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Five years after his critically acclaimed debut album Throwback, Glenn Astro returns with his deeply personal album Homespun.

Marking a change in course from his first release on Tartelet Records, Glenn Astro is set to showcase his sophomore album Homespun, a testament to a visionary artist who has come into his own. Made up of ten tracks spanning 45 minutes, the record twists and turns between electronic meditations, soulful vocals by Ajnascnet, and futuristic electro, carving out a world of spacey eclecticism that is as nostalgic as it is experimental.

“This album is in all facets different from the first one, which was a deliberate decision. No vintage sounds and references, no sampling, combined with futuristic sound design and song structures.I tried to keep it as current and intuitive as possible,” he says.

Known for his chunky beats and fuzzy textures, Glenn Astro has released on labels such as Ninja Tune and Apollo, leaving a distinctive signature on everything he touches.

But Glenn Astro has quietly been crafting a new sound for himself. Sometimes taking detours – morphing into his dark alter ego and experimenting with artist collaborations.

The sound of Homespun is a culmination of several years of reflection and artistic development – however, the album itself was produced in less than three months. “I set myself an ultimatum to finish the album within three months. If I didn’t make it, I’d
have to rethink my career path and keep music as a hobby, he says.

On the introspective first single and album title track “Homespun,” Ajnascent’s vocals lend a sincerity to the melancholic production. “It’s about the regret of not taking chances and giving in too much, but also about taking responsibility and being honest with yourself. Homespun is a nod to nostalgia and a desire for simplicity and prudence, being equally the culprit and the cure,” elaborates Ajnascent.

On “The Yancey,” an homage to J Dilla, Glenn Astro paints his vision of contemporary dance music with shimmering melodies, deep ambient soundscapes, and advanced drum programming. “Moreira” and “Look at You” feel like spaced-out electronic funk hybrids, while “Taking Care of Business” goes back to the future with Glenn Astro’s take on jungle. Other tracks such as “Mezzanine,” “Slow Poke Flange,” and “Viktor’s Meditation” provide the finest dubby electronics.

Age in Decline marks the 50th release and 5th year in operation from Manchester based label, Natural Sciences: a v/a comp of new tracks from the contemporary underground alongside choice cuts pulled from the labels annual Future Works series available on vinyl for the first time. Get ready for the beat down.

To close the 3 EP reissue series of Neville King and Lee Laing's King & City label, the all female group Charisma are presented with their summer infused Lovers cut, Everything Is Fine.

Three Lewisham friends, Angela Richardson on lead vocals, with Geselle and Janie backing, were active from 1982 to 1990, but are really remembered for the early recordings made with Neville King. Their debut, Everything Is Fine rides the Lovers sound at its peak. Written with One Blood's Lloyd Robinson, with the rest of band of Robinson brothers providing the rhythm section, this is pure South London sound system music.

Recorded again at TMC (Tooting Music Centre) Recording Studios - working alongside the likes of Dillinger, Tradition and New Musik - Everything Is Fine rides a beautiful soul reggae rhythm as Trevor (Drums) and Lloyd (Bass) Robinson set the foundations, while One Blood provide the Dub mix.

A true love's lament, a song of hope, serenity and pure vibes. Label head Chuggy slides behind the mixing desk for an extended Discomix that stretches, loops and dubs the vocal and dub back forth, to close a glimpse at this uniquely British phenomenon, taking reggae closer to it's heart and soul.

12inch release of highly sought after Colored Music edits by Tokyo's, Chee Shimizu (Organic Music). The two cuts originally featured on the the bands seminal self titled album (from 1981) that remained a cult DJ secret weapon, for many years, all over the world. This heavy EP includes an alternative version of 'Heartbeat' that featured on the Japan only "Individual Beauty" LP of 2018 (also compiled by Shimizu)

Following their live performances at the latest two Dimension Festival Editions and vinyl releases on international labels such as Slices of a dog, Money Sex, Odd socks and Sorry For This featuring a remix by none other than mr. Marcellus Pittman, Nas1 are finally back on Bosconi Extra Virgin with a new album titled Polaris Time. It’s a multi colored sonic adventure, moving from their hip hop and detroit house roots to a new palette of sounds including afro percussions and fresher synth lines blended together into a unique electronic soundscape that creates exotic, psychedelic atmospheres and unconventional, raw midtempo dance-floor tracks. The Album begins with the enchanting ballad of “L’ isola di Serie B” , moving deeper with the spaced out vibe of Domino Skii , landing on the more tropical and frivolous scenarios of “Cicci Briucci” and on the laid-back interlude of “Il Sangue Non Serve A Niente”.
In the beginning of the flip side appears instead the jazzy and uplifting first cut named “Frigo Deca”, followed by the freaky jam of “Come Thru” and the adventurous balearic tune “Hector Savage” ending with the ethereal closing skit “Il Sangue Non Serve A Niente (outro)"
Fans of Kyle Hall, Theo Parrish as well as John Talabot or Nicola Cruz are warned, absolutely not to be missed if you have been following Nas1 music so far.

Red Vinyl

Almost 10 years already….Just a short moment away from its tenth anniversary, the cutting-edge Label La Belle Records unveils the second part of its One Night Stands collection.

If the first part portrayed very warm, tropical tones, this second opus feels more like the end of a party or the morning after, with a selection of tracks at a crossroad between slo-mo, synth-pop, lo-fi, ethnic groove and nu-disco like few others have done before.

This is something you've never heard before! All thanks to the insatiable digging from the master curator and co-founder of the label, Antoine Harispuru aka Golden Bug.

From Rome to Bruxelles via Paris and Vilnius, this second edition hits hard with names like Get A Room!, Rodion, Ellis Island (a world collaboration between the Italians Bawrut and Hot Spell), Rodion, Front de Cadeaux, Claap! and some other electronic gems.

Warok music releasing the fourth featuring collaborations with various artists, from breakbeat techno to mental driving techno.

In the Ponorogo series, Warok is continuing revealing the story behind the label which is inspired by the fascinating Indonesian culture.

French artist JC Laurent returns to label with a hypnotic cut in collaboration with label co-founder Coltur entitled "The Vault" featuring syncopated, spacious rhythms, zappy synths revolving underneath the reverberating bass grooves before Enemy Records' Blenk & Materia's Ruhbarb join to create a shimmering techno roller in the form of "Day One" which pulsates with breaky drums and rubbery modulations.

On the flip, Skrypton's Moteka & Shekon provide a psychedelic experience within "Gallia" featuring tunneling oscillations, rising synths and undulating effervescence taking you on an otherworldly trip until Eyth & Hearthug round things off with "Patchworks" which offers up acid squelches, alleviating, angelic pads and scattered, broken percussion which keeps the enthralling energy flowing until the end.

Tape / Cassette

As one half of Phantom Horse, his long-serving electronic duo with Ulf Schütte, Niklas Dommaschk co-produces beautifully muted, Kraut-inspired jams that seem to soundtrack fictitious TV ads for wondrous imaginary household appliances, e.g. a calmly efficient, if slightly unsettling kitchen robot with an integrated lava lamp feature.

In contrast, Shapes cuts tracks down to size – nothing here is longer than five-and-a-half minutes. Also, Dommaschk has turned up the treble, the prominence of the higher frequency spectrum adding bite and menace to these deceptively simple synth polyrhythms.
Whereas opening track “Benzin” (German for “Petrol”) manages to conjure the paradoxical image of something or someone meandering with urgency, “Einzeller” (German for “single-celled organism”) channels a John-Carpenter-style pulse, complete with horror sound effects. “Interference” is a truly effective representation of the term, with piercing, but quiet tinnitus frequencies set above a beat as sparse as it is crunchy. “Two Stones”, by contrast, offers a kind of robotic wistfulness whereas closing piece “Energies of the mind” fizzes out like a jumble of toy keyboards attempting to score a science programme - and failing, but instead revealing some much grander emotional truth.

This is the sound of breaking some kind of inner lockdown, of turning inwards and then projecting parts of murky inner shadows outward, as well-defined and sometimes lurid shapes, individually clear, but still in the process of becoming organized into a complete whole. The unfinished is what excites us the most. May the shapes never find their slot in the jigsaw puzzle.

All songs by Niklas Dommaschk
Recorded between 2017 and 2020 in Berlin and Nijmegen
Mastering by Edgar Medina
Artwork by Daniel Castrejón

From 1963 to 2014: "Peace Chant - raw deep and spiritual jazz" exhibits 51 years of music. A well matched anthology with sounds to dive into, hard rhythms to dance to and vocals to meditate on.

The Tramp Records crew has compiled 9 tracks in nice order and dramaturgy. Some tunes you might have never heard before unless you own one of the rare original vintage vinyl records. Peace Chant is released on two separate LPs with own catalogue numbers and on one CD. Some songs I can't get out of my mind:

The previously unreleased "Don't Give Up Your Smile Today" is opening the compilation. It's from Das Goldene Zeitalter, a band that didn't survive - but whose members had a huge influence on German jazz, soul, afrobeat and funk within the last years merging into groups like The Poets of Rhythm, The Whitefiled Bros., and The Malcouns. Boris Geiger aka. Bo Baral sings a Pharoah Sanders like tune, his voice deeply resonating, the rhythm section heavily grooving.

After the first three woolly recorded tracks Walt Bolen's "Peace Chant" with its dry and funky sounds with flute, two guitars and percussion is quite a pleasure to listen to. Organ and voice are Bolen's who used to play the keys in San Fernando Valley church when he was a child. "Peace Chant" was recorded for his own Ar-Que label in 1972 and is one of the few cuts with him as a leader. He has played sessions and clubs for years and today he is sitting at the church organ again.

This publication's oldest recording dates back to 1963: "Mozambique" by Luna Brothers Trio, a Caribbean and hypnotic instrumental. For my jazz trained ears it is rather unusual that the güiro (the gherkin played with a stick) is being played throughout the entire song. Heavily laid back cowbell, concas and timbales and the slightly detuned piano are wonderful! "Mozambique" sounds like from another star but its origin is Los Angeles, where the brothers Fred and Ricardo Luna had their night club band. You could imagine a bast skirt strip and at the same time the great Raumpatrouille (Space Patrol) landing on German B&W TV screens in 1966.

Hozan Yamamoto recorded crime jazz with the Japanese bamboo flute shakuhachi. He belonged to Tony Scotts "Music for Zen Meditation" in 1964, played with Ravi Shankar, avant-garde jazz bassist Gary Peacock and appeared at Donaueschingen Festival for contemporary music. Tokio university's open minded lecturer recorded the funky and modal "Spotlight on Sapporo" in 1972.

German techno and house composer Tim Engelhardt takes you on a deep dive into his peculiar-yet-relatable world of musical meanderings with ‘Idiosynkrasia’. True to the nature of idiosyncrasy, the album is more than the sum of its parts.

‘Idiosynkrasia’ is an ode to the inspiration Tim finds in all kinds of spaces and places: each cut woven from the same cloth of meticulously formed melodic structures and expertly crafted harmonies, gently amplified and unfettered by genre. From the opening track it’s clear that Tim has a profound awareness of rhythm and sound, his background as a pianist lending an easy fluidity to the album as it expands and contracts to tell a story which is gentle, humble and reflective.

Using granular processed recordings of piano, floating strings and other instruments to transmute emotions like love, nostalgia, vulnerability and longing, the album shifts through meditative, flow-state inducing tracks, morphing into cuts designed for dancing it all out.

Take it straight, mix it up or down: ‘Idiosynkrasia’ is cinematic in form and orchestral in structure, each track is marked with Tim’s unique sonic signature and careful attention to instrumentation.

Inhale the spirited and lively flow; exhale and surrender into epiphanic moments: this is an album which will catalyse deep breaths, reflection and a different way of thinking.

‘Hörtest-Edition IV - Visions of Jazz’ is a listening experience to be cherished. It offers a specially curated programme which can be compared across different media and in various formats. Enjoy an audiophile adventure in perfect sound quality: the 180gram LP, cut at half speed, has been subject to the most exacting demands during the pressing process, rendering the quality of a turntable audible. Compare the special features of vinyl with the strengths of a conventional audio CD, or alternatively feast your ears on the sound quality attainable in the hi-res world of 24-bit. For this listening experience, ACT has curated a selection from its current releases by renowned artists, all recorded and produced to the highest standards and with an uncompromising focus on sound quality.  Test… compare… but above all, enjoy the music. Under the motto ‘Visions of Jazz’, ‘Hörtest-Edition IV’ presents a multi-faceted kaleidoscope of current jazz.  This ‘Hörtest-Edition’ includes gatefold 180g LP, CD and 24Bit high resolution digital download files. Curated and compiled by Marco Ostrowski.

Two versions of this much-loved gem (covered by Led Zeppelin and Roger Daltrey from The Who more recently), ‘As Long As I Have You’ was the

title track of Garnet Mimms’ first solo album from 1964 which made a brief appearance as a seven inch and now goes for £500.

The slightly longer ‘Single Version’ made it to demo-only in France in 1967 and is a super rare cut - an edited live version with brass courtesy of

The Senate that goes for around £400 if you can find a copy. Remastered here from the original sound source.

Untold’ is an experimental electronic LP from multi-disciplinary artist and author Sophia Loizou. Depicting a series of speculative sonic landscapes; animals, ocean waves and weather systems are abstracted into eco-centric cyber-dreams creating powerful ambient compositions that invite us to see the Earth through the eyes of others.

‘Untold’ is not about the natural or the technological but the relationships between the two; sonic textures, breaks and melodies are shaped by the dynamics of a lion’s roar or the rhythm of a dolphin’s echolocation emissions. “I didn’t want to make it human-centric,” explains Sophia. “I wanted to remove my compositional and structural domination, to find ways to make it about the symbiosis of systems I see in the world.”

‘Untold’ is part of a much bigger multi-disciplinary project that also includes a collection of poems with accompanying audio, artworks, an AV show and a lecture performance.

Mastered and cut by Matt Colton @ Metropolis.

We welcome Nick Verwey aka DAWN AGAIN to the Houseworx Family. The profilic househead from Melbourne / Australia will release "TRAIN THE HOUSE DOWN" in October 2020. 4 cuts full of soul in his trademark style.

Trauma Collective returns with four cuts of decidedly hypnotic and abstract techno from ever-prolific ASC. Rounding out the last decade with a string of stand-out releases on his own imprint, Auxiliary, the San Diego producer brings his cerebral sonic aesthetic to the fledgling Madrid label. "Loop Research" showcases a singular artist unbound by tempo and at the top of their game.

A vital voice in the modern discourse on depression, body positivity, and the LGBTQ community, her trailblazing influence has arguably never been more apparent and some of the key writers of the moment have teamed up to work with her. Alongside Rae Morris and Fryars, who co-penned the first single WHO I AM, co-writers include Jonny Lattimer (Ellie Goulding, James Bay, Rag ‘n’ Bone Man), Future Cut (Little Mix, Shakira, Lily Allen), Tom Neville (Dua Lipa, Kesha, Calvin Harris) and Shura. Among the tracks she releases here are the slinky, tropical-tinged Overload, a warning to a people getting on your nerves, and Escape, a broken beats-driven track about escaping everyday life. The summery Self Love owes a debt to Donna Summer, while Melanie’s love of Billie Eilish influenced the moody, intimate Nowhere to Run. Melanie and Billie’s admiration for one another was plain to see at this year’s BRIT Awards, where Melanie presented Billie with the Best International Female Solo Artist award after a long embrace. Who I Am and second single Blame It On Me have both set up the self-titled album and despite releasing during a global lockdown, she has performed to great acclaim on TV and online across the world on flagship shows such as The One Show in the UK, no less than 4 million plus German TV shows and James Corden’s Late Late show in the US where her performance is now the benchmark. With growing streaming support and A list radio support on both tracks in the UK, Australia, Latin America, SE Asia and Germany so far, it’s a global new chapter for Girl Power.

Growing up in Milton Keynes, the largest of the "new towns" outside of London designed and built in the 1960s, perhaps explains why producer Nicholas Worrall is subconsciously drawn to clearly delineated sonic structures and flawed techno utopianism, two concepts that are ever present in both his sound and aesthetic approach to music.

Wordcolour was formed just two years ago, at a time when Worrall was habitually cutting up and splicing human voice samples ripped from YouTube memes, film dialogues and musique concrète tapes.

The first artistic demonstration of these ideas arrived in 2019 via his mixtape “I Want To Tell You Something” for the Blowing Up The Workshop platform. This unique set immediately grabbed the attention and support of the specialized music press and media, including Pitchfork and Resident Advisor.

“Tell Me Something” is Wordcolour’s official debut EP and heads straight for the dance floor. It is comprised of an unusual melting pot of influences that fuse the UK club sound, post-dubstep and a style akin to Paul Lansky's ‘90s musique concrète. “Tell Me Something” offers a vibrant leftfield, avant-garde techno and edgy electro, all immersed in the vast cosmos of the human voice.

B•O•M is the fifth album by freak electronic producer NCHX (NOCHEXXX). A percussive planet of acid-techno, UK bass, house and electro-phonk, hosed down with a chemical wash of post-dubstep and UK bleep contaminants.

Departing with a tube station screech, HUNTING HIDES signals a lone defender’s ride through the underground - trace amounts of musique concrete dart around the tunnel walls, while sub-low cushions the rumble. ENTERCOL is perfect 3am mix fodder; saturation hot-points push beneath a middle eastern theme, whilst SEVENTH GUN TERRITORY is pure rapid-fire bongo bizness - a concrete terrain punctuated with corrugated metal grids and moving shadows: distorted poly-metered brutalism! CYBERTUSH is the perfect OST to a club littered with vape pens, while B-Boi bots flirt with promiscuous A.I.

Arguably the most fierce cut is TEFLONTUAN - an ode to NCHX’s favourite pro Antuan Dixon - the Deathwish skater lands bolts with the illest of steeze. Side-chained 303 squelch rattles alongside x0x sequenced drums as wavetable pads float above kinked rails. A nights gallop over city curbs. The LP signs off with LOCATION SCOUT, a SpaceX sample-return mission heading back to earth with a fistful of deep house red planet crumble.

“A dance floor’s dream and a mixing engineer’s nightmare” - Resident Advisor

Jazz / Funk / Fusion 45" from the Italian collective 291out. Comes with a premium brown paper sleeve and pantone label. Mastered and manufactured by Timmion Cutting.

Enigmatic producer RNDTXTR debuts on Rekids with a deep techno three tracker entitled‘Random EP’ this September.

“Some tracks just stick with you. They never leave your box, or in this case USB, and I’ve been playing these tracks from RNDTXTR for well over two years. Everywhere from Tokyo to Berlin. These have a universal appeal, being hypnotic and just the right balance between pushy club sounds and spatial melodies” - Radio Slave

Shrouded in murky atmospherics, ‘RND009’ opens the package with rigorous drums, shuffling shakers, sweeping pads and scintillating synths. ‘RND007 (Dub Mix)’ continues with a similar cantering rhythm as various rattling percussive elements work alongside clever automation for a tracky cut designed to lock listeners into a trance. Concluding matters, ‘RND004’ is the wonkiest number on the package with its syncopated groove and otherworldly melody.