Belgian producer Gratts finally drops six in-demand reinterpretations from his Be Strong Be Free imprint to vinyl while showing off the label's collaborative, open-hearted spirit. Alex Kassian sets the tone with a lush, chugging instrumental of 'Sun Circles', followed by Terry Farley & Wade Teo's classic 90s Sound Factory-style overhaul of 'Off My Feet.' 'Submerge Me' dives into raw, hypnotic percussion before the flip delivers Fennec's rolling, floor-ready re-chug of 'Better Days'. Conrad McDonnell of Idjut Boys fame adds heavyweight dub depth to 'Jour De Fete', while Southpaw closes the EP by flipping 'Euphori' into tender, emotive trip-hop.
Cerca:del close
B. Chamber (Stratum A), by B. Close, is the first full length solo release by Los Angeles-based multi-disciplinary artist Brian Close. The first of two volumes assembled from some thirteen hours of music produced by Close while residing in Connecticut from 2021-2025, B. Chamber (Stratum A) offers a vivid, fractal afterimage of a prolific, specific time and space in the artist’s oeuvre.
After leaving New York City early in the pandemic to a farmhouse in the countryside with dedicated spaces for multiple sound stations, Close developed an intensive daily practice of melding with the machines. The vast, pastoral backdrop of rural CT provided inspiration and contrast for his ongoing investigations into dynamic, poly-rhythmic electronic music. The sounds on B. Chamber (Stratum A) range from the machine-modeling of acoustic instruments and natural environments to the utterly unhuman, spinning on the axis between crystalline, pointillist precision and shifty blown-cone distortion. Close’s atypical interpretations of rhythm, noise and other undefined musics land in a hybrid zone of their own.
Throughout B. Chamber (Stratum A), Close’s productions are in perpetual motion. Foxtrot’s shifting hi-hats and disembodied voices rise like cicadas propelled by glitching machines and tangled rhythms, Many Drive draws momentum from dubby stabs and twinkling atmospherics. Character Community’s nimble, drifting snares and erratic static are uplifted by swelling synths, and Mpan’s modular mining forgoes drums but is no less propulsive for it. Acre Voices’ seasick pads and deft drum patterns tap an energizing nerve, and closer 5D Bow’s ambush of pummeling machine gun fire spirals into the tryptamine palace and emerges completely rinsed and refreshed.
Equally powerful in the club as in the outdoors, in the headphones eyes closed or on the move, B. Chamber (Stratum A) grants an immersive temporary trip on B. Close’s unique wavelength, with Stratum B to complete the picture in the summer of 2026.
RIYL - Mark Fell, muay thai, Vladislav Delay, gaming, Errorsmith, modular synthesizer.
+++++
Brian Close (b. 1979, NYC) uses the cold logic of mathematics to trigger states of total sensory displacement. Close co-founded multiple AV studios to explore the "hypnotic"—a ritualistic practice of motional-graphism and improvisational sound. His work is a study in synesthesia and the architecture of trance, using geometric precision to dissolve the sense of time. It is a digital-visceral experience built on heavy logic, designed for large-scale immersion and timelessness.
Close is one half of Georgia who have released records on Palto Flats, Firecracker Recordings, Meakusma, Youth, OOH-Sounds and EM Records, and have a long-running residency on NTS.
B. Chamber was written, produced and mixed by Brian Close.
Mastered by Rashad Becker.
Artwork by Brian Close.
Some 30 years after they first met in the DJ booth of Tokyo’s Spacelab Yellow nightclub, close friends François Kevorkian and Dimitri From Paris have finally joined forces in the studio. The result is The Nassau Excursion, a dazzlingly good three-track EP inspired by their joint love of disco and boogie-era dance records made at Island Records’ Compass Point Studio in the Bahamas.
Across three essential tracks, François and Dimitri explore and celebrate this distinctive Caribbean post-disco sound – one where weighty basslines and heavy drum machine beats rub shoulders with early ‘80s synths, dub-style production, heady hand percussion patterns and arrangements drenched in space echo and tape delay.
A mutant beat manifesto from Miami luminaries Jonathan Trujillo (Jonny from Space) and Pablo Arrangoiz (El Gusano, DJ Fitness, Baüzer Vep), Crespi Drum Syndicate’s Colada Talk follows the duo’s debut on Sonido Isla with a freshly freaked collection of percussive oddities. Rooted in foundational clave rhythms and avant-garde experimentation, Crespi Drum Syndicate emerges from the amphibious underbelly of Miami’s Latin-infused club scene with their singular electro-acoustic vision.
Extensive live recording sessions, free improvisation, and a ritualistic studio practice
— countless hours spent twisting and rearranging sounds from found objects and Buchla modular systems — coalesce into new rhythmic forms. Atonal saxophone, bass clarinet, and slide whistle further expand upon Trujillo and Arrangoiz’s ever-evolving sonic palette, while NYC’s AceMo lends a hand on the heavily syncopated “Siu,” and closer “Boubow” might be the duo’s most hook-driven production to date with its mangled pop vocal and lewd drum-line bounce.
Landing somewhere between Steve Reich’s polyrhythmic “Six Marimbas,” Moebius & Plank’s industrial Krautrock sessions, and Ricardo Villalobos’ hypnotic techno minimalism, Colada Talk delivers on a world of subtropical rhythmic futurism and experimental body music that’s as heady as it is culo-shaking.
- 1: Lemonade Tycoon
- 2: Anti-Bird-Spike-Bird-Nest
- 3: Interlude (Stride)
- 4: Allcapsallbold
- 5: Pet Boss
Taupe’s latest album release, waxing | waning delivers jazz experimentalism, ‘skronk’, avant-rock, and electronics, by the Glasgow-based trio, due out via Minority Records. Across its seven tracks, waxing | waning captures Taupe’s approach – bold and boundary pushing – shaped by a fresh shift in the band’s dynamic and compositional approach.
Taupe’s waxing | waning, co-composed and realised by its players in a studio that was once an undertaker’s premises in Glasgow, is an absolutely affirmative album, an act of cultural defiance in desperate times.
Comprising Mike Parr-Burman (guitar, bass guitar, electronics), Jamie Stockbridge (alto and baritone saxophones) and Alex Palmer (drum kit, percussion), Taupe work up a storm of skronk, free jazz and harmolodic frenzy whose closest relations include Zu, Melt Banana and John Zorn. However, waxing | waning is from its opening, stuttering blasts, an exercise in seeking out and claiming new territory, finding unique and novel permutations in which jazz, rock, electronics interbreed at breakneck pace. Here is a group determined to say and do things they don’t get to say and do elsewhere in their musical lives.
‘Lemonade Tycoon’ hits the ground skronking. It’s cubistic jazz, cumulative in its impact, avoiding the white lines of the conventional freeway, bridling, bustling, coming at you from all angles – a three way conversation of astonishing rapidity, fast track, telepathic communication – everyone from James Chance to Albert Ayler coming at you at once, before morphing in to a spidery scrawl of electronics and furious percussion. ‘Anti-Bird-Spike BirdNest’s‘ title somehow sums up the sort of mental images evoked by the music – its sheer creative disobedience, as if being chased in vain, like a delivery rider evading capture by ICE agents -– shapeshifting, assuming different shades, sprouting metal quills and, in its midsection, seeming almost to swallow itself alive, before regurgitating itself in a sublime mess.
‘Interlude (Stride)’ is not exactly ambient, more a horizontal enmeshment of percussion, drones, reverberant noise, electronics, a sonic mulch. ‘allcapsallbold' reminds of early Aksak Maboul, in its playfulness, a haywire series of short phrases, subject to mechanical interference, a complex weave of irregular rhythms, increasingly eloquent sax phraseology and caustic guitars, which land heavier and heavier. ‘Pet Boss' is the new jazz equivalent of a highly evolved, mature conversation among brilliant equals, sharp, empathetic, complementary, rising to a collective, joyful noise. On the title track, electronics descend like a shower of bright particles, intensifying in their luminosity, whitening the skies, as sax and drums kick up a tempestuous, spontaneously sculpted noise that summons the ghosts of the great free jazz players, before a dark calm descends slowly. Finally, ‘Turn Push Kick’, a burgeoning chatterstorm of electronics, before the group kicks in, at angles to one another, led by abrasive guitars, reminiscent of Sunn O))) in their ritualistic concussion, riffing, digging deep amid squealing sax and piledriving percussion.
- 1: Eat Your Greens
- 2: Mustard Sauce
- 3: Drop Top
- 4: Parlor Change
- 5: Emeralds
- 6: Letter To Brother Ben
- 7: Francisco Smack
- 8: Jolene
- 9: Lion’s Mane
- 10: Red Dog
- 11: Queen Of My Heart
Emeralds, the sophomore long player from Parlor Greens, finds the trio serving up a beautifully curated sampler of what funky organ music can be. Three true masters of their respective crafts: Tim Carman (formerly of GA-20) on drums, Jimmy James (True Loves, formerly of Delvon Lamarr Organ Trio) on guitar, and Adam Scone (Scone Cash Players, The Sugarman 3) on organ. Seasoned and soulful pros coming together to make infectiously funky instrumental jams. Parlor Greens are truly in top form: tour tight and more confident than ever in who they are and where they’re going.
The first time these three met in Loveland at Colemine’s Portage Lounge studio was marked by a certain freshness. It was new, it was the first time they had all played together. It was exciting, it was unknown territory. The session for Emeralds weighed much heavier on all three members. All three dealing with personal tragedies in their individual lives, the session truly served as a genuine moment of joy for the group. Just three talented musicians, writing and playing music now as friends in a familiar environment. No moment is the weight of the session more obvious than with the album’s closer, “Queen Of My Heart,” a tune Jimmy wrote for his mother shortly after she passed away. So with a heavy and soulful heart, Colemine Records is beyond proud to present the sophomore effort from three maestros. Parlor Greens presents… Emeralds.
- A1: Give It To Me Baby
- A2: Ghetto Life
- B1: Make Love To Me
- B2: Mr. Policeman
- C1: Super Freak
- C2: Fire And Desire
- D1: Call Me Up
- D2: Below The Funk (Pass The J)
Rick James Blends Brazen Attitude, Fearless Sexuality, and Shrewd Charisma on Street Songs:
Punk-Funk Album Aims for the Hips and Head, Includes the Timeless Hit “Super Freak”
Sourced from the Original Master Tapes and Strictly Limited to 4,000 Numbered Copies:
Mobile Fidelity’s 180g 45RPM 2LP Set Presents 1981 Smash in Audiophile Sound for the First Time
1/4” / 30 IPS analogue master to DSD 256 to analogue console to lathe
“Punk funk” was a relatively unknown concept before 1981. But once Street Songs took the charts by storm that year, the world soon knew about what became Rick James’ signature style. And how. True to its name, Street Songs blends outspoken sexuality, brazen attitude, and edgy commentary amid contagious R&B-fueled arrangements that simultaneously aim for the hips, head, and various nether regions. And it’s never sounded better.
Sourced from the original master tapes, strictly limited to 4,000 numbered copies, pressed at Fidelity Record Pressing, and housed in a Stoughton gatefold jacket, Mobile Fidelity’s 180g 45RPM 2LP set presents James’ platinum-certified effort in audiophile quality for the first time. Playing with crisp dynamics, lively textures, airy headroom, and revealing clarity, this collectible edition of the record that stayed at the No. 1 spot on the R&B Album Charts for 20 weeks invites you to get closer to music that beckons you to turn your space into a private dance floor.
Then again, you’ll likely be so taken by how the taut bass lines, snappy rhythms, and four-on-the-floor beats — all rendered in stunning detail and with full-bodied architecture — come across with such accuracy and presence, you might stay pinned to your seat. On this pressing, the soundstaging, imaging, and lit-fuse energy of Street Songs reach new heights. Everything from the rubbery feel of the guitar lines to the depth of James’ temperature-raising vocals to the scale of the horn charts emerges as if James and his ace session crew set up in your room.
The Buffalo native and his ensemble waste no time getting their message across. On the album-opening “Give It to Me Baby,” James and company lay down a mix of sleek funk and pulsing disco that practically activates the bright lights of a discotheque and stimulates the libido of anyone within earshot. Having reached No. 1 on the Billboard Hot Soul charts, the song is pure sex — and just one of the carnal delights on a record that embraces the subject as fearlessly as James does his identity.
Of course, the most famous of James’ erotic excursions — the timeless “Super Freak” — hit No. 1 on Hot Dance Club Play charts, No. 16 on the Hot 100, and, later, No. 153 on Rolling Stone’s list of the Top 500 Songs of All Time. Bolstered by a quavering keyboard theme and electro riffs, the much-sampled track worms itself inside your muscles with smile-inducing subject matter, gliding vocals, nimble movements, a hot tenor-saxophone solo, and backing vocals by the Temptations.
The iconic Motown group isn’t the only celebrated guest artist on the Grammy-nominated Street Songs. James’ then-labelmate, Stevie Wonder, lends harmonica to the frank sociopolitical narrative on “Mr. Policeman,” a protest tune that also manages to stroll ’n’ strut via simmering organ, staggering brass accents, and James’ gritty vocal performance. In addition to contributing backing vocals on several cuts, Teena Marie turns in one of the album’s signature moments on “Fire and Desire,” a romantic old-school duet with James that impresses with smoothness, sensitivity, and smokiness.
High-profile colleagues aside, James remains the undisputed star, a figure whose leather-and-latex attire, braided hair, and natural swagger made him misunderstood by some in the mainstream and embraced by everyone in the know as a true original. As a testament to his magnetism and skills, his charisma and rawness seemingly seep through every note, whether on the balladic sweep of the risqué “Make Love to Me” or strident, poke-and-prod persuasion of the moonwalking “Call Me Up.”
On the closing “Below the Funk (Pass the J),” an uptempo autobiographical tale that addresses the visionary musician’s second-favorite love, the singer acknowledges his upbringing and inseparable connection with his roots — an homage to where he began and a toast to where he’s gone.
Rick James, keepin’ it real on Street Songs, still as real as it gets.
Impatience is thrilled to present Leaving Memory, the latest album-length work by Piper Spray and Lena Tsibizova. Leaving Memory is a searing distillation of the duo’s ouevre - it’s eleven prismatic electronic seances combining for a mind warping wormhole with it’s own internal (il)llogic, where pop, ambient, and industrial music convene beneath a rugged HD of digital processing and brain fog. Equally rosy with nostalgia as it is ominously forward looking, Leaving Memory defies easy categorization and makes for an astounding, confounding listen.
By turns violently abrasive and disarmingly touching, Piper and Lena deploy sounds that fracture and disintegrate, burn up and explode, synthetic supernovas that give the record an unmistakable, inimitable texture. Song structures often abide by their own blueprint - heading in one direction before making an abrupt dive elsewhere. Bursts of vibrant colour lurk below layers of grayscale noise. Unidentifiable voices deliver secret messages from the murk. When rhythm’s emerge they ground the tracks to some unknown terrain and invigorate.
Lame Line veers towards the sweeter end of their spectrum, a hazy plaintive repetition increasingly lashed with friction, before Exit erupts with clanging rhythm and shards of distortion. Diagnosis is an almost sweet alt-pop song, Lena’s vocals yearning beneath a dubby shuffle, while Keeper Of The Void’s possessed incantations open up to a ripping, fried climax. Beryl Grey releases the pressure gauge, a gently lilting drift arpeggiating as the sun sets, and Lost Cars sweats through claustrophobic drones and bird song before the clouds part on a serene scene. Leaving Memory closes with Shin, offering a genuinely sweet resolution and a gentle landing back down to earth of either footsteps or fireworks, swelling synthesized horns and woodwinds, a kiss on the cheek for making it out the other side.
On Leaving Memory, Piper Spray & Lena Tsibizova share their uniquely discordant take on freaky music for unsettled minds, an intensely energized set that offers a deeply evocative, unimaginable otherworld for adventurous ears.
Piper Spray and Lena Tsibizova have been producing music together since 2020. Leaving Memory is the first to be presented in the LP format. Piper has previously released music via Orange Milk, Hausu Mountain and Gost Zvuk, as well as his own Singapore Sling Tapes label. Lena works predominantly as a photographer, and together Piper and Lena have released music via radio.syg.ma and Kartaskvazhin. Both make music as part of Air Krew, who have released music on the Echotourist and Motion Ward labels. They’re both currently based nowhere.
Leaving Memory was written, produced and mixed by Piper Spray and Lena Tsibizova, and mastered by Sergey Podluzhniy. Cover photo by Lena Tsibizova, design and layout by Justin Sloane.
French artist Trypheme debuts on Impatience with “Odd Balade”, a darkly-hued collection of songs drawn from human delicacy and dreamworld mythology.
“Odd Balade” is Trypheme’s most ambitious and boldest record to date - both lyrically and musically. The album’s thirteen tracks resist rigid genre boundaries and flutter from medieval folk realms, sprawling synths, gothic 80s wave, leftfield pop, haunted vocals, mutant electronica to reverbed guitars - all reflected through her own shadowy prism. Especially album closer “A Walk In The Vercors” evokes a soothing serenity that echoes the sonic balm of Julee Cruise.
Trypheme’s musical repertoire trends heavily electronic and somewhat abstracted, but on “Odd Balade”, the artist slips into the role of the modern troubadour with a shift to a more poetically and personal songwriting that is infused with symbolism and dreamlike fantasies. The connective tissue of the album is the audacity to love and the vulnerability that ensues. As intimate and introspective as the lyrics are, the themes remain universal and human to the core: the fear of losing a loved one, the melancholia of leaving places and t“the fear of losing a loved one, the melancholia of leaving places and the cycles of life. The record was largely composed in Chars, stirred by the French village’s eerie atmosphere and frequent trips to the seaside in Brittany, where Trypheme resides. Drawing inspiration from the rugged terrain of the seaside landscapes, the writings of Allen Ginsberg and Mark Fisher and the hyperrealist art of Scott Prior, Trypheme uses her songs to depict life with broad strokes of rhythm.
On “Odd Balade” Trypheme consolidates herself as a gifted, nimble songwriter, masterly producer and subtly powerful vocalist. The record combines her skill for crafting lush, alien sound worlds and efficient, alluring arrangements with stealthily devastating songs. Belin’s voice becomes a key ingredient, appearing on eleven of Odd Balade’s thirteen tracks, by turns heavily manipulated, sampled and replayed as a form of percussion, or basically bare.
“Odd Balade” is the manifestation of Trypheme’s roving artistic practice, a ceremonial-grade sacrament cast in a rich nocturnal glow. Pairing the mundane with the mythic, the album stays true to its core: odd and strangely familiar.
RIYL - Riding off into the sunset to an unknown destination, hauntology, present, tales told by the fireside, hot summer rain, adventures, to feel a warm presence when you are walking in the forest or in the mountain, coastal landscapes, sailor’s stories, slow motion, vitesse, heavy blossoms, colors, the warmth of the sun, the tenderness of the moon, getting lost in unfamiliar streets, city’s lights, motorway rest area by night, magic numbers, rendez-vous, picnic, serendipity, poetry, the smell of old records and old books.
Tiphaine Belin has been releasing music as Trypheme since 2016. Odd Balade was written and produced by Belin, and mixed by Belin and Abel Roux. It was mastered by Amir Shoat. Cover art photography is by Ariane Kiks, with art direction by Ariane Kiks in collaboration with Mathilde Chaize.
2026 Repress
Next year the iconic anthem Cafe Del Mar will celebrate its 30th anniversary, a landmark that will be celebrated with a series of brand new remixes alongside the finest existing remixes in specially remastered versions.
Launching the series of vinyl releases in September is a remastered vinyl-only release of the original mix, as well as the best-known version of this classic track, the iconic Three ‘N One Remix.
Nearly 30 years ago, Paul M aka DJ Kid Paul recording as Energy 52 unleashed a record onto an unsuspecting public that would go on to define club culture for an entire generation of dance music enthusiasts. Named as an homage to the legendary Ibiza sunset spot, Café Del Mar broke down boundaries between the underground and
the mainstream, charting in the UK singles charts on three separate occasions and named as the “best tune ever” by Mixmag at the start of the new millennium. In terms of cultural and emotional impact in dance music, it’s hard to find a record that comes close.
Café Del Mar has come to represent the most euphoric and hedonistic pleasures of dancefloors - in Ibiza and all around the world - and has been remixed by some of the biggest names in the industry. Now, 30 years after its original release, Superstition Records will be putting out a new series of releases, with brand new remixes as well as remastered versions of some of the many remixes from across the last three decades. The vinyl-only remastered version of the original and Three ‘N One mixes will launch the series, with further details about the rest of the series announced in the coming weeks.
In 2021 Paul Van Dyk’s Café Del Mar remixes launched a series of vinyl and digital re-issues on the Superstition Records imprint after an almost 20 years hiatus. From 1993 until 2003 Superstition Records was a groundbreaking Techno, Tech-House and Trance Label and released some of the biggest and most revered records of the early German electronic scene.
- Salgan Al Sol
- Divertido (Reventado)
- Verdes Prados
- Buen Día Señor Presidente
- El Parque
- Cada Día Somos Más
- Dueño De Tu Piel
- Voy Creciendo
VOL. 2[23,49 €]
Reissue of the classic debut of Billy Bond & La Pesada del Rock & Roll, a legendary and historic Argentinian Rock & Hard Rock masterpiece from 1971. Recorded with an absolutely impressive list of musicians that includes legends such as Pappo, Luis Alberto Spinetta, Héctor "Pomo" Lorenzo, Vitico, David Lebón or Javier Martínez, and led by acclaimed singer Billy Bond, the band creates an amazing album fed by Hard Rock, Blues, Rock'n`Roll and a nice touch of Psychedelia that absolutely justify the cult status this album carries. A monster of a record and an absolute milestone in South American rock music. An essential release for the hugely important Argentinian label Music Hall, licensed by the label and re-released in close cooperation with the iNAMU, Argentina's National Music Institute. Includes classic heavy weight hits such as "Salgan Al Sol", "El Parque" or "Divertido Reventado". Gatefold cover, includes insert with extensive notes and rare photos.
Reissue, at last!, of Vol. 2, second album by legendary Argentinian Rock outfit Billy Bond y La Pesada del Rock and Roll, a Hard Rock classic originally released in 1972. Leaning on the heavier side of their Hard Rock, Blues, Rock'n`Roll and Psychedelic influences, and keeping their playful spirit intact, the band created another masterpiece. Includes bonafide classics of their repertoire such as "La pálida ciudad", "La máquina" or "Para qué nos sirven". Their tongue in cheek adaptation of the patriotic song "Marcha de San Lorenzo" got them heavily censored by the government. An essential release for the hugely important Argentinian label Music Hall, licensed by the label and re-released in close cooperation with the iNAMU, Argentina's National Music Institute. Gatefold cover, includes insert with extensive notes and rare photos.
- Start
- Out Of Sight
- The Fountain
- These Are Things
- Manchester Cat
- Longsword
- Harum Scarum
- Bit 42
- One More Hand
- I Think I Found It
- Fireworks
- Morning Light
- Motorbike
- Close
The last time Noir embarked on a similar creative exorcism was for 2012's Jimmy's Show LP which selected choice cuts from 18 E.P. 's released via straight to fan subscription over as many months. The resulting album is one of his most lauded and beloved by fans, with the vinyl now selling for silly money on Discogs.
Programmes for Cools is Jimmy's Show's spiritual successor, idiosyncratic, other worldly and brimming with timeless melodies. Noir's influences seep through the track list, wrapped with a haunting, dreamlike delivery.
First single 'Out Of Sight' is a Fleetwood Mac meets Selected Ambient Works era Richard D James, four to the floor banger. Already a fan favourite, it propels Side A forward with a somewhat misplaced optimism, much like Neil Young's 'Walk On' starting On the Beach.
Side B is more esoteric, exemplified by 'Fireworks’which includes lyrics and vocals from Marie Claude Dequoy,produced with the wooze of golden era Boards of Canada. Elsewhere, influences as disparate as Stevie Wonder, on the wonky clav funk of 'The Fountain', and Ian Brown 'I think I found it' illustrate Noir's disregard for musical straightjackets (the latter may have the most unapologetic baggy, hypnotic groove since the Mondays' 'Halleluiah').
As the album swells to its conclusion, via the epic Led Zeppelin meets the Warhol clique 'Morning Light’and the heart tugging finale of 'Motorbike’(the first song released from the most recent run of E.P.'s), there is a sense of completion and finality...
‘This is the last Jim Noir album. There are no more Jim Noir albums after this one. This time I'm serious. It's been the hardest I've ever worked on anything. I think I have created my own Be Here Now...Sorry.’
Joking and hyperbole aside, the album has more of an Abbey Road feel, and needs to be experienced in one sitting. If the infamous Davyhulme prankster is to be believed and this is his final outing, then you could wish for a more fitting album. - NM
- A1: Frosting
- A2: New York, Paris And London
- A3: De Facto
- B1: Sirens
- B2: Jerry
- B3: Forever At Last
Forever at Last - the debut EP by Melbourne’s HighSchool - is finally back in print on vinyl. Six brilliant tracks that introduced the world to an exciting new band, it’s been out of print long enough and is being reissued ahead of their 35-date World tour. Produced by Archie Shannon (Floodlights), the band’s ingenuity shines with them effortlessly mining myriad influences. Where first singles ‘Frosting’ and ‘New York, Paris and London’ delighted with their potent mix of sun-dappled indie pop and industrial post-punk, their next two ‘De Facto’ and ‘Sirens’ pointed to the dancefloor with the band infusing DFA / New Order / Future Islands sounds while the final pair saw ‘Jerry’ taking a darker turn, playing on the band’s gothic image before closer and title track ‘Forever at Last’ pushed the synth to the fore. A perfect record.
Eco-vinyl pressing
You don’t need to be Freud to regard teeth as a delicate issue. They can make joy look joyous and pain look painful, and on the cover of the new múm album they do both at the same time. As »Yesterday Was Dramatic – Today Is Okay« (2001), »Finally We Are No One« (2002) and »Sing Along To Songs You Don’t Know« (2009) »Smilewound« is another example of the band’s art of juxtaposing two conflicting meanings and taking advantage of the energy created through the tension between both.
Sparser in sound than many of its predecessors, »Smilewound« is an airy, relaxed record. The múm-core-duo of Örvar and Gunni doesn’t make you laugh out loud (except maybe for the quirky vintage Arcade-sound-start of »When Girls Collide«), but it will make you smile often - despite the heavenly voices singing about violence in one form or another in most songs. Musically, múm’s capability to build playful electronic sound-ornaments around simple melodies is in full bloom. And these days they know that trimming the ornamentation can strengthen the melody. Take »The Colorful Stabwound«: an aguish drum’n’bass piece and »Smilewound« gets close to a straight pop-song. Even that isn’t very close, but it combines its rhythmic strength with a simple yet effective piano-line and the soothing lushness of a female voice to something compelling that follows you like the smell of a delicate eau de toilette. Or »Candlestick« which started out as a little ditty strummed on an acoustic guitar many years ago and has grown into this bouncy piece of synth-pop that changes its musical colours every couple of beats until you feel comfortably dizzy. Perfect pop in very fancy clothes. No wonder that antipodean pop-princess Kylie Minogue wanted to collaborate with múm on the »Whistle«, the main song in 2012-movie »Jack & Diane«.
Recorded in, among other places, the band’s practice-space, an old baltic farmhouse and on the kitchen-table after dinner, the album was produced by múm themselves. And being the revolving collective they are, it comes as no surprise that we see the return of former member Gyda. Defining satellites as part of the core fits nicely with the band’s penchant for ambivalence - in fact that's part of the album's charm.
A chance meeting in Mexico City set Points of Inaccessibility into motion. When Ibero-American composer Rafael Anton Irisarri crossed paths with Dutch media artist Jaco Schilp at MUTEK in 2024, a conversation about how technology shapes perception revealed an unexpected common ground. Schilp invited Irisarri to a spring 2025 residency at Uncloud, the Utrecht-based collective he co-founded, where Irisarri's sound began to take form amid an environment shaped by Schilp’s visual research.
The Uncloud studio was located inside the former Pieter Baan Centre, a forensic psychiatric prison where suspects of violent crimes were once confined. Its long history of silence and containment shaped the atmosphere in which the project developed. Within this setting, Irisarri coaxed long bowed-guitar tones through a network of pedals and looping systems. The raw gestures thickened into a vaporous and architectural field of sound. Schilp processed the material through a custom point-cloud software patch that produced images in continuous flux. The visuals flickered, dissolved and reformed like memories that resist coherence, functioning as a digital Rorschach that reflected the observer’s own perception.
Amid these spectral echoes, the project evolved into an examination of how the past persists within present signals. Memory endures as residue and interference, continually shaping perception even when its source has faded.
Schilp’s visual process required a continuous stream of sound in real time. Irisarri improvised throughout the residency, generating material that allowed the visuals to develop in parallel. Once back in his New York studio, he began shaping the recordings by carving pathways through the improvisations and mapping selected passages into MIDI. This process allowed him to build outward from the bowed-guitar material with minimal overdubs, adding Prophet 5 textures, Moog bass and strings that expanded the harmonic field while keeping the original performances at the center. To refine the structure, Abul Mogard provided editorial input, working with Irisarri’s stems to guide transitions and strengthen the overall pacing. The material, originally created under conditions of immediacy and constraint, evolved into a fully realized work through careful revision, patience and sustained reworking.
The title engages the geographic concept of the Poles of Inaccessibility, locations defined solely by their distance from all surrounding points. Irisarri adapts this idea to the conditions of digital life, where new forms of inaccessibility arise through the informational enclosures that structure perception. What appears to be a fully connected network often produces a deeper kind of separation, one shaped by the filtering logic of the systems that mediate experience. In this sense, the digital sphere mirrors its geographic counterpart. We inhabit spaces saturated with signals, yet the possibility of genuine contact becomes increasingly remote.
At its core, Points of Inaccessibility considers what can be understood as the new rituals of capitalist realism. Irisarri uses the term digital shamanism to describe the forms of simulated connection that organize contemporary life. These systems promise comfort through algorithms, influencers and AI interlocutors, yet they often reproduce the same conditions that generate loneliness in the first place. What appears as connection becomes the echo of connection, a sequence of gestures that imitate solidarity while withholding it. Like the geographic poles, these rituals are defined by distance. They pull us into environments where everything is illuminated, yet meaningful proximity becomes increasingly rare. In this sense, the work approaches a hauntology of the present, a reflection on futures that have stalled and intimacies that have been thinned by the algorithmic infrastructures that surround us.
This thematic tension unfolds across the album’s four movements. Faded Ghosts of Clouds introduces the work with textures that rise and dissipate in slow cycles, creating an atmosphere that resists clear definition. Breaking the Unison occupies a pivotal position in the sequence and focuses on the moment when the individual and the system fall out of alignment. Its shifting patterns trace the scattering of signals that once suggested connection, revealing the instability at the heart of contemporary perception. Signals from a Distant Afterglow forms the center of the album and features vocals by Karen Vogt, whose presence enters the sound field like a fragile transmission shaped by distance and delay. The closing piece, Memory Strands, follows motifs that appear, recede and briefly intersect before returning to quiet. Across these movements, the album outlines a landscape in which emergence and disappearance continually inform one another.
Listening to Points of Inaccessibility is an encounter with a sound field that is constantly in flux. Elements surface briefly, shift position and recede, creating a sense of motion that resists stable interpretation. The music moves between closeness and vastness, carrying traces of memory while withholding a clear point of resolution.
The album’s visual identity completes the project’s conceptual arc. In Mexico City, where Irisarri and Schilp first met, Daniel Castrejón transformed stills from Schilp’s point-cloud visuals into the cover image. The final artwork captures a single suspended frame of the digital material, a moment extracted from a field that is normally in constant motion. Its surface recalls the texture and abstraction found in the work of Catalan artist Antoni Tàpies, where material presence and erasure coexist within the same plane.
What emerges is a work that examines the tension between technological systems and human presence. Points of Inaccessibility asks whether connection is still possible within environments shaped by mediation and delay, or whether we have become isolated points within the very networks that promise proximity. What possibilities for relation persist within environments organized by algorithms and interruption? And how are we meant to understand presence when so much of it is constructed at a distance?
Points of Inaccessibility will be released on BioVinyl on February 6, 2026, with audiovisual performances planned throughout 2026.
Mastered by Stephan Mathieu
Artwork by Jaco Schilp
Design and layout by Daniel Castrejón
Artist photo by Iulia Alexandra Magheru.
Repress!
4 To The Floor is committed to delivering seminal house music to wax, making sought after heritage tracks readily available on vinyl for crate diggers to add to their collections. The fourth edition of the series pays homage to one of the most loved names in house music – Sandy Rivera. Known for his soulful dancefloor cuts he has produced timeless classics, with his long-lasting career and multitude of aliases captured by this 12” release. Opening the A-side is the Moodymann Edit of Kings of Tomorrow’s ‘Fall For You’, featuring the stunning vocals of long-time collaborator April Morgan, followed by Sandy’s grooving ‘Come Into My Room’ which features LT Brown. On the flip is Soul Vision’s ‘Don’t Stop’ with its atmospheric strings and gospel vocal. The release is closed with Kings Of Tomorrow featuring Elzi Hall ‘Show Me’, an atmospheric club cut that shows the versatility of this house legend.
KIK is the new project of two core strategists of sonic enigma HHY & The Macumbas: Jonathan Uliel Saldanha & João Pais Filipe. Ditching acoustic instruments in favour of drum synthetics & tightly controlled sound design, the duo's debut album NIGHTSHIFT focuses on off-kilter club tracks that thwart 4-on-the-floor flavours whilst maintaining trance-inducing extended cycles. If the devil is in the details, this is all about the spectromophology of the details.
Beginning with moving morse code blips in an odd time signature We Can't Dance announces the characteristic unlife of the album's pulse. Once the kick enters, syncopations progressively accumulate into a weave of interacting rhythmic lines. Smoke Machine's groove is reminiscent of the riddims Saldanha explores in his HHY & The Kampala Unit, adding scintillating pads and snippets of blitzed out laughter.
The album's third track, Proff, hearkens back to the initial pulse, displaced and pitched down in register. Here's a more meditative temperament on display, where the regular geometries of the club have been moved into higher-order structures. Segments rise & fall into earshot. Deepening the meditative mood, Back Room explores a short melodic leitmotif anchoring the track's wander- lust.
The rhythmic assault continues in Tactical Gear, bringing further experiments into polyrhythmic contours exacerbated by preci- sion movements of echo & delay. Limping can be heard as a what-if sonic fiction taking Autechre-inspired abstractions through Durbanoid Gqom terrains. The album closes with its longest track, Night Shift, that segments into shifting sound worlds.
Drawing from industrial grit, cybernetic percussion and the eerie fluorescence of after-hours energy, NIGHTSHIFT exists in the liminal space between body music and abstraction——a soundtrack for phantom warehouses and malfunctioning machines. This isn’t just music; it’s an immersive sonic environment, a journey into the heart of deconstructed dancefloors.
For fans of Rian Treanor, Proc Fiskal, Jlin and Lorenzo Senni.
Most recently, HHY has been collaborating with Nyege Nyege through projects such as Kampala Unit and Arsenal Mikebe, performing live with the ensemble alongside Valentina Magaletti, and producing records for artists like Fulu Miziki, as well as collaborations with Phelimucasi, Rey Sapiens, Kingdom Choir and others. He also released Camouflage Vector: Edits From Live Actions 2017–2019 on the label, a live album featuring two tracks with Adrian Sherwood.
Previous collaborations include Tunnel Vision with Badawi (released on Tzadik), the HHY & The Macumbas album Beheaded Totem on House of Mythology, and Fujako (Wordsound, with MC Sensational), along with double-bill shows with acts such as Clipping and Death Grips.
- We Need Each Other
- Recognize A Friend
- Cigarettes Inside
- Out For Blood
- Particular Poison
- Delmar Avenue
- Drinkin' In The Land Of Lincoln
- My Song On The Radio
- Pay For Being Free
- The Walls Are Closing In
- Evening Prayer
Turner Cody first collaborated with Nicolas Michaux and the Soldiers of Love (Clément Nourry, Ted Clark, and Morgan Vigilante) on his album Friends in High Places (2021). This album marked a turning point for Turner Cody, in which he started to incorporate country influences to his songwriting. But that was only the beginning, and Out For Blood is without question a country album. This new album offers the perfect canvas for him to express his poetic lyricism, and to paint portraits inspired by American mythologies. The songs explore such themes as freedom, individualism, destiny, sin and redemption. Rooted in traditional narratives yet resonating with our times, these songs are to be seen as parables: imaginary characters faced with the dichotomy of good and evil. In the vein of Kris Kristofferson, Townes Van Zandt, or John Prine, Out For Blood stands as a major contribution to the great repertoire of American song. ut For Blood bears witness to a transformation in Turner Cody"s life. While his songwriting already hinted at a certain Americana, it primarily reflected his twenty years spent in New York and the legacy of the anti-folk scene-closer to the Velvet Underground than to Hank Williams. Then came the move: Cody and his family left New York to settle in St. Louis, on the banks of the Mississippi. This change of scenery and perspective fueleda new way of writing. The challenge was clear: maintaining the subtlety and textural work characteristic of his previous works while integrating the country heritage of the new songs. The collaboration between Turner Cody and Nicolas Michaux signs the perfect communion between an artist who writes in the language of poetry and another who crafts sound and textures. The Soldiers of Love, far more than a backing band, have influences ranging from jazz to fusion, from pop to Congolese rhythms. Their subtle, atmospheric sound merges with Turner Cody"s "three chords and the truth" to create this unique magic!
- 1: The Gallopers
- 2: Dr Love
- 3: Tears For Leda
- 4: The Back Of Your Bike
- 5: The Tears Of Cora Pearl
- 6: The Rose Tattoo
- 7: Don't Come Crying To Me
- 8: Witch Hazel
- 9: Old Flame
- 10: Carmilla
- 11: The Bride Wore Black
- 12: Madame X
- 13: Away With The Fairies
- 14: The Moon Doesn't Mind
Tears Before Bedtime is the sparkling new album by the Would-be-goods, Jessica Griffin’s band of pop adventurers. Since The Camera Loves Me, their cult classic 1988 debut for the legendary él Records, they have blazed a musical trail through indie guitar pop, with a garage band edge and forays into other territories - glam rock, tango, French chanson… The result is unique and timeless.
The songs on Tears Before Bedtime balance delicacy and power. Perfect pop melodies are delivered in Jessica’s gorgeous and idiosyncratic voice. Her lyrics are intelligent and wry, wistful and witty. Every song tells a story, taking us on a journey through space and time, from belle époque Paris to a 1960s London biker café, from a riverbank in ancient Greece to a 1970s teenage bedroom.
Listening to a Would-be-goods album is like wandering through a gallery of portraits. Innocence gives way to experience. Danger lurks amid the lights of the funfair in the 1950s carousel whirl of The Gallopers. The sinister Dr Love promises heaven but sends you down to hell, to the sound of a last dance in a smoky soul basement. A nymph meets a god in disguise in a garage-band take on a Greek myth (Tears for Leda). The Rose Tattoo is the tale of a doomed love in a sultry Southern state. Don't Come Crying To Me flames an ex-lover to the sound of Bollywood horns and shivery guitar. In Madame X a portrait painter vents his fury on a spoilt socialite beauty. The album closes with a sweetly jazzy lullaby (The Moon Doesn't Mind).
The Would-be-goods began playing as a full band in the 2000s and have been previewing some of these songs at recent shows in England, Scotland, France, and Spain. The album was recorded in London with Jessica on guitar and vocals, Peter Momtchiloff (Heavenly, Talulah Gosh) on guitar, Debbie Greensmith (Thee Headcoatees and many others) on drums, and Andy Warren (The Monochrome Set, Adam and the Ants) on bass. Guest musicians have contributed organ, piano, vibraphone, cello, trumpet, and flute to make this the richest-sounding Would-be-goods record yet.




















