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New York’s very own JW Francis announces his brand new album ‘Dream House’ – his third with London based label Sunday Best Recordings. Coinciding with the announcement is the gloriously up-beat new single ‘Casino,’ which offers a glimpse into what to expect on his forthcoming feel-good LP. When JW isn’t writing songs about his own life or surreal imagery, he writes about other people – most notably around the month of February when he writes valentines songs on his fans’ behalf. ‘Dream House’ encapsulates all of this and forms a collection of glorious tracks written for other people: “Every year, about 6 weeks before Valentine’s Day, I make the following post on social media: “If you send me the name of your Valentine, and the reason you love them, I’ll write a song for them on your behalf.” That is how Dream House was born, 3 years ago. Over the past three years, I have received over 300 requests from fans to write songs for their loved ones. All of the songs on Dream House come from this project, some of them have been reworked to speak more to the artist’s life, others have remained exactly as they were first written. Ultimately, this is an album about caring for others, and the way we express it.” Written and recorded at the start of 2021 in NYC, ‘Dream House’ is slightly reminiscent of The Strokes and even has hints of Lou Reed, however the project is still quintessential JW Francis with its blissful melodies and dreamy instrumentation; perfectly fitting given the album’s title. Along with the announcement comes ‘Casino’, a track about pursuing your dreams, as JW explains, “This song is about taking a gamble on myself as a musician, quitting my job, and living the life I want to be living. The video explores the two lives I was living before I got the opportunity to follow my dreams and doing music full time.” ‘Dream House’ follows the hugely well received ‘WANDERKID’ and ‘We Share a Similar Joy’ and once again proves why JW is the king of laid-back and effortlessly cool song-making.

New York’s very own JW Francis announces his brand new album ‘Dream House’ – his third with London based label Sunday Best Recordings. Coinciding with the announcement is the gloriously up-beat new single ‘Casino,’ which offers a glimpse into what to expect on his forthcoming feel-good LP. When JW isn’t writing songs about his own life or surreal imagery, he writes about other people – most notably around the month of February when he writes valentines songs on his fans’ behalf. ‘Dream House’ encapsulates all of this and forms a collection of glorious tracks written for other people: “Every year, about 6 weeks before Valentine’s Day, I make the following post on social media: “If you send me the name of your Valentine, and the reason you love them, I’ll write a song for them on your behalf.” That is how Dream House was born, 3 years ago. Over the past three years, I have received over 300 requests from fans to write songs for their loved ones. All of the songs on Dream House come from this project, some of them have been reworked to speak more to the artist’s life, others have remained exactly as they were first written. Ultimately, this is an album about caring for others, and the way we express it.” Written and recorded at the start of 2021 in NYC, ‘Dream House’ is slightly reminiscent of The Strokes and even has hints of Lou Reed, however the project is still quintessential JW Francis with its blissful melodies and dreamy instrumentation; perfectly fitting given the album’s title. Along with the announcement comes ‘Casino’, a track about pursuing your dreams, as JW explains, “This song is about taking a gamble on myself as a musician, quitting my job, and living the life I want to be living. The video explores the two lives I was living before I got the opportunity to follow my dreams and doing music full time.” ‘Dream House’ follows the hugely well received ‘WANDERKID’ and ‘We Share a Similar Joy’ and once again proves why JW is the king of laid-back and effortlessly cool song-making.

Expanded with 2 original single-version tracks. Digitally mastered from original BYG tapes by Nick Robbins. 16-pages booklet with photos & exclusive liner notes by author and journalist Kevin Le Gendre. CD: Original 1969 BYG album. Expanded with 2 original single-version tracks. Digitally mastered from original BYG tapes by Nick Robbins. 16-pages booklet with photos & exclusive liner notes by author and journalist Kevin Le Gendre. *** Having been part of the fabled ‘Canterbury scene’ along with luminaries such as Robert Wyatt and Pip Pyle the irrepressible Australian guitarist-vocalist-songwriter Daevid Allen formed Gong with Welsh vocalist Gilli Smyth in Paris at the end of the ‘60s as France was in state of ferment. Magick Brother introduced Gong as one of the great oddities of the psychedelic and space rock age. The nucleus of Allen, Smyth and Malherbe was able to create a musical vocabulary very much of its own all the while searching for essential metaphysical truths. “The band made strong political statements that comes through loud and clear on this re-mastered version of Gong’s debut album...” Kevin Le Gendre, 2022

Kid Cudi meldet sich mit seinem zehnten Studioalbum „Entergalactic“ zurück.
Der GRAMMY-Gewinner und mehrfache Platin-Award-Träger festigt mit seinem kommenden Projekt erneut seinen Platz an der Spitze der globalen A-List-Musiker: innen.

Als Parallele zur musikalischen Verwirklichung seines Schaffens erscheint ebenfalls eine gleichnamige Netflix-Produktion. Die Regie teilen sich Kid Cudi und der erfahrene Filmproduzent Kenya Barris (Girls Trip, Der Prinz aus Zamunda 2).
Kid Cudi teilt stolz mit: „Entergalactic is everything I’ve always wanted to do, create a long-form visual companion to an album.”

Neben der musikalischen Fülle überzeugt das Album auch durch seine hochkarätigen Feature-Gäste wie Ty Dolla $ign, 2 Chainz oder auch Steve Aoki.

Subterranean Jungle is the seventh studio album by the American punk rock band the Ramones, released by Sire Records in February 1983. The album appealed to a hardcore punk rock style rather than featuring several pop-oriented pieces; this is due to the fact that guitarist Johnny Ramone received more leeway with steering the overall genre with his hard rock influenced riffs.
40th Anniversary of the seventh Ramones album. Subterranean Jungle marked a return to the roots of the band. Includes "Time Has Come Today.

Chaos & Colour, the energetic and triumphant 25th studio album from British hard rock legends and progenators Uriah Heep, bristles with explosive classic rock guitars, supreme harmonies, and Heep’s famously generous keyboard foundation.

Led by founding member Mick Box, it is no surprise that themes of light, love and, ultimately, positivity are constant through the eleven tracks. Opener “Save Me Tonight” shows the band’s weighty yet blistering chops, whilst “One Nation, One Sun” is a journey of soaring balladic contemplation.

“Fly Like An Eagle” emanates magic and mystery in a way that the late, great Ronnie James Dio would have heartily approved, and “Closer To Your Dreams” is a battle cry for all rockers to get out there and do it, with Shaw imploring that “So many have tried but slipped away/Now it’s time for you to have your say.” Throughout the album, Bernie Shaw’s timeless vocals are expertly supported by keyboardist Phil Lanzon, bassist Dave Rimmer and Box, with Russell Gilbrook on drums rounding out exceptional performances throughout.

Produced at Chapel Studios by Jay Ruston, and engineered by Pieter Rietkirk, Chaos & Colour is a superb album of quality hard rock from the pioneers of the genre who continue to create top class material. Old fans will be reinvigorated whilst new fans will surely find Chaos & Colour an exceptional discovery.

Chaos & Colour will be available to pre-order from November 4, in Black and Coloured Vinyl configurations, as a standard CD Digipak, a Deluxe CD packaged in a hardcover book with Uriah Heep’s Chaos & Colour signature patch and in digital formats.

UK jazz dance hero Paul Murphy teams up with BBE Music to deliver his first compilation on the label: a blazing selection of up-tempo jazz titled ‘The Jazz Room’.
Lauded by none other than Gilles Peterson as “the original messenger of jazz who found almost every dancefloor classic”, Paul began DJing in 1970s London. His passion and unique playing style placed him at the epicentre of an emerging jazz-dance scene in the city, popping off in spots like The Horseshoe (aka Jaffas), The Wag, The 100 Club, The Blue Note and The Electric Ballroom, where he founded the now famous ‘Jazz Room’, after which this album is named.

BABILBON is the fusion between Babylon and Bilbo. A collective of musicians with experience in other bands from Bilbao with the idea of bringing a modern twist to the old Jamaican rhythms, fusing them with dancehall and hip-hop rhythms without any pretension of sounding purist, and also lending the microphone to 10 artists from Bilbo and "surroundings": Bite Akatz, Suprah, Mad Muasel, Xatiro, Belardi Rockers, Gatom, Ras Reguilón & Daka, Fundación de Raperos Atípicos de Cádiz, Inés Pardo and Priteo. Their eponymous debut album (called 10 Beats and Riddims Basque Label) was recorded at Mamba Beltza studios in the Iturralde neighborhood of Bilbao, with the aim of thundering in all the sound-systems of the great Babylon. For the purpose, the band gives the microphone to 10 vocalists from Bilbo and "surroundings" to the delight of locals and strangers. The selection is of bells and whistles, but behind the rhythmic recitation of rhymes, puns, breaks and Jamaican riddims, there is a solid and versatile band that, adapting to the guests, builds a homogeneous sound around the Babylonian assortment of languages, dialects, accents, textures, styles, personalities, moods, cultures and subcultures.

If naming is a form of claiming, of being claimed, how is one tethered to both the physical landscape that surrounds us, as well as our own internal emotional landscape at times calm, at times turbulent, and ever changing? H.C. McEntire’s new album Every Acre grapples with those themes that encompass grief, loss, and links to land and loved ones. And naming claiming land, claiming self, being claimed by ancestry and heritage permeates the hauntingly beautiful landscape that is this poignant collection of songs. The songs straddle the line between music and poetry. In “New View,” McEntire cites poets “Day, Ada, and Laux, Berry, and Olds” fixtures in the world of writing, whose works are beacons of light over bleak horizons. The beginning of the song is backed by soft guitar plucks that fall on the downbeat and spangle like stars, and, throughout, guitar, bass, and drums swell together gently, mimicking ebbing and flowing tides under the moon. McEntire’s voice (at once tender and fierce) intones the truth of both giving and taking, releasing and claiming: “Bend me, break me, split me right in two. Mend me, make me I’ll take more of you.” Permeated by heartbeat-like drums, “Shadows” develops quiet ruminations on surrender and loss reminiscing, moving on. This ponderous, dreamlike song asks the question of how “to make room.” How does one make room, for self and for renewal and surrender, when it is so difficult to leave what you know behind? Playing with slivers of descending chromatics, along with the occasional downward-stepping bass, here McEntire yearns for home, and for nesting. Perhaps one of the more grief-stricken songs, “Rows of Clover” is a lamentation, one that touches on the loss of a “steadfast hound.” The lone piano in the beginning of the song is rhythmically hymn-like. The stark verse arrangement gradually leads to a chorus that reads like a moody exhale, swollen with lush guitar strums and a Bill Withers–esque understated soul groove. But what stands out the most is an image of being “down on your knees, clawing at the garden” the only explicit mention of a person in the song. “It ain’t the easy kind of healing,” sings McEntire, seemingly from further and further away as her voice echoes; and healing takes time, time takes time truths that linger painfully. “Dovetail” is a song that tells of various women. The song moves back and forth between solo piano and the addition of bass and drums under vocals. McEntire’s gentle, trembling vibrato harmonized in thirds in a celebratory manner calls to mind a rejoicing psalm and shines through these images, leaving the listener cuttingly fraught with emotions such as wonder, sadness, nostalgia that can only arise with these juxtapositions. Gracious (and graceful) with its lilting melodies and lush harmonies, Every Acre explores the acres of our physical and emotional homes. These songs are reaching for the kind of home that we all seek: one where we can rest and lay down (or tuck away) our burdens of loss. And maybe, moving through every acre of a world that often tries to tear our sense of identity and heritage down, McEntire sheds light on what it is to be human in this life both stingy and gracious, both hurtful and kind.

1000 black vinyl LPs. London-based ‘indie-supergroup’ SUEP announce their long-awaited debut mini-album Shop, a collection of 6 oddball, car-boot-sale pop songs with a sprinkling of theatrical storytelling. Led by Georgie Stott (of Porridge Radio, Garden Centre) and Josh Harvey, SUEP was born out of a near-decade of playing in sheds and barns with like minded personnel, holding a mutual love for Paul McCartney, Jona Lewie, the B-52s, Devo and other performative freaks enjoying themselves. Following a move to London from Brighton, the pair added George Nicholls (The GN Band, Joanna Gruesome, The Tubs), Will William Deacon (PC World, Garden Centre), and Ollie Chapman (Boil King) to the line-up. The 5 piece take turns writing songs and taking the lead vocal duties in a wonderfully playful but coherent collaboration, with their debut being a kaleidoscopic off kilter pop ride, taking the listener through haunted castles, deprived encounters, days lost to the imagination in bed, and through the integral friendships that give SUEP the energy to keep dancing to their own beat. The album was arranged and recorded in the Red Lion Boys Club, an ex-youth centre in which Georgie and Josh both lived. Using equipment collected by Josh in his travels as a bootsale and market trader, the sports hall was transformed into a makeshift studio for a few days, with sessions conducted by producer Matthew Green (Sniffany & The Nits, The Tubs, etc.) Mark Riley (BBC 6 Music) described SUEP’s debut single and album opener, ‘Domesticated Dream’ (2021) as “perfect pop music.” The joyfully kitsch track brims with a 70s Yamaha disco beat, deep bass, nostalgic drum machines, and hooky melodies. Possibly the most psychedelic and infectious track born out of lockdown, it tackles homelife, drinking too much, and making big plans that never come to fruition, but with a big technicoloured positivity for the future of the human-race, with the chorus’ refrain, “the psychedelic 4000s,” predicting the return of the psychedelic Age of Aquarius in a couple of millennia time. The following single ‘Misery’ (2021) is pure cosmic swing-pop wizardry in part inspired by spy music and The Supremes. Ollie, The track’s baritone vocalist, describes it as “A love song disguised as a song about loss. It's about cherishing the things that matter but it’s also about having the courage to say goodbye,” with each line of the song a small story about a different character. Whilst latest Shop taster ‘In Good Health’ is darkly euphoric like a pleasantly strange meeting of Siouxsie Sioux and Jona Lewie. It’s a playfully discombobulating mix of 80s jangly guitar, chirpy keyboard and moody post-punk tackling mental health, drug addiction, and the power of friendship, written after the song’s vocalist Georgie came out of hospital following a mental health crisis. “I wanted to write a song that encapsulated how important my relationships with my friends and boyfriend were at that time” she explains “…and one that also felt dark like I did at the time. I couldn’t go outside due to anxiety surrounding my health so I stayed inside for weeks. People would visit and watch films with me or let me tattoo them or make music with me. My community helped me recover.” Elsewhere on Shop is ‘Just The Job’ fronted by Harvey and described by him as “About the relief of accepting a menial existence, and allowing life to be boring - but (within that) how the small things are the important ones, how pulling a sicky or extra long lunch break are important things to do for yourself. It’s an anthem for working people who’ve had enough - and a crowd favourite at SUEP gigs. The darker undertones and post-punk angles of the Georgie-fronted ‘Onions’ is inspired by the crapness of cliques, with the band calling the song “A cry of welcome to all;” and finally the hooky ‘Friend of Mine,’ described as “A love letter to all the people that come and go throughout your life no matter how long you know them”. SUEP have received coverage in Independent & Clash, (among many others), with big support from Mark Riley and Steve Lamacq (BBC 6 Music) for early singles.

Korea Town Acid (Jessica Cho) is wildly creative. She is an electronic artist at her core, but that barely scratches the surface of what her sound encompasses. Citing influences as UK future bass, glitch, jungle, and alternative hip hop, KTA fuses these sounds with concepts of movement and texture, to create multi-faceted works that go beyond the club. Born in Seoul, Korea, Toronto based DJ/Producer Korea Town Acid maintained a fierce but mindful schedule amidst pandemic induced lockdowns. With the ease of restrictions and the gradual return to a version of normalcy, KTA continues to thrive, without hitting pause. In 2021 she released her full length LP Metamorphosis, a self produced ten-track record, featuring collaborations from Toronto based artist DESIIRE, U.K based Korean pianist and rapper Pianwooo, Seoul rapper PNSB, L.A beatmaker Dreamdave, and New Jersey MC, L.J The Alien. She swiftly followed that up six months later with the release of Cosmos, another self produced full length LP that boasts the 2022 Juno Award nominated track, ‘Sobriety’. She also contributed to Cadence Weapon’s 2021 Polaris Prize winning record Parallel World, producing the track ‘Play No Games’. Despite touring restrictions in 2021, KTA delivered a notable hardware set as part of Hinter Live, showcased at POP Montreal, and continued her monthly online residency at The Lot Radio in New York. Korea Town Acid released her latest LP, Elephant in The Room, via URBNET. The twelve track self produced and mixed album, was mastered by East End Mastering in Toronto, ON, and features a lineup of Canadian guest collaborators, including Zander Miller, Khrono K, and Hood Joplin. In anticipation of the release, KTA has been actively securing live performance sets to showcase new tracks, with recent appearances at Vancouver’s Wonderment Festival, Montreal’s MUTEK Festival Toronto’s Summer of Seoul festival at the TIFF Atrium, Peprally, and Promise Cherry Beach series

Honoring the craft and the ones that came before him through undeniably infectious beats that brace the weight of his choice samples and original layers. Getting his chops up through his younger days, Shane spent his time developing instrumental obstacle courses for local emcees to dance around including Gift Of Gab (Blackalicious), Spills (NY) Kinetic Source (Ozomatli) and Cashus King (LA.) By the age of 21 Shane threw himself into the ring of the Stones Throw beat making contest. To only the surprise of himself, Shane walked away twice as a weekly winner of the battles. After a small hiatus due to the birth of his daughter Clementine, Shane jumped back on the pads and began crafting the instrumentals for what would become Apostolos. With the instrumentals in flux Shane reached out via Instagram to an upcoming emcee out of the Duck Down Camp, a prodigy of the late, great Sean Price, Rim. After chatting back and forth for a small time, making sure Rim knew Shane was in this project for the right reasons, Rim jumped on board and even helped land other up and coming NY emcees like Eddie Kaine & Spills. From there everything snowballed. One feature led to another and soon enough the album was taking shape with features from not only Rim and Eddie Kaine, but hip-hop heroes such as Masta Ace, Planet Asia, A.G. of D.I.T.C. and Geechi Suede. With a few more instrumentals and spaces to fill Shane reached out to long-time bay area engineer/producer Deegan Mack Adams to help with the mixing and mastering and overall release of the project. Apostolos gets its namesake and back cover imagery from Shane Sounds' great great Grandfather, Apostolos Christakis who immigrated to the United States from Greece at the turn of the 20th century. The documents you see on the back cover are Apostolos’s army registration documents only a week after coming to the United States. We pay our respects to the ones who came before us and allowed us to be here to create this project. Salute!

The album’s seemingly brief tracklisting belies a work of great beauty and depth, and one which turned into a one-man crusade for singer/guitarist Lars Andersson, intertwining deeply personal stories with his love for the era of Romanticism. “Every time I go to a museum and I’m about to pass through the era of Romanticism I stop in awe,” says Lars of the enduring appeal of the 18th century artistic movement. “Whatever it is – stories, paintings, music – it triggers something deep within me, something profoundly human. It really hits a nerve, and it utterly immerses me to a point where I can’t move.” The album replicates this feeling; a gloriously over-the-top blend of Slowdive and Sigur Rós, mixed with the single-mindedness of Daniel Johnston and the noisiness of Nirvana, it’s as bold and beautiful and every bit as ornate as the art that inspired it. Unlike their acclaimed debut, 2019’s All That Ever Could Have Been, which gradually came into focus with a 15-minute opening track, Picturesque hits home from the very first note of the short and sweet opener, ‘Ballerina’. That’s not to say there aren’t epics here – ‘Metamorphosis’ is essentially a 12-minute suite of three movements; blistering closer ‘The Lot’ is 11 minutes of Swans-inspired heaviness – but everything is much more direct and focused. This isn’t an album to lose yourself in, it’s one to get swept away by. “‘More is more’ was definitely the credo when making this record,” agrees Lars. “A big inspiration were bands like Pond and the way they manage to fill their songs up with stuff to the absolute maximum. While I definitely tried to give the listener some room to breathe at certain points and while, in good old post-rock fashion, it still builds up and breaks down, it relies much more on simple melody and harmony as opposed to noisy experimentation to transport feeling.” Never more so than on the first single, ‘The Golden Age’, which is the album’s centrepiece; a soaring slice of über-shoegaze that is so stunning you can’t take your eyes or ears off it. Like all the songs on the album, it’s based around a fairy-tale from the Romantic era. In this case, it’s Heinrich von Ofterdingen by the German poet, author and philosopher Novalis (other influences are: The Steadfast Tin Soldier by Hans Christian Andersen; The Seven Ravens and Hans in Luck by the Brothers Grimm; Undine by Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué and The Golden Pot by E.T.A. Hoffmann), with Lars drawing parallels between the titular character’s mystical and romantic searchings and his own personal quest. This is apt as the album has been an overriding obsession for Lars for the past two-and-a-half years; as well as writing and recording the songs (bandmate Phillip Dornauer played drums), he also mixed and mastered them at his Alpine Audio studio and Picturesque is very much his Brian Wilson or Kevin Shields moment. MOLLY were in the middle of their European tour when Covid hit in early 2020, forcing Lars to retreat back to his home outside Innsbruck and giving him time and space to think about every detail of the record. “Well, I was on a quest I guess,” he admits. “Like everyone, I was stranded at home and at some point I just said to myself, ‘If not now, then when?’ It was an intense process. I’ve worked on music from other bands and artists before but producing and mixing your own music is an utterly different animal. It was probably the most intense thing I’ve ever done, but it was also incredibly rewarding and the feeling of it all coming together piece by piece is incomparable.” The artwork is just as effective. “I think of Radiohead’s OK Computer – what you hear on the record is what you see on the cover,” explains Lars. “We were inspired by what we call ‘wimmelbilder’ hidden pictures in German, a very specific style in art where there are a lot of little things happening. When you see it from further away, it looks organic like a lost painting from the area of Romanticism, but the closer you look the more digital it gets. It’s a nice analogy.” He’s right, it perfectly sums up the conflict between Romanticism and 21st century life. “Romanticism was basically an answer to the Industrial Revolution as well as the social and political norms of the Age Of Enlightenment,” concludes Lars. “Now, we all live in a much more industrialised, materialistic, individualistic and sterile society than any early Romanticist could have ever possibly imagined. Over 200 years later the Romanticists have lost the battle.” With the divine and downright pulchritudinous Picturesque, MOLLY begin the fightback.1.Ballerina 2.Metamorphosis 3.The Golden Age 4.Sunday Kid 5.So To Speak 6.The Lot

Motörhead veröffentlichen ihr 23. (und letztes
Studioalbum) Bad Magic von 2015 noch einmal in einer
erweiterten Version.
"Bad Magic: SERIOUSLY BAD MAGIC" beinhaltet
frisches Bonusmaterial und zwei bisher unveröffentlichte
Tracks: "Bullet in Your Brain" und "Greedy Bastards",
sowie eine glanzvolle Live Performance von der Bad
Magic Tour beim gigantischen Mt Fuji Festival in Japan
2015. Als Bad Magic 2015 veröffentlicht wurde, tat es
einen gewaltigen Schlag und alle, die meinten Motörhead
wären zahmer geworden, wurden eines Besseren belehrt.
Das Album erreichte in Deutschland auf Anhieb die Top 1
Chart Position. Producer Cameron Webb hatte seinen
Anteil daran; er überzeugte die Band, das Album in den
NRG North Hollywood, Maple Studios und Grandmaster in
Kalifornien live aufzunehmen- zum allerersten Mal in der
Ära Kilmister/Campbell/Dee.
Eine der versteckten Juwelen des Albums auf "Bad
Magic: SERIOUSLY BAD MAGIC", ist Motörheads
berühmteste, international gefeierte Version des David
Bowies Klassiker, "Heroes". Ursprünglich sollte der Song
auf Bad Magic (2015) erscheinen, wurde jedoch in der
letzte Minute wieder heruntergenommen. Jetzt aber fand
"Heroes" seinen Platz auf "Seriously Bad Magic".

"Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the bassbins, Mysticisms brings the latest in its Dubplate series. After the success of his first digital dubb excursions on the version, Persian returns with a second 10” of reggae inspired electronics, covering Bass, Breaks, Digidub and now also, Jungle.

Taking no prisoners with the massive opener Survival Dub, Persian marries classic breakbeats and toasting to bouncing, dance floor effect. THE party starter. This is followed by Smoke Mari, a looping steppas of FX and breaks to lay down the Dubplate clash.

As ever the link between rave, breaks and sound system culture is explored, this time with the Roots’n’Lovers opening of There Is No Love giving way to a Junglist drop, before risin’ to a beautiful soul sermon.

Finally, taking it all down, tings wrap with the deep, sampledelic dub of Zatoichi’s Troubles. With a bass to destroy many a speaker, it’s lanquidity morphs from the EP’s hedonism of sound clash styles to a gliding “tokers delight”.

Smoke the Mystery. "

"Island Time" is the latest album from Joel Sarakula and his first since relocating to The Canary Islands at the height of the pandemic. From his home in the UK he accepted an invitation to perform a special concert Alfredo Kraus Auditorium in Las Palmas, Gran Canaria in November 2020 not realising it would change his life.

"Island Time" is a collection of songs covering themes such as island life, city life, loneliness and romantic love and our relationship with nature.

Stylistically covering soft-rock, soul, disco and reggae, "Island Time" and its first single "Tragic" is broad in scope but ultimately a cohesive record, with the production focusing on a small group of musicians featuring Phil Martin (Dawn Patrol, Martin & Garp) on drums and Xav Clarke on guitar and bass. Building on his previous records "Love Club" and "Companionship", Sarakula expands his palette with a broader use of synthesizers and drum machines and makes stylistically adventurous choices such as the AOR samba of "Dinosaur" and the 70s-cod reggae inspired title track "Island Time", a tribute to escape and re-invention. Sarakula sings "Don't bother me I'm on island time, don't bother my mind once again." For any overworked and over-connected city-dweller, this plea for isolation in a tropical island is a beautiful fantasy.

"Island Time" will be released on Jan 20th, 2023 with Sarakula bringing some tropical sunshine to the freezing European winter in January and February with performances already confirmed in The Netherlands and Germany.

Booty Haul returns to Alloy Cuts with more of his Boom Bap goodness. Blending multiple choice samples and breaks, most notably the Mary Jane Girls’ “All Night Long”, to create a hip hop instrumental that sounds like it was forged in a NYC basement in the mid-90s.

This time Mr Haul draws for a ragga acapella on the A Side, clashing with the Canadian Dancehall Queen “Carla Marshall” and her 1990 hit “Champion”.

Samosa Records heads into the autumn with a crackling and enchanting EP from one of the masters of funky grooves and dusky beats, LTJ EDITS.

Opening the EP on the A-side, we have the perfectly pitched ‘Somebody’. Tight bassline merges with church- like organ chords, a sharp guitar riff and a soulful vocal that you feel in deep your bones. Meticulously constructed, this track will resonate with anyone familiar with LTJ Edits’ work (and newcomers alike).

A2 brings us the title track, Mr Man. This masterpiece has everything you want from a slow, thumping groove. At 98 bpm, it’s a trademark LTJ Edits smackdown, but oh boy - it has so much more in the trunk. Mesmeric, hypnotic - the familiar smooth mid-range tenor vocal gives you goosebumps on your goosebumps. An instant classic.

The B side kicks things off with mid-tempo stomper ‘Give All’. Make no mistake, this is LTJ Edits in the kitchen cooking soul food with a hint of blues and lashings of rare groove. A rolling, powerhouse of a track that also delivers a message to the masses, you’ll have this one thumping out of your speakers for a long, long time. Everybody needs it. Got to have it.

Finishing off this outstanding release is the cherry on top of the funky cake - simply entitled ‘James’. As soon as the guitar riff and bass starts, you get the meaning behind the title. This is all about the raspy, unmistakeable vocal, chanking guitar and funkadelic, bluesy bassline. A rhythmical, funk infused JB bath bomb from start to finish. After your first listen, you’ll want to go straight back on this ride.

The Mr Man EP is a serious chunk of vinyl and LTJ Edits has found a perfect home at Samosa Records. You have this in your record box and you’re ready for anything.

Mystery Circles is busy at the moment with a great series of tapes, albums and 7"s all dropping in relatively quick succession. This one is a nice heavy 180-gram vinyl long player with only 100 copies pressed. It's Brooklyn's Tyler Gilmore, aka BlankFor.ms, at his best, if you ask us. His highly textured ambient uses gorgeous spinet piano, dusty and degraded tapes and analog synthesisers to make for something that evokes deep memories and transports you to places you had long forgotten. It is a touching record that leaves an indelible mark.