Search:like

Green Vinyl + Slipmat

"Les Heures Felines is the first EP from U25 on their own label Unative Records.

This work interprets the perpetual movements of human moods. We are witnessing the progression of a thought, a feeling which is constantly changing. Emotions take precedence over reason, they are supple and fluid and leave us with memories as disintegrated as we are. The beauty of man lies in his twitches. We are just blurred and faded sketches of what we would have liked to be. The result of all of these thoughts is told in those hard kicks, tortured pads, melodies, voices and breakbeat.

Módulo 1000 were not messing around when they made 'Não Fale Com Paredes’. It holds its own, not just as a raw, heavy, experimental “Brazilian” psychedelic rock album, but as a raw, heavy, experimental psychedelic rock album, full-stop!

Formed in Rio de Janeiro in 1969, Módulo 1000 honed their craft as the house band in clubs and resorts in São Paulo where they predominantly covered American artists such as Jimmy Hendrix as well as British giants, Led Zeppelin. After acquiring a taste for fame following the performance of one of their tracks at the Rio International Song Festival, the band focussed their attention on composing original material. Their manager, Marinaldo Guimarães, encouraged the band to explore their experimental and creative sides. This, in parallel with the explosion of experimental music in Brazil, resulted in the band performing alongside heavyweights such as O Têrço; there was a happening in the air.

Módulo 1000 recorded just one album. Released on Top Tape records in 1972, it featured Eduardo Leal on bass, Candido Faria on drums, Daniel Cardone on guitar, violin and vocals, and Luiz Paulo Simas on organ, piano, and vocals. 'Não Fale Com Paredes' was produced by the popular DJ, Ademir Lemos, and came housed in a fold-out cover featuring tripped-out artwork and design by Wander Borges. However, due the uncompromising nature of its wild, heavy psychedelic rock sound, the album was destined not to be played on the radio in Brazil. Rumours suggest that the label didn't understand the album, and as a result, it wasn't promoted or marketed. Thus, like many other underground cult classics, it was lost in the ether, only later to be rediscovered by a new audience at a different time.

One thing is certain, you definitely know when you've heard Módulo 1000. The sound is raw, heavy and at points quite aggressive, more Black Sabbath than Os Mutantes. It floats between psychedelic rock, prog rock, early metal, and dare we say, displays elements of proto-math-rock.

The band’s discography includes a 7" single, as well as their music being featured on several compilations for Odeon Records, additionally they released a 7" single under their alias 'Love Machine' for Top Tape Records. These compositions are included as bonus tracks on the CD version of our reissue.

If you've been in the club scene for many years like David Dorad, you will one day face the big, essential, serious questions that each of us will ask ourselves sooner or later:

Are marmots pack animals?
Can marmots sign language?
Do marmots plan their lives according to European or Chinese zodiac signs?
Do marmots need a special passport, after all they don't have a thumb to turn the pages?
What happens when a marmot eats Coke and Mentos at the same time?

And with all those questions whistling, hissing and muttering in his head, David grabbed piano, baton and BioBassline to crochet his new EP.
This is called "Marble" and offers 6 different approaches to solve these big questions.
As a source of ideas, he has competent partners at his side in Roman Flügel, Mira, Christopher Schwarzwälder, Canson and Sascha Cawa.


A1 -
Murmeli - original
The marmot tribe awakens. Get up to brush your teeth. Gets your toes tapping. Makes you snap your fingers. Dare to roll your hips. Later rhythmically to turn. To look elegant at the same time. Eyes closed - eyes open.
Murmeli, the regular leader, sits at the piano.
Everyone is dancing, toothpaste in the corners of their mouths and a smile that takes the toothpaste by the hand.
A normal morning in marmot houses.

B1 -
Murmeli - Mira & Christoph Schwarzwald RMX
Mira and Christoph Schwarzwalder take over from Murmeli. They vary, combine and subtract. The first marmots raise their thumbless fists in the air - showing their passports, ready to take off.

B2 -
Murmeli - Canson RMX
Canson also sits next to Murmeli. Caress the theme, tickle the groove.
Murmeli has the best ideas early on: "Boy, let's try Mentos with Cola, we'll definitely take off."
Canon is in!


C1 -
Murmelot - Original
The sun goes down in Murmelhausen too. Then Murmelot is ready. Gives his advanced Pilates class, which the whole tribe takes. The village wants to remain mobile.
Murmelot's motto is "Why not stretch while walking?"
And so shall it be. He sets the rhythm on his wooden Fairtrade 303 and our furry friends shave shaky and obscene messages down each other's backs while impatiently hopping for the drop.

D1 -
Murmelot - Roman Flügel Remix
Roman Flügel and Murmelot are old buddies. Struck while carving the 303.
Roman happily takes over the Pilates class, the dancing crowd. Enchanted until the razor's batteries are empty and only dancing remains, only dancing is important.

D2 -
Murmelot - Sascha Cawa RMX
Sascha Cawa takes his trunk by the hand, wants to motivate her again shortly before the second sunset of the day. Whispers little obscene Pilates positions in their ears. That motivates. Murmelot switched from piano to percussion.
The marmots' sweat feeds the golden orchids in the clearing for the next six months.

Limited Green Vinyl Edition of Munich-based quintet Fazer’s second album.
Nadi' follows the underground success of their self-released debut 'Mara', which quickly sold out on vinyl and became one of the most streamed jazz records of the year. Moving freely between composition and improvisation, the band's spacious, organic sound pitches lyrical melodies from guitar and trumpet over double-drummer polyrhythmic grooves and dub-like basslines. The album title 'Nadi' references a term rooted in traditional Indian medicine. Nadis are channels that connect points of intensity within the body. This reflects the band's feeling while playing of moving as one body. Contrary to the creation of the group's debut album 'Mara', both the writing and recording sessions for 'Nadi' were completed in relatively short periods of time.

Blue Transparent Vinyl

Auf Doro's eigenen Label erwcheint eine Neuauflage ihres siebten Studioalbums "Calling The Wild" (2000) als litmiierte blau transparenter Gatefold Doppel LP Auflage.

With L'Amour Aux Mille Parfums, mim comes out of the shadows, naked, and gives a very personal vision of love that is at once accessible, profound and complex.

mim writes a politics of intimacy that grows out of the rubble of free pop tinged with experimental song. He turns clichés and expectations on their head in his own way in a "post-modern love" music that lowers its weapons and invites laughter and a form of enlightenment. Surprising and invigorating.

To accompany him in this adventure, he invites his friend, Charlène Darling, and together they stage their friendship in a dialogue full of sincerity and laughter. mim & Charlène had already collaborated on the excellent album "Saint Guidon".

Translated with DeepL Translator (free version)
We've heard it a million times: the story of the diary in music, the coming of age, the coming of age, the coming of age record. We've heard it a million times times, but never like this. With L'Amour aux mille parfums, mim comes out of the shadows, naked, and gives a very personal vision of a a record with a heavy heart, hemmed in by inner turmoil as much as by questions by inner turmoil as much as by questions about a socially stifling era. a kind of intimate politics that grows out of the rubble of a free pop tinged with experimental song.

L'Amour aux mille parfums is divided into two segments: a "social" A side and a "mystical" B side. and a "mystical" side B, both of which Mim has conceived of as two proponents of a of a vision embedded in the reality of the desire for love shattered by the outside world. world. Pas Malade is, according to its author, "a piece that breaks the screen, almost documentary". Bienvenue (which opens the album) states loud and clear, without any aesthetic irony "better a broken heart than a closed one". The The narrative and musical path of this album is naturally freed from the of love to wander with a certain malice in the sensitivity of the musician and the sensitivity of the musician and those who listen to him. It turns clichés and expectations on their head in its own way. clichés and expectations in his own way, writing a kind of "post-modern love" music music that lowers its weapons and invites laughter and a form of enlightenment.

Die Originalbesetzung von Black Ox Orkestar ist nach einer 15-jährigen Pause wieder zusammen. Die aus der fruchtbaren Montréaler Post-Punk-Agit-Prop-Szene der frühen 2000er Jahre hervorgegangene Band besteht aus Scott Gilmore, Jessica Moss und Thierry Amar von Thee Silver Mt. Zion (Amar komponiert und spielt auch weiterhin Bass für Godspeed You! Black Emperor) und Gabriel Levine von Sackville. Black Ox Orkestar haben Mitte der 2000er Jahre zwei gefeierte Alben mit aufgewühltem akustischem Avant-Folk veröffentlicht, auf denen sie osteuropäische und nordafrikanische Folklore durch die Linse einer düsteren, resonanten Indie-Rock-Sensibilität erforschten und Interpretationen von Instrumentalstücken aus verschiedenen jüdischen, rumänischen und arabischen Traditionen den Originalen gegenüberstellten. Auch dank Gilmores politisch aufgeladenem jiddischen Gesang sind diese frühen Alben für eine neue Generation von Musikern und Fans der jiddischen, Klezmer- und jüdischen Diaspora-Musik zu Meilensteinen geworden. Das von Greg Norman (Jason Molina, Nina Nastasia, Electrical Audio) hervorragend produzierte Album Everything Returns macht genau da weiter, wo die Band aufgehört hat: ein einschneidend atmosphärisches, melancholisches und doch entschlossenes Album einzigartiger moderner jüdischer Folkmusik, bei dem Klavier, Geige, Kontrabass, Klarinette und Cymbalom die Kerninstrumentierung bilden und die Gesangsstücke hauptsächlich auf Jiddisch gesungen werden. ENG Everything Returns reunites the original Black Ox Orkestar lineup following a 15-year hiatus. Arising from the fertile Montréal post-punk agit-prop scene of the early 2000s, the band comprises Scott Gilmore, Jessica Moss and Thierry Amar of Thee Silver Mt. Zion (Amar also continues to compose and play bass for Godspeed You! Black Emperor) and Gabriel Levine of Sackville. Black Ox made two acclaimed albums of roiling acoustic avant-folk in the mid-2000s, exploring Eastern European and North African folkways through the lens of a gritty, resonant indie rock sensibility, juxtaposing interpretations of instrumentals from various Jewish, Romani and Arabic traditions with originals led by Gilmore's politically-charged Yiddish vocals. These early albums have since become lodestars for many among a new generation of Yiddish, Klezmer and radical Jewish diasporic music practitioners and fans. First revealing its resurrection in February 2022 with a surprise flexi 7" single issued by left journal Jewish Currents as a gift to its thousands of subscribers, Black Ox has indeed fully and fruitfully reunited. Exquisitely recorded by Greg Norman (Jason Molina, Nina Nastasia, Electrical Audio), Everything Returns picks up right where the band left off: an incisively atmospheric, melancholic yet resolute album of uniquely modern Jewish folk music, with piano, violin, upright bass, clarinet and cymbalom making up the core instrumentation, and the vocal tunes sung primarily in Yiddish, alongside album centerpiece "Viderkol" and closer "Lamed-Vovnik" where English also features. This is not fusion music, but diaspora music: a cross-cultural call and response of musical lexicons, emerging from the history of Jewish persecution and displacement, the musicology of 19th century repertoire from Jewish shtetls , the improvisational traditions of nusakh in Jewish music and taqsim in Arabic music, and a wider polyglot dialogue of Jewish, Slavic, Arabic, and Central Asian musical traditions. Lyrically and stylistically, Everything Returns connects key current issues_from refugees forced to leave their homes, to the return of fascism and exclusionary nationalism_with the legacy of modernist Yiddish poetry and song. The new Black Ox Orkestar album is a sublime, poetic, politically-informed statement of re-energized diasporic musical intent, where Gilmore's voice and the band's simmering arrangements conjure an ardent, doleful balladry that echoes the sound and sensibility of artists like Tindersticks, The National, Nick Cave and Leonard Cohen. Everything Returns is a haunting, richly textured, darkly sparkling song cycle at once from a vanished world and very much of our time and place. Thanks for listening.

SoiSong is the stunning but short-lived partnership of Coil co-founder Peter "Sleazy" Christopherson and veteran Russian electronic experimentalist Ivan Pavlov. Though friends since 1997, the project birthed roughly a decade later in Bangkok, where Christopherson relocated following the death of his Coil collaborator John Balance in 2004. Named after the Thai word for `two' along with a notorious red-light district street nearby, the duo dialed into a cryptic language of lurching synthetics, Eastern minimalism, and interdimensional glitch, oscillating between elegance and mayhem. qXn948s collects some of their earliest recordings, and remains as transgressive and transcendent a listen now as it was upon its release a decade and a half ago. Pavlov characterizes SoiSong as less a musical group than a "utopian, semi-alien platform for collaboration, devoid of pronounced personality or centralized authority_ more like a message from elsewhere that anyone is welcome to participate in and spread." Every facet of the project was disruptive and oblique: self-released CDs packaged in elaborate origami that had to be destroyed to be accessed; a website with password protected sections, where different passwords were provided for different events, objects or releases; performance merchandise of headphones and a Walkman melted shut so the music can only be heard as long as the set of batteries last. Theirs was a muse as unprecedented as it was uncompromising, equal parts pranks and profundity. qXn948s began with samples and software composed intuitively in tandem before a large monitor, then progressively processed and scrambled into bewildering arrangements of digital frequencies, alternately spartan and claustrophobic, uneasy and uncanny. Vignettes of small melody emerge and are obliterated; gamelan-esque tones spiral above cybernetic pulse programming and funereal didgeridoo; skeletal piano meanders in the distance while flickering circuitry pummels patterns of white noise. Pavlov describes his and Christopherson's chemistry as "unspoken and sincere, and very efficient." That music this aggressively disorienting and complex congealed in a smoothly organic fashion is testament to the rare vision of its creators.

Clear Vinyl

SoiSong is the stunning but short-lived partnership of Coil co-founder Peter "Sleazy" Christopherson and veteran Russian electronic experimentalist Ivan Pavlov. Though friends since 1997, the project birthed roughly a decade later in Bangkok, where Christopherson relocated following the death of his Coil collaborator John Balance in 2004. Named after the Thai word for `two' along with a notorious red-light district street nearby, the duo dialed into a cryptic language of lurching synthetics, Eastern minimalism, and interdimensional glitch, oscillating between elegance and mayhem. qXn948s collects some of their earliest recordings, and remains as transgressive and transcendent a listen now as it was upon its release a decade and a half ago. Pavlov characterizes SoiSong as less a musical group than a "utopian, semi-alien platform for collaboration, devoid of pronounced personality or centralized authority_ more like a message from elsewhere that anyone is welcome to participate in and spread." Every facet of the project was disruptive and oblique: self-released CDs packaged in elaborate origami that had to be destroyed to be accessed; a website with password protected sections, where different passwords were provided for different events, objects or releases; performance merchandise of headphones and a Walkman melted shut so the music can only be heard as long as the set of batteries last. Theirs was a muse as unprecedented as it was uncompromising, equal parts pranks and profundity. qXn948s began with samples and software composed intuitively in tandem before a large monitor, then progressively processed and scrambled into bewildering arrangements of digital frequencies, alternately spartan and claustrophobic, uneasy and uncanny. Vignettes of small melody emerge and are obliterated; gamelan-esque tones spiral above cybernetic pulse programming and funereal didgeridoo; skeletal piano meanders in the distance while flickering circuitry pummels patterns of white noise. Pavlov describes his and Christopherson's chemistry as "unspoken and sincere, and very efficient." That music this aggressively disorienting and complex congealed in a smoothly organic fashion is testament to the rare vision of its creators.

#PF005 ITRIA VOL.3 is a slow techno-inspired cosmic journey that condenses in a single orbit a great cast of artists coming from different galaxies. It marks an evolution in sound and mood, taking us to a deeper and more visceral dimension.
The first track by Interstellar Funk is a 100% pure electronic mind-trip, a machined groove where thoughts still roam frenetically paves the way for a more intimate experience.
Tamburi Neri’s downtempo track shapes a space-time portal in which to sink; their sound is like a beat echoing from the bottom of the chest and spreading to the tips of the fingers softly.
For the first time, Salamanda co-works with Polifonic framing a Korean unknown soundscape, an ambient loop track through which we break away from this dimension and move towards the exotic.
Hiver restore a connection with reality through their pulsating bass. The heartbeat speeds up, but we still float into a dreamy techno atmosphere.
Claudio PRC & ZIPPO come into play with a powerful combination of techno textures that gets us to resurface and awaken the senses.

Wu Tang & Staten Island MC/Producer come together again in new vinyl release Wutang x Remedy. Remedy is a MC/producer from Staten Island, New York who first made his mark with the song "Never Again" off the Wu-Tang Killa Beez' debut album The Swarm in the summer of '98. He eventually made his full-length debut The Genuine Article in the spring of '01 & followed it up with Code Red about 2« years later. The last we heard from him on his own was when It All Comes Down to This was released in 2010. But as the 12-year anniversary of that approaches in a few weeks, he's enlisting a star studded cast of veterans to be featured on his 4th album. Ghostface Killah tags along for the opener "Modern Day Miracle" working in an occultist loop to verbally abuse anyone who wants to challenge them whereas "Death Defying" with Inspectah Deck finds the 2 over an operatic instrumental talking about choosing whether to kill or be killed. "Sparrow" takes a more soulful route feeling comparing himself to the titular bird leading into Ghostface returning alongside Conway the Machine for "The Pulpit" incorporating some orchestral samples talking about the street life.The penultimate track "Noir Story" is a full-on Killah Priest solo cut with a drumless instrumental & his lyricism on here is a reminder as to why he's this reviewer's 2nd favorite affiliate right behind Killa Sin in terms of lyrical skill, the previous cuts. "Never Again" then ends the album by mournfully paying tribute to those we've lost along the way.If you're a diehard Wu fan like I am, then you're gonna come away from this highly impressed. It's great to hear Remedy completely rejuvenated & he does an awesome job of paying homage to my all-time favorite hip hop group from the guests to the production.

Mondo, in partnership with WaterTower Music, is proud to present Michael Giacchino's absolutely brilliant score to Matt Reeves’ highly anticipated THE BATMAN. Featuring the music of Academy, Emmy and Grammy Award-winning composer Michael Giacchino, whose credits feature some of the most popular and acclaimed film projects in recent history, including THE INCREDIBLES, COCO, JOJO RABBIT, RATATOUILLE, STAR TREK, JURASSIC WORLD, ROGUE ONE: A STAR WARS STORY, SPIDER-MAN: HOMECOMING, and WAR FOR THE PLANET OF THE APES. This is the fifth film Reeves and Giacchino have collaborated on.

Giacchino proves himself, once more, as one of the greatest living composers, by introducing a powerful and instantly canonized new theme to one of the most musically iconic superheroes. When director Matt Reeves heard the theme for the first time, he was with film producer Dylan Clark. “I was blown away!” He exclaimed. “It was so emotional. The two of us literally cried…it was amazing.”

Though it's not only the world's greatest detective who emerges with a new theme - Selina Kyle / Catwoman's new string heavy theme is slinky and haunted like that of a classic noir's femme fatale. And Giacchino's take on The Riddler is far more haunted, accompanied by the Tiffin Boys choir, a truly terrifying and dread-inducing motif for one of the scariest takes on a Gotham villain, to date.

With nearly two hours of score, housed on three discs, featuring all new artwork by Henry Abrams.

Composed by Michael Giacchino
Artwork by Henry Abrams
Manufactured in Czech Republic

Five years after "Mort d'un Pourri" (Death of a Corrupt Man) Philippe Sarde finds Alain Delon for this adaptation of a violent thriller by Jean-Patrick Manchette. If "Le Choc" (The Shock) offers a rather watered down vision of the original novel, the composer chooses to give a boost. Sarde explains : “My position was this : to inject singularity into this somewhat smooth story. I get some really good soloists together for an unconventional score balanced between rock, jazz fusion and romanticism. I wanted it to be energetic with a modern drive. To me, "Le Choc" is a direct extension of the great blends in "César et Rosalie" or "Coup de Torchon (Clean Slate)". A jazz-rock rhythm section, musicians from Weather Report with the London Symphony Orchestra, and the great Wayne Shorter. I

asked him if he could play his soprano with a timbre like a bombard, an unexpected transposing of a folk instrument onto a jazz horn..." To director Robin Davis, this magnificent score will be a real lifeline : "With his music, Philippe told a story alongside mine, he brought "Le Choc" back to what it might have and should have been. And I love the invisible link with Lautner. After Stan Getz and "Mort d'un Pourri", we’re still with Delon & Sarde but this time the saxophonist is a black American, Wayne Shorter."

Pressed for the first time from a high definition transfer of the recording tapes, this new album has been mastered without any compression, respecting all the dynamics of the recording produced at Abbey Road.

Hiding in Place, the new EP from Philadelphia’s Queen of Jeans, opens with the springy pluck of a single note on electric guitar, like a ping from a satellite waiting for a response in a long, quiet expanse. Then, Miri Devora’s voice atop guitar and drums: “Hiding in place, conjure your face/Don’t wanna lose my mind.”

This is the title track’s invitation to a four-song study of loneliness, alienation, and the unraveling that comes with those states, but it’s also bookended with moments of levity: joy and romance burst through on second track “Why Hide,” a response of sorts to the title track’s cloistered anxiety. Devora wrote the songs at the start of the pandemic in March 2020 when she had just been laid off from her job of almost 10 years. Her partner, guitarist Mattie Glass, worked 11 hour shifts at a grocery store, so Devora was alone in their apartment for months on end. When they were written, these weren’t intended to be pandemic-specific.

Draped in a flag of patriotic shame, the Hated stormed onto the scene just as D.C.’s Revolution Summer was swerving out of control. Channeling Bad Brains’ Black thrash and Hüsker Dü’s zen approach to hardcore, Dan Littleton, Erik Fisher, Colin Meeder, and Mike Bonner synthesized their own version of what became emo in 1985. Remastered from the original analog tapes, Best Piece Of Shit Vol. 4 compiles their D.I.Y. debut cassette, the No More We Cry EP, and 14 period bonus tracks from the Hated vault, spread across two LPs and annotated by fellow Annapolis hooligan Andrew Gebhardt. Decorated with extensive photo documentation and cut’n’paste ephemera, this Hated-approved set captures a band, a scene, and a country on the verge of either exploding or imploding. Never said it’d be like this, right?

Draped in a flag of patriotic shame, the Hated stormed onto the scene just as D.C.’s Revolution Summer was swerving out of control. Channeling Bad Brains’ Black thrash and Hüsker Dü’s zen approach to hardcore, Dan Littleton, Erik Fisher, Colin Meeder, and Mike Bonner synthesized their own version of what became emo in 1985. Remastered from the original analog tapes, Best Piece Of Shit Vol. 4 compiles their D.I.Y. debut cassette, the No More We Cry EP, and 14 period bonus tracks from the Hated vault, spread across two LPs and annotated by fellow Annapolis hooligan Andrew Gebhardt. Decorated with extensive photo documentation and cut’n’paste ephemera, this Hated-approved set captures a band, a scene, and a country on the verge of either exploding or imploding. Never said it’d be like this, right?

Stockholm's Havenaire follows up a series of head-turning ambient releases on the likes of Shimmering Moods, Polar Seas and Glacial Movements with a limited new long player on Past Inside The Present. Across six slowly shifting soundscapes he layers up his misty-eyed chords into music that is designed to empty your mind but that also gently sweeps you heart. There is subtle hope and optimism amongst the ambient fog here that leaves you feeling cleansed and soothed. All six pieces have their own character but are very much united by a sense of calm and serenity that is utterly captivating.

Corn, originally released in 2015, features nine tracks Russell recorded in 1982 and 1983. In collaboration with Russell"s partner Tom Lee, Audika"s Steve Knutson compiled Corn from Arthur"s original, completed 1/4" tape masters. Russell himself compiled this material on three separate test pressings-labelled El Dinosaur, Indian Ocean, and Untitled, respectively- in 1985. Russell fans know something of the Corn sound from Audika"s debut release, "Calling Out of Context" (2004), which included four songs from these sessions: "The Deer In The Forest Part 1," "The Platform on the Ocean," "Calling Out Of Context," and "I Like You!" This new collection includes rhythmic alternate versions of "Lucky Cloud," "Keeping Up," "See My Brother, He"s Jumping Out (Let"s Go Swimming #2)," "This Is How We Walk on the Moon," and "Hiding Your Present From You," along with "Corn," "Corn (Continued)," "They and Their Friends," and the closing instrumental "Ocean Movie," one of the most beautiful and curious Russell tracks ever to see the light of day.

Hot Hot Heat’s classic debut album, ‘Make Up The
Breakdown’, filled with smart, energetic, dancepunk hits, returns to vinyl with this fully remastered
LP edition.
AllMusic called the album “an addictive, densely
packed pop gem that ranks among 2002’s best
albums,” and Pitchfork agreed, including it on their
list of The Best Albums Of 2002.
Following closely on the heels of their critically
acclaimed ‘Knock Knock Knock’ EP, ‘Make Up the
Breakdown’ is Hot Hot Heat's first full length,
recorded with Jack Endino at Vancouver, BC’s
Mushroom Studios (with engineering help from
Chris Walla of Death Cab for Cutie).
SPIN Magazine had this to say about ‘Knock
Knock Knock’: “Some retro new wavers hang
themselves on their own skinny ties. While their
peers lip-synch to Cure 45s, these Canucks take
subtler cues from early ‘80s synth disco. It’s not
new-wave worship, it’s the sound of punk teaching
itself to dance.”
‘Make Up The Breakdown’ delivered on the
promise hinted at on the EP. ‘Hot Hot Heat’ (along
with peers like Radio 4 and The Rapture) blended
angular post-punk twitch with danceable pop,
effectively (and finally) persuading white dopes on
punk to get on the good foot in the early 2000s.
Opaque yellow vinyl.

Violet Vinyl

The debut of Hamburg trio Cloud Management stages the meeting of three proven exceptional figures: Thomas Korf and Sebastian Kokus have been responsible for some stunning leftfield neo-kraut releases with their band Love-Songs in recent years; Ulf Schütte has been one of the most productive, and innovative protagonists of experimental electronic music in Germany for many years (see Datashock, Phantom Horse, or his most recent collaboration with G. Steenkiste/Hellvete on Umor Rex, for example). Following Love-Songs' highly acclaimed collaboration with Schütte, »Spannende Musik«, released in 2021, the formation of Cloud Management as a group in its own right marks a new beginning, which is celebrated with the long player on Altin Village & Mine.

The album is characterized by a dense texture of repetitions in which (modular) synthesizers and bass go head-to-head. It is on this foundation that the formal grammar of the album develops over its nearly 45-minute running time, organized along precise interventions into the hypnotic pulse: What is recognizable as echoes of 1960s/70s minimalism or Cluster functions on »Cloud Management« not in the sense that the sequences or the sequencers are left to themselves, but as highly concentrated, microscopic work on repetition. This virtuosically arranged, groove-based and even danceable density of the seven pieces never sounds strained or as an end in itself, but floating, cloud-like. The polyrhythmic workouts are at all times in the service of a refreshing expanse that opens up from the sonic saturation and is far removed from the formulaic box-checking often associated with the attribute ›kosmisch‹. »Cloud Management«, thus, marks not an exercise in the traditions of a musical past, but a distinctive position within contemporary electronic music.

All songs are written, recorded and produced by Ulf Schütte, Thomas Korf and Sebastian Kokus.

Tuhka, like its titular cinder or ash symbolises new beginnings, fertile ground and creativity after a long lapse. In the same vein, the tracks on this edition were created after a long fallow period.

Tuhka was created out of archival snippets and new vocal loops created on the sunny top floor of Merlijnstraat in early 2022. Late lockdown there was spent writing on the balcony and walking or playing in nearby parks. This creative but relaxed time is embodied in the feeling on ’Tuhka,’ a release wrapping itself around the core of two long-form tracks:

Kärpässieni is a soft, pensive number, with an archival cheap synth track and a chopped-up mystery field recording mingling with a simple subdued vocal loop. There is a titular reference to amanita mushrooms, a fungi encompassing the mystery and the melancholy bitterness present in the track. The feeling is akin to a frosty morning spent on a walk to the Mercatorplein library and feeling your toes start numbing.

Varisevalehti means ’shudderingleaf’ and it consists of an airy, optimistic voice loop that progresses and winds around the length of the track. Alongside it, at times you can hear tape-manipulated samples from a ’learn Italian’ record I used to own. The feeling is more of a wander around Westerpark when the blossoms have started come loose and fly around in the air, forming soft pink deposits in the corners of streets.

Thanks to Haron Aumaj for enduring support and for the copious quantities of Banjaan borani.

On in february, Isik Kural works like a photographer of sound, documenting the passing and returning of time as if material snapshots of life's temporality. Across the album's twelve songs, each composed from chance loops and cocooned within the soft container of Isik's memorable voice and melody play, time is held on to hopefully, impossibly, eternally.
Born in Istanbul, Isik studied music engineering at the University of Miami, alighted in New York City, and eventually settled in Glasgow, immersing in a sound design masters and audiovisual practice. While these paths guided him between different projects and cities, a voice was simultaneously growing inside the artist, informed by a vision of the world in its everyday luminosity. This voice was expressed in the lyrical and instrumental waves of 2019's As Flurries, a cassette collection for Italian label Almost Halloween Records.
Isik Kural's in february will be released on October 15, 2021 on vinyl, cassette, compact disc, and digital formats. On behalf of Isik, a portion of the proceeds from this release will benefit Turkiye Egitim Gonulluleri Vakfi, an organization that creates and conducts workshops, educational training programs and after school programs for children across Turkey.

"Black Screen Records has once again teamed up with Tumult Kollektiv to release their soundtrack to Hundred Days, a game of choice, nostalgia and winemaking.Departing from the folkloristic orchestral sounds of Pine, the music for Hundred Days strives for an intimate setting, prominently featuring a small ensemble of synthesizers, cello and guitar. The compositions are lush and intricate, creating a soothing and light-hearted score, tinged with a sense of melancholy.""We are really proud to be releasing our second soundtrack with Black Screen Records and would like to thank everyone that has been supporting our music.Working on the music for Hundred Days was a wonderful experience and a great opportunity to taste some wines (and learn about winemaking).Thanks to Weinhof Lindicke for allowing us to record sounds on their vineyard, and Lawrence Herlyn for showing us around.Furthermore, our deepest gratitude to the wonderful musicians we got to work with on this project. Thanks for borrowing us your talent, near infinite patience, and making the music sing."" - Alexander van der Kruijf, Jonathan Howe & Leonhard van Voorst"

RIYL: A Hawk And A Hacksaw, Leonard Cohen, Daniel Kahn, Xylouris White, Arooj Aftab, Tindersticks, Nick Cave, Alasdair Roberts, Geoff Berner, The Klezmatics. Deluxe 180gLP with 350gsm Arktika jacket/inner + 36”x12” art/lyrics fold-out + DL. CD in gatefold jacket + art/lyrics fold-out. Recorded by Greg Norman (Jason Molina, Nina Nastasia, Electrical Audio). Everything Returns reunites the original Black Ox Orkestar lineup following a 15-year hiatus. Arising from the fertile Montréal post-punk agit-prop scene of the early 2000s, the band comprises Scott Gilmore, Jessica Moss and Thierry Amar of Thee Silver Mt. Zion (Amar also continues to compose and play bass for Godspeed You! Black Emperor) and Gabriel Levine of Sackville. Black Ox made two acclaimed albums of roiling acoustic avant-folk in the mid-2000s, exploring Eastern European and North African folkways through the lens of a gritty, resonant indie rock sensibility, juxtaposing interpretations of instrumentals from various Jewish, Romani and Arabic traditions with originals led by Gilmore’s politically-charged Yiddish vocals. These early albums have since become lodestars for many among a new generation of Yiddish, Klezmer and radical Jewish diasporic music practitioners and fans. First revealing its resurrection in February 2022 with a surprise flexi 7” single issued by left journal Jewish Currents as a gift to its thousands of subscribers, Black Ox has indeed fully and fruitfully reunited. Exquisitely recorded by Greg Norman (Jason Molina, Nina Nastasia, Electrical Audio), Everything Returns picks up right where the band left off: an incisively atmospheric, melancholic yet resolute album of uniquely modern Jewish folk music, with piano, violin, upright bass, clarinet and cymbalom making up the core instrumentation, and the vocal tunes sung primarily in Yiddish, alongside album centerpiece “Viderkol” and closer “Lamed-Vovnik” where English also features. This is not fusion music, but diaspora music: a cross-cultural call and response of musical lexicons, emerging from the history of Jewish persecution and displacement, the musicology of 19th century repertoire from Jewish shtetls, the improvisational traditions of nusakh in Jewish music and taqsim in Arabic music, and a wider polyglot dialogue of Jewish, Slavic, Arabic, and Central Asian musical traditions. Lyrically and stylistically, Everything Returns connects key current issues from refugees forced to leave their homes, to the return of fascism and exclusionary nationalism—with the legacy of modernist Yiddish poetry and song. The new Black Ox Orkestar album is a sublime, poetic, politically-informed statement of re-energized diasporic musical intent, where Gilmore’s voice and the band’s simmering arrangements conjure an ardent, doleful balladry that echoes the sound and sensibility of artists like Tindersticks, The National, Nick Cave and Leonard Cohen. Everything Returns is a haunting, richly textured, darkly sparkling song cycle at once from a vanished world and very much of our time and place. Tracklist: 1 Tish Nign 2 Perpetual Peace 3 Oysgeforn / Bessarabia Hora 4 Mizrakh Mi Ma’arav 5 Skotschne 6 Viderkol (Echo) 7 Epigenetik 8 Moldovan Zhok 9 Lamed-Vovnik

RIYL: ESG, LCD Soundsystem, Liquid Liquid, Hercules & Love Affair, Talking Heads. Melbourne, Australia "heat beat" icons NO ZU regroup after the passing of vocalist Daphne Camf, to release their first new original music since 2016. NO ZU have played Barcelona's Primavera Festival, performed live on French television, and toured Australia with no wave icons ESG and James Chance. Led by the magnetic, tireless Nicolaas Oogjes, NO ZU's multi- limbed, mutant punk funk has evolved over the last decade to make them one of Australia's most distinctive and debauched groups. Daphne’s passing in 2021 left a huge hole in the band, and they fell into a long silence. Now they return with an EP featuring her final recordings with the group. Heat Beat, named after the band’s own trademarked genre, is classic NO ZU. Dark and playful, layered with cryptic allusions and implausibly danceable, the EP shows NO ZU at their restless, exploratory best. 2016 second album Afterlife took NO ZU to Europe as well as US shows where they collaborated with members of Liquid Liquid. 2017 remix EP BODY2BODY2BODY saw Afterlife tracks reworked by the band's 80s idols A Certain Ratio and Jonny Sender of Konk. In 2020 they released a double A-side single covering Hunters & Collectors’ Talking To A Stranger and Bryan Ferry’s Sensation, and played their last live show in Feb 2020. Now NO ZU return with a joyful, celebratory EP of their final recordings with beloved vocalist Daphne Camf. Like a post-punk band discovering the joys of dub, disco, and Afrobeat” – Pitchfork // “Melbourne’s freakiest multi-limbed ensemble are masters of percussive lunacy and wild x-rated boogie” – The Vinyl Factory // Side A: 1. Liquid Love 2. Mind Melt.. Side B: 3. Cosmetic Beat 4. Heat Beat Head 5. Phone Call Melt Down

David Gedge says: "During our `Hit Parade' series in 1992, there were a couple of Science-Fiction-themed singles, namely `Flying Saucer' (July) and The Queen Of Outer Space (November). And, would you believe it, I've only gone and done it again, haven't I? Thus, hot on the heels of last month's `Astronomic' comes the November single, erm... `Science Fiction'. It's not about the whole genre as such; the title will make sense when you hear the song. Although it's quite a sad lyric I, rather glamorously, wrote it whilst enjoying the amenities of a fancy hotel in Hollywood, so maybe the proximity of the film industry inspired me. Talking of inspirations, one band that has influenced The Wedding Present, off and on, over the years is The (mighty) Fall. And I don't know if they even planned it but, on `Plot Twist', Jon's spiky guitar riff and Melanie's crunchy bass line totally remind me of the classic Craig Scanlon / Steve Hanley combination that was memorably to be heard on sessions like the one recorded for John Peel in March 1983. Suitably inspired myself, when writing this lyric, I decided to also reference The Fall (for the second time in Wedding Present lyric history, the first being `Take Me!' some thirty-three or so years ago)." Penultimate release in this monthly series, in 2022 The Wedding Present will be releasing a new 7" single every month, the last but one is available for indie record stores only soon. This fascinating project - which goes under the name of 24 Songs - comes thirty years after the band's similar Hit Parade series of 7"s in 1992 and features two brandnew recordings of the current WP incarnation. Each of the records comes in a beautifully designed sleeve featuring brutalist photography by Jessica McMillan

Earl McKenzie & Clive Gardiner are two lifelong friends who grew up together in Southall, West London, UK. Their mutual love of soul and funk inspired them to form a 7-piece band, The Class of 78, while still at school and years later became the duo, McKenzie & Gardiner. They made their first demos in 1983 followed soon after by a 12" single ”From Time” which became a highly sought-after Boogie-Funk Rare Groove. With their reissue of Timestamp—an album that has been championed and promoted by funk luminaries like Dam-Funk and Funk Freaks—the duo offer a deluxe edition to the 2014 version that’s been long sold out. Included, is an expanded version which has been remastered and repackaged as the appropriately titled, Timestamp: The Collection. To boot, this double disc LP is equipped with detailed liners that includes a lyric sheet, making this CQQL Records’ bespoke reissue something special!

As a kid, feels like a million years ago, we would watch Saturday morning cartoons. After the cartoons went off you’d catch wrestling, WWF or Soul Train. After that TV block though, if you were lucky, you’d see Kung Fu Theater. Classic martial arts movies that ruled the early afternoons those decades ago. Just seeing those for an hour and You’d be charged up to go outside and try to test your skills on the other kids around you. In rare cases you may get blessed with a two piece double feature back to back. Lord Beatjitzu brings back Bruce Li for a fresh adventure and drops him in Japan the land of the samurai. You’ll recognize the hard hitting knock instantly. Lord Beatjitzu digs in and presents a full length classic that follows directly in the footsteps of his premier LP, Beat Kune Do. Expect neck snapping drums and the usual obscure loops he's known to dig up as we delve on another adventure. This is his fifth project on Grilchy Party imprint and he shows no signs of slowing down. Be safe out there and be sure to protect your necks, your chests and your heads!

His debut was recorded in the winter of 2003 with assistance from Texas
chamber pop collective The Earlies, followed by three albums of original material
and one all-covers album. In 2011, a near-fatal car crash paralyzed his arms for
months. He spent his recovery time listening to some demos he'd made before
the crash. The material eventually culminated in the darkest and most intensely
personal collection of songs from him thus far and garnered widespread critical
acclaim. (Micah P. Hinson & The Nothing). Since then, each record is a final
confrontation with himself, each song shakes with danger. I Lie To You, the new
Micah P. Hinson album, comes from five days and five nights of recording in
Irpinia, South Italy, with production by Alessandro Asso Stefana (PJ Harvey, Mike
Patton, Vinicio Capossela). Accompanying Micah and Asso are Raffaele Tiseo's
celestial strings, Zeno De Rossi metaphysic drumming and the double bass
gentleman Greg Cohen. On this new album he sings, with his weathered, husky,
prophet-like voice, eleven tales of love, loss and regret, which once again reveal
his heart as an artist laid bare.

Shelter Press extend a quietly cine-poetic invitation to visit the Outer Hebrides via immersive sounds - field recordings of psalm singing and local dialect - collected and arranged by interdisciplinary artist Joshua Bonnetta, going hand-in-hand with Shelter Press’ core interests in the fading light of its 10th year in operation. A beautiful artefact - complete with 60 page photobook.

Accompanied by an evocative photo study and access to an accompanying film and essay, Bonetta’s second release for Shelter Press following 2016’s ‘Lago’ imparts a real feel for the archipelago, off the north west coast of Scotland, where he was stationed during an artist’s residency during 2017-2019. Stitched together from observant field recordings and interviews with residents on the islands of Barra, Berneray, Harris, Lewis & North Uist, the work elicits a sense of timelessness in its slow drift between shores, hills, standing stones and the intimacy of its voices, including Gaelic spoken word, folk song and whistling. Save for the appearance of a plane overhead, the sounds of car and boat motors, plus a little bit of electronic disturbance that pull you into the modern era; the results practically imagine what it would have been like to visit the islands with a recording device at any point since the last ice age. 

For Bonetta, who hails from rural Canada, the similarities between his formative landscapes and those of Scotland must have appeared familiar, perhaps a subconscious recall/reminder that the two places shared a landmass, albeit 425 million years ago. His sound sensitive subtlety and cinematic ear in arranging his collected sounds serves to highlight the way the modern world only just infringes on Innse Gall’s ancient landscapes and only relatively modern tongues (if we’re thinking in geologic terms of scale). We hear the sounds of its avian population seamlessly eliding its humans in the whistling of Alick Macauley, and the natural cadence of of its mild oceanic climate mirrored in lilting Gaelic folksong, here performed by Calum McDonald, Joey Morrison, and Maggie Smith, and more generally practiced by only a tiny percentage of Scotland’s population (some 1%) but still surely alive in its meridian isles where time moves much more slowly.

With the nuance and poetry expected of a Shelter Press title, ‘Innes Gall’ reflects on the area’s anglicised name, meaning “islands of the strangers”, with calming, soberly documentarian results as heartwarming and fascinating as a visit to the area, just without the effort of travel, and from the comfort of your own living space. Bonnetta is incapable of ignoring the cinematic frame, and intersperses each shot with enough poetry to keep you entranced.

»Follower« is Abrahams’ 6th album for Room 40 and showcases his continuing interest in the ambiguous spaces between music and noise; tonality and atonality; rhythm and texture. All four tracks have piano as a key factor: in one instance, high-pitched and atonal; in another, emotive yet distant as if projected on to a screen. Follower presents the listener with a sound world of colourful juxtapositions, rich orchestration and organically open forms.

On the opening track, bass piano meanders through a wilderness of de-tuned bells and organ swells; a strange sort of festival. Low frequency sighs evenly punctuate, like a pump or a heartbeat. It’s a procession that takes it time as it wanders the terrain, brought to a close with transcendent distortion. On track 2, muscular modal piano surfs among waves of percussion and analogue synthesisers. A buffeting travel.

Tape



By its very nature, intuition is something of which we easily lose sight. Music however, as both bridge and secret technology, connects the natural, artificial, and the earned. It can act as both a reminder of cultures and people gone, while materialising and alchemising from thin air elements not to be found on any periodic tables, and visions no human can see.

»Pin down the dust« is the first meeting of Nighte - Christina Carter (Charalambides) and Mari Maurice (more eaze) - and it feels both automatic and natural. The collaboration stems from a spontaneous decision by the duo to start playing together weekly. “That's how this music was made,” explains Carter, “with gut feeling as the guiding principle. Mari understands the music I've made on such a deep level that playing with her feels so natural.”

The result of this meeting is inarguably some of the most beautiful music to ever emerge from either Carter or Maurice. The structures are spacious, generous, and gentle, with scraped violin strings and seemingly ancient moans strewn sparingly like falling leaves on a picnic blanket. Having begun life as freeform interplays between the duo recorded live at Maurice’s house, overdubs were later added and the material mixed by Maurice alone into finalised pieces.

Maurice’s varied instrumentation litters the background with distant and oneiric miscellanies, from groaned saxophone phrases and heavenly organ drones to glissandi guitars. Carter’s voice sits in the centre, embodying and channelling (mostly) wordless human ecstasy - and at times unease - amidst the allotment of blossoming sounds. Maurice & Carter’s clairvoyant connection notwithstanding, music always offers a portal back to our buried intuitions. “Pin Down The Dust” is both a tribute and a guide to this spontaneity and instinct, putting aside thought in favour of feeling.

Tape



Originally released in 2019, Craig Tattersall unspooled a gorgeous tape of disintegrated piano meditations and dusty lower case ephemera.

On the A-side it’s a dreamily searching, silty flux of piano notes peeling in slow motion. Strings drift over, connoting cold breezes and infrasonic, spectral presences, but the effect is far from menacing, it’s more a tranquil shade of sublime, like those hours after midnight when the meridian sounds of road traffic and human life have ebbed off into the distance and you’re left with the sighing creaks of a room.

The sound is remarkably different on the B-side. Here the air gradually thickens with murkier sub-harmonic distortion, bordering on a seething sense of aggression relative to most of Tattersall’s other output, pushing the grim murk to a logical entropy that precipitates elegiac pauses for reflection and warbling closure.

Extremely rude, extremely powerful, extremely Detroit. You will never miss this one if you are on the dance floor. The boss of Visillusion records was one of the first music producers and DJ’s who dipped his toes into the deep black pond of techno. Actually, that was so long ago that nobody knew the name of this genre at the time. From 1987 he has appeared under different monikers around the globe for many occasions and he is definitely cannot be stopped.

Fresh three-tracker from Thomas Barnett is a gold horse. Moscow-based Exarde has got you covered if you are one of those DJ’s who like lifting heavy weights. Just pop the A-side on the deck without even looking and let this warehouse bounce. But don’t forget to flip it in a few minutes because the B-side has a more experimental feel if we might say and just can’t be missed by any electronic music aficionado.

The liminal space between storytelling and dreaming is full of noise. Like whispers, flickering lines of static travel to the rhythm of tension, moving through moments of stillness and chaos. The sharp details of the hyper-personal become shared memories.

Dreams can be stories, their fabric transient and their logic malleable - like folk songs carrying ancient knowledge or clairvoyant wisdom.

White Dove Dream tells a story that only sound can. One that defies language and closed narrative; a story that is both a personal rumination and collective conversation.

There are layers of healing synthesis and dream logic improvisation; captured recordings coalesce somewhere beneath the scramble like deja vu. Like a diary entry, or a manifesto - noise is folk music and Icebear is noisy.

Icebear is Eilis Mahon, a sound artist from Kildare, Ireland.

White Dove Dream is her debut release on Weeding - an independent label and collective of friends based primarily in Dublin, Ireland, who love to make and share noise.

Recent play of “Funny Games / Garfield” on Pure Soil - NTS.

Three generous portions of blissful beats on the Electric Shrine imprint, kicking off with the downbeat (in BPM terms) but lively 'Solar Visions' coming on like a dub mix of a lost Chic classic, 'What You Love' more like prime-era John Carpenter remixed by a mischievous Orb and 'Un Amore Supremo' a slow motion (one of the slowest we've ever encountered) reverb-fest, designed for more eccentric chillout rooms. And that's all before the opera singer pitches in.

With UPGRADES, Fogata Sounds imprint nearly 20 years of collaboration between Troy Berkley & Krak in Dub. This opus follows half a dozen maxi 45's and 300 gigs across Europe, from the One Love Festival to the underground sound system nights. The vocalist and the producer skills take you on a journey into “Sound System” music, from Early Roots to Future Dance-Hall, oscillating between Dub and Jungle. Those styles appear like solar polaroids , bringing images to the minds of neophytes and music lovers. 12 effective and original tunes mixing analog instrumentals like in “Life pon the line” or “CrystalBall” to the uncompromising Stepper from « Roll Call ». Featuring the big tune « Matta » and to singles « Dub plate Dada » et « Sound and Power » feat Sr Wilson.

The Sol Power All-Stars are back once more on the Rocksteady Disco label with some superb new covers of much-loved British funk band Cymande. Each one brings a fresh perspective while paying heed of the Afro-roots of the originals. 'Anthracite' (feat Denise Henderson) opens up and is designed for moaner dance floors with cosmic synth work and big, bouncing drums. There is a deeper and more steamy sense of rhythm to the tropical sounds of 'Getting It Back' while the Parkway dub of 'Anthracite' sounds like early house music. Two versions of 'Genevieve' offer shuffling rhythms and big horn stabs and stomping, ass-wiggling Afro-jazz.