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Ayô Dele — which means "joy comes to me" in Yoruba — is neither a slogan nor a promised miracle. It is a breath of fresh air. That of an album born in the interstices, where the word find their way between shadow and light, between the disorder of the worldand the impulse to be .
At the heart of the project, Julien Gervaix and Damien Tesson, multi-instrumentalist beatmakers, share a groove language that is both dense and airy, where every detail breathes and finds its place.
With background in Afrobeat, Dub, Funk, Soul, Roots Reggae, and Electronic Music, they treat the studio to be their playground. Their music is a hybrid groove that speaks to the body: round or bouncing basslines, brass oscillating between melodic warmth and funk energy, textured guitars, arpeggios, enveloping Rhodes, clavinet that slides, presses, and embraces. Everything comes together with precision and flexibility, in an inventive and warm composition. The meeting of their experiences and sensibilities gives rise to open, generous music, made for dancing and vibration.
With Ayô Dele , Ireke is embarking on a new chapter: the duo is refining its style,allowing the voices to breathe. The groove remains the driving force but opens up to intimacy. This intimacy is carried by two unique female voices: Nayel Hoxo, a Beninese-Nigerian singer/rapper, and Agnès Hélène, who has already made a name for herself on Tropikadelic with "Petit a Petit". They don't sing side-by-side; they coexist, respond to each other, and sometimes intersect. But each follows her own path: Nayel, with the power of her words in Yoruba, offers songs of elevation, healing, and resistance — a light born in the cracks Agnès explores these cracks themselves: what wavers within us, what reinvents itself in bonds, glances, and gestures.
For one track, Olivya (Dowdelin) joins this dialogue in Martinican Creole. Her sunny soul sketches the contours of gentle resistance and celebrates rediscovered light.
Ayô Dele embodies a quiet yet radical determination: to smooth nothing over, to let plurality, contradictory emotions, and mixed heritage live. An album that moves forward through vibrations, that speaks of emancipation without slogans, love without clichés, anger without uproar.
Two women, two inner worlds: a sensitive complicity, a shared breath. Music that seeks not effect, but echo, weaving a living soundscape between reinvented traditions and contemporary textures. An alchemy faithful to the spirit of Underdog Records, where music unites and brings people together. Ayô Dele : "joy comes to me." A lucid joy, crossed by shadows, patiently regained. Music that welcomes, releases, gives, and in doing so, makes us feel good.
In a saturated world, Ayô Dele chooses nuance: transmission without emphasis, joy without naivety. An album that vibrates more than it demonstrates, that connects more than it imposes, and which, in its quiet clarity, resonates with a deep desire to be fully alive.

After a first cosmic cruise through Mediterranean Space Disco by TORRE, Musiq Voyage returns with its second release — this time from one of its own founders, Arno E. Mathieu.
Known for his label collaborations with NYC legend Joe Claussell, for his acclaimed Circumstances Of Chaos LP, and many releases on iconic labels like Compost, Yoruba, Real Tone, Deeply Rooted and Africanism, Arno has spent over two decades jamming & crafting deep, balearic & psychedelic journeys across house and electronic realms.
With MV002, he comes home, channeling the spirit of his native Provence and the sun-drenched pulse of the Mediterranean.
Arno delivers two evocative tracks:
“Phoenix” – an 80’s-inspired electronic resurrection, rising from the ashes on waves of funky basslines, soaring synths, and cosmic guitars.
“L’Amoragie” – a cosmic disco odyssey blending “Amore” and “Hémorragie” into one passionate eruption of love and sound — powered by hypnotic drums, anthemic synths, and euphoric choirs.
Mediterranean soul, space disco energy, and emotional storytelling — Musiq Voyage continues its journey.
Enjoy the trip.

Lucy Duncombe and Feronia Wennborg compose a modern symphony for virtual choir on 'Joy, Oh I Missed You', muddling sound poetry with Nuno Canavarro and ‘Systemische'-style machine-damaged surrealism. Like a mashup of Lee Gamble's 'Models', Akira Rabelais' 'Spellewauerynsherde' and Robert Ashley's timeless 'Automatic Writing’ screwed to perfection.

Duncombe and Wennborg have been chewing over ‘Joy, Oh I Missed You’ for four long years, working their process until they were "queasily intimate" with their arsenal of artificial voice tools. Tracing the history of the technology, from voice synthesisers and chatbots to AI voice analysis tools, the duo experiment relentlessly to develop a digital-age response to IRL extended vocal technique - think François Dufrêne, Yoko Ono or Phew. Less interested in replicating human sounds exactly, they instead test how various tools might cough up their own idiosyncratic tics as they stretch and stutter through attempts to mimic their "fleshware" counterparts.

Duncombe's got prior form here, most recently re-synthesising her voice on the brilliantly oily 'Sunset, She Exclaims' 45 for Modern Love, following a stunner for 12th Isle in 2021. Wennborg brings along experience from her tenure as one half of microsound duo soft tissue, whose 2022 LP 'hi leaves' (Students of Decay) was a haptic treasure. These approaches mesh remarkably well on their first collaborative full-length, with Duncombe's eerie bio-electronic incantations providing the ideal foil for Wennborg's carbonated hardware processes. It's not completely clear where the human voice ends and the zeroes and ones begin on 'Your Lips, Covering Your Teeth', as rolling cyborg syllables tumble over OS-startup womps and surprisingly svelte outcroppings of glassy, synthetic glitches. The music is surprisingly mannered, a sonic reflection of the cover, where a mouth is pixellated until only colour swatches remain. Duncombe and Wennborg trace the gradual erosion of their voices, leaning into the chaos as their various tools veer off into unique patterns of failure.

What sounds like a far-off, ghosted folk rendition (we're reminded of the Icelandic laments that Rabelais chewed up on 'Spellewauerynsherde') is offset by gnarled, bitcrushed machine faults and pneumatic lip smacks on the brilliant 'Residue', and on 'Brushed My Hair', the duo massage the voice until it sounds like a flute. Assembling stutters and barks and sighs into a celestial chorus alongside time-stretched moans, they create a levitational atmosphere on 'Smell It', freezing the energy from bizarre pitch steps to configure a zonked vocal ensemble.

'Joy, Oh I Missed You’ is an album that, like its source material, constantly morphs, testing the boundaries of its concept repeatedly without bubbling over into conceptual goo. In fact, it's remarkably euphonious, even at its most theoretically abrasive; Duncombe and Wennborg wring out uniquely angelic formations through a process of trial and error that packs a surprising, hefty emotional punch.

Four Flies is thrilled to present the very first release of Gianfranco Reverberi's hidden masterpiece: a mind-blowing soundtrack, possibly his wildest and most daring. This Italian score is sort of a Holy Grail for fans of the spaghetti sound, especially thanks to the legendary track "Psicolimite".


In 1973, a mysterious 45 rpm single surfaced under the name 'Sharon Chatam e la sua Orchestra.' The single seemed to be a harmless cover of the theme from Last Tango in Paris, complete with a typical image from the film. But behind the innocent facade, a secret was hidden: the B-side track, "Psicolimite," was actually the main theme from Rivelazioni. When someone in the United States figured this out and realized the 'Sharon Chatam' moniker was a pseudonym for Reverberi and his team, the price of the record skyrocketed, making it a coveted collectible.


This makes the discovery of the full soundtrack even more exciting, considering that the music Reverberi composed for the infamous film by Renato Polselli - one of the most outrageous and uncompromising Italian genre cinema directors - was thought to be lost forever, perhaps vanished into the depths of some film processing lab. But thanks to the sleuths at Four Flies, this enigmatic masterpiece has been resurrected and presented in all its glory. It's available now as a luxurious gatefold double LP with original artwork by the brilliant Eric Adrian Lee.


While the film, despite some critics praising it as "psychotronic," is a bizarre mishmash of rambling pseudo-psychoanalytic theories and sexual deviance voyeurism, the music stands out as a foremost, vital element, able to exist on its own.


Reverberi's reputation as a serious, refined producer (for artists like Lucio Dalla, Gino Paoli, Luigi Tenco, and many more), however, led him to keep his distance from exploitation films like Rivelazioni. To maintain his image, he had his friend and former schoolmate Umberto Cannone take credit for the score – a tactic he also used for Polselli's next film, Mania (1974).


But this anonymity might have unexpectedly increased his creative freedom, for the score he put together and recorded is experimental, at times raw, and driven by a relentless rhythm section where bass and drums lay down the groove. The use of electronic instruments is impressive for the time, with drum machines and spacey synths creating a dark and dreamlike atmosphere. Psychedelic flutes, piano phrases, crazed percussion, filters, compressors, and jazzy improvisations on sax and vibraphone complete the mix.


The full soundtrack was recovered following the discovery of the original 1-inch, 16-track tapes, which were transferred, mixed, and mastered for optimal listening on both vinyl and digitally, with the digital version featuring 8 bonus tracks.


Available from November 22!

Trip Maps 3 is a compilation of psychedelic / electronic oddities written by The Future Sound of London under various guises.

The Trip maps series (now at Vol.3 ) is created in conjunction with charity label Touched Music.

Live drums and bass mash with bizarre electronics , feels like the past but definitely the Future …….

Dark Entries has raided the bathhouse to bring us Deep Entries: Gay Electronic Excursions 1979-1985, 10 tracks of obscure queer synth bliss. One of Dark Entries' most important missions has been illuminating neglected facets of gay musical history, with crucial archival works by legends like Patrick Cowley, Sylvester, and Man Parrish. On Deep Entries, the label spans 6 years of gay electronics - from sultry to angsty to camp, these songs are overflowing with snappy 808 snares and sinewy analog synth leads. The '80s were a difficult period for many in the gay community as they grappled with the horrors of the HIV/AIDS crisis. The 10 tracks on Deep Entries, varied in genre and vibe, are united in their portraiture of 1980s gay life, and the hope for love or fleeting romance. Previously unreleased cruising soundtracks come courtesy of Patrick Cowley’s “Love Me Hot” featuring vocalist Paul Parker and Boytronic’s “Tonight (Alternate Mix)” set on Hamburg’s famous “Mile of Sin.” Brisbane-based Megamen deliver the proto-electroclash number “Designed for Living,” which prefigures Madonna’s Marlene Dietrich rap in “Vogue.” Trans vocalist Paula "Ula" Villagrá declares, “Everyone is gay!” on Muzak’s “Happy Song,” a skittering tecnopop anthem. Dereck Higgins' “This Was Something” rings like a lost Joy Division cut draped in bizarre effects, and Polar Praxis’ “(I Want) To Be Different” is a seething ode to alterity. Nightmoves’ “Nightdrive,” is best known as the brooding instrumental B-side to their epochal “Transdance.” Transistor Jet’s “Master Of The Universe (BW's f-w)”, Maxx Mann’s “Just Like a Razor” and Bachelor’s Anonymous’ “A Stranger’s Bed” are mood music for the pleasures of BDSM and one-night stands. The record comes housed in a retro bathhouse fantasy sleeve designed by Gwenaël Rattke and includes a double-sided poster with photographs and lyrics. Deep Entries arrives on December 1st in honor of World AIDS day, and proceeds will go to the San Francisco AIDS Foundation.

Number six-up for our Prozpektiva series and for this record we are proud to present a future star, an electronic music producer from Montevideo, Uruguay, Pi. With single track contributions so far on labels such as Holístico Records, White Scar and Lutzifer this is Pi's first full original release - with her trademark oscillations through techno, breakbeat, and electro with melodic tones the future definitely looks bright.

At the helm of a collective immersed in London’s underground house landscape, Bizarre Traxx co-founder Jhobei is keeping things moving in his own unique way, shaping and crafting a sound to call his own. Releasing on labels like Mindhelment, Picnic and Mood Waves while stepping out as 1/3 of trio Felon5, he marries warping and heady territories with loose, spacey spheres, creating immersive trips for all hours of the night. Here he delves deeper once more, landing on Up The Stuss for the first time with his playfully titled ‘Slink ‘N Slide’ EP.

The title cut launches straight into the action and showcases his sound perfectly, harnessing squiggly synths, driving low-end grooves and sweeping astral sonics to unveil a cosmic ride through rich textures. Expect the same depth and unpredictable twists and turns across the EP as he draws for influences spanning those early golden years of tech house through to minimal and hazy late-night electronic realms. As debuts go, this one is stacked with treats and musical goodness from top to bottom - no surprise they’ve been go-to cuts for those deeper moments from the label boss!

Nice Coordinated Outfit is a journey through history to a time before the internet and social media and before inner city gentrification, when Fitzroy was the beating heart of Australia's avant-garde music and culture. Musically, it showcases the band's incredible range from deep minimal dub to bizarre electronica with elements of shoegaze and experimental noise.

Back then, High Pass Filter were the kings of the Fitzroy underground. Dark, weird improvisers who aimed for something new each performance. Whilst electric guitars and rock n roll dominated Australian airwaves and stages, High Pass Filter were pioneering a sonic revolution in the shadows. The band's indefinable sound saw them sharing lineups with artists from hardcore and punk luminaries like Fugazi and The Boredoms and to dub heavyweights such as Lee Scratch Perry and The Mad Professor.

*2021 Repress*

Minami Deutsch 1st self-titled album. Minami Deutsch’s debut album is sated with an absolute love of Krautrock and the driving motorik beat.

=Band Description=
Minami Deutsch was formed by Kyotaro Miula (guitar, vocals, synthesizer) in Tokyo in 2014. Their sound is influenced by both their love for Krautrock legends such as Can and Neu!, and the band members being self-professed "repetition freaks" who heavily listen to minimal techno.
The music proceeds straightforwardly with the Motorik beat (Hammer beat), devised by Klaus Dinger (Kraftwerk, Neu!), as its central axis. Humorous, yet bizarre Japanese lyrics are whispered over a hard, cold beat that is maniacally repeated, creating a pleasant ambience of electronic pulses drifting in space. Sharp guitar tones reminiscent of Michael Karoli (Can) occasionally explode into fuzz distortion, on the verge of collapse.

Parasole's music fits the bill for cutting-edge electronic music. Infrared Vision is a display of his love for polyrhythmic drum patterns, post-club sketches, twisted dance floor gems and classy, big room-ready tunes.
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Few words of the artist:

''When I started to conceptualize my album I had a few end goals'', explains Parasole. ''I wanted to string my own style through Infrared Vision, so it would be familiar to the people who like my music. In tandem, I strived to produce a fresh voice sonically and experimented with a few new production techniques. I also grabbed ideas outside of techno and house, because I didn't want to be influenced by anything new. I was listening to a lot of jazz, hip-hop, Nine Inch Nails and Prince for example.''

Parasole took his time to write, produce and record Infrared Vision, dividing the process into three steps. ''First I wrote the album in words, pinning down ideas and track concepts on a notepad. Subsequently I transferred my ideas to my gear. Due to a heavy tour schedule I sometimes brought gear with me on the road, to continue my sketch process on the hardware. I then recorded it at home and at Phil Moffa's studio in New York. When the music was fully finished the album morphed to its final version. Phil Moffa laid down the final mixdown at Butcha Sound Studios, while Marco Spaventi handled the mastering.''

In 2023 we began our hugely successful 80s 12” series on CD – a year-by-year journey through the greatest 12” singles from the decade, and in 2024 we presented a selection of tracks from 1980-1982 as the first volume in our collectible vinyl boxset series, followed by Volume Two celebrating 1983-1984 in 2025.

This year, Now Music is proud to announce the third instalment in this essential collection, NOW Presents…12" 80s: Volume Three: 1985-1986, as a stunning 5-LP boxset. A limited edition and numbered set with each of the 5-LPs pressed on a different colour vinyl – red, yellow, blue, hot pink and lime green – to be released on July 17th, 2026, and for many of these tracks this marks the first time back on vinyl since their original 12” release!

Opening with one of the decade’s most powerful rock anthems, Queen’s ‘One Vision’ appears in its Extended Version, ahead of Eurythmics’ euphoric ‘There Must Be An Angel (Playing With My Heart)’ in the Special Dance Mix and Dead Or Alive’s irresistible ‘You Spin Me Round (Like A Record)’. Side A closes with Frankie Goes To Hollywood and the epic ‘Welcome To The Pleasuredome (An Alternative To Reality)’. Flip the LP over for more iconic 12” versions from 1985, beginning with Tears For Fears and the UK Extended Version of ‘Shout’, alongside Go West’s ‘We Close Our Eyes (The Total Overhang Mix)’, the massive soundtrack hit ‘Don’t You (Forget About Me)’ from Simple Minds and Arcadia’s sophisticated ‘Election Day (Consensus Mix)’.

LP2 opens with four defining tracks that perfectly capture the electronic and cinematic sound of the mid-80s. Paul Hardcastle’s groundbreaking hit ‘19 (The Destruction Mix)’ leads into two instrumental classics: Harold Faltermeyer’s ‘Axel F’ and Jan Hammer’s ‘Miami Vice Theme’, both featured in their Extended Versions, before Propaganda’s peerless ‘Duel (Bitter-Sweet)’ closes the side. Side B showcases some of the era’s biggest dancefloor favourites, from Mel & Kim’s ‘Showing Out (Get Fresh At The Weekend)’ and Gwen Guthrie’s enduring club anthem ‘Ain’t Nothin’ Goin’ On But The Rent’, to Aretha Franklin’s ‘Who’s Zoomin’ Who?’ in its Dance Mix and the soul-pop brilliance of Loose Ends’ ‘Hangin’ On A String (Extended Dance Mix)’.

LP3 brings together some of the decade’s most beloved pop and rock crossover hits. Side A opens with the powerhouse pairing of Philip Bailey and Phil Collins on ‘Easy Lover (Extended Dance Remix)’, followed by Bonnie Tyler’s dramatic ‘Holding Out For A Hero (Club Mix)’ and Pat Benatar’s classic ‘Love Is A Battlefield (Extended Version)’. Stephen Duffy’s infectious ‘Kiss Me (Mixe Plural)’ precedes The Human League’s U.S. #1 ‘Human (Extended Version)’. Over on Side B, Duran Duran lead with the ‘Extended Mix’ of ‘Notorious’ before a run of timeless dance-pop including Sly Fox’s ‘Let’s Go All The Way’, Jellybean’s ‘Sidewalk Talk’ and Maria Vidal’s ‘Body Rock’, culminating with Ashford & Simpson’s club classic ear-worm ‘Solid (Special Club Mix)’.

LP4 opens with huge examples of sophisticated synth-pop and dance-floor innovation from 1986. Pet Shop Boys’ era-defining ‘West End Girls (Dance Mix)’ is joined by New Order’s influential ‘Bizarre Love Triangle (Extended Dance Mix)’. Up next, Red Box’s pure-pop of ‘For America (Bazooka Mix)’ and Nick Kamen’s breakthrough hit ‘Each Time You Break My Heart (Extended Version)’. The reverse side celebrates some of the biggest floor-fillers of 1986 – all in their 12” Versions, beginning with The Communards with Sarah Jane Morris and their unforgettable #1 version of ‘Don’t Leave Me This Way’, alongside Bronski Beat’s ‘Hit That Perfect Beat’, Bananarama’s global smash ‘Venus’ and Five Star’s ‘Can’t Wait Another Minute’ in its ‘M&M New York Remix’ form.

The final LP opens with a side packed with some of the most enduring dance-pop and of the era. Whitney Houston’s ‘How Will I Know (Dance Remix)’ is followed by Steve Winwood’s uplifting ‘Remix’ of his massive hit ‘Higher Love’, the celebrated ‘Shep Pettibone Remix’ of Level 42’s ‘Lessons In Love’ and Bryan Ferry’s elegant and atmospheric ‘Slave To Love (12" Remix)’, whilst over on the final side some of the years’ most distinctive and innovative sounds are showcased: Big Audio Dynamite’s genre-blending ‘E=MC2 (12 Inch Remix)’ and Furniture’s cult classic ‘Brilliant Mind (12" Mix)’ feature alongside Talk Talk’s majestic ‘Extended Mix’ of ‘Life’s What You Make It’, and to close this superb collection, the full ‘Extended Version’ of Spandau Ballet’s powerful ‘Through The Barricades’ provides a fitting finale, bringing together 42 essential 12” versions from 1985 and 1986 across five superb LPs.

This new album compiles several songs made in the years following Black To Comm's classic "Alphabet 1968" album. Originally released on the seminal Type label in 2009 (and to be reissued on Cellule 75 this year) "Alphabet 1968" combined the sound of vintage shellac and vinyl loops with broken electronics and field recordings, the press release mentioning disparate influences "ranging from Moondog to Basic Channel by way of Bernard Herrmann". In a beautiful one-page review in The Wire magazine (later reprinted in his book Ghosts Of My Life) Mark Fisher compared Richter's music to JF Sebastian’s miniature automata in Blade Runner ("with their bizarre mixture of the clockwork and the computerised, the antique and the ultramodern, the playful and the sinister"), ETA Hoffmann's inventor-magicians and Auguste Villiers de l'Isle-Adam's 1886 tale of Thomas Edison's (fictitious) construction of an artificial human.

Now titled "Coh Bâle" (inspired by a strange dream) these recordings were supposed to become a follow-up to said album but for reasons unknown it never materialized and the album seemed forever lost. At the time Richter started to dive deeper into several strains of (so-called) world music aka the folk music of Southeast Asia and Eastern Europe as well as liturgical and medieval music, the Kraut-Electronica of Harmonia and several certain Mediterranean experimentalists from the 1980's who started to merge their mostly electronic and field recording based compositions with traditional musics from all over the world by way of new sampling technology.

Many of the songs for the album were recorded while travelling and at various residencies around Europe: a detuned piano in a Thessaloniki basement (Richter played at a children's birthday party there), vintage synthesizers in the GRM studios in Paris, decaying acoustic instruments found in an old Black Forest mansion, childrens' voices at a workshop in Karlsruhe's ZKM Institute; then mixed on headphones in the ICE trains running between these places and his hometown Hamburg.

"Coh Bâle" is taking inspirations from old Nonesuch Explorer and Ocora LP's, Crammed Records, 80s Mediterranean Ambient (Nuno Canavarro, Roberto Musci) combined with the DIY spirit of Deux Filles and Flaming Tunes and the playfulness of Asa Chang & Junray. The songs are both mysterious and transparent, intricate and frugal, vibrant and patient. One of the album's unexpected climaxes is a gorgeous (artificial) berimbau version of the Welsh traditional "Iechyd o Gylch".

No two songs feature the same instrumentation and many acoustic sources (pianos, flutes, wood percussion, viola, tablas, autoharp) were disassembled and later coalesced into new configurations or used as virtual instruments; later combined with samples, field recordings, electronics and (on a few tracks) autotuned vocals reminding of recent works by the likes of Claire Rousay or More Eaze.

We had to wait for a worldwide pandemic for Richter to dig deep into the vaults and finally bring these recordings to light. This is the 2nd release from his archives after the "Diode, Triode" LP which presented Musique Concrète/Acousmatic recordings made at INA/GRM and ZKM. Another massive Double-CD (MM∞XX Vol. 1 & 2) was released last year featuring collaborations with 33 artists such as Andrew Pekler, Richard Youngs, Eric Chenaux, Maja Ratkje, Radwan Ghazi Moumneh of Jerusalem In my Heart, GRM boss François Bonnet (Kassel Jaeger), Felix Kubin, Timo van Luijk (In Camera, Af Ursin), Luke Fowler and many others, showing Richter's versatility and his willingness to reinvent himself for every new release.

Marc Richter is widely known under his Black To Comm moniker, having released (at least) 12 albums under this alias in the last 20 years. He is currently signed to the Thrill Jockey label. Richter composes soundtracks for film and has worked with visual artists such as Mike Kelley and Ho Tzu Nyen. He also records as Jemh Circs and Mouchoir Étanche for his own Cellule 75 label (named in tribute to the late Luc Ferrari).

From the depths of the most independent and revolutionary underground, a handful of tracks from the repertoires (often limited even to a single flexi disc) of some of the heroes who rode the wave, extracting from it—more for themselves and expressive necessity than for us—its most mystical and expressionist essence. New and No Wave, minimal and minimalist electronics, Avant Wave from the land where the sun still rises for now.

Merzbild Schwet, the second album opus released in 1980, is considered one of Nurse With Wound's major releases, and is part of the famous "Silver Edition" on Rotorelief Records, with a luxurious chrome-plated cover in double Gatefold sleeves, and sumptuous 200g vinyl discs issued in 300 copies on silver and black vinyl, and 700 copies on black vinyl.

The first track, Futurismo, begins with clanking rhythms, record skip clicks, and horn riffs before veering off into a crazed quilt of women singing, laughing, and talking in French. About halfway through, wild screeches of distortion disrupt the piece, and then more bizarre sounds take over before the piece ends with a collage of over modulated electronic hum and rambling piano. The other cut, Dada X, goes further into weirdness with lots of silences, creepy creaking noises, tones that build up and collapse, and scattered spoken word in French and English from Eve Libertine from the political punk band Crass, and the piece certainly lives up to the Dada of its title.

The Return of 'The Nightstalker', a Childhood Intelligence endeavor written/produced by Dan Piu & Gary Rich (2022). The second album «Genetic Constitution» is the sequel of «The Tragedies Of A High-Tech World» (2020), in which the Nightstalker continues to manifest its mystic dystopian electronic prophecies. Full of haunted melodies, cinematic compositions and passages of hope and despair.

«In a damned world
dystopian and mad
we create our own sound
of the positive apocalypse

with bizarre characters
we feel connected
with the outsiders,
strangers and forgotten

in the darkest hour
the crazy sounds arise
standing on the edge
a delight for the senses

when all are gone
we have stayed
in the endless desert
good and evil at the same time

for us it is true
always to nail down
when everyone can have it
we do not want it»

British South African composer & producer Galina Juritz presents 'One Weird Trick', her debut solo album on London's home for interdisciplinary oddballs, Kit Records.

As a classically trained violinist, Galina has worked in bands and ensembles such as ShhArt Ensemble, Inclementine, and in various combinations featuring leading musicians from Cape Town and Johannesburg's classical and jazz scenes.

Galina composed the music for Madness: Songs Of Hope and Despair, a cantata made in collaboration with Dizu Plaatjies, with a libretto by psychiatrist Dr Sean Baumann. Madness debuted at the World Psychiatry International Congress in 2016, and had a two week run at Cape Town's Baxter Theatre in 2017. As a composer she writes frequently for film, animation and ensemble.

She has collaborated with the likes of composer Neo Muyanga, Mr Beatnick, Cara Stacey, Kelpe, Juliana Venter, Violeta Garcia, Kit Records head Richard Greenan & more. Galina has been remixed by the likes of Photay, Memotone and Tom Skinner (Sons of Kemet, The Smile).

'One Weird Trick' is the culmination of her solo material. Still rooted in the ornate, technical world of string composition and arrangement, the album is stubbornly unclassifiable.

Opening with time-dilated ambient ('Leaves') before segueing into rippling, florid techno ('Skeleton and Tiger fighting'), Galina twists again and again, shifting gears through stoned, jazz-inflected r'n'b ('Things I Know to be True'), string-led widescreen songcraft ('Come Back') and orchestral minimalism for standing on vast shorelines ('Time Split at the Seams of Your Departure [everything is now before and after]').

On the B side, Galina flexes her composition chops with the storming jazz of 'Spirit Level', recorded by Cape Town-based musicians Buddy Wells, Andrew Lilley, Jonno Sweetman & Stephen de Souza. Galina is then joined by the Stockholm Sax Quartet on 'In Rebellion of Time', a stately Reichian revelation that moves from solemn ballet to ecstatic multiharmonic denouement. To close, Galina retrieves oozing electronics and smeared journal entries from the guts of a black hole - a fitting conclusion to a truly unique, unpredictable, delightful, sad, infectious, and bizarre record.

Influences / sounds like: Louis Cole, Matthew Herbert, Darkside, Thundercat, Eiko Ishibashi, ECM, Oliver Coates.

'One Weird Trick' is out 7th November 2025 via Kit Records, available on vinyl & digital formats.

Kit Records will throw an album launch party at Servant Jazz Quarters in Dalston, London on 30th October 2025. Tickets TBC.









[g] 07: Time Split at the Seams of Your Departure (Everything Is Now Before and After) [feat. sir kay]

Swedish trio Death And Vanilla follow their much-praised re-imagined soundtracks to `Vampyr' (2017) and `The Tenant' (2018) with their interpretation of the soundtrack to cult 1968 TV show `Whistle And I'll Come To You'. Ltd White Vinyl LP, Soundtrack / Electronic / Indie At a time when post-ambient electronica and bedevilled folk music are co-habiting, and the public's interest in Pagan rites and rituals has been sparked by a new generation of fans. The bizarre storyline of Whistle And I'll Come To You seems even more pertinent_ and strangely haunting. The Jonathan Miller-adapted 1968 ghost story was originally part of BBC's Omnibus series and featured Michael Horden as a fussy professor who discovers an ancient whistle which summons up the spirits. A black and white folkloric tale in the style of The Wicker Man, the original TV programme received rave reviews. The esoteric live score was recorded at the Hypnos Theatre in Malmö. The 42-minute soundtrack utilises stuttering tape loops on `Intro' before breathing new life into the primitive John Carpenter-like drum machine on `Supernatural Breakfast', while `Walk On The Beach 2' sounds like a hauntological rendition of a Broadcast classic. Indeed, that effect is amplified on `Nightmares', with its swirling wind and other-worldly choral effect, before the feeling of some supernatural presence is suggested on the penultimate cut `Evidence Of Spiritualism'.

By the composer of JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure Part 2, City Hunter: The Movie, Soul Eater, and Black Butler.



Yato dreams of becoming a famous and respected god, but his reality is far from that dream. One day, his fate takes a turn when he saves Hiyori, a high school girl, from a car accident. In return, he asks for her help to achieve his grand ambition. Together, with Yukine, a spirit who serves as his sacred weapon, they navigate the world of humans and deities, where Yato must prove his worth and divine heritage.



This vinyl record features several BGM tracks from the series. Taku Iwasaki, a renowned composer in the anime industry, has created a vast array of background music, blending numerous styles—from traditional music infused with electronic elements to rap, as well as dark and melancholic piano pieces. Through this musical variety, the composer perfectly captures the anime’s atmosphere: comedic and joyful moments, intense action sequences, and much darker themes that reflect the protagonist’s past.

Chickasha, Oklahoma is not a place known for producing a lot of original proto-punk bands. In fact, there is, to our knowledge, only one: Debris'. Formed in 1975 by bassist Chuck Ivey, guitarist Oliver "Rectomo" Powers and drummer Johnny Gregg, the trio created some of the most art-damaged outsider rock 'n' roll this side of MX-80 Sound.

When a local studio offered the package deal of ten hours for recording and mixing as well as pressing 1,000 LPs and two-color jackets, Debris' came in well-rehearsed – nailing all eleven of their songs in just one take. In April 1976, the same month as Ramones' debut album, Debris' would release their lone record onto the world.

Opener "One Way Spit" could easily be mistaken for a lost KBD single – from Chuck's bizarre count-in to the band's trashy start-stop rhythms, unfurling a Dadaist flag around Johnny's visceral vocals. On "Tricia," a reference to the then-current Patty Hearst trial, Oliver's gruesome groans are sardonically juxtaposed with an electric saw. These LSD-tinged tunes are a potent mix of Beefheart-ian controlled chaos and the genuinely weird avant-rock associated with the mid-'70s Cleveland scene.

Enhanced by analog synthesizers and electronic effects, the album sounds like Eno-era Roxy Music or Stooges' Fun House buried deep in the red Oklahoma dirt. While punk would spark a handful of bands who boldly straddled the line between the primal and the experimental, the relatively unsung Debris' were one of the first to do so.

Debris' had a standing invitation to play New York at Max's Kansas City and CBGB in 1976, although they never made it out of Oklahoma. The private-press edition of their self-titled album (also known as Static Disposal, which was actually the label name printed on the original front cover) has since become a collector's item and is even namechecked on the infamous NWW list.

By the composer of JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure Part 2, City Hunter: The Movie, Soul Eater, and Black Butler.



Yato dreams of becoming a famous and respected god, but his reality is far from that dream. One day, his fate takes a turn when he saves Hiyori, a high school girl, from a car accident. In return, he asks for her help to achieve his grand ambition. Together, with Yukine, a spirit who serves as his sacred weapon, they navigate the world of humans and deities, where Yato must prove his worth and divine heritage.



This vinyl record features several BGM tracks from the series. Taku Iwasaki, a renowned composer in the anime industry, has created a vast array of background music, blending numerous styles—from traditional music infused with electronic elements to rap, as well as dark and melancholic piano pieces. Through this musical variety, the composer perfectly captures the anime’s atmosphere: comedic and joyful moments, intense action sequences, and much darker themes that reflect the protagonist’s past.

These new collaborations follow the mesmerising 'Dissolve In the Rain' in 2022 where Calibre leaned into the blues of Chelou.

Belfast-born Dominick Martin has spent the last 30 years creating. With over 100 Singles and 25 albums, encompassing a myriad of tempos and genres. Painter, Multi-instrumentalist, singer, writer, producer and DJ.

Chelou is the moniker of London-based artist Adam Gray, a singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and producer known for his psychedelic blend of folk, blues, and indie electronics. Raised in Camden and influenced by a musically rich environment, Chelou developed a reverb-soaked, dreamlike sound that combines minimal vocals, distorted guitar, ambient textures, and offbeat lyricism. His name, "Chelou," is French slang for "bizarre" or "strange," reflecting his enigmatic and unconventional identity.

He emerged in 2014 with the DIY EP The Quiet, gaining early support from BBC Radio 6 Music DJs like Lauren Laverne and Tom Ravenscroft. Tracks like "Halfway to Nowhere," "Out of Sight," and "Garden" drew attention for their raw, intimate tone and distinctive visual accompaniments. His debut album Out of Sight (2018) expanded his sound and artistic reach, featuring a popular animated video created by Robin Eisenberg.

REPRESS

New Delhi-based Peter Cat Recording Co. will release their debut album, ‘Bismillah’ on June 14, 2019 via French independent label Panache Records. Debut UK live shows are soon also to be announced by the band.


Peter Cat Recording Co. could almost have a question mark on the end of its name. Not least as founder & frontman Suryakant Sawhney refuses to explain where that name really comes from or what it means (perhaps a reference to the Tokyo jazz club owned by Haruki Murakami), but also since the very existence of the band itself raises a raft of questions. When was the last time we fell for an indie rock band for the right reasons? Not because the band in question nostalgically imitate a perceived ‘golden age’ but because they innately embody the fundamentals of such music: fantasy, sincerity and the freedom to make music without rules or career aspi- rations. And when was the last time this kind of band sounded like Sinatra, Barry White, the sweetest doo-wop, humid fanfares and a psychedelic wedding band, all at once? And all of this coming from India?
In truth, the story of Peter Cat Recording Co. was written within the triangle of San Francisco, Delhi and Paris.
In the first of these cities, Sawhney (a native of Delhi) pitched up to study film-making. More distracted by the city’s peaking live scene of the early noughties, this is where he started to make music and to sketch out an idea for the band.“
The people I lived with supported my idea of writing music, they introduced me to great mu-
sic. There used to be a great garage scene in San Francisco, like The Oh Sees also Ty Seagall, Mikal Conin, all those bands. This is a world I had never seen in my entire life. A big inspiration from San Francisco was that you could record yourself. You don’t need to be in a studio and spend a lot of money to make an album. You can do it”.


At the end of the 2000s, Suryakant returned home to New Delhi, and started his band for real, more or less the same band that plays today. “I wasn’t so concerned about will we be performing, will we be the greatest band, will we be trendy. I just wanted to make something that was consequential and important for us, I think. Something which would last, something people could listen to and be like « this is life changing ». It was for the sake of beauty”.


For the first few years and in India alone, this is exactly what Peter Cat Recording Co. did, in total indifference to the rest of the world. This was until young Parisian label Panache stumbled across the band online via Vice’s THUMP subsidiary, stupefied by the band’s cosmic video for seven-minutes-and-counting track, ‘Love De- mons’. And so in spring of 2018, ‘Portrait Of A Time: 2010-2016’ was released on Panache - making the first international release from Peter Cat Recording Co., bizarrely enough, an anthology of re-mastered, hidden gems from the band’s ramshackle back catalogue, previously recorded in Suryakant’s own living room. With Peter Cat’s off-kilter charm hitherto unheard of beyond the fringes of India, the release provided a gateway op-
Whilst the title track found its way onto Tracks Of The Year lists at the Guardian & NME, it was tricky for new PCRC enthusiasts to get a firm grip on the startling push/pull between the immediate, uncanny music this release gathered, and the cultural backdrop of New Delhi at which it was so startlingly at odds.


Opportunity for a wider fanbase to fall in love with their cloud-like, drunken songs for the first time.
If discovering your favourite new band via a ‘Best Of’ feels a curious premise, then ‘Bismillah’ does more than hint towards the promise of Peter Cat Recording Co’s future. Blending gypsy jazz, psychedelic cabaret, space disco, bossa supernova, Bollywood and uneasy listening with kaleidoscopic ease, in many senses, the band’s knack hasn’t altered. Always different, paradoxical, unpredictable yet somehow familiar. The new album opens to the strains of bird chatter, the whisper of a city’s soundscape and the first few notes from an instrument which seem to be calling us to the departure lounge, a fore-shadow of the flight ‘Bismillah’ launches its listener
on. Suryakant sings with the detached, rueful elegance of Sinatra marooned on a desert island, whilst his band create small space-time capsules which navigate their way through genres and eras – including the future – and between nostalgia and eccentricity.


Peter Cat recently trailed ‘Bismillah’ with the release of ‘Floated By’, an appositely titled musing on failure & missed opportunities, punctuated by the fulsome brass section which weaves through so much of the album.


The languid, blue quality to the track is offset by the attendant music video, created with footage shot, implau- sibly enough, at Suryakant’s own marriage ceremony (needless to say, the wedding band hired for the day was of course, Peter Cat Recording Co.) Sawhney dryly notes; “Hopefully it’s not a many-a-times-in-a-lifetime event. You can’t fake that set, those people actually having a good time, being really emotional and intense.” ‘Bismillah’’s colour-drenched album cover also captures Suryakant’s father-in-law making his wedding toast on that same day - a nod back towards the cover of ‘Portrait Of A Time’, itself a black & white image taken at the wedding ceremony of Suryakant’s own father.


A stumbling but gracious collection of songs rooted in a kind of drunken soul music, the melancholy nature of some of the songs on ‘Bismillah’ renders them almost liquid, before they develop into more dance-like shapes. Suryakant’s rangy voice swoops from the falsetto glide of ‘I’m This’ to the beat-up baritone blown along by the warm breeze of ‘Soulless Friends’. The elliptical structure of album opener ‘Where The Money Flows’ also al-
lows for the use of brief bursts of autotune effect on his vocal without feeling incongruous, whilst the desultory lyrics of ‘Heera’ (a Hindi word for diamond) - sharing something with the Morricone school of grand storytelling - have an emotional weight that would impress even coming from a native English speaker. Perhaps the most gleefully unpredictable moment on ‘Bismillah’ comes with the illusory, vocal loops on the intro to ‘Memory Box’, errupting into 8 exhilarating minutes worth of unbridled, string-backed disco joy. A cat might have nine lives, but on ‘Bismillah’ and beyond, Peter Cat Recording Co. are hinting towards an un- knowable multitude of dimensions. Throw them all together, and it equates less to a listening experience and more to an out-of-body experience.


Peter Cat Recording Co. are: Suryakant Sawhney (vocals/guitar/organ), Dhruv Bhola (bass), Kartik S Pillai (organ/guitar/electronics), Rohit Gupta (horns), Karan Singh (drums)

At a time when post-ambient electronica and bedevilled folk music are co-habiting, and the public’s interest in Pagan rites and rituals has been sparked by a new generation of fans. The bizarre storyline of Whistle And I’ll Come To You seems even more pertinent… and strangely haunting.
The Jonathan Miller-adapted 1968 ghost story was originally part of BBC’s Omnibus series and featured Michael Horden as a fussy professor who discovers an ancient whistle which summons up the spirits. A black and white folkloric tale in the style of The Wicker Man, the original TV programme received rave reviews.

The esoteric live score was recorded at the Hypnos Theatre in Malmö. The 42-minute soundtrack utilises stuttering tape loops on ‘Intro’ before breathing new life into the primitive John Carpenter-like drum machine on ‘Supernatural Breakfast’, while ‘Walk On The Beach 2’ sounds like a hauntological rendition of a Broadcast classic. Indeed, that effect is amplified on ‘Nightmares’, with its swirling wind and other-worldly choral effect, before the feeling of some supernatural presence is suggested on the penultimate cut ‘Evidence Of Spiritualism’

Limited 2025 Repress
Black Truffle is pleased to announce the release of Ichida, the first release from the duo of two important yet often underappreciated musicians, Eiko Ishibashi and Darin Gray. Ishibashi is a singer-songwriter, keyboardist, drummer, and multi-instrumentalist, known in Japan both for her own elaborately conceptual solo albums and for her frequent collaborations with figures such as Jim O'Rourke, Merzbow, and Phew. Darin Gray is a bassist and multi-instrumentalist known for a multitude of collaborations (with O'Rourke and Loren Connors, among many others), for On Fillmore, his cinematic post-exotica project with Glenn Kotche, and as one half of Chikamorachi with Chris Corsano, one of the finest free-jazz rhythm sections around. Presenting the entirely of a live set performed at Tokyo's Super Deluxe in March 2013, the set begins as a duet for Ishibashi's flute and Gray's upright bass. Calmly melodic yet harmonically inventive, with shades of 'spiritual jazz', the pair's acoustic ruminations are gradually joined by Ishibashi's lush electronics, which randomly flicker between chords in a manner recalling the classic work of David Behrman. As the electronics build into a gloomy fog of slowly cycling loops, Gray lays his bass aside and turns to making strangely mournful interjections on a mouthpiece. Eventually Ishibashi moves to the piano, enveloping the audience in rippling pools of sustained, octave-doubled melody, provided by Gray's bass with a fluid and dynamic foundation. For much of the second side, both Ishibashi and Gray turn to electronics, ultimately arriving in a bizarre space of melancholic arpeggios and random sputter and sizzle, oddly reminiscent of 70s outsider prog acts like Wapassou. An uneasy coda of rich piano chords ends the set. Captured in warm room ambience and beautifully mixed by Jim O'Rourke, Ichida is a rare combination of improvisational acumen and emotional directness, both adventurous and immediately accessible.

Black Truffle is thrilled to begin 2025 with a rare solo release from Konrad Sprenger, alias of elusive Berlin composer-producer-instrument builder Jörg Hiller. A prolific collaborator, Sprenger has worked extensively with icons of American minimalism such as Ellen Fullman (with whom her recorded the gloriously eccentric song album Ort) and Arnold Dreyblatt (as a core member of the Orchestra of Excited Strings since 2009), as well as releasing their music on his impeccably curated label, Choose. As an instrument builder and installation artist, he has overseen the creation of a computer-controlled multi-channel electric guitar and, with Phillip Sollmann, a modular pipe organ system designed to be reconfigured from space to space.

In much of Hiller’s work, a scientific approach to acoustic phenomena co-exists with a pop sensibility and a sly sense of humour. Nowhere is this unique combination more in evidence than in his slim body of solo work, beginning with the startling diversity of instrumentation and compositional approaches heard on the short pieces of Miniaturen (2006) and Versprochen (2009), followed by the more single-minded exploration of the computer-controlled electric guitar on Stack Music (2017). Set brings together these various strands of Sprenger’s work into a wildly infectious, playful epic, performed by the composer and the mysterious Ensemble Risonanze Moderne. On the LP’s second side, we are also treated to a guest appearance from longtime collaborator Oren Ambarchi, on whose recent solo releases Simian Angel and Shebang Sprenger has made key production contributions. Ambarchi’s signature stuttering, swirling harmonics weave through a sparkling assemblage of electric guitars, acoustic instruments, percussion and electronics—though, given the deft use that much of Sprenger’s recent production work makes of midi-controlled sampled instrumentation, it’s anyone’s guess where the acoustic ends and the digital begins here.

As soon as the needle drops on the first side, we are inside a musical world that Set will inhabit for its 33 minutes: sparkling guitar harmonics and palm-muted notes, tuned percussion, crisp electronic drum hits, flashes of horns, and untraceable bursts of synthetic sound are arranged into a skittering polyrhythmic framework calling up the detail-rich percussive constructions of contemporary techno filtered through the pointillism of the post-serialist European avant-garde. Behind this shifting mist of particulate sound, winds and strings sound out held chords, reminiscent of Arthur Russell’s Tower of Meaning in their epic yet seemingly aimless drift. The relationship between elements is mysterious, appearing both carefully considered and almost random. Though never straying too far from where it begins, as the piece moves along, it spotlights increasingly bizarre instrument choices (shakuhachi and steel drums, anyone?) as well as momentary liftoffs into motorik propulsion. Set is a fascinating, mercurial thing: at once propulsive and fragmented, essentially static in form yet ever-changing in detail, unabashedly egghead in its construction yet sure to get the feet tapping.

Merzbild Schwet, the second album opus released in 1980, is considered one of Nurse With Wound's major releases, and is part of the famous "Silver Edition" on Rotorelief Records, with a luxurious chrome-plated cover in double Gatefold sleeves, and sumptuous 200g vinyl discs issued in 300 copies on silver and black vinyl, and 700 copies on black vinyl.

The first track, Futurismo, begins with clanking rhythms, record skip clicks, and horn riffs before veering off into a crazed quilt of women singing, laughing, and talking in French. About halfway through, wild screeches of distortion disrupt the piece, and then more bizarre sounds take over before the piece ends with a collage of over modulated electronic hum and rambling piano. The other cut, Dada X, goes further into weirdness with lots of silences, creepy creaking noises, tones that build up and collapse, and scattered spoken word in French and English from Eve Libertine from the political punk band Crass, and the piece certainly lives up to the Dada of its title.

Post-Nuclear Mind Music? Lizard Strategies? Void Spirit...? These bizarre titles are just a few of the self-coined terms that Australian electronic musician Ian MacFarlane has conjured to represent his eccentric sonic world. An artist whose unique style of electronic experimentalism has balanced dangerously close to the edge of popular convention, existing outside the mainstream and extending well beyond the fringe of any sanctioned independent scene. A futurist outsider whose extraordinary musical vision has explored the uncharted realms of consciousness and fantasy. Following a brief stint with the legendary Australian Krautrockers Cybotron, MacFarlane produced three independent solo albums throughout the late 1970s and early 1980s. His debut LP Void Spirit, an experimental album issued under the pen name 'Violet Lightning', was followed by a further two albums published under his own name, the cosmic influenced Back From Beyond and finally the privately issued electro-ambient suite Planetarium. Presented with hours of unreleased home recordings, The Roundtable has begun a dedicated search through the fascinating archives of this under exposed artist. Beginning with a vinyl release of the rare cassette-only album Planetarium; this private press sees MacFarlane armed with a bank of Roland Synthesizers, Drum Machines and field recordings, spawning a mutant amalgam of German Kosmische Musik, French Library electro and Private Issue New Age. Surrender to the stars and welcome to the first instalment of "Muzak To Moralize By".

To celebrate the 30th anniversary of bob sinclar"s iconic label, Yellow Productions, step into the catchy world of the french touch with an exceptional and limited boxset with 3 LP vinyl records plus a poster. Discover hits, unreleased nuggets and rare tracks ranging from house to trip-hop, jazz and hip-hop. Discover some of the biggest names on the electronic music scene : Like Dimitri From Paris, Dj Gregory, Kid Loco, Martin Solveig and David Guetta!

"A Seamless Symphony of Harmonious Electronica" - Jazziz

Emerging from over a year of creative hibernation following their debut album, Stavroz's upcoming EP "Kick Up the Dust" jolts them back into action. The EP flows gently, yet the overall mood of the journey isn’t always easy to pinpoint. There’s a certain vagueness to Stavroz’ sound which allows for bizarre experiments to seep through without interrupting the course. “We like to keep it lightly twisted, like a wink with a frown,” says the band.



In the title track however, Stavroz boldly steers towards the heart of the dance floor: efficient, remorseless, powerful, intense and most of all... elegant. Guiding you harmoniously through the club is a delightful duet of trumpet and saxophone, timed perfectly to heal you where it hurts most.



"Her Eyes Were Red" does what it says on the cover. There's melancholy - without sadness. Power - without force. Love - without lust. Stavroz's music possesses a distinct power that feels both natural and organic, never resorting to brute force or aggression. In their own way, the Belgian quartet offers an astonishing journey of saxophone & duduk, supported by broken beats and chopped vocals.



In Dae-El, a track featuring the Brussels-based producer and sound designer Poltrock, ethereal-sounding synths and duduk are combined with ghostly high-pitch distortions. Despite a backbone of muffled beats, the tune has vaporous qualities, reverberations that wobble and tinkle into space – it’s an easy listening experience but in a trippy, spaced-out way. “We’re trying to go for the sweet spot between the couch and the club”.



Adding further depth to their EP, Stavroz collaborates with Brazilian singer and composer Castello Branco in "Valente." Here, intimate Sade-like vocals harmonize with rubbery scratches, acoustic guitar, and horn segments, crafting a lush lounge piece that seamlessly balances both relaxation and empowerment, transparency and provocation. It's a testament to Stavroz's versatility and their knack for creating music that defies easy definition, leaving listeners eagerly anticipating the next twist and turn in their captivating musical journey.

A collection of 18 rare disco tracks from Yugoslavia. Compiled by Leri Ahel & Zeljko Luketic from original master tapes. Fox & His Friends label owners Ahel & Luketic selected obscure 7'' singles, b-sides, out-of-print releases and digged deep into the vaults of Jugoton to tell the story of how disco infiltrated clubs and pop music. This compilation is vinyl counterpart to their pioneering research and work in two major exhibitions tracing roots, influences and social significance of disco in music, fashion and design held in 2015 in Klovicevi Dvori Museum and HDD Gallery in Zagreb. "Socialist Disco - Dancing Behind Yugoslavia's Velvet Curtain 1977-1987" double gatefold LP with extensive liner notes contains tunes from KIM Band, Gabi Novak, Arian, Ljupka Dimitrovska, Ana Sasso, Moni Kovacic, Milka Lenac, Rok Hotel, Ivica Surjak, Grupa ST, Nano Prsa and many more in various sub-genres including classical orchestrated disco, dance reworkings of international chart hits and synth-filled italo-disco stompers performed by Yugoslavian music stars, fashion models and even sports and football heroes. Disco, a vital Trojan horse (in local notion: a pop music you can dance to), stayed quite a long time In Yugoslavia, refusing to be silenced and refusing to jump into the bandwagon of expected. It was influenced by American and European disco sound, for example, by the Boney M, Amanda Lear or Love Machine, who all visited Yugoslavia and had live concerts. The producers and the big record companies like Jugoton, PGP RTB, Diskoton or ZKP RTVL, noted the hype in music and they constantly probed the market with limited run of seven inchers or special performances. Some artists were quite successful, but the rest were in the 7'' single empire which was free enough to experiment with all things disco had to offer - genre hybrids, use of electronics, sexual innuendo, bizarre lyrics and most importantly, great musicians and major composers having fun. The no-restrictions policy of disco was there to evade the rules and surely it did.

WE ARE WINTER'S BLUE AND RADIANT CHILDREN (WAWBARC) is the new quartet of Mat Ball (BIG|BRAVE), Efrim Manuel Menuck (Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Thee Silver Mt. Zion), and Jonathan Downs and Patch (both Ada). On "NO MORE APOCALYPSE FATHER" they present six modal lullabies drenched in seared distortion, slathered across striding electronic pulses. Ball and Menuck began creating music in and for the bleakest moments of Montréal winters: "We're honoring that idea of winter, when you come inside and your house is warm, a place that only exists because of how cold it is outside," says Menuck. They later recruited Downs and Patch to flesh out their initial ideas. Menuck met them in 2015 when recording Ada's final album at Montréal's Hotel2Tango _ where they reconvened to make this record. "NO MORE APOCALYPSE FATHER" is an album about witnessing bleakness from a place of safety. Carrying newfound descriptive depth, thanks to the quartet's open-ended songs freeing him from writing in meter, Menuck likens his lyrics to photorealism. On opener `Rats and Roses' he sings of an unnamed city struck by an unknown cataclysm, but the details are local: specifically, his neighbors inadvertently poisoning birds when tackling a rat infestation. It's backed by blown out synths and guitars reaching a soaring crescendo. "Seeing things from a distance and not being able to intervene happens a lot on the record," Menuck explains. "If you're a feeling and thinking person, that's just part of the human condition. We watch horror unfolding from afar, unable to do anything concrete to change it." A powerless witness, able to describe but not intervene. `Dangling Blanket From A Balcony (White Phosphorous)' references Michael Jackson holding his child over a hotel balcony in 2002_the bizarre media spectacle still lodged in Menuck's psyche. This and the album's closing track also elegize white phosphorous, a technology of war designed to light up battlefields but capable of inflicting horrific burns on those it touches. Illumination and horror in one, here underpinning scenes picturesque and terrifying. "The last song `(Goodnight) White Phosphorous' is deliberately like a lullaby," says Menuck. "Written from the viewpoint of watching white phosphorous falling outside your window." Scorched and tarnished and laden with harrowing imagery, "NO MORE APOCALYPSE FATHER" is also a record bathed in light: the bewilderment of hopeful spirits witnessing despair, watching a blizzard of distress unfold outside from a place of relative shelter and comfort. You could call that emotional ambivalence, maybe numbness. But those words are too passive for the weight of conflicted feeling resonating through the album. "I never know how I feel on an overcast day when the sun is still bright despite the grayness and the light is very flat. The colours become more saturated, and you see a single flower, say a morning glory, whose colour is so vibrant beneath the gray, I don't know if that's a lovely sensation or a terrible sensation. It's both," says Menuck.

Whisper it quietly, but Andrew Meecham’s ninth album as The Emperor Machine, Island Boogie, may well be the long-serving producer’s strongest set to date. Of course, all his albums ripple with vintage synth sounds, colourful lead lines, dub-flecked electronic disco grooves and lashings of cosmic intent, but this one just feels a little more special. Island Boogie is certainly special. Meecham’s “most personal” full-length to date, it was inspired by his experiences at the Rotation Garden Party – a beloved micro-festival promoted by a group of friends (including sometime Bizarre Inc and Chicken Lips partner Dean Meredith), renowned for the quality of its custom-built Klipschorn soundsystem. “The album’s title sums up the vibe that you get from Rotation,” he explains. “It may be held in a landlocked venue but it gives a wonderful sense of isolation – it is an audiophile paradise.”

Meecham road-tested rough versions of the album’s eight tracks at Rotation 2023, with the feedback and dancefloor reaction guiding the sound and arrangement of the final mixes. Fittingly, Meecham will return to the event to showcase the album at Rotation 2024 this July. Given the inspiration he’s drawn from previous editions of the festival, that will be a very special occasion. Musically, Island Boogie offers the most fully functioning and expertly constructed expression of The Emperor Machine sound yet, a style Meecham describes as “electronic cosmic disco-boogie”. It’s a sound that takes cues from early ‘80s NYC punk-funk and dub disco, vintage electro, proto-house and left-of-centre synth-boogie, but one that’s instantly recognisable to those who have followed Meecham’s career over the last three decades.

Island Boogie also sees Meecham continue his blossoming working relationship with Severine Mouletin, whose stylish and distinctive vocals previously graced his popular ‘Dance Por Amor’ and ‘Your Own Style’ singles. Here Mouletin features on four tracks: the acid-flecked retro-futurist wave-boogie of ‘La Cassette’ (featuring additional percussion by Rupert Brown); the infectious, bleep-sporting headiness of recent single ‘Devoilez-Vous’; and the squelchy analogue synth-funk of ‘Wanna Pop With You’ and ‘Vas-y-Le Chat’. Meecham also finds space for a cover of Fox’s 1976 pop-rock classic ‘S-s-s-single Bed’, one of the Stafford-based artist’s all-time favourites. His version, featuring headline-grabbing lead vocals by Michelle Bee and guitar from Dave Atherton, re-imagines the track as a subtly Chic-influenced slab of infectious electro-pop rich in kaleidoscopic synth sounds, sing-along choruses and shuffling drums.

The instrumental foundations of the classic Emperor Machine sound come to the fore on the album’s three other cuts. There’s the jazz-funk-flecked warmth of the LP-opening title track; the sparse squelches, bleeps, TB-303 style bass and brightly coloured electronics of ‘Walk The Dog’; and the exotic, slow-motion cosmic electronica of ‘Cha Murrah Etem’, a warm but poignant affair dedicated to his late father. Heady and intoxicating, with hints of Balearica and digital reggae, it offers a fittingly beautiful and tactile conclusion to Meecham’s most expressive and accessible album yet.

The label that ignited the Dutch post-punk scene! Homogeneity be damned, these early Plurex tracks are a head-turning snapshot of what was happening in the late ‘70s Netherlands underground! Includes an interview with Plurex founders and all of the singles from 1978-‘80! Some of the bands would never release another record, but for the label and many of the artists there was yet more history to be made, not least of which was Minny Pops’ ascendance to seminal status, and Plurex’s emergence at the center of the envelope-pushing Dutch music scene that came to be known as Ultra. “It’s extreme, that’s what that word stands for,” explains van Middendorp of the movement, “It stands for something that’s clearly outspoken, and that’s what we tried to do.” From the confrontational clang of their early punk releases to the electronic art attacks that arrived soon after, Plurex was about saying something new, loudly enough for all to hear. When those records were made,” says van Middendorp, “I never expected that we would have a conversation about them 40 years later if not longer. At the time nobody was even thinking for one minute that this might happen.... That so many years down the line there’s still people out there that will discover this music. And the great thing about The Plurex Story is that it’s also on a format that I’m a big fan of, because who gives a shit about the stream? It’s nice to have a physical album in your hands.”

While she was still a member of Nasmak, one of the leading bands of the Dutch ultra-movement, Truus de Groot started Plus Instruments in 1978 with herself as the sole member. When the project evolved, she found a wide range of rotating collaborators like Michel Waisvisz, Lee Ranaldo and James Sclavunos. Plus Instruments was about freedom and the live performances were largely improvised. The sound minimal but captivating. The music always came from within, but De Groot was also triggered by bands like Red Crayola, Suicide, DAF, Wire, Per Ubu, Devo and the No Wave scene in NY. She was always experimenting with primitive multi-track recording and whatever crappy gadgets she could find. Always looking for a gritty, dirty sound and bizarre overtones.

At a young age she travelled to New York and began to immerse herself in the nightlife of the city that never sleeps. Here she found true creativity, passion and expression. The club scene was alive but highly competitive, so this fearless Dutch girl would just knock on promoter’s doors to get gigs booked at places like CBGB’s, Peppermint Lounge, Underground and the Pyramid. De Groot eventually settled in the United States and never stopped experimenting with sound. In recent years she reinvented Plus Instruments and led the group into new territory.

The recordings for this LP were made by De Groot at home and the music is experimental, minimal, industrial but also playful, sounding nothing like most of the later material. 14 tracks in total of which 7 are taken from the elusive and impossible to find self-released debut cassette as ‘Truss Plus Instruments’ which was sparingly distributed by Nigel Jacklin and his legendary Alien Brains fanzine in 1980. The remaining 7 tracks are from the same period (1979-1980) and were carefully selected from the vast archive of De Groot. We are glad to present this anthology that serves as a long overdue testimony to the formative phase of a unique female pioneer of electronic music.

Electronic Works for Choreography, Soundtrack, and Art Installation 1976-1996

Marden Pond’s “Evaporations” (1976-96) is an archival project showcasing the composers experimental music approaches that utilize synthesizers, electronics, and computer. These rare or unreleased tracks and demos were initially purposed for art installation, dance and theater , music exploration, and ambient listening experiences. Marden was artistically right beside his contemporaries of the Land Artist Movement of the Southwest during the 70’s, as he created soundscapes inspired by the vast and bizarre features of Utah. Some of the other work presented on this record was to inspire physical movement by use of unorthodox arrangements and percussive rhythms, juxtaposed with fleeting synth phrases and environmental textures.

Besides the two tracks included from Marden’s hyper rare 1980 private press LP “Castle Valley Impressions”, this collection of music is being presented on vinyl for the first time.

tapetopia 006 In 1983, some more subdued sounds began to waft from the GDR punk underground into the second half of the ’80s. At five to the end of time, it was perpetually striking midnight and the occasional punk band would mix a little laudanum into their potential for aggression. Portents in this vein preceded a dark wave whose foamy crest would break on fog walls of dry ice. Especially in Leipzig and East Berlin, a chain-rattling zeitgeist produced bands that drew from a dark well. Many of these bands arose from the still hot or already cold ashes of punk. The two founding fathers of Neuntage Alt, René Glofke and Taymur Streng (nicknamed “Strangler”), knew each other from the East Berlin punk scene. The third man aboard, Mike Sauer, played drums in the early 1980s for Sendeschluß, a punk band that, lost in thought somewhere in the no-man’s land between punk and post-punk, faded away in 1984. Punk was no longer the order of the day, but it was a form of expression among many and easy to combine. Glofke and Streng found common ground in experimental set-ups with such otherworldly names as Medusa Brahma or Die zeitweilige Erscheinung.
From this far-flung point of departure, a short tunnel led straight into the black light of Neuntage Alt, the coldest star in the low-hanging sky above East Berlin. Neuntage Alt appeared at the end of 1986, during the last blackout phase of the GDR, on the threshold between the underground and the so-called “other bands” – a scene that used the non-socio-critical approach of German Wutwave (“anger wave”) in order to be allowed to perform publicly. In the context of this scene, Neuntage Alt did not belong to the inner circle. Moreover, the band’s subcultural base was initially in Mahlsdorf, on the south-eastern edge of East Berlin. This was where the DIY sound studio of amplitude apostle and great modulator Taymur Streng was situated. Strangler held the position of house electrician and keyboard god in various projects. One of them had the bland alias Mahlsdorfer Wohnstuben Orchester, behind which the avant-garde court chapel of the bungalow studio was concealed. There Taymur also conspired with the East Berlin underground band Ornament & Verbrechen (tapetopia #001). Ronald Lippok of Ornament & Verbrechen remembers how once, at the opening of a joint session, he and his brother Robert attended Taymur’s engaging slide show of his collection of test patterns. Afterwards, they created a piece with the psychedelic title “Das sentimentale UfO”, which sheds an iridescent light on the bizarre atmosphere in the studio. Taymur’s obsession with technology was legendary. The home studio was also his living space; a circuit, a machine park of screwed and soldered equipment, a single keyboard orgy. His own creations were also based on circuit diagrams found in the radio amateur magazine “Funkamateur”. Its somewhat clueless subtitle “Praktische Elektronik Für Alle” (Practical Electronics for All)

UK duo Wrecked Lightship debut on Peak Oil with a six-track slate of cyber aquatic alien bass music as placeless as it is precise: Antiposition. Comprised of Laurie Osborne (Appleblim) and Adam Winchester (Dot Product), the pair share a fascination with destabilized rhythm and retro-futurist dreaming, smudging dub, drum n bass, synthetic tribalism, and kinetic sound design into fresh electronic frontiers.

Antiposition both refines and refracts the project’s vision. From wobbly interstellar ascension (“Hex”) and cavernous industrial dub (“Bizarre Servants”) to junglist murk (“Sunken Skies”) and fractal shuffle (“Diminished Ark”), Wrecked Lightship move between haze and hyperspace, mythos and mystery. It’s less deconstructed than reconstructed, fashioned from galactic debris and congealed by the gravity of outer spheres.

"7 Estrelas | quem arrancou o céu?" ("7 Stars | Who ripped the sky down?") is the fourth album of the Sao Paulo-based artist Luiza Lian, and her third collaboration with French/Brazilian music producer Charles Tixier. Nearly five years after the celebrated "Azul Moderno", the duo returns to the scene they materialized before a period of darkness that rewrote Brazil's history. And this new visit pushes the boundaries even further with resources that the singer-songwriter had only started exploring on the previous record. The tracks, "Tecnicolor" (featuring the only guest appearance on the album, as Luiza is joined by singer Céu) and "Homenagem" (Homage), continue to explore this new horizon, which becomes increasingly bizarre and deceptive. In addition to layering noises and electronic elements over her musicality, Luiza also explores the range of her vocals by digitally distorting them. The first tracks are just the initial steps in this new work: a profound reflection on how we distort our lives based on false reflections we see both digitally in our use of social media and materially in an increasingly consumerist society. The new album recreates this artificial context in an almost caricatured way, deliberately exaggerated distortions to generate the estrangement we should feel towards the values we cherish and reject based on this false reality we force ourselves to believe in.

You just moved to the big city, you end up at a party where you don't know anyone and someone walks up to you and asks: "Hey, are you alone here?". That is exactly the feeling that Porcelain id describes on their debut album Bibi:1, short for the Arabic pet name Habibi. Porcelain id is the pseudonym under which Hubert Tuyishime (they/them/their) has been unleashing unique songs since 2020.

The album - inspired by their move from a quiet provincial town to Antwerp - is the soundtrack to walking into city traffic during rush hour and trusting to get out of the chaos in one piece. It is an ode to exciting encounters with complete strangers and to the friends you can come home to afterwards. A story about being a stranger in a city you've romanticized for so long, the rejection that comes with it, and the false nostalgia with which you look back on it all later on.

At first hearing, the completely English-language Bibi:1 may seem like a brusque farewell to the autobiographical intimacy and lo-fi singer-songwriter music on the previously released EPs Mango and Reprise, and especially on songs like Vlaanderen. But to Porcelain id it feels like an organic evolution. One towards more abstraction, experimentation and electronics, but never detached, and still building on the core of Porcelain id.

The new sound is the result of an intense collaboration with producer and partner in crime Youniss Ahamad, who, despite their different musical backgrounds, immediately felt challenged after Porcelain id's legendary elevator pitch: 'I want to make something that is situated between Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds and Yeezus by Kanye West'.

Together they drew the blueprint for Bibi:1 in Youniss' home studio. Track by track, without looking back. A sporadic, but rigid process that added to the intensity of the album. In the studio, the songs were taken to a higher level. The two invited a pack of talented friends and young musicians to the studio to add parts, a stark contrast to the solitary approach of previous EPs. Aram Abgaryan (recording engineer/synths/vocals), Nard Houdmeyers (guitar), Tim Caramin (drums), David Idrisov (bass), Alban Sarens (sax) and Emma Hessels (vocals) came by. Aram Santy was at the controls during the mixing sessions.

The result sounds like the ultimate symbiosis of Porcelain id and Youniss. Lofi, but ambitious. Fragile, but rough. Poppy, but disruptive. Sometimes challenging. Then welcoming again. Sometimes even danceable. Each song forms a small vignette that is part of a diverse, but coherent unity. Adam Coming Home and Low Poly are closest to the melancholy of Porcelain id's earlier work, while Lights! strikes a new path. First single Man Down, on the other hand, is inspired by the Antwerp students who drown every year and sounds like a wandering nightly stroll through the city. For Brilliant, David Idrisov was asked to 'play bass as if Chet Baker were not a trumpet player, but a bass player', a bizarre assignment that he accomplished with verve. And Cellophane flirts with emo trap and was sung with raspberries between the teeth, to simulate the effect of grills.

The heavyweight trio of Keiji Haino, Jim O’Rourke and Oren Ambarchi return with their 12th and most epic release to date, the triple LP With pats on the head, just one too few is evil one too many is good that's all it is. Documenting the entirety of their final performance at the dearly departed Roppongi home of Tokyo underground institution SuperDeluxe in November 2018, the music spread across these six sides splits the difference between the guitar-bass-drums power trio moves and experiments with novel instrumentation that have defined the trio’s decade of working together. Containing some of the most delicate music the three have committed to wax since the gorgeous 12-string acoustic guitar and dulcimer tones of Only wanting to melt beautifully away is it a lack of contentment that stirs affection for those things said to be as of yet unseen (BT011), this wide-ranging release also offers up some of their most blistering free rock performances yet.

The side-long opening piece finds Haino on a single snare drum in duet with O’Rourke on unamplified electric guitar, playing in the lovely post-Bailey vein heard on his classic 90s recordings with Henry Kaiser and Mats Gustafsson. Spiky dissonance and ringing harmonics interweave with flowing melodic fragments as Haino single-mindedly explores the resonance of the snare like an untutored Han Bennink. On ‘Right brain, left brain; right, left; right wing, left wing. Just how many combinations can be made from these?’, O’Rourke moves to synth and electronics, joined by Ambarchi on drums, who at first focuses on sizzle cymbals before hypnotic cycles of gentle tom rhythms combine with electronic burbles and flutters to suggest a dream collaboration between Masahiko Togashi and Jean Schwarz. Ambarchi’s percussion is then joined by Haino on wandering, overblown flute, before the man in black switches back to the snare for a bizarre, stuttering drum duet.

For the first trio performance, Haino makes another new addition to his seemingly infinite catalogue of instruments, this time a homemade contraption he refers to as ‘Strings of Dubious Reputation’. Joined by O’Rourke on increasingly spaced-out electric guitar and Ambarchi on skittering percussion, Haino’s wonky, slack strings adds a definite ‘musique brut’ edge to this side-long performance, certainly one of the most enchantingly odd in the trio’s discography. When the group reconvene for the second set, spread out across the final three sides, they seem ready to breathe fire from the first instant. O’Rourke slashes distorted chords on the six-string bass, Ambarchi breaks into his signature irregular caveman thump, and Haino squeals and squawks on heavily delayed oboe before unleashing an overpowering electrical storm when he first picks up the guitar. For over half an hour, the trio pound out one of their most relentless performances, a constantly rearranging kaleidoscope of tortured fuzz guitar, insanely busy bass riffing and propulsive, tumbling drums. A hushed atmosphere initially reigns on the final long piece, given the mournful title ‘There are always things I wish to say but I can only convey them in this language August 6 August 9’. Haino’s clean guitar strumming calls up the shimmering tones of his PSF classic Affection, gradually building to a surging wall of sound, bass and drums lumbering through a roar of jet-engine guitar. Arriving in a deluxe trifold package with photos by Lasse Marhaug alongside inner sleeves with extensive live images, this epic release is perhaps the most remarkable document yet of this unique trio’s stamina and continuing inventiveness.

- Panda Bear, Voice of the Seven Woods, Mammane Sanni Abdoulaye. File under: Jazz / Electronic. Titi Bakorta almost didn't make it. Born in and raised in Kinshasa, the Congolese multi-instrumentalist was on his way to Uganda when he fell off the boat as it traversed the mighty Congo River. Unable to swim, Bakorta was saved by a friend who dragged him to the closest city Kisangani, where he was unexpectedly acquainted with local singer Dancer Papalas. Soon they were performing in bands together, traveling across the continents and settling in Tanzania, South Sudan and Dubai - they even appeared in front of General Defao, the beloved Congolese vocalist who fronted legendary soukous bands Grand Zaiko Wawa, Choc Stars and Big Stars. Now based in Kampala, Bakorta offers his own unique take on Congolese pop and folk sounds, weaving traditional elements through a psychedelic lattice of guitar loops, mangled voices and eccentric beatbox rhythms on his debut full-length. He bends woodblock snaps on 'Kop' into stuttered blurs, wailing emotionally over twanging riffs and bizarre, theatrical xylophone twinkles. It's still pop music on some level, but curved around Bakorta's unwieldy personal narrative - there's a sense that everything could unravel at any time but it all hangs together, strengthened by Bakorta's confident, contemporary production smarts. 'Elles Vais' is more airy, with celestial soukous vocals that float above tight, electronic drums. Tangled guitar echoes overlap each other like dense, weaved tapestries, contrasting perfectly with Bakorta's urgent, driving pulse. Occasionally, he transcends completely, like on 'Molende' where his chants and phrases neatly flutter between praise music and contemporary R&B. "Hustling, hustling, hustling, everyday I'm hustling," an angelic voice coos over phased electric guitar plucks and looped, AutoTuned chorals. It makes perfect sense that Bakorta should team up with Metal Preyers' Jesse Hackett on the album's final track, the aptly-titled 'Titis Haunted House'. The two artists share a similar obsession with moonlit, carnivalesque soundscapes, and Hackett's eerie synths provide a suitably eccentric foundation for Bakorta's ghostly wails and fuzzy guitar sounds.

Exotica, ye-yé cumbia, guaracha infused twist, rock’n roll mambo, Spanish rumba, boogaloo beat, tropical garage and other unexpected bastard genres are featured in this festive compilation of bizarre hits taken from the glorious catalog of records released during the 60s and 70s on the Peruvian label Discos MAG. Some clearly unite genres, others are projects with creative names, but all are bold musical initiatives that got and will always get people onto the dance floor. “Sabroso Go Go” brings together fourteen musical mixes created in the recording studios of Manuel Antonio Guerrero (MAG), in which music directors combine rhythm with alchemy in a quest to find the philosopher's stone of the dance. Exotica, ye-yé cumbia, guaracha infused twist, rock’n roll mambo, Spanish rumba, boogaloo beat, tropical garage and other unexpected bastard genres are featured in this festive compilation. Although this compilation begins in 1957, experiments like this (some more memorable than others) were not new in Peru. The songs on this album were however much more successful hybrids. Some clearly unite genres, others are projects with creative names, but all are bold musical initiatives that got and will always get people onto the dance floor. At the end of the fifties, rock music shook the foundations of Peru, and orchestras rushed to cover hit songs and explore the possibilities of mixing them with tropical music. Lucho Macedo's orchestra took up the mantle and reinterpreted a well-known guaracha by Celia Cruz ('Rock and Roll') in mambo style, renaming it 'Rock and roll Mambo'. 'Maestro de Rock and Roll', a hit by the Cuban Conjunto Casino, received similar treatment. Another mix in this vein is the rock tune 'El Rock de los Chinos' by the Mexican Manolo Muñoz (author of 'Speedy González') recorded by the Chilean Choche Mérida for MAG in 1961. The following year, Chubby Checker’s 'The Twist' hit the scene and was immediately fused with guaracha by maestro Nelson Ferreyra. A legendary MAG musician, Carlos Pickling, composed 'La Charanga del Espacio' in 1963. The space sounds are produced by Pickling and his inseparable Hammond. He himself is the one who leads the orchestra that accompanies Benny Del Solar, Lita Branda and Pablo "Melcochita" Villanueva in the tropicalized version of Spanish Rumba, when the beats of the Iberian rumba were still exotic in South America. Around that time, the Chilean Willy Marambio was already living in Lima. In the track included on this album, the go-go style showcases his virtuosity on the trumpet. Another outstanding trumpet player, Roberto "Tito" Chicoma from Chiclayo, played as a session musician with MAG from 1959. A few years later, he became one of the most popular Colombian cumbia players, a talent he demonstrates in the song on this compilation, which blends the fun of go-go with yé-yé beats. 'Batijugando' was a hit from Mexico and was played in all the rhythms played across the Hispanic world since 1967. Inspired by the "Batman" series, it was performed at MAG by the Betico Salas orchestra, with vocals by the Panamanian lady crooner Nallye Fernández. 'Computador Electrónico' is another surprise on this album, performed by Panamanian vocalist Patty Pastel, it is the only known version in Spanish of 'Der Computer Nr. 3', originally sung in German by France Gall. Two other songs feature Edgar Zamudio. The versatility of Zamudio y Los Vikingos (originally a Chilean group) is demonstrated in the guitar-heavy song composed specifically for the late sixties skate fashion ('Go Go en Patines') and in his idiosyncratic protest song ('Día de Pago') performed in beat style. In the mid-seventies, Los Kintos, led by guitarist Francisco Acosta, developed different harmonic ideas in an instrumental track that veers from boogaloo to salsa, the fashionable rhythm of the day. Finally, in 1976, when the bumping hips dance craze swept the continent, Manuel Guerrero was quick to jump onto the bandwagon, composing a Bump song, together with his son Carlos. The Italian musician based in Lima, Luciano Luciani performed the song 'A Bailar Bump' backed by his band of local musicians Los Mulatos.

Canadian producer Dylan Khotin-Foote has kept his Khotin alias going for the better part of a decade; the impressionistic electronic project shifts with the movements in his life. Sometimes it leads, like when the club-friendly grooves of 2014's Hello World immersed him in the heart of Vancouver's underground dance scene, and sometimes it follows, like 2018's Beautiful You, a downtempo salve for DJ fatigue. His melodic sensibility and playful ear for atmosphere remain the rippling core of the project's fingerprint; whether beat-driven or ambient, a foggy smear or a dusted and pristine print, a Khotin track has a distinct and instantly recognizable swirl. During and after the 2020 release of Finds You Well, his second LP on Ghostly International, Khotin-Foote settled back into a slower vibe in his hometown of Ed- monton. Even before the pandemic, his pivots to softer production, and away from DJing, left him with fewer opportunities in Vancouver and club bookings overall, and as a self-identifying introvert, he was fine with that. But the change of pace did open space for Khotin-Foote to grapple with concepts of adulthood and career. At his lowest, he almost walked off this musical path altogether; instead, he doubled down on the craft _ the tone, pacing, and dynamism of new material _ arriving at a definitive full-length. With Release Spirit, Khotin releases himself from the pressure of expectation, fusing and refining everything we know about his music. The warmth and familiarity of Khotin's dreamy, dulcet style meet new ideas and frameworks, a natural progression, a modest revelation; Khotin confirms it is okay to move slowly and he's never sounded better doing it. The album title borrows from the "release spirit" mechanic in the video game World of Warcraft. When players die, they are prompted to release their spirit and return as ghosts to find their corpses and come back to life. Khotin sees it as a worthy metaphor for the impending change his return home presented and the resulting process of purging artistic expectations to find his creative self again. On this go- around, he is freer, more playful, and more intentional within his palette of warped synth, breakbeats, and piano sounds _ including the classic Casio SK-1 presets he's used since the start _ mingling with wistful samples, field recordings, and other abstract snippets. For the first time, he enlisted Nik Kozub to do the mix and assist with sequencing. Khotin-Foote has long worked with the Edmonton-based musician and engineer in the mastering phase, as well as their days co-running the label Normals Welcome, and this time was able to involve his ears earlier given their newfound proximity. "I think it's my best sounding record to date." We begin on "HV Road" or Happy Valley Road, where Khotin-Foote spent time during a family vacation in British Columbia's Okanagan Lake. His plans to record crickets at night are quickly foiled by his younger siblings; the cute exchange orients the listener to a core memory of sorts, setting the tone of universally understood warmth and wonder that has defined some of Khotin's most transportive tracks. Hazy percussion takes hold, and we are swept further into the wisp of "Lovely," a grooving, melodic standout built on the interplay between the beat and human voice-like hums. Khotin knows this zone well; equally suited for a reverie or a club warm-up. The bubbling atmosphere and absurdity of "3 pz" offer a cosmic/comic interlude and also speak to reflections on his family's move to Canada two generations ago, and the audio tutorials they used to learn English. "I can only imagine my grandpar- ents repeating some of the bizarre phrases." "Fountain, Growth" finds Khotin in collaboration with Montreal's Tess Roby (Dawn to Dawn) for the project's first-ever vocal track. Roby's soft cadence echoes atop spiraling air pockets of rhythmic production, lending a breezy, almost shoegaze pop feel. Throughout the single and the album, wind gusts between the compositional layers, akin to the roaming spirits of its namesake, curving around the birdsong of "Life Mask" and seamlessly reaching "Unlimited <3." The latter bumps in slow motion; disembodied whirrs from his Casio collide with 808 drums and sub-bass for a vibe that teeters on trap and instrumental hip-hop. Release Spirit rests in a dream sequence. Oscillating synth lines dance around the heartbeat of "Techno Creep," a hyperactive REM state before the digitized ambient sprawl of "My Same Size." In the final pass, Khotin imagines transcontinental travel from the glow of his screen. He recorded "Sound Gathering Trip" to soundtrack a genre of YouTube videos he's taken to that follows train routes through Europe and Japan. The scene is serene and moving; piano keys warble as static-filled sound design shimmers off the rails, from cityscapes to the countryside, an introspective ride through a world beyond his bedroom. It doubles as an apt parting image for Khotin's project as a whole: dreaming big but happiest when riffing on the details, shaping environments from the inside out. Over the last decade, he has stretched from his core in Edmonton, leaving a trace in Vancouver and beyond; but when all signs point home, he loops back to see it all from a different vantage, revitalized, refined, and free.

Pink Vinyl
Canadian producer Dylan Khotin-Foote has kept his Khotin alias going for the better part of a decade; the impressionistic electronic project shifts with the movements in his life. Sometimes it leads, like when the club-friendly grooves of 2014's Hello World immersed him in the heart of Vancouver's underground dance scene, and sometimes it follows, like 2018's Beautiful You, a downtempo salve for DJ fatigue His melodic sensibility and playful ear for atmosphere remain the rippling core of the project's fingerprint; whether beat-driven or ambient, a foggy smear or a dusted and pristine print, a Khotin track has a distinct and instantly recognizable swirl. During and after the 2020 release of Finds You Well, his second LP on Ghostly International, Khotin-Foote settled back into a slower vibe in his hometown of Ed- monton. Even before the pandemic, his pivots to softer production, and away from DJing, left him with fewer opportunities in Vancouver and club bookings overall, and as a self-identifying introvert, he was fine with that. But the change of pace did open space for Khotin-Foote to grapple with concepts of adulthood and career. At his lowest, he almost walked off this musical path altogether; instead, he doubled down on the craft _ the tone, pacing, and dynamism of new material _ arriving at a definitive full-length. With Release Spirit, Khotin releases himself from the pressure of expectation, fusing and refining everything we know about his music. The warmth and familiarity of Khotin's dreamy, dulcet style meet new ideas and frameworks, a natural progression, a modest revelation; Khotin confirms it is okay to move slowly and he's never sounded better doing it. The album title borrows from the "release spirit" mechanic in the video game World of Warcraft. When players die, they are prompted to release their spirit and return as ghosts to find their corpses and come back to life. Khotin sees it as a worthy metaphor for the impending change his return home presented and the resulting process of purging artistic expectations to find his creative self again. On this go- around, he is freer, more playful, and more intentional within his palette of warped synth, breakbeats, and piano sounds _ including the classic Casio SK-1 presets he's used since the start _ mingling with wistful samples, field recordings, and other abstract snippets. For the first time, he enlisted Nik Kozub to do the mix and assist with sequencing. Khotin-Foote has long worked with the Edmonton-based musician and engineer in the mastering phase, as well as their days co-running the label Normals Welcome, and this time was able to involve his ears earlier given their newfound proximity. "I think it's my best sounding record to date." We begin on "HV Road" or Happy Valley Road, where Khotin-Foote spent time during a family vacation in British Columbia's Okanagan Lake. His plans to record crickets at night are quickly foiled by his younger siblings; the cute exchange orients the listener to a core memory of sorts, setting the tone of universally understood warmth and wonder that has defined some of Khotin's most transportive tracks. Hazy percussion takes hold, and we are swept further into the wisp of "Lovely," a grooving, melodic standout built on the interplay between the beat and human voice-like hums. Khotin knows this zone well; equally suited for a reverie or a club warm-up. The bubbling atmosphere and absurdity of "3 pz" offer a cosmic/comic interlude and also speak to reflections on his family's move to Canada two generations ago, and the audio tutorials they used to learn English. "I can only imagine my grandpar- ents repeating some of the bizarre phrases." "Fountain, Growth" finds Khotin in collaboration with Montreal's Tess Roby (Dawn to Dawn) for the project's first-ever vocal track. Roby's soft cadence echoes atop spiraling air pockets of rhythmic production, lending a breezy, almost shoegaze pop feel. Throughout the single and the album, wind gusts between the compositional layers, akin to the roaming spirits of its namesake, curving around the birdsong of "Life Mask" and seamlessly reaching "Unlimited <3." The latter bumps in slow motion; disembodied whirrs from his Casio collide with 808 drums and sub-bass for a vibe that teeters on trap and instrumental hip-hop. Release Spirit rests in a dream sequence. Oscillating synth lines dance around the heartbeat of "Techno Creep," a hyperactive REM state before the digitized ambient sprawl of "My Same Size." In the final pass, Khotin imagines transcontinental travel from the glow of his screen. He recorded "Sound Gathering Trip" to soundtrack a genre of YouTube videos he's taken to that follows train routes through Europe and Japan. The scene is serene and moving; piano keys warble as static-filled sound design shimmers off the rails, from cityscapes to the countryside, an introspective ride through a world beyond his bedroom. It doubles as an apt parting image for Khotin's project as a whole: dreaming big but happiest when riffing on the details, shaping environments from the inside out. Over the last decade, he has stretched from his core in Edmonton, leaving a trace in Vancouver and beyond; but when all signs point home, he loops back to see it all from a different vantage, revitalized, refined, and free.

New edition of this Soul Jazz Records out-of-print classic album available now as a new limited-edition one-off pressing triple yellow vinyl album (plus download code), and limited-edition one-off pressing special yellow CD edition.
Soul Jazz Records’ Space, Energy and Light is a collection of music by early electronic and synthesizer pioneers (from the 1960s through the 1970s), mid-1970s proto-new age gurus and 1980s guerrilla D-I-Y cassette-era electronic artists, spanning in total over a near 30-year time frame. All of these artists used electronic advancements in music technology as a means of exploring not only space and the idea of the future, but also of looking inwards to the soul and of creating music in harmony with the natural world.
From computer software and hardware experimentalists and sound pioneers such as Laurie Spiegel and Kevin Braheny, as well as Mother Mallard’s Portable Masterpiece Company – the first synthesizer ensemble created in collaboration with Robert Moog – through to musique concrète experimentation, the album shows how technological advancements and creative artistic expression often went hand in hand. 
In the mid-1970s artists Steven Halpern and Iaxos were instrumental in creating proto-new age music, experimenting in both the healing properties of sound and its relationship with the natural world. These artists also pioneered a new self-contained and underground D-I-Y approach to music, creating their own record labels, forming new distribution networks (with albums sold in meditation centres, health food stores and ashrams) far away from the commercialism of the mainstream music industry. In the early 1980s after the revolution of punk, these D-I-Y attitudes and ideas appeared once more in the growth of the distinctly anti-commercial and underground cassette-only careers of artists such as Germany’s Stratis and Carl Matthews in Britain.
Artwork includes some of the earliest photography of the Plieades star cluster dating from the 1880s.

"Listening to Space, Energy & Light in one sitting is a bit like experiencing constellations exploding within constellations inside your brain." Record Collector
"Incredible collection of spacey electronics and meditative soundscapes dating from the early 60s to the late 80s here, lovingly assembled by the Soul Jazz team. This compilation has it all if you like your music deep. Big names such as Iasos and Laurie Spiegel feature, but even if you think yourself a bit of a nerd in this field, there are some lesser known pearls to be found." Bleep
"Quite simply an amazing mix of some quite bizarre and interesting pieces of music, no way to describe it other than to buy it, put on some headphones and drift off to inner space.” Amazon
"New compilation charting almost three decades of experimental
electronic and synthesizer music from the most influential and often
unsung composers of their generation. Beginning and 1961 and
following the story until 1988, Space, Energy and Light connects
proto-new age gurus and DIY tape vigilantes who were equally
inspired by the advancements of new technology and its potential to
unlock utopian futures in both the music and the soul." Vinyl Factory

Timeless atmospheres, hypnotic sonorities, minimal arrangements. And a composer gifted with a never ending passion for music, experimenter in his genetic code, innovator by vocation, at ease with various instruments in order to forge avant-garde themes. Piero Umiliani was already forward in building completely new sounds in the late Seventies. “Tra Scienza E Fantascienza” finds his alter ego Moggi experimenting with alternative grooves, electronic music, jazz tunes and soundtrack motifs. One of the most interesting music libraries in the Italian composer's discography, reissued with a new remastering by Musica Per Immagini, is in full harmony with its title.

Science fiction has opened up our eyes to a variety of scenarios, possible or impossible, sometimes with a happy ending, sometimes apocalyptic, at times familiarly near, more often disarmingly far away, and always capable of inspiring our imagination. For the histrionic artist it took, perhaps, less of a cosmic leap to create this masterpiece. Centred on the cover, a strange creature with only one eye, its hands on a beaker containing a mysterious red liquid. To its right, a symbolic circle is imprinted on a sandy surface, and three bizarre constructions, similar to the volumetric flasks found in a laboratory, of differing heights and shapes. There is a strange blue planet in the distance.

Self-recorded indie experimentalist from the Pacific Northwest. For fans of Grouper, The Microphones, Unwound’s Leaves Turn Inside You. Features Madeline Johnston (Midwife), Alex Kent (Sprain), Lula Asplund, a chamber ensemble and more. In 2019, Drowse’s Kyle Bates set out to produce a self-recorded new album. Marked by moving across state lines, long-distance relationships, and deaths in the family, the following years proved to be metamorphic. Now, three years later, he’s emerged with Wane Into It, continuing a distinctly Pacific Northwestern tradition of self-recording indie experimentalists (Grouper, The Microphones, Unwound’s Leaves Turn Inside You). One of the most impactful moments came during the looming passing of a family member. With death expected, the choice was made to conduct a bizarre “living-wake” gathering—with the soon-to-be1deceased in attendance. Shortly after, Bates found himself disturbed, preoccupied with the abstraction of memory. The experience led him to reassess the tool one uses to curate our selective memories: the internet. The internet, which creeped into even more aspects of life during the pandemic, serves as our self-made digital link to the past. Its uncaring presence layered over humbling thoughts of death and his own childhood memories of the Oregon Coast as he worked on Wane Into It; life’s hyperreal texture sank into the recordings as he felt his body age and wane. Big sounds were captured in bedrooms, hallways, practice spaces, forests, and on highways throughout West Coast vibraphones chime over black metal guitars, a mellotron drones under degraded samples, violins splinter against granular field recordings. In the process of documenting these aural moments Bates completed an MFA at Mills College, coloring the album with shades of avant electronic and minimalist composition (Pauline Oliveros, Terry Riley, Maryanne Amacher, Sarah Davachi etc…). To realize this scope Drowse collaborated with Madeline Johnston (Midwife), Alex Kent (Sprain), Lula Asplund, a chamber ensemble and more. Bates’s songwriting and production have never been more lucid; sounds flicker as he sings with fragile intensity. The record, Drowse’s third for The Flenser, impressionistically distills loss, distance, mystery, prescription drugs, the preservation of memory via recording, and ambient anxiety through its titular act: to Wane Into It, to disappear awaiting the next moon phase, water returning to sea before reemerging as a wave. Track Listing: 1. Untrue In Headphones 2. Mystery Pt. 2 3. (Ashes Over The Pacific Northwest) 4. Wane Into It 5. Telepresence 6. Gabapentin 7. Blue Light Glow 8. Three Faces (Cyanoacrylate) 9. Ten Year Hangover / Deconstructed Mystery

Self-recorded indie experimentalist from the Pacific Northwest. For fans of Grouper, The Microphones, Unwound’s Leaves Turn Inside You. Features Madeline Johnston (Midwife), Alex Kent (Sprain), Lula Asplund, a chamber ensemble and more. In 2019, Drowse’s Kyle Bates set out to produce a self-recorded new album. Marked by moving across state lines, long-distance relationships, and deaths in the family, the following years proved to be metamorphic. Now, three years later, he’s emerged with Wane Into It, continuing a distinctly Pacific Northwestern tradition of self-recording indie experimentalists (Grouper, The Microphones, Unwound’s Leaves Turn Inside You). One of the most impactful moments came during the looming passing of a family member. With death expected, the choice was made to conduct a bizarre “living-wake” gathering—with the soon-to-be1deceased in attendance. Shortly after, Bates found himself disturbed, preoccupied with the abstraction of memory. The experience led him to reassess the tool one uses to curate our selective memories: the internet. The internet, which creeped into even more aspects of life during the pandemic, serves as our self-made digital link to the past. Its uncaring presence layered over humbling thoughts of death and his own childhood memories of the Oregon Coast as he worked on Wane Into It; life’s hyperreal texture sank into the recordings as he felt his body age and wane. Big sounds were captured in bedrooms, hallways, practice spaces, forests, and on highways throughout West Coast vibraphones chime over black metal guitars, a mellotron drones under degraded samples, violins splinter against granular field recordings. In the process of documenting these aural moments Bates completed an MFA at Mills College, coloring the album with shades of avant electronic and minimalist composition (Pauline Oliveros, Terry Riley, Maryanne Amacher, Sarah Davachi etc…). To realize this scope Drowse collaborated with Madeline Johnston (Midwife), Alex Kent (Sprain), Lula Asplund, a chamber ensemble and more. Bates’s songwriting and production have never been more lucid; sounds flicker as he sings with fragile intensity. The record, Drowse’s third for The Flenser, impressionistically distills loss, distance, mystery, prescription drugs, the preservation of memory via recording, and ambient anxiety through its titular act: to Wane Into It, to disappear awaiting the next moon phase, water returning to sea before reemerging as a wave. Track Listing: 1. Untrue In Headphones 2. Mystery Pt. 2 3. (Ashes Over The Pacific Northwest) 4. Wane Into It 5. Telepresence 6. Gabapentin 7. Blue Light Glow 8. Three Faces (Cyanoacrylate) 9. Ten Year Hangover / Deconstructed Mystery

After the legendary French Ethno-industrial band Vox Populi! vanished into obscurity in the early 1990ees, some, like bass player, Francis Manne aka Francis Laffont aka Kosa Nostra aka Kosa aka Fr6, expanded in their their new artistic adventures. Alone or with others, he followed his multi-disciplinary sonic visions that he already displayed on the label Vox Man records, that he founded with Vox Populi! member Axel Kyrou in 1982. Together they released the famed "Audiologie" compilations, an audio fanzine featuring a contemporary outlook on the experimental electronic, and improvisational avant-garde music scene of the time. Particularly the two "Alterntative Funk: la Folie Distinguée" compilations turned into today’s collectors’ items for fans of bizarre electronic music.

Now Notte Brigante brings “Kosa and Friends 1987/97“, twelve unreleased recordings that display Francis Manne’s ongoing musical creation after the break-up of Vox Populi!. Minimal Synth, post punk, field recordings, psychedelic, cold wave, and weird proto funk are welcome thoughtful listeners into an eccentric world of pop and poetry, of experiment and groove. As the visual part was always equally important as the music for him, the cover links to Manne’s graphic work, which has also often been featured on many Vox Populi!, Bain Total, or Vox Man Records. A venturesome collection that documents an unexplored universe of a visionary French avant-garde musician and his vivid peer group.

Black Truffle is thrilled to announce Drumming Up Trouble, the first release of previously unissued music by Alvin Curran on the label. Collecting works recorded between 2018-2021 and a side-long epic dating back to the early 80s, as the title suggests, Drumming Up Trouble focuses on a hitherto almost unknown aspect of Curran’s encyclopaedic and omnivorous musical world: his experiments with sampled and synthesised percussion. As Curran’s wonderful, wildly sweeping liner notes make clear, his fascination with drumming belongs to the radical investigation of music’s fundamental elements that has marked his output since the beginnings of MEV, who aimed (as he says in a recent interview) to return ‘in some collective way to a non-existent start time in the history of human music’. Whatever kind of music our proto-human ancestors played, he writes, ‘drums were front and centre in the mix. Drums rule!’

In a paradox typical of Curran’s approach, Drumming Up Trouble interrogates this most ancient dimension of music with contemporary technology. On the first side, we hear recent pieces performed using the sampling software and full-size MIDI keyboard setup Curran has refined since the 1980s. Two of them are wild real-time improvisations, primarily utilising an enormous bank of hip-hop samples. Building from polyrhythmic layers of drum machine fragments to wild cacophonies of clashing vocal samples, scratching, and frantic pitch shifting, these energetic and at times hilarious pieces occupy a space somewhere between John Oswald’s Plunderphonics, Pat Thomas and Matt Wand in the Tony Oxley Quartet, and the propulsive Kudoro/Grime fusion of Lisbon’s Príncipe label. They are improvisations are accompanied by two austere, minimal compositions realised in collaboration with Angelo Maria Fallo: ‘End Zone’ for orchestral bass drum and high oscillator, and ‘Rollings’, where a snare roll is gradually stretched and filtered by digital means into ‘floating electronic gossamer’.

The incredible breadth of Curran’s output makes it pretty unlikely that a listener familiar with his work would be surprised to find it branching out in a new direction. But no degree of familiarity with his work can really prepare for side B’s epic and bizarre ‘Field it More’. It’s perhaps best to let the maestro describe this unhinged and infectious offering in his own words: ‘It features an 8 bar funky minimal riff à la James Brown, played on synth and an-out-of-tune piano, synced to a pre-paid patch on the Roland drum machine. Over this is laid a heavily processed track of the voices of dancer Yoshiko Chuma and movie-maker Jacob Burckhardt discussing an upcoming performance of theirs at the Venice film festival, capped by a track of my playing an increasingly out of control blues over the top of all of the above’. Only Pekka Airaksinen’s Buddhas of the Golden Light comes to mind as a reference point that might even vaguely compare to this wild home-brew of drum-machine funk, mad improvisation and squelching electronics, which eventually dissolved into a massive, layered cluster. Ancient and modern, synthetic and human, hysterical and rigorous, Drumming up Trouble is 100% Curran.

CLASSIC ALBUM REMASTERED BY ED WYNNE & RE-ISSUED ON CLASSIC BLACK VINYL.

One of the most influential bands to emerge from the UK's festival scene, the Ozrics layer ambient & ethereal landscapes with freeform dub trips, incredible rave grooves & psychedelic progressive rock

It's an open exploration of music & the soul. One of the most influential bands to emerge from the UK's festival scene, the Ozrics layer ambient & ethereal landscapes with freeform dub trips, incredible rave grooves & psychedelic progressive rock. It's an open exploration of music & the soul.

For over 30 years, the Ozrics have experienced the vicissitudes of the rock & roll life. The band has flourished through several line- up changes, spawned several side projects, created their own record label, put out close to 25 albums, scored a hit record & sold over a million albums world-wide. And yet, the basic motivation behind the band's existence has never wavered. Their signature blend of hippy aesthetics & raver electronics with spiraling guitars, textured waves of keyboard & midi samplers & supergroovy bass & drum rhythms continues to delight fans across the world to this day.

'Strangeitude' was released in 1991 & featured the band's first single, 'Sploosh!' which reached number 1 in the UK independent chart. Presented for the first time since its original release on classic black vinyl by Kscope.

Camille Bertault and David Helbock are two of the most jawdroppingly talented members of the cohort of European jazz
musicians currently in their mid-Thirties. Their journeys in improvised
music are always adventurous, playful and exciting.
 She is the rising star of French vocal jazz. He, Austrian-born, is one
of the most fascinating pianists on the scene. Their personalities
appear to be polar opposites, yet Bertault’s livewire humour and
Helbock’s calm self-assuredness only appear different on the surface.
When it comes to the musical choices they make, they are
emphatically on the same page. Each is astonishingly versatile, with
an innate sense of dramaturgy. This voice / piano duo reaches
unbelievable levels of inventiveness here on ‘Playground’.
 “We both love Egberto Gismonti and Hermeto Pascoal, Björk and
Monk,” Helbock explains. “We also wanted a classical piece.” The
duo found the initial repertoire to explore and to spread their musical
wings with relative ease. Bertault’s vocal artistry is hers and hers
alone. Her voice is a magnificent instrument to carry a melody,
whether at breakneck speed and with devastating precision or at
pindrop volume. Helbock’s creativity, as he exploits all the sound
possibilities of the grand piano, is completely ‘sui generis’ as well. He
dampens the piano strings, he plays directly on them, he uses the
piano case as a percussion instrument, he makes use of electronics.
And ‘Playground’ is the first time he has worked with loops.
 His accompaniment therefore has an almost orchestral scale and
depth, a jewel case for this scintillating and very special voice. The
pair have written seven new numbers for the album: we hear the
whimsical blues of ‘Lonely Supamen’, the mysterious ‘Fabelwesen’,
the chanson-esque ‘Aide-moi’ and the ethereal-melancholic ‘Bizarre’.
 ‘Playground’ is a kaleidoscope of sounds and emotions which
invigorates, excites - and will always surprise. The craft and
technique may be breath taking, but neither musician ever forgets the
essential: “It’s not about showing strength or virtuosity, but about
expressing the truth of the moment,” says Camille Bertault. And that
is what she and David Helbock have delivered with each and every
track.

40th anniversary edition of the debut album by the multi-talented musician Carlos Perón. “Impersonator” was originally released in 1981 when he was still a member of Yello. This first solo work represents a desire to conduct daring electronic experiments, to achieve stylistic variety and musical intensity while at the same time it is an example of Mr. Perón’s bizarre sense of humour.
Since the beginning of his career he pushed experimentation beyond limits with noise atmospheres, loops and complex textures which he has long used since before the introduction of sampling technology. With the arrival of sound sampling, he was among the first to experiment with equipment such as the Fairlight, Emulator and Mirage. During his time with Yello, Carlos may well have been one of the world’s first sampling masters.

This new re-issue of “Impersonator” includes all original tracks with some bonus including the whole Frigorex EP from 1984 and six previously unreleased cuts recorded between 1982 and 1983. Limited edition of 500 copies with gatefold sleeve and an exclusive postcard.

Emerging from Lower Franconia's hidden reverse, Johannes schebler, known as ambient-poltergeist "Baldruin" and surreal folklorists Christian Schoppik & Katie Rich of "Brannten Schnüre"-fame have puzzled and amazed outernational audiences from the stranger end of the avant/lo-fi spectrum in recent years. The trio is now collectively dreaming as "Freundliche Kreisel",reaching for terra incognita rather than common ground on their most bewildering and accessible outing to date. Arch-pontifices of the electro-acoustic and outsider-art realm, they fill in gaps and invent missing links on the go with somnambulistic ease, confusing the hypersensitive and hyaline timbres of contempo-electronic aesthetics with the naïve charm of Germany's obscure Kassettentäter and mutant-NDW.

Think Daniele Mana and Lorenzo Senni digitally rewiring the 4-track recordings of Gareth Williams' Flaming Tunes or sometimes, much scarier, it feels as if it's the other way round. There certainly is an air of whimsical yet post-ironic romanticism to the songs contained here, a madcap, tongue-in-cheek ghost story as filtered through the transcendental senses of a childhood perspective. This attitude is best personified in the disarming innocence of Katie's vocals whose intonation touches on nursery rhymes as much as on dirges and bizarre 'schlager' kitsch.

Heirs to the tradition of magic realism, examining fragments of an arcane sacred mundanity like a crack in the concrete of everyday life, Freundliche Kreisel dwell on this often neglected microcosmic topography, yielding an adventurous and visionary piece of a decidedly Franconian next-level post-modern folklore.