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Mit dieser besonderen Jubiläumsausgabe feiern Nathaniel Rateliff & The Night Sweats 10 Jahre ihres
explosiven Debütalbums. Mit den zeitlosen Hits, die ihren kometenhaften Aufstieg einleiteten, darunter
das unaufhaltsame „S.O.B.“, ehrt diese Veröffentlichung den rauen Soul, die Vintage-Grooves und den
kraftvollen Gesang, die Fans auf der ganzen Welt in ihren Bann zogen.
Auf dieser Anniversary Edition kommen elf bisher unveröffentlichte Demos zum Original-Album hinzu.
Dazu ein paar Worte von Nathaniel Rateliff selbst:
”Die Reise eines Songs muss irgendwo beginnen. Lieder können Ideen sein, die jahrelang schlummern.
Manchmal verstecken sie sich in unserem Inneren und es liegt an uns, uns ihnen zu öffnen und ihre melodische Geburt zu begrüßen. Hier sind elf ungehörte Ideen, die vor etwas mehr als zehn Jahren auf meinem
Dachboden entstanden sind. Ich hatte ein Mikrofon, ein zweikanaliges Interface, einen zweikanaligen
Vorverstärker und meinen Laptop. Ich habe diese Werkzeuge damals gerade gut genug genutzt, um die
Ideen in dem Moment einzufangen, in dem sie auftauchten.”
Erleben Sie das Album, das den modernen Soul-Rock neu definierte und eine Band bekannt machte, deren
Musik nach wie vor Herzen und Tanzflächen auf der ganzen Welt bewegt.

Returning to Die Schachtel with his fourth full-length with the label, the Genoa born, Bologna based, guitarist and electroacoustic composer, Stefano Pilia, delivers “Lacinia”, a new, immersive cycle of compositions, delving deeper into the realm of metaphysical, spiritual, and divine meaning, weaving astounding arrangements of sonority from a palette of synths, strings, brass, organ, various electroacoustic instruments, and percussion. Resting at a refined intersection of the acoustic and electroacoustic, drone, and chamber music - overwhelmingly beautiful, delicate, and bold, - “Lacinia” stands as a high-water mark in Pilia’s already remarkable and forward-looking career.

Since its founding in Milan during the early years of the new millennium, Die Schachtel has occupied a singular place in the landscape of experimental music, issuing a carefully curated body of reissues and archival releases by historically significant figures and projects like Christina Kubisch, Luciano Cilio, Marino Zuccheri, Prima Materia, Claudio Rocchi, Lino Capra Vaccina, Gruppo di Improvvisazione Nuova Consonanza, Roland Kayn, and numerous others, balanced against bristling contemporary counterparts by the likes of Jim O'Rourke, Giovanni Di Domenico, Nicola Ratti, Luigi ArchettI, Valerio Tricoli, etc. Running like a spine through the label’s output is a deep dedication to the work of the Italian guitarist and electroacoustic composer Stefano Pilia. Now Die Schachtel returns with “Lacinia”, Pilia’s forth full-length with the label and their first release of 2024. Building on the ground of deeply personal engagement with metaphysical, spiritual, and divine meaning, explored within his previous LP with Die Schachtel, 2022’s “Spiralis Aurea”, “Lacinia” encounters the composer working in close calibration with various ensembles, including the Bologna based Ensemble Concordanze and Comunale di Bologna String Orchestra, weaving synths, strings, brass, organ, various electroacoustic instruments, and percussion into an astounding reconfiguration of immersive, contemporary minimalism that stands among Pilia’s most noteworthy releases to date. Issued by Die Schachtel in two special double vinyl editions and a CD edition, “Lacinia” features artwork by Bruno Stucchi/Dinamomilano, and is an absolute marvel that draws you in and doesn’t let go.

First emerging during the early 2000s, over the past two decades – via solo releases and numerous collations with artists like Oren Ambarchi, Valerio Tricoli, Alessandra Novaga, Z'EV, Andrea Belfi, David Grubbs, and numerous others - the Genoa born, Bologna based, guitarist and electroacoustic composer, Stefano Pilia has presented a singular voice within Italian experimental music, harnessing visceral energy and hands-on immediacy within delicately woven tapestries of sonority, each investigating the sculptural properties of sound and illuminating its relationship to space, memory, and the suspension of time. “Lacinia”, Pilia’s forth solo venture with Die Schachtel, encounters the composer reentering his longstanding practice of collaboration with various ensemble forms, including the Bologna based Ensemble Concordanze, for the albums central piece, “Lacinia Off Axis”, spinning stunning string confirmations by Pietro David Carami and Elena Maury on violin, Alessandro Savio on viola, and Mattia Cipolli on cello.

A new, important cycle of compositions by Pilia, “Lacinia” (meaning "lace" in Latin) builds upon the exploration of the metaphysical, spiritual, and divine dimensions through numbers, geometry, and the creation of tonal forms explored by 2022’s “Spiralis Aurea”, mirroring archetypal, immutable forms at the juncture of the abstract realm of mathematics and architectural structures in the physical world, expands the poetics and compositional ideas featured in its predecessor. Regraded by Pilia as both a series of individual compositions and a single work, “Lacinia” was conceived to “define a circular path (a sort of "rhizomatic lace") where the beginning and end touch, suggesting the concept of time not only as linear but also cyclical and ritualistic—an eternal return, a process of transformation where matter changes, its state changes, but without altering the invisible internal principle of mutation”, embarking upon a a series of “steps, degrees, and energetic quanta in a progression of archetypal whole numbers and transcendent creation.”

The resulting 16 tracks unfold as a series of complex sonic meditations. While deeply resonant with the minimalism of composers like Arvo Pärt, LaMonte Young, Pauline Oliveros, and Eliane Radigue, Pilia digs deep and moves far beyond the predictable tonal relationships and structures of that idiom, echoing the ancient liturgical and devotional music of composers like Gesualdo da Venosa, Monteverdi, and John Dowland, at a refined intersection of the acoustic and electroacoustic, drone, and chamber music.

Fascinatingly structured as a whole to include a number of motif returns, across which we encounter works like “Lacinia Off Axis” appearing in slightly different rendering, states, or evolutions three times, and compositions like “Eve” appearing twice in subtly different forms and arrangements - first for four oscillators, guitar and voice and then for string orchestra - as well “Maris Stella”, which similarly makes two appearances, first for horn trio, organ and percussion, and then for string orchestra, with “Lacinia” Pilia delves further into the world of chamber music than ever before, creating a deeply inward, mediative body of work the totality of which, guided by its rich string arrangements of arching, sorrowful tone, feels almost like a mass for some unproclaimed loss; simultaneously locked in the nuances of a moment, while managing to suspend time.

Perhaps most remarkable is Pilia's ability to create a remarkable sense of sonic cohesion while using such a varied number of ensembles and instrumentation. From the sprawling string arrangements delivered by Comunale di Bologna String Orchestra, under the direction of Paolo Mancini, and Ensemble Concordanze, and a flute trio (Cadux / Plectere) brilliantly played by Manuel Zurria, to pieces for sax, organ and percussion, violin duo and percussion, organ and percussion, Pilia manages to create a sense of singular, encompassing world that flows forward like a shifting stream.

Overwhelmingly beautiful, delicate, and bold, “Lacinia” is unquestionably a high-water mark in Stefano Pilia’s already remarkable, forward-looking career. Nothing short of a marvel of contemporary Minimalism that, through its shifting arrangements of harmonics, tonality, and texture draws flickering images of ancient forms of music into the present day, “Lacinia” is Issued by Die Schachtel in two special editions on double vinyl and a CD edition, featuring artwork by Bruno Stucchi/Dinamomilano. This is an immersive all-consuming listen that can’t be missed.

A hill repeating its own name.

Ben Beinn — mountain mountain — an imagined summit, recursive and unstable.

Poole’s new album Ben Beinn follows 2024’s In a River Shadow, and deepens his exploration of environment, voice, and abstraction. If the previous record moved with flowing water and submerged hymns, Ben Beinn climbs into elemental instability: passing storms, coded skies, and sodden ground.

Across ten tracks, Poole entangles the Celtic New Age sound world — traditional instrumentation (flute, low whistle, bagpipe, piano, strings) — with synthesis, environmental recordings, and abstracted voice. The sound palette is tactile — marked by microtonal harmony, swelling dissonance, and a breathy naïvety. Voices in Gaelic, Norwegian, and English surface and dissolve, stretched beyond recognition — more weather than word.

The album’s title refers to a tautological hill — Ben Beinn, or “mountain mountain” — a recursive site where motifs surface, fracture, and re-emerge. On 365 Days of Rain, rainfall data becomes a rhythmic lattice that slips from metrical order. 1000 opens the record in cinematic emergence: mountain icicles and frozen streams swell into strings and breathy melodic weight. Pulling from the connective folktales of hill and mountain trolls — “Dance for a thousand years,” Poole writes, “for jeg har sovet tidlig så lenge.”

Recorded in Scotland between 2024–2025, Ben Beinn draws from environmental recordings of frozen hill passes, storm drains, and peat bogs using contact mics and hydrophones. Rather than simply reflecting place, these recordings press against it — layering the sonic materiality of landscape with synthesis and song. An inflection point between fabrication — folk music as performed identity, a carrier of story — and its obfuscation through digital networks, where tradition is refracted into plural forms.

Musical reference points include the emotionally saturated textures of Inoyama Land, the folk-electronic hybrids of Eli Storbekken, the hyperrealist collage practices of Noah Creshevsky, and the disquieting sonic simulations of James Ferraro. While Ferraro captures the uncanny surfaces of networked life, Ben Beinn turns inward — toward a located listening, shaped by weather, memory, and terrain.

The second in a triptych that began with In a River Shadow, Ben Beinn continues Poole’s excavation of environmental and folk material through contemporary methods. If the first record submerged itself in flowing water and submerged hymns, this one is shaped by the slow pressures of land and sky — a music of erosion, recurrence, and elemental presence.

Furthering the passionate exploration of cinema that has guided her two previous LPs - 2017’s ‘Fassbinder Wunderkammer’ and 2020’s ‘I Should Have Been a Gardener’ - the Milanese guitarist/composer, Alessandra Novaga, returns to Die Schachtel with ‘The Artistic Image Is Always a Miracle’, two sides off shimmering, tense compositions – culminating as one of her most creatively ambitious and conceptually rich outings to date – freely inspired by the life and work of the Russian director Andrej Tarkovsky and the music of Johann Sebastian Bach.

Classically trained at the Musik Akademie in Basel, Switzerland, over the last decade Alessandra Novaga has emerged as one of the leading figures within northern Italy’s thriving new, experimental, and improvised music scene, rendering striking solo efforts, in addition to collaborations with Loren Connors, Stefano Pilia, Elliott Sharp, Nicola Ratti, Paula Matthusen, Sandro Mussida, Kid Millions, Travis Just, Francesco Gagliardi, and others. Remarkably ambitious and forward thinking, her approach to the guitar embarks upon a relentless deconstruction and rethinking of her instrument’s unique properties through distinct applications of structure, resonance, space, and tone, creating in a deeply personal and emotive music, seeking narrative and meaning within the abstractions of sound.

In 2017, with the LP, ‘Fassbinder Wunderkammer’, issued by Setola Di Maiale, Novaga embarked upon the exploration of her love of film. Having begun with Rainer Werner Fassbinder, this was followed in 2020 by Die Schachtel’s release of ‘I Should Have Been a Gardener’, a deeply intimate mediation on the life and work of Derek Jarman. Rather than focusing on a fixed point of inspiration or a single film to work from, these pieces achieve a form of abstract portraiture, distilling elements drawn from these filmmaker’s life and work into ambient networks of texture and tonality. ‘The Artistic Image Is Always a Miracle”’ freely inspired by the Russian director Andrej Tarkovsky and the music of Johann Sebastian Bach, finds Novaga radically expanding her sonic palette within this approach.

The seeds of ‘The Artistic Image Is Always a Miracle’ can be traced to a conversation that Novaga had with Alan Licht (contained in the highly regarded Common Tones: Selected interviews with artists and musicians 1995–2020, Blank Forms, 2021), relating to the connections between music and cinema, which led her to consider Andrej Tarkovsky’s use of Bach's music within a symbiotic framework: how the music illuminates the imagism of the films, and the film illuminates new dimensions of the music. Slowly developing over the subsequent years, the resulting album comprises six individual works, some of which draw directly upon pieces of Bach’s music that Tarkovsky used in his films – specifically 'Erbarme dich, Mein Gott', 'Das alte Jahr vergangen ist', and 'Ich ruf zu dir, Herr Jesu Christ' - while others draw upon the sensibilities and moods evoked in the imagination by the director’s films.

As a point of departure and illumination into the process and spirit that underscored the creation of the album, Novaga points toward a passage in Tarkovsky’s "Sculpting in Time”:

“Art is born and takes hold wherever there is a timeless and insatiable longing for the spiritual, for the ideal: that longing which draws people to art. Modern art has taken a wrong turn in abandoning the search for the meaning of existence in order to affirm the value of the individual for its own sake. What purports to be art begins to look like an eccentric occupation for suspect characters who maintain that any personalized action is of intrinsic value simply as a display of self-will. But in artistic creation the personality does not assert itself, it serves another, higher and communal idea.”

‘The Artistic Image Is Always a Miracle’ can be understood as a realisation of the collectivism of which Tarkovsky speaks, in the service of something far beyond the expression of self. Encountering Novaga moving into fairly uncharted waters, three of the album’s pieces incorporate the human voice we encounter the voices of others: that of the poet Arsenij Tarkovsky, the director’s father; a singer from Bach’s ‘Erbarme dich, Mein Gott’, capturing a broadcast in an underground parking lot, and Novaga’s own, rendering the melody from Bach’s “Ich ruf zu dir, Herr Jesu Christ”. Roughly alternating between solo excursions on guitar and bristling electroacoustic pieces, over the course of the album’s two sides Novaga weaves one of her most abstract and ambitious bodies of recordings to date, shifting between the complex tonal mediations generated by the six strings of her instrument, and phycological densities activated by the expanded pallet of sonority made possible by the tactics and approaches of musique concrète.

An immersive, deeply engaging meeting of beauty and melancholy within a labyrinth of voices and ideas, ‘The Artistic Image Is Always a Miracle’ transfigures the life and work of Andrej Tarkovski – one of the greatest auteurs in the history of cinema – into a singular, experimental statement of collective truth. Belonging to recent, ambitious stream of contemporary new music releases on Die Schachtel that’s already included Novaga’s ‘I Should Have Been a Gardener’, Stefano Pilia’s ‘Spiralis Aurea’, Jim O'Rourke & Giovanni Di Domenico’ ‘Immanent In Nervous Activity’, Claudio Rocchetti’s ‘Labirinto Verticale’, and Damāvand’s ‘As Long As You Come To My Garden’, among others, ‘The Artistic Image Is Always a Miracle’ is available on as a limited edition of 300 dark turquoise vinyl LPs released on June 21, 2024. The LP, designed by Bruno Stucchi / dinamomilano, comes with an 8-pages insert illuminated by Alessandra’s text as well as the lovely and intense photographs of Matilde Piazzi.

In syrupy slow pursuit of a strong 2023 debut, Yungwebster's somnolent sequel is bolstered by pitch-perfect production from Space Afrika and Nathan Melja, who vaporise the rapper's auto-tuned post-Future drawl with euphoric orchestral drones, brittle micro-trap beats and weightless pads.

Over a decade ago at this point, Future released 'Codeine Crazy', the decelerated finale of 'Monster', one of his best-loved mixtapes. The track neatly summarised themes the Atlanta rapper had been circling for years at that point, layering his slurred, lean-dizzy rhymes over producer TM88's rubbery, melancholy synths. "Take all my problems and drink out the bottle," he moaned robotically, using the track's minor key bounce to represent the crushing delirium that followed fame and its tasting menu of intoxicants. It's still Future's high water mark creatively, and its traces can be observed in a full spectrum of contemporary sounds, from 6LACK's downtrodden, self-aware R&B to Lil Uzi Vert's feverish trap. But it's Yungwebster who's taken the haze to its logical conclusion, reimagining the Magic City-sculpted bumps as hypnagogic Actavis- 'n Xanax-hued ambient music. You could argue it was bound to happen - the more you sip, the slower it gets - and plays as a cracked mirror to cloud rap's long-smoked hybrid of Southern psychedelia and post-OutKast eccentricity.

Webster's opiated POV is clearer than ever before on 'II'. Just peep the cracks in his voice on the Space Afrika-produced opener 'Skyfall' as he coughs and splutters over watery samples, booming subs and SA's patented collage of soundtrack-ready strings and sirens. Presented at regular speed and in chipmunked form, it sets the pace for an album that, like its predecessor, constantly fucks with the timeline, pitching the whole master into doubletime or slowing it down to a crawl to present a curved, inebriated narrative rather than a straight line. Even without the tempo switches, Webster singles out beats that accent his warbled rhymes that sound as if they'll fall apart at any moment. French DJ and producer Nathan Melja backs 'Disheveled' with Black Ark-styled oscillations and airlock'd echoes, filtering the bassline until it almost disappears entirely; with room to breathe, Webster's able to take the lead - you might not be able to pick out the words, not entirely at least, but you get the message.

In fact it's Webster's voice that's the revelation on 'II' - with a coherent mix from producer tnotsobad, the nuances and fluttering tonalities emerge more vividly than they have before. It makes the flip between the regular speed and fast on 'Txts Red on iMessage' a textural decision, the different pace shifting the warbled cadences so Webster's voice becomes far more important than the additional elements. And on the album's Space Afrika-produced eight-minute centerpiece 'Crochet / I Swear', Webster's mumbled bio-mechanical whines create a much-needed foil for the decelerated boom-clack and suspended save room ambience. We get to encounter a personality here, not just an aesthetic, so as the album moves into its twilit fourth side, the beatless, voice-led somniferousness of 'YA SA' and ululating 'Phone' come off like a descent into tranquillised sedation. Rap has rarely sounded so chimeric.

Demuir marks an inaugural release on Hot Creations with High. Alive. And Dirty., a
diverse four track EP made up of all original records.

The EP opens with Santa and The Elf. A penetrating bassline ratchets up and down, as horn
like synths whir occasionally in the background, alongside tassel-like hi-hats. Up next, the title
track High. Alive. And Dirty. provides stunning contrast. A happy, funk-fuelled number, the
track incorporates disco elements with “positive and soulful vibes”, before Rawness - Beat 3
features a “raw native structure”, bongo sounding drums and tropical vocals to from a well-
rounded, feel-good record. Eerbawdy Wants to Deeezsko rounds off the EP in fine form, with
more disco elements and chiming, emotional keys.

Canadian-based Demuir is a distinctive talent in the electronic music sphere. A prolific
producer, Demuir has already made a home on labels including I’m A House Gangster as well
as Cassy’s Kwench Records, whilst he is soon set to release on Loco Dice’s iconic Desolat
imprint.

END[GER] Die Band Wednesday aus Asheville, North Carolina errichtet im Laufe der zehn Songs von "Rat Saw God" einen Schrein voller aufregender Details: Halb lustige, halb tragische Botschaften aus den Südstaaten, die sich klanglich irgendwo zwischen dem wimmernden Skuzz von Neunzigerjahre-Shoegaze und klassischem Country-Twang entfalten - mit verzerrter Pedal Steel und Frontfrau Karly Hartzman, die mit ihrer Stimme, den Lärm durchschneidet. Ein Song von Wednesday ist wie ein Quilt. Eine Kurzgeschichtensammlung, eine verschwommene Erinnerung, ein Flickenteppich aus Porträts des amerikanischen Südens, der disparate Momente einfängt und als Ganzes doch irgendwie einen Sinn ergibt. Karly Hartzman, die Songschreiberin, Sängerin, Gitarristin und Leiterin der Band, ist eine Geschichtensammlerin als auch eine Geschichtenerzählerin: Eine aufmerksame Beobachterin von Menschen und witzigen Bemerkungen. "Rat Saw God", das neue und beste Album des Quintetts aus Asheville, ist ekphrastisch, aber ebenso autobiografisch und vor allem sehr einfühlsam. Es wurde in den Monaten unmittelbar nach der Fertigstellung von dem zweiten Album der Band, "Twin Plagues", geschrieben und innerhalb einer Woche im Drop Of Sun Studio in Asheville aufgenommen. Die Songs auf "Rat Saw God" erzählen keine Epen, sondern das Alltägliche. Sie sind lebensnah, erzählen vom wahren Leben, sie sind verschwommen und chaotisch und seltsam zugleich - was Hartzmans eigenem Ethos entspricht: "Everyone's story is worthy. Literally every life story is worth writing down, because people are so fascinating." A Wednesday song is a quilt. A short story collection, a half-memory, a patchwork of portraits of the American south, disparate moments that somehow make sense as a whole. Karly Hartzman, the songwriter/ vocalist/guitarist at the helm of the project, is a story collector as much as she is a storyteller: a scholar of people and one-liners. Rat Saw God, the Asheville quintet's new and best record, is ekphrastic but autobiographical and above all, deeply empathetic. Across the album's ten tracks Hartzman, guitarist MJ Lenderman, bassist Margo Shultz, drummer Alan Miller, and lap/pedal steel player Xandy Chelmis build a shrine to minutiae. Half-funny, half-tragic dispatches from North Carolina unfurling somewhere between the wailing skuzz of Nineties shoegaze and classic country twang, that distorted lap steel and Hartzman's voice slicing through the din. Rat Saw God is an album about riding a bike down a suburban stretch in Greensboro while listening to My Bloody Valentine for the first time on an iPod Nano, past a creek that runs through the neighborhood riddled with broken glass bottles and condoms, a front yard filled with broken and rusted car parts, a lonely and dilapidated house reclaimed by kudzu. Four Lokos and rodeo clowns and a kid who burns down a corn field. Roadside monuments, church marquees, poppers and vodka in a plastic water bottle, the shit you get away with at Jewish summer camp, strange sentimental family heirlooms at the thrift stores. The way the South hums alive all night in the summers and into fall, the sound of high school football games, the halo effect from the lights polluting the darkness. It's not really bright enough to see in front of you, but in that stretch of inky void - somehow - you see everything. The songs on Rat Saw God don't recount epics, just the everyday. They're true, they're real life, blurry and chaotic and strange - which is in-line with Hartzman's own ethos: "Everyone's story is worthy," she says, plainly. "Literally every life story is worth writing down, because people are so fascinating." But the thing about Rat Saw God - and about any Wednesday song, really - is you don't necessarily even need all the references to get it, the weirdly specific elation of a song that really hits. Yeah, it's all in the details - how fucked up you got or get, how you break a heart, how you fall in love, how you make yourself and others feel seen - but it's mostly the way those tiny moments add up into a song or album or a person.

Ramirez returns with THA PLAYA$ MANUAL II, the long-awaited sequel to his cult classic that helped solidify his place as one of underground rap’s most distinctive voices. Steeped in Southern-fried funk, Bay Area swagger, and Memphis-style menace, this new chapter finds Ramirez sharper, smoother, and more seasoned—delivering game like a streetwise sage with a gold grill grin.

Where the original Playa$ Manual was gritty and raw, THA PLAYA$ MANUAL II sounds like a player who's leveled up. The beats knock harder, the flows glide slicker, and the game is deeper. Ramirez weaves tales of betrayal, come-ups, late-night drives, and cold-hearted reality with the same charismatic cool that made him a standout in the $uicideboy$-adjacent G59 movement—but this time with a more refined, cinematic approach.

From trunk-rattling bangers to syrupy smooth cuts that soundtrack late-night escapades, THA PLAYA$ MANUAL II feels like a ride through Ramirez’s world with tinted windows up and the bass on max. It’s a record for the hustlers, the heartbreakers, the loners, and the legends in the making.

This is more than a sequel—it’s a statement: the playa’s still active, and the manual’s been updated.

“It’s not often you find yourself recording alone in a churchat 3am. I’m not religious, but I experienced somethingunique while playing through the night as the streetsaround me slept. It felt like the music was telling me whatto play and I was the passenger. Lumen grew out of avariety of compositional seeds - from composed songsthat remain true to the score, leaving little room forfreedom, to wide open improvisations recorded in themoment with nothing predetermined.
“It’s in the space between composition and improvisationwhere the magic happens - and where, if the musiciansare willing, the music can lead. I recorded day and nighton a Yamaha grand and an upright felted piano. It felt likesome sort of solo retreat: sitting in a building of faiththrough the night, delving ever deeper into the music.When I finally resurfaced, I felt profoundly that it was themusic that had led me, rather than the other way around. “As a composer, it’s simplicity that I’m searching for - howto say the most with the least. My previous albums wereabout filling the space, both texturally and dynamically. Butsolo performance is different. There’s unlimited freedom,and while that can be liberating, it also comes with addedresponsibility. Beyond the recording, the music takes on anew life. The piano, the room, the acoustic, the mood ofthe audience, even how much sleep I’ve had - all of itinforms how the music evolves. So, each performance iscompletely unique and unrepeatable.
“The recording of Lumen is just the beginning of itsjourney. Where and how it evolves from here is whatkeeps me searching.” - Bill Laurance

frozen reeds presents Mark Fell’s ‘Psychic Resynthesis’, an instrumental work performed by Explore Ensemble. This double LP is the label’s 8th release, arriving 13 years after its foundation.

Fell is a multidisciplinary artist, composer, and theorist based in Rotherham, UK. Renowned for his rigorous and conceptual approach to electronic music and sound art, his work explores the limits of structure, rhythm, and perception through a blend of computational systems, philosophical inquiry, and cultural critique.

Over the last decade, Fell’s practice has visibly shifted from a world of technical intricacy and myopic microdetail to one of collaboration and community. He has purposefully sought out diverse musical partners from a wide variety of traditions and disciplines and found equally diverse ways to work and create together – not to integrate their playing into a musical fusion, but rather to discover how such combinations of approaches and experience can stimulate unique and heretofore unheard results.

The music here emerges from a commission for contemporary chamber group Explore Ensemble, situating Fell’s work in a new context entirely. Having been a notable critic of classical music’s slavish adherence to traditional musical notation, “the score”, and its associated issues of control and hierarchy, one might expect a provocative or abrasive approach. Instead, a work of deep, tonal introspection unfolds - an elegant structure navigating the artist’s antipathy for linear or timeline-based musical approaches.

In Fell’s selection of timbres and events, the dynamic of composer and performer is interrupted by his twin adoption of system and flexibility. Mathematical determination and sonic fixation vie for dominance. The conflict governing combinations. Upsetting preconceived strategies.

Published in an edition of 777 double LPs, with included digital download, the result, ‘Psychic Resynthesis’, represents both a prismatic object for repeated examination and an abstruse table of musical correspondences.

Clement "Minkie" Moore's introduction to the music business came via his friend the great deejay U Roy. Back in the mid 1970s, Minkie and U Roy were both living in the Tower Hill area of Kingston, and U Roy was resident deejay on King Tubby's sound system. Minkie followed his friend and the sound, and occasionally U Roy let him hold the mic and deejay on Tubby's set. U Roy encouraged Minkie to take music more seriously, and with that encouragement, his first record "Wickedness" was made. Minkie got a cut of a rhythm from his friend the late Sydney Wilson, and voiced and mixed the rugged deejay tune "Wickedness" at King Tubby's studio. Sydney had earlier voiced this rhythm as a tune called "Why Do I Cry", but alongside "Wickedness", voiced it again with a new vocal called "Time Has Gone". In fact that tune and "Wickedness" share the same dub version. Clement continued to move in the music scene, next recording for Harry J's Jaywax label in 1979 with a tune called "Jah Is Real", as a duo named UNI-TONE along with his friend Denzil. Then in 1980, Clement revisited the great rhythm of "Wickedness", deciding to this time sing rather than deejay on the rhythm. He returned to Harry J studio, adding some choice new instrumental overdubs on the rhythm for this new cut, "Every Time I Do My Thing." In the decades since, astute roots collectors have honed in on this excellent rhythm and its several cuts, not least of all this pair of them by Mr. Clement "Minkie" Moore. It should be noted that in the manner of the day, other associates of Tubby's studio, Prophets Yabby You and Alric Forbes, also utilized this rhythm. Minkie's musical journey continued thru the 1980s, when he linked with American group Lambsbread, writing and performing on their second album which was recorded at Channel 1 in early 1987. In the 1990's Clement returned to self-production on his Allah label, in addition to cutting a 45 for Chinna Smith's High Times label. Nowadays Clement is still going strong, occasionally dropping new music like "Greedy", recorded at Bravo's Small World studio in downtown Kingston.

Clement "Minkie" Moore's introduction to the music business came via his friend the great deejay U Roy. Back in the mid 1970s, Minkie and U Roy were both living in the Tower Hill area of Kingston, and U Roy was resident deejay on King Tubby's sound system. Minkie followed his friend and the sound, and occasionally U Roy let him hold the mic and deejay on Tubby's set. U Roy encouraged Minkie to take music more seriously, and with that encouragement, his first record "Wickedness" was made. Minkie got a cut of a rhythm from his friend the late Sydney Wilson, and voiced and mixed the rugged deejay tune "Wickedness" at King Tubby's studio. Sydney had earlier voiced this rhythm as a tune called "Why Do I Cry", but alongside "Wickedness", voiced it again with a new vocal called "Time Has Gone". In fact that tune and "Wickedness" share the same dub version. Clement continued to move in the music scene, next recording for Harry J's Jaywax label in 1979 with a tune called "Jah Is Real", as a duo named UNI-TONE along with his friend Denzil. Then in 1980, Clement revisited the great rhythm of "Wickedness", deciding to this time sing rather than deejay on the rhythm. He returned to Harry J studio, adding some choice new instrumental overdubs on the rhythm for this new cut, "Every Time I Do My Thing." In the decades since, astute roots collectors have honed in on this excellent rhythm and its several cuts, not least of all this pair of them by Mr. Clement "Minkie" Moore. It should be noted that in the manner of the day, other associates of Tubby's studio, Prophets Yabby You and Alric Forbes, also utilized this rhythm. Minkie's musical journey continued thru the 1980s, when he linked with American group Lambsbread, writing and performing on their second album which was recorded at Channel 1 in early 1987. In the 1990's Clement returned to self-production on his Allah label, in addition to cutting a 45 for Chinna Smith's High Times label. Nowadays Clement is still going strong, occasionally dropping new music like "Greedy", recorded at Bravo's Small World studio in downtown Kingston.

New Source presents a new release from Juan Barraco under his alias Bunda. On this four-track EP, Bunda builds a personal and physical journey through his distinctive take on contemporary club music. Rather than following trends, Bunda draws from deeper sources: Latin American rhythmic traditions, post-industrial energy, and a classical music-rooted instinct for improvisation. The result is a release that feels expressive, tactile, and refreshingly off-grid.

From the heavy percussion and orchestral flashes of “Dvořák’s New World” to the stripped-back, jazzy minimalism of “New Source,” each track offers a distinct mood and approach. “Frente en Alto” brings a sense of urgency with its forward-driving rhythm and subtle tension, while “Game Over” closes the release with a raw, broken groove and distorted textures aimed straight at the sweatier corners of the club.

After their epic run with Channel One beginning in the mid 1970's, the Mighty Diamonds moved to producer Gussie Clarke for a string of albums starting in 1979 and running thru the 1980s. Among the many many great tunes from this run, the title track of their 1982 album "The Roots Is There" is simply one of the Diamond's best ever, and probably the most lyrically militant tune they ever made. This tune was never released as a single at the time, though new mixes were released as a single in 2017. But prior to the release of the album back in the day, this song was played on dubplate in a raw mix without the horns and added percussion that made it onto the final album mix. This raw vocal cut, followed by a raw instrumental version, changes the whole tone of the tune and brings it into another level of militancy right up there with the hardest stuff you can name, even in an era filled with so many extra tough stepping classics. Rather than remaster from an old dubplate, for this 45 we had producer Gussie Clarke and Music Works' close associate engineer Curtis Lynch go back to the original tapes, and with an original dubplate as reference, perfectly recreate the original raw cut, now released in pristine tape quality. Again we present this release on Music Works' original early 1980s dubplate label design, just like the original slate would have been adorned with. If you only know the sweet harmony side of the Diamonds, give this one a try to see their other tuff side, and listen to the lyrics, as relevant to the struggles of right now as they were in 1982.

Some things simply need time to brew. Loek Frey returns to Omen Wapta with his third release on the label: Nayan. The Amsterdam-based artist shares a long-standing friendship with label head Woody92 - keeping each other in motion as artistic peers since the label's inception. Over time, they've built a shared archive of material: sound sketches, tracks, and sonic touchpoints - an ever-evolving third space where their paths continue to meet as they move in parallel. Nayan emerges from this deep-rooted exchange: a distilled six-track release that fuses Frey's cerebral intricacy with the label's primordial uncanniness, reaffirming both as key voices in a yet-to-be-defined sonic realm. Diving into the release, Frey's signature remains intact - tactile, spatial, and rhythmically precise - but a subtle shift is at play. A paring down. A move toward something more reduced, maybe even more patient, yet no less absorbing. The A side leans inward: deep pressure, spectral traces, and an undercurrent of tension that never quite resolves. It's music for staying with, not escaping from. Flip to the B side and the palette widens - kicks land heavier, patterns loosen, textures fill the full frequency field. Still deeply rooted in the Wapta world, but with an assertiveness that whispers rather than shouts. Somewhere between absence and force. With Nayan, Loek Frey carries his Omen Wapta narrative into new territory - merging restless experimentation with dancefloor intention.

New compilation by Coco Maria on her own new founded imprint Club Coco. Comes with a 4 page folded insert.

There are albums that aren’t just listened to—they’re lived in. Club Coco – New Dimensions in Latin Music is one of them. This compilation, curated by Coco María, marks the first release on her own label and serves as a sonic portrait of what Latin music can become when it’s guided by intuition rather than labels. Eleven tracks open the windows and cross continents as effortlessly as changing a song. Here, Neapolitan synthesizers coexist with digital cumbias, voices whisper from within the groove, and rhythms invite movement—without urgency or pretense.

This selection isn’t defined by a genre but by a feeling: that of someone dancing with an open heart and keen ears. Each track is a postcard from a corner of the world, and also a love letter to rhythm and the emotions it stirs. From Bogotá to Naples, passing through Lima, Amsterdam, and New York, this compilation offers a journey where past and future brush against each other in the present moment. Club Coco doesn’t aim to define a sonic truth, but to invite listeners to discover new ways of hearing and feeling.

The party has already started. Come on in.

An elusive cult gem resurfaces through Glossy Mistakes. Originally released in 1986, L'Empire Des Sons is an otherworldly blend of synth pop, folk experimentation, and cinematic percussive layers-dreamlike, poetic, and wildly ahead of its time. L'Empire Des Sons was a fleeting yet powerful transmission from the fringes of the French underground-an album that blurred genre lines and evaded easy classification. Fusing experimental folk, lo-fi synth pop, and avant-garde textures, the record exists in its own sonic universe: poetic, layered, and fiercely independent. Formed in Saint-Étienne by percussionist and composer Dominique Lentin (Dagon, Fille Qui Mousse) and first-time vocalist Bipé Redon, L'Empire Des Sons emerged from the vibrant DIY spirit of the early 1980s. Their paths crossed during the interdisciplinary project L'Opéra Quotidien, and what followed was an intuitive, deeply collaborative process. "I would bring in lyrics and my voice," Bipé recalled, "and Dominique would shape the music around the atmosphere or rhythm suggested by the words." The result is a collection of songs that feel both meticulously constructed and completely free. Ethnic percussion, marimbas, xylophones, and synthesizers dance around Bipé's surreal, fragmented lyrics-little sonic postcards from imagined worlds. There's a theatricality here, but it never feels forced; rather, it's playful, intimate, and raw. Despite their inventiveness, L'Empire Des Sons remained a well-kept secret-circulating only in select avant-garde circles and eventually becoming an extremely sought-after collector's item. Now, thanks to Glossy Mistakes, this lost artifact returns to the world with new life: remastered from the original tapes, pressed on vinyl for the first time with extended liner notes. L'Empire Des Sons was never meant to be boxed in. Like the quote from Brian Eno that opens their liner notes-"For the world to be interesting, you have to be manipulating it all the time"-their music resists stasis. It evolves, shifts, surprises. And now, it finally gets the audience it always deserved.

Shhh. The command to be quiet is not just part of the title of one of the two sprawling compositions on this pioneering album. It's also an apt metaphor for the relaxed hypnotism and spaced-out atmosphere that define In a Silent Way, a record that pushes the boundaries of studio possibilities, artist-producer relationships, and rock-jazz chasms. Recognized as Miles Davis' first full-on fusion effort and part of his "electric" era, the 1969 landmark claims a Who's Who line-up that sends the music into an ethereal stratosphere.

Mastered from the original master tapes and pressed at RTI, this unsurpassed 180g LP edition lifts the veil on the cutting-edge assembly process that created the pair of lengthy suites. Helmed by three electric instruments, the bevelled compositions melt away all preconceived notions of "jazz," ˜rock," and "ambience," following a loose theory Davis dubbed "New Directions."

Few albums are so delicately textured. And on Mobile Fidelity's meticulous reissue, such sulcate elements pour over ink-black backgrounds on a canyon-wide soundstage. In particular, Tony Williams' inventive percussive touch – he causes the cymbals to shimmer as a pieces of silver tend to do when exposed to sunlight – is broadcast with lifelike three-dimensional qualities, the panoramic view extending to Davis' nocturnal trumpet, Wayne Shorter's ribbon-unfurling saxophone, Dave Holland's extrapolative bass, and the mosaic of keys.

If the record's only accomplishment is its introduction of guitarist John McLaughlin to the world, it alone would be enough. Yet In a Silent Way continues to bedazzle, puzzle, and inspire for myriad reasons – not the least of which is the seemingly telepathic communicative methods employed by the group's members. The line-up is great on paper, but, if it's even possible, the octet sounds even better in practice, with the instruments and tonalities conjoining in avant-garde communion like hyper-sensitive tentacles exploring the stippled landscapes of an undiscovered planet.

Diverting from expectation, tubular grooves twist, turn, and spin, sometimes piling atop of each other, always shying away from structure and melody. Ellipsoidal solos provide hesitant guidance, ranging from Chick Corea's Fender Rhodes phrases to Davis' decorative spirals. And as colour is the primary unit of currency on Davis' Sketches of Spain, laid-back episodes, geometric spaces, and quiet sensuality reign here, with the set's maverick reputation attained via musings on solitude rather than explosions of noise.


Controversial for the period, the heavily edited production of In a Silent Way blew open the once-locked doors on what producer's could attempt – and how artists could assist them. Knitted together as one would construct a cross-hatched quilt, songs contain grafts of repeat passages that provide unifying structure and experimental continuity. What a statement.

FONCEDALLE is a high-volume amplified trio, a warm wave of acid guitars fuelled by addictive bass and electronic beats. In late 2021, they released their Traboule EP and went on a tour that saw them perform 40 gigs between 2022 and 2023, half of which were in Europe. Their debut, self-titled album is set to be released in March 2024 on EXAG’ Records (BE). It's rawer, with tracks meticulously crafted and reworked live. While still exploring the realms of rock fused with machines, electronic trance, and melodic flights, the album also has its share of oppressive sections, unbridled chaos, and ambient, ethereal passages. FONCEDALLE serves as the missing link between the Manchester scene of the 80s, Gilla Band’s noise rock, Soulwax’s electronic rock, and the motoric turbines of Turing Machine. Preferring not to choose between being an open door or an impertinent product, the band chooses to concoct a recipe it envisions coming from the future rather than flipping through a book filled with references

GAISTER (Olivia Salvadori, Akihide Monna and Coby Sey) release their self-titled LP.

The record captures the embodiment of an encounter, one moment of the trio’s ongoing relationship as artists who communicate with each other through sound, voice and music.
After orbiting in the same circles at each other's shows around 2016 in London, Sey and Salvadori eventually crossed paths. In 2017 Sey joined Salvadori’s artistic collective Tutto Questo Sentire on a residency in Capalbio, the southernmost part of Tuscany, Italy, and started working together. Down the line the pair ended up joining with Akihide Monna (of Bo Ningen), performing together in 2019 at Camden Art Centre on Cork Street in London.

When the trio come together something new is created, brought out after laying dormant, like an Icelandic Geysir. The setting of this particular encounter amongst the trio is essential in the album’s sonic palette, process and emotion. The album was recorded in Iceland at
Greenhouse Studios, where the trio formalised a set of intuitions; how nature can provide a guideline in the choices of the instruments, their materials and related rhythms; reflections on the voice as a sculptural element, pure sound and words.

As Akihide has said of the experience during their short and intense recording period: “The sound spontaneously spun out as if we were pulling at each other's hearts and minds with a strange internal connection and sensation. Something pure was brought out.”

‘Gaister’ itself is a made up word, sprung from the German ‘Geist’ to mean ‘spirit’, and made into a sound of its own. A purity, spirit and essence is pulled from the trio, in spite of their varying mother tongues (Italian, Japanese and English), musical genres and identities to create something new. Olivia Salvadori’s operatic vocals run free, flowing and moving in
synergy with Monna’s rhythmic drumming. Sey sings freely with Salvadori, their voices braided together like a waterfall.

This flowing nature is reflected in the album itself, its timestamps and scores are marked by encounters rather than tracks themselves. This album can be considered as one constant piece and a journey of its own that is not foreclosed, in keeping with the band’s ethos of
constant conversation and collaboration.
As Sey speaks of the trio’s relationship: “Olivia, Monchan and I had performed live together once before, several years before this song and this album came to be… and yet, we fully trust each other’s intuition when performing and creating music together because of our unified belief in the ability of sound and music to communicate and connect.”
credits
releases November 1, 2024

Olivia Salvadori: voice
Akihide Monna: voice, drums, percussions
Coby Sey: voice, percussions, synths, wurlitzer

Recorded at Greenhouse Studios in Reykjavik, Iceland

Recorded and producer: Sandro Mussida
Sound engineer: Francesco Fabris
Studio assistant: Domiziano Maselli and Jakob Vasak

Mixing engineer: Kristian Craig Robinson at Total Refreshment Centre, London, UK

Still staged in the gritty atmosphere and philosophical weight of post-metal, sludge, and ambient noise, `idsungwüssä' sees Abraham march even further into dissonant and defiant territory. "The three albums are clearly linked together thematically" comments the band, "although, rather than an additional chapter, idsungwüssä is more like a parallel narrative to 'Débris de mondes perdus'. The latter was a jump in time after 'Look, Here Comes the Dark!, whereas 'idsungwüssä' is a jump in space, a journey away from earth. It should be the final piece of this little jolly ride." This album isn't just heavy, it is absolutely drenched in delicious filth, and yet by embracing even more the melodic interludes and melancholic passages, they create a devastating contrast to the wall of power coming from stacked guitars, catastrophic drums and raging, sharp vocals - delivered in Swiss-German dialect. From the patient grandeur of coming extinction, to the chaos and fevered urgency of the aftermath, in `idsungwüssä' Abraham move forward from prophetic lamentation to an elegiac visceral response. The emotional closure of this expression is felt, something final that will leave you speechless and with only one real option; listen to it again.

Still staged in the gritty atmosphere and philosophical weight of post-metal, sludge, and ambient noise, `idsungwüssä' sees Abraham march even further into dissonant and defiant territory. "The three albums are clearly linked together thematically" comments the band, "although, rather than an additional chapter, idsungwüssä is more like a parallel narrative to 'Débris de mondes perdus'. The latter was a jump in time after 'Look, Here Comes the Dark!, whereas 'idsungwüssä' is a jump in space, a journey away from earth. It should be the final piece of this little jolly ride." This album isn't just heavy, it is absolutely drenched in delicious filth, and yet by embracing even more the melodic interludes and melancholic passages, they create a devastating contrast to the wall of power coming from stacked guitars, catastrophic drums and raging, sharp vocals - delivered in Swiss-German dialect. From the patient grandeur of coming extinction, to the chaos and fevered urgency of the aftermath, in `idsungwüssä' Abraham move forward from prophetic lamentation to an elegiac visceral response. The emotional closure of this expression is felt, something final that will leave you speechless and with only one real option; listen to it again.

This is Music: The Singles, ist ein Kompilationsalbum der englischen Alternative-Rock-Band The Verve:
Richard Ashcroft (Gesang), Pete Salisbury (Schlagzeug), Simon Jones (Bass) und Nick McCabe (Gitarre).
Ursprünglich wurde das Album im November 2004 veröffentlicht und enthielt zwei Nicht-Singles, die aus
den Aufnahmen zu ihrem dritten Album Urban Hymns stammten: „This Could Be My Moment“ und
„Monte Carlo“.
2024 markiert den 20. Jahrestag der Veröffentlichung eines Albums, das nie auf Vinyl gepresst wurde,
und unter der Leitung der Gruppe ersetzt diese längst überfällige Neuauflage die Bonustracks durch die
kraftvollen Singles aus dem 2008er Reunion-Album Forth - ’Love is Noise’ und ’Rather Be’ - und enthält
auch die zweite Single ’She’s A Superstar’ (1992) in ihrer ursprünglichen, achteinhalbminütigen Form (statt
der fünfminütigen Bearbeitung). Somit repräsentiert das Album nun die komplette Geschichte der Singles
von The Verve.
Benannt nach der sechsten Single der Band, der ersten aus ihrem zweiten Album A Northern Soul, dokumentiert es auf brillante Weise die Kraft der relativ kurzen, aber epochemachenden Reise von The Verve
durch den musikalischen Kosmos.

Das Fantasy-Mittelalter-Metal-Phänomen CASTLE RAT präsentiert sein zweites Album! Castle Rat ist die NY Fantasy-Heavy-Metal-Band, die von der Rat Queen angeführt wird, welche die Mission verfolgt, ihr Refugium gegen diejenigen zu verteidigen, die es zerstören wollen. Ihr zur Seite stehen The Count, The Plague Doctor und The All-Seeing Druid. Gemeinsam stellen sie sich mit Heavy Magie dem unerbittlichen Zorn ihrer Erzfeindin - dem Tod in Form von The Rat Reaperess. Das zweite Album The Bestiary ist ein riffgeladenes Kompendium mystischer Kreaturen und vorwarnender Erzählungen aus einer vergessenen Welt. Es erzählt 13 allegorische Geschichten von mythischen Bestien und dem Zauberer, der sie beschwört, und verwebt kraftvolle Heavy-Hymnen und dunkle Verzückungen zu einer betörenden und unvergesslichen Heavy-Metal-Odyssee. Als ob Grace Slick mit Black Sabbath um ca. 1200 A.D. auf einem KISS-Konzert rumachen würde. Aufgenommen von Randall Dunn (Sunn O))), Wolves in the Throne Room, Björk) und gemischt von Jonathan Nuñez (Torche, Restless Spirit), bietet das Album fesselnde Tracks zwischen epischem Heavy-Gemetzel und doomy Hard Rock. The Rat Queen kommentiert das Album wie folgt: "The Bestiary' ist ein konzeptionelles Buch der Bestien, das von mystischen Kreaturen aus einer vergessenen Welt erzählt. Die letzten verbliebenen Seelen jeder dieser Kreaturen wurden von `The Wizard' gesammelt und aufbewahrt. Die Geschichten der einzelnen Bestien und des Zauberers selbst werden mit der Kraft traditioneller Heavy-Metal-Songs und Hard Rock-Magie verwoben." Hervorgegangen aus New Yorks abscheulichem, kreaturenverseuchtem Untergrund, schlugen die Fantasy-Heavy-Metaller zunächst mit ihren Live-Auftritten und später mit ihrem Debütalbum "Into The Realm" im Jahr 2024 große Wellen. Seit ihrer Gründung im Jahr 2019 haben CASTLE RAT ein lebendiges Labyrinth aus Erzählungen und Mythen geschaffen, welches sie nun rund um die Welt führt. The Bestiary auf CD (aufklappbares Digipak), MC (mit gefaltetem Inlay) und auf LP (farbiges Vinyl, inklusive ausklappbarem Lyrics-Insert)!

Can a self-portrait be a collage? Can empathy be autobiographical? What's the point of living if we're not trying to understand all the horror and humor that surrounds everything? These are a few of the questions lurking under the bleachers of Wednesday's new album Bleeds, an intoxicating collection of narrative-heavy Southern rock that_like many of the most arresting passages from the North Carolina band's highlight reel so far_thoughtfully explores the vivid link between curiosity and confession. Bleeds is not only the best Wednesday record_it's also the most Wednesday record, a patchwork-style triumph of literary allusions and outlaw grit, of place-based poetry and hair-raising noise. Karly Hartzman_founder, frontwoman, and primary lyricist_credits Wednesday's tightened grasp on their own identity to time spent collaborating on previous albums, plus a tour schedule that's been both rewarding and relentless. "Bleeds is the spiritual successor to Rat Saw God, and I think the quintessential `Wednesday Creek Rock' album," Hartzman said, articulating satisfaction with the ways her band has sharpened its trademark sound, how they've refined the formula that makes them one of the most interesting rock bands of their generation. "This is what Wednesday songs are supposed to sound like," she said. "We've devoted a lot of our lives to figuring this out_and I feel like we did." Just like Rat Saw God, one of the defining rock & roll records of the 2020s so far, Bleeds came together at Drop of Sun in Asheville and was produced by Alex Farrar, who's been recording the band since Twin Plagues. Hartzman again brought demos to the studio, where she and her bandmates _X andy Chelmis (lap steel, pedal steel), Alan Miller (drums), Ethan Baechtold (bass, piano), and Jake "M.J." Lenderman (guitar) _ worked as a team to bulk-up the compositions with the exact right amounts of country truth-telling, indie-pop hooks, and noisy sludge. More than ever, the precise proportions were steered by the lyricism_not only its tone or subject matter, but also the actual sound of the words, as well as Hartzman's masterfully subjective approach to detail selection. Every image or scene is filtered through Hartzman's agile, writerly brain. The particulars deemed essential all contain revelations about Hartzman's specific obsessions and vulnerabilities, about the fragmented way she processes the world. Maybe sometimes the best way to locate truth or pain or dignity within your own life story, Bleeds suggests, is by crawling into someone else's.

Can a self-portrait be a collage? Can empathy be autobiographical? What's the point of living if we're not trying to understand all the horror and humor that surrounds everything? These are a few of the questions lurking under the bleachers of Wednesday's new album Bleeds, an intoxicating collection of narrative-heavy Southern rock that_like many of the most arresting passages from the North Carolina band's highlight reel so far_thoughtfully explores the vivid link between curiosity and confession. Bleeds is not only the best Wednesday record_it's also the most Wednesday record, a patchwork-style triumph of literary allusions and outlaw grit, of place-based poetry and hair-raising noise. Karly Hartzman_founder, frontwoman, and primary lyricist_credits Wednesday's tightened grasp on their own identity to time spent collaborating on previous albums, plus a tour schedule that's been both rewarding and relentless. "Bleeds is the spiritual successor to Rat Saw God, and I think the quintessential `Wednesday Creek Rock' album," Hartzman said, articulating satisfaction with the ways her band has sharpened its trademark sound, how they've refined the formula that makes them one of the most interesting rock bands of their generation. "This is what Wednesday songs are supposed to sound like," she said. "We've devoted a lot of our lives to figuring this out_and I feel like we did." Just like Rat Saw God, one of the defining rock & roll records of the 2020s so far, Bleeds came together at Drop of Sun in Asheville and was produced by Alex Farrar, who's been recording the band since Twin Plagues. Hartzman again brought demos to the studio, where she and her bandmates _X andy Chelmis (lap steel, pedal steel), Alan Miller (drums), Ethan Baechtold (bass, piano), and Jake "M.J." Lenderman (guitar) _ worked as a team to bulk-up the compositions with the exact right amounts of country truth-telling, indie-pop hooks, and noisy sludge. More than ever, the precise proportions were steered by the lyricism_not only its tone or subject matter, but also the actual sound of the words, as well as Hartzman's masterfully subjective approach to detail selection. Every image or scene is filtered through Hartzman's agile, writerly brain. The particulars deemed essential all contain revelations about Hartzman's specific obsessions and vulnerabilities, about the fragmented way she processes the world. Maybe sometimes the best way to locate truth or pain or dignity within your own life story, Bleeds suggests, is by crawling into someone else's.

If there is one person, who has been causing a stir on the international club circuit recently, it is Barcelona's John Talabot. Already his debut “My Old School“ (which is meant literally by the way) on Permanent Vacation in 2009 and shortly after that the single “ Sunshine”, which he put out on his own Hivern Disc imprint, made him one of the most promising musicians of the Spanish electronic scene. And those two releases also already set the mark for John Talabot’s unparalleled music: raw, loopy, heavy on the kick drum, sample based, moderate on the tempo, distorted on the drums and light years away from the clean and ever revolving house sound of today. This unique style which also blends influences from afro beat, Detroit techno, Chicago house and cosmic disco, but also northern soul or the energy of Flamenco, immediately turned some heads around. James Murphy, Âme and Aeroplane started including Talabot music in their sets like it was the most natural thing. However - and this is quite rare - he not only gained legions of fans in the house and disco community, but also amongst the leftfield pop and indie rock followers. NME and Resident Advisor both had “Breakthrough“ features on John Talabot and he can be proud of a “Best New Music“ dubbing on
Pitchfork. (Being rather elusive on showing his face in magazines or the web it also came to some funny rumors that John Talabot was the alter ego of a well-known techno producer from Detroit).
At the same time he drew the attention of like-minded artists like James Holden and Luke Abott from Border Community, Blondes or Delorean, which lead to a bunch of fertile collaborations: Luke Abbott and Blondes remixed Talabot’s “Sunshine“ single , John Talabot remixed a track by Delorean and vice versa Delorean’s Ekhi contributed vocals to the track “Journeys “ on John’s album). Another example is the Young Turks Label (home of Jamie XX, Holy Fuck, El Guincho or SBTRKT ) on which he released the “Families“ EP in 2010. It was praised beyond limits. Pitchfork for
instance hailed: “… where pop and house influences sweetly buffer up against one another to provide an unyielding sense of elation“ and even brought Talabot a comparison with artists like Four Tet or Caribou.
While staying true to his sound, John Talabot has nevertheless shown a constant evolution as a producer since his first release. He has traced a solid musical path that has turned him into one of the big references of European House and has made him also a highly in demand Remixer (for the likes of The XX, Francesco Tristano’s “Aufgang” project, Shit Robot on DFA, Thaiti 80, Joakim or Teengirl Fantasy to name just a few ).
A progression that now crystallizes in “ƒin”, his first full-length album for Permanent Vacation. A record, in which the Barcelona mastermind sets aside the danceable immediacy to expand his stylistic palette more than ever. For that purpose, Talabot melts all the elements that have constructed his distinctive sound until now and makes them emerge from a new perspective, in which the construction of complex song structures, intricate rhythms and superpositions of ever-evolving melodies and atmospheres pick up the baton of the “a kick-drum and a sampler” philosophy of his initial productions. The result brings us 11 tracks (we should call them songs really!) dominated by dark ambiances, gaseous textures and bittersweet moods that, above all, reveal a kind of vivacity that’s really hard to find in contemporary electronics. “Fin” is far from being a track collection. From the majestic opener “Depak Ine“ to it’s solemn ending with
“So Will Be Now“ , one of the two tracks that features Talabot’s soul and label mate Pional, each song traces an overall dialogue with the rest, culminating a highly emotional journey through Talabot’s always compelling and unique musical vision.

After a ten-year absence that left a palpable void in the hearts of millennial emo kids, MOTION CITY SOUNDTRACK are finally back-and yes, it"s everything we hoped for. The Same Old Wasted Wonderful World feels like coming home: a dizzying, emotionally articulate blast of guitar-laced pop-punk that reminds us why this band meant so much in the first place. It"s a sonic time machine, sure, but it never gets stuck in the past. Instead, it builds on it-older, a little bruised, but somehow more alive. Justin Pierre"s voice still wobbles gloriously between a scream and a sigh, only now it carries the weight of experience, not just anxiety. Rather than reinventing themselves, MOTION CITY SOUNDTRACK double down on what they"ve always done best: big hooks, bigger feelings, and that perfect tightrope walk between chaos and control. Tracks like "Particle Physics" (with Patrick Stump of Fallout Boy) and "Your Days Are Numbered" (featuring Mat Kerekes of Citizen) channel the kind of clarity that only comes after surviving your own worst years. In a world drowning in lazy nostalgia, The Same Old Wasted Wonderful World is a rare and welcome return that feels less like a reunion and more like a long-overdue continuation.

After a ten-year absence that left a palpable void in the hearts of millennial emo kids, MOTION CITY SOUNDTRACK are finally back-and yes, it"s everything we hoped for. The Same Old Wasted Wonderful World feels like coming home: a dizzying, emotionally articulate blast of guitar-laced pop-punk that reminds us why this band meant so much in the first place. It"s a sonic time machine, sure, but it never gets stuck in the past. Instead, it builds on it-older, a little bruised, but somehow more alive. Justin Pierre"s voice still wobbles gloriously between a scream and a sigh, only now it carries the weight of experience, not just anxiety. Rather than reinventing themselves, MOTION CITY SOUNDTRACK double down on what they"ve always done best: big hooks, bigger feelings, and that perfect tightrope walk between chaos and control. Tracks like "Particle Physics" (with Patrick Stump of Fallout Boy) and "Your Days Are Numbered" (featuring Mat Kerekes of Citizen) channel the kind of clarity that only comes after surviving your own worst years. In a world drowning in lazy nostalgia, The Same Old Wasted Wonderful World is a rare and welcome return that feels less like a reunion and more like a long-overdue continuation.

Exklusive Vinyl-Sammlung mit Demos, Skizzen und Outtakes vom neuen Album "Season Of The Peach" von Black Lips. Mit einem Feature von King Khan sowie alternativen Versionen und Mixen und exklusiven Songs aus den Sessions. Gleichzeitig mit ihrem richtigem neuen Album "Season Of The Peach" wird die Outtakes-Sammlung "Bebop Armageddon (Detours & Offcuts From Season Of The Peach)" veröffentlicht, ein wildes, limitiertes Kompendium: Demos, alternativen Versionen und klingende Missgeschicke der jüngsten Sessions zum neuen Album, für echte Fans auf Vinyl gebannt. Wenn "Season Of The Peach" eine farbenfrohe Halluzination ist - teils Garagenrock-Fantasie, teils verbranntes Americana-Land - dann ist "Bebop Armageddon" sein zerfetzter, magnetischer Schatten. Diese 14 Tracks nehmen einen orientierungslosen Weg durch dasselbe Terrain und bieten mutierte Skizzen, wunderschöne Trümmer und freakige Umwege, die vor rohem Charme und chaotischer Erfindungsgabe nur so strotzen. Es gibt alternative Mixe (,Kassandra"), Demoversionen (,Judas Pig", ,Zulu Saints") und schwindelerregende Neuinterpretationen wie ,The Illusion Pt. 1 (dream mix)". Das Exklusive ,Colt 44" (mit King Khan) rattert wie ein Güterzug, der zu entgleisen droht, während ,Satan" und ,Back To Kiev" gleichermaßen versengten Psych, Saloon-Gospel und gespenstische Front-Porch-Melodien bieten. Alle Tracks wurden auf Analogband im Sound At Manor Studio von Oakley Munson in den Catskills aufgenommen. Bebop Armageddon fängt den Geist der Sessions in roher, ungekünstelter Form ein. Keine sauberen Linien. Keine Wiederholungen. Kein Glanz. Das ist das Chaos unter der polierten Oberfläche des Mutteralbums - die Black Lips, die sich nicht benehmen wollten. Limitiertes klassisch schwarzes Vinyl (1000 Stück weltweit) mit DLC dabei.

"Impressed are thrilled to be presenting The Bamboos Best, a compilation in celebration of twenty five year anniversary of the formation of The Bamboos.

The definitive collection of one of Australia’s most celebrated, influential and enduring Soul & Funk acts - tracing the history of the band that laid the foundation for the now internationally recognised Australian Soul scene.

Twenty songs taken from across their extensive catalogue, including many that have been unavailable on vinyl since their original release, and one track appearing in the format for the very first time.

From their raw Deep Funk origins through their own genre defying musical path, The Bamboos have reinvigorated a classic sound whilst seamlessly incorporating contemporary influences to create something altogether brand new.

Managing to appeal to both Soul/Funk purists as well as casual music fans along the way, the band have always focused on what’s important: songwriting, groove and powerful vocals.

With »Roto«, Derek Piotr revisits the aqueous terrain first explored in his 2016 album »Drono«, where the paradox of water’s stillness and perpetual motion was refracted into looping voices and glitching textures. Conceived as a »spiritual successor« and recorded in 2019, the album has lain dormant for six years before surfacing on Discreet Archive. That stretch of silence seems to have deepened its charge – the sound feels unearthed rather than made, like a whirlpool biding its time in obscurity until now.

Unlike »Drono«’s mosaic of shorter pieces, »Roto« unfurls as two expansive half-hour tracks, allowing Piotr to probe repetition with greater intensity. Vowels accumulate until they shimmer with alien sentience, drones grow dense and psychoacoustic, and the smallest digital artifacts flicker like neural sparks. The result is a work that denies familiarity; recurrence here only breeds strangeness, unspooling into a procession of hidden pulses and altered voices that resist prediction, drawing the listener deeper into a submerged, otherworldly space.

Derek Piotr is a folklorist, researcher and performer whose work focuses primarily on the human voice. His work covers practices including fieldwork, vocal performance, preservation and autoethnography; and is primarily concerned with tenderness, fragility, beauty and brutality. He has collaborated with artists including Scott Solter, Nathan Salsburg and Thomas Brinkmann across various disciplines.

He is lead archivist and creative director of the Fieldwork Archive.

If you're a serious music fan but not a native Kiwi, your first awareness of New Zealand's fab music scene may have come from the debut of The Chills' mesmerising Kaleidoscope World collection of early singles. Within a few years, a great number of NZ acts saw music released by various UK and US labels . . . generally to great praise and enthusiasm. That this occurred without any of these acts having to move abroad to further their chances was nearly as delightful a feat as the music itself. The exception to this was Dead Famous People, radical in a snap decision after a five-song 12" for Flying Nun, Lost Persons Area, to change hemispheres and make a go for it in London. It started well. Three London recordings were added to three from their Flying Nun EP and put out by Billy Bragg's Utility label - about as perfect a mini-album as there's ever been. Response was positive, more songs recorded, the group did a John Peel session and played out often, but the vaguely impoverished group began to fall apart. Singer and primary writer Dons Savage - determined to make it - had a near-miss at becoming Saint Etienne's singer on an early take of their 'Kiss And Make Up' cover, and there was a fine performance from her on The Chills' 'Heavenly Pop Hit' . . . but dismay had set in. Upon learning of her mum's passing back home, Dons returned to NZ and was quiet for decades. Most of their London recordings were later released later in minuscule quantities by very small labels, but these saw scant press or attention and enjoyed next-to-no sales. Their moment had passed, and the band has suffered the strange fate of being the least-known of the truly brilliant acts associated with Flying Nun. Listening to these `lost' songs, it seems unfathomable that they could have fallen by the wayside. No NZ songwriter comes as close to equalling Martin Phillipps' pop brilliance as Dons. Her superbly sweet vocals, delicious harmonies and sophisticated arrangements aside, the songs dealt perceptively with universal follies of youth and yearning in tandem with a then-unusual twist of lyrics dealing matter-of-factly with her sexuality at a time when `women's music' was seen as exclusionary (segregated into its own bin in shops, if it existed there at all), and the riot grrrl movement was years away, later breaking through due to its radical stance. Dons is a pioneer in myriad ways, the irony of her transcendent brilliance failing to propel a greater career may rest in the fact that she leapt to the head of the class too quickly for people to grasp it; a fate that's befallen so many musical geniuses acknowledged today but less in their time - something rather tragically acknowledged in old pal Martin Phillipps' song with The Chills, 'A Song For Randy Newman, Etc.' None of these thirteen songs fails to deliver something both immediate and unique. And we're proud to debut 'Vampirella"', a magical fantasy song of longing and intrigue - surely one of the most perfect tunes to ever sit around unreleased for decades! Dons is again busy conjuring new songs; in the meantime we're delighted to unveil these obscure gems from the past.

*Long overdue reissue of the first album by The Hanging Stars to coincide with their tour support slot with Edwyn Collins – initial 300 copies come with 12 x 12 print*

“In late-Sixties California, the Byrds and Flying Burrito Brothers combined traditional country music with hippy rock to great success. The influence lingered and whatever cultural relevance it has this is a delightful, transporting listen” – The Times 4/5

London-based psych-folk outfit The Hanging Stars re-release their much-loved debut album Over the Silvery Lake on Crimson Crow. Blending folk pastoralism with swampy 60s Americana, they sound like the missing link between the California desert sun and the grey skies of London Town. The album was recorded between LA, Nashville and Walthamstow, with each of these vastly different places leaving an indelible mark on the songs.

Now signed to the Loose Records label and fronted by London-based songwriter, singer and guitarist Richard Olson (The See See, Eighteenth Day of May), The Hanging Stars are essentially a loose collective of people who weave together a blissed-out psychedelic tapestry. The rest of the core band is made up of Sam Ferman on bass and Paulie Cobra on drums, Horse on pedal steel and Patrick Ralla on banjo, guitar. They jam rather than write and hang out rather than rehearse, harnessing a kind of tipsy euphoria resplendent with luscious arrangements and glorious vocal harmonies.

During 2015, prior to this album’s original release the band released two critically acclaimed singles via The Great Pop Supplement (both of which also appear on the album). “Golden Vanity” was premiered by The Line of Best Fit who said; “you'd be forgiven for thinking you'd just unearthed a rare deep cut from the late 60s/early 70s boom of psychedelia infused Americana” and “The House on The Hill” was described by The Guardian as; "a hazy, desert-dream of a song, nicely sharpened with steely-eyed guitars, Mersey-laced harmonies and just a whiff of the Gun Club”.

There are a number of allusions to nature and the weather on the album, borne in part out of the contrasting surroundings in which it was produced. The band’s fascination with Americana led them to record some of the material Stateside, laying down some of the parts at Battle Tapes Studios in Nashville (Lambchop, Paperhead), as well as at Vision Quest Studios in Los Angeles with Rob Campanella. His work with The Quarter After, The Brian Jonestown Massacre, Beachwood Sparks The Tyde, and GospelbeacH was a perfect match to capture their sound and they even had San Franciscan legend Chrystof Certik step in on lead guitar for a couple of tracks.

Following the LA recordings, a trip to the Californian desert provided the core notion of what they wanted to produce - a shard of light that they clung on to whilst recording the rest of the album in the significantly more rain-soaked atmosphere of Walthamstow, London, under the watchful eye of Brian O'Shaughnessy at Bark Studios (The Clientele, Comet Gain). As the band explained at the time: “Ultimately we hope you can hear both the sand and the rain in this record.”

The Hanging Stars place themselves firmly as part of a long folk tradition encompassing European and North American influences – as a continuation rather than a pastiche of these styles. This is the sound of a band really coming in to their own, fully formed and in no doubt of their vision. With Over the Silvery Lake they succeeded in producing a record, which has the country, blues and folk traditions at its heart.

Teresa Rotschopf, a musician and composer from Vienna, presents her second solo album, »Currents and Orders« – a radical, delicate, yet grandiose sonic journey between experimental pop, new music, and improvised composition. The album will be presented live on August 27 as part of the »Pop-Kultur« festival (silent green, Berlin) and at the »ORF RadioKulturhaus« (Vienna) on 12 September.

»Currents and Orders« was recorded in an unusual location: a stalactite cave in Styria, Austria. Together with a small group of musicians (Maria Gstättner: bassoon, contraforte; Alex Kranabetter: tuba, trumpet, French horn; Patrick Dunst: saxophone, duduk; Florian Klinger: marimba, vibraphone, glockenspiel, cymbals, gong, stalactite; Patrick Pulsinger: gong, stalactite; Ulrich Schleicher: gong) and in co-production with Patrick Pulsinger, Rotschopf recorded the album in June 2023 – deep underground, far from daylight, but all the closer to archaic sounds and resonances.

The cave becomes not only an acoustic stage, but also a symbolic space of memory, retreat, and transformation. The album comprises four pieces – including two large-scale tracks:
- the opening, mantra-like title track »Currents and Orders« (over 10 minutes)
- the final, free-jazz, expressive »I Open My Gates (for You)« (over 20 minutes)

With a minimalist structure, choral voices, vibraphone, percussion, and wind instruments, fragile yet powerful soundscapes emerge, whose spatial depth is also palpable through the cave reverberation.

Rotschopf first developed the desire to record in a cave in the summer of 2022. What began as a visual and sonic image became a concrete project – supported by the Austrian Cave Association. In June 2023, Rotschopf and her musicians spent three days in a cave in the Styrian forest. Almost a kilometer of cable was laid, and equipment and instruments were carried deep underground. Rotschopf describes the recording situation as a kind of return to herself: »I descended into this cave, as if I could descend into myself, into my own womb ... What we did in the cave could just as easily be called ›recording music,‹ but it could also be called ›remembering‹ – remembering the earth, the cave, and humanity.«

»Currents and Orders« is an album like a ritual: haunting, atmospheric, bold in its form, and deeply rooted in both physical and emotional space. Music that takes its time, uses space, and pushes boundaries.

The pre-release single »O Please My Soul (Rest On My Back)« (release: July 17, 2025) is accompanied by a striking music video shot by Antoinette Zwirchmayr on 16mm film: Teresa Rotschopf holds a real owl in her hand – an image that is as magical as it is enigmatic.

Label owner Martin Hossbach read a review of Rotschopf's first solo album, »Messiah,« in 2018 and contacted the artist. Joint releases followed, including a drone album on the sub-label Martin Hossbach Score and a Pet Shop Boys cover version on Martin Hossbach Cover.

Teresa Rotschopf, Musikerin und Komponistin aus Wien, präsentiert mit »Currents and Orders« ihr zweites Soloalbum – eine radikale, zarte und zugleich groß angelegte Klangreise zwischen experimentellem Pop, Neuer Musik und improvisierter Komposition. Das Album wird am 27.8. im Rahmen des Festivals »Pop-Kultur« (silent green, Berlin) und am 12.9. im »ORF RadioKulturhaus« (Wien) live vorgestellt.

»Currents and Orders« entstand an einem ungewöhnlichen Ort: in einer Tropfsteinhöhle in der Steiermark, Österreich. Gemeinsam mit einer kleinen Gruppe von Musiker:innen (Maria Gstättner: Fagott, Kontraforte; Alex Kranabetter: Tuba, Trompete, Waldhorn; Patrick Dunst: Saxophon, Duduk; Florian Klinger: Marimbaphon, Vibraphon, Glockenspiel, Becken, Gong, Stalakmit; Patrick Pulsinger: Gong, Stalakmit; Ulrich Schleicher: Gong) und in Ko-Produktion mit Patrick Pulsinger nahm Rotschopf das Album im Juni 2023 auf – tief unter der Erde, fern von Tageslicht, dafür umso näher an archaischen Klängen und Resonanzen.

Die Höhle wird nicht nur zur akustischen Bühne, sondern auch zum symbolischen Raum der Erinnerung, des Rückzugs, der Transformation. So umfasst das Album vier Stücke – darunter zwei großformatige Tracks: - das eröffnende mantraartige Titelstück »Currents and Orders« (über 10 Minuten) - das finale, free-jazzig-expressive »I Open My Gates (For You)« (über 20 Minuten)

Mit minimalistischer Struktur, Chorstimmen, Vibraphon, Schlag- und Blasinstrumenten entstehen fragile und zugleich mächtige Klangwelten, deren räumliche Tiefe auch durch den Höhlenhall spürbar wird.

Der Wunsch, in einer Höhle aufzunehmen, kam Rotschopf im Sommer 2022. Was als visuelles und klangliches Bild begann, wurde zu einem konkreten Vorhaben – unterstützt vom Österreichischen Höhlenverein. Im Juni 2023 begab sich Rotschopf mit ihren Musiker:innen drei Tage lang in eine Höhle im steirischen Wald. Fast ein Kilometer Kabel wurde verlegt, Equipment und Instrumente tief unter die Erde getragen. Rotschopf beschreibt die Aufnahmesituation als eine Art Rückkehr in sich selbst: »Ich stieg in diese Höhle hinab, so als ob ich in mich selbst hinabsteigen könnte, in meinen eigenen Schoß [...] Was wir in der Höhle taten, könnte man ›Musik aufnehmen‹ nennen, genauso gut aber auch ›Erinnern‹ – Erinnern von Erde, Höhle und Menschsein.«

Currents and Orders ist ein Album wie ein Ritual: eindringlich, atmosphärisch, mutig in der Form und tief verwurzelt im physischen wie emotionalen Raum. Musik, die sich Zeit nimmt, Raum nutzt und Grenzen sprengt.

Die Vorab-Single »O Please My Soul (Rest On My Back)« (VÖ: 17.7.205) wird begleitet von einem eindrücklichen Musikvideo, das Antoinette Zwirchmayr auf 16mm-Film drehte: Teresa Rotschopf hält darin eine echte Eule auf ihrer Hand – ein Bild, das genauso magisch wie rätselhaft wirkt.

Labelbetreiber Martin Hossbach las im Jahr 2018 eine Rezension des ersten Rotschopf-Soloalbums »Messiah« und nahm Kontakt zu der Künstlerin auf. Es folgten gemeinsame Veröffentlichungen – etwa ein Drone-Album auf dem Sub-Label Martin Hossbach Score und eine Pet-Shop-Boys-Coverversion auf Martin Hossbach Cover.

Black Truffle is thrilled to present the first ever solo Donso n’goni recording from octogenarian Swedish multi-instrumentalist Christer Bothén. Active in the Swedish jazz and improvisation scene since the 1970s, often heard on bass clarinet, Bothén travelled to Mali in 1971, eventually making his way to the Wassoulou region in the country’s south where he encountered the Donso n’goni, the sacred harp of the hunter caste of Wassoulou society. Though playing the instrument has traditionally been restricted to those who belong to the hunters’ brotherhood, Bothén found an enthusiastic teacher in Brouema Dobia, who, after many months of intensive one-on-one lessons, gave Bothén his blessing to play the instrument both traditionally and in his own style. Returning to Sweden, he would go on to pass on what he had learned to Don Cherry and play the Donso n’goni in a wide variety of inventive settings, including the driving Afro-jazz-fusion of his Trancedance (reissued as BT118).

The seven pieces of Christer Bothén Donso n’goni offer up a stunning showcase of Bothén’s work on this remarkable instrument, heard entirely unaccompanied, except for the final piece where he is joined on a second Donso n’goni by his student and collaborator, the virtuoso bassist Kansan/Torbjorn Zetterberg, and Marianne N’Lemvo Linden on the metal Karanjang scraper. Recorded in three sessions in Stockholm between 2019 and 2023 in richly detailed high fidelity, the instrument’s buzzing, sonorous bass strings make an immediate, overwhelming sonic impression. Hyper-focused on hypnotically repeating pentatonic patterns, the seven pieces are at once relentlessly single-minded and endlessly rich in subtle variations. The concentrated listening environment turns small details, such as the deployment of the instrument’s segesege rattle on two of the pieces, into major events. Six of the seven pieces are traditional, with Bothén contributing the remaining ‘La Baraka’, but the line between tradition and the individual talent is imaginary here: as Bothén explained in a recent interview with The Wire’s Clive Bell, ‘I play traditional and untraditional, and I play the music forward and backward’. While the traditional Wassoulou pieces provide the rhythmic and harmonic elements, Bothén’s individuality as a performer is alive in every moment, felt acutely in boundless variations of attack, improvisational flourishes, and unexpected accelerations and decelerations. Captured entirely live and bristling with spontaneity, this music is undeniably the product of almost half a decade of Bothén’s devotion to the Donso n’goni and its traditional music.

Accompanied by detailed new liner notes by Bothén and stunning colour photos from his time in Mali, Christer Bothén Donso n’goni is a stunning document of a remarkable instrument, played with an almost spiritual intensity by one of contemporary music’s great explorers.

Artist and multi-instrumentalist Flaer embraces the search for quiet miracles on first full-length LP Translations.

In 2023, Realf Heygate - who makes music as Flaer - released his debut mini-album Preludes, composed on his mother’s piano and his childhood cello.Returning to ODDA for his debut full-length album, Heygate is now looking in another direction. A record that embraces transition and movement, Translations is in many ways more internal, less rooted to a single place and reflective of the process of laying new foundations in Cornwall.

Like Preludes, Translations is coloured with found sounds and field recordings, from the starlings which can be heard singing through the open window of his studio, to the brittle recordings of his mother, who was a linguist, learning Spanish on a set of language tapes. In both cases, Heygate embraced the translations and memories inherent to the sounds.

“When I digitised my mother’s tapes, they warped and stuttered in a very similar way to the starling’s song,” he explains. “They had this uncanny rhythm and pulse that I couldn’t quite decode, but was saying something." These decayed transmissions hint at loss, resisting clarity in favour of the ineffable.

Translations is also a record of ambiguities and in-betweens, suggested by the double meaning of the album’s opening track ‘Entre’. At once intricate and expansive, threaded with birdsong and acoustic guitar motifs, this and ‘Starling Descends’ (a reference to Vaughan Williams’ ‘The Lark Ascending’) act as a bridge away from the pastoral themes of Preludes towards a more assertive sound. At times intimate in its textured instrumentation and at others more overtly grand in orchestration, reflecting awider palette of influences.

“Flaer began in many ways when I picked up my mother’s instruments, seeking a form of reconnection. Where words evaded me, they became the tools through which I found a language for grief – and above all, for love.”

Recorded between 2023 and 2025 – what Heygate calls “A gradual process of sowing and harvesting ideas rather than a single intense creative period” - each track follows a rhythm similar to the small maquettes and sculptures he has been working on in his visual practice, whereby structures and melodies form intuitively in moments that are as rare as they are fleeting.

“It's that feeling of searching that I really enjoy,” Heygate continues. “I never know what the destination of the composition is going to be, and I never really find what it is."

Translations is released on limited edition off-white vinyl LP (500 copies worldwide) with one of five signed and numbered handmade risograph prints. It's also available as standard black vinyl LP and digitally.

Celebrating 20 years of defining, and redefining, electronic alt-pop - Metronomy ‘GREATEST HITS’ is the first comprehensive collection of their “smash hits” spanning across all 7 studio albums, and will be release alongside a separate album of BBC Sessions.

Formed in 1999 by Joseph Mount, Metronomy has released six acclaimed studio albums and become one of the UK's most influential electronic acts. Known for their distinctive visual aesthetic, innovative production techniques, and energetic live shows, Metronomy continues to bridge the gap between experimental electronic music and accessible pop. From the charm of early tracks like "You Could Easily Have Me" to the sophisticated pop of "The Look" and the dance floor magic of "Love Letters," Metronomy's distinctive sound has consistently pushed boundaries while maintaining their unmistakable identity.

The previously unreleased BBC Sessions reveal another dimension to these songs, capturing their magnetic live energy and Joe’s evolving approach to arrangement and performance, all recorded between 2009-2019 across BBC6Music, BBC Radio 1 & BBC Radio 2.

Barcelona-based producer Ikari debuts on NIX with When It’s Over, a tightly constructed EP that brings together the weight of low-end pressure with crisp percussive detail. Built for the club but with a strong emotional pull, the release folds bass-rooted aesthetics into tightly wound techno frameworks, led by carefully sculpted sound design and a deep sense of mood.

Each track acts as a standalone world, but together they form a cohesive whole, driven by feeling rather than formula. There is a subtle melancholy running through the release, not overbearing, but present in the tonal shifts, textural tension and soft-release moments that flicker throughout. It is a record that sharpens Ikari’s already distinctive voice, pushing his technical process further without losing the raw edge that defines his work.

On When It’s Over EP, the focus isn’t on maximalism. Every choice feels deliberate: harmonic details, spatial effects, rhythmic structure. All of it is aimed at stirring something visceral in the listener. It is the sound of an artist locked into his own narrative, inviting us to step in.

Mitsubishi Fuso is the first single from Ikari’s debut EP for NIX, out on 4th of July. The full EP follows on the 18th of August as a limited stamped white label, mastered and cut by Tim Xavier at Manmade Mastering.

Celebrating 20 years of defining, and redefining, electronic alt-pop - Metronomy ‘GREATEST HITS’ is the first comprehensive collection of their “smash hits” spanning across all 7 studio albums, and will be release alongside a separate album of BBC Sessions.

Formed in 1999 by Joseph Mount, Metronomy has released six acclaimed studio albums and become one of the UK's most influential electronic acts. Known for their distinctive visual aesthetic, innovative production techniques, and energetic live shows, Metronomy continues to bridge the gap between experimental electronic music and accessible pop. From the charm of early tracks like "You Could Easily Have Me" to the sophisticated pop of "The Look" and the dance floor magic of "Love Letters," Metronomy's distinctive sound has consistently pushed boundaries while maintaining their unmistakable identity.

The previously unreleased BBC Sessions reveal another dimension to these songs, capturing their magnetic live energy and Joe’s evolving approach to arrangement and performance, all recorded between 2009-2019 across BBC6Music, BBC Radio 1 & BBC Radio 2.