quête:dif

With his new instrumental album Ventas Rumba, the French composer (and singer) returns to his signature instrument, the piano, blending it with warm synth tones. This album represents a "return to his roots ", allowing Ezéchiel Pailhès to reinvent himself in a seamless way while still exploring ballads and ritornellos, halfway between light-heartedness and melancholy. Ezéchiel Pailhès has been meaning to write a solo piano album for as long as he can remember. Hardly surprising, of course, for this academically-trained pianist, brought up on classical music and then studied jazz. Yet, since his 2001 debut with the electro-pop duo Nôze, and his subsequent four albums, the artist had constantly postponed this project that was so close to his heart. Then in 2022, just as he was getting ready to start producing an album of new songs, this long-standing aim finally materialized.
The melodies he wrote seemed to stand on their own naturally, spurring him on to compose this series of fourteen tracks, recorded in sessions split between France and Latvia.
A new piano: the Una Corda
Ezéchiel wanted this project dedicated to the piano to begin a new narrative, to explore new instrumental terrain and new tones, something far removed from the familiar piano he has been playing all his life. He opted for the Una Corda piano, designed by David Klavins, a groundbreaking instrument builder renowned for his distinctive pianos with vertical shapes and frames.

The Una Corda, created in 2014, is an upright piano with a single string per note (unlike three strings on traditional pianos). Enticed by the "crystalline and unique" tones of this instrument, which is hard to find in France, Ezéchiel travelled to Kuldiga, Latvia (where David Klavins set up his workshops and studios), to record the first part of the album. Although the title of the album may initially conjure up images of a distant, sensual dance, the reality is quite different. Ventas Rumba indeed refers to the waterfall and rapids (in Latvian: rumba) of the river Ventas, which runs near this small village in the western part of the country. Ezéchiel chose to blur the lines, as the sound and musicality of the title likely evoke both his short stay in the Baltic country, and also a form of distant exotic imagery perfectly in tune with his own mischievous wit. Tracks as short stories

Back in France, Ezéchiel enhanced the first tracks recorded in Kuldiga with subtle synth tone layers, and added other tracks composed and recorded at his Montreuil studio. The album reflects a deliberate and sensitive orchestration of piano, synth keyboards and digital effects, as he puts it: "playing to erase the differences between the tones of the various instruments", as if each instrument's texture echoed the others. According to Ezéchiel, you can listen to Ventas Rumba as you would leaf through "a collection of short stories", through compositions that rarely exceed three minutes and evoke figures of movement, lightness, curves or modulation, such as "La ligne", "La valse des singes" or "Fly Finger". Others more seriously relate to a kind of spirituality, which quietly infuses such different tracks as "Ferveur", "Éclair" and "Louanges". Ezéchiel adds: “I’m by no means religious, but I like what God has managed to get musicians to achieve (laughs)". "Louanges", for instance, despite its electronic edge, "refers to Olivier Messiaen, a very devout composer who I greatly admire". Other tracks are directly inspired by the classical music he listens to on a daily basis. For example, Chopin's “8th Nocturne” formed the backdrop of “Pianovado”. Likewise, the harmonic structure of Beethoven's “Waldstein Sonata No. 21” inspired “Opus 53”. Aside from these multiple references and inspirations, which quickly recede behind a style that is uniquely his, Ezéchiel Pailhès keeps exploring ideas already found on his first solo albums, this time in an instrumental format, undoubtedly purer, fostering an imaginary world that evokes the shapes and themes of ballads, ritornellos, light-heartedness, passing time, reverie or a universal subdued melancholy.

For more than twenty years, Ka Baird has explored the outer dimensions of sound through performance. Extending far beyond their roots in the psychedelic folk movement of the early aughts, Ka is known for their raw, boundary pushing solo performances that bridge experimental sound, performance art, and ritual. Their tool set in the live arena includes extended voice and microphone techniques, electronics, flute and piano. Bearings follows their 2017 debut Sapropelic Pycnic and Respires, their acclaimed 2019 album.

Initially conceived as a twenty minute composition and presentation commissioned by Lampo in Chicago in the spring of 2022, Ka first explored the concept of “bearings” through a series of intimate performances where they shifted guises between magician, shaman, clown, and athlete, all enduring ongoing states of groundlessness through a physically demanding performance that entailed both play and struggle. This piece, in tandem with the heaviness of caring for a dying parent during the subsequent year, laid the groundwork for Bearings, with the album’s final narrative structure revealing itself in the months after their mother’s death the following September.

Enlisting a cast of contributors including Andrew Bernstein (alto saxophone), Max Eilbacher (flute processing, electronics), Greg Fox (percussion), gabby fluke-mogul (violin), Henry Fraser (contrabass), Joanna Mattrey (viola), John McCowen (contra clarinet), Camilla Padgitt-Coles (bowls, waterphone) Troy Schafer (strings), Chris Williams (trumpet), Nate Wooley (trumpet), and their beloved cat, Nisa (purrs) to create a collective hum and thrum, Ka and company create sprawling minimalist densities, punctuated by abrupt starts and stops, complex harmonics and textures, percussive flourishes, and a single, cyclical lyrical phrase: “Here. Disappear. Poof!”

Ka considers the album to be a deviant nod to a song cycle, throughout which certain motifs are repeated in different configurations. In the album’s sonic lexicon, a trumpet blast signifies a birth or death, or a distant string motif denotes a memory. Bearings is a durational work of profound abstraction and focus, within which sonorous elements, structure, and meaning reach a single, unified form. This amounts to nothing short of a creative high-water mark for one of the most dynamic and uncompromising artists working in the landscape of music today.

7A Records are proud to present Davy Jones’ “Incredible!”. A deluxe reissue of Jones' “lost” ‘80s album, remastered and expanded with bonus tracks. The limited edition gatefold Vinyl release is limited to 1,000 copies. Pressed on 180g transparent blue vinyl, it features extensive liner notes from Monkees historian Mark Kleiner and rare and previously unseen pictures by photographer Henry Diltz.

Fuelled by MTV’s re-runs of the original Monkees TV series, “Incredible!” was recorded at the height of mid-‘80s Monkees comeback-euphoria. Given the flurry of activity happening on multiple fronts for the Monkees throughout 1986, especially the grueling demands of their touring schedule, the fact that Davy Jones managed to record a full album amid the chaos is somewhat staggering. “Incredible!” features several songs that could well have reached the Billboard charts, had things played out differently. However, Jones decided to hang on to the album and it ended up being self-released on cassette on his own mail order label. The minimalistic promotion and treatment of the original release belie the considerable studio and artist firepower behind these recordings. This deluxe repackaging allows this chapter in Jones’ fascinating journey to finally more fulsomely shine.

• Remastered With 6 Bonus Tracks
• Rare & Previously Unseen Photos
• Extensive Liner Notes
• Limited to 1,000 copies

Bewilderment - the feeling of being perplexed and confused - is the inspiration behind Pale Jay's new album. It's a soulful exploration of a family's gradual disintegration due to years of avoidance and miscommunication. During this difficult time, Pale Jay began to question the stories he had always lived with and re-examined his identity. The resulting work, Bewilderment, is his first full-length album, which strives to find answers to these questions and more. The album is set to release on 8/18/2023 on Karma Chief Records, a subsidiary of Colemine.Pale Jay is a trained jazz vocalist and pianist, and he wrote, recorded, and produced all songs on the album, except for 'By The Lake', which is a collaboration with labelmates Okonski - Steve Okonski, Aaron Frazer, and Michael Montgomery. Pale Jay's music is influenced by a wide range of songwriters, including Labi Siffre, Carole King, and William Onyeabor. 'Bewilderment' is a seamless blend of Pale Jay's trademark dusty soul, slow disco, and Afrobeat, with string arrangements by Raven Bush adding an extra layer of magic to the beat- heavy productions.Pale Jay's debut LP is a captivating journey of self-discovery. Each song on Bewilderment tells a unique story, but they all share a common theme of personal growth and self-understanding. Grab a copy on 8/18/2023 to dive in and experience the new album.

Wisdom Teeth co-founder K-Lone is dropping two EPs on Aus Music: the first instalment nods to UKG and house flavours, landing mid-May, while the second offers a deeper, broken techno vibe, arriving in late June. 'Give It Up' opens Part 1 with a bubbly rhythm and bassline that percolates through the woody, organic percussion. Lush pads and neon lines swirl skyward to silky and seductive effect as various other samples and daubs of colour bring the groove to life. The heady 'Wait 4 U' is a textbook K-Lone house cut with low swinging bass, sultry sax stabs and molten R&B samples that get the juices going next to warm, diffused synth lines.

On the flip, 'What I Want' ups the pace but keeps it deep and smooth with rubbery kicks and gooey bass overlaid with soft-edged chord stabs that will pump the floor. Lastly, 'Own Way' closes down with a tumbling bassline that takes you deeper as muted vocal sounds and glowing chords hook you into an infectious groove suited to the most intimate dancefloors.

UK trailblazer K-Lone heads up the label Wisdom Teeth with fellow producer Facta and has released everything from club-primed garage to innovative home listening records. Whether cooking up kinetic beats and bouncy bass or soundtracking a lazy summer's afternoon with synthesised bird calls and lush marimbas, the London-bred artist is a proven studio wizard. Critical acclaim has come for both his ‘Swells’ and ‘Cape Cira’ albums, and now his ‘Catching Wild’ EPs for Aus Music offer yet another portal into the colourful world of his idiosyncratic, signature sound.

Das MEANWHILE PROJECT LTD ist zurück - Knappe vier Jahre nach MARSEILLE erscheint ein neuer Longplayer des Kölner Projekts. Das Duo um MARCELL BIRRECK und MARCUSADAM ist mittlerweile zur fünfköpfigen Band angewachsen, die das neue Album mit der Unterstützung weiterer Gastmusiker gewohnt opulent und vielschichtig präsentiert. SIR MANDRILL wartet erneut mit einer üppigen Palette unterschiedlicher Stilrichtungen, die sich dabei gekonnt miteinander vermischen. So verschmelzen auch hier wieder Chansons, Folk, PostPop, Indie-Rock, Alternative, Ambient und noch viel mehr zu einem großen Ganzen, das in seiner Gesamtheit absolut stimmig wirkt. Einflüsse von so unterschiedlichen Bands wie dEUS, Motorpsycho, den Villagers oder Calexico blitzen hier und da auf. Und die beeindruckende Stimme von Sänger MARCELL hüllt alles abwechselnd in einen warmen Mantel, ermahnt, fleht, rüttelt auf und beruhigt von einem zum nächsten Moment. Damit ist der Band ein großartiges Album gelungen, das dazu einlädt, sich auf eine intensive musikalische Reise zu begeben und mit jedem Hören neu einzutauchen.

GRUPO ÉBANO (Pr. "Grupo EH-ba-no") In the time-honored spirit of excavating gold from the unlikeliest dark corners, we bring you the shiniest of gems which is guaranteed to thrill lovers of classic Brazilian bossa and MPB. This self-titled album by Rio's Grupo Ébano, an all-female gospel vocal group, was originally released on CD only in 1997 on a small independent label and in small quantities. The songs, all originals from the pen of group leader (and backing vocalist to the stars) Gil Miranda, are richly melodic and sophisticated in the mode of all the 60s and 70s Brazilian classics (think Quarteto Em Cy) while their positive spiritual message is more reminiscent of the Clark Sisters if they sang in Portuguese. This first-time reissue, first-time vinyl & digital edition and debut international release will bring many new fresh ears to this lovely and very classy album which will appeal to different generations of Brazilian music lovers, from tastemaking DJs to their parents to even their grandparents.

Re-issue coming soon! Gatefold w/ printed sleeves and etching on Side D + download card.
Hiss Spun is Chelsea Wolfe’s sixth album. Recorded by Kurt Ballou (Converge).
“When musicians have this intensity in them, they often get to it sooner and stay put. Ms.
Wolfe sounds like she’s using it by choice, not disposition; she can use different kinds of
darkness as colour or tincture." - NY Times
“The reigning dark priestess of goth-scarred art rock.” Rolling Stone

All different alternate versions of songs featured on 1973’s Tanx album. • Many appear on vinyl for the first time. • Limited edition of 400 copies on Pink Vinyl with printed inner bags. All royalties go to Light of Love Foundation for the Marc Bolan School of Music & Film

Audionaut sound adventurer Neil Stringfellow (aka Audio Obscura) makes a welcome return to Subexotic with his many-splendoured mixed media project Acid Field Recordings In Dub. Following years of avid field recording, Neil explains how it came about through a series of epiphanies: "It sort of started after I did a field recording introduction weekend workshop with the legend that is Chris Watson (the BBC wildlife team and ex-Cabaret Voltaire), just in terms of it being very inspirational and meeting like minded people. I've been sound recording for about 12 years now and have a good archive of sounds, and simply enjoy just listening and capturing the world. Since then over the years I've learned to really listen to the everyday soundscapes and as such I no longer walk down the street listening to a personal stereo anymore, the world can often be more exciting than music. A few memories of listening stick out which really helped form this album. I was walking up a hill in Norwich and a street cleaner was coming down pushing his cart, the broom attached to the cart but one end was bouncing up and down in the exact way a snare drum in a Dub reggae record might sound with the dub echo effect.. for a few seconds it was amazing and I stopped and stood still and just savoured the moment but of course did not have a microphone with me. Another time recording the dawn chorus in Lowestoft the chirping birds sounded intense coming from different trees and walking between the trees seemed to make the classic 303 acid squelch sound. part of this is in the middle section of the Babyloniacid track. Another time I was recording in a forest after a storm sitting under thick trees trying to keep the mics dry and the wind blowing the tops of the trees was like a swooshing synth line. I always liked the moments when the soundscapes felt like music and over time had a desire to marry music and field sounds together. Things really came together though when in summer 2022 I had a minor operation and was resting in bed after the operation, high on painkillers feeling quite spaced out. It was in the middle of a heat wave and the nurses had opened the ward windows, it was evening and I could see pink clouds but the sunset was out of view. I'd been listening to the Eno / Harmonia album and after that ended, I put on some Burial. I just lay there watching the clouds and the title Acid Field Recordings In Dub just came into my head... I could hear how the concept should be: made with field recordings, manipulating them and creating ambient soundscapes... dubby beats fractured in places and snatches of the acid 303. This is more or less what I wrote down that day and a few weeks later I started to create it... the process came easy and at first, I thought I'd need to spend some time making new extra field recordings but, to be honest, I has such an archive I pulled most of the sounds from that." Music, electronics & field recording by Neil Stringfellow. Design & mastering by Dan Seville. Test siren on 'Through Nuclear Skies' recorded by Marc Weidenbaum. Melodica on 'Hollowlands' played by Simon McCorry

NAKID presents the first album in years from Max Loderbauer (Sun Electric) and Tobias Freund’s cult Non Standard Institute. Delving deep into the aether with a double LP - almost an hour and a half in length - featuring ruined, vaporous and engrossing ambient variations on a theme.

Planing axes between iridescent new age ambient, sublime folk and avant-classical, to miasmic drone and plangent shoegaze; ‘A Day or Two’ charts the Non Standard Institute’s first actions in 6 years and serves as a compelling reminder of their intuitive work in abundance. Expanding and contracting their sound across 18 parts, they arc from heaving, oddly-tuned drones to smoggy, surreal soundscapes, bringing a wealth of fine-tuned instincts to the table. With Max Loderbauer’s 35+ years as Berlin ambient pioneer with Sun Electric, jams with Villalobos, and roles in Vladislav Delay Quintet and the Moritz von Oswald Trio, he’s matched by Freund’s 40 years of deep engineering expertise embedded in the experimental industrial and techno trenches.

The melancholy, Satie-laced piano meditations that grounded 2018's '5863' are gone, and the human touch that's been present since their very first collaborations is placed under the microscope, enhanced by their use of the Haken Continuum Fingerboard, a gestural synth that was developed to open up new modes of playing. Loderbauer's experience with the piano helps him make the most of the instrument's touch-sensitive 3D surface, while Freund uses two multi-channel loopers, piping the sounds through his arsenal of pedals.

The 18 tracks are billed as "unplanned atmospheres" that arc from sombre, drone-heavy material to humid, tape-saturated imaginary-island jams such as 'Listening To Cells' and 'Are You One Of Them'. On the latter, the duo work patiently, letting dusted string plucks tumble across each other while warbling pads hum below, bending like flutes. On 'Unlikely Events', anxious didgeridoo-like wails are ruptured by environmental rattles, before ominous voices lead us into a pocket of industrialised resonance. In time, the skies open up and the sounds morph into pastoral song, the drone blurring into hopeful pads almost as lucid and eloquent as AFX's 'SAW Vol. II', with sonorous synths that float over formless strings. Reflective, cinematic arrangements for flute and silvery ambient give way to diffusions of denser, resonant polychromatics and pucker up in outernational, alien ambient impulses recalling Connor Camburn jamming with dirashe folk pipes.

By now one of our most cherished and respected portuguese songwriters, Maria Reis has been steadily creating a legacy that will undoubtedly endure in the portuguese songwriting canon for years to come. Co-founder of the Lisbon based Cafetra label- collective, Reis spent her teenage years honing her craft, particularly with her co- leading role on Pega Monstro with her sister Júlia Reis, with albums like 'Alfarroba' and 'Casa de Cima' on Upset !the Rhythm and whose indefinite hiatus since 2018 opened the gateway for a prolific solo venture. After a raw debut EP released in 2017 – Maria -, 2019 saw the release of the celebrated 'Chove na Sala, Água nos Olhos', a definitive statement of Reis' almost casual gift of painting vivid and impressionistic portraits of everyday life, conveying all the anger, resignation and melancholic joy of moving on. Two years later, following a string of widely praised live appearances, Reis records the 'Flor da Urtiga' EP with musical production of Noah Lennox aka Panda Bear, a sweeter affair, crossed by a witty irony that tackles such subjects as family, love and toxic masculinity, through layered acoustic guitars, lightweight percussion and joyful harmonies. 'Benefício da Dúvida' from 2022, strips back most of the production to rely on simple but affirmative arrangements assembled with the help of her sister Júlia and longtime collaborator Leonardo Bindilatti.

And now, almost two years on the clock after 'Benefício da Dúvida', Maria Reis returns with a newfound maturity with 'Suspiro...' - Portuguese for sigh. Created in close collaboration with Tomé Silva - a young and versatile musician and producer who's been recently leaving a mark on the portuguese scene - and recorded in the intimacy of the latter's bedroom, 'Suspiro...' doesn't cut ties with that recent past but reflects the learning process embedded in previous ventures in its lyrics and arrangements, towards song's eternity. A projection of different emotional states and physical spaces throughout these years, 'Suspiro...' carries in the apparent simplicity of its title the plurality of meanings found in such a natural act, from anger to being in love, from resignation to resilience. Life in a sigh? We've been further from that.

An attentive and sensitive observer of both intimate and surrounding spaces, Maria Reis continues to explore wordplay in her very personal manner, a poetic act as brutally honest as filled with imagery allusions, enchanting the mundane with lyricism. Touched by a resigned and dreamy melancholy, 'Suspiro...' settles, for the most part, on electric and acoustic guitar lines, simple but expressive rhythms, floating vocal harmonies and a voice almost tangible in the way it conveys memorable hooks without fear of appearing both fragile and tenacious. 'Amor Serpente's low key tragedy turned mantra for life, the blissed pop of 'Estagnação' or 'T-shirt', 'Holofote's flailing rawness, the mesmerizing sparkle of 'Pico', 'Meta Data's electrified energy or the playful keyboards and sound effects of 'Coisas do Passado' composing a lively portrait of reality and expectations where we can all see ourselves reflected in. For Maria, almost a second nature, that through all her honesty, know how and imagination, reaches a new life with 'Suspiro...'.

Theo Parrish has green-lit a couple of back catalogue reissues from his Sound Signature label this month and this one originally came back in 2010 and found him on production duties and Bilal Love on the vocals. The Melloghettomental EP is an archetype Parrish offering - dusty, lo-fi beatdown and house fusions with muted but meaningful chords and aching vocal hooks. You get all that on blissed-out opener 'Can't Keep Running Away', superbly soulful live bass work on 'U Bring Me Up' and heavier, more griding grooves but still sublime vocals on 'Why Wait'. The title cut is an off-grid mix of sci-fi melodies and diffuse chords, shimmering drums and low slub bass. Sublime.

Recording technology was completely revolutionized in the 80s by the multitrack recorder, with the popularity of 24-channel SSL consoles sweeping the world. Japanese pop music created during this wave of digital improvement is now recognized worldwide as ""City Pop."" Techno Pop was another offshoot born of the same revolution. Precise, computer-controlled beats produced by groups like Yellow Magic Orchestra (YMO) introduced a different type of sound to the masses. By now, these works have been brought into the international limelight and continue to be a major influence on today's music.

At the center of Tokyo’s Techno Pop scene was ALFA/YEN Records. The label left behind an impressive body of work, but much of it wasn't made widely available... until now! This new, definitive compilation focuses on the music archives of the YEN Records catalog, available for the first time exclusively at Light in the Attic. This is a true celebration of Japan's Techno Pop scene of the 80s, reissued with the intent that future generations, internationally, will be able to discover, enjoy, and appreciate ALFA/YEN and its significant contributions to the sonic landscape of the 80s and beyond.

Bruno Berle, the young songwriter and poet originally hailing from Maceió, the capital of Brazil’s Alagoas state, crafts songs that are simple, direct, and full of tender nuance. With his first album No Reino Dos Afetos (which translates to "In the Realm of Affections” and was released in 2022), Berle firmly established himself as a unique and important voice in the burgeoning scene of new Brazilian artists making a global impact, including peers like Ana Frango Elétrico, Tim Bernardes, Bala Desejo, Sessa and more. Now back with his second album, No Reino Dos Afetos 2, he stretches that further.

Bruno Berle’s music lives between two worlds – a traditional Brazilian folk talent steeped in history, and a contemporary, dreamy electronic pop; the result is songwriting that’s genre-bending, intentional, iconoclastic and consuming, spacious and sinewy and singular, a striking reflection of its composer while leaving space for the listener to settle in. The album follows Bruno’s relocation to São Paulo, and the songs are a reflection of his past and present. A rebuke of former categorizations of his work in Brazilian music scenes, and an idea of where his music can move, unfettered.

Berle’s music is purposeful in being a true portrait of himself, and a reflection of the music, art, and fashion scenes he personally moves through. Berle aims to provide an entrypoint for Black queer joy in his music, in his storytelling, in his presence and vision as a creative. For him, it feels subversive to be playing MPB laced with dubstep and lo-fi, a sort of intentional sacrilege, capturing a dialogue of modernity in traditional music.

Berle wrote most of the arrangements and co-produced his new album, Reino Dos Afetos 2 with longtime friend and musical partner Batata Boy, who is also from Maceió; the album was recorded in Rio de Janeiro, Maceió, and São Paulo, his new home, and picks up the conversation begun in 2022 on Berle’s debut album No Reino dos Afetos. Both records are the result of a nonlinear but coherent seven-year music creation process culminating in these albums, holding hands across space and time.

“Tirolirole,” the first single from the record, was released at the end of 2023; sun-soaked rhythms and soft voice coat the song, the lilting refrain of “Tirolirole” throughout – hushed, gentle, but somehow almost tactile, a golden-hour moment unlocked in the mind. “Tirolirole” is a triumphant future classic about the temporality of a blossoming love, with Bruno’s stunning vocal soaring over melodies which ebb and flow like the waters on the Atlantic shore. Of the track, Berle explains: “Despite ‘Tirolirole’ being an expression that evokes my childhood, just like the light words about nature, the harmony, and the poetry are epic, carrying a great hope for love.”

In fact, the guiding theme of No Reino dos Afetos 2 is a relationship, unfolding in the arc of a weekend. It traverses the innocence of an early young love, how that can be formative, can stretch on to take new shapes, or shape you. The album happens at the genesis of meeting someone and falling for them, before the relationship is thrown into overdrive – set in a big city, against a backdrop of major life changes, rising energy, the sound of São Paulo.

Something transcendental emerges in “Dizer Adeus,” with an arrangement that echoes a gospel atmosphere (evangelical and Catholic environments were pivotal to Berle’s upbringing). On “É Só Você Chegar,” piano and flute gracefully intertwine, a dance, while “Quando Penso” skews sparser, the voice-and-guitar minimalism somehow cultivating an entirely different shape – somehow both cozy and melancholy, with the background sound of a rainy day. Coupled with the lo-fi aspects that shape much of the album’s personality in the vocals and the production, No Reino Dos Afetos 2 is meticulously elaborated by Berle’s sonic alchemy, like on the mid-album instrumental “Sonho,” which feels like floating. “It’s the apex. It’s when lovers are sleeping together,” Berle explains of the feeling he wanted to encapsulate in the song.

On “Love Comes Back” Berle interprets Arthur Russell, the late Iowa musician who only reached greater visibility after he died in 1992. “His way of making music is similar to mine,” Berle explains. “He sings in a more fragile way, has more of an experimental way of recording, letting ‘chance’ appear in the final work.”

Even so, Berle doesn’t want his music to be buried in sentimentality – and the purposefulness of his craft serves as a sort of north star. The production, the arrangements, his restraint and intentionality in crafting his songs feel just as vital as their emotional cores. His songwriting is amorphous, fluid, an encompassing genre-bending movement in-and-of-itself, quietly daring. The songs are often in conversation with other works – drinking in fountains as diverse as the filmmaking of Ingmar Bergman, the poetry of Walt Whitman, the rhythm of Djavan, and the painting of Maxwell Alexandre. Musically he weaves together a rich tapestry of Brazilian folk, UK 2-step garage/dub, trip hop and sun soaked west coast songwriters; something akin to the worlds of Milton Nascimento, Arthur Russell, James Blake, Feist, and Sade colliding into one. But even then No Reino Dos Afetos 2 floats separately, a romanticism driven by a simplicity and intimacy, an open-ended possibility, Berle’s singularity as an artist at the helm of the ship.

This collaboration is full of synchronicities that go all the way back to 2020, when The Galaxy Electric (Jacqueline Caruso & Augustus Green) started conjuring the melodies and arrangements for this project - without knowing what it would be for. Their obsession with Retro Sci-Fi films & TV shows was thoroughly indulged during the COVID lockdown: "It was our “escape” out of reality. Shows like The X-Files, Dr. Who, and movies like Forbidden Planet and Clockwork Orange were our strange bedfellows guiding us to create music like we’d never made before." The result was a mix of electronica, psych pop and retro-futurism blending together to form music fit for the Korova Milkbar. As they emerged from this cocoon of sci-fi isolation, Jacqueline & Augustus began reaching out, connecting online with other obsessives: "Through our shared love of BBC Radiophonic Workshop Sound FX Records, we connected instantly and deeply with Drew Mulholland. Across time zones and land masses, our connection sparked creative collaboration like we’ve never known, and this new project was re-born. We knew in an instant that those forgotten ideas were meant for this moment. And thus began the files flying back and forth - until the synchronicities became fully manifest into what is now Muzak for the Korova Milkbar..Drew may tell it differently, but the sense of nostalgia, deja vu & mystical connection remains the same. A project we could have never set out to produce on our own, and that was always meant to be created with Drew. A dream fulfilled."

Solo Throat is the first solo LP from vocalist, composer and movement artist Elaine Mitchener. Drawing on the work of African-American and African-Caribbean poets Edward Kamau Brathwaite, Aimé Césaire, Una Marson and N. H. Pritchard, these twelve new vocal compositions disrupt semantic sense, play with the margins of lyrical translation, and give rise to new voicings. Elaine Mitchener is a veteran of vocal expression in the global Black Avant Garde, traversing free improvisation, cross-disciplinary music theatre and contemporary composition with clarity and joy. Most recently, Mitchener has been improvising and composing with the written word as source material - challenging classical ensembles with her piece (“the/e so/ou/nd be/t/ween”), and commissioning composers Matana Roberts, Jason Yarde and George Lewis to respond to the work of Sylvia Wynter (“On Being Human as Praxis”, Donaueschinger Musiktage, 2020). Her performance of Umbra poet N.H Pritchard’s text FR/OG at OTO in 2021 was a revelation - a solo vocal recasting of the powerful visual-material form that Pritchard uses to disrupt semantic ‘sense’. Building on this performance, Solo Throat takes the work of Pritchard alongside poets Edward Kamau Brathwaite, Aimé Césaire and Una Marson as its source material. Its compositions are a loose translation - a carrying from text to voice which holds multiplicity and celebrates the transformative power of literary possibility. Surrendered to the spacing and repetition of consonants and vowels, Michener’s exceptional phonetic freedom gives rise to a sensuous experience which intensifies the roles of rhythm, timbre and breath in expressing meaning. Solo Throat comes together as much through difference as similarity. Mitchener’s own solo improvisations sit alongside the work of Brathwaite, Césaire, Marson and Pritchard, forming a constellation of unlikely alignments which make no aesthetic conclusion. Instead, Solo Throat is a site of encounter, an irreducibly plural de-composition of words into a heterogeneous assemblage of sounds and impulses, emphasising what Anthony Reed calls, “the play on and the surplus of margins of lyrical translation to resituate other pathways of expression”. Just as the poets cited use white space to complicate our act of reading, so Mitchener utilises silence and multiphonics to complicate the act of voicing and the way we listen. Genre: Experimental / Vocal / Poetry

Ultimately about self trust, Nicholson uses brooding chamber- pop and synthladen alt-pop to navigate many of the different relationships we have in our lives: friends, family, relationships with ourselves and, more personally, her changing relationship with music.

Self-produced by Nicholson at Blank Studios in Newcastle, the recording process was complemented by mix engineer Oli Deakin (CMAT, Benjamin Francis Leftwich, Elanor Moss) and mastering engineer Katie Tavini (Arlo Parks, Nadine Shah, Sega Bodega).

The resultant album takes the listener on intimate journeys of minimalism and melancholy through to blooming, euphoric ends, with Nicholson's signature rich harmonies and ethereal, reed- like vocals remaining a compelling constant. Exploring themes of escapism, nostalgia and self-reflection, Nicholson leans on musical influences including Daughter, Matt Corby, The National, Warpaint, Lucy Rose and Laura Marling. There are also nods to her prog-rock upbringing and 80s inspired outros that wouldn't sound out of place on the soundtracks to Drive and Stranger Things.

A selection of 28 Colombian cumbia bangers for the dance floor from the deep vaults of Codiscos and associated labels Costeño, Zeida and Famoso, all of them originally released between 1962 and 1983.

“Cumbia Cumbia Cumbia!!!” combines well-known classics and rarities that are difficult to find in their original formats. An invitation to enjoy and be amazed, above and beyond ethnographic and academic concerns.

The historical origins of cumbia in Colombia are nebulous and imprecise. The mythology surrounding it suggests an ancient past when Amerindian, African and European musical sounds were mixed together.

The main record companies in Colombia such as Discos Fuentes, Discos Tropical, Sonolux, Zeida-Codiscos, Silver, Ondina, Discos Atlantic, Vergara and Curro were created between Barranquilla, Medellín, Cartagena and Bogotá from 1936 to 1954. All of them, without exception, recorded Colombian tropical music that over the years was given different names such as porro, gaita, fandango, paseaito, merecumbé, mapalé, bullerengue or, of course, cumbia.

After digging deep into the overwhelming archive of Discos Fuentes in our previous volume, this second instalment in the series “Cumbia Cumbia Cumbia!!!” comprises 28 Colombian cumbia bangers for the dance floor from the deep vaults of Codiscos and associated labels Costeño, Zeida and Famoso, all of them originally released between 1962 and 1983. Legally established on July 1, 1950, Zeida (later Codiscos) was one of the companies that consolidated Medellín as the epicenter of the Colombian recording industry in the central decade of the last century.

“Cumbia Cumbia Cumbia!!!” combines well-known classics and rarities that are difficult to find in their original formats. An invitation to enjoy and be amazed, above and beyond ethnographic and academic concerns.

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

2026 Repress

DJ Support from Danny Howard, Annie Mac, Mistajam, Pete Tong, Charlie Hedges, Kraak & Smaak, Maxinne, Todd Terry, Alex Preston, Full Intention, GW Harrison, DJ Rae, Rudimental, Alaia & Gallo, Illyus & Barrientos, Johan S, David Penn, Sam Divine, Riva Starr, Claptone, Nice7, Dario D’Attis, Mousse T, S-Man, Huxley, KC Lights, Friend Within, Dombresky, Gorgon City, Chris Lake, Format:B, Pirupa, TCTS, Alan Fitzpatrick, Low Steppa, Mat.Joe, Raumakustik, Eskuche

Next up and with a label debut is one of the leading Female artists on the circuit, Tini Gessler! Tini dropped some straight-up club fire on our sister label Toolroom Trax earlier in the year alongside Juliet Sikora and digs deep into her clubby roots once again with 'Do What You Want'. After releases on the mighty Drumcode, Sola and Kittball in recent years, her 10 year career is going from strength to strength which is seeing her DJ all over the Globe on a weekly basis and her music production is making huge waves within the industry, and rightly so. Next up Italian born DJ and producer, CASSIMM is back on Toolroom with a straight up club weapon! After laying down the delicious disco number last year called 'Get On The Funk' with Kid Enigma, this follows suit perfectly and fuses chunky beats, disco licks and has Bruno Blanc sharing some sentimental lyrics about how important house music is to all of us. Last but not least, French artist Tony Romera is back on Toolroom with another slice of Tech House fire. Tony Romera first stepped onto the scene 10 years ago as a fresh-faced 20 year old looking to make waves and disrupt the electronic music world with his unique style and French-house inspired beats. Since then he's been busy releasing music and experimenting with different sounds and styles, putting out music on a range of powerhouse labels and gaining support from the likes of Diplo, Fisher, Chris Lake, Fatboy Slim, Deadmau5, Vintage Culture, Adam Beyer and more. House Y'all's distinct character is built upon a warped, creeping bassline and tough, relentless beats providing an irresistible pulsing backdrop as the familiar chanted vocal emerges. A sonic trip that transports you deep into the heart of the underground.

Countless radio plays on Radio 1 from Danny Howard, Sarah Storie, Pete Tong Other notable radio plays – Kiss FM, Toolroom Radio, Sirius XM, Data Transmission Radio, Radio 1 Dance Anthems, Radio 1 Party Anthems, Rinse FM, Select Radio, Tomorrowland Radio

Ornette Coleman's hugely influential 'The Shape Of Jazz To Come'
pressed on limited edition 180g premium orange vinyl.

'The Shape of Jazz to Come' was a watershed event in the genesis of avant-guard jazz. The record shattered traditional concepts of jazz harmony, disposing of both the piano player and the whole idea of concretely outlined chord changes. The album includes Coleman's classic tune 'Lonely Woman.'

"The element that pours out of this disc is creativity in strong, concentrated waves. Four of the half dozen Coleman originals in this collection grow out of bop roots, but Coleman hears other things, too. This is not easy music for the listener, but even at its most difficult it remains compelling." - John S. Wilson, DownBeat

Maximilian Skiba, an Eminent Figure in the World of Electronic Music, Makes a Triumphant Return to Skylax After an Absence Spanning Over a Decade. His Resurgence Is Nothing Short of Exceptional, as He Joins Forces With the Legendary Snax to Deliver a Musical Offering That Rekindles the Very Essence of House Music's Illustrious origins.
Skiba's Two New Tracks, "Pushing My Buttons" and "In Motion," Serve as a Compelling Testament to His Impeccable Craftsmanship as a Producer. the Influence of the Pioneering triumvirate—Larry Levan, Ron Hardy, and Frankie Knuckles—is Palpable Within These Compositions. Both Tracks Are a Masterful Blend of Nostalgia and Innovation, Perfectly Aligning With the Playlists That Once Defined the Heyday of House Music's Most Celebrated luminaries.
"Pushing My Buttons" and "In Motion" Evoke an Air of Sophistication, Exuding a Smooth, Velvety Quality That Transports Listeners to the Cherished Era of Original Disco. Drawing Parallels to the Timeless Classics Like Dinosaur’s "Kiss Me Again" or Loose Joints "Is It All Over My Face", Skiba's Creations Pay Homage to the Bygone Era While Injecting a Modern Edge. This Phenomenal Ep Goes Beyond Skiba's Original Works, Offering Two Exceptional Remixes That Elevate the Experience. the First Remix, a Balearic Interpretation by the Emerging Talent Maltitz, Adds a Refreshing Dimension to the Tracks. the Second Remix, Helmed by the Skilled Apollon Telefax, Ingeniously Transforms the Already-Classic Tunes Into an Explosive Italo-Disco Sensation. These Remixes Seamlessly Weave Together the Past and the Present, Creating a Bridge Between Different Eras While Keeping the Music timeless.
In Essence, This Ep Is Not Just a Musical Offering; It's a Journey—a Seamless Fusion of History and Innovation That Transports the Listener to an Era of Musical Brilliance, All the While Redefining the Boundaries of Contemporary Sound. Skiba and Snax's Collaboration Is Not Merely a Comeback; It's a Testament to the Enduring Legacy of Electronic Music, Encapsulating the Spirit of House Music's Golden Age While Breathing New Life Into Its Timeless Allure....

With this new three 45 set, the second in our "Cumbia Sabrosa" series, Rocafort digs deep into the vaults of Discos Tropical to bring you six more vintage cumbia sound system bangers. Each 45 showcases a different type of flavor with the emphasis on big band brass (Pacho Galán, José Ramón Herrera), electric guitar (Super Combo Los Platinos, Cuarteto Del Mónaco), and accordion (Andrés Landero). Like its larger rivals Discos Fuentes and Sonolux, Tropical was one of the most influential in the development of cumbia as an important genre not only in its home country of Colombia, but also in Mexico (and beyond), participating in a cross-cultural exchange that would spawn Mexico's own domestic musical artists, sonidero DJs and sound systems, record collectors and a dance scene devoted to tropical music with Colombian roots.

Combining elements of post-rock, trip-hop, and industrial music, HAAL have quickly become cult favourites in the UK live scene. Their psychotropic blend of samples, DIY pedals, and monolithic instrumentation, has seen the band play and tour alongside the likes of Kyoto Kyoto, WEB, Deliluh, Treeboy & Arc, Katy J Pearson, and Gurriers, as well as appearing at festivals such as ArcTanGent, Dot To Dot and more. Coming off the heels of their recent singles “Janus” and “Judy” (and subsequent remixes by Water From My Eyes and Crimewave), the new EP “Back To Shilmarine” arrives as a blistering snapshot of the band’s protean dynamism.

The band celebrate their late-90s / early-00s influences in a caustic yet melodic blend of tracks that nod as much to the output of labels such as Dischord, Touch & Go, and Nothing Records, as they do their contemporaries in the UK scene such as SCALER, Famous, deathcrash, and LICE. The EP sees them bring all these touchstones together to create a unique and uninhibited maelstrom of sound that spans everything from intricate math-inflected guitar lines and pensive vocals to propulsive drumming, totemic riffing, and warped synths.

Arguably some of HAAL’s heaviest material to date, “Platform 1, 18:19” offers the first look into this new material melding motorik rhythms and hypnotic riffs with sudden explosions of noise and power. However, as ever with HAAL, there is more than meets the eye – the track also features samples completely abstracted from their sources, for instance, the drone that begins the song is taken from a video of frontman Alfie Hay and his friends beating Bop It.

Elsewhere on the EP, the lyrics explore themes of cosmic existentialism, absurdism, meaning, transhumanism, inner reflection, science, history, and general philosophy. “All the lyrics are musings or verses that I wrote at very different times in my life” says Hay. “I then had to fit them around the music, despite being written at wildly different periods.” The record was once again recorded with long-time collaborator Alfie Tyson Brown (Katy J Pearson, LICE, Lazarus Kane) at The Louisiana in Bristol. The band have a tight knit collaborative circle around them, this is particularly notable around the band’s imagery

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

Following two acclaimed European and Asian tours, UK producer Tom VR returns to "all my thoughts" with a special vinyl release of his latest single, "Acheless."

The vinyl features the original tracks "Acheless" and "Couldn't Find the Words," plus a brand new VIP edit
exclusive to the format. This edit showcases Tom VR's signature sound: a tapestry of textured electronica that's both driving and dark, yet punctuated by flourishes of vibrant color.

While the original "Acheless" unfolds melodies within its framework, the VIP edit takes a different approach. Here, the focus shifts to the pulsing rhythm section, with the signature plucky melodies subtly restrained.

Manchester emcee Black Josh joins forces with New Orleans analog instrumental warrior Wino Willy on collaboration project "Today's The Day". Since the epic opening joint "Habitat" and throughout the 7 joints on this project the two show an incredible chemistry, with the English lyrical maverick delivering some incredible wordplay on Wino Willy's grimy productions. As a member of Cult of The Damned and Levelz, and one of the standout artists of the Blah roster, Black Josh has been killing it whatever the backdrop and this record is no different, with fellow nationals Lee Scott and SonnyJim joining on the first single "E R M8" as well as Da$h on "Vince Carter". An electrifying collaboration by two masters of their craft!

Fly Me To The Moon is the fifth installment in Rod Stewart’s

The Great American Songbook series of pop standards and is considered by many as the best album in the series. On the album, Stewart swings around through well-known songs such as “Fly Me To The Moon”, “What A Difference A Day Makes”, “Beyond The Sea”, and “I’ve Got You Under My Skin” among others.

Fly Me To The Moon is available on black vinyl.

Our 20th celebration year continues with a very special comeback! It’s exactly ten years now since the last Ben La Desh release on our label, his sublime “Stellar Talk EP” hit big waves and together with the “Midnight Rendez-Vous EP” from 2012 he cemented himself in the lo-fi deep space house scene as an artist to look out for, no one produced deep house like he did back then. After a longer break from releasing music he is back and we think stronger as ever, with analogue gear and well curated sampling and live field recording we present you his “Fine Rise EP”.

The opener “Heel Goed” is an amazing track with that distinctive 909 beat and DX bass driven “La Desh” flavour and a truly wonderful vocal sample from a 90s TV commercial, hilariously funny and brilliant at the same time! We can’t wait to see the faces of people, especially on the Dutch dancefloors, when they try to figure out and discover what the ladies are talking about! Second A side track is the super funky “Lift Adrift” that flanges itself to outer space, etherical with chopped break beats and various percussive and rhythmic Pearl Syncussion layers running through effect pedals, Lift Adrift!

On the other side we start out with the deep title track “Fine Rise”. Here Ben treats us again to his trademark spaced out effects driven sound and on top a killer bass line and synth lead melody, reminiscent of the golden age of (good) trance music. Followed by the break beat gem that is “Asanti”, cautiously cut up breaks and layered machine drums with bubbly Syncussion sounds, rain drops falling down on different surfaces recorded in a garden in the French Drôme and processed African Kalimba. Did we already say Etherical? It is!
Closing out this great new record is the ambient piece “Expanding Signal”, an analogue tune that consists of field recordings and deep dubby chords, a building Juno pulse, swooshes and again a profound DX bassline, think of “Sun Electric” or “The Orb”.

Enjoy this one and play it loud on the dance floors or silently in your bedroom, it works everywhere as far as we are concerned!

All tracks mastered by Salz Mastering in Cologne. Photography & Art by Break 3000.

Hailing from Copenhagen, Denmark, The Sonic Dawn is one of Europe's most prominent current acid rock bands. Formed in 2013 by childhood friends Emil Bureau, Jonas Waaben, and Niels 'Bird' Fuglede, the trio has delivered four albums, celebrated for their dynamic fusion of genres from sitar pop to heavy psych. Their highly anticipated fifth LP is slated for release this spring via Heavy Psych Sounds. The debut album, Perception (2015), marked their international breakthrough with Berlin-based Nasoni Records. The sophomore release, Into the Long Night (2017), launched on Heavy Psych Sounds, accompanied by an extensive European album tour-some 60 shows, including two weeks with Brant Bjork (US)-solidifying their presence. The subsequent album, Eclipse (2019), earned acclaim as "easily one of the best psychedelic pop albums of the decade," and once again the group hit the road hard, playing in 11 different countries. In 2020, The Sonic Dawn unveiled Enter the Mirage, recognized as "a modern psych classic" by Shindig Magazine. While the planned album tour was cut short, it was possible to play on WDR's legendary TV show Rockpalast, which has featured David Bowie, the Grateful Dead, and many more through the years. Now, their highly anticipated fifth album, Phantom (2024), is set for a worldwide release on May 10th, 2024. Formally welcoming long-time collaborator Erik 'Errka' Petersson as a new studio band member on organ/keys, The Sonic Dawn continues its sonic journey. Culminating from four years of creating music, the album showcases a raw and heavy musical style blended with the melodic psychedelia for which the band is renowned.

Hailing from Copenhagen, Denmark, The Sonic Dawn is one of Europe's most prominent current acid rock bands. Formed in 2013 by childhood friends Emil Bureau, Jonas Waaben, and Niels 'Bird' Fuglede, the trio has delivered four albums, celebrated for their dynamic fusion of genres from sitar pop to heavy psych. Their highly anticipated fifth LP is slated for release this spring via Heavy Psych Sounds. The debut album, Perception (2015), marked their international breakthrough with Berlin-based Nasoni Records. The sophomore release, Into the Long Night (2017), launched on Heavy Psych Sounds, accompanied by an extensive European album tour-some 60 shows, including two weeks with Brant Bjork (US)-solidifying their presence. The subsequent album, Eclipse (2019), earned acclaim as "easily one of the best psychedelic pop albums of the decade," and once again the group hit the road hard, playing in 11 different countries. In 2020, The Sonic Dawn unveiled Enter the Mirage, recognized as "a modern psych classic" by Shindig Magazine. While the planned album tour was cut short, it was possible to play on WDR's legendary TV show Rockpalast, which has featured David Bowie, the Grateful Dead, and many more through the years. Now, their highly anticipated fifth album, Phantom (2024), is set for a worldwide release on May 10th, 2024. Formally welcoming long-time collaborator Erik 'Errka' Petersson as a new studio band member on organ/keys, The Sonic Dawn continues its sonic journey. Culminating from four years of creating music, the album showcases a raw and heavy musical style blended with the melodic psychedelia for which the band is renowned.

With words as weapons and public infrastructure as his blank slate, John Fekner's City Squad are always questing for the ineffable, even as they yearn for concrete change - Make no mistake, Idioblast is a serious party where everyone is welcome.

Released in 1984, Idioblast is a lost classic, a future shock narrative ahead of its time, and yet completely of its era, like few artifacts before or since. The cover tips you off from the jump--a crude but effective collage featuring classic Fekner slogans like Toxic Junkie, Growth Decay and Soft Brains Watch The Screen And Buy The Jeans. In an uncanny and tragic coincidence, the very first lyric on the album--"The place to be is on the space shuttle/if you're brave enough to get on it"--seems to anticipate the Challenger disaster just two years later.

But for the most part, the tracks on Idioblast directly reference the concepts that inspired Fekner's visual art. Musically, "Rapicasso" utilizes pneumatic pounding with an industrial edge as Fekner equates the great and controversial painter with risk-taking graffiti kids bombing trains and billboards across the city. Art is in a constant state of exploding--forms, paradigms, outdated ideas.

Splitting the difference between hip-hop and new wave, the Santaniello-sung "The Beat" is like Thomas Dolby meets Run-DMC and should've been a radio staple for at least one sticky summer. It could soundtrack either a couples roller skate or a drug-fueled evening out. Channeling Fekner's slogan-stencil aesthetic, "Travelogue The 80's" is a tour de force reminiscent of Negativland's experiments in audio culture jamming. As Fekner details, "I grabbed all of the sounds via a shortwave radio picking up transmissions from LaGuardia airport and the TV. I recorded and edited on a Sony Pro Walkman and an Aiwa dual cassette deck."

"“A jazz artist to watch” (NPR) and “a virtuoso in the truest sense of the word” (JazzTimes), Morgan Guerin spent nearly a year crafting his multi-dimensional Tales Of The Facade, layering instruments and sounds track upon track. And while an impressive amount of the album is performed solely by Guerin, he also enlisted stellar collaborators, including Georgia Anne Muldrow, Melanie Charles, Cisco Swank, Zacchae’us Paul, J Hoard, and Kokayi. Despite Guerin’s widespread acclaim as a jazz artist, it would be reductive to call this a ""jazz album." "It touches a lot of different periods and styles of music," Guerin explains. "Wayne Shorter and John and Alice Coltrane are big influences, but so are people like Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, Minnie Riperton, and Kendrick Lamar. I wanted all of those sounds to be represented. ” What’s left in the grooves obliterates concepts of genre even as it celebrates genres themselves. Now signed to Candid, Guerin’s music will finally reach an audience as vast and diverse as his musical vision."

Sam Cooke’s SAR Records Story 1959-1965 gathers significant recordings of SAR Records – the label Sam Cooke co-founded, produced the majority of records for and was instrumental in operating. Groundbreaking artists such as The Soul Stirrers, Johnnie Taylor, Billy Preston, and Bobby Womack’s group The Valentinos are all featured, in addition to Sam himself. “The whole SAR Records Story is infused with Sam Cooke’s rapturous sense of how sacred gospel and sexual soul flow together, unbroken,” stated Milo Miles on NPR’s Fresh Air upon the set’s initial release almost three decades ago. In an era where black-owned labels were a rarity, Los Angeles based SAR Records was founded at almost exactly the same time as Motown, its Detroit counterpart. SAR was established in 1959 by Sam Cooke, music publisher J.W. Alexander, and S. Roy Crain, Cooke’s road manager and founder of gospel group The Soul Stirrers. The acronymous name standing for Sam Alex Roy, SAR sought to keep gospel music alive while simultaneously crossing over to pop audiences in the secular world. LPs 1 and 2 of the set focus on the former, while LPs 3 and 4 encompass the latter. From choosing talent, to writing a great number of songs, to producing, SAR was entirely the fulfillment of Cooke’s vision on a musical/creative level. The superstar singer, who had already crossed over from the gospel world himself, tirelessly coached the vocalists during SAR recording sessions, emphasizing diction. His methods are heard throughout the collection, as he is heard speaking to artists between takes. “And by Sam being there with you and just giving you that special attention, you wanted to give it to him like it was supposed to be. I think that’s what made SAR, SAR. Because he was selling himself through different artists.” – Bobby Womack. VERY LIMITED 1-2 COPIES ONLY PER SHOP

Arriving as the third album on Supreems ‘Sweet Sun’ label – an imprint gathering a reputation for future-facing, storytelling electronic music – Sloucho's 'NPC' explores the duality of his main character and non-playable lives. With a strong Irish artistic presence featuring Rory Sweeney, EMBY, Curtisy and more, Sloucho navigates through Cloudcore-inspired broken beats, bass-driven percussion, alternative dreamscapes and wubby fuck-steps on his most complete release to date, laying the foundation for an origin-story in the process.

Garnering support from Surusinghe, Roza Terenzi, Two Shell and more; some of the tracks on NPC have already been heard in clubs around the world - from Antwerp to London and Mumbai to Paris. ‘Mind Traveller’ offers an ambient introduction to ‘Athrú’, Sloucho’s home world, as the artist's pitched vocals act as the listeners guide into the island's core. ‘Mutant’ features experimental electronic artist Rhoshi on a track that follows the kaleidoscopic sonic-themes of Sloucho’s previous Cloudcore releases ‘Slow Feet’ and ‘Silver Veil’, before the Rory Sweeney-featuring ‘Come Around’ ignites the dance with its dutty screw-face two-step, balanced by moments of melodic contemplation before evolving into a techno-dancehall hybrid.

‘Brand New’ stays on the steppy aesthetic, and brings MCs EMBY and Zack Oke into the frame with a 3D Meta-human video created in collaboration with respected, exhibiting digital artist Aisling Phelan. Using a motion capture suit, they captured EMBY and Zack’s performance and imported it into Unreal Engine, using different environments scanned from around the Greek Islands as the backdrop. The result is mind-blowing; a complete digital realm, shot like a real-life rap video as EMBY and Zack spit bars across an elasticated garage riddim. Full video is on YouTube.

‘Super Maramu 2000’ is a cut of alien-club beamed directly from ‘Eile’, the afterlife of Sloucho’s Neolithic ancestors. A waltzer-ride through Latin-bass and techno with an oxymoronic blend of maximalist and minimalist futurism, it’s as silly as it is serious, before the stuttering, juke-influence of ‘Make It Work’ brings the album’s rapid first half (and a bit) to a close.

Sloucho seamlessly weaves from front left of the club to dark, fume-filled rooms on ‘Two Thousands’ (featuring EMBY and Curtisy), ‘Rocks’ (featuring Zack Oke, who sounds remarkably like experimental spoken-word artist Coby Sey here, and Chilean artist Vatican Jail) and ‘Lights On’ (featuring Yamagōchi), Sloucho explores a previously unseen side to his sound, meandering through alternative trap and hip-hop laden beats that are both dreamy and nightmarish, bringing NPC to its starry-skied climax.

It is a monster album which unites the who's who of the modern blues and rock scene and took Krissy one year to produce! Friends on the album include rap metal giants Clawfinger, the god of hellfire Arthur Brown, the voice Chris Farlowe, Germany's soul queen Inga Rumpf, legendary singer songwriter Stoppok, the iconic Hamburg Blues Band, elite drummers Dennis Chambers & Curt Cress, Blues singing dynamite Big Daddy Wilson and many more. The album includes 24 songs and is almost 3 hours long with a mix of Krissy's original material and his favourite cover songs. "It was a long time in the making and I managed to get it done. I started the pre-production in November 2022 and went in the studio to begin the meat and potatoes process in January 2023. I wanted to get all my favourite musicians together that I have met on the road in my career. They are not all here by any means, but a good handful are! I did not want this album to have a box, so there are many different genres from metal to blues and jazz to rock'n'roll. But in the end, it is a Krissy Matthews record."

Originally released on tape by SicSic in 2014, Aprilnacht commemorates a decade of music from Brannten Schnüre and marked the spring in a tetralogy of albums about the four seasons when it came out. Back then the Würzburg-based project consisted solely of Christian Schoppik, who later welcomed Katie Rich to take over the vocals. He used to perform as Agnes Beil, but dropped the name when, while making this album realized his music was becoming "much gentler and more fragile". Aprilnacht already captured the particular musical ideas that Schoppik would thoroughly keep exploring, delving deeper and deeper into the use and manipulation of samplers from sources so diverging as to wander between the five continents to post-war German family television and cult cinema. Heir of the ritualistic intensity of Coil, of the intricate sampler assemblies of Ghédalia Tazartès', and of the dusty, dismal old ballads from around the world, Brannten Schnüre manages to make these paths cross in a territory that is as inherent as it is uncanny; sieged by the past and intimate as a hearth. An organic approach to folk, ambient, and sound collage, where ethereal yet thoroughly textured pieces coalesce in enthralling, delicate, and innermost musical rituals.

The album cover paintings reveal the temper: dreary old towns where shadows come to dim the slow passage of crepuscular colors, a soft area of reanimation where wind and light come close and foresee the night of spring. Aprilnacht was inspired by the stories of German philosopher and writer Friedrich Alfred Schmid Noerr, whose work exhaustively examines the conflict between paganism and Christianity, safeguarding myth in a way that Schoppik describes as boldly modern, humorous and unpredictable in its variations of the Germanic folklore motifs. "I wanted to do the same with the music," he states, and the music here could as well be suitable for a night when household deities welcome wandering will-o'-the-wisps, water nymphs, and gyrovagues to discuss Perchta's leadership of The Wild Hunt, but this album is not a folk tale, it's not an elegy to worlds already gone, hidden in years; it's an intersection of routes that open mysteriously before our ears like a congregation of vapors. Aprilnacht is a gathering of voices; "There are too many children, and none of them keeps quiet," reads the last verse of «Requiem für eine Ringelnatter.»

Sensuality drips over the music to celebrate both the voluptuousness and tragic quality of nature; "It's raining on me, urine from your flowers," Schoppik sings in «Urin deiner Blüten» and later on, faced with a snake's erotic features, as if he wanted to be embraced by it: "Your quick, sharp tongue and your warm venom; that's what the pond is missing." Orality is where this profusion of contents thrives. When the voices get closer and condense, the words reveal the saliva employed to pronounce them; we feel the mouth and the tongue, but when breath envelops them in sorrow and softens their edges, they sound distant, diffused in the atmosphere, letting go of the body that held them. These two vocal facets oscillate permanently and interact naturally with the fertile assembly of samplers and instruments that develop throughout the album, which condense and disperse impersonating each other, interweaving to search for a specific syntax. Tangled whisperings of enigmatic phrases, timid voices that stick out to check the scene but hide away quickly, shivering trance chants and monastic ambiances, distant screams and clamors in between chaos and warfare swirl until bursting into subtle songs where even Mother Mary comes forth softly. Soothed by foggy atmospheres and crackling punctuations, these voices shape a vulnerable crowd, an occasion of fragility. Along this swarm of songs thrown into thin air, accordions sound like heavy-breathing lungs; clarinets sigh like curtains shaking; violin solos wander around like bees; Gjallarhorns cries distend like fleeing cattle; glockenspiels evoke remote music boxes and inherited toys; backward emanations emerge like slender waves retreating. On the banks of stretching loops and ember textures is where the songs slowly nest, collecting the words to find their tone.

A poem by Jorge Teillier says, "To talk with the dead you have to choose words that they recognize as easily as their hands recognized the fur of their dogs in the dark. To talk with the dead you have to know how to wait: they are fearful like the first steps of a child. But if we are patient one day they will answer us with a flame that suddenly revives in the fireplace." This may be Brannten Schnüre's main purpose: To find the voice to speak to those of whom we were a vision. Not in mourning, but acknowledging the obscure and volatile nature of spring's regenerative force, searching for the treasure of balance, as evidenced in the lyrics of «Requiem für ein Schwalbennest,» "Its nest was destroyed so many times before it was finished, and despite that, the shallow builds as if it is infatuated." The same idea is here in the words of Schmid Noerr, who made poetry an act of resistance to the horror of Nazism; "Since having seen the ability of a brilliant spirit to die, with a calm mouth that everyone saw, health is true again and we affirm it, even if rivers of blood flow." And as we call for the dusk's kindness, waiting to return home and eat with our kin by the stove, our ears become used to the games of the night. We feel like we're rowing on wetlands, while the "moon musick" keeps us vigilant against the slightest movement of water or sweet moan because eeriness here is imperative for survival. Do not succumb to the insipid howl of death, for nothing may last but mutability. You see, the rock has moved a little during the night; the rest is just wind fleeing from the void.

Another well kept secret from the Italian cult electronic music imprint - Interactive Test. A 4 track EP with a wide range of flavours in "house" music, very much dependent on the different samples employed. A side starts off with a deep house track echoing similar atmospheric qualities as to some of the dancefloor oriented productions making their way into US underground scene around that time, specifically Chicago and Detroit. The Percapella Mix makes the dedication to the Canadian Disco legend Gino Soccio very clear with a lengthy sample of "There's a Woman", a track which uses early electronics in a pioneering way, with what could possibly be one of the first examples of an Acid Bass line. On the B-side, things slow down a a notch with more clear cut explorations in Acid house featuring layers of synths and percussive samples and occasional placement of vocal samples from countries far away from Italy, all made possible thanks to the new exciting technologies that had recently been made available to producers at the time. Remastered by Man Made Mastering in Berlin and re-released with new full cover artwork.

Handpicked by Paul himself, Will of The People is a carefully curated collection of 31 tracks from Weller’s extensive cornucopia of tunes that never quite made it to one of his 9 studio albums since 2002. Here is a collection which reminds us that there has always been a parallel narrative to the main recorded output of Paul’s albums and singles. The B-Side, and the remix, is a space in which to explore, experiment, or to flex a different set of artistic muscles.
The story begins back in the autumn of 2003, when the Fly On The Wall 3LP & 3CD collection brought together a wealth of Paul Weller solo recordings that stretched back to 1991. The B-sides, 12” EP tracks, single remixes and ‘live’ recordings featured all had one thing in common, namely that they hadn’t been included on any of his hugely successful solo albums. Furthermore, in many instances, they’d become highly sought after in their original formats and were fetching significant sums from fans and collectors. Will Of The People follows up Fly On The Wall and takes the listener through a similar mix of rarities, this time spanning the period 2002 to 2021.
From covers to eclectic remixes, Will Of The People delivers a scintillating array of songs which skirt across many genres. Here you will find such gems as Paul’s cover of The Beatle’s “Birthday”, released to celebrate Macca’s 70th, and the sparkling disco-ball banger remix of Cosmic Fringes by none other than the Pet Shop Boys. It also includes Paul’s first foray into film soundtracks with the sublime “Ballad Of Jimmy McCabe” from the film Jawbone. Scattered across the tracks are appearances from the likes of Primal Scream, Simon Tong & Graham Coxon.
Will Of The People is released on triple vinyl and 3CD. The album features sleeve notes written by writer and broadcaster John Wilson.

Repress!

Born in 1977, in Malang, East Java, Wukir Suryadi began playing music for theatre at the age of 12 with the Idiot The-ater Studio, and later with the Rendra Theater Workshop. In his solo work, and as a member of Senyawa, Error Scream, Bendera Hitam Setengah, Potro Joyo and other groups, Wukir breaks the boundaries of traditional music, death metal and avant-garde performance. On this new release, “Cycle and Prayer,” recorded in 2023, he expands the edges of his unique artistic world further, by digging in to meditative improvisation, art, and community building in his home workshop in the mountains of central Java. These recordings vibrate inwards, toward the microcosmic ecologies of forests and rivers; they distort outwards, resonating with global waves of apocalyptic change that are forcing all living beings to the edges of existence on earth. The result is a meditative poem that moves, as its titles an-nounce, from phenomena to phenomena, praying that humans find a way out from the depths of the depths to the light that illuminates the soul.
An essential mode of creative work for Wukir is the creation of unique instruments, using these sound sources as “bullets of expression.” In addition to the spear-like tube zither Bambu Wukir, he has created the Solet, Enthong, Garu, Luku, Arrows, and Industrial Mutant instruments, which in addition to being used in live performance, have been exhibited in the Instrument Builders Project and the 2017 Jakarta Biennale. In the past few years, Wukir has begun to collaborate with local guitar makers, carpenters, and suppliers of native endemic wood in the mountain region of Salatiga. Using earthen bricks along with local woods (suren, coconut, mindi, and waru lengis) as building materials, he constructed a new studio and workshop space in Tingkir, where this album was made. The trees, water and air of the local environment have exerted a powerful influence in Wukir’s documentations of instrumental sound. On this recording, he uses the simple Cetta guitar, an instrument designed in Bali and made for Indonesian children and local communities of folk and popular musicians, in order to explore the different sonic characteristics of a more “normal” instrument built from local wood.
The themes of the album -- cycle and prayer -- arise from a foreboding series of meta-events that shook Indonesia and the world over the past years, following one after the other: the COVID-19 pandemic, the Ukrainian-Russian war, the Kanjuruhan Stadium tragedy in which football supporters were gassed and killed by police, revelations of govern-ment failures and corruption, the rise of personal vehicles, the increasing disturbance of natural patterns of the rainy season and other ecological cycles. “In these waves of technology and narratives of truth made for certain interests, playing a sound at a certain frequency and repeating can try to bring images and feelings to a certain point of con-sciousness,” Wukir told me. “Sound is a prayer that creates a change, whether gradual or rapid, in the behaviour of living things, to face the demands of the time, as humans struggle to live according to what they believe.” The draw-ings and sketches used for the cover spontaneously emerged alongside the recordings, as an instinctive depiction of “time and sound, nature that is outside of oneself, and nature that is within.”

"Congo" by Nkrumah is a hypnotic slice of deep roots by Nkrumah aka Toronto's Kwame Salmon. The city that was home to Johnny Osbourne, Leroy Sibbles, Jackie Mittoo and countless other Reggae legends has produced another artist following this great lineage, a singer with a voice unlike anyone else. Originally released in miniscule quantities as a self produced dubplate/lathe cut, the 45 caused a sensation among Djs and sound system operators world wide.
This official release features a different mix with an extended version and a spare, mesmerizing Dub version by Toronto's Heavy Manners crew reminiscent of late 90s/early 2000s Rhythm and Sound releases.

Cotenius X is an exploratory improvisational project of the Ukrainian sound artist Daria Redkina and the Russian experimental vocalist Varya Pavlova aka Lisokot. Improvising together since 2017 they incorporate folk, electronic and musique concrète elements into their spontaneous compositions. “Plastic Bag” is a testament to collaboration - an archival reflection of the time the duo spent experimenting together. Their theatrical performances involve impersonation or adoption of different characters and are informed by social, political, historical, and site-specific narratives. The duo has been compared to The Residents and see themselves carrying the psychedelic absurdity of the US group forward by giving it a feminine twist.

Freerange welcome back Salvatore Freda once again for possibly his strongest track yet, along with three very different remixes. Remixer Nebraska has had a string of excellent releases on Rush Hour, with his recent album 'Displacement' getting rave reviews on Resident Advisor.

It took Krissy a year to produce his new 24-song album - a nearly 3-hour mix of original material and favorite cover songs - and it brings together a who's who of the modern blues and rock scene. "I wanted to bring all my favorite musicians together (and) didn't want this album to be pigeonholed, so there are different genres from metal to blues to jazz to rock 'n' roll. But at the end of the day, it's a Krissy Matthews record."

Kee Avil's music is both adventurous and intimate, intellectually challenging and emotionally resonant. The Montréal guitarist and producer's 2022 debut LP Crease garnered plaudits from outlets like The Wire, The Quietus, Mojo and Foxy Digitalis, picking up a Canadian Juno Award nomination and Bandcamp Album Of The Day and Albums Of The Year along the way. Its intricate construction, unnerving atmospheres, and knife-edge take on avant-pop prompted comparisons to early PJ Harvey, This Heat, and Gazelle Twin. A remix EP with work by claire rousay, Ami Dang, Cecile Believe, and Pelada brought collaborative perspectives to four Crease tracks, offering new pathways within those songs. With Spine, Kee Avil strips back her heavily textured compositions, opening up a much rawer sound. She calls it folk—and while traditionalists might scoff, this is urgent music that reflects the precarity of modern life, as well as the jarring mixture of electronic and real-world interactions that have become the fabric of our day-to-day experiences. There's a hypnotic post-punk somnambulance to it all, using the repetition and fracturing of melodic phrases interwoven with delicate electronics to create curious and persistent hooks. While not a concept album, themes of time's passage, remembrance, and decay crop up across multiple tracks. Each track intentionally only has four elements—guitar, electronics, and two other instruments, with Kee's voice and guitar pushed to the front. Within this minimalist framework, the juxtaposition of beauty and discomfort that is key to the Kee Avil sound stands out in skin-prickling relief. "We're shaped by many versions of ourselves," says Avil. "I was looking back at these versions of myself and what could have been, what didn't end up being and what did end up being, and going back like that through time. Seeing the future, the past." Spine was written in Kee Avil's home studio after a lapse in writing while touring Crease and working on other projects. She is a well-known and respected member of the Montréal experimental scene, and formerly ran Concrete Sound Studio with Zach Scholes, who continues to work with her as a producer on Spine. Compared to the three years that went into making her debut, Spine emerged in a matter of months—a process that may also be a factor in its intensity and sharpness: "This record was much harder, like it was really discovering everything from scratch." In her desire to not simply replicate or extend the sound of Crease, she felt she had to rip up the rule book, write in a different way, and pare back songs against her usual instincts. Sometimes, when we work against our ingrained habits, we get to the core of who we really are. Spine is an exercise in that process. Without over-intellectualizing or being didactic, it hits immediately and emotionally, especially if you are a person who has spent much time in the process of self-examination. Kee's voice hisses, whispers, and chants; her guitar bends and rings; electronics skitter and crackle; violin creaks like a door in the wind. There is something so evocative about the atmospheres she creates that it's easy to overlay one's own feelings onto her work, but to do that wholly would be to overlook one of the most important things about Spine: Kee Avil's clear and thoughtful vision. This isn't just the next step forward in her artistic trajectory; it's a stunner of a record that stands on its own, a bracing and thrilling listen that has much to reveal about the contradictions inherent in being human. — jj skolnik.

Scriabin · Scarlatti creates a dreamlike meditation in which the boundaries between pieces, eras and states of mind fade away. Asal’s full performance of the Sonata is framed by a selection of Scriabin’s etudes and preludes, six sonatas by Scarlatti and two improvisatory Transitions by the pianist himself. Julius Asal chose two different Steinways for the recording, one for its sumptuous dark sonorities, the other for its clear, crisp sound. “These miniatures by Scriabin and Scarlatti are like mythical creatures from another dimension, with their own character, their own life, their own past, present and future.” Everything’s possible in a dream”, says the 27-year-old artist, who has a rare talent for innovative programme curation. “Even seemingly different materials from different times and with different densities can merge and create a new substance that’s never existed before.

Funeral For Justice is the new album by Mdou Moctar. Recorded at the close of two years spent touring the globe following the release of 2019 breakout Afrique Victime, it captures the Nigerien quartet in ferocious form. The music is louder, faster, and more wild. The guitar solos are feedback-scorched and the lyrics are passionately political. Nothing is held back or toned down. The songs on Funeral For Justice speak unflinchingly to the plight of Niger and of the Tuareg people. "This album is really different for me," explains Moctar, the band"s singer, namesake, and indisputably iconic guitarist "Now the problems of terrorist violence are more serious in Africa. When the US and Europe came here, they said they"re going to help us, but what we see is really different. They never help us to find a solution."

Funeral For Justice is the new album by Mdou Moctar. Recorded at the close of two years spent touring the globe following the release of 2019 breakout Afrique Victime, it captures the Nigerien quartet in ferocious form. The music is louder, faster, and more wild. The guitar solos are feedback-scorched and the lyrics are passionately political. Nothing is held back or toned down. The songs on Funeral For Justice speak unflinchingly to the plight of Niger and of the Tuareg people. "This album is really different for me," explains Moctar, the band"s singer, namesake, and indisputably iconic guitarist "Now the problems of terrorist violence are more serious in Africa. When the US and Europe came here, they said they"re going to help us, but what we see is really different. They never help us to find a solution."

Berlin based live performer Sarah Sommers' debut Album recorded live. HeartCore is 74 minutes of dance music driven by Sarah’s deep love of electronic dance music from different eras and genres including dub, techno, house, dubstep, drum n bass and breakbeat. The album spans 9 Tracks taken from Sarah’s live sets over the last two years from performances predominantly in Berlin clubs.

Pull the Rope, the new record by Ibibio Sound Machine, casts the Eno Williams and Max Grunhard-led outfit in a new light. The hope, joy, and sexiness of their music remain, but, further honing the edge of their acclaimed 2022 album Electricity, the connection they aim to foster has shifted venues from the sunny buoyancy of a sunlit festival to a sweat-soaked, all-night dance club. Williams and Grunhard attribute this shift to a matter of collaborators, recording Pull the Rope with Sheffield-based producer Ross Orton (Arctic Monkeys, M.I.A.) over the course of two weeks. The way the pair wrote songs changed significantly_rather than Eno penning lyrics to music generated by Max and company's jamming, Orton started with Eno and Max writing together before adding the band. With less time in the studio and a new way of considering how they built songs, the duo found making decisions about Pull the Rope's sound quicker and more instinctual than before. "Ross is from Sheffield, which has an edgier, more industrial vibe than London," Grunhard explains. "He hears things differently than us, is more grounded in rave and grungier sounds, and knew when to add drums or push the instrumentation more. It was very different for us, but it lends itself to where Ibibio Sound Machine is going." In melding their songwriting process, Grunhard and Williams have, impossibly, pulled the trick of making Ibibio Sound Machine a tighter band than ever before, building out from their core in a way that highlights the electrifying group of musicians they play with. Rather than recording with the full band in the room, Pull the Rope was sculpted, elements added and shaped by Grunhard, Williams, and Orton along the way. As a result, Pull the Rope is a nimble, sleek machine that's thrilling from the first note of the opening title track, Eno's otherworldly voice and PK Ambrose's throbbing bass driving through a kaleidoscopic array of house, post-punk, funk, Afrobeat and disco, bangers and ballads, making an argument for unity that begins on the dancefloor. "We are the places we grew up, the places we've been, and the people we've met along the way," Williams says. "Hopping around the globe, we've found that people are fundamentally the same_they're people. Opposing sides push and pull, but there is an alternative to war, violence, and suffering." Lead single "Got to Be Who U Are" literally globetrots, name checking locales across the world that would feel disparate were it not for how well-traveled they are. Eno growing up in the musical melting pot of the Ibibio region of Nigeria and Max being a conservatory-trained musician from Australia, one could call their meeting in London and formation of Ibibio Sound Machine predestined. "Mama Say" and "Let My Yes Be Yes" touch themes of female empowerment. They're indicative of the band's depth as they push further into the electronic; "Mama Say" hits notes of electropop while "Let My Yes Be Yes" fuses electro to Afrobeat. Ibibio Sound Machine have always imbued their music with political consciousness, and the light that shines through in Williams' vocals and voice has never felt more necessary. The sound of Pull the Rope, then, is hope in darkness, bliss in spite of bleakness. Once again, Ibibio Sound Machine are here to provide the soundtrack to the best night of your life, and the better world to come.

From the studio of Attack on Titan, comes a new show - CHAINSAW MAN. This vinyl includes score highlights by Kensuke Ushio from the hit series The soundtrack album by Kensuke Ushio taps into different styles whilst at the core reflecting the action-gore story with lots of electronic & industrial beats and fast-paced melodies. As a contrast, the focus track "that's a dream come true" is a slow-vibing piano track with electronic beats that shows the rare but intense emotional scenes in the show. Kensuke Ushio started his solo career in 2007 under “agraph”. and creates electronic music. He has worked on music for animation TV series, music in advertising and movies such as: A Silent Voice, Devilman Crybaby, Space Dandy, Liz and the Blue Bird, Japan Sinks 2020, Heike Story and now Chainsaw Man.

In the third release of Organic Signs, we embark on a direct journey to the musical heart of Refractor: the annual gathering held in a forest on the outskirts of Madrid to celebrate dancing under the sun and stars for 24 uninterrupted hours.

With four tracks that encapsulate the sound of different mental states you may experience firsthand on this expedition, we begin with label manager Jan Swam's track. He introduces us to ancestral sounds featuring a flute played by himself, gradually accompanied by a penetrating bassline and synth, along with various elements spread across the stereo field. All of this leads to an unexpected finale. Next, we delve into the track by French artist based in Seoul, Pyramid Of Knowledge aka K.O.P. 32, who has crafted a perfect progression of sounds to immerse us in a trance towards the depths of the subconscious. The intensity builds up gradually until reaching its peak in the final moments.

On the other side, we welcome back our beloved Digitalis, responsible for the label's first release. This time, he presents a lost gem from '97 never before released, transporting us directly to the UK rave scene. Get ready to feel the unleashed pulse of the English artist who left an indelible mark on psychedelic music. Finally, we venture into the last chapter where Tadan pilots an interdimensional ship towards the hidden face of a moon that orbits a planet beyond the solar system. Close your eyes to appreciate the depth of the atmospheres and textures, intertwined with a constant rhythmic line that will guide us to the final moments of the record.

More Rice is back with their 7th release, “Double-O-Seven”, the first split EP between More Rice head honchos DOTT and Sarayu. The Ep showcases the artists’ own way of interpreting the acid bassline.

The A-side Bullets On The Floor is built on DOTT’s signature basslines on a 303 with a moving atmospheric background texture throughout the track, combined with haunting noises and melodies from his trusty Prophet 6. Pricey Drive Down was made with the same foundations and instruments, with the idea of creating something different with the same timeframe.

On the B-side, Sarayu’s 4am Sci-Fi features a prominent arpeggiator throughout the track together with a rhythm created from a sequencer. A surprise on the second drop included, one for the dance floor. On B2, a trancier track of the EP, comes with rolling acid basslines with drums that keeps the tracks moving.
Made for club use!

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

Rising London R&B/Neo Soul Artist Releases Debut Mixtape. After the breakout success of singles "green eyes" and "waste your time" - backed by Gilles Peterson, Jamz Supernova, Jamie Cullum, Alexander Nut, Touching Bass and many more - Summer Pearl announces her debut mixtape. Marking her first full release in three years, the mixtape is her most ambitious and accomplished project to date, complete with guest appearances from UK music royalty, including an enchanting feature from soul and reggae luminary Liam Bailey and heavyweight productions from brokenbeat virtuoso Kaidi Tatham.

20TH ANNIVERSARY DELUXE EDITION

“One Day,” the critically acclaimed Bambu Station album now celebrating its 20th Anniversary with this Deluxe Edition Double Vinyl and digital release. Bambu Station believes “Vibes is everything” and their impact on fans and their community activism have been just that. Founded in 1997 by lead singer, songwriter, producer Jalani Horton, of St. Thomas, Virgin Islands, Bambu Station is the culmination of a lifetime of love for music and the quest for sharing and uplifting through sound, poetry, words, and action, which has since grown to a musical force supported by roots fans around the world. The sound of Bambu Station is best described as heavy, natural and
relentlessly captivating. From its conscious roots music to its powerful, insightful and timeless lyrics, Bambu Station's sound is very percussive, profound and inviting.

As the explosion of roots reggae music from Jamaica in the sixties and seventies turned to dancehall, unexpectedly there came a resurgence of roots reggae from the Virgin Islands. Bambu Station was a main progenitor of that resurgence. It would be a band that would create music and write songs that reach into the difficult spaces in the lives of people. It would be a band that would have a positive impact on the lives of people. It would strive to keep a mighty torch lit -- lit by ancestors and musician-prophets alike. On the first release of their breathtaking third album “One Day”, many songs quickly became instant favorites. Fans, writers and industry experts all continue to praise the album as “classic”, “very powerful”, and “one for the ages”. From The Beat Magazine, Reggae Reviews, Urban Ambience Journal and countless others, critics dubbed Bambu Station’s “One Day” as one of the most significant albums of the modern reggae scene. Creation Steppin’ Radio selected “One Day” as its “Album of the Year” for 2003. The D.C. Annual Reggae Awards selected “One Day” as “Album of the Year 2003,” the song “One Day” as “Song of the Year 2003” and Bambu Station as “Producer of the Year 2003.” Terry Wilson ‘Midnight Ravers’ on WBAI FM, NY says, "Bambu Station is the best and most important band in Reggae music." “This is a fabulous album that demands a place of pride in every cultural fan's collection.”

Many of the instant favorites on “One Day” include the provocative opener “Humanity Bawlin’,” “Gunsmoke”, the first single from “One Day”, a very deep, roving and powerful reflection of the rampant gun violence that hit the Virgin Islands hard and haunts us in America and around the world today. "The anthemic “Fya!”, and the mesmerizing “Move On”. "Pass It" captures the passion and spirit of the roots rockers era, while the haunting title track "One Day" is reminiscent of The Specials at their best. The heart wrenching tribute to “Amadou Diallo” is in memory of the brutally slain innocent West African immigrant in New York. “Eyes of Men” is a call for female dignity and homage to Betty Shabazz, Malcolm X’s widow.

Repress of Child's EP "I". "If you're familiar with CHILD and are particularly a sucker for the keyboard, I'm afraid I've got some bad news - It's mostly gone. Fear not, though, as their fuzz-infused blues is alive and kicking and is sure to continue to appeal to a lot of fans of different genres. The three songs follow as their lengths increase, starting with "Age Has Left Me Behind", clocking in at 03:47 and ending with "Going Down Swinging", a 10:20 jam which definitely raises the temperature and which I'm confident will be talked about for a long time. In-between, one can find "The Other Song", which is not just another song, but a sublime cover of Spirit's "The Other Song", originally released as part of the album "Son of Spirit" in 1975. A great tune started only by Michael (drums) and Danny (bass), to whom Mathias and his guitar join after around 20 seconds, and later with a lovely vocal melody which stands throughout the whole song - the less fuzzy song of the EP but definitely a pure beauty (so is the original)." - More Fuzz

Orange vinyl, limited to 350 copies. Repress of Child's EP "I". "If you're familiar with CHILD and are particularly a sucker for the keyboard, I'm afraid I've got some bad news - It's mostly gone. Fear not, though, as their fuzz-infused blues is alive and kicking and is sure to continue to appeal to a lot of fans of different genres. The three songs follow as their lengths increase, starting with "Age Has Left Me Behind", clocking in at 03:47 and ending with "Going Down Swinging", a 10:20 jam which definitely raises the temperature and which I'm confident will be talked about for a long time. In-between, one can find "The Other Song", which is not just another song, but a sublime cover of Spirit's "The Other Song", originally released as part of the album "Son of Spirit" in 1975. A great tune started only by Michael (drums) and Danny (bass), to whom Mathias and his guitar join after around 20 seconds, and later with a lovely vocal melody which stands throughout the whole song - the less fuzzy song of the EP but definitely a pure beauty (so is the original)." - More Fuzz

LIE HEAVY brings together notable rockers, Karl Agell, JD Dennis, TR Gwynne and Graham Fry. You may know them from some of their musical forays with Corrosion of Conformity, Leadfoot,The Skull/Legions of Doom, Confessor, Patriarchs in Black, The Point, Deltoid and The Backsliders. LIE HEAVY draws on the original hard 'n groovy jams of Sabbath, Mountain, Lizzy and Purple, fused with their own massive experience. So, it is not difficult to fathom why LIE HEAVY sounds like a well-oiled, hard working band of 30 years rather than a new entity. Their pedigree does not belie their power. Collectively, they have spent tens of thousands of hours in practice spaces, studios and on stages around the world, honing their vast skills, to find one another in this moment being among the top guardian practitioners at the gates of transcendently HEAVY music.

Blood red vinyl, limited to 350 copies. LIE HEAVY brings together notable rockers, Karl Agell, JD Dennis, TR Gwynne and Graham Fry. You may know them from some of their musical forays with Corrosion of Conformity, Leadfoot,The Skull/Legions of Doom, Confessor, Patriarchs in Black, The Point, Deltoid and The Backsliders !!! LIE HEAVY draws on the original hard 'n groovy jams of Sabbath, Mountain, Lizzy and Purple, fused with their own massive experience. So, it is not difficult to fathom why LIE HEAVY sounds like a well-oiled, hard working band of 30 years rather than a new entity. Their pedigree does not belie their power. Collectively, they have spent tens of thousands of hours in practice spaces, studios and on stages around the world, honing their vast skills, to find one another in this moment being among the top guardian practitioners at the gates of transcendently HEAVY music.

Live recording of the final show of SANAM's debut European 2023 tour at London's home for experiemntal music, Cafe Oto.

Beirut's SANAM burst on the scene in 2023 with their debut album Aykathani Malakon, chosen by The Guardian as one of their 5-star albums from 2023: "Aykathani Malakon thoroughly embodies their originating influences, whipping up kosmische, post-punk, psych rock, free jazz and Levantine folklore into an alchemical tour de force delivered with a defiant, DIY disposition".

Under difficult conditions, the band took to the road for a European tour in November 2023 with the final show at Café Oto. From their incendiary European debut earlier that month at LeGuessWho then rapturous, sold out shows in Switzerland, Belgium, Germany and the UK, spirits for the Cafe Oto gig were high and it was destined to be a tour highlight. 'Live at Café Oto' captures the intensity of the shows, a ritual where improvised rock, free jazz and noise underscored an exorcism of traditional Egyptian song and Arabic poetry.

Drummer Pascal Semerdjian adds: "On this tour, I felt the album evolve from being a set of improvised tracks captured spontaneously, into ripe solid songs. Playing these shows back-to-back, our chemistry kept growing, we got closer, and our live sets, at least to me, were an embodiment of this evolution. In a way, this was the real birth of the band"

Vocalist Sandy Chamoun: "We started the tour with a great push at LeGuessWho, and we kept this energy throughout the whole tour. Every gig felt like I was playing the songs for the first time, providing a new and fresh experience for me. We finished the tour with an emotionally intense gig at Cafe Oto, a dream venue. The audience was incredible, as if we had known each other for a long time and the energy was intense and intimate at the same time; it felt like we were in a small circle of fire together, both us and the audience."

"There was definitely magic in the air for our show at cafe oto - an iconic, humble and warm venue and the last show of the tour – it felt like everything was in the right place. It was my favourite show by far, specially that we were also comfortably able to talk about Palestine, the atrocity we have to live with and can't ignore." Pascal Semerdjian

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In the dynamic landscape of contemporary jazz, Scottish pianist and composer Fergus McCreadie has carved a remarkable niche. Since 2021, his career has skyrocketed, marked by two acclaimed album releases that propelled him into the limelight – shortlisted for the Mercury Prize and clinching the Scottish Album of the Year (SAY) for "Forest Floor." His debut with Edition Records, "Cairn" (2021), set the stage for a journey deeply rooted in natural themes. McCreadie's latest venture, "Stream," continues this intriguing exploration, this time delving into the essence of water. Accompanied by his long-standing comrades, David Bowden and Stephen Henderson, the album flows with the fluidity of its namesake. It's a musical stream that flows through the rich landscapes of Scottish folklore and the sophisticated avenues of contemporary jazz, blending them seamlessly. The album's narrative is a testament to the trio's evolving musical identity, meticulously crafted to mirror a journey from darkness to light. McCreadie shares, "What I like most about this album is that it evolves from dark to light as the album goes on. It's a sort of cloudy skies to sunnier skies journey, quite different from previous albums where the track sequence was more arbitrary." Their sound, a nuanced tapestry woven with delicate touches and bold strokes, speaks of their confidence and exuberance in forging a distinct path. "Stream" is an exploration of shared passions and expressions, pushing the boundaries of their musical language and vocabulary to new depths. With "Stream," Fergus McCreadie, Bowden, and Henderson offer a refreshing antidote to the predictable. Their music is a celebration of individuality, a journey that resonates with the trio's unique voice. It's an invitation to listeners to immerse themselves in a soundscape that's both familiar in its Scottish roots and revolutionary in its jazz execution – a goal every artist aspires to achieve. "Stream" is a musical narrative that flows like water – sometimes calm, sometimes tempestuous, but always moving forward. For those seeking a fresh, engaging, and authentic musical journey, Fergus McCreadie's "Stream" is a listening adventure not to be missed.

Stream by Fergus Mccreadie, released 3 May 2024, includes the following tracks: "Driftwood", "Sun Pillars", "Stony Gate", "Coastline" and more.

Chris Whitley was an artist with his feet planted in two very different worlds. On one side was a guitarist/ songwriter who grew up with the Delta and Chicago blues of Robert Johnson, Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf, with some Bob Dylan thrown in. But at the same time, he was hanging out with NYC Lower East Side avant-gardeists like Arto Lindsey and Michael Beinhorn during his early ‘80s formative years. And it is precisely that tension between tradition and experimentation that makes his music so interesting and unique among “roots rock” artists. That tension is palpable on 1995’s Din of Ecstasy, his second record; Whitley abandons the acoustic blues-rock of his Living with the Law debut in favor of an album, that at first listen, owes a lot to the early-‘90s grunge movement. But Din of Ecstasy is hardly a johnny-come-lately to that sound; those are some truly weird tunings and chords being played by Whitley. It’s almost like he’s reinventing grunge in his own fashion, soaking it in blues and seasoning it with dissonance and feedback. Add some dark, druggy lyrics to the mix and Din of Ecstasy takes its place as one of the decade’s most adventurous albums, a cult classic way overdue for a vinyl release. Limited edition “clear smoke” vinyl, nestled inside a printed inner sleeve. Don’t sleep on this one

I Know I'm Funny haha is Webster's most realized manifestation yet of this emotional and musical alchemy. Continuing to bloom from her 2019 breakthrough and Secretly Canadian debut Atlanta Millionaires Club, Webster's sound draws as much from the lap-steel singer-songwriter pop of the 1970s and teardrop country tunes as it does from the audacious personalities of her city's rap and R&B community. The album began for Webster with the stirring ballad "In a Good Way," as in "You make me want to cry in a good way"_an instantclassic Faye Webster one-liner. It's beguilingly simple, the kind of melody and arrangement that seem to have existed forever. A sense of relief charges the neo-psychedelic pop of "Cheers," where Webster experiments with an overdriven guitar tone. She also collaborated, on "Overslept," with the Japanese artist Mei Ehara, who she calls the biggest influence on her new music. Webster's music is full of personality. Many of her songs contain bits of girl-group-esque talk-singing, which color her atypical storysongs. Webster says she's in a growth mindset, pushing herself to learn more, to be more vulnerable. "Growth is really important to me," she says. "I hope people will relate to my songs, and not just be like `this is a good record' but `this makes me feel something. This is making me think differently, this is making me question things.' I told myself a few years ago that I was going to be more honest in my songwriting, that honesty is the best route to take with music. If I have a voice and people are listening to me, I'm not going to waste it."

Nach zwei von der Kritik hochgelobten Alben, zahlreichen Mini-LPs, EPs und Singles kehrt das Londoner Trio Girls In Synthesis mit seinem neuen Statement, dem dritten Album "Sublimation", zurück. Wenn du dachtest, du kennst GIS bereits, dann irrst Du Dich diesmal vielleicht.GIS gehen weiter und haben eine düstere und intensive, aber dennoch melodische Sammlung von Tracks erschaffen, ihre Interpretation einer kantigen Pop-Platte. Der Opener 'Lights Out' besteht aus zwei Teilen; der erste ist ein Barrett-eskes Gesangs- und Gitarren-Lamento über Schlafmangel, das über eine von 'Faust Tapes' beeinflusste Freeform-Noise-Sektion in einen stampfenden, hochintensiven Showdown übergeht. In Songs wie "Deceit", "We Are Here" und "Picking Things Out Of The Air" zeigt sich die Gruppe von ihrer melodischsten Seite, indem sie einige der chaotischen Noise-Elemente ihres charakteristischen Sounds auf ein Minimum reduziert und leidenschaftliche, schwebende Vocals und Keyboard-Melodien in den Vordergrund stellt. Ihr Markenzeichen, das treibende Schlagzeug und der Bass, ist besonders bei den Stücken "I Judge Myself" und "Corrupting Memories" zu hören, wird aber durch intensive, vom frühen Gothic beeinflusste Keyboardlinien ergänzt, die Einflüsse aus den späten 1970ern/frühen 1980ern mit der zeitgenössischen GIS-Intensität in Einklang bringen. Die langsam sich steigernden Tracks 'I Was Never There' und 'The Prefix' bauen mit spärlichen Arrangements und kreisenden, spiralförmigen Outros Spannung und Atmosphäre auf, während die Band im abschließenden 'A Damning Lesson' zu ihrer intensiven, knüppelnden Soundwand zurückkehrt, nur um sie in eine verschwommene, hallende Drum-Machine zu schicken, die an die frühen Arbeiten von Cabaret Voltaire erinnert. Nächstes Kapitel, nächstes Level für GIS!

Nach zwei von der Kritik hochgelobten Alben, zahlreichen Mini-LPs, EPs und Singles kehrt das Londoner Trio Girls In Synthesis mit seinem neuen Statement, dem dritten Album "Sublimation", zurück. Wenn du dachtest, du kennst GIS bereits, dann irrst Du Dich diesmal vielleicht.GIS gehen weiter und haben eine düstere und intensive, aber dennoch melodische Sammlung von Tracks erschaffen, ihre Interpretation einer kantigen Pop-Platte. Der Opener 'Lights Out' besteht aus zwei Teilen; der erste ist ein Barrett-eskes Gesangs- und Gitarren-Lamento über Schlafmangel, das über eine von 'Faust Tapes' beeinflusste Freeform-Noise-Sektion in einen stampfenden, hochintensiven Showdown übergeht. In Songs wie "Deceit", "We Are Here" und "Picking Things Out Of The Air" zeigt sich die Gruppe von ihrer melodischsten Seite, indem sie einige der chaotischen Noise-Elemente ihres charakteristischen Sounds auf ein Minimum reduziert und leidenschaftliche, schwebende Vocals und Keyboard-Melodien in den Vordergrund stellt. Ihr Markenzeichen, das treibende Schlagzeug und der Bass, ist besonders bei den Stücken "I Judge Myself" und "Corrupting Memories" zu hören, wird aber durch intensive, vom frühen Gothic beeinflusste Keyboardlinien ergänzt, die Einflüsse aus den späten 1970ern/frühen 1980ern mit der zeitgenössischen GIS-Intensität in Einklang bringen. Die langsam sich steigernden Tracks 'I Was Never There' und 'The Prefix' bauen mit spärlichen Arrangements und kreisenden, spiralförmigen Outros Spannung und Atmosphäre auf, während die Band im abschließenden 'A Damning Lesson' zu ihrer intensiven, knüppelnden Soundwand zurückkehrt, nur um sie in eine verschwommene, hallende Drum-Machine zu schicken, die an die frühen Arbeiten von Cabaret Voltaire erinnert. Nächstes Kapitel, nächstes Level für GIS!

The Bolshoi released three albums during their existence, but they also recorded a fourth album that was never officially released during their tenure. Provisionally titled Country Life, it was released in 2015 as part of a limited 5-CD box set. We are excited to now release it on vinyl for the first time. The album is double colored orange and green vinyl. Country Life consists of demos recorded for the album, and many of these only survived on reference cassettes but were digitally restored. We are especially thrilled that Trevor Tanner has recorded a brand new acoustic reimagining of the song "Dolores Jones" made specifically for this release. The Bolshoi were different. Their songs were dark and subversive, sufficient evidence for many critics to corral them under the "Gothic" banner at the time of their debut - but they really only "flirted" with Goth. They oozed dark, pensive lyrics supported with inventive pop-goth guitar making them nearly impossible to categorize.

Turning his attention to dance for his latest album, Fearless Movement out this May on Young, Kamasi Washington resumes his ongoing study of music as a means of connection. His 2015 album The Epic, as well as 2018’s Heaven and Earth were received by critics and audiences as a reimagination of modern jazz showcasing Washington’s larger-than-lift compositions full of celestial grandeur and his distinct blend of jazz, Latin, funk, classical, hip-hop and soul. Fearless Movement, however, offers something different: terrestrial rhythms and collaborations from rappers, musical icons and even Washington’s own daughter. Features include: Thundercat, Taj Austin, Ras Austin, Patrice Quinn, DJ Battlecat, Brandon Coleman, D-Smoke, George Clinton, Bj the Chicago Kid, and Andre 3000.

Culled from three 1985 gigs in the UK during a transitional and transcendent time in the band's story, Sonic Youth's `Walls Have Ears' appeared as a 2LP set in 1986, not just a live album but an artful tapestry full of live experimentation with songs, between-song tape segues, darkness, humor and audio verité on par with elements of side B of `Master Dik' to come later. With a bit of complexity to the situation of the release itself. But that's a different story. Deleted as quickly as it appeared then, it's now issued for the first time officially under the band's auspices. In this 2LP set brimming with primitive classics like "The Burning Spear", "I Love Her All The Time", "Death Valley 69" and "I'm Insane" (uncredited on sleeve), segues and live guitar changes ooze together threaded by Madonna tapes and vocal loops off the board. The first two sides of `Walls' are massive, cavernous, with newly-drafted drummer Steve Shelley in tow taking on past tunes and unveiling "Expressway To Yr Skull" in glorious form. They tear it up especially on one trash-fi excerpt of "Blood On Brighton Beach" (actually "Making the Nature Scene") from a legendary outdoor gig November 8th where Moore, Gordon and Ranaldo's guitars treble-blast dissonant shockwaves over the black-stoned beach of Quadrophenia fame. The record's second slab spotlights an April 1985 pre-Shelley gig supporting Nick Cave at London's Hammersmith Palais and was one of the final appearances live of Bob Bert, again featuring some molten takes on "Brother James", "Kill Yr Idols", "Flower" (Iisted as "The Word (E.V.O.L.)"), "Ghost Bitch" and others. The emergence of the Jesus and Mary Chain in the world gave Brit scribes a lazy and easy parallel, addressed here with a wink with the inclusion of "Speed JAMC", another offstage tape interlude playfully scrolling through one of that band's songs at fast-forward. This document remains an essential representation of some lean and mean years of the quartet's throttling march out into the world in the mid eighties. Coloured vinyl, one red, one yellow LP.

Lauded experimental death metal band Dååth has emerged from its 13-year hiatus with a new album, The Deceivers, at once a devastating reminder and giant leap forward that showcases the technical wizardry and brutal intensity that the Atlanta, Georgia-bred band is capable of. After 12 years on hiatus, Dååth found their ideal new home at Metal Blade, signing to the label and wasting no time creating new music, cover songs (Death’s “The Philosopher” and Morbid Angel’s “Where the Slime Live”) and reissuing previous albums. The first new song from the revitalized Dååth, “No Rest No End” (released ahead of the album in February, 2023), features guest solos by Spiro Dussias and now-Daath member Trujillo, who impressed Levi so much while guesting on the track that he was invited to join the band. Metal Injection called the song “massive,” with Sean Z. saying, “The first time I heard 'No Rest No End' in demo form, I was blown away! I immediately knew exactly what I wanted to do vocally. The words practically flew off the page. During every step of the creation process, the song was an obvious masterpiece.” The band began their journey in 1999 and stayed busy for just over a decade before its 2011 hiatus. In that time, Dååth released four studio albums—2004’s Futility, The Hinderers in 2007, The Concealers in 2009, and their self-titled LP in 2010. Tours with Cattle Decapitation, Dark Funeral, Cynic, Nile, Slayer, Dragonforce, Goatwhore, Chimaira, Dying Fetus, and Devildriver followed. Dååth also landed a coveted spot on Ozzfest playing before tens of thousands of fans in outdoor amphitheaters across the US, in addition to the infamous and long-running metal tour Summer Slaughter. Levi believes this is the most focused and deadly version of Dååth to date, and is excited about what’s in store. “The chemistry is great, because we can talk about stuff that would normally be uncomfortable for a lot of musicians to do without causing problems,” he says. He’s lived a lot of life since the band went away over a decade ago and admits that his mindset is very different now than it was during the original run. “We're taking this to its full potential, letting nothing and nobody stand in our way,” Levi concludes. “If you're not going all out, what's the point?"

Cate Brooks is back with her seventh release for Clay Pipe Music. Never one to stand still, ‘Easel Studies’ finds her pushing the boundaries of sound synthesis and experimentation on the Buchla Music Easel while still sounding beautifully beguiling and hypnotically melodic.

"On this day in 2015, at exactly Midday, I took delivery of a wildly exotic musical instrument. To call it a synthesizer would be a misrepresentation; it’s really more of a tactile, living, breathing entity than anything else. It had originally supposed to have been delivered on the day before, but had somehow been mislaid in the labyrinths of the Royal Mail sorting office at Elephant and Castle.

I sat patiently and quietly all morning, waiting for its imminent arrival. I had already read through the ‘manual’, which is more of a concept / design for living, written by synthesis legend Allen Strange.

With Noon approaching, I became a little anxious- my local postie, Barrie, was usually here by about 10:30am and there was no sign of him.

At 11:58, Barrie walked past, completely ignoring my house. Obviously concerned, I stood at the door and waited for him to walk back toward his van. As he came back, he smiled and I called out, quizzically “Barrie?”. His reply was “Yes I have!” and walked back to his van, collecting a large box and bringing it to my door. I remember the weather was muggy and my neighbour was attending to her rose bushes, as the cheery and helpful postie deftly navigated around her busy secateurs.

I took the box inside, opened the top and just looked at the inner box for a while. I took a photo of it, which I still have. It felt like quite a momentous occasion, because I felt that this instrument would take me to different sonic spaces than I was used to. It wasn’t my first experience with Don Buchla’s instruments by any means, as I’d learned to use his 200e system. But this was quite a different beast.

My cat Brillo came to inspect the box and I set the Music Easel up on the floor and plugged it in. The result of that very first experiment became “Pendula”.

In the following days and weeks of that summer, I created many more experiments on the Easel, quite often with Brillo either sat on me as I played, or trying to climb up on the instrument itself, attempting to move the faders and switches himself.

By the end of August, I had amassed some thirty-something pieces, which I put aside for future reference. I had learned a lot about this instrument, its idiosyncrasies, subtleties and ways of working.

Sadly, Brillo died in September of 2015. I like to think that his last summer with me was a comforting experience, curling up and listening to the sonic experiments taking place, as he regularly did for the sixteen years he was with me. The first track on the album, “Con Brillo” is my little tribute to him.

Fast forward to 2021 and I rediscovered all of these experiments. Some were almost unlistenable, but some had a beguiling charm about them- perhaps the sound of someone not really knowing what they’re getting into. They needed mixing and balancing, so I set to work. I also wrote a new piece, with exactly the same recording chain, in the same way, in the same room. This became the suitably titled final track “Hindsight”.

The Music Easel has remained a constant source of sonic worlds for me to explore. It because the main instrument on the album Agri Montana, for example and has cropped up on many other records I’ve made since.

I would especially like to thank David at Postmodular for selling the Music Easel to me, after phoning him and disturbing his Sunday afternoon outing to Hyde Park (sorry about that David). I always promised I would send him a copy of something I had produced on it, so hopefully he will enjoy Easel Studies."

As I finish writing this, I notice that it is, once more, exactly Midday.

I hope you enjoy Easel Studies too.

Cate Brooks (21st of May, 2023).

Heavyweight vinyl LP version comes with full colour inner sleeve and free download card
Designed by Julian House

"The Carrier is a succinct distillation of folk-rock magnificence." SHINDIG

"The Carrier an impressive package all round, and one that could easily end up on a few Album of the Year lists." - WE ARE CULT

Large Plants started as a solo project for Jack Sharp, the singer and guitarist for Wolf People. It was spurred on by a writing frenzy during the lockdown of 2020 when Sharp played and recorded all the parts for what would become the debut single, La Isla Bonita and the first album The Carrier. In summer of 2021 the tracks were mixed by songwriter Chris Cohen (formerly of Deerhoof & Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti).

Large Plants’ songs are immediate, heavy psychedelic rock belters filtered through a haze of analogue tape flutter. Sharp’s voice has an eerily distant and delicate tone that lends a strong folk sensibility to the album; like the scent of winter mornings and fresh soil mixed with the whiff of petrol. Though the songs are generally three-minute gems, they are lyrically more like ancient ballads; peopled with tragic youths, witches, lovelorn troubadours and femmes fatales.

Sharp is now touring Large Plants as a four piece along with Ed Taylor on drums, Ollie Taylor on bass and Joe Wooley on guitar with dates booked so far at OSLO, Hackney -17th April and The Betsy Trotwood, Clerkenwell 5th May

Pull the Rope, the new record by Ibibio Sound Machine, casts the Eno Williams and Max Grunhard-led outfit in a new light. The hope, joy, and sexiness of their music remain, but, further honing the edge of their acclaimed 2022 album Electricity, the connection they aim to foster has shifted venues from the sunny buoyancy of a sunlit festival to a sweat-soaked, all-night dance club. Williams and Grunhard attribute this shift to a matter of collaborators, recording Pull the Rope with Sheffield-based producer Ross Orton (Arctic Monkeys, M.I.A.) over the course of two weeks. The way the pair wrote songs changed significantly_rather than Eno penning lyrics to music generated by Max and company's jamming, Orton started with Eno and Max writing together before adding the band. With less time in the studio and a new way of considering how they built songs, the duo found making decisions about Pull the Rope's sound quicker and more instinctual than before. "Ross is from Sheffield, which has an edgier, more industrial vibe than London," Grunhard explains. "He hears things differently than us, is more grounded in rave and grungier sounds, and knew when to add drums or push the instrumentation more. It was very different for us, but it lends itself to where Ibibio Sound Machine is going." In melding their songwriting process, Grunhard and Williams have, impossibly, pulled the trick of making Ibibio Sound Machine a tighter band than ever before, building out from their core in a way that highlights the electrifying group of musicians they play with. Rather than recording with the full band in the room, Pull the Rope was sculpted, elements added and shaped by Grunhard, Williams, and Orton along the way. As a result, Pull the Rope is a nimble, sleek machine that's thrilling from the first note of the opening title track, Eno's otherworldly voice and PK Ambrose's throbbing bass driving through a kaleidoscopic array of house, post-punk, funk, Afrobeat and disco, bangers and ballads, making an argument for unity that begins on the dancefloor. "We are the places we grew up, the places we've been, and the people we've met along the way," Williams says. "Hopping around the globe, we've found that people are fundamentally the same_they're people. Opposing sides push and pull, but there is an alternative to war, violence, and suffering." Lead single "Got to Be Who U Are" literally globetrots, name checking locales across the world that would feel disparate were it not for how well-traveled they are. Eno growing up in the musical melting pot of the Ibibio region of Nigeria and Max being a conservatory-trained musician from Australia, one could call their meeting in London and formation of Ibibio Sound Machine predestined. "Mama Say" and "Let My Yes Be Yes" touch themes of female empowerment. They're indicative of the band's depth as they push further into the electronic; "Mama Say" hits notes of electropop while "Let My Yes Be Yes" fuses electro to Afrobeat. Ibibio Sound Machine have always imbued their music with political consciousness, and the light that shines through in Williams' vocals and voice has never felt more necessary. The sound of Pull the Rope, then, is hope in darkness, bliss in spite of bleakness. Once again, Ibibio Sound Machine are here to provide the soundtrack to the best night of your life, and the better world to come.

Experimental Japanese operator Lemna returns to Mantis with another five intricately sculpted cuts that toy with tension, release and the mysterious atmosphere of the forest at dawn. Lemna adopts a considered, patient approach to her music practice, creating interlocking rhythms which take cues from Autonomic fragmentation as much as techno hypnosis, but it's the spatial pressure and textural sound design which makes her music truly fly. Taking predawn walks in woods at the foot of the mountain she calls home, she drew inspiration from five different organisms within the vibrant ecosystem around her to create a collection of tracks she aptly refers to as 'Nocturnal Assembly'.