Search:how

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.

The perfect soundtrack for a summer roadtrip in an old car across Death Valley.

“Calexico's musical textures are woven out of a dazzling array of instruments and styles, including mariachi trumpets, countrified pedal steel, Latin jazz percussion, and carnival organ, just to name a few. The songs move at siesta speed, casually looping and loping along, never getting overheated. Bandmates Joey Burns and John Convertino have their hands in so many musical pies--including projects with OP8, Giant Sand, Victoria Williams, Giant Sand, and Richard Buckner--one wonders how they find the time to create the sun-soaked music of Calexico. But thank God they have.” --Tod Nelson

James Brown wants to know one thing before he and his band begin Sex Machine. “Can I get into the thing, really?,” he asks. His cohorts enthusiastically respond in the affirmative. And for the next hour and change, Mr. Dynamite gets into it and more, turning in a sweat-soaked, feet-moving, hip-swiveling, emotion-purging, in-the-red, drop-everything-you’re-doing-and-dance performance for the ages. Ranked by Rolling Stone among the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, the sweeping 1970 effort towers as a testament to Brown’s inimitable legacy as well as the peak powers of his voice, vibrancy, and bands.

Sourced from the original master tapes, pressed at Fidelity Record Pressing, and housed in a Stoughton gatefold jacket, Mobile Fidelity’s numbered-edition 180g 33RPM 2LP set presents Sex Machine in audiophile sound for the first time. It explodes with the energy the lightning-strike music demands. Dynamic, immediate, present, airy: Everything from the brassiness and fluidity of the horns to the snap and decay of the snare to the swell and carry of the organ comes across in full-range perspective.

Then there’s Brown’s superhuman singing, which here emerges with a purity, naturalism, and transparency that ensure you feel everything. Screeching, shouting, pleading, moaning, preaching, stinging, commanding, testifying, crooning, humming: The Godfather of Soul contributes one of the finest vocal performances known to man. This definitive 55th anniversary reissue of Brown’s monster funk statement further exhibits a combination of clarity, solidity, separation, and imaging that helps bring to light what he and his crack ensembles committed to tape. Both in the studio and on the stage.

Just how lifelike does this reissue sound? Senior Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab engineer Krieg Wunderlich, who handled the remaster, notes: “There were some artifacts that sounded a bit like mistracking. But they turned out to be breath blasts on the vocal microphone. That is part of history. JB was workin' hard, and breathin' hard. And there was an edit the timing of that was truly strange. Again, a part of history.”

Originally marketed as a live album, Sex Machine contains six songs recorded in the studio and later overdubbed with canned crowd noise and reverberation. Save for “Low Down Popcorn,” the tracks on the latter half stem from a phenomenal performance captured in October 1969 at Bell Auditorium in Brown’s adopted hometown of Augusta, GA. The special relationship between the singer, the audience, and the location is palpable.

As the 1960s gave way to a new decade, Brown experienced immense success and dealt with unexpected change. Soul Brother Number One soon expanded his idea for an official live album captured in Augusta when the ensemble that backed him on that date morphed into the original version of the world-famous J.B.’s just months after the show. The virtuosic abilities, sticky chemistry, and rhythm-forward nature of the J.B.’s prompted him to book a one-off session in Cincinnati, OH, on a late July night.

Anchored by brothers William “Bootsy” Collins and Phelps “Catfish” Collins, the group — as well as two different drummers — laid down a nearly 11-minute rendition of “Get Up I Feel Like Being Like a Sex Machine” and a thrilling medley of “Bewildered,” “I Got the Feeling,” and “Give It Up or Turnit a Loose.” A pair of then-recent studio singles cut in separate locations in 1969, “Brother Rapp” and “Low Down Popcorn,” each featuring his prior group, took care of the second LP worth of material that complements the originally planned live set.

Complicated? Somewhat. Unusual? Definitely. But just as he elevated the expectations for all present and future R&B artists, Brown not only makes it all work. He makes it positively electrifying.

“Get Up I Feel Like Being Like a Sex Machine” is alone deserving of a dissertation on the art of funk music, seeing it moves up and down akin to an oil derrick, witnesses Brown unleashing a trademark series of grunts, squeaks, and “good god” asides, and glides to a hypnotic groove that won’t quit. Or look to the syncopated rhythms of “Brother Rapp (Part I and Part II),” one of multiple pieces here that signify the point where Brown began viewing every instrument as a percussive tool. Brown closes the three-song medley with his new band with a skedaddling “Give It Up or Turnit a Loose,” which provides jolts on the order of sticking your finger into a socket.

Not that the actual live material falls short in any way. Setting an insistent tempo for the vitality that follows, “I Don’t Want Nobody to Give Me Nothing” positions Brown as a role model, leader, and self-sufficient entrepreneur. All simmer and boil, the short and sweet “Licking Stick” dares you to keep pace. The floating, almost comforting “Spinning Wheel” spotlights the instrumental prowess of Maceo Parker and company, and functions as a seamless segue into the tender, horn-saluted “If I Ruled the World.”

And Brown and his mates still aren’t done. Just try to resist the one-two closing punch of “I Can’t Stand Myself (When You Touch Me)” and “Mother Popcorn.” Mercy.

Ain’t it funky? Sure ‘nuff.

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.

Australian producer Mike Buhl returns to Denude with Modern Explorer II, a four-track meditation on movement, memory and the spaces in between. Techno, downtempo and atmospheric sound design become tools of enquiry here: rhythms are less about function than about asking how far repetition can carry a feeling. From the searching lift of “Voyage Return” and the focused pulse of “Focal” to Vril’s dubbed, peak-time reimagining and the gently dissolving closer “They Were Always”, the record traces a quiet arc from momentum to reflection. Modern Explorer II feels like a small philosophy of the night: music for travelling without arriving, for dancers who know that the journey on the inside is at least as important as the one on the floor.

Chaos is fundamental for creating something powerful. It teaches us to be at ease with how things are, to listen to ourselves, and find our own order’. (Enrico Sangiuliano)

Pioneering, avant garde yet chart-storming sound designer/producer/live performer Enrico Sangiuliano drops EP ‘Order In Chaos’ as release #1 in his self-destructing countdown imprint ‘NINETOZERO’, out 20th November. The EP’s three tracks respectively represent a triptych of sound exploring tension, release, and dissolution, with violinist and composer Vito Gatto joining Italian techno/melodic maestro Sangiuliano for tracks 1 and 3. The EP blends electronic, classical and electro-acoustic genres, resulting in a fresh, unique product that defies typical techno expectation, as Sangiuliano and Gatto explore the concept of disorder as a creative playground.

‘With this chapter, we dive into chaos – something that can be uncomfortable, but is the place in which you can find unexpected or new ideas. Chaos is fundamental for creating something powerful. It teaches us to be at ease with how things are, to listen to ourselves, and find our own order’. (Sangiuliano)

The ‘Order In Chaos’ EP continues a momentous year for Enrico Sangiuliano, and heralds his upcoming all-night-long SOLO show at Nitsa in Barcelona (Nov 28th, tickets here). His highly acclaimed NINETOZERO label has also previously featured Charlotte de Witte, Antonio d’Africa, Mattia Saviolo, GMS, Alex Lentini, STOMP BOXX, Zimmz, Secret Cinema and About Sofiya.

Vito Gatto is a Milan-based violinist, composer and sound explorer. He is the founder of label/collective NeMu (‘Neutral Mutation’) producing Italian projects at the interface of electronic and organic sound. His self-description as ‘Making sounds, looking for silence’ makes him the perfect collab partner for ‘Order In Chaos’, which ‘embraces the paradox: chaos births order, and order dissolves back into chaos.’

‘Whilst classically trained, I have always been fascinated by the world of electronic music, in all its expressive forms’ Gatto says. ‘I use real instruments and natural sound sources processing them through electronics to enhance their unpredictability, always remembering that the core of music - whether classical or electronic - is communication and storytelling. This philosophy guided our creative synthesis on this release.’

The collaborative workflow combined remote and in-person studio work over roughly a year, culminating in these three key tracks reflecting different musical and conceptual layers.

‘Order In Chaos’ EP tracks:
Enrico Sangiuliano & Vito Gatto ‘Adaptation for Strings and 909’: A cinematic overture built from the raw intimacy of Vito Gatto’s violin, processed and layered with unquantized 909 drums. Out of grid, out of rules. Drama and turbulence surge until thunderous kicks strike like sudden storms. ‘This track symbolises both of us. Vito sent the strings, I added the iconic Roland 909. It has no structure and no grid, the arrangement is not precise, it’s a very pure track and a great example of disorder and freedom.’
Enrico Sangiuliano ‘Order in Chaos’: The title track is a pure techno weapon and dancefloor igniter: rolling, stripped, euphoric. A shape-shifting lead synth constantly mutates, flirting with disorder until the kick restores gravity. Chaos becomes dancefloor order.
Enrico Sangiuliano & Vito Gatto ‘Dissolution’: The closing moment. Strings and drums dissolve into a weightless drone. Beatless and infinite, it invites surrender into space. ‘This cinematic track slowly melts ‘Order in Chaos’, adding processed organic sounds and field recordings from the mountains.. coming back to nature, and silence.’ (Gatto).

Still #0 to go in the NINETOZERO countdown… And then what? With Sangiuliano, it’ll be something unexpected and brilliantly innovative.

IS THE BEST is the manifestation of Prontaxan's collective mindset as a music group formed by visual artists, musicians, producers, and filmmakers.

IS THE BEST tells a story about release — how the constraints of routine can break free through celebration, and how Funkot becomes a universal language to speak about resistance, pressure, and acceptance of reality within the context of today's working class.

IS THE BEST is an expression of this phenomenon — where a masterpiece is one that breaks out of its shell to shine, be admired, discussed, and criticized by its audience.

IS THE BEST is born as Prontaxan's remedy for electronic music lovers across the globe.

Der Soundtrack zur irischen Komödie ""The Spin"" (2024) in der Regie von Michael Head, der zahlreiche Auszeichnungen bei diversen unabhängigen Filmfestivals von Belfast über Chicago bis Toronto gewann und auch auf dem Filmfest Bremen lief. Die Originalmusik wurde von Mark McCausland (McKowski) komponiert und produziert und enthält Gastbeiträge von: Howe Gelb, Jolie Holland, John Parish, Nick Power, Dave Murphy, Pieta Brown, Dead Goat, Steve Wickham, Gemma Doherty, Laura McFadden, Brenock O’Connor und Drew McConnell. Die LP erscheint auf farbigem Ecomix-Vinyl, bei der jedes Format ein Unikat ist.

Remastered Pink Vinyl 2LP

Jane Removers Debütalbum "Frailty" (2021) entstand mitten im fegefeuerhaften Sommer nach ihrem Highschool-Abschluss, kurz vor ihrem 18. Geburtstag im September. Der Text ist das eigensinnige Coming-of-Age-Tagebuch einer LGBT+-Teenagerin, die in den Vororten eines verwirrenden, gesellschaftspolitisch turbulenten Amerikas festsitzt. Die LP wurde begeistert aufgenommen: Platzierungen auf der Album-des-Jahres-Liste von Pitchfork und TheNeedleDrop, begeisterte Kritiken von Paste, Insider und FADER und breite Resonanz bei einem jungen Publikum, das das Album als kathartisch und nachvollziehbar empfindet. Doppel-LP auf Pink Vinyl, remastered.

Soundtrack-LP mit Originalsongs aus den Staffeln 4, 5, 6 der erfolgreichen Netflix-Zeichentrick-Serie BIG MOUTH, geschrieben und komponiert von Mark Rivers. Das Album enthält Gesangsdarbietungen der angesehenen Besetzung, darunter Nick Kroll, Maya Rudolph, Andrew Rannells, John Mulaney, Crissy Guerrero, Jason Mantzoukas, Paul Pell, Jon Daly, Joe Wengert u.v.m. Rotes Vinyl.

This is the ultimate mini-album that can proudly be called LIP CREAM! “9 SHOCKS TERROR” has remained timeless since its original release in 1986, embodying incomparable speed and a level of perfection that defines Japanese hardcore. Opening with ‘TERROR,’ which goes straight into reverse audio and needle skips, the song structure charges forward relentlessly, shaking off the catchy, humorous, and approachable vibe that had previously defined LIP CREAM. Naoki's noisy yet melodic guitar, Pill's wild drums, Minoru's heavy yet high-speed bass, and JhaJha's intense shouts that still allow the lyrics to be clearly heard—all these elements fuse together to create powerful tracks that have reached an unprecedented sound. Recorded at Shinjuku JAM Studio, ‘9 SHOCKS TERROR’ was composed primarily by Minoru and Naoki, with lyrics and artwork by JhaJha. JhaJha's hand-drawn jacket illustration was a parody of THE FUZZTONES' album “Cinderella”. Additionally, an English translation of the lyrics is included for this RELAPSE release, helping English-speaking listeners understand the unique world of LIP CREAM. Interestingly, the title “9 SHOCKS TERROR” was revised to “9 SHOCKING TERROR” on the 2007 CD reissue by ONI Label. This revision was made after illustrator PUSHEAD, who has a long-standing relationship with LIP CREAM, pointed out a grammar error. However, the original title has been restored out of respect for the original work for this RELAPSE reissue. Following the release of this album, LIP CREAM launched their self-managed national tour “BLOODY SUMMER TOUR,” and fans who bought the album rushed to the gig. Additionally, during a show at Doshisha University in Kansai in the autumn of the same year, torches were brought onto the stage and Jha Jha set them ablaze, causing absolute chaos (footage of this incident can be viewed in the video “LIP CREAM ONLY”).

Vinyl gatefold jacket includes a 12x12 insert reproduction of the original LP jacket art.Recorded in 1956 and released in 1957, Supersonic Jazz is arguably the first long-playing album by Sun Ra and His Arkestra on his Saturn label. However, it was not recorded as a debut. Rather, the album was assembled from tapes recorded during a number of sessions at two Chicago studios (RCA Victor and Balkan), and several tracks had been released as singles before their inclusion on this album. (Sunny's first fully realized commercial album was 1957's Jazz by Sun Ra, produced by Tom Wilson on his short lived/soon to be defunct Transition label.) Prior to these sessions, Sunny was still arranging for the Red Saunders Orchestra and singer Joe Williams, in addition to arranging for and coaching doo-wop ensembles. As Sunny's ambitions achieved liftoff, the Arkestra coalesced, began building a repertoire (mostly of Ra's originals), and making forays into studios. Deciding it was time for commercial releases, Sunny and business partner Alton Abraham launched Saturn (sometimes called El Saturn) as a record company in 1956. As a first offering, Supersonic Jazz is a pinnacle Sun Ra release. While reflecting many prevailing bebop, Latin, and R&B conventions of the mid-1950s, it's evident that Sun Ra's musical voice and vision were starting to propel him away from the jazz mainstream. Biographer John Szwed finds on these recordings "characteristics which seemed alien to swing, bebop, or the new, more soulful and hard-edged music which was coming to be called hard bop."

“Godzilla just walked into the room. People just stood there with their eyes and mouths wide open.” To hear Randy Holden describe the audience’s reaction in 1969 to his solo debut performing with a teeth-rattling phalanx of 16 (sixteen!) 200 watt Sunn amps is about as close as one will get to truly experience the moment heavy metal music morphed into existence. However, at last Riding Easy have unearthed the proper fossil record. Population II, the now legendary, extremely rare album by guitarist / vocalist Holden and drummer / keyboardist Chris Lockheed is considered to be one of the earliest examples of doom metal.

Though its original release was a very limited in number and distribution, like all great records, its impact over time has continued to grow. In 1969, Holden, fresh off his tenure with proto-metal pioneers Blue Cheer (appearing on one side of the New! Improved! Blue Cheer album and touring for the better part of a year in the group), aimed for more control over his band. Thus, Randy Holden - Population II was born, the duo naming itself after the astronomical term for a particular star cluster with heavy metals present. “I wanted to do something that hadn’t been done before,” Holden explains. “I was interested in discordant sounds that could be melodic but gigantically huge. I rented an Opera house for rehearsal, set up with 16 Sunn amps. That’s what I was going for, way over the top.” And over the top it is. The six-song album delves into leaden sludge, lumbering doom and epic soaring riffs that sound free from all constraints of the era. It’s incredibly heavy, but infused with a melodic, albeit mechanistic, sensibility.

Troubles with the album’s release bankrupted Holden, who subsequently left music for over two decades. It was bootlegged several times over the years, but until now hasn’t seen a proper remaster and has yet to be available on digital platforms. “The original mastering just destroyed the dynamics of it,” Holden says. “They flattened it out. Now we got a really nice remaster that should be the closest thing to the original recording.”

An earth-moving night in Chicago, 30 crazy years ago, caught HOT on tape and finally unleashed! Teengenerate were a force to be reckoned with in the ‘90s garage punk underground and with their string of classic singles and LPs, the Midwest was just STARVED for these heathens to break our minds wide open. And they did, and some of us were just “never the same.” Is this how Hozac started? YES, this was THE SEED. Just an awe-inspiring brute force of punk purity, slashing through incredible covers of THE KIDS, PAGANS, and FUN THINGS and sowing the seeds of obscure punk obsessions to no end with their savage treasure map of sick sounds.

The heat, the power, the rage and the euphoria, it just doesn’t always align like it did when Fink & Fifi took the stage. Sure enough, it was on THIS DAY 30 years ago that our minds were blown apart and our eyes were opened and a life-changing rock’n roll performance that commemorates the 50th release on the Hozac Archival subsidiary. Secretly recorded by Ken White, the Brides’ right hand man, and mastered by TIM WARREN of Crypt Records for maximum authenticity, Live at the Empty Bottle just explodes out of the grooves and will level anyone within earshot, just like it did when Teengenerate desecrated Chicago TWICE on the same night (check out their VML Live at the Fireside Bowl 7″ too!), exactly 30 years ago TODAY!

This album cover is quite mysterious, isn't it? Let's uncover what's behind it. The first notes of the opening track immediately set the tone: the journey begins. Take the album title literally and allow yourself to be comforted by the tenderness the British band is about to offer.



Dream pop is a genre of its own, characterized by a warm sound, enveloping bass lines, dreamy synths, and beautiful vocals. With "No Rush," Tokyo Tea Room guides the listener through an exploration of their emotions and an escape from everyday life.


Each of the 12 tracks on this project exudes the same tender energy, yet stands out with creative and meticulously crafted compositions. This project is poised to become a staple of the genre.

Hip Hop icon and one of the genre’s most distinctive voices, Big L returns with 'Harlem's Finest: Return Of The King', the latest release in Mass Appeal's 'Legend Has It...' series.

Features guest appearances from Nas, JAY Z, Mac Miller, Joey Bada$$, Method Man and more

Sometimes artistic genius can be hiding in plain sight. Innovators and sonic pioneers that are stalwarts of the 140 dubstep scene can be taken for granted with just how damn good they are.

With DDD favourite Abstrakt Sonance’s second LP on the label ‘Nature of Things’, he is taking his organic fuelled, harmonically intuitive, bass driven madness to new heights.

With his signature blend of primitive percussion, scattered chops and savage sub frequencies - Abstrakt’s record is an 11 track tour-de-force of production mastery, impish tendency and true artistic expression.

To single out particular tunes on the album seems a fallacious exercise, given the strength in-depth of the sequence of work - with guest appearances scattered in from producers Wraz., Coltcuts and Outsider, alongside the stunning vocals of Sahala and bars from the godson of grime, Saskilla.

Let us just tell you that each one will have you flying through the jungle like tarzan on speed, with enough adrenaline to fend off any silverback gorilla and emotional guile to lead a troop of chimpanzees.

Existential musings over the Nature of Things can be confusing at best - but with Abstrakt Sonance it equates to sonic and visual clarity.

Careful though, he could still pop you with the Snipa.

In November 2023, I played an event in Stockholm, put on by Bojan aka Boj Lucki, who runs a label called Bukva Sound, which I had done a remix for earlier that year. DJ Sofa was also on the lineup with me, as well as someone I had never heard of called Gustav Ejstes.

A lot of people I was talking to at the event and on the day were telling me about Gustav and how much of a spectacle it was that he would be DJing tonight, and explaining about a band he is a part of called Dungen (pronounced Doon-yen) which is very well known & respected in psychedelic rock.

I checked his set out and was very impressed by how confident he was with his vinyl mixing & selection, as well as some of the tracks on digital he was playing that I'd never heard before. I told him afterwards how much I enjoyed his set and he seemed quite happy about that, because he had been a long time vinyl buyer of my music & other releases on Future Retro London.

The day after, Bojan took me & DJ Sofa to meet Gustav at his home & we got to chat with him about music, see his record collection & hear some jungle/hardcore tracks that he had been making. Turns out a lot of the tracks I liked from his set that I'd not recognised were ones that he made!

I thought it'd be really cool to be able to release some of them as he's never put anything out like this & since he's a fan of the label, so I asked if he'd up for it and here we are!

Big thanks to Gustav for the wicked music, his manager Oskar for his co-operation in helping to put his release together, to Bojan for introducing me to Gustav's work & to The Tribes for doing the artwork.

Recordings from the Åland Islands, the duo debut by synthesist Jeremiah Chiu and violist Marta Sofia Honer, is a truly unique series of pieces that marry acoustic and electronic sounds with field recordings, all captured on a trip to the titular Baltic archipelago.
By the time Åland Islands was released in 2022, Honer had already been working with Makaya McCraven and Daniel Villarreal, but this project brought her to the front as a lead artist. And Åland Islands was the label's first collaboration of any kind with Chiu, who has since released the solo outing In Electric Time and the genre-breaking debut of his co-led supergroup SML, in addition to a trio album with Honer and the late Ariel Kalma (2024's The Closest Thing to Silence).

Recordings from the Åland Islands is far more than its context within the world of IARC, however, and it’s certainly more than its context as a travel document. Here Chiu and Honer have created a new world out of an old one with work that sees them in dialogue with their own source material. Like early masterpieces by Franco Battiato or Alvin Lucier, Åland Islands repeatedly presents the listener with a palpable sense of place, only to pluck them up and drop them into an entirely new one.
“...so tranquil and beautiful...” – Jayson Greene, Pitchfork

Although humans possess language as a means of communication, We sometimes hurt each other simply by intending to. In war, bullets kill people. If we consider words to be like bullets, they can be violent and cause mental suffering. However, when communication causes problems, the only way to solve them is through more communication. I thought: wouldn't it be wonderful if those bullets could turn int flowers instead? In everyday life, when we talk, laugh and share moments with friends and family, Those moments can be transformed into flowers. Keeping this in mind, I created this album. (Hidetoshi Koizumi aka Hybrid Leisureland)

He cast off his old skin, fundamentally altering his studies, homeland, and life, thereby charting a new future. Recorded at Sound on Sound Studios in Montclair, New Jersey, in January, 2024, 'Ancestral' was influenced, in part, by O'Gallagher's PhD studies into the music of John Coltrane, and reunites the versatile reeds player with guitarist Ben Monder while, notably, features the first-ever recorded collaboration between master drummers Andrew Cyrille and Billy Hart. "Basically, my PhD (available on O'Gallagher's website) is an analysis where I transcribed all of Trane's solos, spelling out what he does on his late recordings 'Interstellar Space' and 'Stellar Regions'. And it shows that free music is not free, not the way people think it is.

Trane was definitely thinking about organization in those records. This research definitely gave me ideas about how to be freer within the systems that I had developed, and how to perceive them in a more organic way." O'Gallagher's latest recording marks a significant artistic evolution, following a period of considerable personal change. After leaving Brooklyn, New York, he and his wife relocated to the UK before ultimately settling in Lisbon, Portugal. This journey, coupled with dedicated study, profoundly shaped his new music. O'Gallagher, Monder, Cyrille, Hart, and Coltrane: a potent brew. In an album consisting largely of first takes, O'Gallagher's compositions vary from through- composed pieces to skeletal charts to full- blown group compositions/ improvisations.

Oh No helped shape the texture of modern independent hip-hop, introducing the world to his turbulent lyricism with the 2004 Stones Throw classic The Disrupt before establishing himself as one of the world’s most dynamic beat architects. Ranging from soulful to sinister, hypnotic to chaotic, Dr. No’s psychedelic production has become a vital force in hip-hop, bringing the best out of artists like Mos Def, Action Bronson, Prodigy, Murs, Dilated Peoples, Danny Brown, Elzhi, Your Old Droog, and more. The California native has also released several acclaimed sample-themed instrumental collections, mining Mediterranean psyche funk, the work of jazz icon Roy Ayers, Italian library music, rare Ethiopian grooves, and more. Now, Oh No is back with Nodega, his first vocal album in more than a decade. Conceptualized as a corner store where microphone assassins stop through to lay down their street tales, the project finds Oh No cooking up a fresh batch of wild creations as the drama unfolds. While contributing a handful of memorable verses himself, Oh No mostly focuses on crafting soundscapes for a staggering array of guests, including Logic, Ghostface Killah, Talib Kweli, Tha God Fahim, Alchemist, Guilty Simpson, Blu, Crimeapple, Rah Digga, Esoteric, Vic Spencer, Wildchild, Big Twins, and more. “I work with some of the most dangerous emcees in the game,” he explains. “I wanted the album to be like a hip-hop play, with all these different geniuses showing how they steal the scenes.” This concept is brought to life by music Oh No describes as a “cinematic landscape ranging from dark stabbing pianos to melodic jazz interludes, raw gutter loops to funk grit, dirty synths to nighttime thrills.” A visceral experience elevated by immense collective talent, Nodega is a compelling one-stop shop for Oh No’s expansive artistry.

On her fourth full-length album as Shedir, Sardinian sound artist Martina Betti offers a profound meditation on what it means to be human on the threshold of uncertainty.

We Are All Strangers is a series of ambient tapes-tries shaped by duality and introspection, where sound becomes a space to explore the tension between identity and ambiguity, presence and disappearance, connection and solitude. Inspired by the idea that we are all strangers, however, first and foremost to ourselves, Betti crafts seven fluid, slow-burn compositions that inhabit a sociological liminal zone—what she comments as an “inner elsewhere.”

These aren’t songs in the traditional sense, but evolving sonic environments that feel like emotional states made audible. Environmental textures, submerged electronics, and deep low-end pulses coalesce into a dreamlike architecture of sound: immersive, fragile, and quietly transformative.

Rather than offering answers or closure, the album invites us to live in radical openness—to stop trying to define everything we see and feel, and instead bathe in what remains unnamed. In this sense, We Are All Strangers is an invitation: to sit with uncertainty, to embrace the unfinished, and to find resonance even in our collective disconnection.

For listeners drawn to the introspective frequencies of Rafael Anton Irisarri, Félicia Atkinson, or Lawrence English, Betti’s music offers a similarly haunting and immersive experience—one where strangeness is not a flaw, but a starting point. In her hands, ambient music becomes a kind of reflective shelter: a place to brush against each other in the dark and begin to learn, as she puts it, “the difficult art of closeness.”

T.O.Y.'s new album, The Prophet, is passion, history, a vintage museum, and full of great songs that are waiting to be heard. T.O.Y. is a German synthpop and futurepop band founded in 2001 by Volker Lutz. Highlights include collaborations with Alphaville's singer Marian Gold ("Turn On!") and FAITHLESS drummer Andy Treacey ("Silent Soldiers"), blending T.O.Y.'s atmospheric sound with iconic voices from the electronic music scene. "The Prophet is something truly special. During the Corona pandemic, wrapped in isolation, we all needed consistency, a sense of comfort, and security. I found that feeling through sounds--the sounds I have known my whole life: the music of the 80s. Courageously and full of ideas, one song after another emerged. Motivated by the wonderful collaboration and friendship with Alphaville frontman Marian Gold, who kept encouraging me with words about how good this record was, the pandemic passed, and so did one year after another. Through my friendship with Faithless drummer Andy Treacey, I got in touch with Jonathan White, also a member of the Faithless family. A true genius on bass in live performances, he became part of the album as well." - Volker Lutz

Spike Lees neuester Film ,Highest 2 Lowest" zeigt das Leben des Gründers des fiktiven Plattenlabels Stackin Hit's, gespielt von Denzel Washington. Der Soundtrack hat eine coole Auswahl an Original-Songs von etablierten Musikgrößen und neuen Künstlern. Die aufstrebenden Sängerinnen Jensen McCrae und Aiyana-Lee bringen ihre einzigartigen Stimmen ins Album ein, während die Harlem-Legende Eddie Palmieri mit seinem Salsa-Orchester für energiegeladene Auftritte sorgt. Das absolute Highlight ist der ebenfalls aus New York stammende A$AP Rocky (der auch in dem Film mitspielt), der zwei knallharte Ohrwürmer beisteuert, die uns daran erinnern, warum er einer der modernen Superstars des Rap ist. Die Starpower des Soundtracks wird durch eine mitreißende Orchesterpartitur von Howard Drossin untermalt und durch ein vom Jazzpianisten Fergus McCreadie angeführtes Trio ergänzt.

Sometimes, the most beautiful stories begin simply between friends, over laughter, late nights and shared music. That’s how the collaboration between Oscar and the Wolf and Roméo Elvis was born. What started as an unexpected jam session after dinner soon evolved into something much greater: a modern-day Romeo and Juliet where two distinct worlds, North and South, pop and rap, light and shadow, meet and merge effortlessly.

Their first collaboration, “Ceiling”, captures that magic: the perfect balance between intimacy and grandeur, where contrast becomes harmony. Premiered live before 100,000 people during Belgium’s National Day celebrations, the single immediately resonated, becoming a radio hit and surpassing one million streams within weeks.

Now, the duo present JARDIN, an eight-track EP arriving this December. Here, Oscar and the Wolf and Roméo Elvis push each other beyond their comfort zones, exploring new sonic landscapes and blending their unique identities into one sound. From the pulsating energy of “Crocodila” and “Je M’en Balec”, to the tender alternative rock ballad “Lose My Baby”, and the groove-driven “Chargé (Monet)” or the club-ready “Bon Sense”, JARDIN unfolds like a living garden, a vibrant space where every track blossoms into something new.

To celebrate the release, the duo will perform together for the first time on December 15 and 16 at Ancienne Belgique in Brussels. Both shows sold out within hours, a testament to the excitement surrounding this groundbreaking collaboration.

With JARDIN, Oscar and the Wolf and Roméo Elvis don’t just unite genres and languages; they build a bridge between regions, emotions and artistic worlds, a celebration of sound, connection and friendship.

The project brings together a stellar cast of musicians. Guitarist and producer Matthis Pascaud who crafts a rich and colourful sonic landscape, along with acclaimed drummer Raphael Chassin, pianist Thibault Gomez, and bassist Simon Tailleu. The record shines further with the participation of special guests: iconic guitarist Bill Frisell and the legendary saxophonist Archie Shepp, whose contributions underscore both the intimacy and the grandeur of Rampal's homage. Through inventive arrangements and deep poetic sensibility, 'Song For Abbey' revisits key pieces from Abbey Lincoln's repertoire, including a luminous, modern rendition of ' And It's Supposed To Be Love' .

Marion Rampal's voice, instantly recognisable and deeply evocative, breathes new life into Lincoln's world, blending tradition and innovation across jazz, blues, and folk influences. With high-profile guest artists, Bill Frisell and Archie Shepp, who elevate the album's international visibility and media value, 'Song For Abbey' is not just an album, but a resonant contemporary statement - a vibrant crossroads of jazz legacy, emotion, and artistry. "One of the most beautiful voices of her generation brings new life to the legacy of the sublime singer and songwriter Abbey Lincoln - chills guaranteed." - Jazz Magazine

Live music needs to offer you something that you cannot get on a studio recording. It's the sense of freedom and intimacy, wondering how the songs will be played and what the reaction will be. Live concerts give you the tingle where the hair stands up on the back of your neck. "Live audiences give you the tension and responsibility to be creative, for me that's the challenge I like," says the iconic Dutch guitarist. After all of these years, you ponder what keeps Jan going out there, night after night. "It's my love to play for people all around the world," he smiles. The supremely gifted guitarist is equaled by very few, and his legendary ability makes him impossible to pigeonhole. His position as Dutch royalty has been cemented; he received the Golden Harp Award in early 2005, Holland's most prestigious music prize, and in 2012, he was appointed Knight in the Order of Orange-Nassau. This royal honour recognized his contributions to Dutch music and his influence on musicians worldwide.

Seattle born and raised brothers. Since forming in 2020, everything has fallen into place as it should for the Brudi Brothers, a direct byproduct of their desire to create and play, wherever and however. Shortly after signing to Mom+Pop earlier in 2025, they released their single, “Me More Cowboy Than You,” a tongue-in-cheek jab at the “cowboy craze” and its subsequent poseurs, which went viral, reaching more than 1.4 billion views and 60 million streams.

On their folkier “Motherland,” the Brudi Brothers detour through a nostalgic recollection of the days when love was freer, meditations on how time is fleeting, and a reverence for the souls who have come and gone, held by their interwoven harmonies and guitars.

Celebrating 25 years since its original release, The High & Mighty's seminal debut album, "Home Field Advantage", returns in a special anniversary edition vinyl reissue. Originally launched under the iconic Rawkus Records banner, this album became a defining moment in underground hip-hop, showcasing the sharp wit and raw talent of Mr. Eon and DJ Mighty Mi. Now, in collaboration with Eastern Conference Records, RRC Music Co. revives this classic with the care and respect it deserves.

"Home Field Advantage” stands as a testament to the golden era of hip-hop, featuring an all-star lineup of guests who helped cement its legendary status. The album includes unforgettable appearances by Mos Def, Pharoahe Monch, Evidence, Eminem, Defari, Cage, Kool Keith, among others, each bringing their unique flavor to the project and amplifying its impact.

This 25th-anniversary edition is more than just a reissue; it's a revitalization. As a special treat for collectors and die-hard fans, this edition includes six bonus tracks, adding further depth to an already rich collection of tracks. Remastered for vinyl by the renowned Davide "Bassi Maestro" Bassi and packaged in a gatefold jacket with restored original artwork curated by Mr. Krum, this release pays homage to the album's legacy while celebrating its enduring influence.

This 25th anniversary reissue is not just a trip down memory lane — it's a reminder of why this album continues to resonate in the hip-hop community today. Don't miss the chance to own this piece of music history, reborn for a new generation.

Ston Elaióna is John Also Bennett’s first album for Shelter Press since his 2019 solo debut Erg Herbe. The American born, Athens, Greece, based flautist, synthesist, and composer weaves a strikingly singular electroacoustic excursion for bass flute and Yamaha DX7ii, largely recorded in the golden haze of the early morning hours - bending time at the otherworldly juncture of consciousness and place. Translating from Greek as “in the olive grove”, Ston Elaióna is permeated with the ambiences of the ancient and present world, guided into form by a playfully rigorous approach to sound.
Initially emerging during the mid 2000s as part of Columbus, Ohio’s noise scene, before relocating to NYC around 2010, Bennett’s diverse activities picked up an increasing sense of pace over the following decade - performing and recording as a solo artist (JAB), with the trio Forma and with CV &JAB, his prolific duo with his partner Christina Vantzou, as well as playing in Jon Gibson’s ensemble among many other multifaceted collaborations. However, since 2020 the flautist and electroacoustic composer has existed in a semi nomadic state: drifting between Brooklyn, Brussels, extensive tours, and Greece, where he finally came to rest in Athens last year.

Drawing upon a carefully honed attentiveness to the environments and experiences of everyday life, Ston Elaióna is a suite of nine pieces (with an additional track exclusive to physical formats), many of them composed and played live as the early morning sun touched the Parthenon, in full view from Bennett’s studio window in Athens. Bennett’s refinement and restraint, honed over his years adrift, led him to adopt a limited palette focused on his primary instrument, the bass flute, and a Yamaha DX7ii synthesizer tuned to just intonation scales. Alongside a handful of other keyboards, digital oscillators triggered by his flute, and occasional field recordings, this simple palette is reflected by the deeply emotive sense of minimalism that permeates the album’s two sides. Following two solo albums defined by outward facing temperaments - 2022’s Out there in the middle of nowhere (Poole Music), which used a lap steel guitar and generative oscillators to evoke the surreal landscapes of the South Dakota badlands, and the largely synthetic atmospheres of the 2024 anthology Music For Save Rooms 1 & 2 (Editions Basilic) - the shift in Bennett’s worldly circumstances offered an intuitive return to the calm, inward states of creative exploration that have historically defined JAB’s sound. In parallel, context provided clear sources of inspiration for many of the album’s themes, as well as sources for some of its sounds. The aura of Greece, from the ancient to the present, from its stones and olive groves to its traffic, figures heavily across Ston Elaióna’s two sides. John Also Bennett’s Ston Elaióna forms an elegantly rigorous world of electroacoustic sonority, bridging the expanse of time with the immediacies of environment and happening in the here and now: a profound sonic mediation on the countless dimensions unlocked by life in Greece.

Joel Shearer’s Listening Immerses Itself in Ambient Guitar, Restraint, and the Beauty of Repetition

With guitarist and ambient composer Joel Shearer’s new album, Listening, he took the path of repetition, subtle movement, and pure sound rather than conventional songwriting. What began as a disciplined experiment — limiting himself to just electric guitar — soon expanded. At various points, he introduced piano, cello, and trumpet, allowing the record to evolve organically. "I didn’t know I was making another record,” Shearer says. “I was experimenting, wanting to do something beyond just the electric guitar. So, I started these other tracks, and that’s how Listening came about.”

Unlike albums built around hooks or dramatic shifts, Listening unfolds gradually, moving with patience and restraint. There are no choruses, no obvious climaxes — just sound evolving over time. “Instead of a traditional song structure with a verse, chorus, or B section, it’s one continuous movement that grows and dissolves,” Shearer explains. “It’s not about anticipating the next moment—it’s about sitting inside the sound, getting comfortable with patience.” A Topanga-based session musician, composer, and producer, Shearer’s previous solo albums, Morning Loops and Hours, explored the manipulation of only the electric guitar, using texture and repetition to push beyond conventions. Listening continues that journey, offering music that resists distraction and rewards deep attention.

Shearer recorded Listening without a click track, working in long, freeform takes. His shimmering, clean guitar tones—often unrecognizable, processed through looping pedals and effects—became a foundation, with layers of sound building around it. “I love making the guitar sound like anything but a guitar,” he says. “I might play for just a minute, but once the sound enters the effects chain, it takes on a life of its own. The music keeps evolving, stretching time in ways I couldn’t predict.”

The opening piece, “Big Sur,” is an 11-minute meditation that drifts in slow, hypnotic waves, its layered guitar textures sparkling like light over water. The piece moves without urgency, subtly transforming as it pulls the listener deeper into its atmosphere. “Threshold” features a delicate piano melody that gradually unfurls, allowing its essence to fully settle before the next emerges. Subtle layers of ambient guitar weave around the piano, stretching and dissolving into the background, creating a sense of stillness and slow expansion.

At nearly 15-minutes, “The Clear Light of the Void” is a slow-burning study in sustain and resonance. Layers of guitar stretch and dissolve into an open, drifting soundscape, each note lingering and shifting like a breath held in suspension. Subtle tonal variations emerge over time, creating a sense of vastness—an expanse where sound is less about movement and more about presence.

“The world is noisy—so much information, so much distraction,” Shearer says. “I wanted to create something that allows people to just be present with the sound, without expectation.” It’s an album that demands nothing from the listener but offers space — to focus, to drift, to listen without waiting for what comes next.

Die Cut Sleeve with download. It’s a strange betweenworld, bookended by sleep and the jolt of being wide awake in a place where you wonder how you got there. You know the feeling… It seems familiar but the colours are, well, unreal. In a high-ceilinged room, a grand piano plays lush melodies as, meanwhile, somewhere, an Alice In Wonderland clock ticks, cellos are bowed, a swarm of something vibrates and the hallucinatory crowd around Rosemary’s Baby babble. An echoey electronic hum builds and falls like a 50s refrigerator passed through and effects board, things run backwards, staccato strings are plucked… and that’s not the half of it. “I’ve never been happy staying in one particular school of musical thought. The fun has been turning things on their heads, to try something you were not supposed to do.” We’re on an immersive and adventurous travelogue with the former member of the legendary Tangerine Dream, Paul Haslinger - this is a man who knows how to build tension, hold moods, illustrate contempt, lies, passion and pleasure; He can create fear, loathing and love - he’s been unlocking the nuances of such emotions in a hugely successful career as a TV and film soundtrack composer (Halt And Catch Fire, Underworld and the Golden Globe-nominated Sleeper Cell). ‘Exit Ghost’ is his long thought out opus, a moment caught in time, flicking through reference points, taking an ethereal excursion that permeates musical genres as it becomes awash with intricate sounds and cross-pollinating rhythms. Built originally from the warmth of his grand piano ‘Exit Ghost’ resonates with purity and power, from an eerie and evocative betweenworld, that’s at once expansive and rolling, then intoxicating and suffocating in equal measures; modern composition at its most uplifting; cerebral, celebratory, intense and beautiful. “The soul searching in connection with this record was extensive. Finding places of resonance, giving a colour to your memories. It was more challenging because it’s not somebody else’s narrative. Finding the core of your own story can be the most difficult task of all.” Created over the span of eight years and filled with literal and personal references, the album itself is a testament to the search - a quest filled with hints, particles and suggestions.

Their original pop-infused songs blend rock, punk, and garage rock, and--together with their wild stage presence--have made them unforgettable to anyone who sees them live. Last year, the power trio even provided the soundtrack for a Ryukyu Nissan commercial--appearing in it themselves. Now, it's time for their debut LP: "Best Answer"! The album is incredibly catchy and versatile. From wild, lo-fi punk instrumentals like "Beehive!!" and "Howling Bowl", to cool pop- punk tracks like "I Want You", "45", and "Questions- theme".

There are also danceable garage punk songs like "Brighton Beach", "Koi no yokan", and "Yoakenotori ga naita". The track "I am I" references the SONICS' guitar sound and adds cool Japanese female vocals, screams, and harmonies. The album also includes two wild, punky cover versions: the R&B classic "I Got My Mojo Working", and a charming yet incredibly cool take on Jacques Dutronc's "Les Cactus". And with "Honey Pye", they even deliver a catchy off- beat tune with a feelgood pop-punk attitude. This album is top-quality Japanese rock--from beginning to end!

It was December 2015 when Simon Weiss delivered his first EP for Voyage Direct, an impressively intergalactic affair full of supersonic synthesizer arpeggio lines, Motor City influences and robotic drum machine hits. Two years on, the experienced Dutch producer returns to action for the first time since, in the process delivering another quartet of starry-eyed productions.
.
Through releases on Deepermotions, Rush Hour and Hometaping is Killing Music, Weiss has established a reputation for combining a deep understanding of dancefloor dynamics with a sci-fi inspired futurist aesthetic. Both of these complimentary traits are much in evidence on his second outing for Voyage Direct.

Weiss blasts off via Brain Fever', where raw, mind-altering arpeggio bass, fuzzy drum machine hits, spacey chords and alien electronics thrust our hero skywards. Think of it as techno for funk-fuelled, Italo-disco loving astronauts whose journey to the end of the universe is only just underway. This intergalactic funk blueprint is explored further on the deeper and more melodious You Want A Cigarette', where Weiss's vocoder vocals wrap themselves around mutant TB-303 lines, rush-inducing chords and clattering machine percussion.

On Space Ghetto (Booty)', our hero celebrates the discovery of previously unknown worlds in the only way he knows how. With kaleidoscopic, full-throttle electronic motifs and funk-fuelled synth-bass to the fore, Weiss offers his own unique take on electrofunk. Pleasingly fuzzy and tightly wrapped in the syncopated drum machine handclaps of ghetto-house, it's a typically far-sighted and attractive proposition.

With just two minutes to go until his spacecraft touches down on alien territory, Weiss rounds things off via the melancholic chord progressions and heartfelt vocoder vocals of Intro', a beat-free excursion just tailor made for dramatic set openings and spine-tingling mix endings. He may be stepping into unknown territory, but it won't be the last you'll hear from Simon Weiss.

At the beginning of the 1960s, at the Berklee College of Music, Byard Lancaster met some feisty friends: Sonny Sharrock, Dave Burrell and Ted Daniel. It is easy to see why he rapidly became involved in free jazz. Once he was settled in New York, he appeared on Sunny Murray Quintet, recorded under the leadership of the drum crazy colleague of Albert Ayler.



In 1968, the saxophonist and flutist recorded his first album under his own name: It’s Not Up To Us. The following year he came to Paris in the wake of… Sunny Murray. He would come back to France in 1971 (again with Murray) and in 1973 (without Murray for a change). This is when he met Jef Gilson, the pianist and producer who encouraged him to record under his own name again.

On Palm Records (Gilson’s label), he would release four albums: Us, Mother Africa, Exactement and Funny Funky Rib Crib.



A few months after recording “Us”, Lancaster recorded “Mother Africa” along with Clint Jackson III, a trumpeter, partner of Khan Jamal or Noah Howard on other recordings.

On march 8th, 1974, Lancaster and Jackson headed up a group composed of Jean-François Catoire (electric and double bass), Keno Speller (percussion) and Jonathan Dickinson (drums).


Together, they create an immediate impression. From the first seconds of “We The Blessed”, they develop a free jazz which rapidly abandons any virulence under the effect of blues and soul based interventions.

When Gilson’s composition “Mother Africa” begins, listeners are transported into the studio, listening to the musicians setting up: chatting and joking… Then comes the melody: a dozen or so notes of a repeated theme which is accelerated and deformed according to their whims… The jazz played by the association Byard Lancaster / Clint Jackson III is rare: creative AND recreational. “We the blessed”, is apt listening to this again today!

This CD edition contains a bonus track, the magnificent “Love Always” that was originally released on the fourth (and last) volume of the Jef Gilson Anthology series released in 1975.


Recorded on 8th March 1974, it is a beautiful 15-minute-long modal jazz piece. Four notes from the bass (the relentless Jean-François Catoire, who makes up the rhythm section alongside drummer Jonathan Dickinson and percussionist Keno Speller), and the group is up and running!

On piano, Gilson shows the subtle tact of a sideman, leaving the lions’ share of the place to the horns. This allows us to hear the trumpet of Clint Jackson III and the alto (which sometimes sounds almost flute-like) of Byard Lancaster each staking their claim in a long hallucinatory march which moves from moments of direct exaltation to profoundly sensitive collective playing.

Goodbye Matters retraces Silly Boy Blue’s intimate journey through a year shaken by the loss of a loved one and the emotional transformation that follows. This EP explores the emptiness left by this sudden absence, and how, over time, that void slowly fills with acceptance.


Each track represents a stage of the grieving process, associated with a color and a season, reflecting the emotion that accompanies it.



Summer 1 opens the story with an apparent calmness of everyday life that hides an inner turmoil. Autumn dives deeper into the tangible pain of absence, as memories gradually fade away with the falling leaves of the season.



With Winter, the EP reaches a breaking point. The music is stripped down to its bare essence, conveying an emotional landscape emptied out, where the outer cold mirrors inner loneliness.



Then comes Spring, where sadness still lingers but gives way to a glimmer of hope, symbolizing the struggle between memory and renewal.



Finally, Summer 2 marks acceptance — a last imaginary conversation, a gentle farewell. The cycle closes, yet light returns, offering a peaceful conclusion to this journey through loss and reconstruction.

Kill Them With Kindness is the 18th album from Beans on Toast, recorded at Greenmount Studios in Leeds with The Beans on Toast Band, a collection of musical friends he handpicked from the UK music scene a few years back.

"We've done a few tours together, but this was our first venture into a studio. Each one of them is amazing, and together... well, I'm proper chuffed with how it sounds. Have a listen for yourself," says Beans.

This album is a bit of a juxtaposition, as is the title. "There are songs that deal with the current state of the world: wars, maniac leaders, the rise of AI and the fall of the establishment. Then there are songs about trees, late nights in music venues, art, love and my new cat. As usual, it's a time stamp of my thoughts and feelings from the past year on planet Earth."

Transparent Purple vinyl. Sometime in 2005, a lone box of master tapes escaped an estate sale and made its way through a network of collectors, record dealers, and "junkers" into the hands of leading Ohio soul expert Dante Carfagna, who linked them to Columbus, Ohio's mysterious Prix label (See: Eccentric Soul: The Prix Label). A bit of research turned up Prix proprietor George Beter, who identified most of the unlabeled material. All it took was an endless series of phone calls and letters and two fields trips in Columbus. But one complete mystery wended its way onto our final Prix compilation. "You and Me," a simple but irrepressible demo credited only to Penny & the Quarters, was found tacked onto a mixed studio reel. Our survey of every willing lifer left on the Columbus soul scene, including retired DJs, producers, and important local artists, produced not so much as a glimmer of recognition at the name Penny & the Quarters. Though we loved the song from the first play, it may've ended up a bit buried on our original compilation, as #18 of 19 tracks.Four years later, Eccentric Soul: The Prix Label hadn't exactly become a huge seller, although listeners had repeatedly told us that the unfiltered studio demos that fill out the record's back half were true diamonds in the rough. But neither Penny nor her Quarters had appeared to claim credit for their efforts. Then, completely out of left field, we heard from respected screen actor and avowed Numero fan Ryan Gosling that Penny's piercing bit of stripped down doo-wop was being considered for inclusion in Derek Cianfrance's indie-weeper film Blue Valentine. What we didn't know was that "You and Me" had won a major role in what became an indie circuit hit, and that Penny & the Quarters would instantly assume the role of world's most famous unknown doo-wop group.Every week is a slow news week in Columbus, Ohio, and early January 2011 found the city recovering from the thrill of elevating Ted Williams_the formerly homeless guy with the awesome voice for radio_into a national news sensation. But both major daily newspapers in town, as well as the city's alternative weekly, also ran stories about how a lost and unknown Columbus soul group had become the musical centerpiece of a film already garnering Oscar buzz. That mainstream spotlight aimed at Blue Valentine and Penny & the Quarters did the trick: we finally made contact with the widow of Jay Robinson, lead Quarters' singer and songwriter. Robinson, it turned out, had also been the leader of Columbus doo-wop pioneers The Supremes (later known as "The Columbus Supremes," for reasons which should be obvious). Jay Robinson never did give up on the dream of writing a hit record; even so, the posthumous realization of his dream is cold comfort for his widow and daughter. With their blessings, we returned to those estate sale masters and pulled down another neglected track ("You Are Giving Me Some Other Love") from the still-unknown Penny and her now-partly-known Quarters. "You and Me" is a song that could not be suppressed: not when Prix failed to release it; not when Penny & the Quarters were forgotten; not when Numero stuck it at the bitter end of a much overlooked compilation. Its evolution from estate sale trash to silver-screen gold has finally returned it to big-hole 45, where it probably should have lived all along.

Comprising of sisters Eva and Grace Tedeschi, The Cords are the brightest new indiepop band from Scotland and this is theri debut. They started playing drums when they were little kids and later found that they liked 80s and 90s indie music more than their peers did, and so formed a band, just the two of them, with Grace on drums and Eva on guitar - and the songs started to flow. With only a cassette and a flexi single released so far (both of which sold out in a matter of hours), Eva and Grace honed their skills by playing a whole series of gigs with some of the biggest names in Scottish pop. Their first show was with The Vaselines, and since then they have played with Camera Obscura, Belle and Sebastian, BMX Bandits and others, while also sharing stages with the new generation of indiepop stars: the Umbrellas, Chime School, Lightheaded. Like all great pop bands, The Cords have taken familiar ingredients and created something utterly fresh. Older indie fans will hear echoes of The Shop Assistants, The Primitives, Tiger Trap and Talulah Gosh, but they will hear something else too: a yearning, dreamy melodic power that takes the songs into darker, stranger places. Younger pop fans won't care about these old reference points: what they will hear is the sound of two young women doing something utterly exciting: playing loud guitar and loud drums, taking analogue instruments and hitting them hard in the service of immediate and infectious pop tunes, and not giving a second thought about the digital world that wants to own everything we do. The Cords sound free: they remind us that pop music, played right, is expressive, liberating, joyful and deeply personal. First single `Fabulist' is a sweet and catchy pop song that races along, so headlong and hooky that, on first listen, you could miss the fact that it's a wholehearted take-down of people who lie for a living. And the album is a fun rollercoaster ride from that point onwards, with the real stars of this record being Eva's sinuous guitar and silky vocals, and Grace's clattering, expressive sing-song drums. It's the sound of two sisters having an intense musical conversation with each other, pushing each other on to greater heights, exhilarated by the set of perfect pop songs they have magicked up. DIGIPAK CD, LP on BABY BLUE VINYL.

Dharmacide is a Spanish band known for their eclectic fusion of genres, blending elements of shoegaze and dreampop music. Their sound is marked by intricate guitar riffs, powerful drumming, and deep, emotive vocals that create a unique atmosphere. The band, with members of Alcalá Norte and Depresión Sonora, has made a huge impact on various stages, performing at renowned venues and festivals, including iconic spots in their home country as well as internationally, earning praise for their high-energy performances and thoughtful compositions. Their latest singles have been produced, mixed and mastered by Mark Gardener from Ride. "Tougher Than the Rest" is their awaited second album. They take a step forward with a darker sound with gloomy riffs and ethereal voices in which they describe perfectly how the sound of a night full of random events -that surely, we all have experienced- would be like. Their sound is influenced by today's bands like Diiv, Warpaint or Beach House but also by classic artists like Cocteau Twins, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds or Tom Waits. 'The Cigs, The Light, The Coffee and Crying' is the first single in which we find a powerful reverb-laden riff with a solo vocal melody in the middle of the chaos until breaking into a powerful chorus. Their debut LP "Cult Band Member" (2021) is sold out and the growing interest in the band anticipates that copies of this new album will not last long.

The inimitable Richard Youngs returns to Black Truffle with this third full-length for the label, Hidden. Like CXXI and Modern Sorrow, Hidden unfolds across two side-long pieces at once eminently listenable and possessed of the ‘bloody-minded’ dedication to ‘having an idea and sticking with it’ that Youngs himself has identified as one of the key qualities of his work.

At the core of both pieces are rapid, randomised arpeggios generated with a Moog Grandmother, hypnotic patterns that wouldn’t be out of place on a Berlin School classic. Alongside these arpeggios, across the seventeen minutes of the first side-long piece Youngs builds an airy structure of shakers, synthetic handclaps and a brief, repeated sample, impossible to identify but sounding like a glitched foghorn. Over the top we hear his unmistakable voice, repeating single syllables—Ha, Ho—with a slow delay, something like a lonely one-man-band take on Anthony Moore’s Pieces from the Cloudland Ballroom or a more musical elaboration of the hypnotically overlapping delayed phonemes of Anton Bruhin’s Rotomotor. Like much of Youngs' work, the arrangement of sounds is sparse, each layer punctuated by spaces that allow others to shine through, in a way that seems to have more to do with dub or early hip-hop than high-brow models of musical reductionism.

On the flipside, the arpeggios return, now accompanied by ringing, filtered guitar chords and long flute tones. The use of a similar ground layer across the two pieces with strikingly different overdubs calls up Youngs' first solo record, the classic Advent, reminding us of how consistent ‘theme and variations’ is as an approach in his enormous body of work. Joined by handclaps and a chiming sound, the piece almost feels like it is about to achieve dance-floor lift-off at times, only for the percussion to disappear and leave the listener once again floating among the guitar and flute, now joined by occasional cut-off vocal snippets, like a radio turned quickly on and off. The suspension of these disparate elements over the steady foundation of the Moog arpeggios might remind some listeners of the free-form studio explorations of Moebius & Plank and Holger Czukay or even give a nod to Youngs’ formative encounter with Cabaret Voltaire.

Like some of Youngs’ much-loved work with Simon Wickham-Smith, Hidden approaches relatively familiar sounds and instruments from skewed angles, delighting in loose structures of interaction that border on gleeful incoherence while remaining outwardly beautiful. Coming up to almost four decades of persistent activity, like little else in contemporary music Youngs’ work beams with the simple joys of exploration and experiment.



- 140G schwarzes Vinyl inklusive bedruckter Innenhülle und Downloadkarte

Rustic helvetic black metal, deeply rooted in medieval lore and tales of pestilent witchcraft. A fericious array of piercing riffs, marching percussions and tortured howls

Featuring the otherworldly vocals of the legendary jazz singer Norma Winstone whose vocals were recently sampled in Drake's 2023 chart topping single IDGAF (feat. Yeat) and Leo Taylor (Floating Points, Hot Chip, Joy Crookes) on drums, the EP is the amalgamation of Barrott's long term fascination with sunset music, and the ways the change of seasons impact the way we co-exist with the sun. As winter draws closer and we move on from the Autumn equinox to Winter solstice, Barrott's latest release captures the transformative yet paradoxical feeling of melancholy over the end of Summer and the start of winter while creating an eerie sensation of serenity.

The EP follows from the release of Barrott's critically acclaimed and deeply personal 2024 album Everything Changes, Nothing Ends.

The new EP sees Barrott return to his beloved sunset music, as he continues his eternal quest to find new ways to soundtrack this sacred Ibiza moment.



Crowned as the"master of sunset music"by Pitchfork, Barrott's new EP is filled with celestial grandeur that stops you in your tracks. A profound musical meditation and an homage to the sunsets of the Autumn months, the EP captures the sonic poetry of the changing skies and the seasons.

The haunting combination of Barrott's production & arrangement skills, Taylor's jazz drums and Winstone's endlessly ethereal vocals soar in a harmonious union across the title track of the EP while the openerI Am The Starssummons you in for a brief respite from the cacophony of the modern world. The wistful second trackMy Blue Heartlingers with you with its melancholic jazz horns swelling side by side with Winstone's vocals while the closing trackI Am The Airfloats through your ears with its sublime contemplativeness. I Am The Sun, You Are The Moonsees Barrott returning to his sonic ruminations on sunsets, however they are more profound and life affirming than ever.



"At the end of the summer, on a clear bright starry night I climbed to the top of a mountain in Ibiza with a pair of headphones and listened to these tracks and lost myself in the vastness of the night sky and the endlessness of Norma's voice. At that moment everything made sense in my world for the first time in a long while and it just felt right",Mark Barrott says.

"I was surprised and delighted to be asked to participate in this very musical project and to be given such a free hand. Trying to integrate the voice into what were already beautifully formed pieces was creatively very interesting", Norma Winstone says

Editors-Frontmann Tom Smith veröffentlicht sein Solo-Debütalbum „There Is Nothing In The Dark Which Isn’t There In The Light“

Nach zwei Jahrzehnten als Frontmann von Editors und zwei Alben mit Smith & Burrows betritt Tom Smith mit „There Is Nothing In The Dark That Isn’t There In The Light“ nun endlich Solo-Territorium. Motiviert durch den Wunsch, zu den rohen, akustischen Anfängen seines Songwritings zurückzukehren, machte sich Smith daran, etwas Intimeres und Persönlicheres zu schaffen, weg vom kollaborativen Charakter seiner Bandprojekte.
Anfangs Stand noch der Gedanke im Raum, diese Songs wieder mit seinem langjährigen Kollaborateur Andy Burrows zu schreiben, entschied sich aber schließlich für einen einsameren Weg und engagierte stattdessen den Produzenten Iain Archer. Gemeinsam schufen sie ein Album, das auf emotionaler Ehrlichkeit, akustischen Texturen und Themen wie Verbundenheit, Erinnerung und Resilienz basiert.
Auf dem gesamten Album balanciert Smith reduzierte Arrangements mit filmischen Schnörkeln und schafft so eine dynamische Bandbreite – vom minimalistischen Schmerz von „Broken Time“ bis zum mitreißenden Drama von „Life Is For Living“.
Obwohl von Melancholie geprägt, schwingt auf dem Album letztlich Hoffnung mit – es unterstreicht Smiths Entwicklung als Songwriter und seinen Wunsch, Musik zu schaffen, die das Wesen seiner Persönlichkeit widerspiegelt.

- Oxblood Single Vinyl

With great albums you can enjoy them many times and still hear new things. So how about when a great album is re-imagined and you can hear even more new twists? Chris Pope has taken the classic 1980 album by The Chords and taken a new slant on the amazing songs he wrote on it which will see the album in a new light. When re- working older songs in your back catalogue you musn't miss any of the energy and swagger that made the songs so exciting to hear the first time around and Chris, along with the other members of the band: Sandy Michie on guitar, Mic Stoner on bass and Ken Cooper on drums, have brought a new power to the songs that energised a Fred Perry wearing movement in '79 and '80. Enjoy this album and the clever way it looks at each moment on that record and a few other choice cuts

What if fate had followed a different path? Alex Marker and Ben Reed were childhood friends who made music together before pursuing different careers, with Ben becoming a professional musician while Alex followed a career in stage design.

Originally a drummer, Alex set himself a challenge of writing a song for his wife for their wedding day. One song led to another and collaborating for the first time since they were very young Alex and Ben soon found they had a whole album's worth. Influenced by Alex's career in drama each track on Impostor Syndrome aims to tell a tale or paint a portrait encapsulating a moment of change or release. Ben brings a wider palette of musical styles and arrangements to augment a series of songs which draw from a wide range of musical influences including: singer/ songwriter, British prog, folk and rock. Ben Reed is a multi instrumentalist whose playing credits include bass duties on Frank Ocean's albums Endless and Blond as well as work with David Byrne, Sampha, Mustafa, Frank Dukes, Nilufer Yanya, Hayden Thorpe, FKA Twigs and many others.

He has previously released four full length albums of his own; Tall Story, Who Dreams of Hyssop, Station Masters, Loft, Bandaged and most recently You Do You. Alex Marker is a critically acclaimed theatre set and costume designer who has designed over 150 productions for a wide variety of venues including The West End, tours, regional theatres and the fringe. Further back he used to play drums in pit bands for productions and has occasionally been seen on stage too. The album features guests including: organist Ross Stanley (Steve Howe Trio), flautist R achel Hayter ( Alvorada ), bassoonist Philip Dale ( Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment) and Matt Weeks who plays brass alongside mixing duties.

US Black Friday 2025 Release. There are very few albums in the psych/punk/hard rock/private presses strata that garner the sort of universal awe and accolades that Fraction’s almighty Moonblood LP does, and even fewer records in the world that could be dubbed ‘Christian Rock’ incur such fierce devotion. Indeed some records just meteorically lift themselves out any genre tag with brilliance and sheer defiance--and Moonblood is surely one of them. Based in LA, Fraction was a ragged collection of working-class musicians--the line-up was ringleader Jim Beach--vocals; Don Swanson--lead guitar, Curt Swanson--drums, Victor Hemme--bass, and Robert Meinel--rhythm guitar. Beach himself describes those early days: “The guys met through various acquaintances that we had in LA. All of us had been in bands before, but were seeking something with more teeth. We had a small studio in an industrial complex in North Hollywood and started practicing sometimes as early as 4:30 AM. We all had day jobs, so we did what we could.”

Amazingly the recording sessions for the album were recorded similarly on the fly, as Beach further states: “The Moonblood recording took place at Whitney’s Studio in Glendale, CA, early in 1971. On a strict budget, these songs were recorded in less than three hours—all of them “one takes.” We played, all 5 of us, simultaneously-- there were no studio effects, no overdubbing or any additional sound effects added. Basically what you hear is considered ‘old school’ recording.”

This workmanlike description in no way prepares one for the pure tortured genius the session wrought. Particularly noteworthy is Beach’s vocals—as commonly stated, the spirit of Jim Morrison is conjured in his deep baritone, which gives way to unparalleled pained howls, at times bathed in delay which trails into the abyss. Fascinatingly enough, Beach cites the much punker Love as his fave LA band over the Doors, and also gives influence-nods to proto-everything rockers The Yardbirds and to Dylan, whose dark word tapestries surely inspired Beach’s lyrics (though lines from The Doors’ “L’America” pop up on the LP) Whatever the case, the man clearly has a vision, as even the stark sleeve concept is Beach’s own. Equally as integral to the Fraction sound is lead guitarist Don Swanson—his blown-out fuzz riffs set a template for what is now commonly known as “stoner rock” or “acid punk,” and his solos consist of jagged, wah-wah-ed shards of notes, with his amplifier clearly pushed to the limit.

Beach says: “Don’s guitar was always my driving force and he did everything he could to keep it over the top. You’d never know that (his sound) was coming from an old, broken down Esquire. Don kept it alive!” The other members contributions shouldn’t be underappreciated though-- drummer Curt Swanson keeps things at a constant simmer, and then boils over when the whole band launches into snarling glory. The band and LP as a whole equals something indescribably intense from start to finish—comparisons to the Detroit late 60s high-energy bands like The Stooges and MC5 abound, as well as the sort of late 60s damaged spirit lurking in biker clubs and disgruntled Vietnam vets. The song cycle on side 1 of the LP in particular cuts to the emotional core, with severely charged dark lyrics like “Extend your thumbs and burn the darkness out of her.” Which brings us to the Christian aspect--it often can confuse listeners. The Fraction/Beach world of religion is complex and perhaps a bit pagan/sinister than most---fire and brimstone, temptation, and the truth-seeker being burned by this hell on earth—or perhaps as Beach himself best put it: “Speaking for myself, as a believer, it’s been a progressive experience since my childhood.

I think we’re all basically driven to live more than religion.” The album was pressed in a run of but a few hundred to little attention in the day, but now inferior bootlegs flood the marketplace, and originals of Moonblood command thousands of dollars. So enjoy this all-inclusive reissue, which also features for the first time on vinyl, 3 lost tracks-- like the more acoustic-minded “prisms” and “dawning light,” as well as the proto-metal choogle of “Intercessor’s Blues.”

Soul diamonds featuring Millie Jackson, Gloria Ann Taylor, The New Establishment and Ruby Andrews

MAL welcomes Hiroshi Takakura aka Element & co-owner of Riddim Chango Records with a heavyweight session of deep roots mutations and dynamic steppers.

A truly unique and well loved character, Hiroshi is one of Japan’s key figures for dub wise experimentation and this release presents a decade of influence distilled into a selection that bridges Jamaican and UK lineages with a very personal slant.

The centrepiece, ‘Longest Summer Pt.1 & 2’, is a radical remake of the theme from Fruit Chan’s Hong Kong cult film. He flips the wistful, naïve melancholy of the original alongside deep bass weight and syncopated hats with a slink and roll that feels as well suited to the steaming tarmac of LA as any smoke laced, late night Blues dance.

Born from the momentum of live set preparation, the raw sketches that make up the ep were shaped into full-blown dancefloor weapons, particularly the percussion-heavy, tribal mayhem of the title track, ‘Motion Exchange’.

All in all the release captures a snapshot of heady obsessions: UK roots and dub pressure channeling echoes of Jah Shaka, Jamaican dancehall’s roughneck energy, and a wide selection of experimental electronic influences from the early 80’s to the present day.

Motion Exchange delivers a weighty steppers sound that honours its roots while pushing into bold, forward-thinking territory.

Like Element’s sets, this is music for the rig but has layers of detail that reveal themselves on repeat listens and in selector tradition, the EP offers multiple versions for extended play.

A further milestone in MAL’s journey, with Takakura charting heavy new territories in modern dub. RIYL 5 Gate Temple / Bokeh Versions / Lord Tusk / Seln etc.

Click here to see our current stocklist
You received this email because you requested to be added to our wholesale mailing list.

Our mailing address is:
Rubadub ltd
Unit 4, Carberry Court
28 Queen Elizabeth Ave
Glasgow, Scotland G52 4NQ
United Kingdom

Want to change how you receive these emails?
You can update your preferences or unsubscribe from this list.

Back again with another release for the Meeting Of The Minds series, this time with lucky number 13!

First track on this is by me & Fez The Kid, who has been regularly sending me music for years, most of which I admit to sleeping on due to the sheer volume of demos submitted to the label. But when I was able to actually check some music that he sent me, there was one tune (at the time called All Round Juggling) of his that I gave me a few ideas on how it could sound. He was thankfully up for me working on it with him & the end result is "Skin Out Crew (Magnificent Mix)", which I've been playing a lot in sets this year.

"BDC" is a track done by me & The Last Ronin (aka Stretch & Enjoy) which they had started and I was really into it because it reminded me of some of the "ruff with the smooth" ragga jungle style tracks I'd hear on labels like Slam!, Tom & Jerry, Kemet & so on. It was really fun to work on this with them & we were also able to do a 2nd collaboration, which will be coming out on the next Defender compilation on Stretch's label AKO Beatz.

Settle Down is someone that was on my list of potential collaborators for a long long time but I just kept neglecting to reach out to him about actually doing something together. I eventually got round to getting in touch with him last year for collaborating on a track for Meeting Of The Minds, so he sent me something he had started, which I added some more to & sent back to him, so that he could add the finishing touches. The end result is "Shell Of A Man", which I like because it's quite sparse & ominous, dark but not in the typical "darkside hardcore" way.

"Altitude" by me & Flex Luthor has been through quite a lot haha. He initially reached out about working on a tune together in 2021 & at the time, I was keen but already quite occupied with other artists I was collaborating with for the series, as well as contemplating ending the series on Vol. 10, due to the amount of work it takes to compile each one (which also explains why Vol. 14 is not currently ready for release yet). But around the end of 2022, he sent me a track he had done where he said that he was struggling to get any kind of bassline that he was happy with. I liked what he sent so I asked him to send the track over for me to work on, but I then sat on the track for a whole year due to other commitments before finally working on it in 2024, during a long plane ride where I had time to actually focus on it. I was able to get the track to a place we were both happy with, until it became one of the tracks of mine that got lost when my backpack was stolen a few weeks later, with my computer inside. I didn't have the backup of the project, so unfortunately, we had to master this track for release from the mp3 file of the first & only version we had of it. I think it still sounds fine though, especially as this is not the first (or only) time I've had to send mp3 files off for mastering, but yeah, what a journey this tune has had!

• 180 GRAM AUDIOPHILE VINYL
• GATEFOLD SLEEVE
• INCLUDING INSERT WITH LINER NOTES
• FEATURING JILL SCOTT, WYCLEF JEAN, GARY BARTZ, JAMILA WOODS, KASSA OVERALL, TEEDRA MOSES A.O.
• BRAND NEW 2022 ALBUM BY GRAMMY NOMINATED
JAZZ MUSICIAN THEO CROKER


Love Quantum is the seventh studio album by Grammy Award nominee Theo Croker since his 2007 debut. The album finds Croker making his first-ever foray into the concept of love, once again inviting listeners on a genre-defying journey across time and space in discovery of the self and our shared human experience. Of the album, Croker says, “It's a love story. It's a tribute to all the different levels of love that can exist - love of a friend, love of a partner, love of a parent, love of yourself and a love of life. It's really about the journey of love, the experience of it, and how powerful that energy is for us as human beings.”

Joining Croker across the album's 11 tracks are Jill Scott, Jamila Woods, Wyclef Jean, Ego Ella May, Teedra Moses, Chris Dave, Gary Bartz, James Tillman and Kassa Overall.

Love Quantum is available as a limited edition of 1000 individually numbered copies on solid gold coloured vinyl. The album is housed in a gatefold sleeve and includes an insert with liner notes.

Musician and visual artist by day, bat researcher by night: Mathilde Nobel brings both worlds together on her new album Guadirikiri on Nous'klaer Audio. Unlike the first album, Guadirikiri features (almost) no vocals. Instead, its compositions took shape through Mathilde's deep fascination for bats. Creatures that, much like her, navigate and make sense of the world through sound. By night, Mathilde travels across the Netherlands to study their calls, movements, and patterns. Using ultrasonic detectors and thermal cameras, she's been gathering and archiving recordings and visuals, gradually building what she calls an orchestra of bats - shaping and inspiring what became Guadirikiri.

Kevin Sery is the ambient guitarist behind From Overseas and now returns with a brilliant follow-up and stylistic evolution of his 2020 debut, Home. This one was inspired by fatherhood and the artist's studies in environmental philosophy, which is why the eight luminous soundscapes feel both intimate and immense. Layers of shimmering guitar, airy drones and organic resonance add up to a sonic meditation on awe that cannot help but have a profound effect. From the cascading beauty of 'Appalaches' to the radiant calm of 'Infinite,' this is ambient music that is too emotional and cinematic to be simply left playing in the background. It's a contemplative heavyweight that demands and rewards your full attention.

„Happy Christmas… Again!“ – die erweiterte ReEdition
++ Aufgenommen mit dem Royal Philharmonic Orchestra & dem City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra
++
++ Mit fünf zusätzlichen Weihnachtstiteln & vier persönlichen Audiomessages von Howard ++
Erweitert um neue Musik – und persönliche Botschaften zum Jahresausklang: Die kommende ReEdition „Happy Christmas… Again!“ von Howard Carpendale sorgt pünktlich zum ersten Adventswochenende
für besinnliche Momente und wunderschön orchestriertes Weihnachtsfeeling. Unter anderem auch als karriereübergreifende Deluxe-Edition (inkl. dem ersten Weihnachtsalbum von 2001!) erhältlich, erscheint die
ReEdition in etlichen Konfigurationen und Bundles.

"The Word II," which gained instant worldwide recognition after being sampled by Mac DeMarco in "Chamber of Reflection" and by Travis Scott and Quavo's unit HUNCHO JACK in "How U Feel." Shigeo Seikito's seminal work, which includes that track, will be reissued on colored vinyl. It's the most widely listened-to electone piece in the world, drawing attention from a diverse range of audiences including hip-hop, Balearic, and dream pop enthusiasts.

Going back to sleep… a lovingly gathered suite of windswept, heart-bursting contemporary DIY indie-pop and folk including new songs by Carla dal Forno, The Reds, Pinks and Purples, Lewsberg-related duo The Hobknobs and Rat Columns, next to luminaries and newcomers Daily Toll, Who Cares?, The Lewers, The Sprigs, Drunk Elk, I Can I Can't, The Gabys and Chateau. A beautiful contemporary companion of I Won't Have To Think About You (A Colourful Storm, 2017).

Focused on Australian artists predominantly recording and performing in intimate spaces, the compilation's sentiment extends to likeminded artists around the world. A feeling of introspection that seems impossible to achieve when recording for anyone but yourself. A trip through the wonderfully diverse international pop underground, or more simply, a group of music makers performing on A Colourful Storm's imaginary stage.
, or more simply, a group of music makers performing on A Colourful Storm's imaginary stage.

For the first time ever, Marcal's "Thought Control" is available on vinyl to commemorate Enemy Records' 20th anniversary. Previously only available digitally, the EP figures some of Marcal's biggest tracks such as "Seroto"and "Manta Ray." This ep is part of a limited series of reissues and first pressings from the label's back catalog, headed by Dustin Zahn.



"Thought Control" takes on a slightly deeper and heady direction than his previous output for Rekids or Uncage. However, the drums are still slammin' and every detail is crystal-clear. Marcal's natural progression shows he is more in control of his sound than ever before.



Manta Ray starts the EP with swinging drums and shots in the dark that will keep people marching through the night. Nevoa is the most melodic cut on the record. It's moody, wandering, and tripped out enough to disassociate you from reality. Robotic Thinking is as rigged as it is funky. The strong, pedaling, unified groove is laced with vowel formants and pulsing sinewaves. Closing out the EP is Seroto, a steady headsdown tribal workout for those trying to find their way through the late-night fog

Following his award-nominated and critically acclaimed 2023 album Until Then, Danish guitarist and composer Rasmus Oppenhagen Krogh now presents his fourth album as a bandleader. "The title refers to the pillars that life and existence rest on," Krogh explains. "The moments, feelings, and meetings that form us as human beings, and that follow us the rest of the way. Snapshots that become defining for how our life develops." Musically, Pillars balances clear song structures with rich, intricate harmonic foundations. Krogh draws on influences from jazz, indie, rock, film scores, electronic music, and pop, creating a genre-fluid universe in which the ensemble"s improvisational voices shape each piece. Krogh"s guitar takes the lead, acting as a melodic guide, while the production - crafted alongside longtime collaborator Rasmus Juncker (Yör, Anna Roemer, Little North) - adds depth and texture, highlighting the album"s bold and multi-faceted sonic identity. As on previous releases, Krogh is surrounded by some of Denmark"s finest musicians, all longtime collaborators whose personal voices and improvisational approach have deeply influenced his musical development. The ensemble includes Anders Christensen on electric bass (Paul Motian, Jakob Bro, The Raveonettes), Jakob Hoyer on drums (The Raveonettes, Jakob Bro, Nikolaj Norlund), Lars Greve on reeds and effects (Resonerede Rum, Girls in Airports, Peter Sommer), Simon Toldam on piano and synths (Simon Toldam Trio, Han Bennink Trio, Efterklang), and Victor Dybbroe on percussion (Girls in Airports, Teitur, Blomsten). Their interplay and openness create a living, evolving sound world, with Krogh"s guitar at its emotional center. Beyond his own projects, Krogh is a sought-after guitarist, working with artists ranging from Guldimund to Takykardia and Emil de Waal. Pillars underscores his identity as a deeply personal and forward-looking voice in contemporary instrumental music.

DJ Support: Oliver Dollar, Harri Subclub, Boogs, DJ Sneak, Pinto (NYC), Moonboots, Joey Coco, A.Well, Oscar de Lima, Dubble D, Charles Eddy, CA LOU

Tiptoes drops a 4 tracks with the help of Ben Silver on the remix to round out the Fire EP. Built for the club, Fire sounds its exactly how its titled, a club weapon with all heat from start to finish. My Love offers a refined deep house number for those who like to deep subtle and groovy. Switching gears on Sumn Raw, Tiptoes layers down heavy drums and sampling at its finest. This one will be a smash for those late night sets and Ben Silver offers up something special in his remix, encompassing what the 24 hour session at Revolver sounds like, big, bumpy and full of groove.

Going through his music files from the past fifteen years, LFU found some unfinished and long forgotten projects. One particular track caught his attention, made by former 'Pantoffeldiertjes' VJ Bas Klompmaker, now known as Pantov. This track, called 'WannaBe', was remixed at some time by LKRT and LFU, but was never finetuned and stayed on the shelf for a long time. When you listen to the original 'Pantov - WannaBe' theme, it feels like you get caught in a magic spell. A boost of freedom and positive energy flows from the speakers straight into your brain. Pantov & Casa Meganika polished up the original track, while LKRT and LFU re-created the remixes. You simply cannot sit still when listening to LFU's catchy and mesmerizing punchy breakbeat remixes: a 7inchMix and a full version boasting even more breakbeats (how many breaks do you want?). The LKRT RMX has a trippy progressive - four to the floor - energetic feel: keep moving straight ahead!

Unreleased 80s psychedelic funk rock out of Boston, MA. Influenced by Funkadelic, Sly Stone and James Brown, to name a few.

Sherman Williams Started playing and writing music at age seven, he played through middle school.

Travelled with a group, called Total Eclipse, throughout the East Coast during his high school years.

He was on a mission to be a professional musician/singer/songwriter, of a band – he wanted heavy rhythms to match his huge guitar action, this is how Black Axess came about.

"I badly wanted to record the music that I helped to create with the Black Axess so paid out of pocket for the studio time." - Sherman Williams

From that session one single, "Tonight" was released on 7" but the lost album "The Golden Seal" sat on tape almost lost to time. That was until Robert Garcia and Daniel Mathis spoke to Sherman while tracking the "Tonight" Single, and discovered the lost LP we have here, credit to them both for sorting out and hooking us up and special thanks to Daniel for saving the tapes when UPS almost lost them, which might have been the end of it!

Lay back, light one up, and listen on loop.

The two tracks are an additional commentary on the band and the compilation: one song looks back fondly to former lineup incarnations and how the records were made, while the other lists the artefacts and talismans of kitchen-sink and DIY culture which run at the core of what PC, Gare du Nord Records, and a host of other friends, artists and labels get up to, still, now, in the mid 2020s. Musical nods in the recordings are directed towards Wreckless Eric, first-album Clash, and Cockney Rebel. The two songs are in MONO.

»Chronotopia« is the second album by composer-performer Elisabeth Klinck. After collaborating closely with artist Oscar Claus to blend her violin playing with electronic soundscapes and field recordings on her 2023 debut Picture a Frame (Hallow Ground), Belgian electroacoustic artist Elisabeth Klinck now turns inward. On Chronotopia, she takes a more song-oriented approach, embracing her voice as a vital counterpart to her violin, intertwining their sounds like threads in a dynamic, multicolored fabric. The record marks an essential turning point in her artistic evolution and opens up a rich internal world. It is a tapestry of sound, emotion, and curiosity spun from—both literally and figuratively—her growing voice.Klinck, who works as a composer and performer in theater, wrote the pieces between tours and recorded the album in the same place as its predecessor, the Spanish Pyrenees. Though the outside world isn’t as explicitly reflected in the recordings as it was the case on »Picture a Frame,« her sophomore album responds to the outside world by capturing both the expansive serenity of the mountains and the frenetic pulse of life on the road. Eschewing her previous, more atmospheric and abstract approach, Klinck creates a landscape that is built on the song and filled with intimacy. Her music feels at once vulnerable and deeply human, balancing the rawness of improvisation with the careful precision of melody-led composition.Klinck describes »Chronotopia« as a playful exploration of time—its fluidity, its constraints, and its influence on how we navigate the world. These notions reverberate through her melodies and lyrics, which dance between moments of shimmering clarity and messy, beautiful chaos. These contrasts are further accentuated by the cunning interplay of voice and violin, which itself reflects the artist’s fascination with duality and transformation. Recorded in both organic and controlled environments, »Chronotopia« blurs the lines between intuition and design. The »time space« into which Klinck invites her audience is a place where sound becomes touch, time bends like light, and every moment carries the thrill of discovery

Clear Vinyl. Luxurious jacket with embossed logo and details plus cut-out on the side. Explore an emotional sci-fi game with a unique blend of survival, adventure, and base-building elements. Help the sole survivor of an ill-fated space expedition create alternative versions of himself to escape a hostile planet and tackle personal turmoils with this unconventional crew. 11 bit studios, the creators of the award-winning games This War of Mine and Frostpunk, present The Alters, an ambitious sci-fi survival game with a unique twist. You play as Jan Dolski, the lone survivor of a crash-landed expedition on a hostile planet. To survive, you must form a new crew for your mobile base. Using a substance called Rapidium, you create alternative versions of Jan -The Alters- each one shaped by a different crucial decision from the protagonist's past. The one-of-a-kind soundtrack for The Alters was created by Piotr Musial best known for his compositions for games like The Witcher, Frostpunk and This War of Mine. For The Alters, Musial chose to stray from the obvious path when it comes to this genre of games and head for something more original: "While many sci-fi soundtracks these days favor the sound of analog synths, the idea behind the music of The Alters was a bit different. We wanted the music to feel more untraditional and mix digital, glitchy elements, unstable reverb with organic sounds, all of which together could support this unique story." With this approach, Musial dove deep into the world of The Alters to turn abstract ideas and atmospheres in very concrete music: "We aimed for the planet to feel overwhelmingly strange and hostile at first. The music starts as more abstract and based on dense atmospheric sound design. Our circular base, a place of safety and comfort inspired to create a theme that 'goes round' by a repeating leitfmotif. You will always feel at home there, unless there's something bad happening, and that's where the theme will get changed, broken." Musial further explains: "One of the key elements we get to discover in the game is the Rapidium crystal. A strange mineral, with yet unexplored properties. We felt like it could have its own theme too, and therefore, wherever you find it, it 'sings' to you with it's strange, bassy voice, supported by a trace of live recorded strings, that were digitally destroyed to create this translucent texture, that sound unlike the real thing. A glitch crystal, is what they call it after all. But the more we explore the planet, the more the story we uncover. We wanted the music to gradually gain momentum and show the leitfmotifs more often, guiding you through emotional moments, fun moments, tough ones, reaching a grand finale. I hope you'll enjoy this ride." Enjoy playing and listening to The Alters!

The tracks on Night Song reflect Howl Quartet's narrative range, with each composition offering a personal or poetic point of departure. The title track, 'Night Song', captures the shifting emotional landscape of new parenthood, drawing on quiet intensity and tenderness. 'Falling Man' is a moving tribute to Brunt's great uncle, an RAF pilot who died in a plane crash shortly after the Second World War, while 'Renjo' channels the drama and exposure of a high-altitude journey through the Himalayas. 'Smallhope', dedicated to a much-loved family home, unfolds slowly with warmth and nostalgia. 'Embers' reflects on the quiet, transformative energy of a fire's dying glow.

'Oku' is a journey inward, drawing on the Japanese idea of inner space, 'Tolls' offers a sombre reflection on consequence and choice and 'Gwdihw' is a lively tribute to the much-missed Cardiff venue where the group's early musical friendships began. Each member of Howl Quartet brings their own musical voice to the group, but it is the strength of their long-standing connection, musically and personally, that defines the band's sound. With its balance of lyricism and exploration, Night Song is both a natural progression and a bold new chapter for the quartet.

Haunted Heart: The Legendary Riverside Studio Recordings brings together the complete studio recordings by the Bill Evans Trio featuring Scott LaFaro and Paul Motian. Included are the albums Portrait in Jazz and Explorations, plus 26 alternate takes - 17 previously unreleased. The collection includes rare photos, introduction by John Densmore (The Doors), and new liner notes by Eugene Holley Jr. and audio is newly remastered by Paul Blakemore, with lacquers cut by Kevin Gray at Cohearent Audio.

With Dominik Eulberg and Arne Schaffhausen (of EXTRAWELT) we welcome back two longtime Cocoon heroes to the label. The two were featured in a VICE Magazine special last year for a 'field recording' documentary. you-need-to-hear-this/dominik-eulberg-westerwald-extrawelt-zurich-lost-and-found) which marked the beginning of a new collaboration. Dominik and Arne checked their fresh recorded sounds in the studio and found out that there have a common base and musical understanding. They started to work on new tracks and it looks like this joint venture will continue for a longer time. The first results of their mutual work is 'A Little Further' which will be released in three different versions on Cocoon Recordings in the next weeks (COR12117). So let's start with 'Not On A Map' version: This one seems to be tailor made for the next afterhour and the rising sun. Dominik and Arne create the perfect mood for those special moments on the floor with a nice mix of energetic beats, interesting sounds and an emotional bass- and synth-programming. So many layers and different levels however the overall picture never gets overcharged or too demanding. Coming up next is the '37 Routes' version which quite stands out with the used breakbeats and no standard 4/4 kick drum. The synths are more scratchy and louder and the bassline seems to jump out of the speakers, this is a massive wall of sound production. The direction here is clear. However the two incorporated some cool and magic breaks that seem to refer to the deeper Eulberg sound which forms a great mix of two different techno-visions. Last but not least there's the 'Imaginery Escort' version which appears a bit like the dub edit of 'A Little Further".

DJ Support from Alan Dixon, Danny Tenaglia, Made By Pete, Nick Warren, Hernan Cattaneo, Anthony Pappa

The Magic Black Plastic series reaches its 8th instalment for another carefully curated vinyl EP that features a quartet of bestselling tracks from Dave Seaman & Steve Parry’s Selador Recordings imprint.

Wending their way onto wax for this edition is Andrew Sant & Andre Espeut’s achingly beautiful vocal gem ‘The Call’, Dilby’s classy hypnotizing ‘Closer’, Levi David & Abigail Bailey’s anthemic ‘A Better Place’, and last but in no way least, Aubrey Fry & Nick Stoynoff’s heavy hitting rework of Danny Howells’ ‘Stereodrama.’

it’s another awesome foursome to satisfy your vinyl needs.

2025 Repress

DJ Koze doesn't aim for technical perfection for its own sake, but rather to serve the purpose of giving birth to great music. On his debut 'Rue Burnout EP' from his own Pampa label, he plays with finesse and sophistication, and implicitly understands the importance of subtlety, leading from dreamy and restrained parts to a noisy frenzy at the end. 'Blume der Nacht' starts with a looped piano solo from Arabian dodecaphony, interwoven with bangs of violine bows, piercing high-pitched strings, almost shrieking glissandi, deep angel chants and obsessive sharp rhythms. The 37 year old constantly horny wunderkind producer has made a habit of creatively foiling expectations, and works also under the pseudonyms Adolf Noise, Swahimi and recently Madima Lokkah to redefine the boundaries of electronic music. This daring concept works perfectly in the title track 'Rue Burnout' - it is very rare that you find house music this excitingly light-fooded and precisely transparent. The musician cuts the pigtail off the term 'Kackmusik' for good, and demonstrates how sounds are capable of creating the most delicate musical interplay.
Amen.
DJ Koze, Germany, April 2010.

2025 Repress

DJ Koze exists both above and beyond club culture as we know it - his albums and remixes flying free from genre and trend - and symbiotically woven into its heart. Yes, he always abstracts and weirds out the principles of house, techno, hip hop, pop, psychedelia, exotica and so forth, but he does that because he understands them. And when it comes to club-demolishing tracks, he understands those principles as well as just about anybody on earth. Thus he could create an enduring club tune like 2015's 'XTC' that is strange, contemplative, even disturbing, bore little relation to anything around at the time, yet still got bodies moving and sweating better than way more obvious techno bangers. And thus the Knock Knock album, which melts a million genres and none into one another, can comfortably include 'Seeing Aliens". 'Seeing Aliens' unquestionably is a banger, its bass riff snaking around your body like a python, its high-drama strings, pianos and outbursts of noise designed for maximum crowd pressure release. But, again, it sounds like nothing else, and its dynamics and twists unfold over eight and a half minutes in ways that will mess with your head every time no matter how many times you hear it. The exclusive b-side track, 'Nein König Nein' ("No King No"!), meanwhile, is slightly gentler on the face of it: it's less about sonic pressure, more about hip-shaking syncopation. But it too tells strange fairytales in its peculiar and brain-tweaking accumulation of detail, and though you'll hear archetypal sounds from the heart of house and disco in it, every last one of them becomes new and otherworldly.

'Songs and Bodies' is best described as hypnagogic post-rock, an impressionistic blur of dissociated riffs, jazzy rhythms and half-heard voices that casts a beguiling digital silhouette of '90s indie music. The album began as a personal experiment, a question that emerged as Piotr Kurek cast his mind back to the era that birthed bands like Gastr del Sol, Bark Psychosis, Labradford and The Sea and Cake. Curious how this music might sound in today’s cultural climate, he started recording sketches at home on guitar and keyboard, applying the same advanced processing, editing and manipulation techniques that had nourished his last run of albums. Early on, he brought in drummer Mateusz Rychlicki and bassist Wojciech Traczyk, layering their performances into the evolving material. These ideas might have remained in that unvarnished state had Unsound not suggested a live performance of the work in October 2024. Spurred by the invitation, Kurek hardened his resolve, finishing a crumpled, uncanny set of half-songs that extend the chimerical sonic universe of the jazz-inspired 'Smartwoods' and its baroque predecessor 'Peach Blossom'.

Not an exercise in nostalgia, 'Songs and Bodies' is an examination of the '90s and '00s experimental rock canon that isolates its humanity as the world stares down a new technological dawn. At a glance, Kurek's songs are remarkably organic, diaphanous guitar-led meditations embellished with era-specific organ and electric piano vamps, cryptic vocal utterances and dusty drums, but it's all an illusion. Listen a little closer and the wrinkles appear—the robotic, garbled articulations, awkward tempo fluctuations and charming hiccups.

Kurek distills these vulnerabilities and blemishes to present a deeply personal but relatable abstraction of familiar sounds and gestures. It's the closest the composer has come to old-fashioned songwriting, but the end result is the same: an invitation to look beyond the frosted glass of an increasingly digital existence.