Search:go west

repress

Levon Vincent returns with his fourth full-length studio album Silent Cities a striking departure from his previous records. This, his first release experimenting with the cassette format, Silent Cities is a kind of mixtape through more private moods and personal pitches (literally given Levon’s non-standard tunings).

While Levon has always pro
duced dance floor jams with the intention of raising people’s heart rates, Silent Cities began with 72 bpm: his average resting heart rate, and the concept of tuning the music he was making to his own body rather than increasing anything. This brought the tempos down to 72 bpm or even half of that, at 36bpm. Programming the record during the empty cityscape of Berlin lockdowns, this is the first time Levon’s created an album for the home stereo or for headphone listening whilst navigating through a city. A mixtape specialist in his youth; he was always wanted to play with the cassette format. The results are sure to delight any listener, with the ever-present ambient, krautrock, shoegaze, hip-hop and electro influences coming to the foreground on this work.

“I was expanding further along the lines of a surprise favourite from my previous LP, a song called She Likes To Wave To Passing Boats which was not a 4 on-the-floor piece to play in clubs but a more impressionistic piece of music that I wrote to expound some emotions one day” says Levon. “It was a song written using just intonation. I really love how warm the pure 4ths sound, so when working on the new LP Silent Cities I decided to use my own tunings”.

Historically, the use of just intonation has meant that such instruments could sound "in tune" in one key but at the expense of more dissonance in the other keys. None of the songs on Silent Cities use standard Western equal temperament, Levon created his own scale designs coupled with the ancient ratios found in just intonation.

Born in Houston in 1975, Levon’s life changed dramatically when his parents moved their family to New York in 1981, uprooted from what he knew, the shock, the change from Houston to New York at 6 years old, is referred to constantly in Levon’s Musical output over the years. Levon's family moved houses in and around NYC from 1981 -2010, never more than a mile or two from the WTC. He lived on the Lower East Side during his teenage years and early 20s. This time period and this locale are also a big theme recurrent in his music as he tries to convey how the "downtown" lifestyle and culture-melding affected him so much at a tender age. He cut his teeth working in record shops around lower Manhattan, and while working at the Halcyon Record shop in Brooklyn he (alongside DJ Jus-Ed) was instrumental in creating the wave that came to be known as the "NYC House Renaissance" circa 2010. During the Y2K years he studied 20th C post-minimalism at Purchase college of New York under James McElwaine (who tangentially produced Man Parrish’s Self-Titled proto-hip-hop debt LP). Levon was fortunate to study theory with avant-garde composer Dary John Mizelle and orchestration under conductor Joel Thome. He undertook masterclasses with Philip Glass and also served as intern for John Kilgore, engineer for Steve Reich, where he was present for notable mix sessions such as “Violin Phase.”

Post-minimalism clearly remains an influence not to mention the early sampler stars of 80s freestyle and synth pop. Mixing such far-reaching influences is something Levon executes tremendously well. The first track Everlasting Joy moves at a head nodding 96 BPM tempo, reflecting formative influences like Paul Hardcastle’s Rainforest or Art Of Noise’s Moments in Love. “Those types of songs were a big eye opener for me as a youth, because it was where I realised songs in popular culture didn’t have to be kept to just 3 minutes, and they didn’t require vocals either. So, Everlasting Joy is a song with that intention, one that might be radio-friendly, despite the long arrangement and without vocals. You could say it was inspired by 107.5 in NY because that was a station I listened to a lot in the 1980’s.”

The majority of demos on Silent Cities were recorded before Covid-19 hit the world - when Levon had found a studio space outside of home in his adopted city of Berlin. It was a career first - working on music outside the bedroom. This riding the train or bicycling ‘going to work’ in Berlin opened up a new mood in his music, using the time back and forth to be inspired - commuting as an NYC transplant who still feels as a tourist in Berlin, with a pair of headphones, looking out the window on the train, or stopping on bridges and parking his bike to enjoy Berlin's skyline and horizon. Then, the pandemic struck and “work” came to a halt. Levon had recorded so much material during that year in the studio out of house it seemed like an inflection point for him to lighten the burden of the possessions he was carrying.

“People close to me have watched me give away synths and hardware regularly and I have given away my record collection every few years for my whole life. As a struggling artist in my 20s who had worked in record stores that whole time, I learned that moving constantly with 12k records just wasn't the way to live. So, in light of the pandemic, I set up a shop online, and sold all my music equipment. I also created a separate shop for all my sneakers and clothes. Easy come, Easy go. This provided me with a slow drip type of income that carried me quite well through the pandemic and it allowed me to focus on my own art and music. Getting rid of all my possessions felt like a weight being lifted from my shoulders and I was able to stay the course and remain committed to the music. I needed a further 2 years to mix and arrange the LP. If it weren’t for the pandemic, I would not been able to make this type of LP, so in light of everything, I was able to turn a depressing time in to something lasting and musically very positive.”

You can hear how his approach to a cassette release retains the "Medium is the Message." ethos. Silent Cities is a spooling, warm piece about life memories and embodiment.

A gonzo crew of shaved-headed, sax-blowing, reverb-stomping maniacs,
the fivesome tore it up on the stages of unsuspecting West Coast teen
haunts and hit the big screen via the 1964 B-Movie Bikini Beach
The album features Penetration, one of the undisputed all-time surf cornerstones!
Back in the 1960s, when surf music was burning up and down the beaches of the
Southern California coastline, it was often a gimmick that made one band stand
out from the others. The Surfaris had the laugh at the beginning of "Wipe Out."
The Chantays had the great guitar run at the beginning of "Pipeline." The
Tornadoes tried Shootin' Beavers ; The Pyramids simply had great surf music and
bald heads.
Their big hit, Penetration, stayed in the top ten (Billboard) for 13 weeks reaching
as high as #4 nationally. Only The Beatles kept the song from going higher. The
Pyramids appeared on American Bandstand (twice), The Bob Eubanks Show,
Shebang, Dave Hull's Hullabaloo, and The Lloyd Thaxton Show. The band went on
to record a handful of killer singles and one album before splitting up in 1965.
Now back in print after 25 years, the Pyramids are back in action and ready to
rock!

We love nothing more than belated success, from the Nightingales' rise to top cult band, to the string of five marvelous Blue Orchids LPs in six years (as much as Martin Bramah had managed in the previous four decades) . . . so give us more. Like David Westlake. The release of NME's C86 cassette heralded a new generation of artists who'd emerged since the preceding C81 assembled a set of acts who'd coaxed new dialects out of punk, rhythms, reggae and the avant-garde. Though variable, C86 became a phenomenon, making a bigger splash and enduring longer than anyone could have predicted. The evolution by 1986 of "independent" or "alternative" music into "indie" brought a modified focus. From C81's post-punk negotiations of politics and cross-cultural influence to C86's compact blasts of, on the one hand, effervescent melodic pop and, on the other, jagged Beefheart-esque racket. Tiny Global Productions has proudly presented already one of the best from C86. The Wolfhounds' leader David Callahan's talent evolved masterfully into Moonshake, and more recently to a strain of blistering raga-folk psychedelia which deals with sociopolitical issues in brilliantly idiosyncratic fashion. And what of another of the best from C86 - the Servants, David Westlake's band? Ambivalent about the invitation to be on C86, Westlake gave the NME a wrong-footing b-side, before keeping a distance from the noise around the compilation. Subsequent releases from Westlake and The Servants and Westlake attracted fine reviews but settled quietly into relative obscurity, despite musical involvement from various Housemartins, Go-Betweens and Triffids, a quest by Stuart from Belle & Sebastian to find Westlake and form a band; not to mention Luke Haines' own five-year presence in the Servants before forming The Auteurs, Baader Meinhof and Black Box Recorder. Westlake went first into the law, then spent years in literary academia. Now the surprise arrival of My Beautiful England. The album is a masterpiece of concept, composition and performance, a conceptual work of truths and reflections of difficult but deft and unflinching expression. "It is not only fashionable now to denigrate England and its past; it is heresy to recognise good in it. The place that made me is disappearing. Its values and traditions. Among them: good manners, humility and clemency, resilience and perseverance, good humour. History is being refashioned – in spirit and material fact – by ideologues unshakeably certain they are in the right, and people are being distanced from their pasts. Some find themselves forced into passive acceptance of new distortions of the past, out of imitativeness or cowardice. I resist. This album is a memorial. Intentionally, a museum piece. It is a personal tribute to the England I knew."

Here it is finally, the third and latest album by New York City band Five Dollar Priest. Continuing the sounds and style of their previous albums, on Eyes Injected with Love Five Dollar Priest stamp their personalities on a base of Lower East Side free-jazz, no wave and dirty, very dirty rock. But they go deeper and deeper into it this time, with songs about hard times and low life in the New York City streets, which they know perfectly well. These definitely aren't easy sounds and this is not music for the masses or the newbies -- this is top-class weird and sick melodies and lyrics which Bang! Records are truly proud to release. Five Dollar Priest include, among others, great musicians: Ron Ward (Speedball Baby, Wobbly Organ); Grasshopper (Mercury Rev); Christina Campanella (Speedball Baby); Norman Westberg (Swans).

For Fans Of: J. Tillman, Phosphorescent, Low, Damien Jurado, Bill Callhan. “It’s going to be hard to talk about this when it’s done.” So begins A Mold For The Bell, the new album from Colorado singer-songwriter and producer Logan Farmer. What follows that enigmatic lyric is a collection of stark and ambient folk songs, tethered solely by Farmer’s unadorned vocals, acoustic guitar, and moving embellishments from contributors, including saxophonist Joseph Shabason (who also mixed the album) and renowned harpist Mary Lattimore. With the help of Grammy-nominated producer Andrew Berlin (Gregory Alan Isakov), Farmer tracked all of the vocal and guitar parts over two days in the early months of 2021. The tracks were recorded quickly, live in the studio to capture the raw intimacy and immediacy of Farmer’s live performances. The rest of the album’s creation occurred remotely, over texts, phone calls, and emails with Shabason and a handful of other musicians, as wildfires, insurrections and the pandemic raged around them. “I was working at a bookstore that winter,” Farmer explains, “and I’d walk to my shift every day, obsessing over lyrics and early mixes in a cheap pair of earbuds.” These daily walks would take him past a church, where he’d often stop on the sidewalk and listen to the bells at the top of the hour. “I’ve always loved the sound of church bells, but as the situation worsened, what began as a comfort began to feel ominous, almost threatening.” This experience, alongside influences as disparate as Tarkovsky’s film Andrei Rublev and the novels of Olga Tokarczuk, led to a collection of songs that are similarly foreboding, expanding upon the stark and spacious universe of Farmer’s last album (2020’s Still No Mother) to reveal an atmosphere that’s even more oppressively still, like an abandoned Victorian home. Tracks: 01 Silence or Swell 02 Cue Sunday Bells 03 Horsehair (feat. Mary Lattimore) 04 Crooked Lines 05 William 06 The Moment 07 Renegade 08 South Vienna

An Indie-pop daydream desperate melody with true love's aim. A voice subtle in its delivery and powerful in its affect. Hooks, lyrics, melody, tears. I'd call it a teen tragedy but everyone's getting older, Hearts are getting bigger but head and heart can't ever line up. 11 tracks 45RPM. Ribbon Stage are a trio from NYC with no small amount of love for the noise pop days of Dolly Mixture and the Shop Assistants. The group does perfectly what only punks playing pop music can do–create chaotic noise in tandem with the sweetest hooks and most sophisticated nihilism. Ribbon Stage makes noise pop so catchy you swear you've heard before. Forever trapped in the space between your ears. Featuring Mari Softie (Ratas del Vaticano, Tercer Mundo, Exotica, and Pobreza Mental) as well as scene stalwart Jolie M-A (Juicy II, Boys Online) and vocalist Anni Hilator. Recorded by Hayes Waring on 1/2” 8 track tape in Olympia WA. Mixed by Capt. Tripps Ballsington. Mastered by Amy Dragon. Look for the video for singles “Playing Possum”, “Stone Heart Blue”, and “Dead End Descent” as well as a Fall West Coast tour, if touring is at all still possible in the new future. Whatever happens it is quite assuring that whatever these times may bring bands can still put out music as good as this EP. 2500 vinyl copies. “It’s an indie-pop joy ride” -SVL (Rollingstone) // Tracklist: 1. Playing Possum 2. Nothing Left 3. No Alternative 4. Nowhere Fast 5. Sulfate 6. Stone Heart Blue 7. Clock Tower 8. Hearst 9. Exaltation 10. It's Apathy 11. Dead End Descent

Moody Blue Vinyl. RIYL: Codeine, Mazzy Star, Bedhead, Red House Painters, Low & American Music Club. Previously unreleased 16-track recordings that predates Spain’s 1995's landmark “The Blue Moods Of Spain". Includes original studio version of "World Of Blue" featuring Petra Haden on violin. Re-mixed and re-imagined by Kramer for Shimmy-Disc. The LP “World of Blue” features Merlo Podlewski on guitar. I first met Merlo in 1994. My sister Rachel Haden, who had been working with him at the Rhino Records store in Westwood, knew I was looking for a new guitarist for my band, and introduced us. Merlo is one of those guitarists whose playing is so smooth and effortless he makes anyone feel like they can play. He had an instinctual grasp of harmony and theory, which brought a great counterpoint to the technical knowledge and finesse of lead guitarist Ken. Spain played their first official L.A. gig with Merlo at a club called Pan, which shortly thereafter changed its name to Spaceland. We opened for Beck and That Dog. We played at Spaceland a lot and at other small clubs and coffee joints like the Troy Cafe (owned by Beck’s mom), Congo Square Coffee House in Santa Monica, Alligator Lounge, and others. At a certain point that year we were ready to record our first 7” single, and I reserved some time at Poop Alley. Poop Alley didn’t seem like the ideal recording setting. The walls and floors were made of concrete, and there was no soundproofing. The mixing board was in a loft up this steep staircase with no guard rails. But it worked somehow. On the particular day we recorded basics there was a rain storm which you can clearly hear in the background. The ceiling was so high there almost wasn’t a ceiling. A steep curving staircase with no guardrail led up to a loft area where the console was located, and next to it, on a custom-built, guardrail-less ledge, a queen-sized bed where Tom slept. I paid for the session with weed I grew in my closet. We set up and it started raining. Tom put a microphone outside. After tracking was finished, Petra came over and overdubbed violin. There was a cushioned area where I remember sitting during mixdown. We stayed good friends with Tom. We recorded a couple more songs with him the following year. Tom recorded lots of bands at Poop Alley. My sisters’ band That Dog, Beck, the Rentals, Rod Poole, Tom’s band Waldo the Dog Faced Boy, and many others. There were parties in the alley. There would be a keg of beer. Everyone was well-behaved. The most dangerous it got was when Kenny asked Beck if he was a Scientologist. I remember laughter and happiness the most from those parties. Not long afterwards Tom shut down the studio. Luckily for us, the tapes still exist. On those tapes are five songs, all of which are represented here. “I Lied” and “Her Used-To-Been” were released on the 7”, the remaining three have never been released before now. I can’t remember who I sent copies of the 7” to but shortly after it came out I got a call from an A&R executive at Geffen inviting me to their offices to talk. “I love your songs,” I remember him saying to me, “but my boss David Geffen won’t let me sign you because he doesn’t know how to market you.” Eventually a label that did want to sign us got in touch with me. Restless Records, they had decent distribution, so I said to myself, “Why not?”. This eventually led to the recording that produced our debut LP “Blue Moods of Spain”. Track listing: A1. Her Used-To-Been A2. Phone Machine A3. I Lied B1. Dreaming of Love B2. World of Blue

• Finding a new Eddie Hill recording from 1969 was quite a thrill and on hearing the beautiful mid-tempo groove, we included it on both our “Westbound Northern Soul” and “Masterpieces Of Modern Soul Vol 3” CDs in 2010. Since then, demand for ‘I Am So Thankful’ has risen and we can now issue it as a single. It was originally scheduled to be Westbound 151 in the USA but that spot was claimed by Emanuel Lasky’s ‘Never My Love’. Eddie now has a Kent release to go with his Detroit waxings on Thelma, Ge-Ge and M-S.

• ‘Long Live The King’ was an LP track from the Detroit Emeralds’ acclaimed debut album “Do Me Right”. It didn’t get a US 45 release but did sneak out on a Various Artists UK DJ-promo EP in 1973 for then-current Phonogram releases. This is the first time this superb and popular dance track it has been commercially available as a single.

OLD FIRE - das Projekt des in Abilene, Texas, ansässigen Komponisten und Produzenten John Mark Lapham - kündigt sein zweites Album "Voids" für den Herbst an. Für das Album, das größtenteils aus Kollaborationen besteht, hat Lapham eine beeindruckende Liste von Sängern und Sängerinnen rekrutiert. Neben Gastauftritten von Julia Holter, Adam Torres und Emily Cross ist auch die lebende Songwriter-Legende Bill Callahan auf drei Songs zu hören. Einer davon ist die ergreifende, düstere Lead-Single "Don't You Go ft. Bill Callahan". Es handelt sich hierbei um eine Coverversion des britischen Singer/Songwriters John Martyn, bei der auch Thomas Bartlett alias Doveman am Klavier, Semay Wu am Cello und Robin Allender an den Tasten/Gitarren zu hören sind. Ein wunderbares Stück, über das Stereogum treffend schreibt: "If you've ever wondered what Bill Callahan singing a Radiohead dirge might sound like, it would probably sound a lot like this."

Repressed !

We are proud to present a set of edits of this long-lost classic from the golden age of African music, from a figure who is still beginning to get his props internationally, Eji Oyewole.

Born to a royal lineage in Ibadan, Prince Eji Oyewole has had a career as a flautist, saxophonist and sometime bandleader spanning well over half a century. He trained both in Nigeria and then at Trinity the prestigious music school in London, and his life as an itinerant musician also saw him living for extensive periods in Geneva, Hamburg and in Lyon.

While for many years Fela Kuti (with whom Eji played) and King Sunny Adé commanded international attention to the exclusion of most other Nigerian musicians, as if there was only room for one Nigerian superstar at a time on the world stage, on the domestic scene things were very different. Eji was part of the huge craze for ‘highlife’, a generic term that in fact subsumed many different styles, united in their fusion of traditional west African forms with jazz influences and electric instruments, and in the bands’ working practices as entertainers at the nation’s numerous hotel / nightclubs. As this cracking album, recorded for EMI Nigeria at the tail end of the ‘70s and now remastered, reveals, Eji’s version of highlife was even more distinctive than most, eschewing the usual emphasis on guitars for a brasher, horn- laden sound, seemingly influenced as much by American funk as it was jazz, and of course with the heavy percussive undertow central to most African music.

This gave Eji a chance to shine, and there are some scorching solos as well as tight ensemble playing across the four lengthy (to ears accustomed to the three-minute pop song) songs. Eji also played piano on the session. The material has an element of social commentary (Oil Boom and Unity In Africa) and should help feed the seemingly insatiable appetites of the many who have been turned onto African music by the enterprising efforts of devoted collectors, labels and fellow fans.

Surely one of the few musicians who has played with Fela, Miles Davis and Bob Marley, Eji Oyewole still plays regularly in Lagos, recently had an album of new material out with his current band The Afrobars, and has been a member of Faaji Agba, a super-group that has toured internationally and been dubbed ‘the Nigerian Buena-Vista Social Club’.

"The LP "World of Blue" features Merlo Podlewski on guitar. I first met Merlo in 1994. My sister Rachel Haden, who had been working with him at the Rhino Records store in Westwood, knew I was looking for a new guitarist for my band, and introduced us. Merlo is one of those guitarists whose playing is so smooth and effortless he makes anyone feel like they can play. He had an instinctual grasp of harmony and theory, which brought a great counterpoint to the technical knowledge and finesse of lead guitarist Ken. At a certain point that year we were ready to record our first 7" single, and I reserved some time at Poop Alley. Tom Grimley converted an auto-repair shop into Poop Alley Studio. The walls and floors were made of concrete, and there was no soundproofing. The mixing board was in a loft up this steep staircase with no guard rails. But it worked somehow. On the particular day we recorded basics there was a rain storm which you can clearly hear in the background. We set up and it started raining. Tom put a microphone outside. After tracking was finished, Petra came over and overdubbed violin. There was a cushioned area where I remember sitting during mixdown. There were little stacks of Aphex 16-track tape everywhere. We stayed good friends with Tom. We recorded a couple more songs with him the following year. Luckily for us, the tapes still exist. On those tapes are five songs, all of which are represented here. "I Lied" and "Her Used-To-Been" were released on the 7", the remaining three have never been released before now." - Josh Haden

Soul Revivers continue onwards from their earlier 2022 release ‘On The Grove’ with the hotly anticipated dub version ‘Grove Dub’.

An ambitious, collaborative project, producers David Hill and Nick Manasseh bring together reggae legends, including Ken Boothe and Ernest Ranglin, with the hottest UK musical talent, in what has become the standout reggae project of the year.

The dub version continues in the same vein - another instalment in the rich history of West London reggae and dub.

Digga D returns with his highly-anticipated third mixtape, Noughty By Nature. Lead Single 'G Lock’ featuring US rap star, Moneybagg Yo follows on from Digga’s previous releases which include ‘2K17’, ‘Pump 101’ and ‘Wasted’, the latter two of which were his second and third top 10 records. Since the release of his critically acclaimed 2021 mixtape, Made In The Pyrex – a project which showcased the lyrical dexterity of the West-London rapper – Digga D has firmly cemented his position within drill, a genre which he has dominantly spearheaded over the last few years.

Seit der Gründung im Jahr 2015 und dem sofortigen Senkrechtstart haben dArtagnan 5 Alben aufgenommen und Hunderte Konzerte und Festivals gespielt. Schon das Debütalbum heimste Gold ein und erreichte wie alle Nachfolger die Top-10 der Album-Charts. Auf ihrem fünften Album "Felsenfest" meldet sich die Band "rockig, wild und weltgewandt" zurück, denn dArtagnan sind nicht nur angekommen, sondern mit ihren geradlinigen Melodien, ihrer Spielfreude und dem unverwechselbaren Sound, Schrittmacher der Folkrockszene. So überrascht es wenig, dass oft genug mehr als die Hälfte der Single-Streams aus dem Ausland kommt. Das Doppel-Album enthält konsequenterweise neben 12 deutschsprachigen Songs 8 weitere Songs mit Folk-Klassikern und prominenten Duettpartnern wie Candice Night (Blackmores Night/USA), Luc Arbogast (France), Blackbriar (Netherlands) und den O'Reillys and the Paddyhats (Deutschland)."Felsenfest" erscheint erstmals in 5 verschiedenen Ausführungen: Neben der Doppel-CD und dem Digitalalbum gibt es die Vinyl-Edition (180gramm black vinyl), die "Holzbox-Edition" (mit Fahne, Lilien-Kette, Autogrammkarte und Instrumental-CD) sowie das limitierte 3CD-Earbook, ein etwa 30 x 30 cm großer, gebundener Bildband mit dem Doppel-Album, den Instrumentalversionen sowie einer von allen Bandmitgliedern handsignierten, großen Autogrammkarte.Das neue Album von dArtagnan: Felsenfest, verwegen und frei!

Debut Harkin LP now available via Forte: Recorded at: Seahorse Sound, Los Angeles USA (Carlos Gonzalez), Tesla Studios, Sheffield UK (Richard Formby and David Glover), Echo Canyon West, New Jersey USA (John Agnello), Spirit Level, Peak District UK (Harkin). Additional recording by Jeff T Smith at The Bungalow, Leeds UK. Mixed by John Agnello at Water Music, New Jersey USA Mastered by Heba Kadry

A Breath of Fresh Air is the triumphant, inspiring new album from Bread of Kaliwild, a longtime staple of the underground rap scene who continues to grow and shine as an emcee. And while he certainly made waves with the release of his solo debut, Daily Bread in 2019, Bread is on another level with the ten tracks on this project. It’s all part of his plan to capture the sound he loves and holds so dearly, all while pushing himself as a lyricist.

Specifically, the L.A. rap staple calls out “What Love Is” as one of his favorite lyrical moments, and it’s easy to see why when you hear it. During the third verse, he shows love to his children in a creative and heartfelt way like only he can. “What Love Is” is also one of several collaborations between Bread and living producer legend Nottz, one of the emcee’s go-to producers. The two linked for Daily Bread and kept creating magic for their tracks together on this record. Whether it’s on the politically charged “Eye 4 Eye” or on the moving Guru tribute “Nice Like That” (feat. Big Shug), Bread and Nottz are a force.

The Kaliwild rapper’s ear for production doesn’t stop there, either. His two other collaborators—beatsmiths Noah Ayala and Therealasethic—provide a wealth of warm, head-nodding instrumentals for Bread and his guests. Just listen to “Godz Return,” a funky West Coast banger produced by Ayala that also features Planet Asia. Or head to the Bay Area on “Feels So Good,” which boasts Therealasethic’s shimmering production and guest vocals from Keak da Sneak, URG7, and Gemini.

There’s so much to love about A Breath of Fresh Air, though the most remarkable aspect may just be Bread’s passion.

a 1 Let Us Begin (Intro) feat. DJ Romes

West Mineral return with a followup to Mister Water Wet’s 2019's subtropical ambient slow-burn debut ‘Bought the Farm’, expanding Iggy Romeu's horizons to contrast feverish Afro-Caribbean ambient jazz with jaunty illbient and atmospheric freakouts. Low-lit heat that’s highly recommended if yr into Nick León, Carlos Niño, Kelman Duran, Gonçalo F. Cardoso.

Mister Water Wet continues to excavate the tropical soundscapes that simmer the producer's Kansas City home with his Puerto Rican roots, on a new album of extended vignettes and mood pieces that cross a late 90’s Mo Wax instrumentals vibe with present day feelings of displacement and ennui.

LP opener ‘Bory’ tunes us into Water Wet’s weirdly fuzzed frequencies, where tremeloed strings and found sounds resemble what might have been a lost dean blunt x dean hurley sound design concept for Inland Empire, while ‘I Saw the Green Flash' opens a swirl of strings and traditional rhythms caught in a reflecting pool of canned classical orchestrals and 1950s theremin wails. 'Good Apple’, meanwhile, cranks up the mood with aged x looped piano paired with an undulating, bass-heavy shuffle that wouldn't sound out of place on a Kelman Duran x Martin Denny mixtape.

'When Kennybrook Burned to the Ground' leans into heady jazz vapours, spreading crackle over pitch-fucked horn samples, but it’s the producer's weird use of percussion that keeps us gripped: scattering his arrangements across the grid, mimicking an ensemble of players deployed in irregular formations. Romeu embraces trip-hop on 'Any Other Time', blending Afro-Caribbean percussion with a swung downtempo beat, while ‘Isthmus’ reminds us of the clatterbox plunder of Moonshake’s PJ Harvey hookup ‘Just a Working Girl’ - with all its asymmetric hooks.

The extended closing track 'Losing Blood' takes a leaf out of Fennesz's glitched rulebook, stretching and folding disintegrating loops through an 11 minute descent into the elegiac aether.

RAW SPACE" is rooted in chaos and chance, sensuality and intensity - it's an album that's able to sound alarmingly freeform and tightly controlled simultaneously. Already established as a genre-disrupting DJ, and even dubbed "demon of the Nile" by Ugandan politicians after an exuberant performance at Nyege Nyege festival in September 2019, Kampala-based sonic hypnotist Authentically Plastic brings a digger's literacy, an activist's intent, and an artist's playfulness to their jagged debut album. As both a DJ and a producer, Authentically Plastic is drawn to the idea of chance as a creative tool - to push against the idea of the all-knowing genius, and approach artistry instead as a facilitator, unraveling parallel mismatched rhythmic events. Their musical process is to start with chaos, then attempt to mold those fleshy structures into polyrhythmic mutations, pulling influence from East Africa's innovative musical landscape and augmenting it with an exploratory sense of surrealism. On opening track 'Aesthetic Terrorism', rough-hewn industrial rhythms chug mechanically against course, dissonant synth blasts and acidic arpeggios. There's a faint sparkle of Detroit's chrome-plated Afro-futurism, but bathed in neon light, reflecting Africa's contemporary electronic revolution. Authentically Plastic's productions have a sense of thematic coherence, but their myriad influences are torched into cinders, leaving inverse impressions and ghost rhythms: the tuned overdriven clatter of 'Anti-Fun' echoes Ugandan kadodi modes, yet simultaneously mirrors the rugged out-zone grit of Container or Speaker Music; standout centerpiece 'Buul Okyelo' meanwhile is as rhythmically cross-eyed as Slikback or Nazar, but juxtaposes kinetic dancefloor thumps with chaotic microtonal ritual cycles. Writing "RAW SPACE", Authentically Plastic found themselves fascinated by sonic flatness. They realized that in Western art, there's an obsession with depth of field that carries into music, robbing it of intensity. The album is an example of the power that can be reclaimed when you let go of depth, letting sounds rub together carnally and spawn something fresh and unexpected.

(REISSUE)

Genius Loves Company is the final studio album by rhythm and blues and soul musician Ray Charles, posthumously released August 31, 2004. Recording sessions for the album took place between June 2003 and March 2004. The album consists of rhythm and blues, soul, country, blues, jazz, and pop standards performed by Charles and several guest musicians, such as Natalie Cole, Elton John, James Taylor, Norah Jones, B.B. King, Gladys Knight, Diana Krall, Van Morrison, Willie Nelson, and Bonnie Raitt. Genius Loves Company was the last album recorded and completed by Charles before his death in June 2004.The album is known as one of Ray Charles" most commercially successful albums. On February 2, 2005, Genius Loves Company was certified triple-platinum in sales by the Recording Industry Association of America following sales of over three million copies in the United States. It also became Charles" second to reach number one on the Billboard 200, after Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music (1962). On February 13, 2005, the album was awarded eight Grammy Awards including Album of the Year and Record of the Year.