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Sam Bhok releases his debut album, Sloom. Influenced by experimental club sounds as well as the filmic emotion of post-rock and film scores, Sloom resists minimalism in favour of dense, interlocking layers. Euphoric synth textures and fractured drum patterns drive the record, pairing club energy with reflective undercurrents as hardware synths and drum machines are set against caustically digital, hyper-modern sounds.

Known for his behind-the-scenes work with Gilles Peterson, most notably as an integral part of the Worldwide FM team, Sloom represents Sam stepping into focus as a skilled producer of forward thinking electronic music. Written between 2020 and 2025, the record is a statement of identity and a creative shift away from the world of the selector, and towards something more personal and expansive.

Mastered and cut by legendary engineer Beau Thomas on eco-mix marbled vinyl, Sam Bhok draws from analogue and modular synthesis, processed and twisted into restless forms that reflect the unease of the digital age. Sloom is charged with anxieties about technology, capitalism, culture, and climate, delivered both through introspective, IDM-informed tracks and moments of dancefloor catharsis.

Razorbats unleash their fifth studio album, "Anthems of a Lost Century" - a sonic blast that throws you straight into the golden age of rock, while pushing the genre forward with power and attitude. This is not just another record - it's a statement. Recorded at Velvet Recordings in Spydeberg with producer Eiliv Sagrusten, and released by the renowned label Voices of Wonder, "Anthems of a Lost Century" is a tribute to the era 1974-1994 - packed with massive production, unforgettable hooks, and a sound that demands attention.

Beat Machine Records is proud to present the fifteenth chapter of its iconic Swinging Flavors series, starring Ac1d Vicious—a brutalist force in underground jungle and acid rave—backed with a remix from high-speed specialist Samurai Breaks.

“Screamer” is exactly that: a hardware-driven sonic assault that draws from 90s breakbeat chaos and acid techno ferocity. Think distorted amen breaks colliding with tortured 303 riffs, all arranged on glitchy hardware gear with no safety nets. Every snare slices through, every bass stabs deep—it’s raw, unstable, and unapologetically intense.

The B-side flips the script with Samurai Breaks’ signature footwork‐meets-jungle rework. Twitchy, fast-paced and percussively scattered, his remix injects hypermodern energy while preserving the original’s rave DNA. The two tracks together form a high-pressure 7” that captures both the nostalgia of old-school warehouse violence and the momentum of cutting-edge club experiments.

Following artists like DJ Sofa, Ornette Hawkins and naco, to name a few recent ones, Ac1d Vicious marks a new evolution for the Swinging Flavors series—one where tempo and texture are weapons, and the dancefloor is a war zone.

This release continues Beat Machine Records' mission to highlight forward-thinking club music rooted in global underground culture, with a sharp focus on physical formats and hybrid rhythms.


b b1. Screamer Samurai Breaks Remix

Gainax’ alliance, “oyster sunrise”, had their base a couple light-years off the galactic ice ring. Unassumingly sitting in-between shelves of hyperspace artillery was a black sturdy box, with aluminium details revealing it’s conventionally terrestrial design. Stuck to the box was a label tracing it back to recon-mission-3.31 with a hand-written note that read “destiny’s best FFriend”

Recon Mission 3.31 was the last of a series of top-secret visits to a remote-community of terrestrials who had abandoned the global hegemony. Defined by their abrasive aesthetic but warm nature these self-defined spiritualists welcomed Gainax’ legion with caution. This courageous openness was part of their hopeful prophecy, one that saw the terror of Project-ST as an essential step in the global awakening.

Hand Stamped & Numbered (limited to 300 copies)

After screaming to the world You Don't Know What Chiptune Is, arottenbit returns with an even more radical and collective statement: You Don't Know What A Rework Is. Ten tracks, completely deconstructed and rebuilt by twenty Italian bands, each in their own sonic language. From drone swallowing the void to the most savage death metal, from visceral punk to a fearless flamenco twist, every track becomes an uncharted territory, a journey where arotttenbit's identity dissolves and multiplies into twenty new forms. Most of the recordings were captured by Otto himself with his mobile studio, during a tour across Italy that took him into basements, rehearsal rooms, and underground spaces, harnessing raw and direct energy from the bands in their natural environment. Mixing and mastering then came to life at Otto Engineering Labs, his personal sound-space where everything was stitched together and transformed into a single living organism.



[a] SPECIMEN 1.1.[FLC:011-015] (FEAT. FULCI)
[b] SPECIMEN 2.1.[ISK:006-008] (FEAT. JASON DAHLKE)
[c] SPECIMEN 3.1.[FSG:005-007] (FEAT. FOSGENE)
[d] SPECIMEN 4.1.[OVO:004-007] (FEAT. OVO)
[e] SPECIMEN 5.1.[UND:008-010] (FEAT. UNDERTAKERS)
[f] SPECIMEN 6.1.[HWF:007-009] (FEAT. HYPERWÜLFF)
[g] SPECIMEN 7.1.[3ST:009-010] (FEAT. THREESTEPSTOTHEOCEAN)
[h] SPECIMEN 8.1.[MBR:006-007] (FEAT. MASTER BOOT RECORD)
[i] SPECIMEN 9.1.[LXN:010-011] (FEAT. LESLIEXNIELSEN)
[j] SPECIMEN 0.1.[8NE:006-008] (FEAT. OTTONE PESANTE)

Auf dem 2025 erscheinenden Album spielt / erfindet Pabst den Hyper-Rock. Da crashen die Drums, da stottert die Gitarre vor sich hin, da schwirren Synths von links nach rechts, da überdreht der Bass vollkommen. So etwas kann nur aus einer der wichtigsten deutschen Rockbands ihrer Generation herauskommen! Unterstützung gibt’s erstmals in Form von Features mit den australischen Garage-Legenden DZ Deathrays, der Leipziger Indie-Poetin Blush Always und den britischen Grunge-Punks Snake Eyes.

ROTTEN, FOUL, DERANGED!

Around the end of the 1980s and the first years of the 1990s bands like PUNGENT STENCH, DISHARMONIC ORCHESTRA, DISASTROUS MURMUR or MIASMA made a name for themselves by putting out some classic albums. "Been Caught Buttering", "Changes" or "Expositionsprophylaxe" were records spawned by Austrian hordes which were globally hailed by devotees of Death Metal. As fertile a soil Austria once seemed to be, throughout the last 30 years not one single Death Metal album was put out that would match the quality of the pioneers.

Apparently, it took Brenton, an Australian settling in Vienna, to eventually put Austria on the map again. After having founded FESSUS with 3 other members in 2023, the quartet put out their first demo "Pilgrims of Morbidity" in the same year.

Now, two years after the very promising demo, FESSUS return with their first full-length. Cryptically entitled "Subcutaneous Tomb" the album's six lengthy songs stylistically continue where the demo left off. Whereas other bands focus on hyper-speed, over-technicality and brutality, FESSUS' brand of Death Metal is mostly played in moderate tempi with outbursts of speed and aggression scattered throughout the album. The songs are foremost characterized by memorable compositions and groove. Every song literally oozes with morbidity and conjures a dense macabre atmosphere. Brenton's vocals which are partly reminiscent of NECROPHAGIA's Killjoy are one of the highlights of the album. With his performance being equal parts versatile and deranged, Brenton spews vile bile and brimstone like not many lunatics before him. Although there are hints of other bands like AUTOPSY or PURTENANCE found on the album, FESSUS actually managed to come up with a sound that’s distinctly their own.

"Subcutaneous Tomb" is a perfectly produced album that those worshipping at the altar of morbid, rotten Death Metal can't afford to miss out on.

Recording, mixing, mastering: Thomas Taube (Five Lakes Studio)

GATEFOLD DOUBLE VINYL WITH SPOT UV FRONT COVER

Following the skewed-unself-help-brilliance of ‘Sus Dog’ (which marked his first full foray into songs, abetted by Thom Yorke), and its companion piece ‘Cave Dog’, Chris Clark returns to the dancefloor’s simple, but no less affecting pleasures, with ‘Steep Stims’.
“I found it hard to pull away from listening to this record, hard to stop making it, I had to remove myself from the Stims and stop enjoying it at some point. The album feels like nature to me. I love it when electronic music feels more naturalistic than acoustic music, more potent, that’s the devil’s trick, the promise of electronic music.” comments Chris.
“I used an old synth - the Virus on all of the tracks. I used it at Mess in Melbourne - run by my friend Robin Fox - I loved it so much I had to buy one when I got back to the UK, it took a while to find. They’re a bit clunky to program but make some of my most favourite sounds.”
‘Steep Stims’ marks a back-to-basics approach, invoking the early years of gung-ho creativity enforced by limitations in technology at the time. “Most of the tracks on this album capture the spirit of making music on old samplers, which don’t have much memory time”, explains Clark. “It reminds me of making ‘Clarence Park’, my first album, where I would have to finish tunes in the session, as they would be saved on floppy disks and I couldn’t easily go between tracks. This new record is just a few synths and a few choice sounds; the writing is the important thing.”
Made quickly, ‘Steep Stims’ reflects the immediate rave energy of his live show, but that’s not to say it’s basic floor fodder, as it’s rife with personality, synth magic, and knack for melody. Although swift and impressionistically captured rather than laboured over, it’s still formidably deft, with plenty of oddball weirdness lurking beneath the dancefloor.
Soft, orange, scorched, brutal, the opening track ‘Gift and Wound’ captures the classic dance music dread / awe / euphoria combo perfectly, before ‘Infinite Roller’ merges sparkly-minimalism with snarling bass and soft sines, which turn more dense and metallic as it progresses.
The melancholic smoke belch of ‘No Pills U’ gives strong classic vibrations, which is belied by its creation, made in just 20 minutes. “I love working quickly sometimes”, comments Clark. “Inspiration hits, rough and ready. It’s off the cuff but also screams ‘don’t gild the lily with nonsense, keep it simple keep it clean’”. Segueing into its elder brother, the piece becomes bigger and beatier on ‘Janus Modal’, where it permutates for over 7 minutes of fluttering, beatific club majesty.
At ‘18EDO Bailiff’ you inexplicably find yourself at a clearing, things have suddenly got much quieter. You enter a decrepit and eerie old house, and as you move through its unsettling interior, you arrive at ‘Globecore Flats’. A real piano tuned to 18 notes per octave gives the pair of tracks a haunted, olde worlde feel, which promptly gets eaten by a huge tech step tearout monster, birthing a strange but exotic beast.
The white hot ‘Blowtorch Thimble’ is all hooktasm-rave-hyper-amen-energy, whilst acidic flute leaps around like Ian Anderson on pingers throughout the catchily simple jump-up lurch of ‘Civilians’.
“‘In Patient’s Day Out’ is like some sort of Morricone-does-kraut-rock-with-drum-machines, but that’s probably just in my head” says Clark. “I made several versions of this then went with the early mix but cranked through some choice outboard because it just had something.”
Drumless, yet still full of exhilarating-big-trance-drama, ‘Who Booed The Goose’ flashes by in stroboscopic fast forward, then ‘5 Millionth Cave Painting’ gives a palate cleanser, letting “the virus with its delicious broken, luxurious reverb have a moment”, before ‘Negation Loop’ swoops down in all its glory, with Clark’s tweaked vocals leading deconstructed trance breakdowns, tape edits and brutal noisebursts.
An antidote to the bombast of its predecessor is ‘Micro Lyf’, which closes the set on a poignant note, of sorts. Muted staccato gives way to field recordings “that gradually put it in this outside space; alien in a meadow somewhere nameless. It feels like a sinkhole. The record kinda swallows itself up and then is gone”, ends Chris.

Extended Field vereint Horse Lords und Arnold Dreyblatt für die achtzehnte Ausgabe von FRKWYS, einer generationsübergreifenden Zusammenarbeit abenteuerlustiger Musiker, die sich von der klanglich strahlenden Welt der reinen Stimmung angezogen fühlen - einem alten Stimmungssystem, bei dem die Tonintervalle aus ganzzahligen Verhältnissen abgeleitet werden. Dreyblatt tauchte erstmals in den 1970er Jahren in New York in diesen Ansatz ein, während Horse Lords fast vier Jahrzehnte später begannen, dessen Möglichkeiten zu erforschen und anzuwenden. Gemeinsam schaffen sie eine lebendige harmonische Umgebung, die von ihrer gemeinsamen Leidenschaft für Rhythmus angetrieben wird und eine Verbindung von diskreter, aber verwandter Ästhetik für die Ewigkeit herstellt. Dreyblatt ist ein Pionier des psychoakustischen Phänomens und war von 1975 bis 1977 Assistent von La Monte Young, bevor er bei dem legendären Alvin Lucier an der Wesleyan University studierte. Er entdeckte die klangliche Kraft angeregter Saiten, rüstete einen Kontrabass mit Klaviersaiten nach und schlug mit schnellen Schlägen darauf, um einhüllende Wolken metallischer Obertöne zu erzeugen. Dreyblatts Album Nodal Excitation aus dem Jahr 1982 legte einen klanglichen Entwurf fest, der bis heute das Herzstück seiner pulsierenden Musik bildet. Schließlich zog er nach Berlin und leitete im Laufe der Jahre verschiedene Ensembles, die das kompositorische Gerüst, das er um seine klingenden Töne herum aufgebaut hatte, verstärkten und interpretierten. Im Gegensatz zu Dreyblatts hyperfokussierter Praxis haben Horse Lords einen ganz eigenen ekstatischen, hybriden Sound entwickelt: Hard-Driving-Rhythmen unterstützen eine Kollision aus traditioneller Ritualmusik, Free Jazz und spektral brillanten elektronischen Schauern psychoakustischer Klänge. Nachdem sie sich mit ihrem 2020 erschienenen Album ,The Common Task" eine treue Fangemeinde aufgebaut hatten, zog der Großteil der Band 2021 nach Deutschland, wobei sich Gitarrist Owen Gardner und Bassist Max Eilbacher in Berlin niederließen und Saxophonist Andrew Bernstein nur wenige Stunden entfernt in Bayern. Schlagzeuger Sam Haberman blieb in Baltimore, trifft sich aber weiterhin mit der Band für Albumaufnahmen, darunter das 2023 erscheinende Album ,Comradely Objects", und ausgedehnte Tourneen. Ohne es zu wissen, teilten beide Seiten ein gegenseitiges Interesse an der Musik des anderen. Anfang 2017 schlug Dreyblatts langjähriger Kollege und Freund Werner Durand ihm vor, sich die Band anzuhören. Er erinnert sich: ,Nachdem ich sie gehört hatte, antwortete ich schnell: ,Klingt großartig! Ein bisschen wie meine Musik. Ich habe noch nie von ihnen gehört!` Ich schickte ihnen eine Nachricht über ihre Bandcamp-Seite, und sie antworteten: ,Hallo! Danke für die Nachricht, wir sind große Fans deiner Musik!` Aber erst als Dreyblatt die Band im Oktober 2021 in Berlin sah, kreuzten sich ihre Wege endlich. Einige Tage später schlug Bernstein eine Zusammenarbeit vor. Dieser Prozess verlief langsam, aber sicher; beide Seiten waren sehr beschäftigt, und als die Musiker schließlich zusammenkamen, mussten sie unterschiedliche harmonische Vorstellungen miteinander in Einklang bringen und brauchten jemanden, der Haberman am Schlagzeug ersetzte. Dreyblatt schlug Andrea Belfi vor, einen angesehenen italienischen Schlagzeuger und Komponisten, der in Berlin lebt. In den folgenden Kompositionssitzungen lernten Horse Lords und Dreyblatt die Feinheiten der harmonischen Vorlieben des jeweils anderen kennen und fanden Wege, diese zu einem einheitlichen Klang zu verschmelzen. ,Andrew und Owen schlugen Strukturen für die Navigation durch meine Tonsysteme vor", erklärt Dreyblatt, ,während Max in SuperCollider gewichtete algorithmische Frequenzmuster entwickelte." Viele Bewohner des Stimmungsuniversums haben hartnäckige Überzeugungen darüber, was richtig und was falsch ist, daher ist die Geduld und Offenheit beider Seiten ziemlich ungewöhnlich, wobei die Partnerschaft faszinierende Akzente und Veränderungen hervorbringt. ,Als Fans von eingeschränkter/algorithmischer Kunst (nicht der schlechten Art!) haben wir beschlossen, diese Matrix in den Mittelpunkt unserer Entscheidungsfindung zu stellen, um uns sowohl eine nicht willkürliche Möglichkeit zu geben, die ansonsten unendlichen Möglichkeiten zu begrenzen, mit denen man bei der Komposition mit Zahlen konfrontiert ist, als auch einen Ausweg aus festgefahrenen Gewohnheiten", schreibt Gardner über die Schaffung von Grenzen für ihre harmonischen Welten. Anstatt den Prozess einzuschränken, zwang diese Entscheidung die Musiker, ihre Komfortzone zu verlassen, und erforderte mehr Einfallsreichtum und Bedachtsamkeit bei ihren Entscheidungen. Das Endergebnis ist weit mehr als die Summe seiner Teile, da beide Parteien sich auf die Ideen des anderen einlassen, ohne die Vorrangstellung ihrer eigenen Ideen zu opfern. Der galoppierende polyrhythmische Antrieb, der ein charakteristisches Merkmal der Musik von Horse Lords ist, bleibt allgegenwärtig, und ein Stück wie ,Extended Field" nutzt die numerische Matrix von Dreyblatts System sowohl harmonisch als auch rhythmisch. In dem sich endlos wandelnden Drone-Stück ,Suspension" umschmeicheln Horse Lords Dreyblatts gestreifte Bogenstriche mit ihren eigenen pulsierenden Tönen. Obwohl ihre Rolle in den jeweiligen Werken unterschiedlich ist und sie im Verhältnis zu anderen Elementen in unterschiedlichen Anteilen vorkommen, ist die harmonische Erforschung das Herzstück dieser atemberaubenden Zusammenarbeit. Wie man im Schlussstück ,Impulse Array" erkennen kann, führt das Stöbern der Horse Lords in Dreyblatts Matrix zu den klanglichen Entdeckungen, für die sie leben. Wie Gardner bemerkt: ,Jede Wendung offenbart einen überraschenden, aber irgendwie unvermeidlichen neuen Akkord, dessen Verlauf seltsamerweise an einen Bach-Choral erinnert, der sowohl sehr zielgerichtet als auch ohne Ziel ist."

Never Sleep charity tape series focuses on London's pirate radio momentous rise with a true pioneer.

Femme enterpriser DJ Rap holistifies futurism with a cacophony of Ragga, Hardcore and Transatlantic soundscapes. A bass propagation filled with landmark pointillism, matriarchal musicianship and acidic House.

Soundclashing all machismo in sight, rugged mercurial stripped back bedlam for the peak time listener. Complexificating with hypnotic FX, "WHERES THE RAVE" signalling, flawless magnetica and hyperbolic genre splicing. Rap brings the "mood", hybrid soundsystem lashing and method only she fully enablises.

Literally sleeping inside and DJing on Fantasy FM from the age of 16 (you can hear her doing the ads at the start), this mix showcases an incredible time for the burgeoning sounds of the new millenia and the rise of pirate radio across London.

DJ Rap recently released her 6th studio album and is well known for her charity work and love of club culture. A female pioneer in the UK music industry and a long lasting staple in the Electronic history lexicon.

All proceeds go to Four Paws who help Animal Welfare across the UK

Limitierte Vinyl-Auflage des 2021er Tapes ""Brooklyn Pirates: Neighbourhoods In The Sky, 2014–2021"" (Death Is Not The End), einer Recherche in den Archiven des Radiomoderators David Goren aus Brooklyn, New York. Seit mehreren Jahren erforscht dieser die Piratensender-Community in NYC und produziert Sendungen & Podcasts für BBC World Service und KCRW. In jüngster Zeit katalogisiert Goren seine Streifzüge durch die lokalen Frequenzen mithilfe der Brooklyn Pirate Radio Sound Map (BPRSM) und spürt so den noch immer bestehenden Verbindungen zwischen nicht lizenziertem Rundfunk und der lokalen Nachbarschaftskultur Brooklyns im digitalen Zeitalter nach.

Vorliegende Sammlung vereint Cut-Up-Aufnahmen von wilden Soca-Jams, Kompas über Wahlnachrichten aus Grenada, haitianischen Traueranzeigen und Werbung für jamaikanische Patty-Shops und spirituelle Heiler – samt Sendungen türkischer, orthodoxer und sephardisch-jüdischer Piratensender. Die B-Seite deckt den Zeitraum von Mitte der 2010er bis Anfang 2021 ab und fängt insbesondere die einzigartig eigenwilligen und hyperlokalen Reaktionen der Brooklyn Pirates auf den globalen Zerfall der frühen 2020er Jahre ein – Coronavirus-Pandemie, George Floyd, Biden-Wahl, u.a. – und dient als wichtiges Dokument der Sozialgeschichte, das den Wert von DIY-Community-Sendungen in einer Zeit weltweiter Lockdowns und des völligen Zusammenbruchs der Politik demonstriert.

Tracklisting:

The 11th release on ALIM Music, Brian Jackson - Is That Jazz? is destined to be considered a masterpiece reworking of a masterpiece of an original. Featuring the vocals of Rahsaan Patterson and the quality production of Masters At Work, Brian Jackson has paid a real tribute to his former collaborator, Gil Scott-Heron, in covering a track originally released on Heron's 1981 Reflections album.

Brian Jackson truly is a legend of Black Music through his aforementioned collaborations with Gil Scott-Heron to his recent BBE releases This Is Brian Jackson, All Talk, Mami Wata and Little Orphan Boy. There is no need for hyperbole when speaking of Brian's contribution to music, because the music and his track record speak for themselves. He truly is a legend in his craft.

Rahsaan Patterson's distinctive vocal style has attracted praise and recognition from no less a beacon of Black Music than Chaka Khan. His co-billings have been equally impressive with a list that includes Lalah Hathaway and Earth, Wind & Fire, collaborations with Faith Evans, Ledisi and Rachelle Ferrell and he has had his own compositions recorded by Brandy and Van Hunt.

‘Cataclysm’ is a poignant call for revolution of both politics and consciousness, conveyed through ten distinct songs written and produced by Zanias between 2020 and 2024. Each piece of music inhabits its own aesthetic universe and rhythm, featuring elemental fusions of coldwave, italo disco, witchhouse, trance, breakbeats, hyperpop and even a touch of drum and bass. The unique amalgamation is best described as post-industrial ethereal wave, of Zanias’s very own signature. The subject matter grapples with how to move forward through times when civilisation and the entire ecosystem of the planet feel like they are on the brink of total collapse, while gazing back over hundreds of thousands of years of human survival in total awe of how far we’ve come. The lyrics aim for a balance of vulnerability and poetic strength, as the audience is beckoned to “thread the power through the pain”. While darker atmospheres are conjured through the sound design and instrumentation, the album ultimately directs itself steadfast toward the glittering sheen of hope. As the tempo ascends through the course of the album’s tracklist, so too does Zanias’s deep attachment to our sacred humanity and refusal to give in to despair.

‘Cataclysm’ represents an ambitious defiance of genre tropes in pursuit of pure artistry, with a potent political message delivered with assertive fervour and playful sincerity. Additional production was contributed by mixing engineer Trey Frye, best known for his work in the band Korine, and the album was mastered by Alain Paul.

SML is the quintet of bassist Anna Butterss, synthesist Jeremiah Chiu, saxophonist Josh Johnson, percussionist Booker Stardrum, and guitarist Gregory Uhlmann. Their second album, How You Been, finds the supergroup of prolific composer/producers pushing ever further into the hyperrealist, collectivist approach to music creation nascently explored on their debut Small Medium Large, which was lauded as "awe-inspiring" by Glide, "exuberant" by the Los Angeles Times, and "an exciting milestone" by Pitchfork. As SML has evolved and spread out in space-time, their fluencies, both as an improvising unit in performance and as a production team in the studio, have sharpened. At inception the band inspired disparate but distinctive artist comparisons like Essential Logic, Oval, Herbie Hancock"s Sextant, and electric Miles Davis, as well as assorted genre touchpoints like Afrobeat, kosmiche, proto-techno and new-jazz. With How You Been their work manages to both collapse and explode such derivatives, displaying a new, high resolution version of SML, fully-flowered into a new strain of sound, bound to incite its own copycats in due time.

Acclaimed electronic musicians, producers and sound architects Max Cooper and Rob Clouth team up for a new collaborative EP; a dark, playful four-track dive into ambient, breakbeat and techno’s subconscious flow, featuring a standout vocal performance from South London rapper FLOHIO.

Recorded over a series of spontaneous London sessions, “8 Billion Realities” channels years of creative exchange between two of the genre’s most quietly innovative artists and is a result of a decision between the longtime friends to refrain from conceptual overthinking in favour of instinct and joy.

As long-time admirers of each other’s audio/visual work, Cooper and Clouth collaborated in London together after both emerging from intense, idea-heavy album cycles. What followed was a series of exploratory sessions, half-improvised, half-built around half-formed thoughts.

The result is a club-ready EP that feels alive and human: imperfect and hypnotically rich.

“Rob Clouth has been one of my favourite electronic music producers since I first heard his work in 2011,” says Cooper. “His work is more full of ideas and structure than anyone else.” “We were both coming from extensive conceptual studio albums and both in the mood for simplifying things and having some fun with the music, so that’s what we did”.

For Clouth, no stranger to Max Coopers Mesh label having previously released an array of EP’s plus his 2020 debut album “Zero Point” this record marks a new chapter, both creatively and personally.“Something pretty new for me is collaborating,” he says. “You kind of have to when to stop, because if you develop an idea all the way to its endpoint, the other person has nowhere to jump in.”

The first “A Moment Set Aside” began as a break from another idea, a live, unplanned improvisation based around arps and ambience. “The track was written in about as long as it took to play it,” says Cooper. “It was pulled from a 1 hour recording session, more or less as you hear it… the energy and excitement grew as the unplanned moment bore some magic.”

“The lesson being that sometimes it’s helpful to set aside a moment without forcing results, and let the subconscious have something to say.” What followed was darker, heavier. “Asymptote” is detuned techno. Subversive and euphoric in its descent. “We found a sort of brain mangling, half consonant, half wandering detuned techno pulse, which we started chatting about being a sort of pit of spiralling body parts we were falling into,” says Cooper. “It was a lot of fun to work on and let loose with bigger kicks than I usually ever get to unleash.”

Then came “8 Billion Realities”, featuring a standout rap performance from FLOHIO; an emerging figure in the UK grime and rap scene. The track was inspired by conversations about algorithmic echo chambers and hyper-personalised online worlds. Frantic, direct, and South London to the core, FLOHIO brings this tension to life. Her sharp, intense flow cuts through distortion and rhythm, landing the track somewhere between chaos and control instantly making it one of the most striking moments in either artist’s catalogue. “A different reality for all 8 billion of us,” says Cooper. “We weren’t sure if it would work… but there was something about the energy of the percussive idea and the story which felt like it might fit.” “Then FLOHIO had a play with it and straight off the bat absolutely killed it, not just with the lyrics and energy, but the harmonising too, it was a beautiful process.”

The final piece on the EP “Candeleda” originated from Clouth’s solo experiments with a live rig made entirely of vocals and keys, using his self-developed “cheatbox” system. “He put forward a beautiful stumbling melodic sequence which we bounced back and forth adding harmonies and synth layers,” says Cooper. “It rounds off a collection covering some of the breadth of music that we both love.”

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

Retinal Rivalry ist der Soundtrack zu Cyprien Gaillards neuem stereoskopischen Film Retinal Rivalry (2024). ,Es ist eine faszinierende Reise durch die deutsche Stadtlandschaft und ihre vielschichtige historische und soziale Bedeutung. Aufbauend auf seiner früheren Erforschung der skulpturalen Qualitäten dreidimensionaler bewegter Bilder geht das Werk über die Grenzen der Leinwand hinaus. Durch die Ausschöpfung des vollen Potenzials modernster Technologie bietet Gaillard eine erweiterte, geschärfte und tief bewegende neue Sicht auf die Welt um uns herum. Retinal Rivalry ist nach dem Phänomen der visuellen Wahrnehmung benannt, das auftritt, wenn das Gehirn zwei widersprüchliche Bilder gleichzeitig empfängt. Anstatt zu einem 3D-Bild zu verschmelzen, wechselt das neuronale System zwischen der Priorisierung des einen Bildes und der Unterdrückung des anderen, was beim Betrachter Verwirrung und Unbehagen hervorruft. Gaillards Film setzt sich mit diesen Komplexitäten der visuellen Verarbeitung und den Grenzen der Technologie auseinander und sammelt visuelle Informationen durch außergewöhnliche, oft augenzwinkernde Aufnahmen, die das Innere und das Äußere, das Eingeschlossene und das Verstreute sowie das Natürliche und das Gebaute miteinander verflechten. Seine Kamera nimmt ungewöhnliche Blickwinkel ein, wechselt von sanften Luftperspektiven zu einem niedrigen Blickwinkel aus der Perspektive eines Nagetiers, zu schwindelerregenden Ein- und Ausblendungen auf der knolligen Nase einer Skulptur oder zu einer langen Einstellung eines Zuges, der durch eine Landschaft fährt, und zieht uns in eine vielschichtige Erfahrung hinein, die zwischen einem schlechten Trip und unerwarteter Schönheit, die Trost spendet, schwankt. In ,Retinal Rivalry" deuten verschiedene Treppen, Spiralen und Aufzüge auf einen Zustand des ständigen Auf- und Abstiegs hin und betonen das Wechselspiel zwischen Distanz und Nähe, abgrundtiefer Tiefe und lebendiger skulpturaler Darstellung. Der Film pulsiert rhythmisch mit Bildern, die anschwellen und sich zusammenziehen, sich aufblähen und entleeren. Er manipuliert das Gefühl der Zuschauer für Tiefe, Maßstab und Textur und lässt vertraute Materialien und Orte unheimlich erscheinen, wobei er die inhärenten Ungenauigkeiten und Verzerrungen der Darstellung hervorhebt. ,Retinal Rivalry" zeichnet die gewöhnliche Welt in großartigen Details auf und versucht dabei, unter die Oberfläche der Dinge zu blicken. Der Film ist eine Darstellung von Raum und Zeit, die Darstellungsweisen destabilisiert und eine neue Hyper-Vision-Version der Realität bietet. Mit 120 Bildern pro Sekunde aufgenommen und mit derselben Geschwindigkeit projiziert - fünfmal so schnell wie im Kino üblich - fängt Gaillard mehr ein, als das menschliche Auge natürlich wahrnehmen kann. Die Filmmusik greift auf verschiedene klangliche Elemente zurück und unterstreicht so die Erforschung von Dissonanz und Synchronität. Indonesische Instrumentalmusik wird überarbeitet und mit Feldaufnahmen von rumpelnden schweren Maschinen und seltsam melodischem Würgen kombiniert. Der Soundtrack enthält auch die ersten Zeilen aus Werner Herzogs Aguirre, der Zorn Gottes (1972) sowie die dazugehörige Ouvertüre der deutschen Band Popol Vuh. Die Klanglandschaft von Retinal Rivalry steht im Kontrast zu den Bildern - was wir sehen, steht oft im Widerspruch zu dem, was wir hören. Nur in einem Abschnitt verschmelzen Ton und Bild: Ein gebrochenes Bein betätigt das Pedal einer interaktiven Orgel, um ein Stück von Johann Sebastian Bach zu spielen, das immer wieder ins Stocken gerät.

EN/JP liner notes by Doran and a hyper-realistic cover by Japanese visual artist/graphic designer Kai Yoshizawa using 3DCG software.

"8 Automated Works", the first full release by Componium Ensemble, an "indeterminate chamber music" ensemble helmed by Spencer Doran of Visible Cloaks. The project is inspired by the long history of automated musical instruments, beginning with the ancient Greek Archimedes and further developed by the Banū Mūsā brothers in 9th century Baghdad, who "first perfected the concept of a programmable, automated musician: a mechanically controlled flute which used hydraulic water pressure and a system of arrangeable punchcards using a visionary proto-MIDI structure", as Doran explains in the liner notes. This mechanical music-making was extended a millennium later with the use of aleatoric principles by the European Dietrich Nikolaus Winkel, inventor of the self-composing Componium mechanical music system. Doran continues this lineage further, using the possibilities of digital technology and its ability to automate a huge range of virtual instruments and introduce aleatoric elements, moving beyond human impulses and limitations, allowing "new shapes to emerge". Dedicated also to Noah Creshevsky, pioneer of what can be considered cyber-human music, Componium Ensemble features a wide and intriguing range of instruments including prepared piano, bowed harpsichord, celesta, bass clarinet, flute, cello, Balinese tingklik, and more, often in multiple groupings. Despite this variety of instrumentation and the seemingly formidable theoretical underpinnings, the music is very accessible and attractive, spacious and fresh, with a light touch and a sophisticated melodic sense which will appeal to pop fans as well as classical/contemporary music listeners. The album is mixed by longtime collaborator Joe Williams (Motion Graphics, Lifted) and available in 10-inch vinyl, ,

Comes with DL card, wrapped in shrink + a sticker. EN/JP liner notes. ** High grade experimental computer music that deserves a check - tip! **

The first LP release to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the release and to honor the late composer.

This collection, featuring seven pieces from 2011 to 2015, celebrates Noah Creshevsky's 70th year with a fittingly life-affirming and masterful verve. An award-winning composer who has studied with Nadia Boulanger and Luciano Berio, he began composing electronic music in 1971, using the power of circuitry, tape and then digital technology to create a "hyperreal" musical world in which recordings of human performers, both vocalists and instrumentalists, are juxtaposed and recombined in compositions which span eras, cultures and genres. His use of expanded musical palettes arises from an aesthetic of inclusion, guided by an open spirit and an expansive musical sense. The combination of the emotional power of human performances with the precision of computers create real-beyond-real super-performances of surprising control and virtuosity, resulting in a hypothetical and yet very real music, full of drama, humor, and tenderness. This album, Creshevsky's second release on EM, following the 2004 "Tape Music" compilation, gives ample evidence of both his mastery of digital technology and his profound, empathetic musical instincts. His ability to use the computer to highlight the gifts of human performers is displayed on every track, including a piece which focuses on Japanese vocalist Tomomi Adachi.

OOOOH! by Alex Bad Baby Lukashevsky with Cocoa Corner (2025)

Celebrated veteran of Toronto’s music scene, known for his boundary-pushing approach to folk and avant-garde music, twists rock music into strange and brilliant new shapes with the help of young jazz players, U.S. Girls, and his own immensely talented son.



OOOOH! is hard on the outside and soft on the inside. Made in the spirit of unity,
humanity, and poetry — disobediently renouncing the glory of personal triumph for the
generosity of an honest experiment. On the last track of the album you’ll hear “Or do you only ever never want to make a single enemy? / That’s not freedom or humility / It’s nothing, honestly.” Oooh, that's a bad baby!

A celebrated Toronto songwriter and performer, Alex Lukashevsky has always been disobedient. Which simply means, nothing is off the table when he’s looking for his
poetic voice; when trying to find the realest I of the teller. As he sings on the lead track “that musician that’s dead” The musician is radical/ it’s the world that’s demented/ listening with their eyes, the music looks dented/ they’re over-represented.
OOOOH! was recorded in January 2024 at Sound Department in Toronto, engineered by Patrick Lefler (ROY), mixed by Grammy-nominated producer Matt Smith. All the songs were tracked live off the floor in two days, with one extra day for recording vocals, to keep the recording fully alive and breathing. As leader of Deep Dark United, as a solo performer, and a sideman in Brodie Wests’ Eucalyptus and Luka Kuplowsky’s Ryokan Band, Alex has been an outsized influence on the Toronto music scene that spawned acts like Broken Social Scene and Owen Pallett. (Pallett, who has toured with Lukashevsky, went so far as to record an entire album’s worth of Alex’s songs, backed
by a full orchestra.)

Lukashevsky has approached each of his albums and projects as something completely new, using only the musical boundaries he creates with each song. Even when he
has recorded songs with nothing but his voice and his own acoustic guitar accompaniment, the results are never “stripped down” or “back to basics,”
Gong! How do you get to heaven / have fun! have fun!
It’s cool to approach music as a game of “spot the influence”; Burt Bacharach-meets-Black Flag; Lana Del Rey-meets-LCD Soundsystem etc. Glorified mash-ups are promising because of their conversational nature. But they can turn us into hyperboreans; blowing cold air beyond ourselves while doing what we can to remain warm. To devise a game or a narrative is to have a winner and a loser, but we all know that just as you win/ so you lose. And does anything really change? Alex Lukashevsky and Cocoa Corner are more at ease drawing blind contours or playing an old game like consequences. They let things add up without knowing particularly how. Cognition is recognition.

Lukashevsky, in addition to writing all the songs, plays guitar and sings on OOOOH!, doing both in ways that are soulful and spikey at the same time. Joining him on guitar and vocals is his oldest child, Charlie Lukashevsky, who, at 23, is already a talented performer and songwriter in his own right. Cocoa Corner also includes Aidan McConnell, an in-demand drummer and composer, Jack Johnston, a jazz bassist and Barry Harris acolyte, and percussionist Evan Cartwright (The Weather Station, U.S. Girls, Cola, Tasseomancy), who plays steel pan and marching drum.

Working with his son and with other younger musicians is central to the album’s
unpredictable aesthetic. It reinvigorated the sound in unexpected ways. Lukashevsky says, “I had to reconsider my own instincts. I had to deal with being 99 years old.”
In addition to these performers, the album includes a tasty contribution from Meg
Remy, the visionary musician and producer who is the leader of the critically acclaimed
project U.S. Girls. Remy duets with Lukashevsky on the imagistic and sprawling album
closer “things keep happening.”
About that album title: OOOOH! is taken straight from “that musician that’s dead” an
arch and unhinged comment on the exertion required to navigate a lifetime of music making.
Lukashevsky’s delivery of that one emotive word is a kind of cultural posture, but also a
hundred percent primitive expression. The impact is never less than visceral. His vocal
delivery ranges through rich baritone blues to keening falsettos to a kind of sprechstimme that periodically steps out from the music to grab the listener’s shirt. He
doesn’t sound too nice, but he is sincere. When life gives you lemons lament.
For OOOOH! his first official full-length album since 2012’s Too Late Blues, (a collection of knotty-yet-effervescent tunes built upon the enchantingly serpentine harmonies of Lukashevsky and his vocal collaborators, Felicity Williams (Bahamas, Bernice) and Daniela Gesundheit (Snowblink, HYDRA)), Alex has once again broken apart and rebuilt his own approach to music. Or rather (because that sounds too over-determined), he
has allowed his music to build itself into strange new shapes that only fleetingly and
coincidentally, but happily, resemble anything that might be called rock and roll. There is some editorializing within the song’s lyrics— Lukashevsky even cheekily contributes to the “spot the influence” game with the line “Muddy Waters, Rite of Spring!” a funny preemptive strike against anyone already reaching for some variation of avant-blues to describe what the song is up to here. In fact there are many names checked on this record (literally and in spirit); they are the lily pads that trace the path of this expression! Palestrina, Peter Pears and Benjamin Brittain, Andrés Segovia, Stravinsky, Lotte Lenya, Alice Coltrane, Skip James, Chuck Berry, D’Gary, Betty Carter, Mukhtiyar Ali, Chuck D, Yoko Ono, Hailu Mergia, David Bowie, Jane Siberry. rhythm is a skeleton mansion / haunted by melody / feckless prodigy / the world is under a spell / cast by some demon angel / Practice day and night / Try as hard as hell / no one can sing that well Musicians are often worried by the way in which they are prepared to fail rather
than how they would like to succeed; it’s such a deep concern that it tempers their creativity and shackles their process. Current cultural proclivities, tend to comfort a certain kind of artistic failure and abnegate another kind. How many testimonials, full of heartfelt care and investment, have you heard for Taylor Swift, and yet a craftsman like Chris Weisman is often dismissed easily as though he’s doing something anti-social. what’s throwing itself in my ears and my eyes / arrogant devil ad hominem christ.
The music you will hear on this recording veers off in multiple directions at once,
and features a rock and roll spirit with a divergent heart. This is no sclerotic clomp of the Average Rock Song, but in fact a flood of humanity in all its darkness and moodiness and unpredictability. If most performers make songs that are like sports cars or pickup trucks to drive around, Lukashevsky has built something more akin to a rowboat in a tree: it’s weird and beautiful.

Talulah’s Tape is the debut offering from magnetic Midwest-jangle collective Good Flying Birds. Across a patchwork mixtape of stripped-down home recordings that span the independent-guitar spectrum, the band delivers colorful, intricate pop songs perched between the immediacy of DIY punk and the intimate sweetness of twee. Breakbeats, memes, and noise glue everything together, making the album feel as chronically online as it is timeless.

Originally released on cassette in January 2025 by Midwest-punk legend Martin Meyers’s Rotten Apple label, the tape sold more than 300 copies in under a month and quickly became an out-of-print and coveted item. Meyers called it “certified catnip for popheads.” Now, with a refined track list and a fresh master from Greg Obis, Talulah’s Tape returns on LP and CD via Carpark and Smoking Room in October 2025.

While production and approach vary, a through-line of sensitive self-contemplation rests on bright, scrappy guitars and hyperactive melodic bass. Opener “Down on Me” rides a buoyant bass line while jangling guitars frame reflections on overcoming trauma: “I see you in the mirror every time I cry / I hear your voice every time I try.” Next, the guitars trade twinkling counter-melodies on “I Care for You,” pairing sugary, lovestruck lyrics with effervescent strums: “You catch me when I fall / You build me up so tall.”

The rosy grin occasionally twists into a wicked smirk. “Dynamic” warns, “You used to paint the face, but now you’re just the clown,” while “Glass” asks, “Is it lonely at the top when everyone follows the trend, and you hold the pen?” Both tracks brim with sparkling guitar interplay. By the closing, nearly five-minute “Last Straw,” Good Flying Birds stand far beyond conventional indie-pop or 4-track punk, unveiling a roller-coaster of unpredictable changes, vocal harmonies, and instrumental cross-talk.

Altogether, Talulah’s Tape is a pastel-yellow, candy-coated shell filled with thoughtful juxtapositions and melodic experiments. Standing on the same ground as idiosyncratic songwriters like Connie Converse and Daniel Johnston, Good Flying Birds find sweetness in sadness, tear stains on a colorful flower-print couch. Simultaneously, it’s packed with the scratchy guitars and vibrant rhythms of Scottish guitar groups like The Pastels, Orange Juice, and Josef K. It’s a tremendous opening statement from a band just getting started.

Mark Fell inaugurates his new label – The National Centre for Mark Fell Studies – with his first solo electronic material in years; a slinky, ravishing volley of unique dance drills that have been in the works for over a decade, feeling somehow like Derek Bailey dissecting Singeli, or Autechre and Hermeto Pascoal dancing in hyperspace. There’s nothing else quite like it.

Back on the floor for the first time since dealing a pair of deep house 12”s with DJ Sprinkles, sending a contemporary classic in »Protogravity« with Errorsmith, plus a lauded collab with Gábor Lázár – all in 2015 – Fell taps back into core club concerns last explored to this uncompromising extent on his string of »Sensate Focus« EPs released between 2012–2013. He’s hardly been slacking since then, with a slew of far-reaching avant collabs with everyone from Rian Treanor to Limpe Fuchs, Okkyung Lee to Pat Thomas, Explore Ensemble to Will Guthrie – each one blurring distinctions between producer, composer, and conductor.

The »Nite Closures« EP is worth the wait – and then some. As ever, Fell manages to retain a highly distinctive, instantly identifiable sound while also tracing and mapping new bends in the continuum. His exploration of contemporary styles and patterns is here distilled and articulated with a rare, daring playfulness and sinuous intricacy – for over half an hour he flows from frantic to almost emotional at the drop of a snare. Trust it’s not your everyday / everynight club music, with an asymmetric angularity bound to wrong-foot fresher feet, but also the type of absolutely future-facing, skewed machine funk that clubs are crying out for, even if they don’t quite realise it.

As someone who’s witnessed the dominance of colouring-book Jive Bunny DJs recycle tested ideas ad infinitum, the message is a firm do-one to myopic ravers in »Nite Closures«. From the displaced anticipations tested in its extended dub and ravishing, tweaked polymetrics on its version, through a »Large Modulos #3« teeming with organismic details, to the hair-kissing swang of »auchterhouse (inversion)« and its clipped, cascading 2.1-step reprise, Fell offers thrilling new options for the loosey-gooseyest dancers at each turn. For us, it’s perhaps his greatest record this century.

Talulah’s Tape is the debut offering from magnetic Midwest-jangle collective Good Flying Birds. Across a patchwork mixtape of stripped-down home recordings that span the independent-guitar spectrum, the band delivers colorful, intricate pop songs perched between the immediacy of DIY punk and the intimate sweetness of twee. Breakbeats, memes, and noise glue everything together, making the album feel as chronically online as it is timeless.

Originally released on cassette in January 2025 by Midwest-punk legend Martin Meyers’s Rotten Apple label, the tape sold more than 300 copies in under a month and quickly became an out-of-print and coveted item. Meyers called it “certified catnip for popheads.” Now, with a refined track list and a fresh master from Greg Obis, Talulah’s Tape returns on LP and CD via Carpark and Smoking Room in October 2025.

While production and approach vary, a through-line of sensitive self-contemplation rests on bright, scrappy guitars and hyperactive melodic bass. Opener “Down on Me” rides a buoyant bass line while jangling guitars frame reflections on overcoming trauma: “I see you in the mirror every time I cry / I hear your voice every time I try.” Next, the guitars trade twinkling counter-melodies on “I Care for You,” pairing sugary, lovestruck lyrics with effervescent strums: “You catch me when I fall / You build me up so tall.”

The rosy grin occasionally twists into a wicked smirk. “Dynamic” warns, “You used to paint the face, but now you’re just the clown,” while “Glass” asks, “Is it lonely at the top when everyone follows the trend, and you hold the pen?” Both tracks brim with sparkling guitar interplay. By the closing, nearly five-minute “Last Straw,” Good Flying Birds stand far beyond conventional indie-pop or 4-track punk, unveiling a roller-coaster of unpredictable changes, vocal harmonies, and instrumental cross-talk.

Altogether, Talulah’s Tape is a pastel-yellow, candy-coated shell filled with thoughtful juxtapositions and melodic experiments. Standing on the same ground as idiosyncratic songwriters like Connie Converse and Daniel Johnston, Good Flying Birds find sweetness in sadness, tear stains on a colorful flower-print couch. Simultaneously, it’s packed with the scratchy guitars and vibrant rhythms of Scottish guitar groups like The Pastels, Orange Juice, and Josef K. It’s a tremendous opening statement from a band just getting started.

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



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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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

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



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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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

Repress!

Biosphere is the main recording name of Geir Jenssen (born 30 May 1962), a Norwegian musician who has released a notable catalogue of ambient electronic music. He is well known for his works on ambient techno and arctic themed pieces, his use of music loops, and peculiar samples from sci-fi sources. His 1997 album Substrata was voted by the users of the Hyperreal website in 2001 as the best all-time classic ambient album.



Cirque - originally released in 2000 - was Biosphere's first album for the UK label Touch. This new re-issue comes with a 6-track bonus album and new artwork.



Mojo (UK): Fourth full album from ambient pioneer. Coming to prominence with 1992's Microgravity - which along with the first couple of Aphex/Polygon Window CDs, defined the genre ambient - Geir Jenssen as Biosphere has made three of the '90s' best albums, culminating with last year's near beatless Substrata. The idea - as it always was thanks to Eno's On Land - is music as environment (reflecting, creating): working from his base in Tromso, Arctic Norway, Jenssen offers a polar, Apollonian exploration of the human psyche. Cirque is a perfectly constructed 47-minute sequence: cold clarity up against real depth of field, synth cycles dissolving into sudden moments of sonic revelation that sound like a waking dream - try the first 20 seconds of Black Lamb and Grey Falcon. (And if you think that's pretentious - your loss). Inspired by the story of a young American, Chris McCandless, who walked alone into the Alaskan wilderness and perished, Cirque balances the tightrope between warmth and unease, resolving into a moon melody that leaves you a peace. What a good record! Jon Savage.

Chicago based producers Jason Patrick, and 4trk label owner, DJ Hyperactive team up for their 3rd collab on 4TRK-036 as Aliasing “Off the Grid” EP. 3 tracker of hypnotic, atmospheric tracks for the dance floor.

A hill repeating its own name.

Ben Beinn — mountain mountain — an imagined summit, recursive and unstable.

Poole’s new album Ben Beinn follows 2024’s In a River Shadow, and deepens his exploration of environment, voice, and abstraction. If the previous record moved with flowing water and submerged hymns, Ben Beinn climbs into elemental instability: passing storms, coded skies, and sodden ground.

Across ten tracks, Poole entangles the Celtic New Age sound world — traditional instrumentation (flute, low whistle, bagpipe, piano, strings) — with synthesis, environmental recordings, and abstracted voice. The sound palette is tactile — marked by microtonal harmony, swelling dissonance, and a breathy naïvety. Voices in Gaelic, Norwegian, and English surface and dissolve, stretched beyond recognition — more weather than word.

The album’s title refers to a tautological hill — Ben Beinn, or “mountain mountain” — a recursive site where motifs surface, fracture, and re-emerge. On 365 Days of Rain, rainfall data becomes a rhythmic lattice that slips from metrical order. 1000 opens the record in cinematic emergence: mountain icicles and frozen streams swell into strings and breathy melodic weight. Pulling from the connective folktales of hill and mountain trolls — “Dance for a thousand years,” Poole writes, “for jeg har sovet tidlig så lenge.”

Recorded in Scotland between 2024–2025, Ben Beinn draws from environmental recordings of frozen hill passes, storm drains, and peat bogs using contact mics and hydrophones. Rather than simply reflecting place, these recordings press against it — layering the sonic materiality of landscape with synthesis and song. An inflection point between fabrication — folk music as performed identity, a carrier of story — and its obfuscation through digital networks, where tradition is refracted into plural forms.

Musical reference points include the emotionally saturated textures of Inoyama Land, the folk-electronic hybrids of Eli Storbekken, the hyperrealist collage practices of Noah Creshevsky, and the disquieting sonic simulations of James Ferraro. While Ferraro captures the uncanny surfaces of networked life, Ben Beinn turns inward — toward a located listening, shaped by weather, memory, and terrain.

The second in a triptych that began with In a River Shadow, Ben Beinn continues Poole’s excavation of environmental and folk material through contemporary methods. If the first record submerged itself in flowing water and submerged hymns, this one is shaped by the slow pressures of land and sky — a music of erosion, recurrence, and elemental presence.

Nigerian-born, London-based singer, songwriter, musician and producer Steven Bamidele presents his keenly anticipated sophomore album, 'THE CRASH!' – a sonically rich exploration of purpose, doubt and personal reckoning. Written against the backdrop of an ever-changing world, the album combines soul, rock, jazz, acoustic and electronic textures, along with daydream-esque storytelling for a thought-provoking journey in pursuit of something real in an age of hyper-curation and superficiality.
At its core, 'THE CRASH!' is a soulful meditation on the weight we place on relationships, the fundamental cost of growth, and the search for direction in an imperfect world. It's a deeply personal project, shaped by Steven's own journey through faith, disillusionment and self-discovery. Raised in a strictly Christian household, Steven's first crisis of belief came at 17, when he began questioning the very foundations of existence. As his faith unravelled, music became his new guiding force – a source of direction, discipline and identity. But as he turned 30, disillusionment crept in once again. The stark realities of the music industry, coupled with global uncertainty, reignited that same despondent weight he had battled in his youth.
"It was an intoxicating feeling when I was younger and had no responsibilities, to foolishly believe I was the first person in history who'd worked something out that no one else had. It gave me this twisted sense of power and was a big creative motivator. Where I'm at now, nihilism is debilitating, boring and unhelpful. I've worked to find a way to channel those feelings into this project. I'm really proud of it."– Steven Bamidele

A critique and embrace of self-destruction, esoteric vanity and inevitable ruin. The molten-red LP on Riot Season Records plunges deep into an abuse of distortion, existential doom and primal Stooges-like chaos. LA’s Acid Punk Power Trio returns to its mark 1 line up, now wielding a second addition in twin-drum assault
OVER-GAIN OPTIMAL DEATH are :Jasso : Guitar/ Vocals, Luna : Bass, Backhaus + TJ : Twin Drums
Jasso (guitar/vocals) is seemingly out for blood on this 4 track studio album, leading a violent dive into the abyss, Japanese Underground fury meets Hendrix’s wreckage, fuzz-drenched wah freak-outs compete against raw punk vocals caught in an endless slap back delay…
OVER-GAIN OPTIMAL DEATH are an Acid Punk power trio formed in 2008 hailing from Los Angeles, and now currently hiding out somewhere in the South of France.
Fronted by guitarist/ vocalist Jasso (Psychedelic Speed Freaks, Antarcticans), they push a special niche product of blown-out extreme psychedelic noise rock. Their sound is enveloped in a total nihilist
"No Hope" atmosphere of heavy lyrics and distortion, mating intoxicating pulsing repetition, hyperactive improvisations and out of body guitar solos.
Resurrecting US 60s punk and acid-riffage from the likes of Blue Cheer, the Stooges, MC5 and live Hendrix Experience, OVER-GAIN OPTIMAL DEATH also draws greatly on the in-the-red sound aesthetic and high energy of the Speed Freak Underground and Hardcore scene of 80s/90s Japan.

The Rhythm Makers's Soul On Your Side is flawless proto-disco funk. The Bronx-based band - that later went on to form heavyweight disco outfit GQ - originally released this treasure in 1976 and it's long been a hard to find record. It's also rare to find a record this hard. Captivating funk at its rawest, no doubt.

Storming out the gate with the rollicking Loft/Garage staple "Can You Feel It (Part 1)", the listener is immediately put on notice that this LP is just a little bit special. The title track, "Soul On Your Side", is a classic dancer and the basis of GQ's future hit "Disco Nights". But it's perhaps "Zone", a huge Baldelli track, that the record is best known for. Hypnotic psyched-out cosmic-disco / cosmic funk, it's an unrelenting groove that really thrusts the party into hyperdrive. With doses of scintillating Latin and pulsating African rhythms driving the pumping tune, atop an unstoppable bassline and imaginative, soul-slathered keyboard figures, it's basically a full-on funk assault. You might need a lie-down after this.

But there's no let-up on the B-Side, immediately grooving thanks to "Funk-N-You", a laidback glider that just rolls in the sleek style. Gorgeous harmony skills are displayed on "Street Dreamin'". Beautiful and gritty funk, by turns. "You're My Last Girl" is an airy ballad with two leads before the legendary "Monterey" enters the fray. A much-sampled instrumental and heavy disco-funk nugget, it contains an amazing B-Boy drum break making the whole LP worth the price of admission. "Can You Feel It (Part 2)" closes out this spectacular set.

The Rhythm Makers had been gigging around New York City since the late ’60s, having initially come together as Sabu and the Survivors, named after bassist Keith “Sabu” Crier. They eventually - for this album at least! - settled on The Rhythm Makers and cut one record for the small De-Lite subsidiary Vigor. The core lineup featured Crier, keyboardist Herb Lane, drummer Kenny Banks and rhythm guitarist Rahiem Leblanc.

Mastered for vinyl by Simon Francis, cut by Cicely Balston for Alchemy at AIR Studios with artwork restored at Be With HQ, this new edition should hopefully bring this album into the homes and record boxes of many more people.

Wenn Sie von Hillsborough, North Carolina, auf der 1-85 nach Norden fahren und die Ausfahrt zur 58 East nehmen, erreichen Sie in fünfzehn Minuten Diamond Grove, ein kleines, nicht eingemeindetes Gebiet im Brunswick County, Virginia, am Meherrin River. Für die meisten Besucher gibt es dort nicht viel zu sehen - für Lebensmittel müssen Sie nach Lawrenceville und für Baumaterial nach South Hill fahren. Doch versteckt in diesem Fleckchen Virginia-Piedmont liegen die Überreste einer Milchfarm aus den 1740er Jahren, deren Haupthaus ein wunderschönes altes Gebäude mit zwei Etagen ist, das noch immer mit Seilbetten und allem Drum und Dran ausgestattet ist. Wenn man heute dorthin fährt, hört man in der Ferne Geräusche von jemandem, der in den vermieteten Nebengebäuden Sojabohnen und Baumwolle verarbeitet, von landwirtschaftlichen Reifen, die über Schotterstraßen knirschen, von quakenden Fröschen und von singenden Meisen: chick-a-dee, chick-a-dee. Aber wenn Sie zufällig im September 2023 vorbeigekommen sind, konnten Sie vielleicht Fiddle-Melodien hören, die von den Kiefern widerhallen, BBS-Geräusche in leeren Räumen und die Klänge von Weirs, die ihr zweites Album und ihr Debüt bei Dear Life Records aufnahmen: Diamond Grove. Weirs ist ein experimentelles Kollektiv, das aus der Musikszene im Zentrum von North Carolina hervorgegangen ist und zu gleichen Teilen aus Oldtime-Folk und DIY-Noise besteht. Die Auftritte von Weirs sind hierarchielos und umfassen zwischen zwei und zwölf Personen. Im September 2023 reisten neun von ihnen die US-58 hinauf, um sich im Wohn- und Esszimmer des Hauptgebäudes einer Milchfarm einzufinden, die noch immer im Besitz der Familie des Bandmitglieds und Organisators Oliver Child-Lanning ist, deren Verwandte seit Jahrhunderten dort leben. Die Besetzung von Weirs - weder endgültig noch besonders wertvoll - umfasst Child-Lanning, Justin Morris und Libby Rodenbough (seine Mitstreiter bei Sluice); Evan Morgan, Courtney Werner und Mike DeVito von Magic Tuber Stringband; sowie die treuen Andy McLeod, Alli Rogers und Oriana Messer, die bis tief in die Spätsommernächte spielten. Das Ergebnis sind die neun Tracks von Diamond Grove, aufgenommen mit einer provisorischen Signalkette, die aus geliehenem Equipment der gesamten Community zusammengestellt wurde. Das Weirs-Projekt begann als Tape-Experimente mit traditionellen Melodien, die Child-Lanning im Winter 2019 unter dem Namen Pluviöse aufgenommen hatte. Daraus entstand das erste Weirs-Album Prepare to Meet God, das im Juli 2020 in Eigenregie veröffentlicht wurde und eine Zusammenarbeit zwischen Child-Lanning und Morris während der COVID-Pandemie war. Die seltsamen Umstände dieses Debüts - eine gemeinschaftliche Tradition von Live-Songs, die isoliert voneinander aufgenommen wurden - werden durch Diamond Grove aufgehoben, ein Album, das in der unwiederholbaren Konvergenz von Menschen, Ort und Zeit verwurzelt ist. Auf dem neuen Album setzen Weirs ihre Suche nach dem besten Weg fort, sogenannte ,traditionelle" Musik weiterzuentwickeln, zu bewahren und zu befreien. Sie sind Songfänger, die Melodien sammeln, die kurz vor dem Vergessen stehen. Ihr wildes, Jahrhunderte umspannendes Repertoire klingt wie eine avantgardistische Jam-Session - eine Art Real Book für eine Szene, die sich mit Porch Jams, Big Blood, Amps for Christ und Jean Ritchie auskennt. Weirs fangen Songs ein, deren Interpretationskanon noch offen genug ist, um neben denen zu stehen, die sie zuvor gesungen haben, aber niemals über ihnen. Dies sind keine Versuche, definitive Versionen zu schaffen. Die Aufnahmen auf Diamond Grove fühlen sich eher wie Besuche als wie Überarbeitungen an. Und die Frage, die Weirs auf diesem Album stellen, ist nicht, wie sie einfach die Tradition ihrer Vorfahren fortsetzen können, sondern wie traditionelle Musik heute klingen könnte. Für Weirs könnte die Geschichte dieser Tradition weniger aus dem Folk-Revival stammen als aus der Musique concrète, weniger aus makellosen alten Meisteraufnahmen als aus etwas wie The Shadow Ring, wenn diese aus dem evangelikalen Süden kämen. Wenn man ,(A Still, Small Voice)" hört, spürt man, wie die Kraft der Hymne etwas Gleichwertigem weicht: den Dielen, dem Knistern des Feuers, dem Zubereiten und Essen von Mahlzeiten. Diese Spannung zwischen Bewahrung und Verfall ist das innere Leuchten von Diamond Grove. Nehmen wir ,Doxology l": Die Melodie von ,Old Hundred", einer Hymne aus der Sacred-Harp-Tradition, wird in MIDI umgewandelt, über iPhone-Lautsprecher abgespielt und in der Septemberluft neu aufgenommen. Für manche Revivalisten mag diese Hymne, gesungen mit der ganzen Pracht gefälschter Auto-Tune-Stimmen, blasphemisch klingen. Aber Ohren, die beispielsweise auf die Hyperpop-Produktionen der letzten Jahrzehnte eingestellt sind, werden sofort die spannungsgeladene Schönheit des digital verfremdeten Shape-Note-Gesangs verstehen. Dieselbe Spannung belebt ,l Want to Die Easy". Weirs' Version basiert auf der Aufnahme von A Golden Ring of Gospel, die in der Folkways-Sammlung Sharon Mountain Harmony verewigt ist. Die Melodien, Texte und Strukturen sind weitgehend unverändert geblieben. Aber die ,reine" Klarheit der Stimmen der frühen Aufnahme ist verschwunden. An ihre Stelle tritt der distanzierte Klang des Silos der Milchfarm, in dem Weirs ihre Version aufgenommen hat, dessen natürlicher Nachhall von zwei Sekunden die ursprüngliche Nähe ersetzt. Auf diese Weise wird der Klang des Aufnahmeortes selbst zu einem Teil der traditionellen Darbietung. Das Herzstück von Diamond Grove ist Weirs' Interpretation von ,Lord Bateman", einer Melodie, die Jean Ritchie als ,große Ballade" bezeichnete: Sie wurde gespielt, wenn die Arbeit getan war und der Tanzabend zu Ende war. Es ist ein Lied aus dem 18. Jahrhundert - so alt wie die Diamond Grove Farm - über einen gefangenen Abenteurer, der laut Nic Jones den Geist eines Errol-Flynn-Films verkörpert. Wie viele großartige und oft a cappella gesungene Interpretationen steht auch bei diesem ,Lord Bateman" die Stimme im Vordergrund und unterstreicht die Bedeutung des Geschichtenerzählens für das Zusammenkommen der Kinder. Neu ist hier der immense Bordun, der die Erzählung in ein unaufhörliches Gewebe elementarer Kräfte verwandelt. Es ist ein verschwommenes Murmeln kollektiver Saiten, das den Kanon von Ritchie und June Tabor ebenso bereichert wie Pelt's Ayahuasca oder Henry Flynt's Hillbilly Tape Music. Obwohl Diamond Grove nicht explizit von der alten Milchfarm handelt, auf der es aufgenommen wurde, kann es nicht umhin, ihr zu ähneln. Alte englische Balladen wie ,Lord Bateman" und ,Lord Randall" ergießen sich über Felder, die einst von der britischen Krone ,vergeben" wurden. Tragische Lieder wie ,Edward" taumeln über Tuscarora-Pfade und Baumwollfelder nach dem Bürgerkrieg. Hymnen wie ,Everlasting l" und ,Everlasting Il" fangen das Mondlicht ein, das seit Lord Bacons Rebellion durch doppelt gehängte Fenster fällt. Und die Nachtvögel trillern noch immer, und die Pflüge pflügen noch immer eine unkomponierte Musik, die darauf wartet, von zufälligen Ohren entdeckt zu werden. Diamond Grove ist in dieser Hinsicht Geschichte. Es ist ein Ort. Es ist Zeit. Es ist das Einfangen von Liedern, Lebendigkeit, Tonbandmanipulation. Wie der niedrige Damm, den das Wort ,Weir" andeutet, ist es eine Verteidigung gegen die Strömung. Es ist eine Verteidigung regionaler Lexika gegen massenproduzierte Umgangssprachen; eine Verteidigung gegen den Glauben, dass wir einfach zu einer einfacheren Zeit zurückkehren können; eine Verteidigung gegen die Vorstellung, dass Volksmusik ,rein" bleiben muss; eine Verteidigung gegen die Behauptung, dass ein Traum von der Zukunft, der in verlorenen Geschichten schlummert, unwiederbringlich verloren ist. Gegen all das verteidigt Diamond Grove traditionelle Musik, indem es sie so klingen lässt, wie die Komplexität der heutigen Zeit - weil es weiß, dass solche Musik und all die Geschichten, die in ihr stecken, auch in Zukunft eine Rolle spielen werden.

Originally released in 1985 on Japan Records this is CHIKO HIGE’s second solo effort. Hige digs deep in the No-Wave idiom to come out with a powerful, hypnotic sound trip full of hyper-cinetic grooves, clipping guitars and twisting saxophones. A snapshot of controlled chaos that still sounds relevant today!

"Hyperglyph" is the first new album in 11 years from composer/trumpeter/synthesist Rob Mazurek and composer/percussionist Chad Taylor"s long-running Chicago Underground Duo project. Mazurek and Taylor have played music together in a multitude of formations over nearly three decades, including their ongoing partnership in Mazurek"s large-format-skyward-expressionism vehicle Exploding Star Orchestra, in the expanded Chicago Underground Trio, Quartet and Orchestra (all with guitarist Jeff Parker), as well as a plethora of other assemblages. The early albums by the Duo have proven to be embryonic blueprints for the avant-jazz / electronic / indie rock hybridizing of the time, making them majorly important moments in the articulation of the "jazz" dimensionality of the then-burgeoning "post rock" sound. That sound, of course, was being transmitted far and wide due to the success of these groups as well as the Mazurek/Parker project Isotope 217, and the Chicago Underground"s frequently-intersecting collaborators in Tortoise. Just as most of the still-working projects born of that era have evolved, reconfigured, and grown, the Chicago Underground Duo has undergone a number of musical moltings, with the project always in the background of disparate individual aural investigations. The concurrent personal evolutions of Mazurek and Taylor as the Duo project drops off and picks back up makes it a true reflection of their own lives and friendship.

,Slapped By My Life" ist eine bittersüße Hymne an Jessys Ehemann. Musikalisch tendiert der Song eher zu einem tanzflächenorientierten Sound, verspielt und schwebend bei schnellen 158 bpm. Die ,Existential Edit"-Version drängt noch weiter auf die Tanzfläche und betont die mitreißenden, üppigen Synth-Texturen mit Akzenten und Phrasen, die dem Track einen treibenden Schwung verleihen. Textlich schwankt der Song zwischen offener Liebe, Dankbarkeit und Unsicherheit und ist das Einfachste, Direkteste und Persönlichste, was Jessy je geschrieben hat, entstanden in Zusammenarbeit mit Pearson Sound.

Shhh. The command to be quiet is not just part of the title of one of the two sprawling compositions on this pioneering album. It's also an apt metaphor for the relaxed hypnotism and spaced-out atmosphere that define In a Silent Way, a record that pushes the boundaries of studio possibilities, artist-producer relationships, and rock-jazz chasms. Recognized as Miles Davis' first full-on fusion effort and part of his "electric" era, the 1969 landmark claims a Who's Who line-up that sends the music into an ethereal stratosphere.

Mastered from the original master tapes and pressed at RTI, this unsurpassed 180g LP edition lifts the veil on the cutting-edge assembly process that created the pair of lengthy suites. Helmed by three electric instruments, the bevelled compositions melt away all preconceived notions of "jazz," ˜rock," and "ambience," following a loose theory Davis dubbed "New Directions."

Few albums are so delicately textured. And on Mobile Fidelity's meticulous reissue, such sulcate elements pour over ink-black backgrounds on a canyon-wide soundstage. In particular, Tony Williams' inventive percussive touch – he causes the cymbals to shimmer as a pieces of silver tend to do when exposed to sunlight – is broadcast with lifelike three-dimensional qualities, the panoramic view extending to Davis' nocturnal trumpet, Wayne Shorter's ribbon-unfurling saxophone, Dave Holland's extrapolative bass, and the mosaic of keys.

If the record's only accomplishment is its introduction of guitarist John McLaughlin to the world, it alone would be enough. Yet In a Silent Way continues to bedazzle, puzzle, and inspire for myriad reasons – not the least of which is the seemingly telepathic communicative methods employed by the group's members. The line-up is great on paper, but, if it's even possible, the octet sounds even better in practice, with the instruments and tonalities conjoining in avant-garde communion like hyper-sensitive tentacles exploring the stippled landscapes of an undiscovered planet.

Diverting from expectation, tubular grooves twist, turn, and spin, sometimes piling atop of each other, always shying away from structure and melody. Ellipsoidal solos provide hesitant guidance, ranging from Chick Corea's Fender Rhodes phrases to Davis' decorative spirals. And as colour is the primary unit of currency on Davis' Sketches of Spain, laid-back episodes, geometric spaces, and quiet sensuality reign here, with the set's maverick reputation attained via musings on solitude rather than explosions of noise.


Controversial for the period, the heavily edited production of In a Silent Way blew open the once-locked doors on what producer's could attempt – and how artists could assist them. Knitted together as one would construct a cross-hatched quilt, songs contain grafts of repeat passages that provide unifying structure and experimental continuity. What a statement.

his ultimate 6LP Boxset presents the works of Pascal Comelade from 1984 to 2024 and his 40 years producing instrumental music. Each vinyl has been thought as an album in itself , with its own identity, that could be listened as it is. According to the artist, "Improperies- compositions et enregistrements magnétiques (1984-2024)" is a music puzzle which doesn't obey to any rule with the exception of Pascal Comelade's creation and art thoughts that kept moving over the years.
Limited numbered to 500 copies - 6 x Black Vinyl in spineless sleeve, heawyweight cardboard slipcase/custod numbered at the back, includes an insert-photo signed by the artist. The boxset artwork is an original creation by Miquel Barceló.