quête:free

Freestyle Records drop another UK boogie 12" rarity from Eddie Capone's Treatment, this time the previously white label-only "Only You Know What I Like" from 1985. Limited to 300 copies worldwide.

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A mainstay of the UK's reggae, soul, funk & rock circuits since the early 1970s, Eddie Capone has played with a diverse and revered collection of acts; Chairmen of the Board, The Foundations, Black Velvet, The Elgins, Arthur Brown's Kingdom Come, Arthur Lee's Love, Billy Preston and Edwin Starr to name but a few. Eddie was also part of short-lived group Casablanca, with David Costa & Barry Clarke of early 70's folk-rockers Trees, signed to Elton John's Rocket Record Company.

Eddie founded the Treatment band in the early 1980s bringing in a revolving cast of singers and players, and created the Treatment Records imprint out of his own Black Rock studio in South East London in 1982. Releasing a string of singles - with efforts from Eddie Capone's Treatment, a side-project with singer Beryl Marsden as Salt & Pepper, and a single from Norwegian group Wave - Treatment Records then followed this up in 1985 with the 12" release of "I Won't Give You Up" with Diane Jones brought in on vocal duties. This received solid support amongst DJs and radio at the time, and was quickly followed with this solid slice of white label-only UK boogie-funk that has since become a favoured deep cut on the selectors circuit.

Treatment Records continued through the 1980s through to early 1990s releasing Eddie's music, both as a solo artist and as part of collaborative side-projects, and Eddie has continued to write, perform and produce music from his home studio right through to the present day. As a committed community figure & activist in South East London, Eddie has since 2014 re-started Treatment Records under the name of 3G Treatment - bringing together three generations of people from the local area to ensure young artists & musicians have access to the expertise and experience of their elders for support and encourage successful careers in the industry.

Special limited edition "10 years of 22a" repress of Ed "Tenderlonious" Cawthorne"s debut LP - a cornerstone recording in the new wave of UK jazz. One-off pressing of 300 numbered copies, double transparent orange vinyl housed in a gatefold sleeve. "The Shakedown" features a dream team of top talent Tenderlonious named the 22archestra, who he leads seamlessly throughout. Listeners are exposed to the full breadth of Cawthorne"s technical and compositional skills, ranging from subtly meandering jazz, to hip hop, Afrobeat, Latin and exhilarating free form jazz.

Lemonheads’ seminal album ‘It’s A Shame About Ray’, lovingly reissued for it’s 30th Anniversary. The long overdue reissue includes a slew of extra material, including an unreleased ‘My Drug Buddy’ KCRW session track from 1992 featuring Juliana Hatfield, B-sides from singles ‘It’s A Shame About Ray’ and ‘Confetti’, a track from the ‘Mrs. Robinson/Being Round’ EP, alongside demos that will be released for the first time on vinyl. This reissue celebrates their prestigious fifth album, these deluxe bookback editions feature new liner notes and unseen photos.

Described by music journalist and author Everett True as “A 30-minute insight into what it’s like to live hard and fast and loose and happy with like-minded buddies, fuelled by a shared love for similar bands and drugs and booze and freedom.”. ‘It's A Shame About Ray’ had a considerable impact back in those heady, carefree days of '92, the record perfectly captures Dando’s ability to effortlessly encapsulate teenage longing and lust over the course of a two-minute pop song.

Singles such as 'My Drug Buddy' and the breezy perfect pop of the title track might stand out (plus the add-on of 'Mrs. Robinson' which later copies included), but the album's real strength lies in the tracks in-between; the truly fantastic 'Confetti' (written about Evan's parents' divorce), and the eye-wateringly casual acoustic cover of 'Frank Mills' (from the "hippie" musical Hair), a version that seems to resonate with every ounce of pathos and emotion felt for the lost 1960s generation. To hear Evan Dando sing lines like 'I love him/but it embarrasses me/To walk down the street with him/He lives in Brooklyn somewhere/And he wears his white crash helmet' is to truly appreciate how wonderful and tantalising pop music can be. Then, there's the rush of insurgency and brattishness on the wonderfully truncated 'Bit Part'; the topsy-turvy 'Ceiling Fan In My Spoon'... this was male teenage skinny-tie pop music on a level of brilliance with The Kinks, early Undertones, Wipers.

Pique is the sensational debut solo album from Dora Morelenbaum, one of the key talents spearheading Brazil’s new musical wave. A member of the Latin Grammy award-winning band, Bala Desejo, Dora showcases a new side to her solo productions on this special LP. Whereas Dora’s first solo EP, Vento de Beirada, was a leap of faith, Pique sees her soaring as one of Brazil’s standout stars, emboldened, emphatic but ever elegant. Building bridges between past and present, it’s a funkier, more groove-based affair, weaved together with those signature, slower, celestial tracks. Touching on disco, MPB, soul, R&B and jazz, the album is enriched with an indie pop aesthetic courtesy of fellow Brazilian star and co-producer, Ana Frango Elétrico.

With an ethereal, enveloping air few can match, Dora’s gift shines through both the serene and the spirited songs contained within. The blissful, sun-soaked ‘Não Vou Te Esquecer’ opens, before the funk-fuelled, feel-good ‘Venha Comigo’ and ‘Sim, Não.’ give a glimpse of the creativity bursting from the production partnership between Dora and Ana Frango Elétrico. Elsewhere, the album reclines into hazy lean-back realms via ‘A Melhor Saída’ and ‘Petricor’, virtuoso jazz funk in the form of ‘VW Blue’ and radiant MPB through the album’s title track ‘Pique’.

The drumming is tight, fresh and swung, the horns and strings deftly arranged, as funk-driven basslines and strutting guitars mesh with playful production touches that give an added vibrancy to the record. It is an album that exhibits every side of Dora and one she has been involved in from the ground up, from the songwriting, singing, arrangement and production to booking the studio time and sourcing the artwork designer, Maria Cau Levy.

An exchange of musical ideas powers every great scene and Rio’s contemporary landscape is no different - a family of interconnected musicians and friends that collaborate on each other’s productions. Pique is graced by a wealth of these leading Brazilian lights including her Bala Desejo bandmates Lucas Nunes, Julia Mestre and Zé Ibarra, as well as Guilherme Lirio, Alberto Continentino and Tom Veloso to name just a handful. This exchange crosses generations merging tradition with modernity. In a full circle moment, Dora’s parents Paula and Jaques Morelenbaum, who featured in countless recordings from Tom Jobim's Nova Banda and Ryuichi Sakamoto to Gal Costa and Gilberto Gil, join on the album through backing vocals and arrangement.

Pique sees Dora embrace a freedom through fresh forms, showcasing the depth and diversity of her creative artistry. An infinitely listenable release that nods to Brazilian greats like Gal Costa, Banda Black Rio and Lincoln Olivetti, fused with the indie pop edge of Ana’s production. The result is truly unique and sure to be a future Brazilian classic.

Having spent their formative years in São Paulo Brazil, as a teenager, Lau Ro found themself uprooted from their home. Moving with their family to Europe in search of a better quality of life, their story was like that of many immigrants in the same position. Lau Ro's parents found work in factories and cleaning jobs, for the first few years in the North of Italy and then in Brighton on England's Southern coast. "We never managed to visit back home, so my connection to Brazil became largely made up of childhood memories and my fascination with all the 60s and 70s music I could find from there."

In Brighton, the young non-binary singer and composer would immerse themself amongst the city's vanguard of free-thinking artists and musicians. Lau Ro formed Wax Machine whose prefigurative, psychedelic community provided a glimmer of countercultural hope amid a backdrop of national political decline. From 2020-23, Wax Machine birthed three cult-favourite albums in as many years; indebted in part to their British psychedelic forebears from progressive folk, rock and jazz yore. But the kernel of Lau's Brazilian sound was already beginning to blossom across Wax Machine's releases. Now, taking root deeper still, Lau Ro steps forward with their debut album: Cabana.

Named after the small wood cabin at the bottom of their garden where the album was recorded, Cabana is a deeply personal record of memory, self-discovery and imagination. Melancholy and hope combine across ten tracks of dreamy bossa, ambient folk, fuzzy tropicalia and majestic MPB. The music is swathed in masterful string arrangements and trippy electronics in equal part, while Lau Ro's delicate, yet quietly confident voice takes acerbic aim (in both English and Portuguese) at polluted city life, while dreaming of a utopia, rich with nature and wildlife.

Like the musical equivalent of semantic drift, Lau Ro's displacement led to the creation of another Brazil. A mythic place in Lau's soul, as they put it, "where the sunshine and joy of my childhood remained untapped." Lau continues: "It's music that might sound as if it came out of a parallel universe Brazil, rather than its modern day landscape. I am nowadays rediscovering Brazil, going back as often as I can and trying to stay connected to these different parts of the world and myself."

The second release on Objekt’s newly established Kapsela imprint arrives in the form of Chicken Garaage, a solo 2-track EP by Objekt that explores the fertile terrain around 00s breakbeat and garage. The A-side, Chicken Garaage, is a playful and poignant nod to the pioneering proto-dubstep explorations of the early 2000s, as the genre was first beginning to crystallise, by the likes of Horsepower Productions, DJ Abstract and Benny Ill. First sketched out on tour in Melbourne while eating takeaway chicken karaage, it’s the first outcome of an experiment with a new workflow to produce music with an accelerated approach and more immediacy and expressivity; encouragingly, it has the lowest final version number (55) of any Objekt track in recent memory. B-side “Worm Dance” leans into Hertz’s headsier inclinations – constructed mostly from field recordings made at a lake house outside of Berlin in 2022, it channels mid-00s T++ into a moody, elastic breakbeat roller.

The vinyl comes with a free lossless download.

Mastered by Kassian Troyer at Dubplates & Mastering

Artwork by Brodie Kaman

The 2015 edition of Winnipeg’s send + receive festival, focussed on rhythm, turned out to be a generative meeting of minds. There, Mark Fell encountered the music of Will Guthrie, a meeting that was eventually to result in the frenetic acoustic drumkit and digital synthesis pairing heard on Infoldings and Diffractions (2020). At the same festival, Limpe Fuchs first heard and appreciated the music of Mark Fell, planting the seed of a collaboration that came to fruition when Fell (along with his son Rian Treanor) visited Fuchs at her home in Peterskirchen, Germany in September 2022. Black Truffle is pleased to announce the release of the results of this extensive session in the audacious form of a triple LP, housing over two hours of music across its six sides. The collaboration might appear unlikely: what common ground could exist between Fuchs, classically trained pianist, legend of improvised music, instrument builder and sound sculptor active since the 1960s, whose group Anima Sound connected the dots between free jazz, krautrock and ritual, and Fell, proponent of radical computer music, known for his bracingly austere productions that twist remnants of club music into algorithmic stutters? For all their seeming disparity in technology, approach and background, the music on Dessogia/Queetch/Fauch makes it immediately evident the pair share a great deal in their essentially percussive approach and ability to, in Fuch’s phrase, ‘establish silence’. Recording at her home studio, Fuchs had the use of her entire array of instruments, found, invented, and traditional, and treats the listener to some that don’t often make their way to concerts, including extensive passages performed (with Gundis Stalleicher) on pieces of wooden parquetry. Alongside metallic, wooden and skin percussion of all kinds, sounded and struck in every conceivable way, we also hear bamboo flute, viola, and Fuchs’ distinctive free-form vocalisations. Fell also stretched himself, with his contributions ranging from characteristically fizzing pitched percussive pops to swarms of sliding tones and abstract digital noise. Showing both remarkable restraint and improvisational freedom, much of the music consists of duets between a single percussion instrument and a distinctive mode of digital sound, often lingering in one timbral-rhythmic space for minutes at a time. Improvisational forward momentum coexists with a free-floating, wandering quality. On opener ‘Dessogia I’, the shimmering almost-gilssandi tones of Fuchs’ enormous set of microtonally tuned metal tubes ripples across Fell’s rubbery pulse, which moves up the frequency spectrum as Fuchs becomes more animated and switches to horn. At some points, as on the metallic chiming tones that open ‘Fauch I’, only the unexpected dynamic behaviour of Fell’s sounds distinguish them from Fuchs’ acoustic instruments. At others, like on ‘Queetch III’, the waves of sliding tones and noise textures are bracingly synthetic, joined by piercing squeaks and scrapes from Fuchs’ metal objects. Epic in scope, immersing the listener in an entirely distinctive world of sounds, and thrillingly bold in its melding of the most ancient musical procedures with cutting edge technologies, Dessogia/Queetch/Fauch is an unexpected major statement from two of the great mavericks of contemporary music.

On How It Ends (?), slinky melodies snake through nocturnal atmospherics, drawing you into a world built on poetic, painterly lyricism. Night Crickets, a long-distance groove affair that materialized during the drawn-out days of lockdown, has emerged once again to soundtrack our waking dreams.

David J (Bauhaus, Love & Rockets), Victor DeLorenzo (Violent Femmes) and multi-instrumentalist Darwin Meiners spearhead a loose collective of like-minded creative souls whom, through sheer tenacity and a burning desire to collaborate and create, transcend the restrictions of space and time. Audio files shared from Los Angeles to Milwaukee, from London to the San Francisco Bay, and the ghosts of Candlestick Park shimmer through the fog, coalescing in a glorious ‘gesamtkunstwerk’ that draws from the past, the present and the imagined future.

Declaring Bauhaus, Love And Rockets, and Violent Femmes iconic, foundational bands in the history of alternative music would receive little pushback from those in the know. San Francisco born artist Darwin Meiners is a fan of all three. A chance meeting with David J grew into a friendship, and Darwin not only became a bandmate, but his manager. After reaching out to Victor DeLorenzo through e-mail, Darwin met the Violent Femmes drummer after their set at Coachella. Soon, after the three collaborated on Darwin’s 2014 release Souvenir.

As the pandemic took hold, Darwin was looking for a new project to occupy the lock down time and approached Victor, who was keen to proceed and suggested that David join as well. The musical trust established between these three was immediate and Night Crickets were born. Within weeks a global process was initiated between them, the recordings eventually forming the album, A Free Society.

Following that release, inspired by how well – and quickly – they all worked together, the trio kept up their collaboration. “We are each free to discover musical connections that could only exist in an ideal creative setting” explains Victor. “We are very lucky to have three musicians who write, sing and play various instruments in one trio… our egos seem to melt into one when we face musical decisions, so our expeditions are always filled with pure discovery, humor and drive!”

How It Ends (?) was crafted with the same collaborative spirit as A Free Society. Each member contributed contributed unique elements to spur their collective creativity—whether a drum pattern, a lyrical concept, or a musical idea—and together, they expanded these initial sparks into the finished work. True to their approach, much of what you hear was captured in the first take, reflecting a genuine, unfiltered moment.

The music on the How It Ends (?) is a true evolution of the debut album. It is deeper and darker. Having said that, the dark tone is alleviated by a healthy measure of the buoyant, bouncy and melodic. “Much of the new material is very psychedelic and the contrast between this heavy, dark psychedelia and the more uplifting pop elements puts me in mind of The Beatles’ ‘Revolver’ album to some degree,” tells David J. “The recording process for the new album was exactly the same as the first in that we all recorded remotely, taking turns to share files and reacting spontaneously to the previous track, overdubbing then passing on once again until we all felt that the track was done.”

“While we didn’t start with a specific theme, the album emerged as a contemplative exploration of endings” says Darwin. “It touches on the loss of individuals, the shifting of ideas, and the fragility of systems. Beneath this sense of darkness and finality, however, there are threads of beauty and glimpses of hope. We invite you to immerse yourself in the album and experience the journey we’ve embarked upon.”

Kenner von Richard Swift wissen, dass sein Katalog umfangreich und phantasievoll ist, vollgepackt mit ebenso vielen ausgefeilten, eiskalten Klassikern wie verrückten Ein-Take-Experimenten. Diese Kleinode kommen in allen Formen und Größen, und während das den Eingefleischten nichts ausmacht, ist der Einstieg in die Musik von Swift für den Neuling schwierig: Wo soll man anfangen? Was kommt in die engere Wahl? Wie viele Crooner? Wie viele wilde Lieder? Vor diesem Hintergrund präsentiert Secretly Canadian "4 Hits & A Miss - The Essential Richard Swift", einen bescheidenen Versuch, die siebenundvierzig Minuten und vierzehn Songs zusammenzutragen, die die Uneingeweihten einführen können. Wenn Sie Richard Swift nicht kennen, lassen Sie sich von dem unvergleichlichen Kevin Morby aufklären: "Es gibt einen alten Pfadfindermythos, von dem ich als Kind gehört habe, dass man eine Kapelle bauen kann, wenn man die richtige Person mitten in den Wald setzt, bewaffnet nur mit einem Schweizer Taschenmesser. Wenn ich an diesen Mythos zurückdenke, denke ich an Richard Swift, der, wenn man ihn mitten im Wald mit einem 10-Dollar-Radio-Shack-Mikrofon absetzte, irgendwie ein Studio bauen konnte und in diesem Studio eine Kapelle des Klangs errichtete. Tatsächlich hat er genau das in seinem eigenen National Freedom Studio mitten in den Wäldern von Oregon getan, in einer Stadt namens Cottage Grove, wo er unzählige Stunden seiner eigenen Musik und der anderer Leute aufgenommen hat. Diese Kapellen des Klangs werden - und ich habe es bereits erlebt - kommende Generationen in Ehrfurcht versetzen und inspirieren, so wie es die Steinkapellen im frühen Europa tun. Beide lassen die Menschen verblüfft zurück und fragen sich: Wie konnte etwas so Massives und Schönes mit so minimalen und archaischen Mitteln gebaut werden - und in Richards Fall so schnell? Nach ihrem Tod scheinen die meisten Künstler endgültig zu ruhen, ihre Kataloge ruhen für immer neben ihnen. Aber Richard scheint aus dem Jenseits rastlos zu sein, und die Arbeit, die er hier unten auf der Erde begonnen hat, geht weiter. Sein letztes Album, The Hex, wurde nur wenige Monate nach seinem frühen Tod im Jahr 2018 veröffentlicht, und jetzt haben wir mit 4 Hits and A Miss eine Sammlung seiner beliebtesten Songs sowie einen neuen, noch nie zuvor gehörten Track "Common Law", aufgenommen um 2012. Ob Gelegenheitsfan oder Swift-Purist, 4 Hits & A Miss ist entweder ein perfekter Startpunkt oder ein Ziel für uns eingefleischte Fans, um wieder einmal etwas Neues zu finden, das uns beeindruckt und inspiriert. Wie ein versteckter Raum in seiner bereits beeindruckenden Kapelle gibt es immer etwas Neues von unserem geliebten Freund und Helden, dem verstorbenen großen Richard Swift, zu entdecken." Viel Spaß!

So viel Ärger in der Welt...Aber - die Reggae Legende King Jammy kehrt in sein Dub-Labor zurück, um eine neue Klangbotschaft mit positiven Vibrationen im Dub zu schmieden. Jammys handverlesene Friedenstruppe von Kingston 11 Stalwarts lässt 10 frische Boomshots zur Heilung der Nationen fallen, um die Welt mit Hilfe von Dub zu vereinen - wenn diese Dubs einschlagen, fühlst du keinen Schmerz! Frisch aufgenommene 2024 Dub Attack von King Jammy, Versionen in Hülle und Fülle von Jammys 21st Century A Team, Musikern Andre Dennis, I Sax, Brandon Harris plus eine Anspielung auf seine illustre Vergangenheit Jammy zieht Vintage Parts von Sly & Robbie und High Times Band heraus, um sie auf zwei Deep Dives (Climate Action Dub und Ceasefire Dub) zu mixen. Alle Tracks wurden von King Jammy, Romeo 'Shemmo' Facey und John John fachmännisch aufgenommen und abgemischt.

Anadol and Marie Klock have teamed up for a joint album, La Grande Accumulation. They met two years ago at a festival in England crowded with violent seagulls and outsider musicians. Klock being prone to barking on stage and Anadol not laughing at jokes she doesn’t find funny, they straight away had the intuition that they would meet again. And so they did, a few months later, at Anadol’s studio in Istanbul.

Today, the two Pingipung artists present the fruit of this musical friendship. La Grande Accumulation was born out of the peculiar atmosphere of the studio neighbourhood in Büyükada, an island where thousands of cats run free and humans randomly destroy things during apocalyptic times when parts of Turkey had just been turned into dust by terrible earthquakes. The French lyrics are inspired by hours of conversations, the music is consequently drenched in absurdity, overflowing with a strong urge to live and enjoy. According to the LP sticker, this album has been certified “Best handshake of 2024”, and stickers never lie.

La Grande Accumulation brings together Marie Klock's mysterious metaphors and Anadol's intriguing radiophonic psych-pop. Stretching forms beyond common sense to see how long they can resist is probably their favourite game. The result are six highly imaginative tracks that challenge the sub-3-minutes standards of Spotify pop.

Gözen Atila aka Anadol is well known to the Pingipung audience, with three solo LPs on the label. Her music follows a kind of collage logic, she interweaves countless styles, combining field and studio recordings with obscure quotation marks here and there. "I hope no one will come and explain this music to me, because it's the most beautiful music there is", says Kristoffer Cornils about her solo album Felicita.

Marie Klock is a French writer and musician who produces songs oscillating between synthpop and neo-folk, full of anarchic humour and existential dread. Her recent solo LP on Pingipung was a captivating tribute to the recently deceased poet Damien Schultz entitled Damien est vivant.

Marie Klock delivers her lyrics in song or spoken word, stream-of-consciousness musings on strange human adventures, and her rich keyboard melodies culminate in a nonchalant dialogue with the bass trombone (La Reine des Bordels). In the opulent opening piece (La Grande Accumulation), a woman is cursed to take home everything she kicks in the street; a bit later, we stumble upon a ghoul hiding in the gutter (Sirop amer), Mona Lisa loses her teeth (Sonate au Jambon) and a warthog struggles to climb the stairs of a silver tower (Sabots triviaux).

La Grande Accumulation was mixed and mastered by Jonas Romann at Chaos Compressor Club in Hamburg and cut to vinyl by Kassian Troyer at D&M in Berlin. It's an audiophile LP that invites to focus on every detail in this heap of musical ideas.

Michael Mayer albums don’t come round too often, which is one of many reasons why his fourth collection, The Floor Is Lava, is a genuine event. It’s been eight years since his last one, the collaborative & released on !K7; its predecessors, Mantasy (2012) and Touch (2004), took their sweet time, too. It’s no real surprise, given the many hats Mayer wears – globetrotting DJ, revered remixer, inveterate collaborator, and boss of both Kompakt and Imara – that his solo productions are relatively sparing. But this also speaks to their quality: Mayer’s name on a record sleeve is a sign of quality, of music that’s both looking to the future and calling back to the past, that balances the imperatives of the dancefloor and the loungeroom, that’s as exploratory as it is functional.

On The Floor Is Lava, Mayer seems to be taking the temperature of both the music that surrounds him (past and present), and the ides of the industry he works within. There’s that iconic album title, for a start. “The album’s mindset,” he says, reflecting on those four words together. For Mayer, it’s partly a critique of the way the industry boxes in both producer and listener, focuses them on genre, on market, on the next new thing: “Being a free minded spirit that transcends genres has become an uphill battle.” A battle worth fighting, though, and with The Floor Is Lava, the result is an album that’s varied, quixotic, idiosyncratic, charming, and deeply, addictively listenable.

Throughout, Mayer finds thrills in exploration and juxtaposition, allowing unexpected things to blossom and giving them their life, their platform, throwing the listener exciting curveballs: “It’s a DJ album by a DJ that’s easily bored.” Either easily bored, or endlessly curious, The Floor Is Lava is rich with ideas. It opens with “The Problem”, which looks back to look forward, embracing the rickety way early house productions threw samples together with gleeful abandon. Mayer mentions Pal Joey, and the scene around Rockers Hi-Fi and their Different Drummer imprint, as reference points, and you can hear that freewheeling spirit throughout.

It’s followed by “Vagus”, a slinky, sensual minimal house number that Mayer describes as his “musical catnip”. The flow of these two opening cuts defines the dynamic of The Floor Is Lava, defining the dialectical drive at its core: thesis and antithesis leads to synthesis, but with a welcome prickliness that means you’re always excited, always engaged. It’s also productive in the way it derives energy from rubbing genres and sounds against each other, in unexpected ways, for maximum musical frisson. There’s psychedelic techno on “Feuerstuhl”, more minimal techno with “Ardor” (Mayer mentions ‘Immer 1’ era 90s minimal as inspiration), slippery, Shepard-tone breakbeat through “Sycophant”, a lovely, lush vocal turn on the poppy “The Solution”.

The album closes with the melancholy “Süßer Schlaf”, where Mayer sets a poem by Goethe to one of his most haunted, moving pieces of music yet, in abstract tribute to a lost friend. It’s one of the most affecting moments on The Floor Is Lava. There’s also an update on 2020’s wild Brainwave Technology EP, with the surrealist glitter-stomp of “Brainwave 2.0” (check out those handclaps!),where Mayer’s thinking about the socio-political precipice of the now: “I’m reading with great interest about this whole complex of how humanity is about to cross so many lines and the implications that the resulting financial and educational inequality will bring.”

That’s The Floor Is Lava: then and now, brainwaves and nerve structures, problems and solutions, genres on fire; the real, the unreal, and the surreal. An album for the easily bored and the endlessly curious. Mayer has the last word, telling us all you need to know about the album’s spirit: “Burning for the cause, being zealous, being addicted to the heat of the night, the exuberant powers of music.”

Michael Mayer veröffentlicht nicht oft Alben, was einer von vielen Gründen ist, warum ‘The Floor Is Lava’ ein echtes Ereignis ist. Es sind acht Jahre vergangen seit seinem letzten Werk, dem Kollaborationsalbum &, das auf !K7 erschien; seine Vorgänger, Mantasy (2012) und Touch (2004), ließen ebenfalls auf sich warten. Es überrascht nicht wirklich, da Mayer viele Rollen gleichzeitig erfüllt – weltreisender DJ, vielbeschäftigter Remixer, unermüdlicher Kollaborateur und Chef von sowohl Kompakt als auch Imara – weshalb seine Solo-Produktionen eher sparsam ausfallen. Doch das spricht auch für deren Qualität: Ein Album mit Mayers Namen auf dem Cover steht für Qualität, für Musik, die sowohl in die Zukunft blickt als auch auf die Vergangenheit verweist, die das Gleichgewicht zwischen den Anforderungen des Dancefloors und des Wohnzimmers hält, die genauso erforschend wie funktional ist.

Auf The Floor Is Lava scheint Mayer sowohl die Musik um ihn herum (vergangen und gegenwärtig) als auch die Strömungen der Branche, in der er arbeitet, zu reflektieren. Da wäre zunächst der ikonische Albumtitel. „Die Grundhaltung des Albums“, sagt er, drückt sich in diesen vier Worte aus. Für Mayer ist es teilweise eine Kritik daran, wie die Industrie sowohl Produzenten als auch Hörer in Schubladen steckt, sie auf Genres, auf den Markt und auf das nächste große Ding fokussiert: „Ein freier Geist zu sein, der Genres überschreitet, ist zu einem steinigen Weg geworden.“ Ein Kampf, der sich jedoch lohnt, und mit The Floor Is Lava ist das Ergebnis ein Album, das vielfältig, eigenwillig, charmant und tiefsinnig, aber auch süchtig machend ist.

Im gesamten Album findet Mayer Freude an der Erforschung und Gegenüberstellung von Stilen, lässt unerwartete Dinge erblühen und gibt ihnen Raum, überrascht den Hörer mit spannenden Wendungen: „Es ist ein DJ-Album von einem DJ, der sich schnell langweilt.“ Entweder langweilt er sich schnell oder er ist unendlich neugierig – The Floor Is Lava ist reich an Ideen. Es beginnt mit „The Problem“, das in die Vergangenheit blickt, um nach vorne zu schauen, und die wilde Art, wie frühe House-Produktionen Samples mit fröhlicher Unbekümmertheit zusammenwarfen, aufgreift. Mayer nennt Pal Joey und die Szene um Rockers Hi-Fi und ihr Label Different Drummer als Referenzpunkte, und dieser freie Geist zieht sich durch das gesamte Album.

Es folgt „Vagus“, eine sinnliche Minimal-House-Nummer, die Mayer als seine „musikalische Katzenminze“ beschreibt. Der Fluss dieser beiden Eröffnungstracks definiert die Dynamik von The Floor Is Lava und den dialektischen Antrieb im Kern: These und Antithese führen zu einer Synthese, jedoch mit einer willkommenen Schärfe, die dafür sorgt, dass man immer aufgeregt und engagiert bleibt. Zudem gewinnt das Album Energie, indem es Genres und Klänge auf unerwartete Weise aneinanderreibt, um maximalen musikalischen Nervenkitzel zu erzeugen. Es gibt psychedelischen Techno in „Feuerstuhl“, mehr Minimal Techno mit „Ardor“ (Mayer erwähnt ‘Immer’ Ära Minimal als Bezugspunkt), gleitenden Shepard-Ton-Breakbeat in „Sycophant“ und einen lieblichen, üppigen Vocal-Auftritt im poppigen „The Solution“.

Das Album schließt mit dem melancholischen „Süßer Schlaf“, in dem Mayer ein Gedicht von Goethe vertont und eine seiner bisher eindringlichsten und bewegendsten musikalischen Kompositionen schafft, als abstrakten Tribut an eine verschiedene Freundin. Es ist einer der ergreifendsten Momente auf The Floor Is Lava. Ebenfalls gibt es ein Update der wilden Brainwave Technology-EP von 2020, mit dem surrealistischen Glitzer-Stampfer „Brainwave 2.0“ (hör dir diese Handclaps an!), in dem Mayer über den sozio-politischen Abgrund der Gegenwart nachdenkt: „Ich lese mit großem Interesse über diesen ganzen Komplex, wie die Menschheit dabei ist, so viele Grenzen zu überschreiten und welche Auswirkungen die daraus resultierende finanzielle und bildungstechnische Ungleichheit haben wird.“

Das ist The Floor Is Lava: Damals und heute, Gehirnwellen und Nervengeflechte, Probleme und Lösungen, brennende Genres; das Reale, das Unreale und das Surreale. Ein Album für die schnell Gelangweilten und die unendlich Neugierigen. Mayer hat das letzte Wort und sagt uns alles, was wir über den Geist des Albums wissen müssen: „Brennen für die Sache, leidenschaftlich sein, süchtig nach der Hitze der Nacht, den überschwänglichen Kräften der Musik.“

Collapsing new rhythms and industrial visions meet restless melodic vocals on Gateway, the debut album from San Francisco duo YANTRA on Swiss label Subject To Restrictions Discs. This isn’t dance music, but you will dance to it. It isn’t ritual music, but it will channel spirits.

The dreamer is still asleep. She awakens to heed the call. Curious downtempo drums, spartan and potent, animate the body. Running through the city, shadows dance on walls, and alluring voices, whispered, sung, and soaring, possess the mind. At the end of the path, gazing at the mirror’s edge, she finds the source of the voice—and realizes it’s her own.

YANTRA are artist-producer Yaniv de Ridder, also known by the alias YNV, and lyricist-vocalist-instrumentalist Janina Angel Bath. The pair have worked together for some time, beginning with YNV’s 2021 LP Golden Hour Ritual. On Western Paradox, a YNV EP released last year on Subject To Restrictions Discs, Bath contributed vocals—and so YANTRA, the project and the concept, was born. Working together, the pair craft new forms of transcendent sound, timeless and familiar all at once

based songwriter Henrik Appel returns with third album Shadows. Ranging from freewheeling garage rock to intimate moments, and adding touches of jazz, Shadows is inspired by the likes of Bob Dylan’s Blond on Blonde and The Fall’s Hex Enduction Hour and another step of his continued evolution as a songwriter and artist.

For as long as he’s been a solo artist, Henrik Appel has been in a constant state of evolution. His first album, 2018’s Burning Bodies, was a meticulous construction project, one that came togeth-er over a five-year period and that saw him chronicle, with searing honesty, the slow death of a relationship, with its nine songs written according to a stringent set of self-imposed rules, intend-ed to keep the songwriting minimalist and bare-bones in nature.

His 2021 follow-up, Humanity, represented a remarkable progression of its own. It was born out of a break-up of a different kind, this time with his former bandmates in Stockholm outfit Lion’s Den; piecing together aspects of the vision he’d had in mind for the band’s never-realised second al-bum, he built from them his own sophomore LP, one that took the classic feel of Burning Bodies and imbued it with adventurous new influences, as he began to carve out a genuinely singular sound.

Now, three years on from Humanity, Appel has made another ambitious left turn. Neither of his first two albums were made in complete isolation; on both, he enlisted the production services of Stockholm underground legend Martin ‘Konie’ Ehrencrona, and also collaborated on his lyrics with his partner, Emma Lind. Now, on this thrilling reinvention of a third record, Appel has turned away from perfectionism, placing chief importance instead on making a raw, human record.

No stranger to the Spatial family following the release of his excellent Age of Awareness EP back in 2023, Eusebeia brings his eclectic breakbeat driven vibes to sister label
Curvature for an EP spanning a variety of energies with a free-spirited approach to drum patterns and atmosphere you wont want to miss.

A1 Set In Motion
Shimmering melodic keys and light hi hats quietly introduce Set In Motion, as Eusebeia takes a laid back opening approach to his Curvature debut. Clean, wandering breaks enter the mix and develop continually, as a subtly used, luscious female vocal greets the listener with a curiously soothing vibe. Following the breakdown, a deep, pounding bassline punctuates skillful synthwork riddled with intrigue and atmosphere to round off
a unique, eclectic track.

A2 In Perpetuum
Stepping things up with a doggedly breakbeat focus, In Perpetuum is an energetic piece with an opening backdrop akin to an aging printer being coaxed back to life,
before an echoed vocal welcomes hyperactive, rasping breaks, edited and chopped with the scintillating talent we have come to expect from Eusebeia. The latter half of the
track changes up the vibe slightly with inquisitive padwork gliding above the omnipresent edits.

B1 Flow State
Subtle cowbell style cymbals and gentle melodies introduce Flow State, before an inimitable duality of old school atmospheric breaks pass the baton repeatedly through the track in typically impactful style from Eusebeia. The melodies and an understated bassline wrapped around kickdrums continues through the various phrases before the beats depart, leaving the listener to reflect on a truly captivating track just as the title
suggests.

B2 The Cure For What Ails You Reverberating percussion and classic whale sounds instantly grasp your attention
before ominous 808 bass ushers in a thunderous helping of pure amen pleasure sent straight from the old school - edited and programmed to perfection by Eusebeia with a
finesse seldom seen in modern production. Dense kickdrums vibe perfectly with the highs and mids of a track destined to headline many an atmospheric junglists set.

Written and recorded in London at Abbey Road Studios, "Les Chansons de l'Innocence retrouvé", Etienne Daho's 11th studio album, is now reissued on LIMITED EDITION double LP. Two vinyl with 23 additional tracks on the double LP (live versions, alternatives...). " Les Chansons de l'Innocence retrouvé " is a free and out-of-fashion album written and produced with Jean-Louis Pierot. Cinematographic and epic, with a permanent tension oscillating between lightness, flamboyance and gravity. We meet the ghosts of Francis Bacon, the slums of Soho, William Blake and John Barry for the haughty beauty of the strings or David Lynch for a dizzying “L’homme qui marche”,Debbie Harry, Nile Rodgers, Dominique A, Jenny Beth, Yan Wagner, François Marry and Au Revoir Simone come to accompany Daho on this dense and Dionysian journey. A masterstroke.

"Louane is back with ""solo"", a new album that shows us a new side of the artist. She asserts herself, fully embracing her emotions, without fear of trying new things or putting herself in danger. After an 11 year career, we discover a body of work in which the artist reinvents herself and experiments more than ever. This new album celebrates the many facets of her personality, offering her, thanks to those who accompany her, a new freedom allowing her to express her individuality. A solo climb, without nets, with the strength of her conviction and talent.
Available on CD and LP. "

The acclaimed trio of Mikkel Ploug, Sissel Vera Pettersen, and Joachim Badenhorst is set to release their fourth studio album, Lento, on November 1, 2024, through the Klein label. Following their celebrated albums 'Equilibrium', 'Walking Voices', and 'Liquid Light', this new release further cements the group’s position as an innovative voice in contemporary music.

Lento offers an evocative blend of jazz, folk/world, classical, minimalism, and avant-garde influences, crafted through a dynamic mixture of free improvisation and original compositions. The trio’s unique synergy is evident in every track, pushing the boundaries of genre while maintaining an intimate and expressive core.

The trio comprises of the Norwegian vocalist and saxophonist Sissel Vera Pettersen, a multifaceted artist known for her collaborations with Chick Corea and Marilyn Mazur, Her contributions to Lento showcase her versatility, moving seamlessly between voice and saxophone with a fluidity that anchors the group’s explorative sound.
On guitar is Danish virtuoso Mikkel Ploug, who is renowned for his work with saxophonist Mark Turner and composer Bent Sørensen, Ploug's playing on Lento is both intricate and expansive. Completing the trio is the Belgian reed player Joachim Badenhorst, whose talents on the clarinet have earned him a spot in Downbeat Magazine’s "Rising Star" polls. Badenhorst is known for his work with Han Bennink Tony Malaby’s, Kris Davis and his own projects Carate Urio Orchestra and Zero Years Kid.
Having garnered praise from critics and fans alike for their previous albums, the trio continues to evolve and captivate. Lento is a testament to their ability to fuse disparate musical elements into a coherent, deeply moving whole. Expect meditative passages, explosive bursts of improvisation, and moments of pure musical dialogue that transcend traditional boundaries.

Originally released in 1982 on the band’s own label. Limited reissue on red/white splatter vinyl limited to 500 copies only.

In 1997 a CD compilation called Calambre Techno was released in Spain which included a track called Utopia. Its producers were two Spanish brothers who had been making electronic music since 1991 under the name INTRO. The track of the compilation was a remix of the original included in the Ep Intro - @Utopia from 1994. @UtopiaRemix is a simple but perfect Techno-Trance anthem, Retro-Psychedelic but futuristic, one of those timeless tracks that always sound original despite its 30 years. Now UFC is proud to re-issue this techno-trance gem on vinyl as its eighth release accompanied by remixes from current producers of different visions.

About the remixes; The duo The MFA give us their '94 On The Floor Remix', a perfect “hit” to hear at dawn where they perfectly combine IDM, Indie-House and Experimentalism. Spanish producer Promising/Youngster presents 'Electric Shock Remix', a titanic version of the original remix where powerful Electro rhythms collide with Experimental and Futuristic IDM.

In the case of Brassica we left the way free to experiment with the original remix and he gives us his 'Psytalo Remix', a perfect fusion of Techno, Breaks and Psychedelia, originality in its purest form as this producer has accustomed us to in all his productions. To close the Ep, we find 'FutureCosmicalAscension Mix' by R.I.P. Bestia, truly a different version that is difficult to include in a specific style where the main melody is progressively guided towards a state of euphoria.

Original Track Produced by Intro: Francisco & Nacho Sotomayor. Liscensed with permission of Absolute Ambient (ES) 1994