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The acclaimed compilation series returns with volume 4! Fourteen tracks showcasing the most exciting emerging voices in Belgian jazz, ready to claim a permanent spot on your turntable.

The latest instalment in the celebrated compilation series once again shines a spotlight on the most adventurous and forward-thinking artists emerging from Belgium's jazz scene. Curated by Belgian tastemaker, DJ and broadcaster Lefto Early Bird, the collection continues a tradition of uncovering hidden gems and introducing them to a wider audience of dedicated diggers.

Over the years, the Jazz Cats series has become a trusted barometer of Belgium's ever-evolving jazz landscape. Long before many artists gained international recognition, they first appeared on these compilations, making the series both a discovery platform and a snapshot of one of Europe's most exciting musical ecosystems.

Jazz Cats Volume 4 captures a scene bursting with creativity, diversity and ambition. Across fourteen carefully selected tracks, the compilation explores the many directions contemporary Belgian jazz is taking today. Jazz, hip-hop, electronic music, afrobeat, spiritual jazz and experimental sounds coexist effortlessly throughout the collection.

The opening stretch of the compilation, led by Brussels-based Irreversible Entanglements band member Aquiles Navarro, Ola Tunji and HelenaCasella, offers an early glimpse into a scene that rarely stands still. Their music moves freely between traditions and contemporary influences, reflecting less concern with preserving genres than expanding them. Artists such as Lupo Spaccaro and Kunde, joined here by the raw soul voice of Fred Gata, draw inspiration from hip-hop and contemporary beat culture, yet neither approaches these influences in a conventional way. Instead, they reveal how naturally these sounds have become part of the vocabulary of a new generation of jazz musicians.

Experimentation emerges as another defining thread. KVR and BREAD FOR PIGEONS embrace unpredictability through unexpected textures, shifting atmospheres and confident compositional choices, creating music that constantly challenges expectations. Elsewhere, artists like Gaiko and VLIEGWERK favor immersive soundscapes that reward repeated listening. Whether there's a connection between musical adventurousness and a preference for capital letters remains a question for future research.

At the heart of the compilation lies a strong sense of movement and groove. Ragini Trio and Foutloos approach that rhythm from different angles, yet both build their music around powerful, pulsating foundations. Their tracks need close attention, revealing layers of detail and low-end richness that practically demand to be experienced on a proper sound system.

By the time it reaches its closing chapter, Lucid Lucia, SLAGADER and Kuna Maze bring the focus back to forward motion. Jazz and funk-infused grooves provide a fitting finale, reminding us that however far these artists push the jazz genre, they never lose sight of its ability to connect, uplift and move people.

The result is a body of work that feels remarkably cohesive despite its diversity: a portrait of a scene that continues to evolve through curiosity, collaborationand constant reinvention.

Planet E looks to the heart of Detroit’s club culture for the debut appearance on the label from Motor City mainstay, Mister Joshooa. A DJ and sound engineer closely intertwined with the city’s music scene, regularly found behind the decks at clubs like TV Lounge and Lincoln Factory and having previously appeared on Carl Craig’s celebrated Detroit Love compilation, ‘Settle Down’ introduces four tracks that cement Mister Joshooa’s lucid, far-out take on house.

Lead track ‘Settle Down’ distills the energies and influence of the scene into a rubber-jointed, rolling introduction that vibrates with energy and anticipation, nailing a bassline that could run for hours and injecting trippy effects, live percussion and out-there vocals drawing in dancers. ‘Snake Oil’ meanwhile strips things way back, squeezing plenty of juice for the floor from a tunnelling, lightly psychedelic arrangement, offering bang-for-buck deepness that’s no scam.

‘Stop Me’ continues to drive Mister Joshooa’s productions in even wonkier, even mysterious directions, its oscillating crawl and hypnotic melody primed to create a heady atmosphere, giving surreal or even sinister, depending on each dancer’s perspective. Finally, ‘Step Up’ offers the roughest, readiest ride to close, where classic drum machine programming reverberates against throbbing sonics and all manner of analogue weirdness, transforming into an outsider techno stepper from the darker side.

I see lucid blue flames moving before my eyes.
I hear voices melting. Voices somewhere from within.
Speaking words I do not know but feel connected to, almost as if I have known the meaning once..
Noises that obscures the multiple pictures hidden in these digital compositions.
Iku Sakan have created a set of five tracks that takes the listener on a
trip deep into the human psyché. Emotional flickering movements that twists and turns. The albums have a darker, much more intense feel than some of Ikus earlier magical and often hypnotic music. A myriad of different voices creates pulsing patterns and constantly morphing pictures for my inner eye. It's an album that might work as a hack to our lingual structures, pushing limits, pushing possibilities of meaning.

A pool of over-saturated information boils and out of the vapor new contours take form.
The magical and hypnotic is not gone, I still recognise the softer aspects of Ikus highly detailed hybrid sound design. But I no longer see where it takes me. It excites me. It feels like the world is expanding again, breathing. The sounds on the album asks us questions and points in several directions at once. In the shadows, weeds of lucid dreams grow deeper roots, reaching for my inner ear.

The faint sounds on the track Nature Morte reminds me of expeditions to the local witch house ruins as a child. Something almost not there, something felt. History, Memories and the connection between the two seems to have played a part in these compositions. Emotional reactions that plant reactions in other people, all around creating soft movements on the face of our planet.

Whether our collective psyché is an open field or an impenetrable dark forest, is of less concern with a key like Omnitopoeia, that works like an enhanced mirror, reflecting the dreams of the words we speak everyday, reflecting the emotional charges of significant places. Unrecognisable but still remembered.

There have been many different ways in describing the personal stories behind the protagonists of the electronical music scene in the 90ies. It´s in the nature of things that especially producers, whose place of work is the studio, remained rather in the background.
One of them is Ralf Hildenbeutel. He was the producer of Sven Väth´s most important releases such as "L'Esperanza" or "Fusion" and an essential creative part of the Eye Q label in the 90ies. His "Earth Nation" project was the first live act from that genre who was taking a drummer on the live stage, playing on international festivals and stages including the "Montreux Jazz Festival". The vita continues. While many other musicians kept on working on techno, Hildenbeutel composed for artists such as Laith Al-Deen or Phil´s son Simon Collins and wrote filmmusic for movies such as "Hommage á Noir" which won the Goldmedal for music on the New York Filmfestivals. The film adaption of Martion Suter's "Der Koch", "Ausgerechnet Sibirien", TV thriller such as "Kommissarin Lucas" or even the series of "Verbotene Liebe" have been scored by Ralf Hildenbeutel. His filmmusic for the international multi-awarded shortmovie "Momentum" was nominated at the Newport International Filmfestival. On "Moods" Hildenbeutel finds more back to electronical music. Fans of artists such as Ólafur Arnalds, Nils Frahm or Jon Hopkins will enjoy this longplayer. Hildenbeutel mixes complex string-arrangements and piano pieces with clicks & cuts and invents his own coherent language which allows both directions to live in harmony. Elegiac compositions and vivacious, percussive breakouts as in "Spark" (for which an video by award-winning filmmaker Boris Seewald will be made) meet on this album.
An album which grows and gains depth with each hearing.