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When The View reconvened last year after five years apart, the three old-friends realised just how much they have missed... well, everything about being in a band: the rush of seeing an audience react to their performances, the camaraderie of being together, a simple jam idea evolving into a fully-fledged song. A run of comeback gigs at Glasgow"s O2 Academy saw all 10,000 tickets sold in advance, the fan reaction was overwhelming and they were even joined on-stage by an old friend in the shape of "Line of Duty" actor Martin Compston. After all that, how could you resist wanting more? Especially as their rehearsals for the shows saw the band conjure up a wealth of new song ideas just like they did back when they first started out. And so The View today announce that "Exorcism of Youth" - their first album since 2015 - via Cooking Vinyl.

GAZELLE TWIN - aka composer, producer, singer, and visual artist Elizabeth Bernholz - has scored Sky's brand new TV series "Then You Run".

Created for television by Ben Chanan (The Capture), based on the novel YOU by Zoran Drvenkar, Then You Run follows four rebellious London teenagers on a city getaway to Rotterdam. This contemporary eight-part series boasts an incredible cast of rising stars; Leah McNamara (Normal People) as Tara, Vivian Oparah (Rye Lane) as Stink, Yasmin Monet Prince (Hanna) as Ruth and newcomer Isidora Fairhurst as Nessi.

The four friends embark on what should have been the perfect summer break which soon spirals into a dark and perilous adventure. When their attempt to take on some of the most dangerous people in Europe doesn’t quite go to plan, they find themselves on the run with three kilos of heroin, more questions than answers about Tara’s family, and a gang of deadly criminals tracking their every move.

Invada Records have previously released two recent Gazelle Twin scores (2020’s Nocturne and 2021’s The Power).

Her 2018 acclaimed album Pastoral was described by Pitchfork as “...belonging to a proud tradition of English satire, plumbing the depths of the nation’s psyche and twisting it to wryly discomforting ends”.

No shortage of colorful characters emerged from Cameroon’s bikutsi scene in the 1980’s and early 90’s. Gibraltar Drakus is one of the most enduring and enigmatic of the artists who helped transform bikutsi into a beautifully endless fabric of triplet rhythms that eventually reached ears around the world.

Following the advent of Cameroon Radio Television in 1987, bikutsi began to supplant makossa and soukous for domination of the local airwaves and the attention of cosmopolitan, thrill-seeking residents of Cameroon’s capital Yaoundé and beyond. Biktusi perfectly fused Beti traditional music and increasingly electronic, highly rhythmic guitarbased bikutsi. Mimicking the sound of village-based xylophone music by rigging a mute to electric guitar strings, bikutsi artists provided a relentlessly energetic dance format for those with a taste for music steeped in their hometown sensibility (countering the popular makossa that many felt sounded less indigenous).

By the early 1990’s, Les Tetes Brûlées were indisputably the most famous and influential artists in bikutsi, due in part to the innovations of their incendiary guitarist Théodore Zanzibar Epeme. Following their first European tour in 1987, the band blew up internationally but Zanzibar tragically, and mysteriously, passed away, which nearly brought an end to the band completely. In hindsight, the consensus among most Cameroonians is Zanzibar’s contributions to biktusi were transformational and immeasurable.

“Zanzibar is the one who taught me how to compose a song, and I learned a lot from Zanzibar musically. We spent whole nights working on methods and other approaches to compose beautiful songs. I owe half of everything I have today to Zanzibar!”

Swept up in all this was Gibraltar Drakus, who was the youngest member of Les Têtes Brûlées and was also the protégé of his biggest supporter, Zanzibar. So it was fitting that he dedicate his 1989 debut to their groundbreaking late guitarist who had meant so much to him. Drakus literally exploded from his first album Hommage A Zanzibar (1989), which sold over 100,000 copies despite rampant piracy. For the recording, Drakus made sure he engaged prolific producer Mystic Jim to record and mix the album. The innovation musically rests both within the guitar interplay and the discipline in the orchestration, which result in a mind-bending clockwork of cross-rhythmic harmony.

The album opener, “Fainted Fog,” reintroduces this fuller, panoramic version of Helios. Woozy synths give way to a propulsive drum pattern as the track’s characteristics populate in the haze. A piano plays between the beat, and another synth solos overtop, ascending towards the peak with an exhale of live kicks and looping guitar. For every bold moment on Espera, there are more muted, counter-balancing stretches; “Intertwine” offers one of the most meditative. Strums mingle with keys in the front half before the beat returns to deliver a hypnotic nod.

Kenniff sees each song as integral to the whole — “if you took one out, it would be like tearing a page from a book,” he says — but still functional independently, like a series of self-contained epics. “All The While” best represents this intention; a song in three equal parts constructed on a resonant drum sequence. Shimmering synth notes surface first, then pastoral guitar and piano flutters, converging at the end to evaporate into the ether.

Multiple GRAMMY® Award winners Bruno Mars and Anderson .Paak are releasing their award-winning album An Evening With Silk Sonic on vinyl for the first time on 12th August 2022. The track list includes the hits “Skate”, “Leave The Door Open” and “Smokin Out The Window”. Silk Sonic won International Group of the Year at the 2022 BRIT Awards and are set to open the 2022 GRAMMY Awards. The album entered the UK Album Chart at #9 and remained in the chart for 16 weeks. The focus track on album launch “Smokin Out The Window” peaked at #12 on the UK Singles Chart.

Their debut single “Leave the Door Open,” earned them Best Group at the 2021 BET Awards, entered the UK singles chart at #20 and is now certified Gold in the UK. They released the live version “Leave The Door Open (Live)” and serenaded audiences three times over at the GRAMMY® Awards, iHeartRadio Music Awards, and the BET Awards. The track was followed by a hugely popular social media campaign, #LetSilkSonicThrive and was immediately welcomed by unprecedented critical acclaim. “What’s new, smooth as silk on the ears, and features two stars of R&B?” wrote Billboard, praising Silk Sonic as “a groovy duo” and the single as “lounge at its heart.” Consequence of Sound enthused, “Mars has a voice like a liquid whip, while .Paak raps and sings through a foggy haze. They sound like smoke on the water.”

ABOUT SILK SONIC:

The seeds of the collaboration were planted in 2017 when Anderson .Paak and Bruno Mars toured together on the European leg of his 24K Magic World Tour. One late-night jam session on the road unlocked immediate chemistry. Just before the world slipped into quarantine, Bruno called Anderson: “Remember that idea we had back in 2017? Let’s do it.” One studio session grew into to a months-long collaboration, culminating the “setlist of doom.” Legendary Bootsy Collins christened Silk Sonic and came in as the “special guest host” for An Evening With Silk Sonic, their debut album.

Silk Sonic was finally set free on March 5th, 2021. Within less than a month, their debut single “Leave The Door Open” cracked over 230 million streams, and currently sits at 2 billion streams with over 510 million official video views. It reeled in rave reviews, including Variety who noted it “could be a Best R&B Song GRAMMY® winner from 1974.” After petitioning the GRAMMY® Awards to #LetSilkSonicThrive, they made their debut performance with “Leave The Door Open” and served up a powerful tribute to Little Richard.

Freak Frequency was a fitting title for the new material Greg Obis was planning for Stuck, the frenetic and twisted post-punk outfit he formed in 2018. Inspired by the doomy social economics of Mark Fisher’s Capitalist Realism, the bleak worldbuilding of horror games Demon’s Souls and Bloodborne, and the bombastic yet arty satire of Devo, Obis channelled his audio analogy into Freak Frequency, an album ringing out with explosive sounds and ideas.

Stuck formed after Obis’ previous projects, Yeesh and Clearance, called it quits in short proximity. Obis is on guitar and vocals, which span from booming theatrics to ecstatic yelps. The project’s rhythm section is completed by shoegaze guitarist-turned-chugging bassist David Algrim and tightly wound drummer Tim Green—also a graphic designer, and the artist responsible for Stuck’s distinctively unified visual aesthetic. Original co-guitarist Donny Walsh contributed freely inventive lines for the first few years of the project, including on Freak Frequency; Ezra Saulnier of Red Tunic, the newest member of the band, now brings calculated contrapuntal riffs to match Obis’ parts.

The building blocks of Stuck include the egg punk eccentricities of Uranium Club and The Coneheads filtered through noise rock power, à la Jesus Lizard or Slint; that melange is glittered with the precision microtones of Unwound and Women. “I want the feeling of immersion and chaos and tension, with a big guitar amp playing a big chord,” says Obis of his inspirations, citing friends and peers Cloud Nothings and Preoccupations. “But I want it delivered by having a lot of smaller points of light poking through.”

In fact, writing for Freak Frequency began while Content’s recording was still underway—beginning with “Scared,” which features acoustic layers under feedback squalls. “Time Out,” with motoric guitars in the sputtering lineage of Wire, was also composed in late 2019. Obis wrote it about the cycles of compulsion and shame woven into social media use, and the way negativity drives algorithmic engagement. It became an exciting exercise for the group in ramping up speed; “I thought I knew how far I could push Tim’s tempos,” Obis recalls. “But Tim kept insisting we do it 20 bpm faster than what I had. He is an absolute monster for playing that.”

Album opener “The Punisher,” a spiral staircase of disembodied guitars and rhythmic slams over a 2/4 beat, came in the aftermath of the January 6 insurrection. It felt immediately emblematic to Freak Frequency, and Obis describes it as his favorite Stuck track: one he wishes he could write again and again. “It hits all the boxes that Stuck can do: it’s goofy, but there’s a lot of intricate guitar interplay, and at the end, there’s a big payoff,” he explains. The last song written was “Do Not Reply,” a pre-album single that came to Obis after engineering for Melkbelly and channelling their earworm melodies. Algrim wouldn’t let it on the record unless Melkbelly’s front person Miranda Winters dueted on vocals; she was happy to oblige, and the gritty epic closes Freak Frequency.

With slippery snark, percussive heft, and funhouse mirrors of sludge, Freak Frequency delivers its needed screeds with gratifying nuance. If Stuck’s interpretation of this messed-up world goes down like a bitter pill, it’s only because its sugar coating is too delicious to keep from eating.

Chain Of Flowers return with their lofty and long-simmering sophomore full-length, rich with reckonings, reverb, and redemption: Never Ending Space. Despite some of the songs dating back a few years, the record first began materialising in earnest during the pandemic, by which point most of the band had relocated from Cardiff to London.

Reunited and rejuvenated, they picked up where they left off, booking two multi-day sessions at Hackney hub Total Refreshment Centre with producer Jonah Falco. In this time they successfully channelled their kinetic chemistry into 10 full-blooded anthems of torn dreams, poetic delirium, and “hope stretched too far.” Musically, Never Ending Space skews notably more maximal than the group’s previous work, fleshed out with trumpets, saxophone, synth, percussion boxes, and spoken word. (Smith jokingly calls them The Chain Of Flowers Orchestra).

Yet the songs still swing and soar with a charged heart, ripe with hooks, drama and ragged melody. Opener “Fire (In The Heart Of Hearts)” stirs to life on a tide of wiry guitar and defiant horns, facing down the embers of love that still glow in the wake of pain: “Peace came tumbling like a shower of bricks / The mind twists slowly till everything fits.”

A tense energy ripples throughout – from the nocturnal rush of “Serving Purpose” and “Amphetamine Luck” to the bruised battle cries of “Torcalon” and “Old Human Material.” Outliers like “Praying Hands, Turtle Doves” hint at proggy possible futures, while instrumental vignette “Anomia” offers an intriguing glimpse at a lesser heard facet of the band: swaying, shadowy, subdued. The album’s title track is also its closing cut, a stomping, sparkling ode to “the wrong side of the night, where time goes to die.” Smith describes the scene: “Everyone’s talking, screaming, trauma bonding, but no one’s listening. Broken dialogue. Shouting over each other. You want to switch off, but everyone’s too fucked.” The guitars spiral and slide towards the oblivion of dawn, the chance to crash and do it all again.

Tom James Scott holds a unique position in experimental music. With a soft brush approach Scott, who currently lives on the North-West coast of England, has explored delicacy in music with a variety of sublime releases on a variety of labels. Predominantly known for gentle investigations of guitar and piano, Scott has shifted to incorporating different technology and tactics over time. All of this, either in performance or recording, is embedded with a spirit that is quintessentially his own. Nightshade is the latest in his expanding catalogue, one which ignites an alarmingly new take on his approach to music. Echo on Water initiates proceedings with the unmistakable sound of tape.

Any instrumentation is buried amongst the woozy sway of the medium itself, with its rough dynamics soon morphing into an overwhelmingly swirling mass of emotionally decayed sound. The movement of matter takes on a haunted shape with sounds looping and falling apart as the physicality of the medium holds it all together. The second track Blue Mist furthers this approach with its smeared haze of gorgeous emotion. This is deep exploration of ideas meeting matter. Wasting Stars takes up the entire flip side with the sound of tape recoiling a bit to allow the delicate glow of instruments to come more to the fore, with gentle effects that weave the musical matter. As a skewered take on Scott’s earlier piano explorations the atmosphere here is a subdued soundscape evoking the spiritual sadness found in the piano works of Gurdjieff/De Hartmann, with a modern lo fi angle.

Nightshade is a deeply effective journey and one of the most exquisite examples of Scott’s delicate approach so far. Two sides of form which inhabit contrasting yet complimentary clouds of sound communicating in an stunning emotional flow. As music with only trace elements of melody, Nightshade is a beautiful take on tools being used to explore paths both highly idiosyncratic, deeply moving and discreetly personal.

Chain Of Flowers return with their lofty and long-simmering sophomore full-length, rich with reckonings, reverb, and redemption: Never Ending Space. Despite some of the songs dating back a few years, the record first began materialising in earnest during the pandemic, by which point most of the band had relocated from Cardiff to London.

Reunited and rejuvenated, they picked up where they left off, booking two multi-day sessions at Hackney hub Total Refreshment Centre with producer Jonah Falco. In this time they successfully channelled their kinetic chemistry into 10 full-blooded anthems of torn dreams, poetic delirium, and “hope stretched too far.” Musically, Never Ending Space skews notably more maximal than the group’s previous work, fleshed out with trumpets, saxophone, synth, percussion boxes, and spoken word. (Smith jokingly calls them The Chain Of Flowers Orchestra).

Yet the songs still swing and soar with a charged heart, ripe with hooks, drama and ragged melody. Opener “Fire (In The Heart Of Hearts)” stirs to life on a tide of wiry guitar and defiant horns, facing down the embers of love that still glow in the wake of pain: “Peace came tumbling like a shower of bricks / The mind twists slowly till everything fits.”

A tense energy ripples throughout – from the nocturnal rush of “Serving Purpose” and “Amphetamine Luck” to the bruised battle cries of “Torcalon” and “Old Human Material.” Outliers like “Praying Hands, Turtle Doves” hint at proggy possible futures, while instrumental vignette “Anomia” offers an intriguing glimpse at a lesser heard facet of the band: swaying, shadowy, subdued. The album’s title track is also its closing cut, a stomping, sparkling ode to “the wrong side of the night, where time goes to die.” Smith describes the scene: “Everyone’s talking, screaming, trauma bonding, but no one’s listening. Broken dialogue. Shouting over each other. You want to switch off, but everyone’s too fucked.” The guitars spiral and slide towards the oblivion of dawn, the chance to crash and do it all again.

No. is the tenth Soft Riot album by Glasgow-based Canadian synth auteur Jack Duckworth (also known as JJD). With origins from the mid-nineties in the vibrant art-punk/hardcore dominating the West Coast American/ Canadian underground at the time, he has clocked in over twenty five years of musical output in various bands and projects.

No. is the logical follow-up to When Push Comes To Shove, released in November 2019 on the Glasgow UK-based label Possession Records, which saw some critical acclaim in the increasingly diverse synthwave scene — a crystallization of the artist’s signature “SynthLord” sound.

With No. things have been shaken up and pushed into new directions. Many different factors came into play, including the conditions of the pandemic lockdowns and an urge for listening to music favourites from beyond his own scene informed developments on this new record. One key feature of these tracks is that under these conditions they were developed as individual pieces — a contrasting approach from previous albums where tracks were written with an album in mind. An evaluation of all of these individual tracks in the summer of 2022 unveiled a common pattern going through these new compositions.

One can still hear any number of echoes of the spirits of original synth artists in his sound, such as Images in Vogue, The Box, Section 25, Thomas Dolby, Skinny Puppy, Chrome, Cabaret Voltaire, Fad Gadget, Japan and Bill Nelson. However, some of Jack’s halcyon punk influences surface as well, taking inspiration from legendary punk/hardcore labels such as Dischord and Gravity, as listening habits over pandemic steered back towards more guitar-based styles. The introduction of expanded production techniques, experiments with vocal styles and tones, and stylistic shifts mark a progression of Soft Riot’s sound. The result is a snarkier, urgent and more playful, with a focus on pure synthpop, new wave, art-punk, proto-EBM as well as grittier synth-punk and post-punk tones.

The variation, energy and tone of this collection of tracks illustrates Soft Riot’s ability to transcend the hallmarks of today’s music environment, which increasingly is fragmenting into smaller and smaller micro-genres. Dry wit and dark humour take the lyrics and the tone of this album on a fun ride through music scenes, dark alleys and inside jokes.

Emil Amos (Grails, OM and podcaster plus) decommissions pieces originally bound for the KPM library. A personal interpolation of "music for films (& television)" expounds upon diverse sounds: synthy 80s soundtracks, contemporary hip-hop beatmaking, ambient music, and The Hulk"s "Lonely Man Theme". Emil"s dark visions are full of noirish shadows and eerie neon glow - mood music for drug trips spent dreaming up new soundtracks to take drugs to! Emil Amos" forthcoming Zone Black album is a fully inhabitable world, its episodic narrative divided into an improbable balance between morbid ambient anthems and insouciant hip-hop instrumentals. Emil hadn"t heard it done quite this way before, so he took it upon himself. And it sounds real! Straight out of Madlib"s kitchen sink, and with a sense of brooding dread, "Jealous Gods" features throbbing beats, low synth paired with high vocal melody, layered together into something even more impossibly bizarre than the sum of their parts - like say, monks singing from on high, over a battleground littered with remnants of the old guard. Emil warps evocative tones, taking familiar sounds into new dimensions, reaching for the kind of depth and resonance that defines moments with an almost invisible touch.

Decades Of Devil Worship
HIGHLIGHTING OVER 25 YEARS SINCE THE BIRTH OF THE UK EXTREME METAL GREATS, WITH A STORMING LIVE SATANIC ASSAULT OF CLASSICS FROM AKERCOCKE'S EARLY REPERTOIRE

Throughout the years, Akercocke has become known for its savage & prodigious
live work. And now, with a stunningly produced & meticulously delivered torrent of
high-octane blackened death metal captured live in at the Underworld in London
in 2007, Akercocke blast through a collection of tracks lifted from the classic
debut, 'Rape Of The Bastard Nazarene' & follow-up album 'The Goat Of Mendes'
for a night of pure satanic magic with 'Decades Of Devil Worship', a hellish &
eclectic journey through the ritualistic & the profane.
Towering above most nefarious contemporary noisemakers, London's Akercocke
erupted across the consciousness of the UK metal scene in the late '90's,
wielding a fiendishly inventive blend of death, black & progressive metal. Their
distinctive, smartly-dressed demeanour & eloquent preoccupation with all things
dark & Satanic marked them out both as ferociously individual artists &
enlightened students of the pitch-black sonic code. Immediately embraced by the
British faithful upon the release of debut album 'Rape Of The Bastard Nazarene',
Akercocke spent the following decade leading the creative charge for their entire
native scene.
Akercocke received widespread acclaim for follow- up album 'The Goat Of
Mendes' (Peaceville, 2001) & despite enjoying furious momentum over the
following years, the release of fifth album 'Antichrist' in 2007 signalled the end of
the first chapter of the Akercocke story, when the band retreated into the
shadows & remained dormant for the best part of a decade until a triumphant
return was marked with the stellar Peaceville return, 'Renaissance In Extremis',
released in 2017.

REPRESS

Codek is the brainchild of Jean-Marie Salaun who grew up in Paris influenced by the folklore of the inner city. In 1978 he joined art rock group SpionS alongside Gregory Davidow and recorded two singles. Diving into the Paris post punk scene he met Claude Arto and designed the artwork for Claude's single on Celluloid Kwai Systeme / Betty Boop.' Robin Scott (M Pop Music') had produced the SpionS first single and wanted to collaborate further. With Claude, Jean-Marie wrote Me Me Me', intended for a choir, for M. Then SpionS split and Robin was off to Switzerland to record an album to follow-up his hit single. That left Jean-Marie alone in London, where he began working as Codek, a play on the brand name Kodak The Me Me Me' single was released by MCA Records in 1980. Back in Paris, now with some studio experience, Celluloid Records hired Jean-Marie to produce records for Artefact and Les Orphelins. Over the next 2 years he began working on ideas for the next Codek single Closer / Tam Tam'

Closer' started its life as an electric baseline played by Jean-Marie. Claude Arto sequenced the floating synthesizers. Laurent Grangier and Frédéric Lapierre of reggae band Immigration Act played the horns. The lyrics Hard to say. Easy to do. We don't need to say what we do' were a statement on creation as narration expressed Jean-Marie's ennui, I'm tired with it.' Tam Tam' was inspired by Burundi drummers playing on the plaza in front of Beaubourg where the song was recorded. Jean-Marie enlisted one of the drummers from the circle, Georges Atta Dikalo, to lay down percussion for the song. The female singers were from the French Caribbean and added falsetto tribal chants. JM was part of the the African night scene in Paris, remixing Xalam's Kanu' and Touré Kunda's Salaly Muhamed.' Claude achieved complex rhythmic patterns using a modular synthesizer and heavy processing. Jean-Marie recorded himself beating his chest for the thump noises. The recording of Tam Tam' and Closer' spanned over two years. They started on 16-track in Studio d'Auteuil, where JM blew the woofers, before resuming in Studio Centre Georges Pompidou with an added 8-track recorder. Jean-Marie was producing other bands, and a lot of this was recorded on "borrowed" studio time. The single was released in 1981 on West African Music, a tiny label from the Ivory Coast, and was re-released a year later by Island Records in the UK (where the B-side was re-named Tim Toum'). Both tracks were staples in the DJ sets of Beppe Loda and Daniele Baldelli, finding a spiritual home in the Cosmic scene of Italy.

Both songs have been remastered for vinyl by George Horn at Fantasy Studios in Berkeley. The jacket is an exact replica of the 1981 edition with artwork by Angela Boy, inspired by primitive electronics and African paintings. Each copy includes an doubles-sided insert with photos and liner notes by Jean-Marie Salaun.

Rare 1986 Funk/Soul From Alabama.

Originally released as a private pressed cassette tape only.

First Time On Vinyl.

Released in collaboration with the Numero Group.

180g BLACK vinyl limited to 500 copies w/obi strip. Non-Returnable.

Armed with little more than his Peavey T-60 guitar and a Jumbo Fuzz pedal, Errol Stubbs and his bar-band cohorts cranked out a self-released tape of funked-up disco soul in 1986. With no label or distribution to speak of, Errol would simply put on his best suit and sell the cassettes by hand. The tape languished into obscurity…until now!

The story of Errol Stubbs begins in Birmingham, Alabama in 1959. The youngest of five, he was surrounded by music as a child–his aunt taught piano at Daniel Payne College while his older brother, Avery Beavers, was an accomplished jazz trumpeter. Under the guidance of Avery, Errol started playing trumpet at the age of nine, though he gravitated toward songwriting and quickly picked up the guitar. Inspired by blues greats the likes of Albert King, Buddy Guy, and Little Milton, 12-year-old Errol began mimicking the sounds that filled southern airwaves. As a teenager, he played at barbecues, fish fries, and dive bars across the Magic City. After a brief stint at Jefferson State studying music, Errol’s passion for songwriting beckoned him away from the classroom.

Stubbs bounced around bar bands before settling on a live lineup and saving enough dough to take his vision to the recording studio. Over the course of two days, his well-rehearsed band recorded Turning it Out mostly live to tape at the Sound Of Birmingham Studio. Located on Birmingham’s east side, the state-of-the-art studio kept the lights on by recording commercial jingles but was more than happy to open their doors to local talent.

Taking notes from guitar god Ernie Isley and funk legend Rick James, the resulting recordings are drenched in cosmic phaser-fuzz guitar work, slapping bass lines, and sexual disco innuendos. Big brother Avery lends a hand on Clavinet for “Sweat,” while studio owner/engineer Don Mosley adds a tasteful dose of Moog synthesizer across a handful of cuts.

Soon after the Sound Of Birmingham sessions, Errol released the private pressed EP “Dancin’ Fancy,” b/w “Spaced Out On Your Love,” the latter of which was featured on Numero Group’s 2019 compilation Visible and Invisible Persons Distributed In Space.

The seven-song cassette Turning It Out was sold in local record stores and from night club stages, but only a few copies made their way out of Birmingham.

It would be difficult to overstate the importance of the Jones brothers Thad, Hank and Elvin on the world of jazz. Between the three of them, their performances can be heard on literally thousands of recordings, including some of the most legendary sessions ever recorded with some of the greatest artists. Post-War Detroit was really taking notes on the new sounds of jazz coming into favor and the group of former Detroiters included on this album include some of its most virtuosic students. Thad Jones, (although he was technically from nearby Pontiac, MI) on trumpet, Kenny Burrell on guitar, Tommy Flanagan on piano and Billy Mitchell on saxophone. Jones’ first for Blue Note from 1956 stands as a fantastic sounding announcement that the Detroiters had landed in New York and were about to take off. Including legendary players Shadow Wilson on Drums and Oscar Pettiford on Bass; Detroit - New York Junction, a long sought after rarity and a true testament to the importance of Detroit on the evolution of jazz music through Blue Note Records. Recorded at Audio Video Studios - New York, NY 1956 by Alfred Lion and Rudy Van Gelder

It would be difficult to overstate the importance of the Jones brothers Thad, Hank and Elvin on the world of jazz. Between the three of them, their performances can be heard on literally thousands of recordings, including some of the most legendary sessions ever recorded with some of the greatest artists. Post-War Detroit was really taking notes on the new sounds of jazz coming into favor and the group of former Detroiters included on this album include some of its most virtuosic students. Thad Jones, (although he was technically from nearby Pontiac, MI) on trumpet, Kenny Burrell on guitar, Tommy Flanagan on piano and Billy Mitchell on saxophone. Jones’ first for Blue Note from 1956 stands as a fantastic sounding announcement that the Detroiters had landed in New York and were about to take off. Including legendary players Shadow Wilson on Drums and Oscar Pettiford on Bass; Detroit - New York Junction, a long sought after rarity and a true testament to the importance of Detroit on the evolution of jazz music through Blue Note Records. Recorded at Audio Video Studios - New York, NY 1956 by Alfred Lion and Rudy Van Gelder

This Moment' - Shakti's first new studio album in more than 45 years - is
a work of immense depth and radiant optimism
With John McLaughlin (guitar, guitar synth) and Zakir Hussain (tabla) joined by
vocalist Shankar Mahadevan, violinist Ganesh Rajagopalan, and percussionist
Selvaganesh Vinayakram, the Shakti of now is a powerfully dynamic collective,
defined by deft interplay, dazzling unison passages, extraordinarily dexterous
improvisations, and the ability to draw from a vast well of global traditions and,
miraculously, put them in conversation with one another.
As a cornerstone of what is now called World Music, the vision and virtuosity of
Shakti has inspired generations of musicians from around the world to explore
sonic hybrids once thought impossible. Born of the musical and spiritual
brotherhood shared by the revolutionary British guitarist and bandleader John
McLaughlin and master Indian percussionist Zakir Hussain, Shakti's soulful,
organic intermingling of Eastern and Western musical traditions has proven
transformative for both the band's members and its listeners. Fifty years after the
informal conversations and jam sessions that sparked the band into existence,
their music continues to resonate and evolve.
Despite the large gap in their studio discography, Shakti has persisted
intermittently over the years as a live proposition, releasing several concert
recordings. "Shakti is very much a 'live' band, " explains McLaughlin. "A part of the
problem with making a studio recording has always been the fact that we live on
different continents, and we all follow our individual careers – in addition to
working together in Shakti. 'This Moment' is the result of me calling everyone in
the fall of 2021 and persuading them to use today's recording technology to
realise it."
Recorded and mixed in the U.S., Monaco, India, and Great Britain, This Moment is
nevertheless cohesive, bound by the deeply held bond shared by the players - a
bond that is audibly apparent across the album's eight tracks.

Blind Prophet & Ishan Sound come together for their first pan-atlantic collaboration here in what is a fine return to the ZamZam label. The pair first met in Portland in 2019 and so it's good to finally have some sounds to get stuck into from their meeting of minds. 'The Labyrinth' kicks off with hefty and stepping drum rhythms that are overlaid by bright synth lines and mystic flutes. The interloping melodies and a menacing bassline finish it in style. On the flip, things get much more dark with 'Minotaur Dub' which is a shadowy world of refracting drums and oodles of reverb and echo. There is a predatory sense to the rhythm that never lets up as fizzing bass pries every deep into the dead of night.

PRSPCTV aka XENTRIX is an emerging Belgian techno talent who steps out here with his first release on Musik is Egall. His moody and atmospheric original 'Perspective & Surface' is found on the B-side. It's a hunched-over, stripped-back deep techno and dub fusion with grotty synths and vast incendiary hi-hats hurrying you along.

Label co-founder Oliver Hess steps up with his own remix on the A-side and flips the track into something as as deep as they come, with dubbed out chords and warm, edgeless but driving kicks and smeared pads all laced up with muffled vocal mutterings and rising synths. It's one for early-evening groove sessions or late-night zone outs.

Four more lively, lovely electro offerings from Plant 43, the second in a limited edition series of EPs focussed on tracks written over the course of the winter of 2022/23. Opener 'Submolecular Shifting' is bright and bubbly, joining the dots between Kraftwerk and Model 500, while 'Eccentric Elliptical Orbit' follows on slower and more grandiose, echoing early New Order's icy cool synth sounds. 'Encased' has a more otherworldly Aphex-like feel, although the juddering, on-off bass keeps it plugged into the dancefloor. 'The Forgotten Storm' closes proceedings, more low key again and graced with ethereal, adding angelic choirs. Energised enough and streamlined enough to be good dancefloor gear, but expertly executed and, as ever, brimming with enough personality to be a decent home listen as well.