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‘Absurd Matter’ is a labyrinthine sonic conundrum that spirals around the two poles of extreme noise and hiphop. It's Berlin-based Italian producer Shapednoise's first album in four years and confidently advances his narrative into the next chapter, building on the groundwork of his prior abstractions to emerge with a coherent genre-warped fusion of urgent rap, crushing bass weight and idiosyncratic sound design. After spending years scrupulously deconstructing club music, Nino Pedone has rebuilt it brick by brick in his image.

The album is the first release on Pedone's brand new imprint WEIGHT LOOMING, a multidisciplinary label platform that's set to explore the depths of bass music, textured noise and abrasive transcendence. It follows a slew of acclaimed releases for Numbers,
Opal Tapes, Type and his own Cosmo Rhythmatic label, and forward thinking collaborations with Kenyan beat alchemist Slikback and Hyperdub-signed Angolan producer Nazar. Pedone's most ambitious project to date, ‘Absurd Matter’ taps into kinetic energy from a hand-picked selection of collaborators, including New York rap duo Armand
Hammer, French DJ/producer Brodinski, Bruiser Brigade's ZelooperZ and vanguard Philly poet, musician, and activist Moor Mother.


On ‘Family’, Billy Woods and Elucid weave a dismal, apocalyptic landscape with their razor-sharp anecdotes. The duo’s macabre imagery is given artificial life by Pedone's industrial scrapes and rattles that curl around their worlds like thick smoke. It's still rap, just about, but lodges itself in the back room of a factory, machines running themselves to an early death. Pairing with techno-rap trailblazer Brodinski, Pedone edges further towards the sound system, spatializing rhythms in four dimensions around Detroit rapper
ZelooperZ's playful expressions. This is the Italian producer's sci-fi tinged liquefaction of radio echoes, a way to fire familiarity into the void and sublime the human voice into weightless mist. When Moor Mother arrives shouting "me me me" on the aptly-titled 'Poetry', it sounds as if all of Pedone's loose threads are being tightened into a knot. His misshapen neo-grime beats sound like a broken jet engine, but smartly cede power to Moor Mother's resonant rhymes. "You can't cancel me" she assures. ‘Absurd Matter’ is a defining personal development for Pedone that not only appraises his career so far, but diverts its logic into frighteningly new sonic territory. From great loss, the producer has determined his work's cardinal themes, and sounds more strident and far heavier than ever before.

Subjekt mints a new limited edition series with a first vinyl pressing of some Biz (Transmat, Acquit Records) tunes that have previously been available only digitally via his Bandcamp. The Aussie is a real pioneer of techno in his homeland and has also made a mark around Europe with outings on top labels like Further Electronix and Tronic. He always delivers deep, hard-hitting cuts that draw on experiences picked up in the scene since the late '80s. This one opens with 'Tears,' which is a deep and atmospheric sound with fuzzy chords and melancholic moods over a mid-tempo rhythm. 'Worlds Collide' brings some Detroit mysticism, then 'Dark Mofo' taps into electro for a deft, kinetic rhythm and icy melodies that come back from the future. 'Fallen Apache' is a deep and dubby roller with an introspective edge, and 'Teach Em A Lesson' shuts down with an astral odyssey and more fluid synth work over analogue drums. Tasteful stuff from this vital veteran.

Mutant, in partnership with Hollywood Records and Marvel, is proud to present MARVEL RIVALS: GALACTIC TUNES, the soundtrack to the highly anticipated MARVEL RIVALS video game.

The soundtrack to Marvel's first Team-Based Superhero Shooter is appropriately epic in every way. It’s heavy on guitar solos, symphonic strings, choirs, and powerful percussion, with infectious melodies that make for an endlessly listenable experience, even outside of the game itself.

The album starts with Adriana Figueroa's "Rivals 'Til the End (Main Theme),” which instantly becomes one of the best anime opening themes you’ve never heard of until today. It’s an immediate earworm that leads off a compilation of fifteen incredibly kinetic tracks, including South Korean singer Le'mon's "Fate of Both Worlds," a mid-album pop funk classic in the making.

Black Hole Superette, the latest album from Aesop Rock, delves into the invisible forces that shape our lives and psyches. It's about the small, often overlooked moments_the everyday experiences that blur the lines between the real and the unreal, waking and sleeping. Aesop's signature gift for transforming the mundane into something dreamlike gives the album a surreal quality, leaving listeners questioning what's truly real as they navigate its vivid, half-remembered imagery. Entirely self-produced, Black Hole Superette is one of Aesop Rock's most technically accomplished works to date. The album's intricate beats and complex structures provide the perfect backdrop for his expansive lyricism, balancing cerebral exploration with emotional depth. From the reflective 'Movie Night' and the eccentric 'Send Help' to the wistful 'Black Plums,' Aesop channels the spirit of a mad scientist, experimenting with sound and concept in ways that defy the ordinary. With a stellar lineup of collaborators that includes Lupe Fiasco, Armand Hammer, Hanni El Khatib, Open Mike Eagle and Homeboy Sandman, Black Hole Superette is dense and kinetic, an album that deftly navigates between complexity and instinct. It's clear this project stands as one of Aesop Rock's most multifaceted and ambitious works yet.

Efficient Space charts Ghost Riders’ North American roadmap, crashing into 1973 New York to ignite the unfiltered teen dreams of Dennis Harte.

In the late ’60s, 11-year-old prodigy Dennis Harte was handed a Sears-bought Silvertone 1448, its in-case amplifier primed for street-level incantations. Recruiting two neighbourhood friends, the trio hammered out raw rhythms, drawing in Brooklyn’s wandering bohemians, keen to glimpse a prepubescent Alex Chilton in the making.

Also jamming with his older brothers, Bart and John, a family friend introduced the siblings to budding music exec Carl Edelson, who had spent the better part of two decades hustling through a string of local labels. A father figure of sorts, Edelson backed them immediately, facilitating sessions at the famed A-1 Sound Studios and Sanders Recording Studio and pressing four 7”s on his newly minted Roundtable Records. To maximise his chances of courting major labels, he strategically assigned each release a different artist name - Dennis Harte, Pure Madness, Harte Brothers and the wryly titled Harte Attack.

Dennis’ emotional maturity and sheer talent bleed into the defining ‘Summer’s Over’, penned by Edelson and once recorded by mid-'60s New Jersey garage vocal group The Wouldsmen. Morphing into an unfathomably teenage, blue-eyed soul/psych lament, it aches for a season slipping away forever. Its Harte Attack edition counterpart - the candied ballad ‘Running Thru My Mind’ - delivers unison harmonies and kinetic guitar interplay with a streetwise punch, channeling the spirit of NYC-area icons The Rascals, The Lovin’ Spoonful, and The Youngbloods.

Roaring like the Spencer Davis Group, Pure Madness’ organ-driven bruiser ‘Freedom Rides’ screams of biker gangs, yet its true subject - ’60s civil rights activists the Freedom Riders - looms as another towering theme for an adolescent perspective. Meanwhile, the loose, bluesy ruckus ‘Treat Me Like a Man’ digs back into Edelson’s catalogue, covering the Beatles-inflected Levittown group The Shandels.

Though Dennis later found success touring with Wilson Pickett and now doubles as a piano tuner to the stars, these four snapshots frame ambition on its outer edge - a heartfelt homage to an unbreakable brotherhood.

The Isle Of Lewis is the largest such of the Outer Hebrides archipelago, and a place where myth and folklore are abundant, The Callanish Stones, a cruciform circle reckoned by tradition to be the forms of petrified giants who would not convert to Christianity, once prompted notable chronicler of the ancient Julian Cope to pronounce himself “Lashed by wind and rain but surrounded by vibe”.

This was where Holy Scum decided to take a pilgrimage for the recording of their second album proper for Rocket Recordings, All We Have Is Never. Frustrated by the physical and logistical challenges keeping the band members from collaborating, they decided the best way forward was at the residential Black Bay Studios on Great Bernera, a two hour plus ferry ride from anywhere. “The isolation of Black Bay was our salvation, a much-needed cleanse after a year of relentless misfortune” reckons the band’s Peter Taylor. Taylor describes the Holy Scum approach jokingly as ‘No riffs’ yet this belies an ability to carve abstraction and minimalism into monolithic and ominous shapes. Whilst the band are as handy as ever with excoriating and ear-splitting experimentation - as on the feverish guitar scree that underpins the taut‘Thieves’ - they also excel in a grittily vital charge as analogous to the ballsy kinetics of Fugazi and The Ex (the primal ‘I Am The Land’) as the overcast catharsis of Killing Joke and Voivod (the infectious ‘Witches’). “The title is a nod to the fact that everything ends - good, bad, ugly, beautiful “ reflects vocalist Mike Mare (Dälek) of their most focused work to date. “That is not a bad thing - it is a rebirth every time. We can spend a lifetime 24/7 together having shared experiences but living separate realities”. “I don’t think it is nihilistic,” he adds. “The despair turns into hope for sure”.

SPF 50 aka Stephan Kimbel has been working the club circuit in NYC and abroad for years now. His approach to techno often incorporates breakbeats and a psychedelic attention to sound design details. He has released killer 12”s on Dzungla, Bliss Point, and his own label, Professional Music. Fixed Rhythms is now excited to present his latest 12” EP offering–”The Rush”.

The titular track, an acid breakbeat techno party starter for the heads, absolutely breaks down the door of the A-side. A2 “Deep Woods” descends into tasty, wiggly, spacious techno. B1 “Kinetic Ritual” is just that…you have arrived in the Zone, a dark corridor leading straight to One and Everyone. Then B2 “UV Got Me Faded” whips you wonky with a modular drumless wobble slap. This is well-crafted dance music that can plunge any crowd into the deep end.

There’s a particular magic that happens when seasoned producers with global roots come together under a shared ethos - not for hype, but for connection. That’s precisely what MISINGO represents. A cross-continental studio experiment born out of Covid-era isolation, the group spans hemispheres and histories: Yorkshire's Doorly, L.A. legend Gary Richards (aka Destructo), and Australian duo Colour Castle. Their debut offering, Give You Love, lands via UK House Music institution Hard Times Records, and it’s as emotionally resonant as it is built for the floor.

Anchored by a slow-burning acid line and moody, immersive synthwork, 'Give You Love' carries the DNA of classic house without feeling like pastiche. DJ Rae’s smokey vocal, recorded in Doorly’s Ibiza studio, sets the tone - raw, intimate, immediate. Gene Farris enters with a gravelly, magnetic counterpoint, flipping the call-and-response into something spiritual. It’s a record that feels both new and deeply lived-in, a jam session from afar that somehow lands with unity and purpose.

For the remix suite, Hard Times dig into family ties and deliver a heavyweight lineup that spans generations of dance music lineage.

First up, DJ Pierre, the Phuture pioneer himself, brings a Wild Pitch revision that is pure summer sleaze and shimmer. Glistening keys, kinetic snares, and a syrup-thick bassline collide in a mix that’s tailor-made for golden-hour sets and open-air systems.

DJ Romain brings that New York swing. All velvet chords, stabbing pianos, and organ swells that spiral skyward. It’s gospel-house energy that doesn’t need to shout to be heard, a reminder that soul still moves the dancefloor.

Closing out the package is Charles Lavine of Soul Clap fame, whose Boston-bred funk sensibility steers things into new territory. He strips back the mix, lets Rae’s vocal ride the groove, and injects a subtle bounce that turns heads and hips in equal measure.

With 'Give You Love', MISINGO and Hard Times haven’t just released a single, they’ve bottled a moment: one born of distance, stitched together with soul, and destined for collective release on dancefloors worldwide.

Black Hole Superette, the latest album from Aesop Rock, delves into the invisible forces that shape our lives and psyches. It's about the small, often overlooked moments_the everyday experiences that blur the lines between the real and the unreal, waking and sleeping. Aesop's signature gift for transforming the mundane into something dreamlike gives the album a surreal quality, leaving listeners questioning what's truly real as they navigate its vivid, half-remembered imagery. Entirely self-produced, Black Hole Superette is one of Aesop Rock's most technically accomplished works to date. The album's intricate beats and complex structures provide the perfect backdrop for his expansive lyricism, balancing cerebral exploration with emotional depth. From the reflective 'Movie Night' and the eccentric 'Send Help' to the wistful 'Black Plums,' Aesop channels the spirit of a mad scientist, experimenting with sound and concept in ways that defy the ordinary. With a stellar lineup of collaborators that includes Lupe Fiasco, Armand Hammer, Hanni El Khatib, Open Mike Eagle and Homeboy Sandman, Black Hole Superette is dense and kinetic, an album that deftly navigates between complexity and instinct. It's clear this project stands as one of Aesop Rock's most multifaceted and ambitious works yet.

On its tenth anniversary outing, Sofia Records doesn’t just mark a milestone - it distills its essence in a four track EP. The compilation reunites the original, 25 year strong, pBPM crew and the fresh talent of Impe´rieux.

KiNK delivers a dancefloor juggernaut “Let The Bass Kink” - raw, kinetic and unmistakably his.
KEi counters with “Killing God Theme“ - a deep, hypnotic slow-burner, rich in emotion that evolves with patient intensity. Then we have the debut of Tegav - a new alias from the pBPM forming member Kalin Baychev with “Stomper“ - an edgy melody on top of a percussive backroom swagger. Impe´rieux, ever the outlier, continues his quest for dance music’s future with “Jarka”, a leftfield yet playful groove that breaks convention while rattling the floor.

With a smiling family snapshot, framed in smoke, strobe light and sweat, Sofia shows how to throw the needle where it matters - squarely pointed to the future.

Repress! with New Artwork

FELT’s sixth volume extracts another fascinating mineral from Guy Brewer’s Carrier alias, further descending the wormhole of darkside minimalism with his most obfuscated rhythmic explorations yet.

FATHOM witnesses Guy Brewer’s unrelenting distillation of precision electronics develop beyond prior incarnations into unclassifiable mutations. Carrier is his sonic vessel in this new era, liberating his prior restrictions to highlight the outer kinetic recesses of experimental sounds that finds a natural home on Perko’s ever-evolving FELT imprint.

The title track twitches along in hallucinatory abstraction, circling the depths with glitched-out programming and fogged-out atmospherics. The Cusp narrows its gaze, meditating on a tense drum rollage that teeters on mellowed menace. Markers then forms a mechanised rinse-out of rumbling subs and plummeting steppers momentum. Trooper unfurls in a finale of future-shocked half time rollage and arpeggiated textures that affirms Carrier’s unwavering vision in sound and style.

The project by Jens-Uwe Beyer and Thomas Venker boasts a remarkable origin story. In 2017, Venker, co-founder and co-editor-in-chief of Cologne’s Kaput magazine, hosted a gathering at Beyer's house, bringing together journalists, creatives, and musicians. To mark the occasion, the pair decided to join forces for an impromptu ambient-electronic performance, presenting themselves as a two-man band. That evening, donned in special costumes designed by artist Sarah Szczesny and fuelled by a generous amount of Japanese whisky, Hasan Poppu was born. Over the course of the pandemic, the duo thought about creating a record based on the live recording of their premiere show. However, the synergy of their collaborative creative energies led them in entirely novel directions. Their self-titled, double-sided album traverses a wild and raucous terrain, moving swiftly from hybrid noise-techno to giddy party ecstasy, to strange and shadowy atmospheres.

Including remixes by YPY, Hibotep, Lena Willikens, Efdemin and Barnt, the 11 tracks span a dizzying array of experimental dance-facing styles. 'Die-Biden' kicks off as a high-vibrational vocal experiment seemingly voiced by a sentient German vocoder. 'Kodō' follows, featuring Venker's playful mantra set against a stomping beat. Willikens' reimagining of 'Teiko' transports the track to obscure realms inhabited by strange creatures emitting ungodly sounds. Meanwhile, Efdemin's take on 'Ekusutashī' pulsates with a kinetic buzz. Flipping over to the B-side, 'Sakura' is a euphoric wall of drone punctuated by eerie whispers and mystical singing. Then, the second installment of 'Kodō' takes a fresh trajectory with a touch of Barnt’s electronic groove stylings. Finally, Hibotep's 'Shojo no yo ni flp' serves as the finsher – an unrepentant trance belter that disintegrates into sampled fragments. Loosely translating to "broken pop music," Hasan Poppu is informed by Beyer and Venker's shared love for Japan. The band takes their cues from the country’s rich sonic cultures while also drawing on Venker's wordsmith background and Beyer's flair for melding melodic tech-house with song-based synth-pop. Originally out on Beachcoma Recordings, Hasan Poppu’s debut album gets a new lease of life on Osàre! Editions with a digital and limited edition cassette tape release. Sarah Szczesny reprises her role in shaping the visual identity of Hasan Poppu by creating beautiful, painterly artwork for the record. words by Hannah Pezzack

Berlin-based French-Irish multimedia artist Zoe Mc Pherson levels up on their third full-length "Pitch Blender", mangling years of experience DJing and performing live into a tight set of cybernetic soundsystem experiments that flicker between the rave and the art space.

Cast your mind back to February 2020 for a moment, when Mc Pherson released their last album "States of Fugue". The world seemed less tangled somehow, and yet Mc Pherson's precision-engineered fusion of exploratory sound design and visceral club pressure seemed to hint at a cataclysmic event none of us were really expecting. Only a few weeks after its release the world changed forever, and the majority of us were grounded - forced to consider our lives and the movement (or lack thereof) surrounding us. The philosophy of this extended time period is welded into the bones of "Pitch Blender", Mc Pherson's supple third album. They have learned plenty in the last two years, and infuse all of that anxiety and spiky emotionality into a spread of tracks that sound as powerful in headphones as they do over a well-tweaked soundsystem, soldering vocals, environmental recordings and instrumental flourishes to unpredictably pneumatic, cybernetic beats.

Anyone that's caught one of Mc Pherson's energetic live performances over the last few months will have an idea of what "Pitch Blender" is made of. They're an artist who's somehow able to match the raw energy of post-punk and no-wave music with the brain-altering potential of the best experimental club tracks, vocalizing an incongruous post-lockdown reality over beats that sound as if they're in a permanent state of flux. 'On Fire' splutters to life in a frenetic patter of drums that blur into oddly soothing hoover sounds, snaking lysergically towards a drop that's teased constantly, and never comes. We're forced to wait until 'The Spark' for that, fighting through choppy, pitch-mangled guitar and rolling beats until a gruesome kick drum forces its way through the psilocybin mists and heaving Bristol-inspired bass clonks. Backed up with just the inverted traces of recognizable breaks, this vigorous pulse lies at the heart of "Pitch Blender", the driving force that powers Mc Pherson's sound even when it's only hinted at.

'Blender' is the moment where Mc Pherson show their full hand, using crackling sound effects, ghost vocals and uneven rhythms to build a textural landscape that's so evocative you can almost taste it. Squealing modular synth effects sound like gameshow buzzers being triggered in another dimension and propel the track forward - it's club music, just about, but Mc Pherson's motivation is world-building, and their world is colorful, abstract, and dizzyingly surreal. "Obsolete user," their voice echoes over driving airlock kicks. But they take a swift left turn with 'Lamella', reducing the kinetic club rhythms to a longing simmer and letting loose with powerful vocals, intoning with robotic, gender-fluxed intensity. On 'Wait', New York City's clacking crosswalk signal - already an effective club track on its own - is transformed into a reminder to slow down, juxtaposed with booming sub-heavy kicks, acidic synths and effervescent percussion that rattles in time with the vibrations. It's foley rave, built for pure psychedelic intensity to blur the line between real life and sonic fiction.

One of the album's most galvanic tracks, 'Power Dynamics' curves a double-time rhythm around breathless HQ sound design squiggles until it hits a polyrhythmic crescendo, striking a queasy balance between rave hedonism and ritualistic hand drum energy. It all builds towards eerie closing track 'Outside' that acts as an important wind down, spotlighting Mc Pherson's ability to operate outside of the rhythmic spectrum, using cinematic scrapes and flickering neon synths to create music that's tense but never terrifying. The track feels like the end credits of a particularly bewildering movie - something between the cyberpunk dystopia of "Ghost in the Shell" and the vivid, sky-scraping beauty of "Koyaanisqatsi". Mc Pherson has managed something special with "Pitch Blender": mashing together genres with rare focus, and sharpening their engineering skills to a fine point, they've concocted an antidote to contemporary malaise - a wakeup call that's begging us to loosen our limbs and move.

Beyond the Bridge proudly presents the latest EP from Dutch sonic architect Spekki Webu, titled "Neural Network," set to release on April 15, 2025. As the founder of Mirror Zone, Webu masterfully conjures a spectral world where time collapses and frequencies bend, inviting listeners on a mind-expanding journey through sound. His ritualistic compositions transcend conventional boundaries, merging past, present, and future into a singular, fluid moment. The eight-track EP delves into an abstract landscape of high-intensity frequencies and textural flux. Webu's sonic manipulations challenge linearity, evoking cyclical movements that oscillate between chaos and order. Each track serves as a kinetic force, pulsating with raw energy and enveloping the listener in immersive sonic architecture. The release also features two transformative remixes from Beyond the Bridge label head K.O.P. 32 and acclaimed producer Feral, each expanding the boundaries of interpretation into new dimensions. credits releases April 15, 2025 All tracks written, produced, and mixed by Spekki Webu at Into The Unknown in The Hague. Additional production by Feral and K.O.P. 32. Mastering by K.O.P. 32 at Pacific Sound Network in Seoul. Visuals by Anton Braun. ? Beyond the Bridge 2025.

2025 Repress

As a trained dancer, movement has always guided GiGi FM’s work, whether through developing movement based instruments, or questing to make you move via sound-systems across the world. These ephemeral moments of altered sleep patterns and dance are now present in the music of ‘Sea~rène’, sounds for a trip in the mind held with a desire to dance.

A sense of brightness prevails in ‘Movimiento’, the feeling of white light rising from the dark of your mind as you lay with closed eyes.



Opener ‘Gabriella’ takes you by the hand to spin you across the ballroom floor, dancing in a dusky glow. Piano twinkles along with your step; a gradual ascension as a graceful dance can be. Lost in thoughtful yet thoughtless drift to the rumble of sound, we can confront parts of ourselves and our connection to others, the spirit of B side opener ’Awakening The World’s Heart’.



Place is important to movement also, as heard in the kinetic motion of ‘Tempelhof’, reminiscent of the feld in Berlin (GiGi’s home) itself. Blurred lines of people weaving their way through, either high speed on skates or on a leisurely stroll. It's summer in the city, where the nighttime shortens and daylight extends, yet the simulated night of the club never ends. Eventually reaching slumber, ‘Lucid Dreaming’ is the record's swan-song, a final lift of propulsion to remind that the dream of dance is a physical act, belonging to the imagined and the real. Digi bonus ‘Raspberry Pie’ is a sweet treat at the end of the dance, a familiar taste and a reminder of joy, ready for the next ‘Movimiento’.

ENG Mamalarky thrive in the in-between, a tri-coastal outfit straddling Atlanta, Austin, and Los Angeles, crafting a sound that feels both meticulously constructed and effortlessly unspooled. Their brand of indie rock is delightfully askew-swirling psych flourishes meet wiry guitar tangents, all anchored by tender, off-kilter hooks that burrow deep. It"s music that invites you into its strange little universe, full of inside jokes and late-night musings turned into melodic gold. Their sophomore effort, Hex Key - marking their Epitaph Records debut-lands in April, with plenty of mileage ahead as they road-test new material. A spring tour includes a run with Hinds and a stop at Treefort Music Fest, where their shape-shifting sonics will no doubt translate into hypnotic, full-bodied chaos. Formed in Austin in 2016, Mamalarky"s lineup has since scattered across time zones, but their chemistry remains unmistakable. Guitarist Livvy Bennett (formerly of Cherry Glazerr), keyboardist Michael Hunter (White Denim), drummer Dylan Hill, and bassist Noor Khan (Faye Webster"s touring bassist) operate like a band that"s spent years finishing each other"s musical sentences. Their songwriting thrives on kinetic interplay-nimble and restless, yet always landing in some deeply satisfying pocket. While indie-pop might be the easiest tag to slap on them, Mamalarky dodge the genre"s more predictable trappings. Instead of settling into breezy melancholy, they embrace complexity-knotty time signatures, rubbery basslines, and melodies that feel like they"re winking at you. It"s heady but never pretentious, the kind of music that rewards repeat listens, each spin revealing a new hidden corner.

Isabelline curator and label head Practitioner reveals a stunning selection of his own archival productions with 'Portobello Innocent', the third release on the mysterious and acclaimed Berlin-based imprint. Recorded between 2016 - 2024, these «ve selected works offer a broad look into Practitioner’s sonic sphere. Introspective club re¬ections that cover a grand scope of machine-translated human emotions. The EP feels like a dug-up lost tape, timeless tracks untouched by current modes or trends, each composition progressively digging deeper into unknown chasms of the enigmatic producers' distinct sound.

Raisina - A hypnotic club track featuring sharp drum machine rhythms and a prominent vocal sample from a 1960s North African love song, creating an alluring and surreally beautiful opener. Well-Behaved Boys - Pulsating, shu®ing techno drums take front and centre, as warped frequencies from raves of a bygone era tune in and out, ¬ickering between past and present with frenetic rhythms and spoken fragments. Form & Emblem - An effervescent ambient interlude, its shimmering textures and layered atmospheres provide a meditative pause amidst the EP’s harder edges. Kala - Hazy and dreamlike, this track layers a wandering dub bassline under a steady house beat, glimmering jazz chords and ethereal textures surround the sonic sphere, evoking ¬ickering memories and lingering mystery. Council - A relentless, bassheavy techno groover with sharp vocal cuts and infectious energy. Council feels like a culmination of all that camebefore, resulting in a hypnotic and kinetic underground offering that feels in«nite. With 'Portobello Innocent', Practitioner offers a rare glimpse into his abstract realm, crafting magnetic spaces between memory and rhythm, the ancient and the future, the human and machine.

Following nearly 20 years of working together as a trio, and numerous cross-collaborations in different configuration between them, Ideologic Organ presents Placelessness, the debut full-length by Chris Abrahams, Oren Ambarchi, and Robbie Avenaim, comprising two long-form works at juncture of ambient music, minimalism, rigorous experimentalism and improvisation, and machine music. Having carved distinct pathways across a diverse number of musical idioms for decades, Chris Abrahams, Oren Ambarchi, and Robbie Avenaim are each, respectively, among the most noteworthy and groundbreaking figures to have emerged from Australia's thriving experimental music scene. Ambarchi and Avenaim first encountered Abrahams when seeing the Necks - the project that has served as the primary vehicle for his singular approach to the piano since its founding in 1987 - together during the late 1980s, not long after having met in Sydney's underground music community. The pair's collaborations date back more than 35 years, criss-crossing Ambarchi's pioneering solo and ensemble work for guitar and Avenaim's visionary efforts for SARPS (Semi Automated Robotic Percussion System), robotic and kinetic extensions to his drum kit. In 2004, fate brought the three together in a trio performance at the What Is Music? Festival, the annual touring showcase of experimental music founded and run by Ambarchi and Avenaim between 1994-2012. For the nearly two decades since, Abrahams, Ambarchi, and Avenaim have intermittently reformed in exclusively live contexts, in Australia and abroad, cultivating and refining the fertile ground first tilled in that early meeting. Placelessness is the first album to present this remarkable trio's efforts in recorded form. Placelessness is the joining of three highly individualised streams, working in perfect harmony; the point at which friendship, mutual respect, and decades of creative exploration produce a singular spectrum of sound. Featuring Abrahams on piano, Ambarchi on guitar, and Avenaim on drums, the album's two sides draw on each artist's enduring dedication to long-form composition. Its two pieces, Placelessness I and Placelessness II, initially began as a single, 40 minute work, before being divided and reworked into distinct, complimentary gestures for the corresponding sides of the LP. Beginning with restrained clusters of reverberant piano tones, Placelessness I progresses at an almost glacial pace, with Abrahams' interventions increasing met by sparse responses, darting within vast ambiences, on guitar and percussion by Ambarchi and Avenaim. Remarkably conversational within its convergences of tonal, rhythmic, and textural abstraction, over the work's duration a progressive sense of tension unfurls and contracts, refusing release, as each of the ensemble's members contribute to an increasingly tangled sense of density at its resolve.While an entirely autonomous work, Placelessness II rapidly realises a distillation of the energy hinted at across the length of its predecessor. Following a luring passage of harmonious calm, Abrahams' launches into shimmering lines of repeating arpeggios, complimented at each escalation of tempo by Avenaim's machine gun fire percussion work and Ambarchi's masterful delivery of tonality and texture, as the trio collectively generate dense sheets of pointillistic ambience within which individual identity is almost lost, before slowly unspooling into unexpected abstractions and dissonances that deftly intervene with the work's inner logic and calm. What could easily be termed a maximalist take on Minimalism, Placelessness is a masterstroke of contemporary, real time composition, that blurs the boundaries between ambient music, experimentalism, free improvisation, and machine music. Drawing on Chris Abrahams, Oren Ambarchi, and Robbie Avenaim's decades of respective solo and collaborative practice, and the culmination of nearly twenty years of working together as a trio, it's two durational pieces - Placelessness I and Placelessness II - take form with a startling sense of effortlessness and grace, neither shying away from explicit beauty or rigorously tension within their forms

Samurai Music returns to the evocative sound world of Ancestral Voices for an album that splits the difference between cinematic sound design and deadly restraint at 170 BPM. Nemeton continues Liam Blackburn's exploration of ancient Celtic mysticism through snaking rhythms and snarling sound design, conjuring a high-definition sonic image of sacred groves and the druids practicing amongst them.

Blackburn's Ancestral Voices project tracks back to 2015, when he debuted on Samurai Horo with the Night Of Visions album. In stark contrast to his celebrated 140 work as Indigo, this project leaned on the inspiration of pagan spirituality to charge his vivid, advanced production style with a rich and mysterious atmosphere. While he's channelled this approach into a variety of tempos and styles, on his 2016 EP Old Earth Voodoo on Samurai Music he applied the concept to a drum & bass framework, which he returns to on Nemeton with rigorous focus.

Far from a straightforward collection of breakbeat tracks, Blackburn uses negative space and pointillist production to carve out an immersive, tense sound world around the 170 grid. He takes a widescreen approach to percussion, running from pin-prick synthesised one-shots to tumbling, organic drums you'd more readily associate with a Hans Zimmer score. Scene-building is the foremost mission across Nemeton, casting otherworldly forces in sweeps of low-end friction and dramatic melodic blooms amidst tangible real-world field recordings of flora and fauna.

Casting the mind back some 2000 years is an exercise in imagination as much as research, and Blackburn ably summons dark fantasy as he delves ever deeper into Welsh mythology with a studious zeal and avid fascination. It's that drive that makes Nemeton burst forth and take shape so powerfully, bristling with kinetic energy and a barely-concealed, strangely seductive menace that leaves a lasting impression long after the last snatch of bass has bared its teeth.

Full page feature in Wire Magazine (March 2025, Issue 493) 'the freak audio series continues with the lysergic You Didn't Hear It From Me which combines dubbed out sampledelia and metallic beats with ghostly saxophone soaked in an acid bath'

Polonius AKA Egyptian-French artist Seif Gaber, whose works spans a decade of “science fiction archeomiragical time travel" explorations and is an important piece of the healthy electronic/far out mosaic in Milan.

With a considerable number of releases under his name, both self released and through such likeminded labels as Ikuisuus, Goaty Tapes or Sun Araw's Sun Ark, Polonius grand vision encompasses a myriad of languages culled from kosmische travelings, exotica's dreamlands, soundtrack psychedelia, spiritual jazz escape routes and transmuted beat science to convey them into a sonic fiction where all these trails intertwine in a cosmological soundscape filled with wonder and speculation.

Building on last year's more beat-centric excursions of his self-titled vinyl debut on Stoned to Death, Polonius' first entry into the Discrepant extended family via Souk finds him dwelling deeper into rhythmic mystic extrapolations through a series of hallucinatory tracks. Conveying jungle's kinetic energy, dubwise meditations on bass weight, collapsing beats, globetrotting percussion accents and synth-driven night drives, 'You Didn't Hear It From Me' finds Polonius with a strong sense of purpose and direction, reconvening bits and pieces from the netherworld into a more urban scenario, not quite any we can stand or dance on. Just dream of.

“Limbs of a Lion” arrives in a dazzling array of shimmering psychedelia, the newest offering on fleet.dreams’ own Vinezza records. Following “Echoes of Ego” his acclaimed inaugural 12”, “Limbs of a Lion” sees fleet.dreams’ artistry and form blossoming into realms of kaleidoscopic cadence & textural buoyancy. The production flows through a classically dubwise live analog mixing setup, new spheres of delays & echoes evolving fleet.dreams’ process to embody a unique & fully realized intersection of live instrumentation & dynamic synthesis.

Each track takes on its own entrancing sway, opening the listener towards beguiling spaciousness, experiences in rhythm, and a healthy dose of surrealist dreaming. “Masked in Porcelain” gleams with mystique, tinged with flanger in a firmly driving dancefloor mode, guiding us deeper into mysteries held by skylines and moonlight. “Secret of the Golden Flower” brings forth photosynthetic gated vocals built for eyes closed body movement, evolving from a cosmic conga groove confidently manifesting in ensnaring kinetic activation.

“iLL Enargeia” brings a touch of depth, stepping into tomorrow with a confident saunter, perfect for the blissful delirium of new beginnings or a space of breadth and reflection in the midst of astral metronomes. The closing title track “Limbs of a Lion” sees us out on a hopeful note, awash in bold luminescence & inviting us to go deeper and deeper within ourselves amidst the grounding embrace of bassline pressure.

Embodying a dance of intangibility towards new unknowns, “Limbs of a Lion” aspires to manifest the grace of movement through our beings - magnetizing and enhancing our danceable forms, frolicking beyond words together. Each track boldly stands on it’s own while orbiting a cohesive whole, perfect for all set and settings, a staple for the DJ crates, and a sign of a musicmaker with even more exciting creations on the horizon.

*words by Kiernan Laveaux
Early support from: Kiernan Laveaux, Daniel Rincón (NAP), 2Lanes & Amelia Holt

"Volcanic Tongue" war ein Plattenladen, der von 2005-2015 in Glasgow von David Keenan und Heather Leigh betrieben wurde und zeitgenössische DIY-Musik aus der ganzen Welt in kleinen selbstgemachten CD-R-Auflagen veröffentliche. Parallel versuchte man, vergessene Künstler aus der Vergangenheit ins Rampenlicht zu rücken, die ihre Musik oft als Privatpressung veröffentlicht hatten. Der Laden war für seine wöchentliche Mailingliste bekannt, in der Keenan enthusiastisch über Neuankömmlinge rappte, insbesondere über die Platte der Woche, die den Spitznamen "tip of the tongue" (Zungenspitze) erhielt. Dieser eklektische Sampler mit 20 "tips of the tongue" - von Outsider-Synth über Psych-Folk bis zu kaputtem Rock'n'Roll, aufgenommen zwischen 1968-2013 - ist eine Hommage an eine lebendige und vielseitige Underground-Avantgarde. Black Vinyl 2LP in PVC-Hülle, von Julian House designt, mit bedruckten Innentaschen samt Linernotes von David Keenan zu jedem Künstler.

PS: Gleichzeitig erscheint beim White Rabbit-Verlag eine Deluxe-Ausgabe des gleichnamigen Buches mit einer CD-Version des Samplers, limitiert auf 1.000 Exemplare, und signiert von Autor David Keenan und Designer Julian House.

Over the course of a decade, Wata Igarashi has risen as one of techno's most accomplished DJs and producers. His highly aesthetic trademark sound is as heavily psychedelic as it's driven by its stern kinetic energy. It's often overlooked that Igarashi is much more than a torch bearer of the raw hypnotic techno he became known for. He's also a very accomplished and versatile musician with a deep understanding of the cause and effect of sound design. His skills are fully on display on 2023's full length "Agartha", a film score to a fictitious movie about the mythical underworld of planet Mars. It was a rather obvious idea to cross the bridge between this epic deep listening album and Wata Igarashi's techno persona by having him remix himself. As you might expect, the "Agartha Sorcery Acid Mix" has turned out to be a masterclass in psychedelic designer techno. It's slightly slower in BPM as the usual Igarashi fare but every bit as captivating. The "Floating Against Time Shimmering Mix" shows another intriguing facet of Wata's spectrum. Let's call it: Psychedelic Deep House. KOMPAKT's very own Michael Mayer couldn't resist to turn the Godzilla soundtrack-ish "Ceremony Of The Dead" into a positively hysterical minimal disco operette. And then there's the "Fusion Mix of Abyss x Darkness" by Philipp Stoffel, a fresh Cologne DJ producer whose AKTE club nights just spawned a label by the same name. He's definitely one to keep an eye on in 2025.
Im Laufe eines Jahrzehnts hat sich Wata Igarashi zu einem der versiertesten DJs und Produzenten im Bereich Techno entwickelt. Sein hochästhetischer, unverwechselbarer Sound ist ebenso stark psychedelisch entrückt wie von einer strengen kinetischen Energie angetrieben. Oft wird übersehen, dass Igarashi viel mehr ist als nur ein Fackelträger des rohen, hypnotischen Techno, für den er bekannt wurde. Er ist auch ein sehr versierter und vielseitiger Musiker mit einem tiefen Verständnis für Ursache und Wirkung von Sounddesign. Seine Fähigkeiten kommen auf dem Longplayer „Agartha“ von 2023 voll zum Ausdruck, einer Filmmusik zu einem fiktiven Film über die mythische Unterwelt des Planeten Mars. Es lag nahe, die Brücke zwischen diesem epischen Deep-Listening-Album und Wata Igarashis Techno-Persönlichkeit zu schlagen, indem man ihn sich selbst remixen ließ. Wie zu erwarten war, ist der „Agartha Sorcery Acid Mix“ eine Masterclass des psychedelischen Designer-Techno. Mit einer etwas geringeren BPM-Zahl als bei Igarashis üblicher Musik, aber genauso fesselnd. Der „Floating Against Time Shimmering Mix“ zeigt eine weitere faszinierende Facette von Watas Spektrum. Nennen wir es: Psychedelic Deep House. KOMPAKTs Michael Mayer konnte nicht widerstehen, den Godzilla-Soundtrack-ähnlichen Song „Ceremony Of The Dead“ in eine geradezu hysterische Minimal-Disco-Operette zu verwandeln. Und dann gibt es noch den „Fusion Mix of Abyss x Darkness“ von Philipp Stoffel, einem jungen Kölner DJ-Produzenten, aus dessen AKTE-Clubnächten gerade ein Label mit dem gleichen Namen hervorgegangen ist. Er ist definitiv einer, den man 2025 im Auge behalten sollte.

Four years since her last dancefloor 12", upsammy returns with a four-track exploration of gleaming, sprightly drum and bass with a restorative centre. Thessa Torsing's moves in upper tempo zones have been defined by her light touch, finding power and presence in finely chiseled sounds and sculpting space between intricate, interwoven rhythms.

The dynamic movement of her pristinely moulded percussion is absolutely geared up for the club, but it's also matched with an uplifting, meditative sound palette which tempers the busy energy of the drums. Pushing and pulling on her arrangements with ever-increasing expressiveness and revelling in the subtlest of modulations to her kinetic beat systems, upsammy proves once again that moving in time to fast music can be an incredibly restorative experience.

This fantastic debut from MshCode on the Guidance label. Full on dark edges jungle mayhem, perfectly produced with clean drums and atmospheric pads, but a sense of deep menace and a claustrophobic toughness to the tearing amens and broken beats.

Joni Void, the artistic persona of Montréal-based French-British producer Jean Néant (he/them) returns to songcraft on their warmest and most welcoming record yet, where the acclaimed sampledelic sound collagist chills out with an emotionally resonant song cycle tinged by downtempo, lo-fi, avant-pop, and trip-hop. Guests include Haco, Ytamo, Sook-Yin Lee, Pink Navel and N NAO. Every Life Is A Light expands on Void's recent stylistic turn towards more languorous and mellow lo-fi production, foreshadowed by the drifting looseness and ambient bricolage of their preceding experimental sound-art record. This transitional sensibility now shapes more defined song structures and styles, with loops are given time and space to unspool, and rhythms shot through the softer-focus lens of trip-hop and dub. Every Life Is A Light swaps the twitchy insistence of Void's acclaimed early albums for a newfound lightness and suppleness, still imbued with all the restlessness, sonic detailing, and emotional resonance that made their name. The neurotic brokenmachine kinetics of earlier Void, summarized by Sasha Geffen as "drawing despair and wonder from within the vast unfeeling of digital communication" in an 8.0 Pitchfork review, may be chilling out, but Void is becoming an ever better conjurer of hauntological feeling. Every Life Is A Light summons this in a comparatively buoyant, benevolent, head-nodding journey more open to tenderness and modest joys. Perhaps it's the sound of Void at greater peace with themselves and the world, despite the bittersweet cost: even as it channels grief, memorializing comrades and companions recently deceased, this album wants light. Void's raw materials continue to draw heavily from samples (their own Walkman cassette fieldrecordings and songs by others) and from a wide community of musical guests. Vocalists Haco on "Time Zone" and Ytamo on "Cloud Level" help levitate what could be lost tracks from a mid-90s Too Pure Records compilation of skewed-lounge electronica. Canadian musician Sook-Yin Lee sings on lead single "Vertigo," a sinewy 80bpm tape-loop and bassline groove propelled by psychedelically-layered lyrics that eventually turn the song in on itself entirely, like Grace Jones' "Nightclubbing" covered by Animal Collective. One of Void's greatest hip-hop loves is the Ruby Yacht collective; charter member Pink Navel drops some brilliant verses on "Story Board." The album's two minimal tracks, an extended piano loop set to a slow beat and shimmering electronics on "Muffin-A Song For My Cat" and the languid sampled bass riff and breakbeat of "Event Flow," are perhaps most overtly `lofi chill.' Indeed the whole album could be said to sit adjacent to those viral (if not already AI-generated) genre trends, which maybe begs the question on a lot of our minds: can specificity and authenticity of musical materials still be heard, still meaningfully signify substance and difference, still matter? Perhaps a question that fades in comparison to the career break Void could catch by landing on generic streaming playlists. More likely, these tracks remain too off-kilter, too genuinely lo-fi and ineffable, and too disqualified by the status of its peasant rights-holders, to catch the algos. Context remains the poor cousin of content. Meanwhile Void marches on, as a tireless organizer of local music events, bouncing around and often living in DIY venue, depending on the latest apartment eviction. With an ubiquitous polaroid camera in tow, they also document each communal happening with a single shot (and often a blinding flash bulb): a memory and metaphor for lives illuminated preciously, singularly, `imperfectly' in the moment. Dozens of these polaroids adorn the album's back cover and inner sleeve art in grid-like montages, as a fitting analog for the careful construction, grainy intimate materiality, and ephemeral feeling of these songs. Every Life Is A Light is Joni Void's most coherent and congenial record while relinquishing none of their experimentalist acumen as a producer or emotional attunement as a composer. Instead these qualities flourish, on an album that lights a humble flame for the fragile promise of homespun creative collaboration as unalienated labour and therapeutic communion, making an enchantingly idiosyncratic contribution to downtempo sample music along the way. Thanks for listening.

My Boy, the third solo record from New Zealand singer/ songwriter Marlon Williams, announces an artist emerging anew. Gone is the solemn, country-indebted crooner with the velvet voice - in his place comes a playful, shapeshifting creature. Following the release of his second album, 2018's Make Way For Love, Williams' toured the world, playing major festivals and collaborating with Lorde, Yo-Yo Ma and Florence Welch. He also forged a fledgling acting career with roles in films The True History of the Kelly Gang and Netflix series Sweet Tooth, as well as a cameo in Oscar winning film A Star Is Born. My Boy parlays this flush of worldly experience into a vivid record as spirited and kinetic as the unfolding life of its performer. "I've always explored different character elements in my music," says Williams. "And the more I get into acting, the more tricks I'm learning about representation and presentation. To get braver and bolder with exploring shifting contexts and new ways of doing things." As the pandemic paused global travel, Williams found himself at home in New Zealand, reconnecting with family and friends. Soon new demos and lyrical themes emerged: of self-identity and escapism; tribalism and a gnarled family tree; and ruminations on the role of masculinity and mateship. Co-produced with Tom Healy and recorded at Roundhead Studios in New Zealand, My Boy finds Williams' leading a new band through a set of genre-hopping tunes: from the cheery sway of `My Boy' and chugging `80s noir sheen of `Thinking Of Nina', to the charging synth of `River Rival', and the sultry pop jam `Don't Go Back.' All this sonic and emotional whiplash is intentional, and ultimately My Boy sees Williams having fun, even while interrogating the behaviors of himself and those around him.

My Boy, the third solo record from New Zealand singer/ songwriter Marlon Williams, announces an artist emerging anew. Gone is the solemn, country-indebted crooner with the velvet voice - in his place comes a playful, shapeshifting creature. Following the release of his second album, 2018's Make Way For Love, Williams' toured the world, playing major festivals and collaborating with Lorde, Yo-Yo Ma and Florence Welch. He also forged a fledgling acting career with roles in films The True History of the Kelly Gang and Netflix series Sweet Tooth, as well as a cameo in Oscar winning film A Star Is Born. My Boy parlays this flush of worldly experience into a vivid record as spirited and kinetic as the unfolding life of its performer. "I've always explored different character elements in my music," says Williams. "And the more I get into acting, the more tricks I'm learning about representation and presentation. To get braver and bolder with exploring shifting contexts and new ways of doing things." As the pandemic paused global travel, Williams found himself at home in New Zealand, reconnecting with family and friends. Soon new demos and lyrical themes emerged: of self-identity and escapism; tribalism and a gnarled family tree; and ruminations on the role of masculinity and mateship. Co-produced with Tom Healy and recorded at Roundhead Studios in New Zealand, My Boy finds Williams' leading a new band through a set of genre-hopping tunes: from the cheery sway of `My Boy' and chugging `80s noir sheen of `Thinking Of Nina', to the charging synth of `River Rival', and the sultry pop jam `Don't Go Back.' All this sonic and emotional whiplash is intentional, and ultimately My Boy sees Williams having fun, even while interrogating the behaviors of himself and those around him.

“Here is my first-born child, a fuck you to all my exes, and basically me just trying to figure out some shit openly and honestly on record. First of many and if you don't like it, then this wasn't meant for you anyway.” - Lola Young.

This Wasn’t Meant For You Anyway marks a remarkable shift in Lola’s sound as an artist. Recorded in LA and produced by friend and collaborator Solomonophic (Remi Wolf, BROCKHAMPTON, Dominic Fike), This Wasn’t Meant For You Anyway
is a multi-faceted, fearless concept. As irresistible as it is unexpected, Lola’s album is crackling with kinetic energy and lyrically fuelled by rage, passion, narrative flair and comedy derision. A contemporary break-up album, This Wasn’t Meant For You Anyway
encapsulates the sound of what it means to be young and in constant romantic chaos. With exciting plans up Lola’s sleeve, her upcoming record will undoubtedly add to her musical trajectory.

2025 Repress
Anenon's tenor saxophone breathes an emotive contemplation on loss, meshed with sustained piano and field recordings. 'Moons Melt Milk Light' is a hyper-personal statement contained in a visceral beauty.

LA native Anenon returns with a highly anticipated new album 'Moons Melt Milk Light' on Tonal Union, bearing his most personal, expressive, and arresting works to date. Anenon is the ongoing solo studio and live project of Brian Allen Simon, whom since 2010 has released multiple albums and EPs to critical acclaim, including the highly revered 'Tongue' (2018) and 'Petrol' (2016).

'Moons Melt Milk Light' is direct, efficient, and unwavering in its immediacy. Anenon departs from the electronics of previous works, and embarks on a reductive, almost entirely acoustic approach consisting of piano, tenor saxophone, bass clarinet, and field recordings. All of the music was improvised with everything recorded as either a first or second take with no edits. Any layering happened fast and in the moment, and yet the sonic architecture of the whole feels both planned and refined.

"I feel a kinetic and messy honesty that doesn't exist in any of the other music I've ever made. There is also a sense of being settled, of calm. There is no faking it here."

The Bait label headed up by Beatrice M looks to Conzi for a fresh new 12" that builds on the label's superb early momentum. It delves deep into timeless 140 bpm sounds with opener 'AU2' layering up the percussion over fathom-deep beats and aquatic dub pads. It's a heady one for late night rolling and 'Drakar' then brings more bright melodies but similar icy beats and organic perc. An N:in remix of 'AU2' makes things more skittish and kinetic and broken, then and Ambit remix sets down with low-end pressure. These are fresh sounds that bring new direction to classic dubstep.

Jacob Long’s fourth full-length for Kranky began as a notion to reimagine Earthen Sea as a “piano trio,” inspired by a year-long immersion in the ECM label catalog, but the compositions soon grew more complex.

Elements were chopped and resampled, then layered with bass, drums, percussion, and additional keys. The result is a fusion of live band acoustics and downtempo loops, sculpted into nine smoke-and-mirror dubs of fractured jazz, soft-focus noir, and trip-hop dust: Recollection.

Like the title implies, Long’s playing and production share a mood of pensive movement, shuffling and rippling like uncertain memories at strange hours.

From looming fog (“Present Day,” “Neon Ruins”) and shadowy breaks (“Another Space,” “Cloudy Vagueness”) to rosy glows (“Clear Photograph”) and smeared reverie (“White Sky”), Recollection deftly wields its palette of gradient color and subdued states of beauty.

His is a music of reduction and reflection, kinetic but oblique, attuned to the silhouettes of sound.

Having thrived throughout the underground realms for the last ten years, Question built a respectable body of work displaying a sound meeting constant progression, a vision sharpened and perfected with each output. Six years following the debut full-length recording, the Mexican quintet unleashes “Reflections of the Void”, a grand tome of sheer Death Metal might in eight tracks that take Question’s sonic traits and overall concept to a whole new level of magnitude. In perfect unison with the majestic Shoggoth Kinetics artwork that adorns the album’s cover, “Reflections of the Void” stands apart and invites the listener to a pathway beyond the horizon, a detailed journey on life and death and yonder. Such carefully threaded concept meets its aural accomplice as Question carries a cloud of impending doom, a dense and arrestive atmosphere on brilliantly crafted songs that drink from the fountain of the past yet blistering in its very own with a striking sense of dynamics which assuredly puts the group in the major leagues of Death Metal mastery. Obscure, threatening riffs blaze through the first moments of the record, trading somber licks and faster belligerent attacks, yet never failing to enter a redundant path, for a tempo change or a dissonant endeavor spells unexpectedly and takes the listener on an intense rollercoaster. Fiercely crafted, the pulsing bass impulses and organic drumming patterns exhale as the pounding heart of “Reflections of the Void”. Technical, precise, enter a scorching performance in taste and dexterity, never sounding dull or plastic but shining for its soulful presence, side by side with the dazzling production, utterly potent and vibrant, taking the defying arrangements to greater extents. In and above this sonic frenzy, a vociferated voice grunts the illusions of our existence with a resonating dark tone spawned directly from the imposing void. As this opus resumes into the boundless vacuum, we are left with a sense of distress and awe. Question crafted a work for the ages, one which with every listening reveals a further dimension, a hidden mystery, just like the classics in the unholy pantheon to which this opus will surely belong someday.

“Reflections of the Void” is released under the banner of Chaos Records.

The last couple of years have seen a renaissance for West Coast singer-songwriters. LA-based youngsters such as Drugdealer and Sylvie have attracted considerable attention releasing warm and mellow records tonally reminiscent of the early 70s. Most fans of this new/old sound are unaware of Bart Davenport's early explorations in the same sonic territory. His now 20-year-old "Game Preserve"album should gain an appreciative new audience with its first ever vinyl release.

In the year 2000, Bay Area troubadour Bart Davenport and several other musicians were recruited by a major tech corporation in Seattle to work on an algorithm-based music matching/search engine. It was what looked like the beginning of a promising career. After a year, however, the project was shelved. Bart and his colleagues were laid off with a healthy severance package... on the 12th of September, 2001. Not only had the musician's life changed, so had the world. Rather than blow the money on a holiday or new car, Bart knew he had to make a record. A proper album that meant something.

Back in Oakland, he entered Wally Sound Studios with former Kinetics bandmate Jon Erickson at the controls, and a swathe of talented local musicians. "With Game Preserve," Bart explains, "Jon and I really wanted to knock it out of the park. I wanted to utilize people from my old bands like Loved Ones drummer John Kent. I also invited my newer indie-pop friends from Call & Response, and a young Nedelle Torrisi. Harmony singing by The Moore Brothers was an essential ingredient on Game Preserve as well."

Both Erickson and Davenport fondly recall growing up in households where the music of The Carpenters, Joni Mitchell and The Eagles soundtracked their young lives. By the early 00s they were ready to reconnect with what is often referred to as the "Laurel Canyon" sound. "I'd buy used tapes at garage sales and play them in the car. "Ladies Of The Canyon" by Joni and Jackson Browne's first album were both in heavy rotation. Jon Erickson was getting deeper into the Steely-Mac-Doobie yacht-rock sound in earnest. A certain amount of childhood nostalgia led a lot of us back to that part of the 70s. I'd flirted with classic soft-rock on my first album, but that record was pretty scattered esthetically. I wanted my next one to be more focused. Jon and I made some ground rules: no electric guitars (except on 'Bar-Code Trees'). No synths. Most importantly, all the songs have an air-tight, super dead, close mic'd drum sound. Putting these sorts of limitations on the sessions will give your record a specific quality. In the case of "Game Preserve"it's mostly about tight drums, acoustic instruments and analog production. We used a 24-track, two-inch tape machine for tracking, then ran the mixes through an analog board straight to a 1/4 inch master tape."

While the album's sonic palette may be firmly planted in 1970, Davenport's songwriting covers a sizable landscape of moods and reflections. From the quasi-flamenco intro of 'Sweetest Game' to the somber Wurlitzer of 'Nowhere Left To Go', to the 12-string shimmer of 'Intertwine', "Game Preserve" tells a story of young love, lost innocence and redemption, crossing borders and oceans along the way.

Released in 2003 on family-run Oakland label Antenna Farm, the ultra-analog sounding "Game Preserve" was only made available on digital formats, including CD. Copies were later pressed by labels in Germany and Spain; the latter being one country the album actually did well in, establishing Bart Davenport with a small but loyal fanbase he still enjoys today. Two European tours as support for Kings of Convenience also helped gain a foothold on the continent. Back in the US, however, Davenport and his sophomore album remained quite obscure.

Limited promotion meant it did little, but for the music lovers that heard it, the album undoubtedly remains a classic of the era, deserving far more. Twenty years on, it now finally receives its vinyl debut. "I personally think it holds up well," says Bart of the album two decades later. "The idea was to make something that could be an homage to late 60s/early 70s West Coast pop but hopefully timeless as well. Years on, I hear it as just that. It was a colorful and brief period of my life that felt at times like it could last forever. I discovered the joy of working in a proper studio with a perfect cast of characters. I'm still very close with all these people and still play music with many of them."

Marionette presents 'dessus oben alto up', the first collaborative recording by Andrea Belfi and Jules Reidy. Hailing from different ends of the globe (Australia and Italy) but both longtime residents of Berlin, Reidy and Belfi’s approaches have much in common, bringing together compositional precision and electroacoustic rigour with improvisation freedom, the immediate gratifications of rhythmic pulse, and an overtly lyrical sensibility. Working together during a residency at the sound studio of Berlin’s Callie’s, an arts institution housed in a 19th century machine factory, the pair (with Marco Anulli manning the desk) have conjured up four expansive pieces where the beautifully recorded percussive clarity of Belfi’s drums threads through a sparkling haze of guitars and electronics.

Opener ‘dessus’ begins with Reidy’s distinctive just-intoned guitar figures, shimmering over a delicate substratum of Befli’s brushwork and bass drum accents. As in all of Reidy’s recent work, the guitar is twisted out of cliché by the unfamiliar tuning and electronic processing. Hanging almost inaudibly in the background for much of the piece, a rush of synthetic tones surges into the foreground to end it. ‘oben’ is built from kinetic patterns of picked guitar arpeggios, locking into irregular grooves with Belfi’s drums, which move from elegant rolls and cymbal patter to driving closed hi-hats and explosive rock interjections. Around the traditional instruments and across the stereo field, electronic sounds swarm and swirl, fizzing and popping in a sun-drenched soundscape that at points suggests both vintage analogue synth destruction and glitching harmonies. ‘alto’ begins in similar territory but turned up a notch, eventually settling into a propulsive 6/8 groove of shifting drum accents, manically strummed 12 string acoustic, and burbling synth chords.

The B side is dedicated to the fifteen-minute ‘up’, where the strategies adopted on the other pieces are put in the service of a more relaxed, slowly unfolding epic. Anchored by a steady pulse throughout, the piece combines chiming guitars, dubbed-out bass lines and constantly adjusted percussive details into a complex flux of sound. Change is at once so subtle and so ever-present that, at any given moment, the listener can never be entirely sure quite how they got there.

Red Laser continue their prolific purple patch, unpacking four more slabs of red lit Manctolo from a host of box jammers, old and new.

Frank Butters wastes no time at all, 'The Call Of The Wild' engaging photon tubes with a highly kinetic array of crystalline synth shards, thunderous bass and hyperactive sfx. Without geeking out too much, special mention has to go out to the synthesis on display here - Butters advancing up the levels of sonic shamanism as he conjures up never-before-heard patches of interstellar cosmic NRG...

Bob Swans' 'Bodyform4U' unites the robots with a universal message of togetherness. Its multiple layers of shuddering arpeggios and star-aligned synths working in unison to quell any fears and send us off into a space age utopia. One that'll work as well soundtracking the end of the session as it will as the dancefloor's filling up; its subtle anthemic qualities sure to rouse the spirits of even the most dehumanized cyborgs.

New signing Lone Saxon drops 'Hypersleep' which utilises rich piano chords and a hefty breakbeat, switching up the vibe but keeping things super uplifting. This one reminds us of that innocent period when you could get on the megabus for 50p and score three for a tenner on the dancefloor. An evocative vocal refrain adds a moment of thoughtful introspection in between the e-rushes and arm-raising for another moment of interactive harmony.

Finally, 'Webo' sees Franz Scala (with a little help from Il Bosco) return to source, delivering a bona fide slice of maximum balls out MANCTALO chug. With tension-wrought chord progressions, delicious layers of lead melodies and a soaring vocal, there's few that can resist the charms of this late night electro-disco hyper anthem.

All aboard the starship !

RL x

Kenny Hooper is a Detroit mainstay and formerly a part of Scan7 who now makes his solo debut on Acquit Records. It continues a purple patch of late that includes his remix work on Nate Nubia's 'Dracula and Frankenstein' and his trilogy on Elypsia Records. The title cut 'Neon Skies' opens with lush synths arp shimmering over crispy, punchy electro drum programming. 'Imagination' has a dubbed-out low end and kinetic kicks with smeared synth lines and intimate vocals bringing some seduction to the sounds. 'Binary Dreams' gets more raw and ragged with a reverberating bassline full of texture and more eerie synth designs up top that keep you on edge. 'How Far' brings a cultured EP to a close with more classy rhythms.

Body Meπa is the New York-based quartet of Greg Fox (drums), Sasha Frere-Jones (guitar), Melvin Gibbs (bass), and Grey McMurray (guitar). As luminaries in the intersecting traditions of improvised music, rock, jazz, fusion, and contemporary classical music, the four artists have each spent decades building diverse practices that extend beyond sound into multiple disciplines. Prayer in Dub, their second release on Hausu Mountain, follows the band’s 2020 album The Work Is Slow.

The album presents a band whose collective intuition as instrumentalists and live-in-the-room songwriters has deepened with each take that they put to tape. Prayer in Dub finds Body Meπa taking up new experiments with song structure and atmosphere, fanning out into a wide menu of both longer and more concise pieces that suggest deliberate shifts in energy and emotional resonance. The album presents a thrilling contrast between storms of precise rhythmic interplay and slowly expanding fields of multi-guitar and bass texture, alternately pushing the narrative toward explosive peaks of intensity and dipping into ambient expanses. Contemplative guitar lines, both bone dry and effected into total abstraction, ripple together over dub-indebted rhythm section grooves before shifting the dial towards beatific twang. Knotty distorted solos surge out of the fray over networks of arpeggios and drum fills.

On Prayer in Dub, Body Meπa pursues a strain of euphoria charged with elegiac grandeur and the looming potential to crumble at any moment under the psychic weight of confusion. It speaks to the band’s goals and general outlook that chaos never completely consumes their sessions. The band channels the kinetic energy of a “supergroup” of veteran musicians into communal works that evolve beyond their creators’ extensive pedigrees into new forms both intimate in sentiment and majestic in scope.

Body Meπa is the New York-based quartet of Greg Fox (drums), Sasha Frere-Jones (guitar), Melvin Gibbs (bass), and Grey McMurray (guitar). As luminaries in the intersecting traditions of improvised music, rock, jazz, fusion, and contemporary classical music, the four artists have each spent decades building diverse practices that extend beyond sound into multiple disciplines. Prayer in Dub, their second release on Hausu Mountain, follows the band’s 2020 album The Work Is Slow.

The album presents a band whose collective intuition as instrumentalists and live-in-the-room songwriters has deepened with each take that they put to tape. Prayer in Dub finds Body Meπa taking up new experiments with song structure and atmosphere, fanning out into a wide menu of both longer and more concise pieces that suggest deliberate shifts in energy and emotional resonance. The album presents a thrilling contrast between storms of precise rhythmic interplay and slowly expanding fields of multi-guitar and bass texture, alternately pushing the narrative toward explosive peaks of intensity and dipping into ambient expanses. Contemplative guitar lines, both bone dry and effected into total abstraction, ripple together over dub-indebted rhythm section grooves before shifting the dial towards beatific twang. Knotty distorted solos surge out of the fray over networks of arpeggios and drum fills.

On Prayer in Dub, Body Meπa pursues a strain of euphoria charged with elegiac grandeur and the looming potential to crumble at any moment under the psychic weight of confusion. It speaks to the band’s goals and general outlook that chaos never completely consumes their sessions. The band channels the kinetic energy of a “supergroup” of veteran musicians into communal works that evolve beyond their creators’ extensive pedigrees into new forms both intimate in sentiment and majestic in scope.

A third Punctuality enters the chat; its latest member Maara proclaiming Drama On for Spray’s ever-evolving label. The Montreal maverick cues up a psy-eyed sesh for the ages, 5 wily thumpers shaded sapphic for those enthralled by the mischievous dance.

Since 2021, Maara has operated on an ‘all pills, no frills’ basis. Her prolific run of EPs for the likes of Kalahari Oyster Cult, Step Ball Chain and Radiant Records has cemented her rightful place within the club pantheon of the prog and divine. Spray and his Punctuality cohort reside there also, teasing clubland salvation for those who dare. Maara giddily joins for the ride, offering a gift in the name of Drama On; an EP of direct dancefloor transmissions that map out kinetic paths to sordid euphoria.

The curtains rise as What U Do 2 Me skips, gallops and jumps across theatrical plains, breaking for a titular reflection before reuniting with its ravey chaos. Drama On swings sharper, riding a sleazy donk through a dimly lit groove of pulsating vulgarity. An outright sassier affair celebrates Sigmund Freud’s Big Day Out; an unconscious slip of the hard house tongue that feeds an otherwise techno-driven delirium with wry glee. Give Me Ecstasy eases the tempo while raising the temperature, commanding your gaze with a noxious roller that seductively writhes in sexed-up delight. The house lights beckon, and Not My Web, Not My Problem she retorts with an unforgiving groove thrusting its charged-up rump through a cauldron of salacious murmurs and groans.

It’s Maara’s world, and we’re all just dancing in it.