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The Earth is burning, covering all environments in ashes. Smoke comes to us from computers-from social networks accelerating the spread of burnt affects, damaging our ability to feel and respond to what the planet strives to express. We need to cool down. Thomas Köner's music can help change the pace of our perceptions: 1) In DAIKAN (2002) - a Japanese term meaning "the coldest" or "the coldest part of the year"-the ear stretches until touching the depth of time that persists in the ice; a sonic drama offers the slowness thanks to which the skin of perceptions can reconstitute themselves; icequakes awaken listeners to the frozen life without scaring them. 2) Banlieue du Vide, considered by many to be Thomas Köner's most iconic audiovisual work and best kept secret, has not been released previously. It is in the collection of a couple of art museums, e.g. the Centre Pompidou in Paris, and has been awarded the Golden Nica at Prix Ars Electronica in 2004, in the category Digital Musics. Banlieue du Vide is the result of months of time-lapse observations of empty streets in the Finnish Arctic Circle, shown in glacially slow slow-motion. Phase cancellation, on which all noise cancelling technology is based, here affects the perception of time, the sense of the flow of time extinguishing itself. At this stage the void is not yet empty, traces of past noise fill the listeners mind with their haunting presence. A remastered stereo version of the soundtrack is released as a special premiere as Bonus Track of the DAIKAN album. Listening to this album, an excess of heat turns into an empowering coldness-like the transient feeling of our terrestrial embodiment in the midst of entropy.

WRWTFWW Records is very excited to present a new full-length collaborative project by Japanese ambient/environmental legend Takashi Kokubo (Ion Series) and Italian/Swiss trombonist Andrea Esperti (Esperti Project): Music for a Cosmic Garden.

Recorded during the heights of the pandemic and completed in February 2021, the majestic 8-track ethereal/botanical soundscape created by Kokubo and Esperti is available as a limited edition double LP, a digipack CD, as well as in digital format.

Takashi KOKUBO, environmental music figure, celebrated sound designer, and founder of Studio Ion, has released over 20 albums, including the genre-defining and highly sought-after Ion Series. He's also played a major role in the sonic identity of Japan, creating the country’s mobile phone earthquake alert sound, credit card payment validation jingles, and much more. In 2020, Takashi Kokubo received a Grammy nomination for his track "A Dream Sails Out to Sea, Scene 3" off Light in the Attic’s Kankyo Ongaku compilation. He is known for recording “sound scenes from nature” around the world using a binaural CyberPhonic microphone of his own invention and for his very unique brand of healing music.

Andrea ESPERTI is a Swiss trombonist and composer originally from Puglia (Italy). He plays in multiple genres (classical, pop, world, electro, jazz) with a globe-trotting approach: encounters with peers, rhythmic exchanges, and unplanned music projects; this is where lies the foundation of his work.

Music for a Cosmic Garden is an ode to celestial botanics, a contemporary and hallucinogenic take on the soothing ambient genre immortalized by artists such as Midori Takada and Satoshi Ashikawa, a beautiful pairing of synthesizers and the mighty trombone, taking you to a meditative galaxy far, far away, where other-worldly is just another word for cozy.

Recommended track for maximum pleasure: "Gaia’s Love Theme".

For the first time the work of Jacqueline Nova is available to the public in vinyl LP format. - Jacqueline Nova is one of the pioneers of Latin American electronic music and an essential figure of the Colombian avant-garde. - Jacqueline Nova (Ghent, Belgium, 1935 - Bogotá, Colombia, 1975), a representative figure of Colombian avant-garde music, developed important and radical work within the field of electronic and instrumental music, as well as in interdisciplinary forms. This album CREACION DE LA TIERRA - Ecos palpitantes de Jacqueline Nova: Música electroacústica e instrumental (1964-1974) CREATION OF THE EARTH - Throbbing Echoes of Jacqueline Nova: Electroacoustic and Instrumental Music (1964-1974), under the curatorship and research of the Colombian composer Ana María Romano G., recovers Nova's most important electroacoustic works: Creación de la tierra Creation of the Earth (1972), Oposición-Fusión [Opposition-Fusion] (1968) and Resonancias 1 [Resonances 1] (1968-69), as well as the music for the film Camilo el cura guerrillero [Camilo the Guerrilla Priest] (1974), composed during her stay at the Centro Latinoamericano de Altos Estudios Musicales (CLAEM) , of the Torcuato Di Tella Institute, in Buenos Aires, as well as in the Study of Phonology of the University of Buenos Aires. The compilation also includes the instrumental works Omaggio a Catullus (1972-1974), Transiciones [Transitions] (1964-1965), and Asuimetrías [Asymmetries] (1967), in which she explores randomness, timbre possibilities or the encounter between acoustic and electronic media. - The interest in experimenting with the human voice, and interdisciplinary work involving visual arts, were some of the aspects that have defined Jacqueline Nova's work. Ana María Romano has written: "Nova lived in an environment hostile to change, to debate and discussion, hostile to her being an autonomous and lesbian woman. She undertook feats that make her a pioneer, even though she did not set out to be taken as one, but only as a result of the commitment, dedication and passion of a creator with her society. Jacqueline Nova died in Bogotá of bone cancer. Her tragic and early death not only cut short a career in full creative force, but also directly affected the development of electroacoustic music in the country. After her death there was a great silence -close to 15 years- in musical creation with electronic means. Nova challenged a conservative milieu and survived alone, working in a field thought to be exclusively masculine. But it was a woman who strengthened the use of technology in Colombian music. A risky bet that sadly represented a high cost: Nova was relegated during her lifetime, but her noises managed to shake and question the comfort zones of the Colombian musical establishment". - CREACION DE LA TIERRA - Ecos palpitantes de Jacqueline Nova: Música electroacústica e instrumental (1964-1974) [CREATION OF THE EARTH - Throbbing Echoes of Jacqueline Nova: Electroacoustic and Instrumental Music (1964-1974)] is published through Buh Records, on all digital platforms and in a double vinyl edition, limited to 300 copies. The album includes a booklet with extensive information written by Ana María Romano G. This publication was possible thanks to the Ibermúsicas fund.

Cosmic Romance is the first LP from Los Angles producer MoodHay that beams down to planet Earth in a swirl of lush synthesisers, hypnotic melodies and warm grooves. It’s a journey of emotions, contemporary and classic all the same. The album orbits around earthly elements of R&B, funk and house, seamlessly blurring in a unique way that MoodHay pulls off with an endearing ease here in the early 21st century. It’s a sonically beautiful love note with a lot of attitude that pilots right to the center of your soul, while keeping your body rocking out real smooth.

MoodHay’s hilltop studio is like a hidden oasis out in the desert, mystical and soothing, where he brings gems (like the ones you’ll hear on this album) to life. He sings and plays all the instruments on this record (minus the hot sax on ‘Melodies’) and is truly blooming as a songwriter.
MoodHay has such a fresh energy around him that is certainly felt throughout Cosmic Romance and these songs were methodically crafted to maximise the vibe out on the dance floor on this planet and others out there.

2023 Repress

* Tales of the Inexpressible” was released on Twisted Records in 2001.

It was a much anticipated and well loved successor continuing in the pioneering spirit of the debut album and in this exceptional follow up they gave us plenty more multi-dimensional surprises and new sonic realities to explore and immerse ourselves in.
From the opening sounds on “Dorset Perception”, the first track featuring flamenco guitar and Latin percussion, we can tell we are in for some incredible planetary as well as interplanetary trips on this musical voyage as Si & Raj take us for a spin though their musical worlds, full of influences garnered on their travels to the 4 corners of the earth.

As the Star Shpongled Banner unfurls, the immeasurable beauty of the album is illustriously illustrated with blissful cascades of Indian Flute washing over the minds ear and achingly beautiful synths rippling with dimensional dub effects throughout. As the Shaman’s voice resonates through the digital dream, the Shaman’s drum begins to beat leading us to a vedic celtic crescendo.

By the time Room 23 emanates from the loudspeakers, Shpongle have confirmed their position as the true pioneers once again, shining a light on the deeper development of the Psybient and Psychill sound and unmistakably elevating the consciousness of the listener to previously unheard of heights by bringing the eddying currents of Raj’s magical flute lines and Simons mellifluous keyboard riffs and genius production style together in an extraordinary hallucinogenic mix.

The album holds 9 gems glistening in hyperspace, gems of unmistakable brilliance and radiant beauty in which every composition contains worlds within worlds, as explored by Raja and Simon on their epic voyages into the depths of musical exploration and recounted in these tales.

They have been the soundtrack to innumerable visionary voyages for the neuronaut cognoscenti, because of the multi layered sounds, shapeshifting focus and awe inspiring depths of the advanced Shpongle production techniques. Tales of the inexpressible is quite literally, beyond description and has been a part of creating so many beautiful moments that its absence from our lives is unimaginable. 

Country songwriter from Brooklyn's indie underground, Dougie Poole blurs the lines between genre and generation on his third solo album, The Rainbow Wheel of Death. Rooted in sharp songwritingvand the organic sounds of a live-in-the-studio band, it's a classic-sounding record for the modern world. The Rainbow Wheel of Death's title nods to the colorful pinwheel that appears onscreen whenever a computer's application stalls. For Poole _ who found himself working as a freelance computer programmer once the pandemic brought his touring schedule to a temporary halt in 2020 _ it's also a reference to the holding pattern that's left much of society feeling stuck, unable to move ahead in an uncertain world. That feeling was pervasive when he in his New York City bedroom and wrapping up the songwriting process in the recording studio itself. Once hailed as the "patron saint of millennial malaise" for his sardonic wit and topical, tongue-in-cheek songwriting, Poole broadens his reach here. "High School Gym" builds a bridge between 2020s lo-fi textures and 1980s pop vibes, while "Must Be In Here Somewhere" _ whose narrator sits at a lap top, searching through "every server burning in North Carolina" for a digital souvenir of a long-lost relationship _ mixes modern concerns with classic country instrumentation. If records like 2017's Wideass Highway and 2020's breakthrough release The Freelancer's Blues told stories about uninspired Millennials languishing in dead-end jobs and no-good relationships, then The Rainbow Wheel of Death focuses on more universal issues like mortality, love, and the passing of the time. With The Rainbow Wheel of Death, Dougie Poole breathes new life into country music, retaining the acclaimed elements of his previous work _ drum machines, synthesizers, and his deep-set voice _ while pushing toward something warm, organic, and prismatic.

In a blizzard of delirious sonics and twis’ up samples extracted from the annals of dancehall and ragga, Seekersinternational return to Sneaker Social Club to double down on the manifesto they laid out with the original RaggaPreservationSociety EP way back in 2016.

As ever, the SKRS magic lies in their ability to convey a deep affection and serious dedication for the source material while simultaneously getting shamelessly weird with it, taking the mutant tendencies of dancehall’s wildest instrumentals and injecting some added cosmic sauce into the mix. On this new record, they’re also embracing the volatile potential of junglist breaks - always intrinsically linked to Jamaican music at the point of inception, especially in the rough and ready daze of ragga jungle.

‘No Parasites (Lickshot)’ is a fierce mission statement, raining down mayhem without ever slipping into familiar modes - the emphasis is on the ragga, the jungle is there as a piquant flavour in the stew, but as ever the SKRS sound remains entirely out on its own. In contrast, ‘CaughtUp (HeartBreaks)’ almost edges closer to hardcore structures, but something keeps slipping in to run the interference, hovering just beyond perception for that all important woozy feeling.

‘2GoldChain (DriveUCrazy)’ is cut up enough to be another interstellar voyage, but here SKRS keep the music back in the mix and let a tapestry of chat lead out front as though capturing a casual street level chaos - bewildering and familiar in equal measure. ‘OriginaloftheOriginal’ completes the set with an earth-shattering script flip once more, coming on like square wave grime and half-speed breakbeat set to emotional stun. If it takes a minute to make sense, that’s because you’re hearing something entirely new.

Almost immediately, Daniel instigated a near legendary run of new albums, releasing 10 full-length albums in the span of nearly the same number of weeks. Genre- spanning, astoundingly distinct artist achievements of an unprecedented order, these albums were originally released exclusively in digital only formats on
Bandcamp. They were direct and immediate missives from one of the most talented, prolific, ambitious, and exciting artists of his generation. We are thrilled to be releasing these albums now in very special limited-edition vinyl pressings. At the heights of ambition, Daniel Romano's Outfit deliver a wandering spell of
melodic backbone, accompanied by percussionist extraordinaire Danny Carey (of TOOL fame). Rising in union with the first pounding hearts of dawn, up and down the arcades of devotion and on through the sunset, where the earth-life fades, Forever Love's Fool is a single hard- edged, complex, multi- part epic (an approach the band
would later develop even further on 2022's stunning La Luna release). It is intricate, precise, energetic music tied to a progressive rock inspired universal vision. Onward into the furthest reaches of love eternal.

Sublime Frequencies is honored to release the third LP from Baba Commandant and the Mandingo Band. Sonbonbela was recorded in the beginning of 2022 in the Republic of Burkina Faso. The group continue to hone their trademark fusion of Mandingue and afro-beat styles. The Mandingo Band are a hit machine, sculpting seven new tracks of near Beefheart/Magic Band dynamics, Fela inspired groovers dusted out in the Sahel zone, rather than the humidity and sweat of Lagos, creating one of the most original and propulsive musical statements to come from the contemporary West African cultural juggernaut. As with previous releases, the band features the legendary guitar pyrotechnics of Issouf Diabate, truly one of the greatest West African (or Earth for that matter) guitarists of the last forty years. The band is completed by a near bottomless barrel of artistry from the Ouagadougou and Bobo Dioulasso musical talent pool. On bass guitar, Wendeyida Ouedraogo, on drums Abbas Kabore, and on percussion and balafon, Nickie Dembele. Leading the charge again is the captain himself, Mamadou Sanou on the Doso Ngoni featuring one of the most distinctive voices of the modern era. The opposite of the banal trends of auto-tune that have pervaded most of West African popular music, Baba’s voice still impresses with its gravel and grit, showcasing a range that is ancient and defiant in equal measure. This LP is a non-stop hit parade of afro-beat bangers destined to light dance floors and living rooms ablaze!!! This album is dedicated to the memory of Massimbo Taragna, the bass player extraordinaire who was an integral part of the Mandingo Band’s trance stun musical power. He passed away in early 2022. RIP TRACKLIST: Side A: CHASSER LES SACHETS, KAMELEBA, AFRO MANDINGO, SEMAYALA Sida B: SEREJUGU, SONBANBELA, WARIKO

In the unobservable reaches of the universe sits the Cosmologist, surrounded by 12-inch vinyl artifacts found on a tiny planet in another galaxy. Earth, they called it. Sci-fi sonic scalpel in hand, he gets to work on two gems from a bygone era. The A side, a rare 1980’s UK new wave whirlwind, given a drum-focused reconstruction aimed directly at the dancefloor, and the B an afrobeat masterpiece gets an expert interplanetary rework.

Dusting off the original promo sheet, it states that the A side entered Balearic folklore as a much-loved Rampling secret weapon at Shoom. Unlike any other record of that era, it features LSD-soaked drums, a barnstorming bassline and a piano riff that wouldn’t be out of place on a Severed Heads cut, finetuned and re-crafted with that space age touch.

On the B, a magical afrobeat rhythm steeped in history whose spirit and style has traversed decades, dancefloors and galaxies. An exploration of a great, reworked and recalibrated with extra-terrestrial resonations.

A stalwart of the Leeds music scene for the best part of 3 decades, Tony Burkill has so far maintained a low profile nationally, choosing to favour continued study and development of the instrument over the attainment of success or recognition within the music industry. Working as a sideman for hire on the local circuit, he has impressed audiences with his powerful and gutsy approach to improvisation and has been a well-kept secret amongst both musicians and audiences in the north of England since the 1980s.Recently featuring as a guest soloist on the debut album by The Sorcerers, Tony has been on the radar of ATA Records since the inception of the label. Impressed by his exuberant and earthy performance style they decided to embark on the writing and production of what was to become "Work Money Death", choosing to frame his playing in the context of the performers that have helped to shape his sound, most notably the spiritual jazz of the 60s and 70s.

"Work Money Death"explores the foundations laid by the great Tenor players of the 60s & 70s: Gato Barbieri, Pharoah Sanders, John Klemmer and John Coltrane, taking inspiration from their work and using it as a springboard for Tenor Saxophonist Tony Burkill's improvisation. Co-written with Bassist Neil Innes, the album attempts to frame Tony's playing within the context of that which has been most influential to him over the span of a 20+ year long career. Featuring on the record are Drummer Sam Hobbs (The Electric Doctor M and Producer of Matthew Bourne's Moogmemory), Bassist Neil Innes (The Sorcerers, Eddie Roberts' Roughneck), Pianist George Cooper (Abstract Orchestra), Percussionist Pete Williams (The Sorcerers) and features a guest performance from Pianist Matthew Bourne on the track "Beginning and End".

Support and airplay from Gilles Peterson (BBC6 Music, Worldwide FM), Jamie Cullum (BBC Radio 2). Good reviews have so far been forthcoming from the likes of Jazzman Gerald and Nat Birchall who described it as sounding "like a lost album from the spiritual jazz scene of the 1970s".

This 40 year anniversary collection traces Brother Culture's career and includes some of his biggest hits, with remastered versions of these classics. The album includes his hits Jump Up Pon It (25 million streams), Supanova (15 million streams), My Selecta (2 million streams), and some of his most listened-to tracks ever released on vinyl.

A composition simply means things being put together. In music, we usually think of composition as a classical idea. But in recent years, the possibilities of what ‘composing’ can be, have dramatically increased. Based in Oslo, Norway, Deathprod (aka Helge Sten) has been making his own forms of music with no compromise since the early 90s. His specialty is a deeply atmospheric, grainy minimalism that slows time down and explores the very particles of sound itself. This music can sound forbidding and alien at first, but compared to his more brutal output, it’s an extraordinarily close and intimate experience. The first new Deathprod studio project since 2019’s OCCULTING DISK, Compositions is the result of an intense period at his legendary Audio Virus Lab studio in central Oslo. All tracks are released in chronological order – in other words, the order in which they were recorded. Helge used a personal, unique combination of obsolete digital audio processors and sound generators, combined with his own secret-sauce tuning system. Like gazing at the wonders revealed by an electron microscope with Helge compositional control directs your attention to a succession of ever more spellbinding details and textures. Helge adopted the Deathprod alias in 1991. A complex array of homemade electronics, samplers, sound processing and analogue effects – cumulatively known as the ‘Audio Virus’ – combined with obsolete samplers and playback devices, to distort and transform sounds into unrecognizable relatives of their former selves. On the new album Compositions, the virus has evolved into even more fascinating and kaleidoscopic new strains. Electronically generated sounds vibrate and tremble like undiscovered metals ringing and resonating together. Sonic forms attract or repel each other as if under the influence of a strange magnetism. None of the tracks are over four minutes, but no way are these ‘miniatures’. Each one contains its own fully-formed galaxy of tones and clusters, while all tracks audibly belong in the same universe. These are 17 compositions in search of a sonic ideal. His off-grid audio control centre created a parallel acoustic universe which he filled with mutated samples and electronic textures. Even the gaps between the tracks are part of that universe. Helge left the almost silent, twitching crackles of his snoozing analogue gear intact, ensuring a smoother transition between them. Helge is continually striving to find new parameters and possibilities for what music can be – what you can affect with the medium of sound. From the intricate homemade miniatures of Treetop Drive to the bonecrushing electronic barrage of Morals and Dogma and OCCULTING DISK, the different sides of Deathprod are all products of the same obsessive focus and self-discipline in pursuit of sonic exploration. His Compositions are private rather than public music: like introspective chamber or solo compositions instead of the more strident, outward-looking tones of a symphony. Helge is a founder of Norwegian improvising group Supersilent and has produced records by Motorpsycho, Susanna, Jenny Hval, Arve Henriksen and others. He recently composed music for Harry Partch’s legendary instruments, which can be heard on Sow Your Gold in the White Foliated Earth, released in 2022 on Smalltown Supersound.

Welcome to another fine episode of SIRS aka »Sounds in real Stereo«! After last years' arrival on LARJ with his »Arrived EP«, Berlin based versatile DJ & producer Daniel Klein is back with »Travel To HDF.Y3D« - an utopian (or more likely dystopian) ode to space travel:

The last few remaining humans are traveling with 140bpm to the most distant galaxy in the universe on a mission to seek out a new space for mankind to live after many years of exploiting good old Mother Earth. What sounds like a horror scenario if you start thinking about it, SIRS manages to wrap up in quite a positive musical message. Thus »Travel To HDF.Y3D« becomes that hopeful uplifting slightly dreamy tune we all need these days - not unlike Christian Bruhn's theme of a certain Captain called Future back in 1980 …

It's also nice to have two more versions of such a strong tune at hand: The first one is a true first one for »Cocktail D'Amore« DJ BUDINO as she comes up with her first remix and production work ever. Budino's approach is a slightly darker, maybe indeed more dystopian one. The synthesizer bass lines dominate her remix and by getting rid of the original's playful melody she creates a very special melancholic feel.

Leipzig based PANTHERA KRAUSE's take isn't quite that different from Budino's as he too focuses on the darker vibes of this journey in space. It's his added extra dose of punch that surely will keep dancers on the floor for sure.

The former »Space Ibiza« resident SIRS now takes over the controls again with »Summer Desire« which too is destined to rule dancefloors not only in Ibiza but all over the world with its lovely airy vibe.

»Travel To HDF.Y3D« returns for one last time in form of the spoken word prolog - a nice extra tool to play with.

Anna B Savage has always asked questions in her music, but on new album in|FLUX answers are no longer her quest. Vulnerability and curiosity have consistently been operative words to describe her work and on her second album she ruminates on the complexities and variables of humanity, the pain or pleasure of love, loss and earthly connection, capturing it all in devasta- ting, elating and powerful ways. The key difference between this and previous releases: she’s not anxious about what’s on the other side. She’s come to appreciate staying afloat - basking even - in the open ended, uncertainty of the grey area.

Anna B Savage‘s new album features the singles „The Ghost“ & in|FLUX“ and will be released on 17th February on City Slang.

160-gram heavyweight Vinyl LP with gatefold jacket displaying the painting series that inspired the music, and the story of Newtok. Newtok is a remote Alaska Native village situated on the Ningliq River, near the west coast of Alaska. Although a very remote and quiet place, Newtok has come face-to-face with climate change. Due to a combination of thawing permafrost, low levels of sea ice, and strong storms, the coastal land of Newtok is eroding dramatically. In 2016, Chicago visual artist Jennifer Cronin embarked on a trip to Newtok to document this changing environment. Upon returning, she spent the next several years developing a series of paintings and screen prints titled Seen and Unseen that captured this eroding landscape. In 2019, Cronin and musical Artist Patrick Mitchell (a/k/a Dusty Patches) began discussing the project after Cronin asked him to perform at the Gallery opening for the series. As a result, Mitchell created this album, Newtok - inspired by Cronin's Seen and Unseen series and the story of Newtok, Alaska. Mitchell is a multi-instrumentalist songwriter and producer from Chicago who has led numerous past projects in the Chicago DIY community including De Triomphe, New Color, and Whiskey Wise. He dove headfirst into synths in 2017 and adopted the electronic alias Dusty Patches. Dusty Patches released his debut project Filthy Four Track Machine: Volumes I & II (2018, Sooper Records), largely made with the Teenage Engineering Pocket Operators and OP-1. In 2020, he released Nocturnal Emissions from the Dablatory, his first project fully realized with modular synthesis. In approaching Newtok, Mitchell composed all of the constituent musical elements of the work and then recorded and live mixed the album during a single live performance on modular synthesizer. The album draws heavily on sprawling ambient synths, electric and acoustic post-punk guitar motifs, cryptic vocal sampling, vintage drum machines, and modular patches that often sound like birds or the sea. The subject matter of the album, the complexity of its arrangement, and its execution as a single live recorded performance makes Newtok a unique musical experience. About Newtok, Mitchell says: This record was an exploration of themes. When faced with the immense canvases Jen Cronin produced upon her return from the village of Newtok, one can't help but feel awe. With the sheer size of the works towering above you, you are compelled. There is overwhelming beauty, desolation, a sense of urgency, and a sense that it is, in fact, far too late. These visual themes, and the emotions they evoke, were connected to the sounds and compositions of this record. There is a coldness to the digital soundscape, but organic sounds of nature and humans tether and steer the album through a journey of musical storytelling. Newtok is a journey of musical storytelling about the tragedy of the Anthropocene in the age of climate change. FOR FANS OF: Mother Earth's Plantasia, Black Moth Super Rainbow, Boards of Canada, Bibio

Limited edition run of 500 copies - pressed on transparent blue vinyl

Following a CD-only release in Japan in 2021, legendary downtempo producer Calm finally releases his “Before” album on vinyl and digital courtesy of Hell Yeah. The 10-track record is a slow-burning Balearic beauty.

Calm aka Kiyotaka Fukagawa has never been to the White Isle, but he sure knows how to capture its musical essence. He has done so over a long and storied career that has taken in 17 albums and some 35 EPs on many labels including this one over the last 20-plus years. His unique blend of ambient, jazz and leftfield was last showcased on this label in 2018 with his By Your Side album, and now he does it again with another timeless and escapist offering.

The record was written, arranged, mixed and produced by Calm, but with gorgeous musical embellishments, trumpets, flutes, saxophones, violins, bass and keys played by friends and guests like Shiba, Sinsuke Fujieda, Fumiko Takeshita, Tomokazu Sugimoto, Yuichiro Kato and Toshitaka Shibata. Tracks from it have already had support from Cosmo Coleen Murphy on Worldwide FM, while Phil Mison says it is "100% reminiscent of an old Café Del Mar or José Padilla record." He is not wrong.

As soon as the opening chords of 'Beauty on Earth' wash over you there is no escaping the naturalistic charm and beauty of this record. 'Long Summer Dream' layers mystic wind sounds and gentle percussive patterns into suspensory bliss, 'Blue in Void' is a plaintive moment of sombre sax and pensive piano, then 'Liminal Moment' awakens the soul with its gorgeous flute lines and looping arps.

There is perfect horizontal sunset house on 'I Love You,' 'Feel It' picks up the pace with seductive saxophone motifs and psychedelic synth loops and 'Before Sunrise Blue' is crushing downtempo melancholia. 'Kunpoo' reawakens you with leggy bass and expansive synths that reach for the heavens, while 'Freedom Sunset' is an epic 10-minute journey out to sea. Lastly, 'Let's Make Harmony' is super slow motion jazz-funk that swells the heart. Before is a superb album that is well-deserving of this double vinyl pressing and is sure to become a Balearic classic.

DJ Support:

Phil Mison, Colleen Cosmo Murphy, Chris Coco, Buena Onda Crew

Indies only release on 180g baby pink vinyl, printed inner-sleeve, download card included. Marrying psychedelic pop with folk and a touch of country, 'Earthling On The Road To Self Love' is the sublime debut album by Brisbane, Australia-based artist Baby Cool – the latest side project by Nice Biscuit co-front woman Grace Cuell. Cuell says of the record, which follows her debut single 'Magic' and tours with Babe Rainbow and The Lazy Eyes: “The songs on this album are deeply sentimental. I have a lot I need to sing about to help me make sense of this earthly pod I have been gifted. If in singing these words out loud, I can help others find solace in knowing that we’re all out here flailing about in the cosmos, then it feels good to me.” Recorded with Sam Joseph (Family Jordan), the songs on 'Earthling' were brought to life with the help of Jess Ferronato (Nice Biscuit), Nick Cavendish (Nice Biscuit) and Drew Heyden (The Flamingo Jones): "I had such a beautiful community of friends that helped bring this whole thing to life. There was magic and love in every part of the process of creating this album.

The sequel came to light. The cohesion between past and present tools forms a pure and emotional intertwining that unites generations.

Tracks A1, A2, B2 and B3 were composed in 1998, 2010, 2001 and 2000 respectively.

300 copies available only 12" vinyl format.

Historically Fucked is a four way entanglement made to create short, eruptive songs and then set about obliterating them from the inside, like improvising a barrel to encase themselves in and then proceeding to lick their way out of it. It is about playing and laughing at playing, and it is about not doing either of those things sometimes. Sometimes it is to do with talking, howling or grunting, and sometimes it is to do with hitting and rubbing.
Historically Fucked contains four people, who each share the same duties, and whose names in sequence are Otto Willberg, David Birchall, Greta Buitkuté and Alecs Pierce. They are from Manchester and often other places. Guitar, bass, drums and voices keenly jostle amid the group’s frenzy of spontaneous rock throttles. Some of these rampant exercises in avant are collected on ‘The Mule Peasants’ Revolt of 12,067’, the band’s new album, released by Upset The Rhythm on February 3rd. This is the group’s first release since 2018’s mantlepiece staple ‘Aliven Wool’ (Heavy Petting). This is Rock and/or Roll as fertilizer, uncivilised and free, as if one were to imagine what the Plastic Ono Band would’ve hit upon if they had read ‘Riddley Walker’, the sound of an entire timeline of expression put back together back-to-front, misshapen and irradiated.

‘The Mule Peasants’ Revolt of 12,067’ is not mere Sedentary Rock but Blasted Basalt, Frog worshipping cave-funk, harmolodic hullabaloo-wop, a musical game of “badger in the bag”. It is the sound of sacks crammed full of aggregate, a chimerical mind-meld, a seductive din that is to a hound dog in blue suede shoes what a raking of the dorsal fin with a fat marrow pinecone is to a pelican in the midst of being fired from the academy.

‘The Mule Peasants’ Revolt of 12,067’ by Historically Fucked was recorded by Rory Salter, mixed by Otto Willberg and mastered by Mikey Young. The liminally worrisome artwork was painted by John Cobweaver.

“They say these days that History is Fucked. Nothing ever dies but continues to rule the earth as an undead tyrant that cannot accept its own decomposition, look earwardly upon the dance of the proudly dead and decrepit!”

Vymethoxy Redspiders, Leeds 2022

Pauline Marx, formerly of the fantastic duo La Fureur de Vouivre, seems like a being from another time and place; namely, an escaped marauder lurking in the forests of a Bruegel painting and integrating the surreal flora and fauna of a Boschian creation into the scenery and lore of deep Brittany. Her invented mythology is loaded with murky rituals and contorted mantras, backed by the surprising sounds and textures of terrains so earthly and so unreal.

The Devil at the Crossroads

Where do you think you come from? Where do you think you're going? Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch’entrate: you, with the noodle to the four winds, who pass the threshold of this disc, you better leave all hope there, and glide in the poisonous footstep of the devil your guide.

Where do you think you come from? The mountain is no longer just the mountain; after your passage, it will no longer even be a mountain. Like the whole landscape, it will have been eaten, sauced by invisible leeches. Your nostalgia for the ground and your thirst to find the source will have only discovered a forest of vain words and foul water. Where do you think you're going? At the crossroads, the world is consumed in the previous future. Only the devil will know how to make you overcome the disgust of traditions, and only the love for the devil will give you enough vim to reach your goal: a village, perhaps, but which belongs to no one, a haven to your excessiveness .

The dark tradition to which this game of ternary trampling belongs, like the rhythm of a heart in tune with the inverted world, has no country and no assigned time. Rather a topology of Eve awakened after a thousand-year sleep, an idiosyncratic and possessed reading of our common humus, made up of stories composted in the limbo of the past, of songs captured in extremis vitae and rebus in the privatized antechambers of death.

What does she tell us about? Of our automobile and in love roamings, of the porosity of the membranes that separate beings and things, of the constant inversion of signs. The seventeen stages of this short journey, where intertwine the throbbing of objects, blown horns and rubbed horsehair, form the map of a country never to be found, ours, where only the voice of an old child and the disgusting devil's poisonous charm can guide us.