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Nach dem Erfolg des offiziellen Anno 1800-Vinylsoundtracks feiern Black Screen Records und Ubisoft Mainz die populäre Aufbausimulation mit "The Four Season": Der opulente zweite Soundtrack entführt in die lebendigen musikalischen Welten der vier Erweiterungssets des Spiels und erscheint pünktlich zum 25jährigen Jubiläum der Traditionsmarke am 31.03.2023, natürlich auf audiophilem 180g Doppelvinyl. Alle neuen Musikstücke werden zur gleichen Zeit auf Spotify verfügbar sein. Das Album wird erneut in wunderschönem Klappcover mit Artworks von Ubisoft Mainz ausgeliefert und kommt mit kostenlosem Download-Code für den digitalen Soundtrack, inklusive 8 Bonustracks. Musikalisch dokumentiert die Doppel-LP nicht nur die enorme inhaltliche Abwechslung der vier Anno 1800-"Seasons", sondern auch die stilistische Bandbreite der Komponisten Steffen Brinkmann, Jochen Flach, Armin Haas, Alexander Röder, Tilman Sillescu und Matthias Wolf (Dynamedion). Die Stücke erzählen von versunkenen Schätzen und reichen Ernten, von Expeditionen in die Arktis und ins gefährliche Land der Löwen, von der Eroberung des Reichs der Lüfte oder dem überwältigenden Ausblick von den majestätischen Dächern der Stadt. Kurzum: Die Welt von Anno 1800 und der facettenreichen Spielerweiterungen wird als akustische Reise erlebbar gemacht. Anno 1800 ist eine von Ubisoft Mainz entwickelte und von Ubisoft veröffentlichte Aufbausimulation, in der Spieler die industrielle Revolution anführen, Metropolen errichten und mit Diplomatie, Handel oder Krieg um die Vorherrschaft wetteifern. Das erfolgreiche PC-Strategiespiel begeistert mehr als 2,5 Millionen Spieler auf der ganzen Welt mit einer Kombination aus bewährten Spielelementen, innovativen Neuerungen und dynamischem Spielverlauf in einer der spannendsten Epochen der Menschheitsgeschichte.

ShitKids lo-fi indie/punk rock debut LP Fish polarised music fans across the world.
Most the reviews came in either 5/5 or 1/5, which is just the way we like it. Athrilling start of a great career that included shows all over the world and makingIggy Pop a fan. This repress contains two bonus tracks and is a part of thePNKSLM 10 year anniversary repress series featuring represses of some of theSwedish label's sold out key releases.

Nearly five years on from their acclaimed debut, Bennett Wilson Poole reveal the follow up. It's been a long time coming, but...

That eponymous first album was only ever intended as a one-off collaborative project — a serendipitous series of events which began with a late evening session where the trio wrote ‘Hate Won't Win’. A response to the murder of MP Jo Cox, it was something of a fresh take on Crosby Stills Nash and Young’s classic protest song ‘Ohio’. The release saw Bennett Wilson Poole embraced by the Americana community, playing live on the Andrew Marr show and crowned as ‘UK Artist of the Year’ at the 2019 UK Americana Awards, in front of a watching crowd including Graham Nash himself.

The new album came together in similar fashion; Robin (Bennett) and Danny (Wilson) started writing new songs late into the night whilst on tour to promote the first record — a tour which unfolded from a three-night residency in a London pub into a year-long odyssey culminating in a headline show in Hall One at King’s Place — and before they knew it, there were enough songs to begin recording an unplanned second album.

Where the first record drank deep from 70s US west coast folk-rock, the second has been heavily spiked with 1960s British psychedelia, even featuring a cover by legendary counterculture artist John Hurford (whose credits include 60s artwork for Oz Magazine and International Times).*

Tony Poole’s meticulous and inspired production has spun Robin and Danny’s fresh batch of songs into a delicate web of musical delight. Fans of the ‘spot the reference’ game Tony started on the first record won’t be disappointed this time either, as there are plenty more to be found here.


As with the first album, the lyrics don’t shy away from current affairs – by the end of that year of touring, the band were already playing “I Wanna Love You (But I Can’t Right Now)”, reflecting on the state of US politics, yet optimistic that the problems are only temporary.

Many of the tracks on the new album feature live rhythm section Fin Kenny (drums) and Joe Bennett (bass) for the first time on a BWP record.

The title of the album comes from the lyrics of ‘Help Me See My Way’, the first single, a prayer for strength in difficult times, the trippy animated video for which was originally issued during lockdown. The dreamy positivity of the line "I saw a star behind your eyes" is tempered with the plea "don't let it die away", a message which feels as important as ever two years on.

All three collaborators have had critical acclaim in their own right. Danny Wilson’s credentials go back to his days in Grand Drive with brother Julian, and his consistent high calibre output with his Champions of the World led them to sweeping the board at the first UK Americana Awards with Album, Artist and Song of the year awards richly deserved; Tony Poole’s Starry Eyed and Laughing were hailed as “the English Byrds” on the back of their two CBS-released albums in the mid-seventies and he has since built an enviable reputation as producer and engineer; Robin Bennett has been relentlessly turning out timeless songs from his Oxfordshire base in bands from Goldrush to The Dreaming Spires

Mit einer Mischung aus zeitgenössischem AOR, melodischem Rock und Djent präsentieren BLACK ORCHID EMPIRE einen progressiven Sound, der ebenso ausgefeilt wie technisch, ebenso frisch wie vertraut und ebenso melodisch wie knallhart ist. Seit ihrem Debüt im Jahr 2016 ist das Londoner Trio auf dem aufsteigenden Ast, da sie den aktiven Rockmarkt in Großbritannien aufmischen. Mit "Tempus Veritas" ist die Band nun bereit, die nächste Stufe zu erreichen. Vom Konzept her ist das Album eine Sammlung von Geschichten, die nach fesselnden imaginären Erzählungen suchen, die in der Geschichte, wie wir sie kennen, versteckt sind. Wenn der Vorgänger "Semaphore" ein Sci-Fi-Album war, ist dies ein Hi-Fi-Album.

Mit einer Mischung aus zeitgenössischem AOR, melodischem Rock und Djent präsentieren BLACK ORCHID EMPIRE einen progressiven Sound, der ebenso ausgefeilt wie technisch, ebenso frisch wie vertraut und ebenso melodisch wie knallhart ist. Seit ihrem Debüt im Jahr 2016 ist das Londoner Trio auf dem aufsteigenden Ast, da sie den aktiven Rockmarkt in Großbritannien aufmischen. Mit "Tempus Veritas" ist die Band nun bereit, die nächste Stufe zu erreichen. Vom Konzept her ist das Album eine Sammlung von Geschichten, die nach fesselnden imaginären Erzählungen suchen, die in der Geschichte, wie wir sie kennen, versteckt sind. Wenn der Vorgänger "Semaphore" ein Sci-Fi-Album war, ist dies ein Hi-Fi-Album.

Angel numbers: a series of recurring numerical patterns or sequences which those who believe in such things invest with cosmic significance.

Also, the name of the forthcoming album by Hamish Hawk – an apt title for an artist who bounces between scepticism and wonder, who alchemises the quotidian, who is engaged in a constant quest to outwit and outflank the ordinary. With the release of Heavy Elevator in September 2021, Edinburgh-based Hawk established himself as a writer of heartfelt, headstrong, unashamedly literate songs to stimulate both pulse and psyche. Heavy Elevator offered words to savour and tunes to relish. The songs were filmic and romantic, blending wit, wisdom, resignation and beauty with a kind of sceptical joie de vivre, delivered in a rich baritone that has drawn comparisons to everyone from Jarvis Cocker to Scott Walker. A singer of style and guile peddling accessible intelligence: what’s

not to love? Heavy Elevator established a powerful artistic imprimatur which nonetheless felt neither defining nor confining. While the album has been justly lauded, Hawk’s next steps have moved the story considerably further forward. Angel Numbers meets growing expectations head on, with panache and aplomb.

"Hungarian guitarist Gabor Szabo (1936-82) issued only three live recordings during his lifetime. Significantly, the first of these, The Sorcerer (1967), remains the most popular album in the guitarist’s all-too abbreviated discography. But there were also More Sorcery (1968) and Gabor Szabo Live with Charles Lloyd (1974), offering Szabo totally in his element and at his bewitching best.
Several more of Szabo’s concert recordings have surfaced in the intervening years, including this one, superbly captured for radio broadcast live in 1976 at the 600-seat Agora Ballroom in Cleveland, Ohio. It is a revelation. There is a sense here that concert patrons may have been hearing an altogether different Gabor Szabo than record buyers.
For one thing, Szabo is heard fronting what is likely his own group, rather than an army of studio musicians. In 1976, Szabo was leading a tremendous quartet with George Cables (or Joanne Grauer) on piano, Tony Dumas on bass and Sherman Ferguson on drums. Szabo had not had a band with this much jazz clout since his famed quartet with Jimmy Stewart in 1967-68 – and it is a union worth savoring: Szabo’s records during this period were light, at best, on jazz.
It’s unclear if any of these musicians are on the Agora date, but as Dumas’s “It Happens” opens the program, it’s a good bet, at least, that the bassist is on board here. But as Szabo’s ’76 quartet is not known to have recorded a studio record, Live in Cleveland is the closest thing to what a mid-seventies Szabo jazz album would sound like.
Gone, are the strings, vocals and concessions to commercial consideration so prevalent on so many of Szabo’s studio records at the time. What is present, though, is fine craftsmanship, tremendous interplay, and the exciting improvisation that good jazz always yields.
This particular concert was part of Sansui’s “New World of Jazz,” a series of 13 hour-long jazz concerts recorded at Cleveland’s iconic Agora Ballroom and broadcast over 40 FM radio stations. The series was sponsored by Sansui Electronics, a Japanese manufacturer of audio and video equipment, which previously sponsored a similar series of rock concerts recorded at the Agora as well.
Sansui was promoting its matrix QS 4-channel sound system – offering, what was considered at the time, superior diagonal separation and stereo compatibility. The firm, partnering with Agora Ballroom and Agency Recording Studio owner Hank LoConti (1929-2014), was looking to take advantage of what they rightly felt was the then-current jazz renaissance.
Each show’s 16-track master tape was mixed through the Sansui QS 4-channel encoder,” according to an August 1976 Billboard article detailing the arrangement, “for distribution to the 40 FM stations throughout the United States that bought the series” – allowing for three commercial spots for local dealers to advertise."

The recording is available for the first time on CD and VINYL. Mastering by grammy-nominated Jessica Thompson.

After almost two years of work, we're glad to invite you to a new journey through the fog of time and enjoy the upcoming reissue of the great Ambient/Folk record from 1984. A well-known to collectors but extremely rare record by Jon Iverson a multi-instrumentalist from Palo Alto and his college friend, mandolinist Tom Walters. They shared a love for singer/songwriter fare and gigged around campus playing covers of Neil Young, CSN, and Loggins/Messina in the late '70s.
"First Collection" was recorded during the Spring of 1984 in a small garage that had been converted to a one-room apartment in the seaside community of Los Osos, California.
With an instrumentation of 12-string guitar, piano, mandolin, analog synthesizers, and sampler, the duo has recorded nine bright, weightless, and diverse compositions where electronic experiments mix with ethnic rhythms, sweeping through inspired folk reminiscent of the work of William Ackerman, John Fahey, Master Wilburn Burchette, and Robbie Basho, to homemade pastoral space folk exuding sophisticated, pale, lunar sonic moods that somehow might remind of the work of Roedelius from the early 80s.
Equipment used for tracking included a rented 1/2" 8-track Otari MX5050 analog tape machine and assorted mics. With only a few thousand albums pressed, First Collection has become a collectable in some circles.
Now, almost forty years later, First Collection has been remixed and remastered from the original 1/2" tapes for this release.

Canadian alt. rock 5-piece Mother Mother have experienced a whirlwind decade, amassing over 830 million streams and views, earning 14 million monthly listeners on digital platforms and 2 million searches at Shazam.
In 2021 they became something of a TikTok sensation when songs from their back catalogue exploded on the platform, quickly accumulating a staggering 325 million uses of #MotherMother as well as 1.5 million fans (now at 2.7m).

In the band’s homeland, they have had numerous Top 10 Alternative Radio hits, spent several weeks at #1, and have been the most played alternative artist at radio for multiple years running. The band have also found success on the road. Their most recent pre-pandemic tours featured numerous sold-out headline dates including New York, London,
Los Angeles and all across Canada and the US.

Last autumn Mother Mother performed a sold out UK tour to over 9,000 rabid fans, including two nights at the 02 Forum in Kentish Town.

Das sechste Album der New Yorker Band The National ist der Nachfolger des gefeierten Meisterwerks "High Violet" (2010), das sich weltweit über 600.000-mal verkaufte. Sänger Matt Berninger beschreibt die Songs auf "Trouble Will Find Me" im Vergleich zum bisherigen Schaffen der Band als "intuitiver und direkter". Tatsächlich ist der Sound des Albums unmittelbarer und zugänglicher, sodass man förmlich spürt, wie die Band bei sich selbst angekommen ist. "In den letzten zehn Jahren waren wir immer hinter etwas her und wollten etwas beweisen", so Berninger. Nach der fast zweijährigen Tour zu "High Violet" hätten sie sich diesbezüglich nun endlich mal entspannen können. Das Ergebnis ist gleichzeitig so neuartig wie familiär, der Höhepunkt einer künstlerischen Reise, die The National sowohl in neue Sphären als auch zurück zu ihren Anfängen bringt. Bassist Aaron Dessner: "Auf der einen Seite sind die neuen Songs die bisher komplexesten, aber auch die schlichtesten und "menschlichsten". Es fühlt sich einfach an, als hätten wir unsere gemeinsame Chemie gefunden."

Death Cab For Cutie haben es geschafft mit ihrer dritten Platte einen Klassiker des "Quiet Rock" zu veröffentlichen. "Transatlanticism" ist all das, was wir zur Zeit an Rockmusik lieben. Seitdem das Klavier bei Rockmusik wieder mitmachen darf. Große Melodiebögen, die erst nach dem dritten Mal ihre Schönheit offenbaren, leuchtende Ernsthaftigkeit. Eine herrliche Platte. "Transatlanticism" beginnt mit dem Satz : "So this is the new year!" Jedes Mal wenn man diese Platte auflegt ist Neujahr, 4 Minuten nach 00:00 Uhr. Die Band hat die Option, uns durch das ganze Jahr zu begleiten. Mit ihrer Schönheit, Melodie, Vielschichtigkeit... Death Cab for Cutie haben sich 1997 in Bellingham/Washington gegründet. Der Sänger Benjamin Gibbard, dessen Stimme vielen durch sein Wirken bei der Sub Pop-Band Postal Service bekannt sein dürfte, wird von seiner Band - Christopher Walla (Gitarre), Nicholas Harmer ( Bass) und Michael Schorr (Schlagzeug) - durch dieses Album getragen. Wenn Sie schon mal ein wenig verliebt waren, dann hören Sie auf das Titelstück. Das epische 7:55 min lange "Transatlanticism". Und er singt:" I need you so much closer! So come on!"

A beautiful combination of piano, strings, electronics and Ondes Martenot" Hannah Peel, BBC Radio3 "Fusing modern classical and ambient electronic, Missing Island is the highlight of the year in its class. Never predictable, never mundane - a special album."
Louder than War "What is the Missing Island? Snowdrops dances around the title, touching on multiple themes: the elements, the unconscious, the search for meaning and revelation. In the end, the missing island is open to interpretation: the piece that could complete us, if only we could find it." A Closer Listen. France chamber collective Snowdrops return to Injazero Records for their third album Missing Island, a musical fresco in seven pieces, a naturalist painting that exists between contemporary classical, post-folk and electro-acoustic music. Missing Island is the sequel to the highly acclaimed Volutes (2020), and again sees multi-instrumentalists Christine Ott and Mathieu Gabry joined by violist Anne-Irène Kempf on most tracks. This new chapter in the natural history of Snowdrops is lent an earthier texture by the hand-pumped organ, performed by Christine Ott.

Now available at a new lower price. Pressed On Opaque Yellow Vinyl With Japanese Stylized Insert And Deluxe Obi Strip. Remastered From The Original Analog Tapes. The first live Miles Davis electric band release since 1977’s very dark and heavy Dark Magus. The album features live performances from shows at Boston’s Kix Club. The double vinyl release contains reimagined versions of songs from The Man With the Horn (1981), tunes from the pre-electric Gil Evans collaboration Porgy and Bess (1959), and a dedication to the Boston venue called Kix. While this was one of the first live Miles Davis performances in over half a decade it certainly did not show!!! This album features R&B legend Marcus Miller on bass, Mike Stern on guitar, Bill Evans on saxophone, Mino Cinelu on percussion, and electric band alumni Al Foster on drums. Produced and edited by long time Miles collaborator Teo Macero

Balancing traditionally timeless grit with 21st century gusto, Judiciary hammer out hardcore grooves at breakneck thrash speeds. The Texas quintet—Jake Collinson vocals, Kyle Calfin [bass], Austin Looney [drums], Jimmy LaDue [guitar], and Israel Garza [guitar]—wield a searing signature style unlike anything in heavy music. With calculated intensity, it bludgeons without compromise, draws back for a breath, and strikes again even harder. Piling up millions of streams and inciting the applause of Stereogum, Revolver, and more, the group perfects this incendiary hybrid of metal and hardcore on their 2023 second full-length LP, Flesh + Blood [Closed Casket Activities]. “It’s a mashup of old school heavy metal with contemporary energy,” says Kyle. “We didn’t just change anything for the sake of change—we’ve elevated everything in every way.

Darling West decamped for a tiny island on Norway’s west coast to begin writing what was to become Cosmos, their fifth studio album. For the first time, the band’s core – married couple Mari and Tor Egil Kreken – have included band members Thomas Gallatin and Christer Slaaen in the songwriting and production process. As a larger united, Darling West has really evolved. Cosmos is indeed the sound of expansion. West coast, cosmic folk, americana… Call it what you will – there are even hints of afro blues on here – but where the band once fit firmly in the folk/americana category, you might as well just call it pop these days. Cosmos was recorded and produced in its entirety by Darling West. Vocal guests on the album include Matthew Logan Vasquez (Delta Spirit) and Jarle Bernhoft, while David Wallumrød, Lars Horntveth and Torjus Vierli all excel on keys. Finally, the one and only Rob Moose (Paul Simon, Bon Iver, Sufjan Stevens, Phoebe Bridgers) provides strings on “Till Night Turns to Day” and “Old Man”. The listener is also awarded plenty of what we’ve come to love from Darling West: Mari Kreken’s gorgeous voice and Tor Egil Kreken’s incredibly versatile playing (guitar, bass, banjo, etc.) playing. The sum of these parts makes up a magical record, with songs and melodies that will stay on your mind for the unforeseeable future. While many struggled to keep their heads up during the pandemic, the band did their best to contribute positively, and came out on the other side with a growing, dedicated fanbase, due to their incredibly popular “Family Sessions” on Youtube. A recurring concept where they featured a host of friends and other artists, thus creating a community – or family – which is still going strong. The music on Cosmos searches outward, while the lyrics look inward. The resulting record includes elements of pop, while it pushes the envelope for what Norwegian americana can sound like. Cosmos is also about loving yourself, and there are of course a handful of love songs about shaky relationships – as we’ve come to expect from Darling West. The band continues to develop their unique musicianship and Cosmos is indeed another masterstroke from the band.

Gargantuan volcanoes erupting with primal force, fountains of molten lava bursting sky high and massive boulders hurtling capriciously through the air. These potent and violently alluring images in the documentary series The Living Planet captivated Raoul Björkenheim's imagination in 1986. The search for a band name had come to an end. -”I was mesmerised. The name Krakatau sounded like a drum fill to me”. After studying at the Helsinki Conservatory for a year and the Berklee College of Music in Boston for three, Björkenheim relocated to Finland where he played in bands with Jone Takamäki, Antti Hytti and Tom Nekljudow, and later went on to work with composer and drummer Edward “Eetu” Vesala (1945-1999). His always original and highly demanding Sound & Fury workshops were a pivotal hotbed in the local improvised music scene, but after four years of Vesala's strict leadership Björkenheim felt a need to leave Sound & Fury behind and direct all of his attention towards Krakatau. The lineup on the first album “Ritual” consisted of reed virtuosos Jorma Tapio and Tapani Rinne, the bassist Sampo Lassila and two drummers, Michel Lambert and Heikki “Lefty” Lehto. “Krakatau’s debut album was very challenging to make, as I felt that it might be my one and only chance to record my own music, so I wanted it to be as intense and effective as possible”, says Björkenheim, “I was lucky enough to work with an incredibly talented cast of musicians. I can still listen to the album and feel satisfied that it really works. The first guitar solo illustrates what was to become my modus operandi: to try and play the electric guitar in unexpected ways.” Svart Records will release an expanded double LP version of Krakatau’s Ritual. Limited to 500 copies and due out on March 24th, the album contains an album’s worth of previously unheard material recorded in 1987 in Studio Helsinki and at the Finnish Broadcasting Corporation studio.

This new album by Austin-based rockers Fire From the Gods was produced, engineered and mixed by Erik Ron (Godsmack, Motionless In White, Panic! At The Disco) and masterfully blends inspiration and aggression with soul-searching. For some artists, making music isn't a choice, but is fuelled by something bigger than themselves. This is undoubtedly true of Fire From The Gods, whose brand mantra sees them adopting the tagline 'In Us We Trust', meaning that 'We the People' are responsible for change; a unifying statement in order to try to prevent society from succumbing to the growing malaise brought on by soul-sucking technology, divisive politics and environmental destruction.

Sunergy brings together synthesists Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith and Suzanne Ciani for the thirteenth installment of FRKWYS, RVNG Intl.'s intergenerational collaboration series. For this edition, a panorama of the Pacific Coast provides the place and head space for a musical appreciation and consideration of a life-giving form vast and volatile with change. Fortuitously (as is the freaky way), Smith and Ciani were discovered to be neighbors in the small coastal community of Bolinas, California. The two had become close friends, bonding over their experience as woman musicians and, more unusually, their shared passion for the Buchla synthesizer. The music of Sunergy embraces this kinship, with Ciani and Smith respectively performing on the Buchla 200 E and the Buchla Music Easel, two modern configurations of the innovative instrument developed in the '60s by Don Buchla.
Sunergy was recorded in the Bolinas home where Ciani has lived for the last twenty-four years. Her living room overlooks the Pacific Ocean from a cliffside perch, creating an idyllic, inspired setting for music making. Setting up their synths side-by-side, Ciani and Smith took turns keeping time and freely improvising for the album sessions. As a complete piece, Sunergy is shaped by slow, pulsing forms and sinuous, melodic sequences that conjure both an oceanic world and the unlimited sound made possible by modular processing.For her part, Ciani has long been a Buchla voyager. Suzanne proselytized the potential of Don's synthesizer instruments in the '60s and '70s, performing her own compositions before introducing synthesized jingles and sound effects to household audiences. Ciani then achieved wide recognition for her debut album Seven Waves, a collection of colorful, classical song-like melodies fluidly working with harmonic textures and sounds of the ocean shore. Since its 1982 release, Seven Waves has become an important chapter of the ambient canon within which contemporary artists like Smith have developed their own synth syntax. Smith was born just a few years after the appearance of Seven Waves, growing up in Orcas Island, Washington. A place of profound natural beauty, the islands would inform Tides, her first instrumental collection from 2014. Smith composed Tides as an accompaniment for Yoga classes, ultimately freeing her from conventional songwriting into the exploratory, synth-based compositions demonstrated in ecstatic variety on 2016's Ears. Despite the serene setting where Sunergy was realized, the album does not romanticize a complete oneness with nature. Smith and Ciani use their collaborative ground to reflect on the unstable forces at play across the Bolinas horizon. Sunergy takes stock of Bolinas in the 21st century, a once-thriving artist's refuge now vulnerable to real estate pressure extending from affluent San Francisco, and more irreparably, the specter of climate change erasing its many waterfront habitats.
A diametric dynamic is present in Sunergy, a somber meditation amidst the intense cultural and solar forces transforming the landscape, and a hopeful assertion of the surviving creative culture of Bolinas. Far from rehashing the gentle grace of the artists' seminal works, Sunergy instead seeks to awaken and bear witness, employing the Buchla waveforms to mirror the infinite rhythms of the ocean and our essential relationship to it.
Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith and Suzanne Ciani's Sunergy will be released on September 16, 2016 on LP, CD, and digital formats. An accompanying documentary by Sean Hellfritsch will be offered in tandem.

Following up from their smash collaboration with live band Cotonete, Dimitri From Paris and Heartbeat records shop boss Melik Bencheikh, team up once again to launch their new label, Le HeartBeat.
In an ongoing mission to champion the live side of dance music, they locked themselves up in a studio, with the ace players of new Parisian combo, Chatobaron. The first outing on Le HeartBeat draws from the cheekiness of London’s Punk Funk, meeting with New York’s Disco Not Disco. The all acoustic performance invokes the spirits of Ian Dury, Arthur Russell, bouncing on the walls of the Paradise Garage, to enter the soul of Chatobaron’s expert players, each at the top of their game.
Dimitri gets on mixing duties and makes sure the rhythm section keeps the dancefloor busy. In his signature roller coaster style, he provides vocal and dub versions, chock full of breaks and drops.
Working with seasoned players, using the best of vintage and modern recording techniques, Le HeartBeat Records aims to bring decades of record digging culture onto todays dance floors.

Created during the dark days of lockdown, Rnbws' debut on Nehza Records is a luminous blend of contemporary breaks, enchanting techno and a flash of house. Each track tells a story of our connexion to Earth and an ongoing glimpse of danger within sight. Rnbws has dubbed each side of the release “Dark” and “Bright'' to represent moody tones and doom-ridden rhythms on Side A, while Side B leans towards spirited melodies to signify hope and restoration.

Side A — the “Dark Side” — opens with ‘Could Happen To Anyone’. Led by a twisted vocal that morphs into a myriad of crispy hi-hats and low-slung basslines, the intro track reflects the theme of the label; consumerism in the Western world and the terrifying consequences inflicted by human behaviour that could indeed, happen to anyone. ‘Modelicious’ follows suit, stepping up the pace with loopy 808 drums and crunchy percussion, kindling Rnbws flair for electro. ‘Untied’ fizzes with a bang of The Prodigy’s early sound thanks to stripped-back drums and a fully charged synth exploding to the fore, which Rnbws intricately reworked for the record.

On the flip, 'Devotion' marks the “Bright Side''. The track is a mesmerizing house groove, layered with uplifting chords and arpeggiated synths to provide a burst of heartfelt rhythm. This is the track made for hazy outdoor settings to welcome festival season as RONI curates each release in tandem with the four seasons.

‘Salvation’ settles the pace with an acid-drenched lead splattered against dreamy pads and smooth bass, hinting that there is still time to take action and salvage the Earth. The ambient-style ‘Stupid’ closes the EP, neatly taking Rnbws' preceding productions and packing them into one short, shimmering departure to end the aural trip. In the style of Nehza Records, the final track title coincides with questioning the warped view of those in power who fuel the destruction of our environment.

“… an album which shows that Carter Tutti are in a state of continuing evolution” – The Wire. 2007’s Feral Vapours of the Silver Ether will be available here for the first time on vinyl, and was the second release under the Carter Tutti name. On it, the electronic and the acoustic are merged in a seamless, crafted album that is awash with echoes of the sea, the moon, the open road, and flatlands.

New year, new energy, new music...

We’re all waiting for that tune to land in our lap, reach up and slap us simultaneously in the ears, feels, souls and feet. That big sonic blast of emotion and inspiration that sets the tone and gets us excited about a new season of shows.

Hard Times Records present ‘All I Need’, a powerful, slab of house music positivity that smacks of ‘first anthem of the year’ vibes and comes courtesy of one of house music’s biggest pioneers AND a certified UK House music institution that permanently changed the face of global club culture over 30 years ago... Steve ‘Silk’ Hurley and Hard Times.

Neither Hurley or Hard Times need any introductions, but both have histories that deserve so much more than this hype-fuelled promo blurb. Steve ‘Silk’ Hurley is a certified legend. As one of the pioneering House music artists to emerge from Chicago’s primordial 80s phenomenon and the first ever to score a UK number one Hit with ‘Jack Your Body’, the multiple Grammy nominated artist has been a powerful source of energy and inspiration ever since as one of the most consistent forefathers of this scene.

Hard Times have played an equally influential role and are arguably responsible for some of the most defining moments in uk House Music. One of the first club nights to import the US titans to UK dancefloors, the Yorkshire brand were instrumental in creating a blueprint in international DJ culture as they invited the biggest pioneers and legends to their events that began in the sleepy town of Mirfield, but eventually sprawled across the UK with line-ups that ranged from Todd Terry to Masters at Work to Deep Dish and every titan in between. A dominant force throughout the 90s, Hard Times wound down in the 2000s as its founder Steve Raine took a break from the industry to become a sheep farmer, which he still does to this day... Safe in the knowledge that he helped to create an ethos for uncompromising underground House Music that remains steadfast to this Day.

The Hard Times label originated back in 1994 And ran alongside the club night, boasting a small but elite catalogue. It’s about to thrive on a whole new level as Hard Times returns as a label with its first new material for over 20 years with ‘All I Need’.

Timeless yet forward-thinking, loaded to the brim with precision groovemanship, glazed with a strong Latin twist and sprinkled with the gorgeous vocals of Sara Garvey, who many will instantly recognise from her Nightmares On Wax collaborations, ‘All I Need’ is a pedigree house anthem-in-waiting. Universal in vibe and spirit, fully transcending trend or flavour-of-the-month fickleness, this taps into the source and has full potential to be the first big boundary-breaking house hit of 2023... 36 years after Steve ‘Silk’ Hurley topped the charts with ‘Jack Your Body’!

It comes complete with a rainbow of remixes from some equally eye-opening heavyweights: Alex Arnout, Eddie Leader, Terry Farley & Kevin Swain and DJ Skip (who runs S&S Records with ‘Hurley) all provide different perspectives on ‘All I Need’, giving it even more scope and depth to slap us simultaneously.

Franco-Swiss composer & director of INA GRM François J. Bonnet, aka Kassel Jaeger, returns with a new solo album. Following a compositional approach stemming from the musique concrète tradition, without adopting a structuralist aesthetic, Shifted in Dreams explores a wide range of instruments and techniques, going seamlessly from instrumental improvisation to field recording, via micro-editing and the use of asynchronous loops. Mixing the electronic sounds of an ARP 2500 synthesizer with the acoustic drones of a positive organ, articulating guitar layers with the resonance of the Cristal Baschet, bringing together recordings of slamming windows and sound produced by complex modular synthesis patches, Bonnet offers a rich and generous palette of sounds, inviting a constantly renewed sonic investigation.

Oliver Cherer is back with a new Gilroy Mere record which follows on from his other much lauded Clay Pipe releases (The Green Line, Adlestrop and last year’s D Rothon collaboration, Estuary English).

Over the last two decades Ollie has released numerous collections of music in an ever shifting array of modes, from folktronic, singer-songwriter styles through psychogeographic electronica to jazz-tinged, confessional ghost-pop and most recently, the “guitar tainted machine rock disco” of Aircooled.

Gilden Gate is an album of two halves. Side 1 ‘Rising’ celebrates the sun-drenched beaches, pastures and heaths of rural Suffolk, whereas Side 2 ‘Falling’ explores the underwater world of the lost city of Dunwich and its five church spires.

Oliver says:-

“A few years ago I discovered the lost city of Dunwich. I’d made a trip to Suffolk to shoot a short film about Sizewell Nuclear Power Stations and stayed in the old Coastguard’s Cottage on Dunwich Beach within sight of Minsmere Nature Reserve and the power plants. It’s a wild, sleepy place of pines and heath and North Sea winds and a strangely mysterious air – Sutton Hoo is nearby and Eno’s reference to the very beach that I was staying on made perfect sense. In the small museum at Dunwich I learned that this tiny hamlet had once been a major medieval city of international trade. It seemed unlikely and even now, knowing Dunwich as a small village, I find putting what I know about the place into perspective as a city a certain kind of impossible.

It seems that over a period under the influence of the weather, natural erosion and market rivalry the thriving harbour port was inundated by the North Sea and eventually slipped into and under it. The city of churches was lost and all the spires engulfed and toppled. What remains are the few houses, and the ruin of Greyfriars crumbling inexorably down the cliff and exposing the bones of buried monks as the graveyard follows the building’s stones into the sea.

There are local legends surrounding the site including stories of fishermen hearing the bells of lost churches and seeing the ghostly, lighted city beneath their boats as they return to the shore.
Gilden Gate is named for one of the entrances to the old city and is a musical meditation on Dunwich past and present. Frances Castle’s beautiful sleeve art depicts the surface and the sub-marine, the warm and the cold, the past and the present. The glass rises and the glass falls and in the background there are sirens, fog horns, church bells and Eno, and on the sea bed there are the scattered remains of a once great city.”

Gilden Gate is named for one of the entrances to the old city and is a musical meditation on Dunwich past and present. Frances Castle’s beautiful sleeve art depicts the surface and the sub-marine, the warm and the cold, the past and the present. The glass rises and the glass falls and in the background there are sirens, fog horns, church bells and Eno, and on the sea bed there are the scattered remains of a once great city.”

Elias Devoldere is the drummer in bands such as Nordmann, Hypochristmutreefuzz, Suwi, Robbing Millions, and John Ghost. Following an ep, Kaiku, released last summer, Bloomed > Exploded is his debut full length as a solo artist. Besides writing and singing, he composed, played, recorded, and produced the bulk of the ten songs himself. 'Everything blooms', he explains the title of his first album. 'Until it explodes, and something else is able to grow from it'. In this case, what came full cycle is an intimate coming-of-age album of intangible atmospherics, crisp melodies, and understated rhythmical patterns.

BLOOMED >

'As a kid, I just wanted to play football, you know?', says Elias. 'But when I was eight years old, my parents made me choose between drawing school and music school'. And thus began a dedication to rhythm for Elias. At 18, he enrolled at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in his hometown of Ghent, opting for a jazz education. 'Not because I aspired to become a master 'jazz drummer', but to learn music, to become a good musician'. It was at the academy that, after an impromptu jam session, Nordmann first came together. The exhilarating instrumental quartet went on to win second place at the prestigious Humo's Rock Rally in 2014, and released three albums to critical acclaim, with a new one in the works.

Devoldere, in the meantime, had completed his degree with a craving - ironically - for music. 'I was in over my head with jazz for such a long time, and went on an epic discovering spree. Moses Sumney, James Blake, Kendrick Lamar, Connan Mockasin... Lots of stuff I had missed over the years. In a way, I reconnected with the kind of music I was into before jazz dominated my life. Pink Floyd was my first love, for instance, and later Radiohead proved to be a game changer. Diving back into those kind of sounds, I was feeling the urge to follow my old dreams, of being a solo artist - or something more than 'just' a drummer, anyway. So I bought a guitar, an interface for my laptop, and started writing'.

EXPLODED

When he released his 5 track ep Kaiku in the summer of 2021, it summarised a lot of firsts for Elias. First time writing lyrics, first time as a lead vocalist, first time recording his own songs all by himself. The songs had been around for a while, but taking those leaps took a long time. 'Making the ep helped me to find my voice, in every way possible'. Still, in the aftermath of the pandemic, the songs on Bloomed > Exploded sprouted in a time of upheaval. 'Musically the album is quite serene, gentle even. But the themes speak of internal unrest and uncertainty. There are a lot of questions on the album, as it turned out. Duality, as the title suggests, coming from the struggle between a wish to turn everything upside down and a search for peace. Honestly: the prospect of my 30th birthday was messing with my head too'.

Recording during a period of solitude in France, Elias initially relied heavily on synthesizers and drum machines. 'Explode / Boalis was one of the first songs I wrote for this album, and pivotal for its atmosphere, based mostly on electronic elements. Later, I did use 'real' drums on most of the other songs, though, and contributions from other musicians, but the overall mood is very cohesive'. 'Pure', that's how Bruno Ellingham, the UK engineer who mixed the album, described it. Much to the delight of Elias, who reached out to Ellingham because of his previous work with bands such as Massive Attack and Portishead. 'Hearing the end result, I thought he really captured the essence of the original demo's. For me, that adds to this album being a sincere reflection of my true self. 'Take a dive/ Into the place where it's more quiet', as I sing in the last song, that kind of sums it up for me'.

2023 repress in Marbled Vinyl

To say the release of this EP's tracks is long-awaited would be a terribly gross understatement, so it's with much fanfare and general HQ excitement that we announce the sophomore release from the monstrously talented Ross From Friends.

Having been circulating on the net for a fair while now, 'Talk To Me You'll Understand' finally arrives with a fresh mastering, but still thudding along with those scuffed Reebok drums and soaked into fuzzy, stomach-squeezing low-pass filter. All soft chords, soothing vocals, deep-sea bass and skittering hats.

Middle-man 'Gettin' It Done' is a solid label favourite. Less the full vocal flourishes and more the tinkered & chopped MPC underpinned by more dusty drum work that just grows in impact as the track goes on. One for late running and early morning truckin'.

Last but not least comes the R'n'B-inflicted house jam 'Bootman'. Although it takes a good couple of minutes to get going, this is pure 2016 date playlist vibes. Slip the iPhone into the restaurant system and watch the silk melt down from the walls, the tables coat in velvet and ever-lasting passion effervesce from the heaving masses.

Felte Records presents `Glimpse Of Heaven' - a stunning new album by the Hawaii-born, LA-based musician, singer, producer and professional mastering engineer Jess Labrador, AKA Chasms. Labrador's deeply personal work as Chasms has always felt like an unveiling. Following 2019's `The Mirage,' which was a dark, dubby meditation on grief and loss, this new album is both familiar and different. The third full-length under the Chasms name, `Glimpse of Heaven' trades in washes of reverb for starker moments of closeness and intimacy. An exploration of the personal inventory and reckoning necessary to move forward in life, the LP considers not only how we relate to the world, but more importantly how we relate to ourselves. While always distinct, you could previously detect post-punk, shoegaze, and dub sensibilities in the music. Dreamy drift tethered by skittered beats, airy vocals, and melancholic melodies are here like previous efforts too. However, at the same time, Labrador steps into new territory with an expanse of vaporous synths and samples, adding to the project's ethereal electronic pop and dubwise pulse. Lush guitars glisten throughout the album, but this time only in sparse, disciplined embellishments. `Glimpse of Heaven' is a fully realised version of Chasms beyond its influences; to say that this is a seamless evocation of such disparate sounds as Massive Attack, Basic Chanel, Sade, Seefeel and Dif Juz is to say it is wholly unique. While she continues to unfurl her thoughts, there is a shift from opening up to the listener toward allowing the listener to witness her opening to herself. Where the last Chasms record was about various kinds of collapse, `Glimpse of Heaven' is about trying to develop as a whole person. It seems to ultimately be asking whether what we want and what we need align in ways that will get us where we want to be. Can we let go of the comfort of bad habits and steer ourselves toward a less easily obtained but maybe more enduring happiness? `Glimpse of Heaven' is a Chasms record, but really it's a Jess Labrador record. This is the first release operating on her own, and it feels like that's the only way this could have been made. It finds itself in the rare company of those few records that exist within themselves; it's a complete environment. You don't need to know anything to tune in and enjoy the world that she's created. It's a record that feels indebted to itself. It offers premonitions but not directions. It gives us honesty, but doesn't claim to know exactly where that will lead.

The 6th album from the Ohio band finds them adding a member and polishing the jagged edges off their lo-fi pop anthems ever so slightly, letting the album's twelve tracks dance and shimmer like sun glinting off the waters of the Scioto river, perfectly capturing the undeniably midwestern attitude of melancholic joy. For fans of: Sebadoh, Guided By Voices, Car Seat Headrest, The Men, Mike Krol, The Replacements, The Stevens.

Tape

The 6th album from the Ohio band finds them adding a member and polishing the jagged edges off their lo-fi pop anthems ever so slightly, letting the album's twelve tracks dance and shimmer like sun glinting off the waters of the Scioto river, perfectly capturing the undeniably midwestern attitude of melancholic joy. For fans of: Sebadoh, Guided By Voices, Car Seat Headrest, The Men, Mike Krol, The Replacements, The Stevens.

The electronic music producer and DJ whose catalogue of collaborations namechecks acts as diverse as Agoria, Green Velvet, Roman Flugel to Nitzer Ebb, Depeche Mode and David Holmes is set to release his 6th studio album The Strand Cinema on the 24th March on his own label PKR.

The last five years have seen an evolutionary shift for the electronic musician, undertaking more soundtrack work, including for film (Nightride on Netflix, Rough), radio (The Northern Bank Job BBC R4) and theatre (East Belfast Boy).

The Strand Cinema album is a tribute to the art deco cinema building , The Strand, where Phil’s recording studio is. A stirring and beautiful record, it seamlessly traverses the worlds of contemporary classical to beautifully elevated dance music with a recognisably cinematic influence. Managing to sound both grand and expansive, as well as minimal and introspective – it’s a record that explores the macro and the micro.

The opening track “Strand Cinema”, begins with a steady, gentle, looping pulse, almost recalling the kosmische ripples of Cluster, before sweeping and enveloping strings enter, resulting in a track that manages to sound both grandiose and tender in one fell swoop.

Lead single “Atlantic” perhaps most perfectly encapsulates the various sonic worlds that Kieran is operating in, merging a bordering on euphoric dance beat layered with infectious melodies, while remaining anchored to organic sounds, as strings and percussion collide with the driving and hypnotic groove of the track.

“Strike the Match” showcases Kieran’s talents for detail, in a track that feels almost palpably textural and rich in complexity but without feeling overly busy or superfluous; while “Elephant in Castle” utilises intense, almost gargling electronics, that drone with a foreboding and ominous tone, but also produces fractured moments of light, beauty and poignancy.

Created during Covid Kieran’s method was “To literally be like a tuning fork and ask: What's in my chest? If I were to describe what's inside me, and what's going on in the outside world, If I had to score that in a film, what would it sound like right now? I guess I sort of soundtracked my own life”

“One positive side of lockdowns was that we spent more time in natural surroundings where I’d make field recordings. I’d also record acoustic sounds: cello, violin, percussion, guitar etc and then create my own sample bank from all these single one-note sounds. So, creating your own loops and drones. The album was created from organic sounds manipulated by machines; melted, mangled and hacked with computers but machines only sound as good as the human spirit put into them.
The idea of nature and humans versus technology is the concept behind the album’s A/V show which debuts in Belfast in March before touring. Featuring works by 11 artists from across the worlds of film, animation, advertising, architecture, computer science and dance such as Scottish BAFTA nominated Simone Smith, LA based director Frederico Marzio Vitetta who is famous for skateboarding films like ‘Wet Dream’ with Spike Jonze, to futuristic CGI from BAFTA nominated Kris Kelly and a video from contemporary dancer Oona Doherty. onscreen visualisations that explores The visuals explore nature and technology along a timeline from past, present to future with cinema as a loose reference point with varying degrees of utopian versus dystopian moods.

Mongolian producer BODIKHUU returns with a sonic journey through Japan in the form of 13 instrumental hiphop vignettes. “I wanted to portray the 80s Japanese atmosphere through my style,” Bodikhuu writes from his home in Ulaanbaatar, the coldest capital city on earth. “Even though I have never been there, this is my way of saying that I have seen the place.” Unable to travel to Japan, Bodikhuu instead conjures an imagined city through sound. “Tokyo” evokes the neon, sweat, traffic, exhaust, gloaming towers and “monotonous lonely lives” of the sprawling megalopolis through its music. The album is a rich collage of cast-off sounds and razor sharp interpolations of city pop, obscure Japanese jazz, and 80s J-pop, all expertly chopped up on one of the few MPC-1000s in Ulaanbaatar. Faded voices over thundering drums give tracks like “Office Melancholia” and “Subway” a sense of place and emotional weight uncommon in beat tapes. In our new reality, where we all yearn for places we can’t reach, Bodikhuu’s lonesome aural sojourns hit especially hard. “Tokyo” builds on the international success of 2019’s “Rio/Bodianova” (the first Mongolian hip-hop record on vinyl), which found Bodi traveling through Rio on a lush bed of 1970s bossa nova and tropicalia. On this album, we’re jet-propelled into the 80s - all smooth surfaces, shimmering synths, and twinkling lights. Collaged cut-up artwork by Digital Sting (FeelFree Hi-Fi), warm analog master from Dave Vettraino (International Anthem) and loud-cut 160gm vinyl from Smashed Plastic in Chicago complement Bodikhuu’s considered beats.

Indies only release on 180g baby pink vinyl, printed inner-sleeve, download card included. Marrying psychedelic pop with folk and a touch of country, 'Earthling On The Road To Self Love' is the sublime debut album by Brisbane, Australia-based artist Baby Cool - the latest side project by Nice Biscuit co-front woman Grace Cuell. Cuell says of the record, which follows her debut single 'Magic' and tours with Babe Rainbow and The Lazy Eyes: "The songs on this album are deeply sentimental. I have a lot I need to sing about to help me make sense of this earthly pod I have been gifted. If in singing these words out loud, I can help others find solace in knowing that we're all out here flailing about in the cosmos, then it feels good to me." Recorded with Sam Joseph (Family Jordan), the songs on 'Earthling' were brought to life with the help of Jess Ferronato (Nice Biscuit), Nick Cavendish (Nice Biscuit) and Drew Heyden (The Flamingo Jones): "I had such a beautiful community of friends that helped bring this whole thing to life. There was magic and love in every part of the process of creating this album."

Sometimes, a change of view can transform a person’s world. On ‘Don’t Come Down’, the artist formerly known as Matt Pond PA can be found with his “shoulder on the concrete” of a pavement, scoping out the world anew. This granular realignment of perspective serves as an open door to the debut album from The Natural Lines. At once clearly Pond’s work yet a huge leap forward in its measured songcraft, melodic immediacy, collaborative detail and wryly questioning lyrics, the result is a gorgeous album of intimate reflections from a relocated, renamed, revivified talent.

Recorded with close collaborators and friends over a period that saw Pond make vital adjustments to his life, its stealth emergence reflects his desire to set a fresh pace for himself and come from somewhere new, somewhere more open.

Now based in Kingston, New York, with his partner and wild dog Willa, Matt explains the album’s gestation thus. “It was something different from the start. I wanted to write as purely as I could. Instead of getting stuck in the ‘tour, write an album, release an album, tour’ cycle, which is not a natural way of writing or living, I wanted to write an album and when it was done I wanted to make sure it was done. I didn’t want this feeling of, ‘Oh, we didn’t have time’, or, ‘I don’t know whether I believe in the songs but it’s coming out anyway.’ I used to be always racing to the finish line, but I’m not anymore.”

For Matt, the call to ring the changes came with the recognition of “a certain nihilism or narcissism” involved in making music. “In some ways, you have to get in your own head and I think I went too far with that, with drinking and shutting people out. In something that I believe is collaborative, it’s not helpful.”

“I quit lying,” he adds. “I checked my harsher tones. I cut my drinking down. I went to therapy and figured out how to stop shouting at cars.”

Car troubles inspire ‘No More Tragedies’, the album’s standout second track, where he wryly details his desire to dampen his twinned impulses to take pictures of license plates blocking his parking space or take bricks to said car windshields. Warming melodies and harmonies soothe his rage, a balance maintained elsewhere on the album.

A need for connection underpins the lilting ‘Alex Bell’, where Matt’s lyrics playfully reference the inventor of the telephone over a plaintive cello and bubbling keyboards – evidence of the album’s carefully nurtured arrangements. With nimble sequencing, ‘My Answer’ follows with a question: do artists really need to get messed-up to create? Matt may not have the answer, he admits, but he articulates the question beautifully, channelling the influence of Blue Öyster Cult’s ‘Don’t Fear The Reaper’ into a song of fleet, melodic electric-folk drive.

Featuring 17-year-old MJ Murphy on misty backing vocals, the softly insistent ‘Don’t Come Down’ is an album centrepiece, detailing a need to see things anew. Like The Flaming Lips writing a classicist piano ballad, the twinkling ‘Artificial Moonlight’ finds Matt writing late at night, illuminated by the lights from streetlamps. Finally, ‘Mahwah’ closes the album on a note of arrival. While Matt Pond PA’s albums emerged from the disconnection of touring and living in vans, Pond is now happily – cruel winters aside – ensconced in Kingston. “I have found a place I love. Mercury Rev lives near here. It is a cool place to be, an artistic, mountainous, wild place to live. So – maybe this is it.”

In the case of The Natural Lines, a sense of arrival suggests itself. For Matt, the album follows two decades’ worth of Matt Pond PA records and soundtrack works. In a career he once described as “a series of benign mistakes,” Matt travelled far, moving from his band’s starting point in Philadelphia to Florida, Oakland and beyond while releasing 14 well-received albums. In 2017, he declared his intent to retire the Matt Pond PA name, though it lived on briefly in the reissue of The State Of Gold and EPs such as Free Fall, a tribute to Philadelphia.

Now, the name change honours his collaborators. Among a revolving cast, one constant presence in his work has been Chris Hansen, who plays guitar, bass, keys, saxophone and vocals on The Natural Lines’ debut. Matt’s partner, Anya Marina, contributes vocals. Other band members number Hilary James (cello/vocals), Kyle Kelly-Yahner (drums), Louie Lino (keys), Sarah Hansen (horns), Sean Hansen (drums/bass), Kat Murphy (vocals) and, also on vocals, MJ Murphy, for whom Matt brims with praise: “She can do anything she wants to musically.”

A heartening rebirth for Pond and his friends, the result also pays warming, witty, reflective and infectious testimony to the value of reconfiguring one’s outlook. “Once I took control of my mind, I could see what I wanted to say more clearly,” says Matt. “Instead of random floods of mania and panic, I felt like I was composed and composing. It has become as simple as reading the words of a sentence in the right order. As small as the pause before I hit ‘send’.” A development, you might say, conducted along the most natural of lines.

“These things happen,” says K. Leimer of LUYU. Listen Until You Understand is a test drive through an obstacle course designed for new instruments, arrangements, juxtapositions, and real-time experiments dedicated to leaving the original impulses untouched and unadorned. Joined at times by digital percussionist Dolphie Stein, the music throws itself against itself without loyalty to genre or form, mashing granular particles into a tremulous spectrum of soundwalls, transitions, noise, distortions, and the occasional clearing. As close to live improvisation as one can get in a multitrack studio setting, LUYU takes generative techniques and drops them into short-form events by building its soundstage in thickets of shifting elements, collapsing phrases, broken signatures, and implied patterns. An outlier in Leimer’s catalog of general stillness and subtle detail, LUYU revels in the bare sound of things usually hidden in the mix.

Kerry Leimer founded Palace Of Lights in 1979. Leimer’s work has also been issued by Abstrakce, Autumn, First Terrace, Les Giants, Invisible Inc., Origin Peoples and RVNG. His work is included in the Cherry Red Noise Floor compilation series and his early cassette work is featured in the critically acclaimed VOD box set American Cassette Culture. Leimer has been actively producing music since the mid 1970s—his current catalog includes twenty solo albums plus collaborative albums with Savant, Marc Barreca, and Three Point Circle. Recent soundtracks include work for video artists Cristiane Bouger and Fred Birchman, HBO’s How To With John Wilson and the Netflix documentary John Was Trying to Contact Aliens. His work is included in the collection of The British Library.

It seems like an age since Icelandic producer Adalsteinn Gudmundsson's last album as Yagya, 2020's "Old Dreams and Memories." The first album to be released on his own label Small Plastic Animals it was followed by the four-track "Always Maybe Tomorrow" EP in 2021. "Faded Photographs" is his ninth studio album, the most involved and time-consuming project to date and collaborative on a scale not seen since 2012's "The Inescapable Decay of My Heart." It also marks an exceptionally confident return to the art of song-writing, but where that earlier album was a more upbeat dub techno-pop affair, "Faded Photographs" is nostalgic, wistful, reflective and steeped in poetic romanticism. Gudmundsson's love of the art of the album is also more pronounced here than ever before, almost every single track tied together by the particularly unifying use of triplet rhythms in combination with 4/4 beats, beguiling hushed vocals and enveloping, molten dub bass tones. Combined with a typical dedication to sound design and production, "Faded Photographs" is rendered an utterly seamless experience, demanding to be heard as a whole. Written and produced when we had become more distant and disconnected from one another than ever before, "Faded Photographs" brings together and showcases an ensemble of artists in a spirit of collaboration that flies in the face of adversity, a true product of its time.

'Unconscious Collective' is the first album by PS5 - the new ensemble led by Pietro Santangelo (Nu Guinea, Slivovitz, Fitness Forever) - and it will be out for Hyperjazz Records on 21th May 2021.

It's a musical experiment where layered memories and hidden feelings resonate as if they arise directly from the most recondite part of the unconscious and produce a suspension of the stream of consciousness. With the aim to create a state of trance and override the human reason, this is an imaginary round trip across the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean, ideally connecting Naples with North Africa and Latin America.

The arrangements wrote by Santangelo are based on great freedom of improvisation: while the melodic textures of the two saxophones didn't give any clear references, the other musicians followed the rhythmic pulse and its unpredictable ways. The music moves naturally along an imaginary line highlighting the ancestral connection between Jamaica and Ethiopia or between Nigeria and Cuba. In the background, Naples is a synthesis of all the sonic ingredients, mixed and cooked in its own mystical and spicy belly.

Besides Santangelo himself on the tenor and soprano saxophones, the collective is made up of: Paolo Bianconcini, a brilliant Neapolitan percussionist with a very deep Afro-Cuban background; Giuseppe Giroffi, young and talented alto and baritone saxophonist; the bassist Vincenzo Lamagna and the drummer Salvatore Rainone, both loyal members of the former Santangelo's trio.

Recorded live at the Auditorium Novecento in Naples, the legendary studio of Phonotype Records, 'Unconscious Collective' is mixed in analog format by Fabrizio Piccolo, and mastered by Davide Barbarulo at his 20Hz20KHz Studio.

Pietro Santangelo

Pietro was born, lives and plays in Naples. As a saxophonist and composer, he has released five albums with Slivovitz and one with his PS3 trio (Clinamen, Emme records 2017). Graduated in Digital Sound Processing at the Faculty of Physics of Federico II University, he is involved and engaged in the Italian scene of radical improvisation (Franco Ferguson, Elio Martusciello and Officina Arti Soniche, Collettivo NISE).

Multi-instrumentalist since forever, he has collaborated with Nu Guinea, Enzo Avitabile, Fitness Forever, Marzouk Mejri, Dennis Bovell and many others.

He's also author of soundtracks and electronic musician. He appreciates analog photography, loves walking outdoors. He hates biographical notes.

Le Motel and Bruce Wijn met at school, during a school art trip to Munich. They went separate ways for a long time.

Hailing from Brussels, Le Motel's world is a vortex of sight and sound that takes in the many and varied corners of the planet. As a music producer and film composer his versatility has taken him to festivals and clubs in every direction as naturally as he has ventured out to the less accessible areas of the globe as a field recordist. It's somewhere in between these spaces that Le Motel operates, gathering unique experiences and sounds to channel through his studio.

Bruce Wijn is a Brussels-based guitarist who played in several postrock kind projects such as Sound Film, 52 Commercial Road, or more shoegaze Lazy Sin. These collaborations gave him the opportunity to perform in various locations in Belgium, France, England, and the USA. As a musician, his focus has always been attracted by progressively built rhythmic melodies, which would eventually turn into long reverberated or distorted swells, or the otherway round.

All these experiences brought them both to the idea of scoring movies with different yet similar approaches.

That's how their first collaboration happened as Le Motel was working on the soundtrack of the movie Binti, and invited Bruce Wijn for the track Exode, in 2018. Since then, they've been working on other scoring projects, such as the feature film 'Aller Retour' more recently.

Alongside the movie scoring activities another audiovisual live project was born, in collaboration with Antoine de Schuyter and his mesmerizing images.

This one is more focusing on tape textures, field recordings and glitchy effects in order to build atmospheric tracks that they decided to bring together in a first E.P. 'MAAR'.

'MAAR' is elaborated as a soundtrack for an imaginary journey between cold seas and volcanoes explorations.

From the first echoing sounds of playing kids on the shoreside in the opening track 'La Perche' Le Motel & Bruce Wijn let you slide in a technicolor dreamworld, reverbing slowly innocent childhood memories into a chilled, out of range, future.

'MAAR' dives deep into a kaleidoscopic microcosmos watching Nautilus playing hide and seek with 'Captain Ahab' floating on sonic breaking waves, while seagulls gently spread their wings flying through the breezy and misty clouds of Blankenberge.

Lava vulcanica slowly melts in the sad euphorica of the cold North Sea, crystallizing sounds only Le Motel and Bruce Wijn can deliver.

In the mid-70s, Bob Shad’s cult New York Jazz label Mainstream Records turned to the burgeoning underground Disco scene and released a handful of great singles produced by the likes of Tommy Stewart, Jimmy Roach or Bert DeCoteaux. Featuring artists from the early Disco hotbed including South Side Coalition, Chocolate Syrup and Three Ounces of Love, these singles, proving Shad's great flair, accompanied the rise of the New York club and block party culture that was going to revolutionise the musical landscape a few years later. Most of the singles are officially reissued here on vinyl for the first time, with Three Ounces of Love's "Disco Man" full mix previously unissued on vinyl. Remastered by Colorsound Studio in Paris, with liner notes by Charles Waring and artwork by Thomas C. Bradley

Funk and Soul in the early 70s were mutating to a new sound spearheaded by such labels as Philadelphia International Records (PIR), Scepter and Salsoul: Early Disco was taking off and Its sound was earthier and more urban, mixing the nascent Disco beat with strong funk and soul elements. New York was at the epicentre of the phenomenon, thanks to its thriving club scene and also to a new wave of DJs from the Bronx who started playing the music at block parties along with James Brown and Mandrill. bubbling under was a cohort of small independent labels that released some great music on 7" singles to meet the growing demand. Industry veteran Bob Shad and his label Mainstream Records started investigating this new scene and asked his circle of independent producers to bring him their latest production for release. For the occasion, he set up two sub labels, IX Chains and Brown Dog.

Among the producers who'd heard Shad's call were Tommy Stewart who came up with The South Side Coalition's funky '(Don't You Wanna) Get Down Get Down' in 1975 and Prophecy's 'What Ever's Your Sign' a year later. Seasoned arranger/producer Bert DeCoteaux (Patti Austin, Maxine Brown, The Main Ingredient) brought Lenny Welch's soulful 'A Hundred Pounds of Pain' and the superb mid-tempo instrumental 'Nothing Between Us' by The Electric Ladies. Arranger Jimmy Roach came with his latest single with The Dramatics ('No Rebate on Love') whom he'd worked with at Volt and with Three Ounces of Love on their aptly titled single 'Disco Man,' whose unissued long version merging Side 1 and 2 is released here on vinyl for the first time. The sister group would go on to sign with Motown in 1978 and release their sole album self-titled 'Three Ounces of Love.'

​Other highlights on 'Mainstream Disco Funk' include The Grand Jury's 'Music is Fun To Me' with its languid funky rhythm arranged by Ted Bodnar, a producer and studio engineer who'd work with Sir Joe Quarterman, Blair and Al Johnson. Also featured on the set is Crystal Image's superb 'Gonna Have a Good Time (part 1 & 2) which typifies the blend of urban funk, glitzy strings and metronomic beat that were signature elements of early Disco.

​The style would keep getting more commercial over the years and reach overkill in the late 70s but the block party scene which more than embraced this breakbeat-filled genre would soon morph into hip hop in the second half of the 70s with the help of a few key industry figures such as Sylvia Robinson (Sugar Hill Records). By that time, Bob Shad had ceased releasing records and relocated in Los Angeles but he left behind a small treasure trove of superb obscure singles which are now making their LP debut on 'Mainstream Disco Funk' for the delight of all funk and disco lovers.

Strawberries ripen in the spring. Or so they used to, in a more reliable world, one that seems to be rapidly receding in our collective rearview mirror. Presently, “spring” is a troubled concept — fraught with anxiety. Our seasons, if they are seasons at all, are paradoxical. Crops fail, or they ripen prematurely, all at once, and into a burst of rot. Impossibly, somehow, the supermarket shelves stay stocked (mostly, for now at least), and there are buckets of strawberries on every corner. But, of course, their nature is suspect. And they don’t taste like they used to. Or maybe that’s just ruinous nostalgia. But somewhere along the way we certainly lost something. Everybody knows.

Strawberry Season (Leaving Records, November 9 2022) responds tenderly to this sorry state of affairs, not with false comfort — nor escapism. Rather, the album conveys, often wordlessly, that there remains an abundance of sweetness amidst our increasing unease. While much of twentieth century American popular and folk music may have dwelt on the beauty and plenitude of the prairie, More Eaze applies a similar Romantic focus to the small bursts of fecundity that now hide in plain sight. Blending found sound, generative music, a knack for elegant, classically-informed melodic arrangement, and a sort of Liz-Fraser-by-way-of-hyperpop approach to vocals, Strawberry Season offers unique solace — providing an occasion for the kind of deep listening that our overstimulated and undernourished spirits require if there is to be any hope at all (and of course there must be hope).

More Eaze (serving as composer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, producer, and sound artist) guides us incrementally to this locus of attentiveness. Strawberry Season begins with the softly sweeping gentle pets. Early intimations of Velvet Underground give way, indeed, to a string arrangement that John Cale might have saved for Paris 1919. The second track, Suped, features a kaleidoscopic swirl of grocery checkout scanners that eventually coalesce and release with the subtle strumming of a harp. On known, in the midst of a nearly elegiac outflow of feeling, a shower starts to run. Someone steps inside, pulling the curtain back, sending the plastic rings clattering. Moments later, the unmistakable sound of the showerer blowing their nose — an inclusion that is at once light-hearted and jarringly, movingly intimate.

Strawberry Season’s second to last song, low resolution at santikos, serves as a sustained meditation on all that has come before it. Building slowly throughout its nine minutes, teetering, at times, on the edge of danceability, it dissipates suddenly, and Strawberry Season concludes with the rustling of clothes, snippets of distant conversation, creaking floorboards, an exhale and a sniff. There is a feeling of having arrived, of temporary reprieve in the face of uncertainty. A hint of a season yet to come, or one that is perhaps only now accessible in dreams.

The Schnitzelbeat goes on ..... und wir finden uns am Übergang zweier Jahrzehnte wieder. Woodstock hat gerade das offizielle Ende des Summer Of Love besiegelt, die Beatles befinden sich im Stadium des Zerfalls und The Stooges läuten mit unbarmherzigem Lärm ein neues Zeitalter ein. Zurück in Österreich ... die Stadt Wien dämmert weiterhin selig im bornierten Mief der Nachkriegszeit. Gelegentlich weht der Wind den Klang einer Ziehharmonika und eines Jodlers vom Land in Richtung Stephansdom. Die eingeweihten Hörer der Schnitzelbeat-Serie ahnen es allerdings bereits: da war noch etwas Anderes, etwas Wildes, Ungutes, ein dröhnender Faustschlag in die hornbebrillten Gesichter der Spießbürger. Doch wer hätte gedacht, dass die gelungenste Annäherung an den Proto-Punk der Blue Cheer oder MC5 ausgerechnet auf dem Volksmusiklabel Alpenton erscheint? (Albatross, "I am dead"). Da fährt schon ein Aufschrei des Entsetzens aus der Lederhose. Und ein Lächeln puren Glücks in die Gesichter aufgeklärter Fans obskurer Rockmusik. Auch The Seals erweisen sich 1969 als würdige Kämpfer im Krieg der Generationen: "You know nothing about the new generation / because you live in the U-Bahn-Station" stellen die Psychedelic-Punks aus Wien interessanterweise in ihrer Nummer "Stop this War" fest. Und auch sonst ist der Krieg ein geläufiges Thema: der 2. Weltkrieg (The Cop Stigh, "War History"); der Vietnamkrieg (Maybe Hair, "War"); der Krieg der Geschlechter (Young Society, "It's War"). Doch was wäre die Zeit der Hippies und Kommunarden ohne freie Liebe, Blumenarrangements und von allerlei Substanzen unterstützte Ausnahmezustände? "Nicht auf die Blumen in dem Haar, auf euer Herz kommt es an / denn Liebe nur allein alles ändern kann" singt die Casting-Boyband The Wallflowers, aufs trefflichste begleitet von einem Kinderchor, der leider nicht immer ganz textsicher ist. Die Aussage an sich würden aber sicher auch The V-Rangers unterschreiben ("Make Love"). Oder Hannes, Erich, Peter und Arno von der Salzburger Beatband Les Marquis, die einen Westcoast-Liebestraum an den Stränden des Salzkammerguts lebendig werden lassen ("Sand on the Shore"). Zur Halbzeit von Schnitzelbeat Vol. 3 wird ein unvergesslicher Höhepunkt gereicht. 1973 veröffentlicht Rocky F. Holicke die ultimative psychedelische Hymne aus heimischer Produktion: "Ready for Take Off" ist ein unbeschreibliches Monument eines Songs, eine wahrhaft überirdische Erfahrung musikalischer Transzendenz. Wenn es schon über die Wolken geht, dann bitte so, Herr Reinhard Mey. Und natürlich auf Holickes eigenem Label, Aero-Sound. Wo sonst? Während Hide & Seek auf den Spuren von Cream wandeln und ebenfalls von jeder Flugangst befreit durch den Orbit segeln ("I can fly"), blasen aus den Triebwerken von Karl Ratzers Gitarre längst sengend heiße "White Flames". Der legendäre Musiker und Frontmann der Charles Ryders Corporation ist nicht nur einer der besten Jazzgitarristen die Österreich je hatte - er nimmt es auch mit James Marshall Hendrix auf, wenn alle Effektpedale bis zum Bühnenboden durchgedrückt sind. Etwa zur selben Zeit findet sich eine oberösterreichische Ministrantenband - heimlich, nächtens - am Wochenende im Musikzimmer einer Mühlviertler Volksschule ein. Und nimmt dort eine brandgefährliche Granate hochexplosiven, psychedelischen Garagenpunks auf. Mit mehr Fuzz, Wah-Wah, Echo und Farfisa-Orgel als selbst der Leibhaftige persönlich erlaubt hat (The Hush, "Giny"). Und dies ist nicht die einzige weithin unbekannte Super-Rarität, die der Archivar, Subkulturforscher und Rare-Track-DJ Al Bird Sputnik und sein Team von den Trash Rock Archives zusammengetragen haben: die verschollene erste Single von Novaks Kapelle erscheint hier erstmals in einer komplett restaurierten Version, ohne Nadelhüpfen und mit relativ wenigen lästigen Nebengeräuschen ("Garbage Man"). Von den lediglich 10 angefertigten Exemplaren der einzigen Platte der Austrian Brothers ("Brother") konnte die einzige Kopie ohne Pressfehler aufgetrieben werden. Und um endlich der 7" von The Cop Stigh habhaft zu werden, musste sogar jemand sein letztes Hemd verkaufen und die Hose bis zu den Knöcheln runterlassen. Aber "All right", um es mit den Worten der steirischen Acid-Rocker Generation 2000 zu sagen: es hat sich ausgezahlt. Schnitzelbeat Vol. 3 fügt der vergessenen Frühgeschichte der österreichischen Rockmusik wieder zahlreiche faszinierende Kapitel hinzu. Begeben Sie sich mit Al Bird Sputnik und den Labels Konkord und Digatone auf eine weitere Reise in die Tiefen wohlsortierter Plattenkisten und pilgern Sie vor einem Himmel voller Schwedenbomben und Mannerschnitten über Gebirge verzerrter Gitarren in die entlegensten Regionen der österreichischen Popkultur. NOVAK

Legendary Techno artist from Japan, Ryuji Takeuchi, releases his first EP on Monnom Black. Generation Lost EP represents a new evolved sound from Ryuji, inspired from his roots, laying down his signature grooves of percussive driving techno and the classic sound that he pioneered since the late 90's and early 2000's!

As the momentum continues to build for old-school blues rock trio GA-20, the band takes their expanding fanbase by storm with the release its first full-length live LP, Live In Loveland!. Featuring 11 rowdy, blistering performances (including five songs from 2022's Crackdown, three from their 2019 debut Lonely Soul and three previously unrecorded tracks), Live In Loveland! captures GA-20 feeding off the energy of the wall-to-wall crowd and delivering each song with raw emotion and body-shaking force. Live In Loveland! mixes band originals and vintage covers, from early electric blues and honky-tonk country to proto rock 'n' roll, all performed live with deep feeling and punk energy. The album was recorded direct-to-tape on a vintage Tascam 388 at Plaid Room Records in Loveland, Ohio, home of the famous Colemine record label. Produced by Stubbs and engineered by Colemine owner Terry Cole, the band blasts out of the gate playing Harold Burrages' I Cry For You, before tearing into Little Walter's obscure gem My Baby's Sweeter. The previously unrecorded original Hold It One More Time proves to be an instant classic, sitting seamlessly next to the vintage covers on the album. According to guitarist Matthew Stubbs (whose resume includes playing with blues legends Charlie Musselwhite and James Cotton, among others), "There is a special type of energy that is exchanged when we play in front of a live audience, and we definitely feed off of that and wanted to capture that. I love the power and energy of the best live blues albums. Historically, some of the most iconic blues and jazz records have been live ones. B.B. King's Live At The Regal changed my life. So did Hound Dog Taylor's Beware Of The Dog!, and Albert King's Live Wire/Blues Power. We really wanted to continue that tradition and do one of our own."

Limited colour variant "battlefield aftermath with blood & dirt swirl" Following their 2020 debut, Ruin, FORETOKEN's latest album sees the group expand upon their foundations of meticulously lofty soundscapes, mythological narratives, and elaborate musicianship. Utilizing traditional narratives of myths, legends, and folklore from a wide range of Western and Middle Eastern origins, Triumphs examines the ignored collateral damage of the cost of victory through these established mythos. Taking musical inspiration from melodic and tech death metal, as well as power, folk and black metal, Foretoken's core sound on Triumphs is bolstered by subtle and captivating use of traditionally Scandinavian, Southeast Asian, and Middle Eastern instruments for atmospheric depth. Reunited once again with Hannes Grossmann (Hate Eternal, Alkaloid, Obscura, Necrophagist, Blotted Science, and Triptykon) on drums and boasting a guest guitar appearance by The Black Dahlia Murder's Brandon Ellis, FORETOKEN's technical prowess shines through without overpowering any of the nine songs' rhythmic charge. Triumphs was penned throughout 2021 by both Steve Redmond (guitar and orchestration) and Dan Cooley (vocals), with the pair settling on eight original compositions and a cover of Naglfar's I Am Vengeance. Grossmann then commenced drum tracking at his own studio, Mordor Sounds, with guitars recorded by Redmond himself and vocals captured at Trepan Studios by Tony Petrocelly, before mixing and mastering duties were placed in the accomplished hands of Jacob Hansen (Arch Enemy, Fleshgod Apocalypse, The Black Dahlia Murder, and more) at Hansen Studios. Visually tied together by portrait artist Tomas Honz's detailed cover painting, depicting a protagonist's journey in the aftermath of battle, Triumphs aesthetic component is a symbolic embodiment of the duo's enduring fascination with historial consequence via a folkloric lens. Taking fables and fantasy to extreme sonic heights, FORETOKEN's Triumphs is as lofty in ambition as it is accomplished in its musicianship and songcraft.

Critically acclaimed rock group EELS announce
vinyl reissues of earlier records ‘Hombre Lobo’,
‘End Times’ and ‘Tomorrow Morning’, released via
E Works / PIAS. EELS will hit the road this Spring for the longawaited Lockdown Hurricane tour of Europe and
North America, starting in March in Nottingham. The reissues follow EELS’ critically acclaimed 2022 record, ‘Extreme Witchcraft’, which found praise at MOJO, NME, The New York Times,
Stereogum, SPIN and more. EELS have had one of the most consistently acclaimed careers in music. The ever-changing
project of principal singer / songwriter E (Mark Oliver Everett), EELS have released 14 studio albums since their 1996 debut, ‘Beautiful Freak’. In 2008, E published his highly acclaimed book,
‘Things the Grandchildren Should Know’, and starred in the award-winning ‘Parallel Worlds, Parallel Lives’ documentary about the search to understand his quantum physicist father, Hugh
Everett III. Single LP on standard weight black vinyl in a
gatefold sleeve with matt machine varnish.

Niklas Paschburg"s third album Panta Rhei arrives via 7K! on March 17th, 2023. The title and the music are inspired by Heraclitus"s Greek philosophy that "everything flows" and finds the Hamburg-born artist exploring an unrestricted world of post-classical music drawn from deep within himself. Across two previous albums, the now Berlin-based Paschburg has been captivated by the movement of the Baltic Sea (2018"s Oceanic) and the darkness of a Northern European winter (2020"s Svalbard). As a result of being unable to travel during the pandemic, this latest album finds him looking inside his own heart and mind. Niklas"s personal journey becomes a captivating and colourful musical journey that combines his melancholic and delicate pianism with synths and electronic beats, suggestive ambient and the evocative voices of German singer Lúisa, Spaniard Bianca Steck and the Icelandic Kaktus Einarsson, frontman of post-punk band Fufanu. It is a move towards ambient-pop that is intimate and meditative but with positive and uplifting vibes.

By the time Lalo Schifrin composed the soundtrack for Frank Perry's psychological thriller in 1974, starring Cliff Robertson and Joel Gray (who'd just won an Oscar for his role in Bob Fosse's Cabaret) he was Hollywood royalty having worked on such iconic films as Bullitt and Dirty Harry. Perry on his side, had caused a stir with The Swimmer in 1968 starring Burt Lancaster (although he would dismiss the film after being fired from the production) and followed up with a string of great cult movies including ‘Last Summer’ (1969), Diary of a Mad Housewife (1970) starring Carrie Snodgress - whom Neil Young famously fell in love with upon seeing the film and "Play It as It lays" in 1972, adapted from Joan Didion's eponymous novel.

Breaking from the social dramas from of his previous films, Perry decided to shoot a thriller based on journalist William Arthur Clark's book "The Girl on The Volkswagen Floor." The film follows a police officer investigating a murder with the help of a strange ambiguous clairvoyant played by Gray. For the score Perry went to Lalo Schifrin who'd just come out of a bad experience on The Exorcist working with William Friedkin who'd rejected his music in favour of Tubular Bells by Mike Oldfield! The score was recorded in LA with the Wrecking Crew and, although the full line up is not known, it included Emil Richards, Howard Roberts, Bud Shank and of course Schifrin on piano.

'Man on a Swing' is pure undiluted Schifrin from the early 70s. The score plays like a long suite alternating Bossa Nova ("Juke Box Source"), Lounge Jazz ("Trip to LA") and groove ("FM Groove") with superb "suspense” soundscapes like "Rosehaven Hotel". The label has gone back to the Paramount 3-track tape transfers and come up with an updated tracklist (a CD version briefly appeared in the 2010s) - re-sequenced and augmented with a handful of bonus tracks and alternate takes. A highlight is certainly "Radio Source Rhythm" which, losing the guitar and organ, reveal a jaw dropping funk breakbeat that is in the league of Dirty Harry and Enter the Dragon. This and the whole soundtrack, will ravish all the funk diggers and Lalo Schifrin fans around the world.

Ground Groove, the third full-length release from the LA-based, Iranian-American producer and DJ, Maral, begins with an invocation: the sprawling, achingly heavy Feedback Jam opens the floodgates of history. Conventional (linear) spacetime collapses, crushed beneath the track’s lumbering 4/4 heartbeat and successive waves of distortion. As each wave recedes, samples trickle forward in the mix — seeking, perhaps, to fill the void. Voices and instruments rise and fall in uncanny reverse. Overlapping, implied melodies flicker into focus, then flit away. Feedback Jam is at once an initiation ritual, and a thesis statement for the record that follows.

Drawing upon a vast personal archive of Iranian folk, classical, and pop recordings (some sourced from mixtapes made by her parents in the eighties/nineties), Maral presents, on Ground Groove, a further refinement of the signature “folk club” sound she developed as a live DJ— a sound she would later codify on Mahur Club (2019) and Push (2020). By collecting, dissecting, and re/presenting sonic fragments from Iran, Maral practices a kind of dance-floor ethnomusicology. The subject of her inquiry: Iranian


culture and contexts, throughout history and in the present. But, crucially, this inquiry is instantiated within and throughout the body of the listener, whether this listener is dancing in the club, or riding the train, nodding along with headphones on.

Maral speaks of being in collaboration with her samples, treating each as a distinct bandmate, often consulting with an artist’s catalog (or even a single recording) as one would a trusted creative partner. In so-doing, Maral claims to seek to transcend the self. In this regard, her output neatly triangulates contemporary dance and heavy music with much of the traditional religious music that she samples. Broadly speaking, each of these idioms addresses a desire —shared by audience and performer alike—to transcend the self through volume, repetition, and movement.

Having, in her youth, studied the Setar under Nader Majd (the founder of Virginia’s Center for Persian Classical Music), Maral cycled through various genres (ex: punk, emo, dub) in her adolescence and early twenties, all the while expanding her knowledge of, and appreciation for, Iran’s diverse musical traditions during regular summer trips to Tehran. In college, Maral taught herself to make beats with a ripped copy of Ableton (which remains her DAW of choice), eventually transitioning to playing and hosting various club nights. Forever abiding by an autodidactic, DIY impulse to create art and foster community, Maral relocated to Los Angeles in 2013, where she quickly immersed herself in the city’s numerous overlapping music scenes.

Collaboration (beyond sampling) has proven an important component of her process, with notable spoken word contributions from the likes of Lee Scratch Perry and Penny Rimbaud, as well as a 2021 Panda Bear collab track (On Your Way), which the Animal Collective founder co-produced. Maral is equally attentive to the visual components of her records (album art, music videos, etc.), drawing upon the work of peers and friends for inspiration.

Indeed, the genesis of Ground Groove can be traced back to an audio-visual collaboration between Maral and the artist Brenna Murphy, originally commissioned for the 2021 Rewire Festival — a project that would eventually serve as the album’s foundation. Tracks eight through eleven on Ground Groove comprise Maral’s half of this installation, with tracks one through seven composed afterwards, inspired by the fruits of Maral and Murphy’s collaboration. Murphy’s visuals will be released alongside Ground Groove as a visual accompaniment. Additionally, Murphy designed the album’s art, directed the video for the lead single (the aforementioned Feedback Jam), and is featured on track six, Shy Night.

Composed largely on Ableton, Ground Groove features more frequent and more prominent live recordings from Maral (guitar, bass, and vocals) than either Push or Mahar Club. The cult favorite Roland MC-909 groovebox rears its head on Mari’s Groove. Mixed by Trayer Tryon (Hundred Waters) and mastered by Daddy Kev, the attention to sonic quality on Ground Groove constitutes another significant step in Maral’s development as a studio artist.

Ground Groove’s eleven tracks are “grooves” in the obvious sense, in that they are each driven by a persistent, propulsive rhythm, but the album’s title may just as well suggest the glacial passage of time—the scope of human history, in which individual voices, like streams, carve paths (impossibly) through earth and stone, winding their way to the vast sea of the present.

The live album From Wishes To Eternity offers a a glimpse into an early point in the long career of Finland's symphonic metal masters Nightwish when, three albums under their belts and already a household name in their native Finland, the world was just about to be laid before their feet. Recorded at Christmas in 2000 in Tampere, Finland in front of a packed house, Nightwish released this a year after the smash hit record Wishmaster. Unlike some CD pressings in circulation, this version contains the entire 80-minute uncut show. Never before available on vinyl, Lipposen Levy ja Kasetti presents this missing piece in the Nightwish puzzle on CD and gatefold double vinyl, remastered at Finnvox by Mika Jussila, who also mastered the original release in 2001.

Critically acclaimed rock group EELS announce
vinyl reissues of earlier records ‘End Times’, ‘Hombre Lobo’ and ‘Tomorrow Morning’, released via E Works / PIAS.
EELS will hit the road this Spring for the longawaited Lockdown Hurricane tour of Europe and North America, starting in March in Nottingham. The reissues follow EELS’ critically acclaimed
2022 record, ‘Extreme Witchcraft’, which found
praise at MOJO, NME, The New York Times,
Stereogum, SPIN and more. EELS have had one of the most consistently acclaimed careers in music. The ever-changing
project of principal singer / songwriter E (Mark Oliver Everett), EELS have released 14 studio albums since their 1996 debut, ‘Beautiful Freak’. In 2008, E published his highly acclaimed book,
‘Things the Grandchildren Should Know’, and starred in the award-winning ‘Parallel Worlds, Parallel Lives’ documentary about the search to understand his quantum physicist father, Hugh
Everett III. Single LP on standard weight black vinyl in a
gatefold sleeve with matt machine varnish.

Critically acclaimed rock group EELS announce
vinyl reissues of earlier records ‘Tomorrow
Morning’, ‘End Times’ and ‘Hombre Lobo’,
released via E Works / PIAS. EELS will hit the road this Spring for the longawaited Lockdown Hurricane tour of Europe and
North America, starting in March in Nottingham. The reissues follow EELS’ critically acclaimed 2022 record, ‘Extreme Witchcraft’, which found praise at MOJO, NME, The New York Times, Stereogum, SPIN and more. EELS have had one of the most consistently
acclaimed careers in music. The ever-changing
project of principal singer / songwriter E (Mark Oliver Everett), EELS have released 14 studio albums since their 1996 debut, ‘Beautiful Freak’. In 2008, E published his highly acclaimed book,
‘Things the Grandchildren Should Know’, and starred in the award-winning ‘Parallel Worlds, Parallel Lives’ documentary about the search to understand his quantum physicist father, Hugh
Everett III. Single LP on standard weight black vinyl in a
reverse board gatefold sleeve.

Taka Noda AKA Mystica Tribe has been releasing deep music on vinyl since 2011 on labels including SD Records, Solar Phenomena, Silent Season, and his own Mystica Tribe Records. Working in the dub/techno continuum, he is one of only a handful of artists who creates brilliant tunes at both ends of the spectrum, from heavy, psychedelic warehouse techno to beautifully orthodox reggae-infused dubwise. For his first ZamZam, he leans hard into the latter.

Noda describes his approach to these tunes as a “virtual live band,” and while “the only real live instrument is the melodica, I wanted to capture the energy of a live band with this song.”

A master of both melody and rhythm, Noda does exactly that with “Ido” (which means a well for water). The mood hits immediately with a loose & confident groove built from impossibly-live sounding drum work, a perfect orthodox bassline, and achingly beautiful interplay between piano, clav, and melodica. Somehow both melancholy and bright, it captures that moment when winter gives way to the first hint of spring, sun finally breaking through clouds after months of rain and darkness.

Rather than a simple dub of the A side, the version is a complete rebuild of the tune. “Ido - Renren Version” (which means flowing like tears, or a river) drops the tempo down to 120 but goes harder rhythmically in spite of its slower tempo. Opening with a stark, dark, and menacingly driving bassline and warped dub siren, the vibe is completely transformed from above-ground to below. Hard percussion, new melodica parts, and 4-4 hats & kick take it into that full post-punk dub territory that the world needs more of. Much more!!

Hambourg’s electro duo Fallbeil composed by Wosto and Kluentah, is still pretty unknown despite they’ve been releasing a bunch of EP and a couple of LP on label like Mannequin, Killekill sub-label Boidae or New York Haunted and more recently on their own label Teerpappe to name a few. Wosto, long time Macadam Mambo’s collaborater (Danzas Electricas vol. 2 & 3), sent us demos of what sounds very like « what Drexciya would realease on Bunker Records », a compilation of irresistible dark atmospheres slow electro tunes with very raw textures, complemented by few little skits to generate a brilliant album around the story of the Mockturtle. It’s rought as it should be ! And ! Little TIP for gabber’s heads dj, some tracks can be played in 45rpm check « No Go Area » and « Rackelhahn » it makes it worth

Hotflush Recordings celebrates 20 years in the game this year, with a triple pack vinyl compilation featuring some of the key musical events in the label’s catalogue.

Born in 2003, Hotflush stands as one of electronic music’s most influential labels. A multi-dimensional imprint that helped define the development of bass music throughout the mid-2000s, in the last decade it would evolve towards the liminal spaces between house, techno, and beyond - a journey which has given the dancefloor some of its true underground classics.

This celebratory release covers every era and stylistic area of the Hotflush output. 2005’s proto-dubstep face melter ‘The Knowledge’ by Toasty kicks off Side A, with the key sides of bass music development all covered with tracks from James Blake, Loefah, Sepalcure, and Scuba.

UK techno legend Surgeon appears with his seminal remix of Scuba’s ‘Ruptured’ (2008), while the early Paul Woolford classic ‘MDMA’ reminds us of how ended up working with Diplo.

George FitzGerald and Recondite reprise some of their key formative material, while newer names Lawrence Hart, OR:LA and breakout Seoul artist Closet Yi also make appearances.

Canadian mastermind Jacques Greene rounds off the release with his slamming remix of Kiimi’s Breaking My Mind.

This is a compilation 20 years in the making, containing some of the key tracks from the electronic underground - curated and compiled by label boss Scuba.

Freestyle reissue another 12" of prime UK boogie funk - this time giving a fresh cut and press to Bogaz's "I've Got Love", originally released back in 1983 on Dave Stevens' AGR Records imprint.

Bogaz were a short-lived group formed of seasoned musicians and session players Raff Peermamode, Trevor Murrell & Randy Hope-Taylor of Congress, Cargo & Incognito fame. I've Got Love represents one of only two 12"s ever released by the group.

Madonna is the first and only recording artist to have 50 number 1 hits on any single Billboard chart. To celebrate this historic milestone, Madonna has curated a new collection titled Finally Enough Love which includes her favourite remixes of those chart-topping dance hits that have filled clubs worldwide for four decades.

This collection highlights You Can Dance, Madonna’s first ever remix collection. Celebrating 35 years this year, You Can Dance has sold more than five million copies worldwide and is still the second best-selling remix album of all time. The collection also pays homage to “Everybody,” Madonna’s first single. Each remix is newly remastered for the collection by Mike Dean, who produced Madonna’s two most-recent studio albums, Rebel Heart (2015) and Madame X (2019). Along with those rarities, this album also introduces the “Offer Nissim Promo Mix” of “Living For Love” as its first official release.

Freestyle puts out another reissue 12" in their drive to unearth rare and classic UK funk, soul & boogie records - this time a much needed pressing of the late Candy McKenzie's heavy boogie-funk cover of Patrice Rushen's classic Remind Me. Produced by Candy's late cousin, and seasoned session bass player, John McKenzie (and licensed from the family estate) this was originally released in 1983 - and comes with an excellent dubbed-out 'Different Style' instrumental version on the flip.

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Candy McKenzie (1953-2003) was a North West London-based vocalist from a Guyanese family heavily steeped in musicianship . She began learning the piano at a young age, picking up vocal harmony from her father, a jazz bass player. Her brothers Bunny & Binky, were also celebrated bassists. Candy would marry young in 1970 at the age of 17, though just one year later her brother Binky (who played with the likes of Cream, Alexis Korner & John Mclaughlin in the late 60s) tragically killed her mother and father, along with Candy's husband in an attack at the family home to which Candy was present. Candy was also injured but escaped with her life.

In the years that followed the tragedy Candy, regularly accompanied by her brother Bunny, would find reggae vocal session work - often at the Chalk Farm Studios frequented by many key producers & acts. She found her way onto Aswad's first album and Keith Hudson's legendary Flesh Of My Skin Blood Of My Blood LP - and a little while later on a couple of sessions with Bob Marley for Island, under the supervision of Lee Perry.

The latter two parties took a keen interest in Candy, with Island wisking her away to Jamaica in 1977 to record an album at the legendary Black Ark. Her vocals found their way onto The Congos seminal Heart of the Congos LP, but the album she recorded with Perry was shelved - with just the Black Art holy grail 12" Disco Fits / Breakfast in Bed finding it's way to release at the time.

Back in London, Candy spent the early to mid 80s recording various lovers and funk/soul 12"s, including this fantastic cover of Patrice Rushen's Remind Me, produced by her cousin John. She went on to record singles for labels like Elite & Cooltempo throughout the '80s and early '90s, and appeared as backing vocalist with the likes of Leonard Cohen, Whitney Houston, Elton John and Diana Ross. She passed away in 2003, with her one and only album recorded at the Black Ark finally seeing release on Trojan in 2011.

Candy's cousin John McKenzie got his starts in the music industry in the mid 70s as part of prog group Man and communal festival rockers Global Village Trucking Co., as well as playing with the likes of Annette Peacock and Steve Hillage. His father Mike McKenzie was also a key Carribbean jazz figure in the UK throughout the early 1950s, through to the '60s and '70s. John would become a heavily in-demand session musician - playing with everyone from the Eurhythmics to Bob Dylan - while also finding time to produce this record, alongside a couple of excellent 12"s with Mel Gaynor as Finesse, between 1982 and '83. He would regularly tour the world as a live musician for a huge array of headline acts, appearing on multiple chart hits, and in his later years was a member of the excellent group Ibibio Sound Machine. He lost his battle with cancer in 2020.

This reissue is dedicated to the memory of both John & Candy McKenzie.

Japan's guitar hero Takeshi Terauchi reworks traditional songs and lets everything go wild with his magnificent and frenzied guitar sound. Enter the electrifying world of Eleki!

Gatefold 180g heavy vinyl LP, reverse board print. Comes with extensive liner notes by Japanese pop culture writer Julien Seveon (Cinexploitation)

All tracks licensed by King Record Co., Ltd., Tokyo, Japan.

Mastering and lacquer cut by Jukka Sarapää at Timmion Cutting Lab, Helsinki, Finland.

Artwork by Nker

The aftermath of World War II gave rise to a global phenomenon that saw new generations of young people rise up determined to forge new paths from their elders – culturally, politically, and musically. Japan was no exception and the recent past made the local youth angrier, hungrier and even more determined to fully experience something different from their parents. The country caught on to the early rock & roll craze almost in tandem as it was happening in the States. Teenager Chiemi Eri singing "Rock Around The Clock" and Kazuya Kosaka with "Heartbreak Hotel" were among the first to make what would soon be called Rokabiri accessible to a large audience. Teacher and parent associations showed concern regarding this new music when teenagers started missing school to attend afternoon shows – one of which most notably being the Nichigeki Western Carnival where all the top names of Rokabiri played to sold out audiences. But by the end of the 1950s, the youth of Japan had moved on to something else entirely: Eleki.

The 50s and 60s were a time of rapid change that saw trends come and go. Japan, like all other industrial countries, saw its youth move from one musical sensation to the next. And in the early 60s, there was one band in particular that created a distinct new flavor: The Ventures. Leaving behind vocals and focusing strictly on the impact of the sound of the electric guitar, The Ventures drove kids crazy all over the world. Other bands followed, most notably The Shadows, but in Japan, no other instrumental rock band managed to leave such an impact. The sound of The Ventures helped boost guitar sales in Japan and soon hundreds of cover bands were popping up all over the country. The Eleki Bumu (electric boom) was now in full effect with Takeshi Terauchi emerging as its first and greatest guitar hero.

Terauchi was born January 1939 in the prefecture of Tochigi, north of Tokyo. His mother taught music and played the shamisen – a traditional Japanese stringed instrument – while his father ran, among other things, an electronics shop. Their respective professions were to be decisive in the path that Terauchi would later take. Serendipitously, at the age of five, Takeshi was given his first instrument – a guitar. His destiny sealed, he quickly began experimenting with different tools from his father's shop to give his instrument a stronger sound. The technological approach came from his father, the technique from his mother. Terauchi's signature playing style owes a lot to his mother's instrument of choice, as he attacks the notes on his guitar as one plucks the strings of a shamisen.

This exceptional compilation you are holding in your hands explores some of the best works by Takeshi Terauchi, recorded between 1966 and 1974, where the guitar hero looks inwards to Japan for inspiration. A meeting between traditional folk songs and the unique way Terauchi and his band play: the content is explosive, inspired, and highly addictive! The 60s and 70s were undoubtedly Terauchi's finest hours, and in the late 60s, one Japanese critic said that Terauchi was not only the best guitarist in Japan, but also in the world. You can now find out why.

Die Kult-Black-Metal-Band NARGAROTH veröffentlicht jetzt 4 ihrer Full-Length-Alben via Season of Mist auf Vinyl!

FFV: Tsjuder, Gorgoroth, Mayhem, Darkthrone, Marduk

Die Kult-Black-Metal-Band NARGAROTH veröffentlicht jetzt 4 ihrer Full-Length-Alben via Season of Mist auf Vinyl!

FFV: Tsjuder, Gorgoroth, Mayhem, Darkthrone, Marduk

Marroon coloured vinyl.

1st pressing on Maroon coloured vinyl. Manzanita is the common name for a kind of small evergreen tree endemic to California which has strong medicinal properties. It's also the name of the brand new full length by visual artist, writer, songwriter, and musician Shana Cleveland. Subtle, powerful, and unafraid. We can't actually tell you how much we love this record because you'd never believe us, so we'll just say that it is her strongest and most personal album to date. These songs are as strong as the bricks in the Brill building, and seem destined to be covered by others in years to come. Where her previous record, 2019's Night of the Worm Moon (Hardly Art) functions as a collection of speculative fictions equally inspired by Afro-futurist pioneers Herman "Sun Ra" Blount and Octavia Butler, Manzanita concerns the love that loves to love. "This is a supernatural love album set in the California wilderness," Cleveland explains. The combinations of words and song structure are so strong throughout that one hardly notices Cleveland's nimble fingerpicking on first listen, or how much is packed into the arrangements. The lyrics are satisfyingly direct, with the buoyantly whimsical descriptions typical of the 1960s New York School of poetry. It's peppered with the kind of unexpected turns that make the words more modern, and in their spookiness they are more West Coast, as in "Mystic Mine," with its "Mystic Mine Lane, cars rotting away/ I feel so relieved to be/ Back in the country." So much of the pop music we love is propelled by those first blushes of infatuation and lust, but Manzanita concerns the kind of love that one can only experience with time, work, and devotion. Cleveland says: "The songs were all written while I was pregnant (side A) or shortly after my son's birth in that weird everything-has-quietly-but-monumentally-shifted state (side B)," she says. Moving to the country, starting a family, laughing for real at the same joke the thirteenth time you've heard it, surviving heavy shit (this is the first release since Cleveland's successful treatment for a diagnosis of breast cancer at the start of 2022). This is a love album that's somehow populated with the insect world, ghosts, and evil spirits. Sonically, Manzanita sits in a meadow similar to her previous solo records, set back and away from the genre-recombinant garage pop of her band La Luz. This is part due to the fact that there's a different sonic palette in use here. While Cleveland continues to play guitar and vocals; Johnny Goss, who has recorded all of Shana's solo material and early La Luz recordings, and Abbey Blackwell (Alvvays, La Luz) play the bass; Olie Eshleman is on pedal steel; and Will Sprott plays the keyboards, dulcimer, glockenspiel, and harpsichord-little of which would have been out of place on her previous two solo records-Sprott also adds layers of synthesizer infused with the sounds of the natural world.

Tape

1st pressing on Maroon coloured vinyl. Manzanita is the common name for a kind of small evergreen tree endemic to California which has strong medicinal properties. It's also the name of the brand new full length by visual artist, writer, songwriter, and musician Shana Cleveland. Subtle, powerful, and unafraid. We can't actually tell you how much we love this record because you'd never believe us, so we'll just say that it is her strongest and most personal album to date. These songs are as strong as the bricks in the Brill building, and seem destined to be covered by others in years to come. Where her previous record, 2019's Night of the Worm Moon (Hardly Art) functions as a collection of speculative fictions equally inspired by Afro-futurist pioneers Herman "Sun Ra" Blount and Octavia Butler, Manzanita concerns the love that loves to love. "This is a supernatural love album set in the California wilderness," Cleveland explains. The combinations of words and song structure are so strong throughout that one hardly notices Cleveland's nimble fingerpicking on first listen, or how much is packed into the arrangements. The lyrics are satisfyingly direct, with the buoyantly whimsical descriptions typical of the 1960s New York School of poetry. It's peppered with the kind of unexpected turns that make the words more modern, and in their spookiness they are more West Coast, as in "Mystic Mine," with its "Mystic Mine Lane, cars rotting away/ I feel so relieved to be/ Back in the country." So much of the pop music we love is propelled by those first blushes of infatuation and lust, but Manzanita concerns the kind of love that one can only experience with time, work, and devotion. Cleveland says: "The songs were all written while I was pregnant (side A) or shortly after my son's birth in that weird everything-has-quietly-but-monumentally-shifted state (side B)," she says. Moving to the country, starting a family, laughing for real at the same joke the thirteenth time you've heard it, surviving heavy shit (this is the first release since Cleveland's successful treatment for a diagnosis of breast cancer at the start of 2022). This is a love album that's somehow populated with the insect world, ghosts, and evil spirits. Sonically, Manzanita sits in a meadow similar to her previous solo records, set back and away from the genre-recombinant garage pop of her band La Luz. This is part due to the fact that there's a different sonic palette in use here. While Cleveland continues to play guitar and vocals; Johnny Goss, who has recorded all of Shana's solo material and early La Luz recordings, and Abbey Blackwell (Alvvays, La Luz) play the bass; Olie Eshleman is on pedal steel; and Will Sprott plays the keyboards, dulcimer, glockenspiel, and harpsichord-little of which would have been out of place on her previous two solo records-Sprott also adds layers of synthesizer infused with the sounds of the natural world.

- The third chapter in the acclaimed Pacific Breeze series! - Artwork by renowned illustrator Hiroshi Nagai - Compiled by Yosuke Kitazawa and Mark "Frosty" McNeill (dublab) - Newly remastered audio - 2xLP housed in a deluxe wide spine jacket with full color inner sleeves and custom die-cut OBI - Extensive artist bios by Yosuke Kitazawa // Light in the Attic's Pacific Breeze series has supplied the world's growing legions of Japanese music fans with an expertly curated selection of the most sought-after City Pop recordings-the mesmerizing and nebulous genre of Japanese bubble-era music of the '70s-'80s that encompasses AOR, R&B, jazz fusion, funk, boogie and disco. These familiar sounds are spun through the unique lens of optimistic, cosmopolitan fantasy colored by Japan's affluence at the time. Much of the music has previously been nearly impossible to acquire outside of Japan and continues to captivate listeners with its unique blend of groove-laden escapism, even birthing wholly new genres such as Vaporwave. Pacific Breeze 3: Japanese City Pop, AOR & Boogie 1975-1987 marks the latest chapter in the famed series and features holy grails plus under-the-radar rarities. The collection bursts at the seams to reveal some of the greatest Japanese tracks ever laid to tape, pushing towards the edge of City Pop to reveal glimmers of the next waves of styles to spring forth from the country's creative minds. The appearance of Pizzicato Five hint at the emergence of Shibuya-kei while the influence of hip hop and electro as an emerging global trend are also evident here through the prevalence of heavier programmed drum beats on tracks such as "Heartbeat" by Miho Fujiwara. This volume of Pacific Breeze, like its predecessors, is a female-forward offering with many tracks being voiced by women who would become household names in Japan as actresses and pop idols. Their songs here subvert the norm and brim with an innovative spirit that shatters gender roles in favor of sonic transcendence. Techno-pop classics from Susan, Miharu Koshi and Chiemi Manabe sit alongside sublime funk from Atsuko Nina and Naomi Akimoto while Teresa Noda slides into the mix with a sultry reggae jam. The genre span is stretched wider with hypnotic jazz fusion by Parachute and Hiroyuki Namba, a synthesizer fantasy from Osamu Shoji, and magnetic pop by Makoto Matsushita and Chu Kosaka. Although not front and center, the visionary members of Yellow Magic Orchestra are still very present on Pacific Breeze 3, with Haruomi Hosono, Ryuichi Sakamoto, and Yukihiro Takahashi taking up producer and musician roles on many of these tracks. Pacific Breeze 3 serves up a captivating musical journey that adds an essential chapter to the iconic compilation series.

- The third chapter in the acclaimed Pacific Breeze series! - Artwork by renowned illustrator Hiroshi Nagai - Compiled by Yosuke Kitazawa and Mark "Frosty" McNeill (dublab) - Newly remastered audio - 2xLP housed in a deluxe wide spine jacket with full color inner sleeves and custom die-cut OBI - Extensive artist bios by Yosuke Kitazawa // Light in the Attic's Pacific Breeze series has supplied the world's growing legions of Japanese music fans with an expertly curated selection of the most sought-after City Pop recordings-the mesmerizing and nebulous genre of Japanese bubble-era music of the '70s-'80s that encompasses AOR, R&B, jazz fusion, funk, boogie and disco. These familiar sounds are spun through the unique lens of optimistic, cosmopolitan fantasy colored by Japan's affluence at the time. Much of the music has previously been nearly impossible to acquire outside of Japan and continues to captivate listeners with its unique blend of groove-laden escapism, even birthing wholly new genres such as Vaporwave. Pacific Breeze 3: Japanese City Pop, AOR & Boogie 1975-1987 marks the latest chapter in the famed series and features holy grails plus under-the-radar rarities. The collection bursts at the seams to reveal some of the greatest Japanese tracks ever laid to tape, pushing towards the edge of City Pop to reveal glimmers of the next waves of styles to spring forth from the country's creative minds. The appearance of Pizzicato Five hint at the emergence of Shibuya-kei while the influence of hip hop and electro as an emerging global trend are also evident here through the prevalence of heavier programmed drum beats on tracks such as "Heartbeat" by Miho Fujiwara. This volume of Pacific Breeze, like its predecessors, is a female-forward offering with many tracks being voiced by women who would become household names in Japan as actresses and pop idols. Their songs here subvert the norm and brim with an innovative spirit that shatters gender roles in favor of sonic transcendence. Techno-pop classics from Susan, Miharu Koshi and Chiemi Manabe sit alongside sublime funk from Atsuko Nina and Naomi Akimoto while Teresa Noda slides into the mix with a sultry reggae jam. The genre span is stretched wider with hypnotic jazz fusion by Parachute and Hiroyuki Namba, a synthesizer fantasy from Osamu Shoji, and magnetic pop by Makoto Matsushita and Chu Kosaka. Although not front and center, the visionary members of Yellow Magic Orchestra are still very present on Pacific Breeze 3, with Haruomi Hosono, Ryuichi Sakamoto, and Yukihiro Takahashi taking up producer and musician roles on many of these tracks. Pacific Breeze 3 serves up a captivating musical journey that adds an essential chapter to the iconic compilation series.

If there is a space in this place for a voice of this age, it’s still sealed in wax. Above the din of the noise a vocal appears, in calm
reflection, it delivers a message of hope in a time of despair. Ivan Ave is back. A lot has transpired since we last heard him on a
full-length project, there's a lot to ponder as we get into his latest LP, All Season Gear.
On his 4th solo album, Ivan offers a glimpse into the various seasons he and his friends went through in the last three years. All
Season Gear was recorded on highs and lows through a pandemic, through healing, falling in love and observing the chaos that
is the hyper-textual information age. Lyrically an all-weather-proof record, breaking even with with a joie de vivre, backed by
production from the likes of Sasac, Mndsgn, Like, DJ Harrison and Ivan Ave himself.
The Norwegian rapper’s sixth solo release percolates between desperation and buoyancy, through a tide of beats, as Ivan taps
into his signature observations. His lyrics are an astute surveillance that exploit the mundane in a pensive exploration, touching
on hedonistic heights, with a constant focus on the beauty of the everyday.
The Mutual Intentions mouthpiece breezes through a record of wistful sonorities brought together by the larger Mutual intentions
collaboration. Keys swell and bass undulates, as the production convene on vintage aesthetics, repurposed for air-pod traveling.
It extends the sonic palette of his last LP, Double Goodbyes, and plunges the sound deeper than ever before.
Ivan Ave reinforces our vision of him as a voice for our time. A philosopher’s touch-stone in a world where the incongruous prevails over the sincere.

Daje Funk Records is back with Vol. 4 of the legendary ‘Slam Dunk’ series of EPs, this time featuring Souldynamic - Musta - Les Inferno - Groovemasta !!!

On the A-side, the supremely talented Souldynamic kicks things off with ‘Tales From Q.J.’ - a delicious chunk of late summer grooves bathing in sun-drenched keys and strings. The rolling bassline acts as the hook, and what follows is a gloriously constructed melodic masterpiece sprinkled with heavenly vocals. Fall in love with this, you will.

A2 sees Italian maestro Musta crack open the deep reggae vibes with ’Soup’. You’ll find it hard to resist this bubbling broth of twisted, rhythmic precision bass, ‘one drop’ beats and tight, short skanking guitar riffs. With ‘Soup’, Musta demonstrates his complete understanding of this genre. Darkened room or bar sun terrace - you decide.

On the B-side, label co-owner Les Inferno spices things up several notches with the aptly titled ‘Hot Burn’. And boy, does this track sizzle. A hustling rhythm that takes over your dance nodes from the get go, Les Inferno lovingly sprinkles Latino and Afro vibes all over this searingly hot dish. It’s furious, intense and relentless - and the brass breakdown acts as the tabasco sauce. Drink water. Plenty of water.

Closing Vol. 4 out on B2 is Groovemasta with ‘That Funk’. A track that treats its funky beats and chunky bass like royalty, this 118bpm monster wastes no time in demanding ‘Gimme that funk’. And you’re gonna hand it over. The swirling, gyrating sexiness of ‘That Funk’ can’t be understated - impossible not to lose yourself in this guaranteed dance floor time bomb.

Slam Dunk Vol. 4 seriously raises the bar for this already excellent series, and has to be in any self-respecting vinyl junky’s record box. Grab it while you can!

“Eye Of Delirious” is a long-awaited debut Muscut's release of Chillera’s band bass player Ganna Bryzhata — an Odesa-based sound artist. An ambient LP is a smoothy-flow sub-nautical journey with the songs of Black sea sirens glowing under the moon.

Mastering by Gennadiy Boychenko
Artwork by Volodymyr Pavlov
Graphic design by (DN) daynight.info
Neu Medieval and Heymland typefaces by KTF
Riso print by Hands on Press
Muscut, 2023

Gianni Brezzo, the jazz affiliated band / studio project led by Cologne-based producer maestro Marvin Horsch, has a diverse musical profile that is reflected both in his genre-hopping as well as his creative output. Along with producing for Cologne bands like Keshavara, Woman and Xul Zolar, Gianni has released a number of EP and LP’s since 2017, including 2021’s “The Awakening” which featured vocal appearances from Berlin/Tel Aviv based singer / producer J.Lamotta and soul singer Otis Junior from Louisville, Kentucky. Gianni’s 2022 LP “Tutto Passa,” released on Jakarta Records, was a meditation around Marvin’s relationship to Italian culture, accompanied by research into Italian composers of the 60’s / 70’s such as Piero Umiliani, Stelvio Cipriani and Armando Trovajoli to more recent work by Sven Wunder. This was quickly followed up with EP “Amoria,” an extension of the themes grown from “Tutto Passa.” Gianni’s tracks have consistently placed on Editorial Lists including Spotify’s “State Of Jazz” (509k Likes) and “Café / Croissant” (200k Likes), and “lofi beats” (4.8M Likes) and most recently was synced in an episode of Gossip Girl for HBO US. Gianni’s latest excursion, “Soundscapes Vol. 1 – Music for Harlequins” is a special kind of release, one that ventures into worlds familiar, yet undeniably foreign and exciting. Gianni journeys through baroque pastures and medieval acoustics to bring forth an aural palette of colorful, timeless arrangements that fit comfortably in the sonic pocket. Featuring lush and nuanced instrumentation, all seamlessly melded together within Gianni’s groove-driven framework, the tracks on “Harlequins” present thematic moods that act as sonic windows into an enduring past. Jakarta is ecstatic to share such a project, with limited 300 vinyl initially pressed, arriving March 10th, 2023.

With his new album, Gecko Turner confirms that he is a standout artist in the global groove scene, a must for the outernational sounds aficionados.

Somebody From Badajoz is the fifth studio album in his much lauded discography and his first in seven years, eagerly anticipated by both his fans and himself: "this business of dedicating yourself to music and making songs... it's a long game."

With the release of his first two, remarkable, albums, Guapapasea! (2003) and Chandalismo Ilustrado (2006), Gecko started cultivating what one astute journalist defined as Afro-maduran soul—the "maduran" bit referencing Extremadura, a region in central-western Spain.

Badajoz, Gecko's birthplace, is the biggest city in the area, on the border with Portugal, by the Guadiana River. It is a place that oozes history, where there is constant movement at the border, and people's character is friendly and open-minded with foreign habits.

Gecko's Afro-maduran soul isbuilt on Afro-American music and drenched in Brazilian, African, Latin American and Jamaican sounds. There are also echoes of a youth marked in equal parts by our man's admiration for the Beatles and the flamenco that could be heard everywhere in Badajoz in the seventies. It makes for a singular sound and a musical language of its own—spicy, succulent, full of nuances, but with a very personal flavour.

The album opens with the Nigerian talking drums of Twenty-twenty Vision, (neo) soul in a magical falsetto, carried by a sumptuous orchestral arrangement with a cinematic flavour: "I'd been thinking about doing something called 'Twenty-twenty Vision' for some time, making a play on words with the vision we have of the world after the year 2020 and the medical expression, which, in ophthalmological terms, means 'normal or complete vision.' Beyond that particular song, I think that's the mood of the album: a look at society in the twenties of the 21st century and the feelings and demons it produces."

It's followed by De Balde, a very special song born from a posthumously discovered lyric by the great writer Carlos Lencero, a regular collaborator of Camarón, Pata Negra, and Remedios Amaya, and also from Badajoz. While conceived as a fandango, Gecko has moulded it into his sound in such a seamless way it now seems as if the words could only have been written to be embraced by the percussion, brass, and backing vocals heard on the album. It's the only lyric on Somebody From Badajoz not written by Turner, still it sits rather comfortably with the rest, sharing the same emotivity and sensitivity, as well as the trademark humour and irony.

Other tracks see more protagonism for the rhythm.The beat-driven Ain't No Fun Preachin' to the Choir features Gecko's vocals walking the thin line between singing and talking over a phenomenal afro-disco-funk-infused trailblazer. In Am I Sad? it's impossible to not bob your head to the queen of Papatosina's mongrel rhythm, as close to the banks of the Guadiana river as it is to the shores of the Mississippi. Qué Siesta Tan Buena, He Babeao Y To! is an ode to the snooze in true Afro-Maduran fashion. And in Come And Try, the Caribbean influence is evident—lovers' rock that invites you to dance in good company.

In these songs, and throughout the album, for that matter, the musicians accompanying Gecko, who himself plays many of the instruments as well, shine brightly. All hailing from Extremadura, Javi Mojave (percussion), Álvaro Fdez 'Dr. Robelto' (bass), and Rafa Prieto (guitar) have been carrying him with delicate forcefulness since he started out as a solo artist. At the same time, the wonderful and essential voices of Deborah Ayo, Astrid Jones, Fani Ela Nsue, and Miriam Solís give the album a sunny variety of colours. And there are many more—a sensational group of musicians contributes dazzling harmonic bursts to many of the songs. The palette of sounds is very diverse and rich in textures and nuances, including, for example, the ngoni, bells, and various repurposed kitchen utensils.

The groove is always around, moving between the magical border sound of Everybody Knows Somebody From Badajoz and Little Dose, the silky soul of The Sibariteo Appreciation Society, and the exultant celebration of End Of The World (which surprisingly sees Gecko turning to the occasional use of autotune), a piece that could be used for the final credits of a Monty Python film and, in fact, closes the album.

Gecko Turner has done it again with Somebody From Badajoz, looking to the future without losing sight of the roots. In times of upheaval all over the globe, when people are looking for purity, he delivers a formidable piece of work: risky, optimistic in spite of everything, and with a decidedly bastard sound. Let's rejoice.

Eyelids' new album, A Colossal Waste of Light, does an excellent job of
framing the quintet as one of today's most compelling purveyors of
lopsided guitar pop workouts and earworm-laden vocal melodies
It also proves that great guitar pop can still evoke favorites from a glorious past -
the penetrating moodiness of XTC's Black Sea, or R.E.M.'s Fables of the
Reconstruction, comes to mind - while refusing to waste time on idle nostalgia.
On their 4th full-length album (but 17th vinyl offering if you include previous EPs)
the Portland, OR band also rediscover the beauty of firsts. A Colossal Waste of
Light marks the first time the band wrote songs remotely (it ended up being fun &
weird to send out a very simple version of a song and see who came back first
with another part for it,John Moen looks back), their first reunion at the
Destination: Universe studio post-isolation, and their first batch of melodious new
tunes since The Accidental Falls, the band's 2020 project with poet, lyricist and
Tim Buckley collaborator Larry Beckett (an extra- ordinary pairing that allowed
Eyelids' two frontmen/ tunesmiths, Chris Slusarenko and John Moen, to find a
new, multilayered appreciation for the art of songcraft)

Gondwana Records announces 'Goodbyes' the debut album from Estonian pianist and composer, Hanakiv, a deeply beautiful, meditative piano album featuring special guest Alabaster dePlume

"This is an album about healing. It is about saying your goodbyes to everything that doesn't serve you anymore. Each of these songs has a little goodbye in it. So, these are very beautiful and necessary goodbyes".

Hanakiv is a young composer and musician from Estonia (now based in London) who creates meditative piano-based ambient music with elements from classical and electronic music. 'Goodbyes' is her debut recording and draws on influences as diverse as Tim Hecker, Björk "Vespertine", Kara-Lis Coverdale, Arvo Pärt, Erkki-Sven Tüür and Aphex Twin as well as her own cultural heritage. Music has an important part in Estonian culture, especially choir music and its traditions, but Hanakiv also draws on her love of nature – the beautiful Estonian seaside and forests - and on her time in Iceland. However, it was moving to London that gave her the freedom to make her own music: "London gave me the freedom and courage to really be who I am (as a person and musically)" and her heritage and her new home both offer inspiration to Goodbyes, as Hanakiv moves between these two opposite places, a bustling metropolis and a small country full of nature, drawing inspiration from both as she sculpts her own voice.

Hanakiv had an unconventional music education – she started studying music at a school for handbells when she was nine and was part of a handbell ensemble for eight years. Starting on piano at the same time she went on to study composition at high school, and later at the Estonian Academy of Music. Eventually switching to electroacoustic composition, she studied in Reykjavik, and did internships in Malmö, and again Reykjavik before moving to London. She grew up in a musical family and her grandmother was a piano teacher and choir conductor.

"I would always ask her to take me to her choir rehearsals. I remember sitting under the grand piano, listening to the choir and just being mesmerised by the sounds. She also teaches in a local music school in the south of Estonia with about ten pianos, and I'd spend a lot of time there as well. I believe this was the starting point for me to get to where I am now. The last two pieces on the album (Home II and Home I) are composed in this same music school, so it feels like a full circle.

An early influence was Regina Spektor "the first artist who made me really want to play piano" alongside dream pop and Sigur Rós' as well as Estonian contemporary composers such as Erkki-Sven Tüür and Arvo Pärt. Later her studies took her to Reykjavík: "There is this amazing record shop called 12 Tónar in Reykjavik where you can drink espressos and listen to all their vinyls. I spent quite a lot of time there. There is something about Icelandic music that really excited me (the mixture of contemporary electronic sounds with melancholy, emotionality). This is when I started getting more into electronic music, and experimenting outside of classical music". Following a year long break from studying and inspired by making an electroacoustic soundtrack for a friend's abstract video, she was inspired to complete a masters in electroacoustic composition, diving fully into the worlds of sound recording and mixing and focusing on surround sound and how to position and move sounds in space, eventually doing an internship with composer Kent Olofson in Malmö, who works with multi-speaker systems for theatre productions. "I learnt a lot from him and he introduced me to some of my favourite plugins I've used a lot on this album as well."

Hanakiv moved to London just as the pandemic hit and found herself trapped, in a big new city, without any network or family and so just concentrated on making music. "I stayed in my room with my basic equipment - keyboard, Korg minilogue, SM 58 and Rode nt1-a microphones, laptop and speakers. I was reading about mixing, and trying out different things and listening to a lot of music to get the sense of the mixes and production and finishing a commission piece for 5.1 multi speaker system at that time so I set up four speakers for quadrophonic surround sound in my room!". She also found her way back to piano - my instrument – and started practicing again, playing the pieces she used to play, but also just improvising, and this was the beginning of what would become her debut album, 'Goodbyes'.

"I started appreciating everything about music again (even melody!), and everything just came together naturally, and I arrived to a point where I finally found my voice, and I had something that I wanted to say and share. I composed "Meditation I" first and started with "Goodbye", and all the other pieces are derived from that. Without "Meditation I" there wouldn't be this album. If you listen closely, "Meditation I" starts where "Goodbye" ends; "Meditation II" is born from "Meditation I".

But it was meeting Fi Roberts, a sound engineer based at the legendary Strongrom Studios in Shoreditch, London in December 2020 that really brought the album into focus. The pair bonded over an interest in prepared piano and a similar approach to production ideas (a balance of not overdoing it, and letting the songs speak for themselves, but being open to explore) and Fi became a friend but also a confidant and eventually co-producer

"Fi has a big impact on this record but I don't know how to really explain that properly. Of course, this album is sonically stunning thanks to her amazing mixes and recording skills, but she also believed in this music so much and it created something very special - that's difficult to measure with words. She just works with heart, and I really appreciate that"

This then is 'Goodbyes', the first offering from a major new voice, who offers us a meditative work full of space and tranquillity but also life and friendship and meaning. And we are very proud to welcome her to the Gondwana family.

Thaniil Alexandros can’t imagine a life without producing. Under the name of RBCHMBRS, Thaniil has been tinkering with sample based productions for 17 years. In one form or another, RBCHMBRS has mashed inspirations of hip hop instrumentals with the funky, snappy bounce of UKG.

Being half Greek and half Dominican means that Thaniil’s first memories of music were of classic Greek music and his mother’s love of dance and disco. Growing up on the Bronx meant that he was exposed to a mix of genres his entire life. From boomboxes on the street or from the windows of his neighbors home, gave Alexandros exposure to sounds he hadn't heard.

Toe the Line EP was intended to return to stripped down elements of older releases, but something “a little less outer space, a return to earth.” Armed with an SP-404, RBCHMBRS wants to be playful without being reminiscent, always trying to move forward. He believes that nostalgic pain can propel an artist to make their best work.

While noting history teachers as salient inspirations that opened his eyes to cultures unknown to him, as well as a father who is a history buff of his own, Thaniil has inherited some of their reverence for the classics and the importance of learning from the past. Alexandros’ fundamentals are influenced by Madlib, Timbaland (“the early stuff,” he interjects), Q Tip, Havoc, Alchemist, UKG, as well as the culture that surrounded the NBA in the 90s, during his most formative years.

Keeping it in the family, RBCHMBRS works closely with critically acclaimed emcee/producer THERAVADA, who co-produced Sick by Earl Sweatshirt with him, and who is his cousin. Currently, RBCHMBRS is working on a self-proclaimed “sprawling dance album” with Tesh Curry. His audience has a lot to look forward to.

With his Estrella EP, his intention was expressed through the imagined feeling of a time warp, a portal, and maybe coming out the other end of it. He wanted Toe The Line EP to feel more grounded, a down to earth project that he leaned towards as he searched for his life to settle. This EP reminds him that many things in his life have changed for the better, and a lot of that has to do with the structure hes begun to install.