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We’re excited to present the first release of Hakke!

For the label’s debut, we have Alcyone, an Italian DJ and producer, bringing us a 4-track record. A retro sound blending techno, electro, and synthwave, including a special track dedicated to the freetek and rave scene. The track UFO Raider is a tribute to a classic ’90s video game and features its original vocals.

he next instalment from Soulfuric Recordings is the first edition of “The Sound Of Soulfuric Volume 1” taken from the vaults are four unearthed gems spanning two classics, two exclusives, and long-awaited vinyl debuts from house music specialists such as Hardsoul feat Ron Carroll, Urban Blues Project, The Thompson Project & Crackazat and Art Of Tones.

Stepping up first is Hardsoul featuring the legendary Ron Carroll with “Back Together” (Main Classic Mix) a track that should be found in every soulful house DJ’s set, with Ron’s alluring vocals this one is definitely made to keep the dancers moving and in case of dancefloor emergencies reach for this record.

Up next is Urban Blues Project featuring Bobby Pruitt “We Are One” (Art of Tones Extended Remix) which is being brought out for the first time on vinyl, the original mix was first released in 2001 and the now the Art Of Tones Remix has breathed new life into it making it a must have for anyone who is a fan of the original.

Flipping over to the B side, Urban Blues Project return once again with Love Don’t Live (The U.B.P. Classic Club Mix) with Michael Procter. A Soulfuric classic that has been championed time and time again, first released in 1996 and now being revived almost 20 years later on fresh wax.

Rounding off Volume 1 The Thompson Project & Crackazat featuring Gary L with “Messin’ With My Mind” (Crackazat Extended Remix) this has also never been on vinyl before, released earlier this year this soulful house banger got the touch-up from Bristol’s finest Crackazat who adds his touch to the Florida duo’s offering.

House heads can come together once again and seize the opportunity to get their hands on this outstanding EP.

From the shores of Lake Erie to the heart of the dancefloor, DJ Romain opens a brand new chapter with The Cleveland EP, his latest release on legendary UK house imprint Hard Times.

Having relocated from his beloved New Jersey to Cleveland, Ohio, Romain dismantled and rebuilt his studio piece by piece, laying the foundations for a new wave of creativity. Following his acclaimed Lost D.A.T.S. series and The New Jersey EP, this marks the first body of music born entirely from his new northern base.

The EP kicks off with the haunting vocal and ghostly chords of 'Change Your Mind', before diving into the rattling hats, crisp snares, and plucked bassline of ‘Crysis’ - a pure Romain floor-tool. 'Cuz You Like' rolls deep with warm, shuffling UK vocal energy, while closer 'Deep Reaktor' lands with preaching tones and heavyweight bump, sealing the collection in signature style.

With The Cleveland EP, Romain bridges past and present - new city, same uncompromising house spirit.

Der legendäre Club-Klassiker “Distant Planet” aus dem Jahr 1998 kehrt zurück – in einer exklusiven 12“ Maxi Single für Sammler und Liebhaber elektronischer Musik.

Neben den originalen Mixen von Saccoman enthält dieses streng limitierte Release brandneue, moderne Remixe von:
Talla 2XLC

Carl Clarks x Tom Franke

Kalr8 + Andrea Monta

Jeder Remix verleiht dem zeitlosen Track eine frische Energie, perfekt für heutige Dancefloors – und gleichzeitig eine Hommage an den unverkennbaren Sound der späten 90er.

Gepresst auf hochwertigem, farbigem Vinyl in streng limitierter Auflage – ein Must-Have für DJs, Vinyl-Fans und alle, die elektronische Musikgeschichte in neuem Glanz erleben wollen

Dark Entries release 'A Boy Alone', a double LP set from Manchester electronic music pioneer Eric Random. Best known for his early recordings for New Hormones and Les Disques du Crépuscule and collaborations with Pete Shelley (Buzzcocks), Cabaret Voltaire and Nico.

As an original member of The Tiller Boys with Shelley, Random injected a healthy dose of Krautrock into the dour Manchester post-punk scene in 1978/79 before going solo the following year. Random's first 7' 'Subliminal'/'23 Skidoo' was released in 1981 via Les Disques du Crépuscule and explored ominous sonic surrounds. That same year also saw the release of a second 7" single on New Hormones, 'Dow Chemical Company'/ 'Skin Deep'. Both tracks offered bubbling, rhythmic sound patterns, and were the first to feature other musicians that would become know as The Bedlamites. Consisting of Lynn Walton on vocals, Ian Runacres and Andy Diagram of Dislocation Dance, and bassist Wayne Worm, aka Wayne Sedgeman. Their debut 12' single 'Subliminal Seduction'/'Bedlam-a-Go-Go' was released in 1982 through Plurex, mixing arid funk textures and sparse melodies. That same year the group contributed proto chill-out track '6.55' to Plurex compilation 'Hours' and the highly filmic track 'In Cassette Conference' to the Touch cassette package 'Feature Mist'. In 1983, Random spent several months in the Himalayas with a group of musicians from the Kulu Valley and studied non-Western instruments such as tabla. On returning to Manchester, Random convened a new group of Belamites including Walton, Sedgeman and drummer Graham Dowdall aka Dids of Ludus. They released the 12' single 'Mad As Mankind'/'Dream Web Of Maya' in 1984 on Cabaret Voltaire's Doublevision, embracing electronic, industrial and dub styles. In 1985 they contributed the soothing 'Pure Power' to Food Records' 'Imminent Episode One' compilation.

Our reissue also includes 4 unreleased bonus tracks from Eric's archives recorded between 1981-1984. The whole set adds up to 115 minutes of sinister, somnambulant Random music. All songs have been remastered by George Horn at Fantasy Studios. Each copy is housed in a gatefold jacket designed by Eloise Leigh featuring a spread of ephemera, photos with liner notes by James Nice of LTM.

Evelyne/Masao bring TESTPATTERN to Dark Entries for the label’s first foray into vintage Japanese electronics. Masao Hiruma and Fumio Ichimura’s project Testpattern is known for their release Apres-Midi, a cult slab of synthpop perfection released by Yukihiro Takahashi and Haruomi Hosono’s legendary Yen Records in 1982. While Hiruma and Ichimura parted ways following Apres-Midi, Hiruma’s musical endeavors would continue after meeting French/American model and vocalist Evelyne Bennu in 1984 at a café bar where she would sit and write poetry. Their collaborative efforts as Evelyne/Masao were fruitful, and the duo first performed together in June 1984 on a television program called TOKYO ROCK TV. The album TESTPATTERN comprises seventeen songs recorded in Hiruma’s home studio, which have never been released previously. The Evelyne/Masao duo continues building on the soundworld of Apres-Midi: lush, sophisticated electronics with intricate yet minimalist production. Tracks like “Sakuramochi” and “Bird Island” bear influence from Hosono most clearly, their soaring melodies revealing a subtly ironic redeployment of East Asian musical tropes. But TESTPATTERN is more than homage to Yellow Magic Orchestra. “Tabac” and “Le Soleil Se Leve” display oddball sensibilities closer to Sky Records icons Asmus Tietchens or Cluster. Elsewhere, the project shows affinity for the punkier ethos of continental DIY electronics, like on the quirky “Alien Go Home” and a positively skewed cover of “Singin’ in the Rain.” Bennu’s vocals provide a common thread through these explorations, as she alternates deftly between New Wave deadpan and unhinged chanson singer—check her waxing maximally Francophone on “Au Clair de Lune,” based on an 18th century French song. TESTPATTERN will be available on both double LP as well as CD, and includes a fold-out poster with liner notes with lyrics. This album is dedicated to Masao Hiruma, who passed away in 2011.

Cybernetic disco maestro Patrick Cowley graces Dark Entries once again with Hard Ware, an LP of far-out funk and synthpop celebrating what would have been Cowley’s 75th birthday. Best known for his chart-topping disco anthems, Cowley left us with an incredible body of work before his tragic death in 1982 due to AIDS-related illness. Since 2009, Dark Entries has been working with Cowley’s friends and family to uncover the singular artist’s lesser-known sides, including his soundtracks for gay pornographic films, which the label chronicled on compilation albums School Daze, Muscle Up, and Afternooners. Hard Ware presents the closing chapter in a trilogy of unreleased Cowley dancefloor bangers that began with 2022’s heavy-hitting Male Box and was continued with the soul and garage-inflected From Behind in 2024. The most expansive release in said trilogy, Hard Ware delivers ten tracks of pure, uncut Cowley: sultry, psychedelic, sarcastic, and just a bit sleazy. Cowley devotees will delight in “Tech-No,” a sparse instrumental demo version of his epically dystopian “Tech-No-Logical World.” You could soundtrack your next aerobics session with cheeky numbers like “Pajama Party Massacre” or “Shake It Up,” both of which feature Cowley himself on vocals. The frenetic “Big Ass in Motion” is built around samples from Rudy Ray Moore and The Madam’s infamous “Sensuous Black Woman,” an X-rated comedy record that would later feature in classic booty house records. Mid-tempo cosmic groovers are well-represented with jams like “Hellfire” and “Megablue,” which perfectly capture Cowley’s bathhouse-in-outerspace sensibilities. No collection of Cowley’s work would be complete without an interstellar floor-filler, and we’ve got quite a few here, like “Jungle Jump,” which pits whirling beats with dub-laced swirls of synth, or “Spellbinding Lover,” a Donna Summer-indebted melancholic boogie masterpiece that features Sylvester backup singer Jeanie Tracy. Hard Ware closes with the chilling synth-hymn ”Ice Age,” in which Loverde vocalist Peggy Gibbons sings of a coming frosty apocalypse. The story told in “Ice Age” mirrors the coming AIDS crisis and feels like a haunting premonition from Cowley. The record comes in a sleeve with a hand-airbrushed circuitboard-inspired design by Gwenaël Rattke, and includes lyrics as well as liner notes by Andrew Ryce and Peggy Gibbons. Hard Ware is another crucial document of a tremendous talent taken too soon.

Pyatigorsk-born dynamo b0n dishing out some naughty breaks for his debut on X-Kalay sub-label, Another Place.

Four distinct traxxx going from full-blown seismic tremors to lithe, dreamier fare. A love letter to the halcyon days of ‘90s hardcore, perhaps?

Synths darting (just how we like ‘em), ragga vocal samples enhancing that UK kinda feel. First track sounds a bit like something you might have heard in some disused airplane hangar circa ’92.

Kicking off with a trio of straight-to-the-point accelerators and closing on some lush, levitational gear. Hi-octane rave utopia or blistering ride into oblivion? You decide. 

He said not to mess with his breaks. Nuff said really.

Pearl River Sound - Selected Works 17-24 is a unique sonic archive of Roberto Semeraro, known as Pearl River Sound, one of the most eclectic experimenters in the Italian electronic scene. This collection compiles years of research and sonic exploration, featuring previously unreleased tracks that have never been pressed on vinyl. Moving fluidly between idm textures, deconstructed techno, glitch, breakbeat rhythms, and ambient incursions, each track represents a moment in Pearl River Sound's artistic journey between 2017 and 2024. This release is part of LOSTINLAYOUT GALLERY's participation in the exhibition at EXP - Palazzo delle Esposizioni in Rome, running from April 26, 2025, as part of the group show "THE ART OF TOMORROW. TODAY #1." The exhibition features works by four urban artists: LUCA FONT, JOYS, STEN & LEX, and V3RBO. Each print is randomly paired with a 10x15 cm postcard insert showcasing an artwork by one of the four visual artists.

On Now Claims My Timid Heart, Harris and Hedrick continue the experiment started on Swann and Odette, crafting closed systems that promote a hushed correspondence between their sonic (Basic Channel, drone metal) and literary influences (Kafka, Sebald, Pynchon).

On this album (their first record since 2017 as well as their first release on NYC’s Quiet Time Tapes), Harris and Hedrick eliminated much of music’s normal dependence on physical space, instead creating hermetically sealed sonic ‘rooms’ where the songs can live by sending samples and loops through convolution reverb. Each of the eight tracks on Timid Heart is fundamentally, thus, a field recording from an inaccessible world.

Big remix package for TOY TONICS'S boss KAPOTE. His song "Mystery" from the last album reworked by HARVEY SUTHERLAND, OPOLOPO, CLOSE COUNTERS with a bonus remix by french house master CASSIUS. Turning Kpaote's New school house anthem into super fresh jazz-funk disco, NYC 1990ies House hit and proto-dance bangers. There is no way there is not one version that every good DJ with an interesting fresh sound can't play.

It's 2025 and Toy Tonics one more time tries to define what are the perfect vibes for the "post-dark-electronic music age". Yes. After 10 years of explosion of hard techno, dark trance and fast race sounds Toy Tonics is trying every month to bring ideas for a more positive, high quality, forward-thinking dance music.

Opolopo: Opolopo brings his legendary touch to "Mystery." With a career spanning decades and a reputation for fusing boogie, funk, and broken beat, his remix promises a soulful journey. An artist who's famously remixed everyone from Gregory Porter to Stevie Wonder, Opolopo's version is pure, unadulterated groove.

Harvey Sutherland: Straight from the heart of Melbourne's electronic underground, Sutherland delivers his signature "Neurotic Funk." The celebrated synthesist and producer, known for his distinctive analog textures and a discography that's earned him ARIA Award nominations, is sure to inject his unique genre-bending energy into the track.

Close Counters: The duo from Melbourne, Close Counters, are set to turn "Mystery" into an electrifying fusion of house, soul, and jazz. Known for their dense synths and infectious energy, they have earned praise from tastemakers like Gilles Peterson and have wowed crowds at festivals like Splendour in the Grass.

Finally, the package features "Berlin Boogie Town" with a new interpretation from Parisian legend Cassius, adding some uplifting French Touch filter vibes.

One of contemporary ambient’s preeminent figures lands on its leading label, enacting a transition into a new phase of rhythmic noise and tonal shadowplay laced with peculiar sensitivities, wrangling Dilloway-influenced tape noise thru ASMR ambience, fritzed dub techno, layered vocal drone and ritualistic mantras.

Perila steps up solo with a heavily satisfying debut for West Mineral, investigating negative space and states of subconsciousness. The shift in tone feeds forward into arcane realms of resonant dark ambient and dream-pop, harnessed in amorphous structures using dub-as-method. It’s wholly immersive stuff in a way that’s long been Perlia’s calling card, but here more careful in its command of personalised, atmospheric physics from the Coil-esque ‘cheerleader’, thru the deeply smudged and sexy trip hop of ‘lava’, and the oozing, sloshing OOBE-like spectres of ‘give it all’.

The title of the album is a reference to Carl Jung’s phrase "all haste is of the devil” which informs Perila’s writing process here; she slows down in an attempt to feel more and tap into her shadow self. Album opener 'cheerbleeder' is a doomed, tremolo-heavy mass of ghost notes, while the rattling chains and strangulated voices on ‘metal snax' sounds like they belong on a Wolf Eyes tape. 'grain levy tep dusk' strikes closer to recently unearthed industrial plates from Tolerance and Mentocome, with rusted clangs threaded into deflated, half-speed pulses. The album keeps growing from there, shifting and expanding as Perila exhales and absorbs her cognitive blind spots. She credits "trance states" for helping her let go, and we broadly get to experience that on the mantra-like 'thunder me' and the blurry all-vocal highlight 'hold my leg', which sounds like it could have been snatched from Grouper's 'Way Their Crept' sessions.

As with all of Alexandra Zakharenko’s work under various aliases - Aseptic Stir, Baby Bong, Wedontneedwords, Perila - her allure is self-evident to lovers of textured, diffuse electronics, and never more so than on this lip-bitingly potent suite of delicacies and primordial urges, perfectly balancing ancient and techngnostic aspects with an x-amount of seductive strangeness left in the margins.

Pioneer of the electronic scene and co-creator of iconic projects like Age Of Love and BBE, Bruno Sanchioni returns with the fourth installment of his acclaimed series: Capture EP 4.
This new chapter delivers four powerful and hypnotic tracks, each crafted with the precision and flair that define Sanchioni’s legacy. With deep grooves, acid-tinged lines, and a finely tuned sense of progression, the EP invites listeners into an immersive and energetic sonic journey.

Capture EP 4 further cements Sanchioni’s reputation as a master of electronic storytelling—pushing boundaries while staying true to the spirit of the underground. A compelling addition to his ever-evolving discography, and a must-have for those who seek depth and intensity on the dancefloor.

French:

Pionnier de la scène électronique et co-créateur de projets emblématiques tels que Age Of Love et BBE, Bruno Sanchioni revient avec le quatrième volet de sa série acclamée : Capture EP 4.
Ce nouvel opus dévoile quatre titres percutants et hypnotiques, façonnés avec la précision et la sensibilité sonore qui font la marque de Sanchioni. Entre grooves profonds, lignes acidulées et constructions immersives, cet EP embarque l’auditeur dans un voyage aussi intense qu’élégant.

Avec Capture EP 4, Bruno Sanchioni confirme une fois de plus son statut de maître de la narration électronique — explorant de nouveaux territoires tout en restant fidèle à l’ADN de l’underground. Un disque incontournable pour les amateurs de sons authentiques, profonds et puissants.

SUBURBAN BASE RECORDS PRESENTS BOOGIE TIMES TRIBE – ‘THE DARK STRANGER’ – REMIXES

The Dark Stranger by Boogie Times Tribes is one of the most iconic anthems from the evolution of Drum & Bass. The Dark Stranger now returns for Halloween 2025, with an incredible new double-vinyl package featuring brand new remixes alongside long-lost classics. Pressed on a stunning glow-in-the-dark vinyl and housed in a specially illustrated sleeve depicting the mysterious Dark Stranger character, this release is as collectible as it is powerful.

The package contains eight mixes of this legendary track, cut loud for maximum DJ impact with just two tracks per side to ensure the heaviest playback. Brand new 2025 remixes come courtesy of Crissy Criss (mixed and mastered by TC), Marvellous Cain & DJ Choppah, Metrodome & Sl8r, Exile & Mark XTC, AKAS, and Freeze UK, all reimagining the anthem for today’s dancefloors.

To complete the set, the original 1993 remixes from QBass and the classic Origin Unknown Part 2 Remix are included, both made available here for the very first time since their original release in 1993, having never been repressed or released digitally until now.

This release is already generating massive buzz across the scene. At the recent D&B All Stars event, Andy C dropped the Crissy Criss remix, sparking the only rewind of his epic set. Other versions are already receiving huge support on Kool FM, Rinse, Pure FM, and across clubs and festivals nationwide.

A true piece of legendary Drum & Bass history reborn, The Dark Stranger returns this Halloween 2025! A must-have for DJs, collectors, and D&B fans worldwide.

Reissue of seminal 1992 Bodysnatch cut ‘Euphony (Kuff Mix)’, later released as ‘Just 4 U London’. Accompanied by two more Bodysnatch back catalogue highlights from 1992 – ‘Eyes On The Horizon’ and ‘The Strength (Mental Rapids)’. All three tracks have been remastered with love and care by Johanz Westerman from the original recordings and selected for reissue by Parts Unknown and Craigie Knowes.

Latest record off the Kalahari production line comes courtesy of a real one. Klon Dump in the building, moving like a madman across four barrelling tech house scorchers.

Part-producer, part-engineer and a long time co-conspirator of A Colourful Storm’s Moopie. Better known to some under the alias Mark, but always surefire for some serious dancefloor potency. Doubters, look no further-this is another demonstration of his mastery.

Big with the radiant stabs, even bigger on the earworm groove. Ploughing the furrow of tough, direct but deft as the Klon Dump faithful will have come to expect by now. Proper belters.

Always flexing outstanding rhythmic ingenuity, whether it’s hardcore hybridity as Mark or the tech house innovation shown here. If anything in life is certain, it’s that a KD record will lay down some serious torque.

There’s also an off-kilter playfulness that kinda feels reminiscent of T+++’s ‘Space Pong’ or Fiedel and Errorsmith’s MMM project. Another ace in the hole from the Antipodean shapeshifter.

Tell me something that makes a difference’ demands Gaia Weiss in Tenashee’s debut single. Something that immerses crisp melody into stodgy bass, collides warm dub with icy sound design, all the while slowly expanding like a supernova. ‘Tell me something’ takes the sounds and styles of the past and places them in a gravity-free future, while evoking an ethereal and precise atmosphere.
Gaia Weiss is an actress - not a singer by trade - and summons Charlotte Gainsbourg & Brigitte Bardot to deliver the spoken words as a fractured monologue, guiding us through splintered visions, and detuned chord progressions, in pursuit of the seemingly unattainable; ‘something that can make a difference’.
With this six-chapter journey on the newborn Street Cinema label, Tenashee (DJ Tennis and Ashee, Manfredi Romano and Joseph Ashworth) have crafted and refined - like two artisans from another era - a unique creation: a creature that reconnects electronic music with complexity and richness, fully aware of hyper-contemporaneity, yet capable of resisting surrender to it.
“Blink To Check It’s Real” featuring artist Campbell King - poet and beautiful soul - immediately immerses us in an electronic reality check, with 90s-inspired tweaking and glitching, all woven together with a poem from Campbell that contrasts the dizzying intensity of lust and connection with the comfort of being able to ‘loosen their grip’ and ‘make it safe.’
In ‘I Can See Now,’ Aurelia Ray (the stage name of pop-music-writing powerhouse Caitlin Stubbs) evokes a sense of serenity, pure love, and trust within a refined, spacious piece of minimalist electronica. “Blindsided” is a journey through pure, airy abstraction, a dance floor companion to the glacial trip-hop instrumental “Cold Logic”.
Finally, in “Memories,” the last track in the setlist but actually the first song the duo worked on, conceived and developed five years ago in 2020, the voice of Chinese German artist Mona Yim transports us to a place that is both emotionally introspective and intense, balancing on the edge between desire and reality.
“You should know where I go when I dream,” she states.
Over the course of five years, through exchanges, writing sessions, and fine-tuning in Paris, London, Saint Martin, and Ibiza, the world evolved, but Tenashee’s musical mission remained unchanged. The mini-album reflects the musical backgrounds of its two creators, their unique sensitivity to the present, and their desire to challenge each other with sharp, emotional, yet weightless styles and sounds. It is no longer just DJ Tennis; the successful DJ touring worldwide, organising events, and founding influential labels like Life & Death; nor only Joseph Ashworth with his scientific approach and creativity as a
producer and writer in the competitive world of pop; nor Ashee, with his releases on Circoloco and Aus Music. No, Tenashee is something more.
It is a duet searching for a thread that connects electronic music—past, present, and future—through experimentation, craft, and artistry. The moment has truly arrived for Tenashee to ‘tell us something.’

Bringing together the elder statesman of the Zulu guitar Madala Kunene and internationally acclaimed Sibusile Xaba, kwaNTU pulls two generations of South African guitar mastery into a single point of focus. Under-represented on recordings outside of South Africa, Madala Kunene (b. 1951), the ‘King of the Zulu Guitar’, is revered as the greatest living master of the Zulu guitar tradition. Sibusile Xaba, whose collaboration with Mushroom Hour Half Hour reaches back to his first recording in 2017 (Open Letter To Adoniah/Unlearning), has garnered international acclaim for his unique voice and virtuoso guitar stylings, which bring together multiple South African guitar lineages in an original, spiritualised fusion. Collaborating with Mushroom Hour and New Soil for kwaNTU, the two players come together to weave a filigree sonic fabric which reaches down to the heartwood of Zulu guitar music but moves resolutely outward, building on the past to create a deeply rooted statement about present conditions and future travels. kwaNTU – which can be roughly translated ‘the place of the life-spirit’ – is also conclave of teacher and student, as Xaba has been taught by Kunene for the last decade. Meditative, rich and sonically sui generis, kwaNTU finds these two musicians linking up within the inimitable space of sound and spirit that they share through Kunene’s teaching.

The great masters of South African music have not all had equal exposure. For many years the generation of musicians who were exiled during apartheid took centre stage, as the regime made it very difficult for those at home to be heard. More recently, a new cohort of important voices, especially in jazz, has broken through to international consciousness. But for the generation of musicians in between – those who shone like beacons in the most difficult final years of apartheid and immediately afterward – international recognition has been slow in coming.

Madala Kunene, ‘the King of the Zulu Guitar’, is among this number. A revered figure for current generations of South African musicians, Kunene began his recording career in 1990, at the bitter end of apartheid, with a now classic self-titled LP for David Marks’ storied Third Ear imprint. Born in 1951 in Cato Manor, near Durban, he had determined to be a musician from early childhood, and by the time he first entered a recording studio he had already had a long career as a popular performer. His virtuoso absorption and transformation of the venerable Zulu maskanda guitar tradition and his richly spiritualised approach to music immediately marked him out as someone special, and in the years that followed, Kunene cemented his position as one of South Africa’s musical elders. He is without doubt the grand master of the Zulu guitar tradition, but his sound and sensibility ranges far beyond it into varied sonic terrain, and he has collaborated with a wide range of musicians both at home and abroad. Now in his mid-seventies, he remains a shining light for those that are making music in contemporary South Africa.

‘He is really an amazing person,’ says the guitarist Sibusile Xaba, who has been mentored by Kunene for over a decade, and now invites a collaboration with him on kwaNTU. ‘As a mentor, he's really powerful in showing us the way. For us to have this opportunity to make music together and have a project together is really a blessing to me.’

Xaba himself grew up in Newcastle, KwaZulu-Natal, where his mother had been in a band and his father sang in a church choir, and from early childhood Xaba played homemade tin guitars. He only later realised that music was his calling. ‘I just loved music. I was fortunate. My parents loved music. And when it was time for me to leave home and go to study outside Newcastle, I knew that music was what I wanted to do. There was no second option. It was just music.’ Moving to Pretoria to study music formally, Xaba committed himself to his craft, developing a unique style that draws on both US jazz masters such as Wes Montgomery and Jim Hall, and the rich and varied heritage of the South African guitar, from inspirational jazz players such as Allen Kwela and Enoch Mthalane, to the music of the Malombo groups and Dr. Philip Tabane (Xaba has previously collaborated with Dr. Tabane’s late son, Thabang), and the Zulu guitar tradition embodied by Kunene.

‘I was really in love with the jazz guitar, I really admired it, and I was digging a lot in that direction,’ says Xaba, recalling his first encounter with Kunene’s music, over a decade ago. ‘And then one day on my timeline, Kunene popped up, and I was like – “What's this sound?” I was so connected to it. It really touched me deep. I started checking out his records, and then I found out he's from the same region as I am, which is Zululand.’ After Kunene played a show at the Afrikan Freedom Station in Johannesburg, Xaba make contact with him, and visited him at home in Durban. They struck up a friendship, and Xaba became the elder’s student, as Kunene began to pass on his knowledge and his inimitable way of playing.

kwaNTU is a tribute to this relationship and the deep learning that has defined it. The album was recorded in Zululand in the town of Utrecht, at a cultural centre called Kwantu Village, which gives its name to the album. ‘It's such a broad word,’ Xaba says, ‘but the elders teach us that Ntu is basically an energy, almost chi, an energy, a force that all living beings have within them. It's a living energy, so kwaNTU is like, almost the place of this energy.’ The two men sequestered themselves for five days of jamming, improvising and planning, and then the session was recorded in one take over a single night, with Gontse Makhene joining on percussion and backing vocals and Fakazile on vocals. Other voices and overdubs were later added in the studio in Johannesburg.

The result is a rich and meditative recording that finds two generations in a deeply engaged dialogue. Teaching and passing on his knowledge, the elder Kunene has brought Xaba into a space of sound and knowledge that they now share; Xaba’s own practice of deep communion with nature and his dedication to his musical craft make him the perfect interlocutor for Kunene. The result is an album that foregrounds the two musicians engaged at the highest levels of responsive listening, sympathetic unity, and collaborative concentration. Bringing an elder statesman of South African music to an international listening audience for the first time in decades by pairing him with one of South Africa’s most important new voices, kwaNTU is a meeting of generations and a powerful demonstration of musical lineage and continuity.

‘Before music, there is sound,’ Xaba observes, speaking of Kunene’s unique approach to music. ‘And sound is like a common compartment…it's not restricted to particular people or particular geographic places, you know what I mean? It's sound. Everybody can hear it. So when he constructs that sound into music, I think everybody resonates with the energy behind his construction of sound into song. Here at home, we really love him for preserving our history through the guitar, through his stories as well the music, the songs that he writes. We really, really admire him.’

For their first album as Gilla Band (formerly Girl Band), the
foursome have redrawn their own paradigm. ‘Most Normal’ is like
little you’ve heard before, a kaleidoscopic spectrum of noise put in
service of broken pop songs, FX-strafed Avant-punk rollercoaster
rides and passages of futurist dancefloor nihilism.
Lockdown robbed Gilla Band of any opportunity to try the new
material out live, but the pandemic also incinerated any idea of a
deadline for the new album. They were free to tinker at leisure, to
rewrite and restructure and reinvent tracks they’d cut, to, as
drummer Adam Faulkner puts it, “pull things apart and be like,
‘Let’s try this. We could try out every wild idea.’”
The group also fell under the spell of modern hip-hop, “where
there’s really heavy-handed production and they’re messing with
the track the whole time,” says Fox. “That felt like a fun route to go
down, it was a definite influence.”
‘Most Normal’ opens with an absolute industrial-noise banger that
sounds like a manic house party throbbing through the walls of the
next room as a downed jetliner brings death from above. What
follows is unpredictable, leading the listener through a sonic house
of mirrors, where the unexpected awaits around every corner.
The common thread holding ‘Most Normal’’s ambitious Avant-pop
shapes together is frontman Dara Kiely. Throughout, he’s an antic,
antagonistic presence, barking wild, hilarious, unsettling spiels,
babbling about smearing fish with lubricant or dressing up in binliners or having to wear hand-me-down bootcut jeans (“It was a
big, shameful thing, growing up, not being able to afford the look I
wanted and having to wear all my brother’s old clothes,” says
Kiely).
‘Most Normal’, then, is a triumph, the bold work of a group who’ve
taken the time to evolve their ideas, to deconstruct and reconstruct
their music and rebuild it into something new, something
challenging and infinitely rewarding. It’s a headphone masterpiece.
It’s a majestic exploration of the infinite possibilities of noise. It’s a
bold riposte to your parochial beliefs on whatever a pop song can
or should be. It’s the best work these musicians have put to
(mangled) tape.

Nottingham's Balearic dons Coyote have been digging around in the vaults and turned out four more masterful edits for a grown-up get-together. The fourth edition of this crucial series opens with the gentle guitar strums of 'Back To The Wall', which is intimate and perfect for gathering around the campfire. 'Easy' brings Americana and folky vibes with a lead harmonica and slow grooves, while 'Moon' is a lighter sound with more masterful plucking and undulating grooves with subtle funk and a nice breezy vocal. 'Taling The Veil' shuts down with some late-night yearning and proggy guitar hints that will have you gazing at the stars.