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This time two years ago, Pupil Slicer were preparing for the release of their debut album, Mirrors, with zero expectations of where it could take them. The breakneck speed with which Pupil Slicer were not only accepted but celebrated by the metal scene - both at home and abroad - took the band by surprise. As 2023 starts to unfold, it is a more mature, more considered version of Pupil Slicer that stands before us brandishing their sophomore album: Blossom. Blossom is a hard science fiction/cosmic horror concept album with central themes of abject despair, reincarnation and a fascination of hell. An intense month in the studio with producer Lewis Johns has led to a cohesive and confident sounding album that embraces ethereal singing, electronic breakdowns, and bold experimentation - without ever losing sight of their core tenets. Drawing from influences as diverse as Nine Inch Nails, Deafheaven, Radiohead, and Deftones, Pupil Slicer have moulded an album that is effervescent with passion but doesn’t shy away from a good hook and a catchy chorus. Through darkness and despair, there is always - at the very least - a glimmer of light in all that they do. Blossom is an album that benefits from being digested as a whole, but within this body of work there are gems that stand out, demonstrating that the future is extremely bright for Pupil Slicer. They’re only just getting started.

MD Pallavi & Andi Otto first crossed paths on a theatre stage in India ten years ago. They started collaborating instantly and in 2016 MD Pallavi's mesmerizing vocals for the downtempo raga Bangalore Whispers warmed hearts and ears. Their musical relationship flourished with artistic residencies in Bangalore and Hamburg, their respective hometowns, and a concert tour in Japan. The collaborative track Six made ears turn again on Andi’s album Bow Wave (Multi Culti 2019). And now, years later, the fruits of this artistic endeavour are fully formed here on Songs for Broken Ships - the debut album of the duo.

The album presents an interwoven pop-aesthetic vision of the two artists with their contrasting musical backgrounds. It ranges from organically woven folktronica to cut-up disco tracks and acoustic ballads. Reminiscent of, but not akin to Nicola Cruz, Beach House or Four Tet’s early productions the music is experimental but focused on the listener and their experience.

MD Pallavi is a singer, actress, filmmaker and performer from Bangalore, South-India, where she trained in Hindustani music and poetry since childhood. On Songs for Broken Ships, poems in her native tongue Kannada*, one of India's many languages, are performed over Andi’s alluring production, translating the stories into musical narratives. The poems address topics that are as timeless as the music itself. Social equality is touched upon in Bayalu (written by Bontadevi in the 12th century). Artistic struggles - communicated on An Unwritten Word (Gangadhar Chittala, 1865) - are almost prophetic and the surreal, dreamlike scenario of Clockshop (KS Narasimhaswamy,1958) brings you further inside the sonic journey.

Andi Otto is a composer, cellist and DJ based in Hamburg, Germany, He is known for his idiosyncratic and unconventional dance music productions on labels such as Multi Culti, Shika Shika and Pingipung (which he co-runs and curates). For this collaborative experience his dubbed out basslines gently interlock with the 7/4 and 5/4 beats to create a backbone for the instrumentation and expressive vocal timbres of MD Pallavi. His sound design combines graceful acoustic recordings, juxtaposed against modern drum machines, computer generated noise and vintage synthesizers.

*The LP comes with a text sheet containing all Kannada lyrics - which have their own vocabulary and script - together with the phonetic transcription and English translation.

Following in the footsteps of 'L'Espròva', a record released in 2018 by and 'Mantras', a body of long instrumental pieces, Ernest Bergez joins Jacques Puech, Elisa Trebouville and Loup Uberto to explore the possibilities of a collective energy. L'Herbe De Détourne achieved to catch the vivid energy of the band playing live and combined it with all the sonic explorations the musicians had in mind for a long time, in a completly free state of mind. Themes and songs are wound up in complex rhythmic gears and follow one another in a continuous momentum. Freely digested, the traditional repertoire from the Massif Central mutates and hybridises with invented forms, inspired by traditional Greek, Persian and North African music... The result is music that is as much for the ears, the feet, as for the guts and perhaps the heart.
It can be a ball, a concert, or a spontaneous ceremony. The Occitan language takes a central place, both as musical material and as a poetic and emotional springboard. Inspired by traditional canvases, a poetic form emerges and makes its way through the old words, passed from mouth to mouth.

3 years on from his debut album Second Language, Minor Science returns in a giddy rush of beats, bass and pitched-up samples.
064 is a cheap thrill ride through a world consumed by work. Inspired by several years of hard hustle, "Workahol" and "Casheine" mash up hardcore, bassline, electro and booty bass to offer (over)stimulation for crisis-era dancefloors. "If you want my lovin' you've gotta work harder..."

We are very happy to announce a new release on Mr. Bongo scheduled to be released on the 9th of June 2023. This is a repress of Rio de Janeiro's very own Bala Desejo's debut album "Sim Sim Sim". The album was previously only available on very limited runs in Japan and Brazil and it is now presented and available for worldwide distribution for the very first time.

Bala Desejo could be described as a supergroup, uniting some of the most talented musicians taking part in the current renaissance of the Rio de Janeiro sound. As solo musicians they have worked and collaborated with legends such as Gal Costa or Milton Nascimento. Together they decided to explore new routes and ways, channeling influences from the best of MPB into a fresh and innovative recipe.

Sim Sim Sim went on to win a Latin Grammy in 2022 for the Best Contemporary Pop album in Portuguese language and is the first testimony from one of the most fascinating outlets to come out of Brazil in recent years.

Counting from one to ten is one of the first things we learn when we try to speak a new language. It's also a universal language we use in our beats. Numbers are the inspiration source of this album, and its roots are in the inherent rhythmical existence of numbers in music. There is a numerical theme in all the tracks. Every number matches with different grooves and rhythms, and it all comes together around a single "groove pallet".
- Granul

Never one to pull inventive punches, Left Coast electronic music producer Dave Aju reassembled this notorious cast of characters for a remarkably fitting album package made during one of the most strange times our world has ever faced in the throes of the COVID-19 pandemic. While things were essentially shutdown, reopened, cycle-repeat worldwide, and every other species in mother nature's kingdom temporarily rejoiced while humans remained still in their caves, Aju and The Invisible Art Trio, his formidable if not-seen-in-a-minute musical team behind such underground anthems as "Be Like the Sun", went to work in the final days of the glorious G-Son studios in Atwater Village LA to record this LP.

Indeed, the same four/five walls and vocal booth that saw the Beastie's iconic Check Your Head and Hello Nasty come to life, became the birthplace of Glossolalia, Aju's fifth studio album and appropriately impressive seven-song set. As always, myriad musical styles and influences are strung together and boldly combined here, to the degree that drawing comparisons or attempting genre references feels futile. There are, however, clear visceral expressions of political provocation, hope and anger, fear and joy laid over twisted yet dedicated grooves in a lockdown era where Aju's imaginary collective dance floor feels in the temporary absence thereof and bizarro sixth-world unification strategy of recording every song's lyrics in complete non-languages aka total gibberish, feels right at home. Even the vocal guests join in the literal chant here, granting us diverse spell-casting and sensual nonsensical lyrical lines over tech-funk mother lodes, before closing the otherworldly proceedings with a powerful grand finale tribute to the US of A's proud boys-in-blue in the wake of George Floyd's very public assassination.

Equal parts timely anti-establishment and uplifting call-to-action, Glossolalia serves as a decidedly coarse yet crucial reminder of the possibilities in collaborative and devoted noise-making, booty-shaking, and alternative world-building during greater global disarray - beyond stylistic, nationalistic, and linguistic dividing lines. An overtly universal and unifying message liberating us from any fixed cultural identities and thus differences, to instead just focus on how the music delivers and we physically respond, together, as the foundation. Perhaps also an inspired response to the talking heads in every corner of the world's media, spewing useless and politically-tainted mouth data at us amidst these turbulent times.

Tom Zé and Faust collide in Domenico Lancellotti's "machine samba"

Domenico Lancellotti's SRAMBA reaches back to the roots of samba whilst completely revamping its blueprint, indoctrinating guitar and percussion-led rhythms with analogue synthesisers, courtesy of album producer Ricardo Dias Gomes.

The majority of SRAMBA was recorded over two months in The Cave - Domenico's home studio in Lisbon, the city both Brazilian ex-pats reside in, where the arrival of a couple of Russian-designed synths purchased by Ricardo influenced the direction of their initial experimentation: "Ricardo had these instruments, modular machines" remembers Domenico, "and I had my guitar, some percussion instruments. On the first day we started making sounds and recording them, and songs started to appear, sambas started to appear."

The son of a renowned samba songwriter, at home Domenico would watch his father play and compose. At parties, the adults would hand his father a tamborim (a small tambourine) and ask him to play along. "I grew up inside samba, it's my roots", he says. "For me, everything is samba, I bring it into whatever style of music I am making".

Domenico and Ricardo instantly saw how the synthesisers were not at odds with the sambas they were playing, instead they had a similar sound to its typical percussion instruments (ganza, repinique, surdo, tarol). What's more, they saw a connection with roots samba, the samba that existed before bossa nova and samba jazz came along. This was rhythmic samba, with grooves that could go on ad infinitum. "It's samba de clave, geometrically structured" says Domenico. "It's ostinato samba", adds Ricardo.

"Diga" is a great example of what their proposal is capable of, as what begins as a glitchy machine whirring into action soon turns into a glorious samba in which the gurgles and scratchy beats coming from the analogue equipment only add to the arrangement. Likewise, on "Tá Brabo" it's an aching melody from one of the synths that gives the guitar rhythm its needed counterpoint, and shows how the duo's greatest accomplishment is not in invention alone, but in creating a great samba album. It's an album that can go from the opening track "Ere" with its reverberant bass thud, mantra-like vocals and staccato rhythms to the string-accompanied "Nada Sera de Outra Maneira", a swooning samba that pays tribute to the Brazilian ensemble Tamba Trio, who along with Tom Zé's Estudando O Samba, Domenico names as the biggest influence on their treatment of samba.

Other important reference points are made clear on "Um Abraço No Faust". One of three instrumentals on the album its title riffs off a JoãoGilberto song, "Um Abraço no Bonfá", but whereas JoãoGilberto was giving a hug (um abraço) to bossa nova guitarist Luiz Bonfá, Domenico and Ricardo are giving theirs to the German avant-gardists Faust. "Quem Samba", with its horn section and dramatic melody give a whiff of Domenico's Italian ancestry, while "Descomunal" is devoid of rhythm whatsoever, guest vocalist Tori singing over a bed of electronic drums, cello and swirling synths, that highlights the duo's unwillingness to stick to a particular formula.

Both Domenico Lancellotti and Ricardo Dias Gomes are revered names within Brazilian music over the past 20 years. As a member of the +2's, with Moreno Veloso and Kassin, Domenico released a trio of albums on Luaka Bop in the early 00s that pioneered a new Rio samba sound with elements of funk and psychedelia. With Veloso and Kassin he would later form Orquestra Imperial, a big band intent on reviving ballroom (gafieira) samba, and that has worked with guest vocalists such as Seu Jorge, Elza Soares and Ed Motta. SRAMBA is his fourth solo album. Multi-instrumentalist Ricardo Dias Gomes first came to notice as a member of Caetano Veloso's band Cê which helped reinvigorate Caetano's career with a sound influenced by British new wave. As well as collaborations with Lucas Santtana, Negro Leo and Thiago Nassif, and work with his own group Do Amor, he has released a series of acclaimed solo albums that reveal a restless music-maker.

SRAMBA is a glorious showcase of the duo's style, uniting Domenico's playful lyrics and rhythmic, samba-rooted songs with with Ricardo's assured accompaniment of unorthodox textures and instrumentations. It may be a new language for samba, machine samba (samba de máquina), but as Domenico says, "samba da máquina is samba".

Tape

The music of Melati ESP aka Melati Malay is a euphoric vision of megacity rhythm and rainforest escape, club breaks and weightless pop, mapping new dreams from the sound of futures passed: hipernatural.

Drawing on the music era of her teenage years growing up in Jakarta – Javanese radio Dangdut, gamelan cassettes, Moving Shadow-era liquid jungle, Japanese chill-out, etc. – as well as her current work in progressive percussion trio Asa Tone, Malay’s solo debut is boldly borderless, bridging worlds and wavelengths into a richly imagined hybrid synthetic utopia.

hipernatural is momentous linguistically, too, as Malay’s first foray into singing in Indonesian, the language of her youth. She characterizes her lyrical mode as “abstract, and a bit broken,” an intuitive collage of diaristic emotion and oblique poetry (“plant me in fleeting twilight / missing home, where is home? / I am another you”). Her voice serves as its own versatile instrument, alternately intimate and alien, sensual and sacred, shaded with the haze of hidden heavens.

Co-produced with long-time collaborator Kaazi (100% Silk, Asa Tone), the album’s 12 tracks are cohesive but eclectic, threading through temple bass music, cyber siren techno, Stereolab drum n bass, new age downtempo, and dial-up rave reveries, flecked with tactile fragments of offworld dialogue, computer hum, bubbling water, and beyond.

Malay’s technique of sampling and processing her voice into an electronic palette which she then performs on generative instruments gives the songs a bewitching artificial intelligence elegance, exquisite but uncanny. Hers is a hybridity both organic and hypermodern, deeply personal yet globally sourced – YouTube rips, nature tapes, cheap sample packs, club bootlegs. hipernatural champions a dynamic new language at the axis of then and now, of east and west

Modular synthesizers / electronics + a drum kit enhanced with triggers and sensors: on its self-titled debut album, the duo hÄK / Danzeisen creates a sonic energy that oscillates between high-precision rhythm patterns, analogue sounds and frenzy climaxes.

One must imagine hÄK / Danzeisen as a man-machine apparatus. A collection of cables, resonating bodies and restless limbs that together question all routines. Who overthrow conventional role of instruments and explore the possibilities of a new sound language. Bernd Norbert Würtz alias hÄK operates modular synthesizers, self-soldered circuits and control knobs. Philipp Danzeisen plays a drum kit enhanced with triggers and sensors. These two poles are connected to an interdependent whole in which a constant musical dialogue takes place. The dependencies within this system have been meticulously defined by hÄK / Danzeisen: Drum rolls and sound modulations are interconnected in such a way that there is no contradiction between the strict technological structure and the creative outburst that is possible at any time.

What drives hÄK / Danzeisen is the basic idea that the contrast between acoustic drums and synthetically produced sounds must be overcome in order to create a new experience. Würtz, Danzeisen and their combined instrumentation simultaneously rub up against the same edges, finding a single, piercing voice.

Ideal manifestations of this approach are the duo's live performances: raw energy that oscillates as precisely as it surprises between drones, abstraction and noise attacks, driven by an impudent take on jazz. Constantly oscillating between the registers of "composed" and "improvised", each performance by hÄK / Danzeisen ultimately becomes one of a kind. (Arno Raffeiner)

If Susan Subtract of High-Functioning Flesh / Physical Wash personally supports this Portand based duo is because everything that should be the modern american funky ebm / minimal synth is present in “Costo Humano”. Puerta Negra delivers amazing industrial breaks covered in a very simple but extremely effective by funky bass lines perfectly finished by ensoniq style super synth leads culminated by harsh raged vocals sung in castillan language. This is for sure one of the most fresh and brilliant modern ebm work coming from the states recently. For the likes of the west coast modern ebm acts such as Spike Hellis or the mentioned High-Functioning Flesh.

Brazilian singer, guitarist and actor Seu Jorge returns with an intimate and stripped back session and album, a collaboration with his close friend and kindred spirit Rogê, for new UK based, direct-to-disc record label, Night Dreamer.

Recorded and cut direct-to-disc on Thursday 22nd & Friday 23rd August 2019 at Artone Studio, Haarlem, The Netherlands. Brazilian singer, guitarist and actor Seu Jorge turns to brother-in-arms Rogê, for their first ever album recording, celebrating 25 years of friendship and companionship as part of the latest instalment on UK based, direct-to-disc record label, Night Dreamer.

From concept to completion in four days, the Night Dreamer session commits a lifetime of collaboration and companionship to record for the first time, encapsulated by ‘Caminhão’ - the first song the duo ever wrote together 25 years ago.

Similar to his breakout album and Bowie homage, The Life Aquatic Studio Sessions, the new record is stripped back and raw but with an altogether different ambition - to create a 'classic Brazilian record'. Featuring both Seu Jorge and Rogê on guitar and vocals it also enlists the additional talents of two of Brazil’s most sought-after percussionists, Peu Meurray and Pretinho da Serrinha.

The seven original compositions recall the pairs plaintive and idiosyncratic melancholy and draws on the likes of Brazilian greats like Milton Nascimento, Gilberto Gil and orge Ben.

From Rio De Janeiro in Brazil, Jorge’s success has been witnessed by close friend Rogê – a story which has seen Jorge go from humble beginnings in Rio to working with the likes of Beck and Bowie, and starring in major film and television productions. Well known for his acting roles in,

City of God and the current Netflix hit series Irmandade (Brotherhood), it was Wes Anderson’s A Life Aquatic film that global audiences first saw Jorge on the screen performing as a troubadour strumming Portuguese-language covers of David Bowie classics. All in all, Seu Jorge has been a pioneering force in revitalising Brazilian popular music across the globe.

A songwriter, composer and musician in his own right, Rogê has received a Latin Grammy Nomination for ‘Na Veia’, his collaboration with samba legend Arlindo Cruz. With a strong catalogue of 7 albums and countless collaborations with Brazilian and international producers, Rogê represents the new generation of artists of the Brazilian Popular Music movement and has been instrumental in the pair building an archive of unrealised songs, sketches and ideas, some of which ultimately comprise the backbone of this session.

Like eavesdropping on a campfire session, the one-take direct-to-vinyl process at Artone captures the intensity of the duo’s relationship, setting the conditions for an extraordinarily intimate recording.

With Cruisin', their second album for Telephone Explosion, Toronto's Bernice distils their playful sense of composition resulting in the most affecting collection of their young career. Across fifteen tracks, a special kind of contemporary, jazz-inflected pop unfolds, miraculous for being both fun and musically adventurous, all in the name of emotional resonance. Each groove in the bassbin is matched by a little scratch at the listener's heartstrings. The album was recorded at home with Phil Melanson (Sam Gendel, Andy Shauf) and Thom Gill (Beverly Glenn-Copeland, Joseph Shabason), led by songwriter and vocalist Robin Dann (Martha Wainwright) and producer Matthew Pencer, with additional contributions from longtime members Dan Fortin and Felicity Williams (Bahamas) being captured remotely.

Throughout their eleven years as a group, working at the intersections of several scenes and spotlights (many of which begin and end at Toronto's beloved Tranzac Club), Bernice have developed an idiosyncratic musical language that feels immediately inviting and wonderfully refreshing. The group's two previous releases, Eau De Bonjourno (2021) and Puff: In The Air Without A Shape (2018) received generous nods from both Stereogum and Pitchfork, who described the music as "unusually mesmerizing". With the songcraft a little more crystalline and the vulnerability notched up, Cruisin' feels like the right record to open Bernice up to a much wider audience.

Development of the album began in Spring, 2021 during a writing retreat at the family farm in Bond Head, Ontario. Members of the band luxuriated in slow time, tinkering with lyrics and melodies, sharing meals, knitting. From this communal gathering, the concept of 'dedication' emerged as a guiding theme. Specifically, developing songs in an almost epistolary form; as love letters or check-ins for friends, community members, pets and other more elusive acquaintances (a longtime working title for the project was 'Songs For People').

Lead single 'Underneath My Toe', one of the first pieces developed under this theme, finds the group at their most graceful and direct. Beginning with songwriter/vocalist Robin Dann singing simply 'Hi / I miss you all the time', the composition proceeds to shift subtly between soft jazz balladry and low-bit funk, revelling in the intimate beauty of a long-time-no-see letter to a dear old friend.

Though being a band that so deeply values the art of fartin' around, Bernice couldn't settle on such a straightforward approach. During the creative process, a clarifying question arose: 'Can you cruise to it?'. This somewhat ambiguous aesthetic criteria became a guiding light for the album. 'Sure, it's a beautiful song about building trust with a new nonagenarian friend... but can you cruise to it?'.

Case in point, both follow up singles, 'No Effort To Exist' and 'Second Judy', fall into a more nebulous, bewildering category of song. Undoubtedly affecting, emotionally charged, existentially searching, yet also undeniably juicy. Drum patterns skitter into place while synth tones shift on a dime to meet thematic twists. There's errant whistling and curious overdubs. Then in come elegant backing vocals, elevating the narrative while an unlikely, left-field groove is established. Miraculously, the listener is not just moved, but Cruisin'.

Therein lies the marvel of Bernice: they remind us that the rec room funk of Mario Kart 64 need not exist in mutual exclusivity to a rich tapestry of human emotions. Even as we live through this most cursed timeline, we can look into the heart of things, dwell on the challenges we're called to witness, and find a little levity to carry us through; grab a lil' mushroom and cruise the existential soup.

The duo WILDES from the south of Germany, consisting of Jana Pantha and Jenny Tulipa, presents a musical mix of electro-synth-pop, post-punk and dark disco influences. After the release of their first EP “RAWWR” in 2021, their debut album entitled “KLISCHEE” will be released on 3 February 2023. Released via the Kommando 84 label, the album features 11 songs and a musical re-interpretation of German-language Neue Deutsche Welle sounds. The songs combine spoken word passages in which the singers combine a certain irony with word-playful rhymes. In addition to world-political, social issues, the songs revolve around the complexity of the new romance in love - between cosmos and stereo. The strong and experimentally avant-garde lyrics accompany the danceable pulse of the drum computer, melodic synth waves and the shimmering solos of the lead guitar.

The album “Klischee” begins with an electro-pop track that combines consistent grooves with atmo- spheric sound arrangements and a lead guitar that accompanies our journey to the moon. With the chorus’ high-pitched words, „Konsum - leg mich auf den Moon“ (“Consumption - put me on the Moon”), WILDES dryly yet humorously allude to a society that couldn’t fly “higher”.

The following cheeky song Leger in Schwarz combines impeccable post punk with influences from the NNDW scene. A short love story led by the electronic beat of the synthesizer makes the hearts of the night beat faster. With casual reduction, a guitar riff leads through the song. The guitar solo finally rounds off the plea about the longing for a good flirt.

Italo disco shimmers and pulsates on the driving song Capri. With lyrics like “Pack the boats - Vai a bordo”, Capri is a homage to the tried and tested Italo feeling with a cappucino on the terrazza, or indeed on the yacht with a view of the rocky walls of the island. An electric charge of sequencers and synth tracks acts here as a lightness of being in contrast to the porosity of the rock.

An electrifying electric guitar solo kicks off the fourth track with a mysterious invitation to Steig ein translated, get in. Hypnotised by the lights of the road, dazzled in the side mirror, a clearly repeating rhythm leads into the chorus and through the coming verses. English spoken-word lyrics add to the stoicism of the German language. The song’s great power ends with the line Lost in the dark, holding open the finale of the “Night Drive” encounter.

Digital and stereo on all channels, the distinctly tight and robust rhythm sounds in the song Apparat. A clear and simple synth melody is heard as a contrast and the electric bass gives the balance of the machine at points. Hiddenly, WILDES points here to the superior power that can control human action beyond all limits. A piece as a laudation to all the science fiction novels that play with the switching of the individual parts.

Side One of the vinyl is finalised by a song called La Grande Bellezza that motivates to dance and sing along. The punky pop craft lives through the recurring beat of the rhythm guitar. Here the focus is on the woman in all her facets. The great beauty, una donna, who can do everything as well as wanting everything and nothing...a strong woman who, however, also staggers and wants to jump off the cliff. Clearly and distinctly, the musical accompaniment of the drum machine and the accompanying synth melody reflect hidden parallel worlds and the ambiguity of character - of life? We get a desire for more and turn the round record.

The B side starts with a powerful guitar riff, complemented by a catchy and strong bassline that runs through the song. In this work, WILDES provocatively describes the West’s lust for the much-cov- eted Schwarzes Gold black gold. The song is reminiscent of the works of the band D.A.F. and thus ties in with the electronic punk sound spate.

The driving guitar riff joins in with the reduced synth bass sequence - the electro-pop song with the title Hitze (Heat) came onto the digital music market as the first single from the LP in the summer of 2022. Pulsatingly, the drum computer lets the beats vibrate to the rhythm of heated air. The duo po- etically describes heat with supercooled voices, a clarity in the sky that makes everything flow, that makes the breath dry. The work ends with a melodic synth solo.

Ich lad dich ein, I invite you - we have all said or heard this sentence before. A chance meeting of two people later leads to the altar in love. A far-reaching question that more or less arises in many love relationships at some point “Do you dare?” positions itself in lyrical contrast to the simple ques- tion in the refrain “Do you need sugar?”. WILDES plays with laconic poetry and, full of irony, makes the listeners think about living together. Krautrock contours are skilfully used in this piece. Reduced to the essentials, the chorus immediately sticks in the ear. A cheerful mix of steel drums and infec- tious solo.

Toccami - touch me! We sit on padded leather chairs - “you’re a rocket! Peng Puff Peng” - this song by the band WILDES joins experimental art-punk-pop, electronically with flowing synth waves we take off immediately. Melodically sung, lyrical layers of lyrics dance loosely light and gracefully in the ears of the viewer. The rhythmic beat visualises the feeling of floating in a spaceship. It’s love in the universe - “I love you, my darling” sounds tipsy in the beat-heavy disco refrain.

Hypnotically, WILDES launches into the final song of the entire LP. The title Zone takes us on a journey through time. Inspired by the film Stalker, we find ourselves in a science fiction setting that couldn’t be more present in today’s European events. The musicality of the electric guitar riffs ac- companied by simple new wave drums drives the listener into unknown realms.

Repetition and electronic synth sounds play a compositional role alongside rocking guitar riffs like their forerunners in the NDW scene. Lyrically, each song varies between pop-romantic and politically critical passages. Listeners start pondering about hedonistic life and its consequences. Sometimes it feels like listening to a Tarantino soundtrack in German, other times it feels like listening to an 80s track by a James Bond. Science fiction fantasies and reality add up in dadaistic theatricality to spir- ited synthpunk of the New German Wave from the South. Discoid beats and driving drums in digital are included.

Slovak-Hungarian musician Adela Mede explores the interplay between voice and technology with field recordings. She sings in three languages (Slovak, Hungarian and English). Intimate ambient utterances with themes of spiritual growth accompanied by experimental electronics with a wide scope of influences; from minimalism to folklore. Initially released in early 2022 to universal acclaim on digital and cassette, Night School is extremely excited to share Szabadság on vinyl. Mastered by Rupert Clervaux for vinyl, the clearer format teases out new nuances in the music, revealing a physicality and permanence to Mede’s first masterwork.

"Szabadság is a navigation. This debut by Adela Mede, recorded in her family home on the Slovakian border with Hungary, searches through the personal, familial, cultural, folkloric and geographic of her past and present.

Examining both the vulnerability and determination of her voice - as it leaves the lips, raw, and in the ways it can be transformed with digital processing - the embodied memories of language, of utterance, are explored.

Airy, open sound worlds and tentative strings of improvised naked vocal transform themselves into insistent repetition. Fizzing, sparkling electronics are set against the beautiful grainy depth of field recordings. The locations, these places, are found and lost - home is found and lost - in a dance of fragmented vocal harmonies. Three languages (English, Hungarian, Slovak) weave a song of spring, nature, forgiveness, togetherness and rebirth.

“Indicut” is the debut 7” single from the Mexican-based duo, Apócrifo featuring the talents of LA’s own hip-hop, soul/jazz virtuoso, Georgia Anne Muldrow. Comprised of producer Kefren Rivera and percussionist, Carlos Huitrón, Apócrifo have a sound that blends elements of Jazz Fusion, hip-hop, and Electroacoustic music with a live performance to create a sound all of their own. Under the premise that “nothing is original,” the name Apócrifo refers to unauthorized copying, which allows a great diversity of musical and cultural elements to be taken as an influence.

For Apócrifo, “Indicut” represents the love, dedication, passion and strength they possess to make music, regardless of borders, languages, time and space. Coupled with Georgia’s soulful melodies, “Indicut” makes for a welcomed vinyl debut from Apócrifo. This limited 7” release is available on tangerine-colored vinyl via SomeOtha Ship in partnership with Fat Beats.

There’s writing on the wall that speaks of time immemorial, where symbols exist on the edge of language and abstraction.

It’s upon this precipice that Dominic James Marshall makes his mark, at the helm and on the keys of Cave Art - a slate of scintillating digital sounds, spontaneously arranged, etched in wax. The project is a thoughtful and inventive response to a long tradition of musical sampling.

Familiarity is a vessel through which Marshall channels a fierce artistry and selection is at the heart of what moves it. The trio build upon what makes beat music burrow into us so deeply, maxing out their offerings of giant synths, splintering chords and impactful beats to soul-shifting degrees.

Marshall plunges into the uncanny valley and frolics in it, inventing a fresh path for the genre with irreverent wit and divine grace.

"The Concert" is the first discographic collaboration between percussionist Alexandre Babel and visual artist Latifa Echakhch. The record is intimately linked to the eponymous exhibition presented at the Swiss Pavilion during the 59th Venice Art Bienniale.

For her exhibition in the Swiss Pavilion, Latifa Echakhch created an orchestrated and enveloping experience, a rhythmic and spatial proposal that allowed the visitor a complete perception of time and of his own body. What is the origin of rhythm? How does the body perceive time? How does the mind rearrange it? Can we substitute one perception for another, the visual for the sound? Can fragments of memory go back in time and recreate a different story?

Her proposal entered a dialogue with the building around it, designed by Bruno Giacometti. The artist revisited its architectural programme as well as the prototypical progression of these exhibition spaces, originally defined for the display of classical art. She appropriated the entirety of the spaces, simultaneously exploring continuity, movement and sequence. Their relationship to light, and the different sounds that emerge from them. Yet the exhibition was entirely silent and the musical composition "The Concert" functions as its sound rendering, by following a similar path.

This one-sided vinyl is a complementary and inseparable partner piece to the exhibition and its eponymous catalogue, the latter having been published in April 2022 by Sternberg Press. The music features field recordings made at the Swiss Pavilion itself as well as pre-recorded percussion sounds and significant contributions by the Berlin-based musicians Jon Heilbronn, Rebecca Lenton, Theo Nabicht, Nikolaus Schlierf.

The record, available only after the closing of Latifa Echakhch’s exhibition offers a concluding phase to the project. The resonance of its sensory score. It reactivates the experience of the physical journey of the installation, without imposing itself as a transcription or an illustration. Through texture, temporality and its totality, the record stands as a resonance of the rhythms that have structured the pavilion, the harmonies that have composed it and the sounds that have inhabited it.

Latifa Echakhch Lives and works in Vevey, Switzerland. She graduated from the École nationale supérieure d’arts in Cergy-Pontoise and the École nationale des beaux-arts in Lyon. Galleries representing her include kamel mennour (Paris and London), kaufmann repetto (Milan and New York), Dvir Gallery (Tel Aviv/Brussels) and Pace (New York). She took part in the main exhibition of the Venice Biennale Arte in 2011 and was awarded the prix Marcel-Duchamp in 2013 and the Zurich Art Prize in 2015. Through her interdisciplinary installations, Latifa Echakhch is recognized for the fine balance between forcefulness and fragility of her visual language, inserting surrealist and conceptual elements, and her use of symbols that–in her own words–are both "political and poetic".

Alexandre Babel Lives and works in Berlin. He is a drummer, composer, and curator. His projects redefine the boundaries of musical convention, confounding listener expectations in the conquest of new contexts. Babel has been the artistic director of the contemporary percussion group Eklekto 2013–2022. In 2020, the monographic Festival Les Amplitudes in La Chaux-de-Fonds focused on Babel’s compositional and curatorial work. He is a laureate of the Swiss Music Prize from the Federal Office of Culture 2021.

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