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As the sun sets on a quaint East Nashville house, a young man bares a piece of his soul. Facing the camera, sporting a silky suit jacket/shirt/slacks/fingerless gloves ensemble that announces "singer" before he's even opened his mouth, Lee Tracy Johnson settles onto his stage, the front yard. He sways to the dirge-like drum machine pulse of a synth-soaked slow jam, extends his arms as if gaining his balance, and croons in affecting, fragile earnest, "I need your love… oh baby…"

Dogs in the yard next door begin barking. A mysterious cardboard robot figure, beamed in from galaxies unknown and affixed to a tree, is less vocal. Lee doesn't acknowledge either's presence. He's busy feeling it, arms and hands gesticulating. His voice rises in falsetto over the now-quiet dogs, over the ambient noise from the street that seeps into the handheld camcorder's microphone, over the recording of his own voice played back from a boombox off-camera. After six minutes the single, continuous shot ends. In this intimate creative universe there are no re-takes. There are many more music videos to shoot, and as Lee later puts it, "The first time you do it is actually the best. Because you can never get that again. You expressing yourself from within."

"I Need Your Love" dates from a lost heyday. From some time in the '80s or early '90s, when Lee Tracy (as he was known in performance) and his music partner/producer/manager Isaac Manning committed hours upon hours of their sonic and visual ideas to tape. Embracing drum machines and synthesizers – electronics that made their personal futurism palpable – they recorded exclusively at home, live in a room into a simple cassette deck. Soul, funk, electro and new wave informed their songs, yet Lee and Isaac eschewed the confinement of conventional categories and genres, preferring to let experimentation guide them.

"Anytime somebody put out a new record they had the same instruments or the same sound," explains Isaac. "So I basically wanted to find something that's really gonna stand out away from all of the rest of 'em." Their ethos meant that every idea they came up with was at least worth trying: echoed out half-rapped exhortations over frantic techno-style beats, gospel synth soul, modal electro-funk, oddball pop reinterpretations, emo AOR balladry, nods to Prince and the Fat Boys, or arrangements that might collapse mid-song into a mess of arcade game-ish blips before rallying to reach the finish line. All of it conjoined by consistent tape hiss, and most vitally, Lee's chameleonic voice, which managed to wildly shape shift and still evoke something sincere – whether toggling between falsetto and tenor exalting Jesus's return, or punctuating a melismatic romantic adlib with a succinct, "We all know how it feels to be alone."

"People think we went to a studio," says Isaac derisively. "We never went to no studio. We didn't have the money to go to no studio! We did this stuff at home. I shot videos in my front yard with whatever we could to get things together." Sometimes Isaac would just put on an instrumental record, be it "Planet Rock" or "Don't Cry For Me Argentina" (from Evita), press "record," and let Lee improvise over it, yielding peculiar love songs, would-be patriotic anthems, or Elvis Presley or Marilyn Monroe tributes. Technical limitations and a lack of professional polish never dissuaded them. They believed they were onto something.

"That struggle," Isaac says, "made that sound sound good to me."

In the parlance of modern music criticism Lee and Isaac's dizzying DIY efforts would inevitably be described as "outsider." But "outsider" carries the burden of untold additional layers of meaning if you're Black and from the South, creating on a budget, and trying to get someone, anyone within the country music capital of the world to take your vision seriously. "What category should we put it in?" Isaac asks rhetorically. "I don't know. All I know is feeling. I ain't gonna name it nothing. It's music. If it grabs your soul and touch your heart that's what it basically is supposed to do."

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Born in 1963, the baby boy of nine siblings, Lee Tracy spent his earliest years living amidst the shotgun houses on Nashville's south side. "We was poor, man!" he says, recalling the outhouse his family used for a bathroom and the blocks of ice they kept in the kitchen to chill perishables. "But I actually don't think I really realized I was in poverty until I got grown and started thinking about it." Lee's mom worked at the Holiday Inn; his dad did whatever he had to do, from selling fruit from a horse drawn cart to bootlegging. "We didn't have much," Lee continues, "but my mother and my father got us the things we needed, the clothes on our back." By the end of the decade with the city's urban renewal programs razing entire neighborhoods to accommodate construction of the Interstate, the family moved to Edgehill Projects. Lee remembers music and art as a constant source of inspiration for he and his brothers and sisters – especially after seeing the Jackson 5 perform on Ed Sullivan. "As a small child I just knew that was what I wanted to do."

His older brother Don began musically mentoring him, introducing Lee to a variety of instruments and sounds. "He would never play one particular type of music, like R&B," says Lee. "I was surrounded by jazz, hard rock and roll, easy listening, gospel, reggae, country music; I mean I was a sponge absorbing all of that." Lee taught himself to play drums by beating on cardboard boxes, gaining a rep around the way for his timekeeping, and his singing voice. Emulating his favorites, Earth Wind & Fire and Cameo, he formed groups with other kids with era-evocative band names like Concept and TNT Connection, and emerged as the leader of disciplined rehearsals. "I made them practice," says Lee. "We practiced and practiced and practiced. Because I wanted that perfection." By high school the most accomplished of these bands would take top prize in a prominent local talent show. It was a big moment for Lee, and he felt ready to take things to the next level. But his band-mates had other ideas.

"I don't know what happened," he says, still miffed at the memory. "It must have blew they mind after we won and people started showing notice, because it's like everybody quit! I was like, where the hell did everybody go?" Lee had always made a point of interrogating prospective musicians about their intentions before joining his groups: were they really serious or just looking for a way to pick up girls? Now he understood even more the importance of finding a collaborator just as committed to the music as he was.

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Isaac Manning had spent much of his life immersed in music and the arts – singing in the church choir with his family on Nashville's north side, writing, painting, dancing, and working various gigs within the entertainment industry. After serving in the armed forces, in the early '70s he ran The Teenage Place, a music and performance venue that catered to the local youth. But he was forced out of town when word of one of his recreational routines created a stir beyond the safe haven of his bohemian circles.

"I was growing marijuana," Isaac explains. "It wasn't no business, I was smoking it myself… I would put marijuana in scrambled eggs, cornbread and stuff." His weed use originated as a form of self-medication to combat severe tooth pain. But when he began sharing it with some of the other young people he hung out with, some of who just so happened to be the kids of Nashville politicians, the cops came calling. "When I got busted," he remembers, "they were talking about how they were gonna get rid of me because they didn't want me saying nothing about they children because of the politics and stuff. So I got my family, took two raggedy cars, and left Nashville and went to Vegas."

Out in the desert, Isaac happened to meet Chubby Checker of "The Twist" fame while the singer was gigging at The Flamingo. Impressed by Isaac's zeal, Checker invited him to go on the road with him as his tour manager/roadie/valet. The experience gave Isaac a window into a part of the entertainment world he'd never encountered – a glimpse of what a true pop act's audience looked like. "Chubby Checker, none of his shows were played for Black folks," he remembers. "All his gigs were done at high-class white people areas." Returning home after a few years with Chubby, Isaac was properly motivated to make it in Music City. He began writing songs and scouting around Nashville for local talent anywhere he could find it with an expressed goal: "Find someone who can deliver your songs the way you want 'em delivered and make people feel what you want them to feel."

One day while walking through Edgehill Projects Isaac heard someone playing the drums in a way that made him stop and take notice. "The music was so tight, just the drums made me feel like, oh I'm-a find this person," he recalls. "So I circled through the projects until I found who it was.

"That's how I met him – Lee Tracy. When I found him and he started singing and stuff, I said, ohhh, this is somebody different."

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Theirs was a true complementary partnership: young Lee possessed the raw talent, the older Isaac the belief. "He's really the only one besides my brother and my family that really seen the potential in me," says Lee. "He made me see that I could do it."

Isaac long being a night owl, his house also made for a fertile collaborative environment – a space where there always seemed to be a new piece of his visual art on display: paintings, illustrations, and dolls and figures (including an enigmatic cardboard robot). Lee and Issac would hang out together and talk, listen to music, conjure ideas, and smoke the herb Isaac had resumed growing in his yard. "It got to where I could trust him, he could trust me," Isaac says of their bond. They also worked together for hours on drawings, spreading larges rolls of paper on the walls and sketching faces with abstract patterns and imagery: alien-like beings, tri-horned horse heads, inverted Janus-like characters where one visage blurred into the other.

Soon it became apparent that they didn't need other collaborators; self-sufficiency was the natural way forward. At Isaac's behest Lee, already fed up with dealing with band musicians, began playing around with a poly-sonic Yamaha keyboard at the local music store. "It had everything on it – trumpet, bass, drums, organ," remembers Lee. "And that's when I started recording my own stuff."

The technology afforded Lee the flexibility and independence he craved, setting him on a path other bedroom musicians and producers around the world were simultaneously following through the '80s into the early '90s. Saving up money from day jobs, he eventually supplemented the Yamaha Isaac had gotten him with Roland and Casio drum machines and a Moog. Lee was living in an apartment in Hillside at that point caring for his dad, who'd been partially paralyzed since early in life. In the evenings up in his second floor room, the music put him in a zone where he could tune out everything and lose himself in his ideas.

"Oh I loved it," he recalls. "I would really experiment with the instruments and use a lot of different sound effects. I was looking for something nobody else had. I wanted something totally different. And once I found the sound I was looking for, I would just smoke me a good joint and just let it go, hit the record button." More potent a creative stimulant than even Isaac's weed was the holistic flow and spontaneity of recording. Between sessions at Isaac's place and Lee's apartment, their volume of output quickly ballooned.

"We was always recording," says Lee. "That's why we have so much music. Even when I went to Isaac's and we start creating, I get home, my mind is racing, I gotta start creating, creating, creating. I remember there were times when I took a 90-minute tape from front to back and just filled it up."

"We never practiced," says Isaac. "See, that was just so odd about the whole thing. I could relate to him, and tell him about the songs I had ideas for and everything and stuff. And then he would bring it back or whatever, and we'd get together and put it down." Once the taskmaster hell bent on rehearsing, Lee had flipped a full 180. Perfection was no longer an aspiration, but the enemy of inspiration.

"I seen where practicing and practicing got me," says Lee. "A lot of musicians you get to playing and they gotta stop, they have to analyze the music. But while you analyzing you losing a lot of the greatness of what you creating. Stop analyzing what you play, just play! And it'll all take shape."

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"I hope you understood the beginning of the record because this was invented from a dream I had today… (You tell me, I'll tell you, we'll figure it out together)" – Lee Tracy and Isaac Manning, "Hope You Understand"

Lee lets loose a maniacal cackle when he acknowledges that the material that he and Isaac recorded was by anyone's estimation pretty out there. It's the same laugh that commences "Hope You Understand" – a chaotic transmission that encapsulates the duality at the heart of their music: a stated desire to reach people and a compulsion to go as leftfield as they saw fit.

"We just did it," says Lee. "We cut the music on and cut loose. I don't sit around and write. I do it by listening, get a feeling, play the music, and the lyrics and stuff just come out of me."

The approach proved adaptable to interpreting other artists' material. While recording a cover of Whitney Houston's pop ballad "Saving All My Love For You," Lee played Whitney's version in his headphones as he laid down his own vocals – partially following the lyrics, partially using them as a departure point. The end result is barely recognizable compared with the original, Lee and Isaac having switched up the time signature and reinvented the melody along the way towards morphing a slick mainstream radio standard into something that sounds solely their own.

"I really used that song to get me started," says Lee. "Then I said, well I need something else, something is missing. Something just came over me. That's when I came up with 'Is It What You Want.'"

The song would become the centerpiece of Lee and Isaac's repertoire. Pushed along by a percolating metronomic Rhythm King style beat somewhere between a military march and a samba, "Is It What You Want" finds Lee pleading the sincerity of his commitment to a potential love interest embellished by vocal tics and hiccups subtlely reminiscent of his childhood hero MJ. Absent chord changes, only synth riffs gliding in and out like apparitions, the song achieves a lingering lo-fi power that leaves you feeling like it's still playing, somewhere, even after the fade out.

"I don't know, it's like a real spiritual song," Lee reflects. "But it's not just spiritual. To me the more I listen to it it's like about everything that you do in your everyday life, period. Is it what you want? Do you want a car or you don't want a car? Do you want Jesus or do you want the Devil? It's basically asking you the question. Can't nobody answer the question but you yourself."

In 1989 Lee won a lawsuit stemming from injuries sustained from a fight he'd gotten into. He took part of the settlement money and with Isaac pressed up "Saving All My Love For You" b/w "Is It What You Want" as a 45 single. Isaac christened the label One Chance Records. "Because that's all we wanted," he says with a laugh, "one chance."

Isaac sent the record out to radio stations and major labels, hoping for it to make enough noise to get picked up nationally. But the response he and Lee were hoping for never materialized. According to Isaac the closest the single got to getting played on the radio is when a disk jock from a local station made a highly unusual announcement on air: "The dude said on the radio, 107.5 – 'We are not gonna play 'Is It What You Want.' We cracked up! Wow, that's deep.

"It was a whole racist thing that was going on," he reflects. "So we just looked over and kept on going. That was it. That was about the way it goes… If you were Black and you were living in Nashville and stuff, that's the way you got treated." Isaac already knew as much from all the times he'd brought he and Lee's tapes (even their cache of country music tunes) over to Music Row to try to drum up interest to no avail.

"Isaac, he really worked his ass off," says Lee. "He probably been to every record place down on Music Row." Nashville's famed recording and music business corridor wasn't but a few blocks from where Lee grew up. Close enough, he remembers, for him to ride his bike along its back alleys and stumble upon the occasional random treasure, like a discarded box of harmonicas. Getting in through the front door, however, still felt a world away.

"I just don't think at the time our music fell into a category for them," he concedes. "It was before its time."

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Lee stopped making music some time in the latter part of the '90s, around the time his mom passed away and life became increasingly tough to manage. "When my mother died I had a nervous breakdown," he says, "So I shut down for a long time. I was in such a sadness frame of mind. That's why nobody seen me. I had just disappeared off the map." He fell out of touch with Isaac, and in an indication of just how bad things had gotten for him, lost track of all the recordings they'd made together. Music became a distant memory.

Fortunately, Isaac kept the faith. In a self-published collection of his poetry – paeans to some of his favorite entertainment and public figures entitled Friends and Dick Clark – he'd written that he believed "music has a life of its own." But his prescience and presence of mind were truly manifested in the fact that he kept an archive of he and Lee's work. As perfectly imperfect as "Is It What You Want" now sounds in a post-Personal Space world, Lee and Isaac's lone official release was in fact just a taste. The bulk of the Is It What You Want album is culled from the pair's essentially unheard home recordings – complete songs, half-realized experiments, Isaac's blue monologues and pronouncements et al – compiled, mixed and programmed in the loose and impulsive creative spirit of their regular get-togethers from decades ago. The rest of us, it seems, may have finally caught up to them.

On the prospect of at long last reaching a wider audience, Isaac says simply, "I been trying for a long time, it feels good." Ever the survivor, he adds, "The only way I know how to make it to the top is to keep climbing. If one leg break on the ladder, hey, you gotta fix it and keep on going… That's where I be at. I'll kill death to make it out there."

For Lee it all feels akin to a personal resurrection: "It's like I was in a tomb and the tomb was opened and I'm back… Man, it feels so great. I feel like I'm gonna jump out of my skin." Success at this stage of his life, he realizes, probably means something different than what it did back when he was singing and dancing in Isaac's front yard. "What I really mean by 'making it,'" he explains isn't just the music being heard but, "the story being told."

Occasionally Lee will pull up "Is It What You Want" on YouTube on his phone, put on his headphones, and listen. He remembers the first time he heard his recorded voice. How surreal it was, how he thought to himself, "Is that really me?" What would he say to that younger version of himself now?

"I would probably tell myself, hang in there, don't give up. Keep striving for the goal. And everything will work out."

Despite what's printed on the record label, sometimes you do get more than one chance.

Dimi Angelis presents the 11th release on his ANGLS label - four timeless, heavily saturated,and straightforward tools decorated with minimalistic and highly effective sequences.

On the A-side, "Warp Drive" opens with an impactful 909 groove interrupted by a sharp and manic percussive sequence - the energy is driven by the interplay between these elements. "Hidden Spider" offers a driving, polyrhythmic bass line plotted against two psychedelic sequences interlocked in a call-and-response pattern.

On the B-side, "Cyberman" is direct and persistent - FM synthesis and highly focused hi-hats create an insistent and unrelenting rhythm. "Axonite" closes out the EP with a dense low-end and patiently evolving sci-fi-influenced sequences that fluctuate in intensity - effective weapons for any dancefloor.

Coming off the back of covers on CRACK and PERFECT Magazine cktrl announces his highly anticipated new EP Zero. The producer and multi-instrumentalist shares his latest blend of contemporary-classical and electronic R&B that features a collaboration with GRAMMY Award-nominated singer, songwriter 'Mereba' with artwork captured by multi-award winning Campbell Addy. The follow-up to last year’s critically acclaimed EP ‘robyn’ which charted a journey from heartbreak to optimism, ‘zero’ is a tender exploration into love. As a genre-spanning artist whose music waives between R&B, jazz and neo-classical, cktrl’s latest record builds on his emotive sound whilst leaning towards a more electronic-tinged style of production with stunning featured vocals. On the project, cktrl says: "ZERO allowed me to explore my journeys in knowing love. And as a result I now know that I need to allow myself to let my relationships be what they're meant (to manifest organically) free of expectations and without dreams of an idea of someone. Past hurt definitely informed my decisions but it was so crucial for me to grieve those feelings from ROBYN and learn how to be gentle with myself. Just to be able to feel something new, loving again is always different and exciting, once you can open up. ZERO is that journey of ending up back where you started but different, loved and willing to give." The EP opens with the touching ‘mazes’ - initially released back in May via a beautifully crafted video courtesy of Yasser Abubeker. On this cut cktrl’s skills as a saxophonist immediately shine through as he portrays the complexities of loving someone through all its twists and turns. On title track ‘zero’ cktrl links with Ethiopian-American musician Mereba for a forward-thinking yet delicate collaboration that effortlessly meanders between cktrl’s various musical influences, before ‘felt’ provides a luscious display of soulful soundscapes. Accompanied by the angelic vocals from rising artists Anaiis, Annahstasia & Anajah, it’s a blissful celebration of love. The project closes out with ‘safe’, a contemporary R&B banger backed by a bass-driven beat and rich vocals, framing ‘zero’ as a stimulating collection of tracks that expand cktrl’s impressive repertoire of talent.

DUBFIRE ANNOUNCES HIS DEBUT SOLO ALBUM ON HIS SCI+TEC IMPRINT
With a career spanning over 3 decades, Dubfire has achieved global success as an artist with relentless drive, talent, and intuition. Pioneering commercial notoriety came initially as one half of the Grammy award (2001) winning duo Deep Dish, before embarking on a truly groundbreaking solo career in 2007. A career filled with timeless tracks include his early works ‘Ribcage’ (2007), ‘Emissions (2007), ‘Roadkill’ (2007) and the highly acclaimed ‘Exit’ (2014) a debut collaboration with Kiss Kitten. Collaborative work highlights include Luke Slater, Moscoman, Oliver Huntemann, Chris Liebing, Tiga and co-producing two tracks on the legendary Underworld’s ‘Barking’ album. A true artist, he has always been heavily invested in exploring boundaries or audio and visual technologies, which he displayed more than ever with his HYBRID show. A two-year world tour with a goal to reinvent the concert experience in 2015, also became his muse for his retrospective album ‘A Decade Of Dubfire’. A collection of all his biggest tracks and remixes from the last decade, released in 2017. It may come as a surprise to many, with so many landmark releases, that Ali ‘Dubfire’ Shirazinia hasn't yet released a totally solo album, until now.
EVOLV is an 11-track visionary into the mind of Dubfire to be released on his long-standing label SCI+TEC. It’s concept? The journey of the ‘hybrid’ being and its evolution, which kicks off with ‘Dark Matter’ and ‘Dust & Gas’ set a brooding atmosphere. The rougher percussion, and eerie lead in ‘Dark Matter’ is accompanied by a stripped back sound and glitchy vocals sitting in a spaced-out atmosphere in ‘Dust & Gas’. Its deep and minimal drum work is exceptional. ‘Escape’, a deep, dark and pulsating track that sets the tone for the body of work on the album. Coupled with ‘Elevation’ and it’s understated arpNew Release Information and crisp percussion for the second single. ‘Bottom Dweller’ give you two different versions, the original is straight forward, yet effective for a late-night head down cut, where the ‘Meltdown Mix’ takes a minimal path, and faster pace. ‘Swerve’ sees Dubfire return to that stripped back sound with heavy swinging
percussion, a landmark and much-loved element in his music. Sonically, the journey so far has been like a dystopian landscape, but ‘Decent’ brings a kaleidoscope of colour and sound before dropping into the ‘CHALLNGR’ duo. ‘CHALLNGR 1.1’ is perhaps the most contemporary track on the album. Dubfire picks up the rhythm for a full-on dancefloor focused track. It’s no-nonsense techno at its best, with heaps of pure energy. Two versions appear on the album, ‘CHALLNGR 1.2’ retains the BPM but reigns in the percussion with a snappier approach and a more euphoric warped effect. Closing out, is a special digital only track ‘The Bells Tolls’. This one drives the energy back to ground level, into a more unsettling and mysterious end to a killer 11 track debut album. The music will also be accompanied by a new audio-visual show from the revered DubLab team based in Portugal. Test shows at DGTL (Amsterdam),
Caprices (Crans-Montana) and in Sofia between 2018 and 2019 had created lots of buzz just before the COVID-19 pandemic shut the world down for two years. But now the stage is firmly set for the new album
and live shows. As music evolves, so does Dubfire. EVOLV is a special project from this pioneering producer showing his interpretation of techno in his own unique vision.

To confuse parts for the whole is inevitable with Palm. Drummer Hugo Stanley, bassist Gerasimos Livitsanos and guitarists/vocalists/high school sweethearts Eve Alpert and Kasra Kurt started making music together as teenagers, and spent much of their twenties in the kind of proximity unusual for adults, outside of touring bands and the International Space Station. For a number of years the band consumed the lives of its members to a point of exhaustion: “To be honest I think we got a little burnt out. There were times where it wasn’t clear if we’d make another record,” says Alpert. It was only after multiple freak injuries followed by a pandemic, forced a pause - from touring but also from writing, rehearsing, even seeing each other- that the four were able to regroup and see a way forward again.



On their latest effort, Nicks and Grazes, Palm embrace discordance to dazzling effect. “We wanted to reconcile two potentially opposing aesthetics,” Kurt says. “To capture the spontaneous, free energy of our live shows while integrating elements from the traditionally gridded palette of electronic music.” In order to avoid what Kurt refers to as “Palm goes electro,” the musicians spent years educating themselves on the ins and outs of production by learning Ableton while also experimenting with “the percussive, textural, and gestural potential” of their instruments. To this end, the band continued the age-old tradition of instrument-preparation, augmenting guitars with drumsticks, metal rods and, at the suggestion of Charles Bullen (This Heat, Lifetones), coiling rubber-coated gardening wire around the strings. The unruliness of the prepared guitar on songs like “Mirror Mirror” and “Eager Copy” contrasts with the steadfast reproducibility of the album’s electronic elements.



While Palm cite Japanese pop music, dub, and footwork as influences on this album’s sonic palette, they found themselves returning time and again to the artists who inspired them to start the group over a decade ago. “When we were first starting out as a band, we bonded over an appreciation of heavy, aggressive, noisy music,” Alpert reflects. “We wrote parts that were just straight-up metal.” Kurt adds, “I found myself rediscovering and re–falling in love with the visceral, jagged quality of guitars in the music of Glenn Branca, The Fall, Beefheart, and Sonic Youth, all important early Palm influences.” Returning to the fundamentals gave Palm a strong foundation upon which they could experiment freely, resulting in their most ambitious and revelatory album to date.

South-east Turkey born DJ, sound artist and producer Banu uses music as a political tool. For her, the strong message carried through sound is a vehicle to express emotions as well as a means of fighting against oppression. Using participation, social design, ecology, feminist and queer theory to create multimedia installations with sound as a main element, Banu‘s practice is closer to contemporary art and activist spaces than the club realm.

Banu‘s debut album TransSoundScapes is an exercise in female solidarity between her as a migrant woman and her sisters from the trans community, where an artist from one marginalised group is showing support towards her trans sisters, using her platform to help them amplify their voices and building a bridge towards a mutual understanding of femininity.

Conceptually, TransSoundScapes comes in continuation of Banu‘s previous research-based work, using music as a positive tool for change while working with various marginalised communities. The album originated from the very real experience of being confronted with verbal harassment in Berlin on a daily basis, particularly aimed at her transfeminine friends and companions. As a queer woman of Turkish and Kurdish origin, Banu did not only observe the verbal aggression directed at her friends, but also understood most of the insults shouted in languages such as Arabic. Seeing how she got signifi cantly more verbal violence directed at them when in company of trans people made a lasting impression on her, so she wanted to try and use her relative privilege to amplify transfeminine voices through her music.

Coming from a very conservative family, making music has been her lifelong dream. It was the moment she had the opportunity to work with the iconic Arp 2600 synthesiser (a younger sibling to Eliane Radigue‘s infamous 2500 machine) that all her disparate interests came into place to create an empowering soundscape with the aid of analogue drum machines. TransSoundScapes has a very full, porous sound, where every element that comes into play sounds soft yet clear. Across the 7 tracks, Banu conjures pounding subterraneous bassy techno („Surgery“), slithering tentacular EBM („First Time“) and pulsating cavernous soundscapes („Harem“), where oversized dancefl oor elements are woven with poetic spoken word passages, resulting in sensusous yet political anthems. Banu artfully merges loosely related genres such as techno, electro, dub and sound poems into a sound that is at once deeply personal and extremely compelling.

All of the tracks are collaborative efforts, Banu seeing the process as an exchange of care and shared experiences, while integrating research into her writing process. The lyrics in „Transition (part 1+2)‘‘ are an adaptation of Sara Ahmed’s “Living a Feminist Life”, while „Surgery“ was born out of series of interviews with trans people, channeling the metallic sounds of a surgery room to refer to society‘s perception of transness as a medical condition. Tracks like „First Time feat. Patricia“, „Harem feat. Prince Emrah“ or „We feat. Aérea Negrot“ document her encounters with various trans women, centering their life experiences while also developing a deep dialogue through the process of making music together.

The darkest and perhaps the most emblematic track is ‚‘Bianka (In Memory Of)‘‘, dedicated to the late Bianka Shigurova, a 22-year old Georgian actress found dead in her apartment. It was her Tbilisi photographer friend George Nebriedze who told her Bianka‘s tragic story, whose death is suspected to be an assasination due to transphobia. Banu chose one of Nebriedze‘s analogue photos of Bianka as the album‘s cover art.

TOWNES VAN ZANDT STUDIO SESSIONS FROM 1974 AVAILABLE ON VINYL FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER In 1974, Townes Van Zandt recorded what would have been his seventh album, ‘Seven Come Eleven’. Business issues prevented its release until the recordings surfaced two decades later as ‘The Nashville Sessions’. To commemorate the 50th anniversary of the beginning of Van Zandt’s turbulent musical career and launch of a major catalogue reissue programme, Charly has restored and re-mastered ‘The Nashville Sessions’ to present a stunning document of the folk-blues master at his absolute peak. “These are songs that tap into the timeless myth of the American troubadour, a place where wandering souls tramp the byways of their homeland...” Restored and mastered to vinyl from the original tapes provided by producer and manager Kevin Eggers. Full colour LP sleeve with original Milton Glaser portrait cover. Fully illustrated inner with detailed sleeve notes by Uncut magazine journalist Rob Hughes. Part of Charly’s 50th anniversary programme celebrating the start of Van Zandt’s career. All original Poppy and Tomato albums which Townes Van Zandt recorded at the peak of his career will be newly re- mastered, restored and lavishly repackaged and available on CD & limited edition 180g heavyweight vinyl. The death of Townes Van Zandt in 1997 at age 52 robbed the world of a troubled genius as well as one of America’s finest songwriters. His reputation and popularity has grown greater by the year inspiring books, a documentary and renewed interest from the media, passionately loyal fans and contemporaries such as Willie Nelson, Merle Haggard and Emmylou Harris who have covered his songs to the upper-reaches of the American charts. “From Neil Young and Willie Nelson, Bono and Bob Dylan (who reportedly once said that Townes was “in some ways the better writer”) to Tindersticks and Mudhoney, songwriters and musicians speak of Townes with reverence.” MOJO MAGAZINE “He was the best songwriter and most riveting solo performer I’ve ever seen.” STEVE EARLE “An effortless masterclass in emotionally effecting Americana”.

Mando Diao is back on full effect having played all the major rock-festivals across Europe in summer 2022 including Southside and Novarock. Just before the summer-season they rolled out the first in a series of volumes with sizzling hot and high octane ROCK fresh of the studio. Vol 1 produced the radio-success "Frustration" that managed to climb all the way to No 2 at rock-radio in Germany. Now we are happy to announce Vol 2 to drop 23rd of September having parts of the band in Hamburg for an exclusive and personal 20 YEARS OF MANDO DIAO panel during Reeperbahn Festival. The lead-track "Primal Call" is a hippie-like sounding one that draws inspiration from Led Zeppelin and King Crimson, a much punkier version. No logic whatsoever in the changes throughout the track but hey, that's how the band likes it. Full of surprises. As if the producer was a total lunatic out of control. "Fire in the hall" is a short, intense song written by Björn and Jens. Once again, a blend of primitive rock'n'roll feel and electronics. For example, the drums are based on samples of Patso's drumming. The lyrics are simple and almost trivial, with a "La Vida Loca" vibe: start a great fire, for yourself and others. Most things can be solved with a cleansing dance - both in reality and in lyrics. "If you write the lyrics together with someone, it's easier to avoid becoming pretentious and over-analytical," they summarize. Finally, "Charlie", about their current producer (Charlie Storm). One of the greatest there is having worked with so many big releases (Roxette, In Flames, Hurl etc). At least partly. They were excited about him and felt that he deserved a song. Or maybe they didn't have anything else to write about. Everyone had different inputs, but it ended up being a pure rock'n'roll song. And a real banger.

Stratton returns to Of Paradise for the label’s 20th release. Chalking up a hat-trick of EP’s on the imprint, with the impeccably effective ‘Never Bettered Always Battered’. Arguably his most accomplished and significant release to date, this 4-tracker effortlessly showcases the London-based producers expertly distilled and patented style of evocative and headstrong UK hardcore.

The A-side launches with the anthemic ‘Badboy’, a true floor melter, loaded with tunnelling drums, an electric bassline and a criminally infectious chopped vocal. Following that is ‘Double Happiness (Bludclot Mix)’, a lethal dose of no nonsense proto-rave goods, emanating from the streets of North London. The product of a truly skilled operator who fully understands the inner workings of the kick, hoover and piano.

‘Bless’ kicks off the flip side with effortless momentum. The impetus clearly focused on rupturing bassbins and rewiring brains, with its weapons grade drums, growling bassline, lethal Amen break, euphoric melody and rabid hoover.

Closing out the release is ‘Vapour Trail Hurricane’ another system-rushing slice of hardcore mastery that pulls no punches in its pursuit of dance floor dominance. Fuelled by a hammering kick, sharp sirens and swirling acid lines, these are the final moments before imminent self destruction.

This is true peak-time pressure from one of the UK’s most exciting and inimitable talents.

Fabrice Lig has melody running through his veins. On his quest to explore his deep love for the bitter-sweet yearning of Motor City techno, his tracks transcend trends. Over his three-decade spanning career he has refined his blend of soul-infused dance music to striking effect. His gift for a catchy hook is unmatched. His new studio album "The Mental Bandwidth" shows his musical range as a producer once again. On the album's twelve tracks, he effortlessly traverses, cosmic house, funkified techno and electronica, combining his trademark quirky melodies with playful songwriting and dance floor focused beats. The album format is giving Lig enough space to explore his musical ideas from different directions while staying true to the overall atmosphere. "The idea for the album was to go back to the fundamentals of the original Detroit sound and to find new ways of expressing that soul in my music - as I've been doing for years", explains Lig. With Ann Saunderson and the former Kraftwerk-member Wolfgang Flur, the album features two heavy-weight collaborations that connect the "The Mental Bandwidth" to Detroit's musical legacy, too. Slikk Tim aka Garry Grittness also has a cameo in the form of a funky bassline on "Healing", the pop-infused Ann Saunderson collaboration. The title of the album is inspired by Lig's lecture of Sendhil Mullainathan and Eldar Shafir book "Scarcity: Why Having So Little Means So Much" which explores new approaches to reduce poverty. "The authors discovered that the mental bandwidth of poor people is sometimes really low because of short term issues they are facing and are forced to solve", explains Lig. Those issues are reducing the mental bandwidth for long term thinking capacities, which in turn has consequences for the decision making process. An example: before the quality of education of poor kids is increased, the quality of life they have must be increased. This increases the capacities of the kids to learn more than solely better educational programs.

Rezo Glonti (aka Aux Field), Georgian sound artist and electronic music producer debuts on the label One Instrument with an album entirely made with the Teenage Engineering OP-1.
He mostly works within the field of experimental music and places a strong emphasis on the incorporation of texture and space into his compositions.

On his new album “1 For One” Rezo Glonti created all the layers of the pieces in one take. As always, Glonti’s playing is deceptively elegant, raw but precise, attuned to resonance, radiance, and negative space. The record spans a range of emotions and moods and the result acts like a decaying memory, brief shining moments of clarity fighting against something unclear and untethered.

The various combination of layers perform with both a distinguished efficacy and unhurried dreamy drift—charged and beautiful, pulsating and pleasing. The production is subtle and tasteful.

On his fourth solo album, much as in Oh! (2020), the French composer, pianist and vocalist follows his ongoing exploration of the crossroads between poetry and songs, piano and synth, old-time verses and contemporary sounds. Inspired by the rhythms, effects and speech patterns of urban music, he also delivers, with a warm and moving voice, the texts of three poetesses from the past.
Since 2013, Ezéchiel Pailhès has been crafting a unique French synth pop. On his first three albums, he switched between songs inspired by poetry, instrumental ballads and electronica with hummed
choruses. This latest record is a collection of eleven new songs, two of which he wrote: "Opaline" and "Ni toi, ni moi" (neither you nor me). The others are adaptations of poems written in the 16th, 18th and
19th centuries by French poetesses Louise Labé (1524-1566), Marceline Desbordes-Valmore (1786- 1859) and Renée Vivien (1877-1909).
Poetesses from the past...
From classical music to songs, poetry adaptation is an old French tradition. "My universe has always embraced the musicality of this literary genre," the artist recalls. He actually started this project in 2017 with poems and sonnets by William Shakespeare, Pablo Neruda, Victor Hugo and above all Marceline Desbordes-Valmore, who can be heard again on songs such as "Dors-tu?" (Are you sleeping?),
"Élégie" or "L'attente" (The wait). A figure of romanticism, the author left her mark on the early 19th century through the quality of her texts and her formal inventions, particularly praised by Balzac, and
apparently a decisive influence on Verlaine and Baudelaire. "Marceline's poetry is very musical," says Ezéchiel admiringly. "Her use of rhythm and repetition sounds great and takes on a new perspective when set to music. In fact, she wrote some of her texts with singing in mind.”
“Ces longs secrets dont l'amour nous accuse, Viens-tu les rompre en songe à mes genoux ? Dors-tu, ma vie ! ou rêves-tu de moi ?”
“These long secrets for which love accuses us, Do you come to my knees to break them in a dream?
Are you sleeping, my life! or do you dream of me” (“Dors-tu ?”, after “Les pleurs” (the tears), 1833)
Besides her, we find the more famous, and rebellious, Renée Vivien, whose texts inspired three songs, "Regard en arrière" (Looking backwards), "Mélopée" (Melopoeia) and "La fille de la nuit" (The
night girl). Sometimes nicknamed "Sapho 1900", this figure of lesbian culture and, more broadly, of female genius, combined in her work the themes of desire, dreams, melancholy and the relationship with nature.
“Ta forme est un éclair
Ton sourire est l’instant Tu fuis, lorsque l’appel
T’implore, ô mon Désir !”
"Your shape is a spark of lightning
Your smile, the very moment
You flee, when the calling
Begs you, O my Desire!"
(After “Parle-moi, de ta voix pareille à l’eau courante” (Speak to me, with a voice like flowing waters) and “Ta forme est un éclair” (Your shape is a spark of lightning), Renée Vivien, 1901)
Lastly, with "Tant que mes yeux" (As long as my eyes), Ezéchiel was inspired by a 1555 poem by Renaissance poet Louise Labé, whose main topic explored female love, physical and spiritual desire,
and the torments and pains they generate.
" At the start of the project ", Ezéchiel continues, " I was interested in many poets, men and women, past and present, before my selection was narrowed down to these three female authors. Their works,
often written in difficult or secret conditions, express a raging romanticism, a passionate soul, fuelled by desperate and tormented love. I found it interesting, as a man coming from another world and time, to face this otherness, to trade viewpoints. Obviously, I could loudly claim that the album was the result of a concept, that it reflects today's world, and that it allows me to explore the notion of gender,
giving visibility to the work of a few women, while at the same time pairing these ancient texts with a more modern and rhythmic music, and obviously, there is some truth in that. But more than anything, I
wanted to serve the text itself, to express the emotion and connection I felt with these works.”
Today's rhythms and prosody...
Ezéchiel Pailhès combines texts from French literature with electronic music, its effects and rhythms, as well as a form of scansion that echoes rap, R&B or the current fusion between hip hop and pop,
which is part of our musical background and that of younger generations. "I wanted to cross-reference texts from the beginning of the century with this type of music. I wanted to use today’s techniques to tell the tale of different daily lives and experiences.
The album is thus marked by contemporary electronic orchestrations, in which he drops his favourite instrument, the piano, and his digital collage technique to use more extensive synth melodies, enhanced by drum machines, bringing a gentle and bright vibe to the romantic texts. Lastly, we can hear slight digital tones of Auto-Tune, which Ezéchiel uses sparingly and inventively.

Beyond its sophistication, the term "melopoeia" means a "sung declamation", a "recitative song", sometimes interpreted in a monotonous way. On this album, it could also refer to a sense of phrasing, which does not come from rap, but rather from jazz, Ezéchiel's first love. " In the past, I tried to hide my jazz culture, but it naturally came back on this new album, as can be heard, for instance, in Regard en arrière.” With its verses anchored in our literary memory, the following track "Mélopée", perfectly illustrates the album's vision. It manages to transcend eras, mixing past romanticism with a modern
prosody, fuelled by the nonchalance of hip hop and the warm chords of jazz.
“Qu’un hasard guide enfin mon désespoir tranquille
Vers l’eau d’une oasis ou les berges d’une île,
Où je puisse dormir, mon voyage accompli,
Dans la sécurité profonde de l’oubli”
"May chance guide my quiet sorrow, at last
To the water of an oasis, the shores of an island,
Where I may sleep, having traveled my way,
In the safe depths of oblivion".
(After “Sillages” (Trails), René Vivien, 1908)

PLZ Make It Ruins founder Vegyn is an artist that
pushes diverse sonics in both his solo work and his
collaborations. ‘Like A Good Old Friend’ sees him
follow up 2019’s debut album ‘Only Diamonds Cut
Diamonds’ with a six track EP that effortlessly
traverses electronic, dance, alternative and rap
influences whilst retaining a playful, carefree
attitude.
Vegyn created an impact on a global level through
collaborating with Frank Ocean on his seminal
‘Endless’ and ‘Blonde’ projects, a partnership that
lives on with Vegyn co-hosting Ocean’s Blonded
show.
Vegyn’s other production credits, collaborations
and remixes include Travis Scott, Kali Uchis, Dean
Blunt, KUČKA, Duval Timothy, John Glacier,
SebastiAn (Ed Banger), Porches.
12” with printed inner sleeve.

Impulse is the first work of Ilya Artemov released on Amatori and it's the label's second cassette release. It also represents a successful collective effort realized through different members of the collective scattered in different parts of the world.

Impulse is a sonic investigation focused on space and cosmos as fundamental themes, but not exclusively. Impulse is also a reflection on the human need for inner escape and how this evasion can lead to new discoveries.

With more than 30 years in the game, D.I.T.C. affiliate Andre the Giant of Showbiz & A.G. fame continues to prove that his pen game is better than ever with the release of his latest full length effort, Giant In The Mental.

The album title is more than just a reference to one of his earliest tracks; it’s a statement that he remains head and shoulders above the competition like the rap giant that he is. And he’s proudly doing it all on his own with this record, without any guest appearances.

“I am really not moved by guest appearances,” A.G. explains. “Music for me is mostly therapy, and I don’t need anyone else to help me vent and express my thoughts.” He’s absolutely right, because across the 10 tracks on Giant In The Mental, he skillfully unpacks and tackles a number of different topics with his trademark wit and wisdom.

The Bronx rap legend straight-up kills it on every level, too, from clever wordplay to engaging storytelling raps. If you want his bully bars, just listen to the hard-hitting opening track, “Andre The Giant,” with speaker-thumping production from DJ Manipulator. And for storytelling, you can dig into the beautifully written and smooth “Summer School” or the cinematic and stirring “The Sphinx.”

It all amounts to a truly impressive and cohesive piece of work from A.G., who is eager to continue creating art until he can’t meet his own standards. “If I can’t perform at a high level then it’s time to stop!” he says before adding that pushing himself creatively is what this is all about for him. His integrity and passion for the artform is palpable, and it’s those qualities that have helped him remain such a necessary voice—and force— in music.

DNO hits double figures as Denver’s Trisicloplox & Sectra return with more industrial-strength electro-sludge.

Sectra sets the tone with ‘Mail Theft’, a hulking mass of sand-blasting static, insectoid jitter and low-end boom. It’s an intimidating, uneasy listen, like tuning through the haunting emptiness of post-apocalyptic broadcast frequencies, only to be interrupted by sudden bursts of unseen filth and gore.

Trisicloplox follows with a brace of tracks. ‘Bruised’ does exactly what it says on the tin, gargantuan kicks pummelling layer upon layer of dense sound into an impenetrable wall of noise. Ritualistic rhythms and gluttonous amounts of overdrive swarm over distant wails, sending everything into a spiral into despair.On ‘Megastructure’, doom metal meets hip-hop, as rough-hewn drums crunch above a bassline that takes its cues from the Super Hans School of Electronic Music: “The longer the note, the more dread.”

And finishing up the vinyl offerings is ‘Dead On Arrival’. Coming courtesy of Sectra, the most traditionally ‘club-focused’ effort of the lot sees a serrated breakbeat and venomous acid lick sparring over dissonant pads.

As always, digital listeners are offered a little bonus, this time the only full collab: ‘The Dead InTheir Shrouds’. Shunted along by a systematic kick, the track’s jackhammer subs become all-consuming, seemingly sucking all the air from the room and hurling it back out of the bassbins in a violent frenzy.

A bold release that’s not for the faint of heart, the ‘Dead Structure’ EP further cements Trisicloplox & Sectra as truly original talents and DNO as an outlet that can never be pigeonholed.

Rhythms of postmodern realism at the very bottom of the DNO.

Bay Area Thrash Metal legend Blind Illusion returns after 34 years with a follow-up to “The Sane Asylum”, featuring Doug Piercy (ex-Heathen) and Andy Gallon (ex-Death Angel)! Thrash as a primitive, earthy genre has given us many greats: Metallica, Slayer, Exodus, Death Angel, Heathen and the like. But the more calculated, technical, and ultimately colorful inventors of progressive Thrash, a genre that blossomed handsomely after Watchtower’s debut in 1985, are what truly push the limits of Thrash and test its creative bandwidth. Blind Illusion on their new album “Wrath of the Gods”, achieve this to a degree that has seldom been approached, let alone passed, in the rest of Thrash history, just as they did 34 years ago on “The Sane Asylum”. What is most impressive and revealing about this album, however, is not the technical ability of the musicians involved (although there is nothing wrong with their ability). It’s the pure brilliance that shapes every song, and the demonstration of how focusing on the art of songwriting will work wonders for a band. “Straight as the Crowbar Flies” introduces us first to the astral energy this album exudes, with catchy riffing and Marc Biedermann’s raspy, growling vocals. The screeching guitar solos and the abrupt rhythm changes keep the song fresh, but the band’s incorporation of technical Thrash elements crossed with extremely catchy riffing and drum arrangements proves to be the strong attributes of this album. There are numerous instances where the band finds its virtue in slowing down, letting a power chord ring out, and then letting the drums restart and propel the song once again. When the band decides to let their guard down and get cagey or manic with the rhythm, it’s done so with precision and doesn’t come at the expense of the song structure. When they get technical, the notes still vibrate with emotion, and the song doesn’t just become a vacuum for skills to be shown off. This message is most evident in every song, which all feature catchy guitar licks and great guitar riffs. What Blind Illusion does best on this new masterpiece is deliver cleverly-written and fun songs with catchy riffs. At the heart of Thrash, that’s really all you can ask for. The effects of how masterfully composed this album is has lend the production a unique ethos that makes it feel human. This is a group of guys who know what die-hard Thrash fans want to hear, and they know how to put it on their 2022 album “Wrath of the Gods”.

 The ‘Fantasy’ EP saw Jacques Greene push further
into his downtempo and ambient influences than ever
before. Now he returns with a special club-tested
extended edit of key EP track ‘Relay’, alongside an
incredible Skee Mask remix.
 Since releasing his last studio album, ‘Dawn Chorus’,
in 2019, Jacques Greene has scored the short film
‘Exhaust’ starring Jimmie Fails (‘The Last Black Man in
San Francisco’), Glenn Kaino’s installation piece
‘Tidepools’ (alongside Nosaj Thing), and videogame
‘Homeschool’. He released remixes for artists such as
Para One, DC Salas, Amtrac, Kllo, Elohim, Kacy Hill
and Montreal disco legends Lime.
 In 2020 he made headlines for creating ‘Promise’ - the
first single released with associated NFT that staked
the owner to music publishing. In 2021 Greene
released ‘ANTH01’, a reissue compiling his first few
years of releases across various labels, alongside
unheard tracks from the era.
 Fresh off a US / European tour in 2022 in support of
his ‘Fantasy’ EP, as well as a high profile support slot
on the recent Bonobo tour.
 “Immaculately produced and mixed, and profoundly
effective - both for the pleasure centers it fires, and
also for the associations it triggers. It feels like a
genetic memory passed down across generations of
ravers, encoded in their very DNA.” - Pitchfork
 “An exercise in restless soul-searching, striking a
delicate balance between struggle and serenity as if
one necessitates the other.” - Resident Advisor

Bezbog is a duo formed in 2013 by David Machado and Dora Vieira. Since their first release in 2014, the self-titled Bezbog EP, they have been exploring both acoustic and electronic instruments to create music that lives somewhere in between genres, styles, doctrines and musical cultures. Alongside many underground venues throughout Portugal and Spain, they have shown their work in festivals such as No Noise, Milhões de Festa, Out.Fest, and TESLA at the Castile and León Museum of Contemporary Art, and other places such as the Serralves Museum in Porto and MK Gallery in the UK.

Their latest long play takes its name from the solar deity of the slavic pantheon, Dazhbog - the god that gives, and its idea flows into the concept of this record, through the themes of life, light and darkness, birth and rebirth, and the idea of the omnipresent cycle. We can find cycles in nature, music and life itself can be thought of as a cycle, from the micro to the macro scale.

As they seek to embed their music with these ideas, in a way, their music becomes new sacred music, the music of modern pagan rituals. While Bezbog’s music seeks to replicate the meaning of what that music was, an escape from the profane and a connection to the sacred plane, in form it reconstructs it in light of the duo’s influences, from the obvious portuguese and pagan folklore, chamber and sacred music, to the darkness of doom and heavy metal, the structured improvisations of north-american jazz and psycho-acoustic hallucinations and the hash transients of electronic music.

Dazhbog, while a passenger of the same train of thought as their previous studio work, comes in a different direction from it. Chernobog consists of two short and heavy tracks, painstakingly crafted during several months, while their latest studio effort is a long suite of 8 tracks, composed and recorded live throughout 2020, that form a light and bright record where the duo embedded most of their influences. The album will come out on vinyl in late March, in time for the pagan celebration of Spring and Fertility.

Seventh candy delivery from Bardouin Music with an atmospheric and euphorythmic EP by Lyon-based producer Hyas. This new chapter presents a dreamy and acid story with 5 vault gems - going through electro, speed garage and breakbeat with cloud-grazing synthesizers and echoing effects in the ocean’s depths. Welcome to the unexplored Angel Island Zone.

Death. Sex. Doomed Romance. These three simple phrases define the sound and thematic presence of Panic Priest. The musical project of singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist Jack Armondo (of “dark pop” outfit My Gold Mask), Panic Priest is centered around Armondoʼs deep, crooning vocals while weaving together dreamy guitars and synths. For fans of New Order, Tears for Fears, The Sisters of Mercy, and Clan of Xymox.

Panic Priestʼs long awaited sophomore effort Second Seduction is a significant sonic expansion on the projectʼs signature sound (which was first unveiled by way of the debut self-titled offering in 2018). Co-produced and engineered by Brian Fox (Wingtips, Ganser), the new album intertwines classic genres such as darkwave, post-punk and goth while a richly layered modern synth-pop sensibility elevates the album to something larger than simple nostalgic recreation. Performed and composed almost entirely by Armondo (with key contributions by Twin Tribes, Vincent Segretario of Wingtips and Gretta Rochelle of My Gold Mask), Second Seduction is simultaneously personal yet fantastical. A cathartic account of Armondoʼs real life experiences, stemming from personal heartbreak, life as a non-monogamous individual and even current political anxieties, be prepared to once again be tempted and lured into the world of Panic Priest. Midnight Mannequin Records is proud to present this deluxe reissue of Second Seduction, pressed on limited edition “Kiss Me Dead” ghost white (frosted clear) 140 gram vinyl. Includes OBI strip and insert with lyrics and liner notes.

Super limited edition pressed on heavyweight 180g vinyl housed in a picture sleeve and clear plastic outer sleeve – never to be repressed. Only 175 units.

Tokyo-based DJ, producer and sound artist Yuu Udagawa inaugurates the freshly launched Cyphon Recordings with her debut EP, ‘Forever’.

Growing up on a cocktail of everything from rock, hip-hop and Latin jazz to techno and house, Yuu’s immersive musical output draws inspiration from this diverse pool of influences to create ‘uplifting and healing’ music for the mind and body. There’s an elegance and sophistication to her productions, which stems from her desire to make music guided by the Golden Mean philosophy of finding a middle ground between two extremes: excess and deficiency.

Active as a DJ since the millennium, which saw her playing at clubs, festivals and fashion shows across the country, she soon turned her attention to music production and has since self-released a handful of singles and contributed audio commissions for Sony Playstation3, museums, theatres and apparel brands. Yuu’s meditative pallet of sounds instantly grabbed Cyphon’s third ear which led to the tracks that make up ‘Forever’: a collection of analog slo-mo electronica and leftfield minimal house that strike a perfect balance between warmth and depth.

The release opens with the titular track: a deep, emotive electro cut punctuated by a twinkling synthline and blissful vocals. ‘Mojito’ continues the EP’s voyage into the deep, matching softly spoken word with jazz-tinged chords and meandering melodies, before ’Hug Close’ strips things back, guided by a crunchy minimal groove, warm, resolute keys and reflective synths.

The B-Side steers things on a soulful course. The dark, enveloping atmosphere of ‘Illuminated Night' is lifted by bright synth stabs and harmonic R&B-flavoured vocals. These influences continue on closer ‘Stay With Us’. Slowing down the pace, the track is a wash of shimmering funk-inspired chords and shuffling rhythms, laced once again with effortless, soaring vocal tones.

DJ Feedback:

Joyce Muniz - Nice one!

Andrew Wowk - "Mojito" is awesome - such a nice groove (followed up)

Geordie Elliot-kerr - Some really interesting stuff in here. Digging the whole thing.

Simon Caldwell - Cool and different.

Paul Beller - super star release.

Fred Peterkin - Dope...

Alex Barck - Sounds fresh to me

Ruben Mandolini – Nice

Gabriel Izarraraz - great music will play for sure

Kristijan Molnar - Very nice!

Chris Loxton - superb

Danton Eeprom - Really love the production and original vibe of this record. bring it on!

Raymundo Rodriguez - cool release

They say: "Contemporary synthesizer sounds illustrating wide open space activities, environment and research."

We say: Panoramic proto-techno underwater-electro library dynamite.

One of the hardest pulls on the seminal Coloursound, Open Space Motion (Underscores) isn't just regarded as one of the best releases from library-funk overlord Klaus Weiss. It's one of the very best library records ever.

As cult as it gets when it comes to library music, the Klaus Weiss sound was built on top of sometimes funky, sometimes frenetic, but always hard-hitting drums. AND YET! Open Space Motion departs from his drum-heavy approach by being completely...BEATLESS! That's right, the virtuoso beat smith, Mr "drumcrazy of Deutschland", a man known for snapping necks at will, crafted one of the most horizontally sumptuous, elegantly sweeping electronic masterpieces, sans-drums, a good decade before chill-out rooms became a thing. It features organic instruments married to pulsing synth bass atop brilliantly subdued yet irresistibly funky percussion. Possessing a very special vibe, that's at once futuristic yet cinematic, it overflows with atmosphere.

The highlights - unsurprisingly - are many. The very first track - the unstoppable "Wide Open Space Motion" - is a sinister, string-fried electro bomb that rides an unrelenting bass loop. "Incessant Efforts" is more reflective, with pastoral yet probing flutes atop strutting synth chords and head-nod percussion that really swings. The heavenly, uber-kosmiche "Pink Sails" hovers over swirling neon-synthy-strings and yet more unobtrusive percussion. The beautiful "Transiency" is a dramatic piano-led underscore, its creeping unease created by patient strings, unhurried percussion and some wonderfully strident keys. "Driving Sequences" is perhaps the key tune here, and if the Detroit crew weren't listening to this staggering piece then, well, imagine if they *were*.

The bubbling rhythms of "Southern Mentality", at first ominous, give way to a more optimistic vibe as the movement progresses. The lush, gorgeous "Bows" is deep-sea slow-motion magic whilst the bright-eyed "Outset" feels as fresh as the dawn, and no less beautiful. How these tracks haven't been gobbled up by sample-driven producers is beyond us. Equally calming is the sweeping majesty of "Constellation", again conjuring images of being at one with and fully beguiled by the wonders of nature, of space, of underwater worlds. "Changing Directions" is another fidgety, propulsive non-Detroit beatless bomb.

As with all our library music re-issues, the audio for Open Space Motion comes from the original analogue tapes and has been remastered for vinyl by Be With regular Simon Francis. Richard Robinson has brought the original Coloursound sleeve back to life in all its metallic silver glory.

Double LP documenting a realtime collaboration between Terrence Dixon (Metroplex/Tresor/Rush Hour) and Jordan GCZ (Off Minor/Minimal Detroit/Rush Hour). Finally the full results of these special sessions see the light of day (a ltd edition 12" of exclusive tracks owas released in 2020).
BIG TIP!

"In September 2019, Motor City techno legend Terrence Dixon made a rare trip to Europe. He was introduced to Jordan Czamanski AKA Jordan GCZ, a serial collaborator and electronic music improviser best known for his work as part of Juju & Jordash and, alongside David Moufang and Gal “Juju” Aner, as Magic Mountain High.

The pair hit it off immediately, so Czamanski powered up his studio and the pair began to jam. Over the following five days, the pair improvised extensively, stopping only periodically to drink coffee and discuss music, life and much more besides. While in the studio, they barely uttered a word to each other, instead responding almost psychically to the rhythms, grooves, riffs and musical motifs the other was spinning into the mix.

The results of these surprisingly magical 2019 studio sessions are showcased on Keep In Mind, I’m Out of My Mind, the pair’s first joint album and Dixon’s most significant musical collaboration since the Detroiter’s 2018 hook-up with German techno and ambient veteran Thomas Fehlmann.

In keeping with the project’s improvised roots, the six-track set is notable for its immediacy, pleasing looseness – it was mostly created using outboard equipment including synthesizers, drum machines and effects units – and sonic fluidity. It offers a neat, symmetrical blend of the two producers’ trademark styles, with Czamanski’s attractive chords, melodies and jazz-flecked motifs rising above hypnotic, cymbal-heavy rhythms that have long been the hallmark of Detroit’s sci-fi-fuelled techno sound.

This unique and appealing, dancefloor-focused sound ripples through album opener ‘Fretless’, an ultra-deep chunk of heady liquid techno, and the breathless bustle of ‘Operation Delete’, where bubbly synthesizer motifs, cascading ambient electronics and urgent bass cluster around a killer broken techno groove.

It’s there, too, throughout the surging, deliciously percussive ‘Space Chime’, an alien-sounding concoction that sounds like it was beamed down from some distant galaxy, the warming-but-intoxicating minor key swirl of ‘Axis Mundi’ – a two-part slab of techno psychedelia full of trippy electronics, dystopian jazz riffs and intergalactic intent – and the pitched-down, mind-altering oddness of closing cut ‘Above Ground’, when the pair goes all-out in pursuit of leftfield techno perfection.

Created from scratch in a few days by two of electronic music’s most accomplished improvisers, Keep In Mind, I’m Out of My Mind is an exemplary meeting of musical minds and sonic sensibilities."

Matt Annis

Comes with insert with photographs by Atelier Fantasma (Jop Verberne).

One of the UK’s most consistently inventive production minds of recent times, Lil Silva has perhaps one of the most varied resumes in the world. Causing a seismic effect on the world of club music with smashes such as ‘Seasons’ and releases with the likes of Night Slugs, production credits for a diverse range of artists such as Adele, BANKS, Mark Ronson and serpentwithfeet, and a collaborative project with George FitzGerald as OTHERLiiNE even before factoring stellar solo releases under the Lil Silva moniker using his own vocal, he has continuously combined a broad range of influences to create a transformative, varied discography. After the release of ‘Backwards’ last month alongside Sampha, today Lil Silva announces his long awaited debut album, Yesterday Is Heavy.

Over 10 years in the making, ‘Yesterday Is Heavy’ is a cumulative product of an already remarkable career filled with highlights. An album about stepping out: outside of a comfort zone, and, for Lil Silva, outside of himself. It’s a debut album of heft and heart, but most of all hope – and trusting the process. Buoyed on by the encouragement of long-time collaborators like Jamie Woon and Sampha early in his career (they both implored him to commit his own voice to record), and bolstered by incomparable session experience working with Mark Ronson, Adele and more, the Lil Silva story that started aged 10 in Bedford is beginning full circle. Created primarily in the town he grew up in (and continues to live now), the pervading solace of home courses through the project, while providing the thrilling moments of sleight of hand that Silva has always been capable of.

As he so often does, Lil Silva shares the spotlight with an astonishing international cast of guests. He fuses well-versed modern legends in the shape of Sampha, Ghetts, and Little Dragon with rising stars serpentwithfeet, Charlotte Day Wilson and Skiifall to thrilling effect, the whole time never allowing his deftly dynamic yet considered touch to be outshone throughout. The album has also been created with musical direction from Louis Vuitton musical director and BBC Radio 1 tastemaker Benji B, as well as creative direction from award winning visual artist BAFIC. It’s with the opening track ‘Another Sketch’ however, where his singular talent introduces itself.

With a visual directed by UKMVA Award winner Fenn O’Meally, ‘Another Sketch’ is a prime example of the vast array of talents that Lil Silva possesses. A video that transcends generations of Black Britons (featuring Lil Silva’s own family as well as Sampha), ‘Another Sketch’ focuses on the subject of time. Looking at generations of black britons as monuments, the visual centres on the idea that despite time being able to wear down your appearance, what’s inside of you can never depreciate. The main centrepiece of this is heritage, with archive and newly recorded footage showing Silva’s family and friends enjoying the same activities they did generations ago, spliced with footage and voice notes from one of the lands of his dual heritage, Jamaica. The track itself focuses on a central theme of actions, their consequences and changing our inevitable future, with Lil Silva’s stunning falsetto shining alongside background vocals from serpentwithfeet and an instrumental that initially opens minimalistically before gradually unfurling to unveil elements of his electronic beginnings; a thumping hip hop infused beat and swelling melodic embellishments.

With ‘Yesterday Is Heavy’, Lil Silva reaps the rewards of over a decade of influence to create the debut album he’s always imagined. Simultaneously riding the line between pertinent storytelling and virtuosic production, ‘Yesterday Is Heavy’ charts the story of one of UK music’s unsung heroes taking his time to build something that is truly timeless. Yesterday Is Heavy, but tomorrow is forever.

restock

Hearttheartrecords presents Dangirl and Demo DC who with their combined talents form Ghost N the Wai bring a fresh take on the electronic music scene. Dangirl's musical mastery of keyboard melodies and composition and Demo's unconventional wizardry of electronic sounds and drumming creates an alchemy of aural delight. The Wai (Aka Dangirl) begins this magical experience with her Debut track Between worlds, a celebraton of life, a sparkling tribute to all that exists. With a combination of orchestral magic, arpeggiated droplets and deep groovy basslines, we are taken on an immensely beautiful journey through the cosmos dancing with the intricate layers of the emotional spectrum and rejoicing at what it is to be a living being in the multiverse. Finding beauty and sacredness in even the most testing moments as we are cushioned by an unrelenting and loving consciousness. Some mind made limitations were overcome in the writing of this and as a result caused a significant shift in Dangirl as an artist, hence the effect of this track may be deeply healing. By exploring the pure deliciousness of arpeggiation and marimba sounds The Wai discovered her own unique style of electronica. When the World Sleeps, is an ambient fairy tale of a little girl who ventures out under the starry night sky and is filled with a sense of peace and wonder as the rest of the world wind down to sleep. Big sister to Between Worlds, The Wai's first electronic baby was the original inspiration for Ghost 'N' the Wai starting a whole new venture for Demo Dc and Dangirl. This piece is the tale of a girl who travels to places of unimaginable beauty, exploring the vast cosmos with her star friends. The healing energy of pure childish joy permeates the universe and balances all in existance. As dawn approaches she returns to bed and earth's inhabitants start their routines like a production line. Reminiscent of the Indonesian gamelan (one of Dangirl's lifetime musical inspirations) we are taken on a meditative journey, with haunting bells and dreamy frequencies revealing unfamiliar worlds but maintaining a sense of peaceful slumber. Resting in the womb. Our home. Nap is Over mix is a collaboration of the Wai aka Dangirl and Ghost Foreigner aka DemoDc which when the two unite, form Ghost N the Wai. This track manifested when the Wai asked for Ghost’s feedback on her ambient piece When the world sleeps. After a day of Ghost having it in his grasp, Nap is Over was born effortlessly, giving insight into the power that simmers beneath the surface of these two aspiring artists. The Wai, with her deep, still, meditative grace brings contemplative composition along with Ghost bringing organic yet organised chaotic experimental beats. Nap is over questions reality as it stands, giving the listener the opportunity to ponder their own existence .... the world no longer sleeps ... the Nap is Over.

Last album recorded by Colombian rock pioneers Los Speakers in 1968 after leaving behind its affinity with yéyé and go-go music. One of the most brilliantly whacked-out psych LPs to emerge from South America. Originally self-released on their own Producciones Kris label, this is an almost impossible to find cult record. Officially reissued for the first time. By 1968, Colombian rock had left behind its affinity with yéyé and go-go music. In Medellín, Discos Fuentes had terminated its contract with Los Yetis, whose farewell record "Olvídate" set a strong anti-establishment tone. While the fire of protest that had spread rapidly among students in Paris was dying out, young people in Bogotá voiced their discontent. Aware of the effervescent political climate across the world, Los Speakers wrote their last record between June and September of the convulsive year of 1968. In order to give shape to these new songs they needed a space where they could experiment freely with sound. The music historian and critic and sound engineer, Manuel Drezner, made a providential appearance and offered the innovative Ingeson studios to the trio under one condition: that his company's name was included in the title of the record. For four months, Rodrigo, Manuel and Roberto created a record that was completely different to anything on the Colombian rock scene at that time. Los Speakers used cutting-edge equipment to record and mix "El maravilloso mundo de Ingeson", It was the first time local musicians had access to a multichannel mixing desk where they could experiment with all kinds of bold sound effects. The silences between songs were replaced with brief intervals of sound including the noise of a train running over a passer-by, a bomb exploding_ Although it's often labelled a conceptual record, the four compositions that each of the band members contribute reveal different aesthetic personalities. From the strong influence of Renaissance and Baroque poetry and music to the virulent social critique and pacifist statements, suffused with religiosity and mysticism. Armed with the demo tape, Los Speakers presented the project to CBS, Philips, Sonolux and Bambuco. The labels' verdict was unanimous: not very commercial and very costly. The group reacted to this negative response by pooling their personal savings, inventing a fictious record label called Kris and released the record just as they had imagined it. This led to the creation of a graphic concept unheard of in Colombia: the record included a booklet containing photos, texts and illustrations. Although there was a big media roll out, which included TV appearances and features in newspapers and magazines, as predicted the album was a commercial failure_ "El maravilloso mundo de Ingesón" is one of the most brilliantly whacked-out psych LPs to emerge from South America.

"“The New Backwards” was conceived by Peter “Sleazy” Christopherson in 2007, revisiting stray tracks which hadn’t seemed to gel with the material he had chosen for the more somber “Ape of Naples” from 2005, COIL’s initial posthumous release, a sort of requiem and a kiss-goodbye to his then recently deceased partner John Balance.

Significantly different to its sister release, this album collects the brilliantly chaotic and outrageously rhythmic material from the original sessions for the album that was begun as early as 1993 and had originally been conceptualised as the follow-up to “Love’s Secret Domain”. These songs are as diverse and wild as the places they originated from, partly infamously spawned in Sharon Tate’s former home in the Hollywood Hills, the Nine Inch Nails home base in New Orleans and London’s Swanyard, remixed and restructured with the help of long-term friend Danny Hyde in Thailand, this collection has its own unique flow and an atmosphere not found on any other COIL release.

Both “AYOR” and “Backwards” had by the time the album was first released already become favourites in COIL’s manic live performances. Some of the other tracks had only leaked in demo versions and are here presented updated and polished as Christopherson and Hyde intended them to be heard. It is interesting to consider Balance’s vocal contributions, too. Whilst on the albums COIL did release at the time this material was first put aside (“Black Light District” and “ElpH”) his voice is all but absent, his vocal performances and his lyric writing here are arguably more closely indebted to the previous “Love’s Secret Domain” era, especially the epic “Copacaballa” is noteworthy in that respect.
The New Backwards” effectively became the final official COIL studio release of all new material whilst Peter was still alive and is here presented for the first time fully supervised by Danny Hyde, its co-creator.
The stunning cover uses a detail from artist Ian Johnstone’s “Cubic Raven” painting, licensed from the estate of IJ..

It is high time to rediscover this timeless album with the Infinite Fog release boasting eight further tracks of previously unheard material from the same sessions, rough working stages and surprising remixes which will surely delight the dedicated COIL archaeologists, as they shine yet another light on the creative process and on what could have been.

Recorded at Swanyard, London and at Nothing Studios, New Orleans, 1996.
Thanks to everyone there, especially Trent Reznor who made it all possible.
Written & Produced by Coil & Danny Hyde.
Remixed by Peter Christopherson & Danny Hyde, Bangkok 2007.
For that session Coil were: Peter Christopherson, Jhonn Balance & Drew McDowall.
Mastered by Jessica Thompson.
Front artwork by Ian Johnstone.
Artwork licensed from The Estate of Ian Johnstone.
Layout Cold Graves and Oleg Galay."

The new EXOTICA sensation has a Name : The ROUNDELLS, This talented French trio+1 is exploring the world and its crazy rhythms on this amazing debut album. All the cuts were recorded and mixed at the ELECTROPHONIC studio, down in Lyon, France, by the wizard of the place Hervé Bessenay. With a handfull of vacuum equipment and vintage effects, Hervé"s got it ! The mid century Lounge Exotica sound that was in vogue from Miami to Malibu in the 50"s... full analogical recording rules ! So get your Bamboo skirt and Limbo barefoot in the sand !

Greetings from Buddhist synth pop hell - Sami "Albert Witchfinder" Hynninen joins forces with Finnish hip hop maverick Olli Hänninen A chance meeting in Hell? No! It was destined to happen: Hip hop maverick Olli Hänninen (Ronskibiitti, Hammaspeikko) teaming up with Doom Metal eccentric Sami Hynninen (Opium Warlords, Reverend Bizarre) to create alternative rhythm music unlike anything that has existed before. Hänninen and Hynninen take a trip to eighteen chambers of Buddhist Hell to reflect on the cold and violent world that surrounds us every day. The music stretches from experimental drones through jazz and marching music to bona fide synth pop, but do not try to label this album. It is impossible. It follows only its own laws. It can caress you or hit you in the head, but it never loses its intensity. Imagine a sober but psychotic COIL, or DAF with a shotgun, and you are not even close. The ambient elements and rhythm tracks defining the tone of each chamber morph together everything from weird crackle boxes, self-made anti-instruments and field recordings of a malfunctioning supermarket wicket or unorthodox paving block structures under a luggage trolley, to noisiest distortion and analogue delay effects on a mindlessly abused electric guitar. It is NOT Rock, it is NOT Metal it is just Alternative

Clear Vinyl + DL Code

Yiannis Iliakis is a multi instrumentalist and composer from Athens. He is mainly known as a drummer. As such he is a member of the free jazz band Outward Bound as well as a member of the successful Greek progressive rock band Ciccada. However, that's only one side of Iliakis' creative efforts. In April 2021, he released his first full length electronic album entitled Vertical Horizon on the Submersion Records, which mostly is an ambient work. Now, with Mountainmouth he opens another chapter for his musical talents.

The EP is one of the most thrilling and adventurous takes on what the IDM term usually would suggest. The key song might be the title track "Mountainmouth" - an extremely energetic composition which won't leave you unaffected. As per most of Iliakis' songs it is based on originally recorded drums that were heavily edited. In the next step, these were combined with chords, melodies, bass and harmonies on top. The musical result is simply breathtaking - one might even call this track electronica for prog-rock heads. Surely a perfect opener for the release.

The next song is Carbonated Soap on which Iliakis is going straight forward. The catchy melody and a fresh uptempo beat are offering something that could even fit well into a club-friendly DJ set. Next up, comes "Infected Walkman". According to Iliakis, it was the first one he made for this project when he participated in an art exhibition. This track, as well as the following "Sad Plants", are both down tempo and chilled, yet keeping an experimental vibe without loosing a soulful and human touch. Coming closer to the end, "Exodus Denied" is a brilliant experimental ambient piece, more similar to the works on the Vertical Horizon LP. Finally, the EP ends with a short edit of "Carbonated Soap" that jumps right to the more energetic parts after the first break.

Mountainmouth may not be an easy listen at start - but we are sure the music has the power to be another classic release from our catalogue. The EP will be released in July 2022 on a very limited 12" vinyl as well as digitally. The cover artwork was done by Iliakis himself. We are very excited to present a new artist to you on Equinox with so many different talents.

Violet Vinyl + DL Code

Yiannis Iliakis is a multi instrumentalist and composer from Athens. He is mainly known as a drummer. As such he is a member of the free jazz band Outward Bound as well as a member of the successful Greek progressive rock band Ciccada. However, that's only one side of Iliakis' creative efforts. In April 2021, he released his first full length electronic album entitled Vertical Horizon on the Submersion Records, which mostly is an ambient work. Now, with Mountainmouth he opens another chapter for his musical talents.

The EP is one of the most thrilling and adventurous takes on what the IDM term usually would suggest. The key song might be the title track "Mountainmouth" - an extremely energetic composition which won't leave you unaffected. As per most of Iliakis' songs it is based on originally recorded drums that were heavily edited. In the next step, these were combined with chords, melodies, bass and harmonies on top. The musical result is simply breathtaking - one might even call this track electronica for prog-rock heads. Surely a perfect opener for the release.

The next song is Carbonated Soap on which Iliakis is going straight forward. The catchy melody and a fresh uptempo beat are offering something that could even fit well into a club-friendly DJ set. Next up, comes "Infected Walkman". According to Iliakis, it was the first one he made for this project when he participated in an art exhibition. This track, as well as the following "Sad Plants", are both down tempo and chilled, yet keeping an experimental vibe without loosing a soulful and human touch. Coming closer to the end, "Exodus Denied" is a brilliant experimental ambient piece, more similar to the works on the Vertical Horizon LP. Finally, the EP ends with a short edit of "Carbonated Soap" that jumps right to the more energetic parts after the first break.

Mountainmouth may not be an easy listen at start - but we are sure the music has the power to be another classic release from our catalogue. The EP will be released in July 2022 on a very limited 12" vinyl as well as digitally. The cover artwork was done by Iliakis himself. We are very excited to present a new artist to you on Equinox with so many different talents.

‘Complex and dangerously catchy, lyrically sophisticated and provocative, noisy and somehow serene… Yankee Hotel Foxtrot… is simply a masterpiece.’ – Pitchfork, 10/10, April 2002

‘The looped chaos and plangent melodies... effectively heralded the birth of a new band, as Jeff Tweedy overhauled his compositional modus operandi. So tender was the emotional core of songs like ‘Jesus, Etc.’ that the record became wrapped up in America’s post-9/11 cultural discourse... Yankee Hotel Foxtrot embedded Wilco’s great American songwriter status.’
– Mojo

‘It's as if the Flying Burrito Brothers suddenly decided to cover Pavement songs. There is a gentle, rootsy beauty here that Wilco has buried in a box of vulnerability and covered with a handful of dirt.’ – New York Times

‘Born out of turmoil, Wilco’s fourth album was a stone-cold classic.’ – Uncut

Nonesuch releases seven special editions of Wilco’s landmark 2002 album Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. The now-classic record has been remastered and will be available as part of each set. The Super Deluxe version comprises eleven vinyl LPs and one CD – including demos, drafts, and instrumentals, charting the making of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot – plus a live 2002 concert recording and a September 2001 radio performance and interview. That box set includes eighty-two previously unreleased music tracks as well as a new book featuring an interview with singer/songwriter/guitarist Jeff Tweedy, drummer Glenn Kotche, and Jim O’Rourke, who mixed the acclaimed 2002 album; an in-depth essay by journalist/author Bob Mehr; and previously unseen photos of the band making the album in their Chicago studio, The Loft. For the Yankee Hotel Foxtrot recording, Wilco was Jeff Tweedy, John Stirratt, Leroy Bach, Glenn Kotche, and Jay Bennett with Craig Christiansen, Ken Coomer, Jessy Greene, Fred Lonberg-Holm, and Jim O’Rourke.

A live version of ‘Reservations’ from a legendary concert contained on Snoozin’ at The Pageant – Live 7/23/02 at The Pageant, St. Louis, MO – a recording that is part of the Super Deluxe LP and CD sets as well as the Deluxe LP and digital sets – is now available. A limited-edition vinyl 7” with versions of ‘I’m the Man Who Loves You’ and ‘War on War’, from the Super Deluxe box set, is available now from wilcostore.

Wilco marked the anniversary of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot – which was released commercially on April 23, 2002, after a circuitous and storied gestation, including a period of streaming for free on the band’s website – with a performance of the album’s ‘Poor Places’ on April 18’s Late Show with Stephen Colbert, which may be seen here. The band is currently performing Yankee Hotel Foxtrot in its entirety (plus a mix of concert favourites and rarities) in two limited runs at New York City’s United Palace and Chicago’s Auditorium Theatre. The Chicago show on April 23 will be available as a live stream here.

Yankee Hotel Foxtrot was widely acclaimed as one of 2002’s best albums, appearing in year-end lists of Mojo, NME, Q, Rolling Stone, and Uncut, among many others. Yankee Hotel Foxtrot also was featured in multiple decade-end lists, with Rolling Stone naming it #3 Album of the 2000s, as well as many Greatest Albums of All Time lists, including in the NME.

Among Yankee’s inspirations was a recording Tweedy bought at Tower Records in the late 1990s, The Conet Project: Recordings of Shortwave Numbers Stations. As Bob Mehr points out in his new album note, the record got “deep under Tweedy’s skin.” Tweedy said in his 2017 memoir, Let’s Go (So We Can Get Back), “It was as fascinating to me as anything being made by actual musicians using actual instruments… I wanted to know why it was so hypnotic to me. Why could I listen to hours of this stuff, even though I had no clue what any of them were saying. That question became the foundation for Yankee Hotel Foxtrot… the way people communicated or ultimately failed to communicate.” The album takes its title from a haunting recording of a woman repeating those words that is included in The Conet Project; that recording is sampled in the penultimate song on Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, ‘Poor Places’.

“Conceptually, Tweedy had decided to focus on a big idea for the next album: the state of America. His lyrics – often distilled from scribbled pages of free verse or poetry – became a form of inquiry,” Mehr continues. Tweedy said, in 2004, “I wanted to write about the stuff right in front of my eyes, microscopically looking at America and asking questions about each little thing… How can there be all these good things and things that I love about America, alongside all of these things that I’m ashamed of? And that was an internal question, too; I think I felt that way about myself.”

Mehr says, “Exploring those questions, while weaving in strands of Eastern philosophy and bits of autobiography – Yankee lyrics would be loaded with the pained imagery of someone suffering from migraines and mental health issues – Tweedy would conjure a deep examination of both country and self.”

Describing the uncanny, strangely prescient feeling of the album, which Wilco began offering as a free stream on its website in 2001, Mehr notes: “In the wake of 9/11, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot would be burdened with unintended meaning. The disc had originally been scheduled for a September 11 release. Its cover – a Sam Jones-shot image of Chicago’s twin Marina Towers angled in looming fashion – bore an eerie resemblance to the felled World Trade Center towers. And the songs – with titles like ‘Ashes of American Flags’ and ‘War on War,’ and lyrics about how ‘tall buildings shake, sad voices escape’ – took on a terrible new resonance.”

Yankee Hotel Foxtrot was the first Wilco release on Nonesuch Records following the band’s infamous split with Reprise (both labels are part of Warner Music Group). It was also the first release featuring the line-up of drummer Glenn Kotche and multi-instrumentalist Leroy Bach joining founding members Jeff Tweedy and John Stirratt. The 2002 Sam Jones film I Am Trying to Break Your Heart documented the fraught recording and mixing process, personnel changes, and label issues.

The relationship with Nonesuch would last nearly a decade and include three more studio albums – the Grammy Award-winning A ghost is born, Sky Blue Sky, and Wilco (the album) – along with a live album and a live DVD, plus reissues of earlier records, before Wilco began its own label, dBpm. The band’s current lineup of Jeff Tweedy, John Stirratt, Glenn Kotche, Mikael Jorgensen, Patrick Sansone, and Nels Cline has been together for nearly twenty years.

‘Complex and dangerously catchy, lyrically sophisticated and provocative, noisy and somehow serene… Yankee Hotel Foxtrot… is simply a masterpiece.’ – Pitchfork, 10/10, April 2002

‘The looped chaos and plangent melodies... effectively heralded the birth of a new band, as Jeff Tweedy overhauled his compositional modus operandi. So tender was the emotional core of songs like ‘Jesus, Etc.’ that the record became wrapped up in America’s post-9/11 cultural discourse... Yankee Hotel Foxtrot embedded Wilco’s great American songwriter status.’
– Mojo

‘It's as if the Flying Burrito Brothers suddenly decided to cover Pavement songs. There is a gentle, rootsy beauty here that Wilco has buried in a box of vulnerability and covered with a handful of dirt.’ – New York Times

‘Born out of turmoil, Wilco’s fourth album was a stone-cold classic.’ – Uncut

Nonesuch releases seven special editions of Wilco’s landmark 2002 album Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. The now-classic record has been remastered and will be available as part of each set. The Super Deluxe version comprises eleven vinyl LPs and one CD – including demos, drafts, and instrumentals, charting the making of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot – plus a live 2002 concert recording and a September 2001 radio performance and interview. That box set includes eighty-two previously unreleased music tracks as well as a new book featuring an interview with singer/songwriter/guitarist Jeff Tweedy, drummer Glenn Kotche, and Jim O’Rourke, who mixed the acclaimed 2002 album; an in-depth essay by journalist/author Bob Mehr; and previously unseen photos of the band making the album in their Chicago studio, The Loft. For the Yankee Hotel Foxtrot recording, Wilco was Jeff Tweedy, John Stirratt, Leroy Bach, Glenn Kotche, and Jay Bennett with Craig Christiansen, Ken Coomer, Jessy Greene, Fred Lonberg-Holm, and Jim O’Rourke.

A live version of ‘Reservations’ from a legendary concert contained on Snoozin’ at The Pageant – Live 7/23/02 at The Pageant, St. Louis, MO – a recording that is part of the Super Deluxe LP and CD sets as well as the Deluxe LP and digital sets – is now available. A limited-edition vinyl 7” with versions of ‘I’m the Man Who Loves You’ and ‘War on War’, from the Super Deluxe box set, is available now from wilcostore.

Wilco marked the anniversary of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot – which was released commercially on April 23, 2002, after a circuitous and storied gestation, including a period of streaming for free on the band’s website – with a performance of the album’s ‘Poor Places’ on April 18’s Late Show with Stephen Colbert, which may be seen here. The band is currently performing Yankee Hotel Foxtrot in its entirety (plus a mix of concert favourites and rarities) in two limited runs at New York City’s United Palace and Chicago’s Auditorium Theatre. The Chicago show on April 23 will be available as a live stream here.

Yankee Hotel Foxtrot was widely acclaimed as one of 2002’s best albums, appearing in year-end lists of Mojo, NME, Q, Rolling Stone, and Uncut, among many others. Yankee Hotel Foxtrot also was featured in multiple decade-end lists, with Rolling Stone naming it #3 Album of the 2000s, as well as many Greatest Albums of All Time lists, including in the NME.

Among Yankee’s inspirations was a recording Tweedy bought at Tower Records in the late 1990s, The Conet Project: Recordings of Shortwave Numbers Stations. As Bob Mehr points out in his new album note, the record got “deep under Tweedy’s skin.” Tweedy said in his 2017 memoir, Let’s Go (So We Can Get Back), “It was as fascinating to me as anything being made by actual musicians using actual instruments… I wanted to know why it was so hypnotic to me. Why could I listen to hours of this stuff, even though I had no clue what any of them were saying. That question became the foundation for Yankee Hotel Foxtrot… the way people communicated or ultimately failed to communicate.” The album takes its title from a haunting recording of a woman repeating those words that is included in The Conet Project; that recording is sampled in the penultimate song on Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, ‘Poor Places’.

“Conceptually, Tweedy had decided to focus on a big idea for the next album: the state of America. His lyrics – often distilled from scribbled pages of free verse or poetry – became a form of inquiry,” Mehr continues. Tweedy said, in 2004, “I wanted to write about the stuff right in front of my eyes, microscopically looking at America and asking questions about each little thing… How can there be all these good things and things that I love about America, alongside all of these things that I’m ashamed of? And that was an internal question, too; I think I felt that way about myself.”

Mehr says, “Exploring those questions, while weaving in strands of Eastern philosophy and bits of autobiography – Yankee lyrics would be loaded with the pained imagery of someone suffering from migraines and mental health issues – Tweedy would conjure a deep examination of both country and self.”

Describing the uncanny, strangely prescient feeling of the album, which Wilco began offering as a free stream on its website in 2001, Mehr notes: “In the wake of 9/11, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot would be burdened with unintended meaning. The disc had originally been scheduled for a September 11 release. Its cover – a Sam Jones-shot image of Chicago’s twin Marina Towers angled in looming fashion – bore an eerie resemblance to the felled World Trade Center towers. And the songs – with titles like ‘Ashes of American Flags’ and ‘War on War,’ and lyrics about how ‘tall buildings shake, sad voices escape’ – took on a terrible new resonance.”

Yankee Hotel Foxtrot was the first Wilco release on Nonesuch Records following the band’s infamous split with Reprise (both labels are part of Warner Music Group). It was also the first release featuring the line-up of drummer Glenn Kotche and multi-instrumentalist Leroy Bach joining founding members Jeff Tweedy and John Stirratt. The 2002 Sam Jones film I Am Trying to Break Your Heart documented the fraught recording and mixing process, personnel changes, and label issues.

The relationship with Nonesuch would last nearly a decade and include three more studio albums – the Grammy Award-winning A ghost is born, Sky Blue Sky, and Wilco (the album) – along with a live album and a live DVD, plus reissues of earlier records, before Wilco began its own label, dBpm. The band’s current lineup of Jeff Tweedy, John Stirratt, Glenn Kotche, Mikael Jorgensen, Patrick Sansone, and Nels Cline has been together for nearly twenty years.


DISC 5: HERE COMES EVERYBODY – BUILDING YANKEE HOTEL FOXTROT (PART 2)
Side I: (TRAIN)
1. Radio Cure (Here Comes Everybody Version) *
2. War on War (Here Comes Everybody Version) *
3. Venus Stopped the Train (Here Comes Everybody Version) * #
4. I'm the Man Who Loves You (Here Comes Everybody Version) *
5. The Good Part (Here Comes Everybody Version) * #
Side J: (KETTLE)
1. Pot Kettle Black (Here Comes Everybody Version) *
2. Ashes of American Flags (Here Comes Everybody Version) *
3. Poor Places (Here Comes Everybody Version) *
4. Shakin' Sugar (Here Comes Everybody Version) *
5. Reservations (Here Comes Everybody Version) *

DISC 6: HERE COMES EVERYBODY – BUILDING YANKEE HOTEL FOXTROT (PART 2) / THE UNIFIED THEORY OF EVERYTHING – BUILDING YANKEE HOTEL FOXTROT (PART 3)
Side K: (ESCAPE)
1. Cars Can't Escape (Here Comes Everybody Version) * #
2. A Magazine Called Sunset (The Unified Theory of Everything Version) ** #
3. Remember to Remember (Hummingbird) The Unified Theory of Everything Version ** #
4. I Am Trying to Break Your Heart (The Unified Theory of Everything Version) ** #
Side L: (WAR)
1. Kamera (The Unified Theory of Everything Version) ** #
2. Radio Cure (The Unified Theory of Everything Version) ** #
3. War on War (The Unified Theory of Everything Version) ** #
4. Jesus, Etc. (The Unified Theory of Everything Version) ** #

DISC 7: THE UNIFIED THEORY OF EVERYTHING – BUILDING YANKEE HOTEL FOXTROT (PART 3) / LONELY IN THE DEEP END – DEMOS, DRAFTS, ETC.
Side M: (DRUMMER)
1. Ashes of American Flags (Stravinsky Mix) ** #
2. Heavy Metal Drummer (The Unified Theory of Everything Version) ** #
3. I'm The Man Who Loves You (The Unified Theory of Everything Version) **
4. Pot Kettle Black (The Unified Theory of Everything Version) ** #
5. Poor Places (The Unified Theory of Everything Version) ** #
Side N: (RESERVATIONS)
1. Reservations (The Unified Theory of Everything Version) ** #
2. Love Will (Let You Down) Lonely in the Deep End Version *
3. Lost Poem Demo (Lonely in the Deep End Version) *
4. I’m The Only One Who Lets Her Down (Lonely in the Deep End Version) *
5. Has Anybody Seen My Pencil? (Lonely in the Deep End Version) *














[l] E1. Anniversary (Nothing Up My Sleeve) [American Aquarium Version] *









[v] G2. Not for the Season (Laminated Cat) [American Aquarium Version] *


[y] H2. Not for the Season (Laminated Cat) [Here Comes Everybody Version] * #





[xe] K3. Remember to Remember (Hummingbird) [The Unified Theory of Everything Version] ** #











[xq] N2. Love Will (Let You Down) [Lonely in the Deep End Version] *

Limited Clear Grey Vinyl 7". For Fans Of… Piero Umiliani, Amedeo Tommasi, Dorothy Ashby, Sandro Brugnolini, El Michels Affair, Sven Wunder. Breezy and carefree, Dragatto reminisces on a day spent exploring the streets of Madrid with only a camera, a few rolls of film and the shoes on his feet. Heavily inspired by the European adaptation of Bossa nova in the 1960’s, Salvator creates his own unique mood that’s equal parts sunny and joyful using simple melodic themes opposite lush string arrangements. A surefire companion for the next road trip down the coast or excursion through a foreign city. On the B side, as if delivered from the future, the sweet and punchy Return to Normal is a message of hope and optimism letting us know that things will indeed get better. Dreamy harp arpeggios float effortlessly atop a crushing rhythm section tip-toeing the line between calmness and urgency. Turn this one up loud, light one up and let go.

Tracks 1. Mind On Madrid 2. A Return To Normal

Brooklyn band Office Culture is made up of four longtime collaborators
(and all solo artists in their own right) lead singer and songwriter Winston
Cook-Wilson (vocals/keyboards), Ian Wayne (guitar), Charlie Kaplan
(bass), and Pat Kelly (drums)
Following the electronic avant-pop experimentation of their debut album I Did the
Best I Could, the band's critically acclaimed sophomore LP "2019's A Life of
Crime "unveiled a lush, jazz- inflected sound that Pitchfork described as "sleek
music for a cursed place, opulent like a ritzy hotel lounge." Cook-Wilson's wry and
contemplative songs reflect the bandmates' shared points of musical reference,
including Nite- Flights- era Scott Walker, mid- 70s Joni Mitchell, Curtis Mayfield,
and ECM-label jazz. The FADER wrote: "Office Culture spends the best moments
on A Life Of Crime sounding like the most vital lounge-pop act of all time. Big
Time Things "the band's third album and Northern Spy debut "is a more
maximalist affair. Written and recorded across the course of three years, it's a
meticulously orchestrated and groove- forward record featuring nine of CookWilson's most ambitious compositions to date. Tracks like singles Elegance, Big
Time Things, and Little Reminders draw together a disparate collection of
influences, integrating soulful vocal harmonies, horns straight out of 70s spiritual
jazz, string arrangements informed by modernist classical music, and beats that
reflect the band's enduring love of neo-soul and hip-hop.
The playful experimentation of the arrangements elevates the melodrama and
humor of Cook-Wilson's songs "his most emotionally direct to date "which trace
the complexities of our efforts to better ourselves by learning from our worst and
least rational behavior, and how we attempt to apply that knowledge to nurturing
close personal relationships. The record features a dense cast of supporting
players, including Carmen Q. Rothwell, Caitlin Pasko, Alena Spanger (Tiny
Hazard), and members of Cuddle Magic / Mmeadows. The album releases via
Northern Spy.

On their new album Looming, The Spindle, The Pleasure Majenta shape a
terrifying and sublime mix of noise, broken electronics and guitar
feedback that begs to remain untamed
From New Zealand by way of Berlin, these dystopian goth punks take their cues
from the harsh and heavy energy of The Birthday Party, Swans and The Fall
€"casting bummer vibes into the void to create the pain- soaked statement so
many albums want to make but wind up missing the mark.The lead single € Full
of It € fills the screen with flashes of cinematic post-punk savagery up to its ears
in swampy distortion and sleazy funhouse skronk. Velvety € 70s exploitation flick
saxophones hustle with devilish no-wave spaghetti western guitars and a slippery
bassline like a coffin dragged through mud in a grungy post- punk dirge. It's a
waking tour through a dysfunctional late- capitalist bardo where disassociation
becomes an effective coping mechanism for the cyclical, paralyzing grind of
clock- in, clock- out psychosis. € I felt okay when I wasn't myself "when I was
making music or playing onstage, so I decided I would contact myself in this way,
says The Pleasure Majenta's Lawrence Loz Fergus Goodwin. It's a dangerous
game to play.
Tracks: Satellite / Fabric / Sad2say / Smiles Through A Sneer / Anxious Patient /
Osc / Full Of It / It's Ten / Erik Satie / Gardens

US Born, Manchester-based Avernian inaugurates his newest club-night turned-label venture, with the help of Stenny (Ilian Tape), Tammo Hesselink (Delsin) and Jabes (Timedance).

The first four-track compilation comes to form with opening piece 'Kembow' by Ilian Tape mainstay, Stenny; a pacy bass-ridden roller, executed to devastating effect with razor-sharp synths that stab down into the midrange of the speakers like daggers, sitting atop dread-ridden sub frequencies.

Label-founder Avernian follows suit, already being widely recognised for rowdy releases on imprints such as More Time, Fever AM and Scuffed Recordings. 'Power Stance' continues the 12" with elephant trunk synthesis, and a galloping, low-mid frequency rumble that is second to none.

Jabes (Timedance/Klunk) delivers 'Rite'; a deeply tense excursion with harrowing sound-design and analogue delays that dance around a playful stereo field, mixed down to extreme, scientific hyper-precision.

Closing out the record is Tammo Hesselink (Delsin/Nous'klaer Audio) supplying 'Water Plus' with a neck-snapping groove of warm and distorted, polyrhythmic claps that have been self-recorded among a frenzy of foley lines that spiral into fun and friendly dancefloor adrenaline, bringing the compilation to a clean close and leaving the listener pining for the label's follow-up.

A decade is a long time in music, but it feels less epic when the music in question is timeless, picturesque, and immersive. Founded in London, run from Bali for a period, and now based in Ibiza, NuNorthern Soul has grown from humble roots to become one of the most popular outlets for Balearic music on the planet.

NuNorthern Soul started in the late 1990s, long before the label launched, NuNorthern Soul was a regular Sunday session in a bar in Chester, UK where label founder Phat Phil Cooper and school friend Jim Baron (Ron Basejam, Crazy P, JIM) sat behind the decks and played laidback, eclectic musical selections to wind down the weekend. The name was suggested by one of the event’s regular punters, who likened the community feel of the event to his experiences as a Northern Soul dancer.

Fast forward to 2011. Following a move to London, Cooper was introduced to Ben Smith, a singer-songwriter and producer whose music he’d long admired. After bonding over a few pints of Guinness, Smith offered to hand over a hard drive full of unreleased tracks; together, the pair put together what would become the NuNorthern Soul label’s first ever release: a fine album of beautiful, boundary-free music entitled The Movedrill Projects.

Another EP from Smith, Dedications to the Greats, followed in early 2013, with the sometime Fug and Akwaaba band-member recording emotive, life-affirming cover versions in his signature style. It was followed by an EP of opaque, sunset-ready songs from Ragz Nordset, and NuNorthern Soul was on its way. While the label has subtly moved around musically since, offering up EPs and albums that incorporate elements from a multitude of becalmed and blissful styles, the core ethos remains the same. Significantly, those early Ben Smith and Ragz Nordset releases still stand up to scrutiny all these years on.

Smith has remained a big part of the NuNorthern Soul family ever since, and it’s fitting that two of his tracks – the stunning, undulating downtempo epic ‘Over Land & Sea’, from improvised 2019 album From The Ash, and Jonny Nash’s glistening, shuffling 2015 rework of ‘Hold On To It’ – are featured on this 10th birthday celebration of the NuNorthern Soul story so far.

It’s right, too, that Jim Baron, whose stints behind the decks with Cooper in Chester began the NuNorthern Soul story, also makes two appearances. His chugging, jangling, wide-eyed 2014 Ron Basejam rework of Ragz Nordset’s ‘You Started It All’ – a track that has so far racked up over three million streams on Spotify – was an early label hit, while his fragile, softly spun masterpiece as JIM, ‘Whisper in the Wind’ (featuring none other than Ben Smith on guitar), features here via a deliciously stretched-out, sunrise-ready remix from James Holroyd under his Balearic-friendly BEGIN guise.

Sentimentality aside, the success of NuNorthern Soul is rooted in Cooper’s ability to pick music to release from a wide variety of artists that fits the label’s colourful, atmospheric, and tactile sonic vision. This lovingly curated box set is testament to that, with immersive, yearning efforts from veteran musicians such as Jon Tye (here appearing as Captain Sunshine, via the breath-taking ‘The Oceans Inside’) and the late, great Ryo Kawasaki (remixed by Mancunian, former Body & Soul NYC resident DJ Andi Hanley) being joined by wonderfully on-point productions from relatively recent signings such as Torn Sail (the Balearic folk swell of ‘Disconnected’), George Koultalieris, My Friend Dario and Tambores En Benirras.

10 Years, 5 EPs, 10 tracks, exclusives, previously unreleased and hard to find NuNorthern Soul treasures. Packaged in a full colour commemorative designed box with full colour inner sleeves. 1 track per side of vinyl for maximum audio pleasure. Comes with 4 page NuNorthern Soul insert. Limited edition.

Lisbon's purveyor of dance incantations Paraiso are back with an EP that packs a meeting of 3 legends of the local and global underground - a trio of fearless pioneers and cultural agitators from different eras. Yen Sung and Photonz have partnered up in 2020 to collaborate on new music and start a record label. Fast forward to today and this Paraiso EP is their third release, further exploring their mutual penchant for ethereal house music drenched in subtle but fiery grooves and acid basslines. Opener 'A Temperanca' taps into moody yet bouncy motifs, punctuated by crisp claps and an infectious 303 line in the vein of DJ Pierre's record 'What is House Music', their confessed influence for this track. Things get slower on the A2 where the title track gets reworked with alternative elements - aptly named Gravity Mix. The B side continues the metallic acid exploration via 'Akasha', twisting and turning like only expertly crafted basslines do before things blossom into a sunny house groover with enticing percussion and variegated hats. Legendary Angolan-Portuguese producer DJ Satelite steps in for remix duties, adding his iconic deep afro house edge to a wonderful effect, all blissful motifs and broken percussive sonics.

From a shared love of electronica, aquatic techno funk and tribal rhythms comes this collaboration.

Raw electronics and warm analogue sounds flow and almost breath with life as synths spray atmosphere over washed out stabs which swing from one note to the next.

Layered effects sit alongside glitches and heavily distorted breaks perfectly suited for the rumbling subwoofers of soundsytems.

Written by Mat Carter & Keith Tenniswood at The Cube

As the sun sets on a quaint East Nashville house, a young man bares a piece of his soul. Facing the camera, sporting a silky suit jacket/shirt/slacks/fingerless gloves ensemble that announces "singer" before he's even opened his mouth, Lee Tracy Johnson settles onto his stage, the front yard. He sways to the dirge-like drum machine pulse of a synth-soaked slow jam, extends his arms as if gaining his balance, and croons in affecting, fragile earnest, "I need your love… oh baby…"

Dogs in the yard next door begin barking. A mysterious cardboard robot figure, beamed in from galaxies unknown and affixed to a tree, is less vocal. Lee doesn't acknowledge either's presence. He's busy feeling it, arms and hands gesticulating. His voice rises in falsetto over the now-quiet dogs, over the ambient noise from the street that seeps into the handheld camcorder's microphone, over the recording of his own voice played back from a boombox off-camera. After six minutes the single, continuous shot ends. In this intimate creative universe there are no re-takes. There are many more music videos to shoot, and as Lee later puts it, "The first time you do it is actually the best. Because you can never get that again. You expressing yourself from within."

"I Need Your Love" dates from a lost heyday. From some time in the '80s or early '90s, when Lee Tracy (as he was known in performance) and his music partner/producer/manager Isaac Manning committed hours upon hours of their sonic and visual ideas to tape. Embracing drum machines and synthesizers – electronics that made their personal futurism palpable – they recorded exclusively at home, live in a room into a simple cassette deck. Soul, funk, electro and new wave informed their songs, yet Lee and Isaac eschewed the confinement of conventional categories and genres, preferring to let experimentation guide them.

"Anytime somebody put out a new record they had the same instruments or the same sound," explains Isaac. "So I basically wanted to find something that's really gonna stand out away from all of the rest of 'em." Their ethos meant that every idea they came up with was at least worth trying: echoed out half-rapped exhortations over frantic techno-style beats, gospel synth soul, modal electro-funk, oddball pop reinterpretations, emo AOR balladry, nods to Prince and the Fat Boys, or arrangements that might collapse mid-song into a mess of arcade game-ish blips before rallying to reach the finish line. All of it conjoined by consistent tape hiss, and most vitally, Lee's chameleonic voice, which managed to wildly shape shift and still evoke something sincere – whether toggling between falsetto and tenor exalting Jesus's return, or punctuating a melismatic romantic adlib with a succinct, "We all know how it feels to be alone."

"People think we went to a studio," says Isaac derisively. "We never went to no studio. We didn't have the money to go to no studio! We did this stuff at home. I shot videos in my front yard with whatever we could to get things together." Sometimes Isaac would just put on an instrumental record, be it "Planet Rock" or "Don't Cry For Me Argentina" (from Evita), press "record," and let Lee improvise over it, yielding peculiar love songs, would-be patriotic anthems, or Elvis Presley or Marilyn Monroe tributes. Technical limitations and a lack of professional polish never dissuaded them. They believed they were onto something.

"That struggle," Isaac says, "made that sound sound good to me."

In the parlance of modern music criticism Lee and Isaac's dizzying DIY efforts would inevitably be described as "outsider." But "outsider" carries the burden of untold additional layers of meaning if you're Black and from the South, creating on a budget, and trying to get someone, anyone within the country music capital of the world to take your vision seriously. "What category should we put it in?" Isaac asks rhetorically. "I don't know. All I know is feeling. I ain't gonna name it nothing. It's music. If it grabs your soul and touch your heart that's what it basically is supposed to do."

=

Born in 1963, the baby boy of nine siblings, Lee Tracy spent his earliest years living amidst the shotgun houses on Nashville's south side. "We was poor, man!" he says, recalling the outhouse his family used for a bathroom and the blocks of ice they kept in the kitchen to chill perishables. "But I actually don't think I really realized I was in poverty until I got grown and started thinking about it." Lee's mom worked at the Holiday Inn; his dad did whatever he had to do, from selling fruit from a horse drawn cart to bootlegging. "We didn't have much," Lee continues, "but my mother and my father got us the things we needed, the clothes on our back." By the end of the decade with the city's urban renewal programs razing entire neighborhoods to accommodate construction of the Interstate, the family moved to Edgehill Projects. Lee remembers music and art as a constant source of inspiration for he and his brothers and sisters – especially after seeing the Jackson 5 perform on Ed Sullivan. "As a small child I just knew that was what I wanted to do."

His older brother Don began musically mentoring him, introducing Lee to a variety of instruments and sounds. "He would never play one particular type of music, like R&B," says Lee. "I was surrounded by jazz, hard rock and roll, easy listening, gospel, reggae, country music; I mean I was a sponge absorbing all of that." Lee taught himself to play drums by beating on cardboard boxes, gaining a rep around the way for his timekeeping, and his singing voice. Emulating his favorites, Earth Wind & Fire and Cameo, he formed groups with other kids with era-evocative band names like Concept and TNT Connection, and emerged as the leader of disciplined rehearsals. "I made them practice," says Lee. "We practiced and practiced and practiced. Because I wanted that perfection." By high school the most accomplished of these bands would take top prize in a prominent local talent show. It was a big moment for Lee, and he felt ready to take things to the next level. But his band-mates had other ideas.

"I don't know what happened," he says, still miffed at the memory. "It must have blew they mind after we won and people started showing notice, because it's like everybody quit! I was like, where the hell did everybody go?" Lee had always made a point of interrogating prospective musicians about their intentions before joining his groups: were they really serious or just looking for a way to pick up girls? Now he understood even more the importance of finding a collaborator just as committed to the music as he was.

=

Isaac Manning had spent much of his life immersed in music and the arts – singing in the church choir with his family on Nashville's north side, writing, painting, dancing, and working various gigs within the entertainment industry. After serving in the armed forces, in the early '70s he ran The Teenage Place, a music and performance venue that catered to the local youth. But he was forced out of town when word of one of his recreational routines created a stir beyond the safe haven of his bohemian circles.

"I was growing marijuana," Isaac explains. "It wasn't no business, I was smoking it myself… I would put marijuana in scrambled eggs, cornbread and stuff." His weed use originated as a form of self-medication to combat severe tooth pain. But when he began sharing it with some of the other young people he hung out with, some of who just so happened to be the kids of Nashville politicians, the cops came calling. "When I got busted," he remembers, "they were talking about how they were gonna get rid of me because they didn't want me saying nothing about they children because of the politics and stuff. So I got my family, took two raggedy cars, and left Nashville and went to Vegas."

Out in the desert, Isaac happened to meet Chubby Checker of "The Twist" fame while the singer was gigging at The Flamingo. Impressed by Isaac's zeal, Checker invited him to go on the road with him as his tour manager/roadie/valet. The experience gave Isaac a window into a part of the entertainment world he'd never encountered – a glimpse of what a true pop act's audience looked like. "Chubby Checker, none of his shows were played for Black folks," he remembers. "All his gigs were done at high-class white people areas." Returning home after a few years with Chubby, Isaac was properly motivated to make it in Music City. He began writing songs and scouting around Nashville for local talent anywhere he could find it with an expressed goal: "Find someone who can deliver your songs the way you want 'em delivered and make people feel what you want them to feel."

One day while walking through Edgehill Projects Isaac heard someone playing the drums in a way that made him stop and take notice. "The music was so tight, just the drums made me feel like, oh I'm-a find this person," he recalls. "So I circled through the projects until I found who it was.

"That's how I met him – Lee Tracy. When I found him and he started singing and stuff, I said, ohhh, this is somebody different."

=

Theirs was a true complementary partnership: young Lee possessed the raw talent, the older Isaac the belief. "He's really the only one besides my brother and my family that really seen the potential in me," says Lee. "He made me see that I could do it."

Isaac long being a night owl, his house also made for a fertile collaborative environment – a space where there always seemed to be a new piece of his visual art on display: paintings, illustrations, and dolls and figures (including an enigmatic cardboard robot). Lee and Issac would hang out together and talk, listen to music, conjure ideas, and smoke the herb Isaac had resumed growing in his yard. "It got to where I could trust him, he could trust me," Isaac says of their bond. They also worked together for hours on drawings, spreading larges rolls of paper on the walls and sketching faces with abstract patterns and imagery: alien-like beings, tri-horned horse heads, inverted Janus-like characters where one visage blurred into the other.

Soon it became apparent that they didn't need other collaborators; self-sufficiency was the natural way forward. At Isaac's behest Lee, already fed up with dealing with band musicians, began playing around with a poly-sonic Yamaha keyboard at the local music store. "It had everything on it – trumpet, bass, drums, organ," remembers Lee. "And that's when I started recording my own stuff."

The technology afforded Lee the flexibility and independence he craved, setting him on a path other bedroom musicians and producers around the world were simultaneously following through the '80s into the early '90s. Saving up money from day jobs, he eventually supplemented the Yamaha Isaac had gotten him with Roland and Casio drum machines and a Moog. Lee was living in an apartment in Hillside at that point caring for his dad, who'd been partially paralyzed since early in life. In the evenings up in his second floor room, the music put him in a zone where he could tune out everything and lose himself in his ideas.

"Oh I loved it," he recalls. "I would really experiment with the instruments and use a lot of different sound effects. I was looking for something nobody else had. I wanted something totally different. And once I found the sound I was looking for, I would just smoke me a good joint and just let it go, hit the record button." More potent a creative stimulant than even Isaac's weed was the holistic flow and spontaneity of recording. Between sessions at Isaac's place and Lee's apartment, their volume of output quickly ballooned.

"We was always recording," says Lee. "That's why we have so much music. Even when I went to Isaac's and we start creating, I get home, my mind is racing, I gotta start creating, creating, creating. I remember there were times when I took a 90-minute tape from front to back and just filled it up."

"We never practiced," says Isaac. "See, that was just so odd about the whole thing. I could relate to him, and tell him about the songs I had ideas for and everything and stuff. And then he would bring it back or whatever, and we'd get together and put it down." Once the taskmaster hell bent on rehearsing, Lee had flipped a full 180. Perfection was no longer an aspiration, but the enemy of inspiration.

"I seen where practicing and practicing got me," says Lee. "A lot of musicians you get to playing and they gotta stop, they have to analyze the music. But while you analyzing you losing a lot of the greatness of what you creating. Stop analyzing what you play, just play! And it'll all take shape."

=

"I hope you understood the beginning of the record because this was invented from a dream I had today… (You tell me, I'll tell you, we'll figure it out together)" – Lee Tracy and Isaac Manning, "Hope You Understand"

Lee lets loose a maniacal cackle when he acknowledges that the material that he and Isaac recorded was by anyone's estimation pretty out there. It's the same laugh that commences "Hope You Understand" – a chaotic transmission that encapsulates the duality at the heart of their music: a stated desire to reach people and a compulsion to go as leftfield as they saw fit.

"We just did it," says Lee. "We cut the music on and cut loose. I don't sit around and write. I do it by listening, get a feeling, play the music, and the lyrics and stuff just come out of me."

The approach proved adaptable to interpreting other artists' material. While recording a cover of Whitney Houston's pop ballad "Saving All My Love For You," Lee played Whitney's version in his headphones as he laid down his own vocals – partially following the lyrics, partially using them as a departure point. The end result is barely recognizable compared with the original, Lee and Isaac having switched up the time signature and reinvented the melody along the way towards morphing a slick mainstream radio standard into something that sounds solely their own.

"I really used that song to get me started," says Lee. "Then I said, well I need something else, something is missing. Something just came over me. That's when I came up with 'Is It What You Want.'"

The song would become the centerpiece of Lee and Isaac's repertoire. Pushed along by a percolating metronomic Rhythm King style beat somewhere between a military march and a samba, "Is It What You Want" finds Lee pleading the sincerity of his commitment to a potential love interest embellished by vocal tics and hiccups subtlely reminiscent of his childhood hero MJ. Absent chord changes, only synth riffs gliding in and out like apparitions, the song achieves a lingering lo-fi power that leaves you feeling like it's still playing, somewhere, even after the fade out.

"I don't know, it's like a real spiritual song," Lee reflects. "But it's not just spiritual. To me the more I listen to it it's like about everything that you do in your everyday life, period. Is it what you want? Do you want a car or you don't want a car? Do you want Jesus or do you want the Devil? It's basically asking you the question. Can't nobody answer the question but you yourself."

In 1989 Lee won a lawsuit stemming from injuries sustained from a fight he'd gotten into. He took part of the settlement money and with Isaac pressed up "Saving All My Love For You" b/w "Is It What You Want" as a 45 single. Isaac christened the label One Chance Records. "Because that's all we wanted," he says with a laugh, "one chance."

Isaac sent the record out to radio stations and major labels, hoping for it to make enough noise to get picked up nationally. But the response he and Lee were hoping for never materialized. According to Isaac the closest the single got to getting played on the radio is when a disk jock from a local station made a highly unusual announcement on air: "The dude said on the radio, 107.5 – 'We are not gonna play 'Is It What You Want.' We cracked up! Wow, that's deep.

"It was a whole racist thing that was going on," he reflects. "So we just looked over and kept on going. That was it. That was about the way it goes… If you were Black and you were living in Nashville and stuff, that's the way you got treated." Isaac already knew as much from all the times he'd brought he and Lee's tapes (even their cache of country music tunes) over to Music Row to try to drum up interest to no avail.

"Isaac, he really worked his ass off," says Lee. "He probably been to every record place down on Music Row." Nashville's famed recording and music business corridor wasn't but a few blocks from where Lee grew up. Close enough, he remembers, for him to ride his bike along its back alleys and stumble upon the occasional random treasure, like a discarded box of harmonicas. Getting in through the front door, however, still felt a world away.

"I just don't think at the time our music fell into a category for them," he concedes. "It was before its time."

=

Lee stopped making music some time in the latter part of the '90s, around the time his mom passed away and life became increasingly tough to manage. "When my mother died I had a nervous breakdown," he says, "So I shut down for a long time. I was in such a sadness frame of mind. That's why nobody seen me. I had just disappeared off the map." He fell out of touch with Isaac, and in an indication of just how bad things had gotten for him, lost track of all the recordings they'd made together. Music became a distant memory.

Fortunately, Isaac kept the faith. In a self-published collection of his poetry – paeans to some of his favorite entertainment and public figures entitled Friends and Dick Clark – he'd written that he believed "music has a life of its own." But his prescience and presence of mind were truly manifested in the fact that he kept an archive of he and Lee's work. As perfectly imperfect as "Is It What You Want" now sounds in a post-Personal Space world, Lee and Isaac's lone official release was in fact just a taste. The bulk of the Is It What You Want album is culled from the pair's essentially unheard home recordings – complete songs, half-realized experiments, Isaac's blue monologues and pronouncements et al – compiled, mixed and programmed in the loose and impulsive creative spirit of their regular get-togethers from decades ago. The rest of us, it seems, may have finally caught up to them.

On the prospect of at long last reaching a wider audience, Isaac says simply, "I been trying for a long time, it feels good." Ever the survivor, he adds, "The only way I know how to make it to the top is to keep climbing. If one leg break on the ladder, hey, you gotta fix it and keep on going… That's where I be at. I'll kill death to make it out there."

For Lee it all feels akin to a personal resurrection: "It's like I was in a tomb and the tomb was opened and I'm back… Man, it feels so great. I feel like I'm gonna jump out of my skin." Success at this stage of his life, he realizes, probably means something different than what it did back when he was singing and dancing in Isaac's front yard. "What I really mean by 'making it,'" he explains isn't just the music being heard but, "the story being told."

Occasionally Lee will pull up "Is It What You Want" on YouTube on his phone, put on his headphones, and listen. He remembers the first time he heard his recorded voice. How surreal it was, how he thought to himself, "Is that really me?" What would he say to that younger version of himself now?

"I would probably tell myself, hang in there, don't give up. Keep striving for the goal. And everything will work out."

Despite what's printed on the record label, sometimes you do get more than one chance.

Spanish producer Divorce From New York (AKA Alvaro Granda) returns with his brand new LP ‘Sausalito’ on London’s High Praise. With his previous full-length 2021 offering ‘This Ain’t Jazz No More’ having gained support from Tom Ravenscroft (BBC 6 Music), Jamz Supernova (BBC Radio 1Xtra), Worldwide FM, BBC Radio 1, Errol (Touching Bass), DJ Mag & many more - the stage is set for this heady and potent sophomore release.

Known for his work as one half of San Sebastian based production duo Reykjavik606 (who have previously collaborated with the likes of Tenderlonious and Ishmael Ensemble) Granda creates a rich web of broken beat flavours, uplifting sonics and syncopated rhythms - melding elements of jungle, house and bruk with jazz sensibilities.

Featuring seven brand-new and flavour-packed tracks, ‘Sausalito’ is an uplifting and joyous listen from start to finish. Immersing himself in his extensive collection of Jazz, Soul and Disco vinyl, Alvaro channels golden sunshine-injected influences into a wonderfully cohesive and infectious record. First single ‘Last Ray Of Sunset’ sees Alvaro join forces with long-term collaborator Piek. As its classic disco sounds meet jaunty, MPC- driven drums, and an irresistible bassline - leaving us dreaming of hazy summer terraces, and those last fleeting moments of daytime as evening takes hold.

‘Holly Grove’ evokes a sense of mystery and intrigue with it’s celestial rhodes and flute flourishes, before being joined by syncopated bruk-beats and the alluring vocals of Sarah Zoyaya, who’s tones entwine with some wild synth playing and twisting polyrhythms. Final single ‘I Haven’t Recovered From Last Night With You’ entrances the listener with it’s hypnotic saturated percussion, swirling vocals and reverb-laced key stabs. Creating visions of endless and vast expanses, it shows Alvaro’s ability to weave textures and melody to incredible effect.

With this record, Divorce From New York solidifies his position as one of Europe’s most authentic and original beatmakers. With a range of styles and influences ‘Sausalito’ takes us on a dancefloor leaning journey from sun drenched rhythms through to detroit-techno esque programming. With extensive live performances scheduled for Summer 22 (including a performance at Kala Festival) you can expect to hear this one doing damage on the world’s dancefloors.

Captained by Hugo Mari and Josh Byrne, High Praise is a london-based record label and party. A vessel for uplifting music, made with good energy - they have released music from Yadava, EVM128, Lay-Far, Partner Music & more.

Divorce From New York will release ‘Sausalito’ on 2nd September ‘22 via High Praise.

'Body Riddle', ein Highlight des frühen Clark-Katalogs, von Produzenten wie Arca, Rustie und Hudson Mohawke als massgeblicher Einfluß bezeichnet, wurde unter persönlicher Betreuung von Clark neu für mehr Dynamik remastered und erscheint erstmals wieder seit 16 Jahren.

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BIO: Chris Clark arbeitet seit 20 Jahren mit Musik und Ton. Schon in jungen Jahren wurde er von Warp Records gesignt und veröffentlichte bis dato 13 Alben und eine Vielzahl an EPs und Singles. Sein jüngstes Studioalbum 'Playground In A Lake' für das Klassik-Label Deutsche Grammophon verschmolz sein Markenzeichen, die elektronische Musik, mit den Streichertönen des Cellisten Oliver Coates, der Geigerin Rakhi Singh und des Budapest Art Orchestra.

Nach seiner ersten Filmmusik für die Sky/Canal+ TV-Serie 'The Last Panthers' schrieb Clark die Scores zu 'Rellik' (BBC1/HBO) und das Drama 'Kiri' (Channel 4/Hulu). Kürzlich lieferte er die Filmmusik für Apple TV+ 'Lisey's Story', basierend auf Stephen Kings gleichnamigem Roman, sowie für 'Daniel Isn't Real', einem psychologischen Horrorfilm von Spectre Vision, der Produktionsfirma des Nicolas Cage-Kultfilms 'Mandy'. Dieser OST wurde ebenfalls von der Deutschen Grammophon veröffentlicht.

Chris arbeitete mit der Choreografin Melanie Lane zusammen und vertonte 12 zeitgenössische Tanzprojekte, darunter die Aufführung ihres Soloprojekts 'Tilted Fawn' im Sydney Opera House und zuletzt 'Personal Effigies', das im März 2018 mit dem Kier Choreographic Prize ausgezeichnet wurde, sowie 'WOOF' für die renommierte Sydney Dance Company.

Chris' umfangreiches Verzeichnis an Remixen für Künstler wie Thom Yorke, Massive Attack, Depeche Mode, Max Richter, Battles und Nils Frahm wurde 2013 als Doppelalbum 'Feast / Beast' veröffentlicht.

'What's always set Clark apart is his eclecticism, dynamism, and flair for the dramatic... His tracks don't drop as much as they slip or swerve... He'll end a techno album with eight minutes of beatless, sky-cracking ecstasy and it will make sense. He's allergic to the idea of standard sounds and presets. And unlike many of his more insular peers, Clark can be open to sentimentality — not schmaltz — as much as a belief in humanness and all its inexact wonder. In electronic music's never-ending battle between man and machine, he's seeking a third way.' - Pitchfork

With his Arjunamusic label and a growing catalog of category-defying releases, Samuel Rohrer
continues to quietly, yet confidently, make a name for himself as a genuinely unique figure within
the European electronic music realm. Over the past decade he has assembled a repertoire of
music that fills a sadly neglected gap in the modern musical landscape. That is to say, he has
made a number of “electronically”-aided works that never seem to make “electronic-ism” the main
selling point or raison d'être. Rohrer understands that we inhabit a networked media landscape
that no longer sees a novelty value in every synthetic or technological sound, and by realizing
this, he makes a music that fully engages with the present without completely disregarding the
exciting speculative sensibility that has allowed electronic music to solidify into a tradition. His
latest solo album, Hungry Ghosts, again shows the high quality of sonic design that can be
achieved by conceptualizing musical passages as living, breathing entities rather than as
signposts to some still distant reality.
Maybe more so than any of Rohrer’s solo records to date, Hungry Ghosts is the one that
most unambiguously displays the artist as a kind of inspired sound “cultivator” or landscaper
rather than just a straightforward “producer”. The emphasis here seems to be biological growth
processes rendered in musical form, and in fact some track titles namechecking the biodiversity
of the external world (“Slow Fox”, “Ctenophora”) and neurochemistry (“Serotonin”) lend some
additional credence to this interpretation.
As with previous outings, Rohrer starts with his skills as a genre-resistant percussionist
and builds from there, with dense clusters of drum hits and icy cymbal exclamations leading the
way into a wide-open atmosphere full of fragmented phrases, marked with strange reversals or
compressions of time. The percussive portions and other ambiences merge together in such a
way that the latter seems like a kind of shifting, holographic camouflage for the former; an effect
which makes for a greater than usual number of shifts in mood. Rohrer’s already established
ambiguity and mystery are the moods that permeate throughout, to be sure, but there are also
surprising moments of humorous whimsy (the flourishes of cartoon mischief and teasing silences
on the tracks “Human Regression” and “Bodylanguage”), reverence (the optimistic organ swells
and steady sequencer guiding “Ceremonism”), and meditative focus (the slow-motion spectral
waltz of “Treehouse”). Also notable here are very brief etudes, such as “Window Pain,” whose
dark, lush ebb and flow actually seem tailored to repeated or looped listening.
It’s particularly remarkable that almost all of this material is recorded solo and in a “live /
no overdubs” mode, given how much it feels like well-rehearsed ensemble playing, and given the
impeccable timing involved in continually exchanging the sounds at the very forefront of the mix.
And here we come full circle to the idea of “electronic music” mentioned at the beginning here:
instead of making us feel that we are in the presence of some fully-realized form brought back
from “the future,” Rohrer invites us instead to witness fascinating processes of transition and
mutation, and to value them for what they are now as much as for where they are headed.

Temples is a tempting invitation into another world, full of light and movement. From the second the synth comes in this track has got us deep in its pocket. Shotter manages something that is hard to achieve - he has us floating completely, yet steadily carried by tip-toeing metallic rhythm elements and the relentless swells of bright synths. The game changer in the second half is a new, gritty bass quality, which couldn't roll in any more fiercely. At its fullest the track has us in an uncompromising trance, a relentless movement that we don't ever want to escape from. Breaking back down to pleasantly gentle hi-hat reverb-tails and inducing synth patterns Temples lets us down easy, with the unspoken promise to return.

Ueno claims the room to itself completely and immediately. The rise and fall of melodic synth lines lead us through a labyrinth at first, leaving plenty of space for imagination. Before we notice playful call-and-response rhythms are teasing our ears, until the track surrenders itself to an ever-growing wave of synth patterns and their behind-the-beat-delay. It climaxes into a haunting silence with tenuous high-pitched sounds and a clear outer space feel. Finally, all elements lock into a comforting groove, driving us forward, not too fast, not too slow - exactly right.

The track starts off with a blissfully nostalgic vintage-feel - slightly muffled, like the humbling quality you get from an old Technics playing your favourite LP. But don't be fooled, Cube March is bold. And unexpected. Stomping rhythms take over quickly and full-blown gritty synth-stabs cut the air effortlessly, like blades. An unapologetic and careless pumping bass line makes us want to move with every cell in our body. Shotter demonstrates his fearlessness in experimenting with heavy contrasts and elements from different genres here. A break with tastefully placed repetitive rhythm elements is complemented by the constant ebb and flow of melody lines. Both in volume and presence they fluctuate, one handing over the spotlight to the other seamlessly, keeping us hooked until the very end.

This remix lures you away from reality in a matter of seconds, with Definition's signature heavy hitting bass dominating. He expertly weaves shimmery fills into buoyant synth lines and brings us a skilful mix of dark minimal techno, breaks and infectious monster synth lines. Every so often, he adds a new layer, increasing the depth of the track, before letting it all crumble in a breakdown where time stops and tension grows, as we impatiently await the next rise to carry us away. The lengthy build-ups give this remix the energy to fill any room, easily. It is subtle, yet propulsive, too - a lane that Definition seems to manage regularly.

Three years after Reno Wurzbacher’s entry into the series, Cook Strummer now offers up his own Berlin Gets Physical, a collection of all-new and exclusive tracks.

Berlin-based, Belgium-born Strummer has been a Get Physical associate for several years. He has dropped various singles including the standout 'Rising' which also featured on the Words Don't Come Easy series, and always crafts the perfect mix of rhythm and melody with plenty of hints of his homeland's famous cold wave sound. He often uses his own voice, drum machines, synths and guitars in his music, and since his debut album in 2018 on LOK Recordings, he has had high profile support from the likes of Laurent Garnier, Adam Port and Ame. This summer, he dropped 'Atmosphere' on Obsolet Records which proved another successful outing and now Berlin Gets Physical finds him digging deep into the famous city's freshest and most essential house sounds across 15 well-sequenced tracks.

His own new offering 'For Berlin' kicks off with a dark and edgy vibe, gothic vocals and tense drums. Glitchy hits and blurting synths add to the prickly atmosphere and immediately lock you in while Los Cabra & Manuel Sahagun's 'Italian Groove' then takes off on waves of serrated dark disco synths and Freudenthal feat. Nowhere People continue that macho disco vibe with the rugged chug and cosmic rays of 'Cipher.'

The twinkling 'Bad Karma' by Marvin Jam & Le Mythe then allows you to catch your breath with a slower, more spacious dub disco sound and the twanging bass riffs and exotic effects of Daniel Jaeger & Valenti's 'Quarantine Cowboys' rebuilds the atmosphere with some innovative house blues. The mid-section brings brain-frying synth work on 'Out Of The Blue', bubbling dub house and disco courtesy of dramasquad's sprawling 'ziggy' and percussive deep house looseness from 'Abayomi.'

After KEENE's rubbery and rolling Afro sounds comes more cosmic house richness from Dan Buri and Max Joni & MUKKIMIAU, the driving tech of Red Pig Flower & Lulla and heady sounds of Mike Book. There is a raw house heaviness to FreedomB's 'State of Shock' and things shut down with Electronic Elephant's tightly coiled minimal drum funk on 'Ask Yourself'.

This on point collection is an authentic snapshot of the contemporary underground sound of the Berlin.

Oslo's Ultima Festival for contemporary music in 2014. The idea was to give revered Norwegian experimental electronic musician Helge Sten, aka Deathprod, access to seminal avant-garde composer Harry Partch's self-designed, custom-made, specialized, invented instruments - an orchestra tuned to just intonation, using up to 43 intervals instead of the standard 12 for the most commonly used Western equal temperament. An artist with a 30+ year career and an uncompromising reputation that reflects the emotional specificity of his uneasy, yet compelling sound, maintained throughout his expansive discography, Sten was an intriguing choice for such a project. Although he attended art school, training in electronic music and sound art, he had little experience with acoustic instruments and can neither read nor write music notation. Yet he's been engaged with Partch's music, and outsider art more generally, since he was a teenager. His resulting piece/composition for the project was originally intended only for performance by Cologne-based Ensemble Musikfabrik, for a series of concerts in five European cities between 2015 and 2018. It's Musikfabrik that undertook the painstaking, expensive process of building an entire set of the composer's creations - the second only to the originals built by Partch himself. They are the professional musicians and virtuosic instrumentalists that had to re-train and re-educate on these unknown and experimental sound sculptures in non-standard tunings. And they house this large, gorgeous physical instrumentarium and deal with the enormous logistics of working with it, sometimes shipping the fragile pieces to other locales via semi-trucks or ships. Because of such monumental efforts, Musikfabrik are notoriously guarded with recordings of the instruments. And rightly so. They're the only ones allowed to perform on them, too. But Sow Your Gold isn't Musikfabrik playing. Instead, Sten spent days and nights alone with the instrumentarium in Cologne. He played the instruments himself while recording, layering the recordings and editing without effects to compose an `audio score' for Musikfabrik to work from in order for the ensemble to perform the piece. (Partch also regularly worked this way, although he would transcribe afterwards. Likewise, Sten worked with a professional arranger to create a detailed score, too.) So, that makes Sow Your Gold an even less likely rarity - partly why its release comes seven years after its creation. If you ask Sten about the album's title, he'll point you to the text he borrowed it from - Michael Maier's Atalanta Fugiens by H.M.E. De Jong, a 1969 study of a 1617 book of alchemical emblems - and notable passages dealing with alchemy, chemistry, and agriculture, all transformative processes. And while that may sound complicated, his takeaway is simple: "You have to break something down to create something new," - a lesson he felt related strongly to his own musical process, especially in this project. So, while Sow Your Gold in the White Foliated Earth is a piece written for specific, oddly tuned, extremely rare and unusual instruments, and for a certain ensemble - namely, some of the finest contemporary musicians in Europe - Sten grew fond of the audio score, recognizing it as coming directly from the creative process in its purest, most natural form. And so from a foliated earth, where obscure tradition, treasured scarcity, immense effort, and patient certainty layer and criss-cross, comes rugged gold, polished to shining by one outsider for another.

A retrospective double LP compilation of the work of dutch producer Aad De Mooy. Specifically focusing on the first half of the 90's with his aliases as Interface, Time Warp and Paradise 3001 on ESP Records. This compilation attempts to encapsulate and expose the masterful prowess of Aad's work as a producer with a focus on maximum dancefloor efficiency. This double LP consists of 10 tracks ranging from downtempo acidic breaky chuggers to full on floor activators channeling tribal and early progressive trance inducing elements perfectly arranged in highly effective compositions. Can't go wrong – all killer no filler is all one can say about Aad's meticulous productions. Compiled by Castro & Nemo and re-mastered for vinyl at manmade mastering.

Issued on BBE Music, “Reflections” is the new album by London based harp player and composer Alina Bzhezhinska, alongside her HipHarpCollective. Following up her critically acclaimed debut album “Inspiration” (Ubuntu 2018), Bzhezhinska puts together a second long player, collaborating with British jazz stars Tony Kofi (Saxophones), Jay Phelps (Trumpet), Julie Walkington (Double Bass) and vocalist Vimala Rowe, strongly supported by international talents Mikele Montolli (Electric Bass), Joel Prime (Percussion), Adam Teixeira (Drums) and Ying Xue (Violin & Viola).

 Alina creates a unique sound on the harp with layered effects and electronics, combining original works and covers to pay homage to some of jazz, funk and hip-hop’s greatest innovators. Throughout the record she draws from a variety of influences, including the likes of Dorothy Ashby’s ‘Afro-Harping’, Alice Coltrane’s spiritual outputs, Joe Henderson’s free-form jazz experimentation, 90s Acid Jazz and Trip Hop.

“This album is very vibrant and reflects directly on London’s multicultural community. We had so much fun making this recording - it truly built up our morale in the middle of the pandemic and I hope our fans will feel this energy too. For ‘Reflections’ I tried to break from any stereotypes and limitations - what you hear is my own choice of sounds and influences, taken from the many mixtapes I've been making since I was a teenager. I put together the music I like to listen to when I am happy or sad, when I feel like dancing or meditating. The tunes we play are my own reflections on what I love the most - a free spirit, courage, innovation and all the beautiful things life gives us. I hope our music can reach people’s hearts and evoke all the spectrum of colours and emotions that only the arts can do.” - Alina Bzhezhinska

 Reflections is released on double LP vinyl, limited edition CD & digital formats.
 

Ghent based psych jazz collective Compro Oro, are set to release new album 'Buy The Dip' on the 2nd September via the groove-obsessed Sdban Ultra label. Having received critical acclaim for their 2020 album 'Simurg' - a collaboration with Murat Ertel, co-founder and frontman of Istanbul's cult psychedelic folk band BaBa ZuLa and his singer partner Esma Ertel - the band's fifth album is less ethno- and more techno-logy, both on a musical and conceptual level.

With tastemaker fans including BBC 6 Music's Gilles Peterson and Stuart Maconie alongside Jazz FM's Jez Nelson, the band's spontaneous quest for psychedelic sounds and jazz grooves has not stopped expanding since their formation in 2014.

After imaginative musical trips to Havana, Mogadishu and Istanbul for previous releases, Compro Oro went looking for sounds and inspirations from other corners of the globe for 'Buy The Dip'. Synthesizers and electronic effects spice up Compro Oro's distinctive musical marriage of vibraphones, electric guitars, jazzfunk rhythms, exotic percussions and dubby bass patterns. Band leader and composer Wim Segers created these new compositions often on piano or vibes in a more analogue way, leaving enough room for his band mates to colour each track when fine tuning the song.

Segers was inspired by the world of crypto markets and the specific concept of 'buying the dip': bitcoin diggers who play the markets at specific 'low' moments to gain higher profits when prices go up again. Are we all reduced to consuming creatures, seeking for nothing more than the thrill of pointless spending and endless profits? It's a fairly philosophical question - especially for an instrumental album - but it's key for the punchy and eclectic sounds on 'Ben Hur' and 'Bitcoins'.

Apart from those synths and fx, a fair bunch of neo-noir western vibes sprout up on this album as well - think detuned piano's, flamenco-like guitars, rattling snare drums, and imminent whistles. Add to that some laid back sunny pop sounds ('Kayak'), off-hook and swaying Turkish psychedelica ('Karsilama') and even some haunted, kraut-ish vocal parts ('Dungeon'), it's evident Compro Oro has a musical voice without any equal in Belgium and beyond.

Compro Oro released their first album 'Transatlantic' in 2015, an ode to jazz vibraphonist Cal Tjader, an icon of the 1950's Latin jazz movement. The release received critical acclaim back home, lauded in the press as a drunken mix of Buena Vista Social Club and guitarist Marc Ribot's, Cubanos Postizos. Subsequent live shows have been called a celebration for the hips, the ear and the soul.

2017 saw the release of 'Bombarda', a bold EP that sailed South and East of Cuba, incorporating different ethnic rhythms and melodies in elaborate jams. No palm trees and cocktails in Havana this time, but instead dingy basements and LSD in West African cities. The critically acclaimed 'Suburban Exotica' followed in 2019 with 'Simurg', released in 2020, earning the band global success.

Cristi Cons lands with his debut on Adam's Bite, serving up two pristine cuts of electronic wizardry. The label has previously meddled in strong 90ies aesthetics, delivering starry-eyed homages to days long gone. With the eternal wunderkind at the controls, things get kicked up another notch: following efforts from his peers, he's unearthing, deconstructing, and reassembling some of Frankfurt's halcyon days' most essential sonics.

Drop the needle on the A side to access „Black Swan”, a contemporary house burner perfectly imagining the early trance experiments heard in the dark womb of dance music history. Sprawling across the flipside, „Ahead of the Curve” finds Cristi Cons exploring the psychedelic side of this sound, revealing delicate details to lose your mind in – and a playful bassline keeping bodies earthbound and flowing. Zipping and zapping from Goa to Mainlandia via Bucharest, there's plenty to fall in love with here. Over and over again.

Energy and inspiration come from the Gwoka. From these hands which, when they are not a raised fist, pound the drums, proud of their roots and of their Guadeloupean identity.
This is where Celia Wa comes from, from all that she inherited by spending her childhood between the West Indies and France.

The first years of her life were spent discovering the musical soul of the island, letting the seven gwoka rhythms seep into her until they became an integral part of her. The following years were spent discovering reggae, salsa, jazz and the omnipresent hip hop. Music whose original source was close to her, but to which she only opened up after having travelled thousands of kilometres.

After two self-produced EPs, Wastral is the sum of these inspirations and influences. Born in the acoustic, it is under the modern and futuristic production of Victor Vagh (producer of Flavia Coelo) that the seven tracks were revealed and then sublimated. Dissipated in the vaporous arrangements, softened under the effect of the synthetic layers, the organic was meticulously covered with an electro varnish disturbed by the echoes and reverbs of the dub. Celia Wa's soaring, twirling flute grazes or stirring the groove, her lyrics reviving the memory of her island. In Creole or in English, they tell the story in the present tense without forgetting the past. A past full of the sounds of struggles, of clashing chains and cracking whips, marks that have disappeared from bodies but remain deeply rooted in families and history. New feminine signature at Heavenly Sweetness, Celia Wa draws with Wastral the map of an avant-garde stellar journey in which the musical star of Guadeloupe shines the brightest.

M-High makes his LOCUS debut with his four-track EP, ‘Enchant Me’.

With Amsterdam’s house scene continuing to flourish, M-High has seen his stock surge in recent months. Still young in the game, his releases and remixes via labels such as META, Moxy Muzik and Politics Of Dancing have seen him flying high alongside his fellow compatriots while also evolving from a label regular to A&R duties at PIV alongside founder Prunk. Having featured for the label’s New Year’s Day party in London, the Dutchman touches down on LOCUS for the first time with four fresh productions via his ‘Enchant Me’ EP.

Title cut ‘Enchant Me’ is a slick and classy effort fusing rich chords and skipping drums with zipping acid lines, while ‘Do You Even Groove’ pairs things back as rolling drums and sweeping electronics zig-zag through sparse textures. Next, ‘Endless Whispers’ combines sharp organ stabs with breezy pads and warm basslines, with the low-end heavy ‘Faded Senses’ closing the show and offering up yet more late-night dancefloor grooves.

Deux Filles was not, in fact, two girls despite what the group name and its elaborate hoax of a backstory suggest. No, they were not Gemini Forque and Claudine Coule, French women who met as teenagers under tragic circumstances and became fast friends, recording two albums together before disappearing into the ether. In reality, Deux Filles was Simon Fisher Turner and Colin Lloyd Tucker, a UK duo who first worked together in an early incarnation of The The.

Straddling the line between experimental and pop, Turner was an actor and teen singing star who later composed soundtracks for the iconic queer filmmaker Derek Jarman while Tucker’s career began as an engineer for the famed UK library music studio, De Wolfe, before forming experimental wave group The Gadgets. In Deux Filles, the duo found an outlet for their least commercial tendencies, combining lo-fi proto-dream-pop instrumentals with samples, tape experiments, ambient textures, and drum machines. Even in the vibrant, seemingly endless well of UK DIY, Deux Filles stand out.

Silence & Wisdom – the duo’s 1982 debut – is a series of musical vignettes, like the score of an unrealized arthouse film. Blending processed guitars, sheets of synthesizers, echoey pianos, and washed-out vocal snippets to surprisingly varied effect, the album is recommended for fans of Durutti Column and Virginia Astley’s From Gardens Where We Feel Secure.

Marbled Vinyl
In the wake of Portable’s acclaimed album My Sentient Shadow comes a trio of remixes which expand on his unique slant on techno and synth-pop. Finding three artists who reflect his own experimental
tendencies within dance music, Alan Abraham’s original productions head into unexpected new places while retaining the physical, club-ready energy he manages to instill in his own creations.
A true auteur within techno, DJ Qu brings a sense of poise and drama to ‘The Spacetime Curvature’ as he patiently builds the track into a fierce peak time monster driven by snarling bass and his signature sizzling, shuffled percussion.
Patrice Scott has a reliably smooth, immersive approach to deep Detroit house, and it lends itself beautifully to Abraham’s melancholic vocal on ‘I Feel Stronger Now’.
Leaning in on the jazz dimension of his wide-ranging electronica, Call Super revels in the sweetness of ‘Ripple Effect’ and places delicate piano playing upfront before slipping into a relaxed, sentimental kind of garage and eventually edging towards an uplifting, off-centre strain of house music.
Individual in their own right and yet naturally entwined with the emotional intention of the original versions, this is a set of remixes which pay full credit to the source material while offering something
you won’t expect, like a great remix should do.

Old-School-Hip-Hop how it has to be! Creamy soul samples and sing-along choruses. With this release we celebrate 2 things: our (Lonestar’s) 20th anniversary (yes, we’re old!) and the 10th anniversary of this excellent album. It was originally released only in a small edition on vinyl done by the band. Now it gets a proper re-release with an exclusive-coloured version. But it’s limited to only 300 copies. So be fast or regret it later! "Party people hold onto your hats!" Ugly Duckling presents their fifth full-length album Moving at Breakneck Speed. After more than a decade in the music business, Young Einstein, Andy Cooper and Dizzy Dustin are well accustomed to the recording process. For their latest LP, the boys dug deep into their bag of tricks to create what they feel is their most dynamic and complete release to date. Moving at Breakneck Speed is an exciting and musically exotic adventure story that has our desperate heroes circling the globe to outrun an evil gang of super-criminals determined to put an end to UD once and for all. The record is made up of 14 power packed tracks that showcase Ugly Duckling’s classic production sound as well as the flavourful and humorously soulful vocal styles of Dizzy and Andy. “By the time you work on your fifth record, you ought to know how to do it, right?” asks Andy, “I think we put all of the pieces together to make a really, really good album”. We've made a habit of finding talented artists to create our artwork and this album is certainly no exception. This time around we enlisted the help of Justin Ridge. A native of smoggy Southern California, Justin has enjoyed making silly drawings and directing on animated shows like Avatar: The Last Airbender, Star Wars: Clone Wars, The Cleveland Show, and most recently Black Dynamite: The Animated Series. You can see more of his stuff on his website at justinridgeart. It has been a pleasure working with Justin on this venture and look forward to seeing what the future has in store for this very gifted animator. Also contributing his talents to this album is photographer Noel J. Hadley. We have Noel to thank for the awesome photos that you see displayed throughout the site. Noel's specialty is actually wedding photos, but he was kind enough to join us on a fun-filled afternoon in Los Angeles to capture the theme images for the new album. He was also along for the ride during the filming of the Elevation video, set to be released later this year. You can check out photos from the video shoot on Noel's blog. In addition, there are a number of people who donated their time and effort to help bring this album to life. Comedian TJ Miller can be seen in the Elevation video, a combination live-action/cartoon which will be animated by Justin Ridge. We would also like to thank Andy Carpenter, Jon St. James, Josh Barlow, Josh Fischel, Victor, Dago, Tamika, Tiko, Hiroko, Missy, Brian, Ashley-Dominique, Clout, and the entire Tru Beatz Crew for their contributions. You are all valued members of the UD family. Track listing: Keep Movin’; Momentum; $100 Weekend; Elevation; I Wonder Where She Is Now; One Horse Town; Anything Can Happen (In The Big City); How It Used To Be; Einstein Got A Monkey; Run For The Light; Sprint!; The Homecoming; The Breakneck Theme; Endless Summer

Tape

The third LP from the New Zealand quartet houses 12 jewels of tight, guitar-heavy songs that worm their way into your head, an incandescent collision of power-pop and skuzz. With Expert, The Beths wanted to make an album meant to be experienced live, for both the listeners and themselves. They wanted it to be fun -- to hear, to play -- in spite of the prickling anxiety throughout the lyrics, the fear of change and struggle to cope.

Most of Expert was recorded at guitarist Jonathan Pearce’s studio on Karangahape Road in Tāmaki Makaurau, Aotearoa (Auckland, New Zealand) -- and sometimes in the building's cavernous stairwell at 1am -- toward the end of 2021, until they were interrupted by a four-month national lockdown. They traded notes remotely for months, songwriting from afar and fleshing out the arrangements alone, the first time they’d written together in such a way. The following February, The Beths left the country for the first time in more than two years to tour across the US, and simultaneously finish mixing the album on the road. That latter half felt more collaborative, with everyone on-hand to trade notes in real time, until it all culminated in a chaotic three-day studio mad-dash in Los Angeles. There, Expert finally became the record they were hearing in their heads.

Expert is an extension of the same skuzzy palette the band has built across their catalog, pop hooks embedded in incisive indie rock. The album’s title track “Expert In A Dying Field” introduces the thesis for the record: “How does it feel to be an expert in a dying field? How do you know it’s over when you can’t let go?” Stokes asks. “Love is learned over time ‘til you’re an expert in a dying field.”

The rest is a capsule of The Beths’ most electrifying and exciting output, a sonic spectrum: “Your Side” is a forlorn and sincere love song, emotive; while “Silence is Golden,” with its propulsive drum line and stop-start staccato of a guitar line winding up and down, is one of the band’s sharpest and most driving. “When You Know You Know” skews a bit groovier, pure pop and a natural addition to the band’s live set. “Knees Deep” was written last minute, but yields one of the best guitar lines on Expert. There’s a certain chaos across the 12 tracks, the palpable joy of playing music with long-time friends colliding with the raw nerves of pain.

Stokes strings it all together through her singular songwriting lens, earnest and self-effacing, zeroing in on the granules of doubt and how they snowball. Did I do the wrong thing? Or did you? And are we still good people at the end of it? She isn’t interested in villains, but instead interested in just telling the story. That insecurity and thoughtfulness, translated into universality and understanding, has been the guiding light of The Beths’ output since 2016. In the face of pain, there’s no dwelling on internal anguish - instead, through The Beths’ musi

If the name Seb Martel is still unknown to you, the guitarist appears on the credits of classic albums from Tony Allen, Femi Kuti, Morcheeba or Blackalicious. Saturn 63, his new album on InFiné is dedicated to the exploration of the electric guitar in all its nuances. This new opus made from a selection of 9 guitars from the Musée de la Musique (a branch of the Philharmonie de Paris), and only enriched with the voices of his close collaborators (Camille, Sabrina Bellaouel...), unfolds on fourteen tracks a musical fresco faithful to the historical and geographical heritage of his instrument. The album includes fascinating reworks of Carl Perkins, Benjamin Britten, Chavela Vargas or Vincent Segal in addition to his own compositions. However, adopting a dogmatic approach, and dressing his compositions with sounds and effects collected during the recordings, Martel offers an abstract and experimental edge to Saturm 63, which transports the listener into an out of time experience. Two famous names of the French Chanson, -M- and Mathieu Boogaerts joined Martel to close the album with the snapshot of a speechless improvised session.

2020 veröffentlichten Provinz ihr Top-5-Debütalbum "Wir bauten uns Amerika", wurden in der Folge erst zum "Besten Newcomer" (2020) und im Jahr darauf gleich zur "Besten Band" bei der 1LIVE Krone gewählt, sammelten über 200 Millionen Streams und begeisterten die deutsche Musiklandschaft durch die Bank weg. Nun freut sich die Ravensburger Band, die Veröffentlichung ihres zweiten Albums bekannt geben zu dürfen. Es heißt wie die jüngst veröffentlichte erste Single, "Zorn & Liebe" und erscheint am 16. September 2022 .

Nicht nur der Titel der ersten Single, auch ihr Sound gab bereits einen guten Hinweis auf das nächste Album: Provinz erweitern ihre angestammten Klänge - handgemachte Instrumentierungen, Coming-of-Age-Thematiken, die unpolierte Direktheit der Texte und der fieberhaft dahingeschmetterte Gesang von Frontmann Vincent - um stärker durchproduzierte Elemente, schwebende Synthie-Klangflächen etwa, tanzbare Beats oder Sequencer-Effekte, wie man sie erstmals in ihrem Song "Großstadt" (2021, von der EP "Zu spät um umzudrehen") hören konnte. Daneben gibt die Band weiterhin ihrer Lust an der Kollaboration Raum, die im vergangenen Sommer mit "Liebe zu dritt" an der Seite von JEREMIAS und MAJAN ihren Anfang nahm, zuletzt mit Nina Chuba in "Zorn & Liebe" ihre Fortsetzung
fand und auf dem kommenden Album weitere hochkarätige Feature-Gäste bereithält

Strut continue their Patrice Rushedn original album reissue series with the definitive edition of her influential classic ‘Now’ from 1984.

Released after the global success of ‘Straight From The Heart’ and the huge hit ‘Forget Me Nots’, ‘Now’ stripped back the arrangements and explored a new sonic palette, combining top level musicianship with the evolving studio technology of the mid-‘80s. “By this time, I had built a little home studio,” explains Patrice, “and the new synthesizers and drum machines opened a lot of possibilities. A lot of the pieces on ‘Now’ started off as demos based on these instruments and we just went with it quite naturally, adding guitar, bass and drums.”

The album continued Patrice’s unerring skill in fusing intricate jazz musicianship with infectious grooves. The solid boogie classic ‘Get Off (You Fascinate Me)’ lit up dancefloors and ‘Feels So Real’ became one of Patrice’s best loved songs, an effortless mid-tempo soul stepper. The album is also celebrated for the tender ‘Gotta Find It’ and one of Patrice’s most poignant ballads, the intricate and politically charged ‘To Each His Own’.

The album marked the end of Rushen’s tenure with Elektra before a move to Arista and remains a much-referenced part of her career. “I think it was a great representation of where we were at the time and it may have been a little bit ahead of its time”, she reflects. Famously, Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis had become fans, attending her live shows, and, allegedly, the feel of Janet Jackson’s debut album ‘Control’ two years later was heavily influenced by Rushen’s approach on ‘Now’.

Though Beauty is Useless is only his second solo record, James Devane has been producing and performing music for over two decades, both in isolation and collaboratively (most notably as his duo "En" with Maxwell August Croy). While his first record (s/t on Bremsstrahlung) explored digital manipulation of guitar based loops, Beauty finds Devane replacing the computer processing and aural landscape projection for a couple vintage keyboards, modular based effects and most notably a drum machine. Evoking elements of German minimal techno, Beauty is a rich, focused discovery of process and restraint where less is refreshingly more.

3rd album of kaleidoscopic 60s psych pop from Glasgow quartet, feat. members of The Wharves, Nightshift and Current Affairs. Now in their 5th year of existence, Order of the Toad forge onwards with 12 frenetic new compositions, pulled together throughout windows of opportunity during the covid era. Recently a four piece (new guitarist Fionnan joining the Order just before the lockdowns began), Gemma Fleet (Current Affairs/ ex- The Wharves/Kasms) remains the spiritual lynchpin and main energy conductor from which Chris Taylor (Personality Toilet/Open Face), Andrew Doig (Robert Sotelo/Nightshift) and of course now Fionnan (Open Face) are powered. With added twin guitar dimensionality, the band flirt with an 80s new wave sound at times on Spirit Man, garnishing their regular sound with new hues of blue and purple atop the amphibious green of previous efforts. ‘Subterranean’ which opens the set is evidence of a B52s style composite, Doig’s now familiar faux organ guitar franken-sound holding steady beneath the wild and youthful six string movement that Fionnan brings to the toadstool. Elsewhere Taylor takes the lead Vox on ‘Salt of the Earth’, ‘Upstairs Downstairs’ and ‘The Dumbening’, all further progressions of the ensemble’s sound. Song structure and chord elements subtly mutate away from the 60’s nucleus of yore, Taylor bringing a Kevin Ayers meets Bill Callahan vocal approach to his cleverly assembled lyrical narratives, the band weaving about tempos with eccentric colour around him. Of course Fleet’s voice is central throughout, always simultaneous with her precise elasticity on the 4 string bass guitar, providing the likes of ‘Golden Rod’ with a sweeping Grace Slick meets Dolly Parton wail, a hollering Kate Bush style octave leap during the kinetic ‘Fog Horn’ and the fast paced crescendo of hollers at the back end of ‘Beyond the Pale’, a breathless 4 chord slammer. Her graceful and acute vocalisms paint the world of Order of the Toad and never before as vibrantly.

Gazelle Twin, Lali Puna, This Mortal Coil, Slow Walkers, Atlas Sound, Bowery Electric, Broadcast Press Release: Snakeskin is an album of visionary electronic dream pop, shapeshifting above ambient and industrial undercurrents. It is moody, unsettling, luminous – the culmination of a decade of collaboration and friendship between Lebanese producer/musician/ engineer Fadi Tabbal and singer-songwriter Julia Sabra from Beirut-based indie trio Postcards. The duo began working on Snakeskin in the aftermath of the August 2020 Beirut port explosion, which killed at least 218 people, injured 7,000, and left over 300,000 people homeless. Indeed, Julia's home was destroyed by the explosion and her partner and bandmate Pascal badly injured. The first song that they wrote together afterwards was 'Roots', which closes out the album and was composed for the Ruptured-curated series The Drone Sessions in the fall of 2020. Snakeskin utilizes tape loops, synthesizers, vocals, and drum machines, combining Julia’s pop-inspired melodies and choral roots (an echo from her religious upbringing) with Fadi’s affinity for minimalism and musique concrète. The album seamlessly incorporates the melancholy electro-pop of 'All The Birds', the quiet menace of 'In Our Garden' (long-lost treasures, ancient lies / another buried paradise), and the beat-driven 'Signs'. The title track sums up their frame of mind, beginning as a lullaby and evolving into a glittering tapestry of distortion and feedback. As the artists write, Snakeskin is a product of "the disappearance of life as we know it, and with it the decay of nature and living creatures. There is no rebirth, no renewal. It’s about what it means to feel at home in such a place." Some tracks were also inspired by events happening in the surrounding region, such as the invasion of Armenia by Azerbaijan and the Palestinian uprising of May 2021 in Sheikh Jarrah - both events shedding light on relationships to home and land across the wider region. That such compelling art can emerge from unceasing tragedy may be the ultimate testament to human resilience and the pursuit of freedom and justice. "The moon speaks in tongues we can't discern / A plastic dove hangs from a cypress branch / Haven't you heard? / Nothing grows here anymore / The air is burnt / Nothing grows..." Highlights: – This is the second volume in the Corrosion Series, a collaborative effort by Beacon Sound and Ruptured, and the sixth collaboration between the two labels. – Fadi used samples of Julia's voice on his fifth solo album Subject to Potential Errors and Distortions (2020, Beacon Sound/Ruptured) – The Tunefork Studios team, led by Fadi, administered the Beirut Musician's Fund after the port explosion, as covered by Pitchfork, NME, and the Financial Times. – Julia's band Postcards released their third full-length album After The Fire, Before The End on Berlin label T3 Records in 2021 and are currently touring Europe. Credits: All music composed, performed and produced by Julia Sabra and Fadi Tabbal between November 2020 and December 2022. Lyrics by Julia Sabra. Drum samples by Pascal Semerdjian. Recorded by Fadi Tabbal, mixed by Sary Moussa and Fadi Tabbal at Tunefork Studios, Beirut. Cover photo by Lujain Jo. Design by Josette 'ZOoz' Khalil. Mastered by Rashad Becker. Bios: Julia Sabra is a Lebanese musician, songwriter and composer. She co-founded acclaimed Lebanese dream-pop outfit Postcards in 2013 and is the band’s multi-instrumentalist, lead singer and lyricist. Postcards have released two EPs (2013, 2015) and three albums (2018, 2020, 2021) and have been regularly touring Europe and the Middle East since 2015. She has been the manager of Tunefork Studios since 2017. Lebanese musician, producer, and sound engineer Fadi Tabbal’s work consist of minimalist pieces ranging from ambient and electronic to drone and contemporary classical. He has released six solo albums and has collaborated with various musicians, artists and filmmakers through the years. Often referred to as “the hardest-working person in Lebanon’s alternative music scene”, Tabbal established Tunefork Studios, a collective of producers, engineers and musicians, which has helped shape Beirut's contemporary music scene since 2006.

Ryuichi Sakamoto, Daniel Lanois, Loscil, K Leimer, Deaf Center, Tangerine Dream, Arvo Pärt Wake is a distillation and reflection of the work of three Portland musicians thrown, like the rest of the world, into forced isolation by the continually-mutating curse of a natural world in disequilibrium. The product of involuntarily inward-looking emotional landscapes, Wake emerged sounding surprisingly expansive and confident. The trio uses a variety of instruments –including harp, fretless bass, piano, and a variety of synthesizers– to conjure sparkling panoramas of the imagination that are deep-pooled and impressionistic, bracing yet comforting. Mike Grabarak and Joshua Ward have performed together for years as a duo under the moniker of Location Services, while Derek Hunter Wilson has primarily worked as a solo composer in the classical realm. For the Points Of No Return compilation, Beacon Sound's 50th release and a benefit for the Beirut Musicians Fund, they recorded a collaborative piece entitled "Interdependence In Solitude" that was so promising the label offered to release an album if they continued down the path they had started upon. The resulting eight songs are simply mesmerizing. Made during a period of change and upheaval in the world and society where many people were disconnected from others, the album is the product of a collage-like dialogue built on trust and patience. While the musicians couldn’t physically be together for much of this time, they began sending musical ideas to one another in a conversational back-and-forth that acted as an anchor of stability – something they found they could turn to and depend on when things felt uncertain elsewhere. This comfort zone led to some transcendent moments of experimentation. “Delicate Need”, for example, features recordings of exaggerated pizzicato that were sampled and then run back through processing effects, which were then subsequently performed live over the original track. As things became less risky on the Covid front, they would occasionally meet for backyard rehearsals. Indeed, a recording of one of these rehearsals became the basis for the opening track “Photo Aware”. Wake will be available later this summer as a limited edition LP, with design work by Berlin-based Studio Bernhardt. The cover painting was created by Portland artist Nate Ethington. Highlights: – Derek was invited by the artist Gregory Euclide (Bon Iver, Erased Tapes) to participate in his label project, Thesis, along with artists such as Benoit Pioulard, Loscil, and Julianna Barwick. – Derek‘s first and second albums as a solo artist were released by Beacon Sound (Travelogue, 2017; Steel, Wood, & Air, 2019). – Location Services likewise released their 2019 album Reincorporate on the label. – The artists plan to tour together in 2023. Cascadia release shows TBA. Bios: Location Services is the Portland-based project of multi-instrumentalist Mike Grabarek (Magic Fades) and harpist Joshua Ward. They’ve released music on Beacon Sound and Beer On The Rug. They perform both written and improvised music. Derek Hunter Wilson is a composer and multi-instrumentalist based in Portland. He has released two solo albums on Beacon Sound and has also collaborated with visual artist Gregory Euclide for his Thesis Project label, resulting in a split 10" with Spanish musician Rauelsson. He has additionally collaborated with poets Zachary Schomburg and Brandi Katherine Herrera for several sound and performance pieces. He has performed live on the West Coast and in Berlin, sharing the stage with artists such as Colleen, Amulets, and Liima.

Philadelphia rap artist Asher Roth strengthens his relationship with Salt Lake City producer, Heather Grey on the 7-track extended player, Why’s It So Grey Out? The duo’s chemistry first became evident on Roth’s ‘21 collaborative musical, The Greenhouse Effect Vol. 3. Heather Grey’s standout production led to providing the ideal backdrop for Roth’s latest offering, a lyrical exploration of hope versus doubt. Grey’s production interweaves golden age elements with futuristic uncertainty while the formidable duo ask the unfortunate question, “Why’s It So Grey Out?” This seven track EP boasts guests appearances from Like, Blu, Lord Apex, Kota the Friend and is available for pre-order right here courtesy of Fat Beats in a stunning black and white swirl configuration to coincide with the hand-painted artwork, courtesy of Meghan Langley.
TRACKLIST: 1. Me First 2. Tree Hunter 3. Teammates 4. Ratatatattle (feat. Blu, Lord Apex & Kota the Friend)
5. Shake Weight (feat. Like) 6. 12th Night (Bare Naked) 7. Climate Control

On the occasion of Christian Muthspiel's 60th birthday, In+Out Records is
releasing the album 'Simple Songs' for the first time on vinyl - limited to
999 copies worldwide and personally hand-signed by the jubilarian
Aside from Werner Pirchner's "Himmelblau", the nine duos which Christian
Muthspiel composed especially for this album form a cycle of duets in the mood
set by the first track, "Pas de deux tranquille". Muthspiel is featured on trombone,
piano, e- piano and once even on the recorder, alongside Steve Swallow, whose
distinctive sound on the bass guitar is perfectly suited for this project.
Overdubs, loops and other electronic effects were intentionally avoided in order to
focus on the pure quality of the playing. The underlying principle for all of the
compositions on this album was to keep it simple, both in terms of composition
and sound; to seek refinement in simplicity and to follow the natural, consistent
development of one small musical cell per song. The progression of keys, modes
and tempos from one piece to another also played an important role.
The liner notes to this album are by the Austrian writer Christoph Ransmayr, who
writes very pictorially: "When I hear the Simple Songs that Christian Muthspiel has
composed and then he and his companion Steve Swallow have made twirl and
soar and float, I am sometimes transported to a riverbank in summer, where the
branches of a wild elder tree, stones and grasses become the neck and body of a
bass guitar or the tuning slide and bell of a trombone played with thrilling ease."

Mint Condition - A record label focused on excavating the outer fringes of classic House and Techno. Unreleased mixes, classics, overlooked gems and never heard before material, mined from the last 30+ years of contemporary dance music are the order of the day. From Chicago, Detroit and New York to London and beyond. Mint Condition have got their digging hats on to bring you exclusive heat and those rarer than rare jams that have been in your wants list for years.

Dig in...

East Midlands house legend, Charles Webster, relocated to San Francisco in 1992, setting up Spirit Studios in the heart of the city and a highly productive period ensued. The 'White Powder' EP released in 1995, under Charles' Presence moniker is widely regarded as a classic of its genre, up there with any of its contemporaries on Prescription or Murk. All 4 tracks are flawless and groundbreaking in their ability to to draw together elements of soulful deep house, tribal percussion and the deep melodic tech-house sounds emerging from Europe and America's midwest into a unique whole.

EP opener 'Heart' features the haunting vocals of Sarah Jay, the track builds delicately, adding dark bass, before soaring strings lead into a melodic breakdown. $10's deftly programmed drums really deliver the funk, the deep melodic synth and pad progressions are mesmerising, whilst an unforgettable bass-line underpins the journey. Over on the flip 'Giving Love' intro's with gorgeous pad before shuffling percussion and an uplifting piano turn this track into a joyous ride. Lastly 'Powder Chords' sets the controls for heart of the dance floor, heavy kicks launch a much more techno influenced affair, it's dark and brooding but no less effective in its atmosphere and execution.

'White Powder' is all killer, no filler, a highly sought after slab of wax that has achieved cult status amongst the most discerning DJs, record collectors and music heads alike. Legitimately re-released with the full involvement of Charles Webster, lovingly remastered by London's Curve Pusher from the original sources especially for Mint Condition. 100% legit, licensed and released. Dug, remastered, repackaged and brought to you by the caring folks at your favourite reissue label - Mint Condition!

Supported by the world-renowned Aarhus Jazz Orchestra, multi-award winning quartet Kalaha present Tutku, an energetic fusion of jazz, Turkish psychedelic rock and 80's inspired synth-pop. Their most ambitious and adventurous record yet album pairs the self branded "Danish band with world roots" with a big band committed to embracing innovative contemporary jazz and guest star vocalist Hilal Kaya. Formed after an improvised set at 2013's STRØM Festival in Copenhagen, the four members that make up Kalaha share a collective passion for collaboration and an open-minded approach to music making. Each being active members of different corners of the Danish music scene, the result of their combined musical personalities is refreshingly modern cross between thoughtful songwriting and high level jazz-minded musicianship. While their 2021 release 'Mystafa' saw them collaborate with a number of vocalists, 'Tutku' sees the entrancing vocals of Danish/Turkish artist Hilal Kaya as the focal point of the record. Grounded by the driving sounds of Anatolian rock, the nine track work weaves between folk, spiritual jazz, and even disco, serving up a wealth of danceable grooves and rich harmony. Produced by Kalaha themselves, the production style shifts between the close, modern sound of a pop outfit and the expansive, reverberated sound of a 20 piece ensemble. Soaring over the top of AJO's intricate ensemble arrangements are an expansive network of electronic sounds, carefully designed and played by two of Denmark's leading synthesists, Jens "Rumpistol" B. Christiansen and Mikael "Spejderrobot" Elkjær. With careers including international recognition from UK trendsetter Gilles Peterson, their immersive sound-world of melodic synth solos and explosive dub-tinged sound effects transform Tutku into a large ensemble record unlike any other. Completed by legendary drummer Emil de Waal and in-demand guitarist Niclas Knudsen, Kalaha's striking and colourful visual identity shares the Middle Eastern influence of their music and enhances the psychedelic nature of their songs, invoking otherworldly imagery in the listeners' minds and rounding Tutku off as a cohesive, well thought out recorded statement. Line up>> Niclas Knudsen – Guitars, Emil de Waal - Drums amd percussion, Jens "Rumpistol" Christiansen - Synths & vocals, Mikael "Spejderrobot" Elkjær - Synths and Laptop, Hilal Kaya - Lead vocals, Plus: Aarhus Jazz Orchestra

"“The New Backwards” was conceived by Peter “Sleazy” Christopherson in 2007, revisiting stray tracks which hadn’t seemed to gel with the material he had chosen for the more somber “Ape of Naples” from 2005, COIL’s initial posthumous release, a sort of requiem and a kiss-goodbye to his then recently deceased partner John Balance.

Significantly different to its sister release, this album collects the brilliantly chaotic and outrageously rhythmic material from the original sessions for the album that was begun as early as 1993 and had originally been conceptualised as the follow-up to “Love’s Secret Domain”. These songs are as diverse and wild as the places they originated from, partly infamously spawned in Sharon Tate’s former home in the Hollywood Hills, the Nine Inch Nails home base in New Orleans and London’s Swanyard, remixed and restructured with the help of long-term friend Danny Hyde in Thailand, this collection has its own unique flow and an atmosphere not found on any other COIL release.

Both “AYOR” and “Backwards” had by the time the album was first released already become favourites in COIL’s manic live performances. Some of the other tracks had only leaked in demo versions and are here presented updated and polished as Christopherson and Hyde intended them to be heard. It is interesting to consider Balance’s vocal contributions, too. Whilst on the albums COIL did release at the time this material was first put aside (“Black Light District” and “ElpH”) his voice is all but absent, his vocal performances and his lyric writing here are arguably more closely indebted to the previous “Love’s Secret Domain” era, especially the epic “Copacaballa” is noteworthy in that respect.
The New Backwards” effectively became the final official COIL studio release of all new material whilst Peter was still alive and is here presented for the first time fully supervised by Danny Hyde, its co-creator.
The stunning cover uses a detail from artist Ian Johnstone’s “Cubic Raven” painting, licensed from the estate of IJ..

It is high time to rediscover this timeless album with the Infinite Fog release boasting eight further tracks of previously unheard material from the same sessions, rough working stages and surprising remixes which will surely delight the dedicated COIL archaeologists, as they shine yet another light on the creative process and on what could have been.

Recorded at Swanyard, London and at Nothing Studios, New Orleans, 1996.
Thanks to everyone there, especially Trent Reznor who made it all possible.
Written & Produced by Coil & Danny Hyde.
Remixed by Peter Christopherson & Danny Hyde, Bangkok 2007.
For that session Coil were: Peter Christopherson, Jhonn Balance & Drew McDowall.
Mastered by Jessica Thompson.
Front artwork by Ian Johnstone.
Artwork licensed from The Estate of Ian Johnstone.
Layout Cold Graves and Oleg Galay."

Limited Pressing.

Invisible City Editions returns with an official repress of a fantastic double-sided private press rarity from 1989 Detroit. Featuring two legendary Inner City alumni Producer/keyboardist Engineer Art Forest and Inner City background vocalist dancer/singer Shawn Pittman. On the A side a lush slow modern soul slow burner “Dreams'' features a deep,spatial throbbing bass line with glistening synths floating underneath cool angelic hypnotic vocals by Ms Pittman.” 'Dreams are only Dreams till you make it real' chants Shawn Pittman and we’re lead down a dazzling maze of mirrors. With “I'm Losing Control (Extended Bass-ment Club Mix)” on the flipside a wild late night warehouse dub remix features sci-fi vocal effects,fostex tape loops and ultra-heavy bass and driving drum machines. Minimal lush soul perfect for early mornings and the post-club world and a wild sci-fi house winner for late night club sessions. An IC fave! Remastered by Brandenberg/The Carvery (Note: we’ve also removed the drum machine going out of sync that was on the original press) Official Repress via Art Forest and his label Wildboy.Essential stuff!

Art Forest is an Electronic Engineer and production wizard from Detroit Michigan. He originally recorded 2 of Inner CItys’ Biggest Hits “Good Life” and “Big Fun” and continues to record to this day. Art Forest still finds and repairs equipment to add to his studio today. He also recorded for Paula Abdul “Straight Up” and Madonnas’ “Justify My Love” Shawn Pittman was a singer and dancer from Detroit who was a good friend of Inner City vocalist Paris Grey. Shawn Pittman sang backing vocals and harmonies on “Good Life” and “Big Fun”.

Under The Sun is the follow-up to the astonishing Roots and contains yet more absolutely essential Nucleus material. Originally released on Vertigo in 1974, Under The Sun was never re-pressed and of course those original copies are now very tricky to score. Like all the Nucleus records, it’s aged ridiculously well and this Be With re-issue, re-mastered from the original analogue tapes, shows off just why this deserves to be back in press.

Genius trumpeter and visionary composer Ian Carr was one of the most respected British musicians of his era. He was a true pioneer and saw the potential in fusing the worlds of jazz with rock, just as Miles Davis and The Tony Williams Lifetime did in the US. In late 1969, following the demise of the Rendell-Carr quintet, and tiring of British jazz, Carr assembled the legendary Nucleus. Regarding music as a continuous process, Nucleus refused to “recognise rigid boundaries” and worked on delivering what they saw as a “total musical experience”. We can get behind that.

Under bandleader Carr, Nucleus existed as a fluid line-up of inventive, skilled musicians. This constant evolution and revolution was all part of the continuous musical exploration and discovery that took jazz to new levels. And the music has stayed relevant. To steal a line from a recent review of our re-issue of Roots, when it comes to anything Nucleus “it’s basically already hip-hop”.

Under The Sun opens with the crisp, medium tempo “In Procession”. It’s a typically inventive Carr track with layers of dramatic, riff-led themes and repeating brass blasts. Bryan Spring’s “The Addison Trip” is a moody funk piece, with Kieran White guesting on wordless vocals. Roger Sutton contributes some fine bass guitar on this track, particularly the great solo at around the two minute mark. The excellently-named cool, jazzy ballad “Pastoral Graffiti” paints bucolic pictures with its mellow sonics, plaintive horns and Bob Bertles’ flute.

Sutton’s superb, bass-driven “New Life” brings a different dynamic. Horns, guitar and electric piano swirl over the head-nod bass motif and a killer Ken Shaw guitar solo. A false fade out halfway through brings in a new bass riff that’s picked up by the whole ensemble as Carr wah-wah noodles over the top. It’s full-on. The gorgeous, laidback “A Taste of Sarsaparilla” is exactly that - closing out the first side with a cute blast of what is to come over on the killer flip.

The whole of Under The Sun’s second side is a suite of three “Themes” written by Ian Carr. The uptempo first theme “Sarsaparilla” is comfortably one of Nucleus’ best. What would’ve been a cluttered mess in the hands of most is instead an effortless lesson in clarity and zing. Between Geoff Castle’s electric piano solo, the relentless funky drumming and more wild wah-wah trumpet from Carr, Nucleus show you how it’s done.

The languid groove of second theme “Feast Alfresco” is much more typical of “classic” Nucleus and sounds like something that might’ve been on Roots. A Bertles baritone solo and a guitar solo from Shaw weave around the core, serpentine brass theme.

The darker “Rites of Man”, the third and final theme, is a slow build to a solid bass and electric piano riff, shored up by some tricky brass. Carr takes the theme even further and there’s still plenty of room for soloing from all corners of the Nucleus. As usual, the dynamic Sutton/Spring, bass/drums duo is holding down the rhythm for the rest to jam around.

This Be With edition of Under The Sun has been re-mastered from the original Vertigo master tapes, Simon Francis’ mastering working together with Pete Norman’s cut to weave their usual magic with these wonderful recordings. The bleak, rain-dappled cover matches the melancholic vibe of the record and has been restored as the finishing touch to this long overdue re-issue.

Opening with the buzz of a smartphone on vibrate, First Hate’s sophomore album Cotton Candy launches to life with “Someone New,” a synth-driven statement of intent. The Danish duo’s charged songs are rooted in a recognizable universe, but traverse a wide array of genre experiments and pop detours. Cotton Candy follows the quest of its protagonist stumbling through a crumbling world, winning and losing lovers, swinging from extreme highs to hopeless lows. The title alludes to transience and ecstasy, the surge of a sugar rush before nausea sets in, the way cotton candy dissolves into nothingness leaving only sticky fingers. Throughout, the productions glitter with synthetic detail and hypermodern finesse, effervescent but elusive. “Life is a rollercoaster and we’ve ridden the ups and downs.” During the recording sessions, a collage of Copenhagen musicians flowed through the studio. First Hate is a fixture of the city’s creative community, but ultimately exists in their own sphere, carving a niche as parallel universe pop stars, embracing sweet and bitter, risk and reward: “Sometimes the ones who love you most are the ones who hold you back.” Anton and Joakim grew up in Copenhagen and met when they were 15 through common friends on the street where they lived. “I didn’t enjoy being home so I used to stay at my friend Jakob's basement in an old church on Willemoesgade street,” says Wei. “His mom was the priest. She baptized Anton at age eight during his Jesus phase when he demanded a late baptism from his atheist parents. Jakob was friends with Elias who lived up in Anton’s end and they introduced us to each other. One summer my parents finally married after 20 years of dating. Joakim moved in for two weeks and we accidentally trashed the apartment while they were on their honeymoon. Later on Jakob, Elias, and two other friends, Dan and Johan, formed the band Iceage. Watching our friends’ growing success was a catalyst in creating our own project. At that point everybody in our friend group was making punk music, so the most punk thing we could think to do was start a pop duo.” The First Hate catalog comprises more than nine years of work, including their 2017 cult classic, A Prayer For The Unemployed, a collaborative album Dittes Bog, two EPs and several singles. All of the recordings are self-produced, until they are ready to be finished in the studio. “We have sort of a twin alliance. Like couples finishing each other’s spaghetti at restaurants, we finish each other’s music. Having people enter this sacred mix has been such a pleasure.” On stage Anton and Joakim embody the contrasting yet complimentary energies of yin and yang: Joakim pushing buttons, steering the ship, working synths and samplers with harmonious calm, while Anton’s body bullets around the stage, pounding out his kinetic dance moves. The name Anton means fragile flower, an apt metaphor for his stage presence. A fragile flower shooting through concrete. To behold a performer who consistently delivers such intense live performances is a rare pleasure. “Live means love. When everything is right. When we meet the audience heart to heart. Then the planet spins even faster.” First Hate has performed over a hundred shows across Europe, Asia, the U.S., and Russia, both as headliners and alongside fellow Copenhagen acts Iceage, Lust For Youth, Communions, Soho Rezanejad, Trentemøller and Grand Prix. “We are on a quest of love, yes it’s as cheesy as that.”