Buscar:heart people

Seit über fünfzig Jahren steht Yes an der Spitze des Rock und zeichnet sich durch seine unvergleichliche
Handwerkskunst, Kreativität und Innovationskraft aus, mit der es symphonische Meisterwerke schafft, die
bis heute inspirieren.
Am 23. Januar 2026 veröffentlicht Mercury Studios „Yes Symphonic Live“, eine herausragende LiveSammlung mit 14 Songs, die in High Definition gefilmt wurde. Sänger Jon Anderson, Bassist Chris
Squire, Leadgitarrist Steve Howe und Schlagzeuger Alan White haben die dramatische Intensität ihres
2001 erschienenen Albums „Magnification“ wiederaufleben lassen, dem ersten Yes-Album ohne Keyboards
und dem letzten Yes-Album mit Anderson.
Zur Unterstützung ihres symphonischen Albums Magnification gingen sie 2001 mit einem neuen Ansatz
für ihre Live-Sets auf Tournee. Sie holten sich die Hilfe des European Festival Orchestra unter der Leitung
von Wilhelm Keitel, um ihren Live-Sets neue, üppige Texturen zu verleihen und so den Geist ihres neuen
Albums auf der Bühne zum Leben zu erwecken. Sie spielten nicht nur Titel aus Magnification, sondern
auch neu interpretierte Versionen ihrer zeitlosen Hits.
Klassiker wie „Owner Of A Lonely Heart”, „Long Distance Runaround” und „I’ve Seen All Good People”
klangen noch nie so grandios.

NEW MISERABLE EXPERIENCE are a Philadelphia-rooted collective that reshapes heavy-music rigour into expansive, melody-forward songs through alternative synth-rock. What started as a file-trading collaboration between vocalist/bassist David Grossman (ex- ROSETTA) and multi-instrumentalist Joshua Mahesh Kost expanded into a full band that now includes ROSETTA drummer Bruce "B.J." McMurtrie Jr., technical-metal bassist Brett Bamberger (REVOCATION), and guitarist Brody Uttley (RIVERS OF NIHIL). The group forgoes technical exhibitionism in favour of mood and melody, composing introspective songs designed to reward close listening. Across the twelve tightly arranged tracks of 3rd album "Gild The Lily", the band pares its palette to essential elements: clear melodies, precise dynamics, and richly textured production. The album trades overt bombast for craft, building emotional weight through small gestures and patient arrangements rather than moments of spectacle. "We started saying `infinite sadness' as a bit of a catch phrase with the last album. I think that sums up the vibe of the album and project overall. We are very much in the `sadboi' world with Jeff Buckley, Puma Blue, Radiohead, Deftones, The Black Queen", says Grossman. Sonically, `Gild the Lily' combines alternative synth rock with chorus-tinted guitars, and a rhythm section that alternates between taut propulsion and roomy, reverb-soaked space. The arrangements both electronic and instrumental negotiates smooth and slick danceability alongside sinister edges. The band's aesthetic is one of deliberate economy: textures are chosen to serve mood and narrative rather than technical exhibitionism, and arrangements reveal their depth across repeated listens. Slick, sorrowful and cinematic in atmosphere, `Gild the Lily' is an eclectic collection that can not only groove in vibe and inspire movement, but also pierce to the nerve in ethereal lamentation. RIYL Crosses * Black Queen * Ulver * Vowws * Rosetta * Revocation * Rivers of Nihil

Rochelle Jordan is proudly stepping into her diva era. To those in the know, the Los Angeles-based British-Canadian singer and songwriter has long been an underground force coaxing together the mutually flirtatious scenes of daring alt-R&B and heart-pumping electronic music. With her longtime creative director/producer KLSH, she’s cultivated a singular marriage of sound — mixing soulful sensuality, house bump, DnB wildness, hip-hop swagger, and pure experimentalism — that’s spread not only through certain circles, but also to the mainstream. At the same time that her gauzy 2014 single “Lowkey” was going viral in 2023 — racking up 21 million streams on Spotify alone — she was in the studio cooking with tastemaking beatsmiths like KAYTRANADA and Sango, quietly preparing to melt dance floors and headphones alike.

Now, as the timelines merge, Jordan is approaching success with the sparkle of a brand new star and the stance of someone who’s earned everything she has. Her new musical chapter aims to carry forward the magic that fans feel in her coquettish vocals and bold soundscapes even as she reaches deeper into her pop bag. The fact that her first single of 2025, the darkly dazzling “Crave,” was produced by Chicago house legend Terry Hunter (Janet Jackson, Mariah Carey, Beyoncé) speaks volumes to this exact moment in Jordan’s ascendent trajectory.

“My goal when I first started making music was to bring back something that I felt had started to fade away for me,” says Jordan. “That certain essence or sound that would give me butterflies in my stomach when I’d listen to music — it would unleash some kind of chemical that would make me feel happy and excitable and curious, something that would make my soul shine. My number one goal is always: How do I give people that feeling when they listen to my music?”

Jordan grew up in Toronto raised by British-Jamaican parents. She remembers hearing one of her older brothers cycling through a variety of music at maximum volume in the room next to hers. “Reggae to soul to drum and bass to garage music to gospel,” Jordan recalls. “It was all intertwining for me at such a young age.” She developed her own sound quietly, and soon met KLSH through MySpace. They traded multiple songs back and forth daily until he flew her out to L.A. to record what would become her debut project, 2011’s R O J O. That collaboration hasn’t faltered since, resulting in sonically surprising, subtly infectious sets like Jordan’s breakthrough 2014 album 1021 (with “Lowkey”) and 2021’s dance-steeped revelation, Play with the Changes.

“If you’re talking about Rochelle Jordan, you’re talking about KLSH,” she says. “It’s one and the same. We come from the same inspiration source.” With him at her side to this day, Jordan is crafting new listening experiences as radiant as refracted light glimmering through a prism — an incredible space from within which to explore love in all its iterations — from romantic infatuation to self-affirmation, and strength in womanhood to pride for what she’s accomplished thus far.

More than a decade into her career, Jordan has arrived at a new stage of life and creativity — she’s a seasoned professional, a fully realized woman, and she’s excited to continue growing. “I know my story isn’t necessarily a new one,” she says. “I look at 2 Chainz, who became 2 Chainz way later on in his life. I look at Tina Turner, who became Tina Turner at 40. I want to be another story of resilience for people.” As she prepares to unveil more of her vision, and fans clamber for a long-awaited fourth album, Rochelle Jordan is casting aside self-doubt, and appreciating and underlining her status as a verifiably influential reigning diva in her one-of-one sonic space.

‘Pilot’ is the debut album from London quintet Miniseries. Channelling the epic sweep of TV themes and movie soundtracks into resplendent space rock they explore themes of youth and ageing, heartbreak and paranoia, euphoria and existential dread.

Songwriter Doug Morch (Longview) had been working on largely acoustic folk songs when he met Angela Gannon (The Magic Numbers) at Glastonbury 2017. Romance and musical collaboration ensued. The band coalesced in the hallowed environs of Farringdon's The Betsey Trotwood pub – a musical nexus where burgeoning indie and Americana scenes collide – where they met fellow songwriter and guitarist Dermot Watson (from Brighton's The Dials) and drummer Danny Abbasi and were joined by Doug's former bandmate Aidan Banks on bass. When they came together, their indie folk mutated into motorik art rock, with their first single being an eight-minute jam called "Road".

When it came to capturing their sound, the band reached for maverick musician and producer Sean Read. They recorded tracks at Read's Famous Times studio in Clapton, London, as well as at Edwyn Collins' Clashnarrow in Helmsdale, Scotland – one of the world's most breathtaking and idiosyncratic studio locations, adding unquantifiable magic to the proceedings.

For the closing track "May You Always", they headed to another studio imbued with tangible inspiration: Blueprint Studio in Salford with producer Craig Potter (Elbow) at the helm. For the song, Dermot drew cinematic inspiration from the Withnail & I line "I'll never play The Dane", the song is about realising that the things you aspired to in youth will never come to pass and being at peace with that realisation.

The recurring themes of youth and ageing are apparent in the resplendent lead track ‘You're Gold’ – a heartfelt call for young people to reject materialism and exploitative influencer culture in search of life's deeper meaning, with stylistic nods to The Pixies and early Stereolab.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, "Sepia" explores old age and fading memories through dementia, where the ending descends into chaos like a fragmenting mind. Elements of "Sepia" are foreshadowed in the album's opening track, the instrumental "Pilot Theme", which pays homage to TV theme music, invoking spy thrillers or perhaps something otherworldly from science fiction.

“Offcumdens” is a Calder Valley, Yorkshire term for people who live in the area but come from somewhere else. Hailing from Bury, Lancashire, Morch wrote the song while living in Hebden Bridge (and watching too much Happy Valley) and found himself being an offcumden. It’s a pop at the kind of local nativism which breeds intolerance and an illustration of the sinister rise of wider political populism.

Miniseries' Pilot is just the beginning of the story. Enthralling and atmospheric, the London quintet have created something familiar yet timeless. As singer Doug Morch says, "It's the Miniseries Pilot episode. Like the TV episode a studio makes to test whether it's viable.” In the age of streaming and box-sets, this is an album to truly binge on. We can’t wait to hear what happens next.

The notion of home isn’t precise, even a dictionary will offer multiple definitions. A home can be a place where you live, a place where you belong, where you originate from or a place where you’re given care; it can be a physical space, a land, a people or even a person. The concept isn’t completely universal, but everyone possesses a unique idea of what home means to them. On her fifth album, Ziúr considers not just what home symbolizes from her perspective, but the word’s resonance to the diverse community that surrounds her, and how their stories have impacted her over the years. Indeed, it’s the first time she’s felt it necessary to examine her own nationality. In the past, she’s deliberately avoided labelling herself as German, feeling disconnected from her country’s politics, culture and even the German language itself. In 2025, the idea of Germanness is in flux and progressives are under attack from all sides. The country’s politics aren’t only being turned inward by the growing throng of far-right voices, but by scared moderates, opportunists and those blinded by comfort, willing to ignore hatred to maintain their privilege. Stepping up to provide a different narrative, Ziúr scours her soul, writing and singing in German for the first time and proposing growth and evolution, not fear and regression. “I never considered being part of Germany,” she explains. “But I am.”

A solemn mood permeates the album’s opening track ‘Brown is the Color’, and Ziúr sings in measured, slow-motion breaths over noisy synth oscillations and doomed piano flourishes. Already, it’s a significant departure from her last run of releases, veering away from the frenetic, satirical chaos of 2023’s Hakuna Kulala-released ‘Eyeroll’ or its fantastical, dubby predecessor ‘Antifate’. Ziúr pulls on real world insights here, tracing her oldest, dearest musical inspirations to present her origins to anybody who might be listening. “Cold world is holding up,” she laments with a metallic crunch. “To let go of your heart, let me go.” And her voice emerges from the shadows completely on ‘Tame’; unprocessed, Ziúr sounds naked and vulnerable on ‘Tame’, curving her precise words around broken, lopsided rhythms and jangling new wave guitars. It’s pop music in its own way, inverted and reconstructed to fit snugly into her well-established sonic landscape. On ‘No Yawn’, brittle, downsampled hi-hats and industrial scrapes ping-pong around distorted riffs, provided by James Ó Ceallaigh aka WIFE; “You fail to sugarcoat your half-ass attempt,” she deadpans, “to build your promised wonderland on quicksand.” Even the beatless ‘All Odds No Chants’, a collaboration with Elvin Brandhi and Sara Persico, reveals another room in Ziúr’s autobiographical suite, mirroring György Ligeti’s enduringly influential choral works with its gnarled, dissonant vocal harmonies.

Hercules & Love Affair music has always been about folding past, present and future together – and never more so than in the latest phase, encapsulated by the track that launches things, “Someone Else is Calling.”

If the song-first, ultra-gothic mind-movie of the last H&LA album In Amber was partly motivated by Andy Butler falling out of love with dance culture, this new body of work – an EP titled Someone Else Is Calling – is an unabashed resurgence of the love affair. A co-production with London underground veteran and inspiration to Butler, Quinn Whalley of Paranoid London and Decius, the lead single is a surging, tactile acid track woven around the vocal of Icelandic icon Hips & Lips aka Elín Ey – who hits that new wave disco sweet spot between Grace Jones and Yazoo era Alison Moyet.

Elín’s lyrics work perfectly with the bodily momentum of the sounds, circling around themes of self-possession and the urge to move on to the next experience, the next sensation: hunger for reality. And this taps into Andy’s feelings on escaping New York and moving to Belgium, discovering that dance culture was anything but the hollowed-out, identikit-festival-lineup conveyor belt he’d feared, and still had plenty of outposts where it was still – as he’d first experience it as a teen – about the hot, sweaty reality of diverse people seeking communion, communication and heightened ways of being in the here and now.

The video, filmed by Tatsumi Milori couldn’t be a better expression of exactly this. A love letter to the strange and glorious party scene of Mexico City, it captures people who are both tapping into the eternal verities of those magical dancefloor communions, and thrilling – against all the odds of oppressive forces – at the sense of possibility in the flow of gender and sexuality in the present moment. It’s powered by innocence and experience as intertwined forces, and it amplifies the heartbeat of the song a thousandfold. There will be more, much more, to follow from the partnership of Andy, Elín and Quinn. It digs deeper still into the decades of dance and other underground cultures that feed into this modern moment – but this shining beacon should give you a pretty good hint.

Someone Else Is Calling will arrive on one of Los Angeles’s most exciting new independent labels and creative hubs, StrataSonic, on December 14. The lead single of the same name, along with the music video directed by Tatsumi Milori, is out now. This marks the first collaboration between Hercules & Love Affair and Stratasonic.

Hot on the heels of Luv (LuvLuv) comes a sublime new Drum Chums from midland's madlads Wrekin Havoc.
Over the years we've shared great tunes, fun times and A-grade dance floor debauchery with these permanent party people (our first encounter almost exactly like that Spiderman pointing meme) so it made more sense than we usually do to invite them aboard the V*nga bus for some Balearic-Disco edit excellence.

Things kick off with the sexy throb of 'Shine A Light', a stonewashed funk workout complete with Paisley guitars, Troutman bass grunts and some big time blue-eyed soul vocals. It's a bit like an extended and unheard collaboration between George Michael and Tears For Fears recorded immediately after a particularly heavy night at Future. Unsurprising perhaps that this one's been getting a whole lot of love from DJ Harvey.

'Mars Bar Party' grabs you by the hips from the first bar of its swaying Mediterranean house rhythm, then tugs at every single one of your heartstrings with melancholic pads and a silken vocal croon. Fuuuuuuckin' hell! Sorry, was totally bewitched by the primal power of piano house magic - it's like John Rocca was in the room for a second. Armed with an awesome arrangement and clocking in at ten massive minutes, this may be the ultimate Balearic house journey.

If all this wasn't enough to have you stocking up on 5-HTP and sinus rinse, those crafty cats close the set out with the shimmering disco euphoria of 'Leccy Meet Her'. The bottom end pulses endlessly, Cowley synths trill and a crystal clear Vox soar above, sending us far off into mirrorball orbit. If this isn't a hit at Horse Meat, we'll neck a bottle of poppers and never eat a tomato again.

Each and every track Wrekin Havoc touch is a pearler, but we're particularly chuffed with ourselves for snapping this top trio up.

100% Drum Fun Guaranteed. .

Tuk Smith is the kind of rock 'n' roll ambassador you didn't think existed anymore. Punk maverick from rural Georgia, Biters frontman, producer and solo artist, he's seen the best and worst of a music industry in constant flux. By turns it's left him critically acclaimed, poised for stadiums, dropped, burned out, back in the game and beloved by those for whom rock is still everything. Now based in Nashville, and with his own label Gypsy Rose Records, he creates from a more real place than most. "I want to do something that means something to people," Tuk says, "because a lot of shit nowadays is so disposable and so plastic. I just don't connect with that. I'd like to do things that impact people positively. It's a weird time on the planet, so to have songs about hope, but not be cheesy about it, it's something I think we need with songwriting. That's the kind of music I want to hear." Again, there's that dichotomy he speaks of. "Rock 'n' roll is essentially the illusion of not giving a fuck, right? Like, you know Axl Rose was doing sit-ups and jump rope, and Paul Stanley was on a cardio machine, and they come out and act like it just happens. The point is I sit at that piano many hours, working on this stuff."

15 soul classics from the greatest artists of the genre including James Brown, Barry White, Stevie Wonder, Sam Cooke and Marvin Gaye.

From 1968 through to the mid 1970’s the reggae beat began to slow down,some say due to the extreme heat hitting down onto Kingston Town and its surrounding enclaves. People needed something less strenuous to dance to. The Ska and Rocksteady Sounds (see 101 Orange Street KS007) that rocked Jamaica previously, had now found a slower tempo and become more ‘Dread’ lyrically to suit the times. Reggae music has always moved within the social climate it found itself in and this set here, as we ‘Return To Orange Street’ was ROOTS ROCK REGGAE TIME....

The Rastafarian message that runs through this collection of ‘Reality’, sometimes labelled ‘Sufferers’ music,is strong and works on many levels. It can come across on a heavy rhythm and vocal cut. Its example represented here by Prince Jazzbo’s ‘Dread in a Earth’ and ‘I Roy’s ‘Roots Man Time’, moving through to the popular new sounds of the DJ’s working over an old rhythm and alongside its existing vocal. As with Busty Brown working with Delroy Wilson's ‘Know Your Friend’ and Mr Jah Stitch working over Johnny Clarke’s ‘Roots Natty Roots’ to produce an even more dreader ‘True Born African’. The heartfelt lyric can also convey this message as we can see when Horace Andy laments ‘Where is the Love’ and Delroy Wilson again shows us on his ‘Who Cares’ cut. The great Twinkle Brothers also put the message across on their two cuts we have here, ’Too Late’ one of their lost classics if ever there was one and the thoughtful ‘It’s Not Who You Know’,being another prime example.

Orange Street itself is always at the heart of all reggae's musical changes and some singers also ride these waves as Mr Cornell Campbell shows us here with two cuts. The mournful ‘Too Be Loved’ and his uplifting ‘Girl of My Dreams’, which uses the same rhythm as our previously mentioned Prince Jazzbo’s 'Dread in a Earth’. Showing us that firstly you can’t keep a good rhythm down and secondly that two if not more great songs can work from the same source point. The light hearted ‘Vengeful’ lyric also worked in this period when artists spared off to each other on records to vent their frustrations. As we can hear here with Mr Lee Perry’s ‘You Funny Boy’. The song snipping back at a previous employer over what he felt were his misdoings to an under appreciated Mr Perry. We have culled these tracks together to show that the Dread Roots feel of the 1970’s came across in many guises and even in earlier songs these sentiments were also prevalent. As represented in Slim Smith’s almost bluesy feel in ‘Trying To Find a Home’, never a truer statement in Kingston's ghetto areas.

Well we hope you enjoy this musical journey and make a connection with messages portrayed here, as Mr Monty Morris points out on his contribution to this collection ‘Times Are Dread’.... Dread indeed.....

15th Anniversary Edition. Black Vinyl. When Dinosaur Jr. reunited, more than 20 years after their formation and legendary dissolution, the worry was that these guys were just flogging the back catalog, taking the old show on the road as a marketing gimmick. But the 2007 release of Beyond gave a hearty Marshall-driven "F**K YOU!" answer to those inquiring ears. Restoring the sound established by the unassailable hat-trick gambit of their first three albums -- Dinosaur, You're Living All Over Me, and Bug -- Beyond continued the band's march into rock greatness by making old ears smile and new ears bleed afresh. And then came Farm, the 9th full length record by the original line-up: J Mascis, Lou Barlow, and Murph. If Beyond was Dinosaur Jr.'s return to form, Farm is proof that Dinosaur Jr. could (and still do, to this day!) deliver timeless, exhilarating rock music. Farm encompasses Dinosaur Jr.'s signature palette: soaring and distorted guitar, unshakable hooks, honey-rich melodies. At times wholly 70's guitar-epic, at times perfect for sitting by a babbling brook with Joni and Neil, these songs get into your head and stay there, bouncing happily around. The ear-catching "Plans" is nearly seven minutes of classic whipped-topping rock dessert, while "I Don't Wanna Go There" is a meat-and-potatoes main dish, mixing unapologetic lead guitar with straight-ahead delivery a la James Gang or Humble Pie. This expanded deluxe edition of Farm features four songs never pressed to vinyl and never given worldwide release:"Houses", "Whenever You're Ready" (The Zombies Cover), "Creepies" (Instrumental), and "Show". "Whenever You're Ready", a cover of classic pop-rockers The Zombies, is impossibly good for a hidden gem; Murph stomps in with a sledgehammer to the kit, J and Lou layer low-end and fuzz like two halves of one brain, and right when things feel biggest, airy and colossal, there's J with a lightning bolt of a guitar solo. Pure electricity and melody like only he can make. Recorded in J Mascis' Bisquiteen studio in Amherst, Massachusetts, Farm was produced by Mascis himself, and delivers the singular, unique energy of one of America's greatest living rock bands.

It's been 10 years since Pomegranates - Nicolás Jaar's unofficial/alternative soundtrack to Sergei Parajanov's 1969 film The Color of Pomegranates - was first released, and to highlight this occasion we are reissuing the album on vinyl, with the first edition (a collaboration with the label Mana) having long been out of print.

Longer and slower-releasing than his other albums, Pomegranates often parallels the cinematic epic on which it’s based, with ideas pursued over long timelines and across dark landscapes, assembling elements and moods from the aesthetic and folkloric landscapes of Armenia. Jaar’s identity is perceived within this, folding in his heritage as Palestinian and Chilean as he attempts to build a musical architecture outwards that frames as much of the mess and sprawl of life as possible; using a language that investigates the movement and fluctuation of his own artistic career and character similarly to the film’s tracing of the coming of age of the young poet, Sayat-Nova.

At times, Pomegranates feels profoundly intimate, as though looking through the archive of a friend’s music and discovering the accent and common currency that lives within each of these tracks. Much of Jaar’s most elegant and touching melodic work is nestled here, its power residing in its simplicity and willingness to speak to the heart and not the mind of the listener.

In the text document included in the first freely distributed version of the album in 2015, Jaar writes that the album was conceived during a moment of change, and that the pomegranate became an icon that heralded that passage of time. The physical publication of Pomegranates closes one door whilst opening another, keeping promises and marking a significant point in the career of an artist who restlessly reinvents himself, with a document that illustrates a common language of lyricism, freedom, and emotional resonance linking his many paths and projects

Following their two previous releases, the group--led by the charismatic vocalist Ms. Kennedy and her brilliant musical partner Ondre J (known as Gregory Porter's longtime Hammond organist) - presents a work that fuses funk, soul, and jazz with gripping pop songs and heartfelt ballads, all driven by groove, depth, and Ms. Kennedy's unmistakable voice. The album will be released on CD and LP via Leopard Records. Born from genuine conversations, spontaneous ideas, and a desire to move people through authenticity, 'Humanity' was recorded in the band's Brooklyn home base. The album tells stories of joy and sorrow, self- doubt and self- love, loneliness and connection.

With 'Humanity', Kennedy Administration deliver a record that feels like a soul party, an embrace, and an existential reflection all at once. It's music for overthinkers, outsiders, smartphone scrollers, dancers, and anyone who wants to feel a little less alone. Highlights include Mark Lettieri's (Snarky Puppy) fiery guitar solo and a moving duet with US gospel singer Doobie Powell. Having herself overcome a period of homelessness during the pandemic and rediscovered her voice through music, Ms. Kennedy turns this album into a profoundly personal yet universal statement.

Out Friday 14th June, the renowned jazz and funk trumpeter Sefi Zisling presents his third album ‘The Librarian’, blending classic elements with psychedelic funk, soul, and spiritual jazz. ‘The Librarian’ is dedicated to all things close to Sefi’s heart. The album pays homage to his musical inspirations, his wife, friends, and Eyad, a Palestinian whose story moved Sefi.

"This album was made as an ode to the people I love, and I would like to dedicate this album to them." - Sefi Zisling

Sefi Zisling first started playing the trumpet at the mere age of ten, soon after enrolling in the prestigious art school Thelma Yellin. Performing in an array of bands since his early teens, Sefi has performed and recorded sessions with almost every key player of the jazz world in Israel. His debut album ‘Beyond The Thing I Know’, released on Tel Aviv’s leading collective Raw Tapes, propelled the trumpeter onto the world stage. Sefi then found his home on Tru Thoughts for his sophomore record ‘Expanse’, an album that captured the essence of the classic jazz session and transformed his role from instrumentalist to composer.

The cover art is a painting by the late Walid Abu Shakra, a member of the Abu Shakra family who have collectively played a pivotal role in the Palestinian-Israeli art scene and are respected worldwide. Walid aimed to highlight the expropriation of Palestinian land by the Israeli state and centred his artistic career on safeguarding a disappearing landscape through his monochromatic etchings.

Selling Points
Sefi Zisling's sophomore album "Expanse" sold out on vinyl in the first few months
The cover art is a painting by the late Walid Abu Shakra, a member of the Abu Shakra family who have collectively played a pivotal role in the Palestinian-Israeli art scene
Praise from Jazz FM (Playlisting), FIP, Jamie Cullum (BBC Radio 2), Jazz Times, Jazziz, Tom Ravenscroft, Huey Morgan, Cerys Matthews (BBC 6Music), Musica Macondo, Music Is My Sanctuary, Bandcamp Weekly, Wax Poetics and much more.
Recorded intimately and live with a five-piece ensemble
The LP features a spellbinding version of Mall Waldron's jazz standard 'All Alone'
Mixed by renowned engineer George Atkins (80 Hertz Studios)

Adey Omotade, a sound artist and cultural cartographer rooted in Lagos and shaped by diasporic experiences in Paris, Johannesburg, Berlin and Ivory Coast, brings a rare sensibility to this work: walking between worlds, bringing with him the cadence of home and the dissonance of diaspora. In his hands, sound becomes ritual: a migration of soul, an assemblage of bells, melodies and chants woven from Ifa shrines, river banks and Yoruba festivals. Playing the dual role of griot and cartographer, Omotade, who works across acoustic ecology, experimental music and sound design, builds each track like a shrine: layered, intentional, alive with breath and blood, each track a libation, each break an invocation. Each track unfurls like aso-oke, the celebratory fabric of the Yoruba people: drums that speak in polyrhythms, synths bending like waves, incantations layered like memory, fading then returning, gently like the water at the banks of the Osun River.

The influence of experimental sound design is evident throughout, but ‘Ni'ran’ is no cold abstraction. It pulses with life, with the heartbeat of talking drums, the breath of ambient textures and the warmth of the voices of babalawos, priests of Ifa, invoking ire (blessings) on all. ‘Oori : Ogbe’ invokes the sacred Odu Ifá — a divination verse that speaks of beginnings, clarity and destiny. In ‘Ofo : 'Nkantation’, polyrhythms unfold like verses, each beat a coded message inviting listeners to reflect on destiny and alignment.The title track ‘Ęęro : Eeşu’ begins with the haunting voice of a priest reciting the Odu Ifá, a calling to give unto Eesu his due. Percussive patterns unfold like verses, each beat both a memory and a prayer.

Grooving, evocative, richly diverse, and truth seeking. Black Jesus eXperience"s "Time Telling" explores the fragility of life, the preciousness of time and the importance of hope, love, joy, and community.

Mia Moretti makes her Crosstown Rebels debut with ‘Safe With Me’, featuring Irma Thomas. The soulful new single, backed by a remix from Sweden’s Tiger Stripes.

Los Angeles-based DJ and producer Mia Moretti heads to Damian Lazarus’ Crosstown Rebels with ‘Safe With Me’, a disco-house celebration featuring New Orleans soul legend Irma Thomas, the Grammy-winning Soul Queen of New Orleans. Co-produced by award-winning producer Mark “Blakkat” Bell, a longtime figure in house and electronic music whose work spans from M People to King Britt, the release marks a full-circle moment for Moretti, who draws on her years of crate digging, gospel house expertise, and deep love for vocal-driven grooves.

‘Safe With Me’ pairs Moretti’s richly textured production with Thomas’ commanding vocal presence, creating a track that balances heartfelt emotion with dancefloor energy. Similar to Moretti's DJ sets, the track blends gospel, disco, and house sensibilities with storytelling. Swedish mainstay Tiger Stripes reinterprets the track with his own forward-thinking production. Known for his house and techno grooves that have energised clubs from Panorama Bar to Ministry of Sound, he injects ‘Safe With Me’ with shimmering synth layers and driving percussion, making it a perfect complement to the original production.Mia Moretti has established herself with vocal and gospel-driven house sets and productions. Her debut EP ‘Tambor’ (2023) marked a confident step as a producer sampling female bullerengue artists from Colombia, including Petrona Martinez and Toto La Momposina, followed by ‘Best I Can’ (2024) alongside gospel icon Vonita White and remixes from house music pioneers. In 2025, Mia has continued to build momentum with appearances from Ibiza to Paris Fashion Week alongside the launch of her Chef’s Kiss radio show on Diplo’s Revolution. ‘Safe With Me’ continues that trajectory, highlighting her instinct for timeless grooves and soulful storytelling.

"Die unangefochtenen Könige des Garage Rock" sind wieder da! Zwei Jahre nach ihrem Album "Irregularis (The Great Hiatus)" aus dem Jahr 2023 melden sich Thee Headcoats mit einer neuen Platte zurück, die sich nahtlos in die Reihe ihrer besten Alben aus den 1990er Jahren einreiht. Wir präsentieren Ihnen stolz "The Sherlock Holmes Rhythm ,n` Beat Vernacular". Mit 12 fantastischen Stücken (oder Liedchen, wenn Sie so wollen), die letztes Jahr in den Ranscombe Studios in Rochester aufgenommen wurden. "The Sherlock Holmes Rhythm 'n' Beat Vernacular" erscheint am selben Tag wie "Man-Trap", das brandneue Album von Thee Headcoatees, auf dem die Jungs als Backing-Band fungieren. Thee Headcoats ist eine der vielen Musikgruppen unter der Leitung von Billy Childish und (soweit wir wissen) seine bislang produktivste. Kein Wunder, wenn man Billys unermüdliche Kreativität und seinen vollen Veröffentlichungsplan bedenkt. Thee Headcoats spielen harten R&B, Rock 'n' Roll und Punk Rock, beeinflusst von den frühen Kinks, Pretty Things und vor allem The Downliners Sect, mit einem zusätzlichen Sinn für Humor, der durch Bruce, die Vorliebe des Schlagzeugers für Deerstalker-Hüte, geprägt ist. Thee Headcoats etablierten ihren Stil auf ihrer ersten LP "Headcoats Down" Hangman, 1988 und setzten ihn mit "The Earls of Suavedom" [Crypt, 1989] und "Heavens to Murgatroyd, Even! It's Thee Headcoats! (Already)" [SubPop, 1990] fort. Auf späteren Alben wie "The Messerschmitt Pilot's Severed Hand" aus dem Jahr 1998 kam ein schlankerer, punkigerer Sound zum Vorschein, doch die Jungs blieben ihrem rauen, von den 60ern inspirierten R'n'B treu und klangen auf ihrem Comeback-Meisterwerk "Irregularis (The Great Hiatus)" aus dem Jahr 2023 im Wesentlichen unverändert. "The Sherlock Holmes Rhythm 'n' Beat Vernacular" setzt da noch einen drauf und ist beeindruckenderweise eines der absolut besten Billy Childish Alben der letzten 25 Jahre. Das glauben Sie nicht? Dann kaufen und hören Sie es und lassen sich eines Besseren belehren_

NOW Music proudly presents the next release in our “NOW That’s What I Call An Era” series – NOW That's What I Call An Era - Disco: 1973-1980 – a dazzling celebration of the golden age of disco.



This stunning 3LP set, pressed on blue, violet and pink vinyl, showcases 48 essential tracks that lit up the dancefloors, charts, and airwaves at the height of disco fever — an era when glittering anthems, euphoric grooves, and iconic vocal performances defined nightlife around the world.



LP1 opens in iconic style with Chic’s monumental ‘Le Freak’ followed by Sister Sledge’s equally legendary ‘We Are Family’, and Gloria Gaynor’s empowering #1 ‘I Will Survive’. Anthems follow from Sylvester with ‘You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)’ and Chaka Khan with ‘I’m Every Woman’, ahead of the timeless ‘Young Hearts Run Free’ by Candi Staton and the first side finishes with production by Chic’s Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards on massive hits for Diana Ross with ‘Upside Down’, and Sheila & B. Devotion with ‘Spacer’. Flip the LP over for Amii Stewart’s version of ‘Knock On Wood’ followed by The Three Degrees, Eruption and the first smash from Boney M., ‘Daddy Cool’. The Village People topped the chart with ‘YMCA’ which has become an enduring party favourite, which leads to the infectious ‘Let’s All Chant’ from the Michael Zager Band, Lipps Inc. with ‘Funkytown’ and to close the first LP, sci-fi disco from Dee D. Jackson with ‘Automatic Lover’.



LP2 begins with Donna Summer’s epic version of ‘MacArthur Park’, before Earth, Wind & Fire with The Emotions bring pure euphoria on ‘Boogie Wonderland’, and McFadden & Whitehead with the floor-filling ‘Ain’t No Stoppin’ Us Now’. Great vocals from Marvin Gaye and Harold Melvin & The Blue Notes come ahead of George McCrae’s ‘Rock Your Baby’, one of the collections’ earliest and inspirational moments. UK artist Tina Charles hit the top with ‘I Love To Love’, and Andrea True Connection complete the side with the ear-worm ‘More More More’ whilst over on the other side legends Frankie Valli & The Four Seasons hit dancefloor gold and the #1 spot with ‘December, 1963 (Oh, What A Night)’, ahead of The Trammps with their era-defining ‘Disco Inferno’. A Taste Of Honey, Grace Jones and a second appearance from Diana Ross are up next – before the LP closes with an enduring classic, ‘Follow Me’ from Amanda Lear, Patrick Juvet’s ‘I Love America’, and Frantique with ‘Strut Your Funky Stuff’.



LP3 bursts to life with the international smash and UK #1, ‘Yes Sir, I Can Boogie’ from Baccara, before a huge hit cover from Belle Epoque with ‘Black Is Black’. Next; Alicia Bridges, Rose Royce and UK chart toppers The Real Thing, ahead of funk-infused disco brilliance from Kool & The Gang and Barry White – whilst the side closer is Yvonne Elliman’s ‘If I Can’t Have You’, from the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack and over on the final side there’s a stellar run of Disco nuggets: kicking off with Elton John’s irresistible ‘Are You Ready For Love’, originally released in 1979 and a #1 in 2003 along with ‘Boogie Nights’ from Heatwave, The Emotions with ‘Best Of My Love’, and LaBelle’s influential ‘Lady Marmalade’. The anthemic ‘Got To Be Real’ from Cheryl Lynn is next ahead of the trio of closing tracks: Odyssey with the sublime ‘Native New Yorker’, Thelma Houston’s Grammy-winning ‘Don’t Leave Me This Way’, and fittingly, Donna Summer’s iconic ‘Last Dance’, ending the collection in perfect style.



An unforgettable journey through the songs that defined the dancefloor: NOW That’s What I Call An Era – Disco: 1973-1980 — the definitive celebration of disco’s golden age.

Funnuvojere’s curator and founder, Massimiliano Pagliara, reunites with longtime collaborator Gian to present a new chapter in their shared musical exploration: a full-length album under the moniker Hidden Frequencies. The pair’s creative dialogue began with a 2017 release on LACKREC — itself a tribute to Detroit electro — and this LP continues that sonic discourse, refining and expanding their vision. Hidden Frequencies pays homage to the emotive minimalism of acts like The Other People Place, channeling the melancholic elegance and machine soul of Detroit’s second wave.

It’s a record built on analog textures, brooding basslines, and crisp drum programming — both a reverent nod and a forward-looking reinterpretation. Tracks like “Oscillations Of Us” and “Dreaming In Electric Blue” inject peak-time energy into the atmospheric and almost restrained narrative, with a techno drive built for the dancefloor. “Obsidian Reflections” walks the line — structured around classic electroarchitecture but charged with intense propulsion. Pieces like “Dancing On Data Streams” — the contemplative title track — and “EncodedWhispers” offer more introspective soundscapes, inviting deep listening and emotional immersion.

Together, these tracks form a nuanced body of work that shifts seamlessly between reflective and kinetic, minimal and expansive. Familiar yet exploratory, Hidden Frequencies is the sound of two artists in conversation —not just with each other, but with a musical legacy they continue to honor and reshape. This is a modern electro séance that blends introspection with intention, nostalgia with forward motion.

Celebrating their 10th anniversary, piano trio Alter Ego presents their first-ever best-of LP featuring their signature ballads!
Alter Ego, a piano trio from the Setouchi region, has captivated listeners with their lyrical melodies.
This first-ever best-of LP features a carefully curated selection of the finest ballads they've crafted over the past decade.
This album was remastered at Alchemy Studio, a studio essential to Alter Ego's music.
The album features 11 tracks, including (2) "Meeting That One Friend," a tale of a special encounter; (3) "Where Will We Go?", a jazz waltz depicting the emotions felt at
a crossroads in life; (4) "The Wind Blows on Penelope," which depicts the flow of people connected to the coffee shop "Penelope," which is considered the origin of
pianist Hitoshi Ogata's career; and (10) "The End Opens Up New Possibilities," a song written at a time when parting with a loved one can also be a moment when a new
door opens. Music nurtured over time will gently reach your heart and leave a deep impression.

Selected by Yoshikazu Ogata & Keisuke Taniguchi

Debut solo album from guitar player of Calicos. The result is a record that balances melancholy and raw intensity, where vulnerability is never far from power.Aäron Koch's voice cuts straight through, while the band builds a sound that feels both timeless and urgent, echoing The Veils, My Morning Jacket and Strand of Oaks.



For years, Aäron Koch was the guitarist in other people's bands. Writing intricate riffs and odd time signatures came naturally, but the thought of writing a simple song, a verse, a chorus, a melody that could stand on its own, felt out of reach. He tried and failed, discarded demos, and pushed himself through the humbling exercise of writing "bad songs" just to learn the craft.

'For Once', his debut album (out via Unday Records), is the unexpected outcome of that long struggle. What began as an exercise became a set of songs that refused to stay in the drawer. Months after recording rough sketches, Koch listened back and realized they weren't throwaways after all. With a small heart, he shared them with friends, musicians from bands like Calicos, Uma Chine and Tin Fingers, who immediately heard their potential and joined the project.



The result is a record that balances melancholy and raw intensity, where vulnerability is never far from power. Koch's voice cuts straight through, while the band builds a sound that feels both timeless and urgent, echoing The Veils, My Morning Jacket and Strand of Oaks.

"This music is about weaknesses and vulnerability," Koch says. "Autobiographical really, something I only realized once the album took shape."



That honesty struck a chord. In 2024, after only a handful of shows, Aäron Koch reached the finals of Humo's Rock Rally and was invited to open for Belle & Sebastian at a sold-out Ancienne Belgique. Now 'For Once' shows why: it's the sound of someone learning to write songs the hard way, and discovering in the process that he has something entirely his own to say.

Lukah’s unprecedented trajectory shatters new heights with A Lost Language Found, his most thoughtful, sonically-diverse record yet. With the multiplatinum OG Statik Selektah on production duties, Lukah’s by now iconic, razor-sharp pen-game goes toe-to-toe with some of the best. Trading verses with Houston innovator Bun B, Memphis legend 8 Ball, and the larger than life Killer Mike, all parties involved operate at the peak of their skill. The first of what will be multiple collaborations with heavyweight hip-hop producers, this new LP establishes what we already knew in our hearts: Lukah is here to take over.

The stage set to deliver this latest opus is intensely personal: in the heart of his community, Lukah holds court with his trusted fellows at his great grandmother’s house in French Fort, Memphis, a historically black neighborhood long rec-ognized as a stately, proud vision of Black suburbia in a city still healing from deep racial trauma. Recently laid to rest in Elmwood Cemetery, the pain and strength of mourning her influence is present in the deep lyrics of A Lost Lan-guage Found, where Lukah traces not just his own legacy, but that of the linguistically rich and diverse dialects of his people. The cover image depicts the game room of the house, a place that once hosted civil rights leaders and revolu-tionaries, now a monument both to a history of leadership and to its future. For the first time, Lukah himself appears on the album art to mark this significant occasion, flanked by his partners, the symbolic source of knowledge in his hand. Listening to Lukah spit has always been a privilege and a revelation. His artistic power lies in uncovering secrets thru torrents of lucid, poetic rhymes. The listener is invited to share in this bountiful feast. Witness the real god expansion.

The album is available as a limited edition vinyl release of 500 copies in gatefold jacket.

The word "amateur" originates from the Latin word "amator," meaning "lover" or "admirer". This Latin term is derived from "amare," which means "to love". The French adopted "amateur" from Latin, and the English then borrowed it from French, initially retaining the sense of someone who loves or is devoted to something. Over time, the English usage of "amateur" also developed a meaning related to a lack of professional skill or experience. How did a word derived from love become a slur? Is love really so defenseless? They say love conquers all, but in reality isn’t love quite ridiculous? It has no intention, no motive, no agenda. How could it possibly prevail? It can’t be bought or sold, or so they say.Its mere existence can't be proven or even measured. What an impossible thing. Trying and failing, time and time again, no wonder cynicism always seems to win. I see “amateurism” as a delighted, even foolish, protest. Protest against everything. Of what’s expected of someone, or expected of someone to desire or strive for. To be elite, to be expert, to be professional, to be a master, to excel and succeed. Where’s the joy in that? I just want to have fun. I want to want. I want to love. And keep doing it, forever. I want to have fun, even when it’s tiring and sometimes even heaven is boring as hell. I want to be bad. I want to do my own thing. “I vant to be alone”. I want to be someone so dedicated to their passion that it starts to seem like there’s something wrong with them. All the way. We can take it all the way, and never get it back. ” - Molly Nilsson Amateur is the 12th studio album by Molly Nilsson. Deep in the teeth of a career that threatens to tip into something resembling a “legacy,” Molly Nilsson celebrates with an album recorded instinctively, quickly and bursting with so many moments of emotional brilliance and clarity it may be her greatest yet. Hers has been a career spent reaching out, perennially powerful in her earnestness, a warrior ridiculously defenceless and armed with a glittering sincerity. Shearing herself of the machinations of the music industry, recording at home, writing direct to the heart. Amateur is a jubilee for losers. A treatise in 13 songs, Amateur states clearly that we should live our life with eternal curiosity, offers us an open hand of comradeship out of the rat race. The songs on the album are both some of the most personal of Nilsson’s career and the most anthemic. First single How Much Is The World asks us to re-evaluate value in the face of a Neo-liberal system squeezing the life out of our loves. Pulsing opener Die Cry Lie satirises the commercialisation of emotion in the form of a shout-along diss-track. With a pounding rhythm track held down by gorgeous chord changes, heartbreaker Valhalla carries the torch for the main themes of the album: never growing up, making mistakes with kindness, moving on. When the drums crash in on the line “It’s going to get better now, you’ll see, going to be much better off without me” there is a world of feeling swirling about in the vocal delivery. One reading of the track might be that it’s a break up song but the subtext is classic Molly Nilsson: by living truthfully, making mistakes, we’re active agents against the myriad oppressions of the world. All The Way takes the theme for a run into the eternal sunset. It’s a manifesto for living fully. “Take it all the way, and never get it back” - it’s the process that’s the important point. The journey not the destination. Big Life, follows on like a part 2: An ode not only to Molly Nilsson’s career of endless gigs, endless connections with people, it’s a massive ode for following your dreams, doing it yourself. Closer The Bitter End is a powerful anthem for friendship, another definition of love infused in Nilsson’s work, A beautifully poignant ode to comradeship til the end, it seems to be the songwriter approaching aging, approaching life’s inevitability with the same vigour and earnestness, the same love of life she enjoyed at the onset of her career. There are moments on Amateur shrouded in reverb, slightly out of focus, forcing the listener to step deeper into the Mollyverse.. Nilsson’s open-armed beseeching to the world permeates every beat, every chord. These are songs exploding with life: the chunky, aggressive bassline on the punker Get A Life can’t hide its massive, catchy chorus. The sweeping Swedish Nightmare might be a tongue-in-cheek self-reference, but at its heart it’s a song about the duality of living life large, what is a dream, what is a nightmare? Molly Nilsson says you can’t have one without the other, and why would you want to? Here’s to making mistakes.

Long-time NuNorthern Soul contributor, B.J. Smith is a man in demand, dividing his time between solo work, playing guitar in Crazy P man James Baron’s popular JIM outfit, collaborating in a variety of well-regarded projects (Smith & Mudd, Bison and White Elephant amongst them) and composing for TV. Due to this impressive list of musical commitments, solo releases have been few and far between of late, with Smith’s most recent NuNorthern Soul release, a stripped back version of his Big Sur single, dropping late 2023.

It's been ever longer since he delivered a volume in his popular and ongoing Dedications To The Greats series, where the singer-songwriter and composer successfully turns his hand to other people’s songs. Since debuting the series on NuNorthern Soul in 2013 via revelatory and inspired covers of tracks by Mos Def and the Pharcyde, Smith has covered cuts by Outkast, Prefab Sprout and Soul II Soul.

On volume four, Smith’s first volume in the series for five years, he delivers a “cover of a cover” – a revolutionary and imaginative interpretation of Billy Swan’s ‘Don’t Be Cruel’, itself a version of a song first made famous by Elvis Presley. It was their mutual love of Swan’s version that brought Smith together with the release’s most prominent guest artist, Joe Harvey-Whyte, whose lilting, bittersweet and deeply emotive pedal steel performances can be heard across the EP.

Smith provides three contrasting takes. The EP is led by the ‘Mother Earth’ version, a slowly unfurling epic in which waves of effects-laden pedal steel and sun-splashed picking acoustic guitars usher in Smith’s eyes-closed vocalisations, settling into a groove reminiscent of his collaborative work with long-time friend and collaborator Paul ‘Mudd’ Murphy that showcases Harvey-Whyte centre stage to joyful effect. As the 14-minute epic progresses, we’re treated to long, languid electric guitar solos, percussion-laden slow-motion builds and hazy, stretched-out organ solos. It’s a breathlessly brilliant concoction that’s a million miles away from either Swan or Presley’s versions.

In contrast, the similarly epic ‘Earth Heart’ version – available in full vocal and instrumental takes – pushes the song front and centre. Following an extended build up, where Tamar Osborn’s gorgeous and fluid flute motifs rub shoulders with languid guitar solos and Harvey-Whyte’s pedal steel, Smith takes to the mic, delivering an emotive performance of the song’s heartfelt lyrics over a hushed, slow-motion groove. The track builds in waves as it progresses, with Smith layering up instrumentation as it rolls towards a fine conclusion.

Completing a superb package is the ‘Root Heart Version’, a Balearic-meets-Americana take built around shuffling drums, toasty bass guitar, extended pedal steel instrumentation, flashes of flute and Smith’s sun-bright acoustic guitar. Loved-up and more than a little saucer-eyed, it’s a bona-fide sunset delight.

"Full Cold Moon" ist eine Sammlung von EPs, ursprünglich 2014 erschienen, und nun auf 180g Icy Blue Glitzervinyl neu aufgelegt werden. Mehr als ein Sampler ist es ein Dokument des Übergangs in einer Zeit, in der Cold Cave ihren Sound über ein Spektrum von Isolation und Intensität ausdehnten. Von gitarrenbetonten Synthie-Hymnen über reduziertem Cold-Wave-Minimalismus bis zu dystopischen Spin-Outs fangen Tracks wie der ungewöhnliche Underground-Favorit "A Little Death To Laugh", "Oceans With No End", "God Made The World", "Black Boots" oder "Nausea, The Earth And Me" eine Zeit der Klangforschung und rastlosen Neuerfindung ein. Geschrieben während Wesley Eisolds Umzug von New York nach Los Angeles – einer Zeit, die geprägt war von Selbstreflexion und Distanz zum größeren Kontext von "Cherish The Light Years" – kehren diese zwölf Tracks zum nüchternen und einsamen Geist von "Cremations" und "Love Comes Close" zurück. Minimalistisch und doch mitreißend, ist "Full Cold Moon" Cold Cave in ihrer experimentellsten, essentiellsten und emotionalsten Form.

Crate digger and music enthusiast James Endeacott compiles ‘Unlock Your Mind With Morning Glory’ for Two-Piers Records – A glorious heady mix of the weird and wonderful eclectic music from his radio show ‘Morning Glory’

“One weekday afternoon towards the end of 2017 I sat in The Lyric pub on Great Windmill Street, Soho with my dear friend Raf. I’d just finished another of my weekly Soho Radio shows and was starting to think about the next one. Raf had been on as a guest playing some of his favourite tunes of the day. We had a few drinks, told a few stories and started to plot and scheme. It was always a dream of mine to have a daily radio show. Radio had always informed and excited me from my early teens listening to John Peel under the blanket when I should’ve been either sleeping or revising right up to the present-day musical excursions of NTS, WFMU and numerous internet based stations.

We decided to speak to Adrian and Dan who ran Soho Radio to see if they’d be up for us doing a daily morning show. To our surprise they were into the idea and within 5 minutes Adrain came up with the name Morning Glory. We all liked it. We were all excited. It was all systems go. In December 2017 Raf and myself started a daily 2 hour show. We did the show together, got guests in and the musical policy was whatever we felt like that day. After several months Raf found the mornings too much. Off he went into the distance occasionally coming back with a smile, and a bag of new music. I carried on alone and then suddenly in March 2020 the world stopped, and we went into lockdown.

We set up in my house in Catford, Southeast London and carried on. The show became 3 hours a day and I started to invite friends, record labels, record shops, bands etc.. to supply me with hour long mixes that I played every day. The show took off during this time. My musical tastes expanded as I spent all day long searching for new sounds from around the globe. People started to send me more and more music. I became obsessed with the show. The audience started to take to social media and ask for certain tracks or artists to be played. I got listeners to make me mixes to play on the show and I did several phone interviews with musicians while playing some of their favourite tunes.

I was grateful that Soho Radio left me to my own devices. They never told me what to do or what to play – they trusted ma and I trusted my instincts.

The music on this compilation is not a ‘best of’ it’s just how I felt when I compiled it at the start of 2025. Apart from a couple of tracks they are all things I’ve come across since the show started in December 2017. If I did a list of tracks now I’m sure it would be completely different. Surely that’s the point. We never stick in one place. We are always moving and searching. Always trying to unlock our minds. Put it on. Take your time and let it take you somewhere” James Endeacott 2025

After their first joint recording experience in 2022, in which they dedicated a monograph to the Beatles, revisiting their great classics,
Sarah Jane Morris, a British jazz, rock, and R&B singer and songwriter, and the Solis String Quartet, a Neapolitan string quartet with
extensive concert and recording experience, are embarking on a new album. This time, it's not a monograph, but a tribute to a series
of artists who have left an indelible mark on the universal music world with their art and unique lifestyle. The project is titled "The 27
Club," a reference to those artists who, despite not choosing to belong to any elite circle, were united by the fate of having left this
world too soon, at just 27 years old. Among them are great names such as Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, Kurt Cobain, Amy
Winehouse, and Otis Redding. Despite their differences, these artists share a charisma and a passion for music that has made them
immortal. Their musical legacy continues to celebrate their memory and inspire new generations. The album is a tribute to these timeless
artists, whose songs remain timeless and continue to move. Forever Young.
"After our first recording collaboration with Sarah Jane Morris in 2022, in which we dedicated a monograph to the Beatles, revisiting
their great classics, we decided to take on a new challenge, no longer a monograph but a work dedicated to a series of artists who have
unmistakably marked the universal musical world with their art and their very particular lifestyle! We called it "Forever Young" and it
tells the story of the "Club of 27" in music; an imaginary, dark and very elitist circle in which artists of the caliber of Jimi Hendrix, Janis
Joplin, Jim Morrison, Kurt Cobain, Amy Winehouse, Otis Redding found themselves enrolled, certainly unwillingly and without their
knowledge, after death snatched them from success on the threshold of twenty-seven, only to restore them, almost as compensation,
to immortal glory, just a stone's throw from legend. Musically speaking, thanks to the overflowing evocative power of Sarah Jane Morris's
voice, it was both fascinating and stimulating for us to try to restore It integrates the idea and mood that permeated and still live on in
these compositions, the rhythm, the melody, and the lyricism, in an original reinterpretation that accompanies the listener in the rediscovery of these masterpieces! Solis String Quartet
"Greatly talented creative people often die young, like Keats, Mozart, Schubert, Raphael, and the Brontë sisters. We tend to think of
them in two ways: we wonder what they might have accomplished had they lived longer. However, more positively, we can appreciate
their youthful talents as impervious to the passage of time, their brilliance preserved in their eternal youth. They will remain forever
young." Sarah Jane Morris

Here to dazzle you by the power of the disco ball, Lack of Afro is your friendly neighbourhood ‘Love Dealer’. Two years on from the funk & soul rebirth of ‘Square One’, powered by the ubiquitous ‘Loving Arms’ featuring Greg Blackman, Lack of Afro aka Adam Gibbons is now close to two decades deep in the game with soundtrack credits galore and online streams doing calculator-busting numbers. With extensive touring taking ‘Love Dealer’ up and down the country this Autumn, Gibbons’ ninth studio album is all for "the thrill of seeing people on a dancefloor, all collectively locked into a track that you've produced - there’s nothing like it!”.


‘Love Dealer’ is the authentic modern disco experience, packing a stacked sole’s worth of club beats full of stardusted sing-alongs, style-outs and French touch-style cool. Despite being “written during one of the longest winters in living memory”, ‘Love Dealer’, featuring some co-production from fellow South Coast dancefloor scholar Flevans (and influenced by producer du jour Barry Can’t Swim), exudes warmth and will make you sweat when its highs take effect.


Entering the scene with the radiance of ‘Make It Shine’ featuring Greg Blackman, washing over the airwaves of BBC 6 Music and Radio 2 and taking up a 10-week residency on the Jazz FM playlist, Gibbons and his crack line-up of discotheque players are your go-to team when you can’t wait for the weekend to begin, as subtle as they are straight down to business. ‘Love Dealer’ offers you nothing but the best in sparkling string symphonies, the hippest guitar licks, samples of those invited beyond the velvet rope and struts soaked in night fever.


Double A-side ‘Walls Start Rockin’ and ‘Heart & Soul’ guide the album’s glamour-and-groove, while ‘Love Saves The Day’ and ‘Plain to See’ dramatically take to the podium in a shimmer of pure peak 70s theatre. ‘Keeping Me Strong’ is the synergy of disco chic and the sound of a global advertising tie-in with Dyson, ahead of Gibbons taking a slightly Moroder/Cerrone-ish detour on ‘Idolising People Like Madlib’. “'Love Dealer' is aimed unequivocally at the dancefloor" says Adam. "As an artist, I wanted to push myself in a slightly new direction - more into the land of disco and a four to the floor sound. 'Love Dealer' is quintessentially an upbeat record, full of joy, optimism and hope for the future”. Seek your inner ‘Love Dealer’, kink your ‘fro and let your funk flag fly.
















n B7. 14 Your Love (feat. Jonah Hitchens) BONUS TRACK














n B7. 14 Your Love (feat. Jonah Hitchens) BONUS TRACK














[n] B7. 14 Your Love (feat. Jonah Hitchens) [BONUS TRACK]














[BONUS TRACK]

Emily A. Sprague's Cloud Time traces an audio-spiritual journey through time and place, recorded across a long-awaited debut tour of Japan in the fall of 2024. Compiled from environmental improvisations captured in and for the moment, material at once welcoming, responsive, and inimitable, the album distills a voyage guided by psychic wayfaring, unbound presence, and activating performance for a reciprocal exchange with space, listener, and each fully engaged instant. The Japanese tour documented on Cloud Time held an almost mythic significance for Sprague, taking on properties of her own sonic white whale. After many near-departures and dropped plans to play in the country, "the empty spaces of cancelled trips and forgotten music turned into strange little misty spirits that I felt followed by," she says. "When I began preparing for the tour, I couldn't shake a sense that the invitation to Japan was more about opening myself up to this new place instead of bringing something into it tightly under my control. Improvisation has always been such a pillar in my music practice, and I really wanted to meet the country, spaces and people through that process." To amplify these intuitive whispers on-stage, Sprague reimagined her time-tested live rig, designed to be as free from error as possible, as a looser, more flexible set up that would allow her to interface with what was essentially a blank sonic canvas every night. Each performance became a collaboration between environment and instinct, Sprague processing the events, energies, and emotions informing the evening through her new sound ecosystem, and projecting an entirely present and unique version of herself to each open-eared and hearted crowd. "It was very much more than just an act of playing for me, but a total experience of time and place," she says. The seven long-form pieces that plot the course of Cloud Time, excerpted from over eight hours of recordings archived on the artist's on-stage recorder and generously shared on the album with no additional mixing and only minimal editing, invite listeners to become still in these deep-rooted moments of presence as the album moves from city to city, venue to venue. Cloud Time chronicles material recorded at each tour stop, Sprague selecting and sequencing the album around mood-based storytelling more so than linear chronology. "I tried to make the whole album flow in the way that any one of the complete live performances did," she explains, "while also keeping the spirit of the whole thing as a journey." The result is equal parts travelog, love letter, and impressionistic collage channeled from the potent ferment of a now encased in the glowing amber of memory. Intrinsically inspired by kankyo ongaku, an environmental music philosophy, known both in and widely outside of Japan that tunes into the similarly expansive ethos as Pauline Oliveros' deep listening practice and posits the listener as composer, Cloud Time is ambient music that seems to be listening right back, grounded in heartfelt synthesized frequencies that abundantly hold and heal. Pieces like "Nagoya," "Tokyo 1," and the ten minute "Matsumoto" in particular hum with the atomic resonance of gently tended landscapes, offering space for tuning way in and dropping far out from perspectives that stifle and bind. Cloud Time is an invitation to embrace each moment as both fleeting and eternal, floating by with nothing to grasp onto and absolutely everything to gain. The exercise in acceptance and letting go that Sprague practiced throughout the tour deeply impacted her understanding of self as both a guest and venerable performer. "The process of loving wherever I am, being present and focusing on a clear channel of communication for mind and emotion, rooted so deeply in respect for the space, those within it, and myself, ended up being profoundly healing," she says. "My vision and hope is that this album can be released as a gift back to anyone who either was or wasn't there. A cloud time of life passing by."

STANDFIRST Titanic, the project spearheaded by Mabe Fratti and Hector Tosta (aka I. la Católica), return with a sumptuous and life-affirming new album.



In her sensational 1929 biography Tiger Woman, dancer and socialite Betty May claimed her ‘coster’s eye’ meant she liked to wear as many colours as possible. “Colours to me are like children to a loving mother. Each is my favourite, yet I can never bring myself to deny the others by preferring one.” May’s bold and inclusive strategy is one that manages to transfer itself, almost a century later, to Hagen, the new record by Titanic.


Many will know Titanic as the Mexico City-based brainchild of cellist and singer Mabe Fratti and multiinstrumentalist Hector Tosta who is now operating under the pseudonym, I. la Católica, (taken, rather unusually, from the name of the street the pair live on). With Hagen, and their previous release, Vidrio, (2023), the pair are creating a distinctive signature sound in modern alternative pop music. Nobody else sounds quite like them. Both records have an open hearted nature and simple, winning melodies that play off against a taste for drama, spectacular orchestration and a feeling of otherworldly mystery. Hagen is the more ambitious, sometimes more mystical effort. From the opening handclaps of ‘Lágrima del Sol’, (a wonderfully uptempo playground chant translating as a tear from the sun but, surely, not referencing the brand of pineapple wine?), the record dances its way through various mid-to-late-eighties inspirations, lush and widescreen passages of melancholy and vertiginous contrasts.


Mystery is often found in the simple but slightly odd song titles. English translations of various track titles give, ‘you swallowed the gum’, ‘leak’, ‘a tear from the sun’, ‘raising the trophy’ ‘digging dimensions’, ‘the owner’, ‘the decapitated hen’ and ‘the trap is exposed’. All denote striking images, metaphysical hints and emotional cues or simple, even childlike actions. Though Fratti and Tosta don’t reveal its provenance, the album’s title could even be a crafty play on words: the listener would be forgiven in thinking the moments of brash contrast and eyebrow raising theatricalism in the music constitute a musical nod to German punk chanteuse, Nina Hagen.


On Hagen, singer and cellist Mabe Fratti once again displays her brilliant knack of speaking to us directly. There is never the suspicion of her playing to the gallery, and the directness of many of the lyrics don’t allow it. Parallel to this, Fratti has an almost magical ability to give Hector Tosta’s melodies, and her and Tosta’s lyrics ones imbued with an insight and meaning that feels otherworldly. Tosta admitted it was “pretty wild to hear Mabe take the interpretations to a different place” and the listener can pick up on the delight Fratti takes in (literally) adding a voice to the many narratives.


Two examples can be shown here: ‘Gotera’ (Leak) uses harsh slashes of cello and tough, gunfire-like guitars and drums and multiple vocal lines that could be acting as a Greek chorus. They play off brilliantly against Fratti’s soft, slightly baleful vocal take that delivers lyrics such as: ‘nobody knows where the leak is / but I know where it is / they fight in front of the door and / nobody can go in’. With ‘La Gallina Degollada’ the somewhat blithe melody melody line, sung with what could be sarcastic brio by Fratti, plays against an itchting rhythm and rasping guitar part. The punch comes when you see that the song is about a chicken that has been decapitated and read lyrics such as: ‘I already saw it, it moved, the decapitated chicken’ / ‘could it be that I'm broken’ and ‘Two people hurt each other by thinking that they no longer agree’/ ‘Hours pass and the chicken represents what scares me’.


There may be death and fights to deal with, but there is also a quality of chirpy self-reliance about Hagen that is a key part of its nature. Like Betty May and her colourful outfits, Hagen’s sound often revels in its own sense of richness. Throughout, the record delivers vaulting string sections or glutinous guitar squeals that could, like the powerful, driving ‘Escarbo Dimensiones’ (Digging Dimensions) have come directly from a glossy 1980s TV series. Fratti sees this “glam sound” developed by Tosta on the aforementioned track and ‘Te Tragaste el Chicle’ (You Swallowed The Gum), as moments that were truly “revealing” for the album as a whole during its making.


What else? The thud and thump of ‘La Trampa Sale’ (The Trap is Exposed), and its sudden change of tempo and mood betrays a monstrously ambitious piece of music, the players almost greedily creating the sounds. Other moments are heart wrenching: ‘Libra’ ends on a poppy chord switch that cleverly ramps up the emotion inherent in the music’s notation. You could almost imagine a teenager in a bedroom forty years ago, rewinding the track over and over on a small, cheap cassette player, unable to get enough of that sugarsweet switch. Elsewhere, Oneohtrix Point Never adds stardust and an unearthly sense of space on the changeable, slightly moody meditation, ‘Pájaro de Fuego’ (Firebird). The record ends with ‘Alzando el Trofeo’ (Lifting the Trophy), a track that could soundtrack a state wedding, what with its beautiful cascading piano parts, a sugary vocal and short triumphal guitar riffs that add a rich patina to the overall sound. Fratti: “When I doubled those vocals on ‘Alzando el Trofeo’ I felt there was an epiphany happening, right at that moment.”


Making a good record is a team game. Tosta and Fratti recall seeing Randall from Circular Ruin Studios in NYC “tweak the drums in ‘Libra’ to make that amazing effect of the gated reverb”, or the shaping of ‘Gotera’, “when (recording engineer) Nate Salon added some synths to the track.” Drummer Eli Keszler, “an amazing and versatile player” had the songs down pat in a couple of days” and, according to Tosta, Oneohtrix Point Never “just came to one of the sessions and we hung out, and after all the recordings he and Nate were together in some studio and out of nowhere they sent us some beautiful tracks for ‘Pájaro de Fuego’! Fratti concurs. “He decided that he wanted to record because he was listening to the record (Nate works closely with him) and he really liked it! It was a total honour, indeed!”


Bedazzled by the playing, the skyscraping ambition in the arrangements and the giddy moments of contrast thrown up by Hagen, we could allow ourselves a brief moment of flippancy and state that Titanic’s new record is Yacht Rock meets Aeschylus, full-on. It’s also worth speculating that, in this hyper-sensitive, intemperate age, Titanic’s music has the power, however fleetingly, to heal hurts. Hagen is a brilliant showcase for a fresh and enriching form of pop music: displaying a magpie eye for what glints and plundering what has gone before.


Like Vidrio, Hagen was partially and additionally recorded at Fratti and Tosta’s house, aka Tinho Studios in Mexico City, as well as Golden Girl Studios & Circular Ruin Studios in New York City. Mixing was done by Santiago Parra in Pedro y el Lobo Studios, Mexico City and mastered by Rafael Anton Irisarri at Black Knoll Studios, New York City. The recording engineer was Nate Salon.


Hagen featured Mabe Fratti on cello, vocals & backing vocals, I. la Católica on guitar, keyboards, prepared piano, bass & backing vocals, drums by Eli Keszler and synths in ‘Pájaro de Fuego’ from Daniel Lopatin and Nate Salon.


All compositions on Hagen are written by I. la Católica, except ‘Escarbo Dimensiones’ & ‘Pájaro de Fuego’, which were composed by I. la Católica and Mabe Fratti. The record was produced by I. la Católica and co-produced by Nate Salon & Mabe Fratti. And all lyrics are by I. la Católica except ‘Escarbo Dimensiones’, ‘Gotera’, ‘Gallina degollada’ & ‘Pájaro de Fuego’, which were written by I. la Católica & Mabe Fratti.

STANDFIRST Titanic, the project spearheaded by Mabe Fratti and Hector Tosta (aka I. la Católica), return with a sumptuous and life-affirming new album.



In her sensational 1929 biography Tiger Woman, dancer and socialite Betty May claimed her ‘coster’s eye’ meant she liked to wear as many colours as possible. “Colours to me are like children to a loving mother. Each is my favourite, yet I can never bring myself to deny the others by preferring one.” May’s bold and inclusive strategy is one that manages to transfer itself, almost a century later, to Hagen, the new record by Titanic.


Many will know Titanic as the Mexico City-based brainchild of cellist and singer Mabe Fratti and multiinstrumentalist Hector Tosta who is now operating under the pseudonym, I. la Católica, (taken, rather unusually, from the name of the street the pair live on). With Hagen, and their previous release, Vidrio, (2023), the pair are creating a distinctive signature sound in modern alternative pop music. Nobody else sounds quite like them. Both records have an open hearted nature and simple, winning melodies that play off against a taste for drama, spectacular orchestration and a feeling of otherworldly mystery. Hagen is the more ambitious, sometimes more mystical effort. From the opening handclaps of ‘Lágrima del Sol’, (a wonderfully uptempo playground chant translating as a tear from the sun but, surely, not referencing the brand of pineapple wine?), the record dances its way through various mid-to-late-eighties inspirations, lush and widescreen passages of melancholy and vertiginous contrasts.


Mystery is often found in the simple but slightly odd song titles. English translations of various track titles give, ‘you swallowed the gum’, ‘leak’, ‘a tear from the sun’, ‘raising the trophy’ ‘digging dimensions’, ‘the owner’, ‘the decapitated hen’ and ‘the trap is exposed’. All denote striking images, metaphysical hints and emotional cues or simple, even childlike actions. Though Fratti and Tosta don’t reveal its provenance, the album’s title could even be a crafty play on words: the listener would be forgiven in thinking the moments of brash contrast and eyebrow raising theatricalism in the music constitute a musical nod to German punk chanteuse, Nina Hagen.


On Hagen, singer and cellist Mabe Fratti once again displays her brilliant knack of speaking to us directly. There is never the suspicion of her playing to the gallery, and the directness of many of the lyrics don’t allow it. Parallel to this, Fratti has an almost magical ability to give Hector Tosta’s melodies, and her and Tosta’s lyrics ones imbued with an insight and meaning that feels otherworldly. Tosta admitted it was “pretty wild to hear Mabe take the interpretations to a different place” and the listener can pick up on the delight Fratti takes in (literally) adding a voice to the many narratives.


Two examples can be shown here: ‘Gotera’ (Leak) uses harsh slashes of cello and tough, gunfire-like guitars and drums and multiple vocal lines that could be acting as a Greek chorus. They play off brilliantly against Fratti’s soft, slightly baleful vocal take that delivers lyrics such as: ‘nobody knows where the leak is / but I know where it is / they fight in front of the door and / nobody can go in’. With ‘La Gallina Degollada’ the somewhat blithe melody melody line, sung with what could be sarcastic brio by Fratti, plays against an itchting rhythm and rasping guitar part. The punch comes when you see that the song is about a chicken that has been decapitated and read lyrics such as: ‘I already saw it, it moved, the decapitated chicken’ / ‘could it be that I'm broken’ and ‘Two people hurt each other by thinking that they no longer agree’/ ‘Hours pass and the chicken represents what scares me’.


There may be death and fights to deal with, but there is also a quality of chirpy self-reliance about Hagen that is a key part of its nature. Like Betty May and her colourful outfits, Hagen’s sound often revels in its own sense of richness. Throughout, the record delivers vaulting string sections or glutinous guitar squeals that could, like the powerful, driving ‘Escarbo Dimensiones’ (Digging Dimensions) have come directly from a glossy 1980s TV series. Fratti sees this “glam sound” developed by Tosta on the aforementioned track and ‘Te Tragaste el Chicle’ (You Swallowed The Gum), as moments that were truly “revealing” for the album as a whole during its making.


What else? The thud and thump of ‘La Trampa Sale’ (The Trap is Exposed), and its sudden change of tempo and mood betrays a monstrously ambitious piece of music, the players almost greedily creating the sounds. Other moments are heart wrenching: ‘Libra’ ends on a poppy chord switch that cleverly ramps up the emotion inherent in the music’s notation. You could almost imagine a teenager in a bedroom forty years ago, rewinding the track over and over on a small, cheap cassette player, unable to get enough of that sugarsweet switch. Elsewhere, Oneohtrix Point Never adds stardust and an unearthly sense of space on the changeable, slightly moody meditation, ‘Pájaro de Fuego’ (Firebird). The record ends with ‘Alzando el Trofeo’ (Lifting the Trophy), a track that could soundtrack a state wedding, what with its beautiful cascading piano parts, a sugary vocal and short triumphal guitar riffs that add a rich patina to the overall sound. Fratti: “When I doubled those vocals on ‘Alzando el Trofeo’ I felt there was an epiphany happening, right at that moment.”


Making a good record is a team game. Tosta and Fratti recall seeing Randall from Circular Ruin Studios in NYC “tweak the drums in ‘Libra’ to make that amazing effect of the gated reverb”, or the shaping of ‘Gotera’, “when (recording engineer) Nate Salon added some synths to the track.” Drummer Eli Keszler, “an amazing and versatile player” had the songs down pat in a couple of days” and, according to Tosta, Oneohtrix Point Never “just came to one of the sessions and we hung out, and after all the recordings he and Nate were together in some studio and out of nowhere they sent us some beautiful tracks for ‘Pájaro de Fuego’! Fratti concurs. “He decided that he wanted to record because he was listening to the record (Nate works closely with him) and he really liked it! It was a total honour, indeed!”


Bedazzled by the playing, the skyscraping ambition in the arrangements and the giddy moments of contrast thrown up by Hagen, we could allow ourselves a brief moment of flippancy and state that Titanic’s new record is Yacht Rock meets Aeschylus, full-on. It’s also worth speculating that, in this hyper-sensitive, intemperate age, Titanic’s music has the power, however fleetingly, to heal hurts. Hagen is a brilliant showcase for a fresh and enriching form of pop music: displaying a magpie eye for what glints and plundering what has gone before.


Like Vidrio, Hagen was partially and additionally recorded at Fratti and Tosta’s house, aka Tinho Studios in Mexico City, as well as Golden Girl Studios & Circular Ruin Studios in New York City. Mixing was done by Santiago Parra in Pedro y el Lobo Studios, Mexico City and mastered by Rafael Anton Irisarri at Black Knoll Studios, New York City. The recording engineer was Nate Salon.


Hagen featured Mabe Fratti on cello, vocals & backing vocals, I. la Católica on guitar, keyboards, prepared piano, bass & backing vocals, drums by Eli Keszler and synths in ‘Pájaro de Fuego’ from Daniel Lopatin and Nate Salon.


All compositions on Hagen are written by I. la Católica, except ‘Escarbo Dimensiones’ & ‘Pájaro de Fuego’, which were composed by I. la Católica and Mabe Fratti. The record was produced by I. la Católica and co-produced by Nate Salon & Mabe Fratti. And all lyrics are by I. la Católica except ‘Escarbo Dimensiones’, ‘Gotera’, ‘Gallina degollada’ & ‘Pájaro de Fuego’, which were written by I. la Católica & Mabe Fratti.

Here to dazzle you by the power of the disco ball, Lack of Afro is your friendly neighbourhood ‘Love Dealer’. Two years on from the funk & soul rebirth of ‘Square One’, powered by the ubiquitous ‘Loving Arms’ featuring Greg Blackman, Lack of Afro aka Adam Gibbons is now close to two decades deep in the game with soundtrack credits galore and online streams doing calculator-busting numbers. With extensive touring taking ‘Love Dealer’ up and down the country this Autumn, Gibbons’ ninth studio album is all for "the thrill of seeing people on a dancefloor, all collectively locked into a track that you've produced - there’s nothing like it!”.


‘Love Dealer’ is the authentic modern disco experience, packing a stacked sole’s worth of club beats full of stardusted sing-alongs, style-outs and French touch-style cool. Despite being “written during one of the longest winters in living memory”, ‘Love Dealer’, featuring some co-production from fellow South Coast dancefloor scholar Flevans (and influenced by producer du jour Barry Can’t Swim), exudes warmth and will make you sweat when its highs take effect.


Entering the scene with the radiance of ‘Make It Shine’ featuring Greg Blackman, washing over the airwaves of BBC 6 Music and Radio 2 and taking up a 10-week residency on the Jazz FM playlist, Gibbons and his crack line-up of discotheque players are your go-to team when you can’t wait for the weekend to begin, as subtle as they are straight down to business. ‘Love Dealer’ offers you nothing but the best in sparkling string symphonies, the hippest guitar licks, samples of those invited beyond the velvet rope and struts soaked in night fever.


Double A-side ‘Walls Start Rockin’ and ‘Heart & Soul’ guide the album’s glamour-and-groove, while ‘Love Saves The Day’ and ‘Plain to See’ dramatically take to the podium in a shimmer of pure peak 70s theatre. ‘Keeping Me Strong’ is the synergy of disco chic and the sound of a global advertising tie-in with Dyson, ahead of Gibbons taking a slightly Moroder/Cerrone-ish detour on ‘Idolising People Like Madlib’. “'Love Dealer' is aimed unequivocally at the dancefloor" says Adam. "As an artist, I wanted to push myself in a slightly new direction - more into the land of disco and a four to the floor sound. 'Love Dealer' is quintessentially an upbeat record, full of joy, optimism and hope for the future”. Seek your inner ‘Love Dealer’, kink your ‘fro and let your funk flag fly.
















n B7. 14 Your Love (feat. Jonah Hitchens) BONUS TRACK














n B7. 14 Your Love (feat. Jonah Hitchens) BONUS TRACK














n B7. 14 Your Love (feat. Jonah Hitchens) [BONUS TRACK]














[n] B7. 14 Your Love (feat. Jonah Hitchens) [BONUS TRACK]














[n] B7. 14 Your Love (feat. Jonah Hitchens) [BONUS TRACK]














[n] B7. 14 Your Love (feat. Jonah Hitchens) [BONUS TRACK]

"Prudência / Praga", or "Prudence / Plague", is a double single with these two songs that I composed and which were originally recorded by two of my heroes: Maria Bethânia and Alaíde Costa. Curiously, they are two sambas: although I come from the rock and roll scene in Sao Paulo, I wound up writing a samba as if it were the 50s. At the time of my first heartbreak, at the age of 17, I had the record Jamelao canta Lupicínio with the Orquestra Tabajara on my iPod, and I identified with those dramatic sorrows, almost a hundred years old. In a way, I felt that Lupicínio Rodrigues was bloody and direct, like Tarantino, and Nelson Cavaquinho, heavy metal like Black Sabbath. So, I feel it's a compact 45 of sambas but it's also very Rock n Roll to me. Raw and coming from hell. "Prudência" is that internal battle between the passionate side and the controlling side in the head of the former romantic bohemian. I wrote it for Bethânia to record on her album Noturno. Her version turned into a moving bolero. When I saw her singing it live and the audience singing along with her, I couldn't believe it. I cried, hidden in the audience. She said that when she showed the record to her brother, Caetano Veloso, he thought that "Prudência" was some old classic that she had dug up to bring back to light. Nothing could be a greater compliment than this mistake on Caetano's part. "Praga" also has to do with MPB heroes of mine that I never imagined I'd see up close or have any relationship with or any connection with. I was asked to write these lyrics in partnership with the main man Erasmo Carlos for Alaíde Costa's album! Surreal. Like many people, I got acquainted with Alaíde listening to "Clube da Esquina," her singing with Milton Nascimento. And the idea was to do a poisonous cabaret song samba. The curse of a woman who has dumped a drunk. I love it when Alaíde sings "BIBIDA" in her recording of the song_a total legend. I wanted to produce a kind of horror samba recording, because if it wasn't rock and roll, it wouldn't be much fun for me. I went over to Bielzinho's, and we recorded this chorus that explodes with the percussion and the choir of my friends Tulipa, Maria Beraldo, and Luiza Lian. This take of "Prudência" came from the unpretentiousness of recording two live sessions of the song with Fred Joseph with the cameras of the 70s' program "Ensaio" (MPB Especial) by the great Fernando Faro. The video take ended up being so unexpected and raw that it unseated the studio version, and that's what you hear on the single. The idea behind the video is a sort of this temporal mindfuck; like found lost tapes of the MPB Especial from the early the 70s. Same microphones, same cameras, that zoom_time travel. Between Mil Coisas Invisíveis, the end of the cycle with O Terno, and starting the new album process, I decided to take advantage of the respite to release this rock and roll 45 of sambas, without thinking too much or over-producing the thing. "Prudence? Don't talk to me about prudence!" ;) Tim Bernardes, 2025

Emily A. Sprague's Cloud Time traces an audio-spiritual journey through time and place, recorded across a long-awaited debut tour of Japan in the fall of 2024. Compiled from environmental improvisations captured in and for the moment, material at once welcoming, responsive, and inimitable, the album distills a voyage guided by psychic wayfaring, unbound presence, and activating performance for a reciprocal exchange with space, listener, and each fully engaged instant. The Japanese tour documented on Cloud Time held an almost mythic significance for Sprague, taking on properties of her own sonic white whale. After many near-departures and dropped plans to play in the country, "the empty spaces of cancelled trips and forgotten music turned into strange little misty spirits that I felt followed by," she says. "When I began preparing for the tour, I couldn't shake a sense that the invitation to Japan was more about opening myself up to this new place instead of bringing something into it tightly under my control. Improvisation has always been such a pillar in my music practice, and I really wanted to meet the country, spaces and people through that process." To amplify these intuitive whispers on-stage, Sprague reimagined her time-tested live rig, designed to be as free from error as possible, as a looser, more flexible set up that would allow her to interface with what was essentially a blank sonic canvas every night. Each performance became a collaboration between environment and instinct, Sprague processing the events, energies, and emotions informing the evening through her new sound ecosystem, and projecting an entirely present and unique version of herself to each open-eared and hearted crowd. "It was very much more than just an act of playing for me, but a total experience of time and place," she says. The seven long-form pieces that plot the course of Cloud Time, excerpted from over eight hours of recordings archived on the artist's on-stage recorder and generously shared on the album with no additional mixing and only minimal editing, invite listeners to become still in these deep-rooted moments of presence as the album moves from city to city, venue to venue. Cloud Time chronicles material recorded at each tour stop, Sprague selecting and sequencing the album around mood-based storytelling more so than linear chronology. "I tried to make the whole album flow in the way that any one of the complete live performances did," she explains, "while also keeping the spirit of the whole thing as a journey." The result is equal parts travelog, love letter, and impressionistic collage channeled from the potent ferment of a now encased in the glowing amber of memory. Intrinsically inspired by kankyo ongaku, an environmental music philosophy, known both in and widely outside of Japan that tunes into the similarly expansive ethos as Pauline Oliveros' deep listening practice and posits the listener as composer, Cloud Time is ambient music that seems to be listening right back, grounded in heartfelt synthesized frequencies that abundantly hold and heal. Pieces like "Nagoya," "Tokyo 1," and the ten minute "Matsumoto" in particular hum with the atomic resonance of gently tended landscapes, offering space for tuning way in and dropping far out from perspectives that stifle and bind. Cloud Time is an invitation to embrace each moment as both fleeting and eternal, floating by with nothing to grasp onto and absolutely everything to gain. The exercise in acceptance and letting go that Sprague practiced throughout the tour deeply impacted her understanding of self as both a guest and venerable performer. "The process of loving wherever I am, being present and focusing on a clear channel of communication for mind and emotion, rooted so deeply in respect for the space, those within it, and myself, ended up being profoundly healing," she says. "My vision and hope is that this album can be released as a gift back to anyone who either was or wasn't there. A cloud time of life passing by." Emily A. Sprague's Cloud Time will be released Friday, October 10th in vinyl, Japanese import CD (via Plancha), and digital editions.

Unknown Waveforms is the forthcoming album from Belgian trio KAU, set for release on October 10, 2025. Marking an evolution since their 2023 release The Cycle Repeats, this new record captures a more personal, immediate, and unfiltered version of the band's sound. In an increasingly digital world, KAU takes a different route, with an album rooted in human connection, live energy, and creative spontaneity. Here, the trio reflect their take on instrumental music, drawing heavily fromjazz, hip hop, and electronic influences.

At the heart of Unknown Waveforms lies the starting point of three musicians in a room, writing and composing music on the spot. For KAU, this idea mirrors their working method: long jam sessions, free-flowing experimentation, and shared moments of inspiration. Songs often take shape slowly, unfolding over hours or days, but always built collaboratively as a trio.

The album's title reflects the mystery behind how music comes together, but is also both literal and symbolic. Unknown waveforms are the sounds that arise when machines and people interact in unpredictable ways. Whether you're an experienced musician or just starting out, the creative process often feels elusive and hard to fully understand. But there are also certain moments: creative sparks that can't be planned or programmed. It ends up being more than notes, gear, or structure, it's about the process, the tension and energy that builds when people connect and create in the same room.

The title track, Unknown Waveforms, captures that exact process. It opens with a quote from synth pioneer Wendy Carlos: "I'm just trying to show you how we get some of these sounds", inviting listeners directly into the creative space. The track focuses less on a polished outcome and more on the moment before a song is "finished": it's a portrait of experimentation, feeling, and raw expression.

This commitment to honesty permeates the entire album. KAU kept overdubs to a minimum, avoided excessive editing, and prioritized spontaneous choices over calculated ones. In a time when the future of live, improvised music feels uncertain, they double down on the physical, the real, and the immediate. The album resists the pristine polish of modern production, favoring the warmth and imperfection of analog synthesis. The band embraces the character of their instruments, particularly vintage gear, where subtle flaws add beauty, depth, and personality.

One standout track, cr_eye, is driven by the Moog Subphatty-a key instrument in the band's toolkit for its analog warmth and powerful sub-bass. The track centers around the conversation between bass and drums, allowing the keyboards to recede and create space. It draws emotional threads from earlier KAU tracks like Kampala and Kautokeino, bridging past and present with a shared atmosphere and rhythmic interplay.

Another highlight, Stratford, finds inspiration in London's transport system and the UK jazz scene that has long influenced KAU. A field recording snippet of the London Underground kicks off the track, connecting it to the rhythm of everyday commutes. Built around a hypnotic sequencer line from the Roland JX-3P, the track evokes the motion of a metro journey. Artists like Nubya Garcia, Yussef Dayes, and Alfa Mist, giants of the scenethat the band has admired for years, resonate subtly throughout.

Above all, Unknown Waveforms is a statement of intent from KAU: a celebration of imperfection, creative honesty and an insight in the process.

END[GER] Die Band Wednesday aus Asheville, North Carolina errichtet im Laufe der zehn Songs von "Rat Saw God" einen Schrein voller aufregender Details: Halb lustige, halb tragische Botschaften aus den Südstaaten, die sich klanglich irgendwo zwischen dem wimmernden Skuzz von Neunzigerjahre-Shoegaze und klassischem Country-Twang entfalten - mit verzerrter Pedal Steel und Frontfrau Karly Hartzman, die mit ihrer Stimme, den Lärm durchschneidet. Ein Song von Wednesday ist wie ein Quilt. Eine Kurzgeschichtensammlung, eine verschwommene Erinnerung, ein Flickenteppich aus Porträts des amerikanischen Südens, der disparate Momente einfängt und als Ganzes doch irgendwie einen Sinn ergibt. Karly Hartzman, die Songschreiberin, Sängerin, Gitarristin und Leiterin der Band, ist eine Geschichtensammlerin als auch eine Geschichtenerzählerin: Eine aufmerksame Beobachterin von Menschen und witzigen Bemerkungen. "Rat Saw God", das neue und beste Album des Quintetts aus Asheville, ist ekphrastisch, aber ebenso autobiografisch und vor allem sehr einfühlsam. Es wurde in den Monaten unmittelbar nach der Fertigstellung von dem zweiten Album der Band, "Twin Plagues", geschrieben und innerhalb einer Woche im Drop Of Sun Studio in Asheville aufgenommen. Die Songs auf "Rat Saw God" erzählen keine Epen, sondern das Alltägliche. Sie sind lebensnah, erzählen vom wahren Leben, sie sind verschwommen und chaotisch und seltsam zugleich - was Hartzmans eigenem Ethos entspricht: "Everyone's story is worthy. Literally every life story is worth writing down, because people are so fascinating." A Wednesday song is a quilt. A short story collection, a half-memory, a patchwork of portraits of the American south, disparate moments that somehow make sense as a whole. Karly Hartzman, the songwriter/ vocalist/guitarist at the helm of the project, is a story collector as much as she is a storyteller: a scholar of people and one-liners. Rat Saw God, the Asheville quintet's new and best record, is ekphrastic but autobiographical and above all, deeply empathetic. Across the album's ten tracks Hartzman, guitarist MJ Lenderman, bassist Margo Shultz, drummer Alan Miller, and lap/pedal steel player Xandy Chelmis build a shrine to minutiae. Half-funny, half-tragic dispatches from North Carolina unfurling somewhere between the wailing skuzz of Nineties shoegaze and classic country twang, that distorted lap steel and Hartzman's voice slicing through the din. Rat Saw God is an album about riding a bike down a suburban stretch in Greensboro while listening to My Bloody Valentine for the first time on an iPod Nano, past a creek that runs through the neighborhood riddled with broken glass bottles and condoms, a front yard filled with broken and rusted car parts, a lonely and dilapidated house reclaimed by kudzu. Four Lokos and rodeo clowns and a kid who burns down a corn field. Roadside monuments, church marquees, poppers and vodka in a plastic water bottle, the shit you get away with at Jewish summer camp, strange sentimental family heirlooms at the thrift stores. The way the South hums alive all night in the summers and into fall, the sound of high school football games, the halo effect from the lights polluting the darkness. It's not really bright enough to see in front of you, but in that stretch of inky void - somehow - you see everything. The songs on Rat Saw God don't recount epics, just the everyday. They're true, they're real life, blurry and chaotic and strange - which is in-line with Hartzman's own ethos: "Everyone's story is worthy," she says, plainly. "Literally every life story is worth writing down, because people are so fascinating." But the thing about Rat Saw God - and about any Wednesday song, really - is you don't necessarily even need all the references to get it, the weirdly specific elation of a song that really hits. Yeah, it's all in the details - how fucked up you got or get, how you break a heart, how you fall in love, how you make yourself and others feel seen - but it's mostly the way those tiny moments add up into a song or album or a person.

Hinter dem gefeierten Indie-Folk-Künstler FRUIT BATS verbirgt sich der GRAMMY-nominierte Singer/Songwriter Eric D. Johnson aus Nashville, Tennessee. Mit "Baby Man" hat Johnson ein Album geschaffen, das sich von allen anderen FRUIT BATS-Alben abhebt. "Baby Man" setzt sich aus zehn fesselnden Solodarbietungen mit minimalistischer Instrumentierung (Gitarre, Klavier und gelegentlich Synthesizer) und maximaler Ausführung zusammen und Johnsons Raumnutzung auf dem gesamten Album ist oft ebenso bezaubernd wie die Musik und seine stets bemerkenswerte Stimme. Für die Produktion von "Baby Man" hatte sich Johnson wieder mit Thom Monahan zusammengetan. Das Ergebnis dieser Zusammenarbeit ist das intimste Werk, das FRUIT BATS bisher aufgenommen hat. "Baby Man" überrascht mit einigen der rauesten Stücke, die bisher unter dem Pseudonym FRUIT BATS entstanden sind. Monahan hat die Vocals im Mix nach vorne geschoben, was sowohl die Souveränität als auch die Verletzlichkeit jeder Darbietung hervorhebt. Zwischen der Substanz und dem Klang ist das Hören von "Baby Man" eine kraftvolle und gefühlvolle Erfahrung. Das spürt man gleich beim Album-Opener "Let You People Down" und auch beim nachdenklichen Titeltrack. Johnson ehrt den kürzlichen Verlust eines besonderen Freundes in dem wunderschönen "Creature From The Wild", einer zu Herzen gehenden Hommage, mit der sich leidenschaftliche Hundeliebhaber sofort identifizieren werden. Das philosophische "Building A Cathedral" stellt die Frage, was einem im Leben wirklich wichtig ist und was nicht, während der letzte Song "Year Of The Crow" mit einer stimmungsvollen, bluesigen Klaviereinleitung daherkommt und das Album schmerzhaft und gefühlvoll abschließt. Der Song ist ein passendes Finale eines bemerkenswerten Albums eines geliebten und verehrten Künstlers, der weiterhin Musik konzipiert, Emotionen vermittelt und Verbindungen auf sinnvolle Weise herstellt. "Baby Man" ist der Nachfolger des von der Kritik hochgelobten Albums "A River Running to Your Heart" aus dem Jahr 2023. Johnson ist auch Mitglied des GRAMMY-nominierten Indie-Trios Bonny Light Horseman.

*Long overdue reissue of the first album by The Hanging Stars to coincide with their tour support slot with Edwyn Collins – initial 300 copies come with 12 x 12 print*

“In late-Sixties California, the Byrds and Flying Burrito Brothers combined traditional country music with hippy rock to great success. The influence lingered and whatever cultural relevance it has this is a delightful, transporting listen” – The Times 4/5

London-based psych-folk outfit The Hanging Stars re-release their much-loved debut album Over the Silvery Lake on Crimson Crow. Blending folk pastoralism with swampy 60s Americana, they sound like the missing link between the California desert sun and the grey skies of London Town. The album was recorded between LA, Nashville and Walthamstow, with each of these vastly different places leaving an indelible mark on the songs.

Now signed to the Loose Records label and fronted by London-based songwriter, singer and guitarist Richard Olson (The See See, Eighteenth Day of May), The Hanging Stars are essentially a loose collective of people who weave together a blissed-out psychedelic tapestry. The rest of the core band is made up of Sam Ferman on bass and Paulie Cobra on drums, Horse on pedal steel and Patrick Ralla on banjo, guitar. They jam rather than write and hang out rather than rehearse, harnessing a kind of tipsy euphoria resplendent with luscious arrangements and glorious vocal harmonies.

During 2015, prior to this album’s original release the band released two critically acclaimed singles via The Great Pop Supplement (both of which also appear on the album). “Golden Vanity” was premiered by The Line of Best Fit who said; “you'd be forgiven for thinking you'd just unearthed a rare deep cut from the late 60s/early 70s boom of psychedelia infused Americana” and “The House on The Hill” was described by The Guardian as; "a hazy, desert-dream of a song, nicely sharpened with steely-eyed guitars, Mersey-laced harmonies and just a whiff of the Gun Club”.

There are a number of allusions to nature and the weather on the album, borne in part out of the contrasting surroundings in which it was produced. The band’s fascination with Americana led them to record some of the material Stateside, laying down some of the parts at Battle Tapes Studios in Nashville (Lambchop, Paperhead), as well as at Vision Quest Studios in Los Angeles with Rob Campanella. His work with The Quarter After, The Brian Jonestown Massacre, Beachwood Sparks The Tyde, and GospelbeacH was a perfect match to capture their sound and they even had San Franciscan legend Chrystof Certik step in on lead guitar for a couple of tracks.

Following the LA recordings, a trip to the Californian desert provided the core notion of what they wanted to produce - a shard of light that they clung on to whilst recording the rest of the album in the significantly more rain-soaked atmosphere of Walthamstow, London, under the watchful eye of Brian O'Shaughnessy at Bark Studios (The Clientele, Comet Gain). As the band explained at the time: “Ultimately we hope you can hear both the sand and the rain in this record.”

The Hanging Stars place themselves firmly as part of a long folk tradition encompassing European and North American influences – as a continuation rather than a pastiche of these styles. This is the sound of a band really coming in to their own, fully formed and in no doubt of their vision. With Over the Silvery Lake they succeeded in producing a record, which has the country, blues and folk traditions at its heart.

In Guadeloupe, many people think that jazz and ka music are like a ring and a finger. To some extent, the same could be said about so called Latin music and the music played in the French West Indies.

Both aesthetics were born in the Caribbean and bear so many connections that they can easily be considered cousins. In constant dialogue, there are lots of examples of their fruitful alliance and have been for a while. The English country dance that used to be practiced in European lounges came to be called kadrille in Martinique and contradanza in Cuba. They both featured additional percussion instruments inherited from the transatlantic deportation. Drawing from shared feelings about the same traumatized identity – later to be creolized – it would be hard not to assume that they were meant to inspire each other. The golden age of the orchestras that graced the Pigalle nights during the interwar period further proves the point. As soon as the 1930s, Havana-born Don Barreto naturally mixed danzón and biguine music in a combo based at Melody's Bar. In the following decade, Félix Valvert, a conductor who was born and raised in Basse-Terre in Guadelupe, also worked wonders in Montparnasse with La Coupole, which was an orchestra made up of eclectic musicians. Afro- Caribbean performers of various origins were often hired on rhythm and brass sections in jazz bands, which used to enliven the typical French balls of the capital. In the 1930s and onwards, Rico’s Creole Band was one of them.



Martinican violinist-clarinettist Ernest Léardée, who would become the king of biguine music as well as the main figure of French Uncle Ben's TV commercials (a dark stigma of post-colonial stereotypes), had musicians from the whole Caribbean sphere play at his Bal Blomet – and they all enchanted "ces Zazous-là" (according the words of Léardée's biguine-calypso piece). In les Antilles (French for French West Indies), music history started to speed up in the 1950s, when trade expanded and radio stations grew bigger. The Guadelupean and Martiniquais youth tuned in their old galena radio sets to South American and Caribbean music. As for the women traders, les pacotilleuses, they bought and sold goods across different islands (the "passing of items through various hands" was thought to be most pleasurable) and brought back countless sounds in their luggage. Such was the case of Madame Balthazar, who once returned from Puerto Rico with the first 45rpm and 33rpm to ever enter Martinique.

Out of this adventure was created the famous Martinican label La Maison des Merengues, a music business she opened and undertook with her husband and which proved to be a major landmark. At the end of the 1950s, in Puerto Rico, Marius Cultier competed in the Piano International Contest playing a version of Monk's Round 'Midnight. He won the first prize and this distinction foreshadowed everything that was to come. Cultier, the heretic Monk of jazz, was quickly praised for writing superb melodies, always tinged with a twist that conferred a unique sound to his music. It didn't take long for the gifted self-taught musician to get to play with Los Cubanos, making a name for himself thanks to his impressive maestria on merengues.

The rest is history. Besides, in the late 1950s, Frantz Charles-Denis, born into the upper middle class in Saint-Pierre and better known by his first name Francisco, went back home after working at La Cabane Cubaine – a club located rue Fontaine where he had caught the Latin fever. Francisco's music was therefore heavily marked by his Cuban cousins' influence, which gave the combos he led a specific style and also led to renewal. Things were swinging hard in La Savane, located in the main square in Fort-de-France. He set up the Shango club close by and tested out the biguine lélé there, a new music formula spiced up with Latin rhythms. Soon afterwards, fate had him fly to Puerto Rico and Venezuela.

As for percussionist Henri Guédon (percussions were only a part of his many talents), he was born in Fort-de-France in May 22nd 1944, the day marking the celebration of the abolition of slavery. As an old man, he could remember that in " his father's Teppaz, a lot of hectic 6/8 music was constantly playing...". In the opening lines of his Lettre à Dizzy, a small illustrated collection of writings published by Del Arco, he highlighted the huge impact that cubop had on him as a teenage boy, around 1960. He eventually turned out to be the lider maximo in La Contesta, a big band steeped in Latin jazz. He was also the one who originated the word zouk to describe music which brought the sound of the New York barrio to Paris. It was the culmination of a journey that started in Sainte-Marie: "a mythical place for bélé, the equivalent of Cuban guaguancó". In the early 1960s, the tertiary economy developed to the detriment of agriculture. Yet rural life was where roots music emerged in Martinique and in Guadeloupe.

Record companies played a major part in the process of Latin versions sweeping across the islands – before reaching everywhere else. Producer Célini, boss of the great Aux Ondes label, and Marcel Mavounzy, both the head of Émeraude records - a firm which was founded in 1953 - as well as the brother of famous saxophonist Robert Mavounzy, were big names to bear in mind. Although there were many of them - all of whom are featured on this record - Henri Debs was definitely the major figure in the recording adventure. He proved to be so influential that he even got compared to Berry Gordy. In the mid 1950s, when he acquired his first Teppaz, he worked on his first compositions: a bolero and a chachacha. Then, he became the one man who made people discover Caribbean music, from calypso to merengue. He was among the first ones to rush out to San Juan, Puerto Rico, to buy records and distribute them through a store run by one of his brothers in Fort-de-France. He had members of the Fania All Star come and perform there, which he was madly proud about. He was also the first one to pay attention to Haitian music, such as compas direct and various other rhythms which would soon flood the market. As a result, many of the combos hitting his legendary studio would end up boosted by widespread "Afro-Latin" rhythms. However, he never denied his identity: gwo ka drums were given a major role, although they were instruments which had long been banned from the "official" music spheres. The present selection bears witness to such a creative swarming. Here are fourteen tracks of untimely yet unprecedented cross-fertilization: all types of music rooted in the Creole archipelago have found their way, whatsoever, to the tracklisting. Whether originating from the city or being more rural, they all go back to what Edouard Glissant, in an interview about the place of West Indian music in the Afro-American scope, called "the trace of singing, the one which got erased by slavery." "It is so in jazz, but also in reggae, calypso, biguine, salsa... This trace also manifests through the drums, whether Guadelupean, Dominican, Jamaican or Cuban... None of them being quite the same. They all point to the idea of a trace, seeking it out and connecting to each other through it. This is the hallmark of the African diaspora: its ability to create something new, in relation to itself, out of a trace. It may be the memory of a rhythm, the crafting of a drum, a means of expression which doesn't resort to an old language but to the modalities of it." The opening track features one of the emblematic orchestras of this aesthetic identity, criscrossing many music types from the archipelago. The 1974 Ray Barretto guajira – Ray Barretto was a major New York drummer influenced by Charlie Parker and Chano Pozzo – is magnificently performed by Malavoi, a legendary Fayolais group (i.e from Fort-de-France). Additionally, the compilation ends on a piece by Los Martiniqueños de Francisco. It symbolically closes the circle as it is a genuine potomitan of Martinique culture which also functions as a tireless campaigner for Afro-Caribbean music. Practicing the danmyé rounds (a kind of capoeiria) to the rhythm of the bèlè drum, it delivers a terrific Caterete, a kind of champeta of Afro- Colombian obedience which was originally composed by Colombian Fabián Ramón Veloz Fernández for the group Wgenda Kenya. The icing on the cake is Brazilian Marku Ribas, who found refuge in Martinique in the early 1970s, bringing his singing to the last trance-inducing track. These two "versions" convey the whole tone of a selection composed of rarities and classics of the tropicalized genre, swarming with tonic accents and convoluted rhythms. It is the sort of cocktail that the West Indians never failed to spice up with their own ingredients. For instance, the Los Caraïbes cover of Dónde, a famous Cuban theme composed by producer Ernesto Duarte Brito, has a typical violin and features renowned Martinique singer Joby Valente and his piquant voice.



The track used to be – or so we think – their only existing 45rpm. The meaningful Amor en chachachá by L'Ensemble Tropicana, a band which included Haitian musicians among whom was composer and leader Michel Desgrotte, also recalls how Latin music was pervasive in the tropics in the mid-1960s. They were the ones keeping people dancing at Le Cocoteraie in Guadelupe and La Bananeraie in Martinique. Around the same time, another "foreign" band, Congolese Freddy Mars N'Kounkou's Ryco Jazz, achieved some success on both islands by covering Latin jazz classics – such as their adaptation of Wachi Wara, a "soul sauce" by Dizzy Gillespie and Chano Pozo whose interweaving of strings and percussions can have anyone hit the dancefloor. How can you resist Dap Pinian indeed, a powerful guaguancó by Eugene Balthazar, performed by the Tropicana Orchestra and published by the Martinique-founded La Maison des Merengues? It also acts as a symbol of the maelstrom at work. Going by the name Paco et L'orchestre Cachunga, Roger Jaffory used to play guaguancó too: his Fania-inspired Oye mi consejo is one example of his style. Baila!!!!! Dancing was also one of the Kings' focus points. Oriza is a Puerto Rican bomba and a "classic" originally composed by Nuevayorquino trumpeter Ernie Agosto, which reserves major space for brasses, giving it a special sheen.

Emerging from the New York barrios crucible was also La Perfecta, a Martinique group originating from Trinidad, whose name directly references the totemic Eddie Palmieri figure as well as his own band, also called La Perfecta. Here they borrow Toumbadora from Colombian producer and composer Efraín Lancheros and interpret it by emphasizing percussions, which set fire to the track even more than the wind instruments. The same goes for Martinique's Super Jaguars, who use Tatalibaba – a composition by Cuban guitarist Florencio "Picolo" Santana which was made famous by Celia Cruz & La Sonora Matencera – as a pretext for sending their cadences into a frenzy. In a more typically salsa vein, the Super Combo, a famous Guadelupean orchestra from Pointe-Noire that was formed around the Desplan family and had Roger Plonquitte and Elie Bianay on board, adapt Serana, a theme by Roberto Angleró Pepín, a Puerto Rican composer, singer and musician also known for his song Soy Boricua. Here again, their vision comes close to surpassing the original. In the 1970s, L'Ensemble Abricot provided a handful of tracks of different syles, hence reaching the pinnacle of the art of achieving variety and giving pleasure. They played boleros, biguines, compas direct, guaguancó and even a good old boogaloo - the type they wanted to keep close to their hearts for ever, "pour toujours", as they sang along together in one of their songs. Léon Bertide's Martinican ensemble excelled at the boogaloo which had been composed by Puerto Rican saxophonist Hector Santos for the legendary El Gran Combo.



Three years later, in 1972, Henri Guédon, with the help of Paul Rosine on the vibraphone, tackled the Bilongo made famous by Eddie Palmieri. Such a classic!!!!! And so were the Aiglons, the band from Guadelupe: choosing to execute Pensando en tí, a composition by Dominican Aniceto Batista, on a cooler tempo than the original, they noticeably used a wonderfully (un)tuned keyboard in place of the accordion. On the high-value collectible single – the first one released by Les Aiglons under the Duli Disc label – there is a sticker classifying the track under the generic name "Afro". Now that is what we call a symbol. Jacques Denis

Nach dem frühen Tod von Adam Schlesinger durch COVID-19 im Jahr 2020 dachte das IVY-Trio nie, dass es ein weiteres Album geben würde. Aber die Band hatte einen großen Fundus an unfertigen Songs und Demos in einem Lagerraum in Rhode Island aufbewahrt, der bis zu den Anfängen der Band zurückreicht. Als Andy Chase und Dominique Durand im Jahr 2023 die letzten Vinyl-Veröffentlichungen ihres Katalogs vorbereiteten, reisten sie nach Rhode Island und hörten sich die Bänder an, die sie dort vor all den Jahren zurückgelassen hatten; Bänder, die mit Notizen wie ,Adam's Wacky Idea 1997" beschriftet waren, ,Stupid Cat 2005" oder ,Das hier könnte gut für Shallow Hal sein`. Zusammen mit ihrem langjährigen Freund Bruce Driscoll (Freedom Fry) beschlossen die beiden, ins Studio zurückzukehren und an diesen Aufnahmen zu feilen. Obwohl sie sich nie wohl fühlen würden ein Album unter dem Namen IVY ohne Adam zu veröffentlichen, wurde ihnen klar, dass sie das nicht mussten. Adam hatte seine Parts bereits geschrieben und aufgenommen - er ist auf jedem Song zu hören. Das Trio holte sich auch Freunde ins Studio, die über die Jahre an Ivys Platten mitgewirkt hatten, um diese Songs zum Leben zu erwecken. "Traces of You" enthält alles, was wir an Ivy lieben und immer geliebt haben. Könnte da noch mehr kommen? (Ja, das könnte es.)

Black Vinyl LP with insert (including the story behind the album and lyrics with English translation)

After their first LP, in 1987, Pedro gathered his usual band, Carlos Sousa on keyboard, Bulimundo on drums, Nuno Santos and Zézé on lead and rhythm guitars, Augusto Rasta on bass, Daló on sax and finally Dalú on percussions, for yet another project, one that carried both their names: Jacinta Sanches - Pedro Ramos. Eight days, no more, that’s all Pedro Ramos and Jacinta Sanches needed inside the Estúdios Musicorde. The process was natural, as with all their music, memories recollected and arranged by Pedro on café napkins, rehearsed and perfected at home with Jacinta. Together they imagined music where Cape Verdean saudade could dance together with Kingston’s skank, two island hearts beating inside European concrete.

His name is Pedro Correia Ramos Varela, born in Praia, Santiago, Cabo Verde on April 6th 1954; her name is Jacinta Lopes Veiga Varela, born in Cidade Velha, Santiago, Cabo Verde on January 22nd 1959. The two met in Praia, where a few exchanged words turned into long evening conversations; conversations into friendship; friendship into love; and love into six wonderful children. After the independence of Cabo Verde, they got married in 1978 and moved to Portugal, where Pedro started working as a welder for Lisnave and playing the guitar in a band in Ramada. Trading shipyard sparks by day for the after-hours pulse of Cova da Moura, his love for music proved harder than steel. And in 1982, after seeing Bob Marley and Peter Tosh in Rotterdam, he opened his own Dancing Bar just below their house, a pioneering space for the promotion of reggae music in Portugal.

Their Dancing Bar kept its doors open from 1982 to 1994, seeing the release of two albums and more singles. To this day, Pedro and Jacinta are still making music, one the inspiration of the other. They define themselves as simple people, living happy without prejudice, friends with the world.

2025 marks 20 years of Tectonic, the pioneering dubstep and electronic label founded in 2005 by Bristol’s underground originator, DJ Pinch.
The Tectonic Sound compilation lays down the gauntlet for the future direction of the imprint. Split across 6 x 4-track 12”s, the compilation comprises many producers making their Tectonic debut, including Re:ni, Beatrice M., Yushh, Flora Yin-Wong, and Sicaria, alongside stalwarts like Om Unit, RSD, Peverelist and Kahn & Neek. It’s an exhilarating 24-track journey through experimental, bass-heavy electronic music, with almost all tracks created by the artists specifically with Tectonic's sound in mind - at the intersection where dubstep and techno meet.
“More so than just the sound, the music is in tune with the real ethos of the early dubstep scene,” - Label boss Pinch says: “People talk about 'heads in a scene - but it's led by hearts really. I've always tried to follow my heart when it comes to music and all the music here is from people I trust that do something worth communicating with the world. I love to watch and help artists grow just as much as I'm excited to release tracks from bigger names who are still passionate about what they do and have developed the powers and control to be able to output that effectively. It feels like Tectonic has been a part of so many communities over the years now, and that there is something that binds all the releases together, something that speaks for itself in a way that goes beyond words, something that's instinctive and immediate.”

Across Tectonic’s 150-strong catalogue there are seminal releases by 2562, Scientist, and Mumdance & Logos, side by side with appearances from Flying Lotus, Shed, Adrian Sherwood, Riko Dan and Photek. The label holds some of the earliest dubstep incantations of Skream, Digital Mystikz, and Joker as well as Pinch’s own productions. The evolution of the Tectonic sound branches into audio explorations encompassing sub-heavy techno and grimey soundscapes alongside leftfield electronica and future-facing beats. The common thread that binds is Pinch’s devotion to pushing underground music ahead of its time, always built to rattle a soundsystem

2025 marks 20 years of Tectonic, the pioneering dubstep and electronic label founded in 2005 by Bristol’s underground originator, DJ Pinch.
The Tectonic Sound compilation lays down the gauntlet for the future direction of the imprint. Split across 6 x 4-track 12”s, the compilation comprises many producers making their Tectonic debut, including Re:ni, Beatrice M., Yushh, Flora Yin-Wong, and Sicaria, alongside stalwarts like Om Unit, RSD, Peverelist and Kahn & Neek. It’s an exhilarating 24-track journey through experimental, bass-heavy electronic music, with almost all tracks created by the artists specifically with Tectonic's sound in mind - at the intersection where dubstep and techno meet.
“More so than just the sound, the music is in tune with the real ethos of the early dubstep scene,” - Label boss Pinch says: “People talk about 'heads in a scene - but it's led by hearts really. I've always tried to follow my heart when it comes to music and all the music here is from people I trust that do something worth communicating with the world. I love to watch and help artists grow just as much as I'm excited to release tracks from bigger names who are still passionate about what they do and have developed the powers and control to be able to output that effectively. It feels like Tectonic has been a part of so many communities over the years now, and that there is something that binds all the releases together, something that speaks for itself in a way that goes beyond words, something that's instinctive and immediate.”

Across Tectonic’s 150-strong catalogue there are seminal releases by 2562, Scientist, and Mumdance & Logos, side by side with appearances from Flying Lotus, Shed, Adrian Sherwood, Riko Dan and Photek. The label holds some of the earliest dubstep incantations of Skream, Digital Mystikz, and Joker as well as Pinch’s own productions. The evolution of the Tectonic sound branches into audio explorations encompassing sub-heavy techno and grimey soundscapes alongside leftfield electronica and future-facing beats. The common thread that binds is Pinch’s devotion to pushing underground music ahead of its time, always built to rattle a soundsystem

2025 marks 20 years of Tectonic, the pioneering dubstep and electronic label founded in 2005 by Bristol’s underground originator, DJ Pinch.
The Tectonic Sound compilation lays down the gauntlet for the future direction of the imprint. Split across 6 x 4-track 12”s, the compilation comprises many producers making their Tectonic debut, including Re:ni, Beatrice M., Yushh, Flora Yin-Wong, and Sicaria, alongside stalwarts like Om Unit, RSD, Peverelist and Kahn & Neek. It’s an exhilarating 24-track journey through experimental, bass-heavy electronic music, with almost all tracks created by the artists specifically with Tectonic's sound in mind - at the intersection where dubstep and techno meet.
“More so than just the sound, the music is in tune with the real ethos of the early dubstep scene,” - Label boss Pinch says: “People talk about 'heads in a scene - but it's led by hearts really. I've always tried to follow my heart when it comes to music and all the music here is from people I trust that do something worth communicating with the world. I love to watch and help artists grow just as much as I'm excited to release tracks from bigger names who are still passionate about what they do and have developed the powers and control to be able to output that effectively. It feels like Tectonic has been a part of so many communities over the years now, and that there is something that binds all the releases together, something that speaks for itself in a way that goes beyond words, something that's instinctive and immediate.”

Across Tectonic’s 150-strong catalogue there are seminal releases by 2562, Scientist, and Mumdance & Logos, side by side with appearances from Flying Lotus, Shed, Adrian Sherwood, Riko Dan and Photek. The label holds some of the earliest dubstep incantations of Skream, Digital Mystikz, and Joker as well as Pinch’s own productions. The evolution of the Tectonic sound branches into audio explorations encompassing sub-heavy techno and grimey soundscapes alongside leftfield electronica and future-facing beats. The common thread that binds is Pinch’s devotion to pushing underground music ahead of its time, always built to rattle a soundsystem

2025 marks 20 years of Tectonic, the pioneering dubstep and electronic label founded in 2005 by Bristol’s underground originator, DJ Pinch.
The Tectonic Sound compilation lays down the gauntlet for the future direction of the imprint. Split across 6 x 4-track 12”s, the compilation comprises many producers making their Tectonic debut, including Re:ni, Beatrice M., Yushh, Flora Yin-Wong, and Sicaria, alongside stalwarts like Om Unit, RSD, Peverelist and Kahn & Neek. It’s an exhilarating 24-track journey through experimental, bass-heavy electronic music, with almost all tracks created by the artists specifically with Tectonic's sound in mind - at the intersection where dubstep and techno meet.
“More so than just the sound, the music is in tune with the real ethos of the early dubstep scene,” - Label boss Pinch says: “People talk about 'heads in a scene - but it's led by hearts really. I've always tried to follow my heart when it comes to music and all the music here is from people I trust that do something worth communicating with the world. I love to watch and help artists grow just as much as I'm excited to release tracks from bigger names who are still passionate about what they do and have developed the powers and control to be able to output that effectively. It feels like Tectonic has been a part of so many communities over the years now, and that there is something that binds all the releases together, something that speaks for itself in a way that goes beyond words, something that's instinctive and immediate.”

Across Tectonic’s 150-strong catalogue there are seminal releases by 2562, Scientist, and Mumdance & Logos, side by side with appearances from Flying Lotus, Shed, Adrian Sherwood, Riko Dan and Photek. The label holds some of the earliest dubstep incantations of Skream, Digital Mystikz, and Joker as well as Pinch’s own productions. The evolution of the Tectonic sound branches into audio explorations encompassing sub-heavy techno and grimey soundscapes alongside leftfield electronica and future-facing beats. The common thread that binds is Pinch’s devotion to pushing underground music ahead of its time, always built to rattle a soundsystem

2025 marks 20 years of Tectonic, the pioneering dubstep and electronic label founded in 2005 by Bristol’s underground originator, DJ Pinch.
The Tectonic Sound compilation lays down the gauntlet for the future direction of the imprint. Split across 6 x 4-track 12”s, the compilation comprises many producers making their Tectonic debut, including Re:ni, Beatrice M., Yushh, Flora Yin-Wong, and Sicaria, alongside stalwarts like Om Unit, RSD, Peverelist and Kahn & Neek. It’s an exhilarating 24-track journey through experimental, bass-heavy electronic music, with almost all tracks created by the artists specifically with Tectonic's sound in mind - at the intersection where dubstep and techno meet.
“More so than just the sound, the music is in tune with the real ethos of the early dubstep scene,” - Label boss Pinch says: “People talk about 'heads in a scene - but it's led by hearts really. I've always tried to follow my heart when it comes to music and all the music here is from people I trust that do something worth communicating with the world. I love to watch and help artists grow just as much as I'm excited to release tracks from bigger names who are still passionate about what they do and have developed the powers and control to be able to output that effectively. It feels like Tectonic has been a part of so many communities over the years now, and that there is something that binds all the releases together, something that speaks for itself in a way that goes beyond words, something that's instinctive and immediate.”

Across Tectonic’s 150-strong catalogue there are seminal releases by 2562, Scientist, and Mumdance & Logos, side by side with appearances from Flying Lotus, Shed, Adrian Sherwood, Riko Dan and Photek. The label holds some of the earliest dubstep incantations of Skream, Digital Mystikz, and Joker as well as Pinch’s own productions. The evolution of the Tectonic sound branches into audio explorations encompassing sub-heavy techno and grimey soundscapes alongside leftfield electronica and future-facing beats. The common thread that binds is Pinch’s devotion to pushing underground music ahead of its time, always built to rattle a soundsystem

2025 marks 20 years of Tectonic, the pioneering dubstep and electronic label founded in 2005 by Bristol’s underground originator, DJ Pinch.
The Tectonic Sound compilation lays down the gauntlet for the future direction of the imprint. Split across 6 x 4-track 12”s, the compilation comprises many producers making their Tectonic debut, including Re:ni, Beatrice M., Yushh, Flora Yin-Wong, and Sicaria, alongside stalwarts like Om Unit, RSD, Peverelist and Kahn & Neek. It’s an exhilarating 24-track journey through experimental, bass-heavy electronic music, with almost all tracks created by the artists specifically with Tectonic's sound in mind - at the intersection where dubstep and techno meet.
“More so than just the sound, the music is in tune with the real ethos of the early dubstep scene,” - Label boss Pinch says: “People talk about 'heads in a scene - but it's led by hearts really. I've always tried to follow my heart when it comes to music and all the music here is from people I trust that do something worth communicating with the world. I love to watch and help artists grow just as much as I'm excited to release tracks from bigger names who are still passionate about what they do and have developed the powers and control to be able to output that effectively. It feels like Tectonic has been a part of so many communities over the years now, and that there is something that binds all the releases together, something that speaks for itself in a way that goes beyond words, something that's instinctive and immediate.”

Across Tectonic’s 150-strong catalogue there are seminal releases by 2562, Scientist, and Mumdance & Logos, side by side with appearances from Flying Lotus, Shed, Adrian Sherwood, Riko Dan and Photek. The label holds some of the earliest dubstep incantations of Skream, Digital Mystikz, and Joker as well as Pinch’s own productions. The evolution of the Tectonic sound branches into audio explorations encompassing sub-heavy techno and grimey soundscapes alongside leftfield electronica and future-facing beats. The common thread that binds is Pinch’s devotion to pushing underground music ahead of its time, always built to rattle a soundsystem

"Astral Americana hymns hovering somewhere between the dirt and the stars" Pitchfork

"Mood music for moments of solitude, best experienced without distraction" The Times

"Overwhelmingly effective and ravishingly beautiful" The Wire

American Dust is an ode to the beauty of the American Southwest, where vast desert landscapes hold stories both stark and tender. Eve Adams’ characteristic folk noir weaves a vivid tapestry of love, sacrifice and quiet revelation, conjuring images of dust storms, stray dogs and far off trains.

The high desert of California is a vast and confounding place. Equally inspiring as it is punishing, it’s a landscape that carries magic in its deep dark nights, holding stories both tender and stark in the coarse layer of dust that settles upon everything. It’s long been a source of inspiration for musicians, writers, and painters, each of them adding to the same current, carried forward over time, through hope and hardship and the passing years.

Somewhere out there in that broad and boundless landscape, Eve Adams has been living her own desert life, quietly writing the follow-up to 2021’s Metal Bird LP. Where that album sang of liminal space, the dream-like turbulence of Hollywood’s golden age, American Dust is far more rooted in traditional storytelling; a eulogy for the American Dream channeled through that sweeping part of the country that holds such power and mystery. Slipping into different and varied costumes throughout its ten songs, it finds Eve not just observing the people around her but stepping into their shoes and peeling back the layers of their quiet lives.

Adams writes from within. A few years ago she moved out there, to “the middle of nowhere”, finding a slowness that didn’t exist in the city, and she knows only too well about the mystical nature of the land and those who live within it. Weaving together themes of grit and romance, American Dust holds its focus on the bittersweet poetry of lives lived in solitude, most notably the women who sustain life at the center of it all. “There’s something very radical about domestic life,” Adams says of this thread. “So many women live their entire lives behind closed doors, completely in the shadows. Within those lives is such sacrifice, devotion, and love. I wanted to honor that: the poetry in the mundane, the longing in the repetition. The way love survives boredom and dust and time.”

Eve is joined on American Dust by Canadian musician Bryce Cloghesy, aka Military Genius of Crack Cloud, who plays throughout and also helped produce the album. Musically bold and vivid, it’s an ambitious and detailed stride forward from what’s come before, the scope of the LP’s narrative reflected in the radiant sweep of the playing. On top of gentle piano and guitar, gorgeous strings drift through the album, lending the songs a woozy sense of romanticism; a collaboration with Gamaliel Traynor (Cello) and Caroline’s Oliver Hamilton (Violin).

For all the drama that’s coiled around these songs, it’s the recurring notion of love and hope fighting against everything that holds true throughout American Dust. Musically it’s lush and vibrant, intimate and cinematic side by side, and always bursting with warmth. But it’s what it holds in its weary bones that elevates it to something truly special, something more than just a collection of songs penned in the heart of the desert. The characters it speaks of, and from, feel shadowed but wholly real, like they’re bursting to share their stories that have remained hidden for years and years and they allow Eve Adams to grow as a songwriter right in front of our eyes.

“The same swirling dust that clung to the covered wagons of my ancestors as they crossed the Great American Desert is the same dust my great-great-grandmother swept off her porch during the Dust Bowl of 1936 in Oklahoma, is the same dust that blows in through the cracks in my windows here in the desert, carrying stories from a time long gone,” Eve says, reflecting on the personal narrative that runs through her new album.

“It’s not just dust—it’s American Dust, the kind that settles into the bones of a family and never leaves. I think about that dust as a symbol of the passage of time. I hope this album will be part of that same current, carrying forward for the next generations of my family to find. I’ve been lucky enough to have journals and poetry from my ancestors that documents their lives during times of pure hope and pure hardship. I’d like to think of this album as a contribution to that family history.”

***
My heart is a thousand years old.
I am not like other people.
***

It’s been ten years since Drew Lustman aka FaltyDL last released on Planet Mu. In the meantime he's been running his own label Blueberry Records, been in-house producer for Mykki Blanco and has become a dad. The best things come out of play and it was Drew’s relationship with his young daughter that switched on this playful side of his music. The album in question, ‘Neurotica,’ expresses Drew’s fun in creating such energetic pieces people will want to move to. It's a dizzying sugar-rush at a high-speed bounce; the music is fresh and inviting and most important of all, joyful."Summer of ’24, we were in Catalonia. My girl, our young daughter, the old folks. Days by the village pool, afternoons on the dirtbike. At night, I made salads. Simple things. Good things. One afternoon, lying back, phone in hand, I saw a friend post a GRWM. The music behind it stopped me. A song grabbed hold. The track was ‘Secret’ by Mietze Conte, which is fast-paced euro-pop dance music, like soft fluffy gabber with childlike vocals. I hunted down the full version. Played it again. And again. Twenty times over the next few days. It unlocked something. The best music does that. Like the first time I heard Burial. Had to know what was happening under the surface. That time, it led to ‘Love Is A Liability’ in 2009. This time, it led to ‘Neurotica.’“ “I started to record, getting down fast, bright, sugar-rush sounds. 185 to 200 BPM. I wrote them quick—half a day per track. In between, I slowed things down. Gave space for breath. Mike Paradinas helped shape the album, his ear guiding the flow. I tested the tracks. Played them for kids barely out of diapers and grown folks who still move like they are. It worked, on all ages. I kept it simple. Only two rules: keep it moving and don’t look at my phone. Cut the vocals like I used to.” ‘Neurotica’ is FaltyDL with his mojo refreshed, a new life squared, do yourself a favour, crack a smile and feel the joy.

Vines, the solo project of New York-based multi-instrumentalist and composer Cassie Wieland, offers a window into her inner world through expansive swaths of sound. She pieces together a celestial mix of synths, percussion, strings, and vocoded voice, making music that is at once deeply personal and cinematic in scope. This diaristic approach first took shape with her 2023 EP Birthday Party, and is crystallized on her debut LP, I’ll be here. With the sweeping and vulnerable I’ll be here, Vines arrives fully formed as an artist who crafts deeply resonant and open music–the kind that invites listeners in to listen, reflect, and share in the journey of learning through living.

“It was through making music that I was able to meet myself,” Wieland said. “Anything I’m going through or feeling is something that somebody else out there can relate to, and that’s really special to me.”

I’ll be here is both a culmination of years spent creating gossamer soundscapes and an opening to a new journey for Wieland as an artist. The album grew out of her years as a composer and songwriter, and builds on the language she developed on Birthday Party, which transformed the tumultuous feelings of the passing of time into minimalist meditations. It was just a start, though–a prologue, a development of the kind of language and ideas she wanted to express. With I’ll be here, she digs deeper and writes music that feels more sprawling, further solidifying her singular voice.

Wieland’s musical composition process is similar to journaling, lending itself to the music’s honesty. When she writes, she makes room for all the ideas she has; in these sessions, there are no wrong ideas, and she allows the music to be attuned to the experiences she’s having at the time. With I’ll be here, Wieland zeroes in on themes of anxiety, loneliness, navigating human connection, and having to grow up from a young age, ultimately coming to a place of acceptance. And though it began as a journal written in solitude, her collaborators shape the music with her.

Working with friends, in fact, was a crucial part of bringing the record to life. “Everything that was supposed to happen came together so easily because of the people involved,” Wieland said. I’ll be here was co-produced and recorded with Wieland’s longtime collaborator Mike Tierney, a four time Grammy-nominated engineer who has worked with artists across the contemporary classical and experimental scene like minimalist pioneer Steve Reich, LA’s preeminent classical ensemble Wild Up, and various bands on Bang on a Can’s Cantaloupe Music label. Percussionist and composer Adam Holmes and violinist Adrianne Munden-Dixon are two other longtime collaborators who are frequent fixtures of her live show. Holmes plays synths, drums, and banjo; in live settings, his kit is loaded with elements of the songs that are then triggered by MIDI, making the music an interactive, evolving experience. The album’s gentle, filamented edges are colored by Munden-Dixon, whose poignant string melodies elevate Wieland’s introspective compositions, as well as cellist Helen Newby, saxophonists Julian Velasco and Jordan Lulloff, and bassist Pat Swoboda.

Wieland takes an economic approach to writing music, building the swirling and immersive landscapes of Vines through short melodies, lyrics, and phrases. As each element layers and interweaves, they grow into sprawling webs of ghostly sound. Prior to Vines, Wieland composed pieces for other people to play using a minimalist’s sensibility, writing slowly unfolding melodies for instruments like violin and saxophone. In recent years, she sharpened her solo style across a variety of singles and covers which have garnered significant attention on social media for their emotional resonance (“being loved isn't the same as being understood” in particular went massively viral on TikTok in 2024). Birthday Party, her debut as Vines, brought her writing to a much more intimate space, centering on her vocoded voice cloaked in feathery reverb. A series of recent singles, meanwhile, including “I am my home,” showcase the way that Wieland’s music is born from the story of her innermost feelings, extending far beyond just the self.

Though Wieland’s music often deals with dark themes, it unfolds with tender melancholy, the kind that feels like a warm embrace. On “Evicted,” Wieland wonders if she’s getting sick or moving on, if she’s lost or found. Her vocals expand with each lyrical repetition, as the instrumentals slowly encircle and the music’s rhythm grows and bursts into a heart-wrenching, yet radiant wave reminiscent of post-rock bands like Explosions in the Sky. “Tired” follows a similar trajectory, building from a looping, melancholy rhythm and floating lyrics into a solemn resignation. Elsewhere, Wieland takes a more ruminative approach: “Omw” begins with twinkling piano and melancholy strings that gradually transform into an undulating mass. It is a song born out of the warm feeling of reminiscence, the slight return of hope that comes with nostalgia.

With any searching journey, there is also a point of understanding. The title track closes the album with the freedom of acceptance. A marching drum beats steadily beneath Wieland’s open vocals, moving forward, ever onward as it flies into the ether. In Wieland’s delicately textured music, there is room to come into yourself, and learn to love whomever that is. I’ll be here is a special space that can be all your own, one in which to feel what needs to be felt. “This is music for your story,” Wieland said. “I want you to use it how you need it.”

With a room fulla fine pickers and a set of Hollywood orchestral cues to kill for, Cory Hanson proclaims I Love People! His 4th solo album drills down (baby) on a dryly parallax worldview, with songs about all those people he loves and all the crazy things they get up to. As ringmaster for a circus show of classic folk and rock tropes, Cory tugs at our heartstrings with expert misdirection, embracing tradition by throwing it out, into the wind.

With a room fulla fine pickers and a set of Hollywood orchestral cues to kill for, Cory Hanson proclaims I Love People! His 4th solo album drills down (baby) on a dryly parallax worldview, with songs about all those people he loves and all the crazy things they get up to. As ringmaster for a circus show of classic folk and rock tropes, Cory tugs at our heartstrings with expert misdirection, embracing tradition by throwing it out, into the wind.

Balmat 17 marks both a return and a new frontier. It is the second album on the label from Patricia Wolf, whose 2022 album See-Through is one of the most beloved in Balmat’s catalog; it also marks the first time that Wolf has turned her hand to a film soundtrack. The results are every bit as magical as fans of the Portland, Oregon, composer’s music might expect.

Hrafnamynd—Icelandic for “raven film”—is a new feature-length documentary by experimental filmmaker Edward Pack Davee. Shot on a mix of film and digital formats, and incorporating his father’s Ektachrome slides from the 1970s, the autobiographical film works on multiple levels at once: a reminiscence of his childhood in Iceland, an exploration of landscape and folklore, and a documentary study of the island nation’s ravens—including a talking raven named Krummi.

Wolf is the perfect artist to score such an unusual film. Mixing ambient music and field recording—including extensive experience documenting bird song—Wolf brings an unusually empathic perspective to her music. In the context of Hrafnamynd, her airy melodies, pensive atmospheres, and vivid textures intuitively complement the film’s grainy film stock and blown-out colors. Friends for years, the two artists further bonded when Wolf asked Pack to film music videos for her songs “Woodland Encounter” (from See-Through) and “The Culmination Of” (from I'll Look For You In Others). Pack used Wolf’s previously recorded music as placeholders as he began assembling a rough cut of the film, which made her a natural choice to help him complete his idiosyncratic vision with an all-new, bespoke score.

But Wolf’s soundtrack also indisputably stands alone as a full-length album. Largely created using the UDO Super 6 synthesizer, it features a carefully distilled palette of warm, string-like pads and darkly glistening mallets, rounded out with the very occasional introduction of nylon string guitar. Musically and stylistically, the album’s 11 tracks represent both a continuation of the ruminative sound of See-Through and also an extension into new expressive modes. Few musicians, ambient or otherwise, are as skilled at balancing melody with atmosphere, or at finding ways to eke fresh at finding ways to eke fresh, surprising sounds out of an intentionally reduced toolkit. Meditative, immersive, and emotionally generous Wolf’s Hrafnamynd soundtrack evokes a range of ambient classics from decades past while confidently marking out its own verdant patch of ground.


Artist’s Statement:
Edward and I have been friends for years, but we really started to get to know one another better after I hired him to make music videos for my songs “Woodland Encounter” and “The Culmination Of.” For those projects we got to spend a lot of time hiking in various locations around the Pacific Northwest with his camera, very nice lenses, and tripod. Keeping quiet, hidden, and vigilant we searched for wildlife, good light on the trees, meadows, lakes, rivers, and skies. Edward was already an appreciator of my music and I was already in awe of his filmmaking talents so it felt like a great fit. Although we work in different areas of art our styles compliment one another. We both tend toward slow and careful pacing, with a focus on emotion and introspective reflections on life and the landscapes around us. For this reason, Iknew that I could trust Edward to create videos for my music. We saw so many beautiful and unexpected things on our filming days, but I was moved to tears once I saw how magnificent and poetic it all was. His video work from the cinematography, to the editing, and color correction helped bring my inner vision to life.

A few months after that, Edward surprised me with an invitation to work on the soundtrack for his new film, Hrafnamynd. I enthusiastically said yes. I had always wanted to work on a film, and I knew that his filmmaking style would be inspiring to write music for. I had recently acquired an UDO Super 6 synthesizer but hadn't used it much. I decided that this would be the synth that I'd use for the film. It has the ability to sound very modern, but can also sound so warm and fuzzy, like a synth from the 1970s. It turned out to be the perfect instrument for this project as the film itself straddles time from the ’70s to today.

When Edward sent me the rough cut of the film, he used placeholder music to help give me an idea of the emotion and energy that he was hoping to achieve for each scene. For many of the scenes, Edward used music from my albums as temporary tracks. This told me that he trusted my work and style and therefore I should just trust my intuition with how to proceed. I wanted to make sure that everything that I made was a direct reflection of what was happening on screen, a mirror of its emotion and energy so people could really lock into the film psychologically. This process took my composing to unexpected places—like being led by a strange cat or a raven that seemed to have something to show me. I found that the approach made the music so much more dynamic than my usual style. I really enjoyed being influenced by the action and dialog on the screen. Thankfully, Edward was very happy with the work. I made sure to handle this project with the utmost care because this is about his life and his family, and an exploration of the experiences that made him an artist and filmmaker. While watching the film many times over, I found myself thinking about my own family and my early memories with them and how the place where I grew up has influenced who I have become. I found that his film invites the viewer to reflect on their own lives in a similar way. I hope that this music and film can guide others to contemplate on the history of their beingness and the people and places that shaped them.

Another aspect to this project is the splendor and wonder of Iceland itself. I had the opportunity to visit Iceland for the first time in 2023. I got to play a show there for the Extreme Chill Festival and met many friendly and brilliant Icelanders. I also got to collect field recordings that I used in the film. It's a fascinating place and culture that easily captures the hearts and imaginations of anyone who visits. Whether you spend your time in the city immersed in its impressive arts scene, or venture out into the wilderness to behold its wondrous landscape, it will leave a lasting impression. The soundtrack is also a love letter to Iceland itself.

S4R49 focuses on the legendary Muscle Shoals Sound Studio and features four previously unreleased tracks: two by the wonderful Katie Love; a fabulous version of Phillip Mitchell’s "Hitch Hike to Heartbreak Road" by Curtis Wiggins; and an exquisite song from Sandra Wright’s lost session at the studio, written by George Jackson and recorded in January 1978—proof that the magic was still alive.

GRAMMY-award winning blues icon Koko Taylor was a force of nature. The legendary Queen of the Blues was one of the genre’s best-selling and most recognizable artists. With her huge, gritty voice and the backing of her powerhouse band, The Blues Machine, she delivered tough Chicago blues over a 45-year career, ending with her death in 2009. For people all over the world, her music IS the blues as much as BB King’s or Buddy Guy’s. Crown Jewels is the first new Koko Taylor vinyl to be released in 35 years, and as the title makes clear, it’s packed with over 50 minutes of the finest performances from her celebrated Alligator years. These are songs blues fans know and love by heart, from “Wang Dang Doodle” to “Hey Bartender” to “Let The Good Times Roll.” It’s gritty, unvarnished, old-school blues and proud of it, every track infused with Koko’s ageless energy and passion. Fellow Chicago blues greats Buddy Guy and Carey Ball guest.

*People Like Us, the project of artist Vicki Bennet returns to Discrepant with a special vinyl release of "COPIA". This album marks the first new musical material since "The Mirror" in 2018, delving into the profound realms of existential collage and sampling, celebrating these forms as expressions of timeless connectivity.
* The title "COPIA," meaning 'abundance' and 'copy,' reflects the essence of collage and sampling - art created not in isolation, but as a connective thread through time and space, linking ideas across generations in a seamless tapestry.
* By reconfiguring preexisting sounds and images, Bennet highlights the non-dual nature of creation — where distinctions between past, present, and future possibilities blur, revealing a shared foundation beneath. The album marks a return to not just solo works but collaborations with notable artists.
* Drawing from the new People Like Us live AV performance, "The Library of Babel," sampling and edited sound collage, electronic music, combined with Ergo Phizmiz's lyrics and melodies, "COPIA" weaves and recombines a timeless blend of diverse elements that transcends traditional musical boundaries. This creative process unfolded through the exchange of multitracks across both water and ether. Collaborating with the voices, instruments and editing timelines of Matmos, Hearty White, Gwilly Edmondez, Lotte Bowater, Buttress O’Kneel, Douglas Benford, Irene Moon, Jon Leidecker, and Matt Warwick, the work evolved exquisite corpse-style.

“Bennett has proven herself an alchemist of popular music, able to push her source material into fresh and engaging places. Where some artists hack existing instruments and technologies to create their new sounds, Bennet has circuit-bent the songs themselves.” - Spenser Tomson, The Wire Magazine

For her second full-length as Plume Girl, Sowmya Somanath crafts a space where boundaries of language, feeling, and sound start to dissolve. ‘Unnameable Glory’ ruminates on the limits of expression, and the luminous freedom that emerges when we let go of the need to name. Elaborating on the exploratory songs of her debut, Plume Girl continues to bring together Hindustani classical improvisation, ambient soundscapes, and experimental pop.

Somanath’s voice—from gentle murmur to radiant call—guides the listener through dreamlike arrangements: sunrise guitar arpeggios, humming choirs, heartbeat kickdrums, and synths tremble. Elsewhere field sounds and old family recordings are collaged, a woman’s giggle transposed into a piano melody, a sloshing body of water mirrored by synth bleeps. Plume Girl conjures moments of revelation, drawing from the natural beauty and intuition, that unnameable glory.

Is there a divinity or a wholeness that exists beyond language, belief, or tradition? Unnameable Glory both celebrates and gently challenges the notion: Can we honour the creative richness of culture while also seeing through the divisions it creates? Can we meet the world—and each other—without assumption, without fear, with eyes made new? In these songs, the sacred is found not in grand gestures, but in the anonymous freedom of simply being: the iridescence of oil and water on a street, the smile of a stranger, the hush that settles by a creek.

At the heart of the album is a sense of curiosity and surrender—a willingness to listen without judgment, to let the moment be unnameable, to allow wonder to arise and dissolve. And yet, as Somanath notes, there’s an impulse to capture that’s tough to ignore; a need to replicate and remember. Unnameable Glory dwells in this tension: between holding and letting go, between the urge to define and the beauty of what cannot be contained. There is a quiet, revolutionary joy in simply living and sensing together. Music becomes a meeting place for the whole, the holy, and the unnamable.

Originally issued on Hut Records in June 2000, Alone With Everybody was eagerly anticipated, as it was Ashcroft's first recordings since the demise of the group he founded and led, The Verve - This re-issue replicates the 2000 UK first pressing and is available on audiophile 180g double vinyl in gatefold sleeve.

Opening the album with its string overture, "Song For The Lovers" signalled Ashcroft's intent immediately. Intensely melodic, anthemic, it picked up exactly where The Verve's 1997 multi-platinum album Urban Hymns left off. Lifted as a single, it reached No 3 in the UK and spent most of the summer on the charts.

Recorded at Olympic Studios and Metropolis in London, big, bold and frequently beautiful, Alone With Everybody raced to No 1 in early July; it played to all of Ashcroft's strengths, memorable hooks, catchy choruses, beats subtly influenced by dance music; the brass-blazing bold hoedown of "Money To Burn" was the album's second single; other highlights include the ballad "Slow Was My Heart", the upbeat joy of "C'Mon People (We're Making It Now)" and the reflective, string-enrobed "You On My Mind In My Sleep".

LDF (Lello Di Franco) makes a powerful return to Skylax, this time teaming up with Detroit's own Javonntte. Following his stellar release with Gari Romalis, LDF delivers a release that is pure gold for fans of the original Detroit sound. If you appreciate the styles of Moodymann, Theo Parrish, or Omar S, this record is bound to resonate deeply. The EP opens with "Disco One (All Night Long)," a groove-heavy track that embodies the essence of classic Detroit house. It pulses with soulful basslines and infectious rhythms, setting a hypnotic tone that's perfect for late-night sessions. "Saved" ventures into Chicago acid territory, a tribute to the raw, driving energy of classic acid house. With its punchy 303 basslines and tight, snappy percussion, it channels the best of Chicago's underground with a fresh, modern edge. "After Midnight" offers a smooth, after-hours vibe, balancing deep, jazzy chords with a pulsating rhythm that keeps the energy simmering. It's a track that brings warmth and intimacy, ideal for closing sets or introspective moments. "Martha" is a lush, emotionally rich track that embodies LDF's Italian roots while staying grounded in Detroit's heritage. With warm melodies and a rolling bassline, it delivers a balance between soulful warmth and a classic dancefloor feel. "Love Anthem" is a heartfelt groove, merging lush pads and laid-back percussion with a sense of nostalgic euphoria. It's a track that brings people together, a true love letter to house music. "People From Mars" pays homage to Omar S, with its stripped-down, gritty approach. The track has a rough, analog feel, capturing the raw energy and spirit of Detroit's underground. Finally, "The Dirty Digital Show" closes the EP on an intense note, with a driving rhythm and futuristic soundscapes. As an Italian DJ and producer from Naples, LDF brings his decades of experience—starting from his early inspirations in house and techno in 1993—into this record. Also, as co-owner of Frole Records and co-founder of Basic Frame Distribution, his knowledge of the scene is profound, and it's reflected in each meticulously crafted track. This release is a testament to the timelessness and diversity of house music.

Artwork done by legendary french cult designer H5 (Daft Punk, Air, Etienne de Crecy …)

When Alanis Morissette took direct aim at an ex who wronged her on the eviscerating “You Oughta Know” in 1995, everything about the Top 10 song communicated it wasn’t the usual narrative about love gone south. Or the typical wounded singer wallowing in self pity. Morissette, and both the lead single from and her entire American major-label debut — the profoundly personal Jagged Little Pill — represented a sea change. They kickstarted a movement, one whose impact continues to echo throughout the mainstream nearly three decades later.

Ranked the 69th Greatest Album of All Time by Rolling Stone, included on the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s list of 200 Definitive Albums, and featured in several books about essential albums, Jagged Little Pill remains more than a blockbuster that has sold more than 17 million copies in the U.S. and 33 million units worldwide. It’s a statement, an attitude, a soundtrack for anyone seeking inspiration, an outlet, or permission to be themselves.

Sourced from the original master tapes, pressed at Fidelity Record Pressing on MoFi SuperVinyl, and strictly limited to 4,000 numbered copies, Mobile Fidelity’s UltraDisc One-Step 180g 45RPM 2LP box set of Jagged Little Pill presents the landmark effort in audiophile-grade sound for the first time. A key part of the record’s appeal and accessibility — Glen Ballard’s smooth production, touches that help Morissette’s exposed-nerve fare seem more accessible and melodic — comes through on this special 30th anniversary edition with an openness, presence, and dynamic explosiveness that make the vocalist’s songs that much more real and visceral.

The singer’s distinctive mezzo-soprano deliveries — the octave-rippling highs, dark-hued lows, dramatic crescendos, belted choruses, wispy reflections, occasional yodels — resonate with full-range ardor and depth. As crucial as anything on the record, Morissette’s confessional words take center stage like never before. Ditto the instrumentation and atmospherics that form the magnetic backgrounds of the songs. Key in on the contributions from Red Hot Chili Peppers Dave Navarro and Flea on “You Oughta Know” to Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers' co-founder Benmont Tench’s organ playing on six tracks.

The deluxe packaging of Mobile Fidelity’s Jagged Little Pill UD1S set underscores the work’s distinguished status. Housed in a slipcase, the LPs come in special foil-stamped jackets with faithful-to-the-original graphics that illuminate the splendor of the recording. Benefitting from an ultra-low noise floor, superior groove definition, and dead-quiet surfaces, this UD1S reissue is for listeners who prize sound quality and desire to engage themselves in everything involved with the album, including the now-iconic cover art that juxtaposes two portraits of the then-21-year-old singer-songwriter and features typewriter font.

That script — which suggests a raw, blood-on-the-floor document created without modern aids like spell check or language correction — hints at the heightened level of unvarnished intimacy, honesty, and catharsis Morissette offers throughout Jagged Little Pill. Named after a phrase uttered on the astute “You Learn,” the album explores the frank emotions, inherent contradictions, and wishful desires people feel everyday but are often too afraid to express. Morissette displays no such fear or shyness.

Akin to a woman reading from a diary, Morissette leaves nothing to the imagination as she skewers hypocrisy during the poignant “Forgiven,” seeks recompense on the vengeful “You Oughta Know,” and spills her guts on the soul-purging “All I Really Want.” For all the anger and bile ascribed to the singer and record, Jagged Little Pill is incredibly healthy and upbeat. Morissette uses the catchy pop-rock frameworks and moody ambience to suss out situations, to learn, to give hope. There’s the clever yearning of “Hand in My Pocket”; wry contrarianism of “Ironic”; kind-heartedness of “Hand over Feet”; the live-and-let-live spirit of “You Learn” – all positive and amiable.

Throughout Jagged Little Pill, the ever-approachable Morissette connects with listeners who recognize themselves in her — and has an intelligent conversation with anyone who wants to participate. It seemed almost everyone did. In addition to the mammoth sales that make the effort the 17th-best-selling album in American history, Jagged Little Pill collected four Grammy Awards, two American Music Awards, three Billboard Music Awards, and eight Juno Awards. In 2018, the record became the basis for a musical that netted 15 Tony nominations on Broadway.

Ironic? Anything but. Jagged Little Pill transcends generations, gender, and trends. As Morissette sings on the opening “All I Really Want,”, the album represents “deliverance” — “a place to find common ground.”

Rodina is the project of singer-songwriter Aoife Hearty and partner Joe Tatton, keys-player & co-writer from The New Mastersounds and leader of the Joe Tatton Trio. On Good Company, their first new album in 6 years, the two are joined by other great musicians including guitarist Lucas De Mulder, drummer Luke Flowers, The Filthy Six horns, and members of The Haggis Horns, among others.

Like their previous records there is a strong acid jazz slant to many of the songs, whether interpreted through a modern soul lens such as in opener "Simple Pleasures" or swaying more towards cosmic jazz-funk such as "We Go Out Of Our Way" or "Trust In This Life", which were the first singles lifted from the album.

Throw in some hippy Americana and even a tinge of Gospel and you end up with catchy songs that include both uptempo earworms like the super charged foot stomper "Good People" or the festival anthemic "Inspiration" and some beautiful chilled moments such as "All Over The Sky" and "Flowers".

Recorded at their small countryside recording studio in the Peak District this is the fourth vinyl produced at their studio after The New Mastersounds' Old School and Joe Tatton Trio's Galactico.

"PEOPLE" (original release year : 1988)
Hothouse Flowers' debut album People (1988) was a remarkable fusion of rock, folk, and soulful blues, spearheaded by the charismatic vocals of Liam Ó Maonlaí. The album was anchored by the hit single 'Don't Go', which propelled the band to international recognition.

With rich instrumentation and passionate performances, People stood out for its refreshing blend of Irish musical roots with contemporary rock influences.

The album was the fastest-selling debut in Irish history at the time. It topped the Irish Albums Chart and peaked at No. 2 on the UK Albums Chart, while also making significant impact in the U.S. and other markets. People was certified Platinum in the UK and Double Platinum in Ireland. Backed by strong singles like 'I'm Sorry' and 'Feet on the Ground,' the album sustained impressive momentum, further fuelled by the band's dynamic live performances.

People solidified Hothouse Flowers as one of the most exciting Irish bands of the late '80s, demonstrating the band's ability to bridge genres while delivering powerful, heartfelt music.

For 2025 Hothouse Flowers celebrate both People and its follow up album Home with a UK national tour revisiting both albums in full.

London Records celebrate the tour with represses of People and Home on vinyl, with restored artwork faithful to the original editions.

LP - First Pressing in White Color Vinyl - Limited to 150

Includes: Gatefold. stickers + poster (60cm x 60cm) + download code

5 Years, All Ears, All Heart. Fifteen years ago there wasn't a grand plan, no vision board or 10-year strategy. It wasn't about fame and acclaim, it has always been about feelings and encounters. Meeting people who made music, loved music, were music. Fast forward a bit and the family just kept expanding. It wasn't just producers and DJs anymore, designers, writers, random hype people, "vinyl faced" ones... Everyone brought something different to the table and somehow, through our filter, it took us here. House, Jazz, Techno, Experimental, it didn't matter. The only rule was that the music had to feel alive, with a Jazzy twist, where "Jazzy" means a propensity to improvisation, not just music. This is not a story about numbers or streams. It's about people and places. Every track has a face behind it: the producer who turned a three-note loop into gold, the designer who nailed an album cover in one chaotic night, the heads who spun the story for the release and the friends who supported and listened. That is the soul of Apparel Music and that's why the cover for this "B-Day15" isn't gleaming or shiny, it's real. It's a celebration of encounters. The messy, magical moments when people connect and make something bigger than themselves. It's a big THANK YOU to all the characters who hopped on this ride. This record, dropping in both vinyl and digital formats and featuring artists from all over the world, is the symbol of the Apparel Music essence. From the USA with Osunlade to Australia with Erin Buku & Inkswel; from Denmark with Ghosten (featuring Francesca Touré and IZZY NU) to Italy with 2KS and Kisk; Argentina and Brazil with Eduardo and HNQO (with Collateral Lab), Spain with Tuccillo, Germany and The Netherlands with Marcel Vogel & LYMA. It's about exploring genres, diving into far-off worlds, being curious about other places, other people and figuring out how to make them all feel comfy under the same roof, chilling in the same room. A room we've been furnishing for a while with our little treasures, some fancy furniture, some not-so-fancy, but always with passion. There's more music to make, more stories to discover, more people to meet. Apparel Music is not just a label anymore, it's a big, instinctive, unplanned love letter to everyone who's been and who'll be a part of it. 15 Years, All Ears, All Heart.

VERY LIMITED 2025 REPRESS ON BEAM OF LIGHT VINYL .

Everything changed for The Beths when they released their debut album, Future Me Hates Me, in 2018. The indie rock band had long been nurtured within Auckland, New Zealand’s tight-knit music scene, working full-time during the day and playing music with friends after hours. Full of uptempo pop rock songs with bright, indelible hooks, the LP garnered them critical acclaim from outlets like Pitchfork and Rolling Stone, and they set out for their first string of shows overseas. They quit their jobs, said goodbye to their home town, and devoted themselves entirely to performing across North America and Europe. They found themselves playing to crowds of devoted fans and opening for acts like Pixies and Death Cab for Cutie. Almost instantly, The Beths turned from a passion project into a full-time career in music.

Songwriter and lead vocalist Elizabeth Stokes worked on what would become The Beths’ second LP, Jump Rope Gazers, in between these intense periods of touring. Like the group’s earlier music, the album tackles themes of anxiety and self-doubt with effervescent power pop choruses and rousing backup vocals, zeroing in on the communality and catharsis that can come from sharing stressful situations with some of your best friends. Stokes’s writing on Jump Rope Gazers grapples with the uneasy proposition of leaving everything and everyone you know behind on another continent, chasing your dreams while struggling to stay close with loved ones back home.

"If you're at a certain age, all your friends scatter to the four winds,” Stokes says. “We did the same thing. When you're home, you miss everybody, and when you're away, you miss everybody. We were just missing people all the time.”

With songs like the rambunctious “Dying To Believe” and the tender, shoegazey “Out of Sight,” The Beths reckon with the distance that life necessarily drives between people over time. People who love each other inevitably fail each other. “I’m sorry for the way that I can’t hold conversations/They’re such a fragile thing to try to support the weight of,” Stokes sings on “Dying to Believe.” The best way to repair that failure, in The Beths’ view, is with abundant and unconditional love, no matter how far it has to travel. On “Out of Sight,” she pledges devotion to a dearly missed friend: “If your world collapses/I’ll be down in the rubble/I’d build you another,” she sings.

“It was a rough year in general, and I found myself saying the words, 'wish you were here, wish I was there,’ over and over again,” she says of the time period in which the album was written. Touring far from home, The Beths committed themselves to taking care of each other as they were trying at the same time to take care of friends living thousands of miles away. They encouraged each other to communicate whenever things got hard, and to pay forward acts of kindness whenever they could. That care and attention shines through on Jump Rope Gazers, where the quartet sounds more locked in than ever. Their most emotive and heartfelt work to date, Jump Rope Gazers stares down all the hard parts of living in communion with other people, even at a distance, while celebrating the ferocious joy that makes it all worth it -- a sentiment we need now more than ever.

"HOME" (Original Release year : 1990)

Hothouse Flowers' sophomore album, Home, released in 1990, built on the success of their debut People while showcasing a more mature and introspective sound while maintaining their signature heartfelt, genre-blending approach to music. The album continued their signature fusion of rock, folk, gospel, and blues, its tracks demonstrating both introspection and a vibrant energy.

Home reached No. 1 on the Irish Albums Chart and peaked at No. 5 in the UK. The album was certified Gold in the UK and Platinum in Ireland, reaffirming the band's status as one of Ireland's most successful exports at the time. Lead single 'Give It Up' became a fan favourite, while the band's cover of Johnny Nash's 'I Can See Clearly Now' broadened their appeal, a Top 5 in Ireland and chart hit in UK and Australia.

The band's relentless touring and powerful live shows helped sustain Home's international momentum and commercial success. For 2025 Hothouse Flowers celebrate both Home and its predecessor People with a UK national tour revisiting both albums in full.

London Records celebrate the tour with represses of People and Home on vinyl, with restored artwork faithful to the original editions.

For Wilkes-Barre's One Step Closer - the concept of home is complicated. "I've never felt so distant in my life," vocalist Ryan Savitski screams on the lead single "Pringle Street," a place in his hometown that binds the album's lyrics to both a precise location and feeling of displacement. On their first ever full-length album and debut for Run For Cover This Place You Know, the band offers a modern coming-of-age story about growing up and grasping both the known and the unknown. One Step Closer started in 2016 and in their short five years, Savitski, along with drummer Tommy Norton, bassist Brian Talipan and guitarists Ross Thompson & Grady Allen have come into their own as a modern hardcore mainstay. Their 2019 EP 'From Me To You' countered existing trends in exchange for a more melodic sound in the vein of bands like Turning Point and Title Fight. They went on to open for Have Heart at the band's now legendary reunion shows that summer, and joined bands like Knuckle Puck and Turnstile on tour before pausing to write their debut album. This Place You Know grapples with the weight of themes like isolation, depression, and loss - all amplified by driving bass lines, em-phatic guitar riffs and unwavering drumming performed by the band. From the first moments of album opener "I Feel So," the stakes are made clear by the anchoring lyric 'this place you know, sometimes it hides the truth and lets people go" - One Step Closer is attempting to resolve the unresolvable anguish of moving on from everything you once knew.

Love in the time of collectively assured techno-capitalist-nuclear holocaust! It’s the endless summer the Brits have been harping on about since they think they won the World Cup. The soundtrack is the debut album of the Content Provider; where Octatrack illbient and industrial chanson mesh in a singed postcard addressed to the UK Border Force and co-signed by aliens plucked from the petri dishes of Young Echo, Cold Light and Avon Terror Corps.
It’s a name she tried to keep anonymous, but Drowned By Locals and Bokeh Versions are breaking contract to reveal that the Content Provider is in fact the shock production alias of DALI DE SAINT PAUL. Patron saint of Bristol’s self-destructive improv idols EP/64 as well as post-feminist chamber collective Viridian Ensemble, avant-terror duo Harrga and constant collaborator with the likes of *breathe* Moor Mother, Valentina Magaletti, Mariam Rezaei, Vincent Moon, Maxwell Sterling, Ossia, Ben Vince.
And isn’t it such a strange release? And won’t people be surprised? Endless Summer is grubby and heartfelt, defiant and hopeful, with flecks of warped reggae on E-System nudging the freeform dream balladry of A Feeling and Sunday Morning, Kode9 & Spaceape-worthy dread poetry of Close Ur Eyes next to anthemic electro-crush of Overdrive. Even to those that know her well, and EVERYONE with their belly in the Bristol underground knows her, Endless Summer is a revelation. Perhaps the apex of the known Dali-verse……where her live gigs have boiled with an experimental volcanic vocal force, Endless Summer is twisted, syrupy, sultry, POP.

‘You are behind the damn wheel every day and you don’t even know it’ , weightily remarks Powerplant’s band leader Theo Zhykharyev on the reading of his latest single. London-based project signals the return to signature formula of marching drum machines and wailing synthesisers, matured by life experiencing of prolonged touring. ’Car is life, brother. Sometimes you drive it, other times - the car drives you. And, statistically, we’ll all see the airbags go off sooner than later as consequence of choices made by us or onto us, consciously or not.’
Crashing Cars breaks out the gates to the heavy low end driven dance floor. ‘I was listening to a lot of Bladee when I wrote it and needed a similar thick kick to get you moving’, says Theo. Its an emotionally loaded cannon of a track that will keep you in its grip until it has run its course and told its story. Yearning from connection unfulfilled, rings out through the heartbroken and weeping synth and choir lines. The ever-morphing and dynamic bass works in tandem with razor sharp guitars. The instrumentation, through combined ‘no looking back’ forward charge and immediacy, conjure a manic and emotional forward momentum, which rings out in the song’s lyrics. The vocal performance ranges from the trademark Powerplant goblin squeaks, to more mature, tour-hardened singing. On a sonic aesthetic level, Crashing Cars vibrates in a familiar fashion to Powerplant’s biggest hit Dungen. However, this time far less playful and harder hitting. Described as the fallout of “avoiding, chasing and running away”, lyrically it paints a dead end in human relationships concluding it car-crash heading for the scrapyard. The song concludes with a loaded four line spoken word poetry segment, that hangs over the fleeting outro.
The B side of the single, Never Smile, rolls the speed back, but throws in jangly guitar hooks and bouncy bass lines. Zhykharyev’s vocals sit in a lower register, hence are more stoic and melancholic. If this track had to be a day of the week, it would be a calm, introspective Sunday. With lyrics about looking into evil omens, the sky and reading people as ‘not something different’, it paints an ambiguous, but heavy conclusion about the world and its people. It tells a story about circumstantially settling into an identity and playing the assigned part for the convenience of the external world. It’s easier to fit than to stand apart. It's a perfect balance of mid-tempo radio-rock that builds and changes, before exploding into a shaggy guitar solo, only to go into an unexpected ethereal outro and this 7”s crescendo.
‘Both of these songs are kinda old now, sitting at around 4 years old. And although I haven’t changed the lyrics since then, I somehow find new meaning in them as time goes on. Being Ukrainian and going into the fourth year of the full scale Russian invasion back home, the chorus “my death to you - a better price to pay” makes a lot of sense looking at how the world powers are trying to spin the devastation of my people for a quick profit and an easier life for themselves. This single coming out now at this very point in my life feels both profound and very ironic. Life never ends’, summarises Zhykharyev.

Having spent the last half decade building up a name as a jazz and soul singer of rare distinction, Ada Morghe now presents her fourth album, 'Pure Good Vibes', which features the British reggae icon Maxi Priest A trip to Jamaica in January 2024 set 'Pure Good Vibes' in motion. Ada headed to th island after hearing that her bassist and producer Livingstone Brown, was flying the to work with Maxi Priest. It was an idea that was underlined by her desire to explo the music, culture and Jamaican heritage that had also shaped the lives of her oth band members Luke Smith (keyboard) and Josh McNasty (drums). The resulting album is a beautiful, intimate reflection on adult themes, such a keeping the passion alive, making the most of life's sweet moments and capturing th closeness of two people in love, which is underpinned by a sound that, though n beholden to Jamaica's musical traditions, certainly shares a spirit with them. The are other influences - such as Michael Kiwanuka's soulful fervour, the vibrancy of '60 R&B, and a love of Sade's 'Diamond Life'. Before stepping whole- heartedly into music, Ada Morghe was already a renowne actress and an award-winning author in her homeland of Germany. Having written an starred in the play-turned-film 'Frau Mutter Tier' and been asked to write songs for i soundtrack, she found herself working with former Prince sound engineer Han Martin Buff. That led her to Abbey Road studios in London, her debut album 'Picture and 2020's 'Box', an expression of her refusal to be tied down to any one genre o profession. From there came 2023's 'Lost', a free-flowing vocal jazz suite based on th four elements. 'Pure Good Vibes', however, pulls her toward what sounds like her most natural albu yet: sophisticated jazz and soul that deals with both the romance and reality o matters of the heart.