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SML is a Los Angeles based quintet featuring Anna Butterss, Jeremiah Chiu, Josh Johnson, Booker Stardrum, and Gregory Uhlmann. Spontaneous Music Live contains two side-length pieces of unedited improvisation, recorded live at Los Angeles venue Zebulon during SML"s December 2025 three-night residency, just weeks after the release of the band"s second album HOW YOU BEEN. It was recorded and mixed live to stereo tape by Bryce Gonzales (the same engineer/wizard known for his gorgeous live captures/mixes of Jeff Parker"s ETA IVtet). Between HOW YOU BEEN and their 2024 debut SMALL MEDIUM LARGE (both of which were heavily edited, shaped and post-produced) the band has developed a reputation for records that are heavily fused, polished, and punchy. The medium is on full post-modern display on those LPs, and the band"s post-production knife can be responsible for much of the perspective - the tastiest morsels collected, arranged, and rearranged just so. But the source material from both those albums were live recordings. Longform, unwieldy, ebbing and flowing. On top of that, every performance the band has ever done has been fully improvised in that spirit. So in the sphere of live performance the band"s esteem has grown down a different path - one of linear, hypnotic, expansion. It"s a perceived split persona shared by some of SML"s most inspiring conceptual bedfellows: compare the extended madness of Can"s Live in Paris 1973 to the relative tight form of Future Days from the same year; the speed-funk chaos of Miles Davis" Dark Magus to the heavily deconstructed On The Corner or Big Fun. Spontaneous Music Live removes the curatorial perspective and pulls the curtain back on that search-pluck-reconstruct editing process. What we"re left with is the psychedelic realism of the band in situ, in their home town, collectively improvising, fully in-the-moment, mining for that moment of discovery. We hear, in macro, each nugget of sound which could be the basis for a future SML album track, spattered amongst the collective chaos-and-control like stars in the night sky.

New York-based Patrick Sullivan AKA P-Sol has long proven his credentials when it comes to editing hip-hop joints, mashing together classics, and generally pulling apart favourite jams and rebuilding them with a different perspective. Most of them come on the PS7, as does this new long player, which is a top-shelf example of how to sample properly. Tittle tracks make subtle hints at inspirations if not source material as the works through loopy, sketchy jams that are short but sweet, more club-ready rollers and loved-up beats that drip with sexuality and jazzy sophistication. A great accompaniment to a long journey or lazy afternoon.

‘Cécile McLorin Salvant ... sings standards, show tunes and old novelties in a taut, flinty, elusively beautiful voice, erring toward material with difficult lyrics and tough places in history. Salvant wins over her audiences by tweaking them slightly: daring them to go there with her—not just into the archive, but toward the darkness of the past.’ – New York Times

‘Although Salvant is known as a jazz musician, her approach to music is defined by her instinct for experimentation ... Her music is beloved for ... embracing theatre and subverting classics with playful renditions.’ – Guardian

Salvant, who has performed with orchestras regularly over the last decade-and-a-half and intended to make an album with one sooner in her career, but logistics and her abundant creative ideas led to other new projects intervening. Having finally found time to make this album, With Every Breath I Take is a different sort of record than it might have been even ten years ago.

“It is a rare opportunity to be able to make an album at this scale, which has been a dream of mine for many years,” Salvant says. “Darcy James Argue wrote stunning arrangements and the Metropole Orkest, conducted by the extraordinary Jules Buckley, gave these stories a cinematic dimension. We overcame quite a few obstacles to even get into the recording studio for this project; it took almost four years for us to do so, and I am so incredibly proud to share it.

“I did not choose these songs because they are beautiful, but because they are crucial to me,” she adds.

Cécile McLorin Salvant, a 2020 MacArthur Fellow and three-time Grammy Award winner, is a singer and composer bringing historical perspective, a renewed sense of drama, and an enlightened musical understanding to both jazz standards and her own original compositions. Classically trained, steeped in jazz, blues, and folk, and drawing from musical theater and vaudeville, Salvant embraces a wide-ranging repertoire that broadens the possibilities for live performance.

Salvant’s performances range from spare duets for voice and piano to instrumental trios to orchestral ensembles. Her unreleased work Ogresse is an ambitious long-form musical fairy tale that is being made into a feature length animated film. She has performed at national and international venues and festivals such as the Newport Jazz Festival, the Monterey Jazz Festival, the Village Vanguard, and the North Sea Jazz Festival. Her previous Nonesuch albums, Ghost Song (2022) Mélusine (2023), and Oh Snap (2025) received critical accolades; the former two were both nominated for Grammy Awards. Salvant is also a visual artist, and Oh Snap was named a best album of 2025 by the Guardian, Jazzwise, JazzTimes, and the Francis Davis Jazz Critics Poll.

ALERT: BIG 90s ITALIAN RAVE COMP - a lot of very in demand tunes on here.

Navigators

Franco Falsini and the Interactive Test Universe

There are musicians who follow their time.

And then there are those who seem to move along a different trajectory—like navigators crossing sonic eras without ever truly belonging to any one of them. The story of Franco Falsini belongs to the latter. It is a story that begins long before raves, before techno, before the word “electronic” had even become a recognizable musical genre. A story that moves across continents, technologies, and sonic visions, eventually arriving at a small creative laboratory born in Italy in the early 1990s: Interactive Test. This compilation is a fragment of that universe. But as often happens with the hidden histories of music, understanding it requires going back. Far back.

The Beginning: Machines, Tape and Space

In the late 1960s Franco Falsini leaves Italy and moves to the United States. It is not merely a geographical journey—it is also a journey into a new idea of music. At the time, synthesizers are only just emerging from research laboratories. Multitrack tape recorders allow musicians to build entire sonic worlds on their own. Technology is still far from standardized: every studio is almost an experimental workshop. In Virginia, Falsini builds one of his own. Among cables, oscillators, electric guitars and reels of magnetic tape, a kind of music begins to take shape that resembles nothing else being made at the time. It is not simply rock, and it is not yet truly electronic. It moves somewhere in the space between the two. Out of these explorations emerges Sensations' Fix, the project through which Falsini releases a series of albums during the 1970s. Records that seem to come from a parallel dimension: cosmic landscapes, electronically treated guitars, synthesizers drifting like satellites. Many years later those albums would be rediscovered as visionary works. But at the time they were simply the result of relentless curiosity. A curiosity that would never fade.

The City That Never Sleeps

In the 1980s Falsini’s trajectory leads him to New York. The city is a sonic organism in constant transformation. In its clubs and recording studios something entirely new is beginning to take shape: music built from drum machines, sequencers, and samplers, created for the body before the living room. It is the dawn of modern dance culture. Falsini works as a sound engineer, producer and experimenter. From close range he observes electronic music transforming into a global language. Machines become more accessible, computers begin entering studios, and rhythm takes on an increasingly central role. Yet even in this phase Falsini does not simply follow what is happening. He absorbs. Observes. Reimagines. When he eventually returns to Italy, he brings back not only technical experience but also a clear vision: the conviction that electronic music is an open space, a territory still waiting to be explored.

Tuscany, Early 1990s

At the beginning of the 1990s something is happening in Italy as well. In clubs, abandoned industrial warehouses and clandestine parties, a new scene is beginning to form. It is rave culture: a spontaneous movement bringing together DJs, producers and listeners in a collective experience driven by rhythm, technology, and creative freedom. It is within this context that Franco Falsini, together with his brother Riccardo, creates Interactive Test.

The name almost sounds like a scientific experiment. In many ways, it is. Interactive Test does not emerge as a traditional record label. It begins as a laboratory—a place where ideas, sounds and musical identities can be tested and explored. Around the Falsini studio in Tuscany a small constellation of artists and DJs begins to gather, helping to shape the sound of Italy’s emerging electronic scene. Among them are Andrea Giuditta, Francesco Farfa, Gabry Fasano, Roby Mastelloni, Roby J and many others. Each brings a different musical sensibility. But they all share the same intuition: electronic music is not a genre. It is a language.

The Laboratory of Identities

One of the most fascinating aspects of the Interactive Test universe is its constant play with identity. Franco Falsini releases music under several different names: Open Space, Youth Wave, Agent Fylfoyt, Man Myth Magic. These are not simply pseudonyms.

They are different sonic perspectives, as if each project were a window opening onto a parallel musical universe. Open Space, for example, explores more atmospheric and visionary territories. Youth Wave moves between electronic groove and club-oriented rhythms. Other projects experiment with digital psychedelia or hypnotic techno textures. Interactive Test becomes something more than a label. it becomes an ecosystem.

Domestic Machines, Infinite Worlds

Looking back today at the technology used in those productions, one might almost smile. Many tracks were created on Amiga computers, MIDI sequencers and analog synthesizers wired together in home studios—tools that appear modest when compared to today’s digital possibilities.

Yet precisely these limitations became a creative force. Every sound had to be built, shaped and reinvented. Sequences developed slowly, almost like living organisms. The tracks did not always follow traditional dance music structures; often they felt like genuine sonic journeys. Music built from space.

A Hidden Constellation

Many of the records released by Interactive Test in the 1990s remained for years almost invisible objects, circulating quietly among DJs, collectors, and devoted listeners. Yet it is precisely this underground existence that helped preserve them. Listening again today, one perceives something rare: the feeling of music that does not fully belong to its own time. Music suspended between different eras. Perhaps because it comes from a vision that both precedes and transcends trends.

Continuing the Journey

Looking at Franco Falsini’s entire path—from the electronic psychedelia of Sensations’ Fix to the rave culture of the 1990s—a surprisingly coherent line emerges.

A line defined by exploration.

Each project, each pseudonym, each record appears as a new route within the same great sonic voyage.

Interactive Test was one of its stations.

A laboratory.
A community.
A creative platform.

This compilation gathers some of its traces.

Not as a simple archive of the past, but as a map of a musical territory that continues to expand even today.

Like all true sonic explorations.

Long-time house architect Louie Vega dropped his comprehensive last album, ‘Expansions In The NYC’, as another homage to New York City's 50-year history with dance music. It was full of vocal collaborations and spanned disco, boogie and all forms of house.

'Touch The Sky' feat Tony Momrelle is the latest track from it to get full remix treatment, following on from 'All My Love' late last year.

First to offer his own perspective is Japan's Masaki Morii, a regular on the likes of King Street and Shelter, as well as the founder of his own M2SOUL MUSIC & NU ONE. He bridges soul, deep and Afro house, always with plenty of emotion. His first remix is a lush layering of feathery drums and skyward melodies with the original vocal bringing plenty of heart-aching soul. It's a life-giving work for a moment of pure celebration and release, and shows how musical and artful house can be in the right hands. Extended dub and instrumental remixes all bring out subtly different facets of the original without losing its uplifting essence.

Brandon Weems and Craig Handfield are Musclecars, a duo with a community-first approach to music. From high-profile magazine front covers to gigs at Panoramabar and their residency at Nowadays in New York, they have a fresh and authentic sound that pulls from soul, jazz and disco on labels like BBE, Rhythm Section and their own Coloring Lessons. Their majestic, 10-minute remix is a soulful deep house odyssey designed to nourish and enrich. The soaring vocals come from a place of love, and there is freedom to the jazzy melodies and lavish percussion that warms the heart while pianos and synths are locked in a joyous tussle. The dub shifts things back to chunkier, more bouncy drums, with slightly pared-back, more late-night melodies, while the instrumental is all about giving everything room to breathe.

With Superstring, one of the greatest trance classics returns to vinyl. Originally released by Cygnus X, the track became a landmark in trance history and remains instantly recognisable decades later. Its hypnotic melody and emotional drive helped shape the sound of the genre and continue to resonate with fans and DJs.

This special edition includes an exclusive, never-before-released remix by Oliver Lieb as well as the iconic versions by Rank 1: the celebrated Rank 1 Remix and the Deep Dub Remix. Each interpretation brings a different perspective to the timeless core of Superstring, showing why it remains one of trance's defining records.

Pressed on vinyl for collectors, DJs and trance enthusiasts, this release celebrates the enduring legacy of a classic that still feels relevant today. It represents trance's ability to connect generations through melody and emotion.

Chins For Lefty is the debut album and first recording by Gichard, a new duo chronicling the absurdities of end-stage capitalism and mouldering social rituals from their vantage point in Glasgow, Scotland. Recorded primarily in the band’s home studio straight to tape, Chins For Lefty combines gorgeous, ramshackle melody, DIY kosmische punk, drum machine + synth and, in vocalist/lyricist Lisa Jones, an absurdist commentator on the human condition as it navigates the anxieties of the modern world. Instrumentalist Chas Lalli’s swirling music accompaniment stitches an evocative mix of musical styles, the ragged wind beneath the lyrics’ wings.

Although the duo first collaborated in their previous group Dragged Up, their disparate musical and artistic backgrounds make for an alluring mix in Gichard. Lalli has spent the last 20 years in the Glasgow underground, most notably in the noise rock group VOM, while Lisa Jones’s practice was in poetry and spoken word. Beginning as co vocalist in her previous band, in Gichard her lyrics are centre stage; the vision concocted alongside Lalli amounts to a total world-build.

Chins For Lefty scans almost like a novel, with each track elucidating a skewed universe that bears only some resemblance to the one you and I partake in. Like all works of fiction Gichard’s songs are rooted in reality and the lived experiences of its authors, but here characters are exaggerated, social mores and habits are pulled apart to reveal their inherent alienness. Universal emotions are laid bare, the bright light of anxious examination searching out every hairline fracture in our relationships. Distorted and cracked, the mirror that Gichard hold up to our world is also pretty damn funny.

Opener Cholesterol Test launches an expansive, cosmic guitar and synth intro that belies the Tascam-tape recorder it was recorded onto, like a Chromatics cut substituting anxiety for overt sexuality. Here Jones intones an apology to a non-responsive recipient, in the medium of a long voice note forensically deconstructing an interaction from the night before. Over punk guitars and shuffling, lo-fi drum machine splutters, the narrator in Asking The Apes “prefers things to people” before being taken hostage in the city zoo to confess an obsession which consumes the protagonist, ending with the immortal two liner “I sleep in a cocoon of old newspapers at the end of your street / And I think I have been fired from my job,” On album standout Posthumous Hologram, the narrator is faced with a human simulacra, in this case an undead pop star; the face of the encroaching technological singularity. Yes, it does requests, it can do My Way in 200 different language options. But what are the implications? While you’re left pondering, the alternating deadpan verse delivery and undeniably catchy chorus keep you company.

By the time Break Up With Johnny Dogbirth rattles into view, the band are satirising a suburban inanity blown up to cartoon proportions, soundtracked with a drawled musicality that recalls Rowland S. Howard’s post-Birthday Party balladeering. This approach is furthered on Human Resources: over an angular guitar+bass track, Jones’s short story recalls Dry Cleaning’s erudite lyrical post punk. On Soft Face, Lalli’s guitar and drum machine are swathed in echo and delay, as Jones dissects dating rituals with a west of Scotland drollness. Hamming It Up brings a porcine perspective in a short story that begins with the line “I was breastfeeding discreetly in the service station. She didn’t mind.” What follows is a passage punctured with canned laughter and a narrative involving tribute acts, modern farming techniques.

Brilliant first single Your Private Hell closes the album, the closest the group get to earnest perhaps, filtered through a surreal central Scottishness. While Your Private Hell might seem like a sardonic take down of romance, perhaps it’s the very distillation of love in all its awkwardness, selflessness and weirdness. Here there’s a distinctive Glasgow-ness to this doomed romance: the protagonist falls for an outsider, offers them cheap jarred hot dogs and carbolic soap (the infamous, excoriating soap dished out in schools and government buildings throughout Scotland), offers to cover up a murder, stalks them in the all-night Spar. It’s a short story of intrigue, murder and the irresistible pull of self-sacrifice to share in someone else’s suffering. If that’s not love, what is it? You can see this vision mapped out in black and white on their video for 'Your Private Hell'.

The epitome of a modern artist, Jana Bahrich does most things herself, no matter how painstaking - writing, producing, directing, often hand painting t-shirts the day of shows when the band have run out of merch. This has helped give her band Francis of Delirium a unique identity, with her rock confessionals breathing a new life in to the genre and her paintings creating a striking design aesthetic. Released as she was finishing high school, 2020’s single 'Quit Fucking Around’ was a great introduction and it remains one of her most enduring songs.

Shortly after it’s release, she signed to artist-first indie Dalliance Recordings (Gia Margaret, HighSchool, lilo) and three EPs - All Change (2020), Wading (2021), The Funhouse (2022) and a striking debut album - Lighthouse (2024) - on and Jana has Francis of Delirium flying. While the EP’s fizzed with promise, her debut album Lighthouse landed its punches. Seeking a more vulnerable and open sonic palette, she wove in pop elements to create anthems that celebrated heartbreak and love. Lead singles ‘Real Love’ and ‘First Touch’ were the first tracks she made with an outsider - working with GRAMMY winning producer Catherine Marks (boygenius, The Killers, Wolf Alice) - while the rest of the album was produced by Jana herself and day one collaborator Chris Hewett. The critics were impressed too - “Bahrich’s choruses, almost every one, are lumpin-your-throat gorgeous.” NME; “Jana Bahrich seems too young for this tremendous debut’s ambitious anthems.” Uncut; “A rewarding experience that captures a talented, young artist at the crossroads between adolescence and adulthood." Paste. Live, Francis of Delirium are Jana (guitar and vocals), Jeff Hennico (bass) and Denis Schumacher (drums). Together, their brilliant quiet-loud dynamic and tight interplay only elevate her songs and over the last 5 years, they’ve toured across Europe and North America, playing headline shows, festivals and tours with the likes of Blondshell, Briston Maroney, The Districts, Horsegirl and Soccer Mommy. They’ve also supported The 1975, Alanis Morissette, DIIV and Wolf Alice.

Last summer saw a memorable UK tour with Bôa, the 90s band resurrected by a huge TikTok moment for their track ‘Duvet’. There was a real sense of excitement for these shows with young crowds snaking outside every venue hours before doors and bringing the sort of energy Jana thrives on, she road tested new material to an overwhelmingly positive response, giving her the impetus to go and finish album two. An artist who seeks to connect with her listener on a deeper level, it’s no surprise then that she’s made hope and inner strength central themes on her new album, Run, Run Pure Beauty. Jana says the title track is “an imagining of the world after it has been destroyed by humans and technology. Thrashing against what humans have left behind, ultimately the pure beauty of nature wins out.”

Wanting to bring different perspectives into her songwriting with this record - informed by both her travels and the tumultuous times we find ourselves in - she’s also brought about a progression in her sound with these new songs somehow sounding larger, with undeniable harmonies and more orchestration. Featuring the singles ‘Little Black Dress’ and ‘It’s a Beautiful Life’, Run, Run Pure Beauty serves as an excavation of hope in bleak times. Produced by Jana and Chris, and mixed by Nicolas Vernhes (Deerhunter, Dirty Projectors, Silver Jews, Wild Nothing), its eleven songs of discovery, despair and perseverance ultimately serve as a mirror on its creator and is a brilliant next installment in the Francis of Delirium arc.

'The Endless Dance' is the first collaborative album from Northern Irish producer and composer Hannah Peel and Chinese percussionist Beibei Wang. The record is grounded in the strength of ancient concepts, but comes alive with the joy and freedom of play as together, Peel and Wang travel through the 24 solar terms of the Chinese calendar with a cornucopia of sound in tow – synths and prepared piano alongside traditional and unconventional percussion.

The album is collaged together from recordings made over five days at legendary rural studio Real World, a setting which aligned with the duo’s inspiration from the natural world creating a permanent record of their shared musical landscape, informed by the flora and fauna that emerge and retreat through the seasons.

Both genre-defying, storied artists in their own right, Peel and Wang met while working on Manchester Collective’s 2023 album NEON and 'The Endless Dance' certainly represents a step-change from the duo’s shared classical backgrounds – but their knowledge and training is also the foundation of its freewheeling audacity, giving them the confidence to trust their instincts.

The album is produced by Mike Lindsay LUMP, Tunng, Guy Garvey, Jon Hopkins who, with free rein, brings added energy and creativity to the album, whilst Peel & Wang are also joined by Hyelim Kim on Daegeum, a Korean flute with “colourful overtones on every note”.

Track to track, 'The Endless Dance' is unpredictable and unexpected, which is in part due to the genuine curiosity and outside perspectives that each player brought to the sessions. “I am so familiar with Chinese heritage, but I don't see how it can present in electronics, for instance,” says Wang. “Hannah comes in with that direction, to imagine what the sounds could be together.” The characterful richness of the album stems from the commonalities they found in the sessions. “We both come from cultures where story is really important,” explains Peel. “The attention to detail comes from telling a story, and one note can set that off in a different direction.”

'The Endless Dance' is a major work from two accomplished, singular artists - but it’s also the sound of mutual curiosity and shared fun, or as Wang puts it: “Two women talking in totally different language that had a wonderful chat.”

Schwarzes Vinyl! Doppel-LP im Klappcover. Ursprünglich 2017 rausgebracht und jetzt zum ersten Mal in Europa über Sub Pop erhältlich! Pure Comedy, das dritte Album von Father John Misty, ist eine komplexe, oft sarkastische und ebenso oft berührende Reflexion über die verwirrende Torheit der modernen Menschheit. Father John Misty ist das Projekt von Singer-Songwriter Josh Tillman. Wir könnten viel über Pure Comedy sagen, zum Beispiel, dass es ein mutiges, wichtiges Album in der Tradition amerikanischer Songwriting-Größen wie Harry Nilsson, Randy Newman und Leonard Cohen ist, aber wir denken, es ist am besten, wenn sein Schöpfer es selbst beschreibt. Los geht's, Mr. Tillman: Pure Comedy ist die Geschichte einer Spezies, die mit einem unvollständig entwickelten Gehirn geboren wurde. Die einzige Überlebenschance dieser Spezies, die sich auf einem grausamen, unberechenbaren Felsen wiederfindet, umgeben von anderen Spezies, die in dieser ganzen Sache viel geschickter zu sein scheinen (und für die sie eine Delikatesse sind), besteht darin, sich auf andere, etwas ältere, halb ausgebildete Gehirne zu verlassen. Diese Abhängigkeit bekommt im Laufe der Geschichte verschiedene Namen, wie ,Liebe", ,Kultur", ,Familie" usw. Mit der Zeit und da sich ihre Gehirne als bemerkenswert gut darin erweisen, Bedeutung zu erfinden, wo keine ist, wird die Spezies zum Lieferanten immer bizarrerer und raffinierterer Ironien. Diese Ironien sollen helfen, mit der abscheulichen Verletzlichkeit der Spezies fertig zu werden und zu versuchen, ihre Fantasie mit der Monotonie ihrer Existenz in Einklang zu bringen. So in etwa. Pure Comedy wurde 2016 in den legendären United Studios (Frank Sinatra, Ray Charles, Beck) in Hollywood, Kalifornien, aufgenommen. Produziert wurde es von Father John Misty und Jonathan Wilson, die Tonarbeit übernahm Mistys langjähriger Tontechniker Trevor Spencer und die Orchesterarrangements stammen vom bekannten Komponisten und Kontrabassisten Gavin Bryars (bekannt für seine umfangreichen Soloarbeiten und seine Zusammenarbeit mit Brian Eno, Tom Waits und Derek Bailey). Black Vinyl. Originally released in 2017 & now available for the first time in Europe via Sub Pop! Pure Comedy, Father John Misty's third album, is a complex, often-sardonic, and, equally often, touching meditation on the confounding folly of modern humanity. Father John Misty is the brainchild of singer-songwriter Josh Tillman. While we could say a lot about Pure Comedy including that it is a bold, important album in the tradition of American songwriting greats like Harry Nilsson, Randy Newman, and Leonard Cohen we think it's best to let its creator describe it himself. Take it away, Mr. Tillman: Pure Comedy is the story of a species born with a half-formed brain. The species' only hope for survival, nding itself on a cruel, unpredictable rock surrounded by other species who seem far more adept at this whole thing (and to whom they are delicious), is the reliance on other, slightly older, half-formed brains. This reliance takes on a few different names as their story unfolds, like "love," "culture," "family," etc. Over time, and as their brains prove to be remarkably good at inventing meaning where there is none, the species becomes the purveyor of increasingly bizarre and sophisticated ironies. These ironies are designed to help cope with the species' loathsome vulnerability and to try and reconcile how disproportionate their imagination is to the monotony of their existence. Something like that. Pure Comedy was recorded in 2016 at the legendary United Studios (Frank Sinatra, Ray Charles, Beck) in Hollywood, CA. It was produced by Father John Misty and Jonathan Wilson, with engineering by Misty's longtime sound-person Trevor Spencer and orchestral arrangements by renowned composer/double-bassist Gavin Bryars (known for extensive solo work, and work with Brian Eno, Tom Waits, Derek Bailey).

"Heith and Tarawangsawelas met at the University of Traditional music in Bandung in 2017. Their collaboration has been evolving since then, both in person and remotely. Recording and arranging songs over a long period of time and across a vast geographical distance has lent their practice a distinct character. This distinctive distance allows the possibility to see things from different perspectives and creates music that hovers both in place and out of it. Here, in this music, we are both inside the Sundanese Land, and outside of it, both on the European continent and not. This record carries compositions from one side of the globe to the other, catching spirits and energies from different places, societies and rituals."

Oceanine, Jolanda Moletta’s third album and her first for Beacon Sound, is a powerful and ethereal statement of artistic community. Expanding on her previous work, each track represents a collaboration with a different female vocalist, with the foundational elements being generated entirely by her own voice. By turns haunting, enchanting, and inspiring, you won’t want to come up for air once you’ve been pulled under. Representing a
musical practice that is distinctly feminist, this is an album with a longer view in mind, to an age when the altars were to goddesses and women were centered as powerful beings representing the earth’s cycles of regeneration and renewal. Oceanine then, in all its beauty, can be viewed as an album of survival. It is deeply transportive, accessing something that lies within all of us. As the late, great Lithuanian folklorist and archaeologist Marija Gimbutas noted, “We must refocus our collective memory. The necessity for this has never been greater as we discover that the path of 'progress' is extinguishing the very conditions for life on earth.”

Jolanda Moletta is a multimedia artist and one-woman electronic choir. She creates wordless compositions through extended vocal techniques, integrating wearable-controlled live processing, alongside symbolic visuals. Moletta considers her performances to be a collective ritual and creates her Sonic & Visual Spells following the cycles of nature and the moon. Jolanda's 2022 critically acclaimed album Nine Spells was released on the Ambientologist label, followed by Night Caves on Whitelabrecs in 2025. Moletta’s artistic practice is a radical and spiritual journey through sound art, ritual, and the symbolic archaeology of the feminine.

Oceanine is inspired by sirens, water nymphs, and the timeless call of the sea. At its core lies Jolanda’s deep, lifelong connection to the Mediterranean Sea and to the ancient and modern myths and folklore that have emerged from its waters. Growing up by the Mar Ligure, Jolanda was surrounded by stories carried by salt, wind, and waves: legends of sirens, echoes of ancient voices, and the sea as both origin and oracle. This intimate relationship with the Mediterranean is not merely a backdrop, but a living source that shapes Oceanine’s emotional, symbolic, and sonic world.

Each track features a different female vocalist, creating a rich tapestry of voices, styles, and perspectives. This artistic choice not only broadens the album’s sonic palette, but also deepens its narrative core: celebrating the power, beauty, and mystique of feminine energy through myth, history, and sound.

The entire album is built exclusively from the human voice, processed and layered, yet always remaining voice, and nothing else. For each piece, Jolanda invited every vocalist involved to contribute a raw stem: a short, unedited melodic fragment of just a few seconds, inspired by the album’s themes. These intimate vocal seeds became the foundation of each track: the guest artists’ voices appear as brief, melodic stems, while the entire surrounding “orchestral” fabric is created solely from Jolanda’s own layered and processed voice. In this way, Jolanda’s voice becomes the Ocean itself, embracing, absorbing, and carrying the sirens’ calls within a vast, immersive soundscape. Every song is a unique expression of the feminine experience, revealing its depth, complexity, and emotional range, echoing the call of the sea and the many faces of the siren archetype.

The figure of the siren has transformed across centuries. In myths of Ancient Greece and Rome, sirens were hybrid beings, part woman, part bird, whose irresistible songs lured sailors to their doom. During the Middle Ages, the image shifted toward the half-woman, half-fish figure, often associated with temptation and danger. Historically, the voice of women has often been feared. Sirens were considered harbingers of misfortune not simply because they seduced or destroyed, but because they were powerful liminal beings.

In Ancient Greek, sirens functioned as psychopomps: figures who existed between worlds and guided souls, especially between life and death. Their songs were believed to carry forbidden knowledge, including prophetic insight and the ability to reveal truths about fate and the future. The danger of the sirens lay in what they revealed: knowledge that humans were not meant, or ready, to hear.

Oceanine confronts this legacy head-on. The voices heard throughout the album are not merely beautiful: they are dark and luminous, wild and enchanting, magical, soothing, dreamy, and at times fractured or distorted. They whisper, lament, beckon, and enchant. Like sirens, they skim the surface of the water and sink into its depths, hovering on the edge between tenderness and danger, vulnerability and power. They rise toward the sky, dissolve into mist, and return as echoes charged with raw, elemental emotion: voices that seduce, warn, mourn, and remember. They refuse to be reduced to decoration.

Alongside the album’s release in May, Oceanine will also unfold as a visual and performative work through a short art film. The film includes a live session recorded inside a sea cave facing the Mar Ligure, the very coastline where Jolanda spent her childhood, dreaming of sirens and listening to the sea as if it were speaking directly to her. This site-specific performance reconnects the music to its place of origin, allowing the voice to resonate within stone, water, and air, and transforming the cave into both a sanctuary and a threshold between myth and reality.

What if the sirens’ songs were considered dangerous because they carried another truth, an ancient truth long forgotten?

Oceanine embraces the idea that we are still deeply woven into myth. Though we may see ourselves as rational and modern beings, our world is saturated with ancient symbols and archetypes, often distorted, simplified, or stripped of their original meaning. And if those symbols are allowed to shift, if the mirror once held by the siren becomes an invitation to look beyond appearances and into what has been obscured, then we may finally uncover a deeper truth and reclaim the voice that was always ours.

Oceanine is not just an album. It is a reclamation, a spell, and a call from the depths.

Leading outlet for forward-thinking Scandinavian jazz, April Records, proudly presents the new album from Malmö-based quintet People In Orbit. A followup to their critically acclaimed 2023 release Close/Away (Naxos Prophone), the group continues to explore Scandinavia"s jazz tradition through a contemporary lens, blending acoustic interplay with electronics and a focus on collective improvisation. Led by trumpeter and composer Adam Sass, People In Orbit were formed in late 2020 with the intention of reimagining the classic jazz quintet with a contemporary edge. The group prioritises space, interaction, and ensemble balance, allowing composed material and collective responsiveness to shape the music. Alongside Sass, the band features Edvin Ekman (tenor saxophone, effects), Niklas Bergström (piano, Moog, keyboards), Edvin Elmersson (double bass), and Frank William Reis (drums). Viewpoint is a concept-driven album centred on perspective; how different viewpoints influence the way events are interpreted, and how perspective can foster connection or distance. Much of the album is built around Cycles, a four-part suite composed from a graphic score, with each section representing a different human life and its relationship to the surrounding world. The album moves through shifting emotional and psychological states, from curiosity and tension to reflection and release. Perspective is explored not only through human experience, but also via non-human viewpoints - including music inspired by deep-ocean communication between whales and slow, drifting motion. Musically, Viewpoint continues People In Orbit"s blend of modern jazz-rock and electronics, while drawing influence from the Scandinavian jazz quintet tradition of the 1960s. The music balances structured composition with openness, allowing individual voices to exist within a clearly defined collective sound. With Viewpoint, People In Orbit presents a focused and cohesive statement - an album shaped by shared intent, conceptual clarity, and a continued commitment to collective expression.

A cocktail of rebellious queer vocal fragments, deceptive percussive granules and swaying hammered vibrations, upsammy and Valentina Magaletti's first collaboration trembles with suspense. The seeds of 'Seismo' were sown following a commission from Amsterdam's Rijksmuseum to soundtrack an exhibition of work from the Museum Boijmans van Beuningen in Rotterdam and the duo didn't want to approach their collaboration flippantly. So, wandering the museum's maze of rooms, they recorded various improvised percussive sounds with their arsenal of microphones, using the space to inform various rhythms and textures that were sculpted later into electroacoustic vignettes. This was just the starting point, though; as Magaletti and upsammy began performing together, the project evolved and 'Seismo' began to take shape. The duo had struck on a salient aesthetic concept, using mostly digital and acoustic mallet instruments to blur the boundary between their roles and create friction between the synthetic and the authentic. And the finished record is a phantasmagoric push-and-pull between its various conflicting elements: harmony and dissonance, randomness and predictability, openness and constraint. 'Seismo' isn't the first time that upsammy has studied her environment in search of revelation. On her acclaimed second album, 2024's 'Germ in a Population of Buildings', the Amsterdam-based DJ, producer and multidisciplinary artist erected her complex, unorthodox rhythms and eerie melodies around a modernist frame of field recordings collected in various cityscapes, countering heavyweight basslines with subtle, microscopic sounds. London-based Italian vanguard Magaletti, meanwhile, has applied her unique logic to innumerable projects at this point, working with everyone from batida icon Nídia and hardcore-dub outfit Moin to French writer Fanny Chiarello and British bass scientist Shackleton. For years she's approached the drums with criticism, attempting to challenge any preconceptions, something that's most visible on 2020's 'A Queer Anthology of Drums'. And both artists' thoughtful perspectives are welded together seamlessly on 'Seismo', a dizzying suite of eight eccentric statements that's fragile but never insecure, gauzy but not indistinct. An unnerving sense of space characterizes 'It Comes to an End' as Magaletti's in situ improvisations herald for upsammy's microscopic glitches and chiming pitch-bent melodies. It's almost unbalancing to witness the track's impossible dimensionality, the interplay between reverberant marimba hits and bone-dry synths, or percussion that's been recorded and processed in consciously different settings. A new architecture emerges in the sound itself that the two artists scan and explore meticulously, testing its boundaries with undulating hybridized rhythms on the invigorating 'Superimposed' and offsetting the powdery drums with liquified smacks and alien voices. The duo's vibrations are knotted with piano flourishes on 'Hyperlocalize', balanced with artificial clanks and clangs that disappear into the track's sonorous atmosphere, replaced by whispers and half-hallucinated insectoid chirps. 'Seismo' is an album that feeds off the energy generated by its juxtapositions: the tension and anticipation that's melted by rapid, hyperactive movement and the finely drawn rhythms disrupted by a layer of indistinct, barely perceptible microsounds. It's a collaboration that sounds like two minds challenging each other but not wrestling, each peering from their own distinct vantage point and imagining a third landscape shaped by optimistic, queer vibrations.

Blau-weiße Corona-Vinyl Doppel-LP im Klappcover. Ursprünglich 2017 rausgebracht und jetzt zum ersten Mal in Europa über Sub Pop erhältlich! Pure Comedy, das dritte Album von Father John Misty, ist eine komplexe, oft sarkastische und ebenso oft berührende Reflexion über die verwirrende Torheit der modernen Menschheit. Father John Misty ist das Projekt von Singer-Songwriter Josh Tillman. Wir könnten viel über Pure Comedy sagen, zum Beispiel, dass es ein mutiges, wichtiges Album in der Tradition amerikanischer Songwriting-Größen wie Harry Nilsson, Randy Newman und Leonard Cohen ist, aber wir denken, es ist am besten, wenn sein Schöpfer es selbst beschreibt. Los geht's, Mr. Tillman: Pure Comedy ist die Geschichte einer Spezies, die mit einem unvollständig entwickelten Gehirn geboren wurde. Die einzige Überlebenschance dieser Spezies, die sich auf einem grausamen, unberechenbaren Felsen wiederfindet, umgeben von anderen Spezies, die in dieser ganzen Sache viel geschickter zu sein scheinen (und für die sie eine Delikatesse sind), besteht darin, sich auf andere, etwas ältere, halb ausgebildete Gehirne zu verlassen. Diese Abhängigkeit bekommt im Laufe der Geschichte verschiedene Namen, wie ,Liebe", ,Kultur", ,Familie" usw. Mit der Zeit und da sich ihre Gehirne als bemerkenswert gut darin erweisen, Bedeutung zu erfinden, wo keine ist, wird die Spezies zum Lieferanten immer bizarrerer und raffinierterer Ironien. Diese Ironien sollen helfen, mit der abscheulichen Verletzlichkeit der Spezies fertig zu werden und zu versuchen, ihre Fantasie mit der Monotonie ihrer Existenz in Einklang zu bringen. So in etwa. Pure Comedy wurde 2016 in den legendären United Studios (Frank Sinatra, Ray Charles, Beck) in Hollywood, Kalifornien, aufgenommen. Produziert wurde es von Father John Misty und Jonathan Wilson, die Tonarbeit übernahm Mistys langjähriger Tontechniker Trevor Spencer und die Orchesterarrangements stammen vom bekannten Komponisten und Kontrabassisten Gavin Bryars (bekannt für seine umfangreichen Soloarbeiten und seine Zusammenarbeit mit Brian Eno, Tom Waits und Derek Bailey).

Green Vinyl, limited to 500 copies. New album from the psychedelic, progressive folk rock band from Skien, Norway! The day belongs to the night The four songs on side A came about in November 2022 for a winter solstice celebration at Oslo Badstuforening. Our take on this was that the solstice invites reflections on the relationship between night and day. Does the day spring out of the darkness of the preceding night or does the night follow and swallow the light of the day? Is it Saturday Night or Sunday Morning? Are we running from the past or catching up with the future? Moving from A to B, Lidskjalv has existed as a demo since the 90s. Many versions have been made, but this is the first proper recording of the song. The passage of time is the future becoming the present. It moves forward in circles like a rolling wheel. Balder, Osiris and Jesus are all vegetation gods emulating the turn of the seasons in their eternal return. After the death of winter, life emerges anew. But not only this; there is also the promise of each dawn bringing a Better Day. According to Snorre, after the Fimbul Winter and Ragnarok, there is a new Earth. From the ashes emerges a better place. This holds also the idea of progress. It is at the core of being a prog band; each album is an improvement on the last, an exploration of new territory, a different perspective.

Neapolitan DJ and producer Lello Di Franco, aka L.D.F., presents World Beats — a project driven by the intention to carve out a new, deeper mood on the dancefloor. Rooted in rhythm, raw edits and sampling, the concept draws from forgotten and classic cuts pulled straight from his vinyl collection, reshaped with a contemporary, club-focused approach. This first volume brings together like-minded artists from different corners of the world — Jesse Bru, Chicago edit master Rahaan, and Berlin- based DJ Merci — each contributing their own unique musical perspective while helping define the project’s distinctive global sound.

Sundays is the debut full length from Oakland-based Tanukichan, aka multi-instrumentalist Hannah van Loon. At surface level, the album sounds just how the title describes: hazy, dreamy, reflective, just like a lazy Sunday afternoon. Upon second and third listens, the dreamy music unveils a deeper world: an ever present sense of longing, an endless state of summer and a period of instability that plagues us all at one point or another in our lives.
Raised in San Francisco, van Loon started out making classical, bluegrass and jazz music as well as playing in numerous bands in the area before deciding to make something more personal. What started with a few unfocused demos, with van Loon playing all the instruments herself in her house, became a studio experience and viable collection of music after her friend Anthony Ferraro of Astronauts, Etc. introduced her to Company Records founder Chaz Bear (Toro Y Moi, Les Sins). After collaborating on her 2016 EP Radiolove, van Loon and Bear set out to make a much more sonically cohesive release, with both the producer and artist playing all the instruments on the record. The result is a slice of dream pop that could only come from the combination of the laid back atmosphere of California and the nostalgic and often difficult memories that are generally associated with coming of age.
To van Loon, the tracks of Sundays are a form of contemplation and approaching life’s issues from a different and less complicated perspective. “Sometimes for me, it feels easier to write songs about things than to talk. A lot of things in life are layered and paradoxical, but with songs it always seems simpler.”
Opening track “Lazy Love” sets the stage, sonically and lyrically, for the rest of the album, combining vulnerable lyrics with gorgeous, fuzzy tones. Above pummeling synths and guitar tones, van Loon sings “you know I'd do anything/don't you know I try my best/if I could wake up when the sun is rising” showing the album’s constant theme of balancing always wanting to be the best person you can be, while also feeling a low level joy at letting life play out as it wants to. “Natural” is a track that feels perfect for a road trip, a track that hums away with a driving beat, culminating in the sheer excitement of finally having a night alone with someone you’ve loved for a while, among many highs and lows: “a window too bright/it's natural sunlight/grey fades to white lie/kiss you tonight/it's natural delight/help me feel right.” The tracks collectively address a deep rooted sense of yearning for someone, something new, while also feeling content with your life; a realization that maybe the places you’ve always belonged aren’t where you should be anymore, that suddenly you might be looking for something completely different.
“I settled on the name Sundays as the title of the record because it encapsulated how the record felt to me,“ van Loon says. “I was thinking about the laziness, and dreamy clarity that you can feel after a late night, waking up having to face the world with a new perspective.” Sundays encapsulates this feeling, a nostalgic way of looking at the world, waking up feeling like a slightly different person than before, looking back on life, not sure if you can tackle what’s next, but doing your best, day in and day out

MOVIE MOVIE is based out of NYC and features members of the bands TWIN GUNS, THE ELECTRIC MESS, and THE ABOVE. The band combine elements of power pop, '60s, '70s and '80s garage, classic, alternative and glam rock, but they have a sound all their own, with a focus on strong hooks and melodic vocals. "After Hours" is a 1980s New Wave comedy about a party girl on the downtown scene whose claim to fame is a bit part in a popular movie, where she uttered the immortal line, "Won't you look at the time," but she wouldn't give you the time. "Wasting Time" is an existential road picture in the mind of the protagonist, set across heartland America and a sunny beach in the Caribbean, but in reality he never leaves the girl, or town, and in the end ponders his wasted years. "First Love (Never Dies)" is a romantic drama that spans decades, about an aging rocker who reflects on his first teenage love, a girl he has never stopped thinking about. He tries to track her down and reconnect after all these years, only to find she is now married to his old childhood rival.

"Photograph" is a future arthouse hit, shot in stark black white, about the disintegration of a relationship seen from two different perspectives, captured in an old photograph, in which the truth is revealed in the looks on their faces. "Coming Attractions" is MOVIE MOVIE's second EP, after their debut six track EP, "Now Playing" (2022), on Ghost Highway/ KOTJ Records, and they have two full LPs, "Storyboards" (2023), and "In 4-D!" (2024), both Topsy-Turvy Records.

Focusing on bringing people some fresh air from the island that we produced with its own unique character. Our artists provide an escape to somewhere full of energy to drag you back from the so-called chaotic world. There are plenty of spaces, it’s a sharing for everyone!

As you may know, Koh is a word in Thai that means ‘island’. We want to represent the sound of our characterized island and tell the story through it. For this collection, we want to present the island under the ground which represents the different perspective of life reflecting our music scene in reality.

We gave the word “Clockmaker” as a hint to the artists.
It’s a simple, even mundane concept—something easily overlooked and not immediately eye-catching. It also suggests waiting, as it often takes time for people to return to the shop. But time itself holds meaning, and the clockmaker always has something hidden beneath the surface.

With that in mind, “The Photo Sticker Machine” and “Chucheewa” present their first original track: “Galactic Love.”

Alongside it are five vibrant remixes by artists we deeply admire—from Mogwaa (Korea) and Retromigration (Germany) to three incredible talents from Thailand’s local scene: Kova O’ Sarin, Chalo, and Saranmy.

Adventure Rock pioneers Hällas deliver their most ambitious album yet with "Panorama”, released on 2026-01-30. The album both consolidates and expands the image of what the band is, but also what rock can be. This time different perspectives in a scenario are explored regarding whether humanity is capable of understanding a viewpoint other than their own. It reflects our time but is, in typical Hällas fashion, staged in a fictional, distant world.

Hällas' cult following in modern prog and hard rock will find "Panorama" familiar in a way: an imaginative hybrid of progressive 70s rock and heavy metal with echoes of both folk and psychedelia, along with conceptual content. In another sense, you have not quite heard a record like this from Hällas before. The self-confidence has never been as evident. Influences from different directions collide, and sometimes clash, contributing to the feeling that the expected instead culiminates in wonder at what it is you’re hearing.

Una interpretación de Soinuarenbidea II debería partir de esta premisa: todo es posible, nada es aleatorio, y en sí mismo es un imposible de aleatoriedades. El escenario planteado explora la idea de realidad aumentada desde una percepción sonora, ambiental y colectiva. La obra transita hacia adelante y hacia atrás recreando experiencias extintas de porvenir incierto, tratando de facilitar un fin pacificador. Cada pieza sonora se crea, se despliega, se repliega y se destruye, en una torsión permanente de toda la realidad que hace posible cada fragmento musical, cada identidad acústica, cada espacio sonoro. Lo onírico, la ficción, y el viaje están continuamente presentes, y es en el transitar de cada fragmento donde se produce el diálogo de la exposición musical. Los elementos de esta ficción se recrean continuamente, en un continuum donde se entrelazan y se van contorsionando a medida que crecen o decrecen con cada fragmento de síntesis concreta. Los temas explícitamente musicales son el magma que conduce a dar voluptuosidad al disco, siendo la piel un contexto o límite que en sí mismo fluctúa indefinidamente en texturas y configuraciones posibles. Y la urdimbre del silencio es la síntesis que está continuamente presente y que trata de cohesionar los fragmentos en continua colisión expresiva. Las grabaciones de campo proporcionan el material sonoro concreto, y como un fractal sonoro cada una de ellas ofrece diferentes grados de interpretación que a su vez conduce a nuevos fragmentos y nuevas creaciones. Así que se puede pensar que esta es una síntesis de una posible realidad, pero interpretable en infinidad de maneras. Un movimiento y una estaticidad implícitas que generan estructuras y dinámicas acústicas. Lo que se escucha no es real, pero en sí mismo forma parte de la realidad, creando un escenario expectante. Lo cinematográfico, plástico y teatral, danzante y dinámico cobra importancia en este juego, porque se trata de contar una historia, una experiencia recreada desde los puntos de vista del arte visual. Es a su vez hilo conductor y entretenimiento, discurso político y puro divertimento. Es desde este espacio de convivencia artística que tiene sentido la totalidad y justifica el formato sonoro planteado. La contradicción de la obra es patente en el formato, y es a su vez el planteamiento de una accidentalidad en el devenir vital. Contenedor de Ruido recoge todas estas contradicciones y las manifiesta en la obra Soinuarenbidea II. Es una historia sonora, es un cuento acústico. Es un fragmento de vitalidad en imágenes audibles. Es una invitación a la reflexión, a la crítica, al disfrute, a la meditación, a la celebración. Y sobre todo es esperanzadora apreciación de la realidad como algo maleable que confeccionamos colectivamente, que requiere de una paciente observación y la participación colectiva global, en un mundo finito pleno de diversidades y del que ignoramos prácticamente todo, al que deberíamos volver con respeto y devoción.

Soinuarenbidea II-ren interpretazio batek premisa honetatik abiatu beharko luke: dena da posible, ezer ez da ausazkoa, eta, berez, ausazkotasun ezinezko bat da. Planteatutako agertokiak errealitate areagotuaren ideia aztertzen du, soinu-, ingurumen- eta talde-pertzepzio batetik abiatuta. Lanak aurrera eta atzera egiten du, etorkizun zalantzagarriko esperientzia desagertuak birsortuz eta helburu baketsua lortzen saiatuz. Soinu-pieza bakoitza sortu, hedatu, tolestu eta suntsitu egiten da, musika-zati bakoitza, identitate akustiko bakoitza eta soinu-espazio bakoitza ahalbidetzen dituen errealitate osoaren etengabeko bihurdura batean. Onirikoa, fikzioa eta bidaia etengabe daude presente, eta pasarte bakoitzaren joan-etorrian gertatzen da musika-erakusketaren elkarrizketa. Fikzio honen elementuak etengabe birsortzen dira, continuum batean, non sintesi zati zehatz bakoitzarekin hazi edo txikitu ahala elkar lotzen eta bihurritzen diren. Esplizituki musikalak diren gaiak diskoari atsegintasuna ematera eramaten duen magma dira, azala testuingurua edo muga izanik, testura eta konfigurazio posibleetan mugarik gabe aldatzen dena. Eta isiltasunaren irazkia etengabe presente dagoen sintesia da, zatiak etengabeko adierazpen-talkan kohesionatzen saiatzen dena. Landa-grabazioek soinu-material zehatza ematen dute, eta soinu-fraktal batek bezala, horietako bakoitzak interpretazio-maila desberdinak eskaintzen ditu, eta horrek, aldi berean, zati eta sorkuntza berrietara eramaten du. Beraz, pentsa daiteke errealitate posible baten sintesia dela, baina hamaika modutan interpreta daitekeena. Egitura eta dinamika akustikoak sortzen dituzten mugimendu eta estatikotasun inplizitu bat. Entzuten dena ez da erreala, baina, berez, errealitatearen parte da, eta agertoki espektakularra sortzen du. Zinematografikoak, plastikoak eta antzerkikoak, dantzariak eta dinamikoak garrantzia hartzen dute joko honetan, ikusizko artearen ikuspegitik birsortutako istorio bat, esperientzia bat, kontatzea baita helburua. Aldi berean, hari gidaria eta entretenimendua da, diskurtso politikoa eta dibertimendu hutsa. Elkarbizitzarako espazio artistiko honetatik osotasunak zentzua du eta planteatutako soinu-formatua justifikatzen du. Obraren kontraesana nabarmena da formatuan, eta, aldi berean, bizi-bilakaeran istripu-tasa bat planteatzea da. Zarata-edukiontziak kontraesan horiek guztiak jasotzen ditu eta Soinuarenbidea II obran adierazten ditu. Soinu istorio bat da, ipuin akustiko bat. Bizitasun zati bat da, irudi entzungarrietan. Hausnarketarako, kritikarako, gozamenerako, meditaziorako eta ospakizunerako gonbidapena da. Eta, batez ere, itxaropentsua da errealitatea modu kolektiboan egiten dugun gauza xaflakor gisa hautematea, behaketa pazientea eta partaidetza kolektibo globala eskatzen dituena, dibertsitatez betetako mundu mugatu batean, ia guztia kontuan hartzen ez duguna, eta errespetuz eta debozioz itzuli beharko genukeena.

An interpretation of Soinuarenbidea II should start from this premise: everything is possible, nothing is random, and in itself is an impossible randomness. The proposed scenario explores the idea of ​​augmented reality from a sonic, environmental, and collective perception. The work moves back and forth, recreating extinct experiences of an uncertain future, seeking to facilitate a peaceful end. Each sound piece is created, unfolds, retreats, and is destroyed, in a permanent twisting of all reality that makes each musical fragment, each acoustic identity, each sonic space possible. The dreamlike, the fictional, and the journey are continually present, and it is in the transit of each fragment that the dialogue of the musical exposition takes place. The elements of this fiction are continually recreated, in a continuum where they intertwine and contort as they grow or diminish with each fragment of concrete synthesis. The explicitly musical themes are the magma that leads to the work's voluptuousness, the skin being a context or boundary that in itself fluctuates indefinitely in possible textures and configurations. And the warp of silence is the synthesis that is continually present and seeks to unite the fragments in a continuous expressive collision. The field recordings provide the concrete sound material, and like a sonic fractal, each one offers different degrees of interpretation that in turn lead to new fragments and new creations. So one can think of this as a synthesis of a possible reality, but interpretable in an infinite number of ways. An implicit movement and staticity that generate acoustic structures and dynamics. What is heard is not real, but in itself is part of reality, creating an expectant scenario. The cinematic, plastic and theatrical, dance and dynamic aspects take on importance in this game, because it is about telling a story, an experience recreated from the perspective of visual art. It is at once a common thread and entertainment, political discourse and pure entertainment. It is from this space of artistic coexistence that the whole makes sense and justifies the proposed sound format. The contradiction of the work is evident in its format, and it is, in turn, the presentation of an accidentality in the course of life. Noise Container gathers all these contradictions and manifests them in the work Soinuarenbidea II. It is a sound story, an acoustic tale. It is a fragment of vitality in audible images. It is an invitation to reflection, to critique, to enjoyment, to meditation, to celebration. And above all, it is a hopeful appreciation of reality as something malleable that we collectively craft, requiring patient observation and global collective participation, in a finite world full of diversity and of which we know practically nothing, to which we should return with respect and devotion.

Paisajes sonoros, diseño sonoro, drones y música grabada, realizada y arreglada para Contenedor de Ruido por David Aranaz. Coro: Basandere Ahotsak. Producido y mezclado por David Aranaz. Mástering: Estanis Elorza. Fotografía: David Aranaz. Texto: David Aranaz. Traducción: Saioa Aranaz Oreja. Trabajo y Diseño artístico: Cristina Martinez. Edición: Contenedor de Ruido Producciones y Sarbide Music. Distribución: Contenedor de Ruido.

Contenedor de Ruido agradece el apoyo en la realización de Soinuarenbidea II al coro Basandere Ahotsak y en especial a Eva Orbara Goicoa.

Soinuarenbidea II está dedicado al pueblo palestino.

Paisajes y objetos Sonoros, samplers y otras músicas transformadas para Soinuarenbidea II
Burlada: Paseos sonoros matinales por Merindad de Sangüesa, Calle Mayor, Capuchinas, Parque Uranga y varias iglesias y plazas. Pasajes del cotidiano: basura de papel, cristal y plástico.
Pamplona: Cementerio de San José. CEIP Sanduzelai /// Quinto Real: Fábrica de Armas, Puerto de Urkiaga y alrededores. Suite del silencio, bosques en movimiento /// Fábrica de armas de Orbaiceta: regatas, biosques, paseo sonoro hasta regata /// Belate: Puerto de Belate y alrededores. Vacas en pradera junto a las turberas /// Bardenas Reales: Suite de guitarra y Suite del silencio, estepa desértica /// Austria: Tranvías de Graz y Viena. Muchedumbre del metro de Viena.
Voces cinematográficas de: Matanza en Texas, Robocop, Espíritu Sagrado, Solo los Amantes Sobreviven, Voces de Gaza, Yojimbo, Terciopelo Azul, Los 7 Magníficos.
La pista A2 está dedicada a la memoria de David Lynch.
La pista B4 está dedicada a Eva Orbara Goicoa.
Pista A4: Contiene interpretaciones de piano de Three Piano Pieces Op.11 de Arnold Schoenberg.
Pista A5: Es una interpretación expandida con síntesis FM del Concerto Op. 24 - Etwas lebhaft - de Anton Webern.
Pista A7: Contiene la canción Besarkatu ninduzun (Letra de Josune López y música de Josu Elberdin) en interpretación de Basandere Ahotsak en la iglesia de Burutain bajo la tormenta.
Pista B2: Contiene la canción Recuerdos de la Alhambra (Fernando Tárrega) en interpretación torsionada de David Aranaz Sarasa.
Pista B14: Contiene la canción Agur María (Letra y Música de Estíbaliz Robles “Estitxu” y arreglo exclusivo de Alfonso Ortiz para Basandere Ahotsak) en interpretación de Basandere Ahotsak.

Equipamiento para Soinuarenbidea II.
Micros de condensador SE7, configuración XY y ORTF; Micros de cinta ORTIZ LUTHIER configuración XY y Blumlein; Grabadoras MARANTZ y ZOOM; Sintetizadores y samplers Elektron MONOMACHINE SPS-1, MACHINEDRUM SFX6 y MODEL:SAMPLES. Dave Smith MOPHO. Torso Electronics S-4. Sintetizador Modular 333 DIY; Guitarra clásica ALHAMBRA 6P; Esculturas Sonoras tipo Baschet, cristal y metales; Mesa Soundcraft FX16ii; Interface de Audio RME Babyface Pro FS; DAW Logic Pro; Procesamiento de modelado analógico con Acústica Audio, Waves, Softube, Brainworx, Sonible, Analog Obsesion, Tokio Dawn. Metering de Logic y RME DigiCheck . Amplificación Hafler PRO2400. Monitorización BW DM602 S3. Mezcla digital; Mastering híbrido.

'In 2023, sound artist and composer Weston Olencki toured across the American South. Beginning in their hometown in South Carolina, they snaked a circuitous path from the mountains of West Virginia to the banks of the Mississippi River. As the miles accumulated, so did the initial seeds of new work.
'Instruments and artifacts they acquired hitched a ride in the backseat, while songs and sounds filled their portable recorder: water in its various states, the familiar insectoid buzz of those summer nights, trains cutting through the landscape, the traditional music that lived alongside the communities that kept it. Olencki took it all in, and over time, found ways that these experiences coalesced into a bramble-like perspective of time, where past, present, and future intersect in ways both barbed and beautiful.
'Broadsides, Olencki’s newest solo full-length is the multilayered result of this journey. The album follows their landmark release Old Time Music from 2022, which presented radical interpretations of traditional tunes from Appalachia and throughout the South alongside original compositions that drew significantly on archival recordings. On Broadsides, Olencki rejects delineations between the unmoored avant-garde and the rootedness of one’s cultural heritage, revealing their porous and intertwined nature. “My mother was a quilter. Her mother before that,” they write in the album’s liner notes. “Quilting, like music, is a practice of embedding knowledge and remembrance into the very core of the thing you are making. It’s not just about the materials, but how they’re reassembled, recontextualized, stitched, woven to form new patterns - the minutiae of craft holding significance to those looking to find it. Stories woven from stories, never told the same way twice.”
'Like all great road trips, Broadsides unfolds slowly and continuously, with moments of dramatic reverie punctuating the endless melt of highway in the rearview. We’re immediately confronted by the uncanniness of revisiting old haunts, as Southern storms break through the initial churn of the freight locomotives of Alabama. Olencki’s interpretation of the bluegrass standard “Foggy Mountain Breakdown” captures the euphoria of melancholy in motion. The permutational plucks of banjo are bounced around the frame by a computer, its pitches determined within algorithmic sequences and transcriptions of classic three-finger licks. The tonalities of old-time are smeared and stretched until all that’s audible is the insistence that Heaven might be real.
'In the album’s second half, “Omie Wise,” a murder ballad made famous by Doc Watson, follows an interlude recorded on the river in North Carolina in which the titular character’s body was laid. Ghostly echoes of a dozen other renditions float through the substrata as Tongue Depressor’s Henry Birdsey accompanies them on the pedal steel guitar. The album’s central composition, “all my father’s clocks,” is a profound meditation on entropy and impermanence. The sound of their father’s extensive clock collection ticks away as Olencki pulls a bow across the length of an autoharp sourced from a rural strip mall. The instrument was left as detuned as it was found, the resonance of its deep bass drone and clanging high-end the result of years of neglect and the warping effects of Southern humidity.
'Historically, broadsides were an early form of broadcasting, an often- musicalized telling of current news pasted in the public square. The name was later taken up by Sis Cunningham and Gordon Friesen in the 1960s, whose Broadside magazine published songs and social commentary when American folk music resurfaced as an urgent way of communicating the multifaceted politics of its time.
'Olencki borrows the phrase to recall both this old form of songmaking and that later prominent reexamination of traditional music’s role in modern life, but also to draw attention to the fragmented and machine- mediated way heritage is diffused in this very different, but no less pivotal, moment.
'As a sanitized past is used as justification for current violence and domination, we can turn to these artifacts to better understand the history of ourselves, but only if they are consciously pushed to evolve. Broadsides represents one personal, striking vision of what far-flung futurisms could be respun from = these high, lonesome sounds: a reflection of the unbridled joy and deep sorrow inherent to living together through time, and a desire to push further into the untold and unknown.'

Here, Flavien departs from his usual creative process to embrace collaboration—because plouf! (Léviathan) is also the story of a dive, his first collective adventure with musicians he had always dreamed of working with: Michelle Blades (guitar), Kiala Ogawa (keys), Akemi Fujimori (bass), Cédric Laban (drums), and Thibaud Merle (winds).



Reworking these songs is a way of revisiting forgotten musical landscapes, shedding new light on them with a different perspective. It’s about transforming a solitary electronic record into a collective piece by exploring new textures and instrumental approaches.



With this album, Flavien Berger uses his early tracks as raw material—as if the 2015 Léviathan were now a kind of demo from which to extract the essence and create something entirely new. The project, like the music that drives it, is rooted in the idea of reinvention.



The result is a fresh sonic exploration where Léviathan’s tracks take on new forms—some staying true to their original versions, others completely reimagined, blending past and present.

Good ambient will always been a comfort blanket during harsh times. Whether from a global or more personal perspective. This collection on Secrets of Sound brings together some real dons of the genre, from Mark Barrott - to Steve Roach, and sequences them into one soothing, calming trip that touches son all different sub-sound and styles from New Age to celestial. A spoken word intro from long-running ambient radio Jaroslav Kovaracek sets the scene before you're then cast adrift in supreme sonic lushness.

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

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

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

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

2026 Repress

Flickering in ultraviolet, there is an elusive place where blue pill meets red, ups become downs, and day merges with night. Those liminal spaces where anything is possible is where you’ll find Nightbus and their hypnotic debut album Passenger. Doom, uncertainty, and opportunity lurk in the shadowy corners of their murky existence with stops at disassociation, co-dependency, and addiction before reaching its final destination - a glimmer of hope.

The in-between of Nightbus’ own Gotham lies where Manchester’s city pulse meets Stockport’s outer realm. An audio-visual entity formed among a musical family of friends, freaks, and foes in messy mills and after hours on dancefloors alike, their sound bleeds from tension where collective creative forces are bound together and collide with the fallout of being torn apart. Before even playing a show, their So Young released single ‘Mirrors’ – a knowing nod of respect to some well-known gloomy Northerners - may have made old school indie heads shimmy at shows in Salford’s The White Hotel but also signalled the duo’s knack for offering listeners a Bandersnatch approach to hitchhiking their own personal Nightbus in whatever direction they choose to take. “Everyone can have their moment with our songs; the music is our response to who we are as young people, living in the city full of this energy right now,” they say.

Whilst reverb hefty melodies and dread-filled loops embody isolation from writing at each of their home studio set-ups, magic happens in the ether across 90s trip-hop, indie sleaze and electronica; Jake’s production layers Olive’s pop sentimentality with drums and samples whilst tales of a cast of faceless characters place Olive as puppet master; her severed self’s perspective manipulating their stringed limbs at arm’s length to see how their stories play out when scenes reflecting her own lie close to the bone. “It’s a bit fucked; like having this out of body experience with a made-up movie running through my head,” she says. “As I write I can see they’re all from a similar world, but they allow me to explore different feelings without giving away part of myself.”

Recorded at The Nave in Leeds with producer-engineer Alex Greaves (Heavy Lungs, Working Men’s Club), surprise and danger lies in every crevice. Brooding whispers turn to chants on 6-minute opus ‘Host.’ Improvised when performed live, its immersive shift in tempo leads to hefty dub courtesy of Jake’s pedals. Even then, you won’t know shit’s hit the fan until its mid-point reveal when ominous bass blasts a thunderous soundtrack as its protagonist defiantly walks away after committing the perfect crime. “It makes you wait, and more songs should have sirens,” Olive grins.

Leaning deeper into alter-egos via the video game-psychological horror of a Silent Hill dystopia, the band’s Fight Club moment ‘Angles Mortz’ turns its literal translation of death angles on its head as it reflects upon kink and internalised shame reincarnated as pride. Elsewhere the ice cool ‘Landslide’ is a Requiem for a Dream about the addiction of being in a band; ‘The Void’ explores co-dependency and estranged relationships; and carefully selected samples revive house track ‘Just A Kid’ from the band’s early incarnation. Passenger’s every direction is to face challenges head on. “That is what’s so great about horror; you can see through predictable patterns so when the unexpected occurs it's more realistic and uncomfortable… I want to own the dark stuff!”

As for Passenger’s first single, the pulsating ‘Ascension’ is a spiralling deep dive into death, suicide, and legacy around who or what we leave behind. A noughties club banger by way of NYC beats - ergonomically designed for those who like to stay out a little too often and too late - it throbs like a house party’s partition wall as the literal levelling up undergoes a neon transformation; blue glitching to pink, diffusing the white construct of the Nightbus Matrix. “It really does feel like the end of something and was purposely written that way,” they say, “the ascension is like a firework going off!”

With wheels in motion, Nightbus has become a movement surpassing sonic realms. Between shows from Porto to Brighton taking in The Great Escape, Rotterdam’s Left Of The Dial and Paris’ Supersonic; DJing; remixing; guesting (BDRMM’s Microtonic album); and even enlisting talented like-minds to craft a 3-part queer coming-of-age music video series which ties in with a new ‘hyperpop’ phase in the evolution of their popular Nightbus Soundsystem club night, heads are now being turned from sports brands to high-end fashion designers. “There are things we can’t reveal just yet,” tells Olive, “but we’re excited about the direction this beast we’ve created is heading.” As the album philosophises and asks one ultimate question; what does it truly mean to be ‘Passenger’? Nightbus may not claim to offer a definitive answer, but it might make you feel a bit better about those demons.

XL Recordings is proud to mark the 10th anniversary of Archy Marshall’s (aka King Krule) A New Place 2 Drown with the release of a newly remastered instrumental edition.
Originally released on 10 December 2015, A New Place 2 Drown remains a singular entry in the Archy Marshall catalogue. Known to many for his work as King Krule, Marshall released A New Place 2 Drown under his own name, highlighting a different facet of his creative identity. An atmospheric blend of submerged beats, woozy textures, and diaristic storytelling, the project earned widespread acclaim upon release, including Pitchfork’s Best New Music.
Developed in parallel with a visual world shaped with his brother and longtime collaborator Jack Marshall, the quietly influential project stands as a multidisciplinary love letter to their home of South London, originally released alongside a Will Robson-Scott–directed short film and a book of artworks, photography, and poetry by the Marshall brothers.
The 2025 instrumental edition offers a newly illuminated perspective on the record’s sonic core, drawing fresh attention to the production craft that underpins the project. By stripping the songs back to their foundations, the release highlights the intricate textures, rhythmic detail, and atmospheric depth that have helped A New Place 2 Drown grow into a cult favourite over the past decade.
“A New Place 2 Drown evokes a septic world filled with flickering halogen bulbs, sticky synth keys, and corroded outputs. Marshall has made tremendous strides as a producer, gorgeously reproducing the gloom and loneliness of early '90s hip-hop and finding a way to integrate it into his own style.” - PITCHFORK

The notion of home isn’t precise, even a dictionary will offer multiple definitions. A home can be a place where you live, a place where you belong, where you originate from or a place where you’re given care; it can be a physical space, a land, a people or even a person. The concept isn’t completely universal, but everyone possesses a unique idea of what home means to them. On her fifth album, Ziúr considers not just what home symbolizes from her perspective, but the word’s resonance to the diverse community that surrounds her, and how their stories have impacted her over the years. Indeed, it’s the first time she’s felt it necessary to examine her own nationality. In the past, she’s deliberately avoided labelling herself as German, feeling disconnected from her country’s politics, culture and even the German language itself. In 2025, the idea of Germanness is in flux and progressives are under attack from all sides. The country’s politics aren’t only being turned inward by the growing throng of far-right voices, but by scared moderates, opportunists and those blinded by comfort, willing to ignore hatred to maintain their privilege. Stepping up to provide a different narrative, Ziúr scours her soul, writing and singing in German for the first time and proposing growth and evolution, not fear and regression. “I never considered being part of Germany,” she explains. “But I am.”

A solemn mood permeates the album’s opening track ‘Brown is the Color’, and Ziúr sings in measured, slow-motion breaths over noisy synth oscillations and doomed piano flourishes. Already, it’s a significant departure from her last run of releases, veering away from the frenetic, satirical chaos of 2023’s Hakuna Kulala-released ‘Eyeroll’ or its fantastical, dubby predecessor ‘Antifate’. Ziúr pulls on real world insights here, tracing her oldest, dearest musical inspirations to present her origins to anybody who might be listening. “Cold world is holding up,” she laments with a metallic crunch. “To let go of your heart, let me go.” And her voice emerges from the shadows completely on ‘Tame’; unprocessed, Ziúr sounds naked and vulnerable on ‘Tame’, curving her precise words around broken, lopsided rhythms and jangling new wave guitars. It’s pop music in its own way, inverted and reconstructed to fit snugly into her well-established sonic landscape. On ‘No Yawn’, brittle, downsampled hi-hats and industrial scrapes ping-pong around distorted riffs, provided by James Ó Ceallaigh aka WIFE; “You fail to sugarcoat your half-ass attempt,” she deadpans, “to build your promised wonderland on quicksand.” Even the beatless ‘All Odds No Chants’, a collaboration with Elvin Brandhi and Sara Persico, reveals another room in Ziúr’s autobiographical suite, mirroring György Ligeti’s enduringly influential choral works with its gnarled, dissonant vocal harmonies.

James Brown wants to know one thing before he and his band begin Sex Machine. “Can I get into the thing, really?,” he asks. His cohorts enthusiastically respond in the affirmative. And for the next hour and change, Mr. Dynamite gets into it and more, turning in a sweat-soaked, feet-moving, hip-swiveling, emotion-purging, in-the-red, drop-everything-you’re-doing-and-dance performance for the ages. Ranked by Rolling Stone among the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, the sweeping 1970 effort towers as a testament to Brown’s inimitable legacy as well as the peak powers of his voice, vibrancy, and bands.

Sourced from the original master tapes, pressed at Fidelity Record Pressing, and housed in a Stoughton gatefold jacket, Mobile Fidelity’s numbered-edition 180g 33RPM 2LP set presents Sex Machine in audiophile sound for the first time. It explodes with the energy the lightning-strike music demands. Dynamic, immediate, present, airy: Everything from the brassiness and fluidity of the horns to the snap and decay of the snare to the swell and carry of the organ comes across in full-range perspective.

Then there’s Brown’s superhuman singing, which here emerges with a purity, naturalism, and transparency that ensure you feel everything. Screeching, shouting, pleading, moaning, preaching, stinging, commanding, testifying, crooning, humming: The Godfather of Soul contributes one of the finest vocal performances known to man. This definitive 55th anniversary reissue of Brown’s monster funk statement further exhibits a combination of clarity, solidity, separation, and imaging that helps bring to light what he and his crack ensembles committed to tape. Both in the studio and on the stage.

Just how lifelike does this reissue sound? Senior Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab engineer Krieg Wunderlich, who handled the remaster, notes: “There were some artifacts that sounded a bit like mistracking. But they turned out to be breath blasts on the vocal microphone. That is part of history. JB was workin' hard, and breathin' hard. And there was an edit the timing of that was truly strange. Again, a part of history.”

Originally marketed as a live album, Sex Machine contains six songs recorded in the studio and later overdubbed with canned crowd noise and reverberation. Save for “Low Down Popcorn,” the tracks on the latter half stem from a phenomenal performance captured in October 1969 at Bell Auditorium in Brown’s adopted hometown of Augusta, GA. The special relationship between the singer, the audience, and the location is palpable.

As the 1960s gave way to a new decade, Brown experienced immense success and dealt with unexpected change. Soul Brother Number One soon expanded his idea for an official live album captured in Augusta when the ensemble that backed him on that date morphed into the original version of the world-famous J.B.’s just months after the show. The virtuosic abilities, sticky chemistry, and rhythm-forward nature of the J.B.’s prompted him to book a one-off session in Cincinnati, OH, on a late July night.

Anchored by brothers William “Bootsy” Collins and Phelps “Catfish” Collins, the group — as well as two different drummers — laid down a nearly 11-minute rendition of “Get Up I Feel Like Being Like a Sex Machine” and a thrilling medley of “Bewildered,” “I Got the Feeling,” and “Give It Up or Turnit a Loose.” A pair of then-recent studio singles cut in separate locations in 1969, “Brother Rapp” and “Low Down Popcorn,” each featuring his prior group, took care of the second LP worth of material that complements the originally planned live set.

Complicated? Somewhat. Unusual? Definitely. But just as he elevated the expectations for all present and future R&B artists, Brown not only makes it all work. He makes it positively electrifying.

“Get Up I Feel Like Being Like a Sex Machine” is alone deserving of a dissertation on the art of funk music, seeing it moves up and down akin to an oil derrick, witnesses Brown unleashing a trademark series of grunts, squeaks, and “good god” asides, and glides to a hypnotic groove that won’t quit. Or look to the syncopated rhythms of “Brother Rapp (Part I and Part II),” one of multiple pieces here that signify the point where Brown began viewing every instrument as a percussive tool. Brown closes the three-song medley with his new band with a skedaddling “Give It Up or Turnit a Loose,” which provides jolts on the order of sticking your finger into a socket.

Not that the actual live material falls short in any way. Setting an insistent tempo for the vitality that follows, “I Don’t Want Nobody to Give Me Nothing” positions Brown as a role model, leader, and self-sufficient entrepreneur. All simmer and boil, the short and sweet “Licking Stick” dares you to keep pace. The floating, almost comforting “Spinning Wheel” spotlights the instrumental prowess of Maceo Parker and company, and functions as a seamless segue into the tender, horn-saluted “If I Ruled the World.”

And Brown and his mates still aren’t done. Just try to resist the one-two closing punch of “I Can’t Stand Myself (When You Touch Me)” and “Mother Popcorn.” Mercy.

Ain’t it funky? Sure ‘nuff.

The duality of "man" is a subject that has been explored in art for centuries, from writings of the Bible to Descartes, all the way up to filmmakers like Lynch, Cronenberg, & Carpenter. Who is your "true self" & what do they want? With their sixth studio album "Wish Defense" (again for longtime home Trouble In Mind Records), Chicago trio FACS take a good, long look in the mirror to face themselves. The return of original member Jonathan Van Herik - who stepped away from the group just before their debut album "Negative Houses" was released in 2018 - replacing longtime bassist Alianna Kalaba brings renewed vigor & a marked angularity from the band's more recent output. The songs still hit hard, but the approach is sideways - the roles have changed since Van Herik's original tenure & his previous time with Case & powerhouse drummer Noah Leger in Disappears; now on bass, Van Herik was originally the group's guitar player and features on the debut, while current guitarist Brian Case played bass. This role reversal has helped the band's dynamic, offering up a different musical perspective than before, now revisiting the trio's long-going collaboration with some distance and time. Case notes that the lyrics on "Wish Defense" revolve around doppelgängers or "doubles", tackling the idea of facing yourself and observing your ideas and motivations. Look no further than the album's title track; "Enter the mirror / Double walker / An intimate / Wish defense / Is it real? / You beside me / The detail / Terrifying / Abject self / Your grief / A public / Performance". Case lays out the entire album's theme in one stanza; Are your actions & emotions your true self? Or are they a performative aspect of that "other" person you put forward? Case says that ultimately the sentiment is "_don't let the bastards get you down, there's something beyond this moment, like hope - but not in the naive belief that ultimately people are good". "Wish Defense"s artwork is also a subtle reference to "Negative Houses"' art, returning to that album's black & white starkness & minimalism. The album's checkerboards everywhere are offset reflections of themselves, mirrored with the album's lyrics printed front & center on the cover. Everything is out in the open. A final note; "Wish Defense" is the last album engineered by Steve Albini. Two days were recorded at Electrical Audio in early May of 2024 before Steve's untimely passing, with renowned engineer & friend Sanford Parker stepping in to finish the session 24 hours later, tracking the last bits of vocals and overdubs. Longtime collaborator John Congleton mixed the album as Albini would have; in Electrical Audio's A room, off the tape, using Albini's notes about the session.

Do you believe in spring? Simon Wangen (cello) and Philipp Sutter (piano) pose this question as the title for their new project. Whereas Bill Evans made a demand in 1981, the two Cologne-based musicians believe that in times of uncertainty, crisis, and environmental destruction, it is ok to set a questin mark here. But politics and world events aside: Do you believe in spring? Of course! It's never too late to start something new, get creative, and test your own limits. Simon Wangen is a classically trained cellist, Philipp Sutter a trained jazz pianist. Their different musical roots merge on this instrumental album into a lively mix of neoclassical, new jazz, and Cinéma Nordique. Ten pieces come across as sometimes dark, sometimes wild, sometimes delicate, always focusing on the dialogue between the two instruments that harmonize so well. The subtle use of electronic effects constantly opens up new perspectives and builds a bridge to contemporary sound aesthetics. Cello and piano—this combination has been established for centuries, but can still add new facets today. Do you believe in spring? begins stormily and turbulently, oscillating between romantic, sad, and beautiful moments, and leads from a rather dark beginning to the final and eponymous piece in C major, which leaves the listener with a glimmer of hope. Do you believe in spring? From October 24, 2025!


Do you believe in spring? Simon Wangen (Cello) und Philipp Sutter (Klavier) werfen den Titel für ihr neues Projekt als Frage in den Raum. Wo Bill Evans 1981 eine Forderung formulierte, sind die beiden Kölner Musiker der Ansicht, in Zeiten der Unsicherheit, der Krisen und Umweltzerstörung durchaus ein Fragezeichen setzen zu können. Aber abgesehen von Politik und Weltgeschehen: Do you believe in spring? Natürlich! Es ist nie zu spät, etwas Neues zu beginnen, kreativ zu werden und die eigenen Grenzen zu testen. Simon Wangen ist klassisch ausgebildeter Cellist, Philipp Sutter studierter Jazzpianist. Die unterschiedlichen musikalischen Wurzeln verschmelzen auf diesem Instrumentalalbum zu einer lebendigen Mischung aus Neoklassik, New Jazz und Cinéma Nordique. Zehn Stücke kommen mal düster, mal wild, mal zart daher, stets die Zwiesprache der beiden so gut harmonierenden Instrumente im Fokus. Der dezente Einsatz elektronischer Effekte öffnet immer wieder neue Perspektiven und schlägt eine Brücke zur zeitgenössischen Klangästhetik. Cello und Klavier - diese Besetzung ist seit Jahrhunderten etabliert, aber kann auch aktuell immer wieder neue Facetten hinzubekommen. Do you believe in spring? beginnt stürmisch und aufgewühlt, changiert zwischen romantisch - traurig - schönen Momenten und führt von einem eher düsteren Beginn hin zum letzten und namensgebenden Stück in C-Dur, das die Zuhörenden mit einem Hoffnungsschimmer entlässt. Do you believe in spring? Ab 24.10.2025!

Recorded in concert at the University of Sheffield in March 2025, Reality Is Not A Theory is the first collaboration between Mark Fell and Pat Thomas. Major figures in British experimental music since the 1990s, Fell and Thomas have developed their rigorous practices from radically different backgrounds and perspectives: where Fell’s singular take on synthetic abstraction emerged from Sheffield’s electronic underground, Thomas is a virtuoso improvising pianist steeped in jazz and modernist art music who has simultaneously worked with sampler-based electronics for decades. As the record’s wonderfully academic subtitle explains, we are presented here with two sides of ‘algorithmic and improvised music for computer and piano’, exemplifying both players’ insatiable search for new (and sometimes uncomfortable) playing situations.

The performance begins with Fell’s electronics close to the timbres of acoustic percussion, attacks that suggest wood, metal or glass threaded along a rapid pulse while Thomas focuses on the lowest registers of the piano, deadening the strings. As Fell’s electronics start to ring out and occupy more harmonic space, Thomas turns to wide, repeated clusters, which slowly expand into patterns of chords. Like in his recent solo recordings and his trio work with Joel Grip and Anton Gerbal, Thomas’ playing combines extreme dissonance with a deep lyrical sense. Fell’s work gradually shifts its focus toward drum sounds, drawing on the microtemporal processes that have characterized his practice in recent decades. Heard together with Thomas’ probing piano, the computer sounds call up unexpected associations with the klangfarben antics of improv drummers like Paul Lovens or Tony Oxley. Throughout its second half, the music grows increasingly frenetic, as Thomas sounds out rapid, irregularly repeated figures and beautifully sour chords in the upper register, while Fell’s percussion develops into angular pan-pipe-like feedback and waves of glissandi.

With great confidence and patience, Fell and Thomas often let their individual contributions remain rhythmically distinct and unsynchronised, allowing unexpected correspondence and coincidence to guide the music’s development. Recorded in a hall named after Sheffield steel manufacturer and Master Cutler Mark Firth, the location might suggest a model for understanding how Fell and Thomas interact here: two workers in the same workshop, each immersed in their own part of the production process. Arriving in a striking sleeve designed by Mark Fell, with liner notes by Francis Plagne, Reality Is Not A Theory is an invigorating document of the meeting of two mavericks of contemporary music.

The Sludge Of The Land is the new album by digital folklore and post-exoticism Italian duo Babau. Their first full length since 2023’s Flatland Explorations Vol. 2, with The Sludge Of The Land Babau lands on Impatience with their signature audio-prestidigitation at it’s most disorientingly pungent and zonked, a uniquely contemporary approach described as the sound of a continent moving; animals, plants and minerals included.

As part of a residency at Casa degli Artisti, Milan, in 2022, Babau turned their atelier into a recording studio and performing venue thanks to Francesco Piro, who produced the entirety of the album. There, the duo improvised with different acoustic and digital instruments for several hours a day. Returning after ten years to a sound more akin to a band or small orchestra, Babau re-explores tropes and themes of exotica and jazz from their unique and off-kilter perspective of terminally-online diggers-dwellers of the internet flatland.

An homage to digital content consumption and dopamine-infused sensory overloads, The Sludge Of The Land imagines itself as an abstract sonic wunderkammer of online detritus. By diving into the world of ‘sludge content’: audiovisual chaos produced by mixing different content using split screens or dizzying patchworks of videos, Babau celebrates the formless, viscous goo, spam, chum and slop of out-of-context moving image, fast paced digital videos and lo-fi mp4 artifacts. By endlessly spiraling into the non-spaces of The Net, Babau explore the uncharted parageographies of lavacasts, mysterious Chinese anthropozoomorphic legendary beings, vampiric doomscrolling glides and doppelganger, ctrl+c & ctrl+v spiritualism. These ghosts of pointless microevents and traveling-without-moving bedroom boredom are stuffed by Babau with the epic tone and compositional approach of exotica and world music 2.0 reveries, resulting in an absurd, playful narrative of the dangers and allures of the web.

Bringing together the sound of Richard Hayman and Black Dice, Korla Pandit and Sun Araw, Tony Scott and Carl Stone, once again the duo crafts a compelling audio-textual hallucination of transglobal chimera. A multi-fi, extremely layered treasure of fifth world music.

RIYL - Sun Araw, the strangest corners of the internet, Senyawa, digital wind instruments, Nuke Watch, Black Dice, exotica, hallucinating.

Babau is the pantropical project of Artetetra founders Matteo Pennesi and Luigi Monteanni, where their fascination with exotica, world music 2.0, and field recordings merges with the compositional and improvisational techniques of computer music.

Their latest work, All the Gurls were at the Women’s Archo Ashinto, was recently released by Bamboo Shows, while the previous Stock Fantasy Zone and Flatland Explorations Vol.2, were released by Discrepant. They were selected as SHAPE+ artists in 2023, and the duo has performed at various festivals in Italy and beyond, including Fusion, Club to Club, Terraforma, Nextones, Outernational Days, Camp Cosmic, and Saturnalia. For years, they have been striving to synthesize what has been described as the sound of a continent in motion—people, animals, plants, and minerals included.

The Sludge Of The Land was produced and mixed by Francesco Piro at Casa degli Artisti, Milan, and co-produced by Babau
Drums by Giovanni Todisco, bass by Francesco Piro and piano on A4 by Vittorio Cosmo.
Master by Nick Foglia.
Art by Luca Schenardi.

Dutch artist Sander van der Toorn returns to Kit Records, following his much-loved work with analogue-decayed folk duo Love is Yes, in 2024. While Sander's signature haze of tape-smeared synthesis and motorik guitar is ever present, "kom-kom" represents a departure from the elysian warmth of Love's debut.

The industrial throb of tracks like 'FIVE' and 'Rainhum' bear the deconstructed hallmarks of krautrock pioneers Neu!, and even the dystopic glow of artists like Plastikman or Pole. When kom-kom's harmonic ambitions resurface, such as on the synapse-aching 'Dwarsdoor', or the glassy structures of 'Hazenhart', the effect is startling.

van der Toorn cites the inspiration of Morton Feldman and Sarah Davachi when describing his work less as a linear listening experience, more a collection of sculptures that can be viewed from different angles. In this way, kom-kom doesn't have to move forward; the encounter can be one of stillness, of static objects given movement by the beholder's shifting perspective.

Sounds like: John Fahey being stretched into infinitely long pieces of spaghetti.
Recommended if you like: intercontinental rail travel, Mark Fisher, a nice malbec.

Limited edition of 100 cassettes, with risograph printed artwork.

Elektro Guzzi return with their 11th studio album, Liquid Center - more focused than ever, yet moresonically open. The album presents the trio on a new level: their sense of precision and structuremeets an unexpected depth and warmth.The sound is more restrained, more subtle - and in this way,it gains even more presence. What stands out: this album sounds different. And it feels different too.Over the course of a year, the band developed a recording technique that translates their analog liveenergy into a sonic image that captures both the physicality of a band in space and the coolabstraction of techno.The result is a sound that doesn’t seek loudness, but detail - clear, warm, deep,and with an almost artificial precision. Liquid Center is not a loose collection of tracks but a coherentalbum experience.With every listen, it opens up a little more: a new texture, a shifted perspective,another layer emerging from the space between groove and sound. Maybe it’s the music that’schanging. Or maybe it’s just the way you hear it.

After years of friendship and sound fragmentation, Felipe Valenzuela and Federico Molinari have succeeded in capturing and distilling their unique musical perspective into a single frame.Throughout this process, these two minds from across the Andes have developed numerous productions with a broad, multidirectional genre range.This release features four tracks, each with its own distinct identity. The A1 track, FORCED TO THE SCALES, which lends its name to the EP, blends elements of Spanish classical music with a futuristic edge, seamlessly adapting to various moments within a set.The second track on side A, RAPS TIGHT, is an experiment born from the same session, where a subtle sensitivity is expressed through a a slow beat, enveloped in a harmonious world.On side B, 503 emerges from a different creative process, combining two divergent paths that naturally intersect, resulting in a track full of energy and dynamism.The EP closes with DEAD MAN, a one-shot recording that, through its raw spontaneity, encapsulates the conclusion of a fragmented journey within a frame full of versatility.

Salamanda is the collaborative alias of South Korean producer/DJ duo, and close friends, Uman Therma (Sala) and Yetsuby (Manda). Together they create avant-garde electronic music inspired by minimalist concepts, harmonious rhythms and the work of American composer Steve Reich.

Across the eight tracks of Sphere, their debut for Small Méasures, the pair conjure spherical worlds inspired by bubbles, refracting light and planet earth. Soundscapes laden with percussive elements ebb and flow as arpeggiated stanzas cede to misty synths and shimmering plates, conjuring images of solitary temples sat in vast open plateaus.

“For Sphere, we came up with an abstract concept and image to explore more diversity and encourage imagination. Each track is related to different kinds of sphere we found or imagined. From the big round planet embracing every creature to dancing little bubbles underwater, fragments of ideas floating around, exploding tomatoes, and movement of lights flashing and tickling the eyes…

Or the tracks can be about completely different types of spheres in other people's perspective. We hope Sphere can unleash the imagination and take you on a delightful journey of music.’’

Mobile Fidelity's UltraDisc One-Step 180g 45RPM 2LP Set Plays with Authoritative Tonality, Airiness, and Clarity:
Pressed on MoFi SuperVinyl and Strictly Limited to
3,000 Numbered Copies
1/4” / 15 IPS Dolby A analogue master to DSD 256 to analogue console to lathe

Joni Mitchell is the only artist who could’ve made Hejira. The legendary singer-songwriter said as much when discussing the album decades after its release. Yet that fact seemed obvious from the moment the gold-certified effort streeted in fall 1976. An adventurous travelogue, probing narrative, and offbeat homage to freedom, Hejira remains an inimitable entry in the catalog of recorded music — a spare, gorgeous, meditative series of sonic vignettes comprised of floating harmonic pop, cool jazz, soft rock, and sensitive vocal elements that beckon feelings of motion, discovery, and self-examination.

Sourced from the original analog master tapes, pressed at Fidelity Record Pressing on MoFi SuperVinyl, and strictly limited to 3,000 numbered copies, Mobile Fidelity's UltraDisc One-Step 180g 45RPM 2LP set presents the record ranked the 133rd Greatest of All Time by Rolling Stone with definitive detail, richness, accuracy, and directness. Marking the first time the revered LP has received audiophile treatment, it's one of six iconic 1970s Mitchell records Mobile Fidelity is reissuing on vinyl and SACD.

Playing with a virtually nonexistent noise floor, dead-quiet surfaces, and superior groove definition, this collectible reissue reproduces in enveloping fashion the tones, textures, and craftsmanship that help Hejira function as the equivalent of a liberating trip down an open road with nothing but blue sky, natural landscape, and fresh air in the immediate vicinity. Passages bloom, carry, decay as they do amid an acoustically optimized environment. Soundstages extend far, wide, and deep, with black backgrounds and pinpoint images adding to the realism.

The reference-grade immediacy, airiness, and presence put in transparent perspective Mitchell’s dense strings of words, stream-of-conscious-like phrasing, and unhurried albeit forward momentum. Likewise, the instrumental contributions of her A-list support musicians — a cast that includes L.A. Express members John Guerin, Max Bennett and Tom Scott, plus Neil Young, Victor Feldman, and Abe Most — emerges with breathtaking clarity and dimensionality.

While Mitchell, whose intimate vocals and abstract guitar parts center everything, Mobile Fidelity's restoration of Hejira further reveals the visionary breadth of guitarist Larry Carlton and bassist Jaco Pastorius. Though heard on only four tracks, Pastorius' fretless bass epitomizes the fluid, subtle, flexible, roomy, and shape-shifting characteristics of songs that often appear to transpire out of nowhere akin to the formation of a puffy cumulus cloud overhead. In sync with Mitchell’s voice, Pastorius’ fusion hovers and floats, suspended in a fog you want to deeply inhale. The "grace notes" Mitchell desired on Hejira can now be heard in full. Ditto the luxurious tapestries of alinear lines, fills, and supplements unreeled on Carlton’s six-string.

Visually, the packaging of this UD1S set complements its identity as the copy to own. Housed in a deluxe slipcase, the LPs come in foil-stamped jackets with faithful-to-the-original graphics. This version is for listeners who desire to become immersed in everything about Hejira, including the unforgettable album cover — a pastiche of 14 different photos Mitchell used a Camera Lucida to assemble into one image that’s anchored by a portrait of her in a stoic pose — and the interior shots of Mitchell skating on a frozen Wisconsin lake wearing a pair of black skates, black shirt, and fur cape.

The notion of skating, feeling an awakening wind whipping against your face, and losing yourself to the surroundings are extremely apt for Hejira, which Mitchell wrote after a sequence of trips and relationships prompted her to reflect on the complicated conflicts between independence and marriage, success and satisfaction, duty and desire — and, more specifically, “the cost of being a woman.” The Canadian native delved into such themes before. But never as she does on Hejira, whose liberating, running-away aura doubles as another of Mitchell’s rejections of tradition as well as a suggestion of a better alternative.

At once observational and personal, expansive and insular, cheerful and poignant, Hejira spans a sea of human conditions, emotions, and circumstances. It addresses drifting, isolation, pleasure, place, time, and surroundings with strikingly poetic discourse matched with music that, save for the crooned ballad “Blue Motel Room,” forgoes conventional structures and choruses.

The jazz-based arrangements, marked by scaled-down percussion and all manner of bent, rounded, and unsettled notes, hint that Mitchell has no exact destination in mind. Excursions such as the moody “Furry Sings the Blues,” funky “Coyote” and edgy “Black Crow” throw open previously locked doors to possibility and journey. They signal it’s time for a welcome departure from norms and the past, one that leads to a heightened sense of clarity and perspective. Or, as Mitchell said upon choosing the album title, it’s time for “leaving the dream, no blame.”

Repress!

Wonderwheel recordings is proud to present the first full-length album from

producer Robin Perkins, aka El Buho. Balance represents a meeting of different currents that make up Buho's music: a fascination with the natural world, and its protection, a fascination with the rhythms, traditions and sounds of Latin America and a fascination with modern electronic music and production aesthetics. The album is peppered with Cumbia, Son Jarocho, Andean instrumentation & Afro-Colombian rhythms. Mixed with this, Robin integrates this idea of "nature music" - putting the sound of a misty forest, the songs of birds, of crunching leaves under foot or the rhythmic tapping of rain alongside synthesized sounds, electronic clicks or claps, deep basses. Trying at once to give them their own space but in a new, surprising perspective - it draws electronic music into something more soft, natural, different and appealing.

Balance is also an album that celebrates community and collaboration, showcasing collaborations with ten different artists form Latin America and beyond, both producers, instrumentalists and singers. Including more of a lyrical presence than his previous EPs, Perkins solicited the participation of talented singers like Dina al Wedidi from Cairo, Luzmila Carpio from Bolivia and the incredible decimas of Mexican poet Citlaly Malpica. The album also features the likes of harpist Veronica Valerio, Argentine multi-instrumentalist Rumo Tumba, jarana player Pablo Emiliano from Mexican Son Jarocho group Semilla and members of the Shika Shika family (the global collective he co-run's) Uji, Barrio Lindo, Kaleema, Minük and Jhon Montoya.

El Buho's music has an incredible power to convey feelings, atmospheres, memories or messages. The message that sits behind this music is to value on the one hand the power of community, of collaboration and of our modern, globally, connected world but also the remembrance, protection and celebration of the very earth we depend upon for our existence.