.

Recorded in the orchestral studios of City University, the album folds intimacy into scale, from phone-recorded vocals and samples of breath to heavy, tribal electronics in grand acoustic spaces. The result is by far their most refined record yet, where the band treat the recording studio like an instrument.

The Roots of Chicha, compiled by Barbès Records, was originally released in 2007 and became the first recording to popularize psychedelic cumbia around the world.

From the late 60's through the 80's, Peruvians invented a new popular musical hybrid inspired by music from the Americas. In 1968, Enrique Delgado released his first record on Odeon with his new group, Los Destellos, single-handedly creating Peruvian cumbia. He codified the genre early on by using the electric guitar as the primary melodic instrument, and mixing cumbia rhythms with folkloric huaynos, criollo voicings, Cuban guarachas and guajiras, rock, boogaloo, surf, psychedelia, oriental music, classical music, and bits and pieces from Brazil, France, Chile... All Peruvian cumbia bands for the next thirty years would end up drawing from the exact same sources (Grupo Celeste, Los Mirlos, Juaneco Y Su Combo, Manzanita Y Su Conjunto...).

This new wave of Peruvian cumbia came to be known as chicha. Chicha is originally the name of an alcoholic drink, made of fermented maize, which the Incas were especially fond of. In the past thirty years, however, the word has taken on a pejorative connotation. Peruvian cumbia started being called chicha in the late 70s, around the same time that the music came to be viewed as the expression of the slums – the pueblos jovenes. Little by little, the word became an adjective, and people now talk of chicha culture, chicha press, chicha architecture, even of a chicha president, and none if it – you guessed right – is meant as a compliment. Chicha suggests corruption, shady deals, and cholos – a derogatory term for a person of Andean heritage that, of late, is being reclaimed and worn as a badge of honor by the very cholos it was supposed to demean in the first place.

Brooklyn-born David Forman was steeped in soul music and Brill Building songcraft in the early 1970s while earning his living as a Hollywood set builder. He developed a soul singing style through his friendship with Aaron Neville, with whom he used to sing and jam on his apartment rooftop. He met Jack Nitzsche through his work on the 1972 film Greaser’s Palace (for which Nitzsche created the soundtrack) and later asked Nitzsche to produce this album. Forman’s original record deal with Davis was shepherded by the critic Stephen Holden of Rolling Stone and later the New York Times, and later by Paul Nelson, also of Rolling Stone.Fun fact about Forman: He was an assistant to Phillip Petit on his daring tight rope walk between the twin towers in 1974. And Forman later became a jingle writer and wrote and sang the famous Tums theme song (“Tum tum-tum-tum, TUUUUMS."This release features remastered audio, a plethora of archival photos, and a 24-page booklet with a 5500-word essay from noted journalist and producer Joe Hagan, a staff writer at Vanity Fair and producer of the 2022 compilation 'Earl's Closet' for Light In The Attic. Hagan is also fully committed to promoting the release through his network of key media gatekeepers, as well as his personal connections with legendary musicians, writers, and other cultural tastemakers.

Our director, Joe Stephenson, was looking for a bold, gothic, and dramatic score mixing traditional Hammer Films tropes with a modern sensibility.

Much like Jekyll and Hyde, this is a score of two parts, recorded with two different orchestras - the Budapest Art Orchestra and The Royal Scottish National Orchestra.
This helped to emphasise the split personality of the score: switching from sparse, haunting horror to the operatic gothic explosions we hear towards the end of the film.

A 30-person choir helped achieve a sense of scale where needed, and Hyde’s textural effects are performed on a variety of rare archaic instruments such as the Viola Da Gamba and Stroh Violin which help to evoke the sense of an ancient evil.

With a gorgeous smoky coloured vinyl, and Sean Longmore’s stunning bespoke artwork, this is a limited release that I’m eagerly awaiting to display on my own shelf.
The future of Hammer Films is bright, and I’m thrilled that fans can celebrate its rebirth with a score that honours the past while eagerly stepping into a new era." - Blair Mowat

Neues Album der französischen Gitarristin - ist auf der Ruf Records Blues Caravan-Tour im Januar 2026

2026 Repress

Belgian based Phara makes a huge debut on Soma with The Great Attractor EP. With his fast, raw and energetic sound, Phara's ascent has been quick off the mark and this latest release has the young producer stretch himself farther with cleverly produced and exciting tracks. UK Techno don, Setaoc Mass backs up this already masterful EP, lending his own prowess to the title track.

Great Attractor leans on 90s, spaced out techno vibes as fast paced 909s fire against the backdrop of rapid, modulating synths. Setaoc Mass' remix comes up next, offering a deeper more restrained affair. However, as usual, the adept nature of his productions deal out devastating effect. On the flip, Mission 3,2,1 delves into dubbed out synth work whilst retaining drive and groove. Further dub explorations are found on closing track The Andromeda Manoeuvre. Spacial synth work and atmospherics ebb and flow as Phara's hard hitting and relentless percussive work deals the final blow.

The third instalment of the remixes from J:Kenzo's album 'Taygeta Code' sees four killer producers take on each remix in their own unique style across the 140 bpm spectrum.

BOYLAN (Sentry / Mean Streets) leads the dance with his 140 bpm jungle / breaks flip of 'Like A Hawk' which features vocals by the mighty FLOWDAN. Bringing the heat in heavy and devastating fashion!

MANI FESTO (Rupture / Club Glow) steps up with his electro breaks remix of the modular dance floor heater 'Deadbull', with filtered breaks and a high energy bounce.

Canadian dubstep producer MYTHM (Artikal / Wheel & Deal) delivers his heavyweight remix of album highlight 'Narky'. The Vancouver native flips the groove and levels up the energy bringing additional heat to his version.

The final remix is from UNKEY (Foto Sounds) who takes on the album opener 'Desired State'. Unkey turns the air dark, strips back the vibe and uses sub heavy minimalism to inject a feeling of dread throughout his remix to put a stamp on the finale covering 4 corners of the world of Dubstep and 140 music.

Disco Mind Records impressed everyone with its first EP and now it deals with the pressure of coming back with a second in fine fashion. This one is perfect for warm days and summer nights as it offers four high-impact and gloriously feel-good Brazilian and disco edits all pulled off to perfection. New young talent Brother Julian kicks off with a peak time and groovy burner, then disco don Romand Truth goes a little more deep and smooth with his seductive sound. Delfonic offers the percussive Latin grooves of 'Nada is Going to Change' and 'Grito de Guerra' is another upbeat open-air rhythm.

Naked Lunch - Songs for the Exhausted (Reissue) 2004 markierte für Naked Lunch einen radikalen Neuanfang. Nach dem kometenhaften Aufstieg in den 90ern, geplatzten Major-Deals und finanziellen Katastrophen stand die österreichische Band vor dem Aus. Doch statt aufzugeben, zog sich das Quartett mit Produzent Olaf Opal (u.a. The Notwist) in ein Studio zurück und schuf über drei Jahre hinweg ein Werk, das als "nicht für möglich gehaltenes Meisterwerk" (Der Standard) gilt. Songs for the Exhausted ist kein leichtes Album: dunkel, intensiv, sperrig - und dennoch tröstend. Es erzählt von Müdigkeit und Wiedergeburt, von kompromissloser Kunst fernab des Pop-Business. 22 Jahre später erscheint dieses Kultalbum erstmals als Vinyl-Reissue bei Tapete Records - ein Muss für Liebhaber anspruchsvoller Indie-Musik.

Peter Rehberg is known for his pioneering electronic work with computer software which over time evolved into a modular set up alongside running MEGO and then Editions Mego labels.

Rehberg was a prolific collaborator, with other musicians and with contemporary dance and theatre productions, most notably with French artist and choreographer, Gisèle Vienne with whom he created a series of soundtracks from Showroomdummies, released under the name DACM in 2002 (Showroomdummies MEGO 056), to Crowd in 2017. A collection of Rehberg’s solo works for Vienne was released in 2008 (Work for GV 2004-2008 EMEGO 092). The outfit KTL, with Stephen O’Malley, was initiated by Gisèle Vienne for her work Kindertotenlieder and subsequently made a series of soundtracks for Vienne’s works branching off into a prolific series of live shows. The work Rehberg did for theatre and performance teased out aspects of his practice one may not have encountered in his own solo work as PITA or that of collaborations with other musicians.

Editions Mego is proud to present a previously unreleased theatre soundtrack made for Icelandic choreographer Margrét Sara Guðjónsdóttir, whom Rehberg had a decade long collaboration with until his untimely passing in 2021. The original composition for Liminal States was created by Rehberg for the performance Pervasive Magnetic Stimuli in 2018 and then revisited as a catalyst for the concepts behind Liminal States. This work is based on an ongoing artistic research conducted by the choreographer into altered states of perception through phenomenological embodiment. It is the last in a trilogy dealing with the notion of larger forces that act on us beyond our conscious mind. The trilogy consists of Pervasive Magnetic Stimuli (2018), Boundless Ominous Fields (2024) and now Liminal States (2024).

Rehberg's score for Liminal States is a vast canvas of spectral ambience at once tangible and unfathomable in its constantly shapeshifting lysergic dread. The results are a psychological journey through the mental effects of sound on space and subsequently the mind. The first part presents cascading waves of shimmering electronics laying the groundwork for the second part where the psychological illusion splinters into all manner of sonic effects taking the listener on a deep mental voyage. If references are witnessed the late period long form hallucinatory works of Coil, such as Time Machines and Constant shallowness leads to evil, are amongst a similar mind message delivered here. Unlike any other release in Rehberg’s output Liminal States is a single long form work which, despite the form, retains Rehberg’s idiosyncratic sound vision.

Guðjónsdóttir and Rehberg’s collaboration blurs that relationship into a greater force which truly enables the theme of liminal states to unfold in a brave new fashion. Rich in timbre and sonic invention this is powerful work easily holding its own outside of the intended performance whilst still complimenting the missions statement entirely. This profound collaboration has the cumulative effect where the concept and soundtrack are one and may be one of the strongest works in the entire Rehberg canon.

Montreal indie rock trio Plants and Animals announce "The Jungle", their fifth studio album set to be released October 23rd via Secret City Records. Their shortest album yet and certainly their boldest, "The Jungle" is eight acts in a world full of noise. The album is auto-produced and was recorded at Mixart, their studio in Montreal. The band explains : "We started working on this a couple of years ago. Warren was afraid for a friend's health. He thought he was self-medicating too much and not taking care of himself. He couldn't let go of this image of an overworked dude swallowing too many sleeping pills and falling asleep with the stove on. So it began as the place next door, sometime before Greta Thunberg turned the expression into a rallying cry, where Earth is the house and the people are sleeping. It's terrifying, and on the whole we're not unlike this friend, are we?" "The Jungle" starts with electronic drums that sound like insects at night. A whole universe comes alive in the dark. It's beautiful, complex and unsettling. Systematic and chaotic. All instinct, no plan. Voices taunt,"yeah yeah yeah." This tangled time in which we find ourselves is reflected back in shadows. Every song is such a landscape. The first one grinds to a halt and you become a kid looking out a car window at the moon, wondering how it's still on your tail as you speed past a steady blur of trees. You watch a house go up in a yellow strobe that echoes the disco weirdness of Giorgio Moroder, Donna Summer and David Bowie. You get pummelled by a rhythm then set free by a sudden change of scenery_the wind stops, clarity returns. You're under a streetlight in Queens, soft-focus, slow motion, falling in love. You speak French now too, in case you didn't already. Bienvenue. These are personal experiences made in a volatile world, and they reflect that world right back at us, even by accident. There's one song Nic sings to his teenage son who was dealing with climate change anxiety and drifting into uncharted independence. The band carries it out slowly together into a sweet blue horizon. Warren wrote the words to another shortly after losing his father. It's about the things we inherit not necessarily being the things we want. In a broader sense, that's where a lot of people find themselves right now.

Schon in den späten Achtzigern waren Teile von Ampyre in Gruppen wie Tindale Creek, Silk´n´Steel oder Dark Haze aktiv, die Veröffentlichungen vorweisen konnten. Mit Sängerin Elke Grötzinger, die auch heute noch erfolgreich mit FRONTROW WARRIOR die Bühnen rockt, hatte man dazu einen perfekten Fang gemacht. Somit hatte man im Raum Stuttgart direkt einen guten Start und volle Häuser, trotz starker Konkurrenz.

Für das im Marquee Studio produzierte 5-Track-Demo griff man tief in die Tasche, was zu einem dementsprechend professionell klingenden Ergebnis führte. Das musikalische Können und ein für diesen Stil perfektes Songwriting hätten eigentlich für den großen Knall sorgen müssen, doch 1991 änderte sich die musikalische Landschaft und auch der melodische Metal musste gegen Grunge, Crossover, sowie Thrash- und Death Metal antreten. Das Label Golden Core machte diese Aufnahmen erstmals zugänglich und die Reviews in Magazinen wie Rock Hard oder Break Out waren traumhaft. Aus der Schweiz stammten Sacrifice, die sich 1984 mit einer selbstproduzierten Single vorstellten und dann einen Deal mit dem GAMA Musikverlag bekamen. „On The Altar Of Rock“ erschien 1985 auf dem GAMA-Label Camel und platzierte die Band in der damaligen Heavyrock-Szene.

Die Mischung aus melodischem Hardrock und Heavy Metal macht den Reiz dieses Albums aus. Geschicktes Songwriting mit vielen Hooklines paart sich mit dem spielerischen Können.

Die Wiederauflage auf Golden Core enthält als Bonus die zwei raren Tracks der 12“ Single und ist remastert. Ende der Siebziger befanden sich The Teens auf dem Siegeszug und dominierten die Jugendhefte wie die Bravo. Natürlich sollte es nicht lange dauern, bis man Konkurrenz bekam. Speedy waren eine waschechte Band, die beim Musizieren in ihrem Proberaum entdeckt wurde. Kurze Zeit später wurde die erste Single „Willy Is Back“ von Didi Zill (Birth Control, The Nighthawks) produziert, der auch als Fotograf für die Bravo bekannt war. Man schaffte es ohne Umweg in die Kultsendung Ilya Richer´s Disco. Dies führte zur ersten und leider einzigen LP „Much Too Young To Rock´n´Roll“ und zur gleichnamigen Single mit dem Knaller „Fight Like A Fighter“ auf der B-Seite.

Beide Tracks schafften es erneut ins TV (eine Ferienshow mit Karl Dall und zum zweiten Mal die Sendung Disco) – das Thema Speedy brodelte! Leider entschieden sich die Eltern der minderjährigen Musiker gegen eine Tournee mit Def Leppard, was die Karriere beendete. Die Wiederauflage enthält als Zusatz auch die Songs, die es nur als Single gab.

The capstone of Miles Davis’ electric period, Agharta reigns as a funk-rock fireball — a blazing comet streaked energy and elan, a fearless organism feasting on adventure and freedom, a seven-headed Godzilla stomping its way through Osaka, Japan. Recorded on February 1, 1975 at Osaka Festival Hall at the first of a two-show stand, the double album offers an endless abundance of surprises and shifts — as well as a road-proven ensemble whose chemistry and abilities equal that of any of Davis’ celebrated bands. If the true measure of jazz is the capacity to adapt to the moment and challenge perception, Agharta is consummate.

Sourced from the original master tapes, housed in a Stoughton gatefold jacket, and pressed at Fidelity Record Pressing in California, Mobile Fidelity’s numbered-edition 180g 33RPM 2LP set of this epic live release presents it in audiophile sound on a domestic pressing for the first time. Offering greater degrees of separation, detail, and richness than the compressed CD editions and more clarity, openness, and presence than older vinyl copies, this version of the 1975 release helps bring the concert stage to your home. Just make sure your turntable and speakers are up to the challenge of Davis and Co.’s explosive performances — and producing the decibels they demand.

Teeming with vibrant colors, tones, and pace, Mobile Fidelity’s reissue captures the hear-it-to-believe-it flow, sweep, and moodiness of the music. Though the group honors looseness and freedom with religious verve, the specificity and scale rendered by this remaster allows you to detect methods behind the alleged madness that are often otherwise harder to discern. This insight extends to the understated changes in volume, harmonics, and phrasings. In many ways, you can listen as Davis himself did that early February evening as he helped coordinate the overall direction and decided on whether to blow his wah-wah-wired trumpet or take a turn on the organ.

Tellingly, Agharta would likely never have been made if not for Davis’ ventures overseas and, specifically, to the Land of the Rising Sun. Having for years faced a backlash on his native soil for his choices to experiment and blow past all known borders, Davis was welcomed with open arms in Japan. The concert documented on Agharta — as well as the day’s later show, captured on the equally exciting Pangea — stemmed from a sold-out three-week tour that would ultimately mark Davis’ final public appearances for years, as he soon settled into semi-retirement and nursed the wounds connected to an unprecedented stretch of restless and relentless output.

For all the band-fueled merit of Agharta — and there’s plenty, given the cast of saxophonist Sonny Fortune, bassist Michael Henderson, drummer Al Foster, percussionist James Mtume, and guitarists Reggie Lucas and Pete Cosey seemingly blasts off to outer space and travels distant galaxies by the time this minimally edited record runs its course — Davis’ own playing often remains overlooked. As critics Richard Cook and Brian Morton observed, it is “often fantastically subtle, creating surges and ebbs in a harmonically static line, allowing him to build huge melismatic variations on a single note.” He attacks like a man on a mission, out to prove naysayers wrong and bent on trailblazing another new path forward. Convention and skeptics be damned.

Noisy and furious, dark and discordant, abstract and off-balance, radical and intense, abrasive and atmospheric, strangely beautiful and hypnotically eccentric: Agharta evades simple description, and refuses to be pinned down in any established category — rock, jazz, punk, ambient, prog, avante-garde, or otherwise. Shot through with trench-deep grooves, screaming riffs, scalding solos, and free-improv leads, its cosmic thrust comes on as the equivalent of an animated pointillist painting comprised of millions of textured dots, dashes, and dabs that hold your attention so raptly you want to revisit the ideas again and again.

Always steps ahead of everyone else, Davis knew what he was doing even when Agharta debuted in Japan before later hitting U.S. markets. Though “Maiysha” and “Theme from Jack Johnson” are identified in the track listing, the record contains a number of uncredited references to other Davis works, including a nod to “So What.” This decision to bypass labels only adds to the art of the reveal — the rare black magic in which Agharta expertly deals.

"Guerra Total Na Boca Do Lixo" is CAVEIRAS' new album, to be released on February 13, 2026. The album will include 12 brand new tracks, displaying the usual mix of punk aggression, batucada rhythms, industrial / noise bravado and bass music.

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CAVEIRAS deal in obsessive rhythms and low frequencies, infusing punk with Afro-Brazilian vibes. Their spiritual birth can be traced back to a visit to Favela Rocinha: while watching two young boys improvise a batucada with a bucket and a bin, band members became obsessed with the possibility of an occult alliance between Rio de Janeiro and Einstürzende Neubauten’s Berlin. Back home, Caveiras made a blood oath, vowing to channel the dark side of samba. Armed with an electric bass, scrap percussions and a machine-gunning sampler, they began to butcher Brazilian standards with a wild and iconoclastic attitude. Claves and rhythms of the Brazilian tradition are heavily treated through electro-acoustic techniques, dub-oriented bass lines strip melody down to the bone, while screams cross the line separating punk’s rants from Quimbanda’s curses.

James Brown wants to know one thing before he and his band begin Sex Machine. “Can I get into the thing, really?,” he asks. His cohorts enthusiastically respond in the affirmative. And for the next hour and change, Mr. Dynamite gets into it and more, turning in a sweat-soaked, feet-moving, hip-swiveling, emotion-purging, in-the-red, drop-everything-you’re-doing-and-dance performance for the ages. Ranked by Rolling Stone among the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, the sweeping 1970 effort towers as a testament to Brown’s inimitable legacy as well as the peak powers of his voice, vibrancy, and bands.

Sourced from the original master tapes, pressed at Fidelity Record Pressing, and housed in a Stoughton gatefold jacket, Mobile Fidelity’s numbered-edition 180g 33RPM 2LP set presents Sex Machine in audiophile sound for the first time. It explodes with the energy the lightning-strike music demands. Dynamic, immediate, present, airy: Everything from the brassiness and fluidity of the horns to the snap and decay of the snare to the swell and carry of the organ comes across in full-range perspective.

Then there’s Brown’s superhuman singing, which here emerges with a purity, naturalism, and transparency that ensure you feel everything. Screeching, shouting, pleading, moaning, preaching, stinging, commanding, testifying, crooning, humming: The Godfather of Soul contributes one of the finest vocal performances known to man. This definitive 55th anniversary reissue of Brown’s monster funk statement further exhibits a combination of clarity, solidity, separation, and imaging that helps bring to light what he and his crack ensembles committed to tape. Both in the studio and on the stage.

Just how lifelike does this reissue sound? Senior Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab engineer Krieg Wunderlich, who handled the remaster, notes: “There were some artifacts that sounded a bit like mistracking. But they turned out to be breath blasts on the vocal microphone. That is part of history. JB was workin' hard, and breathin' hard. And there was an edit the timing of that was truly strange. Again, a part of history.”

Originally marketed as a live album, Sex Machine contains six songs recorded in the studio and later overdubbed with canned crowd noise and reverberation. Save for “Low Down Popcorn,” the tracks on the latter half stem from a phenomenal performance captured in October 1969 at Bell Auditorium in Brown’s adopted hometown of Augusta, GA. The special relationship between the singer, the audience, and the location is palpable.

As the 1960s gave way to a new decade, Brown experienced immense success and dealt with unexpected change. Soul Brother Number One soon expanded his idea for an official live album captured in Augusta when the ensemble that backed him on that date morphed into the original version of the world-famous J.B.’s just months after the show. The virtuosic abilities, sticky chemistry, and rhythm-forward nature of the J.B.’s prompted him to book a one-off session in Cincinnati, OH, on a late July night.

Anchored by brothers William “Bootsy” Collins and Phelps “Catfish” Collins, the group — as well as two different drummers — laid down a nearly 11-minute rendition of “Get Up I Feel Like Being Like a Sex Machine” and a thrilling medley of “Bewildered,” “I Got the Feeling,” and “Give It Up or Turnit a Loose.” A pair of then-recent studio singles cut in separate locations in 1969, “Brother Rapp” and “Low Down Popcorn,” each featuring his prior group, took care of the second LP worth of material that complements the originally planned live set.

Complicated? Somewhat. Unusual? Definitely. But just as he elevated the expectations for all present and future R&B artists, Brown not only makes it all work. He makes it positively electrifying.

“Get Up I Feel Like Being Like a Sex Machine” is alone deserving of a dissertation on the art of funk music, seeing it moves up and down akin to an oil derrick, witnesses Brown unleashing a trademark series of grunts, squeaks, and “good god” asides, and glides to a hypnotic groove that won’t quit. Or look to the syncopated rhythms of “Brother Rapp (Part I and Part II),” one of multiple pieces here that signify the point where Brown began viewing every instrument as a percussive tool. Brown closes the three-song medley with his new band with a skedaddling “Give It Up or Turnit a Loose,” which provides jolts on the order of sticking your finger into a socket.

Not that the actual live material falls short in any way. Setting an insistent tempo for the vitality that follows, “I Don’t Want Nobody to Give Me Nothing” positions Brown as a role model, leader, and self-sufficient entrepreneur. All simmer and boil, the short and sweet “Licking Stick” dares you to keep pace. The floating, almost comforting “Spinning Wheel” spotlights the instrumental prowess of Maceo Parker and company, and functions as a seamless segue into the tender, horn-saluted “If I Ruled the World.”

And Brown and his mates still aren’t done. Just try to resist the one-two closing punch of “I Can’t Stand Myself (When You Touch Me)” and “Mother Popcorn.” Mercy.

Ain’t it funky? Sure ‘nuff.

The tapes for “Ronnie McNeir Makes A Move” were found in Mickey Stevenson’s extensive master tape collection. A full new LP of classic McNeir is an absolute treat for his many soul fans; particularly in Europe where he is so admired.
Ronnie recorded over twenty tracks with Mickey Stevenson’s production company in 1971. Eleven of these were featured on his RCA LP “Ronnie McNeir”, but another ten were left in the vaults.

The title track, ‘Let’s Make A Move’ is an urgent, exciting funk sound, composed with Ronnie’s frequent writing partner, Andre Moore. ‘I’m Sorry’ is an earlier version of ‘Gone Away’ which featured on the 1972 RCA “Ronnie McNeir” LP, without the female singer’s vocal response track.
‘Say You’ is the Motown song first recorded by the Monitors in 1965. It has a more laid-back treatment here, giving it a whole new dimension. We issued the single version on a Kent Select 45 in 2022; both versions are featured on the CD. Another re-envisaged Motown number is ‘The Girl’s Alright With Me’ which features Hodges, James, Smith & Crawford’s backing vocals − as do other tracks on this album. Surprisingly, Bob Dylan’s ‘Blowing In The Wind’ is also covered; in a pleasing, jaunty treatment.

‘My Day Will Come’ is a slow-burning number Ronnie co-wrote with his wife Mona. It is one he is particularly proud of and has been picked up by modern soul DJs as a potential crossover hit. ‘Tell Your Mama’ is a sensuous, Marvin Gaye-influenced groove, while ‘East Side, West Side’ is more streetwise, dealing with the social problems that face many young people.

As a multi-instrumentalist, heavily influenced by jazz, it comes as no surprise that Ronnie would record two jazz / soul instrumental jams which he simply named ‘Ronnie’s Bag #1’ and ‘Ronnie’s Bag #2’. The tracks are keyboard-lead, piano and possibly organ – or more likely one of the early synthesisers that Ronnie pioneered. ‘Ronnie’s Bag #1’ is more jazz-oriented, while ‘Ronnie’s Bag #2’ goes funky.

Peripheral Minimal records is proud to present it's latest release: Cold Colors / Xiu "Tristesse" 7". The single comes from a cassette released by Vocoder Tapes in 2013. It will be limited to 250 copies on black vinyl.

The two tracks on the 7" are beautifully constructed minimal wave / synth tracks, that are simultaneously melancholic and uplifting, perhaps for comparison we could think of: Figure Study, Xeno & Oaklander or Selofan.

Cold Colors is Frédérick Barbe who hails from Bordeaux. He has released material on several well-known labels, including: Lux Rec, Oráculo Records, Waste Editions, Nocta Numerica, F.I.R., Romance Moderne, and now Peripheral Minimal.

Xiu is Oksana Rodionova who is based in Milan but originates from Estonia. "Xiu's music is a synthesis between retro-pop and futurist synth waves. It delivers spacy looped electronica, groovy rhythms, linear lo-fi synth washes, softly dreamy pop melodies sometimes admitting dramatic tones and mysterious textural ambiences. The conceptual background deals with thematics related to dystopia, occult arts and mystic beliefs."

The recordings were made between France and Italy during the "Loneliness" E.P. sessions 2013 / 14.

Kill Them With Kindness is the 18th album from Beans on Toast, recorded at Greenmount Studios in Leeds with The Beans on Toast Band, a collection of musical friends he handpicked from the UK music scene a few years back.

"We've done a few tours together, but this was our first venture into a studio. Each one of them is amazing, and together... well, I'm proper chuffed with how it sounds. Have a listen for yourself," says Beans.

This album is a bit of a juxtaposition, as is the title. "There are songs that deal with the current state of the world: wars, maniac leaders, the rise of AI and the fall of the establishment. Then there are songs about trees, late nights in music venues, art, love and my new cat. As usual, it's a time stamp of my thoughts and feelings from the past year on planet Earth."

Transparent Purple vinyl. Sometime in 2005, a lone box of master tapes escaped an estate sale and made its way through a network of collectors, record dealers, and "junkers" into the hands of leading Ohio soul expert Dante Carfagna, who linked them to Columbus, Ohio's mysterious Prix label (See: Eccentric Soul: The Prix Label). A bit of research turned up Prix proprietor George Beter, who identified most of the unlabeled material. All it took was an endless series of phone calls and letters and two fields trips in Columbus. But one complete mystery wended its way onto our final Prix compilation. "You and Me," a simple but irrepressible demo credited only to Penny & the Quarters, was found tacked onto a mixed studio reel. Our survey of every willing lifer left on the Columbus soul scene, including retired DJs, producers, and important local artists, produced not so much as a glimmer of recognition at the name Penny & the Quarters. Though we loved the song from the first play, it may've ended up a bit buried on our original compilation, as #18 of 19 tracks.Four years later, Eccentric Soul: The Prix Label hadn't exactly become a huge seller, although listeners had repeatedly told us that the unfiltered studio demos that fill out the record's back half were true diamonds in the rough. But neither Penny nor her Quarters had appeared to claim credit for their efforts. Then, completely out of left field, we heard from respected screen actor and avowed Numero fan Ryan Gosling that Penny's piercing bit of stripped down doo-wop was being considered for inclusion in Derek Cianfrance's indie-weeper film Blue Valentine. What we didn't know was that "You and Me" had won a major role in what became an indie circuit hit, and that Penny & the Quarters would instantly assume the role of world's most famous unknown doo-wop group.Every week is a slow news week in Columbus, Ohio, and early January 2011 found the city recovering from the thrill of elevating Ted Williams_the formerly homeless guy with the awesome voice for radio_into a national news sensation. But both major daily newspapers in town, as well as the city's alternative weekly, also ran stories about how a lost and unknown Columbus soul group had become the musical centerpiece of a film already garnering Oscar buzz. That mainstream spotlight aimed at Blue Valentine and Penny & the Quarters did the trick: we finally made contact with the widow of Jay Robinson, lead Quarters' singer and songwriter. Robinson, it turned out, had also been the leader of Columbus doo-wop pioneers The Supremes (later known as "The Columbus Supremes," for reasons which should be obvious). Jay Robinson never did give up on the dream of writing a hit record; even so, the posthumous realization of his dream is cold comfort for his widow and daughter. With their blessings, we returned to those estate sale masters and pulled down another neglected track ("You Are Giving Me Some Other Love") from the still-unknown Penny and her now-partly-known Quarters. "You and Me" is a song that could not be suppressed: not when Prix failed to release it; not when Penny & the Quarters were forgotten; not when Numero stuck it at the bitter end of a much overlooked compilation. Its evolution from estate sale trash to silver-screen gold has finally returned it to big-hole 45, where it probably should have lived all along.

London-based experimentalist Luke Younger (a.k.a HELM) returns to PAN with ‘Olympic Mess’.
Where his previous effort, 2014’s ‘The Hollow Organ,’ dealt in dense, distressed sonics, ‘Olympic Mess’ is Younger responding to a period spent engaged with loop-based industrial music, dub techno, and balearic disco. These musical references, all of which can induce hypnotic states and feelings of euphoria, inform ten evocative aural landscapes which unfurl over the course of an hour and act almost as a counterpoint to the turmoil that spawned them.
Crafted using an array of heavily processed samples, found sound and electroacoustics, personal conflict manifests in “I Exist In A Fog” and “Outerzone 2015,” where visceral noise disintegrates into veiled, ambient strata. The disquieting crescendos of “The Evening In Reverse” and “Fluid Cloak” offer no such relief, while the title track and “Don’t Lick The Jacket” are mineral, multilayered abstractions twisting around a brittle pulse.

The re-release of 'Flamma Flamma' by the Intuition Music labe was to mark the 30th anniversary and featured a remastered and re- edited version of the original album released worldwide in 1994. It's appearing for the first time on double vinyl, as well as on CD. The composer himself supervised the remastering and re-editing. After its initial release on CD in 1994, 'Flamma Flamma' climbed numerous international charts and quickly developed from an insider tip to a major bestseller and has been compared with Orff's'Carmina Burana'. The gothic world - both romantic gothic and trash gothic - also embraced the work during long 'Flamma Flamma theme weekends' in castles across Europe.

Nicholas Lens began his trilogy 'The Accacha Chronicles' (Flamma Flamma / Terra Terra / Amor Aeternus) with the first part, 'Flamma Flamma', as a search for harmony between the contradictory elements in nature and human nature. The fusion of nonEuropean musical cultures with Western classical music has been described and appreciated as highly unique. Finally, unlike almost every other requiem, 'Flamma Flamma' not only deals with grief and pain, but also presents death as anatural part of the cosmic life process.

Soul diamonds featuring Millie Jackson, Gloria Ann Taylor, The New Establishment and Ruby Andrews

Fuzzy Blanket Recordings out of Portland returns with a mesmerizing Various Artists EP, weaving together four deep excursions into house and dub-infused atmospheres. Each track unfolds like a story - warm, textured, and deeply hypnotic. From glowing deep house grooves to magical, dub-touched explorations, this collection captures the label’s unique spirit: intimate, timeless, and endlessly inviting. A record made for dreamers and dancers alike.

“Twenty-five years into their existence, The Album Leaf are an old comfy sweater. It might not be the most fashionable thing in your collection but it always feels good when you put it on. Jimmy LaValle’s synth textures are warm, nostalgic and steeped in Boards of Canada / Ulrich Schnauss-style soundscapes that are relaxing, otherworldly and melodic” – Brooklyn Vegan

The Album Leaf shares his new ambient LP, Rotations. The record is a mediative experiment into atmospheric sound. Creator Jimmy LaValle explains, “This collection of music is a true reflection of my creative process—rooted in sound exploration, experimentation, and spontaneous response. Each track captures a moment of creative discovery, free from the pressure of achieving a polished result. Throughout my career, I’ve often placed significant weight on what an album should be. With this release, I’ve let go of those expectations to share a body of work that feels genuine and authentic.

The Album Leaf began as the solo project of Jimmy LaValle, who came up in the San Diego music scene playing in hardcore bands and the instrumental rock band Tristeza. He had inked a deal to release his next solo album through the indie label Tigerstyle Records, so he put the modest advance towards a self-recording starter setup, building out the sound with occasional studio access. The music that emerged — vivid, rhythmic, soaring instrumentals guided by lines of Guitar and Rhodes — not only set the path for The Album Leaf over the next two decades of acclaimed releases (for Sub Pop, City Slang, and others), it became a touchstone for the next generation's wave of melodic and meditative electro-organic music.

Frontman Chris Reifert was already a well-known force on the underground through his time as drummer with Florida's highly respected death metal combo Death. After playing drums on the band's debut album, the much acclaimed 'Scream Bloody Gore', Chris moved back west to the more open climate of San Francisco & formed Autopsy. The band released the demo 'Critical Madness' in 1988 & it wasn't long before Peaceville Records snapped them up in a deal initially spanning 4 albums.

The partnership kicked off in April 1989 with their debut album 'Severed Survival'; a brutal explosion of heavy riffs, tight drumming & a screaming vocal, rounded off with concepts of death, disease & diabolica. This was swiftly followed up with the equally genre-defining 'Mental Funeral' opus in 1991. Released in the autumn of 1995, Autopsy's then fourth & final album before splitting, 'Shitfun', was a glorious scatological gross out & exercise in the limits of extremity & a fitting end to one of the finest bands of a Doomed generation before their return from the grave in 2009 which has continued to go from strength to strength to the current day. This thirtieth anniversary vinyl pressing of 'Shitfun' is presented on bowel- busting limited brown marble- effect vinyl, including the original cover art & printed inner sleeve.

Schon immer schwirrte im Kopf von Husky (Drums / Asphyx, Rotten Casket, ex Sodom, ex Desaster, ex Metalucifer, ex Metal Inquisitor) die Idee herum, eine Band zu gründen, die sich dem puren Thrash Metal widmet und dabei auch einen kanadischen „Razor“-Touch aufweist, ohne jedoch die musikalischen Wurzeln aller Musiker zu verlieren. Auf einem der unzähligen Treffen mit seinem alten Kumpel Patrick (Bass / ex Crematory, ex Apophis) kam es vor zwei Jahren dann auf dem Party.San Open Air zum finalen „lass uns doch mal jetzt was zusammen machen“. Patrick rekrutierte zusätzlich Holg (Gitarre / u.a. Abandoned, Roxxcalibur) und Husky verpflichtete Benni (Vocals / u.a. Knife, The Earwix), um das Line-Up passend zu komplettieren.

Im Juni 2025 traf man sich im niederländischen Enschede, um bei Tom Meier Recordings (u.a. Asphyx, Soulburn, Cryptosis, Graceless, Rotten Casket) ein erstes Demo aufzunehmen. Die Band hat im Anschluss bei niemand Geringerem als High Roller Records einen Deal erhalten, um das Demo als MCD/MLP zu veröffentlichen und auch das folgende Debütalbum wird dort erscheinen.
Und dies ist erst der Anfang…Seid bereit für „Razorsharp Thrash Metal“!

»Lilac« is the first Donna Regina album since 2019’s »Transient.« The world has changed considerably since then, which has also left its mark on the Berlin indie pop duo. The songs released as part of the 2021 single »Welt in einer Stadt« (»World in a City«) for Karaoke Kalk had already dealt with the pandemic-induced standstill and its effects on urban space, and also the rest of the album shows that Günther and Regina Janssen have been influenced by recent social and political developments. »In ›Lilac,‹ I imagine good ol’ Earth as a big ol’ bear shaking us off because it can’t stand us anymore,« says Regina Janssen. It has become a serious album, Günther affirms, but he is also adamant that it is not a sad one. Musically, Donna Regina have remained true to the spirit of their early work, recently re-released by Karaoke Kalk: their arrangements are as minimalist as they are emotionally rich.

»The music is always there,« says Regina Janssen about the creation of the tracks on »Lilac.« As always, the two record their music »track by track and without computers,« as Günther notes. Samples play a smaller role this time than on earlier albums, with analogue instruments such as a monophonic synthesiser and, above all, guitars coming to the fore again. This frames lyrics that are being delivered by Regina in German, English, or in both languages. They delve even further into the intricacies of urban life. »Cities are underrated! What a civilisational achievement it is to have so many people living under one sky,« says Regina. »They constantly put you in touch with the unfamiliar. Sometimes they’ll be overwhelming, and they are always alive.« This ambivalence shapes the tone of the album that ponders on the state of the world today.

Starting with the ominous sounds of »Whole World In My Town,« through the dreamscapes of »Autumn In Paris,« to the elegiac conclusion of »No More Roses,« Regina and Günther Janssen move through different timbres and styles with a few select means. Their preference for minimalist electronics becomes evident at times, while elsewhere the pieces open up to balladic arrangements in which the guitar plays a leading role. This turns »Lilac« into a city by itself, the songs forming its soundscape: every neighbourhood looks different, every street has its own character.

AOKI takamasa and Tujiko Noriko’s 2005 album »28« has become a cornerstone in the artists’ respective discographies. 20 years after its initial release, Keplar issues it on vinyl for the very first time. Three years in the making, »28« saw the sound artist and the avant-pop singer-songwriter combine their distinct aesthetics for an album that defied categorisation. Their combination of advanced electronic experimentation and pop appeal paved the way for a new generation of artists and turned »28« into an enduring fan favourite. Remastered by Stephan Mathieu, the reissue comes with a brand-new artwork by Joji Koyama and a changed track listing—authorised by Takamasa and Tujiko—for the vinyl version to fit it on a single LP, while the digital version remains identical to the original release.

Tujiko and Takamasa first shared the stage together after the turn of the millennium. Both were emerging solo artists, with Takamasa a mainstay on the Progressive Form label and Tujiko forging a connection with Mego in Vienna, Austria. »I simply liked Noriko’s voice and music, and since we often performed at the same events, it felt like a natural progression for us to start working together,« remembers Takamasa. They first collaborated in 2002 for two shows at the Fondation Cartier in Paris and at SonarLab in Barcelona, respectively. The first joint piece was a rework of Tujiko’s »Fly« from »Hard Ni Sasete (Make Me Hard)« by Takamasa, appearing as the album opener »Fly2« on »28.«

After that, the Paris-based Tujiko and Takamasa, still based in Osaka, worked sporadically and remotely on new material. For the first two years of their collaboration, the two met in the context of live events or Takamasa’s visits to the French capital to discuss their process and exchange hard drives while also occasionally sending each other CDrs in the mail. »Aoki made beats and sounds that complemented my music perfectly, building the foundation on which my voice could float,« Tujiko says today. Takamasa used hardware such as the Nord Modular, the Korg Z1, and the Korg ER-1, while also working with different kinds of software and plug-ins as well as Logic. Tujiko was using Cubase, her preferred piece of gear at the time being an AKAI MPC.

After Takamasa moved to Paris in 2004, this enabled the duo to finish the album together in person. Starting with its subtle use of glitches to the almost-anarchic way in which it deals with the structures of a song, »28« came to be an incomparably intricate album. 20 years on, it remains timeless because of its flawless synthesis of the cutting-edge avant-garde ideas of early 2000s electronica with an idiosyncratic but accessible pop sentiment. Both artists look back fondly—though not uncritically, with Takamasa noting a certain »youthfulness« in his contributions—to the album that was titled after their respective age at that time. »Maybe we should make ›51‹ now?,« quips Tujiko. See you in three years, perhaps.

Slip is Paul Abbott’s response to his 3 day residency at OTO in 2023. It’s a continued exploration of the acoustic-digital hybrid drum setup Abbott has been developing for some time, which involves drum kit and synthetic sounds combined closely—through an entanglement of limbs and cables—in an intimate but strange relationship with each other.

Paul Abbott hasn’t had any formal musical training, but has a long history of making music, having collaborated for years with Seymour Wright, Pat Thomas, Michael Speers, Cara Tolmie, Anne Gillis and many others. Eventually, led by a profound suspicion of what is fixed or limited, Abbott began finding other ways to organise sound - or what he calls ‘material’:

“I wanted a way to 'persuade' or guide the possibility of something happening - my activity or the events of an algorithmic composition - for example, but without certainty or formalism. It felt to me, during playing, that certain ideas had a particular sort of shape, but more than the form of a line. I began to write alongside (before/after) playing the drums, and ‘characters’ began to enter the scene as a more wobbly, and therefore appropriate option to notation. Working with these characters allowed me to simultaneously approach body, imagination, language and music: without dividing things up or separating these aspects from each other. It allowed me to leave things messy and entangled, whilst trying to deal with form and specificity: wanting to have some things feel or respond differently to other things at other times.”

In approaching his residency, Abbott developed a fixed cast of characters - crystal, lleaf, reiy.F, reiy.C, strike, nee, qosel, sphu and aahn. They each communicate using different kinds of movement and drum kit/s, and Abbott choreographed them as ‘dances’ based on different feelings, or outlines of behaviours suggestive of ways of moving (body, drums, sounds). He then arranged these characters into ‘compositions’: one for each performance day, with each composition featuring multi-layered activity - options for behaviours, ways to move around the rooms, play drums, develop synthetic sounds, change the lights or re-distribute the sound in the space.

After the performances, Abbott took home 9 hours of recordings split into up to 28 multitrack channels for each day, and re-organised his cast once more into a performance for 2LP, CD and digital. It’s an enormous amount of work - but Abbott is activated by the process. For him, the pleasure of unstable edges, possibilities, slippages, is the vital attraction. Like all living organisms, Abbott’s characters have malleability and responsivity. They stimulate a bundle of possible behaviours, a tendency to act a certain way, a temperament, a boundary of respective limits or affordances.

It’s an affective way of working, inclusive of Roscoe Mitchell, Sun Ra, Nathaniel Mackey and Milford Graves. In ‘Pulseology’(2022), Milford Graves reminds us, ‘Breath varies, so cardiac rhythm never has that (metronomic) tempo. It’s always changing. All the alignments of the heart are determined based on the needs of the cells, specifically tissues and organs. The heart knows if it needs to speed up.’ In Slip, to slip, in a heartbeat, is to descend not into the grid of the even metre accorded to the heartbeat, but into a play of mutability and modality. To change is the condition of the heart.

Seven Blood make music that manages to move the listener despite its hard-hitting sounds. Metal meets Emo-Core. Their songs revive the seemingly lost connection between volume and emotionality. However, they refrain from imitating existing bands and create their own sound, which complements the music of their youth with the band's own character. It all started in spring 2023. Anfy, Azaria, and Oli were going through strong personal crises, had known each other for several years, and decided to do what helps most in such a situation: process the pain together through songwriting. Shortly after, Josi joined and completed the band. Their lyrics deal with personal struggles and observations of our society, whether it's the toxicity of individuals or the ignorant attitude of an entire species. Seven Blood embed these lyrics in a brutal wall of sound that gives their thoughtfulness a furious undertone. The combined force of drums, bass, and guitar rises behind the vocals and is complemented by the ethereal and sometimes biting sounds of fanfares and synths. All of this culminates in a musical high that gives the listener the feeling that everything, and simultaneously nothing, is okay.

Seven Blood make music that manages to move the listener despite its hard-hitting sounds. Metal meets Emo-Core. Their songs revive the seemingly lost connection between volume and emotionality. However, they refrain from imitating existing bands and create their own sound, which complements the music of their youth with the band's own character. It all started in spring 2023. Anfy, Azaria, and Oli were going through strong personal crises, had known each other for several years, and decided to do what helps most in such a situation: process the pain together through songwriting. Shortly after, Josi joined and completed the band. Their lyrics deal with personal struggles and observations of our society, whether it's the toxicity of individuals or the ignorant attitude of an entire species. Seven Blood embed these lyrics in a brutal wall of sound that gives their thoughtfulness a furious undertone. The combined force of drums, bass, and guitar rises behind the vocals and is complemented by the ethereal and sometimes biting sounds of fanfares and synths. All of this culminates in a musical high that gives the listener the feeling that everything, and simultaneously nothing, is okay.

Amazing Things is an album about death which isn't morose, slow, or quiet. A year ago Darren lost a friend to cancer. Amazing Things is an album about death which isn't morose, slow, or quiet. Instead, it is packed with joyful, melodic guitars and some of Darren's prettiest tunes. It is sometimes very sad, but also heartfelt, loving, and rewarding. Darren recorded the album almost entirely solo and this time he has dug deep into his primary instrument, the electric guitar, creating a sound that is rich in tone and texture. Darren Hayman is a British songwriter best known for his work with late 90s band Hefner, but has since made more than 20 albums dealing with astronauts, the English Civil War, William Morris, Lidos, and Thankful Villages. He lives in South London with his dog.

Only Music Matters is a mysterious label that deals in white hot minimal and tech from either one unknown or various rotating unknown artists who all go by the name Unknown. They are all straight to dancefloor, no-frills business, including this one: 'AAA001A' is dark and rumbling with a mid-tempo groove and sleazy vocal slurs from a Saint Germain classic. 'BBB001B' brings a more luminous synth glow and fluttering motifs up top that elevate the dubby, wafting drums. 'BBB002B' completes the trip with some warped pads and sci-fi details over another dusty mix of drums and bass. The likes of Dubfire and Priku have already been banging this one, so you should too.

Marc Brauner joins Flipsight with a four-track journey combining soulful depth and club-ready energy in equal measure.
Under Marc's motto, "Stay Radiant", the A-side opens with a deep head-nodder that glows with a smooth and rolling groove from start to finish. "It's Alright" immediately raises the pulse with tight percussion, lush pads, and feel good momentum.

Flip it over for the B-side, "Show Me How" rides a big kick-snare combo and subtle spacy accents. Closing things out, "Floaty" does exactly what the title suggests: a bass-driven buzzer that lifts the floor and seals the deal.

2025 EDITION / HEAVY BOXSET (BLACK) / CLEAR MARBLED TRANSPARENT VINYL
Emmanuel Top's Attack Records stands as a milestone in the 1990s techno-acid scene.
The French producer pioneered a unique sound that continues to resonate today. Tracks like "Turkish Bazar" and "Acid Phase" remain iconic, even considered among the best techno productions of the 90s.
Thirty years after their original release, all the key tracks by Emmanuel Top on his own Attack Records return to vinyl, remastered in a 5 x 12" boxset.

Emile Sornin has a robot in his life. It's not love, but it's not friendship either, and Forever Pavot is releasing an album documenting the affair on Born Bad. After a bunch of bold pop studio albums and a small stack of soundtracks, Emile needed a break. To put an end to it, he embarked with handyman extraordinaire Jonas Euvremer on the manufacture of an automaton destined to make his musician’s life easier. Melchior, who gave his name to the record, has the face of a ventriloquist's dummy, two plastic left hands, preppy clothes and a primitive logic circuit. This goodie two-shoes cousin of Bender’s is supposed to be doing the interviews and deal with socials for Emile. The plan worked admirably : Melchior is a perfect cover-boy, and his very existence has put our man back to work.



They set a path for phat electronic ventures (and by the way, mostly english-speaking). Sub- continental bass & massive drums, heavy-footed and unabashed : as much appreciated as unexpected. The half-android shares songwriting credits and vocal parts vocoded to perfection. Not a jealous lad, Melchior makes way for a guest of choice on “UFO” and “Waiting for the sign” : Lispector. Julie Margat sings and collaborated on the lyrics for these two bangers that provide a lot of context (robot angst is real). Kumisolo, our favorite Japanese « it » girl in Paris, also sent her “Postcard”, more vapour than song, unreal musical cotton candy of arrangements.


Domotic, who mixes and co-produces, gives a nice spin to “Count to 10”, a hip-hop/kraut crossover with a BEAK> flavour. The Forever Pavot, once a big-band, will be touring as a bass/ drums/keys & vocals trio, with Melchior as guest.



Record after record, Emile Sornin has become an increasingly literate musical illiterate. When needed, his music can still become a thicket of ancient and modern finds. « Le robot gentilhomme », a skillful pastiche of baroque composer Jean-Baptiste Lully, would stand a few rounds against Wendy Carlos. His love for oldies also shines through “Skyway”, a nod to the late Pierre Arvay, France’s Colonel Sanders of library music nuggets.



Forever Pavot may have gone wild, but remains indebted vis-à-vis the golden age of film music. Forebears deluxe Ennio Morricone & François de Roubaix make Hitchcock-style cameos: discreet appearances that you’ll watch out for (those syncopated cascades of syllables at the end of « UFO », and I guess we can indulge with some clavichord/ondioline Victoria sponge). His new flirt is all but a toxic relationship. « Melchior, Vol. 1 »: the robo-bromance is not over yet.

"The five-year anniversary release of Orion Sun’s Hold Space For Me, pressed on tangerine vinyl. Her story, that of an early 20s woman of color dealing with and learning about life's obstacles and celebrations, is understood best through her song lyrics; citing J Dilla, Nancy Wilson, Jodeci, Kirk Franklin, Hazel Scott and Digable Planets as just some of her many influences. She's a career artist with a long road ahead and her sound defies trends; capitalizing on a velvety and familiar voice with timeless jazz / folk / R&B instrumentals.

“...a pinch-yourself song that steps lightly with the thrill of a love seemingly too good to be true (and the fear that it might be)” – Philadelphia Inquirer on “Ne Me Quitte Pas”

“stark and lightly poetic.” – Pitchfork

“A smooth, serene downbeat groove and a blissed vocal finds Orion Sun singing about sudden and deep connection — “It feels so good to know ya” — and despite the sadness implied in the title, the outlook is positive and pure.” – WXPN/The Key on “Ne Me Quitte Pas”

“While the track shares the same title as covers done by Nina Simone, Regina Spektor, and Wyclef Jean, she presents a completely different vibe, slowing down a flipped sample with smooth guitar loops and resonating drums. Still, with all of the stellar instrumentation, the 23-year-old’s voice cuts through as poignant as ever.” – Refinery 29 on ”Ne Me Quitte Pas”"

2024 Reissue

“Tubby did three original dub albums, ‘Dub From The Roots’. ‘The Roots of Dub’ and the third is ‘Brass Rockers’ with Tommy McCook ‘pon the flying cymbals. Where he mixed it with the horn going in and out in a dub way and one named ‘Shalom Dub’ you can call Tubby’s too because he mixed the versions as they were off forty fives’’
Bunny ‘Striker‘ Lee

King Tubby and Producer Bunny ‘Striker’ Lee are intertwined in the birth of Dub Music. After discovering a mistake that made a ‘serious joke’ ( more of which later...) they went on to release the first pressings of this new musical genre namely ‘Dub Music’. Tubby’s vast knowledge of electronics and Bunny’s vast catalogue of rhythms would lay the foundations of what today is taken as a standard... the Remix / Version cuts to an existing vocal tune.

Osbourne ‘King Tubby’ Ruddock was born in Kingston, Jamaica on 28th January 1941 and grew up in the High Holborn Street area of downtown Kingston. He studied electronics at Kingston’s National Technical College and also on two correspondence courses from the U.S.A... When he had qualified Tubby began repairing radios and other electrical appliances in a shack in the back yard of his mother’s home. His work in the early days included winding transformers and building amplifiers for Kingston’s Sound Systems. Tubby built his first Sound System in 1957 playing jazz and Rhythm & Blues at local weddings and birthday parties. His reputation as a man who knew and understood both electronics and music grew steadily and as the sixties drew to a close. Tubby purchased his own basic two track equipment. He installed this alongside his dub cutting machine, a home made mixing console and his impressive collection of Jazz albums in the back bedroom of his home at 18 Dromilly Avenue which he christened his music room.

Tubby and Striker were at Treasure Isle Studio’s one day while Ruddy from Spanish Town was working with the engineer Byron Smith....

“Tubby and myself was talking when Ruddy was cutting some dub but Smithy (engineer) made a mistake through we were talking and forgot to put in the voice. It was two track recording in those days. Ruddy said ‘No Man! Make it stay! and so they cut the rhythm. When I went over to Ruddy’s that Saturday night a dance was in progress and when they played the vocal to the tune... then he said we’re going to play ‘Part Two’. They never called it ‘Version’..and then he played the rhythm track. The song was a catchy song and everybody started to sing along and the deejay started to toast so everything went down well. On Monday morning I went up and I said ‘Tubbs the mistake we made was a serious joke.It mash up Spanish Town! The people went wild. So you have to start to do that now ‘cause when the man put on the ‘Part Two’ everyone start singing this song. It played about twenty times. I said you try Tubbs!’...Well the next Saturday night now when Tubby strung up down the farm U Roy said he’s going to play ‘Part Two’ but Tubby did it different now. He started with the voice then dropped it out and let the rhythm run and then he brought in the voice in the middle and from there Tubby started to get really popular.’’
Bunny ‘Striker’ Lee

Dynamic Sounds upgraded to sixteen track recording in 1972 and Tubby purchased, again with the help of a deal brokered by Bunny Lee. The old four track equipment and the MCI console from their Studio B. The four tracks now gave him far wider scope to work with and he began to create a new musical form where the bass and drum parts were brought up while the faders allowed Tubby to ease the vocal and rhythm in and out of the mix. It was only a matter of time before Tubby’s dub plate experiments began to make it on to vinyl and the first ever long playing King Tubby releases would feature a collection of his mixes to a selection of Strikers rhythms. So please sit back and enjoy this historic set of sounds. Lovingly restored and with a few extra gems added to the CD Editions. These releases were the first to carry the name of King Tubby and the first to credit the great musicians that contributed so much to the rhythms that made these albums possible.

OOOOH! by Alex Bad Baby Lukashevsky with Cocoa Corner (2025)

Celebrated veteran of Toronto’s music scene, known for his boundary-pushing approach to folk and avant-garde music, twists rock music into strange and brilliant new shapes with the help of young jazz players, U.S. Girls, and his own immensely talented son.



OOOOH! is hard on the outside and soft on the inside. Made in the spirit of unity,
humanity, and poetry — disobediently renouncing the glory of personal triumph for the
generosity of an honest experiment. On the last track of the album you’ll hear “Or do you only ever never want to make a single enemy? / That’s not freedom or humility / It’s nothing, honestly.” Oooh, that's a bad baby!

A celebrated Toronto songwriter and performer, Alex Lukashevsky has always been disobedient. Which simply means, nothing is off the table when he’s looking for his
poetic voice; when trying to find the realest I of the teller. As he sings on the lead track “that musician that’s dead” The musician is radical/ it’s the world that’s demented/ listening with their eyes, the music looks dented/ they’re over-represented.
OOOOH! was recorded in January 2024 at Sound Department in Toronto, engineered by Patrick Lefler (ROY), mixed by Grammy-nominated producer Matt Smith. All the songs were tracked live off the floor in two days, with one extra day for recording vocals, to keep the recording fully alive and breathing. As leader of Deep Dark United, as a solo performer, and a sideman in Brodie Wests’ Eucalyptus and Luka Kuplowsky’s Ryokan Band, Alex has been an outsized influence on the Toronto music scene that spawned acts like Broken Social Scene and Owen Pallett. (Pallett, who has toured with Lukashevsky, went so far as to record an entire album’s worth of Alex’s songs, backed
by a full orchestra.)

Lukashevsky has approached each of his albums and projects as something completely new, using only the musical boundaries he creates with each song. Even when he
has recorded songs with nothing but his voice and his own acoustic guitar accompaniment, the results are never “stripped down” or “back to basics,”
Gong! How do you get to heaven / have fun! have fun!
It’s cool to approach music as a game of “spot the influence”; Burt Bacharach-meets-Black Flag; Lana Del Rey-meets-LCD Soundsystem etc. Glorified mash-ups are promising because of their conversational nature. But they can turn us into hyperboreans; blowing cold air beyond ourselves while doing what we can to remain warm. To devise a game or a narrative is to have a winner and a loser, but we all know that just as you win/ so you lose. And does anything really change? Alex Lukashevsky and Cocoa Corner are more at ease drawing blind contours or playing an old game like consequences. They let things add up without knowing particularly how. Cognition is recognition.

Lukashevsky, in addition to writing all the songs, plays guitar and sings on OOOOH!, doing both in ways that are soulful and spikey at the same time. Joining him on guitar and vocals is his oldest child, Charlie Lukashevsky, who, at 23, is already a talented performer and songwriter in his own right. Cocoa Corner also includes Aidan McConnell, an in-demand drummer and composer, Jack Johnston, a jazz bassist and Barry Harris acolyte, and percussionist Evan Cartwright (The Weather Station, U.S. Girls, Cola, Tasseomancy), who plays steel pan and marching drum.

Working with his son and with other younger musicians is central to the album’s
unpredictable aesthetic. It reinvigorated the sound in unexpected ways. Lukashevsky says, “I had to reconsider my own instincts. I had to deal with being 99 years old.”
In addition to these performers, the album includes a tasty contribution from Meg
Remy, the visionary musician and producer who is the leader of the critically acclaimed
project U.S. Girls. Remy duets with Lukashevsky on the imagistic and sprawling album
closer “things keep happening.”
About that album title: OOOOH! is taken straight from “that musician that’s dead” an
arch and unhinged comment on the exertion required to navigate a lifetime of music making.
Lukashevsky’s delivery of that one emotive word is a kind of cultural posture, but also a
hundred percent primitive expression. The impact is never less than visceral. His vocal
delivery ranges through rich baritone blues to keening falsettos to a kind of sprechstimme that periodically steps out from the music to grab the listener’s shirt. He
doesn’t sound too nice, but he is sincere. When life gives you lemons lament.
For OOOOH! his first official full-length album since 2012’s Too Late Blues, (a collection of knotty-yet-effervescent tunes built upon the enchantingly serpentine harmonies of Lukashevsky and his vocal collaborators, Felicity Williams (Bahamas, Bernice) and Daniela Gesundheit (Snowblink, HYDRA)), Alex has once again broken apart and rebuilt his own approach to music. Or rather (because that sounds too over-determined), he
has allowed his music to build itself into strange new shapes that only fleetingly and
coincidentally, but happily, resemble anything that might be called rock and roll. There is some editorializing within the song’s lyrics— Lukashevsky even cheekily contributes to the “spot the influence” game with the line “Muddy Waters, Rite of Spring!” a funny preemptive strike against anyone already reaching for some variation of avant-blues to describe what the song is up to here. In fact there are many names checked on this record (literally and in spirit); they are the lily pads that trace the path of this expression! Palestrina, Peter Pears and Benjamin Brittain, Andrés Segovia, Stravinsky, Lotte Lenya, Alice Coltrane, Skip James, Chuck Berry, D’Gary, Betty Carter, Mukhtiyar Ali, Chuck D, Yoko Ono, Hailu Mergia, David Bowie, Jane Siberry. rhythm is a skeleton mansion / haunted by melody / feckless prodigy / the world is under a spell / cast by some demon angel / Practice day and night / Try as hard as hell / no one can sing that well Musicians are often worried by the way in which they are prepared to fail rather
than how they would like to succeed; it’s such a deep concern that it tempers their creativity and shackles their process. Current cultural proclivities, tend to comfort a certain kind of artistic failure and abnegate another kind. How many testimonials, full of heartfelt care and investment, have you heard for Taylor Swift, and yet a craftsman like Chris Weisman is often dismissed easily as though he’s doing something anti-social. what’s throwing itself in my ears and my eyes / arrogant devil ad hominem christ.
The music you will hear on this recording veers off in multiple directions at once,
and features a rock and roll spirit with a divergent heart. This is no sclerotic clomp of the Average Rock Song, but in fact a flood of humanity in all its darkness and moodiness and unpredictability. If most performers make songs that are like sports cars or pickup trucks to drive around, Lukashevsky has built something more akin to a rowboat in a tree: it’s weird and beautiful.

Local Action is proud to present Daughters, the debut album by Jennifer Walton.

Walton is a beloved figure across various sectors of the alternative music underground. Outside of her own music and soundtrack work, she has been a live drummer for Kero Kero Bonito, collaborates with Sarah Midori Perry on the pair’s Cryalot project, has remixed Metronomy and worked with Iceboy Violet, BABii and more. She also makes music and DJs with close friends aya and 96 Back under the name Microplastics, and recently contributed to London collective caroline’s acclaimed caroline 2 album.

The first seeds of Walton’s debut album were sowed during touring North America in 2018, where whilst ticking off life-long music goals, Walton’s father was dying of cancer. Grief is a constant presence throughout Daughters, and specifically the surreal nature of having to process it amongst a blur of airports, flight connections, hotel rooms and battles for stolen medication with the American healthcare system. Strip malls, drug deals, panic attacks; the artificiality of downtown American city districts dovetailing with reality in its most brutal form. Miss America for a day while life is changed forever.

Weaving between real life diary entries, travelogue-style storytelling, imagery that ranges from mechanical to religious and a scattering of fiction (though we are obliged to mention that ‘Shelly’ is based on a true story), Daughters climaxes with the staggering run of ‘Saints’, ‘Miss America’ and its title track. Sampling unattended machines harmonising bleeps into the void in a London hospital ward, ‘Saints’ narrates Walton taking her father to and from cancer research trials, “sat, hunched and sick in the concourse as minutes became hours”. And to be very real for a moment, Jen is a friend, and first hearing the ‘Miss America’ demo is up there with the most emotional moments we’ve had in 15 years of running this record label.

Finished in London across the second half of 2024, Daughters features musical contributions from some of the closest friends and collaborators that Walton has made in her time as a musician: aya (who also mixed the album), Daniel S. Evans, Joshua Barfood and Nick Granata (all of Shovel Dance), Alex McKenzie (of caroline and Shovel Dance), Aga Ujma and Bob Lockwood.

"Waves of Desire" from Canadian Singer/Songwriter Jerry Leger is the perfect follow-up to his previous studio effort, "Donlands". Produced by Mark Howard (known for his work for such as Lucinda Williams, Bob Dylan, and Tom Waits), it is a record full of vulnerability, space and atmosphere. "Waves of Desire" expands on this but with more pop sensibilities and textures. One of the most respected singer-songwriters around, Ron Sexsmith says, "Leger has that spark in him that all the great songwriters have. He"s the real deal."

The debut album from Tokyo's WENDY, now available for the first time as an extended vinyl edition. Formed as teenagers during Japan's strict COVID lockdown, WENDY secretly came together to create rock 'n' roll for a new generation. Their raw demos quickly landed them a publishing deal with Sony Music Publishing and caught the ear of Grammy Award-winning producer Marc Whitmore (Jon Batiste - "We Are"). Whitmore was so impressed he produced their debut album himself, recorded live in just nine days, with no edits, capturing the band's unfiltered energy. The process was even featured in Sound & Recording Magazine. The vinyl edition includes two exclusive, previously unreleased tracks: "Pull Me In" and the powerful "Pledge of Love".

Das zweite Album Liquid Skin (1999) brachte Gomez noch mehr Aufmerksamkeit und kletterte bis auf Platz 2 der UK-Charts. Mit einer Mischung aus Blues-Rock, Folk und Indie-Sounds wurde die Band mit Künstlern wie Beck oder Pearl Jam verglichen. Die Singles “Rhythm & Blues Alibi”, “Bring It On” und “We Haven’t Turned Around” erreichten allesamt die UK Top 40. Diese Edition erscheint auf grünem Transparent-Vinyl mit dem Remaster von 2019

Mark Fell inaugurates his new label – The National Centre for Mark Fell Studies – with his first solo electronic material in years; a slinky, ravishing volley of unique dance drills that have been in the works for over a decade, feeling somehow like Derek Bailey dissecting Singeli, or Autechre and Hermeto Pascoal dancing in hyperspace. There’s nothing else quite like it.

Back on the floor for the first time since dealing a pair of deep house 12”s with DJ Sprinkles, sending a contemporary classic in »Protogravity« with Errorsmith, plus a lauded collab with Gábor Lázár – all in 2015 – Fell taps back into core club concerns last explored to this uncompromising extent on his string of »Sensate Focus« EPs released between 2012–2013. He’s hardly been slacking since then, with a slew of far-reaching avant collabs with everyone from Rian Treanor to Limpe Fuchs, Okkyung Lee to Pat Thomas, Explore Ensemble to Will Guthrie – each one blurring distinctions between producer, composer, and conductor.

The »Nite Closures« EP is worth the wait – and then some. As ever, Fell manages to retain a highly distinctive, instantly identifiable sound while also tracing and mapping new bends in the continuum. His exploration of contemporary styles and patterns is here distilled and articulated with a rare, daring playfulness and sinuous intricacy – for over half an hour he flows from frantic to almost emotional at the drop of a snare. Trust it’s not your everyday / everynight club music, with an asymmetric angularity bound to wrong-foot fresher feet, but also the type of absolutely future-facing, skewed machine funk that clubs are crying out for, even if they don’t quite realise it.

As someone who’s witnessed the dominance of colouring-book Jive Bunny DJs recycle tested ideas ad infinitum, the message is a firm do-one to myopic ravers in »Nite Closures«. From the displaced anticipations tested in its extended dub and ravishing, tweaked polymetrics on its version, through a »Large Modulos #3« teeming with organismic details, to the hair-kissing swang of »auchterhouse (inversion)« and its clipped, cascading 2.1-step reprise, Fell offers thrilling new options for the loosey-gooseyest dancers at each turn. For us, it’s perhaps his greatest record this century.

Here to dazzle you by the power of the disco ball, Lack of Afro is your friendly neighbourhood ‘Love Dealer’. Two years on from the funk & soul rebirth of ‘Square One’, powered by the ubiquitous ‘Loving Arms’ featuring Greg Blackman, Lack of Afro aka Adam Gibbons is now close to two decades deep in the game with soundtrack credits galore and online streams doing calculator-busting numbers. With extensive touring taking ‘Love Dealer’ up and down the country this Autumn, Gibbons’ ninth studio album is all for "the thrill of seeing people on a dancefloor, all collectively locked into a track that you've produced - there’s nothing like it!”.


‘Love Dealer’ is the authentic modern disco experience, packing a stacked sole’s worth of club beats full of stardusted sing-alongs, style-outs and French touch-style cool. Despite being “written during one of the longest winters in living memory”, ‘Love Dealer’, featuring some co-production from fellow South Coast dancefloor scholar Flevans (and influenced by producer du jour Barry Can’t Swim), exudes warmth and will make you sweat when its highs take effect.


Entering the scene with the radiance of ‘Make It Shine’ featuring Greg Blackman, washing over the airwaves of BBC 6 Music and Radio 2 and taking up a 10-week residency on the Jazz FM playlist, Gibbons and his crack line-up of discotheque players are your go-to team when you can’t wait for the weekend to begin, as subtle as they are straight down to business. ‘Love Dealer’ offers you nothing but the best in sparkling string symphonies, the hippest guitar licks, samples of those invited beyond the velvet rope and struts soaked in night fever.


Double A-side ‘Walls Start Rockin’ and ‘Heart & Soul’ guide the album’s glamour-and-groove, while ‘Love Saves The Day’ and ‘Plain to See’ dramatically take to the podium in a shimmer of pure peak 70s theatre. ‘Keeping Me Strong’ is the synergy of disco chic and the sound of a global advertising tie-in with Dyson, ahead of Gibbons taking a slightly Moroder/Cerrone-ish detour on ‘Idolising People Like Madlib’. “'Love Dealer' is aimed unequivocally at the dancefloor" says Adam. "As an artist, I wanted to push myself in a slightly new direction - more into the land of disco and a four to the floor sound. 'Love Dealer' is quintessentially an upbeat record, full of joy, optimism and hope for the future”. Seek your inner ‘Love Dealer’, kink your ‘fro and let your funk flag fly.
















n B7. 14 Your Love (feat. Jonah Hitchens) BONUS TRACK














n B7. 14 Your Love (feat. Jonah Hitchens) BONUS TRACK














[n] B7. 14 Your Love (feat. Jonah Hitchens) [BONUS TRACK]














[BONUS TRACK]

STANDFIRST Titanic, the project spearheaded by Mabe Fratti and Hector Tosta (aka I. la Católica), return with a sumptuous and life-affirming new album.



In her sensational 1929 biography Tiger Woman, dancer and socialite Betty May claimed her ‘coster’s eye’ meant she liked to wear as many colours as possible. “Colours to me are like children to a loving mother. Each is my favourite, yet I can never bring myself to deny the others by preferring one.” May’s bold and inclusive strategy is one that manages to transfer itself, almost a century later, to Hagen, the new record by Titanic.


Many will know Titanic as the Mexico City-based brainchild of cellist and singer Mabe Fratti and multiinstrumentalist Hector Tosta who is now operating under the pseudonym, I. la Católica, (taken, rather unusually, from the name of the street the pair live on). With Hagen, and their previous release, Vidrio, (2023), the pair are creating a distinctive signature sound in modern alternative pop music. Nobody else sounds quite like them. Both records have an open hearted nature and simple, winning melodies that play off against a taste for drama, spectacular orchestration and a feeling of otherworldly mystery. Hagen is the more ambitious, sometimes more mystical effort. From the opening handclaps of ‘Lágrima del Sol’, (a wonderfully uptempo playground chant translating as a tear from the sun but, surely, not referencing the brand of pineapple wine?), the record dances its way through various mid-to-late-eighties inspirations, lush and widescreen passages of melancholy and vertiginous contrasts.


Mystery is often found in the simple but slightly odd song titles. English translations of various track titles give, ‘you swallowed the gum’, ‘leak’, ‘a tear from the sun’, ‘raising the trophy’ ‘digging dimensions’, ‘the owner’, ‘the decapitated hen’ and ‘the trap is exposed’. All denote striking images, metaphysical hints and emotional cues or simple, even childlike actions. Though Fratti and Tosta don’t reveal its provenance, the album’s title could even be a crafty play on words: the listener would be forgiven in thinking the moments of brash contrast and eyebrow raising theatricalism in the music constitute a musical nod to German punk chanteuse, Nina Hagen.


On Hagen, singer and cellist Mabe Fratti once again displays her brilliant knack of speaking to us directly. There is never the suspicion of her playing to the gallery, and the directness of many of the lyrics don’t allow it. Parallel to this, Fratti has an almost magical ability to give Hector Tosta’s melodies, and her and Tosta’s lyrics ones imbued with an insight and meaning that feels otherworldly. Tosta admitted it was “pretty wild to hear Mabe take the interpretations to a different place” and the listener can pick up on the delight Fratti takes in (literally) adding a voice to the many narratives.


Two examples can be shown here: ‘Gotera’ (Leak) uses harsh slashes of cello and tough, gunfire-like guitars and drums and multiple vocal lines that could be acting as a Greek chorus. They play off brilliantly against Fratti’s soft, slightly baleful vocal take that delivers lyrics such as: ‘nobody knows where the leak is / but I know where it is / they fight in front of the door and / nobody can go in’. With ‘La Gallina Degollada’ the somewhat blithe melody melody line, sung with what could be sarcastic brio by Fratti, plays against an itchting rhythm and rasping guitar part. The punch comes when you see that the song is about a chicken that has been decapitated and read lyrics such as: ‘I already saw it, it moved, the decapitated chicken’ / ‘could it be that I'm broken’ and ‘Two people hurt each other by thinking that they no longer agree’/ ‘Hours pass and the chicken represents what scares me’.


There may be death and fights to deal with, but there is also a quality of chirpy self-reliance about Hagen that is a key part of its nature. Like Betty May and her colourful outfits, Hagen’s sound often revels in its own sense of richness. Throughout, the record delivers vaulting string sections or glutinous guitar squeals that could, like the powerful, driving ‘Escarbo Dimensiones’ (Digging Dimensions) have come directly from a glossy 1980s TV series. Fratti sees this “glam sound” developed by Tosta on the aforementioned track and ‘Te Tragaste el Chicle’ (You Swallowed The Gum), as moments that were truly “revealing” for the album as a whole during its making.


What else? The thud and thump of ‘La Trampa Sale’ (The Trap is Exposed), and its sudden change of tempo and mood betrays a monstrously ambitious piece of music, the players almost greedily creating the sounds. Other moments are heart wrenching: ‘Libra’ ends on a poppy chord switch that cleverly ramps up the emotion inherent in the music’s notation. You could almost imagine a teenager in a bedroom forty years ago, rewinding the track over and over on a small, cheap cassette player, unable to get enough of that sugarsweet switch. Elsewhere, Oneohtrix Point Never adds stardust and an unearthly sense of space on the changeable, slightly moody meditation, ‘Pájaro de Fuego’ (Firebird). The record ends with ‘Alzando el Trofeo’ (Lifting the Trophy), a track that could soundtrack a state wedding, what with its beautiful cascading piano parts, a sugary vocal and short triumphal guitar riffs that add a rich patina to the overall sound. Fratti: “When I doubled those vocals on ‘Alzando el Trofeo’ I felt there was an epiphany happening, right at that moment.”


Making a good record is a team game. Tosta and Fratti recall seeing Randall from Circular Ruin Studios in NYC “tweak the drums in ‘Libra’ to make that amazing effect of the gated reverb”, or the shaping of ‘Gotera’, “when (recording engineer) Nate Salon added some synths to the track.” Drummer Eli Keszler, “an amazing and versatile player” had the songs down pat in a couple of days” and, according to Tosta, Oneohtrix Point Never “just came to one of the sessions and we hung out, and after all the recordings he and Nate were together in some studio and out of nowhere they sent us some beautiful tracks for ‘Pájaro de Fuego’! Fratti concurs. “He decided that he wanted to record because he was listening to the record (Nate works closely with him) and he really liked it! It was a total honour, indeed!”


Bedazzled by the playing, the skyscraping ambition in the arrangements and the giddy moments of contrast thrown up by Hagen, we could allow ourselves a brief moment of flippancy and state that Titanic’s new record is Yacht Rock meets Aeschylus, full-on. It’s also worth speculating that, in this hyper-sensitive, intemperate age, Titanic’s music has the power, however fleetingly, to heal hurts. Hagen is a brilliant showcase for a fresh and enriching form of pop music: displaying a magpie eye for what glints and plundering what has gone before.


Like Vidrio, Hagen was partially and additionally recorded at Fratti and Tosta’s house, aka Tinho Studios in Mexico City, as well as Golden Girl Studios & Circular Ruin Studios in New York City. Mixing was done by Santiago Parra in Pedro y el Lobo Studios, Mexico City and mastered by Rafael Anton Irisarri at Black Knoll Studios, New York City. The recording engineer was Nate Salon.


Hagen featured Mabe Fratti on cello, vocals & backing vocals, I. la Católica on guitar, keyboards, prepared piano, bass & backing vocals, drums by Eli Keszler and synths in ‘Pájaro de Fuego’ from Daniel Lopatin and Nate Salon.


All compositions on Hagen are written by I. la Católica, except ‘Escarbo Dimensiones’ & ‘Pájaro de Fuego’, which were composed by I. la Católica and Mabe Fratti. The record was produced by I. la Católica and co-produced by Nate Salon & Mabe Fratti. And all lyrics are by I. la Católica except ‘Escarbo Dimensiones’, ‘Gotera’, ‘Gallina degollada’ & ‘Pájaro de Fuego’, which were written by I. la Católica & Mabe Fratti.

STANDFIRST Titanic, the project spearheaded by Mabe Fratti and Hector Tosta (aka I. la Católica), return with a sumptuous and life-affirming new album.



In her sensational 1929 biography Tiger Woman, dancer and socialite Betty May claimed her ‘coster’s eye’ meant she liked to wear as many colours as possible. “Colours to me are like children to a loving mother. Each is my favourite, yet I can never bring myself to deny the others by preferring one.” May’s bold and inclusive strategy is one that manages to transfer itself, almost a century later, to Hagen, the new record by Titanic.


Many will know Titanic as the Mexico City-based brainchild of cellist and singer Mabe Fratti and multiinstrumentalist Hector Tosta who is now operating under the pseudonym, I. la Católica, (taken, rather unusually, from the name of the street the pair live on). With Hagen, and their previous release, Vidrio, (2023), the pair are creating a distinctive signature sound in modern alternative pop music. Nobody else sounds quite like them. Both records have an open hearted nature and simple, winning melodies that play off against a taste for drama, spectacular orchestration and a feeling of otherworldly mystery. Hagen is the more ambitious, sometimes more mystical effort. From the opening handclaps of ‘Lágrima del Sol’, (a wonderfully uptempo playground chant translating as a tear from the sun but, surely, not referencing the brand of pineapple wine?), the record dances its way through various mid-to-late-eighties inspirations, lush and widescreen passages of melancholy and vertiginous contrasts.


Mystery is often found in the simple but slightly odd song titles. English translations of various track titles give, ‘you swallowed the gum’, ‘leak’, ‘a tear from the sun’, ‘raising the trophy’ ‘digging dimensions’, ‘the owner’, ‘the decapitated hen’ and ‘the trap is exposed’. All denote striking images, metaphysical hints and emotional cues or simple, even childlike actions. Though Fratti and Tosta don’t reveal its provenance, the album’s title could even be a crafty play on words: the listener would be forgiven in thinking the moments of brash contrast and eyebrow raising theatricalism in the music constitute a musical nod to German punk chanteuse, Nina Hagen.


On Hagen, singer and cellist Mabe Fratti once again displays her brilliant knack of speaking to us directly. There is never the suspicion of her playing to the gallery, and the directness of many of the lyrics don’t allow it. Parallel to this, Fratti has an almost magical ability to give Hector Tosta’s melodies, and her and Tosta’s lyrics ones imbued with an insight and meaning that feels otherworldly. Tosta admitted it was “pretty wild to hear Mabe take the interpretations to a different place” and the listener can pick up on the delight Fratti takes in (literally) adding a voice to the many narratives.


Two examples can be shown here: ‘Gotera’ (Leak) uses harsh slashes of cello and tough, gunfire-like guitars and drums and multiple vocal lines that could be acting as a Greek chorus. They play off brilliantly against Fratti’s soft, slightly baleful vocal take that delivers lyrics such as: ‘nobody knows where the leak is / but I know where it is / they fight in front of the door and / nobody can go in’. With ‘La Gallina Degollada’ the somewhat blithe melody melody line, sung with what could be sarcastic brio by Fratti, plays against an itchting rhythm and rasping guitar part. The punch comes when you see that the song is about a chicken that has been decapitated and read lyrics such as: ‘I already saw it, it moved, the decapitated chicken’ / ‘could it be that I'm broken’ and ‘Two people hurt each other by thinking that they no longer agree’/ ‘Hours pass and the chicken represents what scares me’.


There may be death and fights to deal with, but there is also a quality of chirpy self-reliance about Hagen that is a key part of its nature. Like Betty May and her colourful outfits, Hagen’s sound often revels in its own sense of richness. Throughout, the record delivers vaulting string sections or glutinous guitar squeals that could, like the powerful, driving ‘Escarbo Dimensiones’ (Digging Dimensions) have come directly from a glossy 1980s TV series. Fratti sees this “glam sound” developed by Tosta on the aforementioned track and ‘Te Tragaste el Chicle’ (You Swallowed The Gum), as moments that were truly “revealing” for the album as a whole during its making.


What else? The thud and thump of ‘La Trampa Sale’ (The Trap is Exposed), and its sudden change of tempo and mood betrays a monstrously ambitious piece of music, the players almost greedily creating the sounds. Other moments are heart wrenching: ‘Libra’ ends on a poppy chord switch that cleverly ramps up the emotion inherent in the music’s notation. You could almost imagine a teenager in a bedroom forty years ago, rewinding the track over and over on a small, cheap cassette player, unable to get enough of that sugarsweet switch. Elsewhere, Oneohtrix Point Never adds stardust and an unearthly sense of space on the changeable, slightly moody meditation, ‘Pájaro de Fuego’ (Firebird). The record ends with ‘Alzando el Trofeo’ (Lifting the Trophy), a track that could soundtrack a state wedding, what with its beautiful cascading piano parts, a sugary vocal and short triumphal guitar riffs that add a rich patina to the overall sound. Fratti: “When I doubled those vocals on ‘Alzando el Trofeo’ I felt there was an epiphany happening, right at that moment.”


Making a good record is a team game. Tosta and Fratti recall seeing Randall from Circular Ruin Studios in NYC “tweak the drums in ‘Libra’ to make that amazing effect of the gated reverb”, or the shaping of ‘Gotera’, “when (recording engineer) Nate Salon added some synths to the track.” Drummer Eli Keszler, “an amazing and versatile player” had the songs down pat in a couple of days” and, according to Tosta, Oneohtrix Point Never “just came to one of the sessions and we hung out, and after all the recordings he and Nate were together in some studio and out of nowhere they sent us some beautiful tracks for ‘Pájaro de Fuego’! Fratti concurs. “He decided that he wanted to record because he was listening to the record (Nate works closely with him) and he really liked it! It was a total honour, indeed!”


Bedazzled by the playing, the skyscraping ambition in the arrangements and the giddy moments of contrast thrown up by Hagen, we could allow ourselves a brief moment of flippancy and state that Titanic’s new record is Yacht Rock meets Aeschylus, full-on. It’s also worth speculating that, in this hyper-sensitive, intemperate age, Titanic’s music has the power, however fleetingly, to heal hurts. Hagen is a brilliant showcase for a fresh and enriching form of pop music: displaying a magpie eye for what glints and plundering what has gone before.


Like Vidrio, Hagen was partially and additionally recorded at Fratti and Tosta’s house, aka Tinho Studios in Mexico City, as well as Golden Girl Studios & Circular Ruin Studios in New York City. Mixing was done by Santiago Parra in Pedro y el Lobo Studios, Mexico City and mastered by Rafael Anton Irisarri at Black Knoll Studios, New York City. The recording engineer was Nate Salon.


Hagen featured Mabe Fratti on cello, vocals & backing vocals, I. la Católica on guitar, keyboards, prepared piano, bass & backing vocals, drums by Eli Keszler and synths in ‘Pájaro de Fuego’ from Daniel Lopatin and Nate Salon.


All compositions on Hagen are written by I. la Católica, except ‘Escarbo Dimensiones’ & ‘Pájaro de Fuego’, which were composed by I. la Católica and Mabe Fratti. The record was produced by I. la Católica and co-produced by Nate Salon & Mabe Fratti. And all lyrics are by I. la Católica except ‘Escarbo Dimensiones’, ‘Gotera’, ‘Gallina degollada’ & ‘Pájaro de Fuego’, which were written by I. la Católica & Mabe Fratti.

Here to dazzle you by the power of the disco ball, Lack of Afro is your friendly neighbourhood ‘Love Dealer’. Two years on from the funk & soul rebirth of ‘Square One’, powered by the ubiquitous ‘Loving Arms’ featuring Greg Blackman, Lack of Afro aka Adam Gibbons is now close to two decades deep in the game with soundtrack credits galore and online streams doing calculator-busting numbers. With extensive touring taking ‘Love Dealer’ up and down the country this Autumn, Gibbons’ ninth studio album is all for "the thrill of seeing people on a dancefloor, all collectively locked into a track that you've produced - there’s nothing like it!”.


‘Love Dealer’ is the authentic modern disco experience, packing a stacked sole’s worth of club beats full of stardusted sing-alongs, style-outs and French touch-style cool. Despite being “written during one of the longest winters in living memory”, ‘Love Dealer’, featuring some co-production from fellow South Coast dancefloor scholar Flevans (and influenced by producer du jour Barry Can’t Swim), exudes warmth and will make you sweat when its highs take effect.


Entering the scene with the radiance of ‘Make It Shine’ featuring Greg Blackman, washing over the airwaves of BBC 6 Music and Radio 2 and taking up a 10-week residency on the Jazz FM playlist, Gibbons and his crack line-up of discotheque players are your go-to team when you can’t wait for the weekend to begin, as subtle as they are straight down to business. ‘Love Dealer’ offers you nothing but the best in sparkling string symphonies, the hippest guitar licks, samples of those invited beyond the velvet rope and struts soaked in night fever.


Double A-side ‘Walls Start Rockin’ and ‘Heart & Soul’ guide the album’s glamour-and-groove, while ‘Love Saves The Day’ and ‘Plain to See’ dramatically take to the podium in a shimmer of pure peak 70s theatre. ‘Keeping Me Strong’ is the synergy of disco chic and the sound of a global advertising tie-in with Dyson, ahead of Gibbons taking a slightly Moroder/Cerrone-ish detour on ‘Idolising People Like Madlib’. “'Love Dealer' is aimed unequivocally at the dancefloor" says Adam. "As an artist, I wanted to push myself in a slightly new direction - more into the land of disco and a four to the floor sound. 'Love Dealer' is quintessentially an upbeat record, full of joy, optimism and hope for the future”. Seek your inner ‘Love Dealer’, kink your ‘fro and let your funk flag fly.
















n B7. 14 Your Love (feat. Jonah Hitchens) BONUS TRACK














n B7. 14 Your Love (feat. Jonah Hitchens) BONUS TRACK














n B7. 14 Your Love (feat. Jonah Hitchens) [BONUS TRACK]














[n] B7. 14 Your Love (feat. Jonah Hitchens) [BONUS TRACK]














[n] B7. 14 Your Love (feat. Jonah Hitchens) [BONUS TRACK]














[n] B7. 14 Your Love (feat. Jonah Hitchens) [BONUS TRACK]

»What about Love« is MONKyMAN's personal journey through solitude, love and connection: An honest, heart-driven record exploring spirit, romance and community in a chaotic world.

Written over the course of three years and recorded live on analog gear only with no loops or plugins, the album blends warmth, vulnerability, and a message of hope. Produced with Drew Deal at Sundown Studios with guests from all over the planet, it invites you into a space of reflection, belonging and joy.

Genre-defying and soul-centered, the album unites meditative moments and heavy grooves, moving from the question »What about love?« to the simple realization: »I feel better in love.«
Downloads

James Morrison"s new album Fight Another Day is born of difficult times and heavy emotions but one that, ultimately, leans into the light and joy and hope. Written after a period of reflection and therapy, the songs deal with his own struggles, childhood, and personal battles, with Morrison saying, "Every day being a bit of a battle. Trying to eke the light out after what felt like darkness for ages." From the defiant title track to the soul-baring Something I Can"t Forget and the feelgood New Day, the album captures a wide emotional spectrum. "I"m really proud of the album in terms of the creative, sonic elements and how I dealt with truthful stuff," he says, "but also... it"s an album of songs that hopefully make you feel better and make you nod your head and stamp your feet and singalong."

James Morrison"s new album Fight Another Day is born of difficult times and heavy emotions but one that, ultimately, leans into the light and joy and hope. Written after a period of reflection and therapy, the songs deal with his own struggles, childhood, and personal battles, with Morrison saying, "Every day being a bit of a battle. Trying to eke the light out after what felt like darkness for ages." From the defiant title track to the soul-baring Something I Can"t Forget and the feelgood New Day, the album captures a wide emotional spectrum. "I"m really proud of the album in terms of the creative, sonic elements and how I dealt with truthful stuff," he says, "but also... it"s an album of songs that hopefully make you feel better and make you nod your head and stamp your feet and singalong."

The Keith Tippett Group's Dedicated to You, But You Weren't Listening is a landmark in cutting edge fusion/avant-jazz. A vital and profoundly adventurous Jazz-Rock record that still swings very hard, it was first released on Vertigo in 1971.

Original copies are now very tricky to score and, as most of you really should know, it’s aged ridiculously well.

A legendary work, this Be With re-issue has been newly remastered from the original Vertigo master tapes, demonstrating just why this deserves to be back in press. The stunning gatefold jacket fully restores Roger and Martyn Dean's original, arresting album artwork to complete this must-have reissue.

Alive and bursting with a joyful energy that has to be heard to be believed, Dedicated to You, But You Weren't Listening flirts with perfection. It's truly magical and forever essential.

A brilliant jazz pianist, composer, arranger and bandleader "who could make the outlands of modern music feel like the most hospitable of places" (The Guardian), Keith Tippett's second album is oft-regarded as his Canterbury album.

Indeed, not only does he draw heavily on Soft Machine members past, present and future but the album title itself archly references a Soft Machine composition. Ray Babbington handles bass alongside Neville Whitehead and the drums are shared between Brian Spring (Nucleus), Robert Wyatt(!) and Phil Howard (who would go on to replace Wyatt in Soft Machine). Gary Boyle (Isotope) is on guitar whilst the great percussionist Tony Uter is enlisted for his conga and cow bell expertise. Elton Dean on Alto Saxello, cornetist Marc Charig and Nick Evans on trombone round out this quite stunning ensemble.

Dedicated to You, But You Weren't Listening presents a collective of superhuman musicians really, *really* enjoying themselves in the studio. The sheer exuberance of the performance is totally infectious. It's wild, energetic, atmospheric and, bluntly, bordering on chaotic at points. In a word, it's beautiful.

Robert Wyatt's drumming opens the record with a bang on the majestic Be With favourite "This Is What Happens". Some have described his work here as "easily the most inspired of his career on record." It's an ultra-funky conga-driven groove that truly sparks via the duelling interplay between the three horn players. In the background, Keith's insistent piano, in conversation with those unignorable drums, is the anchor that keeps this piece rollicking away. Breathtaking.

The epic, energetic "Thoughts to Geoff" is a 10-minute jammer that tends towards the dissonant and improvisational but becomes more fluid, laconic and melodic as it unravels. The interplay between soloists and ensembles is particularly dazzling here - blazing solos by Evans, Charig and Tippett himself in a flourish of angular arpeggios interspersed with chordal elocution. Phew.

Up next, the no less-urgent Mingus-referencing "Green and Orange Night Park" is a soaring example of ambitious jazz mixed with rock aggression, with Dean strutting his stuff by launching into a scorching solo. An absolutely jaw-dropping piece. Arguably the highlight of this album of huge highlights!

Though much of the album tends to fall on the raucous side ("Gridal Suite" approaches free-jazz at its most chaotic and, dare we say it, "difficult"), there are a few more sedate, at times spacey numbers, such as the deeply impressionistic "Five After Dawn". The rhythmically complex "Black Horse" is the most accessible track here, a sort of swinging Big Band number with tight grooves, soaring horn & reed melodies, a sizzling Boyle guitar solo and tasty electric piano riffs from Tippett. An hypnotic climax to a staggering record.

This Be With edition of Dedicated to You, But You Weren't Listening has been re-mastered from the original Vertigo master tapes, Simon Francis’ mastering working together with Cicely Balston's cut at Abbey Road Studios to weave their usual magic with these wonderful recordings. The stunning gatefold sleeve has been restored in all its brainchild glory so you know you're dealing with the definitive reissue, here. Now, are you listening?

Oscar Mulero and Another Machines join forces together for the next installment of their Joven Prisionero Project. No less than seven cuts on the zeroes and ones version and a six cut vinyl gonna be released on our 78th release. You may wonder what's inside this new outcome, and the answer is easy and direct: Pure techno with no roundabouts. But techno is an open language and this duo speaks all dialects: From the merciless and bleepy Conocete to the functional and fast paced minimalism on De tunica roja passing thru the drilling Surrealista Entorno stopping via Birmingham on Persiguiendo ecos, breaking the grooves and going martian for Mundo Efimero, back to Birmingham again with El nuevo jardin to finalize the duties with Identidad Variable in a pure scifi mood. If you want to spend your money on a totally useful collection of tools here you have the perfect package. El Joven Prisionero delivers to you exactly what your bodies and minds need under the strobe light. Soon available in your trusted physical and digital dealers.

Crystal Clear Vinyl, limited to 1000 copies. Who were the first punks? Do The Damned have more of a shout than The Sex Pistols? The Stooges or Ramones? Gregg Deal, the acclaimed visual and performance artist behind his new project Dead Pioneers, is making a claim that Indigenous Americans were the first real punks. Deal suggests that the overarching theme of the album is "an introduction to the band itself". Created with a DIY disposition and the "love of a scene that saves lives", they reel off a roll call of marginalised groups and protected characteristics: "Indigenous rights, Black rights, Brown rights, Asian rights, Gay rights, Trans rights, Workers rights and beyond_". This is central to their identity and focus, saying that "with a North American Indigenous person as the vocalist, being unapologetically upfront on the social, political and cultural side of things doesn't seem necessary, but paramount to the overall tone of the band." This self-titled debut, coming in at a lithe 22 minutes with only one of the twelve tracks exceeding three minutes, is almost over before it begins, but covers a huge amount of ground in that time. Blistering opener 'Tired' sets out their stall; as with the whole album, it is passionate, but never preaching. Capitalised 'Political Music' can be hard to land without coming across as hectoring or earnest, but Deal's literary, humorous lyrics effortlessly cut through complex issues of marginalisation and colonialism.

Spanish label MATE always deals in house that is deep but seriously musical and classy. Glenn Davis is next up to keep that tradition going and does so with spine-tingling vocal soul on opener 'To Believe,' which taps into classic early Chicago sounds. 'Reality Check' is a balmy follow up with painterly synths and persuasive stabs, while 'True To Yourself' rides on a gentle broken beat with Italo piano chords adding a retro 90s feel. Completing the trip is the deep space odyssey 'Don't Be Misled', which is infused with glowing, golden chords and super soft and fluffy acid modulations.

The official soundtrack to the first season of the acclaimed historical drama Vikings is now, for the first time, available on vinyl, offering fans and collectors a rich and immersive listening experience. Composed by Emmy Award-winning composer Trevor Morris (The Tudors, The Borgias, Dragon Age: Inquisition), the score captures the raw intensity, emotional depth, and mythic atmosphere that helped define the tone of the series. From sweeping orchestral moments to brooding ambient textures, the music reflects the harsh beauty of the Viking world and its complex characters. One of the standout tracks is the opening theme, “If I Had A Heart” by Swedish artist Fever Ray, whose haunting vocals and minimalist electronics set the tone for the series. The track became iconic, earning recognition for its unique contribution to the show’s identity. The series itself has received widespread acclaim and multiple awards, both for its storytelling and technical execution, with the music playing a vital role in its success. Vikings (Music From The TV Series) is available for the first time on vinyl as a limited edition of 750 numbered copies on blue coloured vinyl. This 2LP package includes a 4-page booklet with pictures and liner notes by Trevor Morris.

The 1st clash of the necks from polymath guitarists MacKay & Walker, taped live at Chicago"s own Whistler bar for release on the Whistler label. Reissued by us "cause of these dudes" uncanny alchemy and their constant, ever-melding flow. It"s an imperative: there"s not enough records around with such intense properties! Coincidentally, it came out 10 years ago. Big deal! We"d have done it when it was only 9 years old too - we just got busy, okay?