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lack Marble Vinyl! High Vis were formed in 2016 from the ashes of some of the UK's best hardcore bands. Gild-toothed frontman Graham Sayle's anguished lyrics about life in working class Britain were familiar to fans of Tremors' full-throttle thrash, but alongside his former bandmate Edward `Ski' Harper and veterans of Dirty Money, DiE and The Smear, High Vis sought to transform that energy and intensity into something entirely new.Like scene-mates Chubby and the Gang did by pulling in unlikely source material from classic doo-wop or Micromoon have by combining everything from psychedelia and metal into their high potency mix, High Vis' 2019 debut album, No Sense No Feeling showed the band were never going to be constrained by any sense of genre rules or regulations. Its claustrophobic rattle bore traces of Joy Division, Bauhaus, Crisis, The Cure and Gang Of Four lurking in the shadows. 2020's synth-driven EP, Society Exists, was further evidence of the band's restless creative MO.High Vis' second album Blending sees them open their viewfinder wider than ever before.

Alongside longstanding favourites such as Fugazi and Echo and The Bunnymen; Ride and even Flock Of Seagulls were shared reference points as the band worked on the album together.From the anthemic sweep of opener "Talk For Hours", through the title track's psychedelic swirl and "Fever Dream"'s baggy groove, it sees High Vis' sound blossoming into something with an unlimited richness. The hazy drift of "Shame" or the melodic jangle of "Trauma Bonds" may take them until uncharted waters, but they still have all the power and bite that made No Sense No Feeling so remarkable.Lyrically, the album represents another leap forward too. Talking frankly about poverty, class politics, and the challenges of everyday life, Sayle's lyrics have always addressed the downtrodden and discarded communities across Britain slipping below the waterline. This time around, Sayle's lost not of that social consciousness, but he's looked at himself and his own emotional landscape, and in the process created something that feels more universal, that reaches a hand-out to people and ultimately gives a message of hope."To me, the lyrics are less selfish," reflects Sayle. "In the past, I couldn't see past whatever was going on with me.

It's about accepting things and being open to conversations and learning to talk to people rather than just thinking that we're all doomed."The song "Talk for Hours" is a prime example of that. Born out of an afternoon meeting up with an old group of mates "repeating the same thing and not actually learning anything about each other" it offers to actually break the cycle and to listen and speak frankly about shared feelings and experiences. "Trauma Bonds", meanwhile, traces the broken lines of those living in lost communities, but ultimately realises that despite our shared scars, there's still hope to move on to a better future."The message of the album is you're not who you're told you are," Sayle summarises. "You're not your class background. Whatever it is, you're not that. Don't resign yourself to thinking you can't be this and you can't be that."It's a vitally important message right now, and one that could be the motto for not only Blending, but for High Vis themselves.

After Joao Selva, Dowdelin, The Bongo Hop, Underdog Records continue their exploration of the Black Atlantic with IREKE.Ecstatic brass, 70’s keyboards, elastic guitars, round bass and world percussion: from this sonic heritage, Ireke makes a unique fusion, enhanced by the audacious contribution of his dub science, and a few electronic touches

IREKE

Ireke? Sugar cane in Yoruba. Like her, the duo loves tropical climates and intoxicating rhythms, quick to liberate the bodies gathered on a dancefloor. Afrobeat urgency, funk suppleness, dub alchemy, highlife jubilation: with Tropikadelic, Ireke summons the heritage of the masters and the audacity of machines to give life to new sonic territories. At the crossroads. For the love of groove.

From the West, with their ears to the Black Atlantic, Julien Gervaix and Damien Tes- son are both children of the collective and of improvisation, playgrounds for these complete multi-instrumentalists.

The first one puts his talents of arranger-saxophonist at the service of the Nantes collective Soulshine and of numerous formations - in turn funk or rhythm’n blues - where swinging is the rule.This is notably the case of the afrobeat group Walko, in which Julien Gervaix had the honour of sharing the stage and the studio for several years with Kiala Nzavotunga, guitarist extraordinaire for Fela Kuti and Egypt 80. Meanwhile, Damien Tesson was being trained as a dubmaster-guitarist-arranger at the reggae roots school with the digital option of the Vendée collective Shi Fu Mi Temple.This initiation led Damien Tesson to join, among others, the Nantes-based group BIBA (Bingy Band) and then to collaborate with Jideh High Elements, a key figure on the international dub scene, Roberto Sanchez and the team of his Lone Ark Studio, as well as Sana Bob, a famous reggae singer from Burkina Faso.And then, life being well done, the paths of Julien Gervaix and Damien Tesson ended up crossing within the jazz-funk combo Playtime, before meeting again in the Vendée a few years later.

With an obvious tropism for Afro-Latin grooves, tropical colours, electronic tricks and furious swaying, the two musicians create Ireke like a glass of well arranged rum. Here’s to us, here’s to you! As if guided by the spirit of the plant, Ireke toasts the immense richness of these danceable rhythms, true generators of life, connection and energy.

Like Legba, the Yoruba orisha of intersections and crossroads, Ireke thrives in the between worlds.Aware of the lineage of goldsmiths who preceded them, Ireke

knows his classics and humbly draws inspiration for Tropikadelic from the musical genius of Pat Thomas, Poly-rythmo Orchestra, King Tubby,Tony Allen, Fela Kuti, Maître Gazonga, Ernesto Djédjé or the Vikings of Guadeloupe. Ecstatic brass, 70’s keyboards, elastic guitars, round bass and world percussion: from this sonic heritage, Ireke makes a unique fusion, enhanced by the audacious contribution of his dub science, and a few electronic touches patiently flushed out in the studio - which the duo considers as an instrument in its own right.

Finally, to give voice to his compositions, on Tropikadelic, Ireke calls upon an army of serious enthusiasts, each member of which has come up with his or her own lyrics. Thus, alongside Ireke, we find the groove griot Pat Kalla (“Femme qui Danse”,“Love Is Jokin”), the Franco-Laotian reggaeman Amatah Keo (“Man Bo Diak”), the Vendée- based Agnès Hélène (“Petit à Petit”,“Oh Ma Chérie”) and Charly Sanga (“Bas Les Masques”,“Oh Ma Chérie”), the Burkinabè lion Sana Bob (“Métissage”) as well as the Nantes soulman Jy Cooly (“Kinkeliba”).

For the duo, music is above all a collective practice, an active liberation, a rhythmic approach to letting go, a source of communicative joy... In short, groove is the weap- on! And Ireke knows how to use it.

LNS and DJ Sotofett return to Tresor Records with The Reformer EP. This new record moves forward with a crystal clear, direct and controlled output, leaving their debut album "Sputters" as an end-mark of a sonic era. Here they evolve into a topography full of contrasts, where harsh digital artefacts, scanner sounds, and vocoder voices cast melodic colors across cold landscapes of club-ready electro.
"Reform" plunges deep into an electro sound splintered by binary bits and submerged pads that beckon a serene melody, which echoes and loops to entangle with mutant voices, noises and buzzes. "Plexistorm" leads with synthesized strings and arpeggiated acidic bleeps until a thick bass emerges, sounding almost like a long-lost Analord record. Heavily shapeshifting with eects processing, it proves primitive movements in dubbing are the perfect counterpart to this precise electro sound.
With "Electric Terraforming", the duo uncover charged energy sources required for life on another planet, as broad synth pads
and memorable vocoder harmonies draw this earworm to a close. Mighty washes of dub rule on "909 The Controller" as a skipping beat invites a slow, rippling melody and percolating reverberated synths.
The vinyl record has significantly dierent sonics to the digital release, and, exclusively, each side ends in a locked groove produced by DJ Sotofett.

New year, new energy, new music...

We’re all waiting for that tune to land in our lap, reach up and slap us simultaneously in the ears, feels, souls and feet. That big sonic blast of emotion and inspiration that sets the tone and gets us excited about a new season of shows.

Hard Times Records present ‘All I Need’, a powerful, slab of house music positivity that smacks of ‘first anthem of the year’ vibes and comes courtesy of one of house music’s biggest pioneers AND a certified UK House music institution that permanently changed the face of global club culture over 30 years ago... Steve ‘Silk’ Hurley and Hard Times.

Neither Hurley or Hard Times need any introductions, but both have histories that deserve so much more than this hype-fuelled promo blurb. Steve ‘Silk’ Hurley is a certified legend. As one of the pioneering House music artists to emerge from Chicago’s primordial 80s phenomenon and the first ever to score a UK number one Hit with ‘Jack Your Body’, the multiple Grammy nominated artist has been a powerful source of energy and inspiration ever since as one of the most consistent forefathers of this scene.

Hard Times have played an equally influential role and are arguably responsible for some of the most defining moments in uk House Music. One of the first club nights to import the US titans to UK dancefloors, the Yorkshire brand were instrumental in creating a blueprint in international DJ culture as they invited the biggest pioneers and legends to their events that began in the sleepy town of Mirfield, but eventually sprawled across the UK with line-ups that ranged from Todd Terry to Masters at Work to Deep Dish and every titan in between. A dominant force throughout the 90s, Hard Times wound down in the 2000s as its founder Steve Raine took a break from the industry to become a sheep farmer, which he still does to this day... Safe in the knowledge that he helped to create an ethos for uncompromising underground House Music that remains steadfast to this Day.

The Hard Times label originated back in 1994 And ran alongside the club night, boasting a small but elite catalogue. It’s about to thrive on a whole new level as Hard Times returns as a label with its first new material for over 20 years with ‘All I Need’.

Timeless yet forward-thinking, loaded to the brim with precision groovemanship, glazed with a strong Latin twist and sprinkled with the gorgeous vocals of Sara Garvey, who many will instantly recognise from her Nightmares On Wax collaborations, ‘All I Need’ is a pedigree house anthem-in-waiting. Universal in vibe and spirit, fully transcending trend or flavour-of-the-month fickleness, this taps into the source and has full potential to be the first big boundary-breaking house hit of 2023... 36 years after Steve ‘Silk’ Hurley topped the charts with ‘Jack Your Body’!

It comes complete with a rainbow of remixes from some equally eye-opening heavyweights: Alex Arnout, Eddie Leader, Terry Farley & Kevin Swain and DJ Skip (who runs S&S Records with ‘Hurley) all provide different perspectives on ‘All I Need’, giving it even more scope and depth to slap us simultaneously.

After the ambitious A Distant (Dark) Source (2018) and the subsequent artistic triumph of its live recording in 2021, French avant-garde metal outfit HYPNO5E return with their sixth studio album. Once more, these four visionary musicians and cinematographers take us back to the lost shores of the palaeolithic Lake Tauca, where we dive deeper into its dark source to fnd vibrant visions of a memory both distant and hazy as well as warm and evocative. Sheol shows HYPNO5E at the top of their game, revealing the epitome of their idiosyncratic sound while also exploring new and exciting aspects of their artistic identity. Since 2006 HYPNO5E have been taking grand strides in honing their brand of cinematographic metal, with each of their albums developing elements that would become essential building blocks to their sound. Their 2007 debut album Des Deux l'Une Est l'Autre harnessed a raw, chaotic energy, while the following Acid Mist Tomorrow (2012) saw them apply a hazy filter to their ferocious sound. On Shores of the Abstract Line (2015) HYPNO5E already transformed into the true modern metal grandmasters they are today, while the special soundtrack album Alba - Les Ombres Errantes explored a more subdued acoustic side of the band. Sheol sees the band sounding warmer and brighter than anywhere else in their storied discography, and the arrival of new drummer Pierre Rettien and bass player Charles Villanueva adds a fresh touch the classic HYPNO5E sound. The sweeping finales of «Lands of Haze» and «The Dreamer and His Dream» as well as the pastoral qualities of the quiet finger-picked parts on «Bone Dust» and «Lava From The Sky» hearken back to the old prog rock records of the seventies, albeit with an updated sonic palette and modern production parameters. Besides, these eight tracks also see the band carefully exploring new patterns, shapes, and forms within their own musical universe: from the alternating use of ritardando and accelerando on the aforementioned rim-clicks to the increased employment of string sections and vocal harmonies. With the addition of a whole new palette of warmer and brighter tones, HYPNO5E superbly bridge the sounds of the modern progressive metal and retro prog-movements creating an evocative sonic experience. FOR FANS OF Gojira, Opeth, Periphery, Uneven Structure, Steven Wilson Limited (100 copies ww) Single Colour (Gold Vinyl) Edition!

The Well & The Gentle, two of the major works of Pauline Oliveros, are presented here in a first time reissue on double vinyl in a gatefold sleeve with extensive liner notes.

If Oliveros had followed a more conventional path she may have, all social obstacles aside, been considered among the major composers of her time. However, Oliveros approached composition in a more egalitarian manner. She wrote music for musicians to interact with or, in the composers words, she wished to create "an inclusive and interdependent and unfolding world of relationships."

Oliveros' propensity towards inclusion is part of what makes this work so remarkably distinctive. The Well & The Gentle is carefully crafted, allowing performers to participate in the creation of the work. Players are asked to collaborate, focus, react and make imaginative choices. Only then can the performers "pass through stages of awakening to the possibilities inherent in making music, working together, leading to the essence of what can shape musical impulses and individual freedom simultaneously."

Unlike most major composers of the era, Oliveros' work focuses on collaboration and improvisation. For Oliveros, the processes involved in making music are as fundamental as the music itself. Oliveros creates, as Arthur Sabatini put it so eloquently in the liner notes, "A world in which sound and the practices entailed in making music merge; become, at once, source and atmosphere, energy and essence, presence and dynamic."

Pauline Oliveros was an electronic music pioneer, accordionist, composer and educator who resided in Kingston, New York. Her instrument was tuned in Just Intonation and she often included it in her meditative improvisational music. Her music is not meditative in the sense that it is intended for listening to while meditating, rather each piece is a form of meditation, such as her aptly titled Sonic Meditations.

A central figure in post-war electronic art music, Oliveros is one of the original members of the San Francisco Tape Music Center (along with Morton Subotnick, Ramon Sender, Terry Riley, Steve Reich and Anthony Martin), which was the resource on the U.S. West coast for electronic music during the 1960s. The Center later moved to Mills College, where she was its first director, and is now called the Center for Contemporary Music. Oliveros often improvised with the Expanded Instrument System, an electronic signal processing system she designed, in her performances and recordings.

In 2021 Velocity Press published Who Say Reload: The Stories Behind the Classic Drum & Bass Records of the 90s, an oral history of the records that defined jungle/drum & bass straight from the original sources. The deluxe coffee table book has since sold thousands of copies and prompted many to comment that it should have an accompanying soundtrack.

Now author Paul Terzulli has compiled a Who Say Reload album. However, where the book focused solely on classics and anthems, the compilation takes a different route and offers up a selection of top-quality tunes from some of the scene’s most respected artists and labels.

Like the book, the album covers the genre’s nineties golden era, and the many styles of D&B are represented. Pioneering producers and crowd-pleasing favourites sit alongside a few sought-after obscurities by the unsung heroes of the scene. Most importantly, there are some absolute bangers!

The 16 tracks are spread over two volumes of 2 x 12"s, and there is also a 13-track digital version, taking you on a journey through music forged from raw breakbeats and basslines that soundtracked a culture of all-night raves, specialist record shops and pirate radio stations.

Jungle/drum & bass is approaching its 30th anniversary. Its sonic and cultural legacy is still being felt today. There’s still plenty of old music that might be “new” to some, and these tunes still pack as much of a punch as they did back in the day. That unique energy generated by a combination of breakbeats, bass and creativity never gets old.

Produced in conjunction with Above Board distribution. All tracks mastered from original sources and fully licensed. Mastering by Beau Thomas @ Ten Eight Seven Mastering. Liner notes from Who Say Reload author Paul Terzulli. Photography by Eddie Otchere. Artwork and design by Protean Productions.

Repress !

Sudi Wachspress returns to Tartelet Records with Dance Planet, a third LP of emotionally-charged house music to welcome us back to the dancefloor. The spirit of true house runs deep in the sound of Space Ghost. Oakland native Sudi Wachspress is intuitively plugged into the romantic, mystical energy of 4/4 club music as a unifying force of empowerment and liberation, carrying the torch from vital forebears like Larry Heard, Alton Miller, and Blaze.

His new album, Dance Planet, carries a greater responsibility to spread spiritual affirmations. As the global dancefloor community emerges from a mentally-taxing recess and confronts their social self like it’s the first day of school, Space Ghost’s message couldn’t be more supportive.

“Don’t be afraid to be yourself, don’t be afraid to let go,” he intones on “Be Yourself.” More than just a beat and a hook, his music is pointedly created to heal and energize. “I’m a big fan of old-school house vocals that have a positive message,” says Space Ghost, “tracks that can perhaps enhance your mood or strengthen your confidence in yourself.”

Wachspress has always represented a beacon of musical uplift, both on his previous Endless Light and Aquarium Nightclub LPs for Tartelet and on his swathes of self-released music and last year’s Free 2 B on Apron. Compared to most house-oriented artists, he places emphasis on the long-player format to create an encircling experience for the listener, smoothing out psychic wrinkles and massaging areas of tension for a fully holistic hit.

Eva Louise Goodman’s Nighttime project locates itself on a musical tree planted on the British Isles, perched atop the branch of folk leaning into sixties rock. Her upstate New York environs don’t stray far from that image. With tempered percussion, floating mellotron, and singing that evokes Bleecker & MacDougal on a fervent Saturday afternoon, her new album Keeper Is The Heart reaches deep into the essence of musicians such as Vashti Bunyan, Sibylle Baier and Pentangle, breaking down the decades into a sound thoroughly and bizarrely modern.

Through her years performing with Mutual Benefit, Goodman fell in love with life on the road and the collaborative energy of a band. In this third Nighttime album, she channels these experiences into her own music. The creative journey from writing to recording to mixing drove her deeper into a sense of self while expanding her sound. In the process, she put aside lo-fi origins and challenged herself to achieve the same intimacy with a bigger production.

Like most paths of self-discovery, the journey started with displacement. In October 2019, Goodman set out to record the album on her own, while cat-sitting at a friend’s empty Brooklyn apartment. Rather than recording, she was drawn to the overgrown garden, where she spent her days listening to music and reading old journals. Charlie Megira, The Incredible String Band and Roy Montgomery invoked the spirit of the album, as she realized that a new, more collaborative approach would be necessary to bring the songs to life.

In March 2021, after a pandemic year immersed in sound experimentation and writing, she entered the upstate New York studio of recording engineer Rick Spataro (Florist). Together, Spataro and Goodman dove into creating the album, recording one song a day, letting the spark and excitement of spontaneity be their guide. “I've always been fascinated with ‘automatic’ arts,” Goodman says, “where things are created intuitively and without premeditation, from the subconscious.” In this light, they worked with abandon–pushing through the heaviness of songs written years earlier with the same energy as songs which were not yet fully developed. Taking chances, improvising, they sought to strip away pretense, and elude perfectionism at all cost.

Among their experiments, the duo manipulated tape speeds–slowing or speeding up different instrument tracks, imbuing passages with altered perspectives. Improvisation was the key in track five, ‘The Way,’ a song about “the magical act of carving out a path through life, amidst all possibility.” After a long day of recording, the song was feeling heavy and uninspired. As night fell, Spataro picked up the Stratocaster and, in one take, laid down a rolling, roiling guitar line that defined the track.

This spirit of surrender weaves through the album. “Break free from time, and sink in the pool of the mind,” begins ‘Garden of Delight’, an energetic highlight, propelled by 60’s-era organ and Jefferson Airplane-esque vocals. The song was accidentally deleted after the first day of recording. By luck or fate, the one surviving file captured the song’s loose and free-wheeling essence. Inspired, Goodman encouraged her circle of collaborators to work similarly: “I gave everyone trust and total freedom to contribute as they felt called to, encouraging an intuitive approach of simply improvising, playing through the song a few times and then sending over the results.” Synth, cello, violin, saxophone and flute all appear, but often in unconventional ways.

Keeper Is the Heart reflects Goodman’s process towards greater creative freedom. The first words she sings: “Lift the veil of all of this hate/To see the fear at its base.” Her last lines: “We’ll follow the fates across the great expanse of time/To the source of the light within our mind.” In between is a work of art awash in personal awakenings that revel in the freedom of intuition, the lifting of veils, and the beauty of transformation. As Goodman states, “What is it you find when you look inward to see beyond, past your fears, to your heart's true desires?”

With its name indicative of the music's boundary-testing diversity and Southwestern inspiration, On the Border finds the Eagles leaving everything on the table and embracing a harder edge that takes the band out of more relaxed territory and establishes it as a group that knows how – and wants – to rock. Glenn Frey, Don Henley, new member Don Felder, and company immediately announce their intent on the defiant album-opening hit "Already Gone" and never look back, crafting a gem of a record that from start to finish is arguably their most consistent and balanced effort.

Limited to 10,000 numbered copies, pressed on dead-quiet MoFi SuperVinyl at RTI, and mastered from the original analogue master tapes, Mobile Fidelity's ultra-hi-fi UltraDisc One-Step 180g 45RPM 2LP collector's edition pays tribute to the record's significance and enhances the experience for generations to come. Playing with reference sonics that elevate an effort revered by audiophiles, it provides a lively, dynamic, transparent, and intimate view of a release whose contemporary importance continues to grow. The opportunity to zero in on the particulars of the Eagles' golden harmonies, distinct vocal timbres, and cohesive interplay has never been better.

Visually, the premium packaging and gorgeous presentation of the UD1S On the Border pressing befit its select status. Housed in a deluxe box, it features special foil-stamped jackets and faithful-to-the-original graphics that illuminate the splendor of the recording. No expense has been spared. From every angle, this UD1S reissue exists as a curatorial artefact meant to be preserved, touched, and examined. It is made for discerning listeners that prize sound quality and production, and who desire to fully immerse themselves in the art – and everything involved with the album, from the iconic Navajo cover painting to the meticulous finishes.

And with On the Border, there's plenty to take in and soak up. Declared by famed critic Robert Christgau as "the Eagles' best album," the 1974 set claims a rich backstory. Initially recorded amid tumultuous sessions with producer Glyn Johns in London shortly after the release of the group's sophomore Desperado set, On the Border took a new turn after the band elected to scrap most of the prior work, return to its native California, and team with producer Bill Szymczyk to give the material less of a smooth, polished sheen and more toughness. Szymczyk also afforded the Eagles more input and freedom in the arrangements, and suggested adding another guitarist to play on "Good Day in Hell." Felder got the call, and so won over the Eagles with his skills, he quickly became the fifth member of the band.

While the late-arriving Felder only plays on one other album cut, "Already Gone," his mates more than prove their muster on the remainder of a double-platinum affair that established the Eagles as a force whose range transcended the calmer country-leaning style it perfected on their first two LPs. Primarily written by Jackson Browne and shelved during the Desperado sessions due to its higher-energy nature, the throttle-twisting "James Dean" ricochets with barbed riffs and rebellious swagger. Listen without limits to how Szymczyk's raw production stamps the song with a leather-and-jeans cool befitting its protagonist. Similarly rugged, the slide-guitar-fueled "Good Day in Hell" boasts its own mean streak. And the funk-laced, boot-stomping title track cautions "don't you tell me 'bout your law and order." Throughout On the Border, the Eagles are in no mood to mess around.

Not that the band skirts sentimental territory. On one of the era's finest covers, the Eagles nail the bittersweet feelings and bring high-definition detail to the vivid scenery of Tom Waits' "Ol' '55," a song the group makes its own. The rustic ballad "My Man" serves as a tribute to the recently deceased Gram Parsons, with singer-guitarist Bernie Leadon taking the lead on the microphone as he pours his heart out to his former Flying Burrito Brothers mate. And when it comes to romance, is it possible to top "Best of My Love"? Graced with Henley's honey-dipped vocals, refined wordless group harmonies, brushed drums, and the gentle strum of acoustic guitars, the Johns-produced cut soared to Number One and set the stage for what would soon be the Eagles' reality: global dominance.

More About Mobile Fidelity UltraDisc One-Step and Why It Is Superior
Instead of utilizing the industry-standard three-step lacquer process, Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab's new UltraDisc One-Step (UD1S) uses only one step, bypassing two processes of generational loss. While three-step processing is designed for optimum yield and efficiency, UD1S is created for the ultimate in sound quality. Just as Mobile Fidelity pioneered the UHQR (Ultra High-Quality Record) with JVC in the 1980s, UD1S again represents another state-of-the-art advance in the record-manufacturing process. MFSL engineers begin with the original master recordings, painstakingly transfer them to DSD 256, and meticulously cut a set of lacquers. These lacquers are used to create a very fragile, pristine UD1S stamper called a "convert." Delicate "converts" are then formed into the actual record stampers, producing a final product that literally and figuratively brings you closer to the music. By skipping the additional steps of pulling another positive and an additional negative, as done in the three-step process used in standard pressings, UD1S produces a final LP with the lowest noise floor possible today. The removal of the additional two steps of generational loss in the plating process reveals tremendous amounts of extra musical detail and dynamics, which are otherwise lost due to the standard copying process. The exclusive nature of these very limited pressings guarantees that every UD1S pressing serves as an immaculate replica of the lacquer sourced directly from the original master recording. Every conceivable aspect of vinyl production is optimized to produce the most perfect record album available today.

Debut album by Dutch producer w1b0, who passed away in August, to be released in November on U-TRAX.

Wibo Lammerts' sudden death on August 15thshocked the worldwide electro community, and also left the record label, that had been working on the debut album with the artist known as w1b0 for the past two years, dumbfounded and in grief.

Wibo had jokingly always called his upcoming debut album 'his legacy', which now sadly has become a painful truth. With the support of Wibo's family, U-TRAX is now doing the only thing that doesn't feel totally wrong: proceed as planned, and release 'When Humans Ruled The Earth' on November 11.

W1b0 made quite a name for himself with heavy electro tracks that he released on labels like Bass Agenda, Hilltown Disco and Discos Antónicos. Standing at 202 meters, and combined with a cheerful character, most people remember him as the gentle giant of electro.
For this album, Wibo wanted to steer away from the dark and heavy electro he mostly made until then. The idea of having a platform to create delicate electronic music in different styles, and make it a showcase of his versatility, was very appealing to him. And that is where he and U-TRAX found each other.

The full-length album (over 75 minutes on cd and digital) comes after 'The Pilex Program EP', released in October, that featured a remix by Detroit's Ectomorph of 'Pilex Driver' and saw 'Program Yourself To Feel' remixed by a well-known Dutch producer that recently created the new 'techno alias' Human Form.
As usual with U-TRAX, the album comes in three different editions, with the 11-track double vinyl version containing the Ectomorph and Human Form remixes. The CD and digital version boast original versions only, plus four additional tracks: 'Alternate Reality Interface', 'Mixed Matter Fluctator', 'Synthetic', and 'In There'. The cassette version more or less has the same track list as the CD/digi version, but has both aforementioned remixes and a bonus track in the incredibly hypnotizing 'I Wanted You', a track that unfortunately couldn't be on the CD and vinyl versions.

Buyers of the physical releases get treated on superior quality products, another trademark of U-TRAX. The vinyl edition boasts over one hour of music, on two 180 grams, green vinyl discs, in a black & white & neon green gatefold sleeve. The eye-catching artwork is created by Utrecht artist Leffe Goldstein, known amongst others for his psychedelic beer can designs for Utrecht brewery Maximus. Wibo, being the beer lover he was, had zero doubts about having Leffe Goldstein do the cover for his album. The CD has a total playing time of 75 minutes and comes in a beautiful 6-panel digipack, while the cassette will have full-color on-body print and comes in a plastic-free Maltese cross fold-up sleeve.

Buyers of the physical releases get treated on superior quality products, another trademark of U-TRAX. The vinyl edition boasts over one hour of music, on two 180 grams, green vinyl discs, in a black & white & neon green gatefold sleeve. The eye-catching artwork is created by Utrecht artist Leffe Goldstein, known amongst others for his psychedelic beer can designs for Utrecht brewery Maximus. Wibo, being the beer lover he was, had zero doubts about having Leffe Goldstein do the cover for his album. The CD has a total playing time of 75 minutes and comes in a beautiful 6-panel digipack, while the cassette will have full-color on-body print and comes in a plastic-free Maltese cross fold-up sleeve.

Opener 'Acid Whip' is one of the oldest compositions on this album, in which a dark 303 bassline hums over layers of spacey strings. Wibo named it after the legendary Whip It party in Amsterdam's De Melkweg. 'Alternate Reality Interface' then presents bouncy rhythms toying around with all sorts of analog (bass) synthesizers, before we go really deep with the epic ambient techno track 'Wandering Souls'.
Then things get a little lighter spirited: 'Mixed Matter Fluctator' is an electro track that builds on sounds created by Matt Buggins. It has very strong Detroit influences, the city Wibo loved so much and that he made a pilgrimage to with a group of friends that called themselves 'The Techno Tourists'. The tempo goes up a notch in 'Program Yourself To Feel', that halfway opens up in wide science fiction strings that evoke memories of Star Wars, the movie series that Wibo was a great fan of, and that was the source of many of his tracks' names. The Human Form remix opens the vinyl edition of this album and is a downright belter of a track.

Next is a somewhat experimental intermezzo named 'Synthetic'. Erratic beats and pounding bassdrums get accompanied by very subtle eerie-sounding strings, before melancholic synthesizers and piano chords take over. This is an excellent prelude to the epic 'Hologram Computing', a track that is one of our favorites. It slowly and softly builds and builds, before a pounding bassdrum breaks loose and a hypnotic arpeggio takes you to higher planes.
Not ready to letting the listener relax, w1bo then serves 'Beilstein Reference', which again presents his trademark cocktail of down-to-earth electro rhythms and catchy melodies, covered in all sort of little sounds and noises, giving the song a lot of energy. What follows is 'Hit me', a track loosely based on a song by Dutch indie rock band Mr. Joe Abe. Wibo met the band's singer on a camping site while being on holidays and the two decided Wibo should do a remix of one of their songs. Nothing was left of the original except the vocals, and the result is a remarkable cheerful, poppy electro song.

'Anticipated Input' is one of the more recent tracks Wibo made for this album, combining electro, acid and, yes: epic strings. But not all is peace and quiet on this album, as 'Pilex Driver' shows. This is w1b0 going experimental in a danceable fashion: Industrial sounds make the track sound like we're passing a construction site that is playing loud electro music. On the vinyl version of this album, Ectomorph totally decomposed the original and made it into a mysterious, almost subdued, and totally brilliant electro track that sees a main role for the retro Roland CR drum machines sounds.

TFHats, Wibo's fellow member of the Transhumanism collective, added lyrics to 'Cartesian Coordinates'. His vocals add a pleasant New Wave flavor to this song, that has breaks that remarkably reminds one of Nirvana's 'Smells Like Teen Spirit'. What follows is the most personal track on this album. 'Fornan' is a song that Wibo made for his wife Nanette, and was added as the last piece of the puzzle that creating an album is. The warm Detroit techno atmosphere in this electro song couldn't be a more beautiful tribute to his love, and mother of their two young boys.
The album then takes a surprising detour through a 1980s landscape with 'In There', that features the Joy Division-esque vocals of another one of Wibo's friends, indicated only as Vincent. The super slow and gloomy track is a treat for anyone that loved the darker side of New Wave. The album has a worthy closer in the sensitive, yet playful 'Schlegel Diagram'.








h 08: Hit Me (w1b0's Slugfest Assault Dub) feat. Mr Joe Abe

San Diego born and raised DJ/Producer, Dillon Marinez, today releases his latest EP ‘Wormhole’, out now on Dirtybird.

Curated by Claude VonStroke, the compelling two-track project presents a dynamic soundscape showcasing the sonic duality of one of Dirtybird’s newest rising stars. The chaotic, high-energy sound of its titular track ‘Wormhole’ is instantly mesmerizing, while its companion ‘Facelift’ is a deep, rolling burner.

Regarding the EP, Dillon Marinez said, “My first Dirtybird Campout inspired both tracks. Claude’s set especially was full of some thick stabby bass which was right up my alley. This sound gave me an idea for each lead and the rest flowed naturally.”

Continuing to grow as a consistent member of the Dirtybird flock, Marinez’s latest EP, ‘Wormhole’ marks his fifth release on the esteemed label following last year’s ‘No Pressure’ EP and earlier singles like ‘Dance For Me.’

Taking inspiration from funk, hip hop, and reggae, Marinez credits his father and brother for exposing him as a kid to the multi-genre sounds that shape his music style today. A bassist since childhood, it was only natural for Dillon to be drawn to the ebbs and flows of house music. Learning Ableton in college, Marinez was able to incorporate a blend of rhythmic elements to create his unique bass lines and incredibly catchy beats known to captivate crowds.

Releasing music on Dirtybird marks a full circle moment for Dillon, as he has previously named Dirtybird’s artists Justin Martin and Shiba San as major sources of inspiration for his music.

Marinez invites fans to join him on his rhythmic journey and stream ‘Wormhole’ today.

After two successful 7’ releases, Eastside Edits is back once again! Continuing their mission to deliver dance floor filling, DJ friendly edits to the 45 community worldwide, Eastside Edits 003 will have every DJ lining up to put copies in their collection!

Side A) LeBaron James brings their magic to a disco boogie classic by the Jones Girls. Keep It Coming was filling dance floors in the 80’s, and this sure shot edit brings a modern groove, pounding drums, and ear grabbing synths. LeBaron James are currently blowing up, releasing music on countless labels and booking DJ gigs worldwide. These guys are at the top of their game and continue to take giant leaps forward in their music careers!

Side B) Baller is no stranger to the 45 community. He co-founded Eastside Edits in 2021 and established himself on Twitch with his personal brand of high energy, open format DJ sets. The 7’ Candi Flip is an upbeat remix of an 80s gem by The Source featuring vocals by Candi Staton. This tune’s energy is sure to make the dance floor move, and its super catchy vocal hook will have the whole crowd singing along!

Well known as the Deep’a half of Deep’a & Biri, and a huge influential source of energy and innovation in Tel Aviv’s house and techno community, Yaron Amor goes solo for the very first time with an incredibly personal project. Introducing Zeena…
“The decision about the solo project was made during a visit to Morocco, in the main city square of Marrakesh I came across an improvised jam of 20 drummers from all over the country, the crazy rhythms they played together spontaneously amazed me and made me realize that the perfect beat I've been looking for, for so many years, was under my nose. In Arabic and Moroccan music that was constantly played in the house where I grew up…”
Home is where the soul is… Zeena translates to beauty in Moroccan and this label exists wholly to celebrate and push cutting edge Arab electronic music. It starts here with Yaron’s first solo EP. The result of an inspired creative series of recordings with drummers and musicians from Israel, Algiers, Morocco, and Berlin, across three tracks we’re taken on a beautiful excursion of emotions, tension and introspective places.
“I tried to merge together influences from the world of techno which I have been active in for almost 20 years along with the rhythms of Arabic music while paying respect to each of the genres.”
From the tension and powerful emotion of ‘The Pain Body’ (a mesmerising kick-less tableaux that would work perfectly for an intro or mid-set game-changer) to the powerful synth-laced Detroitian drive and thump of title track ‘Zeena’ via the wild rolling toms of ‘Omipresence’, this is Yaron Amor as we’ve never heard him before… Raw, honest, direct and totally at home. The middle east has played a huge role in so many inspirations, influences and sample sources since the very start of electronic music. Now its time to bring that to the fore and celebrate it on a whole new level. Zeena is that level. Stay tuned…

Yazzus follows up her appearance on the Tresor 30 compilation with a new EP named BLACK METROPOLIS.

Within its, at times, rough-hewn textures lies a core
that explores joy and energy within the roots of black techno. In her words: “I want this release to be black and beautiful, to be queer, and playful, a nostalgic nod to the 90s but also reimagining it in the current times.”

The Ghana-born, London-bred, now Berlin-based producer’s research into afro-futurism, envisaging a path forward for science, technology and culture through the black experience, has impressed a deep
vision on this EP. Yazzus sets like a cartographer, using her tracks to explore a technologically advanced world, each representing dierent regions and environments.

Human Error Processor introduces an ear-worming percussion pattern nearly swamped by distorted bass drums and a vocal sample screwed just beyond recognition. Perforated leads with a 150bpm four to the floor stomp, infectious and supercharged. Gluey synth
motions soak in an otherworldliness, where industrious,
mechanical rhythms map out futurist structures in all directions.

Metro City Bay Area exhibits a ghettotech soul, lean and bouncy - this part of the galaxy is an infinite source of fun, with the heart of groove at it’s core. Three Deities brings adventurers of its region towards higher powers, its ravey synths and an engulfing bass provoke a complete NRG release, ascending into a spiritual trance where dense melodies bubble and fizz.

Digital-only track United By Fate meddles busy vocal samples with searching melodies, a fitting end to the kaleidoscopic that is BLACK METROPOLIS.

repress !

Fresh sounds from an authentic source. The Evolution EP is a focused and crisp techno thriller. Each track, all of them raw and direct, are certain to be effective. The growing mood builds with a contagious energy throughout the release, with each song as superb as the one before it. Uplifting, driving, floor friendly, and fun.

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

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

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

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

1972-1985 KATEBEGIAK - Prog-Rock, Psych-Folk & Jazz-Rock Music from the BASQUE COUNTRY. The album KATEBEGIAK, now published by ELKAR, contains 13 tunes on double LP gatefold edition from Haizea, Izukaitz, William S. Fischer, Magdalena, Enbor, Itoiz, Koska, Itziar, Errobi, Lisker, Amaia Zubiria & Pascal Gaigne, Gontzal Mendibil & Taldea and Urria, and the CD-Book edition adds an extra bonus track by the great unknown artist Juan Arkotxa. Complied by Mikel Unzurrunzaga Schmitz aka DJ Makala. Music produced in the 70's in the Basque Country got trapped between two earth shattering artistic currents; Ez Dok Amairu in the 60s and Basque Radical Rock in the 80's, and unfortunately, most of the lovely discs and tunes created at that magical time have been pushed to a remote (and sometimes even despised) corner of our collective memory. 60's and 80's music currents are almost opposite, and both work as magnetic poles with a very strong power of attraction, and maybe also as a burden for any of the later artistic currents. 60's generation of artists searched within their rich and ancient cultural roots to acknowledge and update them, in proud, hopeful and unforgettable folk songs. The 80's one on the other hand, worked in a flammable environment in constant social and political conflict and found in punk the perfect way to express their anger and weariness for so many unfulfilled promises and the lack of opportunities into short, noisy, direct and corrosive songs, technically sparse but full of energy and expressive power. Most of the "classic" names engraved in our memory come from one or the other like Benito Lertxundi, Mikel Laboa, Lourdes Iriondo and Xabier Lete or Kortatu, Hertzainak, Zarama, Las vulpes, Eskorbuto or Cicatriz. 70's generation and their music work somehow as the "missing link" ("katebegia" in Basque) between the two. They loved folky tunes and don't forget their ancient roots, but they also look outside for inspiration and experimentation. Just as the 80's boys and girls found punk the 70's guys found a completely different sonic and aesthetic landscape in the works of Grateful Dead, Fairport Convention, King Crimson, Soft Machine, Gong_ and worked closely with keen souls in other neighboring regions such as Maquina!, Pau Riba or Sisa in Catalonia or Smash and Triana in Andalusia. This resulted in more abstract and poetic lyrical content, much longer psych-folk-prog-jazz tunes, full of complex instrumental passages and mesmerizing structures of sheer ambition and masterful execution in many cases. But, most important of all, they found a voice of their own, rich, unique, and fascinating, and that's what makes them so valuable to us. Not only to us, but also to lots of vinyl collectors and crate-diggers around the world, who have in many cases paid fortunes for some of the original editions of LPs that are the source of tunes in this compilation. Mikel Unzurrunzaga Schmitz aka DJ Makala, DJ and producer of worldwide scope and wisdom, noticed this fact first and decided to pay homage to these wonderful tunes through this masterful and dedicated selection for your pleasure and as an open invitation to dig deeper into your adventures in the dark and hidden side of Basque popular music.

‘Reich’s music expands from minimalist austerity to more full-bodied passages and back again. Reminiscent of his earliest work, it is very beautiful.’ – Financial Times

‘The music has tender energy, and an undercurrent of melancholy. Its droning tones sometimes seem to be pulling apart – like taffy, or like Richter’s stretching spaghetti stripes of color.’ – New York Times

Nonesuch Records releases the first recording of Steve Reich’s Reich/Richter, performed by Ensemble intercontemporain and conducted by George Jackson. The composition was originally written to be performed with German visual artist Gerhard Richter and Corinna Belz’s film Moving Picture (946-3).

Reich describes Richter’s book Patterns, which served as source material for the film: “It starts with one of his abstract paintings from the ’90s. He scanned a photo of the painting into a computer and then cut the scan in half and took each half, cut that in half and two of the four quarters he reversed into mirror images. He then repeated this process of ‘divide, mirror, repeat’ from half to quarter, eighth, sixteenth, thirty-second, all the way up to 4096th. The net effect is to go from an abstract painting to a series of gradually smaller anthropomorphic ‘creatures’ (since the mirroring produces bilateral symmetry) to still smaller very fine stripes.

“Belz described the film in terms of ‘pixels’. It begins with two-‘pixel’ stripes and the music begins with a two-sixteenth note oscillating pattern. When the film moves to four ‘pixels’, the music moves to a four-sixteenth note pattern, then to eight, and sixteen,” the composer continues. “After that, I began introducing longer note values – initially eighth notes, and later to quarter notes. By the middle of the film, when the images move from 512 to 1064 pixels, the music really slows to dotted half notes. Finally, as the ‘pixel’ count begins to diminish, the music moves back into more rapid eighths and then ending with the most intense rapid sixteenth movement.”

After more than one hundred performances of Reich/Richter at The Shed in New York in 2019, it was performed in London at the Barbican by the Britten Sinfonia conducted by Colin Currie and then in Paris at the Philharmonie, where this recording was made. The Austrian ensemble Windkraft Tirol, led by Kasper de Roo, will perform Reich/Richter on September 8 at Szentrum, Silbersaal in Schwaz, and the LA Phil New Music Group, led by Brad Lubman, performs the piece, accompanied by Richter and Belz’s film, at Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles on April 1, 2023.

Nonesuch has recorded every new piece of music by Steve Reich since 1985, beginning with The Desert Music and continuing through 2018’s Pulse/Quartet, resulting in twenty-two albums and the two box sets Phases in 2006 and Works: 1965-1995 in 1997. The label will put out a collection of his complete works in 2023.

Reich released a book last month, Conversations, that includes dialogues with past collaborators, fellow composers, musicians, and visual artists who have been influenced by his work, including: David Lang, Brian Eno, Richard Serra, Michael Gordon, Michael Tilson Thomas, Russell Hartenberger, Robert Hurwitz, Stephen Sondheim, Jonny Greenwood, David Harrington, Elizabeth Lim-Dutton, David Robertson, Micaela Haslam, Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker, Julia Wolfe, Nico Muhly, Beryl Korot, Colin Currie, and Brad Lubman. Booklist said in its review, ‘Iconoclastic American composer Steve Reich is singular in his own right, and when he is in conversation with other equally iconoclastic composers, conductors, sculptors, musicians, percussionists, and video artists, sparks not only fly, they sparkle. Reich and his colleagues conduct lovely give-and-takes during which they share stories, creative approaches, and viewpoints. Reich's Conversations is the best kind of eavesdropping.’

Steve Reich has been called ‘America’s greatest living composer’ (Village Voice), ‘the most original musical thinker of our time’ (New Yorker), and ‘among the great composers of the century’ (New York Times). His music has influenced composers and mainstream musicians all over the world. Music for 18 Musicians and Different Trains have earned him two Grammy Awards, and in 2009, his Double Sextet won the Pulitzer Prize. Reich’s documentary video opera works – The Cave and Three Tales, done in collaboration with video artist Beryl Korot – have been performed on four continents. His recent work Quartet, for percussionist Colin Currie, sold out two consecutive concerts at Queen Elizabeth Hall in London shortly after tens of thousands at the Glastonbury Festival heard Jonny Greenwood (of Radiohead) perform Electric Counterpoint followed by the London Sinfonietta performing his Music for 18 Musicians.

In 2012, Reich was awarded the Gold Medal in Music by the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He has additionally received the Praemium Imperiale in Tokyo, the Polar Music Prize in Stockholm, the BBVA Award in Madrid, and the Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale. He has been named Commandeur de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres and has been awarded honorary doctorates by the Royal College of Music in London, The Juilliard School, and the Liszt Academy in Budapest, among others. ‘There’s just a handful of living composers who can legitimately claim to have altered the direction of musical history and Steve Reich is one of them’, states the Guardian.

Pierre Boulez founded the Ensemble intercontemporain in 1976 with the support of Michel Guy (who was France’s Minister of Culture at the time) and the collaboration of Nicholas Snowman. The Ensemble’s thirty-one soloists share a passion for twentieth and twenty-first century music. Under the artistic direction of Matthias Pintscher, the musicians work in close collaboration with composers, exploring instrumental techniques and developing projects that interweave music, dance, theater, film, video and visual arts. In collaboration with IRCAM (Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique/Musique), the Ensemble intercontemporain is also active in the field of synthetic sound generation. New pieces are commissioned and performed on a regular basis. Resident of the Cité de la musique – Philharmonie de Paris, the Ensemble performs and records in France and abroad, taking part in major festivals worldwide.

George Jackson, winner of the 2015 Aspen Conducting Prize, came to attention after stepping in at short notice with Orchestre de Paris, where he stepped in for Daniel Harding. Recent highlights include leading Ensemble intercontemporain at Festival Romaeuropa, the Rainy Days Festival in Luxembourg, and Festival D’Automne in Paris, as well as conducting the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra, the orchestra of Opéra de Rouen and the world premiere of Tscho Theissing’s Genia with Theater an der Wien. His varied operatic experience includes performances at Opera North, Hamburg State Opera and Opera Holland Park, as well as conducting a new production of Hänsel und Gretel at Grange Park Opera.

What I Breathe is the debut album from Mall Grab AKA Jordon Alexander. The Australia-born London-based powerhouse reaches within to create the most comprehensive demonstration of his style to date – loudly defining the raw energy that has become synonymous with the moniker.

“This album is deeply personal and an exploration of all influences, sounds and sides of the Mall Grab project. It follows my journey of the last 6 years from a university dropout in Newcastle (Australia), making music as a source of happiness and expression.”
While glances of what Jordon gravitates towards in dance music can be heard in the record label imprints he steers—Looking For Trouble and Steel City Dance Discs—it's with What I Breathe that he elaborates on and articulates his diverse ear for music. Through collaborations with Brendan Yates of Turnstile, Novelist, D Double E and Nia Archives, the Mall Grab repertoire of emotive electronics is used to traverse his love of hard-to-define energies that exist between genres like Hardcore, Hip-Hop and Soul.
“I have been lucky enough to work with some of my favourite artists which have really been the glue that keeps the project coherent. There are a lot of familiar sounds on this album that my listeners and followers have become accustomed to and joined me in the deep dive. Elements of emotional but hard and pumping club music are intertwined with House, Jungle, Rave and Grime. My adopted home city of London has been a huge inspiration to how my music has evolved and progressed, and on What I Breathe I wanted to create a body of work which not only had something for everyone who has been with me the past 6 years, but also those who aren’t yet aware of what I’m about or the music I make.”
Jordon’s long-standing penchant for all things DIY blossoms in tracks like Lost In Harajuku and Without The Sun which feature his own original lyrics and vocals. As the album twists and weaves from one song to the next, gleaming melodies flare up into club-ready anthems such as Metaphysical and Breathing. The kinetic flow of the music as a whole can be attributed to the many years of cutting his teeth as a DJ, a skill that can be testified by anyone who has witnessed a Mall Grab set.

“As I was a DJ for many years before I delved into producing electronic music, I had a wide appreciation and love for all types of music, predominantly gravitating towards ‘band' music when creating my own projects, before evolving into a fully-fledged electronic producer – however always retaining the influence and love for all things live and genre-fluid.”

Even with a stack of very well-received projects already under his belt, What I Breathe can be seen as the first deep breath in and a fierce declaration of what’s to come for Mall Grab.

“I’m grateful for everything and everyone in my life, those I love and those who support my music, through all the ups and downs. I live and breathe this shit. I cannot do anything else. I will continue until there is nothing left for me to say.”

Cheri Knight's music emerges from the outskirts of late seventies / early eighties Olympia, Washington, offering sound that is both performative and meditative, electronic and organic, collaborative and self-contained, and richly rewarding. Nestled in the nascent milieu of Evergreen State College, where Cheri studied music composition, her practice developed between campus studios and expeditions to San Francisco and Mt. Temper, New York, where she apprenticed and collaborated with Pauline Oliveros and Linda Montano; always adapting to the musical and philosophical timbre of those times and places. American Rituals captures an artist's environmental emergence, unearthing a unique compositional voice and spotlighting regional sonic ethos. The seven works collected here, largely from various DIY cassette and vinyl compilations, range from polyvocal chants, pensive instrumental works, spoken-word collages, primal post-punk excursions, and hymn-like incantations. All are bound by a performative energy, expressing a Cage-ian commitment to the present moment, but also harboring a meditative interior. Marrying the seeing and hearing senses, Cheri's early work primarily plays with words-spoken, sung, recited, incanted, chanted, instructed, whispered - expressing the ritualized patternings of everyday material turned beautiful and strange, musical and hummable, conceptual and devotional. Freedom to Spend excavates this verdant period of experimentation, meeting Cheri at a moment of elemental evolution. Restored and remastered from original tape sources by Josh Bonati, the vinyl edition includes comprehensive liner notes by Steve Peters, a high quality, multi-format digital download, and a future world of past possibilities.

ALL THEIR LEGENDARY RECORDINGS, PLUS LOADS OF UNRELEASED STUFF!

“The Lipstick Killers were easily one of the greatest live bands I've witnessed in my 65 yrs. on this planet” – Keith Morris (Black Flag/Circle Jerks/Off!!)

HINDU GODS ARE CALLING YOU!!! Grown Up Wrong! Records is thrilled beyond belief to present the LONG-AWAITED anthology of material by the legendary Lipstick Killers, who blazed a trail in late ‘70s post-Radio Birdman Sydney before gigging with the likes of the Gun Club and the Flesh Eaters in Los Angeles where they crashed and burned in 1981.

The Lipstick Killers released just one single in their life time – the perfect ’79 Deniz Tek-produced pairing of “Hindu Gods of Love” and ”Shakedown USA” on their own Lost in Space Records and Greg Shaw’s Voxx Records - but a posthumous live album and a couple of archival releases followed. It was all incredible. All that material is included here, as is a plethora of additional stuff, all from the best-available sources (mostly original tapes).

The Lipstick Killers’ enigmatic and high-energy sound – heavily inspired by the Stooges and the ‘60s psychedelic punk sounds of bands like the Thirteenth Floor Elevators and the Chocolate Watchband – bridged the gap between Radio Birdman and subsequent Sydney groups like the Sunnyboys (whose first-ever show was opening for the Lipstick Killers), Lime Spiders, Hoodoo Gurus, the Screaming Tribesmen and the Psychotic Turnbuckles. And of course they anticipated generation after generation of other bands with similar things in mind, right up to today’s ‘60s-inspired freaks like The Straight Arrows, The Living Eyes and Thee Oh Sees.

Clear Vinyl

sferic venture a new set of plasmic ambient entertainment systems by Jonas Wiese’s TIBSLC, mining that slender but heady sweetspot between the earliest Vladislav Delay productions for Chain Reaction, Japanese environmental x architectural recordings and the sort of gear you’d hear from Move D & Jonas Grossmann at the late 90’s Source Recordings heyday.

sferic pick up the mantle of late ‘90s-into-‘00s ambient with a new variant primed for the times. Following the themes of their ‘Decisive Tongue Shifts - Situation Based Compositions’ album of 2021, TIBSLC (The International Billionaire’s Secret Love Child) distills their sferic debut into a crystal clear, hypersensitive set of eight tracks that slip seamlessly into each other’s space, recalling the amorphous end of Jan Jelinek’s ambient shimmers.

Where TIBSLC’s first album sprawled over two discs, this one relates to the same recording sessions, but glimpsed via more succinct windows of opportunity. In effect they’re like Hitchcockian, voyeurist snapshots of other lives in the urban complex woven into a melting emulation of the city at dusk, replete with infrasonic bass from streets below, and streaked with the wistful dream energy and fizzy optimism of a certain city life. In fleeting rounds of ephemeral shrapnel and synth pad washes, the eight parts evoke a sense of mental discombobulation, lending itself to ruminating on the unbearable lightness of being.

After an initial link up last summer, Altrimenti Records present four more remixes of cult Italian synth maestros Cabaret Du Ciel. Once again the focus is on experimentation, testing unusual crossovers between artists, eras and styles in pursuit of compelling new sounds.
The results across all four of these versions are distinct from each other, and distinct from wider trends in dance music.
First up, Benedek approaches 'Great Plains' as a low-tempo space-boogie excursion. Following in the wake of his releases on Leaving Records, L.I.E.S. and People's Potential Unlimited, the LA-based artist lays down thick slabs of Moog while retaining the ethereal swirl of the source material.
Rome's L.U.C.A. (aka Francesco De Bellis) has established his new wave-inspired sound on his own Edizioni Mondo label, not to mention working in other projects such as MAT101 and Jollymusic, and he brings a sprightly, motorik energy to 'Climatic Variation'.
Lorenzo Fortino's 'Suspacid Revisitation' version of 'Lakota' is aqueous and psychedelic, but remains elegant and understated in its execution. The emergent producer has already released on Wo-Land and most recently Miniera, and this remix ably embodies the entrancing qualities inherent in his sound.
The remix package concludes with a playful, leftfield electro diversion from elusive Montreal-based producers Sentena. Hailing from an emergent scene orbiting the Doo label and projects like SnP 500 and Fashion, their crooked take on machine music perfectly meets the adventurous aims of Altrimenti in testing out crossovers of styles and creative processes.

As the z-axis of our planet tilts away, and a gulf of dusty earth, air and searing fire is revealed before us, Minimal Violence holds a unflinching stare, unveiling upon us Phase Three in an act of pure psychic release. Consecutive of the destruction of Phase One and the restructuring of Phase Two it only seems appropriate that the third phase of the series finds the project reaching a state of transcendence and transition as it also aligns with the shift from a duo to the solo venture of Ash Luk following the departure of co-founder Lida P.

This third EP of the DESTROY ---> physical REALITY psychic <--- TRUST series launches straight into the 145 bpm stomper Flatline. It is a track founded by a family spirit, with lyrics co-written with Luk’s mother and their step-father Mad Johnny on vocals and guitar. It draws a hoarse chant of passion, ".. nothing matters .. I still love you .. resuscitation .. resurrection .." in answer to arching melodic euphoria. Cold (sex) follows down a scorched earth driveway into distorted whistles, detuned melodies and some of the best sequencer abuse out there.
We Suocate on the Violence of Light reveals perhaps the finest expedition so far in Minimal Violence’s particular vein of acid-singed euphoric trance. Its synths smeared and merged unholy, where the drums meddle with the tensions between drum and bass and nail to the ground four to the floor rhythm. Focus On That Form pummels hard within a deep noise volley, scratching hard to rid its environments of any longer lasting lustre.

As ever, the transformative sound of Minimal Violence emerges deep from fire. Denying any uncertain embers an escape route, Luk casts anew from a seemingly unending source of unique energy.

Origu teams up with HiPNOTT and 2 Hungry Bros once more for two slices of dope Hip Hop vinyl!

Deep of Deep Breez returns under the 2 Hungry Bros banner, with a nasty piece of boom bap and MC Likwuid brings her surgically sharp lyricism, to collaborate on "IllFayted". Likwuid's commanding presence is inescapable as she delivers powerful messages between her similes, commonplace catchphrases, and cynicism. Dj Evil Dee of Da Beatminerz layers "IllFayted" with some signature cuts to engage your Hip Hop senses! Though, don't be too distracted by those cuts and the hot 2 Hungry Bros beat, because Likwuid's rhymes are so precisely interwoven you might miss an comedic analogy or sociopolitical statement. illFayted is for the true lover of Hip Hop that appreciates all the fresh elements that make it classic and undying.

In the spirit of letting go of negative energy, toxic relationships and flakey individuals, "Hold That (Faybles)" offers an escape plan for folks who are just ready to move forward in 2017. Tired of being outcasted, misinterpreted or just shut out by your peers? Then here is the gateway to redirecting that energy back to the source...hold that! Deep of 2 Hungry Bros lends his magic by providing a melodic canvas with signature heavy alternating drums and sinister deep loops and chops. The song features Donwill of Tanya Morgan and Hipnott's P.so the Earthtone King.

3x12"

Extraordinary musical talent returns with a deeply textured third outing on Blu Mar Ten Music.

Having made serious waves with the release of his debut album "Coeur Calme" in 2014 and the incredible 2016 follow up album "Zawadi", Kimyan Law steers his sound in a darker, more introspective direction with the twelve heavily themed set-pieces of his new album, "Yonda".

The album title, "Yonda", homophonically flits between a location in Kimyan Law's native Congo and definitions of something situated at a distance but still visible, foreshadowing the artist's move away from his typical uplifting palette into less playful territory.

While previous work seemed to be a personal exploration of joy-tinged melancholy, "Yonda", feels much more sober and pensive, infected with external events. In conversation with Kimyan Law the artist described one piece ("Krieg") as his "portrait of war", with the music moving through phases of violence, silence, panic, redemption and peace. Ever the allegorist, Kimyan Law relates themes of conflict and war not just to obvious geopolitics but also to his own physical struggles, and even an obsessive battle with the music itself, ("Yonda" has been more than three years in the making). In 2017 the artist wrote, "I've reached a point where I couldn't sleep because it bothered me so much... I have found myself unable to make any music except for Krieg".

An accomplished drummer in his own right, Kimyan Law's intricate rhythmic sensibility is the lifeblood that runs throughout the album, incorporating ever more outlandish sources of percussion recorded from his natural surroundings and filtered through technology.

"Yonda's opener, "Jaardin", is deceptively gentle, with off-kilter rhythms and pianos providing fertile ground for Elyn's delicate singing before the whole piece careens off into what can only be described as orchestral proto-jungle territory. It soon becomes apparent that this placid introduction is misleading, with subsequent tracks fluctuating between pounding tribal beats ("Arboreal Epitone" / "Kin"), chilling orchestration ("Byo" / "Krieg") and rehabilitated jungle forms ("Seven Ant Foley"). A constant mix of light and dark, futuristic yet primitive atmosphere hangs over the album, with waves of luscious synths and deeply musical string arrangements lovingly cloaked over the razor-sharp drum work.

Unusual conceptual themes litter "Yonda"; "Dor Rhythm" is about a Dung Beetle's journey, "Lampion" is about paper lanterns, "Nova" is about plant growth while "Kilele" is a song about peace, featuring Kimyan Law's own vocals in a new language he created himself, conjuring memories of Cocteau Twin's Liz Fraser.

While "Yonda" contains moments of incontestable beauty it can often be a difficult listen, an illustration of an anxious mind yearning for peace. An obsessive and intricate musician, Kimyan Law's use of African percussion, finely honed polyrhythmic patterns and celestial sprinklings of keys melded with slabs of sub-bass power and sheer energy makes for an intoxicating listen. As ever, Kimyan Law has delivered a profoundly serious piece of work that expands the vocabulary of his genre. Despite the darkness saturating the work, a soft light still breaks through the window. It is the east, and Kimyan Law is the sun.

Twice JUNO-nominated and two-time Polaris Prize listed, Toronto's soul songstress Tanika Charles unveils her album "Papillon de Nuit: The Night Butterfly".

"Papillon de Nuit: The Night Butterfly" is the third studio album from Canadian Soul/R&B powerhouse Tanika Charles and is slated to be released worldwide on Milan-based Record Kicks label on April 08th. Composed and recorded while in and out of lockdowns, "Papillon de Nuit" is an album anchored in growth and maturity. The thematic inspiration came from an unlikely source, a creature that soars after the sun sets, but often goes unnoticed until the light shines on it. It is the "papillon de nuit" to some, but drably referred to as a moth by others, revealing a bias in language alone.

"I always thought it was a strange insect. Once while in Paris, a friend swatted at one and I asked: 'Was that a moth?'. I was told: 'No, that's a papillon de nuit.' I thought that was the most beautiful description for this otherwise overlooked creature. When I later learned of the symbolism associated with it, I felt that really spoke to both my own situation and also what we've all been going through." Production on "Papillon de Nuit" was helmed by a mixture of old and new collaborators. The Safe Spaceship Records production team, consisting of Scott McCannell (Lydia Persaud, Claire Davis), Ben MacDonald and Chino de Villa (re.verse, Jessie Reyez), produced four songs on the album. The group also assisted as session musicians for songs produced by newcomer Todd "HiFiLo" Pentney (Allison Au Quartet, JUNO Award winner). "The Gumption" contributor Kevin Henkel ("Tell Me Something", "Look At Us Now") returned with three compositions, and old friend Jesse Bear (Sean Kingston, Stan Walker) contributed to one song.

Following the success of "Soul Run" (2016/17) and "The Gumption" (2019), Tanika had found a comfortable pace of releasing albums then hitting the road the following year to bring her show to new markets far and wide. So when things changed for all of us, and plans of touring "The Gumption" properly fell through, there was a realization that getting to work on the next project was the healthiest choice to make.

"I was in some dark places. My energy was stagnant and the only reliable constant was this perpetual uncertainty. I had gone from feeling like I was everywhere to only being in one place. From seeing so many new faces, to only my own, in the mirror, everyday and having to face that. Getting back to work on music allowed me to explore these feelings through the format I know best. And I wanted to make sure that when things were ready to resume, I'd be ready with something new for my audience too."

Tanika, who took part in the writing of most of the album, was also assisted by regular co-writer Robert Bolton ("Soul Run", "Remember to Remember") and accomplished solo performer Tafari Anthony (Priyanka, of RuPaul's Drag Race). Featured guests include the multi-disciplinary artist Khari McClelland and rising Toronto rapper, DijahSB. Both Dakarai Morris-James (Joanna Majoko, BeBe Zahara Benet) and Sean "D/SHON" Henderson ("Love Overdue", Serena Ryder) assisted with vocal arrangements across multiple songs.


"I think this album represents my best work to date. And yet, it also represents me coming to terms with who I am as an artist. For the first time I think I've actually accepted my own voice. I can hear beyond the imperfections, and I realized that when paired with the right music, it can sound pretty good. I still have my doubts and my dark places, but a little less of them."

As we emerge into the Now with a fresh perspective and renewed vigour, Red Laser Records usher in a novel epoch of Manctalo movements for our post-COVID enjoyment.

Entrusting piloting duties to four well decorated RL commandos, the EP serves to remind us all that despite everything that's happened, we can still find solace in red lasers, smoke machines and high-powered strobe lights.

Splitting open the collective dancefloor inertia is Kid Machine's 'Only Machines Allowed'.

A cybernetic b-boy jam straight outta the planet MEGOH circa 4044. Guided by electrified vocoder lines and a plutonium-grade, armoured groove this impenetrable battle rocket should issue the much needed power boost to get your body kinetics firing again when they release the e-barriers to hedonism.

Returning star fleet lieutenant Count Van Delicious has been collecting entities from the outer galaxies since his appearance on RL EP 9 ('Dark Fruit' w/ Senor Chugger).
Here he announces his return with an end-credits epic, an #inabiteveryoneelse theme from this young vet on a pants-off permo-buzz, up-scrolling through technicolored c64 visuals and deploying his now trademark zoopa-arps, euphoric synth stabs and thunderous low end shudder to deadly effect.

Meanwhile, Ste Spandex continues his cybernetic realignment surgery, dissecting a well circulated disco meme and adding voluptuous gender-neutral enhancements that'll be getting the next generation of androids frisky, despite their lack of reproductive organs. Fizzling synths, spherical repetition and a multi-dimensional mix of high voltage rhythms leaving that vocal line permanently downloaded in your memory cloud. No sharing necessary.

Scottish deep space observer Ernesto Harmon provides some cosmic ruggedness to close off our mission. Reinforced & galvanised low-end rhymix coalescing with humanoid synth expression and an infinite, carbon-free energy source keeping momentum plateaued through the morning after the night before. There's no off switch baby!

For astral travellers seeking solace in the new Now, EP12 kindly acts as an upgrade to your possibly dormant dancing system as you stumble out into the new nocturnal environment. Hopefully reminding us that the simple act of moving alongside one another in a pitch black, laser-guided club space hasn't changed that much...

Limited press, with artwork which could be the next top selling NFT, we urge our RL family to bag this collectable chronicle from the Red Laser Corp.

Interior sounds from Madalyn in an album that flits between eerie ambience, environment, and hermetic logic. The music’s timing and sequencing feels distant, the elegant constructions conjured and organised semi-consciously, drawing the listener deeper into the dream and towards a zone where watch hands tick forward accurately and their perception of time unspools. Here each neatly tuned conversation and clockwork assemblage harmonises, spinning tantalisingly just out of range and understanding.

“Puzzle Music is the desire to create images out of diverse pieces of sound. To collect timbral colours in a gradient procession and connect them until they create reason. Principally not knowing how the image will turn out, or what the picture even is. It is the act of placing sound shapes next to one another in the hope that clarity will gradually be revealed.

When grouping the songs together I was thinking of them as mechanisms in a timepiece. I have something of an obsession with Swiss watchmaking, although I think this stems from a desire for creative mastery and the design of an energy source independent of electronic needs. Hopefully the songs all serve a purpose towards the end goal of the album... but also, the way the Oberheim Xpander pans sounds is in a very clear circular pattern, which makes me think of gears turning.”

Gazing at the stars is looking at the past. The galaxies send you messages from thousands of light years away. That overwhelming feeling is present on Free Andromeda by Timothy J. Fairplay. An album grounded on earth while floating through eternity with a loose connection to the Milky way.

This nine-track record is, as always with T J. F. a delicately balanced mix between dark and light, analogue and digital, vast space and tight basements. With an impressing collection of premium synthesisers and drum machines, TJF showcases some of the most exquisite electronically generated soundscapes heard on this side of 1984. His sound on Free Andromeda can be described as leftfield inspired by various John Carpenter- and Italian horror movie soundtracks together with some West German Kosmische Musik.

Thimothy J. Fairplay, somewhat of a veteran on the label, makes deep and warm electronic music celebrating underground sounds from the last five decades. This album is no exception. For all you introverts dreaming of a life in the starshine – here’s Free Andromeda!

Jerry Leger follows up his critically acclaimed 'Time Out For Tomorrow' with 'Nothing Pressing'; produced by Michael Timmins (Cowboy Junkies).Jerry's last self released album 'Songs from the Apartment' was a stripped-down lo-fi affair recorded in Leger's home using a cheap tape recorder with an internal microphone
This lead to two songs from Nothing Pressing, "Underground Blues" and "Sinking In," to be also recorded in Leger's home.The remaining nine tracks included on 'Nothing Pressing' present Leger's work in two starkly contrasting soundscapes.

"Nothing Pressing," "Protector," and "Still Patience," are soloacoustic recordings cut live in the studio with little embellishment. The other six tracks are prime roots rock and roll featuring his long-time band The Situation. Among the latter songs, "Kill It With Kindness" and "Have You Ever Been Happy?" have the kind of drive, energy and spirit that are sure to make them highlights of his future live shows.

Leger often times finds himself at a loss as to explain the source of his songs. He feels his songwriting, while clearly drawing on experiences filtered through a panoply of influences,often verges on being a supernatural experience. Over the course of the eleven songs on Nothing Pressing, the songwriter's songwriter engages with questions of existence, mortality,hope, trust and heartbreak while
simultaneously conjuring feelings of isolation, reflection, longing and gratitude.

Paired with such evocative lyrics are wonderfully crafted melodies, soulful vocals and the spirit and energy of a mature songwriter, comfortable in his skin and growing as an artist withevery release. Nothing Pressing serves a wonderfully refreshing tonic in troubling times

Fabio & Grooverider have been at the forefront of UK dance music for over 3 decades. This is the roots of their story told through music. The 2 London DJ's are part of the DNA of the global Jungle / D&B movement and they have remained relevant, cutting edge, authoritative and essential to this truly underground art-form since it's inception. RAGE could arguably be the ground zero of Jungle. The party was started at London's cavernous Heaven club by Fabio & Grooverider in 1988, at the height of Acid House fever that was making it's way up and down the motorways, slip-roads, fields and warehouses of the M25 and further beyond every weekend, troubling the nation, the police, your parents and the press as it went. RAGE was a different beast, it certainly channelled some of that Acid energy but pitted it against the new and exciting sounds emanating from Belgium, Amsterdam, Detroit, Sheffield, Essex and Hackney and in turn created a new style, a new sonic attitude and energy in the process. Rumbling bass-lines, narcotic synth rushes and roughly chopped and sped-up breakbeats all merged into a style that we now know as Jungle. Nothing like this had been heard before, this was a brand new style and it was coming out of London's West End and Fabio & Grooverider were the people firmly behind it. RAGE is approaching its 30th anniversary. Its sonic and cultural legacy is still being felt today, Fabio & Groove are still shutting down raves and festivals every weekend all over the world with their superior DJ sets and musical knowledge guided by their pioneering spirit. This musical selection you hold in your hands, the first of 4 parts, sees them delve into their prodigious memories and record boxes to select a true musical representation of the very beginning of one of the UK's most unique and influential musical movements of the last 50 years. Across 4 x 2 x 12"s compilations we are taken on the journey through the sounds of RAGE, accompanied with track by track notes from Fabio & Groove themselves. This is the sound of the underground, from the inside out. This is a masterclass in the old-school. The roots. There is no filler here, it's simply ALL killer. Lovingly selected and programmed by the masters - 'The Living Shock' & 'The Ladies Choice'. Produced in conjunction with Above Board distribution and Fabio & Grooverider. All tracks mastered from original sources and fully licensed. Mastering by Optimum, Bristol. Artwork and design by Atelier Superplus. 2019

First time vinyl issue of this 1997 Mego classic. General Magic, the duo of Ramon Bauer and Andi Pieper, who, alongside Pita, first pioneered the classic Mego sound on the Fridge Trax 12” in 1995. The following year proved to be formulative when Mego released Frantz alongside a slew of game changing releases from Farmers Manuel, Pita and Fennesz.

Originally released as MEGO 010 Frantz presented a thrilling digression from what was in vogue in music at the time. This was the advent of portable computing and the Vienna based label was at the forefront of harnessing the potential of audio within this new technology.

At once smart and playful these releases reconfigured once disparate genres such as industrial, techno, glitch and the avant garde, folding them into a bright, audacious and euphoric new system of sound. The music on Frantz (named after the Austrian skier, Franz Klammer) still pushes the boundaries of acceptable audio constructions with it’s startling fried electricity and twisted sensibility. The sense of joy in the audio discovery is palatable as techno laced explorations unfold a variety of unexpected and unprecedented sonic manoeuvres.

Tyrell launches proceedings as schizophrenic stuttering handclaps simultaneously slice into pieces as it propels forward. The bending of the brain is on display with the likes of ‘Obvious’ and ‘Close, But Not Quien’. Temko skewers digital debris in which a ghost melody comes to the fore. Brazen rhythms mobilize the tracks ‘No Ketting’ and ‘Bonden’ whilst the Official GM Ski-WM Theme is a short stab of priceless pop wizardry skittering about a strange exhilarating melody in homage to the finest of winter activities.

This reissue also includes ‘Die Mondlandung’ which was released as a 12” in 1995 (MEGO 002), and has never been released anywhere, physical or digital, since. This track is based on the live German TV coverage of the moon landing. An apt theme for the abundance of exploration contained within this classic release.

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About Frantz ... and Peter (by Ramon Bauer & Andi Pieper, November 2021):

Listening to the test pressings of the remastered Frantz album for the first time on vinyl, 25 years after the original release on the then still young Mego label in 1997, felt like uncovering an ancient artefact. In those exciting days during the mid-1990s, together with the late Peter Rehberg, we founded a label called Mego to further explore the wonders of electronic music. And that is what we did for the next 10 years until everything became too much with the label in somewhat rough waters. So we dropped out of music business and pursued different things. It was Peter who continued producing and releasing music with the restarted label, now called Editions Mego. Until his unexpected death in July 2021, he developed Editions Mego into the grown-up and much acclaimed outfit for which it is known today. We will forever miss Peter’s inspiring personality and his uncompromising creativity. His legacy will live on in his music and in the vast and rich Mego and eMego catalogues. We are humbled and proud to have played a role in those formative years of the label.

Peter approached us in October 2020 with the idea to do a vinyl reissue of Frantz, just in time for the 25 year anniversary of its release. That came as a complete surprise for us, General Magic had not released any music or performed live for over 15 years. Anyway, we were delighted with the prospect of having that General Magic "classic" remastered (by the exceptional Russell Haswell) and released for the first time on vinyl on Editions Mego.

Frantz is a collection of tracks that we produced in 1995 and 1996 right after recording “Fridge Trax” (with Peter) and “Die Mondlandung” (which comes as a bonus track on this reissue). At that time, we started to migrate our analogue gear to 64 MB RAM computers and used almost every other digital thing that yielded a sound by any means. We even deliberately crashed our then so-called "Powerbooks" and scratched self-produced CD-Rs until they produced previously unheard sounds. Real time audio processing with computers was barely a thing back then (before SuperCollider was released), but cheerful massaging of sound files yielded interesting results and the future looked bright. Listening to Frantz today, with decades of distance, there are some parts that might appear dated by modern standards, but the energy and the general magic of that period is well captured.

All Frantz tracks were produced in Andi's studio in Berlin and at Mego Vienna. The Mego studio/office was a vivid place located in an old factory on the outskirts of Vienna. We shared the place with Tina Frank, who created most of the early Mego covers and videos. Other artists, musicians and friends were hanging out there almost every day. Many ideas on Frantz are a product of that particular environment. “Mimi”, for example, is based on a field recording in the backyard of the factory, where we also shot the video for “Tyrell”. “11.25” contains sounds from the Prague train station we regularly passed through on the night train travelling between Vienna and Berlin. Other sounds were sourced from the early internet and mangled on the computer, carefully preserving those early audio codec artefacts. While working on the Frantz tracks at the Mego Vienna studio, Peter was usually around, as he was literally working and living there. And so, of course, he also made an impact on that album: It might not be widely known but Peter even appeared on Frantz contributing his voice to the choir on “The Official Ski WM Theme”.

Let there be Frantz!

Fraxinus emerges from temporary suspension with a monolithic 6-track offering on his new self-release label Powerplant. This is his debut EP Position Displacement, carved from a solid block of Devonian granite. After a 4-year dormancy, the Amsterdam-based artist returns with a 30 minute transmission of earth-shaking kick drums, thunderous percussion and razor-sharp sound design. The label’s inaugural release simultaneously marks the first proper outing for the artist, following a run of compilation features & special edition vinyl excursions dating back to 2014. Position Displacement is a journey of divergent moods & cadences, from the wistful flutes of opener Overland to final track Laced’s uncompromising arpeggios. Billowing melodies & piercing stabs run in tandem with a pummelling & steppy rhythm section; Source Code builds steadily, paving the way for Pass One’s warehouse-ready assault. The blooming, fluorescent synths of 115 (Kondo) - named for the mythical Amsterdam club - create a mid-way moment of euphoria, before Larch marches on with its clattering drums. The tracks clearly contain DNA from Fraxinus' foundations with the Her Records cohort – lean, direct & forward-thinking. This time around the aesthetic is more focused, transferred to techno schematics but veering away from 4/4 fare. The sonics have been compacted into dense slabs of energy, primed for soundsystem dispatch. Wholly original, crafted with precision; the EP serves as a powerful statement of intent for both artist & label. Position Displacement will be released 05/11/2021 on 12” vinyl and digital download, presented with full sleeve artwork. The record is followed by a further 2 EPs on Powerplant as we enter 2022.

Sudi Wachspress returns to Tartelet Records with Dance Planet, a third LP of emotionally-charged house music to welcome us back to the dancefloor. The spirit of true house runs deep in the sound of Space Ghost. Oakland native Sudi Wachspress is intuitively plugged into the romantic, mystical energy of 4/4 club music as a unifying force of empowerment and liberation, carrying the torch from vital forebears like Larry Heard, Alton Miller, and Blaze.

His new album, Dance Planet, carries a greater responsibility to spread spiritual affirmations. As the global dancefloor community emerges from a mentally-taxing recess and confronts their social self like it’s the first day of school, Space Ghost’s message couldn’t be more supportive.

“Don’t be afraid to be yourself, don’t be afraid to let go,” he intones on “Be Yourself.” More than just a beat and a hook, his music is pointedly created to heal and energize. “I’m a big fan of old-school house vocals that have a positive message,” says Space Ghost, “tracks that can perhaps enhance your mood or strengthen your confidence in yourself.”

Wachspress has always represented a beacon of musical uplift, both on his previous Endless Light and Aquarium Nightclub LPs for Tartelet and on his swathes of self-released music and last year’s Free 2 B on Apron. Compared to most house-oriented artists, he places emphasis on the long-player format to create an encircling experience for the listener, smoothing out psychic wrinkles and massaging areas of tension for a fully holistic hit.

Marshall McLuhan’s famous edict ‘the medium is the message’ has never been more apt than with regard to modern remix culture. Although the idea of the remix goes way back to the Jamaican dub pioneers and New York disco remixers of the 1970s, the form didn’t truly come into its own until the acid house explosion of the 1980s, when remixers’ credentials often subsumed — and sometimes surpassed — the original source material. Some, among them our lost friend Andrew Weatherall, used remixing as a springboard into multiple other directions, and became auteurs in their own right.

Forged in the white-hot heat of post-acid house Britain, these Heavenly remixes are perfectly weighted with respect and irreverence, the remixer in each case carefully chosen to add heft to the song (as on Al Breadwinner’s dubwise reworking of Mattiel’s ’Guns of Brixton’— the pairing more a game of chess than a best-of-three arm wrestle).

Although Heavenly was founded in the wake of huge upheavals in electronic music, it was still imbued with its own curious parallel life. I’ve always thought of Heavenly as one of the UK’s alt-pop labels; a place where brilliant pop bands live and record, if the general public would only realise. Some of them have ended up in the real, actual charts (Saint Etienne, Doves), but that’s missing the point about Heavenly, who are, like Factory and Fast Product before them, pop music’s conscience.

There is no sense of order to this compilation and we make no apologies. It’s the Heavenly way. Think of it as a present from Loki, the Norse god of mischief. You’ll find a smattering of older tracks: album openers Saint Etienne are taken on a Poseidon Adventure with Underworld, who inject ‘Cool Kids of Death’ with typically manic energy. Elsewhere, ’90s Brum duo Mother add dancefloor pzazz to Espiritu’s innate glamour on an all-funked-up reworking of ‘Los Americanos’, and Mark Lusardi’s remix of Moonflowers’ ‘Get Higher’ is an early Heavenly classic.

On ‘Terracotta Warrior’, a perfect, psyched-out, Mancunian union is created betwixt Jimi Goodwin and Andy Votel, whilst Goodwin cohort Simon Aldred, in his Cherry Ghost guise, receives a proper Tamla-Motowning from Richard Norris (aka Time & Space Machine) on an inspired cover of Cece Peniston’s glam-house hit, ‘Finally’.

There are several of Heavenly’s current darlings here too. One of the most exciting young British prospects, Yorkshire’s Working Men’s Club, effectively remix themselves, as Minsky Rock — WMC’s Syd Minsky-Sargeant and producer Ross Orton — cleave ‘X’ into a riotous industrial racket. Jagwar Ma’s Jono Ma takes the Kraftwerkian leitmotif on ‘Automatic’ and drives the Australian jazz-funkers Mildlife down an electro-convulsive psychedelic tunnel (thankfully no-one was harmed during the making of this remix); Sheffield’s DJ Parrot and Jarvis Cocker deliver one of the outstanding remixes of 2018, turning Baxter Dury’s ‘Miami’ into a lovelorn minor opera; and, making its first appearance on vinyl, David Holmes’ Unloved project is taken on a panoramic Welsh waltz thanks to Gwenno.


There may well be no rhyme, nor reason, to how these compilations have been put together, beyond the fact that they are assembled with love, an innate understanding of the power of great pop music, and a skilled marriage of song and remixer — but does one really need anything more than that for an album to make sense? I’d suggest not.

For Memory Pearl’s »Music for 7 Paintings« Moshe Fisher–Rozenberg traveled to art galleries throughout North America searching for paintings which would enrapture him.

Like the experience of being drawn into the worlds of those paintings, these seven tracks — each one directly referencing a single work by Joan Mitchell, Robert Ryman, Lee Krasner, Helen Frankenthaler, Franz Kline, or Jackson Pollock — are love letters to the sympathetic vibration of one creative mind encountering another. They trace the way art inspires and generates art. Each resonates with the reconstructive energy that comes from translating the visual to the auditory.

One might expect a jagged, alienating angularity, given the modernist and postmodern source material. Instead there is warmth and depth of sentiment, accented by the analogue and digital synth pitch–shifts and cascades. The pieces crackle with the energy of translation: something new is created as the medium changes, mediated across the boundaries of genre. There are associations, asides, tangents as each work is »read« into its new format. There is no alienation, no cold distance: only engagement and warmth. The album’s lead track, Natural Answer, 1976 opens with sounds that feel like the gaze being caught and drawn into an intimate emotional connection with a work. Cupola, 1958–1960 begins with a thickly layered wash of sound as nostalgic as a train ride through the outskirts of a city at night, then expands into a cavernous memory–scene of personal association.

Fisher–Rozenberg brings a vast experience to bear on the paintings that inspire »Music for 7 Paintings«. While this may be his debut full length as a solo artist, he is a consummate collaborator (Alvvays, Fucked Up, U.S. Girls, Youth Lagoon, Man Forever) best known as the drummer and synthesist in Absolutely Free. Also clear is his visual sensibility — his instinct for how to translate the emotive context of visual art into sound, honed in collaborative work on kinetic sculptures, immersive installations and film scores. But what most comes to the fore is perhaps his recent graduate work in music therapy, and the sensitivity learned through his leading of music therapy sessions at Toronto's Centre for Addiction and Mental Health. This direct encounter with music’s power to heal lends the tracks a sacred, therapeutic quality. They are suffused with curative frequencies that connect the isolated individual to a world of contemplative beauty.

»Music For 7 Paintings« catalogues the energy in the gaze of a seasoned musician, translating brushstroke to sound.