Search:house sounds

Dusky’s Life Signs project for Running Back remixed! The Londoners and their distinct hallmark of euphoric, yet multilayered dance floor dynamite get treated by Cinthie, KiNK and Rumu. Similar to the scope of original artists themselves, their interpretations are a wide choice of styles and suitable for different usages. Berlin’s true school house head Cinthie delivers her tried, tested and desired method of disco bass lines and deep house melodies on „Static“, while everyone’s favorite live act from Sofia turns the sounds of „Fridge“ into a lost mid-90ies techno classic. KiNK’s high-octane take would fit perfectly on every fantasy mixtape of Derrick May or Laurent Garnier of those days. Last, but not least, Dusky very own discovery and 17Steps artist Rumu uses „Lea Valley“ to punch his ticket with the UK bass and breaks fare. These goods sell well!

After a steady rise to international recognition through 2 LPS and several EP's already since 2018, Zeitgeist Freedom Energy Exchange joins the Get Together family for their first recording session in Europe. "Prayer For Peace" - A 7 track journey through atmospheric scenes, broken to deep four on floor rhythms and colourful top lines. From the Jazz-funk inspired 'Prayer For Peace' to the infectious Boogie twilight of 'Cadillac' this is a record that is equally well suited to dance floor applications as it is to an intimate night with the turntable spinning and the sensual herbs burning.
This Recording represents the Berlin chapter of the Zeitgeist Freedom Energy Exchange. The curated jam band moniker of Ziggy Zeitgeist, the experiment having emerged from the murky depths of the Melbourne underground. Zeitgeist arrived in Berlin in summer 2019 wasting no time in assembling a talented and diverse group of assorted freaks from many corners of the world to bring their own languages, melodies, rhythms and swagger on this cross continental meeting point.
This session captures the raw energetic fusion of such diverse and innovative musicians scene co-existing in the Techno capital of the world. This city already has its own sound, its own attitude. It's no wonder artists gather from every corner of the world to discover themselves through the lens of the city. That is the sound of the 'Zeitgeist Berlin era' the group explores deeper, darker sounds of the club emerging from their signature hip slinging disco, funk fusion.
For such an occasion the recording was engineered and mixed by platinum producer / engineer Axel Reinemer in the esteemed Jazzanova studios. 3 days of steamy Berlin summer looking over the ring-bahn towards the swamps of the Tegel Forest to the north. Spiritual jazz interludes flirt delicately with bouncing Brazilian rhythms. Psychedelic dub-grooves meander before exploding into bursts of finessed energy, before locking into steady and deep-house rollers.... All live, All together in the room, all real human spirit imbued in every note, with the level of production to easily stand up on the club system This is the kind of record that is as diverse as it is essential in every serious collectors artillery.

Rocksteady Disco returns with a package of officially licensed remixes of Brasilian master percussionist Dudu Tucci. As you’ve come to expect from the Rocksteady Disco family the release is a diverse one, starting with the peak hour acid vibes of “Luana (Pontchartrain Tuluminati Dub)”. Rounding out the A-side is the pensive and moody driving afro house of “Pai Benedeto (Kiko Navarro Remix feat. Carlos Mena)”, complete with a monologue reminding us why we get together in front of soundsystems and dance. On the B-side Blair French puts his foot in “Luana” only the way he can, with tons of drums and a dread bassline for the after hour freaks. Peter Croce closes out the release with his sensual Balearic-meets-Donald-Fagen remix of “Shakehands” featuring a stellar synth solo from Topher Horn. Cut loud to high quality wax, don’t sleep.

Vega Records presents the first Tony Touch / Louie Vega collaboration, the summer anthem “Sacude” now on a special vinyl double pack with remixes by Vega, Manoo, Oscar G, & Touch. If you had one latin house track to play during your set, this surely is the one with the universal appeal. Tony Touch delivers with the infectious hook “Sacude” and the remixes compliment his vocal with powerful drive. Whether the Afro House sounds of Manoo, to the latin underground house of Vega, the hard latin house sounds of Oscar G, or with latin hip-house vibes of Tony Touch, any one of the remixes will have people stomping’ their feet and singing the hooky “Sacudeeeeeee”.

‘The Afro Modern Seventies Sounds of Soweto’s First Nightclub

• Over ten years in the making, this is the first compilation from South African vinyl re-issue specialists Matsuli Music

• Ten track double gatefold album journey through jazz, funk, fusion and disco, detailing the incredible story and sounds behind the Soweto nightclub during the height of apartheid

• Uniquely South African take on the trans-Atlantic sounds of Philadelphia, Detroit and New York City

• Cover artwork by Zulu Bidi (of Batsumi fame) with unseen photographs, and liner notes by Kwanele Sosibo featuring interviews with key musicians, players and a former president of South Africa

• Audio mastered and cut for vinyl by Frank Merritt at The Carvery with heavyweight 180g vinyl pressed at Pallas in Germany

A night-time haunt in the backstreets of Soweto run by a well-known bootlegger should have been a prime zone for nefarious underworld activities. Instead, it nurtured an underground of a different kind. Soon after its opening in 1973, Club Pelican became a spot where musicians steeped in the tradition of South African jazz began to cook up experimental sounds inspired by communion, competition and the movements in funk and soul blowing in from the West. Located in an industrial park on the western edge of Orlando East, Soweto, Club Pelican was off the beaten track, among a matrix of railway and industrial infrastructure. In a different time and place, this would have been a prototypical nightclub location, except there was no local precedent to follow. This was Soweto’s first night club.
In the intervening years, this location has served to heighten the now-defunct spot’s legendary status as a singular venue, one that ruled the night in the Seventies. Initially called Lucky’s and established in 1973, the Pelican’s impact on the Soweto cultural landscape was immediate. Lorded over by a charismatic figure known as Lucky Michaels, the club became the jewel in a nondescript collection of family businesses. It boasted a diverse pool of talent in its succession of house bands and an A-list of ghetto-fabulous singers as

its cabaret stars. Its VIP section was a veritable who’s who of Soweto society and its stage, hosting a mix of the day’s pop culture infused with the creativity and individual histories of the musicians, the Pelican filled a live music vacuum.
One Night in Pelican captures the halcyon seventies period with a single nightclub embodying an indomitable spirit of its troubadour players. While schooled and rooted in “standards” and local forms, the music could take any direction, at a moment’s notice. This compilation features all the key groups and players of the time: Abacothozi, Almon Memela’s Soweto, The Black Pages, Dick Khoza and the Afro Pedlars, The Drive, Ensemble of Rhythm and Art , The Headquarters, Makhona Zonke Band, the Shyannes and Spirits Rejoice.’

As funny as it may sound, Anaïs Mitchell has spent the past 15 years in some kind of hell. OK, not actual hell, but the multi-faceted world of Hadestown, a musical project she began in Vermont in 2006 that has grown into a Tony®- and Grammy®-award-winning Broadway phenomenon with touring editions now delighting audiences as far away as South Korea.

“I experienced so much joy working on Hadestown, but it just kept ramping up and up and requiring more and more attention,” Mitchell admits. “I had to become so single-minded and really put blinders on to my other creative life.” As it did for many artists, the COVID-19 pandemic unexpectedly offered Mitchell a blank slate to reconnect with her own music. The result is a new self-titled album made with close collaborators from Bon Iver, The National and her own band Bonny Light Horseman, Mitchell’s first collection of all-new material under her own name since 2012’s Young Man in America.

“I was nine months pregnant when the pandemic reached New York, so we made an 11th hour decision to leave and have the baby in Vermont,” Mitchell recalls. “We left the city and had the baby a week later, and then like everyone, we were in the midst of this unprecedented stillness. It felt like I could see behind me: oh, there’s New York City. There’s Hadestown. There’s my life with just one kid. A certain kind of stress and expectations. In Vermont, we moved onto my family farm and lived in my grandparents’ old house, with a new baby. I’d look at pictures on my phone from a few months earlier and wonder, whose life was that? This record, and the songs that are on it, came out of that time. I got into a flow again that I hadn’t felt in a really long time.”

Dubbed by NPR as “one of the greatest songwriters of her generation,” Mitchell is a master of the worlds of narrative folksong, poetry and balladry. Those talents are evident from the first moments of the new album, as Mitchell narrates what she calls “an unbearably romantic” trip over the Brooklyn Bridge colored by Bon Iver member Michael Lewis’ heartstring-tugging saxophone accompaniment. “Having left New York, I was able to write a love letter to it in a way I never could when I was living there,” she says. “It was like, fuck it. This is how I feel. There is nothing more beautiful than riding over one of the New York bridges at night next to someone who inspires you.”

Produced by Mitchell’s Bonny Light Horseman bandmate Josh Kaufman, the album proceeds to chronicle Mitchell’s reconnection with the Vermont roots that have been so formative in her life and music. “Bright Star” finds her making peace with the idea of being at peace in the familiar setting of her grandparents’ house, while “Revenant” was inspired by paging through a box of journals and letters belonging to herself and her grandmother — “a very pandemic activity,” she says. “That house is literally my happy place. I can picture myself as a kid, in this house, laying on the carpet with a sunbeam coming through the sliding glass door. There’s something about it that is really connected in my mind to my childhood and a very free, imaginative, creative time. “Revenant” has a lot to do with that house and reconnecting with my childhood self.”

Mitchell concedes that she tends “to be someone who thinks it has to be hard in order for it to be good or beautiful,” but that feeling has changed, partly thanks to her deep connection with musicians she’s met through the 37d03d collective established by The National’s Aaron and Bryce Dessner and Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon. During the pandemic, some of those artists participated in a “song a day” writing group — an idea Mitchell says is usually “totally opposite of how I roll. But it really helped me to gain access to some kind of trust and intuition and flow. I began a bunch of these songs while doing that.”

“It unlocked something that allowed me to finish a bunch of songs I’d been sitting on, and feeling a bit paralyzed about how to finish them,” she continues. “Because no one was touring, it’s not like I was playing them for anyone before we were in the studio. In other times, I’ve trotted things out in advance. Here, it was like, here’s all these brand new songs. Let’s discover what they can be. That was really exciting.”

That discovery process took flight at Dreamland Recording Studios outside Woodstock, N.Y., which Mitchell describes as “this weird, janky, beautiful church - it’s my favorite studio in the world.” Kaufman, Lewis and Big Red Machine drummer JT Bates formed a core band around Mitchell, while Aaron Dessner and Thomas Bartlett joined the sessions mid-week on guitar and piano, respectively.

After the appropriate COVID tests came back negative, “it was a pretty extraordinary feeling to hug, kiss and share the same space playing together,” Mitchell says. “We went into that world for a week and didn’t leave the studio for any reason. I felt very safe with all those guys. It was warm and joyful.”

Mitchell says this environment brought out unexpected details in the material, which was recorded almost entirely live together in the room. “Sometimes we tried separating things out, like vocals, but we always ended up back in the room together,” she says. Indeed, after spending the better part of a day recording overdubbed versions of “Little Big Girl” that nobody loved, the musicians gave up and tracked it again live. “We got so frustrated that we went in and I was like, I’m just going to sing this as hard as I fucking can. It felt like that’s what the song wanted to be,” Mitchell says. “It felt like all those songs wanted to be recorded as live as possible.” The exception to the rule was Nico Muhly's arrangements for strings and flute, which were added from New York City afterward.

Mitchell will debut the new material during various headline tours in the U.S. and Europe in 2022, at which she’ll be accompanied by players from the album. On stage, she can’t wait to further hone the sights, sounds and scenes that bring the songs to such vivid life. “I’ve spent a lot of time trying to write in the voice of other characters, especially with Hadestown. It’s fun for me, but these songs are not that,” she says. “Weirdly, they’re all me. The narrator is me. That’s why it felt right to self-title the album. It felt like after so many years of working on telling other stories, now here are some of mine.”

As funny as it may sound, Anaïs Mitchell has spent the past 15 years in some kind of hell. OK, not actual hell, but the multi-faceted world of Hadestown, a musical project she began in Vermont in 2006 that has grown into a Tony®- and Grammy®-award-winning Broadway phenomenon with touring editions now delighting audiences as far away as South Korea.

“I experienced so much joy working on Hadestown, but it just kept ramping up and up and requiring more and more attention,” Mitchell admits. “I had to become so single-minded and really put blinders on to my other creative life.” As it did for many artists, the COVID-19 pandemic unexpectedly offered Mitchell a blank slate to reconnect with her own music. The result is a new self-titled album made with close collaborators from Bon Iver, The National and her own band Bonny Light Horseman, Mitchell’s first collection of all-new material under her own name since 2012’s Young Man in America.

“I was nine months pregnant when the pandemic reached New York, so we made an 11th hour decision to leave and have the baby in Vermont,” Mitchell recalls. “We left the city and had the baby a week later, and then like everyone, we were in the midst of this unprecedented stillness. It felt like I could see behind me: oh, there’s New York City. There’s Hadestown. There’s my life with just one kid. A certain kind of stress and expectations. In Vermont, we moved onto my family farm and lived in my grandparents’ old house, with a new baby. I’d look at pictures on my phone from a few months earlier and wonder, whose life was that? This record, and the songs that are on it, came out of that time. I got into a flow again that I hadn’t felt in a really long time.”

Dubbed by NPR as “one of the greatest songwriters of her generation,” Mitchell is a master of the worlds of narrative folksong, poetry and balladry. Those talents are evident from the first moments of the new album, as Mitchell narrates what she calls “an unbearably romantic” trip over the Brooklyn Bridge colored by Bon Iver member Michael Lewis’ heartstring-tugging saxophone accompaniment. “Having left New York, I was able to write a love letter to it in a way I never could when I was living there,” she says. “It was like, fuck it. This is how I feel. There is nothing more beautiful than riding over one of the New York bridges at night next to someone who inspires you.”

Produced by Mitchell’s Bonny Light Horseman bandmate Josh Kaufman, the album proceeds to chronicle Mitchell’s reconnection with the Vermont roots that have been so formative in her life and music. “Bright Star” finds her making peace with the idea of being at peace in the familiar setting of her grandparents’ house, while “Revenant” was inspired by paging through a box of journals and letters belonging to herself and her grandmother — “a very pandemic activity,” she says. “That house is literally my happy place. I can picture myself as a kid, in this house, laying on the carpet with a sunbeam coming through the sliding glass door. There’s something about it that is really connected in my mind to my childhood and a very free, imaginative, creative time. “Revenant” has a lot to do with that house and reconnecting with my childhood self.”

Mitchell concedes that she tends “to be someone who thinks it has to be hard in order for it to be good or beautiful,” but that feeling has changed, partly thanks to her deep connection with musicians she’s met through the 37d03d collective established by The National’s Aaron and Bryce Dessner and Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon. During the pandemic, some of those artists participated in a “song a day” writing group — an idea Mitchell says is usually “totally opposite of how I roll. But it really helped me to gain access to some kind of trust and intuition and flow. I began a bunch of these songs while doing that.”

“It unlocked something that allowed me to finish a bunch of songs I’d been sitting on, and feeling a bit paralyzed about how to finish them,” she continues. “Because no one was touring, it’s not like I was playing them for anyone before we were in the studio. In other times, I’ve trotted things out in advance. Here, it was like, here’s all these brand new songs. Let’s discover what they can be. That was really exciting.”

That discovery process took flight at Dreamland Recording Studios outside Woodstock, N.Y., which Mitchell describes as “this weird, janky, beautiful church - it’s my favorite studio in the world.” Kaufman, Lewis and Big Red Machine drummer JT Bates formed a core band around Mitchell, while Aaron Dessner and Thomas Bartlett joined the sessions mid-week on guitar and piano, respectively.

After the appropriate COVID tests came back negative, “it was a pretty extraordinary feeling to hug, kiss and share the same space playing together,” Mitchell says. “We went into that world for a week and didn’t leave the studio for any reason. I felt very safe with all those guys. It was warm and joyful.”

Mitchell says this environment brought out unexpected details in the material, which was recorded almost entirely live together in the room. “Sometimes we tried separating things out, like vocals, but we always ended up back in the room together,” she says. Indeed, after spending the better part of a day recording overdubbed versions of “Little Big Girl” that nobody loved, the musicians gave up and tracked it again live. “We got so frustrated that we went in and I was like, I’m just going to sing this as hard as I fucking can. It felt like that’s what the song wanted to be,” Mitchell says. “It felt like all those songs wanted to be recorded as live as possible.” The exception to the rule was Nico Muhly's arrangements for strings and flute, which were added from New York City afterward.

Mitchell will debut the new material during various headline tours in the U.S. and Europe in 2022, at which she’ll be accompanied by players from the album. On stage, she can’t wait to further hone the sights, sounds and scenes that bring the songs to such vivid life. “I’ve spent a lot of time trying to write in the voice of other characters, especially with Hadestown. It’s fun for me, but these songs are not that,” she says. “Weirdly, they’re all me. The narrator is me. That’s why it felt right to self-title the album. It felt like after so many years of working on telling other stories, now here are some of mine.”

Jozef K continues with part 2 of this stunning project on Takeout under his Eternal Blood moniker, showcasing his stunning take on post-Rave tinged House & Techno.

These tracks will tick so many boxes for those who love the atmospherics of Jamie XX to the rawness of 808 State as both EP's take you on a fascinating journey with the vibe of the UK's magnificent North West.

Jozef's material is regularly supported by the likes of Dixon, Mano le Tough, The Blessed Madonna and Sasha, and we're excited to have him join us with 2 sublime EP's

Top, the chart-topping second studio album from the still rising, Multi-Platinum rap superstar YoungBoy Never Broke Again and featuring the hit singles ‘Callin (feat. Snoop Dogg)’, ‘Kacey Talk’ & ‘All In’, is out on vinyl on January 28th 2022.

With 76 total RIAA certifications and over 72.5M certified units under his belt thus far, YoungBoy Never Broke Again is without question among the landmark hip-hop artists of this or any era. 2020 and 2021 have both seen him become America’s #1 most video on demand streamed artist of any genre. His second studio Album, Top, is officially platinum certified after an explosive debut at #1 on the SoundScan/Billboard 200 upon its September 2020 release. YoungBoy was also last year’s #3 most audio on demand streamed artist industrywide and is currently #5 for 2021 thus far and it serves as a testament to his remarkable talent and versatility, showcasing the Baton Rouge, LA-native’s true heart & soul.

"""Riding SCORCHING hot on the heels of their recent self-titled debut, fans could be forgiven for expecting more of the same from Champyun Clouds’ second long player of
2021. A hodgepodge of cutting-room-floor-fodder and experiments that would’ve been b-sides or Japan-exclusive CD bonus tracks in those halcyon days of physical formats’ golden ages is not what we’re getting. Let’s save those for a deluxe anniversary reissue
one day. Nah - sheer, unabashed creativity fuels this album; and weirdly enough, they’ve managed to branch out in interesting ways while also creating an album that is more immediate and banger-centric. Although Nail’s eclectic psych-lounge tendencies and
Asa’s irreverent poetry and broad Nottingham lilt remain the key touchstones of CC’s sound, opener “Check For Silt”s rough drum’n’bass beats offer an immediate and clear sonic progression for the Nottingham duo. The LP ultimately plays a bit like a haunted
jukebox in outer space - with elements of dub, britpop, early house, trippy, blissed-out sunshine pop (reminiscent of mid-90s His Name Is Alive at their most Beach Boys-aping), William Orbit-esque 90s psych-pop electronica, distorted glam rock shuffles and
garage-y funk. There’s a particularly great moment of sequencing at the end of the first half where I got lulled into a state of near-euphoria with the Air-like “The Flowered Crown” before getting slapped ‘round the face by “I’m Not Right For You”, which sounds
like Nile Rogers producing a demo for Sheila & B. Devotion, except he recorded it at the bottom of a well. Sophomore slump? Never heard of him, mate."""

'The second pressing of Mountain Caller's debut album 'Chronicle I: The Truthseeker' is limited to 500 copies, cream vinyl housed in a single sleeve with printed inner, plus a full download.' Mountain Caller are ready to engage hyper-drive and launch their debut album into the riff time continuum. Mountain Caller are El, Claire and Max and hail from London. They describe themselves as a heavy progressive instrumental three-piece, who are driven to tell stories with music and want listeners to conjure up cinematic scenes in their minds. And that they do … in spades. If one needs a sonic ballpark, think the infectious jamming of Elder and the dynamic cinema-scapes of Mogwai, underpinned by the mantric riffs of Sleep. A rich amalgam of Progressive Rock, Post Metal and Doom. Nevertheless, Mountain Caller do succeed in weaving their own unique spell. The band are already buzzing, pricking up the ears of those in the know, and now after two years honing their chops with a clutch of immersive live performances under their belts (including a slot at Desertfest) Mountain Caller are ready to bring you their debut album. Chronicle I: The Truthseeker. Recorded in January of 2020 at No Studio in Manchester by producer Joe Clayton of Pijn, and mastered by Magnus Lindberg of ‘Cult Of Luna’. For the band, it’s a labour of love; the fruit of three years of jamming, crafting, and conceptualising; a collaborative piece, where each instrument takes centre stage, within a heady mix of chasmic riffs and panoramic, reflective soundscapes. Chronicle I: The Truthseeker is a feminist allegory created in tandem with the music. As the band describe it … In The Truthseeker, we join The Protagonist at the edge of the Twilight Desert, compelled by an indefinable but urgent need to set forth on an Odyssean journey to rediscover her memory and her voice. Over the course of 42 minutes, we travel from barren wastelands to mysterious cities, encountering trials of both body and spirit. It is indeed a 6 track instrumental journey. Full of winding roads, brooding valleys and strange encounters, all vividly evoked by a canny grasp of dynamics, melody and heavy, but hooky riffs, executed with peerless playing. 'Journey Through The Twilight Desert' opens the album in soundtrack mode, and develops in weight and riff (as if Goblin have taken up the baton) and closes in a full wide screen Mogwai trip .... and that's just the opening track. Elsewhere Mountain Caller pushes to noisier, heavier groovier places. Whether it’s the chiming guitars on the Krautrock/post-rock groove of 'I remember Everything' or 'Trial by Combat' and its doom meets Deftones vibe. To album closer 'Dreamspirals' with its melodic hooks and huge earworm riffs, it’s an album that more than stands up to listening on repeat as there plenty to discover.

Nervous Records, the iconic label synonymous with the rise of house from the streets of New York City, will mark 30 years in the music industry by releasing the celebratory compilation LP ‘Nervous Records: 30 Years’ on October 1st (Part 1) and October 15th (Part 2).

Featuring original mixes of the label’s biggest tracks, plus remixes by some of its most celebrated acts, ‘Nervous Records: 30 Years’ is both a celebration of the past and of the future. Featuring a who’s who of electronic dance music, the long player sees names including Louie Vega, David Morales Darius Syrossian, Tensnake, Monki, Franky Rizardo, Danny Howard and more take on iconic Nervous cuts: ‘You Make Me Feel Mighty Real’, ‘Treat Me Right’, ‘Future Groove’, ‘Feel Like Singing’, ‘Get Up Everybody’, ‘Break You’, ‘Hot’, ‘End This Hate’, ‘Unspeakable Joy’, ‘Can Ya Tell Me’, ‘Jerk It’, ‘The Anthem’, ‘It Makes A Difference’, ‘Learn 2 Luv’ and ‘Don’t You Ever Give Up’.

The album marks one of the most enduring, extraordinary legacies to grace America’s illustrious music history, not just in electronica but far beyond. Founded in 1991 by Michael and his father Sam Weiss, and recognizable immediately by its distinctive character logo, the label grew rapidly, in no small part due to Michael Weiss’ practically unmatched passion for discovering new music.

“Louie Vega and Kenny Dope woke me at 4am on Tuesday night, Wednesday morning from their studio telling me they had something really different that I needed to hear,” Michael recollects. “I asked if they could play it over the phone. They said if I wanted to hear it I had to come to the studio. So of course I got myself up, got dressed and went there. That “really different track” ended up being ‘The Nervous Track’, a tune that became our signature release and was also highly instrumental in the emergency of London’s ‘Broken Beat’ movement.”

The label’s willingness to take chances on fresh sounds and innovative concepts rising up from the melting pot sidewalks of NYC ensured a body of work that has become a living musical history of the city. House cuts ‘Unspeakable Joy’ and ‘Nitelife’ (Kim English), ‘Get Up (Everybody)’ (Byron Stingily) and ‘Feel Like Singing’ (Sandy B) bump up against hip-hop anthems like ‘Who Got Da Props’ (Black Moon) and “Bucktown” (Smif-n-Wessun) and reggae cut ‘Take It Easy’ (Mad Lion); soulful flows from Mood II Swing (Kim English ‘Learn 2 Luv’, Loni Clark “Rushing”), Armand Van Helden (‘The Anthem’) and Nuyorican Soul (‘Mind Fluid’) sit alongside seminal techno singles like Winx’ ‘Don’t Laugh’. The young artists and producers who joined the Nervous Records’ family have gone on to become some of the most hallowed and celebrated dance acts of all time: Louie Vega, Kenny Dope, David Morales, Tony Humphries, Roger Sanchez, Armand Van Helden, Kerri Chandler, Kim English, Byron Stingily, Josh Wink, to name just a handful.

“We did a release with Josh Wink under his Winx alias entitled ‘Nervous Build-Up’,” Michael said. “It did well and it was obvious how talented Josh was. Subsequent to that release I was pretty persistent in asking him to continue to play me his new demos. During one phone conversation he said, “Mike I’m gonna play you something over the phone but don’t laugh when you hear it.” That demo ended up being ‘Don’t Laugh’, which became one of our biggest international hits and still to this day is one of America’s earliest and most impactful techno hits.”

As much a celebration of the label’s future as it is of their past, Nervous Records: 30 Years is but a marker in the imprints’ history, a clear sign of where they’ve been and also where they’re going. With 30 years behind them, the label’s determination to unearth new raw diamonds in the rough is as unwavering as ever.

“I’ve always been one to look at what others are doing (the industry at large) and think, “ok, are they doing this specific thing for a reason, or doing it because everyone else is doing the same thing” and make my decision based on that,” says Nervous Records’ General Manager Andrew Salsano. “In an age where data metrics and analytics reign supreme, I remain steadfast that they should be complementary to your decision and not the sole indicator to make one. So many songs today are written with 15 second hooks in mind for social media, and while there’s nothing wrong with that business model you will always be chasing the wave instead of carving out your own path and identity.

“My primary focus for the sound of the label has and will continue to revolve around signing good songs and music that has the ability to react at the street level first. The best results come from artists that are firstly given a bit of local love that grows into a global impact. Fresh ideas that express child-like curiosity and artists showing vulnerability in their music are also something I look for, artists and producers that are not making music with certain markets in mind, but rather their own style and signature that is unique but able to straddle the fine line of underground and overground.”

Still as raw, as underground and as finely tuned to the dance floor as they ever have been, perhaps the secret to the success - and the longevity - of Nervous Records has something to do with that hard, dogged, no-holds-barred NYC edge that runs through the veins of the label. With the next generation of producers rising from the clubs of New York, one thing is certain; Nervous Records will be there to find them, nurture them and bring them to the world at large, over the next decade and beyond.

»Infuso Giallo aka Philipp Carbotta originally hails from rural Western Germany, first cut his teeth in the music scene of nearby Cologne and conducts a host of activities in Berlin for a couple of years now – co-running the label Kame House, designing graphics and producing and playing leftfield electronic music. His debut LP Ocular Soda presents an intersection of these activities – self-released, self-designed and of course self-produced. Even before the first synth chords and reverse atmospheres of the two-part opener 'Every Waking Hour' tickle the ear, it is the eye that is drawn to the bright, cut-out style cover art – itself made up of two eyes on the front and what seem to be their rough shapes or discarded counterparts on the back.
To stay within that metaphor, Infuso Giallo's music is indeed of a reflective and calm nature, taking cues from Berlin School, library and New Age musics from roughly the 1970s to the 1990s – steadily repeating and slowly evolving ostinatos, lush digital pads, quirky filtered toplines and electronic percussion that mostly eschews four-four monotony in favor of much more subtle syncopations. Balearic bomb 'The Big Rip' with its big drums and acid bass turns the energy level up a notch while retaining the somnambulistic, lingering quality that makes Ocular Soda such a coherent listening experience – music on the sheath of waking and dreaming, both worlds and their inherent logics freely bleeding into each other. There are moments of great expanse, such as in 'Mole Gaze' – I couldn't help but see myself hovering somewhere in mid-air while the music unfolds as if on a great deserted plane below me. Maybe this is what it sounds like once the mole leaves his tunnels and takes in the sound of the world overground. 'Hello World', indeed, in its multitude of information to eye and ear, in its gently overwhelming quality. The title track 'Ocular Soda' closes the proceedings with a whimsical nod to 1970s botany-centered library music, its brooding chord sequence and sweet lead lines gradually fading in the distance. A fitting ending to an impressive LP of highly evocative, at times sombre and at times blissfully naive pieces that leave me yearning for more.«

Written, recorded & produced by Infuso Giallo in 2020 & 2021 in Berlin. Mixed by Philipp Janzen & Sebastian Blume at Dumbo Studios, Cologne. Mastered by Sam Irl in Vienna. Design by Infuso Giallo.

Lockdown took its toll on Clive. Not the isolation or sense of impending doom - that was normal - but specifically the worldwide marmite shortage in April. On the verge of a 'Driving to Dundee barefoot' style meltdown, Clive found solace in his 20 year obsession with Alan 'foot on a spike' Partridge.

Taking Musique Concrete to its textbook conclusion, Clive has made music only using sounds from TV series 'I'm Alan Partridge'. Over 100, mainly foley samples were repurposed into the two title tracks of the Alan EP.

Alan A is a raw yet melodic, big plate of House. Containing everything from drawer slams to air bass, cereal destruction to Black Beauty, this orchestra of found sound makes for some unique and exciting rhythmic textures. Grab a cup of beans and enjoy.

Things take a dubby turn for Alan B. Late night broken beats and sultry bass worthy of Alan's Deep Bath. Featuring Lynn on jungle time-stretched vocals.

The EP is bought to a close by off-kilter acid-tinged synthwave nugget, Linton TT. It doesn't fol-low the Partridge sampling rules but needless to say has the last laugh.

Bonus Easter egg for the vinyl heads is a "Dan!" locked groove at the end of side A. Cook a cat!

Label info:
Income Trax is Clive from Accounts' filing cabinet of curiosities. Home for his more eccentric and exotic ideas.

Artist Bio:
Regional tiddlywinks champion, stationary cupboard loiterer and all-round beige sky thinker, Clive From Accounts likes two things; pens and music. But mainly pens. Using springs, tape and old synths with fonts he admires, Clive creates the musical equivalent of warm photocopies. If it's going to be that kind of party, Clive's going to put his Filofax in the mashed potato.

It's been an interesting couple of years for Clive. After being picked up by keen-eared funk wizards Fouk, Clive's vinyl debut hit the shelves perfectly to coincide with the largest record shop and club closure in living memory. Undeterred and with a fire in his belly no amount of pepto-bismol could squash, he pressed on.
A string of releases on highly respected labels On The Corner in London (making the Guardian's best tracks of 2020) and Dirt Crew Recordings in Berlin have led him nicely into the second half of 2021 with an EP on New York disco colossus Razor n Tape and the debut release of his own label: Income Trax.

„Sybilline“, „unique“ and „peerless“. These are some of the adjectives that were used to describe Everyone Is A Door – Panoram’s first full-length on Edinburgh’s Firecracker Recordings. Since then, the elusive producer, founded his own label Wandering Eye, produced automated piano music in Los Angeles (Thom Yorke Sonos playlist approved), composed synth lines underwater for Amen Dunes Freedom and toured two years with the band as well being involved in their collaboration with Sleaford Mods Feel Nothing and their upcoming album on SubPop. But Panoram can also hold its own very well. His debut on Running Back’s Incantations series lets you hear and experience that after the first few bars already. Acrobatic Thoughts is surreal, abstract, puzzling and urgent, yet filled with beautiful, slow-moving melodies and emotional passages. Eccentric humor meets serious soundscapes, acrobatic thoughts evolve around abstract key notes, while an out-of-time and out-place atmosphere surrounds a microcosmos that seems to be otherworldly and very natural at the same time. Panoram manages to build a house that can be as much of a home for ambient record collectors as for futuristic pop fans and all the ones in-between those poles. Or to describe it one sentence while quoting two titles of this enigmatic record: Seabrains controlled by beautiful engines.

Alogte Oho & His Sounds of Joy are back with a new single release after their album debut "Mam Yinne Wa", which can be seen as a harbinger of the second album. You can hear another Frafra Gospel masterpiece by the king of this genre.

"Doose Mam" is a soulful piece that goes straight to the limbs with its repetitive rhythm. The jubilant middle section, in which the wind instruments and the choir pass the balls to each other, is to be emphasized. "Gure Yose Me" ties in with the Frafra Gospel tradition of making use of reggae rhythms. Here we hear a stepper played by Josie Coppola, Europe's No.1 reaggae drummer. Both pieces were produced both in Berlin and in Kumasi by Max Weissenfeldt in Philophon's in-house Joy Sound Studios.

Pioneering Kansas City, MO emo rock band The Appleseed Cast's 2002 Deep Elm release 'Lost Songs' is now available to pre-order on vinyl via Thirty Something Records. Comprised of material recorded after the band's 1998 debut 'The End Of The Ring Wars' and before 2000's 'Mare Vitalis', 'Lost Songs' displays the transitional phase of the band in between the two albums. Carefully uniting old-school and new-school songwriting styles, 'Lost Songs' combines the bitter emotional release of the band's earliest recordings and the meticulous soundscapes crafted through endless hours of studio time on later recordings. Dynamic song structures, hurricane-force rhythms and ultra-vivid lyrics paint bold portraits of disillusion and heartache, while at other points 'Lost Songs' overflows with swells of symphonics, feedback and electronics. The title joins the already released (and still available) vinyl reissue of the band's long out-of-print 2000 Deep Elm sophomore release 'Mare Vitalis.' Ominous, powerful, and magnetizing like the sea, 'Mare Vitalis' is dreamy and charming, and flows from a tide of moody energy with guitars that sweep around complex, precision rhythms. A masterpiece of timeless inspiration, the record is absolutely stunning.

After the release of their first album, Il Est Vilaine ask to artists and friends to deliver a series of high-flying remixes: Tolouse Low Trax, Krikor, Khidja, Marvin & Guy, Golden Bug, Rubin Steiner, C.A.R…
Tolouse Low Trax opens the ball with a destructured version of Yvré- L'évêque while keeping the darkness of the track. We can hear a nod to the track "Holland Tunnel Dive" anthem of the Salon des Amateurs.
For the eponymous track Khidja were inspired by the sounds of the land of the rising sun which is a good thing to accompany the song of Narumi Hedgehog! A bright version and influenced by YMO's era Sakamato.
Golden Bug & In Field proposes an alternative just as trippy as the original version of Marilyn Drum, a trip between neighborhood hospitals and crazy guru.
Another version of Yvré-l'Evêque this time Krikor takes care of it and takes out his sampler for a digi-dancehall version that only he has the secret, Faya !
Rubin Steiner delivers a version back to the roots of Bar à Gwin mixing deep house texture and 80's-NY-hip-hop/electro.
The two Italians of Marvin & Guy bring out the hits, the guitars and the arpeggios for an epic version of Mystères de Lorient.
To close the album, we find Narumi Hérisson at the controls of her piano for a dreamy and sensitive version of Phare Ouest where her voice and that of Yula Kasp are mixed in the greatest harmony!

H- side is etched
The American cable-television industry exploded in the 1980s, pushing broadcasts of diverse programming and emissions of low-laying cultures into homes. Community stations piggybacked on the digital developments of the time, extending their existence through telephony and broadcast a iliates. For those growing up in this time, in locations such as New York City, the localized communications beamed into their homes exposed them to an impressionable array of disparate sounds and visions.
Move into the 1990s and New York was filled to the brim of emergent cultures drawing from this ebullition of communication. From Rammellzee’s shapeshifting to the late Judy Russell and Frank and Karen Mendez’s Nu Groove imprint fusing reggae, poetry and house, nascent ideas emanated from the city walls, from within stores such as Sonic Groove store and on VHS releases such as Stakker’s The Evil Acid Baron Show, a legendary technicolor psychedelic trip along the wildest frontiers of acid house. As scenes expanded and identities developed, such individuals weather the events of the visceral now, expressing themselves right into an unpredictable future.
Function’s long career has seen him uncover a vast range of sonic identities, a mainstay through house, techno and industrial with collaborations with the likes of Regis, Damon Wild alongside his highly influential Infrastructure imprint. With influences deeply tied to pop art, rave and gay scenes, and early memories of block-parties emitting Kraftwerk and Strafe, he found himself seeking out the undercover illegal nights of the 90s on a quest of sexual unearthing, mixing the ever-yearning escapology mission of disco with the influential DJ sets of Jeff Mills.
For his new album Existenz, he marks a clear step away from the corporeal techno of his recent releases. Pivoting around themes of religion, sexuality, trauma and healing, it is a work expansive and celebratory, a clear liberation from a deeply internalized past. Formed from a collection of recordings made in a period from late 2016 to mid 2019, Existenz takes the form of a creative outburst in reaction to a number of traumas - recent, childhood and throughout Function’s life. Life partner Stefanie Parnow assisted the production process in its entirety, providing inspiration, spiritual healing and featuring vocal contributions.
Cosmic synths soar and swoop in ‘Pleasure Discipline’ through towering stacks of rhythm that stutter and creak to a halt before rebooting, a firm robotic response to human intervention. ‘Zahlensender’ reflects a spatial tetris of urban life, as digitalization set within an XYZ matrix confronts the sprawling city. Constant arpeggiated meditations echo synaptic transmissions, e ecting a dissolution of boundaries. ’The Approach’ recalls the unification of the self, a state of delirium non-subjective and smooth, as all connections and functions give way to simple intensities of feeling, crossing the threshold into spirituality. ’Golden Dawn’, featuring Stefanie Parnow, marks a further elevation of dubbed-out euphoria, as once more positive rays emerge. His ode to the effortless short-trip urban navigation 'Kurzstrecke' finds Function in motion, upfront and bold, snapshots of conversation and flickers of light. 'Ertrinken' finds metallic bass jabs swamping snipped synthetic voices, with hidden stores of emotion set as a nod to the history of vocoders as a tool for encrypted military communication. House icon Robert Owens features on 'Growth Cycle' and 'Be', entrenching a celebratory atmosphere over Function's clubwise leanings. Closing track 'Downtown 161' reflects the unmistakeable filtered and squashed interjections of television, and sampled dance vocals - a sound for the curious, dreamers and dancers.
With Existenz, Function reveals an essential body of work, spread over 4LP - thought experiments on the role of identity and spirituality after a lifetime of upheaval and trauma. Leading up until the release date, Function will undertake an album promo tour with select dates - A/V shows at Berlin Atonal and Rural festival in Japan, and three dates as part of his Bassiani residency.

A sublime techno reissue from the vaults of one of London's leading electronic labels of the last 25 years, remastered and re-presented for 2022!

Originally released in 1994 on Mr.C's cult UK house and techno label Plink-Plonk and composed and performed by Laggy Panteli and Zeno Messis (aka Megalon) in their London studio, 'Pandora's Box' is a truly unique record. Sleek, futuristic, fathoms deep and wholly original, the music contained on these 2 discs sounds as modern and as vital as it did on it's arrival all of those years ago.

Exploring a deeper vein of electronic music, Megalon craft their own sonic landscapes that are undoubtedly inspired by all forms of cerebral electronic music. Ambient, Detroit techno, electro, European electronics and of course the duo's experiences in London's early acid house and rave scene all filter through their lens to bring something brand new to the table. The arrangement, sound design and mix on the album is outstanding, lending a totally visionary and modern feel to the tracks that continues to echo today.

'Pandora's Box' is a record that has existed within the shadows for many years, with a hardcore cult following. The kind of record that one might hear deep into the early hours, at the hands of a seasoned selector or an 'insider' who has the knowledge. It is redolent of a time when innovation, ideas and imagination trumped the run of the mill and the homogenous, which goes a long way in explaining what makes this record so exciting some 25+ years later.

A totally essential mid 90's UK techno and electronic classic, as much a treat for the mind as for the body.

Reissued in full conjunction with the artists and remastered by Curvepusher from DAT and original source materials. Redesigned by Atelier Superplus and distributed worldwide by Above Board distribution, 2022.

Scottish DJ Ewan McVicar is tipped for big things, having found support in the likes of Annie Mac and Fatboy Slim. After a stellar year crowned with a release on the hallowed Nervous Records, he makes his debut on Shall Not Fade's "Basement Tracks" series with five explosive earworms.

Amnocairn EP collects the most classic sounds from the dancefloor and melts them together, styles blending throughout songs to keep listeners on their toes and dancing. The title track is a sweeping marriage of insistent house piano and washy dub techno synths, leading into the sugary, hardcore "1001 Freestyle" that calls back to early Lone tracks. Then one for the after hours crew, "Ha Mez", a syncopated 303 techno roller.

McVicar keeps the party atmosphere close across the B-side, flexing laser-cut synth arps with a dark, big-room edge on "Stu Boy", before crowning the EP with a gorgeous sun soaked party number "See U Thru My Eyes", jazzy inflected house with a 90s aesthetic. This EP has something for everyone, bringing together eclectic influences into a smooth festival-ready record.

Utrecht label U-Trax welcomes 90s legend P.A. Presents for an enhanced re-release of his first two releases on this label, namely "Salicylic Acid" and "Flight Simulator".

Ironically P.A. Presents aka Peter Aarsman is the only artist on U-TRAX that actually is born and bred in the city of Utrecht. Even more irony lies in the fact that he hasn't lived in the city for 25 years and has only recently returned home. He was an early player in the hip hop and boogie scenes and long before house landed in Europe he was playing disco and Italo which helped establish him as a truly vital DJ talent. The two reissue EPs presented here marked his production debut back in 1993, both of which are hugely sought after and pricey techno records on second hand markets. In 2019 he returned to the music scene with two new EPs on U-Trax in the the form of Swirling Gas and Sax Madness and new releases are planned for 2020.

The release kicks off with 'Mesopmorph', an effervescent, nostalgic cut with a deeply buried techno rhythm that eventually takes over in tribal style. 'Pop' is a brilliantly tense and dense track wired up with fizzing synths, chattering claps and haunting effects as well as pending drums, then 'Theme' is cosmic industrial, with powerful hits and metallic sounds married to searching laser synths.

'Vera S' is classic 90s techno with mad vocal sounds and frantic synth lines darting about the mix, then things grow deeper and more heady on the stripped back intergalactic journey that is 'Flight Simulator.' The timelessness continues on the dancing analogue drums and hi hats of the classic Detroit styled 'Experiental' and 'A Gasp' before 'Vexillum' brings more warm solar winds and molten techno grooves whist 'Long Metal' closes out with pounding kicks, skewed synths and real sense of space travel.

These are essential early techno tracks that sound as fresh and relevant now as ever and come with remastering and restoration from Thee J Johanz.

Pressed on 2x12" 180 grams grey marbled vinyl.

Recommended if you like: Com Truise, Toro Y Moi, Tycho, Tourist. British Columbia producer Jamison Isaak didn’t anticipate an adulthood of globe-trotting songcraft, but teenage exposure to iconic French house music videos cast a spell on him that still holds: “I knew then this is what I wanted to do'’ Catalyzed by synthetic sights and sounds from oceans away, he patiently taught himself primitive software and recording programs, reverse engineering the heady, swooning horizons of the dance music that had permanently bewitched him. A decade later, having amassed an expansive discography of soft-focus synth pop and romantic electronic a crisscrossing the planet many times in the process the subtext of his project’s journey rings clear: “Teen Daze is dream fulfillment'’ Enter Interior. An ode to electric futures glimpsed in ecstatic heights, from bedrooms to big rooms, it’s an album of first loves refracted through prisms of wisdom, wounds, and wonder. Filter house and flashing lights; soft acid and vaporous neon; bumping clubs in spiral towers: “Like what the teenagers in Akira might be listening to'’ Collaborative cameos by multi-instrumentalist Joseph Shabason (on sublime fantasia opener “Last Time In This Place”) and vocalist Cecile Believe (on the glitch-glamorous anthem “2AM (Real Love)”) evocatively expand the record’s palette but otherwise Interior is Izaak’s love letter to his own artistic awakening, to the paradigm shifts inherent in youthful discovery and remote dreaming — your world exploded, your life forever changed. Years of devotion and divergence have honed his craft radically; tracks like “Nite Rune “Nowhere and“Translation”are among the most supreme bangers in the entire Teen Daze canon, a delirious fusion of textural finesse and emotional transcendence. It’s music of skylines, escape, and sensual energy, forever cresting through nights that never end.

With his first release as EBM outfit Voltage Control on Antler Subway in 1989, Utrecht-based Arno Peeters can easily be considered one of the Dutch Dance pioneers.
Influenced by hip hop, electro and acid house, and his uncontrollable urge to experiment, he moved on to produce techno. Disappointed by the genre s conventions, he rather suddenly stopped with dance music altogether around 1995, letting a wealth of DATs with unreleased material collect dust in his studio.
To our great pleasure, U-TRAX was allowed to pick some nuggets from these archives, resulting in this Titanic EP and an album later this year.

Arno started experimenting with sound at very young age, resulting in his first cassette releases with experimental soundscapes in 1983. In 1986 he joined the notable Centre for Electronic Music (CEM), where he was able to take his experiments to a new level in a professional studio-environment.
In his techno episode , he recorded several 12 -es and CDs as Sp@sms and The Implant, and as part of Random XS, Urban Electro, African Nightflight and The AWAX Foundation, with most of his records being released on the famous DJAX label.
After turning his back on techno, he applied himself to more experimental music again. In 1996, he created AeroSon, a 40-minute sound collage that won him the first prize in the category Composers Under 30 at a high-brow international contest for electro-acoustic music. This piece was later released on the prestigious Mille Plateaux label.

Since then, his focus has shifted away from releasing music, towards working more project-based: on remixes, compilations and interactive (installations, video, sound design), building himself a successful career as radio maker, teacher and engineer, contributing to several award-winning documentaries and podcasts.
This EP is a nice cross section of Arno s dance productions, serving you some acid, techno and electro.

Titanic V1 was originally created to be a Random XS track, the techno band he formed in 1991 with Sander Friedeman. It was performed during their live set at one of the G.U.R.U. parties, organized by U-TRAX label boss DJ White Delight and label artist P.A. Presents.
This acid track was remixed into a techno monster when Friedeman replaced the 303 with a 101 and added a ton of delay on the bass drums, resulting in the woofer destroying Titanic (Underwater Dub).
The flipside sees a rare post-1995 recording by Arno: CEM Traxx 1. As the title suggests, this melancholic electro gem was created using the intricate machinery of the CEM Studio. Originally created as one half of a two-part composition for some project in 2003, it was never released before.

The EP closes with a typical Arno brainchild, the tongue-in-cheek acid banger XD5 Acid Master, from 1994. Tracks like this happen if you leave Arno unattended with a rather un-hip machine like the Kawai XD-5: he turns it inside out and uses it for things it was never intended for. Buckle up!

All tracks have been produced by Arno Peeters and mastered by Ruud Lekx. Label art by Botterman Ontwerp.

white & blue marbled vinyl

With his first release as EBM outfit Voltage Control on Antler Subway in 1989, Utrecht-based Arno Peeters can easily be considered one of the Dutch Dance pioneers.
Influenced by hip hop, electro and acid house, and his uncontrollable urge to experiment, he moved on to produce techno. Disappointed by the genre s conventions, he rather suddenly stopped with dance music altogether around 1995, letting a wealth of DATs with unreleased material collect dust in his studio.
To our great pleasure, U-TRAX was allowed to pick some nuggets from these archives, resulting in this Titanic EP and an album later this year.
Arno started experimenting with sound at very young age, resulting in his first cassette releases with experimental soundscapes in 1983. In 1986 he joined the notable Centre for Electronic Music (CEM), where he was able to take his experiments to a new level in a professional studio-environment.
In his techno episode , he recorded several 12 -es and CDs as Sp@sms and The Implant, and as part of Random XS, Urban Electro, African Nightflight and The AWAX Foundation, with most of his records being released on the famous DJAX label.
After turning his back on techno, he applied himself to more experimental music again. In 1996, he created AeroSon, a 40-minute sound collage that won him the first prize in the category Composers Under 30 at a high-brow international contest for electro-acoustic music. This piece was later released on the prestigious Mille Plateaux label.
Since then, his focus has shifted away from releasing music, towards working more project-based: on remixes, compilations and interactive (installations, video, sound design), building himself a successful career as radio maker, teacher and engineer, contributing to several award-winning documentaries and podcasts.
This EP is a nice cross section of Arno s dance productions, serving you some acid, techno and electro.
Titanic V1 was originally created to be a Random XS track, the techno band he formed in 1991 with Sander Friedeman. It was performed during their live set at one of the G.U.R.U. parties, organized by U-TRAX label boss DJ White Delight and label artist P.A. Presents.
This acid track was remixed into a techno monster when Friedeman replaced the 303 with a 101 and added a ton of delay on the bass drums, resulting in the woofer destroying Titanic (Underwater Dub).
The flipside sees a rare post-1995 recording by Arno: CEM Traxx 1. As the title suggests, this melancholic electro gem was created using the intricate machinery of the CEM Studio. Originally created as one half of a two-part composition for some project in 2003, it was never released before.
The EP closes with a typical Arno brainchild, the tongue-in-cheek acid banger XD5 Acid Master, from 1994. Tracks like this happen if you leave Arno unattended with a rather un-hip machine like the Kawai XD-5: he turns it inside out and uses it for things it was never intended for. Buckle up!

All tracks have been produced by Arno Peeters and mastered by Ruud Lekx. Label art by Botterman Ontwerp.

The Bristol-based composer and producer FFT signs to Numbers for Disturb Roqe and an album to follow in 2022.

Disturb Roqe is out on vinyl & digital on December 3rd, 2021. The EP presents three meticulous, spacious tracks that channel bass-heavy tendencies, with whirring details that showcase masterly sound design in a controlled yet aggressive delivery.

Josh Thompson has released music dispersed across a number of labels, including The Trilogy Tapes, Low End Activist’s Bruk Records, his own Super Hexagon imprint and more. Through transmitting under a series of obscurant aliases, he composed and created while leading a nomadic life between houses, cities, occupations and attractions.

His body of work demonstrates an impressive, evolving artistry, exploring harmonic and textural sounds underlined by a powerful devotion to computer-based production. It’s a focus captured by his artist name FFT, short for Fast Fourier Transform, a process by which signals can be converted from temporal or spatial to frequency domains, or in the other direction.

Multi Culti launch a new quarterly 12" series in step with the seasons beginning with SOLSTICE I:

Post-pandemic lockdown inspiration can be found in the great planetary balancing act that has taken place since a cataclysmic impact with an asteroid caused mass extinction and set our earth’s orbit off axis. This AXIAL TILT, or obliquity, is responsible for the seasons, and life as we know it has evolved around these unleashed forces. As our lives and for many, careers, have spun dramatically off axis as of late, we look ahead to the coming seasons, with the hope that we can weather the changes, and maintain inner stability. To aid in this quest, Multi Culti promises to deliver sonic support with utmost regularity at the peak moments of cosmic significance, with each Solstice and Equinox.

Beginning this journey are some of the label’s most beloved artists. Israeli duo RED AXES provide a chakra-elevating soundtrack with their inimitable blend of psych-garage-tronica, a sun-kissed banger that signals a long-awaited return to the togetherness of the dancefloor.

ZILLAS ON ACID turn in a robustly wiggly jam that electrifies, frazzling zaps and frenetic percussion recall the fritzy tension of the past year, a cathartic shock-treatment for traumatized dancers looking to get back to prime spine-shaking shape.

Mexico managed to stay open for the most part, and TYU seems to have not skipped a beat here, still in perfect form after breaking out as one of the hottest young producers to emerge in recent years. Dark disco, Mexi-chug, call it what you want, but the emergent genre is never better represented than here… spooky, phosphorescent tribal dance, Tulumminati-tested and approved.

Finally, the big guy - MANFREDAS - whose remixes and edits have been highlight-reel material the past couple of years, delivers a long awaited original track with his requisite heavy-weight swag. Wonky tunings and a chunky downtempo beat underpin Manny’s trademark masterful arrangement style, building patiently, with breakdowns that managed to wring every last drop of impact out of an odd, other-worldy assortment of sounds.

Scuba begins a new project with London vocalist and producer DOMiNii, who makes his debut with ‘Diivorce’.

Paul Rose (aka Scuba) has long since explored cross-genre sounds, blending disparate elements and mining nostalgia to create cool moods and moments of pure escapism. Over four critically acclaimed albums and mix CDs for DJ Kicks, fabric, and Ostgut Ton, he’s established himself as one of the industry’s most respected artists and tastemakers. He’s continued to evade musical pigeonholing over the course of his career, never hesitating to challenge himself with new creative endeavours. The fresh sonic direction expressed on ‘Diivorce’ is one he’s been developing since 2018, when he took an indefinite break from the full-time DJ circuit.

‘Diivorce’ is a collaboration with debut artist DOMiNii, a vocalist and producer who takes influence from the likes of Wang Chung, David Newman, Arthur Russell, and The Blue Nile. Although he appeared uncredited with backing vocals on Scuba’s ‘Forgive Me’, which initially came out last summer, ‘Diivorce’ marks his first official release.

Covering areas as varied as power pop, indietronica, exuberant house, and classic rock, the project seemingly touches as many points as it can think of, something Rose acknowledged in a recent interview where he stated that “we made so many tracks, with no real set direction, so with this record I just wanted to pick a limited number that kind of showed where we’d been. We are working on something now that I’d call a ‘proper album’, which I think will come out in 2022, Diivorce is something I see as a documentation of a period of time.”

The project includes illustrations by French artist Virginie Kypriotis who tells the story of ‘Diivorce’ through the eyes of DOMiNii, detailing a world of abandonment and separation against a backdrop of a faded paradise. Rose was first acquainted with Kypriotis’ work through her iconic illustration ‘A Night at Berghain’, which was later used by the club as their official flyer artwork in December 2017.

The vinyl edition of ‘Diivorce’ includes previously unreleased (and vinyl-exclusive) track ‘Tricks’, and is packaged in a limited edition, numbered, screen-printed sleeve.

CMD aka Corina MacDonald is a Montreal-based DJ, producer and host of the program Modular Systems on CKUT 90.3 FM. She has released on JACKTONE, EXPERIMENTAL HOUSEWIFE’S PERFECT LOCATION RECORDS, FUR TRADE RECORDINGS, and BASIC_SOUNDS. For her vinyl debut, she brings us four entrancing, slightly dubby and acidic techno dance floor cuts perfect for the smooth edges of the late night.

The A-side opens up with “Social Factory Reset”, modular jacking techno with an infectious acid swell and patient pads. “Shaping Inner Space” is an apt title. The tempo is slightly faster than A1, and it sounds like an extraterrestrial night out. Euphoric synth twists bring in the break while the bass drum toys with the rhythm only to zap it back home with the force of cosmic gravity.

“Dream-Life Cycles” opens up the B-side tough, with an acid line and bass drum syncopation sure to bring out the stomp. Modular tweets fire off in stereo; pads bring in the harmony; and a nuanced and pleasantly surprising vocal line brings the euphoria on home. “Body Locked” closes the EP with an athletic, cosmic techno track that doesn’t shy away from the trance palette. Step out of your body and onto the dance floor!

WRWTFWW Records is absolutely honored to announce the release of Kenji Kawai’s complete soundtrack to Mamoru Oshii's 1993 superb political thriller science-fiction mecha anime PATLABOR 2: The Movie, available on vinyl for the first time ever and housed in a beautiful heavy gatefold sleeve with obi, as well as on digipack CD. Both versions come with liner notes by the great Masaaki Hara.
A true soundtrack maestro, Kenji Kawai is behind the legendary soundscapes of cult animes and movies such as Ghost in the Shell, Avalon, Ring, Ip Man, and Seven Swords among numerous others. PATLABOR 2: The Movie (Original Soundtrack) is one of his most experimental offerings, an outstanding palette of emotion-filled ambient atmospherics and percussion mastery breathing beautifully through Kawai’s minimalism meets modern classical approach. His symphony of moods paints a delicate picture of urban isolation, a central theme in the movie, but doesn’t hide hints of hope for a joyful future.
PATLABOR 2: The Movie (Original Soundtrack) is an ideal companion to Kenji Kawai’s Ghost in the Shell soundtrack, already available on WRWTFWW Records.

February 2021. During a stay in an isolated house in the Alpes-de-Haute-Provence, I returned to four compositions Renaud Bajeux had sent me a few months prior. I had listened intently and enjoyed them very much, but in this new setting, at this very moment, they took on another dimension. For several days, I went on long walks in the surrounding nature and this album, all in half-light, became an obsession. In sync with the perfection of this moment, with this place, it began to haunt me from dawn till long past dusk. At times calming and meditative, at times wild, rugged, and maybe even dangerous, the music seemed to mirror the mountain landscape encircling me. It became evident that Seeking a Vision would be released on Fragments.

Seeking a Vision follows Renaud Bajeux’s first album, Magnetic Voices from the Unseen (Nahal Recordings, 2019), an exploration of electromagnetic fields. In this second opus, Bajeux works with the sound palette of a Serge synthesizer, combining its polymorphic sounds with field recordings of nature. The album’s four parts can be seen as a continuous mental journey through multiple layers of consciousness. Carried by whispering winds and the cracklings of a campfire, they proceed toward meditative states and obscure inner landscapes.

Seeking a Vision was recorded during an INA GRM residency. Elevation was commissioned by the INA GRM.

Renaud Bajeux is a French composer and film sound designer. His work his primarily based on field recordings and modular synthesizers. It can be located at the crossroads of electroacoustic music, noise, and ambient. Renaud Bajeux’s most recent release is a duet with Antoine Gilloire titled Underwater Soil (Superpang, 2021).

All tracks performed and composed by Renaud Bajeux. Mastered by Stephan Mathieu. Artwork by Morgan Cuinet. Layout by Romain Barbot.

Baltimore, Maryland’s Angel Du$t have announced details of their new album ‘YAK: A Collection of Truck Songs’, which will be released on CD on 10th December on Roadrunner Records and the band have also shared the new song ‘Big Bite’, which is joined by a music video directed by Ian Shelton.

Vocalist / guitarist Justice Tripp commented, “People get really married to the idea of making a record that sounds like the same band. If one song to the next doesn’t sound like it’s coming from the same band, I’m ok with that.”

Put simply, Angel Du$t are the guys who do whatever you don't expect.

Produced by Rob Schnapf (Kurt Vile, Elliott Smith), ‘YAK: A Collection of Truck Songs’ follows Angel Du$t’s 2019’s album ‘Pretty Buff’, and sees the group channelling an anything-goes philosophy into their tightest, most forward-thinking material yet. Recorded over a two-month period in Los Angeles last year, the album is a rotating smorgasbord of percussion, guitar tones, effects, genres, and influences, fashioned in the spirit of a playlist as opposed to a capital-R ‘Record.’ The album’s 12 tracks span jangle-rock gems (‘Big Bite’), piano-spiked power pop (‘No Fun’), and a breezy duet with Rancid’s Tim Armstrong (‘Dancing On The Radio’).

‘YAK: A Collection of Truck Songs’ also features ‘Love Is The Greatest’, ‘All The Way Dumb’, ‘Turn Off The Guitar’ and ‘Never Ending Game’, all of which appeared on Angel Du$t’s 2021 EP ‘Bigger House’,

Breezy but determined as they imbue their laid-back acoustics with sharpness, Angel Du$t continue to prove they are band averse to boundaries. The band’s Roadrunner Records debut ‘Pretty Buff’ was produced by Will Yip and earned the band critical acclaim. Widespread international attention included UK praise from Kerrang! (“13 super-accessible, honest and artfully crafted songs… there’s lots to love about them”), NME (“the fun-first hardcore group bringing ‘90s pop-rock to the pit”) and The Line of Best Fit (“a cacophony of good times and soul”).

The Mighty Soulmates is a towering early 90s project from the legitimate super group of André Cymone (bass player with Prince), St. Paul Peterson (guitarist with The Family and Prince), Mic Murphy (of Sass and The System fame) and Gardner Cole (writer, producer and musician probably best known for his work with Madonna). The sound is a majestic blend of sophisticated funk, emotional R&B, New Jack Swing flava and slick deep soul.

These should-be legendary sessions have been almost a secret since they were recorded back in 1993. The first Be With knew about the project was whilst working with Mic on some Sass re-issues and he told us he had something else we might be interested in hearing.

Mic explained, “In the summer of 1993, Gardner Cole asked if I’d be interested in coming out to work with him, André, and St. Paul. So we all headed out to what can best be described as a fantasy music summer camp at Gardner’s house in Woodland Hills, California. We had all worked together in the past in some form or another so everyone was energized and enthused and excited to see what we could create together. St Paul and Andre had already begun some songwriting at Gardner’s well equipped home garage studio. The songs and ideas progressed quickly and some additional recording was completed at André Cymone’s studio in downtown LA. We ended up working on the project for about 6 months, off and on, until Gardner's house fell victim to the Northridge Earthquake in January 1994.”

There were some vague ideas at the time about turning the sessions into a finished record, but everyone went back to their day jobs and as St. Paul puts it: “for nearly 30 years it just sat there, marinating like a fine funk masterpiece. Everything has its right time and now just be the time”.

From all the tracks Mic sent over, we’ve cherry picked the absolute cream for a tight four track EP. In an alternate history all four for these would’ve been radio smashes. No doubt. But these songs never even reached a plugger. A mixture of beat ballads and uptempo non-hits, coming on like Al B Sure! or Babyface take on Shalamar or, dare we say it, The Purple One - maybe not so surprising given who’s playing!

The feel-good dancefloor dynamite of “I Wanna Be The One” is the explosive opening track. A piano-driven, groove-laden blast of yearning deep-pop, with perfectly delivered soulful vocals and an unmistakable “early 90s” sound. Indeed, fans of Eddie Chacon’s old group will dig this for days. “Back In The Day” has a timeless swing and swagger, the lyrics reminiscing about the halcyon streetlife of the Soulmates’ youth, about Curtis, Superfly and innocent days gone by, about hustling with friends. Yet more spine-tingling vocals over yet another perfectly produced musical backdrop. Stunning.

Opening side B, “Blue Tuesday” is the thrilling pinnacle of the EP, at least for us. It’s absolute soulful-pop perfection, and the one we’ve been asked about most after teasing this collection on our NTS show. A soaring beat ballad full of chiming guitars, gorgeous harmonising, falsetto “doo-doo-doo-doo do-do-do-do” backing vocals and a real steppers’ groove. Glide to this with your loved one at the next roller rink party.

Dramatic, purple-hued closer “Private Time” seems to predict the Timbaland-dominated sound of the mid-to-late 90s, all synthetic strings and squelchy, acidic-drum-machine soul. There’s even room for funky piano breaks, vocoder bridges and more cowbell than you can shake a cowbell at. You could just as easily hear Aaliyah vibing over this as much as Mic.

This EP represents the sound of four incredibly soulful, talented, and influential (soul)mates jamming together over one long hot summer and weaving pure sonic magic. André Cymone loved the “kinda pop, experimental exploration of sound and music. I think these songs make a statement. Not just because of the collection of talented musicians involved but the idea of musically branching out and experimenting; which is what I loved about the project and for people to hear and hopefully appreciate the artistic adventure this music takes, I think it’s a much needed breath of fresh air.” As Mic recalls, “it had the feeling of recovery in a circle with my dudes making music sitting around catching up on life - it felt like living a second childhood. We just wrote what we felt. I don’t remember ‘aiming’ at anything but a great song, melding all our different influences from throughout our lives. We had no restraints. For me personally, it was a time to make music and regroup. I call it the ‘Soulmate Experience’ because in many ways we are kindred souls as a band. We did have an amazing time making the record and so much fun together. Probably my best summer ever”.

The Mighty Soulmates EP has been mastered for vinyl by Simon Francis, cut by Pete Norman at Finyl Tweek and pressed at Record Industry. That early 90s gloss sounds spectacular, if we do say so ourselves.

And such a special record needed some truly almighty artwork, so thanks go to DJ Ruby Savage for directing us to London-based illustrator and designer River Cousin. This music needed something elegant and indulgent yet soulful and striking and something as simultaneously tongue-in-check and deadly-serious as the group’s name. The end result is as modern yet timeless as the music itself.

And these are just our four picks. There’s plenty more where this came from and Mic tells us he’s even picked the album title: “Earthquake Summer”.

Recorded in a pool house surrounded by an evergreen oak tree forest just outside of Madrid; musician and composer Oliver Patrice Weder’s second artist album ‘The Pool Project’ combines textural and meditative sounds that touch on global influences from jazz, ambient and modern composition. In conjunction with the album, Spitfire Audio has released ‘The Pool Project’ sound library, inviting composers and producers to reimagine, recreate or completely pull apart Oliver’s sound world to facilitate their own vision. Capturing the unique acoustics of the pool house, the library is presented in Spitfire Audio's award-winning, easy-to-use plug-in and features a range of controls and effects. While ‘OPW’ was inspired by constant movement and travelling, ‘The Pool Project’ had quite a contrary motivation. Oliver explains “After making my debut album, it was clear for me that it was only the beginning of a long journey. I enjoy the process and idea of creating something deeply personal and connected to the situation I am in, a snapshot of time so to speak, so I had to start writing a second album sooner or later. I love change and find it very inspiring to creatively adapt to my surroundings and circumstances to see what comes out at the other end. I spent the lockdown time living in a countryside cottage just outside of Madrid, surrounded by holly oak trees. The combination of this and seeing my one year old daughter grow up, as well as expecting another baby boy, created a very unique and fruitful environment to draw inspiration from.” Confirmed press/radio: Future Music - Album review Electronic Sound - Album review Scala Radio -Ambient Track of the Week Scala Radio - Session Track/Interview Reviews: "Rich in beauty and emotion… one of the finest modern composers around" - 8/10, Future Music Mag "Sounds like a warm oasis of calm" - 8.5/10, Higher Plain Music Achievements: Recorded and toured across Europe with various bands including psychedelic rock band Time for T. Composed for the BBC. Lead composer at Spitfire Audio. In 2017, Oliver co-scored the feature film ‘The Haunted’ and made a vlog style series Inside the Score with Spitfire Audio, documenting the entire process — from meeting the director, to seeing the film shown at various international film festivals. Released OPW, a sample library and album, in 2019 with SA Recordings x Spitfire Audio. Interview with MusicTech.

After the worldwide success of their first album Puzzle (1999), which sold over 200,000 copies and went gold in Japan, Xavier Boyer (vocals, guitars), Pedro Resende (bass), Médéric Gontier (guitars) & Sylvain Marchand (drums) reunited with producer Andy Chase to record the follow-up, Wallpaper for the Soul, in New York City. Starting in November 2001 at Stratosphere Sound, the prolific sessions gave birth to twenty tracks, twelve of which appeared on the original tracklist. The eight outtakes were compiled on the mini albums A Piece of Sunshine (2003) & Extra Pieces of Sunshine (2004). This new vinyl edition will be the first time all these songs appear together.

Almost 20 years on, WFTS is a tour de force of contemporary songwriting with obvious nods to the past somehow revisited in a timeless fashion. Tahiti 80’s second effort can also be seen as an alternative and more sophisticated snapshot of an era often associated with the rebirth of rock (The White Stripes, The Strokes…). This set of songs also established them as stalwarts of the Post French Touch cannon, showcasing both their ability to write catchy songs and their knack for mélanges & experimentation. 1,000 Times or The Train are unique examples of blue-eyed soul augmented with French flair (« Prefab Sprout as produced by Thomas Bangalter » suggested Uncut which listed WFTS in their Top Ten’s albums of 2003). Listen to Don’t Look Below today, and ask yourself who was mixing Destiny’s Child with My Bloody Valentine in 2001? Delicate numbers like Open Book or live favorite Better Days Will Come both demonstrate T80’s songwriting skills and their innate sense of melancholia.

Listening back to WFTS today, one cannot help but think of it as an album recorded in a state-of-the-art fashion. All four members would typically perform together in the same room. Basic takes were printed on a 24-track analog tape machine and then bounced onto a computer for editing. A fine example of this method is the title track itself. Originally written on acoustic guitar, Wallpaper … is the result of three eight minutes synthesizer jams pieced together. The Frenchmen were keen to try out multitude of ideas and had developed a taste for experimentation. The sessions also coincide with a rich outburst of creativity from a band on top of their game after several months of touring around the world.

Another typical WFTS characteristic is Richard Hewson’s orchestration. Veteran string arranger, famous for arranging The Beatles’ The Long And Winding Road or writing RAH Band’s ‘80s classic Clouds Across The Moon Hewson gave the songs a sweeping orchestral touch. Strings, Horns & woodwinds were all performed at the now defunct Olympic Studios in London. Urban Soul Orchestra, a 24-piece ensemble who played on Oasis’ or Spice Girls’ hits can be heard on five songs: the opening trilogy Wallpaper…, 1,000 Times and The Other Side, then on the Northern Soul revival Soul Deep and lastly on the album’s closer Memories Of The Past.

Rouen’s most famous four-piece, now relocated in a house on France’s North West Coast, in the quiet seaside town of Étretat, added more bells & whistles and resumed production on the songs. With one last transatlantic leap during the summer of 2002, the boys flew to Portland, Oregon to attend the mixing sessions held by sound wizard Tony Lash (Elliott Smith, The Dandy Warhols…). Suggested by Sub Pop’s craftsman Eric Matthews, also a guest on trumpet and keyboards, Lash would later become a major collaborator on Tahiti 80’s subsequent albums.

In the meantime, Laurent Fétis, the designer behind Puzzle’s iconic artwork, had started working with artist Elisabeth Arkhipoff on a set of nostalgic photographs transfigured with a soft air-bush technique. Those visuals, like their predecessors, have since become an inseparable companion to Tahiti 80’s music.

Many musical fashions and flavors of the month have come and gone, but twenty years after its release, WFTS still sounds fresh and relevant. And always forward-looking, Tahiti 80 is currently wrapping up the recording of their eighth album, to be released in early 2022.

Fine Place is a new duo comprising Frankie Rose (Vivian Girls, Crystal Stilts, Dum Dum Girls) and Matthew Hord (Running, Pop. 1280, Brandy). Based in Brooklyn, NYC together they’ve crafted a crystalline full length of nocturnal, electronic pop music that charts a way out the post-global, cyberpunk dystopian environment it was crafted in. Their debut album This New Heaven drenches minimalist song structures in post-industrial washes of sixstring delay and gothic post-punk synths. Presiding over it is the most evocative, emotive vocal performance Frankie
Rose has committed to tape to date.

Following Hord’s relocation from Chicago, the pair wanted to explore new avenues apart from their respective bands or solo projects. “The sound we were going for was an attempt to capture the dystopian feel of New York during a period of desertion by the wealthy. It was produced in a time-frame saturated in both uncertainty and serenity, and the soundscapes we created felt fitting and almost organic as a response to our surroundings. The title also reflects this in an arguably literal, maybe even satirical way.” Sonically, Fine Place references the pioneering mid-to-late 80s pioneers of icy melodrama The Cure and Cocteau Twins, while reflecting both the individuals’; music trajectories thus far. Modular synthesis triggers rhythm boxes and fluttery arps chirp around clanging 808-patterning as Rose’s reverb-laden vocal layering envelops the remaining headroom. The result is massive; a towering, shadowy music that embraces darkness while offering Rose’s bright vocal as chinks of light in the cracks; the production filling the head space of the beholder with preternatural imagery and emotional resonances that are real but not quite defined.

The title song propels forth out of the fog, scintillating with delayed guitar before the reverb-immersed vocal injects the human drama. The chorus constantly teases a big release but holds back creating a taut, dynamic tension. Cover Blind’s slow march makes full use of Rose’s layered vocal sinking and emerging from Hord’s bank of synths. Stand out It’s Your House is pure honey pouring from the speaker on a bank of of arps and near-hymnal vocal layering, a syrupy light offering in the mist. It’s an emotive highlight that only increases as the album progresses; Impressions Of Me is the Lynchian ballad that glides onward into the sunset. The album finishes on a choice re-interpretation of the 1989 track The Party Is Over by Belgian group Adult Fantasies, one of the great over-looked ballads of the era given an almost ecclesiastical makeover by Matthew Hord and Frankie Rose in 2021.

Says Hord: “This record was an incredibly challenging endeavor to make, as I had just come home from a European tour with another music project and wanted to invest into and focus on this collaboration with Frankie. I essentially reimagined how to approach writing basic sequences with the synthesizers I had been rehearsing and performing with for months prior to make something more accessible and pop- like for Frankie to build upon. Frankie is an unsung hero when it comes to mixing, and she was constantly mixing down and processing elements of the tracks to create different atmospheres as we forged forward with every song.”

This New Heaven is an ecstasy of sorts, a half-dream in the border between sleep and daylight.

Repress

Arad, real name Dara Smith, first joined the VOITAX catalogue in June 2020. Back then, the Irish artist served us up with "Radiance Haze" - a 6-track EP, spanning from heavy-hitting breaks to the ethereal ambience, with heavy features of Smith's vocals. Known for his multidisciplinary vision on music, he has also previously made seminal moves with his work as one half of Lakker, alongside Eomac, dropping groundbreaking music on heavyweight labels such as R&S, Blueprint and Stroboscopic Artefacts. For his second EP on VOITAX, Smith now returns with five beautifully crafted tracks that he titles "Augmented Fantasy". While following a similar approach, he does not fail to expand his repertoire of celestial dream-like atmospheres, which he carefully surrounds with a whole variety of vocals, and accurately placed broken drum patterns. In addition to his own singing, Arad also presents two impressive collaboration tracks, in which one of them features the voice of Stine Omar, also widely known as one half the Berlin-based pop duo EASTER. Driving rhythmics and processed, grainy vocals turn this piece into guaranteed hit material. Another collaboration with the befriended vocalist and music producer Nina Hynes serves as a touching closing chapter for this brilliantly produced, eclectic 5-tracker. All pieces are perfectly glued together while keeping their very individual character and soundscapes. The listener is certainly left with an augmented fantasy, as well as a curiosity to hear more to come from the Irish talent.

Tartelet has a knack for uncovering virtuosic, off-kilter electronic music. Max Graef—born, bred and still holding it down in Berlin's Prenzlauer Berg—is their latest artist in this mold. Though adventurous dance music is thick on the ground in the German capital, Graef's 2013 run of singles, cropping up on Graef's own Box aus Holz, plus Melbourne Deepcast, The Gym, Heist and Tartelet, continually surprised, infusing worn-in house with manic energy and acrobatic elasticity. Where many of his peers make languid, self-consciously laid-back tunes, Graef makes brilliantly restless ones. Dropping the needle on one of his EPs, you nearly expect it to pop right off again.


Rivers of the Red Planet, Graef's first full-length and Tartelet's latest album project, takes all that wildness and refines, expands, updates and scrambles it. It's as ambitious and deviously entertaining a record as you'll hear in 2014, the fulfillment of Graef's desire to make anything but another contemporary house music album. At any given moment, Rivers of the Red Planet feels like it could have been recorded through the smoke at a jazz club in the booth at a techno club 30 years from now or inside an MPC stocked with crusty dollar-bin samples. (We'd guess the staff at Graef's beloved OYE Records in Berlin will have a difficult time settling on which section to file it in.) If it sounds sampled, it's a testament to Graef's natural musicianship and production prowess —the record is heavy on sounds he played himself, from drums and Rhodes to fat synth melodies wrung out of an old Crumar Performer water-damaged to perfection. For vocals, Graef enlisted Nigerian singer Wayne Snow, whose rugged soulfulness makes him a natural pairing. On cuts like "Drums Of Death" and "Speed Metal Jesus," the club- readiness of his EPs lives on. But Rivers of the Red Planet may be most at home in your living room, with a good bottle of red and a roaring fire's crackles mixing with the pops and hiss of the vinyl—a playful listen that sinks in, burrowing deep and getting you all warm and gooey on the inside.

Fieldwave, Vol. 2 is the second release in our compilation series created by broadcaster, sound collector and Nonclassical A&R consultant, Nick Luscombe, bringing together artists with field recording at the heart of their work. This second volume focuses on the sounds of Japan, with tracks from Japanese musicians and from British artists who have gathered recordings via trips to Japan.

"I created the Fieldwave compilation series in 2020 as a window to the world of field recordings and wider acoustic ecology, via the work of recordists, sound artists and musicians from around the world", says Nick Luscombe, who compiles the series of releases. "For this, the second volume of Fieldwave, I decided to look to Japan as inspiration – surely one of the most sonically rich places on earth."