Suche:magic number

The Stallions compilations have become a benchmark of Bosconi's position as one of the leading house and techno labels operating out of Italy. This third instalment marks a shift in sound which also comes full circle to the music that first inspired founder Fabio Della Torre as a DJ and producer around the turn of the millennium, when punchy electro production was driving European house and techno into new zones.

All the artists featured on Vol. III are Italian, holding true to Bosconi's commitment to supporting local talent from Florence and across the country. Amongst the familiar faces is Della Torre's own Minimono collaboration with Ennio Colaci, which indulges a proudly manic palette of tweaked bleeps and dirty low-end. Elsewhere, recent additions to the Bosconi fold include veritable legends Alexander Robotnick and Marco Passarani, who infuse their unpredictable approaches to electro-techno and italo disco with ear-snagging synth-pop and driving analogue box jams respectively to create vibrant, impassioned dancefloor monsters.

The Mechanical Man is an alias from Nicola Altieri, who leans in on a classic Italo arpeggio to create a seductive club sound which builds on his recent Bosconi EXV EP, while Cixxx J switches from the mood of his own Bosconi appearance for a new alias Queen Of Coins and a pivot towards heads-down electro-techno-trance with a whiff of International Deejay Gigolos. Lapucci builds on the promise of his 2021 Bosconi 12" with a sentimental fusion track which lands somewhere between old school Italo house, the snappy pulse of EBM and crisp 00s-era electro house. Meanwhile modern day Italian techno legend Lucretio of The Analogue Cops makes his first appearance on Bosconi with the playful video game stylings of 'Gradius'.
A great deal of space on Vol. III is given over to emergent talent, ranging from Miguel Herr's twitchy detroitian synth-pop braindance and Twovi's vocoder-charged electro funk to DJ Rou's jacking ghetto house flavour. Giammarco Orsini and Jacopo Latini appear as Data Memory Access and deliver an emotive, punchy strain of machine soul. Feel Fly rounds the compilation off in bombastic style with an epic, cinematic workout which draws on Moroder-inspired drama without losing the forthright peak-time focus which binds the whole collection together.

Even the artwork on Vol. III serves as an opportunity to celebrate Italian creativity, as pioneering crypto artist Niro Perrone builds on his accomplished work in the field of NFTs and a background in music production to respond intuitively to the vibrant, synthetic sound of the compilation. For all the futurism in the music though, there remains a strong sense of human feeling which has marked Bosconi out since the beginning. The label remains as inspired and inspiring as ever, celebrating the fertile crossover when people manipulate technology to express themselves in an honest, playful way. Independent of wider trends or fashions, Bosconi remains true to its own idiosyncratic passions, and so Bosconi Stallions Vol. III stands proud as a compilation like no other.

Known principally as a smooth titan of blue-eyed soul, Bobby Caldwell transcended genre tags with consummate ease; he was a musical icon of real class and versatility, cherished the world over. Tragically passing away in March 2023 at the too young age of 71, it still feels as if Bobby's true artistry is profoundly under-appreciated. His double platinum self-titled album from 1978 is a timeless masterpiece of sophisticated jazzy soul brilliance and is strictly canonical. Yes, it's perfect, yet it's been out of press on vinyl for years. We're deeply honoured to present the long-awaited reissue this summer.

Whilst Ned Doheny is known in Japan as "Mr California", native New Yorker Bobby Caldwell has always been "Mr AOR" to his Far-Eastern friends. His distinct charm is an irresistible blend of soul, jazz, and pop influences. He possessed phenomenal songwriting prowess, smooth vocal performances, was both a great soul guitarist and dextrous keyboard player and known for genius chord progressions. It all added up to a multi-layered brilliance entering the studio, and the singular sound he landed on was laced with soulful, sweeping strings and funky horns, touching lightly on disco, while allowing his supple voice to carry the stunning tracks he'd crafted.

String-swept opener "Special To Me" immediately sets the tone with its lush instrumentation, rich harmonies, and Caldwell's velvety-smooth vocals. Next up, a huge one. The infectious, mid-tempo bounce of "My Flame" showcases Caldwell's ability to effortlessly blend catchy pop hooks with soulful arrangements. It's an exquisite, emotive ballad that, at the same time, absolutely SLAPS. Game recognise game, and all that, so, accordingly, Notorious B.I.G. memorably ran with “My Flame” for his 1997 single “Sky’s The Limit”. The rolling, disco-very "Love Won't Wait" is a slick, uptempo track containing heartfelt lyrics intertwined with elegant strings and a horn section to die for. Aching - and achingly cool - single "Can't Say Goodbye" is a real fan favourite, and it's no surprise. It's a laconic, slow-mo jazz-funk stepper, with fantastic, very deliberate playing that closes out the A Side quite exceptionally. "Come To Me" slows proceedings down elegantly to open Side B before the universally agreed-upon masterpiece enters proceedings.

"What You Won't Do for Love," the standout hit that became a classic in its own right, perfectly captured Bobby's ability to infuse a contagious groove with introspective and relatable lyrics. With its instantly recognisable horn riff and Caldwell's soulful delivery, this timeless, chiller anthem continues to captivate audiences and define his musical legacy. He scored huge with the track, taking over the pop and R&B airways with this mellow soul stepper. It has remained a perennial favourite and has been heavily sampled, such is its unique allure; Aaliyah sang over snatches of it on "Age Ain’t Nothing But A Number" and you can hear Caldwell’s vocal sample used for the hook on Tupac’s posthumously released “Do For Love”.

Upon submitting the finished album to his label, they requested more material in hope of a big single. As Bobby remembered to Wax Poetics a few years ago: “Now at this point, I’m mentally exhausted...and bear in mind that I got so close to all the songs I’d written. I gave each song a profound amount of thought, and maybe too much. So, in haste, I went in and cut this song, "What You Won’t Do For Love". Wrote it in a day, cut the rhythm track, overdubbed the horns, I sang the song, and literally turned it in three days after. And lo and behold, the one song I gave the least thought to,” Bobby laughed, “ended up being a national anthem.”

The mysterious, magical "Kalimba Song" is a cosmic, kalimba-driven melodic-funk instrumental - short but oh, so sweet. It's followed by the supreme tear-jerker "Take Me Back To Then", Bobby's otherworldly voice deeply longing for a simpler time, "when life was mellow". I think we can all get behind this sentiment. The final cut is arguably its deepest, its low-key finest moment. For us, it is, anyway. The glorious, driving, effortlessly funky guitar-soul jam "Down For The Third Time" is a huge melancholic Be With favourite and has been played by discerning genre-hopping DJs with significant glee for years. Hypnotic, melodic, beautiful. Like the album it elegantly rounds out.

Bobby sadly passed away on 23rd March 2023, after a long struggle with mitochondrial damage and oxidative stress, due to an adverse effect from a fluoroquinolone antibiotic. The reissue of his wonderful eponymous album will be available on vinyl across the globe, ensuring that fans of his incomparable talent - and soul music enthusiasts worldwide - can radiate in the deep beauty of this seminal album. Meticulously remastered and cut by both Simon Francis and Cicely Balston respectively, it has been pressed to the highest possibly quality at Record Industry in Holland.

Groove Culture – a label that has become synonymous with consistently timeless tunes, capturing all the best elements of decades gone by, whilst placing them firmly on today’s dancefloors.

Three is the magic number with Groove Culture Jams Vol. 3 showcasing another fine assemblage of funk and disco driven house sounds with music coming courtesy of Micky More & Andy Tee, Serge Funk, Reverendos Of Soul, Danny Losito and Anduze. A must have.

DJ Support:
Dimitri From Paris, Dave Lee, Simon Dunmore, Brian Tappert, Mello Baptist, Seamus Haji, Terry Hunter, Dj Spen, Hector Romero, Dr. Packer, Kenny Carpenter; Marc Cotterell, Husky, Birdee, Derrick Mckenzie, Angelo Ferreri, Joe T. Vannelli.

White Vinyl

Greyscale #10 is here for the masses! To make things even more exciting, the long awaited is a double vinyl edition! Submersion has been on many top deep and dub techno labels in the past 15 years such as Silent Season, Space of Variants, Milieu Music, Deep Electronics, diametric, Rohs! and more. A landing at Greyscale makes complete sense for the quality Submersion is known for. 'Entrainment' is for those deep dub techno fans that like extended atmospheric tracks surrounded by a heavy ambience. 3 of the 4 sides have 1 track to its entire side making the fidelity of these top notch! 'Transversal, Planetary, Capsule' fills up side A with an amazing and gentle intro that has ominous clouds on the horizon. The beat is distance, while the nuances of the airspace is fully dedicated to submerging you deep within. A truly magical and enveloping sound. The next track to uncover is 'Filter, Gradation, Centrifuge'. Imagine that the earth is a ever-evolving dub techno track and you were viewing or listening to it from the distance of the moon. This would be it! There is a tremendous distance that is created in this track where chords flow and move like clouds over large areas of distance. Sometimes, the best description is a visual one if it helps. Breathtaking! 'Stimulant, Perspective, Sensory' starts the next piece of vinyl with another epic one. It morphs like a planet is being formed before your eyes. Basslines move like mountains while chords strike like distance thunder. The last side has 2 tracks sharing the side. 'Reflectance, Reverberant, Cortisol' and 'Predawn'. The first is a grandious ambient number that sounds heavenly while the last featured song is equally stunning as almost a reprise of a previous. Entrainment will be available on white 180-gram double vinyl as well as CD digipak and digital. These are all supersonic soundscapes to immerse yourself in! Masterpieces!

Global pointing Brazilian jazz trio releases their new album Agôra, that sparkles with electric funk and Herbie-esque eclecticism. It features a myriad of guest vocalists and musicians including Brazilians Xênia França and Zé Leônidas, Jembaa Groove's Ghanaian singer Eric Owusu and South African artists Bongani Givethanks & Mpho Nkuzo

Re-wiring the concept of 'fusion' for 2023, Agôra is Brazilian trio Caixa Cubo's resurgent new record with the title referring to 'now', based upon the intuitive and fluid nature of the trio's method, and this inspired recording. With shoots to black music culture, from Brazil to Brooklyn, Ghana and South Africa, Agôra is the group's ninth album yet is their first where they've invited guests, mainly singers, onto each track and follows their last, Angela from 2020, released on Heavenly Records, which won a BBC 6 Music Album of the Year (Huey Morgan's selection) granting them much deserved international recognition.

The core musical elements of Caixa Cubo are Henrique Gomide (keys), João Fideles (drums) and Noa Stroeter (bass), all from São Paulo, Brazil and where they met as teenagers and would continue their friendship and musical bond at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague, Netherlands. Now all in their mid thirties, João and Noa live back in the city where it all started but Henrique has settled in Cologne, Germany where the recording of Agôra took place, over the course of 3 days, at the home cum studio of Chris 'Dusty' Doepke, their friend and owner of the label they signed to, Jazz & Milk.

In line with all their creations where flow and energy provide the magic, allowing what the moment provides, the album shines not only for its virtuosity but for its minimalism, the depth of space, and for the first time, the ability to figure in and outside of the jazz fold, as the trio decided, for the first time, to bring in singers and add a new aesthetic to their sound.

"Agôra is a wake-up call to reality, a reminder that the infinite possibilities of technological progress should not disconnect us from the earth, from eye-to-eye relationships, and from moments lived in person" the band are keen to point out. "And that we must not be consumed by greed, for all we truly possess.... is the NOW."

Turning hope and metaphor into music, the debut single Sábado, an electrified future- jazz-fizz reflects perfectly the spontaneity that permeated the entire recording of the album. "When we got to the studio, we had no idea what we were going to record. We started playing a groove, kind of inspired by Gilberto Gil's 80s albums, and our drummer João started singing this funny song 'Sábado Barrigudão' (Big Belly Saturday) alongside the bass groove and that was that". Inspired by their city of birth, São Paulo, it features long time collaborator and vocalist Zé Leônidas, with cuicas, tamborim, agogo and shakers providing the most obvious Brazilian affect from the album.

Dreams is the band's first foray into R'n'B melding the group's simple and sporadic instrumentation of drums, keys and bass into a Jill Scott inspired song that could have been born in Brooklyn yet sung by Brazilian singer and Grammy nominated Xênia França and Zé Leônidas in both English and Portuguese. Xênia recently performed online for hip-to-it website Colors and it's her latest collaboration with Caixa Cubo, having first met in 2009 for a series of live performances.

South African artists Bongani Givethanks & Mpho Nkuzo come to the record with a wholly different approach on Ndiyakhangela, providing spoken word and vocal refrains on top of an Afro-Brazilian percussion jam with a delivery and verse in Xhosa, Zula and Ndebele. Asase is the album opener and features vocals of Eric Owusu who is part of highlife pioneer Pat Thomas's live band and most recently, co-leader of Jembaa Groove, an Afro-soul band from Berlin. It's a synth wig out with djembe grooves and offers a brand new take on Afro-soul-jazz.

Other contributions come from Cologne based jazz singer Rebekka Ziegler (Oblique Sunshine), São Paulo based guitarist Eduardo Camargo (Caio & Eric) and trumpet player Matthias Schriefl on Kismeti, a gorgeous and rolling number that ebbs and flows, exemplifying the group's effortless ability to craft a sound energised by a belief in one-self and the idea of having faith without the need to look at each other for verification.

As drummer and percussionist João Fideles perfectly surmised upon arriving for the recording session, "What drums do you have? Whatever you have, I'll use it". Agôra is testament to nearly 20 years of camaraderie, friendship and most importantly, trust.

Lucky Number 13 up for our fav Melliflow ladies this time they let us into the 'Mad Galaxy' of Epiphany (aka Damian Schwartz) & DJ F (Djf Ideograma).

Among those who have written the history of the Italian House is certainly Carlo Troja, aka Don Carlos. In 1991 Irma Records released her first single Alone which immediately became a cult record for DJs across the Channel and especially American DJs. Its particular soft and ambient sounds defined a genre that was then called Paradise House.

And it is precisely from this genre and from this Dj that Irma Records began the celebrations of its thirtieth anniversary a few years ago by
proposing a selection of its catalog chosen by Don Carlos, trying to dig among some of the pearls of the genre but above all among some
songs that featured in his evenings but were less popular at the time of their release.

This compilation had a great response and it was decided to make a volume 2, always selected by Don Carlos. Also this compilation, like the first one, consists of two compact discs and a vinyl version this time with a selection of only 8 of the 20 tracks contained in the CD and Digital version.

All the tracks on the double vinyl have been re-edited by Don Carlos for the occasion. The double cd is in a limited numbered edition.
Among the artists and producers included are: Don Carlos, Lust Unlimited, Subsonic Posse, T.M.V. (Marco Trani, Moz-Art and Maurizio
Verbeni), The Sweatbox Orchestra, Aritmya, Deep Aural Penetration, Be Noir, Love Nation, More Heavy Soul, Outdance, F.I.T.Z. and many
others

Magical, evocative and intelligent. It's the” Peemax Trax EP” by Too Smooth Christ on EYA Records number 18. A truly superb and intergalactic journey that will caress your soul and make you lose yourself in the music.

Once again Christophe Le Gall proved us to be one of the most gifted and forward-thinking producers of electronic music out there. Unmissable.

Repress!

New Single By Legendary Brazilian Singer Di Melo, 40 Years After His Classic Self-titled Samba-soul Lp. Performed And Produced By French Brilliant Combo Cotonete, This Single And Collaboration Will Be Followed By A Full Album Early 2019.

Florian Pelissier Speaks About The Project: on Tour In Brazil With Cotonete, We Had A Few Days Off In Sao Paulo And I Really Hoped To Make A Collaboration With An Important Artist Or Band From The Brazilian Funk Scene. We Had Thought Of Marcos Valle, Meta Meta Or Ed Motta... But Rafaela Prestes Our Brazilian "sound Ingineer/genious" Told Me: "i Worked For The Return Of Di Melo In Rio 2 Years Ago. He Rocks, He's Adorable And He Lives In Sao Paulo, Here's His Number, He Would Be Perfect For Cotonete."
No Sooner Said Than Done. I'm A Huge Fan Of Di Melo And Had Already Tried To Contact Him For Cotonete 6 Years Ago. The Next Day, On A Sunday, He Arrives At Our House With Jo, His Wife, And Gabi, His Daughter. He Takes The Guitar In Front Of Us In The Kitchen, And Gives Us A Private Show Of 3 Hours... We Cried The Tears Of Joy.
He Had 400 Original Songs Never Recorded, A Gold Mine. On The Same Night, We Started Working The Arrangements For 2 Days, Followed By A Rehearsal And Two Small Gigs In Sao Paulo. Immediately After, We Recorded In The Magical Epsilon B Studio. All With The Participation Of Gabi, His 10-year-old Daughter, And Future Star.
This Album Is The Summary Of This Moment, Of These 5 Days Of Madness Spent Together Between the Best Band In The World' And The Legend Roberto Di Melo... Simple, Beautiful, Brazilian-french, Human Music...'

Megastar Bruno Mars has unveiled his new album 24K Magic (pronounced twenty-four karat magic), with lead single of the same title. Written and produced by Shampoo Press & Curl, with additional production by The Stereotypes.
The last time Mars dropped an album was December 2012 - four years ago, an eternity for a pop star. He's surfed the intervening years like a pro, with two Super Bowl halftime performances (headlining in 2014, and a cameo last February with Coldplay and Beyoncé), not to mention the biggest-selling song of the past few years, his collaboration with Mark Ronson, "Uptown Funk", spending 14 weeks at Number One - tying for the second-longest run in chart history - and winning the Grammy for Record of the Year. To date, it's sold more than 12 million copies, been streamed nearly 2 billion times and made several dragons want to retire.
This is Bruno Mars. Six Number One singles. Thirty combined weeks at the top of the chart (44 if you count "Uptown"). Two albums, 26 million in sales worldwide, four Grammys and counting.
Throughout 24K Magic , Bruno Mars re-creates the R&B he fell in love with as a child - the likes of Jimmy Jam, Terry Lewis, New Edition, Bobby Brown, Jodeci, Boyz II Men, Teddy Riley, and Babyface.

One Believer, the Elektra debut by the late bluesman John Campbell, was outside of virtually every trend on major labels and in pop at the time. Other than Chris Whitley's Living with the Law, it was the only roots record issued on a major label in 1991.

A deeply atmospheric record full of subtle shimmering organs and warm guitar textures that accent the dreamy spooky side of the blues more than the crunchy stomp and roll that Campbell was known for in the clubs and displayed on his follow-up Howlin' Mercy. Tracks like "Angel of Sorrow," "World of Trouble," and "Wild Streak" offer shimmering ambient textures from which the blues emanate from the ether. Campbell was living and working in New York and his music was certainly influenced by that late-night environment. These are beautiful songs, tempered in shadow and restraint while baring their teeth at all the right moments. On "Couldn't Do Nothin'," "Devil In My Closet," and "Person to Person the roadhouse magic comes out. The album's last two tracks "Take Me Down" and the title track are menacing in their conviction and creepy swampy in execution.

One Believer is available as a limited edition of 750 individually numbered copies on blue vinyl and contains an insert.

Return To Forever is often cited as one of the core groups of the jazz-fusion movement of the 1970s. The final album by the longest-lasting "classic" lineup of the group (which consisted of Chick Corea, Stanley Clarke, Lenny White and Al DiMeola) was Romantic Warrior, on which they continued their experiments in the realms of jazz-rock and related music genres, and was lauded by critics for both the technically demanding style of its compositions as well as for its accomplished musicianship.

The album is more avant-garde and less funky than the band's previous album, No Mystery. It would go on to become the best selling of all Return to Forever's efforts, eventually reaching gold disc status in the US.

Romantic Warrior is available as a 50th anniversary edition of 1500 individually numbered copies on blue vinyl and includes an insert.

The Romantic, the new album from Bruno Mars. The fourth studio album from the global superstar and 16 time GRAMMY® Award-winning artist marks Mars' first solo album release since 2017's 24k Magic and follows chart topping collaborations with Anderson .Paak as Silk Sonic, as well as smash hits with Lady Gaga and ROSÉ.

Available for pre-order on the 9th January at 5AM GMT and set for release on the 27th February 2026.

Sixteen-time GRAMMY® Award winner and thirty-three-time GRAMMY® Award nominee Bruno Mars is a celebrated singer, songwriter, producer, and musician who is one of the best-selling artists of all time and now continuously the number-one most listened-to artist on Spotify. With recent hits like “APT.” with ROSÉ and “Die With A Smile” with Lady Gaga—the latter earning him two nominations for “Song Of The Year” and “Best Pop Duo/Group Performance” at the 67th Annual GRAMMY® Awards—Mars has celebrated another extraordinary year in music. Among his robust list of accolades, some of which include “Album of the Year” for 24K Magic at the 60th Annual GRAMMY® Awards and “Record of The Year” for Silk Sonic’s “Leave The Door Open” at the 64th Annual GRAMMY® Awards, Mars has held the number one global song for more weeks than any artist in 2024 with both “APT.” and “Die With A Smile.”

Since 2020, 12 Inch Lovers have been releasing new samplers every year, eagerly anticipated by collectors. These samplers have now become a staple and are easily added to vinyl collections across Europe. They offer timeless classics and rare tracks that are often hard to find elsewhere.

With Samplers 11 & 12, they surprise again with a mix of modern classics and tracks that have never been released on vinyl or are difficult to find. By adding unique and exclusive tracks, the 12 Inch Lovers samplers remain innovative and high-quality. They are a must-have for DJs, collectors, and fans of contemporary classics!

SAMPLER 11

A1) Paul Kalkbrenner - No Goodbye (2019)

Berlin techno producer Paul Kalkbrenner became world-famous with his 2008 hit Sky & Sand. Since then, he has released one record after another and performed all over the world in the biggest venues and at the most renowned festivals. No Goodbye is one of his more recent hits, released in the summer of 2019.

The track was created using an a cappella he received on a demo tape while on tour. He was immediately inspired by the vocal and built his own sound and production around it. Interestingly, Kalkbrenner rarely uses vocals, but for No Goodbye he collaborated with Australian singer Chiara Hunter, giving the track a unique and instantly recognisable character. The result is a stylish, dance-floor-friendly track with a rolling house groove that quickly became a modern classic on dance floors worldwide.

A2) Water World - Give Me Love (2000)

This trance classic by Water World appeared in 2000 on the French label Adequat Records and is the perfect tune for a sunny summer evening. Warm melodies and pulsing beats instantly create that beach feeling, as if you were dancing with your feet in the sand. The record recalls Beachball by Nalin & Kane, sharing the same dreamy, sun-drenched vibe.

Behind Water World were producers Laurent David and Frédéric De Backer-names well known to many trance fans. In the nineties De Backer was active with projects such as Global Trance Mission (Dream Mission) and Y-Traxx, the trio that released the 1997 classic Mystery Land.

Give Me Love clearly bears their combined signature: euphoric, warm and melodic, with a timeless build that perfectly balances emotion and energy. The track was released on vinyl as part of Trance E.P. Vol. 01 and remains a fixture in retro-trance sets to this day.

B1) Panoramic - Colors (1996)

Colors by Panoramic is a Belgian trance classic released in 1996 on the legendary label XTC Records, a sub-label of Bonzai Records. Panoramic was a collaboration between Belgian techno icon Marco Bailey and Mauro Mirisola. The duo, also known under playful aliases such as The Coke Man & Sniff, released an EP featuring two powerful trance tracks.

We chose Colors, a tune with pure Belgian trance DNA: driving rhythm, dreamy synths and a catchy female vocal. The combination of Bailey's production expertise and Mirisola's creative touch resulted in a timeless track that still appears in many classic playlists.

B2) Natasha Bedingfield - Pocketful Of Sunshine (StoneBridge Club Remix) (2008)

British singer-songwriter Natasha Bedingfield released the album Pocketful of Sunshine in 2008, featuring the title track as a single. The original pop version became a major hit in North America, reaching the Top 5 in the US. Swedish DJ and producer StoneBridge (Sten Hallström) reworked the song into a groovy house version, released in the summer of 2008.

StoneBridge gave the upbeat pop tune a club-ready beat and an infectious piano riff that made it shine on dance floors worldwide. It was not his first time transforming pop into house gold-he had already achieved global fame with his remix of Robin S - Show Me Love (1992), one of the greatest house anthems of all time. He also remixed Sia - The Girl You Lost to Cocaine in 2008, another club favourite.

The StoneBridge Club Remix of Pocketful of Sunshine appeared on a special remix EP in July 2008 and was played endlessly in clubs-by us too, in the venues where we performed. The result is a timeless, sun-soaked house classic thatmakes sitting still impossible.

C1) Y-Traxx - Mystery Land (Fred Baker vs Mr Sam's Magical Mystery Dub Mix) (original release 1995)

Y-Traxx was a nineties trance project by DJs Laurent David and Fred Baker. This trance classic first appeared in 1995 as a B-side but gained real attention when it featured on a Paul Oakenfold mix album. Thanks to that success it received an official re-release in 1998 on the respected French label FFRR (Full Frequency Range Recordings).

In 2003 an excellent remix by Mr. Sam & Fred Baker followed on the Nebula label. That version is highly sought after on vinyl by trance collectors, and we are proud to feature it on our new sampler.

C2) Weiss - Feel My Needs (2018)

Feel My Needs by British producer Weiss (alias Richard Dinsdale) is the tune with that unmistakable old-school piano and catchy vocal that instantly pulls you onto the dance floor. Released in May 2018on the UK label Toolroom Records, the track is pure feel-good house with a modern touch. From the very first piano riff, hands go up in the air.

Toolroom even called it a "future anthem" for the summer of 2018, and indeed Feel My Needs became a huge floor-filler. The record charted high on global dance lists and gained massive popularity at festivals and clubs that year. With its warm piano chords, tight beat and soulful vocal, this is a modern house classic that will stay in the collective club memory for a long time.

D1) The Killers - Mr. Brightside (Jacques Lu Cont's Thin White Duke Mix) (2005)

American band The Killers formed in 2001 and scored a massive hit a few years later with Mr Brightside. Taken from their debut album Hot Fuss (2004), it became their biggest and best-known track-a true rock-pop anthem.

In 2005 the song was given an electronic twist when renowned producer and remixer Jacques Lu Cont (the alias of Stuart Price) created an eight-minute dance version titled Mr Brightside (Jacques Lu Cont's Thin White Duke Mix). This remix replaced the raw rock energy with a more progressive and electronic vibe, driven by a steady beat and long build-up.

The track found a second life in club culture and quickly became a dance-floor favourite. For vinyl collectors it was an instant must-have, and to this day it stands as the perfect party closer. The Killers themselves loved it so much that they often used the remix live as an outro, followed by the original version. A remix that perfectly bridged rock and club culture-and has since become a genuine classic.

D2) Sia - Drink To Get Drunk (Different Gear Remix) (2001)

The legendary ice-cube sleeve says it all: Drink to Get Drunk was a huge club hit in the early 2000s. Released in 2001 on the UK label INCredible, a sub-label of Sony Music, it was a collaboration between British DJ duo DifferentGear (Gino Scaletti & Quinn Whalley) and singer Sia.

The producers took Sia's original song Drink to Get Drunk from her album Healing Is Difficult and gave it a complete transformation, keeping her distinctive vocal and placing it over a hypnotic progressive-house groove.

The combination of Sia's unmistakable voice and the deep, driving production hit hard: the track became hugely popular in Belgian clubs and turned into an anthem of its time. In Belgium it even reached number one in the dance chart in early 2001, and it also performed strongly in the UK and the Netherlands.

To this day it remains a nostalgic crowd-pleaser that perfectly captures the atmosphere of the early 2000s.

In the last two years, Barry Can’t Swim has released two albums – When Will We Land? and Loner. The debut was nominated for a Mercury Music Prize, winning 2024’s Best Dance Act on BBC Radio 1 and being nominated for Best Dance Act at the BRIT Awards in the same year. The latest album, 2025’s Loner, hit the top ten in the UK charts and was number one in the dance charts. This summer, Barry Can’t Swim cemented his position as one of the most singular new voices in electronic music with a gangbusting performance as a headliner at All Points East in London’s Victoria Park, building on his back-to-back performance with Bonobo at Coachella in 2024. Barry’s Late Night Tales mix brings together disparate styles and forms them into a coherent narrative. The powerful house tracks, like Lance DeSardi’s ‘Power of Suggestion’ and Daniel Avery’s remix of Factory Floor, intertwine with the abstract grooves of Freddie Da Stupid or Ronald Langestraat’s leftfield reading of Boz Scaggs’ ’70s smash ‘Lowdown’. There are exclusive tracks from Barry Can’t Swim himself (in the form of new single ‘Chala’ and an exclusive edit of Superpitcher’s ‘Yves’) and from friends and contemporaries, like Ninja Tune labelmate O’Flynn. Leaving aside the obvious quality of the mix, with its serpentine twists and dramatic turns, you can tell Josh is a fan of this series by bringing in his own personal poet, the brilliant Seamus, for the spoken word section right at the end. He’s a one-man Late Night Tales programmer.

In the last two years, Barry Can’t Swim has released two albums – When Will We Land? and Loner. The debut was nominated for a Mercury Music Prize, winning 2024’s Best Dance Act on BBC Radio 1 and being nominated for Best Dance Act at the BRIT Awards in the same year. The latest album, 2025’s Loner, hit the top ten in the UK charts and was number one in the dance charts. This summer, Barry Can’t Swim cemented his position as one of the most singular new voices in electronic music with a gangbusting performance as a headliner at All Points East in London’s Victoria Park, building on his back-to-back performance with Bonobo at Coachella in 2024. Barry’s Late Night Tales mix brings together disparate styles and forms them into a coherent narrative. The powerful house tracks, like Lance DeSardi’s ‘Power of Suggestion’ and Daniel Avery’s remix of Factory Floor, intertwine with the abstract grooves of Freddie Da Stupid or Ronald Langestraat’s leftfield reading of Boz Scaggs’ ’70s smash ‘Lowdown’. There are exclusive tracks from Barry Can’t Swim himself (in the form of new single ‘Chala’ and an exclusive edit of Superpitcher’s ‘Yves’) and from friends and contemporaries, like Ninja Tune labelmate O’Flynn. Leaving aside the obvious quality of the mix, with its serpentine twists and dramatic turns, you can tell Josh is a fan of this series by bringing in his own personal poet, the brilliant Seamus, for the spoken word section right at the end. He’s a one-man Late Night Tales programmer.

The Romantic, the new album from Bruno Mars. The fourth studio album from the global superstar and 16 time GRAMMY® Award-winning artist marks Mars' first solo album release since 2017's 24k Magic and follows chart topping collaborations with Anderson .Paak as Silk Sonic, as well as smash hits with Lady Gaga and ROSÉ.

Available for pre-order on the 9th January at 5AM GMT and set for release on the 27th February 2026.

Sixteen-time GRAMMY® Award winner and thirty-three-time GRAMMY® Award nominee Bruno Mars is a celebrated singer, songwriter, producer, and musician who is one of the best-selling artists of all time and now continuously the number-one most listened-to artist on Spotify. With recent hits like “APT.” with ROSÉ and “Die With A Smile” with Lady Gaga—the latter earning him two nominations for “Song Of The Year” and “Best Pop Duo/Group Performance” at the 67th Annual GRAMMY® Awards—Mars has celebrated another extraordinary year in music. Among his robust list of accolades, some of which include “Album of the Year” for 24K Magic at the 60th Annual GRAMMY® Awards and “Record of The Year” for Silk Sonic’s “Leave The Door Open” at the 64th Annual GRAMMY® Awards, Mars has held the number one global song for more weeks than any artist in 2024 with both “APT.” and “Die With A Smile.”

"Tonight At Noon" compiles tracks from two earlier recordings sessions: one session from 1957 with Jimmy Knepper on the trombone, the drummer Dannie Richmond, Saxophone player Shafi Hadi and the pianist Wade Legge, which were released on the album "The Clown" (Atlantic 1260). The second session took place in 1961 with Booker Ervin and Roland Kirk on the saxophone, Knepper, the bassist Doug Watkins, Mingus at the piano and Richmond on the drums, and was released on "Oh Yeah" (Atlantic SD 1377).

The two sets differ in mood, but this does not mean that it is an album that uses leftovers. While Mingus in the first session strives for European harmonics and melodic approaches with a hard bop tempo (particularly on the title track) in the direction of the blues, the second session with its vespertine elegance and spatial explorations comes over rather as a sort of exercise à la avantgard Ellington with sophisticated harmonies that pave the way for sluggish marches and gospel-like blues. Kirk and Ervin complement one another particularly well, their swing is appararently boundless. Mingus’s piano playing is deeply rooted in the blues, and his sense of tempo and lightness anhances these numbers, particularly in "‘Old’ Blues for Walt’s Torin".

In these compositions one already finds hints of Mingus’s later recordings. The most beautiful number is taken from the 1957 session and concludes the album: "Passions Of A Woman Loved", almost ten minutes in length, feels like an Ellington suite. Although, or maybe simply because several years passed between the two sessions, one cannot deny this album’s magic.

French artist Trypheme debuts on Impatience with “Odd Balade”, a darkly-hued collection of songs drawn from human delicacy and dreamworld mythology.

“Odd Balade” is Trypheme’s most ambitious and boldest record to date - both lyrically and musically. The album’s thirteen tracks resist rigid genre boundaries and flutter from medieval folk realms, sprawling synths, gothic 80s wave, leftfield pop, haunted vocals, mutant electronica to reverbed guitars - all reflected through her own shadowy prism. Especially album closer “A Walk In The Vercors” evokes a soothing serenity that echoes the sonic balm of Julee Cruise.

Trypheme’s musical repertoire trends heavily electronic and somewhat abstracted, but on “Odd Balade”, the artist slips into the role of the modern troubadour with a shift to a more poetically and personal songwriting that is infused with symbolism and dreamlike fantasies. The connective tissue of the album is the audacity to love and the vulnerability that ensues. As intimate and introspective as the lyrics are, the themes remain universal and human to the core: the fear of losing a loved one, the melancholia of leaving places and t“the fear of losing a loved one, the melancholia of leaving places and the cycles of life. The record was largely composed in Chars, stirred by the French village’s eerie atmosphere and frequent trips to the seaside in Brittany, where Trypheme resides. Drawing inspiration from the rugged terrain of the seaside landscapes, the writings of Allen Ginsberg and Mark Fisher and the hyperrealist art of Scott Prior, Trypheme uses her songs to depict life with broad strokes of rhythm.

On “Odd Balade” Trypheme consolidates herself as a gifted, nimble songwriter, masterly producer and subtly powerful vocalist. The record combines her skill for crafting lush, alien sound worlds and efficient, alluring arrangements with stealthily devastating songs. Belin’s voice becomes a key ingredient, appearing on eleven of Odd Balade’s thirteen tracks, by turns heavily manipulated, sampled and replayed as a form of percussion, or basically bare.

“Odd Balade” is the manifestation of Trypheme’s roving artistic practice, a ceremonial-grade sacrament cast in a rich nocturnal glow. Pairing the mundane with the mythic, the album stays true to its core: odd and strangely familiar.

RIYL - Riding off into the sunset to an unknown destination, hauntology, present, tales told by the fireside, hot summer rain, adventures, to feel a warm presence when you are walking in the forest or in the mountain, coastal landscapes, sailor’s stories, slow motion, vitesse, heavy blossoms, colors, the warmth of the sun, the tenderness of the moon, getting lost in unfamiliar streets, city’s lights, motorway rest area by night, magic numbers, rendez-vous, picnic, serendipity, poetry, the smell of old records and old books.

Tiphaine Belin has been releasing music as Trypheme since 2016. Odd Balade was written and produced by Belin, and mixed by Belin and Abel Roux. It was mastered by Amir Shoat. Cover art photography is by Ariane Kiks, with art direction by Ariane Kiks in collaboration with Mathilde Chaize.

In 1999, on December 23 to be precise, the electronic music landscape changed forever. On that day, the now legendary Icelandic band múm released their debut album “Yesterday Was Dramatic – Today Is OK”. The thing is though, back in the day, hardly anybody realized. It was Christmas after all, people were busy with potentially more important things and didn’t pay attention to some kids selling records on Reykjavík’s high street. Little did those shoppers know.

Thankfully, those 10 tracks weren’t overlooked for long. On the contrary: the album went on to become one of the most influential building blocks of what back then was called electronica and today is considered an art form playing a crucial and important role in shaping and defining the rich electronic music culture of the 21st century. Now, 20 years after the record dropped onto planet Earth, Morr Music is re-issuing the remastered album with its original artwork, adding newly commissioned re-works: A note-for-note representation of “Smell Memory“ by Kronos Quartet (with additional drums by múm’s Samuli Kosminen), a gentle reinterpretation of “Random Summer” by acclaimed pianist and composer Hauschka and an otherworldly new version of “Ballad Of The Broken String” recorded by label mate Sóley. Additionally, four remixes produced in the early 2000s are made available for the first time ever on vinyl here.

In 1999, electronic music was in full bloom. The dance floors were thriving worldwide.Yet the concept of using electronic sounds in acoustic-based productions (or vice versa) was still in its infancy. Many producers were trying, most of them failed. The results felt often forced, fabricated, unimaginative, random and forgettable. New ideas require new mindsets after all. With “Yesterday Was Dramatic – Today Is OK”, múm established a new approach in music production. Instead of setting a fixed agenda and working with a distinct hierarchy for their sonic palette, Gyða Valtýsdóttir, Kristín Anna Valtýsdóttir, Gunnar Örn Tynes and Örvar Smárason let each instrument and sound source be true to itself, creating an ever-evolving universe of sonic bliss. Listening to the album in 2019 still makes every music lover’s heart jump. Combining Drill-and-Bass-inspired beat-chopping, future-informed DSP-programming, ethereal vocal work, indie rock’s boominess, folk music’s soulful brittleness and a lofty feeling for melody and arrangement, the album is a rare example of musical transcendence and remains impossible to categorize.

Many of the ideas formulated and recorded for the album quickly became an integral part of the canonical self-conception musicians around the world were and still are aspiring to. How these ideas really came about, though, is not known – the dynamics, the struggles, the qualms, the sudden realization of having achieved something which might actually stick. Maybe that is a good thing. Örvar Smárason remembers that most of the album “was recorded in a tiny, sweaty room in the summer of 1999 with carpenters banging nails around us, but sometimes we put on headphones so we couldn’t hear them.” It is a good thing they did. As is often the case with classics, all one can do is listen closely and let the magic sink in – again and again.

2025 Repress

“We created a holiday inside our heads.”

A Deeper Life, Chaos In The CBD’s debut album over 10 years in the making, is nostalgic for the duo’s nature-filled youth, exploring the magical coastline and lush rainforest of New Zealand. “The title refers to our childhood, which was idyllic,” says Ben. “It was just the sun, the sand, the sea, waterfalls, birds and fish…” The album’s blissful setting is also depicted on the album cover: a painting, by a childhood friend, of the beach where they grew up in Devonport.

A Deeper Life whirls that profound love of house music and wide-ranging influences – from Brazilian to R&B, ambient to Italo to deep house and downtempo pop – into a serene, cohesive whole with their signature finesse. The result is an international dance sound that feels unmistakably like Chaos and ebbs and flows from the beach party to the club to the afterhours.

On the album they’ve teamed up with a number of US legends and married their vocals with the UK underground: Josh Milan of house pioneers Blaze brings his soulful vocals to the bossa nova beats of ‘I Wanna Tell Somebody,’ a future jazz-dance anthem. Unheralded Chicago house hero and Larry Heard collaborator Lee Pearson Jr. goes deep over ‘More Time’s broken beat flex. And on ‘Maintaining My Peace’, the brothers have matched veteran house singer-songwriter Stephanie Cooke with UK grime MC Novelist, on a slinky LDN interpretation of LA hip-hop and g-funk.

Also featured on the album are New Zealand jazz artist Nathan Haines, frequent collaborator Isaac Asaeili and more.

Presenting the debut solo LP by Indi Zone, member of Slow Life, the label's graphic designer, and half of the Ethereal Logic project. The album is a deep, soothing journey with organic grooves and blissful harmonies that takes you to his "Natural Habitat."

In 2008, accompanied solely by her husband, bassist Stephan Crump , and saxophonist Chris Cheek, she created reVisions in which she reimagined a collection of Stevie Wonder songs to offer social commentary on Barack Obama's historic rise to power. As much a testament to Chapin's unique artistic sensibility as a celebration of the enduring appeal and relevance of Wonder's songs, ReVisions, which also includes sensibility as a celebration of the enduring appeal and relevance of Wonder's songs, ReVisions, which also includes two self- penned numbers, puts a new spin on Wonder classics like 'Masterblaster (Jammin'),' 'You Haven't Done Nothin',' 'Higher Ground' and 'Village Ghetto Land.' Bolstered with new liner notes featuring a recent interview with Jen Chapin, ReVisions: The Songs Of Stevie Wonder is reissued in 2026 as part of the Chesky Original Masters series on 180g One Step Pressing Vinyl LP and Hybrid Stereo SACD

Andrew Lloyd Webber’s The Phantom of the Opera is one of the most celebrated musicals of all time, and this original London cast recording from 1986 remains the definitive recording. Michael Crawford’s Tony Award-winning performance as The Phantom and Sarah Brightman’s portrayal of Christine Daaé helped make this the best-selling cast recording in history. Re-issued for the first time in decades, this classic album brings the unforgettable score to a new generation of listeners. From the title song to “The Music of the Night” and “All I Ask of You,” every track reflects the power and beauty that continue to make The Phantom of the Opera a global phenomenon nearly forty years after its debut. Since its premiere, The Phantom of the Opera has been seen by more than 160 million people in 195 cities and has received over 70 major theatre awards. It holds the record as the longest-running show in Broadway history and was the first British musical to debut at number one on the music charts. The recording has been certified Platinum in six countries.

Rochelle Jordan is proudly stepping into her diva era. To those in the know, the Los Angeles-based British-Canadian singer and songwriter has long been an underground force coaxing together the mutually flirtatious scenes of daring alt-R&B and heart-pumping electronic music. With her longtime creative director/producer KLSH, she’s cultivated a singular marriage of sound — mixing soulful sensuality, house bump, DnB wildness, hip-hop swagger, and pure experimentalism — that’s spread not only through certain circles, but also to the mainstream. At the same time that her gauzy 2014 single “Lowkey” was going viral in 2023 — racking up 21 million streams on Spotify alone — she was in the studio cooking with tastemaking beatsmiths like KAYTRANADA and Sango, quietly preparing to melt dance floors and headphones alike.

Now, as the timelines merge, Jordan is approaching success with the sparkle of a brand new star and the stance of someone who’s earned everything she has. Her new musical chapter aims to carry forward the magic that fans feel in her coquettish vocals and bold soundscapes even as she reaches deeper into her pop bag. The fact that her first single of 2025, the darkly dazzling “Crave,” was produced by Chicago house legend Terry Hunter (Janet Jackson, Mariah Carey, Beyoncé) speaks volumes to this exact moment in Jordan’s ascendent trajectory.

“My goal when I first started making music was to bring back something that I felt had started to fade away for me,” says Jordan. “That certain essence or sound that would give me butterflies in my stomach when I’d listen to music — it would unleash some kind of chemical that would make me feel happy and excitable and curious, something that would make my soul shine. My number one goal is always: How do I give people that feeling when they listen to my music?”

Jordan grew up in Toronto raised by British-Jamaican parents. She remembers hearing one of her older brothers cycling through a variety of music at maximum volume in the room next to hers. “Reggae to soul to drum and bass to garage music to gospel,” Jordan recalls. “It was all intertwining for me at such a young age.” She developed her own sound quietly, and soon met KLSH through MySpace. They traded multiple songs back and forth daily until he flew her out to L.A. to record what would become her debut project, 2011’s R O J O. That collaboration hasn’t faltered since, resulting in sonically surprising, subtly infectious sets like Jordan’s breakthrough 2014 album 1021 (with “Lowkey”) and 2021’s dance-steeped revelation, Play with the Changes.

“If you’re talking about Rochelle Jordan, you’re talking about KLSH,” she says. “It’s one and the same. We come from the same inspiration source.” With him at her side to this day, Jordan is crafting new listening experiences as radiant as refracted light glimmering through a prism — an incredible space from within which to explore love in all its iterations — from romantic infatuation to self-affirmation, and strength in womanhood to pride for what she’s accomplished thus far.

More than a decade into her career, Jordan has arrived at a new stage of life and creativity — she’s a seasoned professional, a fully realized woman, and she’s excited to continue growing. “I know my story isn’t necessarily a new one,” she says. “I look at 2 Chainz, who became 2 Chainz way later on in his life. I look at Tina Turner, who became Tina Turner at 40. I want to be another story of resilience for people.” As she prepares to unveil more of her vision, and fans clamber for a long-awaited fourth album, Rochelle Jordan is casting aside self-doubt, and appreciating and underlining her status as a verifiably influential reigning diva in her one-of-one sonic space.

‘Pilot’ is the debut album from London quintet Miniseries. Channelling the epic sweep of TV themes and movie soundtracks into resplendent space rock they explore themes of youth and ageing, heartbreak and paranoia, euphoria and existential dread.

Songwriter Doug Morch (Longview) had been working on largely acoustic folk songs when he met Angela Gannon (The Magic Numbers) at Glastonbury 2017. Romance and musical collaboration ensued. The band coalesced in the hallowed environs of Farringdon's The Betsey Trotwood pub – a musical nexus where burgeoning indie and Americana scenes collide – where they met fellow songwriter and guitarist Dermot Watson (from Brighton's The Dials) and drummer Danny Abbasi and were joined by Doug's former bandmate Aidan Banks on bass. When they came together, their indie folk mutated into motorik art rock, with their first single being an eight-minute jam called "Road".

When it came to capturing their sound, the band reached for maverick musician and producer Sean Read. They recorded tracks at Read's Famous Times studio in Clapton, London, as well as at Edwyn Collins' Clashnarrow in Helmsdale, Scotland – one of the world's most breathtaking and idiosyncratic studio locations, adding unquantifiable magic to the proceedings.

For the closing track "May You Always", they headed to another studio imbued with tangible inspiration: Blueprint Studio in Salford with producer Craig Potter (Elbow) at the helm. For the song, Dermot drew cinematic inspiration from the Withnail & I line "I'll never play The Dane", the song is about realising that the things you aspired to in youth will never come to pass and being at peace with that realisation.

The recurring themes of youth and ageing are apparent in the resplendent lead track ‘You're Gold’ – a heartfelt call for young people to reject materialism and exploitative influencer culture in search of life's deeper meaning, with stylistic nods to The Pixies and early Stereolab.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, "Sepia" explores old age and fading memories through dementia, where the ending descends into chaos like a fragmenting mind. Elements of "Sepia" are foreshadowed in the album's opening track, the instrumental "Pilot Theme", which pays homage to TV theme music, invoking spy thrillers or perhaps something otherworldly from science fiction.

“Offcumdens” is a Calder Valley, Yorkshire term for people who live in the area but come from somewhere else. Hailing from Bury, Lancashire, Morch wrote the song while living in Hebden Bridge (and watching too much Happy Valley) and found himself being an offcumden. It’s a pop at the kind of local nativism which breeds intolerance and an illustration of the sinister rise of wider political populism.

Miniseries' Pilot is just the beginning of the story. Enthralling and atmospheric, the London quintet have created something familiar yet timeless. As singer Doug Morch says, "It's the Miniseries Pilot episode. Like the TV episode a studio makes to test whether it's viable.” In the age of streaming and box-sets, this is an album to truly binge on. We can’t wait to hear what happens next.

Wiccans only make noise when they feel like it. A band that’s been uttered in reverence for nearly two decades with only a handful of releases, each one a stand-alone classic.
You see, it’s hard to pinpoint a band that actually has the equal influences of American psychedelia and hard rock all anchored in the glorious benevolence of American Hardcore. A tonne of bands dance around and flirt with each but it rarely lands in the sweet spot. They’re not trying to fit some supposed perfect space and that’s the very point so many others miss.
Wiccans are creating the space. Breaking rules and allowing a bit of breadth to what is often a claustrophobic style of music. This might sound scary as everyone knows that the more Hardcore evolves the worse it is - at least on record. The formula that Wiccans are playing with on Phase IV should scare you. It’s totally potent with odd songwriting, intensely creative and varied guitar work and completely pissed vocals. Phase IV does whatever the fuck it wants and passes the bar that only Wiccans could have set for themselves. All of this is propelled by a far stronger production quality than previous efforts and instead of having that expose some fault line it’s secured it as a modern classic.
It’s the kind of shit that will shake the dandruff from the beard of a Third Man collector but will also make that guy stop going to DIY gigs because they’re “too rough” or whatever. I’m just sitting here wondering if this is maybe what might have happened if Poison Idea wrote Hidden World. There’s always space for a carbon copy Negative Approach destroying someones basement and they usually put out a record that is clearly brilliant but fuck me if I can’t help but yawn.
Am I getting old or is Hardcore painting by numbers? In a slough of legitimately top tier Hardcore Punk releases, this one actually sounds like something truly special.

"Ensomheden Vi Deler" ("The Loneliness We Share") is the result of a dialogue between the collages and the music of øjeRum, initiated by IIKKI, between December 2024 and July 2025.

øjeRum is Copenhagen based musician and collage artist Paw Grabowski.

With his collages, the distinctive feature of øjeRum's works is their ability to combine different historical and artistic periods, such as ancient sculpture, medieval frescoes, classical painting and photography, and to make them interact with one another. øjeRum is also renowned for his work as a musician, where he stands out for his surreal, mysterious and poetic universe. His music and art are closely linked. These two sides of the artist's work are constantly intertwined.

In his øjeRum guise, he plucks and strums his treated acoustic instruments, sounding at times like church bells, at times like angelic harp, at time like drones, and suspends the listener in the magic of his melodies. With a deep back-catalogue of releases since 2014 - spanning labels such as eilean rec., Room40, Line, Opal Tapes and many more - he continues exploring his minimal, textural and deeply personal style of ambient music.

The collage and music project "Ensomheden Vi Deler" ("The Loneliness We Share") is an exploration of loneliness, closeness and distance. A meditation on the fragile architectures and hidden shapes of human connection. This is his second release on IIKKI.

Fine Art Book, Ltd. to 500 copies:
Hand numbered & hand stamped / first edition and only edition (no re-print) / hardcover book (15 cm x 21 cm) on Wibalin Natural Cotton White / 80 pages, 35 collages printed on Freelife Vellum 120g/m2 / Swiss Binding / Coloured edges with neon green pantone / Neon Green pantone on front and back cover (logo, slot and circle) / Sticker on front cover.

The capstone of Miles Davis’ electric period, Agharta reigns as a funk-rock fireball — a blazing comet streaked energy and elan, a fearless organism feasting on adventure and freedom, a seven-headed Godzilla stomping its way through Osaka, Japan. Recorded on February 1, 1975 at Osaka Festival Hall at the first of a two-show stand, the double album offers an endless abundance of surprises and shifts — as well as a road-proven ensemble whose chemistry and abilities equal that of any of Davis’ celebrated bands. If the true measure of jazz is the capacity to adapt to the moment and challenge perception, Agharta is consummate.

Sourced from the original master tapes, housed in a Stoughton gatefold jacket, and pressed at Fidelity Record Pressing in California, Mobile Fidelity’s numbered-edition 180g 33RPM 2LP set of this epic live release presents it in audiophile sound on a domestic pressing for the first time. Offering greater degrees of separation, detail, and richness than the compressed CD editions and more clarity, openness, and presence than older vinyl copies, this version of the 1975 release helps bring the concert stage to your home. Just make sure your turntable and speakers are up to the challenge of Davis and Co.’s explosive performances — and producing the decibels they demand.

Teeming with vibrant colors, tones, and pace, Mobile Fidelity’s reissue captures the hear-it-to-believe-it flow, sweep, and moodiness of the music. Though the group honors looseness and freedom with religious verve, the specificity and scale rendered by this remaster allows you to detect methods behind the alleged madness that are often otherwise harder to discern. This insight extends to the understated changes in volume, harmonics, and phrasings. In many ways, you can listen as Davis himself did that early February evening as he helped coordinate the overall direction and decided on whether to blow his wah-wah-wired trumpet or take a turn on the organ.

Tellingly, Agharta would likely never have been made if not for Davis’ ventures overseas and, specifically, to the Land of the Rising Sun. Having for years faced a backlash on his native soil for his choices to experiment and blow past all known borders, Davis was welcomed with open arms in Japan. The concert documented on Agharta — as well as the day’s later show, captured on the equally exciting Pangea — stemmed from a sold-out three-week tour that would ultimately mark Davis’ final public appearances for years, as he soon settled into semi-retirement and nursed the wounds connected to an unprecedented stretch of restless and relentless output.

For all the band-fueled merit of Agharta — and there’s plenty, given the cast of saxophonist Sonny Fortune, bassist Michael Henderson, drummer Al Foster, percussionist James Mtume, and guitarists Reggie Lucas and Pete Cosey seemingly blasts off to outer space and travels distant galaxies by the time this minimally edited record runs its course — Davis’ own playing often remains overlooked. As critics Richard Cook and Brian Morton observed, it is “often fantastically subtle, creating surges and ebbs in a harmonically static line, allowing him to build huge melismatic variations on a single note.” He attacks like a man on a mission, out to prove naysayers wrong and bent on trailblazing another new path forward. Convention and skeptics be damned.

Noisy and furious, dark and discordant, abstract and off-balance, radical and intense, abrasive and atmospheric, strangely beautiful and hypnotically eccentric: Agharta evades simple description, and refuses to be pinned down in any established category — rock, jazz, punk, ambient, prog, avante-garde, or otherwise. Shot through with trench-deep grooves, screaming riffs, scalding solos, and free-improv leads, its cosmic thrust comes on as the equivalent of an animated pointillist painting comprised of millions of textured dots, dashes, and dabs that hold your attention so raptly you want to revisit the ideas again and again.

Always steps ahead of everyone else, Davis knew what he was doing even when Agharta debuted in Japan before later hitting U.S. markets. Though “Maiysha” and “Theme from Jack Johnson” are identified in the track listing, the record contains a number of uncredited references to other Davis works, including a nod to “So What.” This decision to bypass labels only adds to the art of the reveal — the rare black magic in which Agharta expertly deals.

The song titles on Van Halen's aptly titled Fair Warning don't lie. The likes of "Unchained," "Mean Street," "Push Comes to Shove," "One Foot Out the Door," and more indicate the mood the band channels on its double-platinum 1981 record — the nastiest, darkest, and fiercest album of the group's storied career. For the fourth time in four years, Van Halen throws down the gauntlet to all challengers and emerges victorious.


Sourced from the original analog tapes, pressed on MoFi SuperVinyl at Fidelity Record Pressing, and strictly limited to 5,000 numbered copies, Mobile Fidelity's UltraDisc One-Step 180g 45RPM 2LP set plays with unfettered clarity, dynamics, and immediacy. Benefitting from superb groove definition, an ultra-low noise floor, and dead-quiet surfaces, this vinyl edition captures what went down in the studio with tremendous realism and involving presence.

Taking a more controlled approach in the studio and still completing everything in less than two weeks, Van Halen and producer Ted Templeman relied on studio amplifiers to direct the sound. Further diverging from the live-on-the-floor approach of its earlier albums, the ensemble also employed overdubs to great effect. The result: Dense, stacked architecture that underlines the hard-hitting tenor of the songs — and which comes alive like never before on this reference edition that looks as good as it sounds.

The premium packaging and gorgeous presentation befit the reissue's select status. Housed in a deluxe slipcase, it features special foil-stamped jackets and faithful-to-the-original graphics that illuminate the splendor of the recording. Aurally and visually, it is made for listeners who want to immerse themselves in everything involved with the album, including the iconic cover art adopted from William Kurelek's haunting painting, "The Maze."

Isolated frames from Kurelek's childhood-inspired work — including a man bashing his head into a brick wall, a guy pinning down an adversary as he delivers bare-fist blows to his face and others watch with apparent glee, a boy tied down on a conveyer belt and being sent through the equivalent of a meat saw — adorn the front and back covers. The sunnier visual disposition of Van Halen's prior efforts gives way to something sinister and tortured, traits reflective of the music within. The band members, too, are visually depicted not in glamorous shots but in a serious black-and-white portrait in which the quartet is clad in black leather jackets.

Tough, aggressive, stark: Fair Warning comes on like a series of bare-knuckled punches to the solar plexus and boasts lyrical narratives to match. Though not a concept record, the concise album revolves around themes of roughing it on the streets and struggling to survive amid dim prospects. Singer David Lee Roth reportedly penned many of the initial lyrics after traveling to Haiti and observing extreme poverty. The characters and situations populating Fair Warning reflect hardscrabble existence, last-chance desperation, and underlying danger.

Witness the crazies, poor folks, and hunters of “Mean Street”; the former prom queen turned pornographic actress on “Dirty Movies”; the menace and vice of “Sinners Swing!”; the streetwise hustle of “Unchained”; the isolation and alienation of “Push Comes to Shove”; the desire for escape on “One Foot Out the Door”: A carefree California beach party Fair Warning is not.

Having said he felt angry and frustrated during the sessions, guitarist Eddie Van Halen uses the forceful arrangements as a playground for his seemingly unlimited arsenal. Supported by a crack rhythm section and a hyped-up Roth, he performs with an almost impossible combination of punk-like intensity, technical finesse, lyrical fluidity, and unbridled emotion. The virtuoso was increasingly butting heads with Templeton and seeking a freedom in the studio he believed denied him.

No wonder he plays like a bat out of hell. Listen to the rapid-fire manner in which he slaps the high and low E strings on the 12th fret of his instrument on “Mean Street,” instilling the tune with funk flair and metal-spiked sharpness. For the pouty strut of “Dirty Movies,” Eddie Van Halen contributes slide guitar magic made possible after he sawed off the lower portion of a Gibson SG so he could reach further down the fretboard.

Related intensity, urgency, and daredevil momentum punctuate the surging “Sinner’s Swing!” A heavily flanged, delicately melodic introduction frames the attitudinal “Hear About It Later,” among the most creative arrangements of Van Halen’s career. And do riffs come any bigger or magnetic than those on the high-wire kick of “Unchained”? As for the out-of-left-field “Sunday in the Park,” an instrumental composed on an Electro-Harmonix micro-synthesizer: Who but Eddie Van Halen to supply creep factor in such an ingenious way?

Despite selling fewer quantities than Van Halen’s prior efforts, Fair Warning remains for many diehards the record that epitomizes all of the band’s immense strengths —Roth’s manic energy and tongue-wagging humor, Alex Van Halen’s rhythmic heartbeat-in-your-chest bombast, and Michael Anthony’s lucid bass lines included. Arriving when the New Wave of British Heavy Metal and new-wave movements were taking flight, it signaled a shot across the bow from a band determined to stay a step ahead and provide proof nobody could touch what it delivered.

More than four decades later, Fair Warning still sounds that alarm.

For his last solo record ‘Through a Room’, Bill Nace shifted his usual saturated guitar sound and added tapes, hurdy gurdy, doughnut pipe, bird calls and the mysterious Japanese taishōgoto. Setting up for the final night of his three day residency at OTO with only the taishōgoto soundchecked, Nace hoped that Parker would arrive with his small soprano as its opposite. “I’ve been interested in state change, you know, playing until there’s a shift in time.” Known for his development of multiphonics to produce a constantly shifting pattern, Evan Parker has evolved an instantly recognizable sound - his work the soprano most distinct. Happily, it was the soprano Evan brought with him and as soon as the two start to play they entwine - taking off in a double helix of keys and reed primed for endless reconfiguration. Space warps under the velocity of playing, the pitch rising unrelentingly. It felt like unending lift off in the room, sheer energy until the last note makes remember your feet have been on the floor the whole time. Total time bending shredding.

–

"They had never played together before. They had never even met each other before this springtime 2024 concert at London’s Café Oto.

Evan Parker, circular breathing maestro of the saxophone, a legend in the universe that is Free Improvisation since the late 1960s and Bill Nace, one of the most intriguing experimental “noise” guitarists of the 1990s/2000s underground scene.

For those of us who have been enamored by the live and documented work of both these gents, this Café Oto duo was a must-hear event. It could have gone anywhere musically and that would have been totally fine. Particularly with Evan having a history of being thrown into a variety of challenging collaborations throughout his career, employing the learned elegance of trust in his own sensitivity to listening, responding, leading, following, sparring, intertwining, dialoguing, creating in the instant and, essentially, dignifying the non-hierarchical grace of chance.

The aesthetics of socialist consideration in Evan Parker’s playing, in his community of expanded and personal technique, for a younger player such as Bill Nace, strikes an exemplary model. This notion of respect would be entirely the reason Nace, when offered a residency at the most critical “new music” room in England, would request to play in duo with Parker.

Bill Nace came to prominence mostly during the apex of experimental music activity in and around Western Massachusetts in the early days of the aughts, with a focus on visual art and free improvisation guitar action. He could be found in the daytime hours, his head hanging down over a notepad, penning fine-tuned illustrations and abstract line drawings, while in the evenings he’d be attending any number of basement noise gigs, many of which he’d be participating in. His guitar style came across as being informed as much as by the physicality of his writing utensils in friction to the page as it was to his hearing and redefining of radical recordings ranging anywhere from the Black Unity Group to Black Flag.

Utilizing various metal files and other small cylindrical objects Bill would allow his guitar and amplifier to be in tandem with the improvisatory movements of his body as the instrument balanced, intentionally and, at times, precariously, upon his lap. The performances came across thrilling and daring and they would be mostly in the context of venues nothing more than a low-ceilinged damp and dank New England basement, a clutch of people hanging onto rusty pipes or sitting up on dilapidated washer/dryer machines, the shards of Bill’s “file guitar” sounds ringing out like the most alive music on Earth.

By the time Bill reached Café Oto in early 2024 he had relocated to Philadelphia all the while releasing a succession of collaborative LPs on his Open Mouth label to present his developing progression of solo and collaborative work. He also would find himself considerably engaged with playing the electric taishōgoto, a keyboard-activated string instrument from Japan which can exist as a one, two, four, five, or six string oblong sound object. Bill’s approach to the taishōgoto would not be too unlike his approach to the traditional electric guitar, though no outboard implements such as files, sticks, and rocks are utilized. The similarity would lie wholly with Bill’s full immersion of high velocity action-playing where, with the taishōgoto, an electric drone beauty occurs. The flurry of sonics and resultant harmonics emanating from the amplifier (which Bill opts to dial into with borderline loud-as fuck volume settings) furthers the meta-mantra properties of the instrument in an astounding display of drone dynamism.

This sound world of Bill’s two-stringed taishōgoto on this Café Oto night worked beautifully with Evan Parker’s improvisatory saxophone conceptions. The duology achieved instant lift off at ground zero only to find it’s eventual finale as if it were organically ordained. Time seemingly morphed from its ancient human construct of control, rendered inconsequential to the torrential transcendence of the room wildly activated by the magic resonance of the multi-directional pan-spatial sonance of the music as if it were some beatific blessing. It was one of those nights where art as a liberating force of spirit gifted the listeners with an offering of exaltation and joy. It was entirely mystical and mind blowing. A night of Total Music."

Thurston Moore, London, 2025

Numbers welcome New York’s Jubilee to the Glasgow based label - Main Character EP features ‘Trippin’’, a collaboration with Jersey club Queen UNIIQU3. One of the most vital voices in American underground dance music for over a decade, Jubilee brings her South Florida rave roots and East Coast sensibilities to the imprint.

Born from the dizzying emotions of love and grief, the EP opens with the cheeky cackle of UNIIQU3 on ‘Trippin’’. Marking their hotly-anticipated first collaborative release, ‘Trippin’’ bridges Jubilee’s Miami bass heritage and UNIIQU3’s Jersey club sound to create a playful lead single featuring tantalizing vocals.

Starting to work on Main Character in 2019, Jubilee revisited the project during an intense period of change and loss. Bringing in further influences from electro, Baltimore club, 90’s dance and techno to create her signature sound, Jubilee channels the fun, drama and chaos that comes hand in hand during challenging times. A deeply personal release, Jubilee looks to her friends and family for inspiration, including a sample of her parents on ‘Lucky’.

Jubilee’s debut on Numbers continues a stand-out year for the dynamic artist who released two stellar EPs earlier this year alongside celebrating 10 years of Magic City - her party series and record label which was awarded DJ Mag’s ‘Best Record Label’ in 2023 - with a run of records, merch and events across the States.

Blang Records are thrilled to announce another two vinyl album re-releases from Jeffrey Lewis's back catalogue: The debut classic The Last Time I Did Acid I Went Insane (originally Rough Trade 2001) and The critically acclaimed 4th album 12 Crass Songs (originally Rough Trade 2007). 12 Crass Songs (VV004LP): Astonishingly transformed covers of songs originally written by the band Crass in 1978-1984, this 2007 LP is the most rare and sought-after vinyl in Jeffrey's catalogue and is also now completely out of stock. "Weird? Very_ _ but it's also downright inspiring" (4 of 5 stars) - Rolling Stone. "The record presents Crass's lyrics calmly, often demonstrating how sane and practical they are; it proves once again, and kind of thrillingly this time, that no music is immune to interpretation" - The New York Times. "Folk maverick raids anarchist commune and finds catchy tunes_ Works wonderfully" - Spin "Jeffrey Lewis' talents appear without end_ (on 12 Crass Songs he) magically makes the anarcho-rockers' anti-establishment savagery his own, by wrapping their barbed sentiments in his trademark mottled tea-towel warmth" - NME. "12 Crass Songs succeeds utterly_ eerily beautiful and strangely affecting" - Plan B Magazine "He's taken hold of any number of my old stormy favourites and breathed fresh life and fire into them. . . Man, I'm in awe of Jeffrey right now. Who'd have thought he could have done that?" - Everett True/ Village Voice "Quite brilliant" - (4 of 5 stars) MOJO. "It's no mean feat to transform such abrasive harangues into lush, tuneful folk_ without defusing their righteous anger_ but Crass's intelligent and indignant screeds could not hope for a more sympathetic translator." (4 of 5 stars) - THE GUARDIAN. Blang Records and Jeffrey Lewis have history: before Blang was a label, it started life as a live night at the 12 Bar Club in Denmark Street, hosting many a set of the NY Antifolk artists over on UK shores, including Jeffrey Lewis. Now 20+ years since Jeffrey first played Blang. Native New Yorker Jeffrey Lewis is a comic book writer/artist and a musician. A cult hero birthed from the now infamous antifolk movement that sprung up on Manhattan's Lower East Side in the 90s, Jeffrey has released dozens of albums showcasing his unique blend of bleakly witty observations, scratchy, lo-fi punk and croaky folk/anti-folk, all firmly rooted in a strong DIY sensibility. Jeffrey and his band have toured the world multiple times over, released albums on Rough Trade, Moshi Moshi and Don GIovanni Records, and have been featured by NPR, The History Channel, The NY Times and more.

Jackie Mittoo’s ‘Reggae Magic’ is a new collection from the great Jackie Mittoo. The album features a mixture of classic tunes and rarities from the period 1967-74, when Mittoo was at the height of his musical powers. Mittoo’s solo career began after the end of The Skatalites in 1965. He began pushing new musical boundaries, creating a uniquely identifiable organ-led funky reggae sound that owed as much to Booker T and The MGs, Jimmy Smith, Stax and Motown as to the post-ska and emergent rocksteady island rhythms of Kingston, Jamaica. His solo work at the legendary Studio One spanned seven albums and hundreds of singles.

Aside from producer and founder Clement ‘Sir Coxsone’ Dodd, it’s hard to think of anyone more central to the sound and success of Studio One than Mittoo; keyboard player extraordinaire, songwriter, arranger, musician, truly the Keyboard King at Studio One. Jackie Mittoo had been the youngest founding member of The Skatalites (at age 16), probably the most important group in Jamaican music. After they split, he became leader of the three pivotal groups at Studio One – The Soul Brothers, The Soul Vendors and Sound Dimension. He also became musical director for Studio One, helping create countless hits for singers Ken Boothe, Bob Andy, The Wailers, John Holt, Delroy Wilson and more – unforgettable tunes like Alton Ellis’ ‘I’m Still in Love with You’, Marcia Griffiths’ ‘Feel Like Jumping’, The Heptones’ ‘Baby Why’ and others. Between 1965 and 1968, many of the tunes created at Studio One can be attributed to Mittoo – timeless instrumental tracks, recorded either under his own name or those of The Soul Brothers, Soul Vendors and Sound Dimension, that have become the basis for literally 1000s and 1000s of Jamaican songs over many decades, giving the music an unsurpassed longevity.

The endurance of his music was as a direct result of significant developments in Jamaican music in the 1970s, namely the creation of three important new styles: Dub, Deejay and Dancehall. In the early 1970s Mittoo’s instrumental tracks were used as the musical source for a series of classic Studio One dub albums. At the same time Deejays at Studio One, including Dillinger, Prince Jazzbo and Dennis Alcapone, began toasting over these same popular rhythms to create their own new songs. In the mid-70s, a new generation of Studio One singers and deejays, including Sugar Minott, Freddie McGregor, Johnny Osbourne, Michigan & Smiley and others, began once again creating new melodies over these original instrumentals, signalling the birth of a new Jamaican style that became known as ‘dancehall’.

As dancehall swept across the island, rival producers copied these now classic rhythms. These original Jackie Mittoo-driven tunes spread like a virus throughout Jamaican music; be they the instrumental cuts to tunes such as Alton Ellis’ ‘Mad Mad’ , ‘I’m Just A Guy’, Larry Marshall’s ‘Mean Girl’, Slim Smith’s ‘Rougher Yet’, and instrumentals such as Mittoo’s classic ‘Hot Milk’ or ‘One Step Beyond’, The Sound Dimension’s ‘Real Rock’, ‘Heavy Rock’, ‘Full Up’, ‘Drum Song’, ‘Rockfort Rock’ … and the list goes on. These tracks became a constant soundtrack to the island, emitting from the ever-present sound of speaker boxes strung up around dancehalls. This recycling travelled even farther afield; The Sound Dimension’s instrumental ‘Real Rock’, updated by Willie Williams on his classic ‘Armageddon Time’ was in turn covered by The Clash. Lily Allen sampled Mittoo’s debut solo single ‘Free Soul’ for number one hit ‘Smile’; Dawn Penn’s ‘You Don’t Love Me (No, No, No)’, accompanied by The Soul Vendors, was revived by Penn and producers Steely & Cleevie in 1994, since covered by Rihanna, Ghostface Killah, Stephen Marley, Damian Marley and Beyonce. And so it goes; an endless time-leaping, continent-hopping diasporic musical map of the world with all roads essentially leading back to one man – Jackie Mittoo.

The Keith Tippett Group's Dedicated to You, But You Weren't Listening is a landmark in cutting edge fusion/avant-jazz. A vital and profoundly adventurous Jazz-Rock record that still swings very hard, it was first released on Vertigo in 1971.

Original copies are now very tricky to score and, as most of you really should know, it’s aged ridiculously well.

A legendary work, this Be With re-issue has been newly remastered from the original Vertigo master tapes, demonstrating just why this deserves to be back in press. The stunning gatefold jacket fully restores Roger and Martyn Dean's original, arresting album artwork to complete this must-have reissue.

Alive and bursting with a joyful energy that has to be heard to be believed, Dedicated to You, But You Weren't Listening flirts with perfection. It's truly magical and forever essential.

A brilliant jazz pianist, composer, arranger and bandleader "who could make the outlands of modern music feel like the most hospitable of places" (The Guardian), Keith Tippett's second album is oft-regarded as his Canterbury album.

Indeed, not only does he draw heavily on Soft Machine members past, present and future but the album title itself archly references a Soft Machine composition. Ray Babbington handles bass alongside Neville Whitehead and the drums are shared between Brian Spring (Nucleus), Robert Wyatt(!) and Phil Howard (who would go on to replace Wyatt in Soft Machine). Gary Boyle (Isotope) is on guitar whilst the great percussionist Tony Uter is enlisted for his conga and cow bell expertise. Elton Dean on Alto Saxello, cornetist Marc Charig and Nick Evans on trombone round out this quite stunning ensemble.

Dedicated to You, But You Weren't Listening presents a collective of superhuman musicians really, *really* enjoying themselves in the studio. The sheer exuberance of the performance is totally infectious. It's wild, energetic, atmospheric and, bluntly, bordering on chaotic at points. In a word, it's beautiful.

Robert Wyatt's drumming opens the record with a bang on the majestic Be With favourite "This Is What Happens". Some have described his work here as "easily the most inspired of his career on record." It's an ultra-funky conga-driven groove that truly sparks via the duelling interplay between the three horn players. In the background, Keith's insistent piano, in conversation with those unignorable drums, is the anchor that keeps this piece rollicking away. Breathtaking.

The epic, energetic "Thoughts to Geoff" is a 10-minute jammer that tends towards the dissonant and improvisational but becomes more fluid, laconic and melodic as it unravels. The interplay between soloists and ensembles is particularly dazzling here - blazing solos by Evans, Charig and Tippett himself in a flourish of angular arpeggios interspersed with chordal elocution. Phew.

Up next, the no less-urgent Mingus-referencing "Green and Orange Night Park" is a soaring example of ambitious jazz mixed with rock aggression, with Dean strutting his stuff by launching into a scorching solo. An absolutely jaw-dropping piece. Arguably the highlight of this album of huge highlights!

Though much of the album tends to fall on the raucous side ("Gridal Suite" approaches free-jazz at its most chaotic and, dare we say it, "difficult"), there are a few more sedate, at times spacey numbers, such as the deeply impressionistic "Five After Dawn". The rhythmically complex "Black Horse" is the most accessible track here, a sort of swinging Big Band number with tight grooves, soaring horn & reed melodies, a sizzling Boyle guitar solo and tasty electric piano riffs from Tippett. An hypnotic climax to a staggering record.

This Be With edition of Dedicated to You, But You Weren't Listening has been re-mastered from the original Vertigo master tapes, Simon Francis’ mastering working together with Cicely Balston's cut at Abbey Road Studios to weave their usual magic with these wonderful recordings. The stunning gatefold sleeve has been restored in all its brainchild glory so you know you're dealing with the definitive reissue, here. Now, are you listening?

If you're a serious music fan but not a native Kiwi, your first awareness of New Zealand's fab music scene may have come from the debut of The Chills' mesmerising Kaleidoscope World collection of early singles. Within a few years, a great number of NZ acts saw music released by various UK and US labels . . . generally to great praise and enthusiasm. That this occurred without any of these acts having to move abroad to further their chances was nearly as delightful a feat as the music itself. The exception to this was Dead Famous People, radical in a snap decision after a five-song 12" for Flying Nun, Lost Persons Area, to change hemispheres and make a go for it in London. It started well. Three London recordings were added to three from their Flying Nun EP and put out by Billy Bragg's Utility label - about as perfect a mini-album as there's ever been. Response was positive, more songs recorded, the group did a John Peel session and played out often, but the vaguely impoverished group began to fall apart. Singer and primary writer Dons Savage - determined to make it - had a near-miss at becoming Saint Etienne's singer on an early take of their 'Kiss And Make Up' cover, and there was a fine performance from her on The Chills' 'Heavenly Pop Hit' . . . but dismay had set in. Upon learning of her mum's passing back home, Dons returned to NZ and was quiet for decades. Most of their London recordings were later released later in minuscule quantities by very small labels, but these saw scant press or attention and enjoyed next-to-no sales. Their moment had passed, and the band has suffered the strange fate of being the least-known of the truly brilliant acts associated with Flying Nun. Listening to these `lost' songs, it seems unfathomable that they could have fallen by the wayside. No NZ songwriter comes as close to equalling Martin Phillipps' pop brilliance as Dons. Her superbly sweet vocals, delicious harmonies and sophisticated arrangements aside, the songs dealt perceptively with universal follies of youth and yearning in tandem with a then-unusual twist of lyrics dealing matter-of-factly with her sexuality at a time when `women's music' was seen as exclusionary (segregated into its own bin in shops, if it existed there at all), and the riot grrrl movement was years away, later breaking through due to its radical stance. Dons is a pioneer in myriad ways, the irony of her transcendent brilliance failing to propel a greater career may rest in the fact that she leapt to the head of the class too quickly for people to grasp it; a fate that's befallen so many musical geniuses acknowledged today but less in their time - something rather tragically acknowledged in old pal Martin Phillipps' song with The Chills, 'A Song For Randy Newman, Etc.' None of these thirteen songs fails to deliver something both immediate and unique. And we're proud to debut 'Vampirella"', a magical fantasy song of longing and intrigue - surely one of the most perfect tunes to ever sit around unreleased for decades! Dons is again busy conjuring new songs; in the meantime we're delighted to unveil these obscure gems from the past.

Includes insert Featuring covers of iconic cinematic scores Performed with the London Symphony Orchestra Limited edition of 1000 numbered copies on purple coloured vinyl 2CELLOS explore the magic of cinema and television in their new album Score, r eimagining the most beloved film and TV melodies with their distinctive sound.

2CELLOS have forged a signature style that breaks down the boundaries between genres of music, from classical and film music to pop and rock. Score is available as a limited edition of 1000 numbered copies on purple coloured vinyl and includes an insert.