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Legendary Detroit Techno collective, Scan 7's 'Burdens Down' release from 2017 was a true testament to their brilliant ability to merge the soulful house textures with the analogue mechanics. The addition of Maurice Jackson's outstanding vocal stylings topped off the original with a perfect human element. Following the global success of the original version, Elypsia Records has enlisted some of the scene's top tastemakers to deliver a remix package worthy of the original, featuring that same calculated combination of soul and steel.

Leaders of the Parisian underground, DJ Deep & Roman Poncet, provide the first remix which is all about building incredible tension. A tightly squeezed kick drum, short synth chops and cleverly placed vocal samples drive the groove. As the track grows, additional hats and synths arrive, leading up to a quick break before all the floor-rocking energy bursts free. Big!

Dutch Techno legend Orlando Voorn steps up next for his first of two remixes, this one leaning towards a very House-centric shuffle with warm, friendly key stabs and the full use of Maurice's vocals. A truly joyful work of dance music magic here, with a relentless rhythmic drive keeping the party happening at full force.

Underground Resistance's very own Mark Flash takes the remix responsibilities for the B1 with his gorgeous synth-saturated rework of the original. An energetic and stomping kick drum powers perfectly alongside future-facing melodies which shine brightly on top of the tune. This one is guaranteed to serve as an earworm for days after the party has ended.

Rounding out the EP is the 2nd remix from Orlando Voorn, this time peering into the underground with a stripped back jackin' track utilizing a looped key melody on top of carefully placed vocal samples and claps. Some unexpected synths appear at the second half of the tune, putting a bit of new-age funk into the party stomper.

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It’s taken Yotam Avni a little while to get to his debut album; almost a decade, really, since his debut 12”, “That’s What The World Needs”, on California’s Seasons Limited imprint. During that time, the Tel-Aviv based producer has refined his productions, tightening the groove and paring everything back to bare essentials; the power in an Avni cut is its combination of piston-pulse propulsion and a deep, but gently applied, musicality. This combination gives his techno productions added heft on the dance floor, but also a lyrical sensibility that places him squarely in a tradition of techno legends who somehow manage to make the four-to-the-floor a space of poetic intensity, of rigorous joy.

Avni’s been on Kompakt’s radar for a while, first appearing on the label last year, with his Speicher contribution, “Mañana Mañana”. (“Track For Agoria”, from that EP, also appeared on Total 19.) The connection immediately made sense – dance music that managed to feel both lush and streamlined across the same great gasp of late-night energy. But with Yotam Avni Was Here, he’s taken a huge leap. After a brief intro, Avni sets his stall with “Beyond The Dance”, which features slow-moving vocal melisma over sculptural, melting tonalities, a tintinnabulating, harpsichord-like two-note phrase pacing out the track. Then “It Was What It Was” comes into view, its strip-light textures suddenly placed into sharp relief by a muted trumpet figure that hangs in the air, melancholy and pensive.

It’s no surprise, at this point, to discover that Avni’s inspirations for Was Here took in the histories of both techno and jazz. “I wanted to try something more around Detroit Techno meets ECM,” he reflects, when explaining the motivating forces behind the album. “Carl Craig’s Just Another Day EP and Kenny Larkin’s Keys, Strings, Tambourines came out during my high school years and had huge impact on me.” Avni’s also appeared on Transmat compilations, and remixed artists like the Midwest’s Titonton Duvanté, and Orlando Voorn – the latter particularly important for the way he connected the Detroit and Amsterdam techno scenes – his career path is marked by ongoing connections, direct and indirect, to Detroit’s storied history.

“I always wanted to go back to those hi-tek soul roots on a full album,” he continues, and he’s definitely exploring that terrain here, with the sky-strafing brass on “Free Darius Now”, morse-code keys on “Vortex” and glitchy, microhouse tickles of “Know Hope” all contributing to an oblique narrative that seems to arc across Was Here – one fleshed out by guest musicians, who include dop and Gerog Levin on vocals, and trumpets by Greg Paulus (of Beirut and No Regular Play). The cover art makes the jazz connection explicit, riffing on the text-based, minimal design of The Modern Jazz Quartet’s 1955 album for Prestige, Concorde. But the way Avni has gathered around him both inspiring musicians and intriguing reference points makes me think of his broader career as well, the collectivism behind his AVADON nights in Tel-Aviv, his many and wide-ranging releases on labels like Innervisions, Hotflush and Stroboscopic Artefacts, and the openness of his productions, which seem to be all about the multiple, the possibilities of cross-pollination, of fusing this with that, of adding and subtracting, all under the pulsating thumbprint of techno.

Good things, after all, are worth waiting for.

Volker.live ’s debut and final release
“My Love Will Set You Free” Final release? We see the question mark popping up over your head. Well yes, these four tracks are a time capsule, a historic cache which takes you back to one hot summer of 2019. When this care-free boy band formed and made it their goal to climb up the world’s stages to play an all-hardware live set & have f.u.n. while doing so. This endeavor went swimmingly. Festival gigs were pocketed and crowds intrigued. The stand-out track of their gigs was always “My Love Will Set You Free”, an acid-house stomper with uplifting, yet melancholic vocals from their friend ÆN.
Friends and neighbors were quick to re-interpret the song and the idea of a record took shape.
Lehult’s Lucky Charmz propels the listener into the void by upping the acidity. Closing in on a playtime of 10 minutes, we’re readily giving up our sense for time and space. Whirring drum hits meet feedbacking tape delay while riding the rock solid bass line.
Erobique liked the song so much, he quickly drew up two versions of his own. His “Disko Mix” oozes that saccharine, danceable magic mélange of days past. Warm keys, hand claps, and Aen’s intimate voice are stirred into an exquisite cocktail. You know that Carsten Meyer would never forget the umbrella on top. He’ll keep the cherry though.
The “Black Velvet Mix” closes the curtains for a slow dance. This is personal, it’s just between you and the song. Sub rosa.
In the meantime, Volker.live decided to follow separate paths of their adventure, but everyone agreed to release these songs into the world. May they serve as a reminder of what can be created out of care-free energy that’s driven by a deep connection to music. Please check out their other musical undertakings as Echoel and Goodmemory.live .

“When I was asked to put my hands on the original tracks of Blancmange I was instantly excited. They were one of my favourite Bands when I grew up as a teenager in the 80’s. Listening to their music walking around with my Walkman back then was adventurous. Mainly because I was already in love with the aesthetics of synthesisers and drum machines. But also because it was unusual pop music with an extraordinary energy that made it in the charts. Remixing a favorite Band is challenging but I’ve tried to keep the free spirits and playfulness in my mix that makes Blancmange still so special after all these years” – Roman Flügel

Roman Flügel remixes the cult 1980s classic that is ‘Living On The Ceiling’, and the result is a killer, off-kilter slice of club-focussed machine funk that contains the same wonderfully bizarre cocktail of traits, that Blancmange always boasted in spades. Eerie and schizophrenic but also both bright and triumphant. Also features the original and sought after extended mix.

The first in a new series of ‘London Records Remixed’ releases on 12” and digital. Now at its new home as part of the Because Music Group the London Records catalogue is being revisited by pioneering, contemporary electronic producers.

‘Rock Sutra’ is the new space rock album from Sun Araw.
 ‘Roomboe’, the first track, illustrates this process.
Experience is elastic. Humans alive right now tend to think
there is some sort of ‘baseline’ experience of a thing, a
room, a person, a feeling, some version we all agree on.
This isn't true at all: experience is completely dependent
on the quality of attention of the experiencer. There is a
granularity to experience that, when tuned up, reveals
deeper and deeper space inside of things. When you zoom
in (by pure observation: by not-articulating, not-thinking),
you create ‘room’, you make space. Just like that. For
instance, ‘Roomboe’ has an extremely limited tonal
framework; about 9 notes for the main guitar melody. As
the guitar pushes against these melodic limitations with
continually renewed attention and energy, it begins to
create space around itself. And all of the sudden (at about
4:57), out of this constriction, space balloons up from
everywhere simultaneously. ‘Roomboe’ is a clue about how
to open a portal outwards into free space.
 ‘78 Sutra’ is about orbital motion. ‘Catalina’ is about taking
a walk. ‘Arrambe’ is about a peculiar feeling you can get
when you zoom in far enough. The music is offered in a
spirit of generosity and adventure; it doesn’t stay put and
it keeps zooming in to reveal more and more.
 The album was recorded live-to-midi with the band and
this is the first Sun Araw album recorded like that. That
band is Jon Leland on drums and percussion and Marc
Riordan on synthesizers and Cameron Stallones on
synthesizers and guitar and vocals.

It is truly a family affair over at 7 Days Entertainment. Butterbandz, the youngest son of 7 Days Entertainment label head Big Strick, gives us his debut EP titled Legacy. This freshman EP of the youngest of the Strickland clan is nothing short of what you would expect from a family member deeply rooted in dance music from Detroit. The first song off of the EP is a vocal track from BBZ with help from the artist Marc, who is a rising vocal talent from Detroit associated with the 7 Days imprint. If You Don’t Dance is slated to be an anthem among the scene for years to come. It evokes you to get out there and move your body. It brings the energy from start to finish with excited high hats, a grumpy bass and an admirable synth pattern. Things slow down for a more relaxed groove on Free Roaming, a laid back chiller with a smooth synth and a mellow bass of pure delight. Its reverbed synths take you on a never-ending journey through your own mind. Hellraiser is a straight high-octane pure adrenaline rush. It has the soul of true Detroit techno. The unforgiving drum and percussion pattern shines brightly over an acid bass line and catchy synth keys. The last song on the debut EP, Monkey See, closes the project out with a bang. An offset drum knocks on top of an offset synth and warm pianos. The flute is complementary and the percussion ties it all together nicely. Butterbandz shows unparalleled promise for more top-notch projects in the future

Afro futurist sensations Onipa unleash their debut album, combining Afro grooves, electronics and fierce energy for an effervescent celebration of cultural and musical encounters.ONIPA means ‘human’ in Akan, the ancient language of the Ashanti people of Ghana. It’s a message of connection through collaboration: from Ghana to London, our ancestors to our children, Onipa brings energy, groove, electronics, Afro-futurism, dance and fire! Born out of deep collaboration between long-time friends K.O.G (Kweku of Ghana of KOG and the Zongo Brigade) and Tom Excell (MD, guitarist and writer of acclaimed jazz/ soul afrobeat pioneers Nubiyan Twist), the group features KOG on vocals, balafon and percussion, Tom Excell on guitar, percussion and electronics, Dwayne Kilvington (Wonky Logic) on synths and MPC and Finn Booth (Nubiyan Twist) on drums.

The group have worked closely with Ghanaian star Wiyaala who features on three tracks, singing in the Sisaala language from the North of Ghana. The album also features collaborations with South African rapper Spoek Mathambo, Lesotho star Morena Leraba, Ghanaian percussion master Afla Sackey and Tanzanian sisters Pendo & Leah Zawose, each adding their own flavour to the project. “Through the musical prisms of London and Ghana our influences join together to create, a fundamental thread of traditional African rhythms, instrumentation and storytelling, interwoven with electronics, urban soundscapes and synth bass. We use technology, but it should never use us, our music is live and about deep human connection.” (Onipa)

Deliberately breaking all the rules Mr. Hornby once famously outlined regarding the creation of homemade (tape) compilations, Saroos’ members indeed had the term “mixtape” on their minds while working on their latest full-length – albeit in the hip-hop sense: a sonic snack box, interconnected shots from the hip, something that just came together and immediately felt right.

Whereas hip-hop folks nowadays often use the vacuous term “project” in order to steer clear of the ontological debate caused by the almost synonymous use of album/mixtape, Florian Zimmer, Christoph Brandner, and Max Punktezahl, otherwise busy with The Notwist, Driftmachine & Lali Puna, stick to the classics: their new 16-track project “OLU” (Off Label Use) is, officially, still an album. But it’s wild and vibrant like a mixtape, interwoven like its cover: a seamless burst of ideas, impulsively combined to form a split-screen snapshot of recent moments and momentums.

Re-appropriating the term “Off Label Use” – which actually means: using prescription drugs in ways that aren’t mentioned on the instruction leaflet – in their own “off-label” way, Saroos never sounded more loose-limbed and elastic. Whereas the trio’s earlier releases were rather conceptual and homogenous, “OLU” indeed has a more loose, spur-of-the-moment feel, a spontaneous force at its core. Checking the weighty sci-fi inspirations at the door, they use that Bomb Shelter-type of freedom to reinvent themselves at every turn, chasing sounds that happened to emerge in the group’s triangular energy field.

Kicking it off “with a killer, to grab attention” (Hornby/Cusack, after all), the massive reverb-stumblin’ adjustment between beats and bass of opening track “Quarantaine” cross-fades smoothly into “Humdrum Rolloff,” an early hint at the group’s off-label practices: the underwater creepers floating around here were really voices (mostly). From majestically built oriental sound-pieces (“Looney Suite Serenade”), synth-based “End House Mario” and a triptych of speaker-boxxxing gas lamp experimentations entitled “Cord Burn 1-3,” Saroos have rarely sounded this playful and unrestricted: there’s a new energy at work that welds all the different sonic playing fields together to create one continuous 40 minute mix.

For the B-side descent, “Tatsu Jam,” at less than 4 minutes still the longest cut, billows over the kind of sizzling hi-hats you’d expect to hear on real trap tapes from Hotlanta. A prelude to a bunch of quicker-paced instrumentals (“Scratch Pets”, “24h Love Gumbo”) and ambient sun showers, until the next “Plateau” (Mo’Wax vibes!) brings the beats to the fore once again (“Tomorrow’s Kudos”), and the ultimate “Whirligig” sounds like a mix of Oktoberfest 2020 and Johnston’s “Casper The Friendly Ghost” coming apart at the seams.
Whatever you wanna call it – album, LP, mixtape, project, who cares? –, it’s definitely a double A-side tour-de-force.

Third time is a charm they say. But if the first 2 times were already so memorable, what more can you ask for?
Nebraska comes in with a bang for his third release on Heist after ‘Soften the Wireless’ EP in 2016 and ‘Metaphor to the floor’ in 2017. It’s hard to believe it has been 3 years since his last appearance on Heist, but with ‘Y’miss me baby?’, Nebraska takes back center stage with another releasefull of disco flavored electronics. Italian disco man-of-the-moment Giovanni Damico comes along for the ride and delivers a stunning 80’s flavoredremix.
It’s not to say that Nebraska (Alistair Gibbs) has been sitting still since 2017. He’s launched his own label ‘Friends & Relations’ where he explores his cut-and-paste style even more with some seriously cool disco dubs and other sonic adventures. Furthermore, he made a guest appearance on Aaron Dae and JKriv’s Razor ‘n tape Reserve. Apart from his regular musical explorations, he has also published a book (Surprise party every week) where we get a glimpse of how Gibbs sees the world.
His view is one of humor and positivity and one of creating new meaning through rearranging context. This is certainly true for his music and this new EP on Heist. The title track ‘Y’miss me baby?’ oozes funk with a clever combination of samples from different contexts put together to create something altogether new, yet familiar. The track has a real 80’s disco vibe to it and the vocoder adds even more to the ‘Zapp & Roger’ flavor of things. It’s a laidback track that feels like it was recorded on a gloomy Sunday evening with no pressure on anything and just room for fun.
The vibe takes a complete left-hand turn with ‘Dip and Flip’, a high energy house track that rattles, loops and bleeps into a full-on disco frenzy.
The b-side kicks off with Italian disco wizard Giovanni Damico remixing the title track. He’s had a great run recently with releases on Lumberjacks in Hell and more recently on Star Creature, where he’s found a home to explore his own view on modern day boogie. His ‘jam’ remix flips the track into a freeform arrangement where guitars, disco claps, delays and retro synth licks all work together for a great taste of Italian boogie.
The EP finishes off in true Nebraska style, with yet another curveball. ‘Xia long bao’ sounds like a lost Nick Holder track from the 90’s with its loopy island style Rhodes and lazy chanting. The choice of samples along with the catchy groove makes this a signature Nebraska track and a quality closer for this single.
We are super happy to have Nebraska back on Heist and with this amazing EP, you are certainly going to create smiles on your dancefloor of choice.
Yours Sincerely,
Lars & Maarten

”Are you ready to take your turn now?” asks a mischievous voice at the beginning of DJ Marcelle’s new album. But by this point you don’t have a choice: you better buckle up for a joyride through the wild, unpredictable imagination of a true electronic music auteur. ‘Saturate The Market, Now!’ is stuffed with the kind of raw, rhythmic workouts and playful humour we’ve come to know and love from the long-serving Dutch artist. Let’s start with the music: Marcelle pinballs between pumping outsider house, brilliantly weird acid and musique concrète experiments where anything could happen at any given time. Then there are her famous track titles, which take another aim at nightclub patriarchy (‘Technicians And Their Light Effects’, the successor to last year's 'Technicians And Their Smoke Machines') at the same time as displaying a keen sense of satire (‘I Fell In My Own Cesspit!’) and revealing a difficult relationship with the sour, massive rock that for her is ‘German Bread’. With artwork featuring a collage of puppets found in her Amsterdam house and Marcelle’s own on-the-road photography, this is yet another album that sets her a mile apart from the paint-by-numbers dance music producers - or “accountants” as she’s witheringly described them.

Marcelle arrived via punk, post-punk, avant garde and dub and lives by the independent, forward-thinking spirit inherent in those scenes. A sense of freedom is imbued in her work, unsurprising given that this album was written in two weeks and was made entirely on her own collection of machines (save a few choice vocal samples). It’s Marcelle’s eighth vinyl-only release for Jahmoni Music from Munich and follows on from last year’s ‘One Place For The First Time’ which swiftly sold-out and is now onto a repress. The vinyl is released alongside a 10” featuring extended and dub versions of triumphant album-cut ‘Everything Not Yet’.

So are you sitting comfortably? Well Marcelle would prefer if you weren’t. Because this is music for misfits to move to. The very opposite of business techno. A missive from a cult DJ with an enviable record collection and a fearless artist who couldn’t give a flying fuck about dance music norms. Saturate the market with pure energy – let’s do this!Seb Wheeler, Mixmag

Award-winning bassist Daniel Casimir and vocalist Tess Hirst release their debut album via pioneering London-based record labe Jazz re:freshed. Following the success of Daniel Casimir's critically acclaimed debut EP 'Escapee' which featured Hirst on vocals and fellow rising stars on the scene Moses Boyd, Joe Armon-Jones and Shirley Tetteh, this album - 'These Days' is inspired by the duo's London surroundings, delivering thought-provoking lyricism, neo-soul and modern jazz

Casimir, a former Birmingham Conservatoire student, has collaborated with Julian Joseph, Jason Rebello, Benet McLean, Lonnie Liston Smith, Nathan Facey, Shane Forbes, Chihiro Yamanaka, Ashley Henry, David Lyttle, Nubya Garcia, The Tracey Quintet (Meantime Jubilation), Tom Harrison (Unfolding In Tempo), Jasmine Power (Stories And Rhymes), Camilla George and Art Blakey Jazz Messenger saxophonist, Jean Toussaint.

Named Young Jazz Musician of the Year by the Musicians' Company in 2016, Casimir has received plaudits for his arrangements and recital, while Hirst has made a name for herself with her vocals on the jazz circuit having moved between London, Leeds and LA to hone her craft. What sets Hirst apart as a musician is not only the originality of her music but her perspective of herself as an artist. She is an Ethnomusicology Graduate of SOAS and her writing style walks us through her upbringing in West London and down the halls of academia

Casimir and Hirst fuse traditional jazz sounds into beautiful compositions, narrating their way through a political and cultural landscape across these twelve tracks. The frenzied groove heavy'Security' addresses the need to trust one another and how we protect ourselves personally, while the rich atmospherics of 'Freedom' combined with Hirst's vocals, explore liberation and the rejection of duty - from a female perspective.

At the heart of 'These Days', Casimir plays with a passion and power that resonates throughout each composition. His knack for complex chord changes are highlighted in 'What Did I Do', bringing an energy and enthusiasm to the track while Hirst decries our changing capital. Elsewhere, references to John Agard's poem 'Listen Mr. Oxford Don' in 'The Magic Money Tree', explore the past and its relevance to now while a re-imagining of Charles Mingus' 'Fables Of Faubus' further ensures this theme remains central to the essence of the album.

Daniel Casimir and Tess Hirst have already received radio support from BBC Radio 3, BBC Music Introducing and Jazz FM, along with coverage in the London Evening Standard and Jazzwise Magazine

'Don't Let Them' interpolates elements of 'Fables Of Faubus' written by Charles Mingus (c) 1959. Published by Jazz Workshop Inc. Administered by BMG Rights Management (UK) Ltd. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Musique Pour La Danse invites you to rock your body and free your brain with the second and third volume of Break The Limits. Break The Limits are Bay B Kane and Mister E, two East London underground pioneers who released pivotal and visionary EPs between 1990 and 1991. Nearly 30 years later, it's still fresh.

DeForrest Brown Jr. is an outspoken theorist, journalist, curator, visual artist and musician. Raised in the deep South, DeForrest moved to New York a few years ago and has been shaking things up IRL and online ever since.

- He asks difficult questions that make us relook at how we think
about race, class, post-racial ideas, historical events and the social
structures in America.
- His work defies narrow bags and he’s truly a unique cultural polygot
comfortable booking an artist like Felicia Atkinson at Issue Project
Room or shaking up people on the street with his “Make Techno
Black Again” hat line.
- His project Speaker Music was inspired by Rhythmanalysis, a book
of essays by urbanist philosopher Henri Lefebvre as well as
considerations of momentum and the “chronopolitical” from British
cultural theorist Kodwo Eshun. Mobilizing freely improvised
electronic percussion and stereophonic audio recordings, Speaker
Music yearns to caress, engineer and sculpt sentiment into a multi-
textural rhythmic body, quivering moments into a collapsed
“nonpulsed time.”
- His debut for Planet Mu centers around weary sonic portraiture of
sonorous and cybernetic energy music – a music encoded with an
encrypted heat but made “with empathy and without excess.” His
“touching of frequencies” unveils a romantic abstraction of sonic
narratives that recalls previous innovations by musicians such as
Les McCann, Urban Tribe and James Stinson.

DeForrest Brown Jr. will be present at Unsound Festival in October at which he’ll be launching a new publication w/ Primary Information.
He will also present a special event at respected New York art gallery Artist Space on Friday December 13th at which he’ll be launching a book related to the album.

Additional dates will happen between October and next Spring - A Video will also be launched when the album is announced in early October (...).

The vitality you hear on Antique Blacks is a testament to the unique energy of the community around The Foxhole Cafe in Philadelphia, as Ra honed his unique brand of Afro-Futurism through the late 60';s and 70's. Cosmic theatre, spiritual chants, and experimental electronics make this record an essential document that was ahead of its time. Ancient to future! BIG TIP !

The 1970s saw change in Sun Ra's recorded output, and as far as we can tell, the content of his live performances. By the middle of the decade, Sun Ra's music no longer seemed comprehensible as part of the jazz New Thing – quirkier, more idiosyncratic elements were more to the fore.

At this time, 1974, every Sun Ra record still surprised, and seemed radically different from everything else he had released up to then. The musical universe proposed by free jazz had never circumscribed Sun Ra. He had been part of the movement, but was able to use the possibilities it suggested without being limited by its conventions.

The Antique Blacks illustrates this well. Recorded as a radio broadcast in Philadelphia, according to Dale Williams, it has a well defined but oddball structure. Sun Ra was a master architect, very concerned to use the unfolding of an album, a broadcast or a live performance to create a satisfying structure.

Song No 1 starts on an upbeat note, it's a lively, tonal introduction, featuring John Gilmre on tenor saxophone, Sun Ra on roksichord, Dale Williams, then aged 15, on guitar, and Akh Tal Ebah on trumpet.

Sun Ra's poetry is featured on There Is Change In The Air, a track which has on occasion been used for the album title: in its original incarnation as a Saturn LP, there was no dedicated sleeve artwork, and this record appeared under many names. Ra's poetry is allusive, elusive and paradoxical, and this was its first major appearance on a record. During instrumental passages, Dale Williams' guitar is heard, along with the saxophones of Marshall Allen and Danny Davis.

The Antique Blacks is a similar setting for a Sun Ra poem, which encompasses "spiritual men", and Lucifer as a dark angel. The Arkestra is heard in conducted improvisational ensembles, in between the sections of the poem.

This Song Is Dedicated To Nature's God has Arkestral vocals, with John Gilmore's voice in th foreground. Williams' guitar is once again prominent in the instrumental passages.

Sun Ra's poetic declamations provide the structire for The Ridiculous I and The Cosmos Me, which also has a fine unaccompanied tenor solo by John Gilmore, keyboard improvisations by Sun Ra, and closes with bass clarient from Eloe Omoe.

Sun Ra's keyboards are heard with minimal Arkestra support on Would I For All That Were – a fine synthesiser improvisation, with electric piano left hand accompaniment.

Tension is resolved by Space Is The Place, which rounds the album out in an upbeat mood, with Akh Tal Ebah, James Jacson and Sun Ra prominent among the vocalists. The closing section includes the chant Sun Ra And His Band From Outer Space, often used at the close of live performances. This isn't strictly live, though: in one line the vocal is played backwards on tape!

Kerrie makes her debut for DBA with four tracks devised originally for her high impact live sets. Other than a cut on highly regarded London label I Love Acid's 10th anniversary comp Kerrie is a relative newcomer but the ten years she has put in honing her style immediately shine through in her music. The EP ranges from Before Calm's bug-eyed, angular swagger replete with a hair raising distorted hook, to Orb Weaver's peak time techno roll via Acid8 Slider which is one of the most original 303 tracks to come out of the UK in some time and Curveball, a bolshy electro leaning stepper.

Her influences range from current UK artists like Blawan to Japanese artists such as NHK yx Koyxen & Hiroaki Iizuka and pioneers like X101, Joey Beltram and Surgeon. The running thread in her taste is a penchant for high energy, raw banging grooves with a machine funk flavour, and a love of analog sound both as a producer and DJ. No doubt this stems from her time spent working at legendary Manchester shop Eastern Bloc Records where she joined in 2013 and has worked ever since. Honing her skills through her DJ residency for EBloc Kerrie has gone on to become a regularly booked act for the UKs most prestigious underground club nights. As a live performer she has also toured the UK since 2017 with the live show being met with high acclaim. Her live set for Freerotation 2019 has been one of the festival's most talked about debuts.

Neurot Recordings are proud to reissue the landmark collaboration Neurosis & Jarboe, which was originally released in 2003. This latest version is fully remastered and with entirely new artwork from Aaron Turner.

Very limited silver metallic and black swirl 2LP - Non-Returnable

Steve Von Till explains the idea behind the remastering; "Bob Weston (Chicago Mastering Service, and member of Shellac) worked closely with Noah on making these new versions sound as good as the possibly can. Noah has the most trained critical ear for fidelity out of all of us being an engineer himself. We recorded this ourselves with consumer level Pro Tools back then, in order to be able to experiment at home in getting different sounds and writing spontaneously.  The technology has come a long way since then and we thought we could run it through better digital to analog conversion and trusted Bob Weston to be able to bring out the best in it....This new mastered version is a bit more open, with a better stereo image, and better final eq treatment."

He continues about the original artwork..."Aaron felt he could create something that would unify the energy of both Jarboe and Neurosis in an elegant manner.  We let him do his thing and I think it definitely adds to mystery of the album and sets it apart from the rest of our catalog."

When two independent and distinct spheres overlap, the resulting ellipse tends to emphasise the most striking and powerful characteristics of each body. Such is the case with this particular collaboration between heavy music pioneers Neurosis and the multi-faceted performer Jarboe (who performed in Swans and who has collaborated with an array of people from Blixa Bargeld, J.G. Thirlwell, Attila Csihar, Bill Laswell, Merzbow, Justin K. Broadrick, Helen Money, Father Murphy, the list goes on...) The musicians pull from one another some of the most harrowing and unusual sounds ever heard from either artist at the time - a sentiment which also rings true to some 15 years later.

Neurosis & Jarboe opens with a high-pitched whirring sound winding up as Jason Roeder's ominous tom-drum beat and Noah Landis' slinking synth line writhe in unison until Jarboe drops in, drawling in her characteristic, corrupted Southern belle voice, "I tell ya, if God wants to take me, He will." From there on in, the album is a series of abrupt shifts and cleverly juxtaposed themes that flows in a rhythm of its own. The sinister and ethereal sounds, vocal coos and electro-pulses of "His Last Words" seem like the perfect soundtrack to a David Lynch film. On "Erase," song parts are dissected and grafted one atop the other, continually building tension as Jarboe wails and yelps with Banshee fervor.

The project began with the artists working in seclusion, recording the elements that would best highlight their own characteristic integrity and personality, rather than either attempting to mimic one another's familiar elements. As recorded ideas were passed back and forth, the collaboration proved to bring out the most unhinged and urgent talents of all those involved.

Throughout the album, that signature "Neurosis note" - the sound of something simultaneously recoiling and erupting, the apocalyptic tone announcing the birth of a new world - reaches its apex and becomes evermore icy and eviscerating. Guitarists Steve Von Till and Scott Kelly trim their tones for cleaner, chorus-drenched effects layered between the thunderous distortion blasts of bassist Dave Edwardson. Likewise, Jarboe's operatic wail and other vocal contortions sound perfectly suited to the eruptive emotional fray of the music.

The collaboration is a deeply textured mosaic that is a culmination of merged aesthetics from two major influences on free-thinking sounds. It unlocked the hidden potential of electronic music as a new force in heavy rock. At a time when groups like Oneida, Wolf Eyes and Black Dice were beginning to experiment with technology in making mind-numbing leaden electro-drone freed from any essence of "dance music," Neurosis & Jarboe redefined all notions of their past - and outlined the course of heavy music to come. It's interesting to look back through the lens of this release, and think about these ideas and concepts in the present.

Neurosis & Jarboe remains the meeting point of all art that takes us beyond ourselves.

Picnic Record's founder Captn K is back and while he was gone he got a 909, "What are you gonna do with your 909 Captn K?" – "Try doing a bit of house I guess." So with this release the West Australian producer lends his unique style to a bit of 90s inspired house.

Sometimes you just gotta get it off your chest, and with the world the way it is there's a fair bit to get angry about. On R U COOL? Captn K shakes his fist at the sky and gets old school with his 909 and trusty bass synth to let it all out. A rant filled bad-ass-belter that cranks you up and kicks out the bad vibes. It's funny but relatable. It's simple but it's big! Included is a dub version for the club when you want the wriggle without the rant.

On the flip we got Tonite We Flying, a sexy piano driven builder that launches into a vocal filled disco/house track. Amazing husky vocals from Captn k's mate, Britt Bro tell the story of a night out and the desire to be free. Chugging piano n bass, juicy synth swells n sweeps and funky percussion get jiggy with their long time pals, 909 kicks n claps! Together it creates an uplifting energy filled anthem that makes you want to soar into the night!

Let you ears and sub be the judge, chances are you'll find a place for this one in the crate at your next party.

The Juan Maclean return to DFA with a compilation LP of 12-inch singles they’ve amassed over the past six years – re-edited, re-mastered, and ready for fans who may have missed the tracks the first time around. From the dub house sway of 2013’s “You Are My Destiny” to the high-energy stomp of this May’s “Zone Non Linear,” and featuring two never-before-released tracks, “Quiet Magician” and “Pressure Danger,” The Juan Maclean once again justify their longevity as a musical force that is more than capable of repurposing club tracks for every setting.

The Brighter The Light is put together in a way that lends itself to appreciating the sheer banging quality of the songs while simultaneously being able to dance to them in your living room. For example, take “Feel Like Movin,’” which Pitchfork called “gloriously beatific” and “pure DFA gold.” In the new remastered version, the fullness of the keys and the kicks takes over, unfurling across the listener. Deep house rhythms, sparkling synths and a certain spaciousness are what’s emphasized across the record. Gone is the slow-motion melancholy disco from their recent full-lengths – The Brighter The Light is all fierce enthusiasm and dance floor missives, perfect for those who aren’t quite ready to let go of summer.

Juan Maclean is a DJ and producer who has been a mainstay of the New York club scene, as well as maintaining a rigorous international touring schedule, since the release of his first records on DFA in 2002. Vocalist Nancy Whang is his longtime collaborator, best known as a founding member of LCD Soundsystem and a busy touring DJ. Together, the two artists have released an extensive catalogue of 12” singles and full-length albums for DFA, including 2014’s seminal In A Dream LP. The proper follow-up studio album will follow in 2020.

Italian duo Howl Ensemble team up with Turquoise Blue to release four infectious cuts entitled ‘Be Punk As Fuck’ EP.

Italy’s Howl Ensemble – made up of Giovanni Verrina and Germano Ventura enrich a deep, effervescent production style concentrated on the freedom of expression and creativity. In addition to releasing music on Tour Records, Nilla and Infuse, the pair established their Howl Records imprint that embodies a philosophy of releasing dancefloor focused music contributed to by the likes of Dana Ruh, Bassa Clan, 100 Hz and more. Howl Ensemble’s ‘Be Punk As Fuck’ EP sees the duo join the Turquoise Blue family following the likes of DJ Jes, Dan Curtin, Phonogenic and Ekkohaus to name a few.

‘In An Age Of Cruelty’ begins proceedings with alleviating melodies, low-slung bass chords and raw, shuffling percussion before ‘Kindness’ deploys dynamic synth sweeps, rolling low-frequencies and effervescent rhythms maintaining a consistent energy throughout.

On the flip, an organic drum sequence fused with eccentric modulations and undulating deepness takes the focus in ‘Is Punk As Fuck’ until ‘Be Punk As Funk’ rounds things off with broken-beat rhythms and irresistible vocal flutters floating over sparse pad work and funk-infused bass grooves

Don't let the date fool you, released back in 1983 this modal to slightly free jazz outfit from California takes you on a journey back to the late 60s and very early 70s, into the spiritual realms of greats like John Coltrane, Pharoah Sanders, John McLaughlin and Miles Davis among others. A soul jazz treasure from the LA scene of the early 80s - a fantastic record that I rank with the best Strata East sides of the time! The group's led by alto saxophonist Dadisi Komolafe, and features vibes by Ricky Kelly, piano by Eric Tillman, bass by Roberto Miranda, and drums by Sunship Theus - all working together in a style that's infused with soulful, post-Coltrane exploratory energy, never going too far outside, and always staying true to the rhythmic pulse at its core. Kelly's vibes are really great - sparkling underneath solos by Komolafe that remind me a lot of Gary Bartz's earliest work.

LillyGood Party! is back with their 5th release of their official and fully licenced Edits.We are very happy to bring some jazz and some south African vibes to our serie of our extended versions.Those tracks have already been tested and played in clubs at our parties or parties worldwide and those ones are sunny, groovy and club ready for the spring and summer vibes coming. Full of joy and energy, those two bulletsare just perfect for those who love music and mix various styles in their dj sets.On the A side Alex Edit is a long road to freedom like the title says. Co written by Airto and José Neto this longer version of this south African fast afro latin number is infectious with a deep slow beginning going into a fast and crazy ride mixing percussions, great bassline and live music to make people dance and sweat with a big smile on the face.On the B side the Attias brothers Edit with added overdubs sounds bigger and phatter than the original version to be played in a dj set. A sort of deep jazz slow house jam for early or late play . A jazz groove with percussions and great Byron Wallen musicians and singer re fixed for you . Don't sleep its limited and never came out this way J

Celebrating its 25th anniversary, Far Out Recordings proudly presents two albums of previously unheard Azymuth demo recordings from 1973-75

Since their debut album release in 1975, Azymuth have risen to rank alongside the world’s greatest jazz, funk and fusion artists. As young men in Rio de Janeiro, they stood out for both their exceptional talent as musicians, and their wild rock ‘n’ roll antics in the predominantly middle-class worlds of bossa nova and jazz. Their signature ‘Samba Doido’ (crazy samba) sound ruptured the tried and tested musical structures of the day, resulting in what can only be described as an electric, psychedelic, samba jazz-funk hybrid.

Before they became Azymuth, José Roberto Bertrami (keyboards), Ivan ‘Mamão’ Conti (drums), Alex Malheiros (bass) and Ariovaldo Contesini (percussion) played backing band to just about every major artist in Brazil. Bertrami was also contracted as an arranger and songwriter at some the biggest labels of the era: Polydor, Philips, Som Livre, and EMI being just a few. Azymuth’s name can be found on record sleeves by the likes of Jorge Ben, Elis Regina, Marcos Valle, Ana Mazzotti and countless others. But at the dawn of the seventies, fascinated by developments in improvisational music - from jazz in the US, to progressive rock in the UK and of course samba, bossa and tropicália on home turf - the energetic young group were inspired and ready to move forward. Any spare moment in which they weren’t in sessions and writing music for other artists, they would be carving out their own sound.

These previously unheard recordings took place between 1973-75 at Bertrami’s home studio in the Laranjeiras district of Rio de Janeiro. At the time of recording, there was nothing in Brazil, less the world that sounded anything like them, so perhaps it’s unsurprising that when Bertrami presented his demos to the record companies he had been working for, he was turned away, and told in effect that the music was ‘wrong’.

One of the demos ‘Manhã’ would be picked up by Som Livre and Azymuth released their seminal debut album in 1975. Throughout the late seventies and eighties, the group released a series of now classic albums for Milestone Records, before taking an indefinite hiatus to pursue their individual careers.

When English producers Joe Davis and Roc Hunter arrived in Brazil in 1994 to record the first Azymuth album in over a decade, Bertrami dug out the demos which had sat virtually untouched for over twenty years. Joe recalls how he was “blown away by the freedom and intensity of the music, as well as the genius of the ideas musically.” Beginning a long and fruitful relationship, ‘Prefacio’ would be the first track Azymuth recorded for Far Out Recordings and was released on the Carnival album (1996).
Along with ‘Manhã’ and ‘Prefacio’, only a handful of these demos were ever professionally recorded and released, making this the first opportunity to hear many of these early Azymuth compositions in their raw, original form.

On every track the frenetic energy in the studio is palpable, giving the recordings a beautifully personal feel and a sense of the phenomenally creative vision Bertrami, Malheiros and Conti were realising at the time. Fifty years on, Azymuth’s earliest recorded music retains an ineffable, futuristic quality, standing amongst their most captivating and moving work.

Credits:

Keyboards: José Roberto Bertrami (Mini Moog Series One, Arp Omni, Arp 2600, Arp Solina Strings, Fender Rhodes 88, Hammond B3 with box speaker, Clavinet with Wah Wah)
Drums: Ivan ‘Mamão’ Conti
Bass: Alex Malheiros
Percussion: Ariovaldo Contesini
Produced by Azymuth and Jose Roberto Bertrami
Recorded at José Roberto Bertrami’s home studio in Laranjeiras, Rio De Janeiro, Brazil between 1973–1975.
Issue and project co-ordinator: Joe Davis
Tape transfers by Roc Hunter (thanks to Simon Hitner)
Mastered by Daniel Maunick at the Sugar Shack, Lanark, Scotland
Mastered by Frank at Carvery Cuts
All tracks published by Far Out Music Publishing/Westbury Music LTD

Celebrating its 25th anniversary, Far Out Recordings proudly presents two albums of previously unheard Azymuth demo recordings from 1973-75

Since their debut album release in 1975, Azymuth have risen to rank alongside the world’s greatest jazz, funk and fusion artists. As young men in Rio de Janeiro, they stood out for both their exceptional talent as musicians, and their wild rock ‘n’ roll antics in the predominantly middle-class worlds of bossa nova and jazz. Their signature ‘Samba Doido’ (crazy samba) sound ruptured the tried and tested musical structures of the day, resulting in what can only be described as an electric, psychedelic, samba jazz-funk hybrid.

Before they became Azymuth, José Roberto Bertrami (keyboards), Ivan ‘Mamão’ Conti (drums), Alex Malheiros (bass) and Ariovaldo Contesini (percussion) played backing band to just about every major artist in Brazil. Bertrami was also contracted as an arranger and songwriter at some the biggest labels of the era: Polydor, Philips, Som Livre, and EMI being just a few. Azymuth’s name can be found on record sleeves by the likes of Jorge Ben, Elis Regina, Marcos Valle, Ana Mazzotti and countless others. But at the dawn of the seventies, fascinated by developments in improvisational music - from jazz in the US, to progressive rock in the UK and of course samba, bossa and tropicália on home turf - the energetic young group were inspired and ready to move forward. Any spare moment in which they weren’t in sessions and writing music for other artists, they would be carving out their own sound.

These previously unheard recordings took place between 1973-75 at Bertrami’s home studio in the Laranjeiras district of Rio de Janeiro. At the time of recording, there was nothing in Brazil, less the world that sounded anything like them, so perhaps it’s unsurprising that when Bertrami presented his demos to the record companies he had been working for, he was turned away, and told in effect that the music was ‘wrong’.

One of the demos ‘Manhã’ would be picked up by Som Livre and Azymuth released their seminal debut album in 1975. Throughout the late seventies and eighties, the group released a series of now classic albums for Milestone Records, before taking an indefinite hiatus to pursue their individual careers.

When English producers Joe Davis and Roc Hunter arrived in Brazil in 1994 to record the first Azymuth album in over a decade, Bertrami dug out the demos which had sat virtually untouched for over twenty years. Joe recalls how he was “blown away by the freedom and intensity of the music, as well as the genius of the ideas musically.” Beginning a long and fruitful relationship, ‘Prefacio’ would be the first track Azymuth recorded for Far Out Recordings and was released on the Carnival album (1996).
Along with ‘Manhã’ and ‘Prefacio’, only a handful of these demos were ever professionally recorded and released, making this the first opportunity to hear many of these early Azymuth compositions in their raw, original form.

On every track the frenetic energy in the studio is palpable, giving the recordings a beautifully personal feel and a sense of the phenomenally creative vision Bertrami, Malheiros and Conti were realising at the time. Fifty years on, Azymuth’s earliest recorded music retains an ineffable, futuristic quality, standing amongst their most captivating and moving work.

Credits:

Keyboards: José Roberto Bertrami (Mini Moog Series One, Arp Omni, Arp 2600, Arp Solina Strings, Fender Rhodes 88, Hammond B3 with box speaker, Clavinet with Wah Wah)
Drums: Ivan ‘Mamão’ Conti
Bass: Alex Malheiros
Percussion: Ariovaldo Contesini
Produced by Azymuth and Jose Roberto Bertrami
Recorded at José Roberto Bertrami’s home studio in Laranjeiras, Rio De Janeiro, Brazil between 1973–1975.
Issue and project co-ordinator: Joe Davis
Tape transfers by Roc Hunter (thanks to Simon Hitner)
Mastered by Daniel Maunick at the Sugar Shack, Lanark, Scotland
Mastered by Frank at Carvery Cuts
All tracks published by Far Out Music Publishing/Westbury Music LTD

Initially a duo formed in Berlin, FITH have since multiplied and expanded to become a revolving collective of musicians and poets spread out across a Paris/Manchester/Berlin axis. The project, currently comprised of members Dice Miller, Enir Da, Rachel Margetts, ChrIs Lmx, & Arnaud Mathé gesture towards notions of the literary salon, expanded cinema happenings, and the ancient traditions of Greek oratory and religious sermons. Driven by the spell of the spoken word, minimal percussive refrains, oneiric textures & deep melodic synths, FITH channel cinematic imagery, enigmatic narratives & spiritual frenzy.

Their self-titled debut 12' album was released via their collectively run imprint Wanda Portal in November 2016, a 'quietly alluring debut of post punk tempered avant-pop songs' (Boomkat) that laid out the project's foreboding mystique and intoxicating dream sequences with a lurking, devastating sense of purpose and (mis)direction. Other outings have included myriad solo collections of poetry, a two-track release of lurid dissonance and elegiac elevation (Signs / Cornerstone, December 2016) and an extraordinary reinterpretation of the soundtrack for cult film & iconic document of modern alienation Wanda (1971, dir. By Barbara Loden)

With Swamp, their sequel to this activity and their first appearance on Outer Reaches, FITH become a refined force, on a record where all their compelling pluralities and attributes are honed and augmented; everything dilated to delirium. The atmosphere here is one of veiled dread and psychic disturbance, a haunting and macabre psychedelia strewn with echo and dub FX, fragmentary fever dream poetics, elemental drum patterns and volatile synthetic interference. Although the collective conserve the raw crux of their earlier material their execution is, in this special instance, heightened by an intent to broaden and prolong their unique strain of intensity.

Emphatically sinister openers like Forest and Pound present sidereal sequences before building to barrelling, corrosively processed percussion, paroxysmal free jazz and a baleful, concrète-inflected score of electronics, while Swamp introduces phasing currents and a vocal evocative of a chorale from some forgotten giallo film. Elsewhere l'au delà (the beyond) presents a stunning, sombre passage to another state entirely, like some desolate new inflection on Coil's Going Up, before Bialystok shifts into a finale of transportive and meditative evaporation. Together these tracks make for an incredibly immersive and congruous conception; an utterly complete and mesmerising document.

In Swamp's various dimensions perhaps there's comparisons to be drawn with the ritualistic krautrock of Conny Plank and Holger Czukay's Les Vampyrettes, with the hallucinatory, tribal rhythm cycles of Shackleton & Anika's Behind The Glass collaboration, with the primeval drone of Jeremie Sauvage, Mathieu Tilly and Yann Gourdon's France project, with the echoic, disquieting chamber intimacies of Tuxedomoon's Pink Narcissus material and with Lucrecia Dalt's eerie free verse abstractions. But really, we've not heard anything like this before.

Discussing their own inspirations and touchstones the collective cites Franz Kafka, Dario Argento, Lucrecia Martel's La Ciénaga (The Swamp - the film the record is named after) and Yiddish ghost theatre as figures, works and artforms that were prominently drawn upon during the making of Swamp. Yet whilst their imprints could be traced by some, they resemble more of a covert presence within a nuanced whole rather than obvious aspects which moor this record to any familiar setting.

Instead, the acutely unsettling yet poignant spoken word of Miller and the mercurial nocturnes and visitations produced by Margetts, Lmx, Mathé and Da make for a record of strange, novel and striking energies. In revealing the remarkable location and period in which Swamp was recorded Margetts and Miller give a vivid indication as to how these energies are so potently invoked:

'The record was mostly recorded in a caretaker's wing of a 17th century castle in Normandy. It was early March 2018, and our first encounter with the Spring. We had no idea how everything would unfold. There was a lot of tension. Some of us felt compelled to get out the attic room where we had set up our makeshift recording studio and just walk and walk down the vast flat meadows and explore the relics of the wartime barracks, others wanted to keep recording. The outside was serene and inviting, and even though we had been cooped up indoors recording for long stretches of time, we could see from the corner of our eyes, the branches of the trees quivering; an impersonal energy blew through us and then things just happened.'

London's elusive Lukid has never been one for convention. In the few short years between 2007-2012, he struck out on a seemingly effortlessly impeccable run of releases on fellow iconoclast Darren 'Actress' Cunningham's mighty Werkdiscs imprint, as well as his own label Glum. Those albums and EPs flaunted genre distinctions and embraced a freewheeling approach to melody, rhythm and atmosphere that felt at once exotically psychotropic and yet grounded in a resolutely english eccentricity. Thus, they feel like especially-prescient recent classics that continue to find new fans.

In the intervening years, Lukid's energy has been poured into his stunning monthly transmissions on NTS while his output has been sparse aside from a pair of mindbending EPs via Liberation Technologies and Glum, respectively. Those radio sets serve as a telling blueprint for his contribution to the ongoing Arcola project. From low slung Memphis rap mixtape cuts to clattering industrial cassette rarities, turbulent grime and outsider synth hallucinations there is a warped palette that comes vibrantly alive across the four included tracks here. The stormy bump and spectral melancholy of 'The Drip' and 'Clappers' seems to wed them together as thematic bedfellows across both sides of the EP while 'Head Shrinker' tries to squeeze an overcast psych-pop opus out of a rack of malfunctioning hardware. Spit out the other side of this ride you exit to the chopped-and-screwed goth grime of 'Conked Out', having had your brain smeared with the uniquely viscous ectoplasm that only Lukid can excrete. Perfectly slimy.

Warehouse Find!

Danish producer Paxton Fettel joins Delusions for his debut EP for the label entitled Night Waves. Despite his youth, he has notched up an enviable catalogue of original, eclectic releases including two LP's for Greta Cottage Workshop as well as EP's for Plumage, Kolour LTD and Apersonal. Paxton's unique sound and audiophile approach to production has led to remixes for Uffe on Tartelet, Chocky on Secret Reels and most recently Sunrom on edgling vinyl-only label The Bricks.

For his Night Waves EP we get a snapshot of the mans diversity across three original tracks. The opener sees Paxton in his most raw, jacking, dance oor focussed mood to date and the result is a high energy house track which punches hard on a big system. Featuring his own bass playing, snipped and squeezed through the sonic mangle, Night Waves steams along with big bold pianos, swinging hats and just the right amount of oating synths. Simple elements which combine to be so much more than the sum of its parts and one of those stand-out cuts that will be stuck in your head long after you've left the danceoor.

Flipping over we have Paxton going full-on jazz mode in Pacica 399 To Freedom. A track which once again has his beloved Sandberg California live bass part pushed to the fore, pianos, strings and synths building around the driving disco groove. Feel-good sunshine vibes oozing from the speakers as little melodies dance around the sizzling hi hats and encompassing pulse of the kick drum.

Finally we have a deeper note to close on with It's Clear. A repeating vocal hook runs throughout the intro while intricate drum programming gives a nod to the sounds of broken beat and live jazz sensibilities. The end result is a warm, loose and dubby jam which completes the package in ne style and leaves us looking forward to hearing more from this talented young producer from Copenhagen.

Fix Me is a techno symphonic soundtrack of the collaboration between the choreographer Alban Richard and Arnaud Rebotini, dandy of the French electro and César 2018 of the best musical composition for the film 120 beats per minute.

Interested by the sound energy, Alban Richard conceives a piece that draws its power in fervor. Eloquent bodies, sermons and slogans, this choreographic, musical and plastic montage is exhilarating. The four performers translate their actions into words: American evangelical sermons, political speeches and feminist hip-hop songs. The light worked on a vibratory mode bathes interpreters and spectators in the same hypnotic halo.

Driven by an incessant flow, music and dance interfere each in the sphere of the other and compete with energy to monopolize the eyes and listen to the audience.

Since Danielle Mana's 2017 debut EP for Hyperdub, 'Creature', which was a taut, evocative suite of beatless, almost neo-classical electronics, we now find his music has caught an alien virus and started hallucinating. On 'Seven Steps Behind', the borders between reality and the weird have collapsed on each other, and with each listen through its zigzagging course, you're rewarded by its strange twists and turns. 'Seven Steps Behind' is an electronic album that doesn't always sound electronic; a great deal of the record has been created to sound like prepared pianos, harpsichords, cellos and flutes. At other times, sampled acoustic instruments and specially recorded sessions have been processed through software and careful editing. It's this sophisticated layering of contrasting versions of the same sources that help give this record its uncanny balance. The album also plays with your sense of time in its mostly drum-free hall of mirrors, pulling from minimalism, chamber music, dark jazz, and synthesiser experiments. Mana's singing voice also makes it's debut here, albeit adorned by abrasive FXs. His lyrics are encrypted in noise, in fitting with the music's chimeric character, casting images for the listener to decipher. His heavily manipulated voice enters on second track 'Myopia For The Future', sounding something like a singing motorbike pitched over bouncing ostinatos, or on 'No Body's inhuman, word-less range, where it's impossible to tell where the human finishes and the machine starts. Or in the case of 'Leverage For Survival' it's animal and machine. Here, as with the album's eponymous final track, a sensory assault subsides to reveal a heart-wrenching melancholy that anchors the record. Listening to 'Seven Steps Behind' is like stepping into a dream, with all the curious emotions and buried meaning that involves. Yet for all its restless, shifting energy it manages to hold both dissonance and melody in sweet proportion.

Right here, right now ADF are the most important band in Britain. NME 1997
Rafis Revenge originally peaked at number 20 on the UK Albums Chart and was shortlisted for the 1998 Mercury Music Prize, with Bobby Gillespie hailing them at the time as the best live act in Britain. This 21 year anniversary reissue includes a limited edition, coloured 2xLP plus expanded digital & CD editions with bonus tracks selected by Adrian Sherwood. To celebrate the release the band are playing at Rich Mix, London on 28th March.
By the time they recorded Rafis Revenge in 1998, Asian Dub Foundation were primed to explode. Having initially emerged from East Londons grassroots Community Music project as a largely studio-based collective, the band had galvanised themselves into a riotously exciting touring machine by the late Nineties. Their extraordinary live shows around this period were electrifying to witness, kinetic and dynamic, incendiary and euphoric, confrontational yet celebratory. For sheer roof-raising energy, they were unrivalled. ADF have evolved enormously over the last two decades, of course, but their breakthrough album remains a fascinating chapter in the real, complex, unwritten history of Britpop. Expanded and enlarged for this anniversary edition, these multi-layered musical treasures still dazzle and delight with their grandiose ambition and riotous energ

Third LP of Cabaret Contemporain, French band (featuring Fabrizio Rat on keys) who use acoustic instruments (piano, guitar, bass, drums, contrabass) to produce a « hand-crafted » club music infused with techno. Inspired by Jeff Mills, Robert Hood or Drexciya, the five members already had a career on classical scene; their idea is not to replay classical techno tunes but to create a new path for the electronic music. 2 tracks featuring with the label boss, Arnaud Rebotini.

« Ballaro », which opens Cabaret Contemporain's third album, begins with light percussions, which seem to turn on themselves, while being conveyed by reverberations close to dub. After a few minutes of convolutions, the piece gets out of hand, transporting the listener into a rich form of pulsating trance, irrigated by a soaring melody and punctuated by persistent piano tones. « La selva »; more subdued, has the same energy, the track ending in an even more powerful way, a kind of paroxysm.

Finally, the strangest and most minimal « Cactus », features a singular groove, which evokes the most brutal house from Chicago, or the sometimes obsessive techno from Detroit. Just like other tracks such as « Transistor » or « TGV », fuelled by sweat and trance, Séquence Collective bears all the intensity of a techno cut for clubs' dancefloors. The only difference being that their music is not played with synths, drum machines or software, but with acoustic instruments. Dual curriculum The band is composed of five musicians and a sound engineer: Fabrizio Rat on piano, Giani Caserotto on guitar, Julien Loutelier on drums, Ronan Courty and Simon Drappier on double bass and of course Pierre Favrez on console. They are all in their thirties and met at the prestigious Paris Conservatoire in the late 2000s. However, all the musicians in the band have a double curriculum and navigate freely between the institutional realm and the underground or pop music scenes. Through classical or contemporary music, jazz and improvisation, rock and experimentation, they share a common passion for the original and futuristic techno of the 1990s, that of Jeff Mills, Robert Hood or Drexciya, which they have decided to reinvent and further in their own way. Not as a simple stylistic exercise practiced by virtuoso musicians, but rather as a new path for modern music, and for their generation. « The original idea » they say, « was to make club music by hand, like craftsmen. Like in the early days of jazz, our band managed to transform itself into a kind of dancing machine. Our music is therefore functional because it is danceable, but also mental and abstract, while offering several layers of listening. You can dance and play, have a purely physical and sensory connection to the music. But you can also immerse yourself in its listening, perceive refined harmonies or more complex rhythmic superpositions »

If the tones of Cabaret Contemporain are truly unique it is because each member of the band has developed a very personal approach through the use ''prepared'' instruments. The strings of their piano, guitar or double bass may recall strange machines with literally incredible sounds, obtained using objects such as chopsticks, clothes pegs, foil, hangers, a tiny pie mould or many other utensils from a DIY store. A collective energy

Cabaret Contemporain is first and foremost a live band that has been performing in venues and festivals since its inception in 2012 (Nuits Sonores, Siestes Electroniques, L'Aéronef, Le Trabendo, Philharmonie de Paris, Gaîté Lyrique, Rewire, Dancity, Barcelona Accio Musical...), both at traditional jazz and contemporary music venues, and more often at electro music hubs. When facing the audience, the band, which plays each of its sets in one go, without a break, shows an intense physical presence, which competes with the musical power of DJs who share the stage with them. Their performance, full of tension and repetition, which requires maximum concentration and a state close to trance from the musicians, is sometimes, according to them, « a mental journey and a mystic experience ». A dimension that brings to mind the historical techno culture and its dancers who, communicating on the dancefloor, were carried until the early hours of the morning by the power of the beat. An album inspired by the stage Since their beginnings, their compositions on record have drawn their energy directly from the practice of their concerts, whether referring to Terry Riley (2014) or Moondog (2015), an EP and an album dedicated to the repertoire of the two American artists, the original compositions of Cabaret Contemporain (2016) and Satellite EP (2017), as well as this new album. Séquence collective can be listened to as a condensed transcription of their inventions and their live experiments. The tracks, more than half of which were improvised during sessions held in the former Vogue studios near Paris, were recorded in live conditions, « like an old school rock band » they say. As usual, they invited a new musician to join them in the studio. After collaborating with Étienne Jaumet or Château-Flight, Arnaud Rebotini, César winner for best film music, added a welcome synth touch on two tracks (Pro- One, Prophet 600), which boosted the group's formidable collective energy. The album ends with « October Glide », again performed with Rebotini, a lyrical and lively track, built on a powerful and slow progression of timbres and percussions, which would ideally find its place at the core of a techno party « peak time »

You might know Peter Matson as the founder, frontman, and guitarist of NYC-based breakout band Underground System, who recently released a debut album of otherworldly global-dance anthems (on Soul Clap's self titled imprint) and have been touring their live show at venues around the US. Matson's roots, while nestled in worldly live sounds, also firmly grip deeper dance music styles, though they manage to still pack a refreshingly eclectic energy.

His debut EP 'Short Trips' for Brooklyn's Bastard Jazz connects the dots between his time moving bodies in the club as a DJ, as well as in his group as a guitarist and producer, though this record is better suited for a woozy club floor. "Roma Norte" kicks off the wax with its soulful cocktail of latin-house styles and hypnotic basslines that would elevate the opening hours of any club night. Deep house legend and Freerange Records boss Jimpster provides an ethereal, creative remix that delves into afro-house territory. "3AM to Sete" is a warm and bubbly deep house tune that sounds like something you might hear late-night in a South London nightclub—it's all warm bass vibrations and subtle synth explorations. Matson's seasoned instrumental skills shine on "126," another breezy synth jam with just enough punch to make you move, eyes closed, of course. 'Short Trips' sounds like the work of someone not interested in where one scene ends and the other begins, but instead, where they connect.

The name Hugo Mari might not ring a bell just yet, but we've got a feeling this is about to change real soon. He's released a handful of EP's under his former alias Books on Omena and XVI including his own edit series on the latter label (check out his killer track 'in the groove or his jazzy deep house collaboration with Zodiac called 'Feel it in my Bones'). Considering he's also remixed well known artists like afrobeat legend Dele Sosimi and grime master Trim, you might share our view of this amazingly talented and versatile producer. His 'Change ur ways' EP for Heist is soulful, jazzy, deep and energetic with three varied originals and a classic soulful house remix by man of the moment, NDATL label head Kai Alcé.

'Get Loose' features the silky-smooth vocals of Zodiac, some lovely solo work on the Rhodes and a 'free jazz' vibe on the horns. There's a constant funk bassline looping throughout the track to keep the energy going while the loose arrangement as well as the drum programming give the track that care-free feeling of a never-ending live jam. With that, 'Get Loose' is a great club track that crosses the boundaries between funk, jazz and house.

The title track still has that jazzy feeling but moves towards a quirkier territory with some 'Frits Wentink' style harmonization, detuned piano's and loosely chopped samples. There's a definite gospel feel to the track, thanks to the choice in vocal chops, which is complemented perfectly by a filtered disco bassline. The percussion layer and rhythmic elements are full of energy without ever crossing the line where of subtlety that makes this track so catchy.

On the flip, there's 'Feel ur senses', the most straightforward deep house track of the release, that gets its mood from an ongoing tremolo on the Rhodes pads. Space bleeps, bells, a hidden arp and 'reverbed-out' hits give the track an almost balaeric sound that will certainly put a smile on your face.

The B side is complemented with a vocal and instrumental remix of 'Get Loose' by Kai Alcé, who has been throwing out one killer tune after the other, remixing Volcov's Isoul8 project (one of our favorites of the year), as well as kicking out releases on his own NDATL label. Kai goes for a full-on soulful house vibe, giving his own chord progression center stage along with a set of rimshots. He chooses to leave the horns out, and instead work the vocal, Rhodes, and cowbells from the original to great effect, adding a little solo work of his own on a bell-like piano where he freestyles happily throughout the track and copies the vocal for added harmonies.
The instrumental version is perfect for those moments where you're done with all the vocals and just want a tight soulful groove.

We couldn't be happier with this release so play it loud and get loose!

Yours Sincerely,

Maarten & Lars

Bastard Jazz is proud to present the next installment of our long running Tempo Dreams compilation series. As with previous volumes of the compilation, we've tapped an established artist that we're big fans of to shine a light on their personal favorite producers, and compile an album up of all unreleased music from emerging & underrated young talent. And with Volume 5, we're happy to welcome in the Los Angeles based but globetrotting selection of Free The Robots.

Rooted in Santa Ana, CA, Chris Alfaro aka Free the Robots has spent over a decade taking his craft to audiences around the globe. Known as one of the pioneering artists to come out of LA's infamous beat movement, the energy and technical skill behind his live performances have landed him among the greats, sharing stages with Dj Shadow, Prefuse 73, Flying Lotus, to Afrika Bambaataa. Crafting stories to tell with his ever-evolving solo project Free the Robots, he has always had the ability to jump in and out of other worlds inspiring a unique signature sound that hints at jazz, psych, electronic, and hip hop, while remaining un-genre-fiable.

Staying almost permanently on the road, Chris has come across an array of artists and scenes around the world. Different tours and temporary living situations have landed him in the middle of both the DIY underground and more mainstream clubs and stages. Some artists he's connected with have either kept it proudly local or breached international borders. Underrated, unknown, or already on the brink; these are just a few of the people that have crossed paths with Free The Robots. He's chosen these songs as a representation of some of the vibes that inspire his music: Jazz, Psychedelia, Dirtwave, Beats, and a little bit of Future Funk make up Volume 5 of his Tempo Dreams series.

As with all previous volumes, the compiler has produced a track exclusively for the album, which Chris delivers in the bass heavy, South East Asian vibes of "Nasi Goreng" (also available on a limited edition 7" with another unreleased FTR track). Other producers included on the album include Mophono, Never Ending Echo, Kuromoji, RSI-MSK, The Breathing Effect, Cazal Organism, Lefto, Chubby Boss, Caliph8, TITLE, Nois IV, The Heavy Twelves, Mu. and Markey Funk.

Cosmin TRG is back on his white label operation, Sportiv. Brixtonstrasse explores an imaginary buffer zone between the urban angst of London's pirate transmissions and the warehouse logic of Berlin's post-Iron Curtain freedom and energy explosion. In line with the label's semiotics, Gloria is named after the rather unsuccessful 3rd League football club from Cosmin's home town. It's a high octane tribal workout with fuzzy chords, in the vein of 90s luminaries like Sterac, bringing back hints of the era's unbridled energy and enthusiasm.

Since 2008 Düsseldorf based producer and live wizard Stefan Schwander deeply concentrates on his always evolving electronic venture named Harmonious Thelonious. It besprinkles the world with fractional musical structures in the spirits of American minimal music, in order to immingle them with African rhythm patterns. Exceptional hypnotic opiates, enlarged with twisted harmonies and tricky rhythm archetypes. All heavy danceable!

After five magnetic albums for labels like Emotional Response and his old home base Italic as well as a highly acclaimed string of EPs for in-demand platforms like Asafa, Diskant, Disk, Kontra-Muzik, Meakusma, The Trilogy Tapes or Versatile Records, he now produced a heavy arresting 'Petrolia' LP for Marmo Music - a label that is not new to Harmonious Thelonious. Already on the label's second release Tru West: 'The DOWC part 2' his 'Sunset Liturgy' fingerprints are audible with a moving remix. Now he delivers six epic tunes that only partly dance the familiar Harmonious Thelonious dance. There are deeply traces from Africa and Arabia. There is the polyrhythmic witchery that makes his music special. But in contrast his new tunes are more mental then his former ones. They have a menacing industrial feel but yet continue to be enlarged with the enchanting spirits of the land of the Sahara. Furthermore, there is a slight manic touch arising from nervous electronic and foremost organic melodies. The live played jittery is coming from the Berlin based experimental musician Ghazi Barakat, also known under monikers like Pharoah Chromium or Crème de Hassan for mind shredding ambient, drone, experimental, noise, industrial, free jazz and free improvisation music from beyond. For Harmonious Thelonious Barakat, who also produced together with Marmo Music artist Günther Schickert the collaboration album 'OXTLR' in 2014, tuned his wind instruments Rauschpfeife and Kangling elflock-stricken the Master Musicians of Jajouka way. And instead of giving them a prominent lead position, Schwander deeply implements his tones into his propulsive creations to evoke a modern rhythmic meltdown of Occident versus Orient spheres that exhale a deeply absorbing soul.

A record, who's psychedelic energy fits perfect into the Marmo Music cosmos - a world where the progressiveness of the 70ties continues to live in the current to disband all white bread musical norms for the energy of music without classes. Dancers of the world, unite!

Re-mastering by: Ray Staff at Air Mastering, Lyndhurst Hall, London

The remarkable Music, Inc. Big Band remains the apotheosis of trumpeter Charles Tolliver's singular creative vision. Rarely if ever has a big band exhibited so much freedom or finesse, while at the same time never overwhelming the virtuoso soloists on whom the performances pivot. Built around the core of Tolliver, pianist Stanley Cowell, bassist Cecil McBee, and drummer Jimmy Hopps, the music boasts the kind of give-and-take born equally of talent and telepathy -- each player seems to communicate with his colleagues on a higher plane, delivering performances to rival any in their careers. Tolliver in particular plays like a man possessed, summoning an energy and clarity that slice through the big, bold arrangements like the proverbial hot knife through butter.

Pyramids. Jagged Teeth Pushing Through Immaculate Skies. The Ever-changing Light. The Expansive Sense Of Freedom. The Wide Open Spaces. The Textured Landscape Seen From Above. Mountains. Watchful And Immobile For Thousands Of Years, Weathering Seasons, Transcending Change.
It's December 2016. I've Left The London Madness To Hit The Reset Button And Compose New Music In A Tiny Village In The Swiss Alps. I'm Over 10,000 Feet High, It's Minus 15 Degrees And The Snow Is Scintillating Under A Rich Blue Sky. I Turn Around And Suddenly This Gigantic Pyramid-shaped Peak Is Towering Over Me, Staring Me In The Face. Mind Blown. Senses Overwhelmed. Perspective. Lightbulb Moment. I Have My Album Concept.
I Wanted To Put Into Sound My Cathartic Experiences Of The Mountains. Every Track Title Was Chosen Before Composing. The Title Would Be A Catalyst For Visual Memories, Narrative And Overall Vibes. I Continued Developing The Tracks On Occasional Trips To Switzerland, But Mainly Back In The Gritty Habitat Of London's Hackney Wick. The Urban-nature Contrast Had An Impact On The Music Too.
I Use A Lot Of Found Sound, Stuff I Have Collected Over The Years, And A Lot Of Resampled Guitar Sounds And Textures. I Love Imperfections In Sound. Detuned Synths. Distortions And Glitches. Rhythmic Flutters And Percussive Frenzy. 'manual' Cut-ups. I Love Moving To House And Disco And Getting Lost In The More Melodic Side Of Techno. I Love Polyrhythms And Melodic Counterpoints. I Love The Energy And Rawness Of A Live Rock Band. I Channel All This To Create My Own Sonic Palette.

Artwork By Jimmy Turrell, Graphic Artist And Video Director Who Combines A Love Of Handmade Collage, Drawing, Screen Printing And Painting Alongside Digital Techniques. He Has Worked For Universal Music, Nike, Lexus, Levis, Mtv, The New Yorker, Intro, Capitol Records, The New York Times, Green Peace, Beck, The Prodigy/xl Recordings, Channel 4, The Guardian, Gq, The Times, La Times, Newsweek, Getty Images, Adidas, Sony Music, New York Magazine, Wired, Glastonbury Festival, And Vanity Fair Amongst Others.

The Debut Album 'pyramids' Comes Out Worldwide On Limited Double, Green Vinyl (including Download Code).

Svengalisghost captured here in his most true form, the live setting. This recording comes direct from the board during his performance on French television in 2015 and harnesses the maniacal energy of his live set in perfect form. What may be the Chicago born artist's darkest and most plodding recording to date, this is the definintion of deconstructed death-industrial, foward thinking and freeform yet totally focused and razor sharp, plodding drums over open wire electronics and zodiac killer vocals hitting you from all angles. This is sound of evil personified. Limited copies available worldwide.

Boredom, anxiety, pain killers and frustration make a heady mix for both reflection and action. For three weeks I stared out of the window of the tower block onto the tall brick towers of the old asylum chimneys. The past was a strange land suddenly out of reach, the present confusing and claustrophobic, the future something I could only visualise and idolise.

From the balmy Autumn day of my release a light was switched on, buzzing urgently like a neon street light on my path. Life took on new vigour and meaning. Pleasures starkly illuminated, annoyances inconsequential. Old work was re-examined and appreciated. Machines were treasured and connected. My basement filled with ever greater warmth and excitement.

The toy towns of our inner minds are constructed of a million tiny building blocks of experience. But there's a freedom that comes from realising what might have been. Peace in reflection, untethered from the everyday distraction and I take pleasure in the hum drum. Unhampered by trends, untethered to a scene, stripped back to essential carnal influences and desires. Who are we but the sum of our experience.

'Everything Is Quite Now' meanders through a reimagined landscape of personal history, releasing musical fragments to dri* amongst soaring treetops, hollowed lakes and labyrinthine concrete structures, liberated from genre and form - alive at last. In these great expanses, light and dark are presented not as polar opposites, but as a limitless, unified whole.

References to EBM and industrial techno manifest within the sporadic percussive framework whilst gauzy ambient backdrops form an entire world of their own, constructed from the gentle hiss of a looping tape, the booming caverns of a muffled kick, the vivid distortions of a crystalline synth. In the depths of a misty forest, warmth permeates, absorbing inside it all of the darkness, pain, romance and beauty from before.

Prequel Tapes is a work of deep synthesis. Fragments of melody and memory orchestrated into densely layered tapestries; a deeply emotional study on a life characterised by a shi*ing relationship to electronics. The pieces serve as a chronology of desire and reflection, reconciling a nascent passion for industrial music with a history in the club. Oscillating between utopian to claustrophobic, the evolving synth work, deep techno atmosphere and traces of clangorous energy of early European ambient and industrial tell a distinctly German tale, forged between the forest and the autobahn.

Everything is quite now. What else can it be.

Flexuous, Synchronous , Capricious

Bit-Tuner's "Arabian Nights" is based on field recordings, tapes, radio snippets and sounds recorded and produced in Cairo. The gleaming heat of Egypt was processed into a grinding 40-minute live set, contrasting the layered atmospheres with Bit-Tuner's signature staccato beats.

Swirling sounds fall into place as the recording evolves. As blasts of wind carry away the dust, sights of a dense and vibrant metropolis are set free. After his previous works "The Japan Syndrome" and "The China Syndrome", Bit-Tuner's new recording "Arabian Nights" takes an edgy approach: Bit-Tuner extracts grainy physicalness from his sounds and brews them in his high-energy arrangements. It is this directness, that marks Bit-Tuner's distinctive qualities as a live act. He manages to tell stories through waves of sonic pressure.

A live performance by Bit-Tuner based on field recordings & tapes from Cairo.
Recorded live at Helsinki Klub, Zurich.