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In the beginning of the 80's reggae music became increasingly in tune with what was happening in Kingston's dancehalls....probably more so than at any time since the sound system operators had started to make their own shuffle and boogie in the late 50's..
The international audience and the critics were too busy looking for a new Bob Marley to appreciate what was happening downtown and failed to acknowledge that this was a return to the real,raw roots of the music...brash,confidient,young record producers who were totally in tune with the youth audience stepped forward and seized the moment...
Oswald'Ossie'Thomas began his apprenticeship in the music business at the age of fourteen and served his time as a record salesman for Bunny 'Striker 'Lee and Winston 'Niney the Observer' Holness before moving on to Miss Sonia Pottingers Tip Top Records...
'I ended up working in three record stores on Orange Street from 1976 to 1981...Yeah man,Me deh 'pon me bicycle till I buy my motorcycle..Them days records were coming out left right and centre..everyday'
Ossie Thomas...
It was during his time with Miss Pottinger that Ossie began to produce records for himself and in 1979 Ossie and Phillip Morgan began The Black Solidarity label based deep in the Kingston ghetto on Delamere Avenue.
And the man who had made his name in the business selling other people's records now became one of the most important and influential record producers of the era..

Producer CRISTIAN VOGEL, born in Chile and in raised in Bristol, England, represents an inner turmoil within the history of electronic music and techno. Like only a few other artists such as Aphex Twin, he personifies the second wave of techno during which authorship, previously pronounced dead, returned in full force. The former punk, who had completed studies in composition (20th century classical music in Sussex) conveyed a powerful force in his music, which now finds its place very naturally as electronic music; back then, it did more than just shake up the concepts of techno. Complex and intricate rhythms (Süddeutsche Zeitung) dig deep chasms in dark (listening) spaces.

In 1996, together with JAMIE LIDELL as SUPER_COLLIDER, he made a final attempt to breathe life into electronic music, which was still primarily seen as dance/rave/club music, and produced clustered break funk music that was so relevant to its time that many considered it more a music of the future: science fiction for the dance floor. Although the project was not a failure, it did not succeed even halfway in meeting the expectations of an artist who was rather perplexed by the lack of interest he perceived in others in music as art and research. Vogel believes that music has a will to unfold, like a jungle from the undergrowth of industrial cities where music is thought of as an attack and a defense.
Seemingly out of disappointment in the predictably declining hedonism of the scene, he moved to Barcelona and bound his explosive ideas to more accessible formats, founded labels, created networks (No Future, Sleep Debt) and, at the same time, revisited his early days by working more and more on formats such as music for ballet and similar concepts. He also sought freedom precisely in what was referred to as functional electronic music through conceptual and serious endeavors in the artistic sense.
Vogel went under for a time and lived in Vienna before arriving in Berlin nearly two years ago, where he made his first new and daring attempt to assimilate everything that electronic music represented to him on one album: 'The Inertials' on SHITKATAPULT. Shortly after that, his mystical, floating ambient work 'Eselsbrücke' was released, which already spoke the language of the new city.

He now presents a new album on SHITKATAPULT entitled 'POLYPHONIC BEINGS' - a true masterpiece in the inimitable Vogel style, as his fans will no doubt claim. 'POLYPHONIC BEINGS' begins, after two minutes of an irritating noise wave, with a surprisingly classic dub track and grows darker and more abstract from track to track, minute by minute. An eerie and unbelievable sound, with all as it should be: every reverb tail, every movement of the fader, every composed note takes the listener piece by piece into Vogel's own cosmos.
He foregoes interwoven elements for swaying towers of rhythm, powerful sound passages, spaces, roads, mirrors and pathways, leading to a stream of ideas that never wants to end. He aptly quotes Karl-Heinz Stockhausen in the liner notes: These are the "atomic layers of ourselves." And so it is. We are what we hear. This is the definitive CRISTIAN VOGEL.

Bell Gardens combines the musical visions of Kenneth James Gibson (formerly of Furry Things, now recording as
*Bell Gardens' origins began arguably as more of an experiment than the duo's current 'experimental' projects - McBride's drone- and string-laden ambient symphonies, and Gibson's ventures in dub and minimalist techno - as they sought to manifest their mutual reverence for folk, psychedelia and chamber pop in a traditional band structure without cannibalising any particular past genre. Bell Gardens' sound is less reliant on effects and studio trickery than the pairs' independent guises, laying bare as it does vocals and live instruments with emotional sincerity, and presenting songs imbued with an almost pastoral or gospel simplicity and timelessness.
Slow Dawns for Lost Conclusions was again recorded mostly at home studios, but additionally the band made use of a friend's desert cabin in Wonder Valley, California, and it seems this willingness to retreat from the city has lent an expansiveness to the tracks, in particular the spacious, ceremonial 'Silent Prayer' (written in a snowbound mountain cabin in Idyllwild, C.A.) and the crepuscular 'She's Stuck in an Endless Loop of Her Decline' (mapped out under the stars in the desert).
While the addition of strings (contributed by Lauren Chipman of The Rentals and The Section Quartet) and trumpet (Stewart Cole of Edward Sharpe and The Magnetic Zeros) provides a double rainbow of tonal textures throughout, the nine tracks of Slow Dawns for Lost Conclusions are united by an understated elegance belying the newly expanded, communal effort in the studio: each instrument earns its place, nothing is overwrought or conspicuous. Moreover, it is McBride and Gibson's artistry in building stirring soundscapes from the barest of materials in their other guises that lends such assurance and sophistication to these arrangements.
The band is a result of the complimentary cross-pollination of Gibson and McBride's musical tastes - borne from a late-night conversation between the two that grew wings - and it is the universality of the sentiments and their restrained, reflective approach to writing and recording that allows the music to simultaneously straddle the past and the present. The music avoids pastiche, its pedal steel, sleigh bells and harmonies giving a nod to the ghosts of musical genres past, but never overriding or distracting from the emotional content of the sum of its parts.
The album ends with the glorious 'Take Us Away' - one of the first demos Gibson gave McBride when he was on tour with Stars of the Lid - neatly bringing their work to date full circle and exemplifying the band's mindfulness of their own serendipitous beginnings: the dawning of an auspicious, unique musical force.

Bell Gardens - Take Us Away -
Harmonies alert!! Actually, this is rather lovely. Slow-tempo, just the right side of 'twee' and packed full of strings, as if Air and Midlake had been taking balloon trips over the mid-West and sprinkling good-vibes dust across the land. From L.A. and subconsciously plugged into the '60s dream-pop scene, taking in a little bit of Mercury Rev and Brendan Perry en route, stopping off at Pearls Before Swine and Big Star's house for inspiration, before getting stoned with '70s era Brian Eno and Harold Budd.

Ein wahrer Überraschungserfolg in unserem 2014er Release-Kalender, führte VERMONTs gleichnamiges Debüt-Album die Hörerschaft an eine überraschend andersartige Seite des musikalischen Schaffens der beiden Projektgründer MARCUS WORGULL und DANILO PLESSOW (aka Motor City Drum Ensemble) heran. Ein Langspieler voller abenteuerlustiger Jam-Sessions und schnittiger Synthie-Klanglandschaften, berief sich 'VERMONT' lieber auf kompositorische Neugierde und einen informellen, kollaborativen Geist als auf den laser-ähnlichen Fokus, welcher den Club-Produktionen der beiden Künstler zu eigen ist.

Mit VERMONT - THE PRINS THOMAS VERSIONS betritt nun ein weiterer, hochverehrter Held zeitgenössischer Tanzflure die Bühne: der norwegische Disco-Connaisseur und Bootleg-Experte PRINS THOMAS taucht mit drei brillianten Neubearbeitungen tief in die VERMONT'schen Klangwelten hinab und betont die rhythmischen Elemente der originalen Album-Tracks DYNAMIK, ELEKTRON und MACCHINA - ohne jedoch deren zurückgelehnten Grundgestus zu verraten. Er tut dies unter Zuhilfenahme von luftiger angelegten Varianten klassischer Tanzmusik-Stile - Techno, House, sogar eine Prise Dub Reggae - und lässt diese die Hauptbeinarbeit versehen. Das Ergebnis präsentiert sich dementsprechend so drängend wie nötig und so entspannt wie möglich.

Bunny 'Striker' Lee's standing in the Jamaican recording business has remained unassailable for over four decades.Known by many aliases including 'Gorgon'.
The legend of the Gorgon originated in Greek mythology some three thousand years ago and has become a common image in art, literature and in Jamaica...Music.
The name actually derives from the ancient Greek word gorgos which means 'dreadful' ,appropriate when one considers that the avalanche of Gorgon inspired records came as a direct result of the influence of the Rastafarian movement on the Jamaican musical mainstream and the dread locked hair of the Rasta brethren was likened to that of the Gorgon sisters.
''About her shoulders she flung the tasselled aegis, fraught with terror...and therein is the head of the dread monster, the gorgon, dread,awful....'' Homer

Hot Detroit Techno from the one and only.... O B Ignitt. Brand new label from this killer producer. Too much!

Fatima Al Qadiri is a multidisciplinary artist and musician from Kuwait. In just a few years, she has quickly built a reputation as a conceptual artist, exploring themes informed both by her own background and global pop culture, through a number of highly acclaimed EPs, multimedia projects and writings. She is also a founding member of the production team Future Brown. Fatima's debut album is called 'Asiatisch', and as the track titles suggest, the record provides a simulated road trip through an imagined China. Musically, the album is an homage to that quietly influential sub-strain of grime, often loosely termed 'sinogrime' due to its preoccupation with Asian motifs and melodies, pioneered by the likes of Wiley and Jammer at the beginning of the 2000s in East London. 'Asiatisch' is a provocation which asks more questions than it answers. The title is the German word for Asian. Unlike its title, however, the music on 'Asiatisch' revolves around the fantasies of East Asia as refracted through pulpy Western pop culture, in particular Hollywood, literary fiction, music, cartoons and advertising. Fatima asks what is meant by the term 'Asian' in a digital age of viral interchange and the hi-speed trading of cultural bytes; the concept of 'shanzhai' proves pivotal, a term whose meaning stems from a wild, out of control zone of banditry, but which has come to be used to refer to the Chinese counterfeiting of Western brands and goods. While a number of producers have made takes on 'sinogrime' over the last few years, 'Asiatisch' is really the first record that attempts to articulate this weird complex of sonic interchanges between the West and China. With the exception of the opening track, 'Shanzhai', a haunting cover of 'Nothing Compares to You' with nonsensical Mandarin lyrics, and the shimmering 'Loading Beijing', 'Wudang' and 'Jade Stairs' which sample and distort classical Chinese poetry staging an epic confrontation between China's ancient soul and the onslaught of the industrial factory machine, most of the tracks blend mallets, bells, gongs, flutes, steel drums and choral atmospherics with the searing synth-brass and the skittering drums of grime, playing melodies that are inflected as much by classic R&B as to synthetic versions of traditional Chinese music. On "Dragon Tattoo" for example, stereotypical iconography of imagined China is slotted into a threatening, robotic R&B format. The carefree pirating of Western brands blurs into a soft-synth pirating of Chinese musical signs.'Asiatisch' is wrapped in pristine artwork by Babak Radboy from Shanzhai Biennial, and the music was given a 3D sheen by in demand mixer Lexxx. Proclaiming both its love of both ancient and imagined China, 'Asiatisch' is a rare album that is both icily beautiful and conceptually layered.

Jimmy Edgar and Travis Stewart (aka Machinedrum) reunite as JETS for a new and limited 12"Jimmy Edgar and Travis Stewart (aka Machinedrum) reunite as JETS for a new and limited 12' on
Leisure System, featuring vocals from chameleonic soul singer Jamie Lidell.
'Midas Touch' debuted as the opening track on Machinedrum's Essential Mix in November 2013, but
the track has been popping up at Leisure System gigs in various forms for the past six months. This 12'
is only the second release from the JETS project following their self-titled debut on Leisure System,
but as solo acts both Jimmy Edgar and Machinedrum had breakthrough years in 2013, the former
launching his Ultramajic imprint and the latter releasing the Vapor City LP on Ninja Tune. The result of
serendipitous recording sessions, 'Midas Touch' will sound familiar to many but has been given a
unique spin by the restlessly creative duo, buoyed by a powerhouse earworm vocal by Lidell.
'Midas Touch' is a vinyl-only release featuring the original JETS version of 'Midas Touch' and a
shimmering Machinedrum remix that smoothes out the soulful track for the dancefloor.

It's not easy making jams that really work the crowd just as well in Bristol as in Berlin. Nor any other city for that matter. It's those crossover artists that really stand out for us with tunes that do so much more than just ride the wave of what's hot. Enter The Organ Grinder and his sick 3track EP for Heist. 'How did I get here", the A1 track, might sound like something you'd ask yourself when you realize you're in the wrong place at the wrong time, but for us, this track is everything but that. This track has the most gritty and rolling percussion we've heard in a long time, a looped key with a hint of sleazy techno and some subs that will easily blow your grandma's porcelain to pieces. Add some odd FM frequency noises and you've got yourself a killer tune. Changes all the time takes a more drawn back approach, aptly characterized in the vox: 'repetition, with tiny changes all the time.' A set of carefully placed stabs. pads and strings along with a great arrangement that keeps you wanting more of that warm but rough groove. The Valley of doom takes you on a journey through the whole B-side with a stripped down, almost dubby techno vibe, nicely countered with The OG's signature slamming and gritty percussion. I hope you will enjoy this record as much as we do. Sincerely yours, Lars & Maarten

Four track instrumental EP from LA producer Devonwho. Sun-drenched synths and G-funk vibes are the order of the day here; 'Strangebrew' and 'Sleet' zip along with their low-slung bass and melodic purple keys while on the flip 'Cactus' takes the pace down a bit. Slow jamz with a fast feel, these three rolling 4/4 workouts are rounded off with a fresh rework of the title track from fellow West Coast funakateer B Bravo (Frite Nite, Brownswood). Comes in picture sleeve with free download code.

Up and away / To your journey to the sun / Drink your rocket juice / Fly away (Hey, Shooter).
High up in the skies, amongst the clouds, Rocket Juice & The Moon was born. Literally. It happened back in 2008, when Damon Albarn, Flea and Tony Allen convened on the same Lagos flight, to play and exchange musical ideas in that city as part of the Africa Express collective. Relishing a shared enthusiasm for one another's work, and bonding immediately, there and then the triumvirate laid down the blueprint for Rocket Juice.
Still, more than a year passed before conditions were set for three weeks together at Albarn's West London studio, recording and refining two-dozen startlingly out and deeply funky instrumental grooves. The next stage was to invite onboard some extremely talented friends, with further sessions in Dallas, New York, Chicago and Paris... Erykah Badu, no less, queen of contemporary soul. Three companions from Africa Express: Malian singer Fatoumata Diawara, whose debut album has topped World Music charts since its release last Autumn; her multi-talented compatriot Cheick Tidiane Seck, whose prodigious keyboardism has lit up releases by artists ranging from Youssou N'Dour to Hank Jones; the young, Ghanaian rapper M.anifest, quizzically existential, switching seamlessly between Twi and English. And the Hypnotic Brass Ensemble, long-time stalwarts in the Honest Jon's set-up — since one of the team discovered them busking near the shop in Portobello Road, on his lunchbreak — with a second album for the label due in May... Finally, the tracks were dispatched for mixing to Berlin, to be meticulously honed, polished and envenomed by Mark Ernestus, one half of the legendary Basic Channel and Rhythm & Sound partnerships.
The result is Rocket Juice & The Moon — out March 26, 2012, on Honest Jon's Records — a triumphant exploration and proliferation of kinetic Afro-funk rhythms: organic, exuberant, communal music-making, evidenced by the project's live debut on stage as part of the Honest Jon's Chop Up in late 2011, which hit London, Marseille, Dublin, and Cork to such great acclaim (witness the flurry of smart-phone film-clips uploaded in the days thereafter).
From the inaugural bars — that absurdly funky slice of instructional timekeeping, 1-2-3-4-5-6 — the liquid pulse of Fela Kuti's classic recordings drives the action through a suite of 18 shape-shifting compositions. The greatest drummer in the world has never sounded so good as he does here. His intricate cross-patterns jostle and lock with Flea's nimble, rumbling bass riffs. Joined by Seck on There and Extinguished — 'when you dispose of something burning, be sure it's out' — Albarn's keyboards spray synth fusillades up top, over, and under... splicing into the mess of wires running between the freaked Afro-disco of William Onyeabor and the space-jazz-moog of Sun Ra. The HBE brings extra intensity and drama to Leave-Taking — likewise Flea's trumpet to Rotary Connection — teasing out the haunting melody coiled in the mix.
Where the best of vintage Afrobeat sides sustained their concentrated energies over the course of sprawling, marathon jams, RJ & TM manages something altogether different: the group bottles the idiom into capsules of funk... and real songs. Beautifully buoyed by Erykah Badu's unmistakable vocals, Hey, Shooter brilliantly traverses metaphysical spaceways sans any semblance of noodling. Lolo and Follow-Fashion — featuring the open-hearted sensuality of Diawara's singing, M.anifest's quick, brawny science, and more brass blasts — play like its musical cousins or codas. Indeed, the album's shrewd sequencing creates the composite effect of tracks working both individually or within the context of an extended song-cycle.
The lovely ballad, Poison, is bittersweet and ruminative: 'If you're looking for love, beware the signs / They will paralyze you one by one / Poison, it will only break your heart.' Down-tempo and dubby, Check Out and Worries amplify the range of styles and moods. And by the time of Fatherless — a chugging Afro blues that evokes John Lee Hooker lost in Lagos, one gets the sneaking suspicion there's very little outside the reach of this collective's inventive musical grasp.
There is, in fact, a palpable openness pervading Rocket Juice & The Moon — the sense of a limber willingness to follow creative impulse — right down to how the group acquired its name. When Ogunajo Ademola — the Lagotian commissioned to do the album's cover artwork — dubbed his submission 'Rocket Juice & The Moon', it quickly morphed into the formal name of the project, like trying to hold onto mercury.
Surely, the stars above also approved.

Kenny Gino and Big Mike a.k.a. the Solid Gold Playaz both started playing records in the late 70's/early 80's. Having family from Chicago, who were DJ's and down with some of the big guys at the time, "heavily influenced our music and production styles" both say. "Living so close to the city, we could go down to all the legendary night spots. The Rainbow and the Warehouse, the Box, the Shelter... places where you could just feel the vibe. And you could hear guys like Farley Funkin' Keith, Ron Hardy, and Jammin' Gerald (the Chicago DJ/producer who is Kenny's cousin) play these incredible records". They both were hooked on the house sound, and would bring it back to their home, a small city named Racine, Wisconsin, located about an hour and half north of Chicago. They continued to develop their DJ and production skills into the 90's, but musically, weren't taking things very seriously until they met Chicago producer Louis Bell. He introduced them to many of the people who were building the mid-90's Chicago sound. "Louis gave us access... access to places we hadn't been before. He took us into the offices of Cajual/Relief Records and Underground Construction, and suddenly we were face to face with guys who were doing what we wanted to do... Cajmere, Paul Johnson, Glenn Underground... showing us that we could do this too. We did a few releases just to get our name out, and soon we had some pretty big named DJ's playing our music. We had DJ's actually looking for our records, and telling us how much they liked our sounds... that just blew us away, especially with very little promotion and in the limited numbers we were pressing... our music just started to build a name for itself."