Suche:defunct

Compiled onto one vinyl album for the first time, Landlocked (Numbers, 2026) presents Hallucinator’s 1999 debut album originally released under Mark Ernestus and Moritz von Oswald’s label Chain Reaction. Writing much surrounding the culture of what would be later considered ‘Dub Techno’ and its’ primary distribution center, Hard Wax, leads one down roads of shifting primary sources and decades old overheard smoke break recollections. Maybe brevity primes the listener to the paralinguistic to approach the sound on its terms; focusing on how things are uttered and not what.

This theory will remain unconfirmed. Hallucinator original press release left us with three or so gestures to consider over the years since:

“A new act on CHAIN REACTION”s distinct productional thesis. HALLUCINATOR are 3 people from he UK/London and this their first release ever- that’s all what the artists want to let us know…. This record is dedidacted to the memory of Stephen Lawrence!”

The first gesture is one of personnel. Since ’99, we’ve gotten to learn a bit more about the artists behind the Hallucinator project. All London-based, all writers, composers, and sound-designers— Anna Piva, Edward George, Trevor Mathison. These three seem to flow between parameters as aesthetic tactic and tacit structure to the work itself. For example, other collaborative shapes have come from this lineup including Flow Motion (Piva, George and Mathison) as well as the now defunct Black Audio Film Collective of which George and Mathison are founding members.

The second gesture is in the second line of the previous press release, “distinct productional thesis.” Much of Landlocked’s affect and sequencing seems to suggest an emotional study of entropy at the level of sediment. Rhythms play with space and capacity through polyvalence. The production chose subtractive vertigo, often switching and bringing back in elements that vanished from the track 6 minutes ago. Dubbing out so much of a track, one begins to associate sound akin to memories held in the experience of running your hand across a concrete block as a child. Felt (re)memberance in lieu of narrative tale. Using textures that flicker between colour and percussion, Hallucinator’s 12-tracker of loudspeaker perception music might be a mediation on the psychic wake of the Cold War. Intermittent strata of ambience and groove convects an active margin rifting event underneath a scorched geology of power in Western Europe. Again, this is all grapevine hearsay.

But it’s silence that voices the third gesture. The album’s sparse application of the written word touches on the ennui paradox of being landlocked on an island. Stuck. Trapped in the psychosis of occidental hypercentricism. A looping silence of Black British tragedy: “to the memory of Stephen Lawrence”. 18 year-old Lawrence was stabbed to death at a bus stop in southeast London by six white men in 1993. The rift of grief and implicit reiteration of modern subordination left by this hate act went legally silent for almost two decades until Lawrence’s killers were ultimately sentenced to virtually life in jail in 2012. Only six years removed at the time of Hallucinator’s initial invocation of rememory, the mind-numbing accretion of what Black Studies Professor Denise Ferreira da Silva might call “unpayable debt”, finds demonic ground across Landlocked, forming an aural sense of what continues to be refused.

The album ventures through spaces of overactive non-happenings: ‘Red Angel’’s factory floor dub flashes between smokestack and jungle visions, or the halfway mark’s stilted breath of ‘Dusk’ lending its mood to the sort of sedated dreams built from daily life under colony rule for instance. That linked rhythm links us back to our linked fates across Black and Brown folk is real, thus the syncopated signals through this work behave on the level of transnational radiotelegraphy, sounding out its windswept tension of a body negotiating a meat-grinder schema of linear production and wage for others to know that unspeakable thing can be broadcast in every drum tongue.

As the silence continues to reverb, we return to the sort of meaning-making that cannot be told but felt. Soothing to some, disturbing to others. Landlocked, a Rorschach test for a crumbled empire.

Following up 2007s well received X-dub was the Phalaenopsis 12inch that came out later that year. A track selection that came from the same hyped mysterious MySpace track folder, but now transmitted through Frustrated Funks subsidiary, the now defunct Frantic Flowers imprint that was emerging through the early Clone channels. Signing there, without the staffs knowledge of the producers identity, further muddied the waters. Exploring a more housy dub-techno vibe and diving deeper into experimental dub territory. And with it deploying an even bigger smokescreen around Ovatows real identity. Both Phalaenopsis versions re-appear now, for the first time after almost 20 years, fully retouched and remastered, together with an unknown unreleased track (edit) called So It Goes. This is the second in a series of Ovatow work, revived for the heads that appreciate the foggy deep of the Undacurrnt.

California’s beloved Brainstory returns with a new EP celebrating the end of an era. Shoebox Days is an homage to the time spent and the recordings made at their now defunct Long Beach studio, aptly named Shoebox. As the name suggests, the space was tiny and stuffed with gear. While charming, it was riddled with constraints. But, as has been proven time and time again, great art often comes from difficult circumstances, and this new 7 song EP is further proof. The first track, “The Watchers,” opens with an earworm horn melody that immediately pulls you in. The crunchy drums and G Funk bass tones put a bop on it, lush orchestration weaves in and out and sets a mellow vibe. “Blend,” one of only two vocal tracks on the EP, is a California sunshine soaked love song walking the lines of psych rock ballad and B side soul. ”Twin Kitchen” leans you right back into your seat, with Eric Hagstrom’s in-the-pocket drumming carrying the tune.

“Home Alone” is singer Kevin Martin’s ever so relatable tribute to time by himself, time by today’s standards as “disconnected,” but in reality, much more connected… The fellas let some of the jazz background take front stage on “Lone Traveler,” starting out with an air tight groove, and letting loose over it as the track progresses. “Gravity Hill” named after the famed California oddity begins the ending of the EP as Brainstory takes it deep and brings us with them. “Necessary Loss” serves as the closer to this gorgeous journey.

California’s beloved Brainstory returns with a new EP celebrating the end of an era. Shoebox Days is an homage to the time spent and the recordings made at their now defunct Long Beach studio, aptly named Shoebox. As the name suggests, the space was tiny and stuffed with gear. While charming, it was riddled with constraints. But, as has been proven time and time again, great art often comes from difficult circumstances, and this new 7 song EP is further proof. The first track, “The Watchers,” opens with an earworm horn melody that immediately pulls you in.

The crunchy drums and G Funk bass tones put a bop on it, lush orchestration weaves in and out and sets a mellow vibe. “Blend,” one of only two vocal tracks on the EP, is a California sunshine soaked love song walking the lines of psych rock ballad and B side soul. ”Twin Kitchen” leans you right back into your seat, with Eric Hagstrom’s in-the-pocket drumming carrying the tune. “Home Alone” is singer Kevin Martin’s ever so relatable tribute to time by himself, time by today’s standards as “disconnected,” but in reality, much more connected… The fellas let some of the jazz background take front stage on “Lone Traveler,” starting out with an air tight groove, and letting loose over it as the track progresses. “Gravity Hill” named after the famed California oddity begins the ending of the EP as Brainstory takes it deep and brings us with them. “Necessary Loss” serves as the closer to this gorgeous journey.

Balaise was the original title of Vers le Nord’s debut album. In French slang, balaise means something in between badass and flamboyant. The word keeps popping up throughout the record, like a teenager’s graffiti scrawled on a bus shelter after a few drinks. Balaise robots. Balaise ghosts lurking in the shadows. Balaise is the barfly who fantasies about becoming a street vigilante. In many ways, Matthieu Pellerin's new solo project is entirely contained within that word: a gigantic piece one man against the world cobbled together, a monument shaped by hand using layers of synthesizers sounding like cathedral organs cast in concrete.


Stitching this type of freak together took time. Five years, or what sounds like forever in an age obsessed with career trajectories and content strategies. But for Matthieu Pellerin, it was never about career plans or taking the easy road. Or he would have dug up the rotting corpse of Oi Boys, his now-defunct band, whose brief existence and explosive popularity once united sullen skinheads, gothic street punks, and old school punks alike. Or he would have fully embraced the Metz scene, now that the Great International Triple Alliance of the East (Noir Boy George, The Dreams, The Feeling Of Love...) and rising solo acts like Tune Zitoune, Josy Bazar, Fantôme Josepha, and Tony Gerrano have somehow transformed this sprawling open-air heroin camp into an unlikely capital of cool. But Vers le Nord doesn't point East, and it is as a lone rider that Matthieu Pellerin can fully reveal his songwriting scope.


With Le Seul Élément, his first solo project, the Lorraine native had already shown a rare gift for crafting worlds. Picture vast sonic masses stretching like industrial zones, noise-filled fog pierced by pale neon lights and landscapes caught somewhere between the gnarliest dive bar and a doomsday bunker. And slipping through the soul-crushing slowness and fractured blackened atmospheres, one could perceive a throwback to his years plotting in black metal-tinged Loth and Bishop.

Vers le Nord populates those landscapes that once were rough sketches. Damaged characters reign supreme, with a plethora of exquisite mutts brought to life, rather than outcasts committed to the cause. Where Nuits Blanches —his new supergroup featuring members of Rixe, Lion's Law, Headbussa and La Femme— pulls no punches with raw confessions, Pellerin switches gear for tales of robot apocalypses, vagrants and fam-seeking school shooters, delivered with William Sheller-esque rhymes and striking images. Yet even within fiction, he manages to create something deeply intimate, almost defining, showing very little effort: he is a natural. All in all, à l’aise (at ease). Songs resonate deeply with the listener, perhaps because of Pellerin’s odd way or always addressing someone without ever really naming them, a floating, obsessive and inescapable “you” calling us out.


Despite all of the darkness, Vers le Nord stirs deep emotions. There is something of Type O Negative or Anna von Hausswolff in its constant collision of the ludicrous and the epic gothic, its bleak romanticism that never tells a sordid tale. While the vocals remain rooted in a distinctly French punk lineage—think No Class, La Souris Déglinguée and OG Bérurier Noir—the reactor core is hidden somewhere else. Oneohtrix Point Never feels like a closer relative with his ultra-emotional music made of cold synths and disembodied anthems, swallowing and regurgitating forty years of icy, contemplative new wave across ten songs. It comes as no surprise that Lila Ehjä and Aimable, two rising specialists in lowering the temperature below seasonal norms, appear on “Enterrez-moi bordel” (“Bury Me, for fuck's sake”), a grandiose, spectral and magnificently arrogant finale. And in the end, Vers le Nord starts where the original idea was hiding all along: somewhere amid the ruins, definitely balaise and yet somehow, completely à l'aise.

1st Down is a Detroit hip-hop group formed by Phat Kat and Jon Doe in the mid-1990s. Signed to Payday Records, the group recorded one album and released a single before the label went defunct, leaving the full project unreleased. More than thirty years later, Detroit Vinyl presents the complete album exactly as it was intended to be heard, preserving a critical piece of Detroit hip-hop history and showcasing the earliest recorded work of the artist who would later become J Dilla.

NYC's Afro-Latin house player Doug Gomez, who was also half of the defunct Drrtyhaz, leans into club weight and musical detail on Signals 3, a confident new drop built on persuasive rhythms. 'The Space Between Us' introduces his vocal production with Fe Malefiz, who has a sultry, stylised tone that drifts between deep house and Afro-soul with great control. 'The Red Room' shifts gears into peak-time territory with a groove shaped by late-night exchanges with DJ Loka. Closing cut 'To Do Good Na Em Dem Pay' widens the palette further, pulling from Afrobeat's restless rhythmic energy and layering in some bold and brassy horns.

New album by FLOCKS, the duo of drone specialist WERNER DURAND and percussionist ULI HOHMANN. Musical landscapes that move between traditional as well as experimental sounds with influences from Krautrock and JON HASSELL's "fourth world" aesthetics.

WERNER DURAND has made himself a name with various projects with Dhrupad singer AMELIA CHRISTIANSEN, DAVID CHRISTER HENNIX, as the co-founder of THE 13th TRIBE, ARMCHAIR TRAVELLER and TONALIENS (with ROBIN HAYWARD and HILARY JEFFERY) plus numerous solo albums, released on labels like Black Truffle, Unseen Worlds or Edition Telemark. Having studied saxophone as well as Indian / Persian flutes, the Berlin based DURAND is a highly reputated protagonist in the drone scene, famous for his self-built wind instruments like buzz-clarinets or his PVC neys & horns.

His partner in FLOCKS (and longtime personal friend) is ULI HOHMANN whose early encounters with music from Asia, India and Africa led to studies with the Ghanaian master drummer MUSTAPHA TETTEY ADDY and later Tombak and Daf with NEMAD DARMAN (Iran). HOHMANN played in a couple of projects that explored the language of classical Persian music, and started building his own stringed instruments (being an educated carpenter). In 2014 he joined DURAND and AMELIA CUNI for the album "Clearing", and 2018 DURAND and HOHMANN decided to con- tinue as a duo: FLOCKS was born.

On “Lagoon”, the duo further explores the aesthetics it has crafted on its selftitled debut (2023, on the now defunct ZEHRA imprint): DURAND and HOHMANN shape drone-y soundscapes based on their self-built wind- & stringed instruments, Persian percussion and subtle electronics, drawing ad- ditional inspiration from Krautrock (listen to the irresistible, hypnotique, ever-changing rhythmic pattern of the title track) as well as JON

Dark Entries returns to the steam room with Coatshek’s Sound Bath. For their SoundBaths series, now-defunct poppers brand Double Scorpio commissioned artists to make mixes for an imaginary queer bathhouse. When asked to contribute, San Francisco-based artist Coatshek aka Sheki Cicelsky took the opportunity to create original compositions. The resulting album, Sound Bath, serves as a masterclass in slow and sultry ambient techno. Taking inspiration from Pink Floyd, Manuel Göttsching’s E2-E4, and his friend’s DJ mixes (particularly Nick Moss and Matthew Paul’s for “Por Detroit”), Coatshek landed on 107 bpm as the optimal speed for sauna sex. With just a few synths, his Telecaster, and “lots of delays, reverb, and weed,” he sculpted stunning cuts like the effortlessly grooving “Softest” and the psych-laced “Triple Virgo.” The cover for Sound Bath was designed by Coatshek’s fiancé Nate Sprecher, and features photographs by Luke Kraman taken at The Ever Afters campout. The album also includes an insert featuring the Double Scorpio SoundBaths series artwork by Blake Wright. Equally hypnogogic and sexually supercharged, Sound Bath situates the bathhouse as a liminal dreamspace of unbounded erotic potentiality.

2025 REPRESS ON TRANSPARENT GREEN VINYL


Compiled by Philip King “And then came the rise of synth pop : blokes with dodgy haircuts hunched over keyboard-operated machines stuffed with wires and do-it-yourself tone oscillators making sounds like a brood of geese passing gas in a wind tunnel. Whoopee! This is the way the ‘70s ended : not with a blood-curdling bang bang but with a cheap, synthesized, emasculating whimper.” NICK KENT, NME. All The Young Droids: Junkshop Synth Pop 1978-1985 is a new compilation that charts the underbelly of the epoch-defining sound of the synthesiser in 80s popular music. Compiled by Philip King (previously seen compiling All The Young Droogs, Glitterbest and Boobs - The Junkshop Glam Discotheque), the music here connects the dots between DIY synth enthusiasts grappling with new, cheap synthesisers at the tail-end of punk and wannabe, jobbing songwriters enthral to the new music pioneered by Gary Numan, Depeche Mode and Daniel Miller’s Mute Records. Featuring rare tracks of auto-didactic progressive pop music, proto-techno punk, shoot-for-the-stars-land-in-the-gutter chart flops and heralded, underground synth classics, School Daze paints a picture of beautiful failure. Complete with extensive sleeve notes written by King and never before seen imagery, all 24 tracks were remastered by RPM in-house engineer Simon Murphy, many from vinyl copies due to lost master tapes. The story told on All The Young Droids is one of the dawning opportunity presented by both the emergence to the market of cheaper analog synthesisers and the distribution networks plus indie labels that exploded with the advent of punk music in 1976. While the music that sprouted out all over the globe in the wake of these factors was decried as fake, plastic, a refutation of punk’s guitar-led revolution, it’s telling that much of the music on All The Young Droids.. was created in bedrooms, ramshackle studios and home-made set ups with often borrowed equipment. In the era of record labels jumping to capitalise on the success of The Sex Pistols, The Clash (both on major labels, of course) these artists struggled to stand out from a new gold-rush with next to no budget or PR team. With radio and labels desperate for the new Yazoo, what resulted was a testament to necessity being the mother of invention. At the time, the synthesiser was the music of the future, a shiny new machine that could paint like an orchestra with a single finger and a 4-track. In the hands of Manchester avant-pranksters Gerry & The Holograms it’s a pulsing, sardonic weapon.. the only instrument on the Messthetics classic lampooning of New Wave fashion. In Hamburg, a 16 year old Andreas Dorau used it to write and record (with his female classmates on vocals) a global smash in Fred Vom Jupiter (later licensed to Mute Records). The hard-to-find English version (Fred From Jupiter, natch) is included here. Many artists with alreadystoried careers caught the bug and recorded synthesiser-fuelled peons to space, computers, the future and, of course, love-interests. Harry Kakoulli, late of Squeeze, recorded a solo album in 1979 that included the incredible power-synth-pop smash-that-never-smashed I’m On A Rocket. Similarly, Ian North of Neo and American Power Pop stalwarts Milk ’n’ Cookies bought a Korg MS20 and used a tape machine to record We’re Not Lonely, an absolute lost-classic of minimal synth pop. We’re Not Lonely also features on the Junkshop Synth Pop sampler 7” twinned with John Howard unreleased track You Will See, released April 12th 2025. There are plenty of compilation debuts in evidence. Sole Sister were a mysterious trio who were featured on the Scaling Triangles compilation of female-fronted, queer-adjacent post-punk / underground music that also featured The Petticoats. Selwin Image were from San Francisco and featured members of the recently defunct power pop/punk group The Pushups. Their stupidly catchy The Unknown fizzes with New Wave energy - think XTC to Sparks but remains unreleased until now. Dream Unit’s A Drop In The Ocean is an early synth wave cut, positively teaming with Joy Division instrumentation, previously only released on a long-forgotten and super rare, self-released EP. Incandescent Luminaire’s Famous Names belies an archetypal struggle of a small-town trying to make it in a cruel industry but is a thrilling New Romantic-Synth Wave cross over with a OMD gloominess that’s a joy to hear. Feminist Minimal Wave track I Am A Time Bomb by performance artist Peta Lilly and Michael Chance is a revelation destined for new found cult status. It was released on 7” and lost until now. The flipside to the subterranean, never-made-it synth pop mentioned above are the ambitious, even fruity attempts at success that have a perennial elegance to their confidence. New Jersey-ite Billy London (real name Ed Barth) tried to cash in on the synth boom with Woman, released by a major label, a lurching new wave track built on the Louie Louie rhythm and a wonderfully camp Lou Reedstyle sleazy vocal before exploding in the synthesised chorus. The song bombed but with a chorus like this, you have to wonder why? Ex-Glitter Band member John Springate’s My Life is truly epic, with doomed chord progressions and massive sounding drums turning into at least 3 different songs in the course of the track. Before you wonder what’s going on the song resolves with a glorious return to the main refrain. The dry-ice-dressed dance floor is well catered for too. Design’s Premonition and Vision’s Lucifer’s Friend are stone-cold minimal synth bangers, well loved but given a new lease of life here. The Warlord’s The Ultimate Warlord was released in 1978, a homespun proto Hi NRG banger that was later re-recorded by The Immortals in Canada who had a club hit with it. One-man- band Disco Volante’s No Motion was re-issued by Synth wave label Medical in 2012 but makes its first vinyl compilation appearance here. Close your eyes and you can imagine what Lawrence of Felt would have sounded like with some cheap Korgs a little earlier in his career. Gibraltar-based trio The Microbes imagined a computer programming people to dance - how prescient - and ended up with a propulsive, robo-funk track with splendid rubbery bass playing over a tectonic drum machine. Previously picked up by Belgian label Stroom TV, Dee Jay Bert & Eagle’s heavily Euro-accented I Am Your Master demands the listener to “come to paradise!” In a frankly terrifying manner. All The Young Droids is the first compilation to peel away from the narrative that dour, Minimal Synth and Cold Wave were the only musical children of the first rush of synth pop. Philip King and School Daze Records describe a much more complicated world: along with the austere, Brutalist children of Daniel Miller (who produced Alan Burnham’s Bowie-Low-influenced Science Fiction here) was a plethora of desperate cash-ins, accidental mainstream hits, ambitious pop dramas and major label punts that went nowhere. Crucially, the compilation blurs the line between junk and treasure. What if the two things are interchangeable. What if it’s all science fiction?

In 1978 a newly formed Augusta, Georgia group Marshall, Donovan and Broomfield chose to record cover versions of two songs previously recorded in 1973 and 1974 respectively by Florida siblings group Cornelius Brothers and Sister Rose. These Eddie Cornelius penned songs “Let me Down Easy” and “Since I Found My Baby” would form both sides of Marshall, Donovan and Broomfield’s first 45 single, released on group founder John Marshall’s own Augusta label. The flipside “Since I Found My Baby” would eventually gain popularity across the pond with aficionados of the UK modern soul scene of the early 1980’s and beyond.

John Marshall began his musical career in a high school group called The Fabulous Gardenias who recorded the doowop ballad “It’s You, You, You” backed with the up-tempo R n B mover “What’s The Matter With Me” released on Tommy Brown’s local Liz label (named after his wife future Motown recording artist, Liz Lands) in 1961.The Fabulous Gardenias featured John Marshall, the late Atlanta alumni Calvin Arnold, “Little” Joe Jones Jr (later of the Tams) and a fourth guy only remembered as Harold. John Marshall later sang with another Atlanta group The Tams of “Hey Girl Don’t Bother Me” fame from 1970 through to 1978.

Later in 1978, John Marshall having relocated to Augusta, GA the previous year was casually emptying the contents of his mailbox outside his home when a car suddenly pulled up. The driver called out “Hey I recognize you, you’re John Marshall you used to be with the Tams!” The driver continued to introduce himself as John Donovan stating that he too was a singer, followed by an impromptu performance, and hey! sure enough he could sing! A later introduction to Charles Broomfield (John Marshall’s next-door neighbour at that time) would lead to the formation of the group Marshall, Donovan, Broomfield with the addition of Mary Marshall and Pat Donavan (the then, two John’s respective wives) as backing vocalists. The previously mentioned group’s first release the John Donovan led “Let Me Down Easy/Since I Found My Baby” was recorded at the now defunct Jam Studio’s in Atlanta. Upon release, the “Let Me Down Easy “side received considerable local radio play but only led to the group performing a handful of local shows. On the strength of the group’s first release a second 45 release followed in 1980 “Let’s Dance/That’s Love” both sides of this 45 were penned by Charlston, South Carolina native, Harold Thomas who John Marshall knew from his time with the Tams, Thomas having once been part of Bill Pinkney &the Original Drifters and later the Tams management teams. This second 45 never gained the same local attention of “Let Me Down Easy” and after three years together the Marshall’s, Donovan’s and Charles Broomfield went their separate ways. John Marshall lost contact altogether with his former group members and left the music business taking up employment at International Paper Mill until his retirement in 2013.

Due to the current resurgence in popularity of “Since I Found My Baby” with copies regularly selling for four figure sums, Soul Junction have reacquainted ourselves with John Marshall to you bring you “Since I Found My Baby” backed with “Let Me Down Easy” with the addition of the excellent and lesser, known stepper “That’ Love” making this an excellent value 45 release.

A bit of backstory behind this release, I first met Hilton (Jack Horner) at an event in 2012 that took place in a venue called Crucifix Lane (also known as Jack's, now defunct due to expansion of London Bridge station). He's good friends with Krome & Time who were performing that night and I remember chatting with him about jungle (I was still a very eager young lad that was in his first year of raving and very keen to talk about jungle/hardcore/d&b to anyone that would be willing to endure it!) and he mentioned that he used to make jungle in the 90s. I asked who he was and when he told me he was Jack Horner, I went mental because I was a big fan of the 2nd release on Spectrum Records (The Hoover & I Got This Feeling) and to actually meet the person behind those tunes was a really special situation for me to be in.

Unfortunately, I was too shy to get any contact details for him and I never saw him again or knew anyone that had a way of getting in touch with him. That was until very recently, when he had started attending Distant Planet events in London & I got the chance to meet him again, only to be shocked by him telling me that he had been following me & my music and was a fan of me & my label! This time, I made sure that I was able to get contact details for him, I was not going to make the same mistake as last time!

Last December, he messaged me asking if I would be up for doing a remix of The Hoover & I was quite unsure about doing it because of how much I really enjoy the original and feel like it does pretty much everything it needs to do with the sounds used. But, I thought it would be worth a try so I gave it a go and Hilton really liked the outcome (which was a huge relief ????), even though I was a bit too scared to change too much of it haha.

He then asked if I would be interested in releasing it on Future Retro London, which I'd never considered doing because I thought he would have had his own plans for it but I was willing to try & see if we could make a release out of this. I messaged Dwarde & Kid Lib to ask if they'd be up for doing remixes of the same tune (at the time, we only had access to the samples from The Hoover) and they both were and they did great work taking the original track in different directions, each in their own way.

Around the time of making The Hoover, Hilton made another tune with similar samples called After The Pain, which was never released, but he still had the tune. The problem is that he only had it in the form of a cassette recording, which wasn't very good quality and probably would not be easily cleaned up for release. So, I decided to remake the tune from scratch, using the samples I had from The Hoover, as well as sourcing & recreating other sounds used. I was able to remake the whole tune arrangement & then Kid Lib mixed it down to make it sound more sonically similar to how it would have sounded when it was originally made back in 94/95.

Anyway, story time over, big thanks to Hilton for his co-operation & assistance on making this release happen, to Dwarde & Kid Lib for their remix work & a special shout going out to Hughesee for going through Hilton's collection of floppy disks to find & record the samples for The Hoover.

2025 Re-press of this classic EP by Marcello Giordani! This one was originally released on vinyl back in 2006 on our now defunct sub-label “Players Paradise” and was one of the first ever releases by Marcello Giordani who went on to become a household name in the scene and a man of many successes. Currently he is making waves with his “Italo Deviance Music” label and productions under his alias “I/D”.

Get in these three fine cuts again in a superb re-mastered quality. From the Italo inspired “Narcos” to the deeper and darker B-side Disco gems “Change Position” and “Prova 2”. We are sure these tracks will rock your dance floors again this spring and summer. Enjoy!

All tracks re-mastered by Salz Mastering in Cologne.

These tracks span a whole decade. bOkOr and Cannibal 2012 were made around the time feroX released the infamous Gargoyles EP on Black Acre, which was hammered by everyone from Skream to Gilles Peterson at the time.

Pulled off a defunct hard drive, resurrected and remastered. Complete with two new tracks the mighty Mondo! Mondo! and Aum, we have another ground-breaking, genre defying EP for 2024. We are proud to have had support on promo from Richie Hawtin and Marcel Dettmann on this release, which speaks volumes for its quality.

The story of this EP dates back to 2021, when we—the whole BMP crew—were attending our annual family gathering at the now-defunct Sarcus festival (R.I.P).



On a late Saturday afternoon, we all gathered under the same tent to watch one of our dear friends perform live. You guessed it: this friend is Malouane. From the first track of the live set, we in the audience exchanged astonished looks. We knew he had been working hard on this live set for months but didn't know anything about it. As the live set unfolded, we kept traveling mentally in a perpetual state of amazement.


By the end of the set, we all had the same idea: to congratulate Malouane and ask for the tracks so we could release an EP that would capture the essence of this live set, allowing us to relive that very special moment.



After a long wait, we are now more than happy to share some selected tracks from the set with you, hoping you will feel the same excitement we felt at the time.
As a cherry on top, besides having four tracks from Malouane, we asked our dear friend Gabriel Belabbas—from Positive Future—to craft an additional remix, giving this EP a deep house edge.



Certified floorfiller!

Sleep Now Forever is the second and final album released by Sorrow, the post-Strawberry Switchblade group fronted by singer Rose McDowall. Originally released in 1999 and long since deleted it is a cornucopia of pastoral, elegiac folk music, swirling atmospherics, hymnal compositions and above it all the alternating towering and fragile vocal performances of McDowall. Recorded in the late 90s with fellow band member and co-songwriter Robert Lee, Sleep Now Forever is the definitive statement by the now defunct group and Rose McDowall’s most complete long-form work to date.
Released through the group’s own Piski Disk Records, Sleep Now Forever was distributed by World Serpent which struggled through the early 2000s with financial woes, eventually folding due to bankruptcy in 2004. Due to the company’s troubles, Sleep Now Forever was never distributed widely and was a victim of the company’s failure. Released on CD only, original copies are now rare and only traded on second hand channels. Remastered by Mikey Young for a limited vinyl release, Sleep Now Forever will be released on April 20th on double vinyl format, with one side an exclusive etching by Glasgow artist Holly Allan.
Despite its rarity, Sleep Now Forever enjoys a firm cult following. The album’s textures are expansive, lush, deliciously detailed and celestial. Recorded in home study Velvet Hole by Rose McDowall and then-husband Robert Lee, the album enlists an array of players from the underground Neo-folk / industrial scene: Nigel McKernaghan (Uilleann pipes, Whistles), Susan Franknel (Bassoon), John Contreras (Cello) and Lawrence Frankel (Oboe, Cor Anglais). The eleven songs here revolve around McDowall’s instantly recognisable voice. Brought up singing in the Catholic Church, McDowall’s vocals are impeccable and angelic, particularly on tracks like Turn Off The Light where her experiences with religion are canted over soaring oboe and guitar backing. By far the most evolved and realised version of Sorrow’s vision, it feels somewhat criminal that music this beautiful could be lost to time until now.
McDowall’s lyrics throughout Sleep Now Forever deal frankly with mental health, depression, altered states, death and redemption. Wave upon wave of harmony drench each song, McDowal’s vocal multi-tracked and imperious. Opener Soldier benefits from Robert Lee’s use of the studio as instrument, summoning forth a lilting group performance of sparkling guitar and percussion that recalls the Velvet Underground. Mikey Love’s master treats the compositions to brand new frequency dynamics and space. Harmonium and string drones form the counter to McDowall’s vocal on Love Dies, a slow, lurching lament that feels transcendent. On Haunting, the arrangement is orchestral and aching, bleeding into Fear Becomes You, with chord and harmony structure that recalls the baroque sixties pop of West Coast Pop Experimental Art Band or the 60s psychedelic folk movement. A towering, beautiful statement, this elegy for times lost and moonlit-illumination is finally resurfacing from the darkness.

For their sixth instalment, Lowlife Cartel follow up to their last two compilations (“Pimps Improvisations” in 2018 and “Omnia Vanitas” in 2020) with a new six-track VA named “Kodoku”; a vortical release, both bold and forward-looking, while fully geared for the club environment. Taking its title from a poisonous magic from the medieval Japanese era obtained by placing several venomous insects in a jar and letting them kill one another until only one survives, “Kodoku” - which interestingly also translates as “solitude” - features a cast of producers old and new to the fold including Saverio Celestri, the faceless △, Prince de Takicardie, Tundramane & Ko$te, Solar Alliance and Shampoo.

A staple element of the Lowlife Cartel bunch, Saverio Celestri paves the way and dishes out one of his signature jagged, EBM-informed weapons in “Sundays”. Through this hotchpotch of acid-steeped bass entangled with a frantic newbeat-ish swing and razor-sharp synthwaves, the Italian producer shows off the raw and playful facets of his craft to optimal effect. Unknown contributor △ clocks in with “Crachats de Lune”, a proper ominous banger going straight for the jugular with its clever mix of dusty, drum-laden churn, processed vox stabs and sci-fi-indebted laser bursts flashing by unrelentingly. Tailored for hi-octane action at the defunct Boccaccio or Hacienda, Prince de Takicardie “Jam’on’Acid (House Mix)” blows the winds of euphoria across the club like it was done in 1995. Vibing to a pulsating mix of rabid snares, 303-vehicled charges and mangled vocal samples on a classic free rave tip, throwback material that packs a punch.

Flip it over and here is North-American duo Tundramane & Ko$te shifting the scope to Memphis chopped-and-screwed in true hardcore fashion. Straight-out aggression, “Brick To The Face” lives up to its title, so expect leaving the place with a few teeth out your mouth and a good concussion, though more side effects could appear over repeated listens. A radical U-turn from the previous, Ute.- related triplet Solar Alliance - alias Ekkel, Oprofessionell and Mikkel Rev - bring their dashing trance touch to the comp with “Quest for Kiba”, an uptemp maelstrom for the senses, swirling and whirling up until space and time make no damn sense any more. Topping off that versatile tour de force, Japanese producer Shampoo adds his delectably sensuous spin on the record with the lush, sample-heavy lo-fi appeal of “四季ノ歌”. Unpolished feelgood vibes, sun- streaked soulfulness and deft-handed MPC wizardry are on the menu for this ultimate ride and jolly finale.

MFN Recordings presents the label’s debut release in the form of a special double-vinyl retrospective from one of the more singular and under-appreciated characters to emerge from the late 90’s West Coast house scene: Rithma.

Rithma’s music never sat comfortably in one box. House, techno, funk, breaks, psychedelia, and jazz-informed musicianship all found their way into his productions, often with a mischievous, wonky, and slightly surreal edge. This retrospective goes way back, bringing together ten sought-after tracks from the formative years between 1998 and 2010, all lovingly remastered by Martin Iveson aka Atjazz. Initially appearing on small, influential, and now defunct labels, the tracks here have since become increasingly difficult to find on their original vinyl pressings.

Put out on the vinyl circuit today on the occasion of Sascha Müller's 50th birthday is the "50 Years, Still Banging It Hard EP" by named long standing purveyor of quality electronic music, providing a set of three original tracks by Mr. Müller himself as well as three additional remixes on highly limited heavyweight splatter vinyl. With the opening cut named "The Real Acid Protector" Sascha Müller caters a straightforward and well peaktime oriented take on UK-infused Acid Techno backed by heavy claps and spiralling modulations followed by the floating hypnotic late night x early morning Acid(Trance) meditations and twisted machine choirs of "Acid Is Our Religion" whereas the subsequent "Defunction 303" brings forth enchanted Acid Breaks for experienced late night crowds. On the flip we see Citric Acid provide a remix version of "The Real Acid Protector" which speeds things up heavily for strobe-lit underground basement parties whereas the "Acid Is Our Religion *eVADE Remix" offers a playful and trippy little Acid journey for the deep late night jackers and the Flensburg-based DJ Nightnoise morphs "Defunction 303" into a stripped down, swinging and enchanted IDM x Minimal Techno affair whilst at the controls for his so-called 'Mental Atmosphere Remix'. Great stuff and a worthwhile birthday celebration indeed. Go check!

Review by baze.djunkiii / nitestylez.de / 2024.08.26

Limited pressing on splatter vinyl.

‘Falling Backwards’ is the debut album from Him & Earl via Wah Wah 45s, serving up a mystic brew of desert blues, English folk, Americana and stirring southern soul, with tentacles stretching out into psychedelia and prog, across 11 hot and hazy tracks.

Singer-songwriter Olly Him and DJ, producer and composer Wyndham Earl both have deeply-dug roots in the south coast of England, with the former making his name as a solo artist before exploring his soulful folk/prog sound with a number of live acts, and the latter collaborating on albums and sharing stages with Bonobo, Khruangbin, Alice Russell and TM Juke, having remixes released by Tru Thoughts and Mr Bongo Records and releasing his solo projects on his Time Spun imprint.

The pair first met in 2015 when Wyndham produced some songs for now defunct hypnotic Afro-folk outfit Creatures Of The Deep, of which Olly was a founder member. They instantly clicked, but after the group broke up it was a few years before serendipity brought them back together; a chance encounter at a gig saw them begin hatching plans to make a full album under the name Him & Earl with Olly writing the songs and Wyndham arranging and producing the project.

After so long floating in the creative ether, the connective power of these songs has been strikingly immediate. The debut Him & Earl live show in early 2026, before any tracks had even come out, blew Olly and Wyndham’s expectations out of the water as their five-piece band found themselves toe-to-toe with a sellout crowd – a sweaty room full of happy music fans, on an otherwise bleak January night, throwing shapes to live percussion showdowns, losing themselves in psychedelic guitar and bass wig-outs, and singing along to choruses they’d never heard a note of before.

Since then, the first two singles “Bottled Up” and “Away” have had high profile airplay from the likes of BBC 6 Music’s Huw Stephens and Cerys Matthews, and Radio X’s John Kennedy, adding to widespread tastemaker and specialist support around the world, as excitement builds for the album.The LP’s introspective and philosophical lyrics are brought to life by a sonorous yet strangely uplifting sound palette that morphs by stealth into a darkly propulsive, psychedelic and bluesy trip.

Opening song “Away” taps straight into a key theme of the record – journeying, in both a physical and mental sense, and the quest to move on and embrace the unknown – and its sunny guitars, trumpet and violin barely even hint at the tumultuous sonic adventure that’s set to unfold. A stronger indication comes in the title track,“Falling Backwards”, as its elegant web of staccato finger-picked hook, fluid piano melodies and strings unfurls into a six-minute exploration of what Olly describes as “going through every day normality while feeling close to chaos and like things could fall apart at any moment… when there is a myriad of different things holding everything together and if one thing goes wrong everything can fall apart around it.”



“Better Days” swiftly restores a sense of upbeat calm, with lively Kora and Afrobeat-inspired guitar licks, atmospheric trumpet and a harmony-clad mantra of hope on the horizon; the folky “Bottled Up” continues that blissful notion with undulating finger-picked guitar, earthy clarinet counter-melodies and celestial murmurations of delicately plucked strings. The magnetic pull toward more mysterious horizons comes via the dusty twang of Wild West-esque guitars on “Open Road”, a nomadic journey of self-discovery through spacious sonic plains embellished with eerie flickers of flute and clarinet. This leftward turn gathers pace in the trancelike

psych-prog depths of “Preside”, an instrumental cut at the album’s pivotal halfway point. Hypnotic, guttural desert blues-infused riffs on “Inside” channel the feeling of a psychedelic or spiritual trip where, in Olly’s words, “something clicks and you understand things on a different level – it makes you see inside yourself and see things in a different way.” “Shadow overhead” brings a lighter touch to a darker subject – the feeling of paranoia and being locked away from the world – drawn from Olly’s own experience and also his years of working in and around mental health.

Exuberant horns lend hope to loosely looping suspense on “Blindside” (about being caught out by the unexpected, and searching for something to see or hear to pick you up again) and then mesh with urgent strings, low-slung guitars and subterranean bass on “Around Again”, which explores the modern fight to stay afloat amid the endless churn of information and distractions. Still plumbing the bassy, bluesy depths of this journey into the psyche, “You Can Only Know” is a dreamlike revelation about finding someone or something that helps to make sense of the world. Luminescent synths duck and weave, while a rock-solid bass riff is tracked by a soul-soothing four-part “hey hey” harmony, reassuring as a glowing lamp in the window at the end of a life-changing trip.

Weiter geht's mit den Ipecac ISIS-Neuauflagen: ,Wavering Radiant" ist das letzte Album der Band aus dem Jahr 2009, neu gemastert von James Plotkin. Die 2LP 140gr-Vinyl kommt in einer Tip-On-Gatefold-Hülle in zwei Versionen: Standard-Schwarzvinyl und eine Indie-Exklusivausgabe in Ultra Transparent. Das Album wurde von Joe Barresi produziert, und die Band hat sich knapp ein Jahr nach der Veröffentlichung getrennt. Das Album setzt die Tradition von Isis fort, lange Songs zu schreiben, weicht aber ein bisschen von der Soft-Loud-Dynamik und der Post-Metal-Ästhetik ab, die frühere Veröffentlichungen geprägt haben. Es wird allgemein als das zugänglichste Album der Band angesehen. Obwohl die Band seit über einem Jahrzehnt nicht mehr existiert, ist ihr Einfluss auf den Metal immer noch spürbar, und die Verkaufszahlen machen sie weiterhin zu einem der Top-Künstler von Ipecac. Continuing in our series of ISIS reissues, Wavering Radiant is the band's final 2009 release, remastered by James Plotkin. The 2LP 140gr Vinyl packaged in a tip-on gatefold jacket in two retail variants. Standard Black Vinyl and an Indie Exclusive Clear The album was produced by Joe Barresi, and the band split just over a year after its release. The album continues Isis' history of lengthy songwriting, yet presents a slight departure from the soft-loud dynamics and post-metal aesthetic which characterized previous releases. It is widely considered the band's most accessible release in their catalog. Although the band has been defunct for over a decade, their impact on metal is still reverberating, and sales continue to make it one of Ipecac's top artists.

RIPIT is back with a new LP after 3 years spent mostly on the mesmerizing collaboration between THE ÅNGSTRÖMERS- his duo with FRÉDÉRIC ALSTADT -and the Haitian voodoo ensemble CHOUK BWA.

While Ripit is better known for his radical noisy breakbeat work, "A Church or a Factory" explores a more industrial, power electronic and noise ambient side of his synthesizer lust. The instruments abused on this record are: Serge modular, Knifonium and various eurorack modular. The A-side comes with 5 powerful synthetic industrial songs which feature each one a different guest vocalist. The B-side is a long ambient noise piece that will plunge the listener in an anxious meditation.

Ripit is the project of the French NICOLAS ESTERLE for almost 25 years. He explores electronic instruments thru distortion , ranging from industrial hardcore to breakcore, from doom hiphop to dusty dub. Beside his solo project, he's involved in various bands like SOLAR SKELETONS (with TZII), FUJAKO (with HHY) and more recently The Ångströmers.

On the guest side, there's a wild bunch of Nicolas' friends:
- PAUL-TERGEIST is the galactic moniker of PAUL BEAUCHAMP in his band SPACE ALIENS FROM OUTER SPACE;
- ANDREA EV is the lead member of 1997EV;
- ROBERT IMHUMAN and DIVTECH are members of the REALICIDE COLLECTIVE;
- TZII is a long-time road comrade of Nicolas and a touring freak spreading his music all over the world;
- ANDRÉ COELHO is known as METADEVICE and is the founder of the now-defunct SEKTOR 304.

The title "A Church or A Factory" refers to the Belgian countryside, wherever you are, you are at least surrounded by a church or a factory. As he just left the urban life of Brussels to escape to the French countryside, he is now lost enough not to have neither a factory nor a church in sight.

Celebrating the 30th Anniversary of Jennifer Warnes' Pop Classic on Crystal Clear Green Vinyl!
All-Tube Mastering by Chris Bellman at Bernie Grundman Mastering from the Original Master Analog Tapes on 180 Gram Vinyl!
One-Time Pressing of 3,000 Individually Numbered Copies!
New Inner Sleeve and LP Labels!
Pressed at RTI!

Impex Records is celebrating the 30th Anniversary of The Hunter with a one-time, individually-numbered pressing of 3,000 in crystal clear green vinyl! Jennifer Warnes’ acclaimed follow-up to Famous Blue Raincoat features a Grammy-nominated recording by Elliot Scheiner and all-tube mastering by Chris Bellman at Bernie Grundman Mastering using Jennifer’s personal original analogue master tapes.

‘The Hunter’ was released five years after her breakthrough with ‘Famous Blue Raincoat’. A TOP 100 LP when first released in 1992, The Hunter’s audiophile credibility is best summed up by Elliot Scheiner’s Grammy-nominated recording and mix. It contains the charting single “Rock You Gently,” a sonically dense yet expansive cover of The Waterboy’s classic “The Whole of the Moon,” a soulful Jennifer Warnes/Leonard Cohen composition “Way Down Deep,” Todd Rundgren’s “Pretending to Care” and even a Donald Fagen tune (“Big Noise, New York”). She owns every tune here, backed by a-list session players who ground the songs with solid and unobtrusive authority, letting Jennifer’s peerless interpretive skills bring the soul of every lyric to the forefront. Ms. Warnes uses her voice to serve the lyrics, allowing the song to return the favour.

“The follow-up to Warnes’ FBR offers crisp percussion cues, solid bass throughout – but especially during “Way Down Deep” – and a surprise chamber quartet on the title track” – Neil Gader, TAS Guide to Audiophile Demo Disc

Arista (now Sony/BMG) never released The Hunter on vinyl in the U.S. A regular-weight LP floated around Europe for a while but is not noted for exceptional sound or quiet vinyl.

“Remastered by Chris Bellman at Bernie Grundman Mastering, the sonics are luscious. Warnes has always had an audiophile’s ear and was hands-on with this effort–one of the last from now-defunct Cisco Records. It soars effortlessly, restoring warmth and delicacy and easily besting the earth-bound but otherwise excellent CD. It’s an example of both an artist in full charge of her powers, and analogue art its very best.” – Greg Cahill, The Absolute Sound

Little is known about the origins of this project, grasping the curiosity of many 90's trance diggers, this mysterious EP was originally released in 1994 on the now defunct London based label ITP Recordings. Presenting 3 tracks that dive deep into the trancy electronics of the time, going well into the 8 minutes marker on each track the producer takes the time to allow a pallet of atmospheric qualities to gently grow and layer themselves throughout. A very unique aural signature, almost as if fractals had a sound, organised in a highly effective manner for the psychedelic electronic music inclined dancefloor.

Finlay Shakespeare is an electronic musician working from the UK and across Europe. A childhood obsession with his parents’ record collection led him to both create his own music and build his own synthesizer equipment throughout his teenage years. After studying audio engineering, he was invited to become in-house engineer for the Moog Sound Lab UK, leading to collaborations with acts as diverse as Suicide, Charlemagne Palestine, The Grid and Mica Levi & Eliza McCarthy, both in live and studio environments. In 2017, Finlay began recording a series of monthly “Housediet'' releases - all improvised and captured at home utilising drum machines, modular synthesis and processed vocals. After several encounters with Peter Rehberg of Editions Mego, a compilation of the Housediet tracks was drawn up by Rehberg and Shakespeare, culminating in the release of “Domestic Economy” in early 2019. “Solemnities' ', a second album for Editions Mego appeared the following year. In the period since Rehberg’s untimely passing, Finlay has recorded for Superpang, Modulisme and his own GOTO Records imprint. “Illusion + Memory”, meanwhile, continues on from where “Solemnities” left off, with Finlay once again aiming to work at the fringes of electronic pop. Alter is proud to present “Illusion + Memory”, the third full length physical LP of Shakespeare’s utterly unique and sophisticated output. Shakespeare’s obsession and knowledge of late 70’s and early 80’s electronic pop music is once again at the forefront of this intense and dynamic release. Alas, this is not some retro throwback. Shakespeare’s deep understanding of his machines breathes new life into a genre of music once defunct. Supporting the likes of Blancmange bolstered his reputation for sublime synth hooks and dark lyrical content. Building on his previous work in the field “Illusion + Memory” is an unabashed pop record, as joyous as it is intense, moving from the brooding opening ballad “Your Side of the River” through the punchy “Theresa” which could be read as a love song to Throbbing Gristle’s United. Elsewhere “Climb” unleashes the opportunity to the dancefloor as wild electronics snake into all manner of schizophrenic shapes. There is a romantic side to this music. In its homage to electronic pop of the late 70’s and early 80’s but also in the emotional punch Shakespeare injects into every second of every track. Shakespeare’s reboot of these musical forms is technically impressive, one rich in feeling and deep in emotion, atmospherically and vocally. The two come together to create a unique visceral sonic experience… today!

On »Empty Room,« David Granström works with slow transformations, cyclical and isometric patterns as well as just intonation as a way to create harmonic stability, allowing his long-form pieces to develop their own unique temporal and spatial qualities. A prolific figure in Stockholm’s experimental drone scene and a collaborator of Hallow Ground label mates Maria W Horn and Mats Erlandsson, the Swedish composer navigates through moments of quietude and crushing volume on these five tracks. Sonically and atmospherically, the pieces on »Empty Room« simultaneously call to mind Fennesz’s most meditative work or the physical experience of seeing Sunn O))) live, blending guitar recordings and synthesised sounds with forceful effects similar to those of Mario Díaz de Leon’s Oneirogen project while still being as moving and delicate as Alessandro Cortini’s solo work. The album is marked by melodies and harmonies that are the product of a peculiar working process that turned the composer into an intent listener collaborating with, rather than simply using technology.

Having been invited by the self-organising artist group The Non Existent Center for a residency to Ställbergs Gruva, a defunct iron ore mine in Sweden’s Bergslagen region, Granström took his guitar as a starting point for his compositional work that heavily relies on real-time sound synthesis. »I seldomly use the instrument as a sound source in the final compositions and rather transcribe and orchestrate the harmonic structures using sound synthesis,« he explains. »On this album however, I chose to include the actual recordings of the guitar in order to extend the spectra between non-referential synthetic sounds and embodied referential sounds.« Working with precise tunings in order to blend the timbre of the synthesis with the harmonic structures of the composition, he created composite sound objects in which the harmonic elements blend into each other.

Through the re-amplification of synthetic musical materials from the inside of the abandoned mine, his original compositions were enriched with site-specific sound qualities before he further refined them in a singular working process. Granström works with algorithmic and generative processes, using the SuperCollider programming environment and thus blurring the lines between generative and creative forms of composition. »One of the things that I like about this way of working is that it creates a distance between myself as a composer and myself as a listener of the music that is produced entirely by the system,« he says. Granström’s technologically aided eschewing of the conventions of composing doesn’t make the end result any less personal, however. By listening again and again to the newly generated output, Granström simply took on a different role in the process of finalising the music, with the technology and the sounds becoming his co-authors.

By creating systems that generate music, he gains a new perspective on (musical) time, says Granström. »There doesn't have to be a fixed length to the music at all,« he explains. »And by writing music with this in mind, my focus tends to shift towards writing cyclical structures that gradually change and transform over time.« Simple parts, in other words, that emerge as the five complex wholes that form »Empty Room,« a record that itself seems to take on different forms with every new listen.

Vinyl gatefold jacket includes a 12x12 insert reproduction of the original LP jacket art.Recorded in 1956 and released in 1957, Supersonic Jazz is arguably the first long-playing album by Sun Ra and His Arkestra on his Saturn label. However, it was not recorded as a debut. Rather, the album was assembled from tapes recorded during a number of sessions at two Chicago studios (RCA Victor and Balkan), and several tracks had been released as singles before their inclusion on this album. (Sunny's first fully realized commercial album was 1957's Jazz by Sun Ra, produced by Tom Wilson on his short lived/soon to be defunct Transition label.) Prior to these sessions, Sunny was still arranging for the Red Saunders Orchestra and singer Joe Williams, in addition to arranging for and coaching doo-wop ensembles. As Sunny's ambitions achieved liftoff, the Arkestra coalesced, began building a repertoire (mostly of Ra's originals), and making forays into studios. Deciding it was time for commercial releases, Sunny and business partner Alton Abraham launched Saturn (sometimes called El Saturn) as a record company in 1956. As a first offering, Supersonic Jazz is a pinnacle Sun Ra release. While reflecting many prevailing bebop, Latin, and R&B conventions of the mid-1950s, it's evident that Sun Ra's musical voice and vision were starting to propel him away from the jazz mainstream. Biographer John Szwed finds on these recordings "characteristics which seemed alien to swing, bebop, or the new, more soulful and hard-edged music which was coming to be called hard bop."

BBE Music is proud to present the latest J Jazz Masterclass Series reissue, 1978 soul/jazz tour de force album ’Push’ by Noriko Miyamoto. For the first time, this critically acclaimed series that delves deep into the history of Japanese Jazz will be releasing an album by a Japanese female singer, Noriko Miyamoto produced by one of the legendary figures in Japanese Jazz, Isao Suzuki. The release of her incredible debut album, ‘Push’, coincided with a surge in popularity for local female jazz singers such Kimiko Kasai, Yasuko Agawa, etc. that crossed over into the pop market. It was originally released by the now-defunct label, Yupiteru Records in 1978. Since then, it has been reissued a few times in Japan but recently, along with a surge of worldwide interest in old Japanese music, ‘Push’ has been gaining a cult status among foreign music heads, with the price for an original pressing skyrocketing in the second hand record market. This reissue of ‘Push’ will be the first time ever that this album will be officially released worldwide. Long before R&B music went onto enjoy mainstream success in Japan, a soul music and disco loving lady, Noriko Miyamoto who started her music career working as a dancer at the legendary Tokyo disco, ‘Mugen’, was inspired by Tina Turner’s performance there and decided to became a soul singer. It was at a time in the early 1970s when there were only a handful of female songstresses who sang soulfully in Japan. In 1977, Miyamoto was scouted by Isao Suzuki to join his band, Soul Family and subsequently, with their backing, he produced Push, an album that kickstarted her career. It is an album that exquisitely combines her jazzy and soulful vocals with Suzuki’s acoustic bass and precocious playing from his youthful and vibrant group at the time. Along with Sadao Watanabe, Terumasa Hino, Masabumi Kikuchi and George Otsuka, bassist, cellist, multi-instrumentalist, composer, arranger, producer and band leader, Isao Suzuki was considered to be one of the most influential figures in Japanese jazz history. Beloved by many in the Japanese jazz scene as “Oma-san”- Suzuki was renowned for developing young talent.

When we did the first ever vinyl reissue of this 1972 masterpiece back in 2012 it sold out so fast and so many lost the chance to grab a copy has translated into continuous messages asking us to do a repressing of this marvel - which we did and, again, it sold like hot bread. So here is a new edition of this UK jazz masterpiece, this time with a twist :

- Silk-screened cover art : we respect the original design, but have upgraded the printing from regular offset to silk screen to give it an artistic touch!

- In adition to the limited black vinyl edition (400 copies), we offer an ultra limited clear vinyl version (100 copies-only!)

One of the big names in UK Jazz, Neil Ardley was offered the leadership of the seminal New Jazz Orchestra in 1964. Under his direction the Orchestra moved though different styles and changes of personnel, bringing in musicians such as Mike Gibbs (trombone), Harry Beckett andHenry Lowther (trumpets) or even Jack Bruce (bass), some of them also contributed with the writing of some original compositions, making the NJO the root from which the UK's 70's jazz scene was to blossom.

By 1972 the NJO was already defunct, but his legacy remained in the works of its members. Ardley's 'A Symphony Of Amaranths' is a perfect example of what was boiling in the UK jazz scene. It was Ardleys tribute to his idols Duke Ellington and Gil Evans, and featured the skills of some great musicians of the scene including Don Rendell,Stan Tracey, Henry Lowther, Harry Beckett, Jeff Clyne & Jon Hiseman. Side B is inspired by the words of Edward Lear, W. B. Yeats, James Joyce and Lewis Carroll that are musicated by Ardley and feature, among other highlights, Ivor Cutler's narration of 'The Dong With A Luminous Nose' and Norma Winstone's vocals on 'Will You Walk A Little Faster'.



Musicians that participated in the recording session :

- Derek Watkins, Nigel Carter, Henry Lowther, Harold Beckett (trumpets)
- Derek Wadsworth, Ray Premru (trombones)
- Dick Hart (tuba)
- Barbara Thompson, Dave Gelly, Don Rendell, Dick Heckstall-Smith (woodwind, saxes)
- John Clementson (oboe)
- Bunny Gould (bassoon)
- Dave Gelly (glockenspiel)
- Neil Ardley (prepared piano)
- David Snell, Sidonie Goossens (harp)
- Stan Tracey (piano, celeste)
- Karl Jenkins (electric piano)
- Alan Branscombe (harpsichord)
- Frank Ricotti (vibraphone, percussion)
- Chris Laurence, Jeff Clyne (bass)
- Jon Hiseman (drums, percussion)
- Eric Gruenberg, Jack Rothstein, Kelly Isaacs (violin)
- Ken Essex (viola)
- Charles Tunnell, Francis Gabarro (cello)
- Ivor Cutler (narrator)
- Norma Winstone (vocal)
- Jack Rothstein, Neil Ardley (conductors)

Swedish underground maestro Jo Bubbles (a.k.a. Jonas Dahlström) boasts an impressive streak of hot dance 12’’ releases in recent years, for illustrous labels like Parkway Records, The Transient Nature of The Disco Business and Västkransen. Ever intent on lifting homegrown talent and presenting it to its
worldwide audience, Studio Barnhus proudly unveils Mr. Bubble’s first outing on the label: a compilation of four distinct, yet equally striking dance tracks, each showcasing meticulously curated sound palettes paired with undeniably rock solid grooves.
From the electroid stomp of Compass Point to the Balearic-leaning grandeur of closing track Tu Cariño, these are cuts that would have gone down a storm during the early morning hours at Hägring, the infamous, now-defunct disco rave Jonas helped steer for over a decade. We’re thrilled to release these babies into the wild, for all to enjoy. Tu Cariño is out on vinyl and digital formats on October 10.

When we did the first ever vinyl reissue of this 1972 masterpiece back in 2012 it sold out so fast and so many lost the chance to grab a copy has translated into continuous messages asking us to do a repressing of this marvel - which we did and, again, it sold like hot bread. So here is a new edition of this UK jazz masterpiece, this time with a twist :

- Silk-screened cover art : we respect the original design, but have upgraded the printing from regular offset to silk screen to give it an artistic touch!

- In adition to the limited black vinyl edition (400 copies), we offer an ultra limited clear vinyl version (100 copies-only!)

One of the big names in UK Jazz, Neil Ardley was offered the leadership of the seminal New Jazz Orchestra in 1964. Under his direction the Orchestra moved though different styles and changes of personnel, bringing in musicians such as Mike Gibbs (trombone), Harry Beckett andHenry Lowther (trumpets) or even Jack Bruce (bass), some of them also contributed with the writing of some original compositions, making the NJO the root from which the UK's 70's jazz scene was to blossom.

By 1972 the NJO was already defunct, but his legacy remained in the works of its members. Ardley's 'A Symphony Of Amaranths' is a perfect example of what was boiling in the UK jazz scene. It was Ardleys tribute to his idols Duke Ellington and Gil Evans, and featured the skills of some great musicians of the scene including Don Rendell,Stan Tracey, Henry Lowther, Harry Beckett, Jeff Clyne & Jon Hiseman. Side B is inspired by the words of Edward Lear, W. B. Yeats, James Joyce and Lewis Carroll that are musicated by Ardley and feature, among other highlights, Ivor Cutler's narration of 'The Dong With A Luminous Nose' and Norma Winstone's vocals on 'Will You Walk A Little Faster'.



Musicians that participated in the recording session :

- Derek Watkins, Nigel Carter, Henry Lowther, Harold Beckett (trumpets)
- Derek Wadsworth, Ray Premru (trombones)
- Dick Hart (tuba)
- Barbara Thompson, Dave Gelly, Don Rendell, Dick Heckstall-Smith (woodwind, saxes)
- John Clementson (oboe)
- Bunny Gould (bassoon)
- Dave Gelly (glockenspiel)
- Neil Ardley (prepared piano)
- David Snell, Sidonie Goossens (harp)
- Stan Tracey (piano, celeste)
- Karl Jenkins (electric piano)
- Alan Branscombe (harpsichord)
- Frank Ricotti (vibraphone, percussion)
- Chris Laurence, Jeff Clyne (bass)
- Jon Hiseman (drums, percussion)
- Eric Gruenberg, Jack Rothstein, Kelly Isaacs (violin)
- Ken Essex (viola)
- Charles Tunnell, Francis Gabarro (cello)
- Ivor Cutler (narrator)
- Norma Winstone (vocal)
- Jack Rothstein, Neil Ardley (conductors)

Compiled by Philip King
“And then came the rise of synth pop : blokes with dodgy haircuts hunched over keyboard-operated
machines stuffed with wires and do-it-yourself tone oscillators making sounds like a brood of geese
passing gas in a wind tunnel. Whoopee! This is the way the ‘70s ended : not with a blood-curdling bang
bang but with a cheap, synthesized, emasculating whimper.”
NICK KENT, NME.

All The Young Droids: Junkshop Synth Pop 1978-1985 is a new compilation that charts the
underbelly of the epoch-defining sound of the synthesiser in 80s popular music. Compiled by Philip
King (previously seen compiling All The Young Droogs, Glitterbest and Boobs - The Junkshop
Glam Discotheque), the music here connects the dots between DIY synth enthusiasts grappling with
new, cheap synthesisers at the tail-end of punk and wannabe, jobbing songwriters enthral to the new
music pioneered by Gary Numan, Depeche Mode and Daniel Miller’s Mute Records. Featuring rare
tracks of auto-didactic progressive pop music, proto-techno punk, shoot-for-the-stars-land-in-the-gutter
chart flops and heralded, underground synth classics, School Daze paints a picture of beautiful failure.
Complete with extensive sleeve notes written by King and never before seen imagery, all 24 tracks
were remastered by RPM in-house engineer Simon Murphy, many from vinyl copies due to lost master
tapes. The story told on All The Young Droids is one of the dawning opportunity presented by both the
emergence to the market of cheaper analog synthesisers and the distribution networks plus indie labels
that exploded with the advent of punk music in 1976. While the music that sprouted out all over the
globe in the wake of these factors was decried as fake, plastic, a refutation of punk’s guitar-led
revolution, it’s telling that much of the music on All The Young Droids.. was created in bedrooms,
ramshackle studios and home-made set ups with often borrowed equipment. In the era of record labels
jumping to capitalise on the success of The Sex Pistols, The Clash (both on major labels, of course)
these artists struggled to stand out from a new gold-rush with next to no budget or PR team. With radio
and labels desperate for the new Yazoo, what resulted was a testament to necessity being the mother
of invention.

At the time, the synthesiser was the music of the future, a shiny new machine that could paint like an
orchestra with a single finger and a 4-track. In the hands of Manchester avant-pranksters Gerry & The
Holograms it’s a pulsing, sardonic weapon.. the only instrument on the Messthetics classic lampooning
of New Wave fashion. In Hamburg, a 16 year old Andreas Dorau used it to write and record (with his
female classmates on vocals) a global smash in Fred Vom Jupiter (later licensed to Mute Records).
The hard-to-find English version (Fred From Jupiter, natch) is included here. Many artists with alreadystoried careers caught the bug and recorded synthesiser-fuelled peons to space, computers, the future
and, of course, love-interests. Harry Kakoulli, late of Squeeze, recorded a solo album in 1979 that
included the incredible power-synth-pop smash-that-never-smashed I’m On A Rocket. Similarly, Ian
North of Neo and American Power Pop stalwarts Milk ’n’ Cookies bought a Korg MS20 and used a
tape machine to record We’re Not Lonely, an absolute lost-classic of minimal synth pop. We’re Not
Lonely also features on the Junkshop Synth Pop sampler 7” twinned with John Howard unreleased
track You Will See, released April 12th 2025.

There are plenty of compilation debuts in evidence. Sole Sister were a mysterious trio who were
featured on the Scaling Triangles compilation of female-fronted, queer-adjacent post-punk /
underground music that also featured The Petticoats. Selwin Image were from San Francisco and
featured members of the recently defunct power pop/punk group The Pushups. Their stupidly catchy
The Unknown fizzes with New Wave energy - think XTC to Sparks but remains unreleased until now.
Dream Unit’s A Drop In The Ocean is an early synth wave cut, positively teaming with Joy Division
instrumentation, previously only released on a long-forgotten and super rare, self-released EP.
Incandescent Luminaire’s Famous Names belies an archetypal struggle of a small-town trying to
make it in a cruel industry but is a thrilling New Romantic-Synth Wave cross over with a OMD
gloominess that’s a joy to hear. Feminist Minimal Wave track I Am A Time Bomb by performance artist
Peta Lilly and Michael Chance is a revelation destined for new found cult status. It was released on 7”
and lost until now.

The flipside to the subterranean, never-made-it synth pop mentioned above are the ambitious, even
fruity attempts at success that have a perennial elegance to their confidence. New Jersey-ite Billy
London (real name Ed Barth) tried to cash in on the synth boom with Woman, released by a major
label, a lurching new wave track built on the Louie Louie rhythm and a wonderfully camp Lou Reedstyle sleazy vocal before exploding in the synthesised chorus. The song bombed but with a chorus like
this, you have to wonder why? Ex-Glitter Band member John Springate’s My Life is truly epic, with
doomed chord progressions and massive sounding drums turning into at least 3 different songs in the
course of the track. Before you wonder what’s going on the song resolves with a glorious return to the
main refrain.

The dry-ice-dressed dance floor is well catered for too. Design’s Premonition and Vision’s Lucifer’s
Friend are stone-cold minimal synth bangers, well loved but given a new lease of life here. The
Warlord’s The Ultimate Warlord was released in 1978, a homespun proto Hi NRG banger that was
later re-recorded by The Immortals in Canada who had a club hit with it. One-man- band Disco
Volante’s No Motion was re-issued by Synth wave label Medical in 2012 but makes its first vinyl
compilation appearance here. Close your eyes and you can imagine what Lawrence of Felt would have
sounded like with some cheap Korgs a little earlier in his career. Gibraltar-based trio The Microbes
imagined a computer programming people to dance - how prescient - and ended up with a propulsive,
robo-funk track with splendid rubbery bass playing over a tectonic drum machine. Previously picked up
by Belgian label Stroom TV, Dee Jay Bert & Eagle’s heavily Euro-accented I Am Your Master
demands the listener to “come to paradise!” In a frankly terrifying manner.
All The Young Droids is the first compilation to peel away from the narrative that dour, Minimal Synth
and Cold Wave were the only musical children of the first rush of synth pop. Philip King and School
Daze Records describe a much more complicated world: along with the austere, Brutalist children of
Daniel Miller (who produced Alan Burnham’s Bowie-Low-influenced Science Fiction here) was a
plethora of desperate cash-ins, accidental mainstream hits, ambitious pop dramas and major label
punts that went nowhere. Crucially, the compilation blurs the line between junk and treasure. What if the
two things are interchangeable. What if it’s all science fiction?

Scavenger tones and scrambled cassette residue drift across the surface of Compressed Knowledge, a quietly astonishing new work by Philadelphia-based sound artist Tyler Games, operating here as Radio Species. Following releases on Regional Bears, Irrational Tentent, and his own now-defunct Born Physical Form imprint, Games works in a space between musique concrète, tape collage, and microsound, using an economy of gesture to create a suite of fundamentally elusive compositions. Harmonic loops stutter and fold in on themselves, hazy rhythms break free from their clocks, snatches of speech cut out mid-thought as a layer of room tone and tape gunk holds everything in suspension. There’s a sense of broadcast without a source, flickering across half-tuned frequencies––hinting at formal structures while continually slipping away from them. The result is not archival in the traditional sense, but archaeological: these tracks are partial objects, pulled from the noise floor of memory. In its refusal to resolve into stable meaning or musical form, this is work that draws from traditions of sound ethnography, experimental documentation, and concrète montage––where listening itself becomes a mode of speculative reconstruction.

All Men Unto Me is a project led by Rylan Gleave, composer and vocalist (most notably in Ashenspire and various Paraorchestra projects). Today, All Men Unto Me announces their second album Requiem, an album which re-imagines an ancient mourning in a real, contemporary setting. Taking the broad emotional arcs of the Missa pro Defunctis, these structures pave way for new songs, ruminating on patriarchal power systems and the conditions of transmasculinity within these, through the haze of Queer reverence and forgiveness. In Rylan's words, the Missa pro Defunctis "translates to ‘Mass for the dead’, and refers to the Catholic text taken from the Roman Missal. When set to music, it is called a ‘Requiem’. Requiem masses are usually performed at funerals. I’ve sung in a few Requiems — Mozart, Fauré, Duruflé — when I’ve been in choirs, and felt those dramatic arcs of the structure in my own voice. Writing a Requiem felt like processing my own complex feelings about the Church, patriarchal power within it (and more broadly), and the death of a part of me in a framework that allowed for mourning. The contours of sorrow, light, forgiveness, and reverence made space for these songs to speak to my own identity as a survivor, and use that structure in a way that let me direct an ancient narrative myself." Marrying traditional Anglican soundworlds of electro-pneumatic church organ and stacked choral vocals with heavier sounds, closer to experimental/noise rock and doom metal, Requiem sits at times near Swans, Kayo Dot, Lingua Ignota, Greet Death, and Scott Walker.







[e] SEQUENTIA [video]

Compiled by Philip King
“And then came the rise of synth pop : blokes with dodgy haircuts hunched over keyboard-operated
machines stuffed with wires and do-it-yourself tone oscillators making sounds like a brood of geese
passing gas in a wind tunnel. Whoopee! This is the way the ‘70s ended : not with a blood-curdling bang
bang but with a cheap, synthesized, emasculating whimper.”
NICK KENT, NME.

All The Young Droids: Junkshop Synth Pop 1978-1985 is a new compilation that charts the
underbelly of the epoch-defining sound of the synthesiser in 80s popular music. Compiled by Philip
King (previously seen compiling All The Young Droogs, Glitterbest and Boobs - The Junkshop
Glam Discotheque), the music here connects the dots between DIY synth enthusiasts grappling with
new, cheap synthesisers at the tail-end of punk and wannabe, jobbing songwriters enthral to the new
music pioneered by Gary Numan, Depeche Mode and Daniel Miller’s Mute Records. Featuring rare
tracks of auto-didactic progressive pop music, proto-techno punk, shoot-for-the-stars-land-in-the-gutter
chart flops and heralded, underground synth classics, School Daze paints a picture of beautiful failure.
Complete with extensive sleeve notes written by King and never before seen imagery, all 24 tracks
were remastered by RPM in-house engineer Simon Murphy, many from vinyl copies due to lost master
tapes. The story told on All The Young Droids is one of the dawning opportunity presented by both the
emergence to the market of cheaper analog synthesisers and the distribution networks plus indie labels
that exploded with the advent of punk music in 1976. While the music that sprouted out all over the
globe in the wake of these factors was decried as fake, plastic, a refutation of punk’s guitar-led
revolution, it’s telling that much of the music on All The Young Droids.. was created in bedrooms,
ramshackle studios and home-made set ups with often borrowed equipment. In the era of record labels
jumping to capitalise on the success of The Sex Pistols, The Clash (both on major labels, of course)
these artists struggled to stand out from a new gold-rush with next to no budget or PR team. With radio
and labels desperate for the new Yazoo, what resulted was a testament to necessity being the mother
of invention.

At the time, the synthesiser was the music of the future, a shiny new machine that could paint like an
orchestra with a single finger and a 4-track. In the hands of Manchester avant-pranksters Gerry & The
Holograms it’s a pulsing, sardonic weapon.. the only instrument on the Messthetics classic lampooning
of New Wave fashion. In Hamburg, a 16 year old Andreas Dorau used it to write and record (with his
female classmates on vocals) a global smash in Fred Vom Jupiter (later licensed to Mute Records).
The hard-to-find English version (Fred From Jupiter, natch) is included here. Many artists with alreadystoried careers caught the bug and recorded synthesiser-fuelled peons to space, computers, the future
and, of course, love-interests. Harry Kakoulli, late of Squeeze, recorded a solo album in 1979 that
included the incredible power-synth-pop smash-that-never-smashed I’m On A Rocket. Similarly, Ian
North of Neo and American Power Pop stalwarts Milk ’n’ Cookies bought a Korg MS20 and used a
tape machine to record We’re Not Lonely, an absolute lost-classic of minimal synth pop. We’re Not
Lonely also features on the Junkshop Synth Pop sampler 7” twinned with John Howard unreleased
track You Will See, released April 12th 2025.

There are plenty of compilation debuts in evidence. Sole Sister were a mysterious trio who were
featured on the Scaling Triangles compilation of female-fronted, queer-adjacent post-punk /
underground music that also featured The Petticoats. Selwin Image were from San Francisco and
featured members of the recently defunct power pop/punk group The Pushups. Their stupidly catchy
The Unknown fizzes with New Wave energy - think XTC to Sparks but remains unreleased until now.
Dream Unit’s A Drop In The Ocean is an early synth wave cut, positively teaming with Joy Division
instrumentation, previously only released on a long-forgotten and super rare, self-released EP.
Incandescent Luminaire’s Famous Names belies an archetypal struggle of a small-town trying to
make it in a cruel industry but is a thrilling New Romantic-Synth Wave cross over with a OMD
gloominess that’s a joy to hear. Feminist Minimal Wave track I Am A Time Bomb by performance artist
Peta Lilly and Michael Chance is a revelation destined for new found cult status. It was released on 7”
and lost until now.

The flipside to the subterranean, never-made-it synth pop mentioned above are the ambitious, even
fruity attempts at success that have a perennial elegance to their confidence. New Jersey-ite Billy
London (real name Ed Barth) tried to cash in on the synth boom with Woman, released by a major
label, a lurching new wave track built on the Louie Louie rhythm and a wonderfully camp Lou Reedstyle sleazy vocal before exploding in the synthesised chorus. The song bombed but with a chorus like
this, you have to wonder why? Ex-Glitter Band member John Springate’s My Life is truly epic, with
doomed chord progressions and massive sounding drums turning into at least 3 different songs in the
course of the track. Before you wonder what’s going on the song resolves with a glorious return to the
main refrain.

The dry-ice-dressed dance floor is well catered for too. Design’s Premonition and Vision’s Lucifer’s
Friend are stone-cold minimal synth bangers, well loved but given a new lease of life here. The
Warlord’s The Ultimate Warlord was released in 1978, a homespun proto Hi NRG banger that was
later re-recorded by The Immortals in Canada who had a club hit with it. One-man- band Disco
Volante’s No Motion was re-issued by Synth wave label Medical in 2012 but makes its first vinyl
compilation appearance here. Close your eyes and you can imagine what Lawrence of Felt would have
sounded like with some cheap Korgs a little earlier in his career. Gibraltar-based trio The Microbes
imagined a computer programming people to dance - how prescient - and ended up with a propulsive,
robo-funk track with splendid rubbery bass playing over a tectonic drum machine. Previously picked up
by Belgian label Stroom TV, Dee Jay Bert & Eagle’s heavily Euro-accented I Am Your Master
demands the listener to “come to paradise!” In a frankly terrifying manner.
All The Young Droids is the first compilation to peel away from the narrative that dour, Minimal Synth
and Cold Wave were the only musical children of the first rush of synth pop. Philip King and School
Daze Records describe a much more complicated world: along with the austere, Brutalist children of
Daniel Miller (who produced Alan Burnham’s Bowie-Low-influenced Science Fiction here) was a
plethora of desperate cash-ins, accidental mainstream hits, ambitious pop dramas and major label
punts that went nowhere. Crucially, the compilation blurs the line between junk and treasure. What if the
two things are interchangeable. What if it’s all science fiction?

The promise of a Florry show, a now familiar caravan that has been honed over ambitiously trekked zig zags across America and Europe since the release of Dear Life Records debut The Holey Bible, is the redemptive promise and prodigal joy of rock and roll guitar music. Bred in the crackling warmth of the Philadelphia DIY scene, and forged with the alloys of community action, queer liberation and bedroom poetry, bandleader Francie Medosch and her absolute unit of collaborators have put in the work of sharpening their homespun tools to take up the mantle of the great lip-puckering rock and roll tradition pioneered by the likes of The Band and the Rolling Stones, but with proudly displayed Aimee Mann and Yo La Tengo bumper stickers on the rusty frame of the truck. At any second, the wheels could come off but they are steering just fine. For 'Sounds Like' Florry's sophomore effort as a fully realized band, Medosch and co. decamped to Drop of Sun studios in the nest of the Blue Ridge Mountains to record with Asheville wunderkind Colin Miller, a critical voice behind the records of MJ Lenderman, Wednesday and Merce Lemon and a powerful songwriter in his own right. Three powerhouse days in late 2023 solidified writing work done by the band earlier that summer in the now defunct Haw Creek compound under Miller's guiding suggestion. The result is a portrait of a ripping band cresting towards the height of their powers, uniquely equipped to capture a wildly loving, barn-burning camcorder clip of a turbulent trip with your best friends, without dipping into nostalgia bait. Lyrically, Medosch's utterances are both careful and excessive, the product of sifting through the rubble of classic good-time media, and finding what works for both her and her community to reach the heights of abandon. "The Jackass theme song was actually a really big influence on the new album" The expansive personnel and continent spanning footprint of Florry casts a wide net for this community. Florry the band rolls deep in the heard of North American DIY, featuring Jon Cox (Sadurn, Son of Barb) on pedal steel, John Murray on electric guitar, Collin Dennen on bass, Will Henriksen on fiddle, Katya Malison (Doll Spirit Vessel) on Vox, and Joey Sullivan (Bark Culture) on drums. Medosch's recent move to Burlington Vermont entrenches the Philly born project firmly within the ranks of fellow alt-country upstarts Lily Seabird and Greg Freeman, and gives them a vantage just outside of Pennsylvania at the thresholds of New England and the Midwest. There is a new life breathed into this music that confirms Florry as equally rooted in place work, and at home on the vast roads of America. For listeners who fell in love with Florry's infectious charm on sweeping tours with the likes of Kurt Vile, Real Estate, MJ Lenderman, Greg Freeman and Fust, 'Sounds Like', provides a refreshing memento of the band that surely left them smiling. If the support behind 'The Holey Bible' provided validation for the insistent vision of these young artists, 'Sounds Like' finds them reveling in and honing their vocabulary. Praise from outlets like Pitchfork, Stereogum, Paste, and Brooklyn Vegan touched on the potential of their wild idiosyncrasies, and accurately predicted that their next steps would see them continuing to write their own story, like a 10 car pileup that you can't take your eyes off if you tried. Florry proves that they can let the car spin just out of control whenever they want, and you are welcome to ride shotgun while Medosch does donuts in the WaWa parking lot. The ceiling, it turns out, is truly the roof.

The promise of a Florry show, a now familiar caravan that has been honed over ambitiously trekked zig zags across America and Europe since the release of Dear Life Records debut The Holey Bible, is the redemptive promise and prodigal joy of rock and roll guitar music. Bred in the crackling warmth of the Philadelphia DIY scene, and forged with the alloys of community action, queer liberation and bedroom poetry, bandleader Francie Medosch and her absolute unit of collaborators have put in the work of sharpening their homespun tools to take up the mantle of the great lip-puckering rock and roll tradition pioneered by the likes of The Band and the Rolling Stones, but with proudly displayed Aimee Mann and Yo La Tengo bumper stickers on the rusty frame of the truck. At any second, the wheels could come off but they are steering just fine. For 'Sounds Like' Florry's sophomore effort as a fully realized band, Medosch and co. decamped to Drop of Sun studios in the nest of the Blue Ridge Mountains to record with Asheville wunderkind Colin Miller, a critical voice behind the records of MJ Lenderman, Wednesday and Merce Lemon and a powerful songwriter in his own right. Three powerhouse days in late 2023 solidified writing work done by the band earlier that summer in the now defunct Haw Creek compound under Miller's guiding suggestion. The result is a portrait of a ripping band cresting towards the height of their powers, uniquely equipped to capture a wildly loving, barn-burning camcorder clip of a turbulent trip with your best friends, without dipping into nostalgia bait. Lyrically, Medosch's utterances are both careful and excessive, the product of sifting through the rubble of classic good-time media, and finding what works for both her and her community to reach the heights of abandon. "The Jackass theme song was actually a really big influence on the new album" The expansive personnel and continent spanning footprint of Florry casts a wide net for this community. Florry the band rolls deep in the heard of North American DIY, featuring Jon Cox (Sadurn, Son of Barb) on pedal steel, John Murray on electric guitar, Collin Dennen on bass, Will Henriksen on fiddle, Katya Malison (Doll Spirit Vessel) on Vox, and Joey Sullivan (Bark Culture) on drums. Medosch's recent move to Burlington Vermont entrenches the Philly born project firmly within the ranks of fellow alt-country upstarts Lily Seabird and Greg Freeman, and gives them a vantage just outside of Pennsylvania at the thresholds of New England and the Midwest. There is a new life breathed into this music that confirms Florry as equally rooted in place work, and at home on the vast roads of America. For listeners who fell in love with Florry's infectious charm on sweeping tours with the likes of Kurt Vile, Real Estate, MJ Lenderman, Greg Freeman and Fust, 'Sounds Like', provides a refreshing memento of the band that surely left them smiling. If the support behind 'The Holey Bible' provided validation for the insistent vision of these young artists, 'Sounds Like' finds them reveling in and honing their vocabulary. Praise from outlets like Pitchfork, Stereogum, Paste, and Brooklyn Vegan touched on the potential of their wild idiosyncrasies, and accurately predicted that their next steps would see them continuing to write their own story, like a 10 car pileup that you can't take your eyes off if you tried. Florry proves that they can let the car spin just out of control whenever they want, and you are welcome to ride shotgun while Medosch does donuts in the WaWa parking lot. The ceiling, it turns out, is truly the roof.

'the fun years', comprised of multi-instrumentalists Ben Recht and Isaac Sparks, have been making music together since the turn of the century, producing intriguing interrogations of ambient, drone, post-rock, and turntablism. Originally released in 2008 on the now-defunct Barge Recordings, 'baby it’s cold inside' is perhaps the high watermark of their discography. Equally concerned with microtonal nuance and harmonic intensity, it is both a product of its time and something well past it. The chief protagonist is surely the turntable, deployed to create woolly, evocative loops from unidentifiable source material that recall, at times, the work of Philip Jeck or Jan Jelinek—churning, roiling, hissing, atrophied textures further articulated with nuanced processing and buoyed by baritone guitar drones and anti-riffing.

The title of opener "my lowville" feels like a wink to the famed slowcore duo, with spare post-rock motifs hovering in a dusty ether, slowly consumed by distorted washes of rich, harmonic sound. One of the most satisfying aspects of the album is that despite the recumbent nature of most of their sound design choices and compositional proclivities, Recht and Sparks are loath to sit still. "auto show of the dead" is a serpentine piano/guitar exploration full of subtle detail, preceding the immaculately titled "fucking milwaukee’s been hesher forever," in which the tactile delights of clicks+cuts are liberated from the laboratory and allowed to slum it in the world of tape gunk and '90s plate reverb. Later, "re: we’re again buried under" presents an inky black ambience that feels truly expansive and almost overwhelming, and closer “The Surge is Working” tears apart an anthemic shoegaze dirge at the seams, leaving only billowing filtered noise and negative space in its wake.

Presented here with a brilliant remaster by LUPO, 'baby it’s cold Inside should be considered alongside records like Belong’s October Language and Polmo Polpo’s Like Hearts Swelling—an arresting early aughts ambient marvel that warrants ongoing investigation.