American DJ, producer, and Ovum label boss Josh Wink remixes Chris Liebing's 'Eye C' via CLR on 25th September 2026, one of the standout tracks from Liebing's first fully solo-produced LP, 'Evolver', which landed in March. The album featured collaborations with the likes of Luke Slater, Charlotte de Witte, and Daniel Miller, with Josh Wink the latest to rework material from the project. The Philadelphian is an electronic music veteran who has shaped countless releases on his own Ovum, while also remixing the likes of Depeche Mode, Moby, and Radiohead.
Josh Wink showcases his production skills once again with a blistering take on Chris Liebing's 'Eye C', rewriting it with fizzing synth modulations and prickly acid lines. The track grows in intensity as rumbling drums march on, and the synths become ever wilder before pulling back into a deep, atmospheric groove, rebuilding beneath the menacing vocals and icy, incendiary hi-hats.
The original version of Chris Liebing's 'Eye C' is a deep, rolling techno masterclass with pulsing synths and deft percussion peeling away from the groove. It's linear and heady, perfect for the small hours, with unsettling vocal fragments refracted around the mix and subtle hypnotism floating overhead as the drums grow ever harder.
If you dig deep enough into the internet's lower depths, you'll find a shaky video shot on a camcorder. In 43 seconds, we see a makeshift drum kit built out of backyard Ostbahnhof trash, hear distorted vocals, and feel the anarchic energy of band and ravers dissolving into each other. It's now been twenty years since Bonaparte played their very first show at the legendary Bar25 on Berlin's Spree river. The ringmaster of this unhinged musical theater was Tobias Jundt then, and it's Jundt again now bringing the Bonaparte extravaganza back to the stage. New and nostalgic sit close together when the party's been going this long. Or, as they put it: "PARADISE IF YOU CAN STAND IT."
From late October through mid-November, Bonaparte will tour Germany, Austria, and Jundt's native Switzerland at full intensity, the full lineup - band to burlesque. Since their 2006 debut through their supposed farewell in 2019, Bonaparte played over 800 shows in 28 countries. Bottom line: "Too Much" isn't enough to properly celebrate a body of work like this. And the new songs from "PARADISE IF YOU CAN STAND IT" are far too significant not to bring to the stage. The lo-fi trash-punk of Bonaparte's earliest records has been built out with added layers, in production (largely alongside British avant-garde electronic artist HELiX) and in the songwriting itself.
The world certainly hasn't gotten any simpler since 2006. Tracks like "EVERYBODY PRESiDENT," loosely riffing on Zoe Leonard's poem "I Want A Dyke For President," and the corrosive "BRAiN ROT" mirror the social chaos we find ourselves in 2026. "OBEY (THERE iS STiLL A RiOT GOiNG ON)" is just as furious, though here the principle of hope still holds, as a multigenerational choir concludes "everything will be okay." Jundt speaks across generations again on "i LOVE YOU (MORE LATER)," dedicated in equal measure to his parents and his daughters: "Let the echo chamber bleed - from here into eternity."
The reconciliation and hope Bonaparte allows for and tends to, amid violence and all that noise, make "PARADISE IF YOU CAN STAND IT" a singular document of an artist grown wiser. Separation and grief don't cancel out love and vitality - they depend on each other. Ultimately, the album is a record of searching for and finding a home. To arrive, you have to let go.
And what better place to let go than in step with Bonaparte's wild, hedonistic party circus, finally back to gently terrorize our cities?
By the time Michael Nau completed Popfly, the songs felt less like compositions than companions. Arriving in fragments, notebook lines, and fleeting observations, these pieces kept company for years until taking their final form. The result is one of Nau's most openhearted, expansive records, both homespun and otherworldly at once. Radiant folk melodies, tape-warped textures, and flashes of everyday wonder coexist in perfect balance on Popfly. Nau has never been a songwriter who forces songs into existence. Instead, he follows them, trusting intuition over agenda and allowing songs to gradually reveal themselves. Writing and recording often blur together, with melodies evolving before lyrics are finished and stray recordings forming the basis for new songs. Popfly showcases these creative detours: thoughtful folk songs, sonic experiments, and accidental beauty transformed into fully realized compositions. Many songs began at home, growing in meaning. Since he entered the Vermont studio, Little Jamaica, with longtime friend and collaborator Benny Yurco, many of them had already lived several lives. "Studio recording feels like covering my own songs," Nau says. This idea flows throughout: performances are lived-in, feeling effortless, as if assembling itself. The title track carries a flicker of wonder in its simple observations. "New Slack" moves with the loose confidence of a song content to follow its own path. On "Lost Station Hideaway," soft static and fading signals become something strangely comforting, as if the song itself is being broadcast from somewhere just beyond reach. Family and friendship are deeply woven throughout the record. Nau's children contribute vocals, bringing warmth and spontaneity to the album's communal spirit, with longtime collaborator and wife Whitney McGraw lending her serene voice. The harmonies that drift from them extend the album's central impulse of people gathering to make something beautiful. Across Popfly, loose-limbed folk songs mingle with homespun psych-pop, porchside country-folk, dreamlike atmospherics, and quietly profound observations. The record moves with the ease of conversation among old friends, finding beauty in tiny revelations, strange coincidences, and everyday mysteries. The record is full of transmissions from different moments in Nau's life, stitched together by instinct, affection, and time. Taken together, they form a portrait of a life spent paying close attention to the world and its small miracles.
Duality, the second studio album by American rock band RA, originally released in 2005, captures the group at a moment of creative expansion. Building on the heavy, melodic foundation of their debut From One, the band broadened its sound with richer arrangements, deeper emotional themes, and a more polished production approach.
With Duality, RA refined their blend of alternative rock, hard rock, and atmospheric textures. The album features several fan‑favorite tracks, including “Fallen Angels”, “Sky”, “Tell Me” and “Got Me Going”. One of the album’s standout moments is RA’s cover of “Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic”, originally by The Police and written by Sting.
Duality is available on vinyl for the first time and includes an insert with lyrics.
Dis Fig, producer and vocalist Felicia Chen, embraces every facet of heaviness. Chen is driven by a desire to express deeper emotions through meticulously crafted, innovative production and expressive vocals. On acclaimed collaborations with The Bug, The Body, and Asian Dope Boys, Chen"s sound is indelible. Her solo work utilizes electronic, industrial, and bass-forward music as filters for sonic plentitudes, unbounded and wholly her own. Every granule of sound is in service of alchemizing intense emotion and vulnerability. What To Make Of These Mortal Hands is an ambitious widening of Dis Fig"s scope, traversing tectonic dynamic shifts and heartrending arrangements in a filmic study of humanity"s capacity to create both beauty and devastation. Dis Fig has a preternatural ability to ground massive sounds with tactile rhythms and her instinctually connective voice. The album is a staggering display of innovative songcraft and unfathomable emotion-a musical world like no other.
Dis Fig, producer and vocalist Felicia Chen, embraces every facet of heaviness. Chen is driven by a desire to express deeper emotions through meticulously crafted, innovative production and expressive vocals. On acclaimed collaborations with The Bug, The Body, and Asian Dope Boys, Chen"s sound is indelible. Her solo work utilizes electronic, industrial, and bass-forward music as filters for sonic plentitudes, unbounded and wholly her own. Every granule of sound is in service of alchemizing intense emotion and vulnerability. What To Make Of These Mortal Hands is an ambitious widening of Dis Fig"s scope, traversing tectonic dynamic shifts and heartrending arrangements in a filmic study of humanity"s capacity to create both beauty and devastation. Dis Fig has a preternatural ability to ground massive sounds with tactile rhythms and her instinctually connective voice. The album is a staggering display of innovative songcraft and unfathomable emotion-a musical world like no other.
Put your hands together and please welcome Linda Lo to Shall Not Fade's Time is Now imprint. The LA producer/DJ's new 12" EP "Masa" drops 23rd Oct 2026 and f**k is it sick.
Linda Lo fuses* mambo, samba, and salsa with UK garage, dubstep, and club rhythms to make guaranteed rewind material that is gonna light up the dance…
* imma talk about this fuses sh*t in a minute.. First we need to get a bit philosophical. Cos rewinds and fusions aside, this EP is alive. It's part of something bigger and cyclical, without a start or an end. It is music. It was part of someone else's music before and it will be part of other people's music in the future. Right now though, it's Linda Lo's music.
Too esoteric? Let me elaborate and, let's talk about fusion. There is the fusion that is – steal a bit of genre X and culture Y, chuck it on the grid and strut about professing fusion – and then there's actual fusion: Music that is something "new" and real and genuine. Music that you end up describing excitedly as a "fusion of" things (even if it inevitably ends up doing it a disservice). Music that is simultaneously one thing and not that thing, and also something else and not that something else too. Music that is just "music" to the creator but is also part of the progression and evolution of music for others. Mala wasn't making "dubstep". Skream & Benga ended up not making Garage. Like many before and after they were making their music and Linda Lo is making her music so let's hear from her about it. Big up Linda. This is real.
Notes from Linda:
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“Like Croydon by way of Havana”
“Masa, or corn-based dough used to make tortillas and tamales, is a traditional staple food for many in Mexico and throughout LatAm. In the Maya worldview, people's flesh is made out of masa. In order to make masa, corn must be dried, nixtamalized, ground, and mixed (often by hand) to create the right textured dough. I find much of my music work is a collision and a mixing of many elements, all worked into one product. In this way, I've worked these songs, transforming raw rhythms and sub bass into hand-mixed tunes. ‘Masa - EP' presents four delicious heaters. The title track explodes with a fiery double-time dubstep groove. Mambo horn stabs bite through a bass inferno. ‘Cenote' looks down upon a subterranean pool of sound—still on the surface but impossibly deep. ‘Minifalda', pure flirt and gyration, calls in cuica and other voices from a samba bateria. Finally, claves stitch across ‘Mestiza', a fusion of blooming lush orchestration and jagged 2step rhythm.
Around 1960, my grandparents were regular dancers at the Palladium in Los Angeles: young, Mexican, and falling in love to dance music, specifically big band mambo. My mom, consequently, is a fantastic dancer, and her mambo collection along with my dad's exotica records formed the base of my own vinyl collection. When I first discovered garage and dubstep, there was something indescribably familiar to me, something mambo-like about the syncopated offbeat hits and drama. Later, as I began stitching together mambo claves and 2step drums, I assumed I was trying out something totally new. The farther I go, the more I see that I was wrong.
Dubstep, garage and jungle share a parental lineage back to dub reggae, originating from Jamaica. Mambo hails from Cuba, and sister genres of salsa to NYC & PR, and bachata and meringue to the Dominican Republic. Yet, these musical genres of the Caribbean have not developed in isolation. Reggae, mambo, dancehall, salsa, even son jarocho from Veracrúz, Mexico (where my family is from), all developed together, influencing each other fundamentally. Ultimately, all musics of the Caribbean have come from West African polyrhythmic musical heritages. Garage, mambo, dubstep, and salsa are points in time along one musical continuum.
I feel very honored to be a selector working in Los Angeles (and elsewhere!). I hope I can share some music for the next generation of young people to fall in love to. "
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I'm moved by what Linda writes here. #1 Doing what you love, and finding you are part of something bigger. Creating for yourself freely and hoping to inspire others with healthy amounts of care, humility, freedom, self awareness and enjoyment. (It is inspiring and I'm honoured we are now a part of sharing Linda's music). #2 There's something wonderful about finding connection and a sense of place. A place physical, spiritual and in time. Music can help us all find connection and be part of a place. Wheel it up wherever you are.
The vibraphone may have gone quiet, but the groove hasn't. Roy Ayers passed away on March 4, 2025, in New York City, at the age of 84, but the man they called the Godfather of Neo-Soul left behind a vault deep enough to keep dancefloors moving for generations. BBE Music now hands the keys to Berlin's own Delfonic, whose second volume of reworks digs even further into that treasure chest for six fresh, floor-ready reimaginings. The series began when Delfonic shared a spontaneous edit with BBE founder Pete Adarkwah, and listener demand for a vinyl pressing turned the idea into a full official release. Volume 1 sold out fast and moved through collector circles at speed; Volume 2 arrives with even higher expectations attached, and record heads who missed out the first time won't want to sleep twice. Everything here is pulled from deep, previously-vaulted Ayers sessions. The reworks draw from BBE's celebrated Virgin Ubiquity compilations, a trove of unreleased Roy Ayers recordings cut between 1976 and 1981. These are the rarer cuts serious collectors have been chasing for years, now given a second life courtesy of BBE Music Delfonic is the alias of Markus Lindner, a Berlin lifer. He's been DJing professionally since 2004, building his name across Berlin and wider Europe with a sound rooted in hip-hop but stretched across many genres. For anyone who needs the primer: Ayers pioneered jazz-funk through his group Roy Ayers Ubiquity and was widely regarded as the godfather of neo-soul. His breakthrough came young; he got his first vibraphone mallets at age five after watching Lionel Hampton's band, and by 1963 he had his own recording contract. His records have been sampled for decades by artists including Mary J. Blige, A Tribe Called Quest, Common, and Kanye West, cementing him as one of the most sampled figures in soul-jazz history; a status that only grows with every year that passes. About BBE Music: This is a label with real archival credibility on Ayers specifically. BBE has held the license to the Virgin Ubiquity sessions since 2004, and this rework series is a natural extension of that decades-long relationship. Buyers trust the BBE stamp on soul-jazz reissues and edits precisely because of that history and the care, thought and quality that goes into every physical release, as BBE celebrates 30 years of real music for real people.
A multifaceted artist between meta-theatre, music, and poetry. Toji Tojima builds "visible music" from voices, traditional instruments, and everyday objects. Modern folk infused with art wave and the apocalypses of the everyday.
For their eagerly awaited third album, the Parisian trio Howlin' Jaws have teamed up with Swedish producer Kalle Gustafsson Jerneholm (bassist with The Soundtrack Of Our Lives and producer for Foals, The Hives, Jose Gonzalez and Junip) and have taken a major step forward, affirmingthe universal appeal of their explosive yet elegant psych-rock. This new album, Living The Dream, crystallises just about everything we'd ever dreamt of hearing from Howlin' Jaws. Here, more than ever, their dreams take the form of unifying choruses, transforming grief ("Troubled Mind") or separation ("Do What You Gonna Do", "So Sorry") into genuine bursts of hope. Rich in texture (with the Omnichord and Mellotron featuring on the spellbinding "Miss You" and the twilight-tinged "Up On The Roof" respectively) and in wit (led by the biting "Living The Dream"), the eleven-track album is equally diverse in its range of influences. Disco looms large on "Terminal Buzz", country creeps in on "Sunset Laundromat", whilst the fiery "Maximum Speed" is a joyful reminder of King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard's trippy flights of fancy. The trio are stunning when they're in full swing, but just as impressive when they slow the tempo down. Behind its layers of cosmic keyboards, "Time Has Come" immediately sets the scene and subtly invites introspection. Like an echo at the end of the journey, "That Kind of Pain" rubs shoulders with the stars of the French Touch (the Air school), letting the strings of the Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra burst forth amidst its melancholic swells. All in all, whether he simmers his albums like an omelette or a beef bourguignon, Howlin' Jaws proves he's never short of imagination.
For their eagerly awaited third album, the Parisian trio Howlin' Jaws have teamed up with Swedish producer Kalle Gustafsson Jerneholm (bassist with The Soundtrack Of Our Lives and producer for Foals, The Hives, Jose Gonzalez and Junip) and have taken a major step forward, affirmingthe universal appeal of their explosive yet elegant psych-rock. This new album, Living The Dream, crystallises just about everything we'd ever dreamt of hearing from Howlin' Jaws. Here, more than ever, their dreams take the form of unifying choruses, transforming grief ("Troubled Mind") or separation ("Do What You Gonna Do", "So Sorry") into genuine bursts of hope. Rich in texture (with the Omnichord and Mellotron featuring on the spellbinding "Miss You" and the twilight-tinged "Up On The Roof" respectively) and in wit (led by the biting "Living The Dream"), the eleven-track album is equally diverse in its range of influences. Disco looms large on "Terminal Buzz", country creeps in on "Sunset Laundromat", whilst the fiery "Maximum Speed" is a joyful reminder of King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard's trippy flights of fancy. The trio are stunning when they're in full swing, but just as impressive when they slow the tempo down. Behind its layers of cosmic keyboards, "Time Has Come" immediately sets the scene and subtly invites introspection. Like an echo at the end of the journey, "That Kind of Pain" rubs shoulders with the stars of the French Touch (the Air school), letting the strings of the Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra burst forth amidst its melancholic swells. All in all, whether he simmers his albums like an omelette or a beef bourguignon, Howlin' Jaws proves he's never short of imagination.
Armoonia is the work of Armooniaman, also known as Lele DJ, together with Mattia Fabbri. It sits between tech house and acid house, and it keeps everything smooth. The grooves are easy and fine, nothing pushes hard, everything rolls. Travel at 6 am and Botta open the first side, Bass again and Temperament follow on the second. The record moves from tech house toward acid house without breaking its flow. On a floor that means a steady, groovin line that lets the room settle in rather than forcing it. Four tracks, one mood, and a smooth way to keep a night moving.
Blume presents two pieces composed in 1970 by the American pianist and composer David Tudor (1926-1996), one of electronic music's most important pioneers, for the Pepsi-Cola Pavilion, a unique artist-designed and programmed space for Expo '70 in Osaka, Japan, created by Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.). Pepsibird and Anima Pepsi deploy electronic technology as a means to experience sound in ways that are anything but matter of fact, rendering liberated environments within and through which one might democratically express and commune. Viewed through the lens of what was, is, and might have been, they offer the tools for time travel: an unmediated encounter with radical, optimistic ideas that gave way to the complex cultural landscape of our time.
Initially trained on organ and then piano, Tudor emerged as a leading figure within New York's musical vanguard after his groundbreaking 1950 performance of Stefan Wolpe's Battle Piece and the American premiere of Pierre Boulez's Second Sonata. Within less than a year he had joined the Merce Cunningham Dance Company as its accompanist, a role he kept until his death, and began one of his most lasting creative relationships with John Cage, who would state that his entire output between 1951 and the end of the 1960s was written with Tudor in mind. Christian Wolff, Earle Brown, Morton Feldman, Sylvano Bussotti, Mauricio Kagel, and Karlheinz Stockhausen all wrote works for him during the 1950s and '60s. Through indeterminacy and chance-based methods, Tudor was noted for radically intervening with the works he played, often making them entirely his own, and it was this same singularity of vision that led him to gradually abandon the piano in favor of electronic process, through which he began working as a composer in his own right.
His engagement with electronics dates to the early 1950s and Cage's Project for Music for Magnetic Tape. By the following decade the pair had moved to live electronics, with Tudor rendering works like Cartridge Music and Variations II through contact microphones and complex systems of feedback and amplification. Before modular synthesizers existed, he designed and built his own electronics, often with engineers from Bell Laboratories, producing dozens of unique instruments and processing tools that helped lay the groundwork for the technological needs embraced by most electronic musicians ever since. A clear marker of his emergence as a composer came in 1966 with 9 Evenings: Theatre and Engineering, where he premiered Bandoneon! (a combine), turning the cavernous performance space into a feedback instrument and a total environment. The event led directly to the founding of E.A.T. the following year by the engineers Billy Klüver and Fred Waldhauer, alongside Robert Rauschenberg and Robert Whitman.
Among the most ambitious of E.A.T.'s projects was the Pepsi-Cola Pavilion, for which Tudor composed four pieces between March and April 1970: Pepsibird, Anima Pepsi, Pepscillator, and Microphone. Together with Forrest "Frosty" Myers, Robert Whitman, the sculptor and filmmaker Robert Breer, and the architect John Pearce, he was tasked with the design and function of the building: a 120-foot diameter steel and polyvinyl dome, shrouded in mist and fog and lit in the evenings by a square of intense blue-white xenon light. Tudor worked with Gordon Mumma and Fred Waldhauer on a unique sound system capable of processing and variable distribution through 37 speakers, controlled both by automated means and by the performer, and with Lowell Cross on a sound-activated laser deflection system inside the pavilion's mirrored performance hall.
Both pieces are an advanced form of musique concrète: libraries of tape recordings, live mixed and processed through the pavilion's sound console and distributed through 8 channels of stationary and rotating patterns designated by Tudor's instructions (small circle, great circle, large rhomboid, spiral, small triangles, small ovals). Pepsibird is focused upon a physical interiority, its source tapes being recordings of the brain wave activity of humans and animals: cat's eye, nerve firing, bats, EKG, alpha waves, a modified nightjar. Recorded in situ in 1970 and mixed down to stereo, it retains a striking sense of the space and ambience that Tudor achieved in performance. For more than eighteen minutes he merges subtle textures and pulses, at times resembling birdsong, within a blanket of vast, resonant ambience of subaquatic density, foreshadowing the relationship to the natural world of later works like Rainforest IV (1973).
Anima Pepsi is centered on the exterior: field recordings that Tudor made of animal and insect sounds (mosquitoes in a jar, a fly on flypaper, a wasp chewing, a beetle walking) and a mix of human and animal sounds that he called the "funny tape". Where Pepsibird deploys interior sounds in ways that allude to the natural world, Anima Pepsi pushes the sounds of nature and humanity toward the otherworldly through the clear presence of electronic sounds and processing, moulding detailed, pointillistic patterns of abstract sonority into gauzy blankets of ambience and space.
The collaboration did not last: less than a month after the opening, Pepsi withdrew its support, fired E.A.T., and disregarded Tudor's tapes, which according to accounts had to be smuggled out by staff, playing its own soundtrack in the pavilion for the rest of the Expo. Heard today, Pepsibird and Anima Pepsi anticipate many territories of later electroacoustic practice, from field recording to live processing, while the terms on which they were made, radically unpredictable, indeterminate, and experimental to the core, reconfigure what we've come to expect from electronic process, making one wonder if the past was ahead. Issued by Blume in a highly limited vinyl edition of 300 copies on red vinyl, with a 20-page LP-size booklet containing You Nakai's essay and newly commissioned liner notes by Bradford Bailey.
Recorded in one comfortably-seated take at Studio Ferber, Paris, France in 2015 - h hunt’s ‘playing piano for dad’ was initially conceived as a Christmas gift to the composer’s father. Intimately recorded, ‘playing piano for dad’ is a heartbreakingly gorgeous & sincere work of eleven vignettes which capture even the most nuanced sounds of the recording session - the composer’s breath, the shifting sounds of the piano pedals, the ambient noise and conversation within the studio. With minimalist tendencies, h hunt’s compositions are earnest and heartfelt, evoking both the jazz sensibilities of Bill Evans as much as Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou’s classical piano works - with pieces from the album having even been championed by Ryuichi Sakamoto for his Kajitsu Restaurant playlist
Acclaimed harpist and songwriter Mikaela Davis’ new album, Graceland Way (due TK via Kill Rock Stars), builds an expansive, kaleidoscopic neo-western dystopia from the cozy origin point—that duality compounded by a subtle exploration of light and dark, grace and struggle, rose and thorn, as well as the mystical power found at their meeting points. The “canyon country” epic born of that work is indebted to the titular street in Chevy Chase Canyon where she recorded the album, the lineage of Laurel Canyon, the mythos of Elvis’s Graceland, and Paul Simon’s restless reinvention. “At the end of the journey, the place you were destined for all along isn’t even a place, it’s a state of mind: Graceland Way,” Davis says. Featuring an unreleased Cass McCombs track (Mizmoon) as well as contributions from Karley Hartzman (Wednesday), Tim Heidecker, Madison Cunningham, Neal Francis, James Felice (The Felice Brothers), Clay Finch (Mapache) & Hannah Read.
AMBASSADE ventures into the world of Manrira - a dark, alluring feminine presence that confronts systems driven by value, profit, and power. Emerging from dystopian structures, Manrira exists in the liminal space where organic and digital forces collide, merge, and mutate. This new audiovisual work is devoted to the enchanting acoustics of the human voice and its relationship to bodies, architectures, and shifting environments. At the heart of Manrira is the human voice - alive, breathing, and full of presence. It flows like a living instrument, shaping space and emotion. Manrira explores the voice as resonance, as body, and as spatial event. Manrira moves from dynamic song compositions into extended structures, blending live bass, neo-classical elements, ethereal vocals, drum machines, breaks, and techno-driven textures. The result is an immersive experience that invites the audience to listen closely and reconsider their connection to sound, space, and their surroundings.
*** Special edition on yellow flame colored vinyl. Comes with a poster and stickers *** AMBASSADE ventures into the world of Manrira - a dark, alluring feminine presence that confronts systems driven by value, profit, and power. Emerging from dystopian structures, Manrira exists in the liminal space where organic and digital forces collide, merge, and mutate. This new audiovisual work is devoted to the enchanting acoustics of the human voice and its relationship to bodies, architectures, and shifting environments. At the heart of Manrira is the human voice - alive, breathing, and full of presence. It flows like a living instrument, shaping space and emotion. Manrira explores the voice as resonance, as body, and as spatial event. Manrira moves from dynamic song compositions into extended structures, blending live bass, neo-classical elements, ethereal vocals, drum machines, breaks, and techno-driven textures. The result is an immersive experience that invites the audience to listen closely and reconsider their connection to sound, space, and their surroundings.
Seven years after the haunting resonance of Voids, electronic pioneer Martyn returns to the album format with Music For Existing. Arriving on 15 May 2026, the record is more than a collection of tracks; it is a profound exploration of what it means to remain devoted to a craft in an era of relentless noise.
The album’s announcement is heralded by the lead single "Heavy Sound." The track serves as the perfect bridge between Martyn’s past and present - a masterclass in tension and release that previews the album’s dialogue between the producer, the musicians, and the audience. We live inside a culture that has prioritised and monetised restlessness. The modern apparatus runs on the continuous production of "next," driven by algorithms that value novelty over depth.
Music For Existing serves as a love letter to the communal act of making music - something that is both healing and inherently defiant. For Martyn, a musician often finds solace in musical conversation with others; in the moment we press record, we simply exist together. This record is an invitation to build human infrastructure around what we love, leaning into the fluid nature of community and seeing exactly where the music takes us when we choose to listen.
The album is a sprawling, "off-the-grid" tapestry that echoes Martyn’s profound appreciation for jazz - free, instinctive, and bursting in every sonic direction. This collection features an expansive cast of collaborators, including Duval Timothy, Dan Only, Lucinda Chua, and Mark Cisneros. The record is further elevated by the contributions of jazz talents Mischa Porte and Cees Bruinsma, alongside the evocative words of writer and poet Musa Okwonga.
While the acoustic textures and improvisational spirit of this record may feel like a departure, they represent a homecoming. Jazz has always been ingrained in Martyn’s work; even in his most stripped-back club tracks, the DNA of swing, syncopation, and free-form structure was always present, if not always visible.
Music For Existing marks the beginning of an exciting journey that will continue from the studio to the stage, celebrating the radical act of existing in the moment.
Following up 2007s well received X-dub was the Phalaenopsis 12inch that came out later that year. A track selection that came from the same hyped mysterious MySpace track folder, but now transmitted through Frustrated Funks subsidiary, the now defunct Frantic Flowers imprint that was emerging through the early Clone channels. Signing there, without the staffs knowledge of the producers identity, further muddied the waters. Exploring a more housy dub-techno vibe and diving deeper into experimental dub territory. And with it deploying an even bigger smokescreen around Ovatows real identity. Both Phalaenopsis versions re-appear now, for the first time after almost 20 years, fully retouched and remastered, together with an unknown unreleased track (edit) called So It Goes. This is the second in a series of Ovatow work, revived for the heads that appreciate the foggy deep of the Undacurrnt.
Argentinian artist Juan Hansen presents his debut album 'Ultrasonido'; twelve tracks spanning indie dance, tech house, and soft melodic house, released on his own newly founded label Ultrasonido, with the second single 'Inside My Mind' coming out via belonging by Innellea.
After his breakthrough Boiler Room appearance in 2019, Juan has been on a relentless quest to push the boundaries, playing major stages around the globe, becoming one of the figureheads of the Argentinian electronic music world. As an exceptional live artist, multi-instrumentalist and vocalist, Juan brings a real sense of groove to the stage, merging two worlds effortlessly: deeply emotional songwriting and direct, dancefloor-focused club tracks. 'Ultrasonido' brings both sides together. The album is a clear evolution of Juan Hansen, presenting a wider range of his sound, which he also presents in his live performances. A journey through the musical world of Juan Hansen.
Across twelve tracks, with contributions from Clér Letiv, Santi Portillo, Franco BA, Rocio Giorgi, Miko Franconi, Brigado Crew and Marley Waters, Juan shifts between club-focused tracks and more intimate, song-driven moments, moving naturally between Spanish and English. It’s a debut album that captures both his roots and the direction he’s evolving toward.
Juan Hansen's story doesn't start on the dancefloor, it starts with acoustic instruments. He built his foundation in the indie and rock scenes of Argentina before crossing into electronic music, a journey that's still audible in every track he makes. After years of building his profile with live performances, mesmerizing audiences from Cosquín Rock and Ultra in Argentina to Watergate in Berlin, Burning Man in the Nevada desert, and Grand Factory in Beirut.
His search is real and visceral; a search for the different, mixing genres without prejudice, with a seriously playful attitude. Positioned within a new generation of artists dedicated to improvising on stage, Juan fuses electronic sounds with analog instruments and organic soundscapes. There's no genre cage. 'Ultrasonido' is his debut album and the launch of his own label, also named Ultrasonido. A long-form statement after years of singles, EPs, and shows around the globe.
This release is dedicated to Rhys's family, his close friends, and everyone who continues to support his music, honoring his legacy, the profound and lasting impact he made on the electronic music scene. Never forgotten, always in our hearts. Microlith lives on!
For South Central’s premier singer, songwriter, and producer, success was never an overnight accident; it was a blueprint executed with meticulous precision. With his highly anticipated project, Labor of Love, Blxst delivers a masterclass in modern West Coast R&B and Hip-Hop, proving that true artistry requires both sweat and soul. The album serves as a sonic manifesto on the price of ambition, the weight of loyalty, and the delicate balance of maintaining romance while building an empire. It stands as a definitive evolution of the distinct sound Blxst pioneered, blending crisp, trunk-thumping 808s with soulful, nostalgic chords and his signature, effortlessly smooth vocal runs.
Entirely self-produced and co-written, Labor of Love bridges the gap between the sun-drenched grit of Los Angeles street culture and the vulnerability of late-night bedroom playlists. From the bounce of celebratory anthems to introspective, late-night drive confessionals, Blxst curates a tracklist that feels both deeply personal and universally resonant. It explores the sacrifices made in the pursuit of greatness, paying homage to the sonic pioneers of LA while firmly cementing his own place as the vanguard of the city's modern sound. It is a celebration of independence and the self-made mentality, reminding listeners that he remains the chief architect of his own destiny.
Ultimately, Labor of Love is a testament to the grind, capturing the sleepless nights and tested relationships that pave the road to success. Blxst puts his heart on the line to show that the work itself is where the true passion lives, creating an album for the city, for his family, and for everyone who stays dedicated to their craft. More than just a collection of radio-ready hits, this project is a cohesive, cinematic experience from one of music's most reliable hitmakers. It is a definitive reminder that Blxst isn't just riding the wave—he is directing the current.
It's 1995 and techno has hit max speed while house is going deep. UK soon-to-be-legend Baby Ford has different ideas as he kicks off his now cult Trelik label with this EP from Ian David Loveday aka Tan-Ru that strips everything back, layers in dubby low ends and masters the art of loop building. It's still driving and mind-melting but with a restrained and futuristic sound that is utterly fresh. As well as the original is a more textured dub and the flip-side classic ' Assembly'. This one is in a hurry, with claps and feathery snares riding the swinging drums. Freaky stabs bring some fun and decades on the EP, which started it all, still sounds unmatched.
XAMAN is the collaborative project of Dino Sabatini and Luigi Tozzi, where two distinct artistic paths converge into a shared musical language shaped through years of independent research and mutual exchange.
Across eight compositions, XAMAN takes shape through gradual transformation. Every element is introduced with intention, allowing subtle shifts in density, tension and space to shape the music over time, revealing its full form through uninterrupted listening.
Released as a double vinyl on Outis Opera Series, the curated imprint of Outis Music, XAMAN reflects a process shaped through listening, exchange and time.
2026 Repress
In the ever-expanding universe of deep house, Julius Steinhoff is far from being a stranger. Half of the dynamic duo Smallpeople, founder and one of the steersmen behind Hamburg's Smallville empire (record store/ label/ party curator around the globe) as well as a producer and DJ in his own right, Steinhoff is closely associated with a group of like-minded people that unite fresh ideas and individualism with a certain consciousness of tradition. That 'Flocking Behaviour' is well embodied in Steinhoff's debut album by the same name. After a string of 12-inches for the likes of Live at Robert Johnson, Geography or his own-brand Smallville and the very well-received Smallpeople long-player 'Salty Days", Julius Steinhoff makes a submission that is all his. Rooted in the elegiac variety of the big three (New York, Chicago & Detroit) and a romantic concept of house music that is at times utopian, the album gathers eight tracks that evoke late nights, hazy mornings and walks on thin air. But 'Flocking Behaviour' is by no means anachronistic: Tracks like 'Under A Waterfall' could be made in just the same manner by a puerile Baby Ford in 1989 as they represent a swaying dance floor in 2014. 'Treehouse' or the title track 'Flocking Behaviour' are experiences that make you feel like meeting new people who instantly greet you like old friends. With someone that works and lives in the here and now, Steinhoff seemingly has no interest in revisionism, complains or antagonism, his approach is welcoming and caring, embracing and mesmerizing. Along the way, his musical apparatus never makes use of cheap tricks or antique clichés.
Dial Records boss makes a welcome return to Smallville in March of 2024 with a fresh four-tracker EP ‘Gravity Hill’. Peter Kersten, better known to most as Lawrence, has been at the forefront of underground house and techno for decades now. His Dial imprint, co-founded alongside Carsten Jost, has grown to become a north star for many seeking out raw, emotive and understated electronic music and Lawrence’s own productions follow a similar path, finding a home on many beloved labels beyond Dial such as Kompakt, Mule Musiq, Ghostly
International, Giegling, Pampa and of course Smallville, that he co-founded together with Stella Plazonja and Julius Steinhoff in 2005.
Title-track ‘Gravity Hill’ opens the project and perfectly sets the tone with Lawrence’s distinct atmospheric haze of keys, chords and pads billowing atop swaying bass tones and crisp drums. ‘Beaver’ follows next and edges into dubbed out realms with expansive stab delays, rounded subs, modulating percussive flutters and a robust rhythmic drive.
‘The Swamp’ then leads the B-side, diving into a deeper territory via airy Rhodes melodies and subtly unfurling pads, intertwined with organic percussion and a jazz tinged bass line. ‘Stargazer’ then concludes the package and shifts back to a more straight, dance floor- oriented feel via a twitchy acid bass, circling resonant synth licks, hypnotic textures and a swinging drum groove.
Smallville 62 artwork by Stefan Marx as always and it's the first 12“ Smallville cover in full colour ever after 61 black/white releases.
2026 Repress
Originally released in South Africa in 1983, In The Music......The Village Never Ends is one of those holy-grail African records that barely needs any introduction. Featuring the enormous 'Nomalizo', it's a record that aficionados around the world have been waiting many years for. Now, Be With Records proudly presents the hugely anticipated vinyl reissue of this bonafied classic.
This release is officially licensed and has been lovingly mastered for vinyl by Simon Francis (Claremont 56 mastering engineer) It has been pressed on audiophile 180gram vinyl for the first time and features the original, rarely seen artwork.
South African singer Letta Mbulu possesses one of the most beautiful voices the world has ever known. Her immaculate voice emits a sweetness that radiates from deep within, brimming with a joy of life and inspiring a spirit of hope and happiness. On this album, her voice soars over a strident musical force that veers between disco, soul and pop music of the most incredible kind. The gleaming guitars recall disco's finest hours while the thump of the beats anticipate 80s British soul.
News of this limited reissue has already been causing a significant stir amongst those in the know so do not sleep on this - you have been warned!
There's something about summer that makes everything fall into place. Maybe it feels even more significant to us, especially if you know MM Discos through its Balearic leanings. It's that time of year when the whole scene reaches its peak, with everyone dreaming of being in Ibiza-or at the very least, somewhere on a forgotten beach or island in the Mediterranean.
For that very moment, Desert Island Disco make their MM Discos debut with a record tailor-made for the summer of 2026. Splitting their time between London and Lisbon, the collective have already shown a deep affinity for African-rooted midtempo sounds through releases on Shades of Sound and Mister T Records, alongside a steady stream of sought-after self-released edits on their Bandcamp.
This time, Desert Island Disco dive headfirst into South Africa, drawing deeply from the worlds of Kwaito and Bubblegum to deliver a record steeped in the warmth, groove and unmistakable spirit of both genres.
From its South African foundations, *World View* reaches far beyond, weaving together tropical textures, Caribbean flavours and Balearic sensibilities into something fluid and difficult to pin down. A borderless collection where geography becomes secondary to feeling, yet every track remains firmly rooted in the dancefloor.
Strut proudly presents the first release in almost a decade from the legendary Senegalese group Orchestra Baobab with Made In Senegal. Few groups embody the spirit of African music like Orchestra Baobab. Formed over 50 years ago as the resident band of the Baobab Club in Dakar, their timeless fusion of Afro-Cuban rhythms, Wolof griot traditions, mbalax, Congolese rumba and jazz continues to resonate across generations and continents. Now, the celebrated big band marks a new chapter in their illustrious history with Made in Senegal, their first new studio album since Tribute To Ndiouga Dieng in 2017 for World Circuit. Released on respected imprint Strut Records in conjunction with Madoky Music, the new album celebrates home, heritage, love and resilience and was recorded entirely in Dakar. On Made In Senegal new songs sit effortlessly beside re-imagined classics. Lead single "Togne Bakhoul", composed by late Baobab vocalist Rudy Gomis is a poignant ode to his wife and "Tioro Bye Samba" reprises a classic Thione Seck song while "Casamance" celebrates the culturally rich Southern Senegalese region, homeland of several Baobab members. "Baobab 50 Ans" marks the 50-year anniversary of this indomitable group. Made In Senegal is another modern Baobab classic combining a fresh approach with roots fixed firmly in Senegal"s rich traditions. It is the perfect time for a new generation to discover the elegant, hypnotic sound of one of Africa"s greatest ever big bands.
A feeling of hope slithering from dark corners permeates most every track of Sour Widows’ new LP, Sigil. Crafted with acclaimed producer and Jay Som mastermind Melina Duterte in downtown Los Angeles, the album’s eleven songs curve in unexpected directions and are the most magnetic Sour Widows have written yet. There is a newfound immediacy to the album as if Sour Widows have urgent findings to share, and throughout Sigil, ostensible disaster ushers in a new start.
A feeling of hope slithering from dark corners permeates most every track of Sour Widows’ new LP, Sigil. Crafted with acclaimed producer and Jay Som mastermind Melina Duterte in downtown Los Angeles, the album’s eleven songs curve in unexpected directions and are the most magnetic Sour Widows have written yet. There is a newfound immediacy to the album as if Sour Widows have urgent findings to share, and throughout Sigil, ostensible disaster ushers in a new start.
Larry June has built a career on making hard work look effortless, and his album Who Coppin’ stands as a masterclass in smooth, lifestyle-driven West Coast hip-hop. The album delivers a high-grade mix of Bay Area luxury, entrepreneurial motivation, and unbothered charismatic flows. Spanning a laid-back audio palette designed for early-morning juice runs and late-night freeway cruises alike, Uncle Larry balances the discipline of a hustle-first mindset with warm, sun-drenched production anchored by crisp organic instrumentation and heavy-knocking bass.
The album features a tightly curated roster of collaborators who align seamlessly with Larry's signature aesthetic. Spoken-word encouragement from Wallo267 sets an intentional tone on the opener "Go Outside Intro," framing the record around execution and focus. Soulful contributions from Jhené Aiko on "California Dream" and Musiq Soulchild on "Pretty Green Eyes" provide lush R&B textures, while NorCal legend B-Legit and longtime partner DJ.Fresh reinforce June’s deep West Coast roots. Meanwhile, Swizz Beatz injects high-energy bounce into "Flex," offering a vibrant contrast to Larry’s understated, cool-headed cadence.
Behind the boards, top-tier producers like Cardo, Teeko, Beat Butcha, Jay Versace, and June Santana craft a nostalgic yet modern backdrop filled with warm sample flips, smooth G-funk synthesizers, and relaxed soul grooves. The project builds to an emotionally grounded conclusion on "God Got Us (Ain't Too Many)," where June strips away the flexes to offer direct encouragement to his audience, proving once again that consistency, self-belief, and steady progress remain the ultimate luxuries.
‘Unfindable Ring', out October 23 on Bayonet Records, is an adventurer’s epic. The arc of the journey, like any good Spirited Away or Neverending Story, lands its wide-traveled protagonist right back at home before bedtime. Grumpy, like many great hero tricksters before him, has always been a project of juxtaposition: upbeat radio-ready hits whose buoyant, goofy hooks belie the dark thoughts they describe. Much of this, Schmitt acknowledges, owes its due to the matter-of-fact morbidity of the trans experience in America. It’s from these experiences—personal, romantic, political, and existential—that the tale of ‘Unfindable Ring’ unfolds.
Ambition and play have always defined the Grumpy sound. Late last year, the Fader praised their “demented, hooky” EP, “Piebald,” whose innovative fuzz-pop confections earned them coverage in NPR and the New York Times. Stereogum heralded them as “wonderfully weird,” and Paste designated them “the best of what’s next.”” Through boisterous collaborations with the likes of Sidney Gish and Claire Rousay, they’ve effortlessly ingratiated themselves with the titans of DIY, and, more recently, Schmitt has become an unlikely favored collaborator of chart-topping country giant Zach Bryan, who named his new record––which prominently features Schmitt’s harmonies–– conspicuously, ‘With Heaven On Top.’
In Grumpy, Heaven Schmitt is joined by Anya Good, Ellie Long (Kid Lake), Austin Arnold, Diego Clare (D.A. Crimson), and Lane Rodgers, who each contribute to every step of the process—engineering and recording, mixing, drafting artwork, producing, and making music videos. A kind of interdisciplinary thieves’ guild, the project, while once Schmitt’s solo eponym, is a labor of communal love.
“We are living these happy lives, and there are people we come across who don’t know us at all who want us to die,” Schmitt, explains. Often the visibility of the joy itself is what prompts the vitriol––“I’m so happy I could die,” Schmitt belts over and over on the chorus (a familiar figure of speech, sure, but one which, upon any scrutiny, shows Schmitt’s hand in the macabre.) A middle finger to fate, Good started asking, “What are you going to do with your One Beautiful Life?” Grumpy is going to keep playing, touring, searching, finding.
No Home is the new album by Lane Hartley, releasing October 23rd 2026 on Royal Oakie Records. Produced in collaboration with David Hartley of The War On Drugs & Adam McDaniel (Animal Collective, Angel Olsen, Geologist), the album was recorded at Drop of Sun Studios in Asheville and features contributions from North Carolina’s tight knit music community–including Mary Lattimore, Seth Kaufman of Floating Action & Dream Sitch, David Hartley, Jack Victor Johnson, and more.
After recording his debut album Naming Horses, Lane left Los Angeles and returned home to the Carolinas, eventually landing in Asheville. It wasn’t too long until the songs started flowing and Lane found himself reaching out to Adam McDaniel at Drop of Sun Studios–a vaunted space that’s been at the heart of indie-rock the past few years, bringing to life recent albums from MJ Lenderman, Wednesday, Fust, and more. McDaniel introduced Lane to David Hartley, and what originally started with discussions to record one song quickly turned into a plan to track a whole album live with a six piece band. Once in the studio, co-producer McDaniel encouraged the group to lean on intuition–“All of the players on this record really brought it to life in such a cosmic way. They instilled so much childlike wonder and fun into the making of the album. It inspired me to keep going” says Lane.
Lyrically the album is a collection of vignettes about people who’ve become alienated from their deepest desires of connection, belonging, intimacy, and autonomy–inspired both by Lane’s own life and the lives of people he’s loved. The unique character of the album emerged when Lane made the decision to pair the dark lyrical content with bright & lush arrangements, inspired by Gene Clark’s No Other, Neil Young’s After the Gold Rush, and Amen Dunes’ Love. In Lane’s words, “The content of the songs got way darker, and my reaction was to make the songs catchier, and to lean harder into the music that influenced me. I wanted each song to feel like a room in a haunted house, with a beautiful garden growing outside”.
Album opener “I Am Not Ashamed” was inspired by the anti-memoir of actress Barbara Peyton, a 1950’s Hollywood starlet who met an untimely end; “It’s about knowing that whatever you’ve done to survive, you still deserve love” says Lane. “Mother” pairs lyrics about ancestral trauma with the sunshine-pop influence of Colin Blunstone, featuring backing vocals from Lane’s sister Barrett Hartley. “It's about coming to terms with the fact that the people meant to protect us are dealing with their own trauma…”
Meanwhile, “All Of This Is Yours” and “Tone Poem” form the spiritual center of the album, an attempt to transmute anger & pain to bittersweet acceptance in the wake of a breakup. “I feel like on the surface this is essentially a breakup album, a lot of these songs are about mourning the end of a relationship and reflecting on what went down. I was falling in love and getting my heart broken, then waking up and driving across the country and doing it all over again.” “Love Is Not A Song” was inspired by Margo Guryan’s Love Songs, pairing bright piano with playful lyrics about an old man who’s been beaten down by life but still believes his greatest love is yet to come. Last but not least, title track “No Home” sums up the album’s key theme of alienation, “It all goes back to this feeling of wanting to belong to someone or somewhere, wanting to belong in your own body.”
Layne & Chang might not be household names to everyone, but in the underground they’re long-established fixtures. Chang—who’s released music under a string of aliases over the years—was tipped by Urb magazine as one to watch back in the mid-’90s and has been embedded in dancefloor culture ever since. Alongside him, Layne Fox (formerly San Francisco, now back in Florida) brings deep disco credentials, having helmed the cult-loved Disco Dimensions label and recording as 40 Thieves—best known for the underground anthem Don’t Turn It Off. In short, the boogie lineage on this record runs deep.
And that’s before you even get to Dan Tyler. As one half of the Idjut Boys and co-founder of Noid Recordings, Tyler helped lay the groundwork for London’s edit culture long before it became a global phenomenon. His involvement here only strengthens the package.
“Shake Your Body” opens the release with a locked-in, funk-driven groove—swirling melodic lines, subtly acidic textures, warm vocoder touches, and tight, punchy drums all dialed for peak-time movement. On the A2, “In The Desert” shifts the mood into something more transportive: a hazy, late-night burner equally suited to open-air parties, after-hours sessions, or home listening with the lights low.
Flip to the B-side and Dan Tyler delivers two cosmic reworks that push things further out. Psychedelic, elastic, and built for serious systems, both cuts hit that sweet spot between heady and physical—already circulating among a handful of tastemaker DJs and primed for heavy rotation as festival season ramps up.
A strong, floor-ready release that sits comfortably in the Whiskey Disco catalogue—rooted in disco, but reaching well beyond it.
Crash landing onto the scene in 2017 with his now legendary NTS broadcast of 2 hours of unheard music, the ultra-mysterious and enigmatic Michael J. Blood has gone on to release a series of sought after, lush and rugged future classics on his own imprints Blood Inc. and BodyTronixxx. Allegedly hailing from Manchester in the North of England, Blood’s sound is hard to pin down but instantly recognisable. Rooted in the twin foundations of modern dance music—Detroit and Chicago—while schooled in the sweaty basements of Manchester’s fêted club scene, his music feels both original and familiar, timeless yet unplaceable.
Weaving together a hypnotic narrative that feels both archival and futuristic, Cause & Effect Vol. 1 brings together some of Blood's rare and hard to find bangers from a variety of his early sold out projects. The collection mixes the pulse of Chicago with the grit and cosmic dreams of Detroit, while never losing sight of the North of England’s sophisticated late-night sleaze. Blood’s dance-floor eclecticism and raw, infectious mutant beats drive a soulful, jazz-louche energy into every track. The result is a collection of atmospheric grooves that weave together hypnotic rhythm and smoky texture, blurring house, techno, broken beat, and jazz-soaked electronics into a heady trip. Cause & Effect Vol. 1 maps out the restless evolution of Blood’s sound, a testament to his instinct for rhythm, atmosphere and dance-floor alchemy. House for the heart, techno for the mind, both built for the body. It’s in the Blood.
Nine-time GRAMMY® winner Anderson .Paak and GRAMMY®-nominated rapper Cordae have been operating on the same wavelength for years. What started as pure chemical reaction on 2019’s “RNP” slowly turned into one of hip-hop’s most natural, low-ego partnerships, fueled by back-and-forth gems like “Two Tens” and “Summer Drop” and a series of dynamic TV performances that felt more like two best friends hanging out than a polished routine. On their debut collaborative album, Heavy Is The Crown, that organic bond gets the full-length treatment it’s always deserved.
At its core, the project is a tightrope walk between serious real-life stakes and uncompromising fun. The title isn't just bravado—it speaks directly to the shared weight both artists carry as the primary providers and anchors for their families. But instead of letting that pressure crush the vibe, .Paak and Cordae lean into each other. Meeting as total equals, .Paak’s elastic, soul-drenched musicality anchors Cordae’s razor-sharp lyricism, allowing both to unpack the heavy reality of success and family responsibility without ever losing their spark.
That balance is what makes the album tick. To drive the point home, the album art pays homage to the cult comedy Step Brothers—a nod to the silly, irreverent friendship that birthed the music in the first place. Heavy Is The Crown doesn't feel like a forced corporate crossover or a calculated career move. It’s a record about brotherhood, family, and what happens when two masters of their craft step into the studio simply because nobody makes them laugh, rap, or create quite like the other.
Nine-time GRAMMY® winner Anderson .Paak and GRAMMY®-nominated rapper Cordae have been operating on the same wavelength for years. What started as pure chemical reaction on 2019’s “RNP” slowly turned into one of hip-hop’s most natural, low-ego partnerships, fueled by back-and-forth gems like “Two Tens” and “Summer Drop” and a series of dynamic TV performances that felt more like two best friends hanging out than a polished routine. On their debut collaborative album, Heavy Is The Crown, that organic bond gets the full-length treatment it’s always deserved.
At its core, the project is a tightrope walk between serious real-life stakes and uncompromising fun. The title isn't just bravado—it speaks directly to the shared weight both artists carry as the primary providers and anchors for their families. But instead of letting that pressure crush the vibe, .Paak and Cordae lean into each other. Meeting as total equals, .Paak’s elastic, soul-drenched musicality anchors Cordae’s razor-sharp lyricism, allowing both to unpack the heavy reality of success and family responsibility without ever losing their spark.
That balance is what makes the album tick. To drive the point home, the album art pays homage to the cult comedy Step Brothers—a nod to the silly, irreverent friendship that birthed the music in the first place. Heavy Is The Crown doesn't feel like a forced corporate crossover or a calculated career move. It’s a record about brotherhood, family, and what happens when two masters of their craft step into the studio simply because nobody makes them laugh, rap, or create quite like the other.
“Negative Music / The Poorest! If they still know silence at all, then only as holes in the continuum of noise…” — Günther Anders, 1965
Editions Mego presents GETGETGET, a new release by Thomas Brinkmann which serves as an inquiry into silence, code, and the limits of perception.
The title GETGETGET references the trilogy of ‘Get’ lp’s made by Rehberg under his PITA moniker; Get Out, Get In and Get On. The music is based on material by Rehberg and Brinkmann morphing these two identities into a third colour, a disappearing color.
Emerging from a live performance at the label’s 30th anniversary in Berlin, the work unfolds as both sonic artifact and conceptual system: a study in what remains when sound is reduced, extracted, and reconstituted.
Taking inspiration from Günther Anders’ notion of “negative music”—composition through absence—Brinkmann’s approach aligns with Heinrich Böll’s idea of “collected silence”: silence not as void, but as a material framed against the constant pressure of noise. In GETGETGET, pauses are not gaps but structural elements, cut from a continuum and reinserted as signals.
The two side long tracks weave a dark abstract and ‘twisted’ presence where the ghosts of the machines and their operators fuse into a fantastical whole. One can hear traces of both Brinkmann and Rehberg logic which seems to fuse in a hallucinatory manner.
Brinkmann’s work reflects a broader condition: the translation of material processes into informational ones. As images detach from bodies and code separates from matter, sound too loses its fixed resonance. What remains is circulation—of signals, of data, of meaning—within systems that increasingly define perception itself.
GETGETGET is an album where absence is equal to presence, a metaphor with suggestive tones of the influence Rehberg had and continues to have in the world of the radical experimental electronic avant garde. The “zero” is not empty; it is what makes everything else work.
