Beats Vinyl New Releases - News

"Emotional Response is delighted to present Benoit B's new project Terra Utopia - 8 tracks of atmospheric breaks that unfold across ambient, beats and drum and bass.

This debut offers the artist a new direction, connected to feelings of an intangible warmth, where empty urban expanse and latent stillness meets a Mediterranean azure of sky and sea, oscillating, ethereal.

The music was created in a short time frame; short pieces, linked around a laconic structure flowing as if across some imaginary astral void.

An invitation, where time slows, days stretch, cloudless nights lead to a romantic dawn, the narrative to allow the listener the space and choice to dream.

Fear no more, the heat of the sun. "

Jerk It and BARS of Beats affiliate Bobo joins the Gestalt
roster with 5 bits of emotive electronics, ranging from ambient
breaks to breaky IDM. This is the first installment of a 10 track
album, split into 2 Eps.

‘London-based Baroque Sunburst and Milanese XCPT serve DJs and systems a zinger in this collabo. Four urgent tracks, uptempo and half-beat, fearless and immersive, shades of techno, bulging basslines. Amidst the echoes of 90s dub, a whiff of industrial, post-punk shamelessness rears its head. Soundboys beware.’

Audio experiments from Active Research.

HYbr:ID Vol. 1 is the first installment of a new series of Alva Noto’s works bringing together heterogeneous composition methods.
HYbr:ID Vol. 1 captures the music commissioned for the score of ‘Oval’, the choreographic piece directed by Richard Siegal and performed by the Staatsballett Berlin at the Berlin State Opera in 2019.
The process of creating HYbr:ID Vol. 1 was defined by the search for a form to bind astrophysics phenomena, fiction, and performance movements.
Its narrative is inspired by cinematic visual techniques and static images portraying scientific events which also inspired the titles of the nine compositions.
The music possesses a dilated rhythmic base contributing to the images of gravity and spatiality. At points static is used with an ornate, delicate intricacy. The album’s sonic spectrum builds with deep sub-bass, gloomy sonics, spacious sound design, and inorganic ambiance that is gently coerced with artistic finesse.
The nine compositions are accompanied by graphic notations informed by the album’s sonic and acoustic codes.

Reflective Records, the label with the holograms, started in 1993 by Jonah Sharp aka Spacetime Continuum reopens its catalog with the “Every Moment” 12” EP, the debut release by Cahl Sel . This homegrown San Francisco artist has been playing live in California with a minimal hardware rig for the past few years and these four tracks reflect his beat-driven but melody-led sound.
This release features the last of the original hologram die-cut center stock from the 1990s.

Dewa Alit, Bali’s master of contemporary Gamelan composition, returns to Black Truffle with Chasing the Phantom, presenting two recent works played by the composer’s Gamelan Salukat, a large ensemble that performs on instruments specially built to his designs, using a unique tuning system that combines notes from two traditional Balinese Gamelan scales. Alit explains that the ensemble’s name suggests “a place to fuse creative ideas to generate new, innovative works” and both compositions demonstrate the composer’s ability to wring stunning new possibilities from variations on the traditional Gamelan ensemble. While using familiar elements of Balinese Gamelan music, such as unison scalar melodies and stop-start dynamics, Alit’s music is overflowing with harmonic, rhythmic, and timbral inventions, the latter often facilitated by unorthodox playing techniques.

“Ngejuk Memedi”, an English translation of which gives the LP its title, results from Alit’s reflection on the complex relationship between tradition and modernity in Balinese culture, particularly in the way that belief in the phantoms or spirits known as ‘memedi’ are shared through social media using digital technologies. Embodying this uncanny co-existence, the opening passages of the piece are at once immediately recognisable in their use of the metallophones of the Gamelan ensemble and strikingly reminiscent of electronics in their timbre and movement. At points, what we hear seems to have been fragmented with digital tools, or even to originate in some incessantly glitching DX7. Short melodic figures loop irregularly, with the ensemble splintering into polyrhythmic shards before unexpectedly recombining for intricate unison passages. After several minutes of this manically tinkling metallic sound world, the metallophones are joined by drums for a meditative passage of lower dynamics, as the uniformly high pitch range explored in the opening sections gradually opens up to include resonant low gong hits. Recovering some of the manic energy of the opening, but now enhanced with the full range of percussion, the piece weaves through a series of tempo changes to a stunning passage of rapid-fire melodies and ringing chords that sweep across the metallophones, their unorthodox tuning creating complex clouds of wavering harmonies.

“Likad”, written during Covid-19 lockdowns, channels anxiety and uncertainty into musical form, resulting in a piece that, even by Alit’s standards, is stunning in its complexity and the virtuosity it demands of Gamelan Salukat. Its opening section is perhaps most remarkable for its mastery of texture, with rapid transitions between dry, muted strikes and metallic shimmers calling to mind the use of filters in electronic music. At points, the complex irregular repetitions of short melodic patterns, where the music seems to get stuck or be suddenly interrupted by a skip, recall the mad sampler works of Alvin Curran or the skittering surface of prime period Oval more than anything familiar from acoustic percussion music. Moving through a dizzying series of twists and turns, the piece ends with a majestic sequence of chords possessing an almost hieratic power. A major statement from a radical contemporary composer, one cannot help but agree with Alit when he sees Chasing the Phantom as an answer to the “question of the future of Gamelan music”.

Limited hand stamped copies..

This is Hannibal Selectors first EP on Influential, following his epic Kniteforce White release, and we are sure it wont be the last. The whole EP has heavy reggae influences, and all the variety that comes with that sound. Each track is completely different but fires on all cylinders. This EP is one you could almost imagine being played by a live band, at a carnival or a festival, fuelling the summer vibes…were it not for the absolute monster breakbeat chopping involved. This is a heavyweight EP that will surely knock you for six but one that you will come back for time and time again.

Club / DJ Support
Jay Cunning, Billy Bunter, the Fat Controller, Liquid, Hyper On Experience, Glowkid, Slipmatt, Dj Jedi, Dj Luna-C, Dj Brisk, Paul Bradley, Jimni Cricket, Bustin, Jimmy J, Doughboy, Lowercase, Dave Skywalker, Ponder and many others

Following her critically acclaimed album The Sacrificial Code, Swedish-American composer Kali Malone returns with Living Torch on Portraits GRM.

Living Torch, through its unique structural form and harmonic material, is a bold continuation of Kali Malone’s demanding and exciting body of work, while opening new perspectives and increasing the emotional potential of the music tenfold. As such, Living Torch is a major new piece by the composer and adds a significant milestone to an already fascinating repertoire.

Departing from the pipe organ that Malone’s music is most notable for, Living Torch features a complex electroacoustic ensemble. Leafing through recordings from conventional instruments like the trombone and bass clarinet to more experimental machines like the boîte à bourdon, passing through sinewave generators and Éliane Radigue’s ARP 2500 synthesizer. Living Torch weaves its own history, its own genealogy, and that of its author. It extends her robust structural approach to a liberated palette of timbre.

Living Torch was initially commissioned by GRM for its legendary loudspeaker orchestra, the Acousmonium, and premiered in its complete multichannel form at the Grand Auditorium of Radio France in a concert entirely dedicated to the artist.

Composed at GRM studios in Paris between 2020-2021, Living Torch is a work of great intensity, an œuvre-monde that is singularly placed at the crossroads of instrumental writing and electroacoustic composition. Living Torch proceeds from multiple lineages, including early modern music, American minimalism, and musique concrète. It’s a work as much turned towards exploring justly tuned harmony and canonic structures as towards the polyphony of unique timbres, the scaling of dynamic range, and the revelation of sound qualities.

GRM (Groupe de Recherches Musicales), the pioneering institution of electroacoustic, acousmatic, and musique concrète, has been a unique laboratory for sonorous research since 1958. Witnessing the extreme vitality of the music championed by GRM, the Portraits GRM record series extends and expands this momentum with Kali Malone’s Living Torch.

Biography:

The compositions of Kali Malone implement specific tuning systems in minimalist form for pipe organ, choir, chamber music ensembles, and electroacoustic formats. Malone’s music is rich with harmonic texture through synthetic and acoustic instrumentation in repetitive motions and extended durations. The music emits distinct emotive, dynamic, and affective hues which bring forth a stunning depth of focus.

Kali Malone has performed extensively in Europe and North America at Musica Festival, Berlin Atonal, Moogfest, Kanal Pompidou, Elbphilharmonie, Paris Philharmonie, and Radio France.

Her commission projects and residencies include the INA GRM, The Richard Thomas Foundation, MACBA, Macadam Ensemble, Orgelpark, Elektronmusikstudion and Tempo Reale. She collaborates and performs with various artists, including Stephen O’Malley, Lucy Railton, Frederikke Hoffmeier, Leila Bordreuil, Drew McDowall, Caterina Barbieri, and Ellen Arkbro. In 2016 she co-founded the record label and concert series XKatedral, together with Maria W Horn, in Stockholm.

Deluxe Edition / LP+Poster

Back in 2017, Moderat announced that they’d be taking an extended break following a final concert in front of 17.000 people in their hometown of Berlin. And now they return. MORE D4TA, the group’s fourth album, arrives more than six years after its predecessor (2016’s III). Created largely during a time when touring (and most traveling) was off the table, MORE D4TA is an album that wrestles with feelings of isolation and information overload—issues that have become particularly pronounced over the past two years. The ten songs on MORE D4TA are rooted in collaboration, but long before any of its tracks were laid down, Moderat spent months hanging out and getting musically reacquainted, indulging in extended bouts of experimentation and slowly fleshing out ideas as they dove into modular composition, field recordings and other sonic oddities.
But no matter how far the band ventures into music’s outer realms, they always wind up back in their own unique soundworld, a place where emotive pop and fluttering electronic soundscapes walk hand in hand. Many of its lyrics are rooted in Ring’s frequent trips to Berlin’s Gemäldegalerie museum (often with his infant daughter in tow), where he’d seek refuge in the great paintings of the past while worrying about the future.
What they make isn’t necessarily dance music, but it is something that shines brightest in the dark of night, the group’s rich melodies and Ring’s ethereal vocals emitting a warm, almost bioluminescent glow. After spending the better part of two decades making music together, they’ve carved out a sound and aesthetic that are all their own, and MORE D4TA showcases a group that’s creatively recharged and fully dedicated to its craft.

Taapion Records co-founder Shlomo drops his expansive and versatile debut album 'Mercurial Skin'.

A driving force within Paris' contemporary techno revival, Shlomo remains an individual at the heart of the city's bustling scene having swiftly established his own idiosyncratic sound with a myriad of releases on Delsin, Arts Collective and Soma and remixes for the likes of Oscar Mulero and Keith Carnal, not to mention reworks of his own productions from Norman Nodge, Johannes Heil, Tripeo and Donato Dozzy. As an artist, the Parisian performs both as Shlomo as well as his live ambient project under his full name, Shaun Baron-Carvais, with appearances from Berlin Atonal to Contact Tokyo, Berghain to Bassiani, Freerotation to Khidi, not to mention a residency at Concrete. Co-founder of Taapion alongside AWB and PVNV, a label celebrating its fifth anniversary having hosted some of the capital's most respected names in Fran ois X, Antigone, Bambounou and Roman Poncet, his wealth of skills as a producer, performer and A&R are clear to see. Having taken many forms and directions across the past 24 months, Shlomo now presents his and Taapion's debut album: 'Mercurial Skin'.

"This album is a return to my roots, I wanted to express and translate the inspiration from my early years into one body of work. Having discovered electronic music through labels such as Warp and their releases from the late 90's / early 00's, I wanted to pay homage to the artists that have guided my sound, and the first part of the album is a tribute to these influences. I was also the only kid in class that would buy movie soundtracks or film scores, and I wanted to convey the memories and emotions from these records within the LP."
- Shlomo

Opening with the entrancing 'Hadal Zone', the 14 track long-player navigates a rich tapestry of textures and emotions to uncover the Parisian's most complete body of work to date, comprising of hypnotic, up-tempo cuts such as 'Mouais' through to entrancing, ever-evolving journeys in 'Suicide Ghost'. 'Mercurial Skin' delves into shades and tinges of Autechre as airy pads float amongst crisp drum work to reveal a truly stunning IDM offering, before ethereal compositions such as 'Maara' and 'Minotia' contrast against the glitchy, off-kilter breakbeats found amongst 'Napalm' and 'Low Key Love'.

'Ivory' offers a sublime slice of serene escapism, whilst the beatless 'Maintain The Lie' and 'Anastasia' exhibit immersive pockets of emotive sound design, acting as interludes whilst transporting listeners to cavities of space and serenity. Murky and eerie atmospherics flood through 'Jager Mod' and penultimate cut 'Brother', injecting panic and intensity to proceedings, before easing into the finale 'Wish You Were Here', as Baron-Carvais punctuates the LP with an expertly balanced exhibition of blissful soundscapes and esoteric melodies.

Comprised of enough experimental and left-of-centre nuances to satisfy even the most curious of diggers, 'Mercurial Skin' delivers an alluring trip into the mind of the most exciting and dexterous rising talents within electronic music.

Think about the classic from MAW "Work", Reel to Real "I like to Move it"... TROPICAL FLASH "Get up" has the same vibe and the same kind of potential on the dancefloor !

This is a truly essential for the coming summer, percussive rhythm and expressive Jamaican vocal style. Funky, efficient and with an organic feel due to the bass guitar and percussion.

Along both original mixes features a really cool remix by the NYC Legend DJ Spinna, this time Spinna did not produce a soulful house track but a real massive House Remix with some heavy 90’ influences, really sick! The 12'' has been cut by Mathieu Berthet so expect a very nice cut, the full picture sleeve has been manually designed by Felix Godefroy and is really colourful, it makes a very nice 12'' with good pressing quality on 140g from Vinyl de Paris.

marbled vinyl

We are very excited to announce the first of four releases of the Stone Techno series, which is a collaboration between the world-famous Ruhr Museum and The Third Room collective. This might sound at first sight a bit confusing. What do have stones and techno music in common? Well, the answer is very simple and yet fascinating.

Our home base, the Mischanlage (mixing plant) located at UNESCO World Heritage's Zollverein in Essen, was built from raw materials that originate from the Ruhr Area: stones and minerals. Its irresistible atmosphere and aura are radiating such an undeniable attraction for all visitors around the world. In exactly this mixing plant, different types of coal from the mines of the Ruhr area were mixed to a maximum quality by means of a huge hopper system.

Alongside with Dr. Achim Reisdorf (Geologist at the Ruhr Museum Foundation) and Kurt Gluck (Ohm Resistance) we came up with the idea to sample the sounds of those natural raw materials and creating a huge sample bank. All the sounds were processed by The Third Room Studios with high end analog gear to create the best sound quality possible.

This sample bank was made available to a fine selection of artists such as Dax J, Efdemin, FJAAK, Hadone, Inhalt der Nacht, Jamaica Suk, Matrixxman, Nene H, Oscar Mulero, RODHAD and many more so that they can crave inspiration from these sounds gathered hundreds of meters from the ground and marking an historical era of the modern industrialized society. We wanted to bring these different aspects together and creating an interdisciplinary music project resulting in several releases with unique soundscapes, atmospheres and rhythms. Enjoy the journey!

Each release is limited to 300 copies (180gr marbled 12" Vinyl, Full Cover Print). As part of the Stone Techno release series there will be also a collaboration with Arte Concert and the Mutek Festival.

Jessica Ackerley (Honolulu, Hawaii) and Patrick Shiroishi (Los Angeles, California) are both members of the newly announced super-family-group SSWAN (along with trumpeter Chris Williams, drummer Jason Nazary, and bassist Luke Stewart). Both have prolific outputs and work diligently to push the boundaries of their respective instruments and previous musical ideas.

'Across Water' sees Ackerley and Shiroishi contributing their own unique takes on the ambient sound. Jessica contributes 'I Am Here' and 'The Crevices Between My Heart', each following the collection's theme of water while the guitar and synth work on the second composition gives way to visuals of deep-sea life that can only sustain itself away from the hustle and bustle of crowdedness. Similarly, Patrick is no stranger to straddling the fine lines between subtle and overt emotionality. 'Because You Went There' and 'Leaving It All Behind' are his offerings, seemingly looking up to the sky rather than down ay the ocean, infused by the sweet and smoggy California air.

PPU by way of Southeast France.. Spaced Out Krew & Westbrook of La Maison Venturi, formed a live band and turned out hours of jams from 2020-2022, truly inspired funk for the freaks, just all around nasty on every level.. featuring Maeva Rojas on vocals

Focusing exclusively on 7"s, Ferry Lane Records launches its first release with the debut of Leona Jacewska AKA Charlie. Having garnered a following with her DJ and live performances, the record sees the Polish producer merging seamlessly Italo, synthpop and wave.

Limited to 200 copies, hand-stamped labels, download code include

ONE-OFF truly limited edition of 300 copies lacquered pressed on 180 gr. high quality solid black vinyl. All tracks have been specially remastered for LONG CUT vinyl by Daniel Hallhuber at Young and Cold Studios (Germany).

HAAis Debüt-Album ist die bisher energetischste und lebhafteste Zusammenstellung an Songs der in Australien geborenen und in London lebenden Produzentin. “Baby, We’re Ascending” ist ein 13-Track-starkes Klangabenteuer, das die Zuhörenden mitnimmt auf eine Reise – von harten, echo-dominierten Beats zu schwungvollen, farbenprächtigen Synthesizer-Lines und hellen, verzerrten Gesangs-Samples. Die Stimmen auf dem Album sind vielfälig und eklektisch – von Jon Hopkins und Alexis Taylor von Hot Chip über den Sänger Obi Franky bis hin zum Spoken-Word-Poeten und Aktivisten Kai-Isaiah Jamal.

German pianist and composer Hauschka returns to Sonic Pieces with music for the experimental film Upstream. Together with filmmaker Rob Petit and acclaimed writer Robert Macfarlane he has created a slow-moving dream-flight into wildness and winter through an eerie, hypnotic soundtrack of the Scottish highlands.

The film, which is shot entirely from the air, follows the course of the River Dee in Scotland all the way to its source in the Cairngorm mountains, the highest of any river in Britain. The soundtrack to the film, seen here, is without doubt Hauschka´s most brooding, deep work and we find him in a much darker mood in contrast to his Oscar-nominated works for Hollywood films. The variation of cello, prepared piano, poems, sound effects and occasional synth create a ghostly sound as if a shadow was slowly moving through the Scottish winter. One can hear a faint echo of David Darling´s Dark Wood era in the empty, dark beauty of the bow - performed by Insa Schirmer. Hauschka sheds his more rhythmic, entertaining side to reveal something new. Together with Petit & Macfarlane he embraces the comfort and force of nature to truly mesmerising effect.

The last and shortest piece of the album Uisge dhè as well as the digital bonus track Here the Heart Fills include prose poems written by Robert Macfarlane voiced in Gaelic and English by Niall Gordàn & Julie Fowlis. The naked words spoken over haunting sound recordings of the River Dee and its source, create a mystical atmosphere heightened only by sparse cello passages. A strange, beautiful and captivating album that stands alone as a truly transportive piece of work: close your eyes and travel... Upstream.

With their debut, MME dUO send us across an impulsive sound collage omniverse of enigmatic Dada - long live imperfection! Formerly working together as Sculptress of Sound, Cologne based Patricia Koellges and Tamara Lorenz make use of a variety of instruments and devices: DIY electroacoustics, small synths, loopers, tuning forks, electric bass, percussion and voice are thrown into the game and shape a sound that’s as diverse as it is striking. The four sides of the record are the four seasons of the year. The cover artwork depicts an oddly shaped honey locust situated just outside MME dUO’s rehearsal room; homebase for a year of recordings for awholerunboom. From spring to winter the album opens up a wayward palette of experimental music. Sweet Cold Night could be a soundtrack for a movie scene of ourselves trudging through a swamp. CutCut somehow sounds as if caught in a loop early in the morning after an extensive club night. RZCK, a deliberately stumbling forward percussion piece is the longest of the 21 tracks. Several video clips go along with awholerunboom, one of which features the artists going through some kind of a ritual exercise inside of a two person costume, trying to put things straight it seems. The track itself Isn’t It Isn’t functions by way of permutations of spoken phrases and it might actually make you wonder if Gertrude Stein had gone electric. Mixed and mastered by Volker Hennes. Cover artwork by MME dUO. Edition of 300.

ONE-OFF truly limited edition of 300 copies lacquered pressed on 180 gr. high quality solid black vinyl. All tracks have been specially remastered for LONG CUT vinyl by Daniel Hallhuber at Young and Cold Studios (Germany)

Auch wenn seine Ergebnisse meist ziemlich elektronisch klingen, die ersten Ideen entstehen oft zuerst am Klavier, auf der Violine oder der Gitarre. Nicht anders verhielt es sich bei den sechs Stücken, die der Londoner Elektronik-Produzent Ryan Lee West aka Rival Consoles für "Sonne" einspielte. Wie sein Vorgänger "Odyssey" erscheint auch diese EP beim Label Erased Tapes, dem Zuhause der zeitgenössisch-klassischen Komponisten Nils Frahm, Olafur Arnalds und Peter Broderick. Mit seinen minimalistisch-elektronischen Arrangements, die auf der Basis kraftvoller Klang- und Rhythmuswellen Atmosphäre und Raum kreieren, fügt sich der experimentelle Sounddesigner wunderbar in dieses namhafte Künstlerensemble ein. Für "Sonne" hat Ryan Lee West Musik geschaffen, die sich selbst um einen Puls herum strukturiert, anstatt den Puls als bestimmendes Element festzusetzen. Den Kernsound der EP bilden neben einem alten Bandverzögerungsgerät analoge Synthesizer wie der Moog Voyager, gelegentlich hören wir den Musiker auch live an der Akustik-Gitarre oder am Schlagzeug.

Returning with our first release of 2022, we are delighted to welcome Soreab to the label. 5 cuts bridging the gap between UK bass, European Techno and early IDM. As well as a weighty remix from the formidable Pugilist.

150 copies, hand stamped.

The Feedback Sutras further showcases the introspective guitar and synth sound-world of PJ Dorsey. The album was initially conceived across the winter of 2019, and envelops the listener in an eerie yet inviting audio snowdrift, slowly unravelling alongside the changing of the seasons into a Baltimore spring.

Tarotplane has honed a sound that manages to invoke the atmospherics of early krautrock and kosmiche, an era which he has studied and draws inspiration from, but with new technologies allowing for shadowy, cinematic drones and reveling in seemingly endless, oscillating harmonics and gliding alien synthetics, leading to musical daydreaming for curious minds, and a perfect marriage of the past and the future.

Tarotplane’s endeavour to reclaim those feelings has developed into a talent published by labels such as Aguirre (Belgium) and Lullabies for Insomniacs (NL). This time working with Baltimore imprint VG+, there is an added element of location specificity, a tangible feeling of a record grounded in "home" yet simultaneously yearning for the stars and the cosmos – a record between two islands. Complimented by original artwork by Fenna Fiction (Knekelhuis/Idle Press), the collage style jacket similarly indicates a time and space in limbo. Fittingly, Tarotplane will return later in 2020 to Scottish label 12th Isle with Horizontology.

The Badge Époque Ensemble return to Telephone Explosion Records with a new LP, Clouds of Joy. Featuring three vocal-led compositions, three instrumentals and three choral arrangements, this new album presents the Ensemble’s most ambitious, mature and engaging material to date. Clouds represents a shift from the group’s previous sonic excursions into the worlds of vintage soundtrack grooves and early electric jazz towards a more era-ambiguous, complex and all-encompassing approach to arrangement & production.

Undergoing a major shift of consciousness upon learning that he was expecting twins, BÉE leader Maximilian ‘Twig’ Turnbull found the spark to initiate the album within his reflections upon the nature of human joy. This shift in mindset also helped shape the record from an operational standpoint: Turnbull stepped away from his fixture on keys, leaving all of the musical performance on this record to his cast of collaborators. With Max assuming a more “directorial” approach to production and arrangement à la Barry White, David Axelrod, or Fagen & Becker, this album finds the Badge Époque Ensemble in its most collaborative mode to date. Vocalists Dorothea Paas, James Bailey and guitarist Chris Bezant all have co-writing credits here with Bezant contributing significantly to three compositions, including the album’s title track. The album was mixed collaboratively as well, as another joint effort between Turnbull, Steve Chahley and Tony Price, a trio who have teamed up behind the mixing desk for all previous BÉE albums, as well as U.S. Girls’ Heavy Light LP.

For the most part, the Ensemble on this record is made up of names familiar to anyone following the Badge cosmology: drummer Jay Anderson, bassist Gio Rosati, flautist Alia O’Brien, saxophonist Karen Ng, percussionist Ed Squires and guitarist Chris Bezant, with the new addition of young jazz pianist Edwin De Goeij, a perfect surrogate for Turnbull’s ideas on keys. (This in-demand collection of musicians represent a scattering of key cogs from a clutch of other premium Canadian exports; The Weather Station, Andy Shauf, U.S. Girls & Marker Starling). Clouds’ emphasis on the sound of the human voice finds its perfect outlet in vocal arrangements by labelmate Dorothea Paas and a return from lead vocalist James Baley. Their contributions find compliment by a choir composed of session vocalists, (including singers from Bernice and Bonjay) who come together to provide a series of show-stopping harmonic acrobatics.

Familiar Badge motifs are present through this album’s nine tracks: extended sections of dusty drum & conga breaks, swirling saxophone and flute flourishes, fleet-fingered guitar excursions, hazy Rhodes chords and lashing Clavinet stabs, but where Clouds excels is in its ability to weave tremendous vocal performances and choral arrangements into its dense tapestry of sound. The lilting melodies and multidimensional harmonies on tracks “Conspiring With Nature” and “All Same 2 Each, Each Same 2 All” bear the hallmarks of late sixties baroque AM-radio pop, while James Baley’s ecstatic, Stevie-esque lead vocal performance on “Zodiac” could light up the midnight sky, turning a nearly eight minute jazz-funk instrumental odyssey into a sure-shot dancefloor hit. Lyrically, Turnbull’s interest in an aphoristic spiritual mysticism condenses reflections on the complexity of human emotion into bold, succinct phrases, a quality most clearly communicated on the album’s three choral pieces, “The Greatest Joy”, “Let Breath Be The Sum”, and “Joy Flows” (upon first hearing these works Turnbull’s partner Meg Remy remarked that they sounded like “radio hits on the planet Dune”).

Clouds of Joy comes serendipitously as catalog number TER0100 - the hundredth release for Telephone Explosion, the rapidly burgeoning Toronto label. It is the group’s third proper full length of five total releases for the imprint in only 4 years. It represents the Ensemble’s most fully realized presentation of a founding vision to create music as human, organic and alive as it is synthesized, produced and designed; music that transcends the notion of linear time, pulling in influences and ideas from the past and taking them far into the future.

MASSIVE REMIXES OF THE VICTOR SIMMONELLI CLASSIC FROM DUSKY & TOTAL SCIENCE

EURYBIA is the second solo album by Italian artist Francesca Heart. The result of a compositional process that began in summer 2020.

The work is the product of a series of intimate imaginary projections and aural engagements with a number of geographical sites scattered across the Italian landscape. Places which have resonated with Francesca during various personal travels and pilgrimages, due to their extramundane and often even mystic significance. The most outstanding / iconic being the cloisters and gardens of San Gregorio Armeno’s monastery in Naples and the Nympheum of Villa Giulia in Rome.

Indeed the whole record seems to bring the listener constantly together with the overwhelming, tender presence of the surrounding environment. Seemingly permeated with a feeling of refreshing musky moistures or textured with soft, wet soil, EURYBIA reminds us of walking barefoot near the lush architecture of some ancient, overflowing fountain or amidst the continuous flows of shallow rivers’ bedrocks informing the album with strong physical, sensory qualities. Myth, senses, and imagination become anchors of artistic and healing expression as well as forms of romantic escapism from an ever complex world.

On the whole, EURYBIA’s seven tracks alternate dense enmeshment of sounds and melodies with sparse, forthright single-instrumental devotional hymns, working as a personal cartography of ephemeral audio monuments to human, transcendental, and mythographic landscapes. Influences connected by means of nuanced ascendance going from classical New Age music and Video Game soundtracks to digital phone ringtones. The fluttering arpeggios used as the main compositional device coalesce together into an experience of relaxing
trance which is yet a glaring, audacious work.

'Marasma Vussa is the Brainchild of Antonio Feola a long standing figure on the London music scene, Antonio has been running the Fish Factory Studio in Willesden, North London for over two decades now. Throughout the years, he has had a major role in helping many of the current lead players of the London scene have a place to record and define their sound.

Antonio's project Masmara has existed for over 30 years and here has found its place on record. Recorded on tape over time with some of the most sought after players in London and edited during the lockdown period, Vussa is an album of mind-bending deep, cosmic mediative jazz experiments. Boasting catchy melodies and heavy, heavy jazz breaks!'

“Have you ever really loved a human? Have you ever come across the wisest of them? They will slip right through your fingers, leaving the most unimaginable impression.”

Jupiter’s Purse is the debut EP by Dallas, Texas-based artist MATTIE on Leaving Records. Produced in conjunction with fellow Dallasite Black Taffy, Jupiter’s Purse is an expansive and unique work of experimental soul. Featuring 2021’s lauded single “Human Thing,” Jupiter’s Purse broadens a window into the fresh and exciting vision of MATTIE. Explaining the EP’s theme, MATTIE states, “I’m very fond of the planet Jupiter in the astrological sense because Jupiter represents expansion. It also represents the planet that takes everything that it is that we desire to see for ourselves in this life and it expands it, right? I was inspired to call it Jupiter’s Purse because it also reminded me of a female womb in a sense, the incubation process that happens within the womb, and kind of the purse being the womb of Jupiter. And the planet is basically holding our things and incubating them until it’s time to expand them.”

Of collaborating with Black Taffy, MATTIE says, “I felt like his melody and my pen, and the voice that was coming through me and what really wanted to be said through the lyrics, it’s like they just found a home together. And it was so effortless to really just kind of dance with his melodies and write these lyrics and these stories. So that’s basically how we kind of started working together, and yeah, I think we made a baby. A studio baby.” The EP’s five cohesive tracks loosely follow the story of a narrator named Mhuv. MATTIE states, “It’s really a story of myself as Mhuv, and how it’s felt for me to be at times identified with the body as a person, and then other times being able to observe the body, and know myself as that as well, and what that has felt like, kind of being in this sense of duality. Jupiter’s Purse is basically a vocal representation of a lot of duality that I experienced. In coming to know my true self, that duality kind of came more to the forefront, so I started to write from that, and to really understand the power in the duality, while returning back to myself as source.”

Director Tramaine Townsend provides visuals for the project. MATTIE states, “I wanted it to be clean but experimental, experimental and also clean. I wanted it to have that two-fold. I’ve been listening to a lot of recordings from Virgil Abloh, and he inspired me this year to really appreciate the duality that’s in my work. And even in the visuals, the cleanliness of it, but the experimental aspect. The purist meeting the tourist. The purist being that classic approach to visuals, which I appreciate Tramaine for, and then also allowing me as the tourist, the one that is experimental and that wants to have a different experience… Once you see it, you’ll see the beauty, the continuity of what we’re trying to say.”

MATTIE concludes, “I feel like what I realized is that there’s a home in me that is comfortable no matter where I’m at. And my life is based on finding that and remembering that home within myself. And so my focus on the external things, even though I keep them up and I maintain the physical things, but I realize that my only purpose, if there was one, is to really remember myself, as if to remember that home within myself, so that I can be comfortable no matter where I’m at. And my music is an expansion of that, that surrender to that aspect of this experience which is to come home and find that home within myself. The music is about going through what it feels like when you are on the path to remembering yourself. What it feels like, that oiliness, that stickiness, that bulldozer, the big explosions, the feeling of ground zero, the feeling of heightened senses, the feeling of being a giant but then also you feel like you are David, and there’s a Goliath. I plan on moving through, which is why the character’s name is Mhuv in Jupiter’s Purse, because I see ourselves, everyone on the planet, moving through these spaces and them not being intended to be a sticking point for us. And so Jupiter’s Purse is what I would call maybe a gateway, a womb to the other side. Jupiter is going to expand this project, because that’s what Jupiter does, and has blessed this project already, so I know Jupiter’s going to expand it to be another side of this, where we won’t be speaking from duality, but we’ll be speaking from our natural state as wholeness.”

repressed !

Emotional Rescue reaches ten releases and their second to be defined as a "cosmic classic" though that doesn't really do The Dream by The Ganges Orchestra full justice. Discovered and championed by a young Daniele Baldelli, The Dream mixed duggis, shenai, tabla, conga and guitar through Indian raga and European rhythm structures to create a unique musical vision. Long known to more open minded collectors and DJs, the whole EP has long been sought after and staple of many sunset and sunrise experiences. For this reissue, Emotional Rescue take it further with a longer version, previously unreleased track "The Calling" which is essentially an ambient version of "The Dream" and has been extended especially for this release by The Invisible Hands. In addition they also provide a short edit of the original releases 24 minute epic "Meditasian".

Protoelectronics psychedelic Mexican Holy Grail rediscovered by Glossy Mistakes. Inspired by Vangelis, Tomita or Kraftwerk, this unknown rarity gets a second life sounding fresh and pioneering today.

Tito was born in 1946 in Ciudad de México, the son of two Spaniards. Since he was a youngster, he had felt the passion for music and instruments. In the meantime, he started a career as architect. Since his early years, he joined various teen rock bands, where he played bass and guitar. Slowly but surely, his interest in synthesizers started to grow. And the rest is history. Tito defines himself as an “electronic sounds fanatic”. Quetzalcóatl is a truly authentic cornerstone in those terms: an inspired and eclectic artist gives shape to a unique sound through legendary synthesizers such as the MiniMoog or the Arp Odyssey. His passion was so embedded that he even built his own guitars and equalizers; some of which appear on this LP.

Quetzalcóatl, his debut solo album, was originally recorded in 1977 (now remastered) in his bedroom using a four-channel Sony recorder in a truly DIY way. This álbum could be considered as a rarity. But if we listen hard enough, we find a pioneering treasure. Somehow, Quetzalcoátl anticipated the sounds of future decades with simple but inspired compositions. It is a mythological trip to the Pre-Hispanic México. This album is an allegory of the Aztec world. Quetzalcoátl is the most important God for Mesoamerican cultures: it represents the inherent human dualism between the body (represented by the snake) and soul (the feathers). In the song “Profecía”, Quetzalcoátl emerges, announcing the end of the world at the hand Spanish colonialism. Limited edition, 600 copies, remastered in Amsterdam by Wouter Brandenburg.

Mysterious Cult 48 with another essential release. Limited copies..

Davide Piras is an Italian producer with a penchant for the tougher, rougher side of British bass music. Creating music under the moniker DJ Chupacabra, Piras has been picked up by labels like Haws and Dr Banana in the past year, and now makes his debut for Time Is Now with more deep raw cuts.

The EP hits hard with deep tech, breaks and rumbling bass. "Grimer" kicks off with sparse, staccato beats for heads down business before the expansive two step of "Rockstar". With its eclectic use of samples and ominous swelling bassline, it's a solid club roller.

Funky, earworming house is the game of B-side opener "Killalot" which hints just a little of an acidic edge. "Morbid" is a heady stepper with plenty of ear teasing melody and atmosphere. The EP closes with a crescendo in "Croissant", which has a chunky minimal deep tech beat and booming bassline which is destined to send the dancefloor wild.

The mighty Ron Wells returns with his legendary “Fast Floor” project. Limited copies..

Classic Groove Chronicles remixes from 2000 on long awaited repress!

Aussie singer / songwriter Sia's debut LP 'Healing Is Difficult' dropped at the turn of the millennium and introduced us to her unique take on electronica, jazz and everything in-between.
Enlisting the legendary Groove Chronicles to take on remixing duties was a masterstroke as this brand spanking new pressing of 'Get Me' show us in fine style. Boasting a fresh soulful vocal version kicking things off and an obligatory instrumental b-side, the GC boys bring their trademark swinging, clipped 2-step funk to proceedings, doing what they do best while making an underground classic in the process.

'Get Me' is now back on the streets with a fresh, legit and welcome 2022 remaster from the wizards at London's The Carvery, repressed onto a nice and heavy 12" slab of wax. Another slamming UKG classic brought back courtesy of Long Lost Brother records and Above Board Distribution. Bound for the reload!