Cerca:deep future

Both Tymon Dogg and Richard Dudanski had musical roots playing in The 101'ers with future Clash singer/guitarist Joe Strummer. All three shared a deep love for southern Spain, due perhaps to the influence of the Romero sisters, Paloma (later "Palmolive" of The Slits) and the artist Esperanza, who were among the first Spanish punk refugees in London. Tymon's career began with beguiling interactions with Apple Records, The Moody Blues and future Led Zeppelin members John Paul Jones and Jimmy Page before he discovered his true musical self as a punk / folk experimentalist, opening shows for the likes of The Slits, Raincoats and Pop Group and becoming the longest-running musical foil in Strummer's career, continuing into The Clash and Mescaleros. Similarly, Richard played in Basement 5, Public Image Ltd, The Raincoats and others before following Esperanza back to Granada...which subsequently became second home to Tymon and Joe. Spain is not without its own punk heroes, and chief among them was Granada's Antonio Arias, another pal of Joe's and leader of Spain's musical heroes, Lagartija Nick, which also included Dacoits members Juan Codorniu and JJ Machuca. Antonio sings the albums two Spanish-language songs. while Tymon sings the other nine...and there's an instrumental, "Mongols", which the band considered too epic as a stand-alone instrumental to mess with! Tymon sings three songs from his past: "The Wheel Of Life And Death" has been heard before as a live bonus track on the expanded reissue of "Battle Of Wills", "Conscience Money" was heard in a very different version on the impossible-to-find "Made Of Light" album, and an embryonic take of "Something To Prove" turned up the even rarer 1989 solo album, "Relentless". If you imagine the playful elasticity of "Sandinista!" recast into a more straightforward record, with Tymon taking the lead on something more than that album's "Lose This Skin", you're halfway there. Guests include Killing Joke bassist / famed producer Youth and Dr Robert from The Blow Monkeys

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Dry mix only single LP edition, reverb mix of 2LP edition excluded.

Issued in 1975, this is the articulation of Zambia’s Zamrock ethos. Its' musicians were anti-colonial freedom fighters, it envelops Zambian folk music traditions, and it rocks - hard. Amanaz were serious, and they made a serious stab at an album. They titled their album Africa, according to original band member Keith Kabwe, “because of how it was shared and how its inhabitants were butchered and enslaved, its resources stolen... all the atrocities slave drivers committed. “ Thus, their “Kale,” a blues sung in Nyanja, that traced the continent’s arc from slavery to Zambia’s independence closes the album. Kabwe and rhythm guitarist John Kanyepa have a winsome softness to their vocals, which sit politely aside the feral growl of drummer Watson Baldwin Lungu, bassist Jerry Mausala and bandleader/lead guitarist Isaac Mpofu. Africa’s vibe ranges from anxious (“Amanaz”) to escapist (“Easy Street”) to straight-up pissed-off. On the “History of Man,” his voice whiskey-burned, his distorted guitar buzzing like swarming hornets, Mpofu indicts his species. There’s a darkness to Africa not found on any other Zamrock records, and a melancholy drifts throughout, specifically on Mpofu’s more restrained “Khala My Friend,” which stands as an effective, bleak situation for the Zambian everyman, the average citizen of a struggling, new nation, who might have had relatives in conflict-torn countries on the horizon, who might have been struggling to find his next meal, who might have seen a bleaker future than his president promised. Then there’s the clear Velvet Underground-influence on the nostalgic “Sunday Morning,” which, as Kabwe recalls, was the first song written for the album, back in 1968, when Velvet Undergound and Nico was a new release - and the underground funk of “Making The Scene.” The album also tackles traditional Zambian music and early-‘60s rock – punctuated, of course by Kanyepa’s wah-wah and Mpofu’s fuzz guitars. But every time Amanaz get too deep, too violent, they come back with an accessible song and woo their listener back to the groove. “Green Apple” is a civil song, featuring Kanyepa’s sighing guitar.

The title of the Lau Nau's 10th album, Aphrilis, derives from the Latin word aperire, meaning "to open." A fitting verb for the month of the year it is closely associated with — April. And while the images of plants and blossoms coming back to colorful life after a long, cold winter feels appropriate when listening to the rich and lustrous bloom of music on Aphrilis, another definition of open feels even more apt. For under the abundance lies the memory of times of austerity, the friction of hard choices, the acceptance that nothing is fixed and the future is unknown. This literal and metaphorical exploration of complexity and contradiction makes Aphrilis a multi-dimensional antidote for our troubled times, one that emphasizes the quiet and communal over noise and spectacle. Laura Naukkarinen, the Finnish artist behind this project, has long kept her mind and spirit open to whatever sounds and creative ideas felt appropriate for the moment. For the past six years that has meant primarily working with modular synthesis — learning how to build modules and releasing acclaimed work centered on its sounds like 5x4 (2023) or Puutarhassa (2022). Running parallel to this work, however, has been a continued exploration of acoustic instruments and group performances with her trio Lau Nau ja Seitsemäs Taivas. Aphrilis arrives then like fresh growth in a creative season cycle. A companion to her brilliant 2017 release Poseidon, the album, says Naukkarinen, "felt like a needed moment to embrace songs with lyrics again." And through the creation of this work, she remained open not only to her own creative muse, but also the input of her chosen collaborators. Each player on Aphrilis — Matti Bye on celesta and synths, Pekko Käppi on jouhikko, Hermanni Yli-Tepsa on violin and contrabass, Topias Tiheäsalo on electric guitar, Samuli Kosminen (Múm) on various instruments — was given free reign to arrange their own parts to accompany Naukkarinen's compositions. Kosminen’s lush fingerprint can also be heard in the mixing and production of the album, as with Poseidon six years ago. The moniker of this project may be taken from Naukkarinen’s own name, but Lau Nau feels more like a band than ever before. The delicacy and softness of the music is reflected in Naukkarinen’s lyrics. Each song is rife with imagery and creatures from the natural world. The spiders in the forest. The animals that keep a young woman company in her refuge in the woods. Wet grass. The feeling of the music is almost tactile, as if listening to the album will leave a bit of dew or sap on your fingers. The theme of this material, says Naukkarinen, runs even deeper. “The songs tell about cracks and changes of direction in different histories: personal, societal, planetary,” she says. “About moments when a yes can become a no and vice versa. The album wants to propose that at the moment of a crisis there is a possibility to influence the histories by our choices.” That may feel like a lot for such a fragile sounding collection of songs to bear. But Aphrilis is an album of surprising strength and resilience

Vanishing Twin is songwriter, singer and multi-instrumentalist Cathy Lucas, drummer Valentina Magaletti, bassist Susumu Mukai, synth/guitar player Phil MFU and visual artist/film maker Elliott Arndt on flute and percussion; and on this album they have made their first artistic statement for the ages.

Some of its great power comes from liberation. The album was produced by Lucas in a number of non-standard, non-studio settings. 'KRK (At Home In Strange Places)' summons up the spirit of Sun Ra's Lanquidity and Broadcast And The Focus Group Investigate Witch Cults Of The Radio was simply recorded on an iPhone during a live set which crackled with psychic connectivity on the Croatian island of Krk.
The magical Morricone-esque lounge of 'You Are Not an Island', the blissed-out Jean-Claude Vannier style arrangement of 'Invisible World' and burbling sci fi funk ode to a 1972 cult French animation, 'Plane`te Sauvage', were all recorded in nighttime sessions in an abandoned mill in Sudbury. The only two outsiders to work on the recording were '6th member' and engineer Syd Kemp and trusted friend Malcolm Catto, band leader of the spiritual jazz/future funk outfit The Heliocentrics, who mixed seven of the tracks (with Lucas taking care of the other three).

Vanishing Twin formed in 2015 - their first LP, Choose Your Own Adventure, which came out on Soundway in 2016; followed by the darker, more abstract, mostly instrumental Dream By Numbers EP in 2017. The band explored their more experimental tendencies on the Magic And Machines tape released by Blank Editions in 2018, an improvised session recorded in the dead of night, offering a glimpse into their practice of deep listening, near band telepathy, and ritually improvised sound making. These sessions formed the basis of The Age Of Immunology.

Holland, Dozier and Holland are arguably the greatest songwriters ever. More prolific than Lennon and McCartney, they shaped “the Sound of Young America” and propelled the Motown sound in the mid-1960s into a creative stratosphere unmatched by any other independent music label. Their trademark catchy teenage love songs were delivered energetically by previously unknown Detroit groups like The Supremes, the Four Tops, Martha & the Vandellas & Marvin Gaye. Although synonymous with Berry Gordy’s Motown, it was their departure from Motown after a stand-off strike in 1967 and a brutal legal battle that led them to run their own group of labels, Invictus, Hot Wax and Music Merchant. This compilation is a definitive look at this period in history, exploring how H-D-H, under a new guise ‘The Creative Corporation’, drove the next generation of soul music in a myriad of different ways, towards funk, underground disco and jazz. Featuring 55 tracks, this collection documents HDH’s creativity and growth over this seminal 8 year period. During this time the trio developed new artists to rival Motown’s success such as Chairman Of The Board, Freda Payne, Honey Cone, Glass House, Flaming Ember, 8th Day, Laura Lee & Eloise Laws. The collection is complete with a detailed depiction of this period in history by award winning author Stuart Cosgrove who wrote the Soul Trilogy, a series of books on soul music and social change - Detroit 67: the Year That Changed Soul, Memphis 68: The Tragedy of Southern Soul which won the Penderyn Prize, as Music Book of the Year in 2018, and Harlem 69: the Future of Soul. Stuart’s notes detail the relationship with Motown in the final days, the immediate fall out after the trio left Motown and the creation of the new labels Hot Wax, Invictus & Music Merchant

The opening line of Emily Dickinson’s short poem ‘‘Hope’ is the thing with feathers’ inspired the central image of Emily Barker’s new single ‘Feathered Thing’, written while she navigated cumulative grief.

When Barker was first introduced to producer Luke Potashnick (Gabrielle Aplin, Jack Savoretti, Katie Melua) in May 2022, she brought with her a full album’s worth of songs. But after visiting Potashnick’s storied studio, The Wool Hall and hearing his ambitious production ideas, she was inspired to write one more song.

“I also needed to process some heavy news” she comments. Barker and her husband Lukas Drinkwater had been trying to start a family. Following a couple of failed IVF cycles (and other “starts that we’d lost”), they investigated adoption and had decided to relocate to Australia to be closer to Barker’s family.

“It felt like we couldn’t work out what we wanted, but we finally reached a point where we both felt at peace with not having kids,” Barker recalls. “It had been an incredibly intense time, coinciding with a house move and the pandemic.”

And then Barker found she was pregnant. “We’d done all these things to try to make it happen, and then it happened naturally (and against all biological odds). Having previously navigated losses throughout our pregnancy journey, we now had to get our heads around what having this new person in our lives might look like - emotionally and practically.”

Soon after work began on the album, Barker had a miscarriage.

“Songwriting has always been a way of processing throughout my life.” Barker reveals how the new song came quickly as she sat at her piano at home. She shared an early version with Potashnick and remembers him politely asking, “Do you mind telling me what this is about?”

“I think I’d left it too abstract, initially,” she reflects. “It was difficult to open up about the miscarriage, but Luke was very supportive and encouraged me to dig a little deeper without necessarily being specific. I revisited the lyrics, and the result is much stronger.”

“I went to the burnt-out woods/ A tourist with some damaged goods/ Remembered how the trees withstood fires before…”

“The opening line is a metaphor for knowing that I’ll get through this,” Barker clarifies. “It’s about recovery and hope, allowing yourself both the space to grieve and permission to move on”. But Barker’s optimism is never misplaced – she knows the imprint of imagined futures and lost children are carried in hearts and minds forever:

“It’s so hard to let go, wanted to know wanted to know you …”

“I think that it's important to share and normalise these stories, which are all too common, yet not openly spoken about. People hide their pain and don’t want to burden friends and family. I think behind all this anguish, there’s a deep, often untold story.”

Now that Barker is settled back in Western Australia, she’s embracing being an auntie. “I’ve got three younger siblings over here who I’m close to, and they all have kids,” she enthuses. “I look after my brother's kids, aged two and five, one morning a week.”

Recorded - along with the entirety of the new album - at The Wool Hall, ‘Feathered Thing’ begins gently, with oscillating piano and distant drums, until the arrangement gradually transforms into an instrumental dervish of vibrant strings, bass drones and cymbal crashes. Throughout, Barker’s vocals float tantalisingly like a slipstreaming feather.

Watch the video, filmed at The Wool Hall here. The Wool Hall is a studio in Beckington, Somerset, set up by Tears for Fears in the 1980s and used by artists including The Smiths, Pretenders, Joni Mitchell and many more.

Emily Barker is an award-winning singer-songwriter, best known as the writer and performer of the theme to the hugely successful BBC crime drama ‘Wallander’ starring Kenneth Branagh.

Her last album, 2020's ‘A Dark Murmuration of Words’, was produced by Greg Freeman and recorded at StudiOwz, a converted chapel in the Welsh countryside. Lyrically probing, by turns both dark and optimistic, Barker searches for meaning through the deafening clamour of fake news and algorithmically filtered conversation, delivering a timely exploration of the grand themes of our age. It garnered widespread acclaim, with Uncut calling it “…a kind of Australian equivalent of PJ Harvey’s Let England Shake”.

Barker has released music and toured as a solo artist as well as with various bands and collaborations, most notably her long association with Frank Turner, and has written for TV and film, including composing the soundtrack for Jake Gavin’s lauded debut feature ‘Hector’ starring Peter Mullan and Keith Allen.

‘Fragile as Humans’ is scheduled for release on May 3rd 2024 through Everyone Sang/Kartel Music Group. The album will also feature earlier singles: the vast, cinematic ‘Wild to be Sharing This Moment’ and the meditative, crestfallen ‘Loneliness’.

Finland's UNEARTHLY RITES are preparing to release their debut album. On Ecdysis UNEARTHLY RITES' potent old school death metal songwriting offers a rallying cry against corporate greed and environmental negligence, with a scathing rebuke of those culpable of ecocide and climate destruction. At the beating heart of Ecdysis lies UNEARTHLY RITES' insistence for a better world, with the perilous effects of capitalist interests taking precedence over nature and human life at the core of the group's concerns. Through their collective work in environmental activism, including anti-mining campaigns in the arctic north that focuses on the challenges faced by the indigenous Sámi peoples, Ecdysis is less a despairing cry as it is a plea for change. The band's caustic approach to extreme metal and punk adds a feverish urgency to proceedings, with the rhythm section of bassist Vikman and guitarists Simo Perkiömäki and Santtu Markko evoking the genre's most brutish traits against Sisli Piisilä's visceral vocal delivery. Despite their rage and despondency at institutional apathy on the title track and the harrowingly doomy highlight cut Sacrifice Zones, album closer Doomed shuns inaction and resigned complicitly by directly challenging the listener to choose their side for humanity's sake and future.

Limited edition Cream and Black swirl PICTURE DISC is for Indie stores only.

Vanishing Twin is songwriter, singer and multi-instrumentalist Cathy Lucas, drummer Valentina Magaletti, bassist Susumu Mukai, synth/guitar player Phil MFU and visual artist/film maker Elliott Arndt on flute and percussion; and on this album they have made their first artistic statement for the ages.

Some of its great power comes from liberation. The album was produced by Lucas in a number of non-standard, non-studio settings. 'KRK (At Home In Strange Places)' summons up the spirit of Sun Ra's Lanquidity and Broadcast And The Focus Group Investigate Witch Cults Of The Radio was simply recorded on an iPhone during a live set which crackled with psychic connectivity on the Croatian island of Krk.
The magical Morricone-esque lounge of 'You Are Not an Island', the blissed-out Jean-Claude Vannier style arrangement of 'Invisible World' and burbling sci fi funk ode to a 1972 cult French animation, 'Plane`te Sauvage', were all recorded in nighttime sessions in an abandoned mill in Sudbury. The only two outsiders to work on the recording were '6th member' and engineer Syd Kemp and trusted friend Malcolm Catto, band leader of the spiritual jazz/future funk outfit The Heliocentrics, who mixed seven of the tracks (with Lucas taking care of the other three).

Vanishing Twin formed in 2015 - their first LP, Choose Your Own Adventure, which came out on Soundway in 2016; followed by the darker, more abstract, mostly instrumental Dream By Numbers EP in 2017. The band explored their more experimental tendencies on the Magic And Machines tape released by Blank Editions in 2018, an improvised session recorded in the dead of night, offering a glimpse into their practice of deep listening, near band telepathy, and ritually improvised sound making. These sessions formed the basis of The Age Of Immunology.

Masterpiece debut album from Acid Synthesis! 8 tracks of fine Acid-Trance taking us back to the golden days of the 90's, think early Harthouse, Resistance D etc TIP!

We Release JAZZ is very happy to announce an exciting new body of work by Joseph Deenmamode aka Mo Kolours. The singular musical spirit’s new 21-track album Original Flow is available as a double LP housed in a heavy 350gsm sleeve with original artwork by Mo Kolours himself and the classic WRJ obi strip, as well as in digipack CD and digital formats.

A catalog of critically acclaimed records, including his self-titled debut (2014), ‘Texture Like Like Sun’ (2015), 2018 album ‘Inner Symbols’ and three companion EPs, established Deenmamode as a prodigious musician and vocalist. Pitchfork extolled his “hypnotic, tribal-infused dance grooves”, DJ Mag appreciated the “colourful celebration of soundsystem culture”, and Resident Advisor advocated that “no one sounds quite like Mo Kolours”. Musical analogies were drawn by The Guardian as “The best album Curtis Mayfield never made with A Tribe Called Quest and Lee Perry” and Mojo as “like Marvin Gaye produced by J Dilla”.

Five years ago, Deenmamode moved to the Japanese countryside. Far away from familiarity, he contemplated his place and further questioned his identity. “I had none of my ‘own’ people around. I had time to really find what makes me tick musically. Japan has helped me go back to those subconscious leanings, really go deep, and reflect the aspects that make up my story”.

The tracks on ‘Original Flow’ have been constructed from sessions, improvisations and soundbites captured around the world during this time; collecting contributions from musicians including Deenamode’s brothers Reginald Omas Mamode and Jeen Bassa plus Andrew Ashong, Charles Bullen, Dwaye Kilvington, Eddie Hick, Stefan Asanovic, Myele Manzanza, Ross Hughes, and Tom Dreissler. Deenamode says “I’m proud of this album’s creative process. Coming from a tradition of scouring through hours of records, I wanted to create my own samples, to find that perfect loop that no other producer could put their hands on. I decided to invite a group of friends and acquaintances, who also happen to be incredible musicians, to a studio in Crystal Palace to improvise based on some loose ideas I had. We spent all day, and recorded everything”.

‘Original Flow’ is an album of UK street-soul nouveau, future indigenous jazz fusion, Rasta Segga, Nyahbinghi jazz, Malagasy Hebrew hip hop. While retaining a spirit of exploration and improvisation, it sees Deenmamode grow and flex beyond beat tape brevity, expanding composition and stretching his musical muscle to play live with other musicians. Themes of empowerment, overcoming adversity, and mental liberation coexist with notes from ancient history, futurism, and science, as well as musings on family and togetherness.

‘Magik Momentum’ springs from a discussion that features at the start of the song, an inspiring mentor answering a question from Deenmamode about improvisation and what role it plays in life when planning and manifesting the future. ‘Rockets to Mars’ questions the lack of care for the billions of people with nothing, while governments plan to explore space. “This sparked a comparison in my mind to a Sonny Okuson song that I would reference when performing. Okuson’s song talked of the lack of resources in many communities in the world, while governments go to the moon”.

He says the music behind ‘The News These Days’ is “possibly my favourite on the album”. Looped like he would a late sixty jazz-fusion sample, there was nothing added and the track was complete within a matter of minutes. “It was the first and best moment from the entire Crystal Palace session”, he adds. The album’s contrasting title track with minimal instrumentation played solo by Deenamode. While frustratingly searching for gems in past recordings, he thought in a burst of ego, “I don’t need no-one else to make a dope beat!” picked up his ravanne, (the traditional frame drum of his fathers home-land of Mauritius), pressed record, and started to play. He says, “In my thoughts were the rhythms of the Nubians in Upper-Egypt and Sudan, the swing of the huge drums played by Mauritanian women, of-course the Sega beat of Mauritius, and the ever inspiring beat of James Yancey”.

Driven by UK broken beat, Cuban congas, Nigerian and Mauritian inflections, ‘Love Vibration’ follows the concept that all emotions carry a vibratory frequency and pays homage to the frequency of creation and the power of love. The two part ‘Tatamaka’ tells of the history of Deenmamode’s ancestors, the maroons of Mauritius. “We are people who managed to run from our oppressors and find refuge in a corner of the island called ‘Le Morne’ where they could not reach us. One bloody day they came in numbers to re-capture, to revenge. Many of us chose to jump to our deaths, rather than be taken back into subjugation. The poem by Creole Richard Sedley Assonne says; “there were hundreds of them, but my people, the maroons chose the kiss of death over the chains of slavery”. Tatamaka was the name of a famed maroon leader who was murdered for claiming his, and our people’s freedom. The song is the imagined journey of escape and freedom by an ancestor of the maroons of Le Morne”.

Born in the west midlands and raised on the traditional sega music of his father’s Indian Ocean homeland of Mauritius alongside records by the likes of Jimi Hendrix, Santana and Michael Jackson; his influences expanded with late 90s jungle and drum and bass nights in Bristol, experiments at art college in Camberwell, and the rich culture of Peckham, “at the time we called it the Afro Quarters of London” says Deenmamode, adding hip hop, dub, soul and soundsystem styles to his individual sound.

He explains, “I love drum music, from hand-drums to 808s. I love music from the ancient past, heritage music, indigenous music, traditional music passed down from the beginning of time. Music from the body, hand claps, grunts and foot stomps. Music with audible depth, busy, bustling, highly charged. Music from the soul, the music from beyond. I love music from the islands and the mountains. The music of the streets, hustle music, alleyway beats. Club music”.

He describes the creative process as thinking in images. “The visual world and the world of sound seem to intermingle in my thought process. When I play the drum with my eyes closed, a world of imagery dances and moves with beat. Improvised drumming feels like I am listening to what I want to hear, rather than trying to play what I want to hear. Following the rhythm and finding new pathways to walk within the patterns is what I experience. In this way I often feel I am just a listener, instead of the player”.
Original Flow is pressed on biovinyl, a sustainable alternative to traditional vinyl. Biovinyl replaces petroleum in S-PVC by recycling used cooking oil or industrial waste gases, resulting in 100% CO2 savings in bio-based S-PVC production. Furthermore, it is 100% recyclable and reusable, embracing the circular economy ideology.

After 20 years of living on the road in different places, Six Organs of Admittance had returned home to Humboldt County - a far country, to some, but still part of the world through which creatures of all kinds are moving through and contributing to. And some of them are human. Alone together - forming connection and exchange out of thought and expression - no different from the people on the other side of the Redwood Curtain. It was there, where Six Organs had long ago emerged, in the name of everything cycling, of circles that spiral concentrically and remain unbroken, the new music was conceived. In moments, it was as if the future had somehow wrapped around 360 degrees; elsewhere, the systems and patterns inside the writing and recording only became evident later - like a recognition that cumulus and nimbus clouds which passed through the sky the day before contained familiar shapes. Informing the songs accordingly as he went, Ben picked up on modes both musical and lyrical, threading backward through the time of Six Organs of Admittance. Almost marinating in it as a way of life. Working on the music and the vocals, then spending some time with them while stepping away from them. Walking the dog and coming back to them Time is Glass is made of that kind of time. Alone time. Recorded in the visceral environs of home, Time is Glass is sharply focused, even as misty impressionist mountains float through the background. Sweet and spiny, "The Mission" sings its purpose, before turning abruptly to the orchestral rumble of "Hephaestus": rural industrial psychedelia, ecosystem goth, synths arcing to lift a helplessly earthbound community into the firmament above. Winding almost imperceptibly back into song with "Slip Away", the time of the record becomes clear, moves fluidly, relaxed but aware, from event to event. People and things coming around again. The intuit, passing through wormholes and time, sounding deep then dissolving into the universal. The acoustic sounds ringing, layered suddenly, then clear again. Explosions of a new kind of distortion. Ecstatic melodies. Communing. The space of a day. The space of a season. Time is Glass, and Six Organs of Admittance is here and will be here, again.

On the surface, Eric Slick's forthcoming LP New Age Rage is a dance record. Further listening reveals that it’s also a statement about our harrowing future - AI, self-driving cars, Twitter rage, mass media manipulation, and ultimately, the sin of perfectionism. It’s sonically influenced by the work of Yellow Magic Orchestra, Talking Heads, Kraftwerk, Todd Rundgren, Prince, The Residents, and DEVO. New Age Rage features many of Eric’s close collaborators: Natalie Prass, Finom (OHMME), Liam Kazar, Antibalas, Butcher Brown, Deep Sea Diver, and many more.

Mattiu will release his new EP "Da Casa" on April 26, 2024, featuring lyrics in Romansh (the fourth official language of Switzerland), showcasing his expressive and characterful voice. He proves that he can deliver scenes and images with such overwhelming and captivating power that even without understanding the lyrics, listeners are guaranteed goosebumps. Translated from German, "da casa" means "at home" or "to home," describing a deep sense of gratitude and contentment that Mattiu associates with the feeling of being "at home." This emotion can be triggered by both a place and specific people. "Da Casa" lives up to Mattiu's debut. The Romansh artist once again uniquely showcases his mother tongue. With his extraordinary voice and knack for profound songwriting themes, he consistently manages to touch and inspire his listeners. Mattiu effortlessly translates his language and talent into tasteful, contemporary, yet emotional songs, promising him a bright future ahead. "Da Casa" features six new songs and will be available digitally, as a digipak, and on vinyl.

Legendary DJ SPINNA creates a cosmic future classic w/ his remix of TAMARA WELLONS' vocal masterpiece. A perfect dance floor groove drenched in intergalactic synths, in a deep & soulful setting. On the flip COFLO gives a double dose of two wildly different iterations of "YOU ARE".

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In dialogue with both past and future, Slapfunk protégé Julian Anthony touches down with a 4-track invocation of classic deep house templates.

Tripped out sensibility meets sci-fi tendency as ‘Full Moon Fever’ and ‘Open Minded’ deliver full-bodied exercises in total dance floor immersion. Fractal fuel for the vision quest, they’re sophisticated like the finest dream house while channelling the buoyant, jacking heft of timeless Chi-town material.

Wide eyed but tuff, ‘Stormy Tuesday’ rolls in with more of the groove-forward drive that typifies Anthony’s best work. It’s just the kind of immaculate gear we've come to expect from the Dutchman, and evoking golden era Dream 2 Science, ‘Virtual Reality’ ploughs the same furrow of propulsive, ‘90s-indebted house. Deep space projections radiating togetherness and warmth from the start.

Especial Specials always deal in releases with a story often as interesting as the music itself. This time out they enlist DJ and producer Dreems for a fine collection of limited-edition 12"s. Angus Gruzman aka Dreems is the man behind the vital Multi Culti label and has dropped his own wares on the likes of Kompakt, Pinchy & Friends and Futureboogie but somehow remains rather in the shadows. This deep dive into his vaults should change that - these are edits and dubs that come doused in psychedelia as they trip through several genres. There is off-kilter dub, melon-twisting dub, intensely percussive and tribal dub, and more besides across the five fantastic tracks.

RFXN kicks off life with a new single from David Agrella that comes with a bunch of great remixes. First off he offers up his own Acid Mix of 'Perro Balearico' and it's a supple, deep and dubby track with liquid synths and prog chords that sound both retro and future all at once. The orange is a more dreamy and spaced-out sound for 5 am sessions. On the flip is a more punch but still silky and warmly melodic remix from Mario Liberti before last of all, Gabriel Rai gets darker. His drums hit harder and the synths are moodier as he takes dancers down a late-night path of mystery and intrigue.

Rich in ancestral flows, between Ghana and Europe, powered by deep, conga led rhythms and seductive warm horn riffs come Jembaa Groove, whose new album and newly rendered sound, reminds us that jazz, in its contemporary, soulful form is not just a London ‘ting’. Highlife is Ghana’s colourful national tradition and is at the heart of Berlin based Jembaa Groove’s groove. And this newly crafted follow up to their debut album. Susuma from 2022, goes even further in provoking new perceptions of jazz and soul music helped by young and senior blood from Ghana and its diaspora. Vocal masterclasses come via Sheffield (UK) based K.O.G and original veteran of the 70s and 80s highlife scene Gyedu Blay Ambolley with Ghanian multi-instrumentalist and producer Kwame Yeboah (Kwashibu Area Band) also providing inspiration.

Yet this is not a breakout moment. For the last 2 years Jembaa Groove have been entertaining discerning dancefloors worldwide. They continue to ratchet up a solid and loyal fanbase buoyed by breakout performances at SXSW (USA), ESNS and Supersonic Jazz Festival (Netherlands). And now looking through the keyhole of 2024, with live headline and album launching dates in April confirmed in London, Paris, Madrid and Berlin and an exciting touring schedule ahead, the future of contemporary, highlife inspired Afro-Jazz is in motion and spreading like gospel.

For Thee Sacred Souls, the first time is often the charm. The band’s first club dates led to a record deal with the revered Daptone label; their first singles racked up more than ten million streams in a year and garnered attention from Billboard, Rolling Stone, and KCRW; and their first fans included the likes of Gary Clark Jr., The Black Pumas, Princess Nokia, and Timbaland. Now, the breakout San Diego trio is ready to deliver yet another landmark first with the release of their self-titled debut on Daptone Records.

“Every step of the way has just been so organic,” says drummer Alex Garcia. “Things just seem to happen naturally when the three of us get together.”

Indeed, there’s something inevitable about the sound of Thee Sacred Souls, as if Garcia and his bandmates—bassist Sal Samano and singer Josh Lane—have been playing together for a lifetime already. Produced by Bosco Mann (aka Daptone co-founder Gabriel Roth), Thee Sacred Souls is a warm and textured record, mixing the easygoing grace of sweet ’60s soul with the grit and groove of early ’70s R&B, and the performances are utterly intoxicating, with Lane’s weightless vocals anchored by the rhythm section’s deep pocket and infectious chemistry.

Hints of Chicano, Philly, Chicago, Memphis, and even Panama soul turn up here, and while it’s tempting to toss around labels like “retro” with a deliberately analog collection like this, there’s also something distinctly modern about the band that defies easy categorization, a rawness and a sincerity that transcends time and place.

The space between every love is filled with vigilance in preparation for future threat. This threat is not so much pain as failure and, above all, fatigue. Even the beginnings, when love seems at its most accessible, are disturbing. In spite of this we advance into the turmoil because we are inebriated with love.

Dominik Suchy's third album admits all this as a quality of love. Disembodied and denied to be gloom or bliss, love is revealed to be a raw process at full length. This makes for emotionally hypercharged music that is more inevitable than tense. The record unfolds, for all its ruptures and weight, as familiar. It is a music of pathos, because it benefits from the emotional knowledge that already resides in you.

The universality of this angle allows for compositions that are less than opulent. A focus on the mass of sound // verticality leads to a bareness that sets "Every Love..." apart from Suchy's previous works. At times sonically overwhelming and rhythmically ambiguous, it should be approached as free jazz rather than post-club.

Every Love Is an Exercise in Depersonalisation on a Body Without Organs Yet to Be Formed does not submit to the weariness of love // Weltschmerzen does not submit to the weariness of the world.

“In places harrowing and emotionally charged, in other places quite inconspicuous, you feel that you are standing in front of something big, transcending everything, which you observe with sacred reverence. Maybe it's the eye of the storm or that love which is the origin of everything.”
Peter Dolnik, 34.sk —

“One of the most distinct electronic artists in our geographical area.'”
Roberta Tothova, Pravda.sk —

“Everything happens with deep apprehension, the atmosphere and its variations are executed on a masterly level””
Richard Kutej, Fullmoon Zine —

“An album full of incessant soundscapes, undulations and sound-design based portrayals of magnificence.”
Mikulas Hamerla, Alterecho.cz —