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Piezo returns to Facta and K-LONE’s Wisdom Teeth imprint with a 5 track EP of experimental, warping, majestic club music. Since his last outing on the label, the Milanese producer has refined and consolidated his aesthetic considerably: through a spree of crucial releases on his own label, Ansia, and then with the release of his essential debut LP, Perdu (released in 2020 on experimental powerhouse Hundebiss). LSD Superhero sees him bring together the goofy, club-ready aspects of his output on Ansia with the meticulously crafted cybernetic sonics of his debut LP, but with the addition of something new: melody. The title track opens the record with house lights up: glitching percs build around gasseous pads and trembling subs in a drawn out climax that finally collapses into a rolling technoiddembow beat at its midpoint. Next, ‘Unto’ squeezes the producer’s wonky, sub-heavy sonics into a 4x4 template - one of those special 5 am tracks that will appeal equally to dubsteppers and minimal heads. (Remember that time Shackleton appeared on Perlon?). ‘TB2’ - a collaboration with label head K-LONE - balances nectar sweet melodies with bust-up drums and glitching FX hits, while ‘Dijitz’ sees him flex his full melodic knack for an eyes down, half-stepping synth workout. To close, ambient wobbler ‘Xxx^_^x’ refracts bass music sonics into something sprawling and shadowy - like an old Benga track exploded and

Vordergrundmusik’s Rittik Wystup returns with a slightly-so avant-garde collage of Piano and Beats. Little melodies awake spuriously, welcoming Spring; they interplay with sizzling cymbals and flamboyant drums. The usage of wind is the carrier throughout the record, just as coastlines bring a strong breeze of cool or warm air.

The overture "Rhythm of the Wind" opens a space of gusts and drafts which circle the EP’s leitmotif. Shifting keys only slightly, it’s a calm prelude to the following track.

"Drums in the Deep" tells the story of a drifting wanderer, voiced by Stepan Terteryan, at the shore of Armenia’s Lake Sevan. His poem can be heard throughout the track, mumbling away as he feels the ground beneath him shaken by roaming bears.

"Three Droplets in Space" presents falling water drops, lifted by a steady, sharp beat. As they approach a large pool, they increase in size and weight, becoming more round and abundant. A gnarly FM bass and frozen hi-hats make way for the passage through the thickening air, blitzing the little leitmotif here and there.

Staying in key, "I Exhale" whispers an ascending piano phrase into the air, which upon reaching for the sky reforms into an unwavering, repeated, slightly melancholic expression. A homage to a valley of bells and chimes, it bursts and blasts into tiny fractions before it evaporates.

Traditional drums and plucked strings progress through "Might y Mist". Before they lose themselves in a faraway landscape, feet stomp and heads bob. As they meld into a fog, carrying debris of the wanderer’s voice and his melody, they spread like a mist: over the water’s surface.

Finally, Timo Maas drops a hefty and punchy remix of "Drums in the Deep". He picks up on the poem and its inclinations but keeps the dancefloor in mind when shattering glassy bits over distorted fragments of the melody. A splendid pumpy finisher to a fairly eccentric EP.

Stars Are the Light, the luminous seventh album by the American psych explorers Moon Duo, marks a progression into significantly new territory. From a preoccupation with the transcendental and occult that informed Ripley Johnson and Sanae Yamada’s guitar-driven psych rock, and reached its apotheosis in the acclaimed Occult Architecture diptych, Stars Are the Light sees the band synthesize the abstract and metaphysical with the embodied and terrestrial.

Branching out from Occult Architecture Vol. 2, the album has a sonic physicality that is at once propulsive and undulating; it puts dance at the heart of an expansive nexus that connects the body to the stars. These are songs about embodied human experience — love, change, misunderstanding, internal struggle, joy, misery, alienation, discord, harmony, celebration — rendered as a kind of dance of the self, both in relation to other selves and to the eternal dance of the cosmos.

‘Wax Limousine’ is the third solo album from London’s Wesley Gonzalez. Set for release on 18th March via Moshi Moshi Records, the record is the follow up to last year’s critically acclaimed ‘Appalling Human’ and finds the indie stalwart delivering his most personal album to date, via a collection of 12 irresistible pop songs. The announcement arrives alongside the title track, which received its first play from Marc Riley on 6Music and its accompanying video, the second to be revealed from the record following ‘Greater Expectations’, released earlier this year. In support of the release, Gonzalez heads out on tour this November, headlining Electrowerkz on 25th and supporting Young Knives across the country (full dates below).

With its truly eclectic range of musical influences drawing on Gonzalez’s ever developing sonic palette, the album’s uplifting sound juxtaposes its themes, documenting the end of a long-term relationship and the overwhelming experience of dealing with a family member’s cancer diagnosis and subsequent treatment. ‘Wax Limousine’ navigates these hurdles with a razor-sharp wit and often brutally perceptive self-awareness, nowhere more so than on the new single. Inspired by both 'Faithless' by Scritti Politti and Aretha Franklin, it is Gonzalez’s version of an 80’s gospel song and, as he explains, written at a crucial point over the last 12 months

“This was written right after the breakup and cancer diagnosis. It was that early stage of a breakup where you can't really understand what went wrong for you or for your ex. There was resentment for the extreme change I had suddenly found myself in, and I was asking what it really was I did wrong. The title Wax Limousine came from old phrases like "as useless as an ashtray on a motorbike". I was trying to express how useless I felt within every situation that had just arrived at my doorstep.”

Wesley Gonzalez first made a name for himself as the leader of Let's Wrestle, whose tuneful and eccentric punk earned critical accolades and a devoted audience with three albums, including 2011’s Steve Albini produced ‘Nursing Home’. Gonzalez wasted little time forging his own path and quickly assembled a live band for his solo work, expanding upon the guitar-driven music of his former band, with an interesting concoction of classic 70’s pop, soul, and indie rock. Gonzalez released his debut solo record ‘Excellent Musician’ in 2017, then the follow up ‘Appalling Human’ in June 2020 through Moshi Moshi Records.

“Radiate Like This” - Warpaint’s much anticipated new record, not to mention their first in almost 6 years - arrives with its own very modern mythology intact, continuing the strange, brilliant, beautiful story of the band and quite neatly picking up where “Heads Up” left off. It’s an album that pulsates with ideas, energy and- most crucially – gorgeous melodies. Listen on in wonder. Pres includes Total Guitar - 3 page feature - April 2022 issue , Dork - 4 star album review. The band will have a UK tour in May. Available formats include releases on Black LP.

OHM Series is the premier series in discovering and sharing some of the world’s strongest dub techno sounds.
Side A begins the release with a breezy opening track by highly regarded and Berlin based artist, Soela.
’Fledgling’, is a perfect blend of tech and melodic chord highlights that every DJ appreciates in their hands to open a set. Next, we have Dawn Razor, who hails from Russia. ’Calm Storm’ is the perfect
name for this uptempo foray into peak-time techno where unusual and exciting sounds balance a minimalistic banger that somehow rides a gentle wave of restfulness.
Side B features Greek producer Stelios Vassiloudis on the first track titled ’Live in Fear’. The un-nerving mechanical feel of this track is sure to turn some heads. It’s pronounced beat and constant dub-chord interference aggressiveness is turned up to level 10 in this epic piece creating a dancefloor monster.
Lastly, ’Elusive’ is the contribution from Russian duo Semitone Cycles. Anton Lanski and Simon P offer the strongest builder on the EP. Well-placed sounds accentuate the catchiness of the track that just gets better and better with each play.
Veteran Icelandic but Copenhagen-based techno figurehead Bjarnar Jonsson, is the brains behind the Ohm Series.

Weymouth punk band Weatherstate are back with a bang in 2021. Since releasing their debut album ‘Born A Cynic’ via Failure By Design Records in 2019, the band have been busy playing gigs (both IRL when that was allowed and on the internet when it was necessary) and continually working on new music. Their hooky, melodic riffs, 90s throwback feel with a modern twist and hard-working DIY ethic caught the attention of awesome independent label Rude Records, who are set to release the band’s second album in 2021. Led by vocalist and guitarist Harry Hoskins, Weatherstate’s line-up is completed by guitarist Callan Milward, Joe Hogan on bass and drummer Toby Wrobel. They’ve risen to the challenges that COVID has posed and, whilst the pandemic threw a bit of a spanner in the works, the band have been working with Four Year Strong’s Alan Day to produce new songs with them, albeit remotely. “I feel Alan really taught us a lot about how to approach a song and see the potential in having an open mind on songwriting,” enthuses Callan about the process and connection. “We really wanted to level up and evolve as a band. I feel the first single we’re releasing - ‘Hangar’ - is evidence of that. He's a super talented dude and has great vision in the potential of new music.” “It goes without saying but doing everything remotely has been a massive challenge and an interesting obstacle to overcome,” continues Callan. “Especially for us, as we have been pretty traditionalist when it comes to writing. I feel we handled it in the best way we could, considering the international side of things too. With pre-production, we had to have some late nights because of the time-zone differences. Neil Kennedy at The Ranch really nailed the engineering and Alan smashed the mix over in the States. All I can say is that you can work miracles over Zoom these days.”

Equally renowned for her song writing as much as her amazingly sultry soul vocals, Barbara Mason was widely known for her early solo ‘60s hits as well as her ‘70s collabs with the likes of Curtis Mayfield before her late ‘70s/early ‘80s disco/boogie dancefloor phase…but the heads at Selector series have unearthed a never released LP of classic cover gems from this evergreen diva of Soul. Limited press.

All These Years is Phil Cook's first fully instrumental piano release. A prolific songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, solo artist, and in-demand musician whose collaborations have run the gamut of genre - as a founding member of beloved band Megafaun to work with The Blind Boys of Alabama, Bon Iver, Kanye West, and Hiss Golden Messenger, to name a few - here, Cook returns to his primary instrument, the piano, back where it all began. All These Years was recorded at NorthStar Church of the Arts in Durham, NC by his cousin and collaborator Brian Joseph (Bon Iver, Sufjan Stevens, Indigo Girls), on a long-cared-for and much-loved one-hundred year-old Steinway piano. All These Years is near hymn-like, a collection of prayers or meditations, improvisations threaded together by feeling, by the things that matter most. When Cook began these songs, he was in the headspace of meditating on the people in his support network, and those closest to him.

Improvisation and experimentation are at the core of Robocobra
Quartet’s DNA, almost intentionally at odds with their roots as a
post punk band.
 Including members with no musical training alongside European
music conservatoire innovators, the result is a groove-driven but
cerebral blast, invoking the likes of Fugazi, Talking Heads and
contemporaries such as Squid and Black Country, New Road.
 The eclectic free nature of their live shows allows them to
channel hop from moments of joy and playfulness to periods of
intense fury, creating a unique sound that has earned them
invitations to Montreux Jazz Festival and Latitude.
 Robocobra Quartet have a rule: No Guitars Allowed. Their
unique sound, concocted and self-produced in Belfast, Northern
Ireland, sees that ‘middle’ space filled by other instruments such
as saxophones, samplers, keyboards and sound effects,
swirling around the melodic basslines and powerful drum
rhythms which prop up the core of each of their songs.
 On top of this music sits a single vocal from behind the drum kit
amid a fury of rhythm, sometimes marrying perfectly with the
pulse of the drums and occasionally at complete odds with it.
 Live dates / tour to be announced.
 “I genuinely don’t think there is another band like ‘em, anywhere
in these islands” - Tom Robinson
 “Free-floating musical explorers” - Hannah Peel
 “Fugazi meets Mingus.” - Drowned in Sound
 “Exploratory pioneers.” - BBC Radio 3 Late Junction
 “A cunning marriage of jazz, spoken word and punk” - The
Quietus

Getting ready, putting on your best gear, pre-playing with your crew to get a nice buzz before you hit the club. Dancing and watching people get down on the dancefloor, the nerds in the back leaning against the wall nodding their heads. Going to the afterhours, wastedly making new friends, making out with a cute stranger and passing out on someone's couch. This record is about all that.

Introducing Josh Caffe’s second single on Phantasy, ‘Do You Wanna Take Me Home?’ is a sensual yet gritty return, a keen document of just one of the many stories of desire always occurring in the shadows, just beyond the strobes. Produced in collaboration with Quinn Whalley, one half of Paranoid London, ‘Do You Wanna Take Me Home?’ also features a headsy interpretation from Steffi & Virginia, marking their first ever collaborative remix.

Inspired by the rawest shades of early Chicago house music, ‘Do You Wanna Take Me Home?’ finds Caffe in thirsty pursuit of pleasure and recognition, eyes locked on an unidentified but all-too enticing individual in the club. Whereas previous single ‘According To Jacqueline’ turned the heads of dancers with it’s outrageous sexuality, Caffe’s follow-up finds him switched by a different strain of lust, head down in a blend of analogue jack and vocal vulnerability.

Steffi & Virginia have long since established themselves as distinct individual forces in contemporary dance music. Here, reunited in the studio together in the first instance since 2019’s ‘Work A Change’ EP on Ostgut Ton, the duo transplant Caffe’s yearning invitation into a sensuous reverie that touches on the deeper, tripper ends of their house and techno heritage. Driven by creeping organ chords and a powerful shuffling bassline, the result is a sophisticated reimagining primed for the heat of the function.

KGLW made the colloquially-dubbed 'Timeland' furtively and in semi-secrecy around the time of their 2019 Red Rocks show, and intended it for use as an intermission piece for said three-hour marathon set. Made up of a thoroughly different palette of inspirations to their usual speedy psych-rock, the LP operates in strange surrealist dance music and instrumental beats, oddly peppered by Gizzard's classic nasal vocal twirls and hooks. Guitar rarely features. Now, this weirdo's oddball remains shrouded behind secrecy and conspiracy theories, and as such, will not feature on any DSPs. So get on it while you can, because this cream coloured vinyl version won't be around much longer before the heads snaffle it up. Just in case you vomit at its glory, it comes in and with a brown paper bag.

Favorite Recordings presents Dark Is The Color, the first LP by Alan Shearer reissued on vinyl for the first time. Despite being initially composed and produced for the French library label PSI, this rare
and obscure in-demand gem from 1985 sounds retrospectively like a proper album with great coherence and sophistication all along. Indeed, these 11 tracks will delight synthesizers addicts. Expect deeply emotive instrumental compositions, with ingenious analogue sequencing on stimulating chord progressions. The result is a highly retrofuturistic album, sometimes almost anticipating 90's videogames
scores. Just imagine Wally Badarou in a bunker with Talking Heads watching New York 1997 from John Carpenter.
Composed mostly step by step on a Sequential Pro-One synthesizer, Dark Is The Color is the product of the exciting state of mind from the 80's era with new sounds, new tools and new trends on the music spectrum. Influenced by bands like Talking Head or Japan, the sirens of the new wave scene strongly resonate here with Alan Shearer's familiarity and craftmanship with synthesizers.
Back in the days, Alan Shearer aka Frédéric Viger was working for his father’s music label, “Musique Pour L'image”, and their sublabel “PSI”. He started with Marathon Life under his real name before taking the Alan Shearer monitor. These records were produced for radio, TV and cinema industries but as well for companies’ internal communication. They represented a real investment from the label and these catalogues are usually full of amazing music from great artists such as Martial Solal, Vladimir Cosma, Joël Fajerman, Harlem Pop Trotters and even Manu Dibango.
About his musical illustration process, Alan Shearer tells: "Soundtracks are indeed my biggest influences and I'm a real fan of American composers as Jerry Goldsmith or Elmer Bernstein. I've always considered soundtracks as the new classical music or classical music of our century. There is a real state of mind producing music for illustration: you have to stick to the video. You should not tell what the image is saying but accompany what it is saying. You have to find a unique link, people always told me music should not be noticed for itself in a movie, that's what makes it good.”

French artist Trudge returns to Lobster Theremin with his debut LP No More Motivation arriving on March 18th with a genre-bending and original masterstroke; charged as it is cerebral. The album's concept points to the artist's tumultuous relationship with music; plagued by life events and the looming shadow of tragedy. That same relationship however, has led to an album of nuance, a cathartic whirlwind that pushes and pulls from one part of the psyche to the next.

From the laden house sounds found in his earlier work, to the hard-hitting emotive techno we hear today, both Trudges’ personal and artistic evolution runs parallel, drawing between the lines of introspection and dance music’s modern functionality. Bangkok Radio kicks off proceedings with a reminiscent drive through the city's bustling landscape, as space unfolds the further we travel from the hustle and bustle of daily life. No Motivation, Meaningless is a nod to the producer's headspace - burdened by the unpredictability of reality and it’s governing influence on art; echoing throughout the entire album.

Mazzomba explores the duality of light and dark; heavily submerged sounds can be heard melting below the surface, as airy synths create an ethereal glow - acting as our torch through the crud-infested trench. The album's interlude Berserk provides a rest bite, an ambient dreamscape laced with deeply layered textures - casting warm fluorescent light amongst the clouds as balance is restored.

Dead Orange and Gradient demonstrate the artist's knact for intelligent sound-design and world-building soundscapes, while Unghosted and Punishments sees Trudge venture into raw and unwavering compositions created for the dance-floor. Closing the album is Blue Ritual, a thought-provoking piece that has the ability to transport and heal. It’s introspective layers point to the changing winds to come - rounding off an album not binded by genre, but an eclecticism that characterizes an artist true to his craft.

Dark Green 12" Vinyl Limited to 1000 Vinyl Includes Exclusive bonus track 'Restless'

“The things you hear when you’re alone. Walking through Mount Royal or other wooded areas you might notice a branch break. As much as I value my alone time and the subtle things you can pick up around and within yourself in those moments, a certain loneliness and anxiety permeates the quiet at some point. The past couple years created ample opportunity for that anxiety and loneliness to stretch its legs and make itself comfortable. This record was born out of weeks of willing a form of peace and inspiration into my surroundings. A large part of that came from working with Leanne Macomber on some vocals. Through a desire to form new connections and throw more humanity into the work. We made a variety of song sketches that I mostly reworked into the final recordings here. We spoke a lot about where our heads were at, certain key phrases, triggers and emotions. Joel Ford, whom I worked on Dawn Chorus with, mixed the record and helped me wrangle a few cats to get this across the finish line. Restless at home in Canada, feeling the restlessness of all my friends and loved ones I kept in touch with as much as possible, trying to make something that made the quiet a bit more peaceful."

Loraine James' new ambient-minded alias, Whatever The Weather, follows her 2021 solo LP Reflection (Hyperdub). In contrast to her club music sensibilities, this mode embraces keyboard improvisations and vocal experimentation, foregoing percussive structure in favor of shaping atmosphere and tone. From this divergent headspace emerged new coordinates and climates, a new outlet: Whatever The Weather. A longtime fan of ambient-adjacent Ghostly International artists such as Telefon Tel Aviv (who she'd ask to master the album), HTRK (whose singer Jonnine Standish features on Nothing), and Lusine (whom she remixed at the start of 2021), James saw the label as the ideal home for this eponymous album of airy, transportive tracks as they began to formulate. The titling on Whatever The Weather works in degrees; simple parameters allowing James to focus on the nuances as a mood-builder. Her suspended universe fluctuates; freezing, thawing, swaying and blooming from track to track. James describes her jam-based approach for the sessions as "free-flowing, stopping when I felt like I was done," allowing her subconscious to lead. The improvisations have an intrinsic fluidity to them, akin to sudden weather events passing over a single environment - the location feels fixed while the conditions vary. The album opens at "25°C," a sunshower of soft hums and keys. As the longest piece, it serves to establish stability, the inflection point where any move above or below this temperate breeze breaks the bliss. Given James' proclivity for organized chaos in her production, this scene is fleeting, naturally. From that utopia, we plummet to the most melancholic read on the meter, "0°C," its isolated synth line traversing a hailstorm of steely beats and static. Next, the dial jumps for the propulsive standout "17°C." Like a timelapse of springtime in the city, the single accelerates across a frenzy of frames; car horns, screeching brakes, and crosswalk chatter fill the pauses between rapid jolts of multi-shaped percussion. For portions of the work, James leans neo-classical, rendering pensive vignettes of cascading piano keys and warm delay. "2°C (Intermittent Rain)" ends the A-Side on a short and stormy loop; a resulting sense of reset permeates the B-Side's opener, "10°C." The producer mingles intuitively on echoed organ, locking into and abandoning atypical rhythms that suggest her jazz-oriented interests. "4°C" and "30°C" display the range of James' vocal experiments. The former chops and pitches her voice to a rhythmic, otherworldly effect, the latter reveals James at her most straightforward (she cites Deftones' Chino Moreno and American Football's Mike Kinsella as inspirations), singing tenderly and unobstructed for nearly the duration before beats collide in the climax. Whatever The Weather closes at "36°C," while a sweltering heat by any standards the track eases along comfortably on a chorus of synth waves, acting as an apt bookend for this evocative, sky-tracing collection that started in a similar state. Cyclical, seasonal, and unpredictable, true to its namesake.