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Caiphus Semenya, AKA Mr Letta Mbulu, is a South African legend, and Listen To The Wind, his iconic debut album, is simply a superb modern-soul/boogie album. It’s also incredibly rare, especially in good condition, so Be With is delighted to present this reissue.

Now a revered composer, musician, and arranger, Caiphus left apartheid South Africa in the 60s for self-imposed exile in Southern California together with his wife, Letta Mbulu. Settling in Los Angeles he started working with the likes of Hugh Masekela and Miriam Makeba and other exiled and semi-exiled South african artists, as well as, of course, his wife Letta.

Caiphus also found himself working with and composing for a broad range of jazz and pop artists, including Lou Rawls, Nina Simone and Cannonball Adderley. His facility with both jazz and African forms served him well. His LA stay was also the beginning of an ongoing collaboration with Quincy Jones, the fruits of which can be tasted in Caiphus’s African compositions for the scores to Roots and Spielberg’s adaptation of The Color Purple.

Given his decades of work behind the scenes, it’s no surprise that it took until 1982 for Caiphus to get around to putting out the first album of his own. But all that experience shows. Listen To The Wind is a deeply impressive synthesis of early 80s US production and instrumentation together with his traditional South African musical roots.

It’s stylistically diverse but the ingredients are never diluted. There are elements of boogie, soul, funk and jazz, all shot through with pan-African flavour, and moving effortlessly from uptempo floor fillers to more meditative, slower soulful tracks. Produced by Caiphus himself, he makes full use of a stellar line up of session musicians including Nathan East, Michael Stanton, Sonny Burke and Paulinho DaCosta. And of course, there are Letta’s show-stopping vocals. To our ears, Listen To The Wind is just one big party, and lord knows we need that more than ever right now.

Opener “Angelina” is one of Caiphus’s most beloved tracks at Be With HQ. It’s a breezy, feel-good SA boogie-funk classic. Harmonic and horn heavy, it sounds as fresh today as it would’ve done in the early 80s. If this one doesn’t make you move, you may need your pulse taking. The drum breakdown alone, a little over halfway through, is sensational.

It’s followed by the gentle reggae lilt of “Play With Fire”. A real melodic slo-mo delight, carried by the tropical vibes and, above all else, by the extraordinary performance of Caiphus himself and his backing singers.

Closing out side one, the spectacular “Umoya” is driven by triumphant horns and slick bass. With its proto-Graceland vibes, we reckon Paul Simon must’ve been listening. Hard. Caiphus trades verses with the unmistakable tones of Letta, and it sounds divine. Yes, it’s as good as anything on Letta’s canonical In The Music… The Village Never Ends. A wide-eyed wonder, made for unity and togetherness, it’s all infectious, smiling faces for nearly nine minutes. But never mind nine, we could party to this for ninety minutes and “Umoya” would leave us re-energised for ninety more.

Elegantly firing up side two is perhaps the album’s best known track. “Without You” is a heavenly slice of modern soul, an end-of-nighter to end them all. Smooth strutting, disco-fied funk with that unmistakably South African sound, it’s just sublime, with those lyrics that keep coming back to smiling faces and community, “without You the sun won’t shine”. Big with the likes of Rush Hour’s Antal, this is aural perfection.

“Ziph’inkomo” is a soul-soothing, swooning epic. Gently building throughout, its final few minutes are genuinely stirring as the backing vocals and instrumentation swell. Jaw-dropping. The irresistible groove of frantic, percussive workout “Gumba Boogie” closes out what must surely be one of the greatest artistic statements of the 1980s. If his friend Quincy wasn’t feverishly taking notes for Thriller, then you could’ve fooled us.

With Simon Francis handling the mastering of this Be With edition, you know it sounds as fantastic as ever. The cover art, as breezy as the music, has been faithfully restored. All that’s missing is you.

Caiphus Semenya, AKA Mr Letta Mbulu, is a South African legend and Streams Today… Rivers Tomorrow, his second solo LP, is perfect. A ten out-of ten album if ever we heard one. It’s also incredibly rare, especially in good condition, so Be With is delighted to present this reissue.

Now a revered composer, musician, and arranger, Caiphus left apartheid South Africa in the 60s for self-imposed exile in Southern California together with his wife, Letta Mbulu. Settling in Los Angeles he started working with the likes of Hugh Masekela and Miriam Makeba and other exiled and semi-exiled South african artists, as well as, of course, his wife Letta.

Caiphus also found himself working with and composing for a broad range of jazz and pop artists, including Lou Rawls, Nina Simone and Cannonball Adderley. His facility with both jazz and African forms served him well. His LA stay also the beginning of an ongoing collaboration with Quincy Jones, the fruits of which can be tasted in Caiphus’s African compositions for the scores to Roots and Spielberg’s adaptation of The Color Purple.

Originally released in 1984, Streams Today… Rivers Tomorrow is not just a musical masterpiece, it is also the soundtrack to the life of many South Africans - both then and now. Fusing the US-heavy sounds of boogie, disco and funk with Afrobeat and traditional African elements, it’s truly a spectacular listen. Jabu Nkosi handles keyboards on the album, with synths by Caiphus and Craig Harris. Sipho Gumede is on bass and Condry Ziqubu is on guitars.

The Afro-Cuban grooves of “Mamase” open the record. Continuing where Listen To The Wind left off, this is another horn-heavy call-and-response ode to a positive life. Life as an invitation to party, to take part, to “get involved”. But only if you’re willing to let in the transcendent power of music. “There’s gonna be a Mardi Gras, there’s gonna be a carnival; there’s gonna be a jamboree, there’s gonna be a bacchanal”. Who can resist that? Vibrations everywhere.

It’s followed by the joy of “Aida”. Gleeful, dayglow keys and synths *just* on the right side of mid-80s sleaze are accompanied by a killer bassline, slick, skipping drums and proud horns. Infectious funk.

The tempo is taken down a few notches for the powerful “Nomalanga” and the lamentations of a heartbroken man who must leave his wife Nomalanga and their children to join the fight against apartheid. It’s an emotional song, no question, but it doesn’t bring you down. The uplifting music and optimistic vocal delivery from Caiphus and his backing singers in the second half offer hope.

Breezy drums and contemplative keys act as a backdrop for the stunning backing vocal harmonies in the intro of “Moshanyana”. This gives way to stuttering beats, a bassline to die for and Caiphus giving it his all, over guitars, marimba and synth strings. Another slo-mo winner.

Side two opens with “Dial Your Number”, an uptempo English-language boogie-funk workout, complete with mid-song cutaway to a random telephone call. Whether or not this propels the song into “key track” status, we’ll let you decide.

What’s not up for debate is the brilliance of “Matswale”. This was a hit in South Africa in the mid-80s and you can still hear why. It might just be our favourite Caiphus hit. Wow. This is some damn fine breezy, beautiful, emotional pop. The restrained playing, the guitar licks and the gentle keys are out of this world. The beats? Thundering, direct and slick. The singing? It’ll give you goosebumps. As for the sentiment? This is Caiphus singing to his in-laws about their daughter’s adultery, begging them to intervene and help him save his marriage. Not your typical pop single story-telling!

The ferocious “Ndi-Kulindile” closes the set with a nod to the coming sound of the States. The hard-edged, electro-influenced drum patterns and bouncing, elastic bassline are something of a departure from the album’s predominant sound, yet one wonderful constant, Caiphus’s exceptional delivery and his sparring with his backing vocalists, is satisfyingly present and warmly deployed.

With Simon Francis handling the mastering of this Be With edition, you know it sounds as fantastic as ever. The stunning sleeve has been restored, with its painting of a dream-like cosmic vista, as a lone figure takes in a scene that’s part distant planet, part urban sprawl. One listen and you’ll be transported.


Caiphus Semenya, AKA Mr Letta Mbulu, is a South African legend and Streams Today… Rivers Tomorrow, his second solo LP, is perfect. A ten out-of ten album if ever we heard one. It’s also incredibly rare, especially in good condition, so Be With is delighted to present this reissue.

Originally released in 1984, Streams Today… Rivers Tomorrow is not just a musical masterpiece, it is also the soundtrack to the life of many South Africans - both then and now. Fusing the US-heavy sounds of boogie, disco and funk with Afrobeat and traditional African elements, it’s truly a spectacular listen. Jabu Nkosi handles keyboards on the album, with synths by Caiphus and Craig Harris. Sipho Gumede is on bass and Condry Ziqubu is on guitars.

One listen and you’ll be transported.

Rare musical magic from the Bruton library catalogue – ambient, spacey, pastoral and electronic. Music by John Cameron, Alan Hawkshaw, Fran-cis Monkman, Brian Bennett and more – all total masters of the scene. All very cool. All very now. All will sell very fast.

Over the last three decades Jonny Trunk has collected and written about library music. But he’s never had a great deal of luck with the Bruton catalogue. By this he means that he’s never stumbled across a massive stash, or lucked-out buying a huge run for practically nothing –that’s the kind of thing that used to happen in the 1990s and the early noughties if you were out there looking hard for library music. But he did manage to get about 25 in one hit about 20 years ago when the BBC shut down their “TV Training Department” near Lime Grove and also when a box of Brutons ended up being dumped at a hospital radio, and they didn’t want the records, so Jonny got a call.

There are lots of Bruton albums in existence – over 330 LPs in the vinyl catalogue, issued between 1978 and 1985. That’s a lot of music to wade through if you are looking for sublime modern day sounds. For many years now the “trophies” from the Bruton catalogue have been the beat or action driven LPs – the two Drama Montage albums (BRJ2 and BRJ8) have always been the big hitters, and others such as High Adventure (BRK2) too.

But Jonny has always found himself drawn to the lime green LPs, the pastoral, peaceful albums (The BRDs), which were full of the kind of gentle, lovely music that would turn up in Take Hart as Tony was paint-ing a woodpecker or a badger or an Autumn tree. The other Brutons he likes are the orange ones (The BRIs) simply because they are full of ex-perimental futuristic electronics and would remind him of 1980s ITV backgrounds. This LP series includes Brian Bennett’s cosmic classic Fantasia (BRI 10). Jonny has been knows to refer to this style of library music as “Krypton Factor library”, because it’s exactly what that strange but successful 1980s TV quiz show sounded like.

In recent years as interest in library music has expanded, we’ve watched
the price of a handful of Brutons really going through the roof - not the just the action and drama ones, but the more esoteric and experimental LPs too – like the BRDs and the BRIs. Jonny gets the vibe that people fi-nally want to hear this other more interesting and experimental side of the Bruton catalogue. So what better time than now to put together a compilation of such sublime period sounds.

Not only does this album bring together a set of fabulous cues that would cost the average man in the street a month’s wages (if the origi-nals were all wanted and if you could even track them all down), but it also chops out the need to listen to other tracks on library albums that are nowhere near as good.

The cues here all date from between 1978 and 1984. They come from the BRD, BRI, BRH, BRJ, BRM, BRR and BRs catalogues.

The composers are all legends within the genre, and here, were doing what great library composers do best – fulfilling a brief and utilising modern studio equipment to both commercial and beguiling effect.

Recumbent Speech, Ezra Feinberg’s second album, opens with a lament. Named for the Robert Frost poem, “Acquainted with the Night” was written during one of the many devastating spectacles of injustice under our current regime. Repeating flutes and synths beam out of a low-end darkness, reflecting a collective sense of loss and alienation. Rising slowly, thickening with guitars and strings, “Acquainted with the Night” lifts off, and so too does the album from there. The second track, “Letter to my Mind,'' features the dynamic interplay of Feinberg's guitar with the loose and playful drumming of Tortoise's John McEntire, both pushing and pulling atop a looping bass figure. "Palms Up" begins with a lockstep pulse recalling early Terry Riley before jumping into an Ashra-like jam with Afrobeat accents. Side B opens with "Ovation," a tryptic with McEntire on drums which sets a wide lens onto a sweeping landscape, with soaring flutes, wordless vocals, and a hypnotic bassline played on a humming fretless that recalls classic ECM jazz-fusion. The piece plunges into an ambient, interior space before reemerging with a guitar solo fried through an old Space Echo effects processor, conjuring lidded Pompeii-era Pink Floyd. The album's title-track finale, "Recumbent Speech," features the magical pedal steel of Chuck Johnson. Unwinding atop a Balearic analog synth pattern, Feinberg stretches textures of Fender Rhodes and acoustic guitar around Johnson’s lyrical steel, with nods to Japanese ambient legend Hiroshi Yoshimura, as well as Cluster & Eno. Recumbent Speech refers to the possibilities, pleasures, fears, and fantasies that occur the moment the noise dies down, when we are recumbent, in repose but still awake, still speaking, and still aware of ourselves as part of the maddening world. Ezra Feinberg is a guitarist, composer, and psychoanalyst living in Jackson Heights, NY. Feinberg was the founding member of the San Francisco psychedelic rock collective Citay, releasing albums on Important Records and Dead Oceans throughout the 2000s. After relocating to NYC, he issued his first solo record, Pentimento and Others, on his imprint Related States and on cassette on Stimulus Progression in 2018. The release, his first since Citay folded in 2012, earned praise from numerous music outlets including Paste Magazine, The Wire, Stereogum, Vice, and Aquarium Drunkard. In recent years, Feinberg has performed and toured near and far with Jefre Cantu-Ledesma, Steve Gunn, Alexander Turnquist, Cruel Diagonals, Daniel Carter, Jonas Reinhardt, Christopher Tignor, Kath Bloom, Robbie Lee, High Aura’d, Glasser, Ava Mendoza, Buck Curran, Real Estate, and many others, and has ongoing studio collaborations with Jefre Cantu-Ledesma and Arp, contributing both guitar and songwriting to the last Arp album Zebra.

Dropsonde was originally released by Touch (UK) in 2006. This is a reissue with seven previously unreleased recordings.

Widely regarded as one of Norwegian electronic music's most important artists, Biosphere's Geir Jenssen career spans nearly two decades, several albums, lots of remixes, various sound installations, commissions, soundtracks and even the odd Himalayan summit.

You may recognise his work without knowing it, so frequently does it crop up on TV trailers and idents. In the early 1990s he was a pioneer of so-called 'Ambient Techno', but since then, he has refined his sound into something more magnetic and enduring.

Dropsonde' isn't a soundtrack like the interwoven 'Substrata' nor an episodic journey in the way that 'Autour de la Lune' is. Here Geir Jenssen is pushing new directions towards the jazz colours of Miles Davis and Jon Hassell, whilst re-invigorating the pulse and projection of his signature sound: a hypnotic combination of pleasure and dread.

The spatial aspects some have dubbed "Arctic sound" but it summons strong feelings, or as Exclaim from Canada put it, "in order to climb higher, you must first go deeper". Jon Savage adds: "As with all of the Biosphere albums, the music draws you in and makes you want to listen and feel. Jenssen's work acts on a very emotional level, one that encourages you to drift away into a haze of images and scenes brought to you by the music, where spectacular beauty hides unseen danger. Intense and moving, but comforting and soothing at the same time."

A 'dropsonde' is a weather reconnaissance device designed to be dropped from an airplane or similar craft at altitude to take telemetry as it falls to the ground. It typically relays information to a computer in the dropping airplane by radio. The fall may be slowed by a parachute. Information collected by a typical dropsonde may include wind speed, temperature, humidity, and atmospheric pressure.

"I think most of it takes place in dreams," Caleb Landry Jones says of his debut solo album, The Mother Stone. "I'm talking more about dreams than I am about what's happened in the physical realm. Or I'm talking about both, and you're not sure what's what." Caleb Landry Jones was born in Garland, Texas in 1989 and comes from a long line of fiddle players. Three, maybe four generations back, on his mother's side. His grandfather wrote jingles for commercials, his mother was a singer-songwriter who taught piano lessons in the house, and his father was a contractor who did a lot of work for the Dallas music-equipment retailer Brook Mays and knew a guy if you needed a bass or a banjo. But Jones is not sure if you can hear any of this in his music and he does not play the fiddle. Jones has been writing and recording music since age 16, around the same time he started acting professionally. Played in a band called Robert Jones for a minute, lost his guitar player to higher education, moved into his own place, and broke up with somebody, at which point the songs really started coming hard and fast. "I started playing guitar and playing more keys," he says, "and then started writing record after record after record after record, because I didn't know what to do with myself. It was a good way of healing. And it felt like as soon as I started doing it, it felt like it needed to happen all the time." In the ensuing years he'd spend a lot of time carrying unrecorded songs around in his head like goldfish in a bag, waiting for a chance to record them in marathon sessions in his parents' barn. "You gotta play the songs every day, or every two or three days, to keep `em," he says. "Otherwise I forget them." Sometimes the ideas fuse together, one chapter to the next; this is how songs grow into seven-plus-minute epics like the ones on The Mother Stone. His back catalog is around seven hundred songs deep_ a whole discography of full albums, most of them unheard outside the barn, at least for now.

Repress.

stunning second 12" single on his new label´is finally coming folks. what a name for this pretty incredible 2 tracker!! "Return of the Zombie Bikers" is a massive spine shiveringly intense almost dnb b lined big room track recorded in early 2005 and can easily be compared to Mat´s strongest moments including "decompression" on minus. Don't get us wrong though, this track doesn´t necessarily need the comparison,it easily stands out by far.let it work on and let it touch you, we feel it´s probably one of the strongest records MJ ever did!! "Put your booty shorts on" is yet another a side track written in 2002 dedicated to his wife Frank and remixed with including a vocal in 2005. A unique taste of what is to come in future live sets at the festivals this summer.this is the "hi end" in micro house coming.

Album features Ernie K Doe’s ‘Here Come The Girls’, The Meters, Eddie Bo, Professor Longhair, Lee Dorsey, Wild Magnolias and more.

This is the definitive collection of New Orleans Funk featuring acknowledged masters next to some of the earlier artists who shaped the meaning of funk. The album is also filled with many rare, sought after and undiscovered funk tracks. It covers the period from the emergence of New Orleans Funk in the early 1960's through to the mid-seventies.

The record is an essential part of anyone in any way interested in Funk's record collection. It has some vital ingredients in it that you can't find elsewhere. With the sound of the New Orleans Funeral March Bands, Mardi Gras Indian Tribes and Saturday Night Fish Fries all as inspiration New Orleans Funk developed into a unique sound.

New Orleans is a port town. Originally owned by the French, this was where many slaves were brought from the West Indies. Many of these slaves came from Haiti and brought with them the religion of Voodoo and its drums and music. It became one of the first parts of America to develop a strong African-American culture leading to the invention of Jazz in the early 1900's.

A main feature of Jazz in New Orleans were the Jazz Funeral Marching bands. Solemn Brass bands accompanying a coffin would, on burial, be joined by a second line of drummers and dancers which would turn the event into a celebration of the spirit cutting free from earth. This African tradition is strong in New Orleans and still goes on to this day. The backline drums play a syncopated style that is neither on the beat nor the off-beat. It is these rhythms that are the basis of New Orleans Funk.

The album comes with a booklet presenting a historical explanation to how and why this music came about, and with lots of information about the people involved.


Reviews: "A Perfect Primer For Funk Fans" Q (Top 5 albums of the year). "Probably the finest compilation that Soul Jazz has released. Essential" Time Out.

A native of Toronto, Tess Parks moved to London, England at the age of seventeen where she briefly studied photography before deciding to focus on music. Tess made an impression on industry legend Alan McGee, founder of Creation Records, albeit the timing of their meeting could hardly have been less ideal, McGee was no longer involved in music and Tess was due to move back to Toronto. After moving back to her hometown in 2012, Tess formed a band on the advice of McGee and less than a year after their meeting, he returned to music with his new label, 359 Music.

Tess became one of his first signings and released her debut record 'Blood Hot' in November 2013 to excellent reviews. One reviewer described her as Patti Smith on Quaaludes'. Others have mentioned her gauzy psychedelic sound' and smouldering voice'. Alan McGee himself said: She's only 24 and is already an amazing songwriter... she just doesn't quite know she is yet ... her most beautiful quality is her lack of ego. Tess is an amazing lady'.

June 2015 saw the spine-tingling collaboration between Tess Parks and Anton Newcombe (Brian Jonestown Massacre) and the resultuing LP 'I Declare Nothing' released to critical acclaim on 'A' Recordings. They toured together throughout the UK and Europe over the Summer.

Alt-rock icon Josephine Wiggs is best known as bassist in The Breeders, rising to superstardom in the '90s and continuing to draw crowds and critical acclaim in the wake of their 2018 album All Nerve.
But over the years, Wiggs has released several of her own albums, all of which delightfully defy genre. Her new solo record, We Fall, is both a departure and a distillation of an enduring personal aesthetic: moody and spare but also melodic, at once contemporary and nostalgic.
Some influences are clear: We Fall is reminiscent of the experimentalism of Brian Eno's Another Green World and recalls the delicate, languid minimalism of Harold Budd. The album's classical inflections, sharpened by a dialog with electronic elements, evoke Alva Noto and Ryuichi Sakamoto. This is an album of juxtapositions: minimalist at moments, richly layered in others; ambient while also sharply focused; melancholy yet resolute.
There's something both dreamy and scientific about We Fall. Wiggs, an enthusiastic amateur mycologist, has an impressive collection of mushrooms she's photographed in her travels. We Fall could be the soundtrack to what can't be captured in a single photo—the growth and decay of miraculous creatures that a less astute and sensitive eye might overlook entirely.
Composed, performed and recorded by Wiggs, with drums and electronics by her longtime friend and collaborator Jon Mattock (Spacemen 3, Spirit , We Fall is a lyrical, bucolic album with an undercurrent of disquiet. Think of a wintertime walk in the woods as dusk falls too soon. True to the classic album form, the 10 almost entirely instrumental tracks on We Fall form a compelling whole: a crystalline meditation on paths not taken and words unspoken, an elegy for moments lost and last embraces.
JOSEPHINE WIGGS BIO
Josephine Wiggs grew up in an unconventional family north of London. Returning home from a summer holiday with a donkey riding in the back of the family's 1927 Rolls Royce was not considered at all bizarre. Wiggs studied cello as a child, segued from college in London to undertake a master's degree in Philosophy, and then, in a move few would have predicted, joined a rock band.
After making three albums with The Perfect Disaster (1987-1990), Wiggs left to join Kim Deal (Pixies), Tanya Donelly (Throwing Muses), and Britt Walford (Slint) in forming indie supergroup The Breeders, whose debut album Pod came out in 1990. Following a shift in line-up—with Kelley Deal on guitar and new drummer Jim Macpherson—The Breeders released Last Splash in 1993; with its hit single 'Cannonball' and 'Divine Hammer,' they became alternative rock superstars.
During the same period, Wiggs released two lower-key albums with Jon Mattock (Spacemen 3, Spiritualized): Nude Nudes (1992) under the name Honey Tongue, and Bon Bon Lifestyle (1996) using the moniker The Josephine Wiggs Experience. She also recorded and produced Klassics with a K (1996), the beloved and only album by the Kostars (Luscious Jackson's Jill Cunniff and Vivian Trimble). During a brief run of shows, Wiggs joined the band on drums, showing her range of musical ability.
In the late '90s Wiggs collaborated with Vivian Trimble as Dusty Trails, whose eponymous 2000 album is an homage to neo-noir soundtracks, spaghetti westerns, and Gallic pop. Time Out described it as 'one of the most subtly suggestive, understatedly elegant...things likely to have caressed your cochlea in years.'
Allusions in Dusty Trails to film music foreshadowed the next stage of Wiggs's career, writing scores for feature and documentary films—from Happy Accidents by Brad Anderson in 1999 to Appropriate Behaviour by Desiree Akhavan in 2014. Her new album We Fall began as a suite of short pieces for the documentary film Built on Narrow Land. Wiggs has also composed and recorded music to accompany live performance and short films by the acclaimed Brazilian choreographers chameckilerner.
In 2013, following the 20th anniversary of Last Splash, the classic lineup of The Breeders reunited for a world tour. Five years later in 2018 they released All Nerve, with Wiggs co-writing two songs and singing lead on the standout track 'Metagoth.' We Fall, Josephine Wiggs' third album of her own design and ninth album in a career spanning three decades, will be released on vinyl and available for download and streaming on April 12, 2019 by Sound of Sinners.

Domestic Exile are proud to present the devastatingly deplorable and malevolent recordings (that are sure to corrode yet electrify your ears) by Glasgow's very own KLEFT.

KLEFT aka Vickie McDonald is rooted in and has actively propagated the underground DIY radical queer punk and feminist movement here in Glasgow. Their projects have included the skull crushing sludge doom of Cartilage, the unflinching and infamous multi- membered hard core stars that were DIVORCE and the sacrificial, druid drone glitch of MOURN. Alongside these projects they have uncompromisingly disrupted, motivated and facilitated collective endeavors to take down the capital power structure of the dominant system of patriarchal club venues and abhorrent fuckers in this town.

For this record 'H+ Sexualis', KLEFT explores the neo-modern space where flesh is left behind. Negotiating, analyzing and tearing to shreds the relationship and balance between flesh and technology. KLEFT's expansive and palpable sonic offerings delve into themes of transhumanism and body hacking and seep into our collective skin begging the question; can flesh ever be created digitally. Does a lack of physicality alienate human experience in a post transhumanism society Are we all destined to be skinless yet digitally connected Will the body become superfluous Toward "the utopian dream of the hope for a monstrous world without gender," as stated on Donna Haraway's essay ''A Cyborg Manifesto.'

From the opening track 'Ossein' the listener grasps a foreboding lethargic build up, lurking out of the spatial ritualistic shadows into a sea of suffocating nothingness. A void where there is no gravity. Skeletal and brittle shattering rhythms which echo DMZ / Skull Disco dubstep alongside the more frozen, glacial ominous explorations of grime are often felt proving KLEFT is an artist whose inspirations run deep and wide and generally exist in the darkest recesses of our subconscious. These fearful, disjointed rhythms are set against weightless atmospheric oscillated synths, as if roaming through bleakly opaque, claustrophobic narrow corridors on a first person survival horror video game such as Resident Evil.

Moving through to 'CMBR', KLEFT's dissonant, degrading soundscape ferociously ascends. The resilient kick drum is propulsive and pulverizing akin to 'ardcore tekno - or intense gabba if you have the guts to adjust the tempo up to +8 - aesthetics that overwhelm and agitate finally revealing it's grotesque biological / amorphous bio structure. Elevating the repetitive 4/4 kick to a destructive, distorted banger of a track as layers of converging atonal noise and sound design simultaneously further enhances the sense of imminent radioactive contamination.

Next is 'Writhe, Squirm, Broken' continuing the convulsive, nauseating permutations of the prior track but reconfigured like a mangled, gruesome Cronenberg-esque parasite that has infiltrated an open wound, excruciatingly feeding off of the inner anatomy of it's hosts body from within. Repulsively reformulating the shape and dimension. The intro is akin to a panic stricken bouncy ball contracting and expanding, the spring reverb building momentum and traveling further away in distance and speed.

'Hackfleisch Deluxe' is a muuurrderous stomper and is one of the more grime / bass orientated tracks that deconstructs and disrupts the tempo familiar to sub-low producers on Black Ops / Jon E Cash / DJ Dread D. The crawling, plummeting frequency of the synth is a nauseating rush of coagulating blood to the heed; a deep throbbing sensory depravation in sharp, paradoxical contrast with the driving harmony layered on top which proves to be infectiously addictive. Furthermore are splintering programmed vocal samples that gives a sense of artificial disorientation, mind over matter, a possible hint at our evolving sentient cognition within a nightmarish simulated, augmented reality

Second to last we have 'Keratin' which is filled with the near fatal dissolving thud of Djax-Up acid that gives the impression that you're a biologist peering through a microscope into a petrie dish and witnessing the rapid and furious genetic cellular replication of bacterial and viral organisms.

Culminating in 'Bruised and Bleeding Hands' where the squashed density of a deflated and depressurized helium filled balloon and elastic umbilical cords, barbed wire and copper wires grind n' coil around the lens of a zooming camera. Taking no prisoners, this is a punishing grime weapon. A phat, surgical kick drum bulldozes its way thru causing carnage, syncopated punching snares after every rave stab and dizzying third beat. It won't be long until ye hear this on Silver Drizzle's youtube channel in the near future.

This record transports us to the hyperkinetic mutation scene on the cult cyberpunk film Tetsuo The Iron Man where the organic flesh / mechanical rust of the Iron Man metamorphoses with the Metal Fetishist during the rebirth sequence and we say 'LONG LIVE THE NEW FLESH!''.

Classic singles like Billy Fury's 'Halfway To Paradise', Dusty Springfield's 'I Only Want To Be With You' and The Walker Brothers' 'Make It Easy On Yourself' would not have been hits without Ivor Raymonde. As their arranger, and in the case of 'I Only Want To Be With You' songwriter too, he shaped the final recordings. He decided on the orchestration and backing
vocals, chose the instruments and determined what was heard on the radio - and what record buyers bought.
'Paradise: The Sound Of Ivor Raymonde' is a long-overdue celebration of Ivor Raymonde, collecting his work as an arranger, musical director, producer, singer and songwriter. The story of a British musical great is told for the first time.
Billy Fury, Dusty Springfield and The Walker Brothers are heard. So is the only vocal performance for which Ivor Raymonde received a credit on a record label. He worked with the pre-fame David Bowie and Tom Jones. He spotted the potential of Los Bravos, steering them into the charts with 'Black Is Black'. Near-misses and obscurities made with Brit-girls Cindy Cole and
Helen Shapiro, the soulful Sonny Childe and confrontational protopsychedelic London band The Flies are as fantastic as the hits. With these and more, 'Paradise: The Sound Of Ivor Raymonde' distils the essence of the magic of Ivor Raymonde.
'Paradise: The Sound Of Ivor Raymonde' is released by Bella Union, the label run by Ivor's son, former Cocteau Twins member Simon Raymonde.
Compiled by Simon and Kieron Tyler, it is a very personal tribute to a sadly missed father. Born in 1926, Ivor Raymonde passed away in 1990. The previously untold story is revealed through a moving reminiscence written by Simon and in-depth liner notes and a track-by-track commentary by Kieron. Ivor Raymonde played on the ocean liner The Queen Mary in 1949. In the Fifties, British television viewers saw him in legendary comedian Tony Hancock's 'Hancock's Half Hour' but music was always going
to be most important - the hits with Billy Fury and Dusty Springfield in 1961 and 1963 meant he was in demand. The 26 selections balance the wellknown with collectable rarities and tracks drawn from - until now - barely heard-of singles. Each is a gem and each shows the magic of an Ivor Raymonde recording.
'Paradise: The Sound Of Ivor Raymonde' is issued on CD and 180g heavyweight double vinyl album with digital download code. The vinyl version is sequenced slightly differently for listening flow. Every track was originally issued as a single issued in mono for the pop market until 1968 / 1969. Keeping the integrity of the compilation in mind, all but four tracks appear in mono as they did originally. The masters used are those of the original singles.

Limited Edition Clear Vinyl

Includes 12' Vinyl and Deluxe CD album, 30 page hard back book

Now that I've been to Nashville,' Kylie Minogue says with audible affection, I understand. It's like some sort of musical ley-line...'

Golden, Kylie's fourteenth studio album, is the result of an intensive working trip to the home of Country music, a city whose influence lingered on long after the pop legend and her team returned to London to finish the record: We definitely brought a bit of Nashville back with us,' she states. The album is a vibrant hybrid, blending Kylie's familiar pop-dance sound with an unmistakeable Tennessee twang. It was Jamie Nelson, Kylie's long-serving A&R man, who first came up with the concept of incorporating a Country element' into Kylie's tried-and-trusted style. That idea sat there for a little while, with Minogue and her team initially unsure about how to bring it to life. Then, when Grammy-winning songwriter Amy Wadge's publisher suggested Kylie should come over to collaborate in Nashville, a city Kylie had previously never visited, something clicked. You know when you're so excited about something,' she recalls, that you repeat it an octave higher and double the decibels I was like that. 'Nashville! Yes! Of course I would!'. I hoped it would help the album to reveal itself. I thought 'If I don't get it in Nashville, I'm not going to get it anywhere.''

Kylie's Nashville trip involved working alongside two key writers, both with homes in the city. One was British-born songwriter Steve McEwan (whose credits include huge Country hits for Keith Urban, Kenny Chesney and Carrie Underwood), and the other was the aforementioned Amy Wadge, another Brit (best known for her mega-selling work with Ed Sheeran). It was then a truly international project: Golden was mainly created with African-German producer Sky Adams and a list of contributors including Jesse Frasure, Eg White, Jon Green, Biff Stannard, Samuel Dixon, Danny Shah and Lindsay Rimes, and there's a duet with English singer Jack Savoretti.

However, the album's agenda-setting lead single Dancing was, significantly, first demoed with Nathan Chapman, the man who guided Taylor Swift's transition from Country starlet to Pop megastar. If anyone knows how to mix those two genres, Chapman does. Nathan was the only actual Nashvillean I worked with. He's got a huge studio in his house, which is probably due to his success with Taylor... there's plenty of platinum discs of her, and others on his walls.' There's something of the spirit of Peggy Lee's Is That All There Is, of Dylan Thomas' Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night, even of Liza Minnelli's Cabaret about Dancing, a song which not only opens the album but sets out its stall, providing a microcosm of what is to come. You've got the lyrical edge, that Country feel, mixed with some sampling of the voice and electronic elements, so it does what it says on the label. And I love that it's called 'Dancing', it's immediately accessible and seemingly so obvious, but there's depth within the song.'

The experience of simply being in Nashville was an overwhelming one, before Kylie had even arrived. Once I knew I was going to Nashville, people talked about the place with such enthusiasm. They said without doubt I would love it and, I would come back with songs. They were sending lists of restaurants, coffee shops and bars. It really was a beautiful and genuine response and it felt like I was about to have a life changing experience and in a way, I did.' The reality came as something of a surprise, when she found a far more modern metropolis than the vintage one she'd envisaged. I thought it would be like New Orleans: little houses and bars, with music spilling out onto the street. It reminded me more of Melbourne: apartment blocks going up everywhere! The main strip, Broadway, where the honky tonk bars are, that's where the street was filled with music and it was just amazing.' Mainly, Minogue remembers the heat and humidity. It was 100 degrees. It was like it was raining with no rain.' She also relished the chance to wander around unrecognised, visit a few venerable music bars and soak in the atmosphere. I didn't get to the Grand Ole Opry or the music museums but I managed to go to a couple of the institutions there like The Bluebird Cafe and The Listening Room, and just by being there, through some kind of osmosis, you get this rejuvenated respect for The Song, and the writing of The Song. There's no hoo-hah around it. There's a singer-songwriter there, talking about the song and singing the song, to an audience who are there to listen. Although, I have to confess I was guilty of starting to clap too soon during a long pause at the end of one of the songs. The guy made a bit of a joke out of it and got a laugh from it, but I thought 'Of all people in the audience, no...''

It's probably no coincidence, therefore, that every track on Golden is a Kylie co-write, making it arguably her most personal album to date. The end of 2016 was not a good time for me,' she says, referring to well-documented personal upheavals, so when I started working on the album in 2017, it was, in many ways, a great escape. Making this album was a kind of saviour. I'd been through some turmoil and was quite fragile when I started work on it, but being able to express myself in the studio made quick work of regaining my sense of self. Writing about various aspects of my life, the highs and lows, with a real sense of knowing and of truth. And irony. And joy!'

The songwriting process allowed Kylie to get a few things out of her system. Initially, she admits, it was cathartic, but it also wasn't very good. I think I was writing too literally. But I reached a point where I was writing about the bigger-picture, and that was a breakthrough. It made way for songs like Stop Me From Falling and One Last Kiss. It also meant I had enough distance to write an autobiographical song, like A Lifetime To Repair, with a certain amount of humour. The countdown in that song: 'Six-five-four-three, too many times...'. I don't know if that will be a single, but I can just imagine a girl with framed pictures of past boyfriends, and kind of going 'Oh god, when am I going to get this right'' When she listens back to Golden, Kylie can vividly hear the Nashville in it. It is, she'll agree, probably the first time that a Kylie album has sounded like the place it was made. You wouldn't normally relate my songs to the cities. Can't Get You Out Of My Head sounds more like Outer Space than London. But Shelby '68, for example, was written in London but it was done with Nashville in mind. It's about my Dad's car, and my brother recorded Dad driving it! I don't think I'd have written a number of the songs, including Shelby '68 and Radio On without having had that Nashville experience.'

The latter, she says, is about music being the one to save you.' Throwing herself into the making of the record, she says, crystallised that idea. If there's one love that will always be there for you, it's music. Well, it is for me, anyway.' That song, in particular, carries nostalgic echoes of the golden age of Country, as heard through Medium Wave transistors and tinny home stereos in the distant past. Like any child of the Seventies, Kylie had a basic grounding in Country music, mainly absorbed from older family members. My Step-Grandfather was born in Kentucky and though he lived most of his adult life in Australia, he never stopped listening to his beloved Country artists.' If there's any classic Country singer whose imprint can be heard on Golden, it's Dolly Parton.

Kylie saw Dolly live for the first time at the end of 2016, at the Hollywood Bowl. It was like seeing the light,' she beams. It was incredible. Everyone, whether they know it or not, is a Dolly Parton fan. When I was in Nashville, I did pick up a T-shirt that said 'What Would Dolly Do' Maybe that should be my mantra.' And, whether consciously or otherwise, there's a timbre and trill to Kylie's vocals on Radio On that is distinctly Parton-esque. My delivery is quite different on this album,' she says. A lot of things are 'sung' less. The first time I did that was with Where The Wild Roses Grow. On the day I met Nick Cave, when I recorded my vocals, he said 'Just sing it less. Talk it through, tell the story.' This album wasn't quite to that extreme, but a lot of the songs were done in fewer takes, to just capture the moment and keep imperfections that add to the song. I remember on my last album, a lot of producers were trying to take out literally every vibrato they heard. And that's not natural to my voice. I mean, I can make myself sound like a robot, but it's nice to sound like a human!' Working within the Country genre also gave Kylie permission to write in the Nashville vernacular. Because we were going there, I wasn't afraid to have lines like 'When he's fallen off the wagon we'd still dance to our favourite slow song', 'Ten sheets to the wind, I was all confused', 'I'll take the ride if it's your rodeo'. The challenge of bringing a Country element to the album made the process feel very fresh to me, kind of like starting over. I started to look at writing a different way, singing a different way.'

If ever Kylie lost confidence in the Country-Pop concept, and found herself pondering This is great, but back in the real world - my real world - how will this work', Jamie Nelson was there to badger her into sticking to the path. We found a way to make it a hybrid with what we'll call my 'usual' sound. It had to stay 'pop' enough to stay authentic to me, but country enough to be a new sound for this album. The closer we zoomed in, and the more we honed it, I knew Jamie was right. We sacrificed good songs that weren't right for this album, because we wanted it to be as cohesive as possible. The songs that were hitting the mark were these ones, so we decided to be strong, and that's how we wrapped up the album. What he said, that stuck with me, was that 'I'd hate to get to the end of this and really wish we'd gone for it.'' Having worked with Kylie for so long, Nelson was able to put this latest shift of direction into perspective. He said 'You've traditionally done it throughout your career. You had your PWL time, then you did a complete turn when you went to deConstruction, then another complete turn with Spinning Around, and R&B dance-pop, and then another turn with Can't Get You Out Of My Head, icy synth-pop, and this is another one.' He was right. It felt like the right time to have a change sonically. New label, new stories to tell, and a new decade almost upon me.'

Kylie Minogue will, it's scarcely believable, turn 50 this year. This looming milestone is partly behind the album's title, and title track. I had this line that I wanted to use: 'We're not young, we're not old, we're golden' because I'm asked so often about being my age in this industry. This year, I'll be 50. And I get it, I get the interest, but I don't know how to answer it. And that line, for my personal satisfaction, says it as succinctly as possible. We can't be anyone else, we can't be younger or older than we are, we can only be ourselves. We're golden. And the album title, Golden, reflects all of this. I liked the idea of everyone being golden, shining in their own way. The sun shines in daylight, the moon shines in darkness. Wherever we are in life, we are still golden.' One of the album's shiniest moments is Raining Glitter, an exuberant banger which ventures closest to Kylie's traditional dance-pop comfort zone. Eg White, who is one of the producers and writers and a great character, was talking about disco one day. I said 'I love disco, but you know the brief.' We needed to be going down the Country lane, so to speak. But we managed to bring them both together. When I wrote it, I was thinking about the Jacksons video for Can You Feel It where they're sprinkling glitter over everyone. And I think there's a Donna Summer record that's got that feel to it. I think that's my job: I basically leave a trail of glitter after every show I do anyway.'

Kylie is looking forward to the challenge of incorporating the Golden material into her live shows. Mixing these songs in with my existing catalogue is going to be fun. And it could be fun to do some of those songs with just a guitar. It'll make my acoustic set interesting...'Her incredibly loyal fans - to whom one Golden song, Sincerely Yours, is intended as a love letter' - will, she believes, have no problem with her latest stylistic shift. My audience have been with me on the journey, so I shouldn't be afraid that they won't come with me on this part. I've had fun with it, and I'm sure they will too.'

The time spent making Golden has, Kylie says, been a time of creative and personal renewal. I've met some amazing people, truly inspiring writers and musicians. My passion for music has never gone away, but it's got bigger and stronger.' And if there's an overriding theme to the record, it is one of acceptance. We're all human and it's OK to make mistakes, get it wrong, to want to run, to want to belong, to love, to dream. To be ourselves.'

I was able to both lose and find myself whilst making this album.'

Record Kicks proudly presents "SuperStudio" the new single by legendary Italian cinematic funk combo Calibro 35 sampled by Dr.Dre and Jay-Z, taken from their forthcoming new studio album DECADE

"SuperStudio" - available on a super limited edition 45 vinyl and digital download together with bonus track "Gomma" - is Calibro 35's first single and anticipates their new album DECADE that hits the streets next 9 February. Quoting the band "SuperStudio is the main theme for a movie that doesn't exist, starring Clint Eastwood and Pam Grier saving earth from the invasion of deadly robots from another planet" and it's pure Dynamite. On the flip you'll find "Gomma", the bonus track out of the album which is an irresistible funk groovy shaker.

Recorded at the legendary Officine Meccaniche studios in Milan by CALIBRO's usual suspect and Grammy Award winner Tommaso Colliva, "DECADE" marks 10 years of Calibro 35's releases and it's the very first album recorded by Calibro with an orchestral-inspired enlarged line-up. Active since 2008 CALIBRO 35 enjoys a worldwide reputation as one of the coolest independent band around. During their ten years career, they have been sampled by Dr. Dre on his Compton album and Jay-Z, they shared stages worldwide with the likes of Roy Ayers, Muse, Sun Ra Arkestra, Sharon Jones, Thundercat, Headhunters and as unique musicians they've collaborated with, amongst others PJ Harvey, Mike Patton, John Parish and Stewart Copeland and Nic Cester (The Jet). Described by Rolling Stone magazine's as "the most fascinating, retro-maniac and genuine thing, that happened to Italy in the last years", Calibro 35 now count on a number of aficionados worldwide which includes VIP's fans such as Dj Food (Ninja Tune), Mr Scruff and Huey Morgan (Fun Lovin' Criminals) among others.

Marco Bailey's 5th full-length album, one that he personally claims to be the best overall representation of his sound. With seventeen tracks comprising almost an hour and a half of music, he has ample room to stretch out and to give listeners an excellent portable version of his potent live show.

By maintaining a consistently high-quality output that does not merely ride the wave of current trends, multi-faceted producer Marco Bailey has managed to survive through decades of mercilessly shifting adjustments to popular taste in dance music. From his beginnings in the late '80s spinning eclectic sets comprised of everything from punk to old school hip-hop, to his present interest in pure unadulterated techno, the Belgium-based DJ and producer has won over audiences with his keen knowledge of how to squeeze the greatest physical and emotional impact out of a few well-placed elements, along with his instinct for seeking out the most innovative and resilient kindred spirits (his impressive number of professional friendships includes artists as diverse as Markus Suckut, Jonas Kopp, Alex Bau, Edit Select, Speedy J, Steve Rachmad and many more). These combined talents have led to his formation of several different labels: MB Electronics in 2001, the 'limited edition' label MBR in 2013, and lastly the new Materia Music label begun last year. His similiarly named event series, Materia, has also been a truly worldwide 'state of the art' summit for advanced techno artists.



The full-length personal releases by Marco Bailey, which stretch back to his mid-'90s period as a trance producer, have been gracefully arcing and anthemic affairs composed of individual tracks that follow that same blueprint. He is now about to drop his 5th full-length album overall, one that he personally claims to be the best overall representation of his sound. With seventeen tracks comprising almost an hour and a half of music, he has ample room to stretch out and to give listeners an excellent portable version of his potent live show. Of course, an epic running time alone is not the marker of a great audio experience, but an epic running time in which one loses track of time completely is - Bailey accomplishes this feat by never rushing the payoff; by organically building up each track until listeners are fully immersed in his alternate universe.



This skill can be heard on banging, sweat-saturated tracks like 'Ash', 'Genetix' and 'Hasai,' but also on comparitively gentle pieces like 'Klauth' (which straddles the line between disciplined electro and something more dreamlike and weightless), or the blissed out 'Suoh,' which feels like a fresh snowfall in audio form. Low-key cuts like 'Rex,' driven by echo FX and other windswept sounds, form natural counterparts to busier tracks like 'Ruth,' with its spring-loaded sequencer attacks, or 'Reboot That Device,' which is ingeniously driven by a psychedelic organ whose sound evolves with various filter settings. Minimalist vocals are occasionally injected into the mix - i.e. on the 'The Darkness' - to impart a subtle message of constant, ongoing expansion into unexplored galaxies without and within. It's as good a definition of the artist's musical mission as any.

Stirred up from deep within, from an abstract spiral of sound and movement, from a sensation of time and space absolving and converging at once, the Black Flower musicians have molded a tangible matter: the album Artifacts. Their second full album sounds international and ageless. Eastern influences, Ethiodub and jazz effortlessly merge. Fantasy and reality seem to fuse. In a word: nourishment for body and soul.

"Psyche-delicious and accessible 20th century Ethiodubjazz. As if John Zorn put on Fela Kuti's shoes and imbibed Mulatu Astatke's whirls."

Piloted by saxophonist /flutist /composer Nathan Daems (Ragini Trio, Dijf Sanders, Antwerp Gipsy-Ska Orkestra), this instrumental band aims for originality. Fellow musicians and 'brothers down the road' are Jon Birdsong (dEUS, Beck, Calexico) on cornet, Simon Segers (Absynthe Minded, De Beren Gieren, Stadt) at the drums, Filip Vandebril (Lady Linn, The Valerie Solanas, Antwerp Gipsy-Ska Orkestra) at the bass and Wouter Haest (Los Callejeros, Voodoo Boogie) playing keys.

For many of us, the Ethiopian aspect once made known to the world by Mulatu Astatke will stand out. Still, Black Flower further adds oriental scales, Afrobeat à la Fela Kuti, jazz in a John Zorn way and varied western music traditions such as rock and dub. The resulting melting pot is undoubtedly inspired by Nathan's distant travels and the multifariously colorful city of Brussels.

...Pretty legit if you ask me - LeFto, Studio Brussel

After their well-received debut album Abyssinia Afterlife (2014, W.E.R.F. / Zephyrus Records) that created an atmosphere of mythical figures and psychedelia, Black Flower now reflects on ancient and modern cultures. The album title Artifacts refers to centuries-old fragile objects or tools that empowered the development of human culture. The world today would look entirely different without those artifacts. The seemingly brittle suddenly becomes a powerful welding cornerstone. Add the musicians' personal musical backgrounds and the result is an album with an ageless mystique. Artifacts is the synthesis of different cultures, of the past and present, and personal and collective memories. It is the soundtrack to modern reality, based on the elements that connect us.

Brilliant - Gilles Peterson, BBC Radio 6

One of Belgium's Best Bands of these past years (...) Black Flower does not simply play a tune, they always groove! - Kurt Overbergh, Ancienne Belgique

Uncomplicated originality, plenty of space for fantasy and an organic tone: those are the ingredients for Black Flower to lay claim to an age-old human ritual: dancing! Still, Black Flower also stands out in various other settings. Their audience at a jazz club will have felt exalted, their audience at a late-night show will not have resisted dancing. The band wields influence over their surroundings in a way only heart-and-soul musicians can. This mastery has repeatedly taken them to United Kingdom, France, the Netherlands and Germany.

hile it may seem as though it's been a quiet year in the studio for Brooklyn-based DJ/Producer Greg Schappert (aka Donor), his first full-length album entitled Against All on Chicago-based Prosthetic Pressings, will prove otherwise.

This 10-track release is a tour de force of formidable intensity and suspense and Donor wastes no time creating an ethereal realm right from the start. By taking a deep dive into a dystopian world full of distant transmission like voices, expressed through field recordings taken in and around New York City, Donor successfully paints a picture of what could be his unsettling vision of the future. While it may be difficult to explain how this album progresses throughout, there is something below the surface tying everything together, leaving us with a feeling of despair in that the world does not end how it is likely to be perceived through this beautiful or haunting, yet sophisticated, soundtrack. Alien invasions, civil war, post apocalyptic mayhem, call it what you will, Donor sets the stage for an unsettling vision of the not so distant future that can be heard in his thought provoking debut LP.

Donor's time spent overseas living in countries like Spain and Japan, his love for Birmingham Industrial Techno and early Dutch and Detroit Electro, combined with his upbringing on John Carpenter films, have all contributed to Donor creating his unique, yet recognizable sound.
Feedback:
Audio Injection / Droid Recordings
Yeah my boy Greg getting down! Great album!!
Leonard Posso / Thema
Hands down one of the best bodies of work to date from Greg aka Donor! SOLID PACKAGE! Many of these will get played throughout the night! Big Ups Donor and PP!
Vidal / Droid Recordings
nice sounds
Ergin Karabulut / FAZE Magazin
ok
DJ Nori / Posivision
cool dark essence.
Paul Clarke / Dj Mag
Not exactly heartwarming but lots of good stuff if you like it bleak.....
Mark EG / Core Magazine, Tilllate Magazine
IP Test
Nerk / V-Records / De:Bug
dark & minimal (in a good way)
Exberliner
!
Frank Hilpert / Freshguide (5x Regional A5 Mag) , Freshguide BLN, Freshguide MDL, erwischt.org/
Big - Review to follow.
Berlin Mitte Institut / Berlin Mitte Institut
More IDM than techno. Some interesting tracks on this album.
David Marcia / Phuturelabs, Phuturelabs
Good stuff. Considering for review and radio play.
Bleed / De:Bug
considering for review
Benoît Carretier / Tsugi
solid one tx
Pawel Gzyl / Nowamuzyk
killer1
Laurent Diouf / MCD magazine / WTM radio show
another wtm's playlist is coming soon...;)
Alland Byallo / Nightlight Music, Bad Animal, Pokerflat
Fantastic album. Deep, dark, nasty. Pure mood (and some seriously heavy BOOM).
Solomun
Hello, i am downloading and pre checking all promos for Solomun. I will give you a personal feedback if he plays and supports this release. Thanks a lot and have a great day.
Solenoid / Graphene / Belief System
wikked album of deep ritualistic techno ...
Electric Indigo
cool tracks here. station a14, ip test and own exile are my favorites after first listen. thank you!
Corin Arnold / BLN FM
sounding good, support!
RADIO CAMPUS BESANCON / THE VINYL GUERILLA
not really for me ... DJ Gaogao
Riyaz Khan / Diversions on chry105.5fm
like the shifting tensions and brooding atmospheres throughout!
Fabian Birke / WOMR College Radio / BLN.FM
For radio play, thanks
Andrew Grant (Circo Loco)
Own Excile is very good
Slam / Soma Records
cool album thanx
Sebastian Roya (Connaisseur)
Bomb! nice job!
Matthias Springer / Diametral / Chillkyway
great release, brainsqueezing!
DJ Hyperactive
good tune on here man
Patrick Bateman (Tic Tac Toe / Connect Four)
Hands On, Calling, Menace Is Mine & In Your Place are the ones for me. As always full quality from Donor!
Jonas Kopp / Curle, Deeply Rooted House
Will check properly , thanks.
HalfStereo
Dark moods is what i like...
Angel Molina ( Sonar / Tresor )
LOVE this dark & hypnotic release. Tracks like 'Menace Is Mine', 'Station A14', 'Counter' or 'Fault Is Found' are absolutely fantastic. thanks!!!
Scuba (Hotflush)
thanks. downloading for scuba!
Bryan Zentz / Minus / Thoughtless / Portlandia
I am miserably late on this—but really like it on quick listen. In Your Place and Us For Them are awesome. Looking forward to listening all the way through. Thanks!
Pär Grindvik / Little White Earbuds
thanks
Dr Hoffmann / Blind Spot
Great release, digging most of the tunes. thanks
Philip Downey / Swoon / pastlessonfuturetheories blog
Like Calling, IP Test, Us for Thenm, Fault, could try some on radio.
Tim Thaler / Bln.fm
downloading
Lukasz (Nermal) Napora / Audioriver Festival, Radio 4 Poland
great stuff. eager to listen to it from wavs
Vito Camaretta / Chain D.L.K
Interesting sonorities
Noah Pred / Thoughtless Music
Stark business worthy of a deeper listen.
2000 And One (100% Pure, Intacto) / 100% Pure
Oh yes perfect intermezzo stuff :)
Alexi Delano / AD ltd, Plus 8
Will have a proper listen.
Echologist (Steadfast) / Third Ear, Echocord
really liking this. fresh beats and trippy hypnotic vibes. look forward to spending time with this.
john1 / Bedrock
downloading
James Zabiela / Renaissance
In Your Place is nice in a bleak way.
Marcel Dettmann / MDR, Ostgut Ton
thx
Richie Hawtin / Minus, Richie Hawtin
downloaded for r hawtin
The Advent / Tresor
fantastic.. pure techno here.. Donor - Station A14 Donor - IP Test
Andrew Weatherhall / Rotters Golf Club
Downloading obo Andrew Weatherall
Noice Podcast Series
very nice Techno...
Samuli Kemppi / Prologue
Great album. Donor in top shape. Full support!
Lee Holman
Good album of deep dark sounds. Especially like Station A14. Thank you!
Benna Schneider / Harry Klein
some nice tunes here ,that I´ll play out surely
Douglas Fugazi / Medellinstyle
Yeah! Sounds really good. Thanks!
Plastic Lounge @ Freies Radio Freudenstadt
good tecno,playing
Kyle Geiger / Drumcode
Really like Space Station!
Paul Ritch
thx a lot for the promo
Dave Angel / Apollo, Rotation Records, Polydor/Love, OuterRythum, React Records, Island
Thanks! Will let you know if supporting.
Luciano Esse / Safari Electronique, Out-Er, Leftroom, Material Series
Great sounds, but I couldn't use them in set! Thanks anyway!
Arnaud Le Texier / Affin, Bass Culture, Cocoon, Children Of Tomorrow, Syncrophone.
Some inspiring tracks on this album! Thx
Henning Lösch / Radio Dreyeckland Freiburg
last exit Brooklyn...:-)
Roko (Sub.fm/B.O.M.B.)
OH shit this is good!!
Sigha / Immerse / Hotflush / Avian
loving this, many thanks
Jerzy Przezdziecki / Recognition Records, Boshke Beats Records
raw and mental. i like.
Alex Tolstey / Triangle Eyes/Boshke Beats Records
ho ho! review to follow
Alan Fitzpatrick
epic! love this.!

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.