An incredibly special project between decorated Manchester punks Loose
Articles and lauded Marseille rapper NADIR, the inviting clash of cultures
come together in a beautiful smash hit - penned as a love letter to
Manchester and Marseille, merging culture, camerarderie and football
You try genre defining this one??? The B Side remix by The Beatmasters is currently
bouncing across dancefloors across the UK and France.
An electrified meeting of minds, Candy Girl is a lost 1975 session by jazz pianist Mal Waldron, recorded in Paris with core members of the mighty Lafayette Afro Rock Band, the American funk unit who had made France their home and whose deep grooves would later be mined by generations of hip-hop producers.
By 1975, Waldron was a decade into his self-imposed exile from the United States—a transformed musician who had reassembled his sound in Europe and Japan after a devastating breakdown in the early '60s. His post-1969 output had stripped jazz down to its core elements: modal intensity, locked grooves, and hypnotic repetition. Candy Girl doesn’t interrupt this trajectory—it extends it, wrapping Waldron’s minimalist mantras around the funked-up chassis of the Lafayette rhythm section.
Originally released in microscopic quantities on the Calumet label and long shrouded in obscurity, Candy Girl was recorded spontaneously in the studio of French producer Pierre Jaubert, whose Paris HQ had become the workshop for both avant-garde jazz (Archie Shepp, Art Ensemble of Chicago, Steve Lacy) and psychedelic funk (Lafayette Afro Rock Band AKA Ice). This session finds Waldron jamming freely with bassist Lafayette Hudson, drummer Donny Donable, and keyboardist Frank Abel on clavinet, Moog and more—laying down raw, unfiltered instrumental funk with an experimental edge.
Highlights include the low-slung vamp of “Home Again”, the crisp, break-laden groove of “Red Match Box”, and the mesmeric swirl of the title track “Candy Girl” —a minor-key electric piano waltz with hints of cosmic soul. There's even a deep cut for the crate diggers: the somber yet meditative “Dedication to Brahms”, where Waldron deconstructs the Romantic composer’s third symphony into a sparse jazz reverie.
Unlike his polished sessions for Japanese labels or the avant-garde swing of his earlier Prestige work, Candy Girl feels more spontaneous, even accidental — and that’s part of its power. It’s a document of Waldron as bandleader, collaborator, and explorer, captured in the midst of a vibrant, cross-cultural scene in mid-70s Paris. Never officially issued with a cover and barely released at all, Candy Girl is a rare convergence of two underground traditions: Waldron’s Euro-exile electric jazz and the raw, sampled-future funk of the Lafayette Afro Rock Band. Now finally resurfaced, it deserves its rightful place in both stories.
PHYR0005: A landmark double split black vinyl from PHYR Records. Label founder Pyramidal Decode joins forces with techno luminary Oscar Mulero for "Il Poema," a 12-track odyssey inspired by Dante's La Divina Commedia. Artwork features Bosch's El Jardin de las Delicias, design by 5599studio.
We're proud to announce the upcoming second vinyl release from Black Teeth Records, and it's a serious one - courtesy of none other than ARtroniks, a Ghent-based producer who's been crafting heavyweight dub-infused pressure since the late nillies. No small name in the game - his work has long resonated in the deeper corners of the bass music world. This new four-tracker is a bold evolution of his sound: a stripped-down, technoid dubstep blend steeped in cyberpunk atmospheres, engineered for proper sound system deployment.
Transit - hauntingly dystopian and beautifully cinematic. A perfect intro, interlude, or ender. Backlash - pure weaponry: sharp, relentless, and built for dancefloor impact. L121 - deconstructed minimalism that cuts deep; skeletal but heavy. Vitamin - hypnotic low-end movement with tight percussive tension.
Scintillating, alchemical kosmische; visionary, deep, and luminous; and beautifully sleeved, with gold foiling and silver ink.
Works In Metal fans out a set of acid treatments and finely sharpened blades — cutting, shaping, suspending form. Sounds are melted down and forged as if liquid metal.
The works are paired. Arc’s Blue Flame previews the smoking volatility at the album’s core. Echoes and resonance soften the dissonant, bright textures; all overlaid with Fofana’s signature, percussive kick drums. Welding drills into the discordant thrills and spills of metamorphosis. Sparks fly and the bittersweet arc of change unfolds.
Fofana discreetly folds in text, poetry, and field recordings, spooring their decomposition and recomposition with a prismatic point of view. The coupling Obscure Light (Decomposition) and Obscure Light (Recomposition) marks something new in his music. The pulse is brightly honed, cascading beyond the dancefloor, exultingly eluding musical genre.
Works in Metal is perhaps Fofana’s most narrative album. At its heart is the killer, extended Lure of the Fragment / So Another Sound Suggests Itself. Melodies circle in call-and-response patterns, balancing proximity and distance, signalling the inward gravity required to work with metal. A nested story-line, with birds flying in; an album within an album. Dredging up memories and associations, Fofana filters in selections from his sound-archives. Layered with synths, field recordings become instruments in their own right. The last three minutes proffer precious clarity — a memory, in miniature, flashed onto molten metal.
In 1943 Suzanne Césaire declared that ‘our surrealism will then supply them the leaven from their very depths. It will be time finally to transcend the sordid contemporary antinomies: Whites-Blacks, Europeans-Africans, civilized-savage: the powerful magic of the mahoulis will be recovered, drawn from the very wellsprings of life. Colonial idiocies will be purified by the welding arc’s blue flame. The mettle of our metal, our cutting edge of steel, our unique communions — all will be recovered’. Works in Metal is a tribute to her prophecy; its enactment, sculpted in sound.
Two of Lamp's masterpieces will be released on vinyl at the same time! Two of Lamp's masterpieces from the 2010s, "Tokyo Utopia Tsuushin" and "Yume",
will be reissued on vinyl! After becoming a viral hit on TikTok in the 2020s, Lamp now has over 2.1 million monthly listeners on Spotify.
In addition to his deep-rooted popularity in Asia (China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Korea, Indonesia, etc.), he was selected as a support act for Mitski last year
and accompanied them on their North American tour. At the same time, his solo tour "FUTURE BEHIND ME" North America 2024, which visited 17 locations
in North America, was all sold out. This summer's solo show at LINE CUBE SHIBUYA was also sold out immediately, and Lamp's two masterpieces,
which are currently gaining worldwide acclaim, will be released on vinyl at the same time!
This is the sixth album by Lamp, a mixed-gender trio that has inherited the Japanese pop music of each era and sublimated it into new pop music by sprinkling
elements of 70's pop and Brazilian music throughout.
This album depicts the mental landscape of a man and woman passing each other in a certain place in a city.
It suddenly reminds us of the cold and warmth of winter, a nostalgic feeling that everyone has experienced at least once.
The jacket features many illustrations by Suzuki Oji, who was active in the manga magazine "Garo," which had a great influence on young artists in the 70s and
produced many geniuses in the manga world, and is known for his representative work "Motorcycle Girl."
The unique, fantastical illustrations resonate with Lamp's music to create a fantastical world.
Furthering the passionate exploration of cinema that has guided her two previous LPs - 2017’s ‘Fassbinder Wunderkammer’ and 2020’s ‘I Should Have Been a Gardener’ - the Milanese guitarist/composer, Alessandra Novaga, returns to Die Schachtel with ‘The Artistic Image Is Always a Miracle’, two sides off shimmering, tense compositions – culminating as one of her most creatively ambitious and conceptually rich outings to date – freely inspired by the life and work of the Russian director Andrej Tarkovsky and the music of Johann Sebastian Bach.
Classically trained at the Musik Akademie in Basel, Switzerland, over the last decade Alessandra Novaga has emerged as one of the leading figures within northern Italy’s thriving new, experimental, and improvised music scene, rendering striking solo efforts, in addition to collaborations with Loren Connors, Stefano Pilia, Elliott Sharp, Nicola Ratti, Paula Matthusen, Sandro Mussida, Kid Millions, Travis Just, Francesco Gagliardi, and others. Remarkably ambitious and forward thinking, her approach to the guitar embarks upon a relentless deconstruction and rethinking of her instrument’s unique properties through distinct applications of structure, resonance, space, and tone, creating in a deeply personal and emotive music, seeking narrative and meaning within the abstractions of sound.
In 2017, with the LP, ‘Fassbinder Wunderkammer’, issued by Setola Di Maiale, Novaga embarked upon the exploration of her love of film. Having begun with Rainer Werner Fassbinder, this was followed in 2020 by Die Schachtel’s release of ‘I Should Have Been a Gardener’, a deeply intimate mediation on the life and work of Derek Jarman. Rather than focusing on a fixed point of inspiration or a single film to work from, these pieces achieve a form of abstract portraiture, distilling elements drawn from these filmmaker’s life and work into ambient networks of texture and tonality. ‘The Artistic Image Is Always a Miracle”’ freely inspired by the Russian director Andrej Tarkovsky and the music of Johann Sebastian Bach, finds Novaga radically expanding her sonic palette within this approach.
The seeds of ‘The Artistic Image Is Always a Miracle’ can be traced to a conversation that Novaga had with Alan Licht (contained in the highly regarded Common Tones: Selected interviews with artists and musicians 1995–2020, Blank Forms, 2021), relating to the connections between music and cinema, which led her to consider Andrej Tarkovsky’s use of Bach's music within a symbiotic framework: how the music illuminates the imagism of the films, and the film illuminates new dimensions of the music. Slowly developing over the subsequent years, the resulting album comprises six individual works, some of which draw directly upon pieces of Bach’s music that Tarkovsky used in his films – specifically 'Erbarme dich, Mein Gott', 'Das alte Jahr vergangen ist', and 'Ich ruf zu dir, Herr Jesu Christ' - while others draw upon the sensibilities and moods evoked in the imagination by the director’s films.
As a point of departure and illumination into the process and spirit that underscored the creation of the album, Novaga points toward a passage in Tarkovsky’s "Sculpting in Time”:
“Art is born and takes hold wherever there is a timeless and insatiable longing for the spiritual, for the ideal: that longing which draws people to art. Modern art has taken a wrong turn in abandoning the search for the meaning of existence in order to affirm the value of the individual for its own sake. What purports to be art begins to look like an eccentric occupation for suspect characters who maintain that any personalized action is of intrinsic value simply as a display of self-will. But in artistic creation the personality does not assert itself, it serves another, higher and communal idea.”
‘The Artistic Image Is Always a Miracle’ can be understood as a realisation of the collectivism of which Tarkovsky speaks, in the service of something far beyond the expression of self. Encountering Novaga moving into fairly uncharted waters, three of the album’s pieces incorporate the human voice we encounter the voices of others: that of the poet Arsenij Tarkovsky, the director’s father; a singer from Bach’s ‘Erbarme dich, Mein Gott’, capturing a broadcast in an underground parking lot, and Novaga’s own, rendering the melody from Bach’s “Ich ruf zu dir, Herr Jesu Christ”. Roughly alternating between solo excursions on guitar and bristling electroacoustic pieces, over the course of the album’s two sides Novaga weaves one of her most abstract and ambitious bodies of recordings to date, shifting between the complex tonal mediations generated by the six strings of her instrument, and phycological densities activated by the expanded pallet of sonority made possible by the tactics and approaches of musique concrète.
An immersive, deeply engaging meeting of beauty and melancholy within a labyrinth of voices and ideas, ‘The Artistic Image Is Always a Miracle’ transfigures the life and work of Andrej Tarkovski – one of the greatest auteurs in the history of cinema – into a singular, experimental statement of collective truth. Belonging to recent, ambitious stream of contemporary new music releases on Die Schachtel that’s already included Novaga’s ‘I Should Have Been a Gardener’, Stefano Pilia’s ‘Spiralis Aurea’, Jim O'Rourke & Giovanni Di Domenico’ ‘Immanent In Nervous Activity’, Claudio Rocchetti’s ‘Labirinto Verticale’, and Damāvand’s ‘As Long As You Come To My Garden’, among others, ‘The Artistic Image Is Always a Miracle’ is available on as a limited edition of 300 dark turquoise vinyl LPs released on June 21, 2024. The LP, designed by Bruno Stucchi / dinamomilano, comes with an 8-pages insert illuminated by Alessandra’s text as well as the lovely and intense photographs of Matilde Piazzi.
Returning with its final instalments, Die Schachtel's Decay Music series extends its explorations of inspired contemporary experimental efforts of the ambient, ethereal, and emotively abstract with Luigi Turra and Elio Martusciello’s “Liminale” and Sergio Armaroli and David Toop’s “And I Entered Into Sleep”, two astounding electroacoustic gestures of blurred space and time, plumbing complexity of meaning bound to sonority. Creatively groundbreaking and inspired, radically rethinking the terms of what ambient music can be perceived to be, they stand among the most striking efforts to appear within the series to date.
An aural bridge between two distinct generations of Italian experimental musicians, “Liminale” is the debut collaborative outing from the creative partnership of Luigi Turra and Elio Martusciello. Active within the context for roughly two decades, Turra (b. 1975) is a reductionist/electroacoustic composer, noted from his tense deployment of concrete and acoustic sources — particularly small sounds and noises — whose work threads the balance between silence, tactile auditory perception, and aleatoric music. Martusciello (b. 1959), on the other hand, is a musician and composer working across the fields of acousmatic and electroacoustic composition, sound installation, multi-media and audiovisual art, and computer music improvisation, who is widely celebrated for both his solo efforts and his collaborations with Eugene Chadbourne, Mike Cooper, Alvin Curran, Chris Cutler, Rhodri Davies, Iancu Dumitrescu, Michel Godard, Tim Hodgkinson, Lawrence D. "Butch" Morris, Jérôme Noetinger, Tony Oxley, Evan Parker, Z'EV, and others.
A single, nearly 40 minute work, extending across the two sides of the LP, “Liminale” — as its title eludes — is an exploration of the liminal through sonic means: “places that exist on the threshold, transitional spaces suspended between a before and an after, between the real and the evanescent” conceiving the soundscape as “a liminal place, a space to be inhabited without the certainty of where it leads.” Unfurling like a labyrinth navigated in darkness, the piece’s first half is marked by sparseness and restraint, as slow-paced guitar tones and harmonics thread silences and resonant ambience within a sprawling sense of space, delicately populated by tiny sounds, fleeting punctuations drawn from undeterminable sources, vocal utterances, and the unexpected appearance of intoxicating piano tones.
As “Liminale” progresses into its second half, Turra and Martusciello enter a more densely populated notion of the in between. No less defined by the presence of space and mystery, discreet textures rustle and writhe within passages of pure concrete abstraction and a fragmented, stretched sense of musicality: long-tones, metallic pulses, minimal vibrations, processed vocalizations, guitar harmonics, and deconstructed piano melodies, buried in spectral, gauzy hazes drifting from beyond arm’s reach within an imagistic and immersive landscape of profoundly meditative scope, where each sonic element flirts the line between emergence and disappearance.
Intimate, fragile, and achingly beautiful, “Liminale”, Luigi Turra and Elio Martusciello’s debut collaboration, is a masterstroke in sound-craft and composition, revealing the potency of meaning locked within transitional spaces and the undefined, and imbuing silence with monumental gravity and weight. Mastered for vinyl by Giuseppe Ielasi, and taking electroacoustic minimalism to an etherial extreme, “Liminale” is issued as the ninth entry in Die Schachtel’s Decay Music series, highlighting inspired contemporary experimental efforts of the ambient, ethereal, and emotively abstract.
When Brion Gysin died a tape was found in his possession which was posthumously released under his name entitled "The Pool". It took many years and a lot of letters to realize this was actually a composition by his friend Paul Bowles, as they often sent recordings back and forth to each other. Dumb EPs are the same in a way, like tapes or letters crossed through time. Not as they are confused, from a band not earnestly wearing influences on its sleeve. But as a future touchstone making music that is uniquely their own.
Formed in the mid-eighties Midlands, they are still not only eating pop but spewing it up in a chaos of thrilling ideas on new album ‘Delete Everything’. Their eighth record sees them further refine, define and deconstruct their melange of industrial rock, loop da loop techno, gonzoid hip hop and punk rock into a series of captivating sci-fi anthems. The band still look and sound like they have stepped out the pages of 2000 AD magazine with Graham Crabb and Mary Byker trading vocals like bouncing Duracell bunnies to the itching, compulsive beats surrounding them. Davey Bennett brings the bottom end and Cliff Hewitt plays the beats whilst Adam Mole delivers guitar aggro and sometimes waves his keyboard around with a delinquent glee. Still creative, still in a world of their own Pop Will Eat Itself have deleted everything and started all over again.
Formed in the mid-eighties Midlands, they are still not only eating pop but spewing it up in a chaos of thrilling ideas on new album ‘Delete Everything’. Their eighth record sees them further refine, define and deconstruct their melange of industrial rock, loop da loop techno, gonzoid hip hop and punk rock into a series of captivating sci-fi anthems. The band still look and sound like they have stepped out the pages of 2000 AD magazine with Graham Crabb and Mary Byker trading vocals like bouncing Duracell bunnies to the itching, compulsive beats surrounding them. Davey Bennett brings the bottom end and Cliff Hewitt plays the beats whilst Adam Mole delivers guitar aggro and sometimes waves his keyboard around with a delinquent glee. Still creative, still in a world of their own Pop Will Eat Itself have deleted everything and started all over again.
Formed in the mid-eighties Midlands, they are still not only eating pop but spewing it up in a chaos of thrilling ideas on new album ‘Delete Everything’. Their eighth record sees them further refine, define and deconstruct their melange of industrial rock, loop da loop techno, gonzoid hip hop and punk rock into a series of captivating sci-fi anthems. The band still look and sound like they have stepped out the pages of 2000 AD magazine with Graham Crabb and Mary Byker trading vocals like bouncing Duracell bunnies to the itching, compulsive beats surrounding them. Davey Bennett brings the bottom end and Cliff Hewitt plays the beats whilst Adam Mole delivers guitar aggro and sometimes waves his keyboard around with a delinquent glee. Still creative, still in a world of their own Pop Will Eat Itself have deleted everything and started all over again.
20/20 Vision is doing a fine job of digging into its archives and reissuing genuine treasure. Next up is a Spirit Catcher classic from 2007 that has been long out of print. The Belgian pair of Jean Vanesse and Thomas Sohet really hit on a fresh sound with their blend of electro-deco and deep house and this double pack still sounds hot all these years on. From the mid-tempo and seductive boogie of 'Motown Spring' to the cosmic tech of 'Search Is Over' via the dazzling disco radiance and sleek Metro Area style vibes of 'Rollercoaster', these are sophisticated sounds that marry dancefloor clout with great sound design. Check 'Voodoo Knight' for a playful and well-worked party starter, by the way.
MoBlack Records brings together four deep-burning cuts, each sculpted for late-night floors and sunrise rituals alike. MERZZY & DJ RONY open with Walhala, a hypnotic ride that balances raw percussion with mythic tension. Belyi & Kirr follow with Good Karma, a rolling groove where warmth and restraint meet in perfect balance. On the flip, Giaggi’s Chopit sharpens the edge with fractured rhythms and a cosmic pull, before Deco (BE) closes the circle with Breathing—a deep exhale of layered synths and pulse-driven low end.
múm are returning with a new album on Morr Music. »History of Silence« is the first full body of work by the Icelandic collective since 2013's »Smilewound« and their seventh studio album to date—recorded, deconstructed, put back together again, refined and finished over the course of two years. Vibrantly oscillating around a carefully curated palette of electronic and analogue sounds, the eight new tracks reflect the group's continuous strive to explore sonic spaces through subtle yet gripping songwriting.
For a long time now, múm have been exploring the idea of distance in their music. In the beginning, this was born purely out of necessity. Founded in Iceland in the late 1990s, the members soon began embarking on journeys across the world—collectively while touring, but also individually, exploring new places to live and create. Settling in, moving on, catching up: The concept of distance soon became an integral part of the collective's process. »History of Silence« leans into this idea, with space and time becoming indispensable pillars of the arrangements. While being coherent and structured, they echo their origins from different seasons, cities, and spaces—neatly stitched together with unparalleled craftsmanship. They breathe an overall airy and intimate atmosphere, yet resonate with the structural heft of time.
On »History of Silence« time manifests in unexpected, liberating, and mesmerizing ways. It does not move reliably forward; it drifts, takes twists and turns, even disappears completely. Electronic textures blur into acoustic sounds, voices flicker and dissolve, melodies stumble and repeat. The arrangements often feel like they’re wandering, gently resisting direction. »Our Love is Distorting,« for instance, begins with a subtle piano motif, playing hide and seek with feedback noises, digital artefacts, and lush—yet very quiet—string arrangements, before gradually forming into a distinctive song. It's a perfect illustration of múm's general approach on this album. »Mild at Heart« turns this idea upside-down, flowing freely from start to finish with moments of silence sprinkled in—serving to emphasize the musical elements. The music on »History of Silence« moves like weather: unexpected, intimate, quietly detailed. Contrasted with vivid phrases, rhythmic shifts, and small hooks, the album offers a new angle of compositional clarity and vision.
Work on »History of Silence« began at Sudestudio in southern Italy. Additional recordings were made in Reykjavík, Berlin, Athens, Helsinki, New York, and Prague. The strings were recorded by Sinfonia Nord at the Hof concert hall, Akureyri, arranged and conducted by Ingi Garðar Erlendsson, who has worked with the band for many years. The orchestral elements don’t dominate the record—instead, they surface gently, adding depth and resonance to the songs without disturbing the songs' fragility.
Contrary to what the album title suggests, »History of Silence« is a collection of bold and colorful songs, no matter how muted they might sound at times. They tickle like a feather drifting through the wind, ending up in unexpected places, stimulating long-forgotten thoughts and feelings, intimate moments of introspection. The songs move through the echoes those moments leave behind: the emotional traces of things unsaid, the weight of stillness. Offering closeness by means of distance and much-needed support.
múm are returning with a new album on Morr Music. »History of Silence« is the first full body of work by the Icelandic collective since 2013's »Smilewound« and their seventh studio album to date—recorded, deconstructed, put back together again, refined and finished over the course of two years. Vibrantly oscillating around a carefully curated palette of electronic and analogue sounds, the eight new tracks reflect the group's continuous strive to explore sonic spaces through subtle yet gripping songwriting.
For a long time now, múm have been exploring the idea of distance in their music. In the beginning, this was born purely out of necessity. Founded in Iceland in the late 1990s, the members soon began embarking on journeys across the world—collectively while touring, but also individually, exploring new places to live and create. Settling in, moving on, catching up: The concept of distance soon became an integral part of the collective's process. »History of Silence« leans into this idea, with space and time becoming indispensable pillars of the arrangements. While being coherent and structured, they echo their origins from different seasons, cities, and spaces—neatly stitched together with unparalleled craftsmanship. They breathe an overall airy and intimate atmosphere, yet resonate with the structural heft of time.
On »History of Silence« time manifests in unexpected, liberating, and mesmerizing ways. It does not move reliably forward; it drifts, takes twists and turns, even disappears completely. Electronic textures blur into acoustic sounds, voices flicker and dissolve, melodies stumble and repeat. The arrangements often feel like they’re wandering, gently resisting direction. »Our Love is Distorting,« for instance, begins with a subtle piano motif, playing hide and seek with feedback noises, digital artefacts, and lush—yet very quiet—string arrangements, before gradually forming into a distinctive song. It's a perfect illustration of múm's general approach on this album. »Mild at Heart« turns this idea upside-down, flowing freely from start to finish with moments of silence sprinkled in—serving to emphasize the musical elements. The music on »History of Silence« moves like weather: unexpected, intimate, quietly detailed. Contrasted with vivid phrases, rhythmic shifts, and small hooks, the album offers a new angle of compositional clarity and vision.
Work on »History of Silence« began at Sudestudio in southern Italy. Additional recordings were made in Reykjavík, Berlin, Athens, Helsinki, New York, and Prague. The strings were recorded by Sinfonia Nord at the Hof concert hall, Akureyri, arranged and conducted by Ingi Garðar Erlendsson, who has worked with the band for many years. The orchestral elements don’t dominate the record—instead, they surface gently, adding depth and resonance to the songs without disturbing the songs' fragility.
Contrary to what the album title suggests, »History of Silence« is a collection of bold and colorful songs, no matter how muted they might sound at times. They tickle like a feather drifting through the wind, ending up in unexpected places, stimulating long-forgotten thoughts and feelings, intimate moments of introspection. The songs move through the echoes those moments leave behind: the emotional traces of things unsaid, the weight of stillness. Offering closeness by means of distance and much-needed support.
múm are returning with a new album on Morr Music. »History of Silence« is the first full body of work by the Icelandic collective since 2013's »Smilewound« and their seventh studio album to date—recorded, deconstructed, put back together again, refined and finished over the course of two years. Vibrantly oscillating around a carefully curated palette of electronic and analogue sounds, the eight new tracks reflect the group's continuous strive to explore sonic spaces through subtle yet gripping songwriting.
For a long time now, múm have been exploring the idea of distance in their music. In the beginning, this was born purely out of necessity. Founded in Iceland in the late 1990s, the members soon began embarking on journeys across the world—collectively while touring, but also individually, exploring new places to live and create. Settling in, moving on, catching up: The concept of distance soon became an integral part of the collective's process. »History of Silence« leans into this idea, with space and time becoming indispensable pillars of the arrangements. While being coherent and structured, they echo their origins from different seasons, cities, and spaces—neatly stitched together with unparalleled craftsmanship. They breathe an overall airy and intimate atmosphere, yet resonate with the structural heft of time.
On »History of Silence« time manifests in unexpected, liberating, and mesmerizing ways. It does not move reliably forward; it drifts, takes twists and turns, even disappears completely. Electronic textures blur into acoustic sounds, voices flicker and dissolve, melodies stumble and repeat. The arrangements often feel like they’re wandering, gently resisting direction. »Our Love is Distorting,« for instance, begins with a subtle piano motif, playing hide and seek with feedback noises, digital artefacts, and lush—yet very quiet—string arrangements, before gradually forming into a distinctive song. It's a perfect illustration of múm's general approach on this album. »Mild at Heart« turns this idea upside-down, flowing freely from start to finish with moments of silence sprinkled in—serving to emphasize the musical elements. The music on »History of Silence« moves like weather: unexpected, intimate, quietly detailed. Contrasted with vivid phrases, rhythmic shifts, and small hooks, the album offers a new angle of compositional clarity and vision.
Work on »History of Silence« began at Sudestudio in southern Italy. Additional recordings were made in Reykjavík, Berlin, Athens, Helsinki, New York, and Prague. The strings were recorded by Sinfonia Nord at the Hof concert hall, Akureyri, arranged and conducted by Ingi Garðar Erlendsson, who has worked with the band for many years. The orchestral elements don’t dominate the record—instead, they surface gently, adding depth and resonance to the songs without disturbing the songs' fragility.
Contrary to what the album title suggests, »History of Silence« is a collection of bold and colorful songs, no matter how muted they might sound at times. They tickle like a feather drifting through the wind, ending up in unexpected places, stimulating long-forgotten thoughts and feelings, intimate moments of introspection. The songs move through the echoes those moments leave behind: the emotional traces of things unsaid, the weight of stillness. Offering closeness by means of distance and much-needed support.
Following the "rich jangle and big, well-developed songs" (Bandcamp) of 2023's Bananasugarfire, Edling sought to deconstruct his creative process by centering collaboration instead of a more solitary pursuit in songwriting, even as personal matters made isolation a more natural instinct. He describes taking time to make notes of the ways, timing and forms in which songs came to him in the process of demoing the record, and regularly questioning if his approach was like that of "watching a pot of water boil" or waiting for a bolt of light to appear in the sky. In many ways, Shooting Star is an appeal to the muse, a record of "songs about writing songs" born from Edling's desire to trust his instincts despite the posturings of inner demons and creative roadblocks, and to celebrate the little wins along the way. The result is a sprawling new work packed to the brim with playful eccentricities and dynamism, one that owes as much of its inspiration to mid-century folkies like Michael Hurley and Karen Dalton as it does to alt rock of the nineties like Yo La Tengo and Stereolab. Shooting Star is a constellation of influences, experiences, reckonings-with the state of the world, with others, with creativity, with oneself-with no two songs created in the same way. Instead of holing up in a recording studio, the creation of the record was formed by a patchwork of collaborations in a variety of recording locales, all which were later alchemized by mix engineer Matthew Schimelfenig. - RIYL Sparklehorse, John Cale, Yo La Tengo, Superviolet, Spirit of the Beehive, Horse Jumper of Love, Of Montreal
These albums are the end result of a collaboration between Cartridge 1987 and the YouTuber Edward who created the YouTube channel "Retro Discovery". With over 200,000 subscribers, this YouTube channel aims to highlight everything related to the "Retro Gaming" culture and the nostalgia that surrounds it.
These albums put together all the musical credits of the 3rd and 4th seasons of Edward's YouTube channel. All the remixes come from the games featured in Edward’s videos.
This is like a tribute to the original composers of these tracks, who have carried these videogames even further than expected, thanks to their musical talents.
The Delines "Scenic Sessions" 10th anniversary Coke Bottle Green Colored LP reissue. Originally issued in 2015 as a Rough Trade and Tour exclusive The Delines album, Scenic Sessions sold out in a period of weeks with their End of the Road Festival appearance that Sept. It was time for a reissue as it is one of the fans favourites and never available outside of the UK at retail with only 1000 copies printed. The band always thinks of this one as The Delines at summer camp. We recorded it during a minor heat wave, it"s loose and a bit rawer than most of our other records, and there"s a no pressure easy going feel to the session that really comes across. It"s a band favorite, too, because while recording it I think we all knew we were becoming a real band.
Released by Hegoa Records and Night School Records.
Greatest Heads is the fourth album by the radical Basque- Berlinesque group Al Karpenter. A deconstruction of structured “rock” music, here Al Karpenter re-imagine “the band” to explore the intersection between Free music, afro-beat, the avant garde and gonzo rock.
If Theodore Adorno wrote “To Write Poetry after Auschwitz is Barbaric” in 1949, Al Karpenter attempts to answer the difficult question today; what kind of music can be done in the face of a genocide? Álvaro Matilla, Marta Sainz, Enrique Zaccagnini & Mattin’s response to the planet’s slipping into a vortex of hate is to create a music ecstatic, a music of protest bursting with multiple musical languages and glossaries, full of overlapping histories and thrilling tensions.
Greatest Heads posits a plurality of musics both in opposition and intertwined: Al Karpenter play rock instruments pulled apart in the studio in post-production. Distorted rhythm chunks bit-crushed and dissipated, segments of freedom oppressed by waves of sound invading from every direction. The interplay between the chief instrumentalists and renowned, storied sound artist Mattin creates something akin to ESP freedom-seekers Cro Magnon playing in Miles Davis’ early 70s groups, The Los Angeles Free Music Society tightening up into a clenched fist of plunderphonics and runaway percussion.
We Are All Karpenters opens Greatest Heads with the most straight-forward song refrain of the record accompanied by a band that soon crash into eruption, imagining Sun City Girls in full free rock mode.
The modulating synth sound soon sucks the band into its wake to create a spine-chilling climax of distorted sound, made fully orgasmic with mastering engineer Rashad Becker’s attention to detail. On Izugarrizko Buruak (Greatest Heads), Matilla intones in Basque over a mangled distorto-beat. A Brand New Astraphobia creates a black space for a heavily processed guitar to blow up before falling to earth at night, a gentle figure serenading the coming end.
On Side B, the band begins by being masticated by a brutal phaser, squelching and stretching the music into new territories. The overt message of Stop The Genocide! is besieged by violence before Worm City aggressively samples the ghosts of soul music, mixing in noise bursts, prepared piano and swiping, abstracted sound. Epic closer Perfect Love feels like a beat poetry performance on a burnt world, still grasping for community, for home, for some sort of human love. A Mad love, then; an angry love fuelled by solidarity and collaboration.
The band’s cascading layers of references and polyglottal musics attempt to create the perfect lover, alive with rage and disorientating ecstasy: Al Karpenter.
Artist and multi-instrumentalist Flaer embraces the search for quiet miracles on first full-length LP Translations.
In 2023, Realf Heygate - who makes music as Flaer - released his debut mini-album Preludes, composed on his mother’s piano and his childhood cello.Returning to ODDA for his debut full-length album, Heygate is now looking in another direction. A record that embraces transition and movement, Translations is in many ways more internal, less rooted to a single place and reflective of the process of laying new foundations in Cornwall.
Like Preludes, Translations is coloured with found sounds and field recordings, from the starlings which can be heard singing through the open window of his studio, to the brittle recordings of his mother, who was a linguist, learning Spanish on a set of language tapes. In both cases, Heygate embraced the translations and memories inherent to the sounds.
“When I digitised my mother’s tapes, they warped and stuttered in a very similar way to the starling’s song,” he explains. “They had this uncanny rhythm and pulse that I couldn’t quite decode, but was saying something." These decayed transmissions hint at loss, resisting clarity in favour of the ineffable.
Translations is also a record of ambiguities and in-betweens, suggested by the double meaning of the album’s opening track ‘Entre’. At once intricate and expansive, threaded with birdsong and acoustic guitar motifs, this and ‘Starling Descends’ (a reference to Vaughan Williams’ ‘The Lark Ascending’) act as a bridge away from the pastoral themes of Preludes towards a more assertive sound. At times intimate in its textured instrumentation and at others more overtly grand in orchestration, reflecting awider palette of influences.
“Flaer began in many ways when I picked up my mother’s instruments, seeking a form of reconnection. Where words evaded me, they became the tools through which I found a language for grief – and above all, for love.”
Recorded between 2023 and 2025 – what Heygate calls “A gradual process of sowing and harvesting ideas rather than a single intense creative period” - each track follows a rhythm similar to the small maquettes and sculptures he has been working on in his visual practice, whereby structures and melodies form intuitively in moments that are as rare as they are fleeting.
“It's that feeling of searching that I really enjoy,” Heygate continues. “I never know what the destination of the composition is going to be, and I never really find what it is."
Translations is released on limited edition off-white vinyl LP (500 copies worldwide) with one of five signed and numbered handmade risograph prints. It's also available as standard black vinyl LP and digitally.
Artist and multi-instrumentalist Flaer embraces the search for quiet miracles on first full-length LP Translations.
In 2023, Realf Heygate - who makes music as Flaer - released his debut mini-album Preludes, composed on his mother’s piano and his childhood cello.Returning to ODDA for his debut full-length album, Heygate is now looking in another direction. A record that embraces transition and movement, Translations is in many ways more internal, less rooted to a single place and reflective of the process of laying new foundations in Cornwall.
Like Preludes, Translations is coloured with found sounds and field recordings, from the starlings which can be heard singing through the open window of his studio, to the brittle recordings of his mother, who was a linguist, learning Spanish on a set of language tapes. In both cases, Heygate embraced the translations and memories inherent to the sounds.
“When I digitised my mother’s tapes, they warped and stuttered in a very similar way to the starling’s song,” he explains. “They had this uncanny rhythm and pulse that I couldn’t quite decode, but was saying something." These decayed transmissions hint at loss, resisting clarity in favour of the ineffable.
Translations is also a record of ambiguities and in-betweens, suggested by the double meaning of the album’s opening track ‘Entre’. At once intricate and expansive, threaded with birdsong and acoustic guitar motifs, this and ‘Starling Descends’ (a reference to Vaughan Williams’ ‘The Lark Ascending’) act as a bridge away from the pastoral themes of Preludes towards a more assertive sound. At times intimate in its textured instrumentation and at others more overtly grand in orchestration, reflecting awider palette of influences.
“Flaer began in many ways when I picked up my mother’s instruments, seeking a form of reconnection. Where words evaded me, they became the tools through which I found a language for grief – and above all, for love.”
Recorded between 2023 and 2025 – what Heygate calls “A gradual process of sowing and harvesting ideas rather than a single intense creative period” - each track follows a rhythm similar to the small maquettes and sculptures he has been working on in his visual practice, whereby structures and melodies form intuitively in moments that are as rare as they are fleeting.
“It's that feeling of searching that I really enjoy,” Heygate continues. “I never know what the destination of the composition is going to be, and I never really find what it is."
Translations is released on limited edition off-white vinyl LP (500 copies worldwide) with one of five signed and numbered handmade risograph prints. It's also available as standard black vinyl LP and digitally.
After recent sold-out vinyl and cassette releases garnering plays on BBC 6Music and NTS, among other Radio Play, 0282 are back with another choice double-sider.
Travis Street’s ‘Jackie Morris Said’ is an instrumental mid-tempo soul stomper, with Advance copies being very well received on contemporary Northern Soul Dancefloors throughout the UK. DJ feedback has likened it to all-time classic instrumental Mod & Soul numbers by the likes of Googie Renee and Wynder K Frog.
The flipside sees a remix by Barden Juniors, fresh from recent DJ gigs with the likes of Keb Darge, DJ Food, and Doug Shipton from Finders Keepers records. Their wonky angular deconstruction is in the vein of classic European Library Tunes from the late 60s / early 70s, and feedback on promo copies has seen it described as “a lost KPM out-take”, “the soundtrack to a lost public information film from 1973”, and “a time-travelling Kool Keith instrumental”.
It has already had radio play support from the likes of Markey Funk (Delights).
„Rivière Noire“ ist das erste Album von Reginald Omas Mamode IV auf dem Kölner Label Melting Pot Music und sein erstes Solo-Projekt seit 2022.
Reginald Omas Mamode IV ist ein anglo-mauritischer Sänger, Produzent und Multiinstrumentalist. Geboren und aufgewachsen in Großbritannien, pflegt er eine enge Verbindung zur afrikanischen Insel Mauritius, der Heimat seines Vaters. Seine musikalischen Wurzeln reichen von Süd-London bis zu den Maskarenen-Inseln (Réunion, Mauritius und Rodrigues), wo seine Familie einst an den legendären „Electric Sega“-Aufnahmen der 1970er beteiligt war. Musik liegt den Mamodes im Blut: Auch seine Brüder sind als Musiker aktiv.
Reginalds Stil vereint Elemente aus Golden Era Hip-Hop, Jazz, Soul, Afro, Funk sowie den traditionellen mauritischen Stilen Sega und Maloya. Man hört Einflüsse von J Dilla und D’Angelo, aber auch den Spirit von Sly Stone, Shuggie Otis oder Lee Perry. Mit vier Soloalben auf dem Londoner Label Five Easy Pieces sowie zahlreichen Kollaborationen gehört Reginald zu den prägenden Stimmen der britischen Beat- und Jazzszene. Seit 2012 wird er regelmäßig von BBC-Legende Gilles Peterson unterstützt, der seine Musik seither kontinuierlich spielt.
Gemeinsam mit seinen Brüdern Mo Kolours und Jeen Bassa sowie langjährigen Weggefährten wie Al Dobson Jr. und Tenderlonious zählt Reginald zu den Mitbegründern der 22a-Kooperative. Das US-Magazin The FADER beschrieb deren Sound einmal als „ein kaleidoskopisches Patchwork aus Hip-Hop-, House- und Groove-Explorationen – verbunden durch den zeitlosen Glauben an Rhythmus als universelle Sprache.“
„Rivière Noire“ markiert eine künstlerische Weiterentwicklung – fast schon eine Wiedergeburt. Zum ersten Mal verzichtet Reginald vollständig auf Samples. Stattdessen spielt er sämtliche Instrumente und Gesangsspuren selbst ein. In seinem bescheidenen Studio erschafft er organische Grooves aus Live-Drums, Drumcomputern, Perkussion, Gitarre, Fender Rhodes und Synthesizern.
Seine Musik ist Ausdruck einer tiefen Sehnsucht nach universeller Liebe und Mitgefühl. Sie reflektiert globale Herausforderungen ebenso wie persönliche Erfahrungen: wachsende Armut, politische Spannungen, ethnische Spaltungen – aber auch alltägliche Beobachtungen. „Rivière Noire“ ist Reginalds Aufruf an die Menschheit, sich ihrer Verbundenheit bewusst zu werden.
SEAWEED GREEN VINYL[22,27 €]
Old-time and traditional music stay exciting for their contrasts. Exacting instrumentation honed through mentorships and late-night jams at fiddler's conventions tangles with a community-sourced inventiveness that influences variants and new sounds. Joseph Decosimo is a master of this genre for this very reason, blending deep technique with an openness and curiosity that keep his music crackling with life. A "marvelous fiddler" (No Depression) and banjo player who braids "exultation and veneration" (INDY Week) into his music, on his third solo album Fiery Gizzard Decosimo gathers a close-knit ensemble of friends from his musical career to infuse his interpretations of fiddle and banjo pieces with a contagious communal joy. As an artist working with traditional music from the South and Appalachia, Decosimo chooses songs based not only on historical significance and lineage but also his own sensory approach. For Fiery Gizzard, his ear was tuned to otherworldly tones and mystery, sourcing from field recordings such as Virginia fiddler Luther Davis' hypnotic version of "Shady Grove" while amping up the music's psychedelic potential. On the middle Tennessee banjo composition "Flowery Girls," a VHS of bluesman Abner Jay inspired Decosimo to rig up a pickup inside a fretless banjo and play it thr ough a tube amp to capture some of Jay's edge and funkiness. But to round out the sound and keep it kinetic meant galvanizing a genre-eschewing crew to jam out - and not in a "spaced-out drooly" kind of way, he laughs, but as a sort of "responsive conversation." Decosimo has always been a community-minded artist. He began playing as a seventh graderin Tennessee, fostering relationships with older players at jams and in homes, a learning mode natural to his inquisitive nature and desire for musical connection. A folklorist by intuition, he later became one by profession, studying with old-time legend Clyde Davenport, teaching in East Tennessee State University's renowned bluegrass program, and receiving his PhD at the University of North Carolina with a dissertation titled "Catching the `Wild Note': Listening, Learning, and Connoisseurship in Old-Time Music." In North Carolina, Decosimo kicked about in the verdant environment of Durham and Chapel Hill's folk and indie scenes, collaborating with artists including Alice Gerrard, Hiss Golden Messenger, and Jake Xerxes Fussell. This community has influenced his own music, including his "sublime and strangely heartening" (Bandcamp Daily) 2022 release While You Were Slumbering and Beehive Cathedral, Decosimo's 2024 "Appalachian mountain music treasury" (New Commute) trio album with Luke Richardson and Cleek Schrey for Dear Life Records. Continuing on this path, Fiery Gizzard is home base for a loose outfit of mostly Tarheel-based musicians from within and beyond traditional music. Inspired by a tour with fiddler Stephanie Coleman (Nora Brown), guitarist Jay Hammond, and synth builder and multi-instrumentalist Matthew O'Connell, Decosimo assembled studiomates based on close friendships and comfort. Coleman, O'Connell, and Hammond contribute to Fiery Gizzard, along with bassist and producer Andy Stack (Helado Negro, Wye Oak), horn player Kelly Pratt (Beirut, David Byrne), Mipso and Fust's Libby Rodenbough, Joseph O'Connell (Elephant Micah), andtrad/experimental artist Cleek Schrey. Decosimo's fiddle and banjo work is virtuosic, intricate and simple simultaneously, a testament to his many years of study. On some tracks, his playing or lovely, plain-hearted singing is the centerpiece, such as on his interpretations of Texan street preacher Washington Phillips' 1929 recording "I Had a Good Father and Mother" or the Eastern Kentucky fiddle barn-burner "Glory in the Meetinghouse," famously played by Luther Strong for Alan Lomax. But there's also a trusting open-door policy, like where Southern Appalachian tune "Ida Red" relaxes into Coleman's sweet, confident fiddling and Hammond's loping guitar. As a bandleader, Decosimo's confidence and enthusiasm for the music reveal the heart of traditional music and how it can come to life through community. Fiery Gizzard is Joseph Decosimo as a powerful champion of traditional music - a sponge who soaks up as much as he squeezes out, a responsive artist who makes his genre accessible, and a magnet who can bring musicians of all sorts into his orbit with his same passion.
New pressing for this album, in translucent highlighter yellow. Inspired by minimal pop and the pioneers of electronic music, LES MANIÈRES DE TABLE, Annie-Claude Deschênes’ first solo album, is as danceable and melodic as it is disquieting and dystopian, proposing to set the table differently by deconstructing the social codes of politeness imposed on us. Conceived during the lockdown to overcome the surrounding inactivity, the songs that make up LES MANIÈRES DE TABLE were not intended to be released. It was by familiarizing herself with new technologies (drum machines, sequencers) that the conceptual and aesthetic ideas that define the album began to develop organically. Through producing beats composed from samples of utensils, table etiquette became a source of inspiration, a form of conformity that she enjoyed deconstructing. At the same time, a fascination for surveillance cameras and other futuristic-looking, but already obsolete technologies became part of her visual universe. Her experiments gradually evolved into a full-fledged project reminiscent of the works of the pioneers of electronic music. The album is inspired by Steve Reich’s minimalism, Kraftwerk’s synthetic textures, Herbie Hancock’s stylistic diversity and experimental cinema’s non-traditional approach to narration.
2025 repress in a new colour variant (Pearl White colour vinyl) with printed innersleeve. The third album proper for "Country-got-Soul"s finest, The Delines, on Decor Records sees them exploring the US Gulf Coast, not far from where Amy Boone grew up. The songs in this cinematic opus all focus around this area and are inspired by when Amy asked Willy Vlautin to write her a song like Tony Joe White"s "Rainy Night In Georgia" after her tragic accident being hit by a car in 2016 and her 3 year recovery. This follows on from 2019"s The Imperial which was number one in the UK official AMA charts for two weeks. Written and partially recorded before lock down the rest of the album was finished last Summer, produced by John Morgan Askew at his Bocce studios just outside of Portland, Oregon.
2025 Repress, New Colour variant, Apricot colour vinyl. Led by vocalist Amy Boone (The Damnations, TX), Cory Gray on keyboards, & horns, Tucker Jackson (The Minus 5) on pedal steel, as well as former Richmond Fontaine members: Sean Oldham, Freddie Trujillo, and Willy Vlautin. Vlautin, the acclaimed novelist and songwriter for Richmond Fontaine, has penned all ten tracks. Recorded in Portland, Oregon and produced by John Morgan Askew, The Imperial shows us again why songwriter, Willy Vlautin became so enamored with Amy Boone"s voice. The combination of Vlautin"s songs and Boone"s voice creates a late night country soul world full of hopefulness and heartbreak.
Hamburg-born composer, pianist and producer Niklas Paschburg announces his latest project, 'Mexican Alps' EP due for release on July 11th. 'La Hormiga' is a rhythmic exploration of life in motion. Pulsing beats and textured synths create forward momentum, echoing the journey through the winding paths of Oaxaca's mountainous surroundings, where tradition and nature intertwine. 'Mexican Alps' combines inspirations gathered from the picturesque mountains of southern Mexico and the majestic peaks of the Swiss Alps. The EP is a mesmerizing journey through those landscapes; drawing inspiration from nature's grandeur and the vibrancy of Día de los Muertos, Niklas blends electronic textures, atmospheric samples, and innovative instrumentation to create a soundscape that is both grounding and transcendent. Without relying on his signature piano, this EP explores new creative territories, evoking deep emotional resonance and moments of introspection. -- If his first album, 'Oceanic '(2018), was conceived as an ode to the Baltic Sea, for his next release, 'Svalbard' (2020), produced with Andy Barlow of Lamb, the Hamburg-born musician, now a Berliner by adoption, sought refuge on an island in the Arctic Ocean, surrounded by snow, ice, darkness and breathtaking landscapes. This time, however, the setting is completely different. "It all started with an invitation to play at a festival in Oaxaca," Niklas says. "Since I had never been to Latin America, I began considering how to take advantage of the opportunity to stay for a while and write something there. I started looking for houses, but I quickly realized it was almost impossible to find one with a piano—it's not a common instrument in Mexican culture. I thought, why not try immersing myself in a writing process that doesn't involve one? I was so excited about the idea that I jumped in." 'Mexican Alps' is the result of a challenge in which Paschburg harnessed his collection of synths and effects to create an ambient-electronic record. On the one hand, an evolution of the work primarily carried out in 'Svalbard' and 'Panta Rhei'; on the other hand, an episode in its own right, distinct from its predecessors due to the absence of the piano and the greater role played by improvisation, by coincidence, it became his first work created without his signature instrument. "Not having the opportunity to write chords, harmonies, and everything else on the piano, I improvised more, focusing on the sound. This was the approach I used to record demos in Mexico, which I then brought with me to Switzerland, where I carried on working on the EP. In addition to my usual setup (the OB-6 by Dave Smith and Tom Oberheim and the OP-1 by Teenage Engineering, plus my ever-beloved Hohner accordion, inherited from my grandfather), I was also guided by the purchase of a new Moog Matriarch with a unique delay. All this helped me build the sound I had in mind: a spacious, abstract, 3D sound that is definitely immersive." He expands. It is an emotional landscape that translates into music. In some of the tracks, Paschburg has also included field recordings collected during the Día de los Muertos, a deeply felt Mexican holiday: "A great celebration, a colorful parade of skeletons, skulls, flowers, and decorated altars, so engaging and intoxicating that I felt compelled to use its sounds in my music." It was precisely from this blend of influences that the fourth track, "Oaxaca de Juárez", emerged—a single characterized by a catchy funk procession and enhanced by the guitar work of Tal Arditi, a rising European jazz artist and singer-songwriter based between Basel and Berlin. 'Mexican Alps' is his new calling card, featuring an enveloping sound crafted by Paschburg in collaboration with Gijs van Klooster, who mixed the EP in a studio specifically designed for Atmos music. Mastering was handled by Bo Kondren at Calyx Studio in Berlin.
Experience the Double-Platinum 1996 Album in Audiophile Sound for the First Time
Mobile Fidelity’s Numbered-Edition 180g 45RPM 2LP Set Is Sourced from the Original Analogue Tapes
1/2” / 30 IPS analogue master to DSD 256 to analogue console to lathe
If great art, as many believe, is inherently polarizing, then the Stone Temple Pilots’ Tiny Music… Songs from the Vatican Gift Shop easily ranks as the California-based band’s finest album. Simultaneously celebrated and castigated upon release in spring 1996, the group’s third full-length finds vocalist Scott Weiland and company expanding their “grunge” palette with a smart blend of glam rock, psychedelia, jangle pop, and other related styles. Having benefited from long-view reassessments that shed the biases and meanness of initial criticisms, the double-platinum effort is now largely and rightly seen as a creative masterwork. All the more reason why it deserves reference-grade production.
Overseen by producer Brendan O’Brien, Stone Temple Pilots used bedrooms, hallways, bathrooms, and the lawn to capture a broad blend of textures, spaciousness, and ambience that helped underline the group’s obvious (and somewhat unexpected) leap from normal “alternative” status to an artist whose aspirations went beyond that of many of its contemporaries. You can hear the multitude of details and tonalities with previously unattained clarity, presence, and scope on this fantastic reissue, which also delivers the impact and punch every rock record deserves. Another tremendous asset: The depth, grain, and pitch of Weiland’s voice.
For all the contagious choruses and glossy melodies that help make Tiny Music… Songs from the Vatican Gift Shop sparkle, the vocal performances of the late singer arguably rank as the best that the much-missed Weiland committed to tape. None other than the Smashing Pumpkins’ Billy Corgan — who, like many peers and critics, felt a pressing need to reevaluate the record as both time marched on and the self-importance attached to the “alternative” scene faded — praised Weiland’s efforts by noting: “Like Bowie can and does, it was Scott's phrasing that pushed his music into a unique, and hard to pin down, aesthetic sonicsphere.”
Smooth and diverse, those traits are everywhere on Tiny Music… Songs from the Vatican Gift Shop. From the clever combination of emotional closeness and distance he brings to the catchy albeit ultimately melancholic “Lady Picture Show”; to the lounge-fly balladeering that causes “And So I Know” to lightly swing akin to a bleary-eyed house band’s final number at a 4 A.M. bar; to the effortless cool and laissez-faire casualness he articulates on the grinding “Pop’s Love Suicide”; to the dimensional raspiness, defiant energy, and let-loose wail that sail through the crunchy “Big Bang Baby.”
The latter tune, the record’s first single and per Weiland a conscious attempt by the band to deconstruct its prior approaches, clearly borrows from the Rolling Stones’ “Jumpin’ Jack Flash.” Because of it, the song drew all kinds of barbs from naysayers. Their disdain extended to most material on Tiny Music… Songs from the Vatican Gift Shop, which indirectly references other prized acts such as the Beatles, Cheap Trick, T. Rex, and Lush. Those cynics failed to grasp that Stone Temple Pilots were paying homage and having a blast, with even Weiland, then battling serious substance-abuse and legal issues, getting in on the action.
Stone Temple Pilots’ skeptics also turned a deaf ear to the records’ stellar pop craftsmanship, sticky hooks, and sly commentary on music-industry machinations and fame. Not to mention the band’s intent, made clear from the outset. In an interview conducted in 1994, guitarist Robert DeLeo stated: “The last thing I wanted to do with this band was make everybody believe we invented something.”
Seen through that lens and the hindsight afforded history, and appreciated independent of the self-righteous authenticity standards of the day, Tiny Music… Songs from the Vatican Gift Shop sounds borderline fearless while authoritatively checking all the right boxes for fun, flavor, and finesse. Part winking send-up, part tribute to the glitter rock age, and part middle finger towards the hip crowd that didn’t know what they were missing, this mid-90s classic repeatedly invites you to drop the needle and press play.
“My hero’s back,” Madeline Kenney sings on the second track of her newest effort, Kiss from the Balcony. In a sense, she means herself; made with friends Ben Sloan and Stephen Patota across just a few in-person studio sessions in Oakland, these tracks represent a culmination of Madeline’s musings on growth and resilience reaching back years, brought to life through this generative and vibrant collaboration. Close listeners can hear the breadth of stylistic elements and themes carried through from various eras of her work, which all come together in a cohesive and timeless record.
In two week-long intensive sessions, the three collaborators grew these nine songs from fragments, sketches, and seeds. With a background in experimental percussion and sound design, Ben Sloan brings an electronic sound to Kenney’s writing; Stephen Patota provides ingenious guitar melodies throughout and grounds the project in acoustic elements. Kiss from the Balcony was originally intended to be an EP, but the sessions brought forth such fruitful ideation and play that the project was expanded to a full length album. It sits in Madeline’s discography as a thematic and musical progression that sees her iterate on ideas about love and explore new sonic motifs through her work with Patota and Sloan.
Much of Kiss from the Balcony is a meditation on modern relationships, a feminist and utterly human contemplation of power and who holds it. “Hereditary backward leaning,” she describes in ‘Slap,’ of the female condition; “But no-one ever likes to see the girls break down / So they keep it to the bathroom floor” she sings in the rapturous opener, ‘Scoop.’ While the songs are shrouded in metaphor, the ubiquity of heartbreak and resilience decode much of the internal conflict Kenney depicts. The album sees her recognize the precarity and peculiarity of life and take it by the horns, realizing she controls her own narrative:
She explores the relationships between joy and suffering, choosing to see them as inseparable, two sides of a single coin. “It’s never over / When will they love me?” Kenney asks on ‘They Go Wide,’ describing her positionality both as a woman in relationship and as an indie artist in the modern music industry.
A playful hopefulness pervades the record, providing a sense of revelation in the journey throughout, Kenney’s radical acceptance of life as it is like a lyrical tongue out at the absurd.
Strut present the first international release in over 30 years by legendary Afro-jazz group Oneness Of Juju with their new album Made Through Ritual on 11th July 2025.
In 1975, the late DJ / producer and jazz distributor Jimmy Gray and James “Plunky” Branch joined a musical revolution, founding Black Fire Records and releasing the label’s debut album, the classic African Rhythms by Oneness of Juju. This July, Plunky brings this important musical relationship full circle with Made Through Ritual, produced by Plunky’s son Jamiah “Fire” Branch and Jimmy’s son Jamal Gray.
The album takes a novel approach to beat culture. Working from demos created by Jamal using a selection of original jazz samples, Plunky took the tracks, replayed and re-interpreted the arrangements using live musicians. “The album explores the art of deconstruction and reconstruction in music - sampling, sequencing, and live improvisation merge with multi-track recording to craft intricate harmonies and arrangements,” explains Plunky. “The process became a ritualistic expression of creativity and transformation.”
The resulting album is a fascinating listen. Opening with the meditative soul chant ‘Share This Love’ voiced by regular Oneness vocalist Charlayne “Chyp” Green, the album opens out into a series of jazz vignettes including the title track, ‘In Due Time’ and ‘Free Spirit’. The powerful album closer, ‘Children Of The Drum’ celebrates black culture and legacy through the poetry of Roscoe Burnem.
Released on 1LP and 1CD with specially commissioned cover artwork by contemporary Ivorian artist Maxime Manga, Made Through Ritual represents an important new chapter in the Oneness story. The album will be supported by a selection of European tour dates during Autumn and Winter 2025.
Sublime private-press piano improvisations channeled from another world by Willem Nyland. Remastered from the original tapes and reissued for the first time, with in-depth liner notes by Matt Marble of the American Museum of Paramusicology. A Columbia-educated chemist by profession and a self-taught pianist by affinity, Willem Nyland (1890-1975) is known as a spiritual teacher in the tradition of Greek-Armenian mystic George Gurdjieff. In the mid/late 1960s, a split with Gurdjieff led Nyland to start his own group in upstate New York. There, after a Friday night lecture on 'The Work' and a shot of brandy, Nyland would launch into remarkable piano improvisations on a specially tuned baby grand, sometimes playing for over an hour. Each improvisation was meticulously recorded and cataloged, a major part of Nyland's teachings. 16 of these recordings were released as standalone LPs on Nyland's own Gauge Hill Press, with artwork by Hungarian American decorative artist Ilonka Karasz, Nyland's wife of over 50 years. These records, with their cascading, deeply emotional playing and beautiful cover art, have become highly coveted by collectors and "paramusicologists." Each contains depths of spiritual information and lyrical, almost visual instrumental storytelling. Nyland deftly and subtly shifts moods and tones throughout these truly inspired extended improvisations.
