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Newcomer Hekla releases her uniquely beautiful debut album for solo theremin and voice Á through Phantom Limb Records - run and curated by former FatCat Records, Thrill Jockey and Royal Albert Hall execs James Vella, Ken Li and Mark Pearse.

A Berlin-residing Icelander, Hekla's sparse, delicate, fractal music exists within these two worlds: dark and magical as Iceland's permanight folklore; and (though beatless) as deeply sonic and intense as Berlin's electronic scene. A long-term scholar of solo theremin, Hekla (shortened from her own name Hekla Magnúsdóttir) uses her instrument as an otherworldly and highly evocative Siren-call. A spectral, wailing, howling, lamenting yearning second-voice that underpins a soft vocal delivery, as if her studio had been haunted with a chorus of ghostly backing singers.

While a handful of reference points share a similar ground to Á - Colleen's interplay of voice and instrumentation; the richly immersive filmscore work of sadly passed fellow Icelander Jóhann Jóhannsson's; 'grandmother of theremin' Clara Rockmore's close relationship with such a singular instrument; Julia Holter's intelligent and classically-aligned songwriting - Hekla's music still exists singularly. A one-off talent, emerging from no particular scene, ascribing to no particular rules.

As a creative tool, the theremin - bizarre, unique, rarely heard - can be expressive, intuitive and highly adaptable. In Hekla's hands, her instrument covers an enormous range, from skittering birdsong of high frequency chirrups and chirps, to grinding, tectonic sub-bass. We are given the throbbing, apocalyptic dread of 'Muddle' and the baroque beauty of traditional Icelandic hymn 'Heyr Himna Smiur' in sequential tracks on the album's a-side. Appropriately, she also writes that the album title - Á - is similarly multifaceted in her native Icelandic: 'a river is an á and also it means ouch like when you hurt yourself, and also when you put something on top of something you put it á (on) something.'

The album was written and self-recorded by Hekla in her home studio in Berlin around her son's daycare schedule. Icelandic super-musician Mr Silla (a part-time múm member) guests on a number of tracks. Tallinn-based engineer Jose Diogo Neves - a stalwart of Icelandic and Portuguese music - mixed and mastered Á.

James Vella formed Phantom Limb in June 2017 after eight years in A&R for FatCat Records. Mark Pearse (formerly head of contemporary music programming at the Royal Albert Hall) and Ken Li (formerly of Thrill Jockey, now of Nettwerk) joined the team shortly after.

The globe-trotting Robert Millis returns to Helen Scarsdale for this beautifully fragile album of dissolved glass rendered as a collage of recontextualized minimalism. To astute listeners, Millis should be a household name due to his work in the unpredictably diverse Climax Golden Twins as well as his impeccable curations for Sublime Frequencies (collections include the Deben Bhattacharya: Men and Music on the Desert Road and Indian Talking Machine books). Hie previous solo work include Relief (released here on The Helen Scarsdale Agency in 2013) and The Lonesome High for the Sun City Girls’ Abduction Records in 2016. His scholarship into the hidden corners of music across the world has also earned him Guggenheim and Fulbright fellowships.

Related Ephemera is an album composed mostly from the hiss, the crackle, the surface noise of 78rpm shellacs and wax cylinders. “Horrifying,” Millis explains “is the concept to record collectors that vinyl degrades and can be easily damaged. however, initially records were considered ephemeral, especially 78rpm records. They were novelties. Fleeting. Entertainment.” Millis intends for the album to be a feedback loop whereby the patina of handling, playing, living with the record will circle back to the original source material. Furthering that metaphor, Millis amplifies and dilates feedback tones generated from his collection of vintage gramophones.

That said, Millis does cite the intrusion of exactly one field recording, a broken toy, and a few notes from a cello. But the construction of these rarified tones, crispy textures, ghostly rattles, and fluid resonance that ripples through all of Related Ephemera has its origins in the tactile nature of the vinyl medium. It’s hardly the stuff of sentimental nostalgia though. Related Ephemera is more an act of time travel, slipping backwards and forwards with the scratch of a needle (Watch out! What pre-recorded needle jump sound is not your turntable going haywire!). The emotional core to the album is that of a resigned melancholy, almost Bergman-esque in its starkness but not without a brief moment of dark humor.

Here is an album that aligns itself aesthetically with Nurse With Wound’s Soliloquy For Lilith, Philip Jeck’s more languid collages, and even some of Harry Bertoia’s sculptural atmospherics.

The vinyl was mastered and cut by Helmut Ehler at D&M Berlin, whose expertise was necessary given that part of the original compositions from Millis’ reworked surface noise were exceedingly problematic to cut. The D&M cut does temper the composition into a mysterious, diaphanous cloud; where the digital-only mastering provides a cascade of insects gnawing within your inner ear. Two facets. One piece of music.

Amnesia Scanner announces Tearless, the Berlin-based duo’s second LP. As Amnesia Scanner founders, Ville Haimala and Martti Kalliala watch their icy home country of Finland thaw, the staggering scale of political recalibration and the worldwide climate crisis to come blows open old norms. This album reflects what it feels to experience Earth at a time when collapse is emerging as the prevailing narrative.


The musical scope of the record is expansive, with guest vocalists—the Peruvian artist Lalita and the Brazillian DJ/producer LYZZA—descending into a vast uncanny valley of sound. Tearless follows the 2014 AS Live [][] mixtape, 2015 audio play Angels Rig Hook, two EP’s for Young Turks, and their 2018 debut album, Another Life (PAN).



“There’s a looming sense of radical change,” they note, connecting the present to a fin de siecle horror and curiosity regarding what new world is being ushered in. Someone called Tearless a “breakup album with the planet.” To which Amnesia Scanner responds, on the LP’s closing track: “Youwill be fine, if we can help you lose your mind.”


With the crossfader on Tearless sitting closer to pop than abstraction, so too does the audience for this record widen in scope. Listening through: Opener “AS Enter” sets a sombre tone until the fucking riffs of the second track(the titular, Lalita-helmed “Tearless”) make clear there’s plenty of roaring to come. A feature from metalcore band Code Orange on “AS Flat” follows, along with “AS Trouble” (feat. Oracle, the third, machinic ghost-member of Amnesia Scanner) and together they hit as black-metal-gaze dirges. At the album’s midpoint, Lalita returns for the beautiful, operatic breakdown of “AS Acá” (released as a single in 2019), before “Call of the Center” guides listeners through three club ready tracks—the grain-processed dembow of “AS Too Late” and “AS Going” with LYZZA, and then the ambientheadbanger “AS Labyrinth.” Closing “Tearless” is the sadboy grunge of “AS U Will Be Fine” with a clear statement of intent: doom, despair, insanity, absurdity, it’s all natural, all cathartic, and all OK. Refuse like the ‘90s and party like the ‘20s—if that seems senseless, you are doing it right.

Multidisciplinary NYC artist Gavilán Rayna Russom launches her own label Voluminous Arts, dedicated to highlight electronic and experimental artists whose work challenges fixed categories of genre and categorization. Her aim is to create a platform for multidisciplinary work and events. The inaugural release being her second solo album as Gavilán Rayna Russom 'Secret Passage', following up last years 'The Envoy, an homage to the East Side Rail Tunnel in Providence, Rhode Island, and the friendships she made there.

In Rayna’s words:
“I grew up in Providence, Rhode Island in the 1970’s and 80’s. The booming jewelry and textile industries of the previous decades had pulled out by that point. The Italian mob ran most details of the day to day operations of the city. As kids coming up in that environment, before the internet, me and the people I hung out with didn’t know anything else and we worked with what we had to entertain ourselves. We found places that had been forgotten by market interests and made them spaces of creative community building. One of the most special of these places was the East Side Rail Tunnel. Running for almost exactly one mile beneath the city’s streets, the tunnel and nearby Crook Point Bridge were unsupervised autonomous zones where I tasted the possibilities of a world without surveilance. The tunnel was particularly important in my creative development because not only was it a marginal zone apart from monetized spaces of creative consumption, but it also had specific experiential properties. It had a bend in it which meant that when you got to the middle of it you were in complete darkness, and I learned quickly that when you spend enough time in complete darkness you start to hallucinate, which I liked. The acoustics were also remarkable; long natural delays and harmonic-reinforcing reverberances. Making any sound in there added layers of acoustic effects which made noises physical and fluid and, combined with the complete darkness, absolutely dissolved boundaries between internal and external experience. I started hanging out there when I was 14 and continued to return there regularly until development, gentrification and policing eventually made it inaccessible. By the mid ‘90s it was sealed off with progressively more impenetrable barriers. Nowadays it looks very different. This music is about some of the significant experiences I had in this beautifully neglected place and the people I had them with.”

»Efia,« the sophomore album by Rosaceae, picks up where the Hamburg-based sound artist’s 2019 debut on Neoprimitive left off, further exploring the topics that had already informed »Nadia’s Es- cape«. From its confrontative front cover to the eight tracks on the album, »Efia« is fully dedicated to the motif of resistance, but does not exhaust itself in polemics. Rather, it masterfully translates the complexities of its underlying central themes into a visceral narrative.
»Efia« was originally conceived as a commissioned work for the 2019 edition of Hamburg’s Noise- xistance festival and departed from a sentence uttered in the British 1980s TV show »Sapphire & Steel« which inspired cultural theorist Mark Fisher in his analysis of what he had coined »hauntolo-gy,« a term originally coined by the Algerian-French philosopher Jacques Derrida in the early 1990s: »There is no time here, not anymore.«
The album again showcases Rosaceae’s knack for combining abstract experimental sound art with a form of storytelling that had already been at the centre of »Nadia’s Escape« and which relies on both verbal and musical means of giving a voice to the voiceless. The disembodied voice of - amongst others - Jesseline Preach and manipulated vocal samples blend in with dense soundscapes, elements of Neue Musik and occasional pure harsh noise. It’s a mix that deliberately puts different artistic tradi-tions into a dialogue with each other: the hallmarks of European salon culture are con- fronted with Kurdish wedding music and the unnerving loop of someone demanding a »Zugabe« (»encore«).
Thus, »Efia« not only blurs the lines between cultural and regional traditions, but also conjures up the ghosts of a past, ghosts that are more than ready to haunt the timeless present trying so hard to repress the atrocities happening at its fringes. As a whole, this makes »Efia« both a chilling work of sound art and a vibrant political statement fuelled by burning hot energy.

Repress

First up is a reinvention from Coby Sey - the Lewisham, South London musician who's founded the Curl collective alongside Mica Levi and Brother May and collaborated with Babyfather, Klein and Tirzah, noted as one of the 50 best new artists of 2019 by the guardian. The tone and atmospherics of the original’s combination of synthesiser and woodwind are sliced into ghostly, mesmeric fragments and refitted in layers around loping, propulsive rhythms with something like UKG's steppiness - languid despite being uptempo, bright and almost gleeful despite the inescapable mournfulness of the source material.

Who’s The Technician? of Ireland's Wah Wah Wino label - turns in a remix that wrestles with the original over seven- and-a-half-minutes of relentlessly captivating deep digi-dancehall, less of a remix than a rebirth cycle, with the latent soul-splitting lament of Kolida Babo’s duduk copy-pasted onto a delirious mercurial lead rotating through hedonistic ecstasy and burnout, a snake-eating-its-own-tail of a version cracking open the third eye with a crowbar, plus a post- apocalyptic, ruthlessly space-invading dub that blasts the remix’s scale out to the starkest retreats of the universe in search of...

Mirae Arts is an independent vinyl label based in northern California with focus on experimental ambient and techno music. Inspired by travel and natural landscapes, Mirae Arts boasts a diverse catalogue of projects from artists such as Seraphim Rytm, Michiru Aoyama, and Katsunori Sawa.

Katsunori Sawa & Anthone (aka Martsman) are Bokeh, the dynamic duo behind some of the most notable releases on Berlin’s Weevil Neighbourhood. Bokeh blends together the distinctive styles of Katsunori Sawa & Anthone, who have releases on labels such as Opal Tapes, SNTS, Hidden Hawaii, and many more under their belts. This year, Bokeh has already released a 12” EP for UVB-76 and Mirae Arts is proud to announce the follow up debut LP release called Lenses Dances.

Lenses Dances comprises 8 tracks that reflect on the photograph effect called bokeh, where aperture settings of the respective camera lens create vivid patterns, almost like dancing dots. It is a dedication to the artists’ love for photography. The music is complemented by Paul Nicholson’s signature graphic designs.

Artwork design by Paul Nicholson, UK graphic designer who created the famous Aphex Twin logo and The Laughing Man logo for the cult-classic anime, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex. Paul has since designed logos and artworks for numerous artists and organizations.

Mastering and lacquer completed by Kassian Troyer at the legendary Dubplates & Mastering.

For the second instalment of Subaltern’s 2020 program, we welcome one of the scene’s best-kept secrets – Imajika. The three hard-hitting tracks take listeners on a sonic journey through tribal rhythms, punchy drums and immaculate sound design. Calling upon ancient forces, Imajika makes a powerful statement with the Stagger EP.

Stagger
Ethereal glass chimes sing in the distance underneath an airy pulse to create an eerie intro until the groove enters to break the tension. We are offered a moment to breathe before being submerged by staggering drums driven by powerfully persistent bass-waves. Playful dubby FXs, gritty wobbles and naughty drum fills keep the head nodding throughout this stomper. After offering one last breath, the second drop hits with a relentless grunt that leaves us gobsmacked and then proceeds to devastate any sub to cross its path.

Unti Pundi
Mystical textures set a ghostly tone, overlaid by the meditative ‘Unti Pundi’. We are whisked through the caverns of time - space is created through reverbs and echoes of snares and droplets. A sinister pitch-oscillating synth takes your hand and as Imajika takes you deeper down the rabbit hole. Evolving basslines and masterfully placed drum fills add new depth to this monstrous beat before a shattering second drop wreaks havoc - Imajika shows no mercy.

Inside the Sycamore Root
Foreboding voices whisper in a secret language, seemingly summoning ancient spirits in a circular tree-based ritual. A cataclysmic drop fused with a tribal rhythm and propels us deep Inside the Sycamore Root. The spirits have been awoken. A gnarly bass pulsates as calls of the wild and menacing laser-synth stabs respond to the ancestral voices. The summoning continues and takes us even deeper into the wilderness as rumbling bass and tribal percussion take over - the descent into the great unknown continues.

Ma Sha Ru announce the launch of Kindergarten Records with their second EP, Zer0: a chaotic blend of club-ready electro, broken UK bass and gnarled techno. Respectively based in New York and Berlin, their music is born of the intense bursts of time this transatlantic couple spend together.
Recorded in summer 2019, Zer0 finds producers Ma Sha and Rù delving deeper into the dark and trippy impulses hinted at with their debut.
Opener Slew is a bubbling cauldron of UK bass rhythms and agitational tension, while the title track Zer0 builds it’s ominous electro around a vocal sample of robot struggling with a mathematical quandary, ghosts rattling in the machine. Things get eerier still on the flip, It’s a Forest Rave paying
homage to a journey deep into the woodland near Vilnius in Lithuania, menace dripping from branches as pounding, gabber-indebted kicks propel dubby keys and a distorted video game lead. Showers rounds off the record with their most experimental effort to date, a broken 140bpm stepper that stumbles and stomps around its delicate, icy core.

WRWTFWW Records is very happy to announce the official reissue of Motohiko Hamase’s astounding ambient house album Technodrome (1993). The album is sourced from original masters and available on vinyl for the first time ever as well as on CD. It comes with liner notes from the artist. This marks the fourth release from the ESPLANADE SERIES which focuses on the works of Yoshio Ojima, Motohiko Hamase and Satsuki Shibano. Inspired by John Cage, Jon Hassel, Brian Eno, and the emergence of house and techno music, Technodrome is jazz bassist turned electronic experimentalist Motohiko Hamase’s foray into what he calls ambient house or, as he explains, “using the gritty sensation inherent to the core of house music” to create an ambient record “aiming to express inverted images, optical illusions, and the sense of déjà vu that modern people can get in the city". Technodrome is constructed around innovative minimalism, a robotic funk orchestrated by bass lines and percussions, and monochrome moods. It’s the most intriguing project in Hamase’s discography, a ghostly ride set in 90s urban landscape, where repetition sets the groove and brings things to life, echoing Hamase’s deeper subtext for his compositions: “and attempt to recreate (as metaphor) the time in our mother’s womb". The album was initially released in 1993 by Newsic, the cult label started by Tokyo’s Wacoal Art Center (also known as Spiral), home, notably, of Yoshio Ojima who co-produced the album. It is now reissued in conjunction with Motohiko Hamase’s #Notes of Forestry and Anecdote albums.

As Ociya, hardware freaks Tin Man (Johannes Auvinen) and Patricia (Max Ravitz), come together in unholy acid matrimony on a definitive double-album, Powers Of Ten.

We know both sides well. Over a prolific run of records for Acid Test and his own Global A, Auvinen has expounded upon the promise of "Nonneo" (recently named one of Resident Advisor's 2010-19: Tracks Of The Decade), unearthing new, emotional vistas from the Roland TB-303. Ravitz, meanwhile, matches Tin Man in studio ethic, establishing himself as one of North America's hardware masters on records for Ghostly and Opal Tapes.

What we couldn't have predicted is how well the parts merge. Cuts like "Ghost Moons" channel the hazy IDM legacies of the past, while "Hopeful Galaxy" mixes a plaintive Rhodes motif with a hopeful 303 line for the perfect "tears on the dance floor" cut. The track titles on Power Of Ten— a perfect melodic techno LP generously spread across two records—are celestially minded ("Gravity Knots," "Star Scraping") and indeed, the cosmic metaphor is apt or the newly-formed duo. On Powers Of Ten, Tin Man's acid lines rocket through space like brilliant, shooting stars. His signature orchestral acid moments are given the perfect backdrop, the nebula of Patricia's rich atmospherics and melodies.

The album was recorded live to 2 track in Patricia’s studio in New York, no edits.

The 7' versions of Keep the Fire Burning and Funky Sensation by Gwen McCrae, two tracks synonymous with the soul, boogie, rare groove and modern disco scenes, are finally being reissued on Expansion Records. Keep the Fire Burning has been one of the most sought after records of the past decade, seamlessly bridging the gap between rare-groove and underground dance-music. What's more, recent price-hikes on online vinyl-distribution websites denote the way in which the market for this record has grown exponentially, a testament to its new-found popularity among the worldwide dance-music diaspora. Funky Sensation, moreover, possesses a timeless and universal groove, a song which has cemented itself as a darling of the boogie-scene, while gaining traction from the likes of Dam Funk and Nu Guinea. Furthermore, Funky Sensation is a traditionally popular record amongst the UK Soul scene, after seeing airtime on London Pirate-Radio stations during the 1980's. Keep the Fire Burning has since been sampled by Star Slimlinger, Marcus Gauntlett and the Hustlers Convention among others and has seen heavy rotation within the underground circuit, owing to its popularity among certain U.S and European DJ's such as Ron Trent, Marcellus Pittmann, and Sam Shepherd. Funky sensation is well-affiliated within the Hip-Hop scene, after providing the musical framework for songs produced by Africa Bambaata, Ghostface Killah and L.L Cool J to name a few. Original copies of this 7' single have exchanged hands for over £100.

As Ociya, hardware freaks Tin Man (Johannes Auvinen) and Patricia (Max Ravitz), come together in unholy acid matrimony on a EP (here) and definitive double-album, Powers Of Ten (coming up on april 27).

We know both sides well. Over a prolific run of records for Acid Test and his own Global A, Auvinen has expounded upon the promise of "Nonneo" (recently named one of Resident Advisor's 2010-19: Tracks Of The Decade), unearthing new, emotional vistas from the Roland TB-303. Ravitz, meanwhile, matches Tin Man in studio ethic, establishing himself as one of North America's hardware masters on records for Ghostly and Opal Tapes.

The album was recorded live to 2 track in Patricia’s studio in New York, no edits.
This 12-inch simply called Acid Test 15, ill be released before the album and also features remixes from Plasmic Eddy

In 1981, London-based E.G. Records released the debut album from a young Ghanaian group called Edikanfo. Edikanfo quickly rose to international notoriety following the release of “The Pace Setters” because of the infectious, forward-looking highlife meets afro-funk synthesis the band committed to tape. But the album also caught an additional wind of publicity due to its producer, the already legendary British musician and sound conceptualist Brian Eno. During that time, Eno was researching and openly propagating West African musics. He often mentioned his love of Fela Kuti and called his own rhythm-driven experiments the search for a “vision of a psychedelic Africa.” He had recently been collaborating with The Talking Heads on their Avant-funk masterpiece “Remain in Light” and with The Talking Heads frontman David Byrne on “My Life in the Bush of Ghosts,” an album which foretold the sort of cross-pollination and global music interconnectivity that today we take for granted. Eno and Edikanfo’s work together at Studio One in Accra (Ghana) was yet another inspired morphing of soundworlds and processes and a significant touchstone for both artists. As Brian Eno recently noted: “the actual recording sessions were joyful - the band played with such verve that you couldn't resist.”



But just when the sky seemed the limit for Edikanfo, the coup d’état in Ghana on the last day of 1981, tragically put the brakes on the band’s quickly developing fortunes. For years after that, the country endured enforced curfews at night, which of course ultimately gutted the live music scene in Accra and elsewhere. Because of this and other financial setbacks, the band ceased activity and its members spread out in exile, all over the world. It clearly seemed as though the story of Edikanfo, one of Ghana’s greatest bands of that era, had come to a premature end.



Now, almost four decades later, Edikanfo has returned. And with its surviving members gearing up to reissue and tour their classic 1981 album, “The Pace Setters,” the band is once again excitedly pointed towards the future.

Ital Tek (a.k.a. Alan Myson) returns to Planet Mu with his sixth album ‘Outland‘. The album was written during a period of new beginnings following a move out of the city to a quieter space and the birth of his first child. During this time of self-imposed isolation Alan recorded a huge amount of source material and spent weeks and months sitting up at night with his newborn, listening back and making notes on how the new record should take form, focusing and developing ideas to shape this lean ten-track album.

Alan talks of the record being a collaboration between two parts of himself, something that definitely comes across as the album unfolds. Textures are something Alan excels at and on his last album, the largely beatless ‘Bodied’, it felt as if he was building a new sound-world. On ‘Outland’ he expands upon this. The album brings together the extremes of Alan's sound, contrasting roughened bass and beats with starker more detailed atmospheres and emotions.

The most beat-driven song here is ‘Deadhead’, with its gnarled bouncing bass, angular distorted melodies and cavernous textures. On tracks like ‘Bladed Terrain’ the contrasts are even more defined with buzzing drones and razor sharp drums plunging into a grainy fog, giving the track a dramatic 3D feel.

Then there are the stop-start pauses of ‘Leaving The Grid’, where the song evaporates into space before reemerging with shuddering rhythms and ghostly textures. Melodies crawl around these tracks as if they’re just waking up, as heard on the atmospheric ‘Angel In Ruin’.

The sleep-deprived fraying of the senses became Alan’s routine and one which he says gave him a renewed creative energy; half-asleep, working through the night, and then into the daytime super-focused but exhausted. Prone to audio hallucinations whilst writing the album, he aimed to capture these distortions in his perception of pitch and time, and you can hear these effects interpreted on tracks like ‘Endless’ and ‘Open Heart’ as melodies phase and slip out of time like an emotional Doppler effect.

This is also true of the soaring atonal synths at the peak of ‘Diamond Child’, which feel like the aural equivalent of eye floaters. These intuitive feelings and functions are a difficult thing to capture in sound, but Alan manages it beautifully and always makes the result feel warm and adventurous, heartfelt and epic.

Red Vinyl

Directly influenced by the film noir tradition and the hardboiled detective novels of yesteryear, Aging craft gloom heavy mood music that aspires to create a cinema without image. ‘Sentenced To Love’ is the pinnacle of the band's work.

Led by David McLean, Aging’s fourth album is a direct continuation of the music he was commissioned to make during his 2017 Samarbeta Residency with The Crime Scene Ensemble, a 15 piece band of actors and jazz musicians formed to live soundtrack the short stories of pulp fiction writer and collage artist Phil Carney. Chronicling tales full of obsession, longing, double crosses and murder, the same thematic and melodic gravitas is present in ‘Sentenced To Love’, largely due to a handpicked selection of musicians from Manchester’s avant-garde and experimental music scenes being involved in both.
 Whereas previous records by the band have largely been improvised, the six brooding scenes that complete ‘Sentenced To Love’ reveal a new compositional rigour and emotional weight, whilst still retaining pockets of nocturnal improvisation, each carefully crafted to create their own distinct and filmic sound world. From the low lit, dive bar blues of ‘Nights In Amber’ to the gun out chase theme of ‘The Trapped Man’, the nameless cowboy ghost story ‘A Shadow On My Name’ and the redemptive odyssey of ‘Cursed With The Thirst’, Aging’s detailed mise-en-scene full of brass, double bass, simmering drums and reverb drenched guitars conjures the pantheon of noir cinema. This is no truer than on the album’s title track, a vampiric torch song whose crescendo soars with Ali Bell’s lamenting, tremulous vocals, which act as a midnight confession of a doomed romance.

In an age where most musicians are attempting to free themselves from limitations, Aging’s ‘Sentenced To Love’ stands proudly as a genre record, one evoking the tradition of the jazz ballad, designed to swallow the listener into the dark cascade of its drama.

On a collision course with earth from the furthest reaches of the universe, The Colours That Rise announce their debut album “Grey Doubt’ on the inimitable Rhythm Section International. Comprised of producer duo Simeon Jones and Nathanael Williams, The Colours That Rise have previously turned heads with 2017’s “2020” EP released on Breaker Breaker (the label credited with breaking Ross From Friends).
Returning with their most accomplished offering to date, “Grey Doubt” features acclaimed guests such as Yazmin Lacey, Yussef Dayes and Andrew Ashong, each respectively complementing the incredible musicianship on display here, capturing the true zeitgeist of present day UK. Combining live instrumentation and analogue synths, intricate, intertwining textures and melodies run deep throughout this beautifully crafted afrofuturist voyage, exploring the darkest recesses of the galaxy, through weatherbeaten and asteroid damaged synth waves and broken drum patterns reverberating out into the vastness of space.
Pre-announcement single ‘Home Time’ has picked up steam with support across BBC 6 Music and 1Xtra through the likes of Benji B, Tom Ravenscroft, Jamz Supernova and Mary Anne Hobbs, who awarded it as her ‘Near Future’ track. The duo are also set for a live performance at Rhythm Section’s showcase at SXSW 2020.

Pilo returns to BNR in 2020 with the “A.R.E.A.” EP. Since his first release for the label in 2013 at a very young age, each subsequent record could be seen as a milestone of growth - the “A.R.E.A. EP” feels confident, produced with consummate skill, focusing on the LA-producers strongest themes and devices. This is not, however, the sort of “maturity” that sees things get boring, more restrained. Pilo’s drum is the beat of LA’s unhinged underground techno scene - they don’t do boring - and this drum is always banging.

A-side examples: “Acid by Mouth.” A stuttered kick and a gated, uncanny valley voice form the backbone for increasing layers of texture and percussion. It’s a rollercoaster, as viscerally satisfying on the way up as on the way down. Pilo’s production journey has been increasingly cinematic, and you can see the songs here - “Acid by Mouth” is suited for a Gaspar Noe nightclub scene, and you love to hear it as long as no one gets murdered. “Ruhig” is tribal, made for spaces with 4 story high ceilings and sparse but blinding flashes of light. You can hear steel beams buckling under pressure, a breath too close behind you. The workers of the factory in fit of madness started raving to the sounds of their own machines. They’ve been dancing, without pause, for years now.

The B-side opens with “Exit the Artificial.” Headbanging broken beat kick, aggressive Skinny Puppy snares, ghost voices in hallucinatory bursts too short to confirm to be real. The draw-distance of the stereo spread seems infinite - listen at the very edges and a whole other (ominous) world is taking place. The ghosts mock you in gated laughs by the end. “Adapt Tactics” leads you out - low tempo, hissy percussion, haunted again at the fringe. Things break down, reduced to grain - brain short-circuits, “will I feel like this forever?” It’s a warning - turn back, there’s nothing for you out there. You embrace the madness, and start Pilo’s “A.R.E.A.” EP again from the beginning.

It's album release time for this Madrid-based soul/jazz organ trio who have been burning up stages and festivals throughout 2019 and who have already had a successful single out on Rocafort Records. Beat Bronco Organ Trio have not rewritten the Hammond musical handbook, but they do what it says on the tin rather splendidly – a Road Trip that grooves, swings and sashays around the familiar but much loved funky jazz theme.

Although it's impossible to listen to the album without summoning up the ghosts of Jimmies McGriff & Smith and the like, nearly all tracks here are originals and shout out personality, verve and respectful homage to the tradition. Featuring the usual leitmotifs: Shaftish film sountrack, lo-fi lounger, gospel-tinged toe-tapper, the hip shaker and much wah-wah frenesi, there's nothing not to like if the genre is your bag.

The steaming horn section on "Hard Play" thickens the sauce à la JBs and the Meters, aided along by a unique orchestra of handclaps. Vocalist and guitarist Alberto Palacios Anaut storms in with "Hey Hey", an old Dave Bartholomew classic from New Orleans, just to remind us where Fats Domino and Ray Charles got it all from. Chip Wickham makes two welcome appearances on flute, adding an extra jazzy touch to "Squirtly" and "Electro Pi" – the latter a fabulous trippy, spacious head-nodder that demands in our opinion some kind of a wigged out drum'n'bass remix. Every track is clearly dominated by variations on the vintage keyboard, be it Hammond, Clavinet or Minimoog; all roads lead to that sexy, sacred sound.

Spain is already prominent on the modern-day Funk map thanks to groups like The Sweet Vandals, Speak Low and Mighty Vamp – and it comes as no surprise that our hero trio featured at various times in all these bands. Gabri Casanova (keys), Lucas de Mulder (guitar, percussion) and Antonio "Pax" Alvarez (drums, percussion) have been busy reviving the funk gospel for some time now. Road Trip is an elegant culmination of their efforts in keeping alive a revered and timeless tradition that still today serves as a reference to where all the good stuff came from: The Church!

Kicking off 2020 – Great Circles takes a step away from the dance floor with the release of the monolithic new work from Philadelphia-based artist Radere, ‘I Do Not Want What I Have.’ This long-in-gestation set of slow burning electronics and shadowy drones is part of the label’s growing selection of releases dedicated to deep listening, following on from the 2017 Prefix Moniker LP.

Radere is the ongoing project of Carl Ritger, who has worked under the nom de plume since 2009 and has deep ties to the Great Circles family. He played some of his earliest shows at Inciting HQ, the recently shuttered, label-affiliated venue, and invited Justin Gibbon AKA Westov Temple and Great Circles label founder to contribute to some of his earlier recordings. While he started out as a more straightforward ambient guitarist, Ritger’s work developed into more experimental textures as he explored modular synthesis and processed found sounds.

Ritger’s releases from his time spent living in Denver, CO c. 2011-2018 are marked by a particular strain of east coast nihilism and an angular aesthetic that keeps the listener off balance. Now back in his native Philadelphia, the two long-form pieces that comprise ‘I Do Not Want What I Have’ represent a perhaps more nuanced meditation on pain and loss. “Spitty Kisses,” the 15-minute album opener, takes aim at the listener with a brutal salvo. It is almost sadistic in its sonic intentions – acerbic modular sound and abrupt stuttering in the material leave a listener personally affected. “You’ve Been A Ghost Your Whole Life,” on the flip, delivers a salve for the A-side’s wounds and resolves its masochistic tones.

Written through a period of intense personal trauma as a means to seek comfort and solace through creative action, it’s clear that the puerile humor of nihilism is gone and grown out of in Ritger’s work.

FFO: taking long walks off of short piers, the legend of the monk Kelpius living among the trees of the Wissahickon, traditional creation and destruction stories in polytheistic faiths, and John Coltrane.

The record is accompanied by a digital-only series of remixes by friends of the artist and regular collaborators, including new works from Borne and Shivers, as well as Great Circles alums Westov Temple, Chaperone, and WOLF DEM.

unperson’s forthcoming ‘The Ghosts That Gave’ EP will be released digitally and on 12” vinyl via Negative Space Ma, kick-starting a new chapter for the enigmatic producer as he glides between ambient, techno, breakbeat, footwork and UK funky with unquestionable prowess across 6 varied but inter-woven tracks.

The EP is framed around the concept of juxtaposing moments of euphoria and melancholy found within club music, delicately expressing intricate textures and emotion for the quiet corners whilst maintaining a dance-floor sensibility.

“Ultimately, I wanted to build a body of work that explores and extends upon various corners of the Harcore Continuum. Through the juxtaposition of fleeting moments of euphoria scattered amongst twisted, melancholic soundscapes, I aimed to express fluctuating emotions which denote the spirit and energy of the club/UK sound-system culture”. unperson

James Ruskin & Mark Broom are back as The Fear Ratio with their third album ‘They Can’t Be Saved’.

180G 2x12"

The duo, who are long-term collaborators have created their own signature style with abstract synths, heavy basslines and experimental soundscapes that fit somewhere in between IDM, electronica and ambient.

Their acclaimed debut album ‘Lightbox’ was initially released in 2011 on Ruskin’s Blueprint Records, featuring remixes from Warp aficionados Plaid and Deadhand. Soon after they formed a long-lasting relationship with cult Manchester based label Skam, with the follow-up album in 2015 ‘Refuge of a Twisted Soul’.

2018 saw a four track ‘Live EP’ release made up of exclusive versions of their Autechre supporting slot at the Great Northern Warehouse in Manchester, Several years and various solo productions later, The Fear Ratio return with an album that solidifies their reputation as experimental producers.

From the ethereal opening bars of ‘Sender’ slowly twisting into a brooding dub breakbeat, to the staccato, bugged out atmospherics of ‘Grey Code’, ghostly electronics of ‘Small World’, tripped out, schizophrenic hip hop haunting bass of ‘Game Plan’ and sun-dappled keys of ‘The Final Vision’ Broom & Ruskin flex their techno muscles ever further beyond the floor.

“…In The City Of Lights Where Nothing Is Grey…" In the City Of Angels by way of Prague, Pink Gloves channels classic Italo Disco on their Italians Do It Better debut. Petr Pliska weaves a tale of introspection on the neon soaked streets of Los Angeles.

Act 1 – Downtown. The title track is a hypnotic journey to the city center over a symphony of synthesis. He laments that he “Never Wanted To Come… Never Wanted To Stay… In The City Of Lights Where Nothing Is Grey”. It’s a place where nothing ever changes
& fantasy greets us in every direction. Beneath the sedated vocals, the synthesizers strike deep & dissolve quickly into a haze blanketing the strut of the heavy backbeat. The stage is set.

Act 2 – The Dancefloor. “Dancing on My Own” infuses Robyn’s four on the floor classic with it’s own cocktail of ethereal melodies & a rhythm section ala Ultravox. In the face of the Narrator’s lament, a mirror ball shimmers reflections of resilience.

Act 3 – The Highway. The downtempo “Wilderness” haunts us, bursting with silken synthesizers & spectral electronics reverberating like the ghosts of last night’s party. The tempered cinematic landscape blends with a mesmerizing sorcery as we drive into the unknown.

Act 4 – End Credits. Suddenly, the film is over. We hear the sunrise straight out of an ‘80s John Hughes film & the beautiful grit of Power, Corruption & Lies.

Produced By Johnny Jewel. Mixed By Lukáš Turza & Johnny Jewel. Mastered By Mike Bozzi At Bernie Grundman Mastering. Vinyl Cut By Bernie Grundman, Hollywood.

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.

“Prostitute” (1988) is Toyah's most experimental and bold album, highlighting her oppression once married and outdated expectations long before today's woke narrative. Sonically it is also a radical departure comprising drums, vocal and guitar meshed with a scrapbook of samples and side two closing on a locked groove. The album was written and played entirely by Toyah and Steve Sidelynk who went on to record and play live with Madonna (Ray Of Light, Music), Seal and Richard Ashcroft, amongst many others.

Issued on vinyl for the first time since 1988, with a new inner sleeve, the album is pressed on 180 gram translucent yellow vinyl.

Toyah's personal favourite album of her catalogue, “Ophelia’s Shadow” (1991), features a band line-up including Trey Gunn on stick, Paul Beavis on drums and Tony Geballe on guitar. Two tracks, “Brilliant Day” and “Lords Of The Never Known” feature Robert Fripp and were originally played live by the band Sunday All Over The World (which featured Toyah, Fripp, Beavis and Gunn).

Issued on vinyl for the first time since 1991, with a new inner sleeve, the album is pressed on 180 gram translucent aqua vinyl.

A unique album of outtakes from the classic ‘Songs
Of Praise’ and ‘In Pursuit Of Shashamane Land’
albums, compiled by On-U archivist Patrick Dokter
from the original tapes and expertly sequenced to
work as an immersive listening experience. A
companion piece to the acclaimed ‘Return Of The
Crocodile’ set from 2016 that took the listener on a
version excursion through the early years of the
group.
 These are the dubbier and more out-there
experiments mixed down whilst Adrian Sherwood
was shaping the sound of the albums. Bubbling
percussion lines skitter across the stereo spectrum,
ghostly voices echo inside the machine and
mangled guitar riffs beam down from Mars, whilst
staying rooted in the tough tribal rhythms that
form the bedrock of the AHC sound. This is music
for the head and feet, take heed!
 Mastered by King Kevin Metcalfe. Comes with
digital download card for full contents plus doublesided poster insert containing an extensive new
interview with African Head Charge mainman
Bonjo Iyabinghi Noah, telling the story of his early
life.

Iron & Wine performed and recorded an absolutely captivating live set of songs in the Blue Room venue at Third Man Records in Nashville. Armed with spartan set-up of a guitar, microphone and his minimal backing band in front of a soldout audience, Iron & Wine’s Sam Beam ambled through his discography, on touchstones like Naked As We Came from classic album Our Endless Numbered Days, The Trapeze Swinger from Around the Well and Winter Prayers from Ghost on Ghost. It was a heartfelt experience without sacrificing any charm, personality or gestalt crowd connection.

This is the soundtrack to a recently released documentary about the critically acclaimed 21 year old rapper from New York, who tragically died in 2017. A 19 song double LP featuring collaborations with Lil Tracy, Diplo, Gab3 and more. Recent releases "Come Over When You're Sober" (pt.1 & pt.2) brought him critical acclaim and strong sales in the UK. Specialist promo/marketing activity across all media outlets.

“We shan't have any more trouble from that meddling Doctor!” Demon Records presents a double bill of unique full-cast BBC radio adventures for Jon Pertwee as the Third Doctor, based on the enduringly popular BBC TV series. The Paradise of Death reunites the Doctor, Sarah Jane Smith and the Brigadier for an adventure that takes them from Hampstead Heath to the far-flung planet of Parrakon, where they face dangers aplenty from the hostile Freeth and Tragan.
In The Ghosts of N-Space, which features Jon Pertwee’s final performance as the Doctor, the Time Lord is in Sicily where he discovers trouble in the form of spectral monsters from another dimension. Presented across 3LP x 12” 180g Heavyweight Blue Vinyl & 3LP x 12” 180g Heavyweight Yellow Vinyl, these two fast-paced adventures were specially written for radio by former Doctor Who
producer & writer Barry Letts. Co-starring Elisabeth Sladen and Nicholas Courtney, both also feature the incidental music and Doctor Who theme arrangement of Peter Howell of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. Among the supporting cast for the stories are Maurice Denham, Sandra Dickinson, Harold Innocent, Peter Miles, Richard Pearce, Harry Towb and Stephen Thorne. Accompanying the coloured vinyl LPs are full episode billings, cast and credits, and six illustrated
sleeves that form a superb double-sided artwork montage. Dummedy-dum, Dummedy-dum, Dummedy-dum, Dum-dum…

Previously performing as The Greatest Hoax, Washington, D.C.-based composer T.R. Jordan debuts a new album of contemporary classical and ambient music with Past Inside the Present. Entitled Just for You, Jordan presents an album focused on the evolution of personal relationships and the paths they take.Produced and mixed by Rafael Anton Irisarri (The Sight Below, Ghostly International) and mastered by Taylor Deupree (12K Mastering). Recollections Suite, the companion cassette, is a long form classical piece featuring a string quartet led by cellist Mark Bridges (High Planes/Loscil, Kranky Ltd).

Latest Vaerel Records artefact limited to 200 copies, bringing together 5 different visions of the label's esoteric aesthetics. The manager of the label Raar bringing powerful percussion accompanied by samples of "Making of a Cyborg". Newcomer Quelza provides us his signature techno with broken rhythms and intriguing synths, then AWB continues to hypnotize us with his deep techno and finally Zadig & Ruhbarb team up for a tool full of high-speed drums and sharp cymbals.

Swiss bass music maestro Bit-Tuner presents a widescreen ambient album about interactions and the traces they leave behind.

Bit-Tuner's 7th album "EXO" marks a milestone in his work: the widescreen and mostly beatless opus focusses on musical storytelling and atmospheric depth. The album was written and recorded towards the end of Bit-Tuner's 2-year stay in Athens.

Influenced by topics like the social and structural turmoils of the past years, the strong connections between communities and the sensation of being in an economic deadlock, Bit-Tuner wrote an album that urges to be listened to in a (self-)reflective way.

It is a call to listeners to listen closely, delve into the sounds surrounding them in any given moment and draw a quiet but firm inspiration from within. Following his field recording-based albums "The China Syndrome" and "The Japan Syndrome", "EXO" highlights his interest in cinematic music and soundtracks.

For the album, Bit-Tuner is collaborating with film maker Joerg Hurschler, who is creating animated footage that will be screened, mixed and live scored at Bit-Tuner's shows in 2020. Joerg Hurschler's work tells the story of molecular objects being propelled into a world similar to ours, where they operate, interact and affect their surroundings, creating and leaving behind something new and strange. What is it that surrounds us, and how do we approach and interact with forces that are beyond our (apparent) reach?

When Elena Colombi launched the Osàre! Editions label in the autumn of 2019, she explained that the label would become home to bold, daring, future-facing music rooted in experimentation and free-spirited musical abandon. These are all descriptions that could apply to the label’s latest release, a retrospective album of little-known works by Greek musician and producer Thanasis Zlatanos.

Many will not have heard of Zlatanos, or Nekropolis, the band he fronted alongside dear friend and regular collaborator Trygve Mathiesen, yet the music he made during the 1980s was otherworldly, intergalactic and undoubtedly alluring. These songs and instrumentals made extensive use of analogue synthesizers and lo-fi drum machines, as well as Zlatanos’s trusted Gibson Les Paul guitar and his own distinctive voice.

Stylistically, the musician and producer refused to settle on a specific sound, preferring instead to create inspired, often mind-altering pieces that join the dots between wave music, skewed leftfield pop, ambient, prototype electronic and Madedonian folk music. Operating for much of the period from a crumbling house earmarked for demolition, Zlatanos kept up a daily music-making vigil that resulted in a vast vault of music, most of which has remained unissued since the 1980s.

The breadth of and width of Zlatanos’s distinctive approach is laid bare on Retrospective, a compilation album prepared by Colombi and the artist himself that draws on tracks from his numerous albums, those by Nekropolis – whose sophomore set “The New Europeans” was banned in Norway – and his epic archive of previously unheard material.

The artist’s singular but wide-ranging musical vision is free for all to see across the 13 tracks stretched across the vinyl version of the album (digital buyers also get a further four superb cuts). It veers attractively from the ghostly, traditional-meets-futuristic new age electronica of “The Crystal Sight (Excerpt)” and the doom-laden coldwave throb of “Master Chameleon”, to the undulating, soft-touch creepiness of “Surreal Moment”, the Vocoder-laden operatic poignancy of “The New Barbarians” and the squally guitar solos and effects-laden electronics of “The Light”.

Words from the artist___:
"I live in the Internet. Visits from outer space make me compose. I breathe here. I am the master chameleon, the psychedelic clown. I am not here anymore, neither in the picture, nor the reflection. Our bed is a boat that takes us tomorrow without us.

Here is an album of dreams and digital emotions. Analogue recordings made with a Prophet, a Moog Rogue, a tape recorder and a Gibson Les Paul guitar.

As far as I can remember I have always been in a recording studio. I listen to, understand and live my life through songs and music. I have worked alone and with friends such as Trygve Mathiesen. Although I am a guitarist, I continue to work with synthesizers on music that blends elements of Macedonian folk music, recordings from the streets and embryonic electronic sounds.

Some of my albums have been critically acclaimed, others banned by radio stations. For years I worked on endless recording sessions in a crumbling house that should have been torn down. The music on this retrospective compilation was recorded at various points between 1982 and the present day. Some of the compositions first appeared on previous albums, while others have never been released before. They were sat on tapes waiting for a saviour. Now that saviour has arrived and they can be free.

For further proof of Zlatanos’s unique sonic approach, check the startling contrast between the bass-laden slacker pop headiness of “No Expectations” and the spacey ambience of “The Dead Don’t Remember”. Considered together, the selected pieces and those elsewhere on Retrospective forms a snapshot of a genuinely unique and visionary musician, composer and producer. It’s a celebration of someone whose work has previously been overlooked."

"Art Is A Cat" is The Dining Rooms' eighth studio album - thirteenth if we also consider five remix and rework records - in over twenty years of career. It comes out five years after the fully instrumental "Do Hipsters Love Sun (Ra)?", and shows itself as a new milestone in the artistic path of the Milanese duo formed by Stefano Ghittoni and Cesare Malfatti.

In fact, "Art Is A Cat" hosts every facet of The Dining Rooms' music, mostly nourishing the intuitions delivered in past albums such as "Experiments in Ambient Soul" (2005) and "Ink" (2007). It preserves all the characteristics of their typical signature: songs balanced between folk and soul, dub expansions, instrumental hip hop and cinematic atmospheres. Not to renounce to any of these aspects and given the high quality of the recorded material, Stefano and Cesare decided not to sacrifice anything, and wrote and produced a 19-song full-length for a total duration of about sixty minutes.

"Art Is A Cat" also hosts a large group of guest singers, both historical voices of the band and absolute novelties, who also co-wrote the lyrics; the vocal parts are interspersed with the group's instrumental classics, from funk-fueled visionary downtempos to more experimental micro-songs. Sean Martin and Georgeanne Kalweit therefore return with two songs each (one of the two sung by Georgeanne has its lyrics written by Jake Reid, a London-based singer who already collaborated with The Dining Rooms in "Lonesome Traveler" in 2011).

Among the new entries we have, first of all, the Italian-Tunisian Rahma Hafsi on the sensual ballad "Little Girl" sung both in English and Arabic, while the very young Italian-Salvadoran Beatrice Velasco Moreno sings, together with Sean on backing vocals, the spoken-word "Teach Me To Dance", the spiritual "Sweet Love" and the title-track, an orchestral folk moment among the most inspired ones in the entire band's history; Lola Kola, queen of Tropicantesimo, also brings an absolute novelty in the world of The Dining Rooms, presenting for the first time an Italian-sung piece: "Nella Sua Loca Realtà", a post-melodic song dedicated to the fragility of love.

The vocal parts series ends with two episodes in which Stefano resumes his past as a singer (in the '80s with Peter Sellers & The Hollywood Party) with the Indian-flavoured "Ohm And Raga" and the existentialist ballad "She Says I'm Bad".

"Art Is A Cat" is therefore a complete and very fascinating album, destined to excite and leave its mark.