Suche:former being

UILTY RAZORS, BONA FIDE PUNKS.



Writings on the topic that go off in all directions, mind-numbing lectures given by academics, and testimonies, most of them heavily doctored, from those who “lived through that era”: so many people today fantasize about the early days of punk in our country… This blessed moment when no one had yet thought of flaunting a ridiculous green mohawk, taking Sid Vicious as a hero, or – even worse – making the so-called alternative scene both festive and boorish. There was no such thing in 1976 or 1977, when it wasn’t easy to get hold of the first 45s by the Pistols or the Clash. Few people were aware of what was happening on the fringes of the fringes at the time. Malcolm McLaren was virtually unknown, and having short hair made you seem strange. Who knew then that rock music, which had taken a very bad turn since the early 1970s, would once again become an essential element of liberation? That, thanks to short and fast songs, it would once again rediscover that primitive, social side that was so hated by older generations? Who knew that, besides a few loners who read the music press (it was even better if they read it in English) and frequented the right record stores? Many of these formed bands, because it was impossible to do otherwise. We quickly went from listening to the Velvet Underground to trying to play the Stooges’ intros. It’s a somewhat collective story, even though there weren’t many people to start it.
The Guilty Razors were among those who took part in this initial upheaval in Paris. They were far from being the worst. They had something special and even released a single that was well above the national average. They also had enough songs to fill an album, the one you’re holding. In everyone’s opinion, they were definitely not among the punk impostors that followed in their wake. They were, at least, genuine and credible.

Guilty Razors, Parisian punk band (1975-1978). To understand something about their somewhat linear but very energetic sound, we might need to talk about the context in which it was born and, more broadly, recall the boredom (a theme that would become capital in punk songs) coupled with the desire to blow everything off, which were the basis for the formation of bands playing a rejuvenated rock music ; about the passion for a few records by the Kinks or the early Who, by the Stooges, by the Velvet mostly, which set you apart from the crowd.
And of course, we should remember this new wave, which was promoted by a few articles in the specialized press and some cutting-edge record stores, coming from New York or London, whose small but powerful influence could be felt in Paris and in a handful of isolated places in the provinces, lulled to sleep by so many appalling things, from Tangerine Dream to President Giscard d’Estaing...
In 1975-76, French music was, as almost always, in a sorry state ; it was still dominated by Johnny Hallyday and Sylvie Vartan. Local rock music was also rather bleak, apart from Bijou and Little Bob who tried to revive this small scene with poorly sound-engineered gigs played to almost no one.
In the working class suburbs at the time, it was mainly hard rock music played to 11 that helped people forget about their gruelling shifts at the factory. Here and there, on the outskirts of major cities, you still could find a few rockers with sideburns wearing black armbands since the death of Gene Vincent, but it wasn’t a proper mass movement, just a source of real danger to anyone they came across who wasn't like them. In August 1976, a festival unlike any other took place in Mont-de-Marsan – the First European Punk Festival as the poster said – with almost as many people on stage as in the audience. Yet, on that day, a quasi historical event happened, when, under the blazing afternoon sun, a band of unknowns called The Damned made an unprecedented noise in the arena, reminiscent of the chaotic Stooges in their early adolescence. They were the first genuine punk band to perform in our country: from then on, anything was possible, almost anything seemed permissible.

It makes sense that the four+1 members of Guilty Razors, who initially amplified acoustic guitars with crappy tape recorder microphones, would adopt punk music (pronounced paink in French) naturally and instinctively, since it combines liberating noise with speed of execution and – crucially – a very healthy sense of rebellion (the protesters of May 1968 proclaimed, and it was even a slogan, that they weren’t against old people, but against what had made them grow old. In the mid-1970s, it seemed normal and obvious that old people should now ALSO be targeted!!!).
At the time, the desire to fight back, and break down authority and apathy, was either red or black, often taking the form of leafleting, tumultuous general assemblies in the schoolyard, and massive or shabby demonstrations, most of the time overflowing with an exciting vitality that sometimes turned into fights with the riot police. Indeed, soon after the end of the Vietnam War and following Pinochet’s coup in Chile, all over France, Trotskyist and anarcho-libertarian fervour was firmly entrenched among parts of the educated youth population, who were equally rebellious and troublemakers whenever they had the chance. It should also be noted that when the single "Anarchy in the UK" was first heard, even though not many of us had access to it, both the title and its explosive sound immediately resonated with some of those troublemakers crying out for ANARCHY!!! Meanwhile, the left-wing majority still equated punks with reckless young neo-Nazis. Of course, the widely circulated photos in the mainstream press of Siouxsie Sioux with her swastikas didn’t necessarily help to win over the theorists of the Great Revolution. It took Joe Strummer to introduce The Clash as an anti-racist, anti-fascist and anti-ignorance band for the rejection of old-school revolutionaries to fade a little.

The Lycée Jean-Baptiste Say at Porte d’Auteuil, despite being located in the very posh and very exclusive 16th arrondissement of Paris, didn’t escape these "committed" upheavals, which doubled as the perfect outlet for the less timid members of this generation.
“Back then, politics were fun,” says Tristam Nada, who studied there and went on to become Guilty Razors’ frontman. “Jean-Baptiste was the leftist high-school in the neighbourhood. When the far right guys from the GUD came down there, the Communist League guys from elsewhere helped us fight them off.”
Anything that could challenge authority was fair game and of course, strikes for just about any reason would lead to increasingly frequent truancy (with a definitive farewell to education that would soon follow). Tristam Nada spent his 10th and 11th unfinished grades with José Perez, who had come from Spain, where his father, a janitor, had been sentenced to death by Franco. “José steered my tastes towards solid acts such as The Who. Like most teenagers, I had previously absorbed just about everything that came my way, from Yes to Led Zeppelin to Genesis. I was exploring… And then one day, he told me that he and his brother Carlos wanted to start a rock band.” The Perez brothers already played guitar. “Of course, they were Spanish!”, jokes their singer. “Then, somewhat reluctantly, José took up the bass and we were soon joined by Jano – who called himself Jano Homicid – who took up the rhythm guitar.” Several drummers would later join this core of not easily intimidated young guys who didn’t let adversity get the better of them.

The first rehearsals of the newly named Guilty Razors took place in the bedroom of a Perez aunt. There, the three rookies tried to cover a few standards, songs that often were an integral part of their lives. During a first, short gig, in front of a bewildered audience of tough old-school rockers, they launched into a clunky version of the Velvet Underground's “Heroin”. Challenge or recklessness? A bit of both, probably… And then, step by step, their limited repertoire expanded as they decided to write their own songs, sung in a not always very accurate or academic English, but who cared about proper grammar or the right vocabulary, since what truly mattered was to make the words sound as good as possible while playing very, very fast music? And spitting out those words in a language that left no doubt as to what it conveyed mattered as well.
Trying their hand a the kind of rock music disliked by most of the neighbourhood, making noise, being fiercely provocative: they still belonged to a tiny clique who, at this very moment, had chosen to impose this difference. And there were very few places in France or elsewhere, where one could witness the first stirrings of something that wasn’t a trend yet, let alone a movement.

In the provinces, in late 1976 or early 1977, there couldn’t be more than thirty record stores that were a bit more discerning than average, where you could hear this new kind of short-haired rock music called “punk”. The old clientele, who previously had no problem coming in to buy the latest McCartney or Aerosmith LP, now felt a little less comfortable there…
In Paris, these enlightened places were quite rare and often located nex to what would become the Forum des Halles, a big shopping mall. Between three aging sex workers, a couple of second-hand clothes shops, sellers of hippie paraphernalia and small fashion designers, the good word was loudly spread in two pioneering places – propagators of what was still only a new underground movement. Historically, the first one was the Open Market, a kind of poorly, but tastefully stocked cave. Speakers blasted out the sound of sixties garage bands from the Nuggets compilation (a crucial reference for José Perez) or the badly dressed English kids of Eddie and the Hot Rods. This black-painted den was opened a few years earlier by Marc Zermati, a character who wasn’t always in a sunny disposition, but always quite radical in his (good) choices and his opinions. He founded the independent label Skydog and was one of the promoters of the Mont-de-Marsan punk festivals. Not far from there was Harry Cover, another store more in tune with the new New York scene, which was amply covered in the house fanzine, Rock News (even though it was in it that the photos of the Sex Pistols were first published in France).
It was a favorite hang-out of the Perez brothers and Tristam Nada, as the latter explained. “It’s at Harry Cover’s that we first heard the Pistols and Clash’s 45s, and after that, we decided to start writing our first songs. If they could do it, so could we!”
The sonic shocks that were “Anarchy in the UK”, “White Riot” or the Buzzcocks’s EP, “Spiral Scratch” – which Guilty Razors' sound is reminiscent of – were soon to be amplified by an unparalleled visual shock. In April 1977, right after the release of their first LP, The Clash performed at the Palais des Glaces in Paris, during a punk night organised by Marc Zermati. For many who were there, it was the gig of a lifetime…
Of course, Guilty Razors and Tristam were in the audience: “That concert was fabulous… We Parisian punks were almost all dressed in black and white, with white shirts, skinny leather ties, bikers jackets or light jackets, etc. The Clash, on the other hand, wore colourful clothes. Well, the next day, at the Gibus, you’d spot everyone who had been at this concert, but they weren’t wearing anything black, they were all wearing colours.”

It makes sense to mention the Gibus club, as Guilty Razors often played there (sometimes in front of a hostile audience). It was also the only place in Paris that regularly scheduled new Parisian or Anglo-Saxon acts, such as Generation X, Siouxsie and the Banshees, the Slits, and Johnny Thunders who would become a kind of messed-up mascot for the venue. A little later, in 1978, the Rose Bonbon – formerly the Nashville – also attracted nightly owls in search of electric thrills… In 1977, the iconic but not necessarily excellent Asphalt Jungle often played at the Gibus, sometimes sharing the bill with Metal Urbain, the only band whose aura would later transcend the French borders (“I saw them as the French Sex Pistols,” said Geoff Travis, head of their British label Rough Trade). Already established in this small scene, Metal Urbain helped the young and restless Guilty Razors who had just arrived. Guitarist for Metal Urbain Hermann Schwartz remembers it: “They were younger than us, we were a bit like their mentors even if it’s too strong a word… At least they were credible. We thought they were good, and they had good songs which reminded of the Buzzcocks that I liked a lot. But at some point, they started hanging out with the Hells Angels. That’s when we stopped following them.”

The break-up was mutual, since, Guilty Razors, for their part, were shocked when they saw a fringe element of the audience at Metal Urbain concerts who repeatedly shouted “Sieg Heil” and gave Nazi salutes. These provocations, even still minor (the bulk of the skinhead crowd would later make their presence felt during concerts), weren’t really to the liking of the Perez brothers, whose anti-fascist convictions were firmly rooted. Some things are non-negotiable.
A few months earlier (in July 1978), Guilty Razors had nevertheless opened very successfully for Metal Urbain at the Bus Palladium, a more traditonally old-school rock night-club. But, as was sometimes the case back then, the night turned into a mass brawl when suburban rockers came to “beat up punks”.

Back then, Parisian nights weren’t always sweet and serene.

So, after opening as best as they could for The Jam (their sound having been ruined by the PA system), our local heroes were – once again – met outside by a horde of greasers out to get them. “Thankfully,” says Tristam, “we were with our roadies, motorless bikers who acted as a protective barrier. We were chased in the neighbouring streets and the whole thing ended in front of a bar, with the owner coming out with a rifle…”
Although Tristam and the Perez brothers narrowly escaped various, potentially bloody, incidents, they weren’t completely innocent of wrongdoing either. They still find amusing their mugging of two strangers in the street for example (“We were broke and we simply wanted to buy tickets for the Heartbreakers concert that night,” says Tristam). It so happened that their victims were two key figures in the rock business at the time: radio presenter Alain Manneval and music publisher Philippe Constantin. They filed a complaint and sought monetary compensation, but somehow the band’s manager, the skilful but very controversial Alexis, managed to get the complaint withdrawn and Guilty Razors ended up signing with Constantin with a substantial advance.

They also signed with Polydor and the label released in 1978 their only three-track 45, featuring “I Don't Wanna be A Rich”, “Hurts and Noises” and “Provocate” (songs that exuded perpetual rebellion and an unquenchable desire for “class” confrontation). It was a very good record, but due to a lack of promotion (radio stations didn’t play French artists singing in English), it didn’t sell very well. Only 800 copies were allegedly sold and the rest of the stock was pulped… Initially, the three tracks were to be included on a LP that never came to be, since they were dropped by Polydor (“Let’s say we sometimes caused a ruckus in their offices!” laughs Tristam.) In order to perfect the long-awaited LP, the band recorded demos of other tracks. There was a cover of Pink Floyd's “Lucifer Sam” from the Syd Barrett era – proof of an enduring love for the sixties’ greats –, “Wake Up” a hangover tale and “Bad Heart” about the Baader-Meinhof gang, whose actions had a profound impact on the era and on a generation seeking extreme dissent... On the album you’re now discovering, you can also hear five previously unreleased tracks recorded a bit later during an extended and freezing stay in Madrid, in a makeshift studio with the invaluable help of a drummer also acting as sound engineer. He was both an enthusiastic old hippie and a proper whizz at sound engineering. Here too, certain influences from the fifties and sixties (Link Wray, the Troggs) are more than obvious in the band’s music.

Shortly after a final stormy and rather barbaric (on the audience’s side) “Punk night” at the Olympia in June 1978, Tristam left the band ; his bandmates continued without him for a short while.

But like most pioneering punk bands of the era, Guilty Razors eventually split up for good after three years (besides once in Spain, they’d only played in Paris). The reason for ceasing business activities were more or less the same for everyone: there were no venues outside one’s small circuit to play this kind of rock music, which was still frightening, unknown, or of little interest to most people. The chances of recording an LP were virtually null, since major labels were only signing unoriginal but reassuring sub-Téléphone clones, and the smaller ones were only interested in progressive rock or French chanson for youth clubs. And what about self-production? No one in our small safety-pinned world had thought about it yet. There wasn’t enough money to embark on that sort of venture anyway.

So yes, the early days of punk in France were truly No Future!

LA-based producer Real Bad Man and LA musician Genevieve Artadi announce their new collaborative album Everything Is Under Control, out October 3rd via the producer’s own Real Bad Man Records. Alongside the announcement, the duo are sharing two new singles from the forthcoming album, “Don’t Gotta Think About U” and “Little Claws”. The former is an electro pop banger that propels Artadi’s intoxicating vocals to the forefront and arrives with an accompanying visual. With Everything Is Under Control, Real Bad Man is proving his versatility as a producer, crafting intricate and lively electronic-forward foundations for an old friend in Genevieve to explore an eclectic, funky approach to her vocals.

Speaking about the single, Artadi says, "'Don’t Gotta Think About U' is about a person celebrating the explosion of her most recent unhealthy romantic relationship. Her spitefulness and delusion of freedom indicate she’s still inside the pattern she hasn’t yet realized she keeps signing herself up for. The sound is melancholic pop, the thread that has always tied Adam and me together despite our musical differences."

"I love juxtaposing dense drums and a very pretty voice," Real Bad Man says of collaborating with Artadi. "That’s what 'Don’t Wanna Think About U' is. We’re also trying to make something catchy at the same time, that’s what I’ve always been drawn to musically is blending genres and moods and get them to work together. As well as pulling Genevieve away from what she does with Knower and her solo stuff.

Real Bad Man’s collaboration with Artadi is a radical shift in approach for the producer, whose previous full-length projects this year were rooted in the distinct strain of underground hip-hop that he’s amassed an extensive catalog in. Everything Is Under Control marks an entirely different, and unpredictable, sonic approach for the duo, embracing experimentation and synth-led electronica that’s reminiscent of Artadi’s work as part with Pollyn (her former band with Adam/Real Bad Man) as well as current duo KNOWER with Louis Cole. Real Bad Man’s latest project extends his prolific run of collaborations this year, embarking in a new genre and sound entirely after releasing full-length projects with ZelooperZ (Dear Psilocybin), Boldly James (Conversational Pieces) and Willie The Kid (Midnight) in the first half of 2025.

Known for her complex, yet playful writing style, Genevieve Artadi has made a name for herself through four solo albums that stretch the gambit of jazz, dream pop and dance music. The last three albums were released on iconic label Brainfeeder Records and the fourth (Another Leaf) was made as part of her being a composer-in-residence with Sweden’s Norrbotten Big Band. She’s also been an accomplished collaborator with her bands Expensive Magnets, Pollyn and KNOWER, and performing and recording with the likes of Thundercat and Snarky Puppy.

Check out “Don’t Gotta Think About U” and “Little Claws” above, see below for more details on Everything Is Under Control and stay tuned for more from Real Bad Man coming soon.

From the cold North of Sweden, NORNA and LEGBITER deliver a six-track document of contrast, convergence, and uncompromising heavy music. Bringing together two distinct voices, the release explores the many shapes heaviness can take_stretching from crushing, slow-moving atmospheres to sharp, volatile bursts of aggression. Formed by musicians with deep roots in the European underground, Norna approach heaviness as a vehicle for emotional gravity. Their sound is expansive and deliberate, built on massive low-end, tectonic rhythms, and an acute sense of restraint. Legbiter approach heavy music as direct, confrontational, and unrelentingly physical. Rooted in hardcore and metal's most ferocious intersections, the band thrives on immediacy and impact. Legbiter compress time, delivering short, explosive bursts that hit with the force of a live wire. Their sound is lean, aggressive, and unapologetically raw. "Even though we sound very different sonically I think we all have a lot of common ground, not only in being parts of the 90's scenes, but also musically in the somewhat dissonant and harsh guitar parts", says Legbiter guitarist (Rickard Nordström. "Personally, I love splits with bands that don't sound exactly the same, but share some common traits and vibes." "Contrast is everything, we have always tried to flow between despair and beauty. Dynamics are important to us. This split will give you that contrast", comments Norna guitarist and vocalist and former Breach vocalist Tomas Liljedahl. FOR FANS OF Handsome * Quicksand * Fireside * Breach * Helmet * Superheaven * Narrowhead * Metz

Very limited numbers, orders will need to be confirmed.

For his new album, Irreparable Parables, Andrew Wasylyk felt a strong desire to write a set of songs featuring an element hitherto rare in his work: the human voice. Equally strong was the conviction that he did not want to sing them himself.

The Scottish multi-instrumentalist and composer set about assembling a group of guest singers, sending out the songs to wherever they were in the world. The vocals were recorded remotely and then, like migrating birds, winged their way back to Scotland. The result is an album of great beauty which, perhaps preeminently in Wasylyk’s work, expresses the vulnerability and resilience of the human spirit.

Six singers appear on the record, represented by six songbirds illustrated on the sleeve by Clay Pipe Music’s Frances Castle. The cuckoo is a nod to Belle and Sebastian’s 2004 single ‘I’m A Cuckoo’, that band’s Stuart Murdoch being the first voice you hear on the new album. When the vocal for ‘Private Symphony #2’ arrived, says Wasylyk, “it was everything that I was looking for and more. But this is Stuart Murdoch. Of course he’s going to make something incredibly beautiful and thoughtful.”

The song lyrics were, for the most part, written by the singers. The music is Wasylyk’s creation. He navigates a sound world that lies somewhere beyond the borders of classical and jazz, ambient and abstract. It is difficult to describe, but easy to understand, which is to say to feel. That is the way Wasylyk’s work is experienced: as a feeling. It takes you back to childhood, perhaps, to feelings of comfort and safety, or to memories of walks at sunrise and sunset, or to the way a shadow falls on a particular field in a particular place at a particular time in your life. This is consoling music. That is why, though pretty, it is not merely pretty. These are songs to shore up the soul.

Wasylyk writes in a room, in his native Dundee, full of “half broken” instruments. He picks these up, plays a little, seeking an idea, a feeling, a door that lies ajar. The musical palette of Irreparable Parables includes brass and woodwind, a six-piece string section, guitar, bass, drums, vibraphone, Mellotron, Fender Rhodes, tape loops, synthesisers and percussion. The strings were arranged by the cellist Pete Harvey, a long-term collaborator.

Among the other guest vocalists are Gruff Rhys of the Super Furry Animals, Saya Ueno from Japan’s Tenniscoats and Peter Brewis from Field Music. Wasylyk himself takes the lead vocal on the title track, though a throat infection and touch of pitch-shifting have altered his singing in a way that even he, having fallen out of love with his own voice, finds acceptable.

The heart of the record can, arguably, be found in two tracks, ‘Love Is A Life That Lasts Forever’ and ‘Spectators In The Absence of God’, sung respectively by Molly Linen and Kathryn Joseph. The former, bright with trumpets, was inspired by the writing of Derek Jarman. “I was feeling deeply upset about the world and wanted to try and write some- thing that was obviously hopeful,” Wasylyk says.

‘Spectators …’ offers an emotional counterpoint. It is an “apocalyptic hymn” that seems to grapple with watching human suffering from afar, too distant to be at physical risk, but experiencing the psychological wounding, and feelings of helplessness, even complicity, that come with constant awareness of other people’s pain. “Kathryn’s a pal, I love her dearly, and she’s a brilliant artist who really feels what she writes,” Wasylyk says. “The cracked tenderness of her voice is spellbinding.”

The album closes with an instrumental piece, ‘Soul Enters The Ocean Sun Climbs Out Of The Sea’, all piano and strings, that offers a sense of resolution and ascension. A good moment, too, for Wasylyk to reflect upon the artistic companionship that he enjoyed while making this record – the songbirds that answered his call: “These humans are incredible at what they do. I’m deeply grateful and feel so lucky. It blows my mind.”

Alex Rex, the project of acclaimed musician and former Trembling Bells bandleader Alex Neilson, is set to release his fourth and final studio album, The National Trust, on March 28th. Written in the wake of the sudden death of his younger brother, Alastair, the album is a poignant reflection on loss, love, and renewal, deeply rooted in the landscape of Carbeth—a cabin community in the Scottish countryside that Alastair called home. For Neilson, the cabin became both a physical and emotional project, a symbol of restoration and reconnection.

"For the first four years after Alastair died, his cabin lay empty and exposed to the remorseless Scottish weather. It came to look like a rotten tooth in a beautiful mouth. Cladding was dropping off its veneer, the ashen baubles of dead wasps nests clung to the rafters, all his possessions were just as he'd left them but eaten by mice, moths and time. Ashtrays still carried the crushed centimetres of his old tab ends. The cabins are so joyfully animated by their host's specific personality and this one looked like a haunted house. Guilt, unrealised hopes and encroaching nature yoked together in a wandering sadness. Combined with the fact that I didn't know the right way round to hold a hammer made the project of its restoration seem hopeless.”

Neilson, however, gradually began chipping away at the task, determined to transform the cabin into something he hoped would resemble “a National Trust site occupied by a psychopath,” with a little help from some friends, including Lavinia Blackwall and Marco Rea.

“They poured love into the cabin and helped restore Alastair's original vision. The project also helped restore my relationship with Lavinia which had fractured after Trembling Bells broke up in 2017. Alongside long-term Rex lieutenant Rory Haye, we applied the same intensity of dedication that we did in renovating the cabin, into creating The National Trust.”

As with Neilson’s previous albums, the recording process was intentionally unpolished, with songs presented in the studio with no rehearsals and captured in just a few takes. This raw, immediate approach amplifies the emotional weight of the album, which Neilson describes as being at a “personal apex of sour self-reflection, mock misanthropy, and self-exposure.” Longtime collaborators Lavinia Blackwall, Marco Rea, and Rory Haye return, alongside guest musicians like Jill O’Sullivan (Jill Lorean) and Trembling Bells guitarist Mike Hastings, to bring Neilson’s vision to life. The result is a deeply personal and multifaceted work, blending acid wit with haunting introspection.

The songs on The National Trust traverse a wide emotional and thematic range. The title track opens the album with a sharp and confessional edge, exploring love, loathing, and cultural critique with Neilson’s signature wit. “Boss Morris” pays tribute to the all-female Morris dancing troupe that reinvents British folk with vibrant energy, while “Two Kinds of Song” turns self-referential humour into an avalanche of remorse, culminating in the unforgettable chorus: “I’ve got two kinds of song. Which one will it be; one where I hate myself or one where you hate me?” Elsewhere, tracks like “Psychic Rome” draw from the decadence and hysteria of ancient Rome, while “The Coward in the Tower” breaks new ground as the only song Neilson has composed on an instrument before recording.

Throughout the album, Neilson’s lyricism is as vivid as ever, transforming personal tragedy into poignant and often darkly humorous art. Yet, there is a sense of finality to this work. "Songwriting has encouraged me to see the whole world as a resource. The things people say and throw away can be chiselled and polished and plopped into a lyric. It’s the same with building the cabin- scouring the edges of society for pallets, discarded wood, ornaments for the garden. But while song writing brings to life orphaned parts of my personality, the cabin is a synthesis of all my interests – nurturing my emotional health instead of exploiting it. With that in mind, I think this will be my last album as Alex Rex.”

With The National Trust, Neilson closes a significant chapter of his career, blending masterful musicianship with deeply personal storytelling. Known for his collaborations with artists such as Bonnie "Prince" Billy, Shirley Collins, and Current 93, as well as his decade-long tenure leading the psych-folk outfit Trembling Bells, Neilson has long been celebrated for his eclectic and uncompromising vision. This final album serves as a fitting culmination of his journey as Alex Rex, capturing the essence of his artistry while offering a profound exploration of loss, renewal, and the enduring power of love.

You don’t need to be Freud to regard teeth as a delicate issue. They can make joy look joyous and pain look painful, and on the cover of the new múm album they do both at the same time. As »Yesterday Was Dramatic – Today Is Okay« (2001), »Finally We Are No One« (2002) and »Sing Along To Songs You Don’t Know« (2009) »Smilewound« is another example of the band’s art of juxtaposing two conflicting meanings and taking advantage of the energy created through the tension between both.

Sparser in sound than many of its predecessors, »Smilewound« is an airy, relaxed record. The múm-core-duo of Örvar and Gunni doesn’t make you laugh out loud (except maybe for the quirky vintage Arcade-sound-start of »When Girls Collide«), but it will make you smile often - despite the heavenly voices singing about violence in one form or another in most songs. Musically, múm’s capability to build playful electronic sound-ornaments around simple melodies is in full bloom. And these days they know that trimming the ornamentation can strengthen the melody. Take »The Colorful Stabwound«: an aguish drum’n’bass piece and »Smilewound« gets close to a straight pop-song. Even that isn’t very close, but it combines its rhythmic strength with a simple yet effective piano-line and the soothing lushness of a female voice to something compelling that follows you like the smell of a delicate eau de toilette. Or »Candlestick« which started out as a little ditty strummed on an acoustic guitar many years ago and has grown into this bouncy piece of synth-pop that changes its musical colours every couple of beats until you feel comfortably dizzy. Perfect pop in very fancy clothes. No wonder that antipodean pop-princess Kylie Minogue wanted to collaborate with múm on the »Whistle«, the main song in 2012-movie »Jack & Diane«.

Recorded in, among other places, the band’s practice-space, an old baltic farmhouse and on the kitchen-table after dinner, the album was produced by múm themselves. And being the revolving collective they are, it comes as no surprise that we see the return of former member Gyda. Defining satellites as part of the core fits nicely with the band’s penchant for ambivalence - in fact that's part of the album's charm.

The journey through French-speaking pop archives continues with this fifth volume, packed with fuzz, gimmicks, and dissent. Far from the charts, the selected tracks display a great creative freedom, often backed by corrosive humor. Welcome to the surprising, kaleidoscopic, and colorful world of the late sixties and early seventies, Wizzz!
Born in Montauban, Robert Pico stumbled into music by chance when he met René Vaneste, then artistic director at Pathé-Marconi. René brought him to Paris to record his first 45 RPM EP in 1964. A year later, Pierre Perret introduced him to Vogue, where he recorded his second album with Claude Nougaro’s orchestra. Sylvie Vartan then introduced him to RCA, where he recorded four singles, including the astonishing "Chien Fidèle," a track backed by a hair-rising fuzz guitar. Alongside his solo career, he also composed for other artists like Alain Delon (the song was recorded but remains unreleased), Magali Noël, Bourvil, and Georges Guétary. In the Paris of the sixties, he mingled with Mireille Darc, Elsa Martinelli, Marie Laforêt, France Gall, Françoise Hardy, Petula Clark, Régine, Dani, Serge Gainsbourg, Joe Dassin, Franck Fernandel, Charles Level, and Roland Vincent. Despite his efforts and winning a Grand Prix Sacem for his final record, Robert Pico didn’t achieve the expected success in show business and decided to leave Paris and return to the Southwest, where he devoted himself to writing. He is the author of 23 books (including Delon et Compagnie, Jean-Marc Savary Editions 2025, a memoir about his youth and his many encounters). Today, he is relieved to never have become a celebrity and devotes himself to his work with passion.
In 1969, the Franco-Italian movie Erotissimo was released, directed by Gérard Pirès (who later directed Taxi in 1998, written and produced by Luc Besson). This pop comedy features Annie Girardot, Jean Yanne, Francis Blanche, Serge Gainsbourg, Nicole Croisille, Jacques Martin, and Patrick Topaloff. The soundtrack was written by Michel Polnareff and William Sheller, with lyrics by Jean-Lou Dabadie. "La Femme Faux-cils," performed by Annie Girardot. It recounts the feelings of a rich CEO's wife who seeks to develop her sex appeal under the influence of advertisement and magazines. Groovy, sparkling and light, this track, with ITS lush arrangements humorously critiques consumer society and feminine beauty standards.
“Je suis l’Etat” (1967) is the flagship track of the first EP by singer-songwriter Spauv Georges, aka Georges Larriaga, better known as Jim Larriaga (1941-2022). Born into a family of bakers, the young man was initially planning to become a hairdresser when he discovered English-speaking music through Elvis Presley and the Beatles. After this revelation, he decided he would become a songwriter and gave himself five years to succeed. He recorded his first two EP’s independently for RCA under the pseudonym Spauv Georges; meaning “that poor George”, a nickname given to him by the mother of her friend Jean-Pierre Prévotat (future drummer of the Players, Triangle, or Johnny Hallyday). Portraying a depressed and eccentric young man, Spauv Georges created corrosive and amusing songs that didn’t reach a wide audience, despite a TV appearance with Jean-Christophe Averty.
Supported by his loyal friend and fellow songwriter Jean-Max Rivière, Georges Larriaga met the future singer Carlos in the early '70s, then Sylvie Vartan’s assistant. He wrote songs for Carlos, including the popular "La vie est belle," "Y’a des indiens partout," and "La cantine", which went onto become a huge hit in 1972. He also composed for Claude François (“Anne-Marie”, 1971), Charlotte Julian (“Fleur de province”, 1972), helped launch child singer Roméo (who sold 4 million records), and later wrote the hit "Pas besoin d’éducation sexuelle" (1975) for the young Julie Bataille. In 1971, Jim recorded an album for Disc'Az: “L’univers étrange et fou de Jim Larriaga”, which featured pop gems like “La maison de mon père”.
The story of the song "Zoé" began when Pierre Dorsay, artistic director at Vogue Records, asked Swiss singer and musician Pierre Alain to write a song for a new female singer. The inspiration came when he realized that Zoé (the artist's name) was also the name of France's first atomic battery, created in 1948, which consisted of uranium oxide immersed in heavy water! The lyrics reflect a bubbling energy that must be handled with caution, while the instrumentation echoes this atomic theme, notably with the use of a theremin.
Zoé’s career lasted only as long as a single 45 RPM, but it seems Christine Fontane was the vocalist behind this pseudonym, who is known for several EPs, a good "popcorn" album in 1964, and a handful of children’s singles in the '70s. Regardless, the photograph on the cover is of a different girl entirely.
Later, Pierre Alain continued his career, writing songs for himself, Marie Laforêt, Danièle Licari, Alice Dona, Arlette Zola (3rd place in Eurovision 1982), and achieving multiple gold and platinum records in Canada. Also an inventor with several patents, president of the Romande Academy, and head of the French Alliance in Geneva, he now composes atonal music, books, and poetry. Moreover, he is also the host of "Les Mardis de Pierre Alain" at "Le P'tit Music'Hohl" in Geneva.
Filled with oriental choruses and fuzz guitar, "Fou" is from Jacques Da Sylva's only EP released by Vogue in 1967. Despite the quality of this recording, all traces of this singer disappear after this first effort.
Valentin is a baroque pop singer born in Belgium. He is the songwriter and composer of most of the tracks on his three singles released in the late 60s in Canada. A legend says that he reincarnated himself as Jacky Valentin during the 1970s for a rock'n'roll revival career in Belgium, but his older brother sadly debunked this story. Valentin's first two singles were arranged by Claude Rogen, a Parisian session pianist who had come to Canada to promote the song “Mister A Gogo”, a cover of David Bowie’s “Laughing Gnome”, adapted by singer Delphine, his wife at the time. Far from his usual network, Claude Rogen arranged music for Polydor, including the arrangements for “Je suis un vagabond” in 1969, a jerk tune with string arrangements and a furious optimism.
Jacques Malia wrote, composed, and recorded his only 45 EP for Festival in 1966. “Histoire de gitan” is an incredible beat track with bohemian scat that tells the story of a gypsy musician who came to Paris to make it in the Music-Hall, to no avail. The hero of the song and its author probably shared a similar fate, as Jacques Malia faded into anonymity after this remarkable attempt.
Bernard Jamet recorded two EPs for Barclay in the late sixties and co-wrote several songs with Christine Pilzer, Pascal Danel, and prolific songwriters Michel Delancray and Mya Simile. The track “Raison Légale” (1968), his masterpiece, immerses the listener in a courtroom right when a murderer is being judged, with jerk rhythm and free arrangements. A unique, paranoid, judicial, and psychedelic oddity.
Jean-Pierre Lebrot-Millers started his career in show business in 1967 as a singer and songwriter for the Philips label. After three singles, he wrote several songs of a new kind with his friend Pierre Halioche, in the midst of the sexual liberation movement and the democratization of drugs. With provocative lyrics, “Les filles du hasard” and “Barbara au Chapeau Rose” were released on a Philips singles in 1968. The character of Barbara was inspired by a queen of Parisian nightlife during the psychedelic years: model Charlotte Martin, who dated Eric Clapton from 1965 to 1968, then Jimmy Page from 1970 to 1983. Jean-Claude Petit’s arrangements, with a table-filled intro, soul brass, and Hendrixian guitar, emphasize the flamboyance of a hedonistic and sexy character, whose dog is named Junkie because “Junkie est un nom exquis”! The track was recorded live in three takes with a full orchestra.
Upon its release, the record was censored by Europe 1 and RTL due to its references to drug use. Jean-Pierre Lebrot was then banned from the airwaves and later dismissed by his record label. He changed his artist name to Jean-Pierre Millers, while his companion Pierre Halioche became D. Dolby for a new dreamy composition, “Chilla”, which Jean-Pierre produced himself with arrangements by Jean Musy. Once again, the song was immediately censored everywhere. After this setback, he decided to stop singing and started taking on odd jobs to support his Swedish wife and their son until the day he met Jean-Pierre Martin, then production manager at Decca, who had worked with Manu Dibango. Martin offered Jean-Pierre Lebrot-Millers, then employed at Rank Xerox, the position of artistic director at Decca. He accepted and became, a year later, promotion director (radio, press, TV). He worked on Julio Iglesias’s first album for Decca, which became a massive hit and allowed him to meet Claude Carrère. The latter asked him to write new songs and find their performers, much like a “talent scout.” It’s through him that Jean-Pierre discovered Julie Pietri and Corinne Hermès. He composed “Ma Pompadour” for Ringo, Sheila’s husband, and took the microphone again for the syncope hit “Rendez-Vous” in 1982.
That same year, Jean-Pierre Lebrot-Millers tried to release a track for which he had heavily gone into debt: “Si la vie est un cadeau”. Having recorded it in London, he presented it to numerous professionals, all of whom refused to get involved. The same thing happened with Antenne 2 and the Sacem when he proposed the song as France’s entry for Eurovision. He then met Haïm Saban, who was producing cartoon soundtracks and had just launched the Goldorak theme song. Saban, having listened to the song, declared it had the potential to become a hit. He sent Jean-Pierre and Corinne Hermès to meet the CEO of the Luxembourg radio and television network. The latter received them, asked to hear a verse and chorus a cappella in his office, and immediately hired them to represent Luxembourg at Eurovision 1983. They reworked the arrangements and recorded a new version with Haïm Saban as co-producer. The song ended up winning Eurovision 1983, a great comeback for our hero. He continued producing and hung out with the band Nacash in Belgium when a couple came to introduce their daughter for an impromptu audition in a hotel room. The girl sang “Les démons de minuit” while dancing to a radio cassette. Impressed, he had her take singing lessons for a year and composed a song for her (for which he had the melody and title, but no lyrics). This required him to go on the hunt for a lyricist, who ended up being Guy Carlier. They recorded the song, which was initially a ballad, at Bernard Estardy’s CBE studio, and gave the singer a new name: Melody. They showed the song around their industry network without success. Later, Estardy called Jean-Pierre to suggest changing the rhythm and making it pop-rock. Orlando, Dalida’s brother, liked the result and decided to co-produce the track. “Y’a pas que les grands qui rêvent » became a classic hit. The song has since been covered by Juliette Armanet (as a ballad, like the original) and Valentina.

Born into an aristocratic Breton family, Hervé Mettais-Cartier worked as a DJ at Queen Kiss, a nightclub in Poitiers, where he formed the band Les Concentrés with Michel (an actor) and Christian (a radio technician). Together, they created a repertoire of whimsical songs (“Ma bique est morte”, “J’suis un salaud”, “Fils de dégénéré”...) that they performed on stage dressed in white (in homage to “concentrated milk”). They performed at Bliboquet and Olympia in 1968 for the 10th edition of the “Relais de la chanson Française” organized by L’Humanité-Dimanche and Nous les Garçons et les Filles, sponsored by Pepsi Cola. Winners in the author-composer category, alongside Danish singer Dorte, their visibility allowed them to record a 45, and appear on television in Jean-Christophe Averty’s show. The A-side of the disc features Bruno le ravageur, a casatchok dedicated to Bruno Caquatrix, the director of Olympia, nicknamed in the song “Coq Atroce” or “croque-actrices”. The B-side is dedicated to “Fils de dégénéré”, a quirky tribute to Hervé's aristocratic roots, mixing absurdity with sophisticated vocal harmonies.
After Les Concentrés, Hervé Mettais-Cartier formed the duo La Paire et sa Bêtise with his friend Olivier Robert. They performed in Parisian cabarets and toured with Pierre Vassiliu. In the late 1970s, Hervé began a solo career. He recorded two albums for the Motors label in 1978 and 1979, which did not achieve their anticipated success due to lack of promotion. In 1980, he met Bernadette, with whom he started a family and created a “Chansons à voir” (songs to see) show that he performed until his death at the end of 2024.

Publicité comes from the final EP by the Missiles (Ducretet Thomson, 1966), a disc that also includes “La (nouvelle) guerre de cent ans”, featured on Volume 4 of our Wizzz! series. Please refer to the booklet for the story of the band.

“He’s 1.82 meters tall, 28 years old, weighs 135 kg, is black and Belgian”: this is the description of singer Hegesippe on the back of his sole single (Decca, 1967). He appears on the album cover wearing a Greek toga, like a hippie gag – we are at the end of the year 1967. In “Le crédo d’Hegesippe”, this former bodyguard of Antoine and the Charlots plays the delightful card of the thick brute converted to Flower-Power and non-violence, with arrangements by Jean-Daniel Mercier, aka Paul Mille.
“Ethéro-disco” was released on a promotional record for clients of the Maréchal company (Liège, Belgium) for the New Year 1979. Over a funky rhythm, celebrity impersonations (Brigitte Bardot, Jacques Dutronc, Fernandel…) deliver an enigmatic text about pharmaceutical products like ether, bismuth, and aspartate. The track was composed by Dan Sarravah (responsible for Joanna's “Hold-up inusité” featured on Wizzz! Volume 3) and Tony Talado, who was also a singer (one 45 in 1967), songwriter (with over a dozen credits between 1964 and 1985 in various styles from surf music to disco), author (Devenez Végétarien, Dricot Editions, 1985), ad designer, and psychologist.

Décollez-les is on the A-side of Mamlouk's only single, a pseudonym for Marsel Hurten, who is known for his work on several EPs in the late sixties, as well as composing music for Hervé Vilard’s “Capri, c’est fini”, Claude Channes' “La Haine”, Annie Philippe’s “On m’a toujours dit”, and Nancy Holloway’s “Panne de Cœur”.
This strange song, with Afrobeat horns and absurd dialogues between a chef and his kitchen staff, is the result of a collaboration between Marsel Hurten and one of his neighbors, a photographer from Pavillon-sous-Bois (93), where the musician settled after returning from the Algerian War. A music video was shot to promote the record.
Marsel Hurten was born in Tourcoing (59) into a musical family. At a young age, he joined the brass band founded by his grandfather, playing the piston before studying trumpet at the conservatory, as well as teaching himself how to play the guitar. As an orchestra musician, he toured in France, Belgium, Germany, and England. He released a series of solo 45’s between 1965 and 1968 for the DMF and Az labels before stopping recording to focus on working for other artists (Gilles Olivier, Noëlle Cordier…).
“L’amour nu” (Vogue, 1971) is the work of the short-lived Belgian band Mozaïque. The track, written by singer Jacques Albin, closely resembles another of his compositions, “Carré Blanc”, which he recorded in 1969 for Disc’AZ.
Represented by the Lumi Son micro-label based in Marignane (Côte d'Azur), Jean-Marc Garrigues released two 45 RPMs in the late sixties, defending the French jerk sound. The song “Je dis Non” is a short, joyful ode to youth, pop music, and rebellion.
Songwriter and performer Jacques Penuel released three singles. The first one, “Astronef 328” (Fontana, 1969), features a dizzying series of chords punctuated by sound effects, a sci-fi story, and arrangements by Jean-Claude Vannier.

We would like to sincerely thank Pierre Alain, Moon Blaha, Marsel Hurten, Bastien Larriaga, Jean-Pierre Lebrot-Millers, Bernadette Mettais-Cartier, Robert Pico, Olivier Robert, Claude Rogen, Micky Segura.

‘Pilot’ is the debut album from London quintet Miniseries. Channelling the epic sweep of TV themes and movie soundtracks into resplendent space rock they explore themes of youth and ageing, heartbreak and paranoia, euphoria and existential dread.

Songwriter Doug Morch (Longview) had been working on largely acoustic folk songs when he met Angela Gannon (The Magic Numbers) at Glastonbury 2017. Romance and musical collaboration ensued. The band coalesced in the hallowed environs of Farringdon's The Betsey Trotwood pub – a musical nexus where burgeoning indie and Americana scenes collide – where they met fellow songwriter and guitarist Dermot Watson (from Brighton's The Dials) and drummer Danny Abbasi and were joined by Doug's former bandmate Aidan Banks on bass. When they came together, their indie folk mutated into motorik art rock, with their first single being an eight-minute jam called "Road".

When it came to capturing their sound, the band reached for maverick musician and producer Sean Read. They recorded tracks at Read's Famous Times studio in Clapton, London, as well as at Edwyn Collins' Clashnarrow in Helmsdale, Scotland – one of the world's most breathtaking and idiosyncratic studio locations, adding unquantifiable magic to the proceedings.

For the closing track "May You Always", they headed to another studio imbued with tangible inspiration: Blueprint Studio in Salford with producer Craig Potter (Elbow) at the helm. For the song, Dermot drew cinematic inspiration from the Withnail & I line "I'll never play The Dane", the song is about realising that the things you aspired to in youth will never come to pass and being at peace with that realisation.

The recurring themes of youth and ageing are apparent in the resplendent lead track ‘You're Gold’ – a heartfelt call for young people to reject materialism and exploitative influencer culture in search of life's deeper meaning, with stylistic nods to The Pixies and early Stereolab.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, "Sepia" explores old age and fading memories through dementia, where the ending descends into chaos like a fragmenting mind. Elements of "Sepia" are foreshadowed in the album's opening track, the instrumental "Pilot Theme", which pays homage to TV theme music, invoking spy thrillers or perhaps something otherworldly from science fiction.

“Offcumdens” is a Calder Valley, Yorkshire term for people who live in the area but come from somewhere else. Hailing from Bury, Lancashire, Morch wrote the song while living in Hebden Bridge (and watching too much Happy Valley) and found himself being an offcumden. It’s a pop at the kind of local nativism which breeds intolerance and an illustration of the sinister rise of wider political populism.

Miniseries' Pilot is just the beginning of the story. Enthralling and atmospheric, the London quintet have created something familiar yet timeless. As singer Doug Morch says, "It's the Miniseries Pilot episode. Like the TV episode a studio makes to test whether it's viable.” In the age of streaming and box-sets, this is an album to truly binge on. We can’t wait to hear what happens next.

In the summer of 2021, Brighton-based, Scottish-Thai songwriter Helen Ganya's grandmother passed away

The grief hit the artist hard, not only because it marked the loss of her last remaining grandparent, but also because it felt like her links to being half- Thai were disintegrating, roots quaking and shifting in uncharted territories. Ganya grew up in Singapore, but spent her summers in the northeast of Thailand where her mum's side of the family is from, visiting her grandmother. Where would all those memories go now that the person at the centre of them was gone? What was her relationship to this place without that glue? And so, in an attempt to process it all, Ganya began to write. "I got my diary and wrote every single memory of my time as a child in Thailand, spending time with her, my grandad, my aunts and cousins and everything," she explains, "I had these snapshots of memories that I just wrote down because I just suddenly panicked: it was like, who am I, then?" It was for this reason that, while Helen Ganya was waiting for her acclaimed 2022 album, polish the machine, to come out, she was already working on what would become her arresting new record, Share Your Care. Ganya has been releasing music since 2015 (formerly under the moniker Dog in the Snow). In the records she's put out over the years, she's shown a proclivity towards dark and artful rock and off- kilter sounds, garnering praise from the likes of the Sunday Times, Uncut, Clash, Loud & Quiet and more. But Share Your Caremarks a new era, building on Ganya's past sonic worlds and interspersing them with traditional Thai instrumentation, resulting in a plush, luminous, psych-tinged affair that is full of feeling. The result is a triumphant, abundant record, teeming with heart and cinematic warmth.

The song titles on Van Halen's aptly titled Fair Warning don't lie. The likes of "Unchained," "Mean Street," "Push Comes to Shove," "One Foot Out the Door," and more indicate the mood the band channels on its double-platinum 1981 record — the nastiest, darkest, and fiercest album of the group's storied career. For the fourth time in four years, Van Halen throws down the gauntlet to all challengers and emerges victorious.


Sourced from the original analog tapes, pressed on MoFi SuperVinyl at Fidelity Record Pressing, and strictly limited to 5,000 numbered copies, Mobile Fidelity's UltraDisc One-Step 180g 45RPM 2LP set plays with unfettered clarity, dynamics, and immediacy. Benefitting from superb groove definition, an ultra-low noise floor, and dead-quiet surfaces, this vinyl edition captures what went down in the studio with tremendous realism and involving presence.

Taking a more controlled approach in the studio and still completing everything in less than two weeks, Van Halen and producer Ted Templeman relied on studio amplifiers to direct the sound. Further diverging from the live-on-the-floor approach of its earlier albums, the ensemble also employed overdubs to great effect. The result: Dense, stacked architecture that underlines the hard-hitting tenor of the songs — and which comes alive like never before on this reference edition that looks as good as it sounds.

The premium packaging and gorgeous presentation befit the reissue's select status. Housed in a deluxe slipcase, it features special foil-stamped jackets and faithful-to-the-original graphics that illuminate the splendor of the recording. Aurally and visually, it is made for listeners who want to immerse themselves in everything involved with the album, including the iconic cover art adopted from William Kurelek's haunting painting, "The Maze."

Isolated frames from Kurelek's childhood-inspired work — including a man bashing his head into a brick wall, a guy pinning down an adversary as he delivers bare-fist blows to his face and others watch with apparent glee, a boy tied down on a conveyer belt and being sent through the equivalent of a meat saw — adorn the front and back covers. The sunnier visual disposition of Van Halen's prior efforts gives way to something sinister and tortured, traits reflective of the music within. The band members, too, are visually depicted not in glamorous shots but in a serious black-and-white portrait in which the quartet is clad in black leather jackets.

Tough, aggressive, stark: Fair Warning comes on like a series of bare-knuckled punches to the solar plexus and boasts lyrical narratives to match. Though not a concept record, the concise album revolves around themes of roughing it on the streets and struggling to survive amid dim prospects. Singer David Lee Roth reportedly penned many of the initial lyrics after traveling to Haiti and observing extreme poverty. The characters and situations populating Fair Warning reflect hardscrabble existence, last-chance desperation, and underlying danger.

Witness the crazies, poor folks, and hunters of “Mean Street”; the former prom queen turned pornographic actress on “Dirty Movies”; the menace and vice of “Sinners Swing!”; the streetwise hustle of “Unchained”; the isolation and alienation of “Push Comes to Shove”; the desire for escape on “One Foot Out the Door”: A carefree California beach party Fair Warning is not.

Having said he felt angry and frustrated during the sessions, guitarist Eddie Van Halen uses the forceful arrangements as a playground for his seemingly unlimited arsenal. Supported by a crack rhythm section and a hyped-up Roth, he performs with an almost impossible combination of punk-like intensity, technical finesse, lyrical fluidity, and unbridled emotion. The virtuoso was increasingly butting heads with Templeton and seeking a freedom in the studio he believed denied him.

No wonder he plays like a bat out of hell. Listen to the rapid-fire manner in which he slaps the high and low E strings on the 12th fret of his instrument on “Mean Street,” instilling the tune with funk flair and metal-spiked sharpness. For the pouty strut of “Dirty Movies,” Eddie Van Halen contributes slide guitar magic made possible after he sawed off the lower portion of a Gibson SG so he could reach further down the fretboard.

Related intensity, urgency, and daredevil momentum punctuate the surging “Sinner’s Swing!” A heavily flanged, delicately melodic introduction frames the attitudinal “Hear About It Later,” among the most creative arrangements of Van Halen’s career. And do riffs come any bigger or magnetic than those on the high-wire kick of “Unchained”? As for the out-of-left-field “Sunday in the Park,” an instrumental composed on an Electro-Harmonix micro-synthesizer: Who but Eddie Van Halen to supply creep factor in such an ingenious way?

Despite selling fewer quantities than Van Halen’s prior efforts, Fair Warning remains for many diehards the record that epitomizes all of the band’s immense strengths —Roth’s manic energy and tongue-wagging humor, Alex Van Halen’s rhythmic heartbeat-in-your-chest bombast, and Michael Anthony’s lucid bass lines included. Arriving when the New Wave of British Heavy Metal and new-wave movements were taking flight, it signaled a shot across the bow from a band determined to stay a step ahead and provide proof nobody could touch what it delivered.

More than four decades later, Fair Warning still sounds that alarm.

Die Cut Sleeve with download. It’s a strange betweenworld, bookended by sleep and the jolt of being wide awake in a place where you wonder how you got there. You know the feeling… It seems familiar but the colours are, well, unreal. In a high-ceilinged room, a grand piano plays lush melodies as, meanwhile, somewhere, an Alice In Wonderland clock ticks, cellos are bowed, a swarm of something vibrates and the hallucinatory crowd around Rosemary’s Baby babble. An echoey electronic hum builds and falls like a 50s refrigerator passed through and effects board, things run backwards, staccato strings are plucked… and that’s not the half of it. “I’ve never been happy staying in one particular school of musical thought. The fun has been turning things on their heads, to try something you were not supposed to do.” We’re on an immersive and adventurous travelogue with the former member of the legendary Tangerine Dream, Paul Haslinger - this is a man who knows how to build tension, hold moods, illustrate contempt, lies, passion and pleasure; He can create fear, loathing and love - he’s been unlocking the nuances of such emotions in a hugely successful career as a TV and film soundtrack composer (Halt And Catch Fire, Underworld and the Golden Globe-nominated Sleeper Cell). ‘Exit Ghost’ is his long thought out opus, a moment caught in time, flicking through reference points, taking an ethereal excursion that permeates musical genres as it becomes awash with intricate sounds and cross-pollinating rhythms. Built originally from the warmth of his grand piano ‘Exit Ghost’ resonates with purity and power, from an eerie and evocative betweenworld, that’s at once expansive and rolling, then intoxicating and suffocating in equal measures; modern composition at its most uplifting; cerebral, celebratory, intense and beautiful. “The soul searching in connection with this record was extensive. Finding places of resonance, giving a colour to your memories. It was more challenging because it’s not somebody else’s narrative. Finding the core of your own story can be the most difficult task of all.” Created over the span of eight years and filled with literal and personal references, the album itself is a testament to the search - a quest filled with hints, particles and suggestions.

Transparent Purple vinyl. Sometime in 2005, a lone box of master tapes escaped an estate sale and made its way through a network of collectors, record dealers, and "junkers" into the hands of leading Ohio soul expert Dante Carfagna, who linked them to Columbus, Ohio's mysterious Prix label (See: Eccentric Soul: The Prix Label). A bit of research turned up Prix proprietor George Beter, who identified most of the unlabeled material. All it took was an endless series of phone calls and letters and two fields trips in Columbus. But one complete mystery wended its way onto our final Prix compilation. "You and Me," a simple but irrepressible demo credited only to Penny & the Quarters, was found tacked onto a mixed studio reel. Our survey of every willing lifer left on the Columbus soul scene, including retired DJs, producers, and important local artists, produced not so much as a glimmer of recognition at the name Penny & the Quarters. Though we loved the song from the first play, it may've ended up a bit buried on our original compilation, as #18 of 19 tracks.Four years later, Eccentric Soul: The Prix Label hadn't exactly become a huge seller, although listeners had repeatedly told us that the unfiltered studio demos that fill out the record's back half were true diamonds in the rough. But neither Penny nor her Quarters had appeared to claim credit for their efforts. Then, completely out of left field, we heard from respected screen actor and avowed Numero fan Ryan Gosling that Penny's piercing bit of stripped down doo-wop was being considered for inclusion in Derek Cianfrance's indie-weeper film Blue Valentine. What we didn't know was that "You and Me" had won a major role in what became an indie circuit hit, and that Penny & the Quarters would instantly assume the role of world's most famous unknown doo-wop group.Every week is a slow news week in Columbus, Ohio, and early January 2011 found the city recovering from the thrill of elevating Ted Williams_the formerly homeless guy with the awesome voice for radio_into a national news sensation. But both major daily newspapers in town, as well as the city's alternative weekly, also ran stories about how a lost and unknown Columbus soul group had become the musical centerpiece of a film already garnering Oscar buzz. That mainstream spotlight aimed at Blue Valentine and Penny & the Quarters did the trick: we finally made contact with the widow of Jay Robinson, lead Quarters' singer and songwriter. Robinson, it turned out, had also been the leader of Columbus doo-wop pioneers The Supremes (later known as "The Columbus Supremes," for reasons which should be obvious). Jay Robinson never did give up on the dream of writing a hit record; even so, the posthumous realization of his dream is cold comfort for his widow and daughter. With their blessings, we returned to those estate sale masters and pulled down another neglected track ("You Are Giving Me Some Other Love") from the still-unknown Penny and her now-partly-known Quarters. "You and Me" is a song that could not be suppressed: not when Prix failed to release it; not when Penny & the Quarters were forgotten; not when Numero stuck it at the bitter end of a much overlooked compilation. Its evolution from estate sale trash to silver-screen gold has finally returned it to big-hole 45, where it probably should have lived all along.

Chris Menist pares his sound right back for A book of imaginary beings, his fourth Awkward Corners outing with a project of electronic and abstracted global grooves. Experimenting with simple melodies and uncluttered arrangements, as well as taking inspiration from the Borges' short stories alluded to in the title, the project took shape in the early part of 2025, in the shorter days and dark evenings of January.

The initial challenge was to knock a basic track into shape each evening after work, then refine it later. There's a melancholy in the air in late winter, compounded by the creeping threat of national and geopolitical instability. Ulla, Natural Information Society, Jabu, Torso and Dawuna formed some of the background soundtrack as each tune took shape.

The track titles came after sitting with the sounds for a while, giving shape to images of people, creatures and their stories for a book that is yet to be written.

Two former friends sets the tone for the album perfectly as a minimal electronic piece with a slowly simmering synth bassline underpinning the groove whilst the trademark Awkward sound of the Shahi Baaja enters drenched in effects. It's the first demonstration of Chris' unique ability to create a world from apparently very little.

Dance of the silver beetles is completely unique in that we can hear chopped up Illimba samples seemingly playing backwards and forewords sometimes alone, sometimes together in duet with Chris' conga rhythms. Add to that a more conventional Illimba melody and added shaker percussion and you have one of A book of imaginary beings most curious chapters.

Anxious shadow puppets is closer to the Awkward Corners sound from previous albums as electronic pulses move around the arrangement with the urgency that the track title suggests. Chris' percussive roots move to the fore with the congas that tie down the Paradise Bangkok Molam International Band's sound. Here, the bassline is more playful and works together with one of Chris' many African Illimbas.

Fans of Chris' adventures on his Roland 808 will dig A leopard with no spots, although the minimal mood continues to flow through on this track. The lolloping, but hard-hitting rhythm track provides the grounding for strange and twisting feedback-sounding tones to work the soundscape.

Abandoned boy (left in charge of the family business) is Awkward Corners at his atmospheric best. Drift off to the sublime sounds of Chris exploring the Shahi Baaja, whilst a soft, repetitive synth line and abstracted pads give the listener that feeling of meditation and peace.

Flamingo with bandaged neck is A book of imaginary beings' perfect coda and is exclusively Shahi Baaja draped in reverbs and delays. It feels like the resolution and the closing of a book that – as of yet – remains unwritten.

Awkward Corners is Chris Menist, a musician, DJ and writer. It started life as a small project in Islamabad, where Chris was living at the time. Initial recordings were made with local musicians in Pakistan and then subsequently in Thailand. This culminated in the Sweet Decay LP that came out on Finders Keepers' Disposable Music in 2014, and in turn led to a limited tape release on Boomkat/Reel Torque of original compositions and re-edits of Thai 45s the same year. Chris released – Dislocation Songs – his second LP proper with Shapes of Rhythm in May 2020, collaborating on many of the tracks with award-winning performer Sarathy Korwar. The LP was picked up by many radio stations including NTS, Resonance FM, BBC 6 Music, Balamii and many more. It made Tom Ravenscroft's LPs of 2020. Amateur Dramatics, Chris' second LP arrived just a year later in 2021 and was a more ambitious project featuring more jazz-focussed compositions and featuring Tamar Osborn and Kitty Whitelaw. Shortly after that came another pivot with the heavier, dancefloor-friendly EP Somebody Somewhere. Somebody Somewhere is Dancing in a Field brought the House (yes House!) vibes, whilst Hector Plimmer turned in a remix of No Words in the same club mood.

As one of NTS Radio's longest-standing presenters, Chris continues to hold down the Paradise Bangkok show. Playing drums and percussion since he was a kid, Chris is the percussionist for The Paradise Bangkok Molam International Band as well as co-founding the record label of the same name. Chris has curated compilations for labels such as Finders Keepers, Soundway and Dust-To-Digital. He has been featured on the Boiler Room, Vinyl Factory Collections, played at the Four Tet curated Nuits Sonores festival, and has put together an edition of Volumes which featured unreleased Awkward Corners compositions.






[d] 04: All the Goodbyes (You Tried to Defer) [Original]





[j] 10: Abandoned Boy (Left in Charge of the Family Business) [Original]

Wally Badarou is a synth pioneer and musical polymath. But rarely does he sing over his sumptuous tracks. The 6 songs that comprise new record Simple Things finally realise Wally's vision for select backing tracks from his beloved Colors Of Silence.

The tracks were originally developed back in 2001 for the release of the original CD; here, Wally has “simply" added overdubs and vocals to their mastered mixes with some discerning edits. Simply put, Simple Things is another slice of simply stunning Wally Badarou genius.

Simple Things has been decades in the making. Indeed, Wally struggled not only with the idea of singing these wonderful songs himself but singing them in English and writing his own lyrics, while wrestling with the sensational backing tracks, which themselves seemed to have taken on a life of their own.

As Wally explained to us: "In addition to the instrumental artist I have been known as, so far, there has always been a singer who simply was not sure he was, up until now. Even though “Back To Scales Tonight”, my very first album, was, indeed, a song album."

Opener "It Couldn't Be You" embellishes the uptempo groove of soca-funk gem "The Lights Of Kinshasa". As Wally explained to us, it's about “a simple love story somewhere, one rainy night, under the lights of Kinshasa. A woman, a man, online dating, quite usual in our times. Then they meet, almost missing each other." The guide vocal Wally had laid for Colors Of Silence - with an organ sound - seemed striving for words in Linguala, a Congolese language he could not speak. Therefore the decision to do it himself was not an easy one, for it had to be in English to fit his singing. We think it turned out pretty good!

"You Can't Hide Always" vocalises Wally's deep concerns set to the propulsive "Smiles By The Millions": "Populism, ostracism, radicalism, ethics and values all turned upside down worldwide, are they all inevitably exacerbated by our social networks? It could all melt down one day, like a house of cards in the ocean of fake news and false prophecies”. Wally wanted to keep the track as bare as possible but, inevitably, the backing vocals and the synth-brass arrive ultimately to present a welcome 70s flavour, with no snare-drum added.

The bright and breezy "We'll Make It Again" adds vocals to "Where Were We", a tropical, reggae-tinged bounce through the islands. Here's Waly: "Where were we when we last said: "I love you"? Simple words to express something quite common, but never quite simple to deal with. A simple song about the resilience of the broken hearts.” The reggae came from it being conceived when Wally was scoring for “Third World Cop”, a 1999 Jamaican action movie.

"Walk Straight Ahead" provides Wally's gorgeous, contemplative and idiosyncratic vocals to the deep serenity of Colors Of Silence highlight, "Amber Whispers". It's a gliding, divine, mini melodic masterpiece. It'll make you swoon in its extreme beauty. As Wally describes, "it started as just whispers, sweet amber whispers. Then the colour turned darker, as darker skies seemed to fall upon us while the whole world keeps on walking ahead, straight ahead, regardless of the blatant warnings, feeling much too comfortable in conformity. Initially, the verses were to be spoken only. I realised they could be sung all the while, without overshadowing the ethereal atmosphere." Amen.

The serene, celestial "Painting My Life Blue" presents the vocal version of "Days To Wonder". Says Wally, "how does it feel when your second half is gone after decades of riding life together? Past the temporary loss of your bearings, you come to realise you've been blind to the essential, and suddenly you can see...For this most intimate song of mine, I had tried to come up with a melody on top of the existing backing track, long before realising the melody was in the keyboard part already. It just needed to be properly mixed with it."

The profoundly emotional "Just Two Lovers" works up the formerly-too-brief and glorious "Crystal Falls" into a much fuller masterpiece and features acoustic guitar sparkle before fully glistening with some gentle head-nod percussion. Waly explains further: "Dear little green men, please tell me, what is it about us that makes you want to come and visit us so often (contrary to Fermi's assertion)? And here is the reply I believe I heard them sing: "You've got the key you've been searching for: Love”. I reverted to the initial backing track I had made around 1985, which already bore the melody, and which I added acoustic guitars to, before singing it." An astounding closer.

A synth specialist, there can be few artists more under-appreciated given their vast influence than Wally Badarou. His solo work practically defined the sound of the Balearic DJs of the 1980s, and thus the more sophisticated sound of dance culture thereafter. He was one of the Compass Point All Stars (with Sly and Robbie, Barry Reynolds, Mikey Chung and Uziah "Sticky" Thompson), the in-house recording team of Compass Point Studios responsible for a series of albums in the 1980s recorded by Grace Jones, Tom Tom Club, Mick Jagger, Black Uhuru, Gwen Guthrie, Jimmy Cliff and Gregory Isaacs. Badarou's keyboard playing could also be heard on albums by Robert Palmer, Marianne Faithfull, Herbie Hancock, M (Pop Muzik), Talking Heads, Manu Dibango and Miriam Makeba. He also produced Fela Kuti. Phew!

When we asked Wally about the significance of this collection's title, he explained: "These are "Simple things” that everyday’s life seems to build upon. The simplest are the harder to describe, but when satisfactorily described i.e. with simple words, they are the more genuine and authentic to express and share. I’ve immersed myself in other classic song lyrics, something I hardly did before, just to appreciate the genius behind the simple words they were made of, and had a great time studying how powerful they were in expressing complex ideas such as love."

Recording was twofold: first, most of the backing tracks were recorded in 2001, in Wally's studio in Normandy, mostly using hardware synths and Yamaha digital consoles. Then, he fine-tuned the melodies and wrote the lyrics in late 2023, then added some overdubs and sang them all during summer 2024. States Wally, "Digital Performer was and remains the DAW I’ve been using throughout, ever since the 80s."

Wally's sophisticated synth textures and expressive keyboard runs are so full of character, so full of life, that this work of art transcends any easy genre categorisation. Meticulously remastered and cut by both Simon Francis and Cicely Balston respectively, it has been pressed to the highest possibly quality at Record Industry in Holland. Sometimes, the simple things are the most extraordinary.

Punk pioneer/Eater main-man, Andy Blade's 7th solo album and follow up to 2024's critically acclaimed & heavily rotated, Sparks bros endorsed "Being Alive Is Fun". It is imbued with the usual left-of-centre Blade-ism's & themes: star maps, UFO's & a slightly twisted nod to tragic 70's heroine Karen Carpenter. You get what you deserve with Blade, and with Tiny Specks you are rewarded with a rich code to decipher at your leisure. Most of all, however, it is all about the quality of his songwriting. Opening track 'Karen Is The Drummer' (featuring Blade's regular singing collaborator - PseudoPomp's Katerina Sharkova) seems unsettlingly self-explanatory, but all does not seem well in the Carpenter M.O.R world - 'It's just her & her brother & her folks indifference to that girl'. Occasional Dinosaur Jr vocalist Tiffany Anders gives 'I'm Not Myself' a poppy but eerie nuance. PollyPikPocketz's Myura Amara pops up on the short but very sweet 'About That'. Matilda Scotland, Quick Romance's uber-cool punky-chanteuse - adds her Gen Z aura to the summery 'I Like It When You're Happy'. Former Generation X guitarist Bob 'Derwood' Andrews, with whom Blade has worked with consistently of late, once again features heavily on 'Tiny Specks'_ Like with Katerina Sharkova's voice, Derwood guitar lines interweave with Blade's honeyed vocal as though they made for each other. 'This Place' is another key track, capturing the claustrophobic-genocidal mood of what has been taking place in Gaza/Palestine for over two years now, and counting. 'This is not so much a protest song as it is the noise in my head'. If John Lydon is the Widow Twanky of Punk, and Billy Idol, its Elvis, then Andy Blade must surely be the Sinatra of Punk.

Erik K Skodvin's feature-length score to Thomas Roth's thriller "Schächten" feels like the epitome of all his musical projects, conjuring a dark cinematic trip through 1960's post-WWII Vienna in a film that touches on topics such as law, justice & revenge.

Releasing a soundtrack as a stand-alone album can be challenging; and "Schächten" is by no means a typical listening experience. The record contains 24 more or less short pieces evolving through dramatic movements, underlaying menace and deep emotive scenes. One thing that stands out is the linear atmosphere throughout the story which creates a wholeness that keeps your attention to the very end. Set in wintery Austrian landscapes in dimly saturated colours, the film's dramatic events with dark political undertones feels like a perfect situation for Skodvin's atmospheric collages - perhaps sounding closer than ever to his early works as Svarte Greiner or Deaf Center. Cello, violin, piano, analogue synth and plenty of hardly recognizable instrumentation come together in a record that feels very organic in its subdued tones. The score also features percussion by Andrea Belfi as well as a Chopin piano interpretation by Kelly Wyse to the bizarrely schizophrenic piece "Judenfreund".

With the contemporary world sliding into darkness again, listening to the soundtrack feels like coming to terms with ones own anxieties - something that in the end comes through as a cleansing experience. As quoted in the film "Everyone is their own devil. And we make this world our hell".

Short synopsis : "Vienna 1960s - The young Jewish business man Victor has to witness how the prosecution of a Nazi crime against his family fails. The political and legal system is still virtually run by former Nazis with large parts of society being entangled in the past. When Victor also loses his grief ridden father and his girlfriend’s family opposes their relationship and his identity, Victor begins to loose faith in formal justice and takes matters in his own hands."

"Prudência / Praga", or "Prudence / Plague", is a double single with these two songs that I composed and which were originally recorded by two of my heroes: Maria Bethânia and Alaíde Costa. Curiously, they are two sambas: although I come from the rock and roll scene in Sao Paulo, I wound up writing a samba as if it were the 50s. At the time of my first heartbreak, at the age of 17, I had the record Jamelao canta Lupicínio with the Orquestra Tabajara on my iPod, and I identified with those dramatic sorrows, almost a hundred years old. In a way, I felt that Lupicínio Rodrigues was bloody and direct, like Tarantino, and Nelson Cavaquinho, heavy metal like Black Sabbath. So, I feel it's a compact 45 of sambas but it's also very Rock n Roll to me. Raw and coming from hell. "Prudência" is that internal battle between the passionate side and the controlling side in the head of the former romantic bohemian. I wrote it for Bethânia to record on her album Noturno. Her version turned into a moving bolero. When I saw her singing it live and the audience singing along with her, I couldn't believe it. I cried, hidden in the audience. She said that when she showed the record to her brother, Caetano Veloso, he thought that "Prudência" was some old classic that she had dug up to bring back to light. Nothing could be a greater compliment than this mistake on Caetano's part. "Praga" also has to do with MPB heroes of mine that I never imagined I'd see up close or have any relationship with or any connection with. I was asked to write these lyrics in partnership with the main man Erasmo Carlos for Alaíde Costa's album! Surreal. Like many people, I got acquainted with Alaíde listening to "Clube da Esquina," her singing with Milton Nascimento. And the idea was to do a poisonous cabaret song samba. The curse of a woman who has dumped a drunk. I love it when Alaíde sings "BIBIDA" in her recording of the song_a total legend. I wanted to produce a kind of horror samba recording, because if it wasn't rock and roll, it wouldn't be much fun for me. I went over to Bielzinho's, and we recorded this chorus that explodes with the percussion and the choir of my friends Tulipa, Maria Beraldo, and Luiza Lian. This take of "Prudência" came from the unpretentiousness of recording two live sessions of the song with Fred Joseph with the cameras of the 70s' program "Ensaio" (MPB Especial) by the great Fernando Faro. The video take ended up being so unexpected and raw that it unseated the studio version, and that's what you hear on the single. The idea behind the video is a sort of this temporal mindfuck; like found lost tapes of the MPB Especial from the early the 70s. Same microphones, same cameras, that zoom_time travel. Between Mil Coisas Invisíveis, the end of the cycle with O Terno, and starting the new album process, I decided to take advantage of the respite to release this rock and roll 45 of sambas, without thinking too much or over-producing the thing. "Prudence? Don't talk to me about prudence!" ;) Tim Bernardes, 2025

Satisfaction comes in many forms. When the magical word Motown is uttered, most people are hard-wired to The Four Tops, the Temptations and The Supremes. But to reduce Motown to the effervescent sixties is only part of the label’s remarkable legacy.
By the 1970s, a different sound was gathering. America was on the verge of a nervous breakdown. The Vietnam War had been a disaster, urban street crime was epidemic and the nation’s college campuses were alive with political resistance. The joyful hope that had inspired “Baby Love” now felt anachronistic and out of time.

The music industry was changing too. The vinyl pop single on 45rpm which had been the staple of Motown’s success was being challenged by concept albums.   This was the era of Edwin Starr’s anti-war album War and Peace (1970), The Temptations mind-bending Psychedelic Shack (1970) and Marvin Gaye’s state-of-the-nation classic What’s Going On (1971).
By the early 1970s Motown had a stable of male vocalists that was arguably the best in the world, among them former lead singers from The Temptations - David Ruffin, Dennis Edwards and Eddie Kendricks. Alongside them singer-producers like Leon Ware and Frank Wilson were asserting their presence.

David Ruffin’s “Crime in the Street” captured the epidemic of violence in Detroit allowing his exquisite voice to quietly rage against gun crime. Recorded a few years before his underground classic “Rode by the Place”, both sound more modern today than when they were recorded.
If there is a common thread here, it’s the mid-tempo shifting soul soon to be christened as “quiet storm” including groups on the margins of Motown such as The Originals and The Fantastic Four led by the impassioned “Sweet” James Epps.
Just to keep you satisfied, immerse yourself in the overlooked creativity of Detroit’s male voices in the early 1970s.

This is where it all starts. Without any reminiscing about their former band Operation Ivy, Matt Freeman (bass) and Tim Armstrong (guitar/vocals) blast through their debut without any hints of ska or blatant Clash plagiarizing. On the contrary, this album rips through 15 tracks of high-energy punk that"s accompanied by heavy bass leads and Armstrong"s permanently slurred vocals. And to top it all off, the lyrical content deals with urban blight and the lifestyle of being a public nuisance. With this trademark sound, Rancid provides the perfect soundtrack for any car chase that includes massive property damage; is it a wonder MTV wouldn"t touch this? -Mike DaRonco

Swampmeat is the project of Dan Finnemore, former co-frontman of cult US rock & roll act Low Cut Connie (as recommended by the likes of Rolling Stone, KEXP, and - yes - Barack Obama), not to mention his role as behind the drums of PNKSLM's own The Castillians, as well as being a former member of the notorious Black Mekon. A long-time homeown secret in his native Birmingham, Swampmeat is now ready to step out of the shadows - over ten years after the project took its first steps. "Gin & Tonic" is a collection of country-fied rock and roll, straddling the edge between country, punk and rock and roll, with great songs and melodies.

PEACOCK DREAMS


After the resounding success of his project Le Cri du Caire, whose eponymous album was awarded a Victoire du Jazz in the “World Music Album” category, Abdullah Miniawy returns with ‘Peacock Dreams’, the first opus of his new trio formation released on the label PPL Songs Aghani Al-Khalq.


Accompanied by trombonists Robinson Khoury (2024 Django Reinhardt Prize from the Academy of Jazz) and Jules Boittin, Abdullah Miniawy presents an unconventional combination of three tenor instruments. The lyrical depth of the voice of the Egyptian poet, singer, and composer merges with the bold expressive capabilities of the two trombones, allowing him to explore unprecedented sound ranges that connect Western and Eastern musical traditions.


The Trio performs Abdullah Miniawy's latest musical compositions, as well as adapts former work stemming from the Egyptian revolution and his previous formation Le Cri du Caire, while highlighting collaborations by inviting trumpeter Erik Truffaz, flamenco singer Niño de Elche, and danish-indian producer Hvad on some tracks.


‘Peacock Dreams’ engages the audience in a unique musical experience that freely combines baroque and operatic influences, Sufi and Coptic themes, and musical motifs from the Arabian Peninsula, infused with the jazzy cacophony of Egyptian traffic jams, once more revealing the transcendental and communional power of Abdullah Miniawy's music.


ALBUM PITCH


A peacock dreams of being a poet. It concentrates, trying to shed its colors, turning its feathers into a gradient of flesh. On the other hand, a poet longs for the peacock’s colors—a galactic blend of earth, forest, sea, and sky, seen from a high vantage point.


A poet can close their eyes and absorb the knowledge of the finite, and absorb the knowledge of the finite, yet miss much, trapped in monotone concentration, eyebrows plucked down to 111.


The peacock, dipping in the ink drops from the poet's pen, sails through a tube into the poet's body. A fluttering storm erupts, reversing the roles: the peacock finds itself under an arrest warrant, while the poet, reducing his expression to a roaring "Wak-wak," struggles to describe the world.

Since its founding back in 2014, Blume has carved a unique place in cultural landscape, issuing free-standing works, spanning the historical and contemporary, that represent singular gestures of creativity within the field of experimental sound. Joining their broad efforts in building networks of context and understanding that already includes the works by Werner Durand, Sarah Hennies, Bruce Nauman, John Butcher, Jocy de Oliveira, Mary Jane Leach, Valentina Magaletti, Alvin Curran, Julius Eastman, Alvin Lucier, and following the first ever vinyl release to attend to James Tenney's legendary Postal Pieces, the label now presents the first LP published by the visionary Swiss composer Jürg Frey. Drawing from the transformative power of breath and resonance, this release represents one of the most profound explorations of musical metamorphosis to emerge from the contemporary experimental landscape.

The completed work represents a "conjunction of these two artists" that has "activated a transformative form of experimentalism." These renderings "dance with an airy lightness, humour, and play, imbuing them with a beauty and emotiveness that can be rare within experimental music." They exist as "breaths, carrying the curiosities of life, belonging to no time and all time, to no one and everyone: a human music to be inhaled and pondered, for which the outcome remains unknown." In this liminal space between composition and interpretation, between breath and resonance, Zurria and Frey have created something that transcends the boundaries of experimental music itself, offering what might be called a metaphysical cartography of sound in its most essential form. As Bradford Bailey observes in his penetrating liner notes, "music is rarely a fixed entity," existing instead in a state of perpetual flux, "taking on the influences of its interpreters and performers." This fundamental truth finds its most eloquent expression in the transformative collaboration between Italian flutist Manuel Zurria and Frey, longtime member of the Wandelweiser Group. Where conventional recordings might preserve a definitive version, this release activates what Bailey calls "states of unknowing and continued experimentation," allowing Frey's compositions to evolve into entirely new dimensional territories. The original string quartet and piano works dissolve into breath-carried architectures of sound, where "the original remains in a constant dialogue with its transformation." This is not mere arrangement but ontological metamorphosis - an alchemical process through which crystalline harmonies are reborn as atmospheric phenomena.

The metaphysical dimensions of this transformation become clear through detailed analysis of the musical result. Where Frey's original compositions operate through what he calls "basic confidence in the clear and restricted material," Zurria's interpretation activates entirely new perceptual territories. Space holds almost atomic sense of weight against the airy punctuations of timbres, textures, and tones, creating "suspensions of time within which questions and identities posed by instrumentation fade." The Extended Circular Music pieces - each comprising "a small number of bars to be repeated an undetermined number of times" - become organizations of sound that defy being definitive or fixed. Originally scored for different combinations of violin, viola, cello, and piano, these works now exist as pure phenomena of breath and resonance, where "hanging, breath-length utterances dance and intertwine amongst complex harmonic clusters and conjunctions."

The philosophical implications of this transformation illuminate a lineage of composers who have moved "away from abstraction and responding to the need to create" something beyond mere technique. Drawing parallels to Morton Feldman's understanding of non-functional harmony, Zurria's approach represents "a transformative form of experimentalism" that activates what Frey calls the "thaumaturgic power" of music - its capacity to heal and transform consciousness itself. The result is "a radical reimagining of ambience: sprawling sonorities and resonances adrift in space, carrying the liberated traces of the work's former incarnations and their truths." In Zurria's interpretation, Frey's String Quartet n.3 becomes something approaching "an organ played in slow motion, its seals leaking," while the Extended Circular Music pieces transform into "glacial chords from a diverse palette of voicings, harmonies, timbres, and tones."

Performed by Manuel Zurria. Recorded and mixed by Zurria at BigCardo, Catania between 2022-2024, with mastering by Bruno Germano at Vacuumstudio, Bologna, this Blume release represents a profound exploration of musical transformation.

Following on from his highly acclaimed debut Len Parrott"s Memorial Lift, Baxter proves that this was no fluke. His 2nd album Floor Show sounds like it was recorded in St Paul"s Cathedral, with vocals added in the whispering gallery. Narratively, it"s seems to be about a disintegrating relationship, although this is no confession booth moment. Guitars float like ectoplasm, Wurlitzer"s spin beneath mirror balls, summoning the presence of spectral beings, swaying to luxurious, narcotic music that predates trip-hop by a good sixty years. Stand-out tracks include the single "Lisa Said", "Cocaine Man" and the wonderful "Francesca"s Party". The album was produced by Baxter, Nick Terry and mixed by Craig Silvey (The Coral, Magic Numbers) in West London in the winter of 2004 / 2005. The band are Damon Reece on drums and Mike Mooney on the electric guitar- both former members of Spiritualized.

Motel d'amour - A Lost Electro-Funk Gem from the NDW Era Resurfaces

When we first collaborated with Collage member Markus Kammann on the EP project "Mit den Puppen tanzen" at the end of last year, we never imagined what would follow: Kammann approached us with a completely unreleased full-length album by his former band. Upon receiving the first three preview tracks, we were floored. One of them was "Nachtcafé" - a track that kicks off with a funky bassline layered over the punchy rhythm of a Roland TR-808. Add shimmering synths and Katrin A. Kunze's sharp, distinctive vocals, and we instantly knew we were hearing something special.

For a label dedicated to rediscovering lost treasures, this was exactly what we'd been searching for. The next two tracks - "Rendezvous" and "Casanova" - were just as compelling. When Kammann sent us the full album, we realized we were holding an electro-funk grail from the late golden days of the German Neue Deutsche Welle (NDW). We were listening to "Motel d'amour".

"Motel d'amour" is a concept album, offering a sharp, vibrant perspective from a confident, intelligent, and radiant young woman eager to experience nightlife, love, and music. Kunze's lyrics paint vivid scenes of flirtation ("Nachtcafé", "Rendezvous"), encounters with men ("Casanova"), the pulse of nightlife ("Die Nacht ist noch jung"), love ("Rotes Licht für rote Liebe"), one-night stands ("Motel d'amour"), and more. Rarely has a German album from that era captured emotional nuance and social dynamics so insightfully. Without veering into the overly personal, Kunze's direct, daring lyrical style was groundbreaking at the time - and remains refreshingly bold today.

While German listeners will fully appreciate the lyrical depth, the music speaks volumes on its own. Kunze's words are masterfully complemented by the production of Markus Kammann and Jürgen Grah. As heard on the in-demand "Mit den Puppen tanzen", their creativity seemed boundless. Each track is tightly composed, catchy, and full of character. While many German bands at the time leaned into rock, Kammann drew from the deep grooves of Earth, Wind & Fire, The Isley Brothers, Brothers Johnson, The Commodores, and the electro-futurism of Afrika Bambaataa's "Planet Rock" and "Looking for the Perfect Beat". The result: tracks with unmistakable electro-funk flair, powered by the classic 808 drum sound.

Though primarily rooted in funk and electro, the album retains flashes of NDW aesthetics - "Wir haben getanzt heut' Nacht" being a prime example. The instrumentation is a dream list for vintage gear lovers: Yamaha keyboards, Roland Juno-60, vocoder, Micromoog, Hohner D6 Clavinet, Fender bass, and a Telecaster guitar all feature prominently.
Recorded in 1985 at the high-profile Delta Studio by Richard Rossbach, the album attracted interest from Polydor. However, the label proposed using the compositions for a solo project with singer Inga Humpe (of Neonbabies), who was already signed to their roster. This would have required replacing Kunze as the vocalist, an idea the group firmly rejected. As a result, "Motel d'amour" was shelved, and Kammann, Grah, and Kunze moved on to form Cold End.
The album cover features a rare archival photo of Katrin A. Kunze - rediscovered by Kammann and now finally seeing the light of day, 40 years later.

We believe Motel d'amour deserves recognition alongside cult German classics like P!OFF?, 1. Futurologischer Congress' "Wer spricht?", Ami Marie's "Verrückt nach Glück", the funkier cuts of Cosa Rosa, or Piet Klocke's groove classic "Heute ist nicht sonst". It's a record that fits into adventurous DJ sets but also rewards a full, start-to-finish listen.

A note on audio quality: Sadly, the original master tapes were lost. The tracks were restored from a vintage TDK cassette. Thanks to modern digital tools, we were able to remaster them to a high standard - but in some songs light distortions remain. We appreciate your understanding and hope you enjoy this lost and undiscovered gem.

Motel d'amour - A Lost Electro-Funk Gem from the NDW Era Resurfaces

When we first collaborated with Collage member Markus Kammann on the EP project "Mit den Puppen tanzen" at the end of last year, we never imagined what would follow: Kammann approached us with a completely unreleased full-length album by his former band. Upon receiving the first three preview tracks, we were floored. One of them was "Nachtcafé" - a track that kicks off with a funky bassline layered over the punchy rhythm of a Roland TR-808. Add shimmering synths and Katrin A. Kunze's sharp, distinctive vocals, and we instantly knew we were hearing something special.

For a label dedicated to rediscovering lost treasures, this was exactly what we'd been searching for. The next two tracks - "Rendezvous" and "Casanova" - were just as compelling. When Kammann sent us the full album, we realized we were holding an electro-funk grail from the late golden days of the German Neue Deutsche Welle (NDW). We were listening to "Motel d'amour".

"Motel d'amour" is a concept album, offering a sharp, vibrant perspective from a confident, intelligent, and radiant young woman eager to experience nightlife, love, and music. Kunze's lyrics paint vivid scenes of flirtation ("Nachtcafé", "Rendezvous"), encounters with men ("Casanova"), the pulse of nightlife ("Die Nacht ist noch jung"), love ("Rotes Licht für rote Liebe"), one-night stands ("Motel d'amour"), and more. Rarely has a German album from that era captured emotional nuance and social dynamics so insightfully. Without veering into the overly personal, Kunze's direct, daring lyrical style was groundbreaking at the time - and remains refreshingly bold today.

While German listeners will fully appreciate the lyrical depth, the music speaks volumes on its own. Kunze's words are masterfully complemented by the production of Markus Kammann and Jürgen Grah. As heard on the in-demand "Mit den Puppen tanzen", their creativity seemed boundless. Each track is tightly composed, catchy, and full of character. While many German bands at the time leaned into rock, Kammann drew from the deep grooves of Earth, Wind & Fire, The Isley Brothers, Brothers Johnson, The Commodores, and the electro-futurism of Afrika Bambaataa's "Planet Rock" and "Looking for the Perfect Beat". The result: tracks with unmistakable electro-funk flair, powered by the classic 808 drum sound.

Though primarily rooted in funk and electro, the album retains flashes of NDW aesthetics - "Wir haben getanzt heut' Nacht" being a prime example. The instrumentation is a dream list for vintage gear lovers: Yamaha keyboards, Roland Juno-60, vocoder, Micromoog, Hohner D6 Clavinet, Fender bass, and a Telecaster guitar all feature prominently.
Recorded in 1985 at the high-profile Delta Studio by Richard Rossbach, the album attracted interest from Polydor. However, the label proposed using the compositions for a solo project with singer Inga Humpe (of Neonbabies), who was already signed to their roster. This would have required replacing Kunze as the vocalist, an idea the group firmly rejected. As a result, "Motel d'amour" was shelved, and Kammann, Grah, and Kunze moved on to form Cold End.
The album cover features a rare archival photo of Katrin A. Kunze - rediscovered by Kammann and now finally seeing the light of day, 40 years later.

We believe Motel d'amour deserves recognition alongside cult German classics like P!OFF?, 1. Futurologischer Congress' "Wer spricht?", Ami Marie's "Verrückt nach Glück", the funkier cuts of Cosa Rosa, or Piet Klocke's groove classic "Heute ist nicht sonst". It's a record that fits into adventurous DJ sets but also rewards a full, start-to-finish listen.

A note on audio quality: Sadly, the original master tapes were lost. The tracks were restored from a vintage TDK cassette. Thanks to modern digital tools, we were able to remaster them to a high standard - but in some songs light distortions remain. We appreciate your understanding and hope you enjoy this lost and undiscovered gem.

Wonderwheel is happy to present the very first pressing of Nickodemus' longtime classic "Sun People", pressed on translucent yellow vinyl. Originally released in 2009 by Thievery Corporation's Eighteenth Street Lounge label, "Sun People" was built with songs made for people who love the sun, sunshine and brighter days to come. Appropriate, of course, as Nickodemus has made his mark soundtracking NYC summers with his massively popular Turntables On The Hudson live events as well as with 20 consecutive years touring the World. The songs were inspired by various people Nickodemus met and places he's been, along with his collective feelings of optimism. It's these positive sonic vibes from all over the globe that Nickodemus matches with collaborators hailing from destinations including Guinea, Colombia, Puerto Rico, Brazil, Romania, India, Turkey, United Kingdom and New York City. These are the Sun People.As songs like "N'dini" "Sun Children" & "The Love Feeling" continue to kept parties dancing until today, "Calle Sol" & "Gira Do Sol" are being discovered by new fans & playlists today. As Jason Bentley, former Music Director at KCRW once said, "Sun People reflects a rich musicality, while infectious rhythms keep the party live. Nickodemus truly knows
no borders on this global dancefloor."Wonderwheel recordings is happy to keep the fire burning with this special limited color vinyl reissue out on June 21st, 2024.

a 01: Sun People (Intro) feat. Ismael Kouyaté
b 02: Sun Children (Original Mix) [feat. The Real Live Show]

First ever release of pioneering radiophonic / experimental / electronic / soundtrack composer you may never have heard of but really should have by now. 26 tracks in all.
As we began the mammoth task of whittling down material for this album Elizabeth recalled the time she met Delia Derbyshire. It was during a party for existing and former Radiophonic Workshop composers at BBC Maida Vale in the early 1980s. Delia introduced herself with typical energy and exuberance proclaiming "It's up to you now - I'm passing the baton. Show these men how we get things done". That must have been quite an honour and responsibility for a young, female composer establishing herself within the male-dominated environs at Delaware Road.
Looking back over a musical career spanning almost five decades, it's clear Elizabeth rose to the challenge and made her mark. She was consistently in demand with television and radio producers, composing for an array of ground-breaking, critically acclaimed and popular BBC projects. Whilst Delia's legacy has achieved mythical status with her position as an innovator and feminist icon secured, the majority of Elizabeth's recorded work remains unavailable so her contribution to the output of the Workshop and evolution of British electronic music is somewhat under-appreciated.
Perhaps this record will help start to remedy the situation. Included are early tape experiments, home demos and non-BBC commissions from the early 1970's to the late 2000s. Having listened to 260+ digital audio tapes from Elizabeth's personal archive we have barely scratched the surface but hope to provide an indication of the breadth of her compositional and sound design skills.
Classically trained in cello and piano, Elizabeth graduated from the University of East Anglia with a degree in Music in 1973. She was mentored by Tristram Cary who helped her to become UEA's first recipient of a Masters in Electronic Music and later awarded an Honorary Doctorate by Staffordshire University. Joining the BBC as a studio manager in 1975, Elizabeth transferred to the Radiophonic Workshop in 1978. One of her first tasks was to create special sound effects for Blake's 7 using tape loops, the EMS 100 and trusted VCS3.
Her celebrated score for The Living Planet in 1982 featured early use of the PPG synthesizer and earned an Emmy nomination. Over the following years studio technology evolved rapidly, but Elizabeth transitioned from analogue recording techniques to newer digital platforms with relative ease, using samplers, midi sequencing and computer controlled workstations.
With an incredible 1,400 commissions to her name, she created special sound for The Day Of The Triffids, Lord Of The Rings, countless radio dramas including Iris Murdoch's The Sea, The Sea, Harold Pinter's Moonlight, all of Howard Barker's plays, productions of King Lear, Wordsworth's Prelude and The Pallisers. The success of The Living Planet led to further work for the BBC Natural History Unit followed by numerous commissions for The Natural World. At one point in the late 1980's at least five of her signature tunes were being broadcast every week including Points Of View, Horizon, Doctors To Be and Everyman.
After the closure of the Workshop in 1996 Elizabeth became freelance, arranging Faure's Pavane for the BBC World Cup '98 coverage (reaching no. 9 in the UK singles chart). She wrote additional music for Monty Python's Holy Grail DVD, scored Michael Palin's Full Circle and Sahara TV series, The Lost Gardens Of Heligan and The Human Body with Robert Winston.
Retiring from the music industry in the late 2000's, Elizabeth recently returned to her East Anglian roots and now lives near the coast. She walks daily, listening to all kinds of music, new and old, on her beloved air-pods.

DJ Quik & JasonMartin (formerly known as Problem), are back with their second collaborative project, Chupacabra. As can be the fear with fan-favorite follow-ups, Chupacabra refuses to copy the formula laid out on Rosecrans yet shares the same soul, steeped in the cores of West Coast G-Funk, but alive and grown up, in a more sophisticated tone. With an album that is LA to it’s core (sans a few tasteful features from artists that would get the nod despite not being from there), Chupacabra provides the sounds to a golden summer in the city of Angels. Like the chupacabra, JasonMartin & DJ Quik are both enigmatic and mystical figures in the hip-hop space. A star-studded list of features include The Game, Suga Free, Jay Worthy, Larry June, Channel Tres, Bun B, DOM KENNDEY, & more. 1xLP, pressed on Blue Vinyl.










j B1 | TWO HI (WAVES) feat Wiz Khalifa, Channel Tres, Free Nationals & George Clinton

Best known for being the front - man of legendary US Hard Rock band ANGEL, Frank Dimino is now leading his own solo project and debuts with a fine Melodic Hard Rock album aptly titled Old Habits Die Hard. ANGEL is a band that was discovered (similarly to VAN HALEN) by KISS bass player Gene Simmons, who got them signed to Casablanca Records. With that label ANGEL released 5 critically acclaimed studio and one live album in the second half of the 70’s. After the band’s demise, Dimino went on to work with UFO’s Paul Raymond and worked as singer for Soundtracks, scoring a Platinum
album for the inclusion of his Cycle V song “Seduce Me Tonight” on the “Flashdance” soundtrack. While Frank is undoubtedly the brainchild of DIMINO, the new album sees him collaborate with some heavyweights of the Vegas music scene, which is where he currently resides. Under the production of Paul Crook (MEAT LOAF), DIMINO sees the participation – among others – of Oz Fox (STRYPER), Eddie Ojeda (TWISTED SISTER), Rickey Medlocke(BLACKFOOT, LYNYRD SKYNYRD), Jeff Labansky (ARMORED SAINT), and former ANGEL bandmates Punky Meadows(on guitar) and Barry Brandt (co-writing with Frank the song” Even Now”). Old Habits Die Hard has reached its 10th Anniversary and is being re- issued with the bonus acoustic track “Even Now”

One of the most legendary, influential and enduring names in rock music history, SWEET, will re-release their 2012 studio album "New York Connection" via Metalville Records. The release will see the album being pressed for the first time in coloured vinyl and a special edition CD with bonus tracks not included on the original release. "New York Connection" is a selection of material that was originally written by other artists, to which the band has unmistakably put their signature sound on . So is it a boring cover album? Well, no! Not really! This time it's a little different! Aside from a decent selection of must-haves - Andy Scott, said we have also added guitar riffs, drum beats or vocal lines from our own classics where appropriate. So their rendition of "It's All Moving Faster" incorporated the guitar line from SWEET's "Burn On The Flame" while "Blitzkrieg Bop" by The Ramones used elements of "The Ballroom Blitz". Although the most obvious example is the fusion of Russ Ballard's "New York Groove" (previously covered by both Hello and former Kiss guitarist Ace Frehley) and Jay-Z's "Empire State Of Mind". Amazingly, it works!

For RSD 2025 the influential band will be releasing a new double LP edition of their Nine Sevens box set of 7" records first released in 2018. Combining the run of early singles with more obscure later period tracks underlines the strength in depth that Wire had. This is pop art as art/pop and an exploration of the blank canvas of pop culture and how far that canvas can be stretched going from three minute constructs to ambient washes. The 7" single was always the ultimate artefact and statement with the A side being the band momentarily paused in time and distilled and freeze-framed into the forever with less than three minutes of electric sound. These "sevens" released from 1977 to the end of that decade, signpost the band's remarkable development from their brilliantly monochromatic early phase to the textured complexity of the almost psychedelic unzipping of their sound and vision. In some ways the compilation of Nine Sevens onto a double album makes for quite a weird documentation of the band in this period. The first disc, to some extent, follows the script of a singles / greatest hits collection but the second one goes wildly off-piste and ends up somewhere quite far from where the collection started. A conventional Greatest Hits collection, besides being conceptually a bit naff would, if strictly based on charting singles, consist of only one song! A Best Of is subjective and somewhat pointless in the age of the Spotify playlist that anyone can make. The only thing really that these tracks have in common (besides being by Wire) is that they were released or destined to be released on 7" by Wire in the period 1977-1980. - Nine Sevens is both title & elevator pitch!' Wire always understood the language of pop and also the artfulness of playing with it, deconstructing it and reassembling it into new and thrilling shapes. Decades later, these adventures into sound are like slices of delicious, perfect pop/noise and hits from a parallel universe. Track list:Side A1 Mannequin 2 Feeling Called Love 3 12XU 4 I Am the Fly5 Ex-Lion Tamer 6 Dot Dash *7 Options R * Side B 8 Outdoor Miner (single version) * 9 Practice Makes Perfect 10 A Question Of Degree * 11 Former Airline *12 Map Ref. 41ºN 93ºW Side C 1 Go Ahead * 2 Our Swimmer * 3 Midnight Bahnhof Café * 4 Second Length (Our Swimmer) **5 Catapult 30 ** Side D (154 EP) 6 Song 1 * 7 Get Down 1 + 2 * 8 Let's Panic Later *9 Small Electric Piece * * previously unreleased on vinyl album ** recorded in 1980 but not released until 2014

Nothing is lost on Cash Langdon. It’s something you can hear in the observational lyrics of his last record, 2022’s Sinister Feeling; but on its follow-up, Dogs, you can also hear it in the camaraderie he cultivates playing live with his band Meadow Dust, a sonic energy that gives off the heat of his native Birmingham. The trio’s fuzzy take on heavy country rock has a worn-in no-fussiness that recalls Neil Young & Crazy
Horse – nothing overthought, nothing understated. And like Young, Langdon’s voice is simultaneously earnest and world-weary – but there’s a sense of humor, too, and a resignation to keeping on (“Dogs,” “Magic Again”). Recorded at Portside Studios (the former location of the legendary Muscle Shoals Sound) in just two days, engineer Brad Timko (Dan Sartain, St. Paul and The Broken Bones) captured Langdon and Meadow Dust at their fiercest yet. The title track “Dogs” and side B heater “Dead Dogs” both take inspiration from the wild dogs Langdon encountered in his neighborhood at the time of writing the record, where he wondered about the sick twist of fate that renders one dog a pet and another a threat. Across songs, he examines how oppressive cycles overlap, intersecting the personal and the societal at all times. The heavy yet melodic “Lilac Whiskey Noise” is the heartbeat of the record, written following an active shooter event that Langdon witnessed at work in 2016. It’s an indictment – not of the perpetrator – but of the systems of power that enable such an act. It’s a microcosm for all of the themes on the album, too: the ongoing violence of simply being awake to the world around you, and the resolve to stay awake anyway.
On the crunchy album-closer “Nothing’s Good Anymore,” Langdon sings about overhearing someone say just that – and you can tell he’s tempted to agree. He’s going to find what kernel of beauty he can. Dogs is a sonic map for finding that beauty in just about anything.

Rhiannon Giddens reunites with her former Carolina Chocolate Drops bandmate Justin Robinson on What Did the Blackbird Say to the Crow, an album of North Carolina fiddle and banjo music. Produced by Giddens and Joseph "joebass" DeJarnette, the album features Giddens on banjo and Robinson on fiddle, with the duo playing eighteen of their favourite North Carolina tunes: a mix of instrumentals and tunes with words.

Many were learned from their late mentor, the legendary North Carolina Piedmont musician Joe Thompson; one is from another musical hero, the late Etta Baker, from whom they also learned by listening to recordings of her playing. Giddens and Robinson recorded the album outdoors and on location at Thompson’s and Baker’s North Carolina homes, as well as the former plantation Mill Prong House. They were accompanied by the sounds of nature, including two different broods of cicadas, which had not emerged simultaneously since 1803, creating a true once-in-a-lifetime soundscape. The duo, along with four other string musicians including the multi-instrumentalist Dirk Powell, will embark on the Rhiannon Giddens & The Old-Time Revue North America tour in April.

“With the assaults on reality going on in the world today, we wanted to offer another kind of record, like walking back onto a gravel or dirt road while a stampede goes the other way,” Giddens says. “With the cicada choir, this record could’ve only happened at a certain time in the last 120 years. We doubled down on place, time, realness, and old-fashioned front porch music. It’s a reminder that another way exists, with music made for your community’s enjoyment and for dancing–not solely for commercial purposes.

“What is the role of music in our society?” she wonders. “How do we de-couple it from unfettered capitalism, where music is a product and musicians are incidental? How do we use the tools and system that we have been bequeathed in a way that reminds us of other ways of being?” Robinson adds, "Recording this album felt like being back in the saddle. Just this time Joe is not here, and his fiddle is under my chin. The album is about home, the cicadas, the storms, the music, and the people who make it feel like home."

Thompson was one of the last musicians of his era and his community to carry on the southern Black string band tradition. He played a crucial role in the lives of Giddens and Robinson, who, along with their Carolina Chocolate Drops bandmate Dom Flemons, spent their formative years learning from Thompson in traditional apprentice/mentor relationships. His influence has guided all of their artistic journeys as well as their mission to keep the legacy of the Black string band tradition alive.

In further tribute to Giddens’ North Carolina roots, What Did the Blackbird Say to the Crow will arrive just a week before Biscuits & Banjos, the inaugural edition of her first festival, which highlights the deep roots and enduring legacy of Black music, art, and culture while fostering community and storytelling. The sold-out festival will feature a much-anticipated Carolina Chocolate Drops reunion, their first performance together in more than a decade.

The Delights formerly unissued recording “Listen To Me Girl” first made it’s vinyl debut during 2017 when released back to back with Tearra’s modern soul anthem “Just Loving You” (SJ1008). Having sold out very quickly this release now commands a price of £60.00 a copy. So, with demand still high we have decided to release “Listen To Me Girl” for a second time with the addition of two recently found unissued master tape tracks, which make their vinyl debut as part of this 3 track EP.

The Delights story began in the early 1960’s while as a children’s group from Chester PA. known as ‘The Twilights’ they began entering local talent shows which culminated in a performance at Philadelphia’s prestigious ‘Uptown Theatre’ during 1963. ‘The Twilights’ made their professional recording debut in 1964 for Weldon McDougal III, Johnny Stiles and Luther Randolph’s Harthon Production’s label with “It’s Been So Long/She Put Me Down” (TW-34). A second Twilights 45 came in 1967 “Shipwreck/For The First Time” (TW-35) which sold sufficiently well to be picked up for national distribution by Cameo Parkway. The group consisted of four male vocalists, brothers Kemp “Toppy” Hill, Ellis “Butch” Hill (the eldest) and Jaime “Peanut” Hill and their friend Raymond, plus lead singer and only female member Brandi ‘Peaches’ Wells (born Marquerite J. Pinder) who was only 9 years old when she sang on the group’s first Harthon 45, (Jaime Hill reputedly never featured on either of the two Harthon 45 recordings).

The Hill Brothers were cousins of Manny Campbell and it’s through this family connection that the group came to Emandolynn Productions initially as backing singers before being persuaded by Manny to drop their former performing name of ‘The Twilights’, to become ‘The Delights’. Under Manny and fellow Philadelphian Charles J. Bowen’s tutelage they recorded the delightful crossover dance track “Listen To Me Girl” during the months of July and August of 1968. Recent unearthed master tape finds from these early sessions have since yielded the featured “Come And Rejoice” an energetic subtle gospel influenced dance track which Manny wrote and produced on them in the hope of giving them a wider body of work and appeal as he shopped their demos around local record companies. The original backing track to “Listen To Me” is also featured on this release.

During the mid-1970’s ‘The Delights’ under the tutelage of respected Philly producer, arranger and songwriter Morris Bailey Jr recorded two 45 releases for the Jamie/Guyden distributed Phil-L.A Of Soul label “It’s As Simple As That/I’ve Got Enough Sense” (PH-374) and “Face The Music/Things Ain’t What They Used To Be” (PH-379). Brandi Wells had left the group prior to the Phil-L.A Of Soul releases to firstly join Major Harris’s backing singers ‘Brown Sugar’ before forming the group ‘Breeze’ who backed fellow WMOT label stable mates Billy Paul, Fat Larry & Philly Cream (a.k.a Ingram). Breeze later evolved into the group Slick who recorded the self-named album which produced the chart hits “Space Bass” and “Sexy Cream”. In 1981 Brandi recorded her first solo debut album ‘Watch Out’ which reached #37 on the Billboard R&B Chart, her second solo album entitled “20TH Century Fox” followed in 1985 for the Omni label. She recorded the Butch Ingram penned “I Love You” 12” single for Butch’s Society Hill records in 1992. Sadly, Brandi Wells passed away in 2003 at the age of 47.

Toy Tonics Music Berlin presents "Para Mytho Disco". The 2nd "Kapote" album of label founder and creative director Mathias Modica.
Keyboarder, DJ, producer, music nerd, graphic designer, multi-instrumentalist, sub-culture impressario and artist (formerly known as Munk of Gomma records.)

Kapote & Toy Tonics
In the last years Kapote was in the spotlight mainly for building the Toy Tonics label with his friends. Developing a platform for new positive quality dance music with a human touch. Toy Tonics is the opposite of the dark, druggy Techno and Trance sounds of the last years.
The warm inclusive music of Toy Tonics represents a new vibe that a young generation of diverse, stylish and culturally intersted generation of dancers loves now. Kapote's Toy Tonics became the key label for that vibe. (In 2024 Toy Tonics made 150 Toy Tonics events in 18 countries. With more than 150.000 people dancing. 90 millions streams on their music.)
Toy Tonics is more than a music label: It's a audio - visual universe. A community, almost a movement.
Based on a new positive attitude and aesthetic diversity. Mixing musicianship with DJ culture, analogue music with electronic, ideas from the past with sounds from now. To create something new. Connecting dance music with graphic design, art and underground fashion.
Kapote and his gang release vinyl, posters, shirts, art fanzines and make exhibitions and partys.

Toy Tonics started in Berlin as a underground niche project. But now became the key label of the new house, wild style disco and organic dance music scene.
Probably one of Berlin's biggest electronic music phenomena along with Keinemusik and Live from Earth.

It went fast: 2020 Kapote's crew started to make small parties in Berlin's off spaces. The "Toy Tonics Jams". The parties became "talk of the town", and Berlin clubs like Griesmühle and Panorama Bar invited the crew. Then international clubs and festival called. Toy Tonics were invited to SONAR (playing the mainstage with Kaytranada and DJ Tennis), KALA festival, Montreux Jazz festival.
Now TT has a residency at Panorama Bar Berlin and sold out events in Europe leading clubs like Phonox in London, Rex Club in Paris, Tunnel in Milan.
Toy Tonics now is the reference brand of a new generation of music loving dancers. Similar to Gomma records, Kapote's former label (2003 - 2015) that was one of the key labels of the "indie dance" scene of the Y2K years (along with DFA and Output Records).

Kapote created a multi-cultural movement with graphic designers, photographers, illustrators from the Berlin scene.
They publish the Toy Tonics Pocket Poster magazine, posters and design shirts. They organize the Toy Tonics Pop Up Galleries mixing music and art. In underground venues in Berlin and in new gallery spaces and museums around Europe.
Toy Tonics has been invited by Palais de Tokio museum in Paris, Triennale Museum Berlin, Design week Milano to create events.
The new Kapote album
The 12 tracks have a very own style. Based on dance music, but going much further. "Para Mytho Disco' is a futuristic mix of sounds. It's far away from the dark monotone techno and trance music from Kapote's hometown Berlin. Instead, he creates warm friendly atmospheres full of sonic colours and little musical surprises.
Kapote's knowlege of music history and his backround as a jazz piano student and son of classic music composer is clearly inside this music. Before turning into a DJ and electronic music producer he has been playing in bands since he was 13 years old.
The album is full of emotional chord progressions played by Kapote on various keyboards. Sometimes reminding music from the past, without being retro at all. The basslines and melodies are inspired by jazz fusion from the 1970ies. And he programmed syncopated grooves that come from afro-american dance music. There are influences from Japanese electronic music (Yellow Magic Orchestra), from 1980s Synthwave and from 1990s electronica (like Squarepusher and Luke Vibert).

Kapote plays keys, bass, flutes and percussions, he plays synth solos and sings on a few tracks. The complexity of the arrangements makes this music never boring. Lot of melodies and solos that catch the listener. Colourful soundscapes that make you want to listen or dance to this album more, and discover details also after you heard it several times.

Kapote background

Before starting Toy Tonics, Kapote used to run a label called Gomma. He produced four albums under the name Munk and music for other artists.
He produced music with Peaches, Franz Ferdinand founder Nick McCarthy, with New York street art legend The Rammellzee, Italian actress Asia Argento, the first three albums of WhoMadeWho and worked with LCD Soundsystem (listen to "Kick out the chairs", the Munk song with James Murphy )
In those "Gomma days" Kapote aka Munk was also one of the main DJs for VICE magazine parties and made music for art projects and fashion brands (Margiela, Prada, Colette).
In 2015 he stopped Munk and Gomma and started Toy Tonics. He found young producers and helped to develop their sound (Coeo, Cody Currie, Gee Lane, Barbara Boeing, Sam Ruffillo). Later he founded the sublabel Kryptox to release music by Berlin based bands that make new forms of jazz or neo classical sounds.

Under the name Kapote Mathias didnt release much:
Only his Kapote debut album "What it is" (2019) and an EP called "Electric Slide" (2022) and a collabo EP with Italian producer Sam Ruffillo ("Robot Salsa").

An although his Munk and Kapote music was an underground phenomena his music has always been a favourite of many great people from the scene.
Supported by DJs like Harvey, Chromeo, Moodymann, Jennifer Cardini, Gerd Janson, MYD, Andrew Weatherall to Blessed Madonna, Justice and Laurent Garnier… to name just a few.

A valentine for black hearts! An electric array of magic sounds! The shock return of a missing legend! The surprise formation of HOUSE Of ALL by five former members of The Fall was bound to provide some pleasant surprises, not the least of which being the creation of an identity distinct from that of any specific Fall line-up, and here the band offer an steep evolution of sound of their two previous albums . . . darker, more elliptic and can we say it? A more mystical sum of talents than most groups ever manage. They've kept their open door policy to former members of The Fall and expanded it. Phil Lewis, who's stepped in live for Pete Greenway, makes his studio debut, and the long-lost Karl Burns has emerged from his mystery lair to add a third set of drums to the line-up . . . besting The Glitter Band by 50%! How this will work live has yet to be determined, but the band has already scheduled dates in Spring, 2025. House Of All Souls is somewhat more psychedelic than its predecessors, and despite seven players, each with his own particular style, the songs and production are shockingly cohesive. From the breakneck pace of first tune, Tempest And Storm to the superb album closer, Born At Dawn And Dead At Sunset, there's quite a lot to unpack - it's an album-lover's album, each track magnificent in its own way and impossible for us to pick a fave from the lot of 'em. Plenty has been written about The Fall, whose 50th birthday is just a few years off, but rare is the group with an equally perverse and persuasive influence in that period. When HOUSE Of ALL debuted, Martin Bramah remarked on it being "part of the Fall family continuum" - a matter of actual fact, given the pedigree of its members. With this, HOUSE Of ALL's third full-length album, it's proven fact that the bright lights of those multiple talents behind the band have yet to dim.

"Whistle from Above" is David Grubbs" first Drag City release in over a decade and his first-ever instrumental album for the label. The suspiciously youthful Grubbs is four decades into his career, with former bands including Gastr del Sol, Squirrel Bait, and Bastro, along with a wild ride of collaborators including f.e. Bitch Magnet, Codeine, The Red Krayola, Royal Trux, Dirty Three, Will Oldham, The Underflow and The Wingdale Community Singers. "Whistle from Above" is the first solo collection David has released since 2017"s Creep Mission. During the 2020 shutdown, David played what he precisely quantified as "a shit-ton of guitar," more than he could recall playing ever previously. Reinvigorated by this period of enforced woodshedding, he produced a series of new pieces, mostly for guitar, but also a piano composition and an exceptionally eerie bit of musique concrète. Meanwhile, David was reconnecting with the Gastr del Sol archive, as a new collection of old performances was being prepared from extensive archival material. The duo magic of that storied collaboration (released in 2024 as We Have Dozens of Titles) left David hungry to play in this format again - as he had recently with Loren Connors, Alan Courtis, Manuel Mota, and Liam Keenan. These duo experiences showed David the path forward to complete this new solo material. Thus he sought out collaborations with folks he"s called "some of the musicians whom I adore most on the planet" - Rodri Davies, Andrea Belfi, Nikos Veliotis, Nate Wooley, and Cleek Schrey - and their stunning contributions flesh out Grubbs" innate, deeply person brand of minimalism. "Whistle from Above" is a colourful, compulsive set of instrumental pieces in which David and his chosen collaborators interact amid the steady roll of an expansive landscape based in the hypnosis of David"s immediately recognizable guitar style.

Enxin/Onyx, the duo of Nicky Mao/Hiro Kone and Tot Onyx (formerly group A), joins Other People with their debut album "In Rupture," capturing the same mesmerizing energy for which their live sets have become known.

“In Rupture” is not painless but in rupture lies possibility. The elasticity of this time pitching us across unknown terrain, revealing new potentialities, eclipsing static being. Whether in breach, collision,shimmer or severance, Enxin/Onyx explores these as occasions for transformation. Peeling back the layers through discord and harmony, exciting the inversion of expectation, towing the listener to depths and back up again to illuminate the senses. At times metallic and feral, at others murky and sharp, each song serves as an offering for all that is in rupture; body, spirit, land, ecosystem.
The opening track “A Void” calls to mind some mutation in its mechanical ecstasy, but for what purpose remains unknown. Even in the near moments of stillness, “Needle Pierces the Threshold” breathes a forceful disquietude. Tommi’s vocals pulling the listener down into some subterranean
madness, to unravel upwards from all sides, flooding the once parched landscape. In “Embers Kissthe Eye”, all of time emerges in one moment, compelling the subject’s gaze towards a new horizon.
The album follows its subjects through exile, exhumation and discovery. Through this process plates shift, fissures are revealed and what once appeared to be indomitable absolutes crack, pointing towards their inevitable collapse. To be in rupture is regeneration, to be in rupture is to return.

Blue Valentine Vinyl. Sometime in 2005, a lone box of master tapes escaped an estate sale and made its way through a network of collectors, record dealers, and "junkers" into the hands of leading Ohio soul expert Dante Carfagna, who linked them to Columbus, Ohio's mysterious Prix label (See: Eccentric Soul: The Prix Label). A bit of research turned up Prix proprietor George Beter, who identified most of the unlabeled material. All it took was an endless series of phone calls and letters and two fields trips in Columbus. But one complete mystery wended its way onto our final Prix compilation. "You and Me," a simple but irrepressible demo credited only to Penny & the Quarters, was found tacked onto a mixed studio reel. Our survey of every willing lifer left on the Columbus soul scene, including retired DJs, producers, and important local artists, produced not so much as a glimmer of recognition at the name Penny & the Quarters. Though we loved the song from the first play, it may've ended up a bit buried on our original compilation, as #18 of 19 tracks.Four years later, Eccentric Soul: The Prix Label hadn't exactly become a huge seller, although listeners had repeatedly told us that the unfiltered studio demos that fill out the record's back half were true diamonds in the rough. But neither Penny nor her Quarters had appeared to claim credit for their efforts. Then, completely out of left field, we heard from respected screen actor and avowed Numero fan Ryan Gosling that Penny's piercing bit of stripped down doo-wop was being considered for inclusion in Derek Cianfrance's indie-weeper film Blue Valentine. What we didn't know was that "You and Me" had won a major role in what became an indie circuit hit, and that Penny & the Quarters would instantly assume the role of world's most famous unknown doo-wop group.Every week is a slow news week in Columbus, Ohio, and early January 2011 found the city recovering from the thrill of elevating Ted Williams_the formerly homeless guy with the awesome voice for radio_into a national news sensation. But both major daily newspapers in town, as well as the city's alternative weekly, also ran stories about how a lost and unknown Columbus soul group had become the musical centerpiece of a film already garnering Oscar buzz. That mainstream spotlight aimed at Blue Valentine and Penny & the Quarters did the trick: we finally made contact with the widow of Jay Robinson, lead Quarters' singer and songwriter. Robinson, it turned out, had also been the leader of Columbus doo-wop pioneers The Supremes (later known as "The Columbus Supremes," for reasons which should be obvious). Jay Robinson never did give up on the dream of writing a hit record; even so, the posthumous realization of his dream is cold comfort for his widow and daughter. With their blessings, we returned to those estate sale masters and pulled down another neglected track ("You Are Giving Me Some Other Love") from the still-unknown Penny and her now-partly-known Quarters. "You and Me" is a song that could not be suppressed: not when Prix failed to release it; not when Penny & the Quarters were forgotten; not when Numero stuck it at the bitter end of a much overlooked compilation. Its evolution from estate sale trash to silver-screen gold has finally returned it to big-hole 45, where it probably should have lived all along.

LP Crystal Clear incl. 24 page booklet
Swedish Melodic Death Metal All Star sensation THE HALO EFFECT (feat. Former & current members of IN FLAMES, DARK TRANQUILLITY & ENGEL) is back with their eagerly awaited second album. The follow-up to 2022’s „Days Of The Lost“ (30m+ Streams) bears all the trademarks of their heritage and the Gothenburg sound but also adds a modern twist. In early 2025, THE HALO EFFECT will embark on an extensive European headlining tour, being supported by fellow Swedes, PAIN!