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Widely and rightly regarded as one of the best ever soul and funk bands, the now legendary Average White Band tore-up the rule book and conquered the US, UK & International charts with a series of soul and disco hits between 1974 and 1980.

AWB’s repertoire has been a source of inspiration and influence for many R&B acts and they are one of the most sampled bands in history, remaining relevant today, continuing to reach new generations of younger audiences.

Snoop Dogg, Fatboy Slim, Ice Cube, Puff Daddy, TLC, Rick Ross, will.i.am and Mark Ronson amongst countless others, have all borrowed sections of their grooves.

Following a seven-year break, Average White Band returned in 2003, with their most recently released wholestudio album, ‘Living In Colour’, which includes two soul classics in ‘I’m Gonna Make You Love Me’ and Major Harris’ ‘Love Won’t Let Me Wait’.

The full album line-up comprised Alan Gorrie, Onnie McIntyre, Klyde Jones, Fred Vigdor and Brian Dunne, along with additional musicians Eliot Lewis ,Cliff Lyons, John Fumasoli, Tony Kadleck, Bill Harris, Carlos Gomez, Joe Najmy and Rob Aries.

* The original sister label to Ram Records from the old Ram HQ studio in Essex, Liftin Spirit Records now celebrates its 25th year with a special ‘RELOADED’ limited vinyl series of remastered classics, alongside rare and previously unreleased tracks since the beginning in1992.

* DATs from artists such as Andy C, Ant Miles, Shimon, Joint Venture, Interrogator and Red One have been located in the archives. Also from the Ram & Liftin HQ came tracks for the Deep Seven label in 1993 and all these rare DAT masters have been located and now re-cut by Simon, the original Ram & Liftin vinyl masterer at ‘The Exchange’. Initially, Deep Seven remasters will present on a printed white label and unreleased tracks will have a black label.

* We continue our Deep Seven remasters with the 7th release in the series. 'Legal Offence' was yet another pseudonym from Ant Miles that brings us 2 thunderous mixes of the track 'Burnin'. Relentless beats and breaks make up this rare and sought after 12" from 1993 that provides that prevalent Hardcore vibe.

Abstrakt Sonance makes his return to Aufect for the labels's first 12" release in a decade! Enlisting the likes of Crowell and legendary Grime MC, Killa P on the title cut "New Style", together they deliver a smackdown with a skippy Grime-Dubstep hybrid banger in a mood fitting for the status quo.

Label owners Greazus step up to flip "New Style" with a remix leaning heavy on 808's and an infectiously animated piano-esque hook.

"Lay It On" turns up the vibes and dips into R&B vocals chops and loose drums that seem to be melting into each other.

Fans of deep, heavy Dubstep will love "Squad Up". This one is meant to push soundsystems - minimal dubby chords, deep dubs, rolling drums, nuff said.

Four tracks of jacking outsider electro have escaped Lok44's petri dish and make up '44problems', the artist's fourth EP for TRUST. Known for his inventive style ever since his sought-after 2003 debut 'Ghetto Of The Mind', Lok44 continues to defy conventions - from infectiously twitching opener 'Spandex', across acid-tinged electric funk bangers 'Volta' and 'Dexta', to the contemplative bass manoeuvres of 'She's In'.

This is the 1973 solo album by Ghanaian percussionist Anthony Kwaku Bah, who was given the nickname „Reebop“ by American
jazz legend Dizzie Gillespie. He passed away early at the age of 39 in Stockholm in 1983, but before made himself a name for his
works with UK 70s rock heroes TRAFFIC and German Krautrockers CAN, amongst others. If you might expect here the prototypical
Afro Beat and Afro Rock you mostly know from British bands, you will be surprised that this is only one part of the deal. Yes, there
are African elements to be found, buried somewhere in this boiling cauldron where polyrhythmic grooves are the base for jazz
improvisations by the brass section, that range from naughty swing and bebop, to freaked out free jazz and enchanting soul jazz
the way it was popular in the late 60s. The arrangements are utterly lush with so much going on here in every aspect that you
would get lost if there was no trace of melody to be discovered, but there they are and they tell you fantastic stories of exotic
places that only exist in your wildest dreams. Kwaku Bah’s rhythm patterns grab you by the horns and pull you into a world of
their own. Hypnotical, irresistible, hot and vivid. The tunes combine jazz, soul, funk and each one is constructed like a self –
contained story. One could imagine these tunes being used as library music for 70s movies from action to romance. All pieces
though are characterized by the constantly pulsating rhythm. To avoid drifting into the field of insubstantial disco dance music,
the performances witnessed here were executed with the highest possible emotional intensity and dedication. Lay back, close
your eyes and float away on a raft of sound upon the wild river of grooves and melodies. Some haunting Exotica jazz passages
with a typical „jungle“ feel get thrown in for the good measure. There are even vocals in an African language hard to identify,
which create and even more mysterious atmosphere. This is just an introduction part of another powerful speed funk groover but
the vocals stay and make this a clear standout track. Saxophone and guitars seem to have a duel here. You will not sit still while
having this tune „Iphonohimine“ coming down on you like a thunderstorm. Blues, Afro Beat, Psychedelic Rock, Funk, it can all be
found in here and the band goes wild into an everlasting improvisation that deprives you of your breath. Can this record get even better? Do not ask, just enjoy what comes next. If you think that some melodies by the giant brass section sound a bit too catchy
just reach out beyond these harmony lines and find yourself in a thicket of grooves, pulsations, bits and pieces of melody with a
dense, sultry atmosphere. Some smaller parts might make you think of cruise ship big bands and white suits, but everybody will
soon drop these and dance in their underwear for the hot blooded power funk base of the tune called „Africa“, which will take
over one’s soul and set it on fire. So clean, so nice and so filthy and dangerous at the same time, this album is a masterpiece of it’s
style. The exciting and very sensual funk rock of „Lovin‘ you baby“ with crazy fuzz guitars and a dark and haunting approach is
another reason to kneel down when you put this record onto your turntable. Great clean lead guitars give it a latin garage rock
edge Carlos Santana would commit serious crimes for. If you love bands like OSIBISA, Eric Burden & WAR, GINGER BAKER
AIRFORCE, SANTANA, Miles Davis, all around 1969 to 1973, this is what you always wanted to listen to. Grab your copy now.

Appearing on Echovolt for the very first time, Vancouver-based producer Wolfey offers up a four-track excursion that draws direct inspiration from the often-rainy climate of his sleepy home city.

"Powell St. Blues" E.P. is a dance record of rare emotional depth that sees the Canadian bring out an impressive amount of warmth and soul from the machines he uses to make music. Drawing inspiration from early house and techno producers out of Chicago, NY and Detroit, Wolfey likes to work with a small selection of synthesizers, drum machines and outboard effects processors - only using the computer to record, edit and mix-down long multi-track takes and improvised jams. The resultant tracks bristle with vivid detail and texture while evoking distinctly hypnotic and alluring atmospheres.

Side A opener “Powell St. Blues” is a bittersweet melancholic chunk of deep house with spacey chords and subtle acid style motifs slowly undulating over dusty drum machine rhythms. Wolfey’s deep and emotive electro influences come to the fore on “No Fun City”, where tech-jazz style electric piano motifs, bleeping lead lines and dubby rhythmic delays dance around a tactile 808 groove. On languid B-side opener “Overcast”, aural storm clouds gather menacingly above a moody bassline and the crunchiest of machine rhythms. S.M.P (Slim Media Player) guests on the EP’s lusciously loved-up conclusion, “Southlands Transmission”, where morphing synth arpeggios, rich sunrise-ready chords and swinging skittering hi-hats recall the pitter-patter of rain on the windows of Wolfey’s Vancouver studio. It’s a fitting conclusion to an atmospheric, mood-enhancing EP.

THE KILIMANJARO DARKJAZZ ENSEMBLE are a project which has always been tied to films. Films are luxurious because they dispose of all these boring, unimportant, and trivial parts of our lives. This allows them to fully control our sensations, to put us in a very specific mood. Joy and sadness are occasionally OK, endless joy or endless sadness are clinical. But there is one sensation which can be persistent and unconditionally bearable at the same time. In the absence of a better alternative, let's call it "the mood". The mood is what TKDE are aiming at. The mood.

The mood is infinite and illimitable, but not uniform and unique. On "From The Stairwell", TKDE deliver eight new incarnations of the mood. Stairwells have always been intriguing. They appear to unavoidably lead you to your destination, but they only disclose the path bit by bit. What lies far ahead of you and far beyond you is hidden in the shadows. The stairwell could just as well be infinite. You climb up this murky stairwell, passing by many doors. Every door contains a variation of the mood, a short film, a song. You open the first one, "All Is One". The evaporating mist discloses a large and empty room with a barstool in the middle. On the barstool, a chanteuse from the roaring twenties. Her voice starts to trigger vibrations of the ground, the walls start spiralling around her, but she remains untouched in the eye of the storm. Second room, "Giallo". Sly guy, telling smile, nice suit. Walking down the streets in the dusk. The ambience starts to get out of phase, the guy stumbles in horror while blending with the surrounding to a brown soup. Fourth room. "Cocaine". Naked people with pig heads crawl on the floor, on the walls, on the ceiling. They try to hopelessly suck up the white dust which covers every single piece of this room and is constantly spit out by tubes coming out of the walls. Dissonant sounds accompany the work of this desperate hive. As the people manage to counteract the tubes, fragile melodies start to overpower the dissonances. Sixth room, "Cotard Delusion". Baby morphing into a black fluid morphing into an old man which turns his eyes inwards and finds his inside to be completely empty. The journey up the stairwell, down the stairwell, continues. The pictures fill your head and make you forget where you wanted to go in the first place.

"From The Stairwell" is a surprise and a logical step at the same time. It is a surprise because the songs are far less beat-driven in comparison to TKDE's earlier works, and even contain a few hopeful tints here and there. It is a logical step because in the end each song turns to have a very diverse dramaturgic flow. This could raise the conjecture that TKDE, initially started out to make music for existing and non-existing films, wanted to incorporate the audiovisual impression completely into songs, making the films superfluous. At times, "From The Stairwell" makes you think of 60's soundtracks, but the organic feeling of those is always interwoven with mechanical elements. Altogether, every single of the numerous details present in TKDE's new songs feels to be at the right place and you can either just dive into the mood or pick one of the many aspects and enjoy it on its own - be it Gideon Kiers' beats & fx, Jason Köhnen's bass & piano, Hilary Jeffery's trombone, Charlotte Cegarra's voice & piano, Eelco Bosman's guitar, Nina Hitz' cello, Sarah Anderson's violin, or - appearing as guest musicians - Eiríkur Óli Ólafsson's trumpet and Coen Kaldeway's saxophone & bass clarinet.

A memorable name with an outstanding cover, Fuzzy Duck is a classic slice of underground London art rock and melodic psychedelia. Originally released on MAM in 1971, it’s truly a musical force of infectious riffs and fiery solos, sharp tempo changes, a tight rhythm section and heavy, Hammond-drenched grooves. With echoes of Spencer Davis Group, early Grand Funk and Vanilla Fudge, it comes on like a heavier Soft Machine or Caravan. No wonder Fuzzy Duck’s cult appeal has endured.

The album features Mick Hawksworth (Five Day Week Straw People, Andromeda) on bass, acoustic 12-string, electric cello and some of the vocal duties, and also Roy “Daze” Sharland (Crazy World of Arthur Brown, Spice) on organ and electric piano. Accompanying those two were Paul Francis on drums and percussion, and Grahame White on guitars and the rest of the vocals.

Originally released in an edition of 500, Fuzzy Duck became legendary all over the world through a holy trinity of scarcity, personnel and its sheer brilliance.

The album kicks off with a heavy, bass-fuelled, Hammond rocker titled “Time Will Be Your Doctor”. This is pure hard-edged blues rock, brilliantly played. Its drum break intro was sampled by DJ Premier for Gang Starr’s “Mostly Tha Voice” on 1994’s legendary Hard To Earn. And we can hear its personality all over Harvey and Thomas Bullock’s Map Of Africa.

Rollicking highlight “Mrs. Prout” follows. At nearly 7 minutes long, it incorporates more psych-leaning guitar and drawn-out keyboards à la Ray Manzarek with the band effortlessly switching from jazzy rhythm section to a progressive one. That magnificent instrumental jam that starts half-way and continues through to the end is a true wonder.

“Just Look Around You” is propulsive folk-rock with a soaring, proto power-pop chorus, backed by frenetic organ and heavy bass high in the rich, intoxicating mix. Back comes the heavy, strung-out psych to both close out side one with “Afternoon Out” and kick off side two with “More Than I Am”. Both tracks are improvisational winners that stylistically nod to the late sixties and “More Than I Am”’s guitar hook, catchy organ and memorable chorus would’ve surely made it a great single.

“Country Boy” quenches the thirst for rhythm and melody, only the lyrics and vibe are wonderfully creepy. The sudden cut of the groove and the drop into a more sinister tempo will make you stumble, before the band pick up speed and toss you back again into the opening jam, this time with a badass organ to ride you home. The final, fully fleshed out track is the majestic “In Our Time”, which oscillates between endless organ-driven boogie and heavenly, genuinely moving vocals. Just stunning.

Infamous instrumental cut “A Word from Big D” rounds out the album. Yes, that’s the band jamming with duck quack sound effects accompanying the music. “Ducking vocals” as the sleeve says. You know, just in case the whole “duck” theme had passed you by. It’s an appropriate closer for what sounds like an album that must have been *a lot* of fun to record. It’s definitely fun to listen to.

Mastered by Be With’s chief sound duck Simon Francis and cut with glee by the veteran Pete Norman, this reissue of Fuzzy Duck’s one-and-only LP sounds as mighty as it should. That unforgettable sleeve artwork has been carefully restored and the records pressed by the wonderful Record Industry in the Netherlands. Essential.

When your roots have a broad geographical diversity, it’s very likely this will resonate in the music you make. This is certainly the case with Alma Negra and their new release on Heist. It seems they have embraced all their cultural influences more than ever in their new ‘Dakar Disco EP’. The whole record oozes class and musicality and feels like a carefree collage of the rich musical lives they live. The three originals on this EP vary in tempo and energy, giving you something for each moment of the day or night. They are accompanied by a remix from none other than the Japanese master of cosmic funk: Kuniyuki.

The EP kicks off with the title track ‘Dakar Disco’; an island style mid-tempo burner, rich with filtered guitars, bells and bleeps. Soothing chords and synth melodies are introduced for a lovely build up, but it’s the live horn section that takes centre stage. Here, the track really comes to full fruition, with a squeaky lead accompanying the horns for an electronic twist to what is above all a lovely summer jam.

‘Contra’ ups the pace and moves more into dance floor territory with loose claps, spacey pads and faraway chants. This track really gets to you with the live percussion and extremely catchy lead running throughout the track. This is afro house just the way we like it.

We’re very proud to have Kuniyuki remixing ‘Dakar disco’. This master of his craft has done an outstanding job with his cosmic take on ‘Dakar disco’. He lays down a great riff on bass guitar, while playing around with all the live elements and adds a serious bit of reverb for a stunning effect. This track is a perfect example of Kuniyuki’s musical skills and we can almost see him jamming this out, eyes closed and directed towards a distant point in space only he can see.

The EP’s closing track ‘Back in town’, is perhaps the clubbiest track of the set. A friendly acid line squeaks over tribal drums & chants and you immediately get pulled in by a great balafon hook. You can really hear how the guys feel at ease combining these worldly elements with modern electronics and ‘Back in town’ is a great example on how to blend these sonic worlds.

So there we are. A taste of the Alma Negra summer with a healthy dose of Japanese funk. Enjoy!

Yours sincerely,

Maarten & Lars

They say you can't judge a book by its cover, and going by 'Jazz Rock', nor a record by its title. Though entering into jazz territory and featuring some distorted guitar, 'Jazz Rock' is more a beautiful marriage of funky breakbeat drumming and spiritual jazz instrumentation, combined with traditional Min'y music performed on the koto and shakuhachi.

Originally released in 1973, the record sounds simultaneously vintage and contemporary. It is akin to something Madlib might dream up whilst lost in Japan collaborating with Min'y players at a recording session. The record features some amazing shakuhachi (bamboo flute) playing by Hozan Yamamoto, which gives the music a haunting, dreamlike atmosphere. You can almost visualise the long grass blowing in the wind, and ear the bamboo rustling in the distance on a long hot summer's day. Takeshi Inomata, Tadao Sawai and Kazue Sawai anchor the session. Takeshi's exceptionally funky-drum work will almost certainly get some producers dusting off and firing up their MPC's. Whilst Kazue and Tadao work their magic on the koto (a traditional string instrument). Though certainly not an ambient record, 'Jazz-Rock' has the same meditative, other-worldly quality that invites you to sit back, listen and be transported somewhere else. Unfortunately, until now the 'Jazz Rock' album is a scarcity that commanded a high price-tag only for the most hardened of record collectors. So it is pleasure to make it accessible to all, and we hope you dig this lost, obscure future classic as much as we do.

Active Life Worldwide is back serving up a Plat Du Jour of delectable dancefloor treats. Introducing the Various series with four uncut house gems that will make bodies simmer.

House and techno focussed FINA sister label FINA WHITE comes through with more direct dance floor grooves from Bodyjack, aka Chris Finke. The veteran artist serves up two killer tracks, one dub and four locked grooves that provide serious heat for DJs and dancers.

Before now, former DMC competitor Finke has established himself with his Bodytrax label in association with the Clone.nl crew, standout mixes for Radio 1 etc and EPs on the likes of UTTU, Hypercolour and DEXT, all while being a famous former resident of titanic techno party Atomic Jam and playing the world's finest clubs for years.

Arresting opener 'Measure Twice, Cut Once' is a big, buoyant techno monster with warped acid lines and raves vocal stabs all adding fuel to the fire. The locked grooves serve up scintillating breakbeats that are hugely powerful and ripe for abuse in the club, and then 'Enfant Terrible' is a dark and eerie warehouse monster. The bass is loud, the kicks rock solid and an echoing female vocal lost in the midst of it all draws you in deeper. Closing things out, the dub versions strip things back to gritty chords and heavy, well-swung kicks that make you march.

This is high class, high functioning techno from one of the finest in the game.

2017 release available again soon, first time through us, last copies. After numerous productions with Xatar, Haftbefehl, Plusmacher, Schwesta Ewa and many more, it was time for the solo debut of The Breed last year. The record entitled The Beauty & The Breed brought Westcoast Vibes into the German beat scene and provided the perfect soundtrack for the summer. Now the new album Sexbox follows up on this. The Breed brings the vibe for relaxed BBQ parties and sunny rides in a convertible. The inspiration for this continues to come from G-Funk and also the classic AON sound shines through again and again, but always stays up to date. The instrumentals are even more mature than on the predecessor and Breedy spins his movie logically further without repeating himself. But instead even more R'n'B influence, even more sex. No classic sample-flip-drum-ready loops, but rather songs that are repeatedly produced out of the box, which through the prominent use of talkbox, live instruments and vocal chops become more than just pure instrumentals. The Breed mixes all these ingredients in a well-considered and dosed way for the Sexbox Cocktail.
The powerful and bass-heavy produced beats make heads nod and spread a real feelgood vibe everywhere.
Matching the artwork Sexbox is released as pink coloured vinyl including a A2 poster for your living room and a mp3 download coupon.

Adeen Records 006 Introduces Bari born by way of Italy producer Nico Lahs. The South Italy producer delved deeper into his roots and returned using an array of vintage analog and digital hardwares, to give life in total freedom (as the name suggests) to his own sound and trademark.
The 2xLP album is the result of an unceasing and steadily research of one of the Italian music innovators, who doesn't just make house, but he's just as adept making hip-hop, downtempo, technoish and ethereal stuff deeply rooted into Chicago and Detroit history that starts with mellow atmospheres to then go up and down, skillfully juggling among samples, hardwares and artistry, showing his abilities with the sole purpose of calling out all the music heads, regardless of their taste, and unite 'em under one only message. Simply something for everyone!

New album of one of the biggest Reggae/Dub french soundsystem starring MacGyver, Rooty Step & Pupajim (who worked with Alpha Steppa, Biga Ranx, High Tone, Mungo's Hi-Fi ...).

Available as super limited edition including 60x60cm Poster !

Since their inception at start of the 2000s, Stand High Patrol have rocked sound systems to their own riddim, assimilating and re-purposing the codes of the genre in their own unique style. From tiny bars in Brittany to huge festival stages, on independent radio or across national airwaves, the crew have quietly trod their own path, never compromising their core value of independence. Connoisseurs have long recognised Stand High’s credentials both as a dub group and a leading sound system, but they stand out from the crowd because of their ability to deliver the unexpected, whether live or on record. Their ability to draw such a diverse audience is testament to this atypical approach to making music.

In 2020, almost 20 years since their humble beginnings, the collective presents their fifth album, “Our Own Way”. As with their first two albums “Midnight Walkers” and “Matter Of Scale”, now considered as classics in their genre, this new opus asserts itself as the latest representation of the crew’s versatile approach to crafting sound. Their music, a blend of its own known as “Dubadub”, has always borrowed influences from multiple sources, and over the course of their career their roots in dub and reggae have intertwined with hip-hop, jazz, new wave, trip-hop and numerous other genres. The ‘Dubadub Musketeers’ have never ceased experimenting, forever seeking to increase the sonic territory they cover, day after day. Both live and recorded, they’ve made it a point of honour to never offer up the same thing twice. Any resemblance that “Our Own Way” might bear to those first two albums is a consequence of this obvious creative continuity, rather than of going “back to basics”.

In contrast to the last two Stand High Patrol records, the hip-hop inspired “The Shift”, or the Bristol indebted “Summer On Mars”, “Our Own Way” doesn’t have a unifying concept or theme. Rather than being limited to a single aesthetic, the LP pays respect to the entire canon of Jamaican music, all unified under Stand High’s inimitable production values. With the wealth of experience gained during the recording of their last two records, the collective decided to aim for a freer project, letting themselves be guided by their own music and their own instincts. The end result is a musical portrait of what Stand High Patrol is in the present moment.

The tracks that make up the new LP burst out of the studio, each born out of unbridled, impulsive creativity. Previously unheard compositions and specially re-tooled dub plates have been assembled into a tracklist that shifts and moves like a classic Dubadub Musketeer live set. Each step of the process has been refined by years of practice : composition, effects, and the final mix. Throughout “On Our Way”, the brutal dub stepper, though still a favourite for sound system sessions, is noticeable by its absence. Instead, it’s the full weight of the crew’s reggae heritage that’s expressed in the mix. It's not just the depth and weight of each tune that strikes the listener, but also the spaces heard between the notes that grab and hold their attention.. The sense of a trip, whether musical, internal or geographic, is omnipresent throughout the LP, linking each track to those before and after. “Our Own Way” finds Stand High Patrol exploring as usual, yet also narrating their journey as they’ve rarely done before

Four intergalactic cuts from Natasha Kitty Katt on Ghetto Disco Records.

Kosmic Oscillations

A deeper Kosmic vibe from Natasha, Kosmic Oscillations puts your head in space. Designed to transcend the dancefloor and take your mind on a Kosmic trip.

Larry’s Code

Paying homage to the one and only, Larry Levan, this dancefloor number is guaranteed to set floors alight. With heavy synth use and a funky bassline, this is one to make you move.

Up There?

An upbeat number centered around the idea of UFOs and glitterballs. A feel-good mover that’s out of this world.

Katt Nip

This bizarre, yet wonderful Italo trip has everything from cat sounds to a thumping bassline. Perfect for the dancefloor, this number is sure to turn a few heads and move feet.

When Bandcamp announced that they will be holding a special fundraiser on June 19th „that is specifically focused on racial justice, equality, and that they will donate their „share of revenues that day to the NAACP Legal Defence Fund“, we thought to put out a special sampler that contributes to that cause. All profits of the sales of „Music for the NAACP“ will go exactly there. Due to the lack of time, it might seemed knocked together, but old and new friends, from near and far alike did their best, to set it up. So, special thanks to everyone involved: especially to Lopazz at Mixmastering, Heidelberg, Rand Muzik Leipzig and the SST cutting house in Frankfurt, who did their part to also make this available on a 2x12“ compilation (same destination for its profits). Thank you for listening, helping and donating.

Sincerely,

Gerd Janson

Ryan Lee West aka Rival Consoles announces details of his highly anticipated new album Articulation, released on Erased Tapes on 31 July 2020.
‘Articulation’, the lead track and album centrepiece, links the record back to the analogue fluidity and colour of 2016’s Night Melody. The division of varying time signatures, intertwined with a complex structure of notes, creates an expression of a moving structure and conjures a dreamy motorik energy. Ryan Lee West explains, "The title track is about articulation and playfulness with shape and time. Its structure is very machine-like, but I was really interested in how melody and sense of story could develop out of this, and it became an exploration of mathematical structures - patterns and shapes having a conversation. I love that something on paper can appear rigid and calculated, but then take on new meaning based on the context that surrounds it, or how it changes over time."
Articulation (which follows 2018’s Persona) was conceived with a very visual way of thinking, unusual for the London musician and producer. During the writing process Ryan drew structures, shapes and patterns by hand to try and find new ways of thinking about music, giving himself a way to problem-solve away from the computer. The album title references a piece by the avant-garde contemporary composer Györgi Ligeti, though not for its music, but for the non-traditional graphic score that accompanied it.
“I find electronic music is often battling to say something with integrity because technology and production can easily get in the way. I think the goal of a lot of electronic composers is to find a balance between the vision of the idea and the power of possibilities on the computer. With a pen and paper sketch you can compose and rethink ideas without technology getting in the way, so for me it acts as a very helpful tool to refresh the process.” - Ryan Lee West
The idea of using analogue drawings and tools to bolster digital creations can be heard in the structure of the pieces that make up Articulation from the broody techno opener ‘Vibrations on a String’ all the way to the album’s boundless closer ‘Sudden Awareness of Now’. While the anthemic rise and fall of ‘Still Here’ and the beatless ambient meditation ‘Melodica’ evoke a certain nostalgia, ‘Forwardism’ achieves the very opposite by burying its melody within the fast-paced rhythm of its pulsating synths.
Rising out of birdsong heard from his studio window, ‘Sudden Awareness of Now’ has a particular urgency about it and seems to perfectly capture a longing for escape. Built around a simple and repetitive melodic theme, expanding and retracting over the course of its seven-minute odyssey, Lee West explains; “I like the fact that if you say something over and over again in music, then over time it can become something else, something reflective.”
Since the release of Persona, Ryan Lee West has taken his captivating live A/V set to all corners of the world. Last seen live on stage with 17 players of the London Contemporary Orchestra for a sold-out orchestral performance at Southbank Centre’s Queen Elizabeth Hall in January 2020.
Meanwhile Lee West has kept busy. After contributing an exclusive track titled ‘Them Is Us’ to Adult Swim’s coveted Singles series, he recently shared the beautifully textured solo piano piece Winter’s Lament on this year’s Piano Day. He has also been in high demand as a composer, scoring Charlie Brooker’s much talked about Black Mirror episode Striking Vipers, composing original music for Secret Cinema presents Stranger Things as well as renowned choreographer Alexander’s Whitley’s groundbreaking new work Overflow which was set to premiere at London’s Sadler’s Wells Theatre this spring.
Articulation will be available worldwide on 31 July, with live activities to be announced as soon as the situation allows safe event planning

Four years after launching his last EP, Lugo-based artist, Synth Alien, makes a comeback to lead the fourth release of Noise To Meet You. Six Electro tracks, under the wings of a 100% hardware set up that has allowed his sound to reach a step up.

• Widely and rightly regarded as one of the best ever soul and funk bands, the now legendary Average White Band tore-up the rule book
and conquered the US, UK & International charts with a series of soul and disco hits between 1974 and 1980.
• AWB’s repertoire has been a source of inspiration and influence for many R&B acts and they are one of the most sampled bands in
history, remaining relevant today, continuing to reach new generations of younger audiences.
• Snoop Dogg, Fatboy Slim, Ice Cube, Puff Daddy, TLC, Rick Ross, will.i.am and Mark Ronson amongst countless others, have all borrowed
sections of their grooves.
• After the success of 1979’s ‘Feel No Fret’, the band went into the studio record their next album and in 1980, ‘Shine’ was released with
the worldwide Chart and Club hit ‘Let’s Go ‘Round Again’, reaching #14 in the UK Albums Chart. However, there was a back-story
behind the album’s release, which Alan Gorrie and Hamish Stuart have annotated in the LP notes.
• To celebrate the 40th Anniversary of ‘Shine’, AWB (past and present) have reconfigured the album as they had originally intended,
bringing in the four tracks that they had to ‘leave’ behind when they changed record labels. In addition, due to separate behind the
scenes situations, two further tracks were unable to be included on the album and remained unreleased until this century.
• ‘On The Strip – The Sunset Sessions’ is what ‘Shine’ could have been; a slightly longer 2LP set, heralding in the new decade.
• The album includes the singles ‘Let’s Go ‘Round Again’ and ‘For You, For Love’, as well as ‘Whatcha’ Gonna Do For Me’, which later
become synonymous with Chaka Khan, who recorded it the following year, having sung on an early-take for AWB, when they were
recording the album. ‘Miss Sun’ makes it long-awaited inclusion on the album for which it had been recorded until fate dealt another
hand, with permission being withheld then appearing as the lead track on Boz Scaggs’ ‘Hits’ LP; reaching #14 on the Billboard Hot 100.
• 40 years on, Average White Band still ‘shine’ brightly and remain highly influential for today’s groove-merchants and EDM DJs.

Big Crown Records is proud to present Adult Themes, the latest full length offering from El Michels Affair. This album takes the band's "Cinematic Soul" aesthetic literally and sends the listener on a journey through a whirlwind of moods and energies. With their 2005 debut album Sounding Out The City, EMA spearheaded an instrumental funk / soul movement that inspired a slew of bands and even lead to the creation of a few independent record labels. El Michels has since lent his signature sound to artists from Adele to Dr John, Lana Del Rey to Aloe Blacc, and a who's who list of others. In 2016 he co-founded Big Crown Records and has since produced the lion's share of its output. A short stint as the touring band for Wu Tang Clan in 2007 led to the cult classics Enter The 37th Chamber (2009) and Return To The 37th Chamber (2017). Adult Themes marks the long awaited, highly anticipated return to an album of original compositions from El Michels Affair. In 2017 in between producing, playing, and recording on other artists' records Leon Michels began creating compilations of short interludes intended to be sampled by hip hop producers. Some of these wound up becoming songs by Jay Z & Beyonce, Travis Scott, and Don Toliver. These minute-long snippets were inspired by the dense moody work of `60s composers like David Axelrod, and Francois de Roubaix, as well as Moondog's brand of classical jazz. Michels was having so much fun creating these instrumental / orchestral nuggets that he decided to expand on some of the ideas and create what would become the soundtrack for a movie that has yet to be made, an imaginary film entitled "Adult Themes." The album plays like the colors on an artists pallet. Songs like "Rubix" and "Villa" are densely orchestrated with the hard-hitting drums that El Michels Affair is known for. On "Life of Pablo", Leon's son makes his first appearance on record and intros a song with an epic arrangement and a moving mood. "Hipps" is a drum heavy ballad that could've easily fit on EMA's debut record, Sounding Out the City. Other compositions like "The Difference" and "Kill The Lights" are bare, melodic mood pieces with sparse drums and sophisticated chord movement. All of these tunes come together to make perfect backgrounds for dialogue and action. One of the beautiful things about instrumental music is that the listener can decide what the narrative is. With Adult Themes El Michels Affair has created a "choose your own adventure" in musical form.

If you are passionate about local music scenes as much as we are you might already know about the current brood of great bands going on in Cardiff, Wales.
Chain Of Flowers were the first to hail from the Welsh capital, followed by related side projects such as Night Thoughts, more recently came Private World of which the two boys we’re about to introduce are also live members of.
A new wave/synth act from the same city called Plastic Estate is emerging this year.

The duo composed by Nicholas James and Stanley Fouracres have released a few digital singles in 2019 as they’ve opened for The Murder Capital at Sŵn Festival and played alongside the likes of M!R!M, Josiah Konder and The Love Coffin. This Place is their first physical release and it’s due on 7-inch vinyl and digital on June 19.

On the two songs that compose the single, Plastic Estate clearly draw influence from the best UK new wave and pop artists such as Dave Gahan, Paddy McAloon, Roddy Frame and yet there is a sophisticated casualness and an innate freshness in their songwriting that makes them not sounding dated at all.
Amazing composition skills for such a young band and a perfect balance between electronic dance elements and acoustic instruments allow them to pay homage to the above-mentioned masters and to be a perfectly contemporary group at once.

Although it’s possible to pick out some darker lyrics, the overall feel is up-beat and breezy. It’s a contrast that runs through a lot of their music – like a dichotomy between dark, melancholia and happier, brighter feelings.
Whether it’s a happy pop synth riff mixed with sombre lyrics or vice versa, the young Welsh duo is delivering the best 80’s-inspired modern pop craft.
RIYL: Echo & The Bunnymen, Prefab Sprout, Depeche Mode, Orange Juice, Wild Nothing.

Shanti Celeste is a vibe. She’s got that magic lightness of touch even when things are getting Jacques Cousteau deep or panel beating heavy. This makes her the perfect candidate for the Sound of Love International 3, channelling the spirit of both those after-hours sessions and the more frivolous daytime boat parties. This is serious music for serious music heads but, after all, everyone is still on holiday. It’s linear and cohesive but plays with the emotions -carnivalesque fun, psychedelic flow-states, heads-down rhythm trax, playful skipping garage, and more abstract moments. Deep joy to deep space and back, often in the space of 3 or 4 well-selected records.

There’s a deep musical and personal connection to the festival - as she says of her first time playing at the Beach Bar, “there’s a heavy Bristol crew there and it all feels easy and nice. It was just good
vibes all round”. And she does make it sound easy too, which belies a DJ with some very serious skills and an ear for a killer tune that others might well overlook. And it’s this that makes the 3rd instalment of the Sound of Love International such a joy - a welcome panacea to all of us suffering from the Croatian blues this year.

To which end, we get a cheeky exclusive collaboration between Shanti and her sister-in-arms Saoirse in the shape of ‘Solid Mass’. Persian’s uniquely British paean to the post-rave Sunrise ‘Morning Sun’, cavernous dub runnings outta the Bokeh camp from Seekers International. These are the lift- off tunes, setting the mind-state for the journey ahead.

Things tighten up with cult underground hero Lucas Rodenbush under his E.B.E alias giving us the taught, grooving, dubby tech-house and Gideon Jackson’s ‘Taj Mahal’, crisp, spatial, mystical and criminally slept-on. We go deeper into the night with Perpetual’s Awakenings’, one of those records that is so much more than the sum of its parts. And who knew that Mark Seven was such a dab hand with the dank machine funk? Check 1998’s ‘Crank’ for the skinny. By the time Paco Pack’s rubberised ghetto house reimagining bounces into play it’s GAME OVER.

The final side leaves us with the soft landing - Cari Lekebusch ‘Output 2’ is both pacey and drifting and Pauline Anna Strom’s ‘In-Flight Suspension’ does what it says, whips away the drums and leaves us floating in space. Will we ever touch down?

To overuse a phrase, this compilation arrives in strange times but is a glorious reminder of what brought us all together and will again. The music and dancing under the stars. See you in 2021.

The next release in the Phonica Special Edition series comes from Ukrainian duo Asyncronous who first came to our attention after hearing their critically acclaimed debut on Berlin label Slow Life, 'The Art of Fighting In A Dream'.
A Phonica favourite, it provided the soundtrack to many days in the shop throughout the year, culminating in its inclusion in our top ten Best Singles of 2019!

The Phonica Special Edition series is focused on one-off projects, special remixes or collaborations, highlighting music that is slightly left of the dance floor and pairing it with unique artwork.
This time featuring a beautiful piece by celebrated Ukrainian artist, Mykyta Storozhkov.
The pair initially joined forces in an effort to explore human imagination and life experiences through music, focussing on creating feelings and atmosphere rather than be constrained by genre limitations. The result on this EP is a hazy cosmic trip through their universe of synth swells, deep sub bass and meticulous percussion.

The journey begins on 'Padma Kirtanam' with a constant drone providing the backbone to a building tension scattered with drums. The tension releases and makes way for A2 'Shinkansen', a beautiful track with minimal drums and dubbed out synths which echo around the listener's ear. Closing the A side 'Volta' continues this aesthetic but adds a 4x4 kick drum upping the groove to a cosmic deep house jam.

'Avalanche' kicks off the B side of the record with a syncopated bass line and skitterish hi hats. The energy is at its highest level here and only stops to make way for the next track 'Blocks of Despair'. The tempo drops and drum hits reverberate above stretched out bass notes creating arguably the most heartfelt tune of the release.
The EP ends with 'Midnight Sun' an ambient excursion that invites you to drift off with Asyncronous into outer space.

Today we have many opportunities to discover the world and travel through it without leaving your own room. In the age of globalisation, with the help of knowledge, technology and imagination, you can instantly teleport yourself to mystical temples of India or see the sun above the polar desert at midnight. No more borders - we are connected like never before, as if we are not at different ends of the globe, but on a single and indivisible continent that is not mapped but exists in a plexus of global events, information flows and digital environment.
This is our common home. Our new Pangaea.

This superb LP is widely regarded as one of the finest rock recordings ever to have emerged from Wales. Touching on pop, prog, glam rock and even country, it’s varied and expertly played but sank without trace upon its original release in early 1974. It makes a welcome return to vinyl here, together with an insert containing numerous rare images.

Mint Condition continue their mission excavating the outer fringes of classic House and Techno. Unreleased mixes, classics and overlooked gems mined from the last 20+ of contemporary dance music are the order of the day. From Chicago, Detroit and New York to London and beyond, Mint Condition have got their expert digging hats on to bring you exclusive heat and those rarer than rare jams that have been on your wants list for years! Dig in....

Back to 1994 and Charles Webster's lesser used Together Trax alias brings us 4 tracks of that deep, soulful and slamming garage house sound. Released on UR's much celebrated Happy Soul sub-label, famed for its gospel soaked, piano driven uplifting jams, Together Trax serves it up in fine style. Strange for UR to sign 4 cuts from a guy from Derbyshire, but once you hear both sets of mixes of 'Celebrate / Ain't Nothin' Wrong' it all makes sense! Both tracks could have come from the deepest, darkest basement session in downtown Detroit no problem, and it's obvious why Mad Mike signed them. This is old-school house, for the connoisseur who remembers how it used to be, way back. When dance music was fun and put a smile on your fave. Often a rare catch, this 12" fetches tidy sums in the netherworld of Discogs and the like, but now it's here again, lovingly restored and ready to make its way into your record bag once again.

Together Trax has been legitimately re-released with the full involvement of Charles Webster and was remastered by London's Curve Pusher from the original DAT's especially for Mint Condition. 100% legit, licensed and released. Dug, remastered, repackaged and brought to you by the caring folks at your favourite reissue label - Mint Condition!

Djebali and Jorge Savoretti combine to deliver their ‘Fraires’ EP on Infuse, accompanied by a remix from Stephan Bazbaz.

Two producers at the heart of today’s modern house and minimal scenes, Paris favourite Djebali and Argentinian DJ and producer Jorge Savoretti have grown to become two of the most consistent and impressive talents active within the scene today. With over thirty years of experience between them, releasing material via the likes of Freak’n’Chic, Raum…musik and Cadenza plus Djebali’s own self-titled imprint, the pairing now turn their attention to new ground as they make their collaborative debut on FUSE sister imprint Infuse this summer, offering up three fresh productions via their ‘Fraires’ EP alongside a remix from Tel Aviv’s Stephan Bazbaz.

The slow-blooming and hypnotic sonics of ‘101’ open the EP in style as the two talents merge sweeping synth lines atop of warped electronics and slick percussion shots, whilst Stephan Bazbaz’s remix ups the tempo and builds on the original with a combination of energetic builds and icy hats. On the flip, ‘Pigalle’ delves into a deep journey guided by a resonant lead line and hazy background murmurs, before closing with the classy ‘Devote Ville’ – a smooth and well measured production which oozes sophistication and quality from the opening minute.

Having re-launched the Secretsundaze label last summer with their 'Stand Up' EP, the Secretsundaze production team make a marked return with the aptly titled 'Devious' EP. This follows on from a bunch of releases on the label from Silvestre, Carista, Eliphino and Joe Claussell.Secretsundaze also recently started a new re-edit series 'Secretsundaze Edits' with a contribution from themselves and Ge-ology topping Juno's Bestsellers charts (no.1 All Genres) for a good stint of February, gaining love from the likes of Gilles Petterson, Mary Anne Hobbs & Antal along the way. The pair have also recently released on esteemed labels such as Live at Robert Johnson, Phonica and Mule Musiq.

Belgian techno wizard Cri Du Coeur is back with a new 2-part vinyl release on his label Arkham Audio titled 'Erickson' & 'Erickson on Acid', which features remixes exclusively from French artists. Jerome D., the man behind the Cri Du Coeur alias, is prized in the industry for giving platforms to Belgian and French artists throughout his career, so it comes as no surprise that he is showing his francophile roots by having a solely French lineup for the remixes on this release. Following the recent release of his EPs 'Diaphragm' and 'Warning', and now bringing us the inebriating 'Erickson' & 'Erickson on Acid', Cri Du Coeur has established that his new alias and freshly-founded but tenacious Arkham Audio label are a force to be reckoned with. The entrancing yet adrenalizing sound that he has adopted shows that his approach to industrial electronic music knows no boundaries or compromises.

The first part of this release features the original mix of 'Erickson' by Cri Du Coeur and remixes of the track by Electric Rescue, Wex 10 , and Trunkline. The second part 'Erickson on Acid' puts a squelching acid twist on things and features remixes by Roman Poncet, Umwelt, and Zadig.

The original mix of 'Erickson' leads with a strong beat and a mixture of industrial sounds that makes for a sublime dark dancefloor track. Electric Rescue follows on with a remix that engages the listener with a terrorising yet intoxicating heavy baseline. Next up is Wex 10 who enchants us with a bouncy laserbeam rhythm and muffled looping vocals. Last but not least on the 'Erickson' lineup is Trunkline's remix which delivers an addictive hazy melody and a deep and dirty mechanical synth horn.

Cri Du Coeur plays with tensions in 'Erickson (on Acid)', putting the listener into a state of hypnosis with squelching sounds that give the song a raunchy character. We are implored to dance as Roman Poncet's remix bears layers of lively percussion beats with twangy synth melodies. The mood intensifies once more as Umwelt's remix features a dark and fuzzy baseline that contrasts with a screeching siren sound creating an ultimate thrilling experience for the listener. Zadig closes off this immense concoction of remixes with a relentless distorted base and scintillating machinelike background noises.

Cri Du Coeur has outdone himself by bringing together such a well-suited selection of artists to create a visceral and magnetizing collection of tracks that showcases his competence in making industrial techno.

Belgian techno wizard Cri Du Coeur is back with a new 2-part vinyl release on his label Arkham Audio titled 'Erickson' & 'Erickson on Acid', which features remixes exclusively from French artists. Jerome D., the man behind the Cri Du Coeur alias, is prized in the industry for giving platforms to Belgian and French artists throughout his career, so it comes as no surprise that he is showing his francophile roots by having a solely French lineup for the remixes on this release. Following the recent release of his EPs 'Diaphragm' and 'Warning', and now bringing us the inebriating 'Erickson' & 'Erickson on Acid', Cri Du Coeur has established that his new alias and freshly-founded but tenacious Arkham Audio label are a force to be reckoned with. The entrancing yet adrenalizing sound that he has adopted shows that his approach to industrial electronic music knows no boundaries or compromises.

The first part of this release features the original mix of 'Erickson' by Cri Du Coeur and remixes of the track by Electric Rescue, Wex 10 , and Trunkline. The second part 'Erickson on Acid' puts a squelching acid twist on things and features remixes by Roman Poncet, Umwelt, and Zadig.

The original mix of 'Erickson' leads with a strong beat and a mixture of industrial sounds that makes for a sublime dark dancefloor track. Electric Rescue follows on with a remix that engages the listener with a terrorising yet intoxicating heavy baseline. Next up is Wex 10 who enchants us with a bouncy laserbeam rhythm and muffled looping vocals. Last but not least on the 'Erickson' lineup is Trunkline's remix which delivers an addictive hazy melody and a deep and dirty mechanical synth horn.

Cri Du Coeur plays with tensions in 'Erickson (on Acid)', putting the listener into a state of hypnosis with squelching sounds that give the song a raunchy character. We are implored to dance as Roman Poncet's remix bears layers of lively percussion beats with twangy synth melodies. The mood intensifies once more as Umwelt's remix features a dark and fuzzy baseline that contrasts with a screeching siren sound creating an ultimate thrilling experience for the listener. Zadig closes off this immense concoction of remixes with a relentless distorted base and scintillating machinelike background noises.

Cri Du Coeur has outdone himself by bringing together such a well-suited selection of artists to create a visceral and magnetizing collection of tracks that showcases his competence in making industrial techno

Black Truffle is pleased to announce a new solo album by Eiko Ishibashi, her first for the label, following on from the duo recording Ichida alongside bassist Darin Gray. Hyakki Yagyō (Night Parade of One Hundred Demons) was produced for the ‘Japan Supernatural’ exhibition at The Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney focusing on ghost stories and folklore from the Edo period onwards. As with The Dream My Bones Dream (Drag City, 2018), the album is a response to troubling questions about Japanese history, and the influence of the past upon the present, but finds Ishibashi shifting further away from her earlier piano-led songwriting and showing a deepening interest in electronics and audio collaging.

The two sidelong parts of Hyakki Yagyō feature layered synthesisers, acoustic instrumentation, recited verse and field recordings, at times densely mixed but always with a subtle interplay of changing elements. The influence of European and American forerunners as diverse as Alvin Curran, David Behrman and Strafe Für Rebellion can be traced, yet at the same time Ishibashi evokes the flute and string sounds associated with Japanese storytelling, and draws directly on the subversive literary tradition of Kyoka (‘mad poetry’) with a verse by the 15th-century poet Ikkyū Sōjun repeated throughout the album. Revisiting what has gone before, re-thinking what is possible musically, as a way of articulating what else might be possible in the future.

As Ishibashi’s liner notes make clear, the album reflects an attention to persistent dangers, myths and evasions in Japanese culture – as well as the lurking uncertainties that might threaten positive change. This would seem to be manifested in the emerging melodies soon met by dissonance, erratic collisions and near silence, as well as the eerie manipulation of the double-tracked vocals. Ishibashi’s underlying concerns ring true more widely of course. Hyakki Yagyō is a work of multiplicities, and mystery, a landscape where nothing is as it seems at first, and everything is vulnerable to sudden violent interruptions.

The album was produced with regular collaborators Jim O’Rourke (double bass) and Joe Talia (percussion), and features dancer and choreographer Ryuichi Fujimura performing Ikkyū’s satirical tanka. O’Rourke’s immersive mix creates a three-dimensional effect, with Ishibashi’s various sound sources enmeshing and interacting in captivating ways.

Pressed on coloured vinyl and presented in a deluxe package with an inner sleeve featuring and artist portrait and liner notes from Eiko Ishibashi. Cover and label design by Shuhei Abe.
Back cover design by Lasse Marhaug. Mixed and mastered by Jim O’Rourke.

key selling points:

- Black Truffle is pleased to announce a new solo album by Eiko Ishibashi, her first since her acclaimed 2018 Drag City release The Dream My Bones Dream.

- This album finds Ishibashi shifting further away from her earlier piano-led songwriting and showing a deepening interest in electronics and audio collaging.

- Hyakki Yagyō (Night Parade of One Hundred Demons) was produced for the ‘Japan Supernatural’ exhibition at The Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney focusing on ghost stories and folklore from the Edo period onwards and is a response to troubling questions about Japanese history, and the influence of the past upon the present.

- Produced with regular collaborators Jim O’Rourke (double bass) and Joe Talia (percussion), O’Rourke’s immersive mix creates a three-dimensional effect, with Ishibashi’s various sound sources enmeshing and interacting in captivating ways.

- The two sidelong parts of Hyakki Yagyō feature layered synthesisers, acoustic instrumentation, recited verse and field recordings, at times densely mixed but always with a subtle interplay of changing elements, hinting at an influence of European and American forerunners as diverse as Alvin Curran, David Behrman and Strafe Für Rebellion.

- Pressed on coloured vinyl and presented in a deluxe package with an inner sleeve featuring an artist portrait and liner notes from Eiko Ishibashi. Mixed and mastered by Jim O’Rourke.

With the sole exception of Louis Armstrong, Nat "King" Cole was one of therare black artists to enjoy such celebrity in the Forties and Fifties. He began his career as a pianist, forming a trio in 1937 with guitarist Oscar Moore and bassist Wesley Prince, but he was so successful as a singer that he went on to make many recordings as a vocalist.

Capitol, his record label, was quick to capitalize on Nat Cole's velvet tones. The hits came one after another: Straighten Up and Fly Right (1943) sold a million copies, and Nature Boy (1948) and Mona Lisa (1950) sold over three 3 million each. Some of his other (numerous) popular hits can be found on Side B.

Nat Cole's popular songs, however — some were so sentimental they were even slushy — should never conceal his talents as a pianist and musician, which he displayed with the best jazz orchestras around (Side A), his own trio (Side C) or in outings with Latin rhythms (Side D).

His fame earned him his own NBC television show in 1956, while Presidents Truman andKennedy would consult Nat on complex racial issues. He also appeared in some fifty films, and continued to record profusely (at least a hundred of his titles entered the sales charts). Nat "King" Cole deserved his title: not only did he sell over fifty million albums, but he also belongs to those artists who wrote jazz history.

Futuro de Hierro, hailing from Barcelona, is the project by one of the Màgia Roja label/club/community collaborators… mostly known for this work with Dame Area but his solo project Futuro de Hierro is equally (or more?) interesting… the loud repetitive broken beats, noises and powerful delivered Spanish vocals make up for a punk influenced industrial techno sound which borders rhythmic noise at times… like something in between Liaisons Dangereuses, Esplendor Geométrico and Sonar…

This is an uncompromising EP filled with harsh tracks that still work for the dance floor… especially for those fed up with hearing the same beat over and over and over again…

Time for some magic as longtime friends Guti and Djebali present their debut collaborative LP ‘Almost Finished’. The two artists decided to get together in Djebali’s Paris studio when Guti was in the French capital in April. With no real plan besides the chance to have a jam together they ended up locked into a four-day session, producing six tracks. In the months that followed, both men roadtested the music around the world, receiving positive feedback everywhere they played. Feeling they’d created something special, the decision was made to arrange a second session at the end of the summer.They found themselves fully immersed in another intensive recording session, where the idea was to make more music based on the existing tracks to create a cohesive body of work that would form an album. Guti and Djebali composed an intro, an outro, interludes and new tracks that complemented those they’d made earlier in the year. Artwork has been specially commissioned from Mister Piro, a protégé of world-famous Madrid-based artist Okuda. The result is a dancefloor-focused collection of 8 tracks (plus a digital bonus) and stunning artwork, which comprise the ‘Almost’ Finished LP

Night Gaunt Recordings is pleased to announce “Ambitions of Guilt”, the newest offering from Brighton, UK based producer L/F/D/M. L/F/D/M is Richard Smith who first emerged in 2013 and has been steadily cranking out the hits ever since. Following his stellar release on Cititrax titled “Dream Bleeds”, Richard Smith is back with a new batch of misshapen heaters. A master of blending fucked up rhythms with chiseled body music that’s both danceable yet also makes you question humanity. Every track crafted to hit deep in the bowels of any warehouse, “Ambitions of Guilt” seeps with acid, techno, noise, and anything in between. With sleazy dance hitters that bring to mind midwest acid/techno, such as Gene Hunt, and also taking from British and Japanese industrialists by the likes early Richard H. Kirk and Sympathy Nervous, Smith creates a feeling that’s both familiar yet still wildly unnerving. L/F/D/M consistently seems to know how to explore emotions in this sphere of cold, repetitive machines, creating an exciting soundtrack to a contorted world.

Brigitte Barbu's Muzak pour ascenseurs en panne (Muzak for broken lifts) marked a bold new addition to the Circus Company repertoire. In a gilded haze of resonant tones conjured by traditional and non-traditional methods, Brigitte Barbu created an inviting sound world brimming with life and doffing its cap to 1970s signal processing. Out of such sonic research and development comes a wealth of material for other artists to sink their teeth into, and so we proudly present an accompanying remix EP that takes Brigitte Barbu's distinctive stamp into new territory.

Roman Flügel makes a first appearance Circus Company with two versions of "Dae-Boj DeMoya" that showcase this constantly versatile lynchpin of European techno. First up is his "kraut remix", which unsurprisingly channels the grainy beauty of Neu! and early Kraftwerk, before his "synth remix" dials back the drums and diverts our attention towards an expansive arrangement of melodious flourishes from classic synthesisers.

John Tejada and Reggie Watts reunite as Wajatta following their triumphant LP Don't Let Get You Down on Brainfeeder to deliver a particularly inventive, soul-stirring vocal techno version of "Couvre chef en peau de taupe". Watts soars over the signature warmth of Tejada's production, while Brigitte Barbu's mysterious tones linger in every fold of the mix.

Matthew Herbert offers up a "Butter Dub" version of the album interlude serie "Trou Vert" that pits his signature stark sampling methods against Brigitte Barbu's material and creates a fruitful dialogue of crooked 4/4 mechanics with all the playful curiosity of the original and a strong dose of Herbert's inimitable musical personality.

What is Randolph & Mortimer? A folk duo, a pair of accountants, a techno act…a law firm? What started off as an ‘art project’, influenced by 80s Industrial, 90s rave music and inspired by the documentaries of Adam Curtis, has morphed into a full on New Beat / Body Music dance-floor moving machine. Their studio releases have gained support from some of the biggest underground DJ’s in the world like Ancient Methods and gone on to top various genre sales charts on Bandcamp. Whilst the R&M live shows have seen them share bills with Godflesh, Youth Code, PIG and 3Teeth.

In 2019 it was time for R&M to throw a marker down and so came “Manifesto For A Modern World”, the debut album comprised of tracks from the “$ocial £utures”, “Hope Tragedy Myths” and “Citizens” EP’s plus some additional songs. This album is basically a greatest hits of Randolph & Mortimer. A statement of intent. All killer and no filler. The original limited edition CDs and tapes sold out and it had some incredible reviews. A Model Of Control called it “An absolutely outstanding release” and super cool New York DJ Andi Harriman (Synthicide) made it one her of top 10 albums of 2019 on Post-Punk

So here we are in 2020 and the Randolph & Mortimer story has seriously stepped up a gear with this double vinyl version of the album featuring all Manifesto tracks plus the acid styled dance-floor favourite “Apply Yourself” and four brand new tracks (“Crystal Peaks”, “Stateless”, “What Are You?”, “Fantasy Land”) which make up a whole new EP.

Limited edition of 400 copies with folded poster/insert and sticker.

We are happy to welcome UK-based producer Native Cruise on Slam City Jams. The guy was on our radar since his releases on No Bad Days and Fruit Merchant that easily combined house music with new-age synths, a wave/EBM touch and balearic sounds.
His „Human Nature“ EP is no exception with five outstanding tracks that differ in tempo and vibe.
The opener „Crew Talk“ is a percussion heavy tune with lots of cowbells, a funky DX7 bass line, deep pads and dramatic chords that build up and up towards the end.
„Elsewhere" is the most housey track on this record, with four-to-the-floor 808s and bittersweet strings that burst out into euphoria. Closing down the A-side is „Fooled Again“, a balearic cut that feels like a day in the sun with it's little synth blips and arps.
On the flip we find the title track „Human Nature“ that might be the hidden jam on this EP. Hard hitting Linn Drums, digital synth bells and those haunting vocals we can’t get out of our heads. Finally we have „Not Long Now“ a perfectly atmospheric deep tune, that sits somewhere between ambient and reggaeton and will make fans of DJ Python more than happy.

Up next in the Omena remix series we got Dee Tree from Minsk and four sparkling and effortlessly soulful re-makes from FloFilz, Harry Wolfman, Saine and Lipski.
All bringing a beautiful and soulful touch to the bands soul-flecked originals.

Bari's based Dj/Producer, Innocent Soul, brings his Disco, Italo and House influenced sound to French label Happiness Therapy’s eight release. Having previously teamed up with Black Loops on a few acclaimed productions on labels such as Toy Tonics, Rough Limited and Defected’s sub-division Classic Music Company, his biggest impact has possibly been with his DJing. Having found success and notoriety as a resident in Barcelona’s club scene, Innocent Soul, makes a bigger name for himself as a producer with his latest release ‘Poison’.



Opening up is title track ‘Poison’ a throwback to the 80’s dance music with an italo touch, driving percussion and mesmeric synths. This track highlights the diversity of Innocent Soul’s production style. The following track is ‘Don’t Make It’ a heart pounding, trance inducing progressive disco track with a prominent foot stomping kick drum, looping Afro-Caribbean percussion, rolling bassline and spacey synths. Next up on the release is a heater, ‘Feelin’ Love’ is a raw soulful house track with an infectious rhythm that gets your head nodding from the get go, beautiful female vocals with bright and uplifting melodies. If you’re looking for a feel good track this is it! Closing out the EP is ‘Bring Your Mind’ a bumpin loop oriented house track with hypnotic basslines, horns and vocals. The perfect after hours track.

As a long-time admirer of his work, R&S/Apollo boss Renaat has signed up Italian craftsman Nuel for a stunning concept album that finds the artist becoming "my own imaginary band" after ten years of personal growth and exploration. Nuel has been revered in underground techno circles for many years. He is a meticulous sonic sculptor who has made some of the most meditative and hypnotic electronic grooves of the last decade on labels like Semantica, Kontra-Musik and Sublunar. He also put out cult classic and highly sought after album 'Trance Mutation', which found him playing all the sounds himself on a wide array of instruments. 'Fantasia' is physical, dance-able music but crafted from unfamiliar sound sources that make it as suited to a campfire gathering as an experimental club setting. It's expertly assembled and utterly unique.

Milton Wright's perfect deep Soul classic "Keep It Up" has always been a top shelf record, everything about it is almost flawless! Whether it's Milton's silky vocal delivery, the incessant guitar driven back beat or the total space Funk vibe of his omnipresent ARP-2600 synthesizer this record has it all. Originally released on TK Disco's more Soul and Funk orientated Alston label which was home to many legendary artists and records, this 1975 sunshine classic never fails to make people move. A classic rare groove indeed. "The Silence That You Keep" takes up side-B, a jazzy, flute driven love song that again features Milton's perfect voice and some fantastic arrangement. A real gem of a record, with the original 45 changing hands for over £100 a time in used condition.

This is the first time "Keep It Up" has been re-issued in it's original 45 rpm format with the original Alston label artwork. It's been re-mastered, re-pressed and made available again with the permission of TK Disco / Alston Records, Miami Florida, USA.

For their sophomore album, Chemical Reaction, Galaxians have stripped back the music and pumped up the vocals. Emma Mason's unstoppable voice elevates the group to a fully-formed musical act. This new LP is all about her voice.

Mason's powerhouse vocal on the West End Records-inspired Chemical Reaction beckons you onto the dancefloor. Jed Skinner's bright and breezy synth melodies allow the song to really breathe, whilst Sam Bell's front-and-centre conga groove (straight out of Double Exposure's My Love Is Free) and Matt Woodward's intricate rolls ramp up the track's energy and momentum. The shorter Mama Ghetto Vogue Edit is brought to life by Darren Pritchard, vogue dancer and mother of Manchester's House of Ghetto, who meets a neon wonderland in the electrifying video.

Elsewhere on the album, Heartbreaker champions female empowerment and personal freedom over a pounding boogie groove. It's a tight arrangement which drops into a delay-drenched Levanesque drum break before crescendoing back into a final chorus via one of Skinner's trademark JX-3P synth solos.

On the proto-house funk of Fight For Love, where Emma flexes her vocal chords to jaw-dropping effect, a failing relationship is thrust into the spotlight over a punchy Linn Drum groove. On the silky shuffle of after-hours jam Work It Out, which brings to mind the classic Sly & Robbie Compass Point productions, Emma croons about a lover, her voice cast in a softer, more subdued glow. Heat of the City sizzles with the essence of an urban summer, and is peppered with heart-stopping hand claps.

Third single Horizon sees the band in more reflective low-key mode, and could be their minor hit of the summer. There's some neat drum programming here, intertwined with Woodward's intricate fills and hi-hat playing.

On Not The Money, Mason's vocal shifts to a lower register in the mid-section, bringing to mind Grace Jones at her most commanding.

All in all it's a life-affirming experience, one born out of a sense of community and collaboration. Seven years on from their early explorations Chemical Reaction sees Galaxians retain sight of the principles that make their output, and dance music as a whole, so vital - commonality of experience, singular moments shared by a crowd, and rhythm as the best medicine.

Following January’s acclaimed vinyl debut from Exterior and summer’s much-loved Kota Motomura EP, Edinburgh’s Hobbes Music label ends 2019 with its first album release, also a debut, from GAMING, a fresh new braindance electronica project straight outta Glasgow, from producer and musician Alan Bryden.

GAMING is a new solo outing that brings together a lifelong love of music and technology and creating left field, rhythmic electronica. It’s the sound of IDM, nineties techno and mensch maschine computer music that is as spontaneous as it is programmed.

“Scenes From A Deserted City is a collection of tracks that started as a set of riffs, loops, rhythms and grooves and unfurled around a sense of growing unease about the future of the urban environment around me.
It’s an album that started out as sound…and ended up as a way of telling stories about the age of anxiety we live in, how our world is changing, and how we find a way through that.
This is DIY electronica from Glasgow – it was made on a growing collection of digital and analogue synths and FX units, including a bunch of modular racks, each with its own idiosyncrasies and character that belies the assumption of the binary.
The studio where it was recorded – an abandoned, and often very cold, school building reclaimed by the community some twenty years ago – offered up stories of resilience, even when all seems lost. (I’m not sure what the mice contributed but they definitely climbed in and out of some synths).
This album is ultimately about my changing relationship with Glasgow, a city I’ve lived in for more than 25 years. It’s about how I feel now about the increasing sense of urban decay and how the city can be a very isolating place. It’s about how I reflect on my younger creative self trying to find a direction but mainly feeling a sense of dislocation and not fitting in. And it’s about the questions I have about how that relationship is changing, how it will be forced to move forward.
The result is a soundtrack for walking home on your own, in that headphone bubble when it’s just you focusing on that music that makes sense to you alone. It’s for early in the morning, after the night before, or going to work with the memories of that slipping and sliding inside your head. It’s about how it feels to be both elated and lonely, to be lost in the familiar, despairingly hopeful.”
ALAN BRYDEN (Glasgow, August ‘19)

Across two 12" slabs come long buried vignettes, motorik experiments and sketches from deep within the SVN archives. A continuation from his previous EP of the same name (c. 2017), this latest collection's smoked-out ambience, skeletal stuttering rhythmic workouts and smudged stoned melodies are some of the myriad parts that make up this most mysterious 'Mechine'.

Recorded at the now infamous Neues Deutschland Studio in Berlin, this collection of tracks continues the unique sonic explorations that SVN is known for and has deftly showcased through various respected electronic outlets including Apollo, Acido, Sex Tags Mania and more. An essential collection of DIY and contemporary German electronics.

Startisha introduces Naeem as a restlessly creative artist with an impressionistic, genre-bending album. As a complete work, Startisha exemplifies artistic daring and emotional intelligence while exploring new ideas and sounds, and philosophically excavating the artist's histories. Startisha may be loaded with impressive collaborations and left-field sounds, but don't get it twisted_this music comes straight from Naeem's heart, representing the journey he's taken to get to this point as well as what lies in the future for him. Baltimore-hailing Naeem Juwan has spent much of the last decade stretching his creative legs in a variety of ways: he's hit the road with artists ranging from the Avalanches and Bon Iver to Big Red Machine and Mouse on Mars, took part in a 37d03d residency in Berlin, and was selected as the music resident in 2019 for New York's Pioneer Works space. Through it all, he's been building the songs that make up Startisha, a record a half-decade in the making that featured Juwan pulling from creative circles all across the U.S. to craft a truly unique document of sound. After studio sessions in Philadelphia and New York, Juwan decamped to Minneapolis and holed up in Justin Vernon's home studio, where Startisha continued to come together with contributions from Vernon, Ryan Olson (Gayngs, Polica), Swamp Dogg, Velvet Negroni, Francis and the Lights, and regular collaborators Amanda Blank and Micah James.

Big South West energy here as young Bristolians Litherland make their debut on new North Devon label with the dreamy, rolling, old school / new school breaks of ' Ida's World'.

'Keffala Breaks ' drops the tempo, adds some grit, and keeps drifting along, before up and coming Italian electro duo Hiver finish things up with a deep and streamlined version of Ida's World.

The latest project by belgo-moroccan producer Reda Senhaji, alias Cheb Runner, focuses on breeding a new style of music between electronics and Gnawa. Taking inspiration from New Beat to Techno, Acid House and Gabber, the grooves are relentless, stiff and club oriented, relying heavily on analog synths and drum-machines. The sound is darker, more experimental and mature than his previous Gan Gah project.

Cheb Runner digs into the acoustic sounds of his youth, for an organic feeling of warmth and celebration. The syncopation of the classic Gnawa percussions, the “Tagnawit”, its groove is undeniable. Featuring two traditional Gnawa singers based in Brussels, Mâalem Driss and Mâalem Hicham, the EP is a reunion for the belgian Gnawa scene, keeping the vibe alive.

In a world of dematerialized culture, we tend to forget where we come from : by putting Gnawa music at the center of his production, Cheb Runner creates a bridge with the past. The young producer is a son of Gnawa himself, this is the music he grew up with and played as a kid.
Now he brings it to the club scene; Cheb Runner’s first EP is experimental, brutal, innovative. Getting past definitions and genres, it opens new horizons for North-African producers, showing them how to use their roots to make new beats. It encourages both tradition and modernity in Music. In 2019, Gnawa music, dance and culture was added to the UNESCO Intangible Cultural
Heritage list, demonstrating both the relevance of the genre and the necessity to preserve it.
of the genre and the necessity to preserve it.

Cheb, the Arabic word for “young boy”, is traditionally used to describe the young generation of Raï singers – like Cheb Hasni, Cheb Mami or Cheb Khaled. It means the new generation is here, to create something new with something old. The reference to the Ridley Scott movie Blade Runner is just that: while the Cheb comes from the bled, a moroccan village in the Agadir region, the beats come from the club scene of an industrial city, like Berlin, Detroit or Molenbeek/Brussels.

Cheb Runner takes you on a trip through space and time, as well as to pass on ancient rhythms to inspire the next generations.

Belgian psychedelic jazz collective Compro Oro are pleased to announce a new collaboration with Murat Ertel, co-founder and frontman of Istanbul's cult psychedelic folk band BaBa ZuLa and his singer partner Esma Ertel. Entitled 'Simurg', the album is set for release on the 19th June via Sdban Ultra and follows Compro Oro's critically acclaimed sophomore album 'Suburban Exotica', released last year.

Compro Oro's introduction to Turkish psychedelics came off the back of a live performance between guitarist Bart Vervaeck and Murat Ertel at Istanbul Express in 2016. Connecting both musically and spiritually, they headed into the studio and under the watchful eye of producer and multi-instrumentalist Dijf Sanders, Compro Oro and Murat recorded several tracks during an intense recording session that would make up 'Simurg'. "The new music is entirely based on improvisation. In contrast to 'Suburban Exotica', which is built more from song structures and where there was more overdubs," explains frontman Wim Segers.

The story of Simurg is a story of attraction, existential research, purification and rebirth. In a mysterious search for fulfilment, millions of birds embark on a journey, crossing several valleys, each representing a human characteristic. While some yield to the attractions of love, ego or grow ignorant and faithless, others remain curious and continue their expedition. Slowly but surely this murmuration of birds thins out and a selection of 30 birds reach Mountain Kaf and the nest of the Simurg. There and then they become one, they are reborn and reincarnated in an almighty and omniscient phoenix.

The strength of Simurg as a result of its power to resurrect from its own ashes reflects the resilience of every human being. We all have the power to strengthen and improve ourselves, not in the least in our contact with others, and this is exactly what this project is about: a spontaneous dialogue, a quest for new musical horizons, a gathering of liberal spirits to reach for the unknown. From the Anatolian rhythms and reverb-smothered funk rock of 'Ben', to the mystical atmospherics of 'Ignorance Is Bliss (Valley Of Ignorance)' and the dark, dub-infused grooves of 'Valley Of Disbelief', 'Simurg' is an allegory about the noise that you can create as a person.

A collection of Jamaican doo wop & R&B records taken from the late 50s and early 60s. These records represent a period in which soundsystems were just starting to dominate the island, with Duke Reid and Sir Coxsone stepping up their rivalry by beginning to make and release their own records rather than rely on US imports for use in their dances. Many of these records are definitely more-or-less imitations of the American records, as the uniquely Jamaican ska sound was yet to take hold - however many of the future stars of ska, rocksteady and reggae were beginning to cut their teeth in the industry on these records, incl. Jimmy Cliff, Derrick Harriott, Alton Ellis and more, and they provide a unique view into the fledgling independent record industry culture in Jamaica that would prove to be unbelievably proflific and unparalleled for an island of it's size.

»Efia,« the sophomore album by Rosaceae, picks up where the Hamburg-based sound artist’s 2019 debut on Neoprimitive left off, further exploring the topics that had already informed »Nadia’s Es- cape«. From its confrontative front cover to the eight tracks on the album, »Efia« is fully dedicated to the motif of resistance, but does not exhaust itself in polemics. Rather, it masterfully translates the complexities of its underlying central themes into a visceral narrative.
»Efia« was originally conceived as a commissioned work for the 2019 edition of Hamburg’s Noise- xistance festival and departed from a sentence uttered in the British 1980s TV show »Sapphire & Steel« which inspired cultural theorist Mark Fisher in his analysis of what he had coined »hauntolo-gy,« a term originally coined by the Algerian-French philosopher Jacques Derrida in the early 1990s: »There is no time here, not anymore.«
The album again showcases Rosaceae’s knack for combining abstract experimental sound art with a form of storytelling that had already been at the centre of »Nadia’s Escape« and which relies on both verbal and musical means of giving a voice to the voiceless. The disembodied voice of - amongst others - Jesseline Preach and manipulated vocal samples blend in with dense soundscapes, elements of Neue Musik and occasional pure harsh noise. It’s a mix that deliberately puts different artistic tradi-tions into a dialogue with each other: the hallmarks of European salon culture are con- fronted with Kurdish wedding music and the unnerving loop of someone demanding a »Zugabe« (»encore«).
Thus, »Efia« not only blurs the lines between cultural and regional traditions, but also conjures up the ghosts of a past, ghosts that are more than ready to haunt the timeless present trying so hard to repress the atrocities happening at its fringes. As a whole, this makes »Efia« both a chilling work of sound art and a vibrant political statement fuelled by burning hot energy.

The Bees are a textbook case of the chew and spit cycle that was the late 80’s South African music industry. Although their unknown story is likely unique, it is just as likely that it is no different to that of many other young artists who dreamed of getting their music heard at the time.

By 1988, the independent record label was no longer as uncommon as it had been at the beginning of the decade. As the 80s went on, more seasoned A&R reps and Producers that had gained experience and connections from their work under major labels would be trying to cash in on a market they helped create. Without the need of big rooms or expensive recording equipment, the digital advancements allowed many Producers to open or work in smaller studios and promote unknown artists under their own imprints. They would then have their catalogs marketed and distributed by the same major labels they had been working for just years prior. This would open up the possibility of a new era of stars as potential talent no longer had to be pitched to major labels in hopes of them taking a chance on a new signee over their already established artists. With the market growing and a struggle to keep up with the demand for new sounds this agreement would allow the major labels to put new emerging artists or groups on their catalog with little investment and high reward if it happened to be a hit.

ON Records was just one of the independent players at the time. Ronnie Robot had just signed the unlikely trio The Bees in hopes of adding a hit group to his label roster that consisted of solo acts. Despite the debut’s fresh house inspired sound, it failed to catch on was outsold by the bubblegum disco the label was known for. Over the years unsold back stock and promos would build up with the distributor. Luckily this allowed sealed copies from the label’s catalog to survive into the 90s when the distributor’s stock was unloaded and picked up by legendary Johannesburg jazz shop Kohinoor. Here sealed copies of the Bees first attempt sat under appreciated for over 20 years before becoming a hot title after they started circulating online and became club staples. This is how the first album of an unknown group with no success was able to become a collectors item and earn a reissue over 25 years later.

With their first record behind them The Bees were ready move forward and get back into the studio. A suggestion from producers had the trio change camps and go work with the newly formed Creative Sound Recordings, the label that promised “Music for the Future” and ended up being an essential studio in the early years of Kwaito. They would work with producer Chris Ghelakis and guitarist George Vardas, while a young Marvin Moses sat behind the desk. Musically the sophomore album was as good as a follow up as you could get. Building on the first album, Mashonisa delivers catchy melodies backed by heavy drum programming that would score points with any Pantsula. The Black Box inspired “ Never Give Up” was one of two tracks chosen to be pressed as the promo for the album, hoping to trick listeners with their catchy version of the hit( A year later the label would release their first volume of Black Box covers sang by neo soul diva BB, it would be a great seller). The label printed up an unknown amount of these in a last attempt to push the release in Shabeens and on Radio. The cheaper route of flooding the market with promo copies would only pay off 25 years later when unplayed copies started being rediscovered and had survived the years in a quantity that original run of the full album could not. Once again it was clear that with no mainstream appeal, the quality of the music on its own was not enough to garner any success at the time. The album flopped worse than their first and failed to make it past it’s initial run, making it one of the harder titles to get from the CSR catalog.

Mashonisa would be the last attempt from the Bees. They would disappear from the scene as quickly as they appeared. Of the three members it is only known that lead Singer Solomon Phiri continued in music fronting a wave dance group before he mysteriously vanished in 1993, never to be heard from again. Through a combination of luck and circumstance the group, which is unknown in South Africa to even the most plugged in musicians, producers and radio hosts of the time, managed to finally get some of the recognition they deserved 30 years later. Unfortunately this small blip of fame would happen with none of the band members present to give their side of the story, or even aware of how their two albums became popular enough to be printed on different continents in a new millennia. The Bees suffered the same fate as countless other artists of the time, who thanks to emerging independent labels and willing producers were given an opportunity to have a short career, only to be replaced by the meat grinder of the music industry when they failed to produce a hit.

Re-Issue on Extreme Eating. Housed in a gatefold sleeve designed by Steve Lippert, mastered by Matt Colton at Alchemy. Everything else was done by Sleaford Mods. From Original Press Release 2015 "Key Markets was a large supermarket bang in the centre of Grantham from the early 1970's up until around 1980," explains Jason Williamson. "My mum would take me there and I'd always have a large coke in a plastic orange cup surrounded by varnished wood trimmings and big lamp shades with flowers on them. Beige bricks with bright yellow points of sale and large black foam letters surrounded you and this is why we called the album 'Key Markets'. It's the continuation of the day to day and how we see it, the un-incredible landscape." "The album was recorded in various periods between summer 2014 through to October of that year. We worked fast as we normally do, the method was the same as the other albums and like the other two, the sound has naturally moved itself along. 'Key Markets' is in places quite abstract but it still deals heavily with the disorientation of modern existence. It still touches on character assassination, the delusion of grandeur and the pointlessness of government politics. It's a classic. Fuck em." 1/Live Tonight 2/No One's Bothered 3/Bronx in a Six 4/Silly Me 5/Cunt Make It Up 6/Face To Faces 7/Arabia 8/In Quiet Streets 9/Tarantula Deadly Cargo 10/Rupert Trousers 11/Giddy on the Ciggies 12/The Blob

Just as Al Green’s “Back Up Train” was pulling out of Grand Rapids, Michigan, for a whistle stop tour to the top of the charts, producer Palmer James began eyeing another Furniture City branch line: Tommy McGee. The result was 1976’s Positive-Negative , the creative apex in a career littered with endless bottoms. Gathered for the first time are McGee’s timeless album, singles for Golden Voice, Mercury, TMG, and Tosted, as well as the complete output of his nascent mid-’60s funk combo the T.M.G.’s

The late engineer and producer Paul C’s fingerprints are all over this single from Ultramagnetic MC’s, perhaps the defining release of their career. While earlier records gave notice of their strange and unique talents, they were loveably messy affairs. This, however, is the real deal, as polished as their early sound would ever be.

‘Give the Drummer Some’ grabs a fistful of different elements – from James Brown, Dee Felice Trio and James Brown – but bends them to its own purpose. This is a song with a momentum of its own and endlessly quotable lyrics. One of which, of course, was sampled by The Prodigy – huge hip-hop fans – for ‘Smack My Bitch Up’ in 1997. The now hugely rare 7” of ‘Give the Drummer Some’ edits this out to make it more radio-friendly, but this reissue reverses that cut, giving you the original lyrics. If anyone knows why Kool Keith also changes the word ‘rappers’ to ‘monkeys’ for that edit, answers on a postcard…

The brilliant B-side harks back to the time when every group had a song dedicated to their DJ. ‘Moe Luv’s Theme’ sees Kool Keith at his most straightforward, singing the praises of the turntable skills of Moe Luv. It would be throwaway were it not for the effortless repurposing of Jackie Robinson’s oft-sampled ‘Pussyfooter’. That – and the presence of one of the world’s great MC’s at the height of his powers – elevates it far above a footnote.

A focal point for the unique punk-funk that was coming together in Bristol as the bridge from the 70s to the 80s arrived, Maximum Joy was formed by Glaxo Babies multi-instrumentalist Tony Wrafter and 18 year old vocalist Janine Rainforth. Soon they drafted in additional Glaxo Babies in the form of drummer Charlie Llewellin and bassist Dan Catsis, along with guitarist John Waddington, fresh from The Pop Group. The group set about making a one-of-a-kind mix of funk, punk, pop, jazz, dub, soul, afrobeat and reggae; creating a brilliant burst of danceable tunes wrapped around elastic basslines and complex percussion, punctuated by melodic horns and stabs of guitar, all of it highlighting Rainforth’s naturally enthusiastic vocal style. They immediately took their place on the rosters of influential labels like Y and 99 with iconic debut single Stretch, as the band had clearly captured something special.

Entering 1982, Kevin Evans had replaced Catsis as Maximum Joy set out to make what would be their only full length LP. Recording at Berry Street and The Lodge with producers Adrian Sherwood (On-U-Sound legend), Dave Hunt (Flying Lizards, Pigbag, This Heat) and Pete Wooliscroft (Kate Bush, Talk Talk, Peter Gabriel, OMD, This Heat) the band would mix practiced grooves with imaginative improvisation. The results were absolutely jaw-dropping.

Station M.X.J.Y. kicks things off with Dancing On My Boomerangand promptly sets forth the blueprint for bands like !!! and The Rapture to capitalize on nearly twenty years later. In fact, those bands can only dream of the mix of driving percussion and spectral shards of guitar that Maximum Joy has clearly already mastered. Do It Todayannounces itself immediately with Rainforth delivering a looping and infectious vocal melody that the others dance around playfully, as handclaps keep the stomping groove intact, leaving a dancehall hit for outer space circling your turntable.

If you ever wondered what it would sound like if ESG and The Slits combined forces, Let It Take You There has the answer for you. Llewellin periodically delivers a cascade of marching band percussion while Waddington’s classic R&B riffs are transformed into a slithering snake trying to keep pace with Evans locked in groove as Rainforth’s singsong vocals are reduced to whispered echoes. They close out side one with the delicious slab of pop that is Searching For A Feeling. Clearly pronouncing the band’s intention to find the positives in a dire time for England, they look to rally those around them to focus on making real change in the face of opposing voices via one of Rainforth’s most delightful deliveries.

Side two sees Wrafter stretching out on Where’s Deke?, showcasing what had already been obvious, as he is the band’s secret weapon, often coloring each tune with his horns, sometimes in several styles just seconds apart. He underlines that feeling with the raucous and bouncy Temple Bomb Twist, before they hit a straight groove in Mouse An’ Me, like a dub infected Train In Vain. Well, if The Clash had ever allowed themselves to properly lose their minds on the dancefloor.

A funky afrobeat flute and guitar battle breaks out (way cooler than it sounds) before Rainforth rallies the troops to not only fill up the disco, but also the surrounding streets in political resistance to Thatcherism via All Wrapped Up. It is entirely genuine and their activism has none of the menace of the others in their scene, but rather a feeling of sharp optimism amongst this danceable masterpiece. It is that optimism that always set Maximum Joy apart, and makes their grooves all the more irresistible today.

Sadly, the upward trajectory of the band was cut short as Rainforth left the group, and soon afterwards seemed to stop making music altogether. The reasoning seemed destined to remain a mystery, until earlier this year when she gave a brave interview to The Guardian where she revealed that an assault by someone in the industry caused her to retreat entirely from music for nearly three decades. Luckily, Janine has embraced music once again, and she refuses to let the magic that was Station M.X.J.Y. be lost as well.

For the second instalment of Subaltern’s 2020 program, we welcome one of the scene’s best-kept secrets – Imajika. The three hard-hitting tracks take listeners on a sonic journey through tribal rhythms, punchy drums and immaculate sound design. Calling upon ancient forces, Imajika makes a powerful statement with the Stagger EP.

Stagger
Ethereal glass chimes sing in the distance underneath an airy pulse to create an eerie intro until the groove enters to break the tension. We are offered a moment to breathe before being submerged by staggering drums driven by powerfully persistent bass-waves. Playful dubby FXs, gritty wobbles and naughty drum fills keep the head nodding throughout this stomper. After offering one last breath, the second drop hits with a relentless grunt that leaves us gobsmacked and then proceeds to devastate any sub to cross its path.

Unti Pundi
Mystical textures set a ghostly tone, overlaid by the meditative ‘Unti Pundi’. We are whisked through the caverns of time - space is created through reverbs and echoes of snares and droplets. A sinister pitch-oscillating synth takes your hand and as Imajika takes you deeper down the rabbit hole. Evolving basslines and masterfully placed drum fills add new depth to this monstrous beat before a shattering second drop wreaks havoc - Imajika shows no mercy.

Inside the Sycamore Root
Foreboding voices whisper in a secret language, seemingly summoning ancient spirits in a circular tree-based ritual. A cataclysmic drop fused with a tribal rhythm and propels us deep Inside the Sycamore Root. The spirits have been awoken. A gnarly bass pulsates as calls of the wild and menacing laser-synth stabs respond to the ancestral voices. The summoning continues and takes us even deeper into the wilderness as rumbling bass and tribal percussion take over - the descent into the great unknown continues.

Producer and multi-instrumentalist J-Felix returns with his
future blend of boogie, p-funk, disco and soul on his
sophomore album ‘Whole Again Hooligan’. Influenced by the
musicianship of Roy Hargrove’s The RH Factor, James
Brown and George Clinton, Joe elaborates on the concept of
the record: "My mum used to call me a hooligan when I was
growing up which was probably quite accurate, but there's
something about finishing a creative project as a musician that
makes you feel whole again”.
‘Whole Again Hooligan’ features a plethora of guest talent
including Brighton producer El Train, vocal flair Jerry Clavier
aka Sol Goodman, soul veteran and stellar DJ – Emeson,
and classically trained musician Afua. The records magic
moments are catalysed through a collaborative ethos, a skill
honed on J-Felix’s debut LP '101 Reasons'.
Constantly soaking up a mind-boggling array of influences –
through touring internationally as Alice Russell and Swindle's
guitarist, being an in-demand DJ (holding residencies at
Patterns, Brighton and Queen of Hoxton, London), hosting
a radio show on 1BTN, supporting the likes of Roy Ayers and
George Clinton, the list is endless... through which J-Felix's
penchant for all things funk has been perfected.


“The spirit of disco is more than alive and well for this” – Mixmag
“This guy’s got it going on!” - Huey Morgan (BBC 6Music)
“A sublime journey through squelchy electro-funk, tripped-out neo-soul and woozy hip-hop beats” - NME
“J-Felix aka Joe Newman crafts a solid tune with smooth gliding funk guitars, an undeniable bassline that magnetizes the eardrums and hard-hitting groove to match.” – EARMILK
“Excellent.. So many reasons to listen to J-Felix’ music” – FIP
“Tru Thoughts’ rising talent” – The Telegraph

"WOLF Music" offer up something a little different to their usual tip, enlisting the warm dusty reverberations of four-piece, jazz-not-jazz collective Velour for a 7" of hazy, genre traversing rhythms. Alongside being producer for the Velour project, long-standing member of the WOLF pack Mr. Fries gives his own distinctive house touch to the flip side remix.

Perfectly capturing the new school of jazz, Essen-based Velour crisscross genres drawing on elements from each yet anchoring their roots in the richness of jazz’s deft melodies and percussive touches. Head-nodding down the open road, ‘Pose’ is that undeniably soulful, first swig of summer many tracks strive to be. Morphing into a woozy affair as the sun sets midway through, Velour’s songwriting talent well outstrips their years. Throw WOLF pack member Mr. Fries into the mix, kneading in his signature production style and the freshly baked result straddles the intersection between jazz, broken beat, house and soul.

Fries then takes on remix duties for the flip, maintaining that dusty demeanour yet going for a full frontal Moodymann-esque house interpretation. The smokey jazz bar sax, background hustle and weighty beat make for a summertime heater served straight from
the grill, garnished just right with Mr. Fries own vocals over the top.

Rising Irish star SHEE makes his debut on House of Disco with a diverse four tracker full of bright ideas, multiple genres and unquestionable talent.

On the A side ‘Our Love’ takes the first spot, an acid-laden deep house cut with enchanting vocal wanderings, before ‘Forgotten’ lets loose, a swirling saxophone disco house heater, shaken not stirred.

Flip it over to find ‘Jiraya’ bringing a touch of trance to proceedings, as arps upon arps suck you in. Finally, ‘Funk, Nah’ comes full circle unleashing the acid once again but this time with a more late night heads down tinge.

Metrist contributes the second part of his Pollen EP trilogy to Timedance. This instalment sees the producer up the intensity of his sound to a fever pitch. Brash synths, sub drops and bold edits combine to make an evil concoction. His singular production aesthetic showcases meticulous and forceful sound design, but all the time keeps a sense of humour like no one else.

Steel drum cover of Grace Jones. Steel drum cover of Erykah Badu. Third full length album coming in 2021. Bacao Rhythm & Steel Band is back with another crushing two-sider that is guaranteed to set dancefloors on fire and get heads nodding around the globe. The mysterious steel pan outfit hailing from Hamburg, Germany has become a staple in DJ sets from Europe to Japan, from the US to Brasil, and anywhere else these tunes have found their way to speakers. They have released a slew of classic 7”s and two critically acclaimed full length albums. With that they have set a high bar for themselves, one clearly they intend on pushing higher with this new offering. Side A is BRSB’s take on Grace Jones’ nightclub classic “My Jamaican Guy”. They take the tune to a new height from the first beat, laying down an infectious groove that will get people out of their seats immediately. Heavy duty drums and bass shake the speakers through the intro then the pans reveal what they are covering as they play the instantly recognizable top line of the original. Rhythm guitar, heavily echoed percussion hits, and the different pan sets all combine to make this yet another instant classic from Bacao. BRSB has received a lot of praise for their choices of covers. Occasionally reworking hits, but, most notably pulling the album cut gems from artists typically more championed by the underground. Well...here they go again, covering Erykah Badu’s homage to the late great J Dilla “The Healer”. This is the type of thing to make Spice Adams jump on his kitchen counter and scream. From the instant this comes on, necks will be snapping and faces will scrunch up as they take the original beat produced by Madlib and give it a run for its money. Shaking subwoofers with the eerie tremolo bass they replay E. Badu’s vocal melodies on the pans adding their own flourishes. Glockenspiel plays the downbeat and a clap like thunder keeps the two-step swaying, all coming together to make this another must have two-sider from Bacao Rhythm & Steel Band

Dievegge emerges again in the darkest hours for the second
instalment. Ouvrijster returns with three soulful house tracks
on the Amsterdam based label and comes back with a definite
improvement in production skills. The first track “Make Me
Move” is a deep disco groover that levitates you with vocals
longing for body movement. The deeper sounds empower the
desire to escape everyday life. “Konkelfoezen” then funks
things up with a groovy baseline and rich sounding stabs. It
yearns for bringing back the modern take on the 70’s sound
into the clubs of today. The slow burner “Sleazy Saints” rounds
up the record with an ode to the sleazy sounds, pleading for
the return of these saints. By its slower pace and unfolding
atmosphere it moves away from the easy heaters and
enriches the messages of these tracks. This second Dievegge
Recordings vinyl only release shows again the goal of this
project and the sound that Dievegge cherishes.

The label ZIEMIA (Polish for EARTH) is centred around a growing group of friends from Poland. Administered by Bartosz Kruczyñski (Earth Trax), Adam Brocki and Jan Wójcicki (Private Press), it is a natural extension of a studio in the heart of Warsaw, where the majority of their music is being created. Ambient sounds and club vibes make the foundation layers of this collaboration, and you can see this theme evolving in some of their first releases on labels such as Growing Bin, Into The Light, Shall Not Fade, Indigo Aera, Phonica Records and Dopeness Galore. ZIEMIA's focus positions itself between club music and ethereal with an Eastern European background.

The second release captures different shades of club environment, from the straight-forward, rough DJ tool by Earth Trax and Newborn Jr. (A1) to deeper and more ethereal dub oriented grooves of Private Press (A2, B1). The last cut on the EP is an after hour downtempo anthem (Earth Trax and Newborn Jr. again), with uplifting pads and chilling leads layered over deep TR-808 drums.

Dropsonde was originally released by Touch (UK) in 2006. This is a reissue with seven previously unreleased recordings.

Widely regarded as one of Norwegian electronic music's most important artists, Biosphere's Geir Jenssen career spans nearly two decades, several albums, lots of remixes, various sound installations, commissions, soundtracks and even the odd Himalayan summit.

You may recognise his work without knowing it, so frequently does it crop up on TV trailers and idents. In the early 1990s he was a pioneer of so-called 'Ambient Techno', but since then, he has refined his sound into something more magnetic and enduring.

Dropsonde' isn't a soundtrack like the interwoven 'Substrata' nor an episodic journey in the way that 'Autour de la Lune' is. Here Geir Jenssen is pushing new directions towards the jazz colours of Miles Davis and Jon Hassell, whilst re-invigorating the pulse and projection of his signature sound: a hypnotic combination of pleasure and dread.

The spatial aspects some have dubbed "Arctic sound" but it summons strong feelings, or as Exclaim from Canada put it, "in order to climb higher, you must first go deeper". Jon Savage adds: "As with all of the Biosphere albums, the music draws you in and makes you want to listen and feel. Jenssen's work acts on a very emotional level, one that encourages you to drift away into a haze of images and scenes brought to you by the music, where spectacular beauty hides unseen danger. Intense and moving, but comforting and soothing at the same time."

A 'dropsonde' is a weather reconnaissance device designed to be dropped from an airplane or similar craft at altitude to take telemetry as it falls to the ground. It typically relays information to a computer in the dropping airplane by radio. The fall may be slowed by a parachute. Information collected by a typical dropsonde may include wind speed, temperature, humidity, and atmospheric pressure.

Fronted by creative lynchpin Billy Sullivan, this startling three-piece – augmented by three other musicians when playing live - have cemented a loyal fanbase since their inception some five years ago and alongside Sam Long, bassist and drummer Matt Johnson whilst initiating album sales in excess of 20k and a tour itinerary approaching nearly three hundred gigs.
Life Worth Living is a contrasting melting pot of unadulterated joy and melancholy, laughter, tears, frustration and peacefulness. Quiet and introspective moments collide with loud and angry times and no less powerful. At its heart is a sense of hope that things can be better, the title reflects that aspiration. Produced by Simon Dine, who was behind the desk for Paul Weller’s 22 Dreams and Wake Up The Nation amongst a varied CV - has harnessed the undoubted vibrancy and swagger of the band’s live show helping create an ambitious album – a vehicle for the talents of Sullivan, Long and Johnson.
From the infectious brass-infused opener, Start All Over Again, the Nutty Boys-esque title track Life Worth Living to Tear This Place Right Down bathed in soul overtones, the ballad-like wonder of How Could I Lie To You? to the ska riffage of single (Just Won’t) Keep You Down and the magnificent finale of Make It Through Each Day.

Big Crown Records is proud to present Adult Themes, the latest full length offering from El Michels Affair. This album takes the band's "Cinematic Soul" aesthetic literally and sends the listener on a journey through a whirlwind of moods and energies. With their 2005 debut album Sounding Out The City, EMA spearheaded an instrumental funk / soul movement that inspired a slew of bands and even lead to the creation of a few independent record labels. El Michels has since lent his signature sound to artists from Adele to Dr John, Lana Del Rey to Aloe Blacc, and a who's who list of others. In 2016 he co-founded Big Crown Records and has since produced the lion's share of its output. A short stint as the touring band for Wu Tang Clan in 2007 led to the cult classics Enter The 37th Chamber (2009) and Return To The 37th Chamber (2017). Adult Themes marks the long awaited, highly anticipated return to an album of original compositions from El Michels Affair. In 2017 in between producing, playing, and recording on other artists' records Leon Michels began creating compilations of short interludes intended to be sampled by hip hop producers. Some of these wound up becoming songs by Jay Z & Beyonce, Travis Scott, and Don Toliver. These minute-long snippets were inspired by the dense moody work of `60s composers like David Axelrod, and Francois de Roubaix, as well as Moondog's brand of classical jazz. Michels was having so much fun creating these instrumental / orchestral nuggets that he decided to expand on some of the ideas and create what would become the soundtrack for a movie that has yet to be made, an imaginary film entitled "Adult Themes." The album plays like the colors on an artists pallet. Songs like "Rubix" and "Villa" are densely orchestrated with the hard-hitting drums that El Michels Affair is known for. On "Life of Pablo", Leon's son makes his first appearance on record and intros a song with an epic arrangement and a moving mood. "Hipps" is a drum heavy ballad that could've easily fit on EMA's debut record, Sounding Out the City. Other compositions like "The Difference" and "Kill The Lights" are bare, melodic mood pieces with sparse drums and sophisticated chord movement. All of these tunes come together to make perfect backgrounds for dialogue and action. One of the beautiful things about instrumental music is that the listener can decide what the narrative is. With Adult Themes El Michels Affair has created a "choose your own adventure" in musical form.

When people talk about Italian dance music, they tend to focus on Rome and Napoli rather than Bologna. Yet the city in Northern Italy not only played a key role in the development of “Italo-house” in the late 1980s and early ‘90s, but also boasts a vibrant contemporary scene. To prove the point, Boogie Café has put together “Bologna On The Move”, a four-track selection of sizzling hot cuts from some of the city’s latest wave of deep and soulful dance music talents.

Leading the charge is Sam Ruffillo, a producer who first appeared on Boogie Café last year following an impressive 2018 debut on Irma Dance floor. He kicks off proceedings with the infectious “U Make Me Sing”, a heavyweight slab of rolling breakbeat goodness rich in tight vocal samples, jazzy guitar licks and wonderfully warm and weighty bass.

Later in the EP Ruffilo returns to action alongside Brine, another rising star with links to legendary Italian label Irma. “Request Line” is a fine slab of chunky, U.S garage-influenced deep house that sees the duo pepper swinging drums and toasty bass with heady organ stabs, cut-up vocal samples and trippy electronics.

Fittingly, Brine gets a chance to showcase his skills as a solo producer via “Star Chaser”, a looser and jazzier house excursion that doffs a cap to the glory years of jazz-funk whilst championing rich deep house synth riffs, jaunty bass and more spaced-out vocal snippets.

You’ll hear a similar jazz-funk influence at the heart of the EP’s only contribution from Red Rooster founder and former House of Disco artist D’Arabia. The most experienced of the three artists on show, he offers up “Straight Outta Fire”, a bouncy, deep and percussive affair that wraps drowsy male vocals, sustained chords and harmonica samples around disco-influenced house beats and what may well be the squelchiest bassline ever to emerge from Bologna.


DJ Support:

Bedmo Disco, Lord leopard, Melon Bomb, Dave Harvey, Haze City, Aroop Roy, Lay Far , Danvers, Kassian, Dave Jarvis,
Jimmy The Twin & Cengiz.

Four peak time, dancefloor remixes of tracks housed on SIRS outstanding debut LP ‘Banana Hard & Disco Kisses’ from the likes of Austin Ato, Yam Who?, Danilo Braca and SIRS himself.

First up on remix duties, Scottish goldenboy Austin Ato takes the sunset funk stylings of ‘Nightwind’ and flips it into a club ready house bumper, fitting perfectly with Hava Izmailova’s dreamy vocals. Rework don and Midnight Riot head honcho Yam Who?, then gives the Stee Downes vocal number ‘Forever’ a first pumping disco makeover that’s got future anthem written all over it.

On the flip side SIRS offers up a new tribal interpretation of ‘Turkish Disco Folk’, doubling down on the Middle Eastern influences yet with a tougher rhythmic side that will spice up any set its slipped into. Finally, NYC-based Danilo Braca inserts an acid injection into ‘If I Can´t Have You’ alongside a dose of sultry strings, ready made to warp any dancefloors out there.

Embarking on a journey from Italy to Anatolia and from Africa to the Americas, Nelson of the East soars over imagined landscapes in his debut, motion picture- inspired album, Kybele. Plug in your headphones, drown out the world, and set
out on a mystic voyage of Earth through the lens of Kybele, the Anatolian goddess of wild nature.

With the world in flux and isolation taking its toll, musical escapism has become a much needed pastime for today’s armchair adventurers. Treating recorded sound as a vehicle of time travel, Milanese artist Nelson of the East (N.O.T.E) takes listeners on a journey through kaleidoscopic soundscapes with his debut album Kybele released on Tartelet Records.

Skillfully weaving the sounds of East and West, the nine-track LP fuses Turkish and cosmic influences with a strong electronic backbone into an otherworldly soundtrack of our time.

“The feeling that passes through the record isn’t straight. It changes, it turns, it is never predictable. Never being able to predict which landscape you arrive at next or where the music is taking you is key to enjoying the sound journey,” says Nelson. “

Named Kybele after the Anatolian goddess of nature, fertility, mountains, and wild animals, the record is a continuous saga that takes from the Berlin-based artist’s own adventurous spirit. Following his previous EP releases Night Frames and Phase Alternating Lines, Nelson explores new territories on Kybele.

The album opener, “Explorer,” is an exhilarating build up to what could be a 80s sci-fi movie, showcasing Nelson’s knack for cinematic moods. “Draw Me,” speaks to the artist’s intention of making a “snare album,” with an irregular, dominating beat untethering it from time or boundaries. “What I realize while I was writing the rhythm part is that the more you keep a beat simple the more difficult it becomes to make it interesting. So I just put down some rules to follow. For example, using swing as smoothly as possible, or using lot of syncopated sequence over the straight 2-4 groove,” says Nicolas.

Another thing Nelson achieves in this album is ambience, or the “motion picture touch” as he calls it. Tracks like the wild and obscure Culto, with its Anatolian nuances and middle eastern-sounding scales are made by layering synths to achieve an orchestral effect.

Other tracks capture the musician’s penchant for African and Brazilian grooves, like the Saudade mix of Burning Palm. On the B side, the Italo-flavored Phase Lines comes through with shimmering synth and electronic drums complete with hazy vocals delivered by DJ Rayne and Nelson himself. Yahuda dives into dark, melancholic electro with a Detroit feel not far from the sounds of the great Drexciya.

The album closes with ZETA, a track that could easily double as an obscure cinematic composition. The nine-track LP is strictly limited to 300 copies, pressed on 180g vinyl with artwork by The Emperor of Antarctica. No repress.

After nine years of quality assured house music, FINA Records hits release number 30 with another of its forward looking offerings, this time from red hot young Frenchman Armless Kid.

Well known on his native Paris circuit, Armless Kid is now breaking out on the wider international scene. He's released his bustling, heart felt house grooves on Rekids and the legendary Classic Music Company, is a Rinse FM regular and has an anything goes approach that has won him high profile fans like DJ Harvey and The Black Madonna.

Opener Shadows is a superbly warm deep house cut with real drive in the silky smooth drums. It's perfect for cosy dance floors, while Lost Days picks up the pace with raw and hurried kick drums and dusty piano keys bringing real beauty to the groove. Brute Factor Disco pumps any party with its urgent drum programming, explosive sense of energy and dazzling disco chords and last of all, NaturaL FL Groove slips into a funky bass riff, with organic licks and authentic old school production values that make it a timeless classic in the making.

new quartet by Samuel Rohrer, Max Loderbauer, Stian Westerhus & Tobias Freund In the present era of media saturation, the artist's dilemma has shifted away from the question whether to fuse disparate stylistic elements, towards the decision of which energies to draw upon: a situation most rewarding for those who listen to musicians navigating this limitless terrain. One such journey, the captivating full-length release from Samuel Rohrer's new Kave quartet coming out this May, is bringing together players who are equally well-versed in the quick-thinking mechanics of free group improvisation and the compositional strategies of contemplative / ‘ambient’ electronic music. With Rohrer acting as creative director and most of the quartet sharing synthesizer duties, there’s a strong sense of unified purpose to this set, and a narrative flow that never causes the listener to focus on one constituent part at the expense of the whole. At the same time, the players know all well that cohesion counts for little without those constituent parts being compelling in their own right. Rohrer and Loderbauer, for example, have previously crafted a unique techno-organic approach with the Ambiq trio, and the lessons learned from that partnership are put to inspired use within this new configuration. Stian Westerhus’ contributions on guitar and vocals, along with Tobias Freund’s electronic reinforcements - Freund also has worked since many years with Max Loderbauer as NSI - all conspire to make something that Rohrer aptly compares as “forest”-like. It’s a descriptor that will have vastly different meanings for each listener. For Rohrer, it refers to music that is confident in the “deep-rootedness” of its foundations and defined by a density and mystery easily confused with darkness, while nevertheless proving its bright vitRight away, on the introductory odyssey 'Cambium' the quartet sets out to make good on this metaphor, creating a hypnotic foundation for what is about to unfold during the next 42 minutes, with brooding, slow, 'searchlight in a fog,' synth washes and percussive stridulation. The twin 'Hibernation' tracks show all the unique elements beginning to coalesce: the emotional tenor is one of vulnerability that melts into the determination of 'staring into the void', a temperamental state challenging to represent authentically in music. The atmosphere of psychic challenge effort lessly gives way to the faintly nostalgic glimmers of 'Giant Peach' - a literary reference to the macabre whimsy of Roald Dahl.
The ultimate dissolution of barriers between organicism and synthesis is accomplished on the majestic 'Divided We Fall', a title referring to Westerhus’ smoky vocalization that winds into a double helix formed from electronic surges.
Again, the ease with which it all comes together is mesmerizing, and while there’s an aura of risk accompanying this walk through the woods, there’s a much more enduring impression of carefully orchestrated growth and change.

Adamant Scream back on PRSPCT XTRM with her 2nd Vinyl EP.

We would like to write an amazing funny as fuck promo text again but were simply not in the mood. This whole Corona thing is one massive mood killer isn't it? Like the ultimate No Fun Virus! At least most people with HIV for instance had a ton of fun while contracting the disease. With Corona however there is no fun part anywhere from start till finish which makes it way worse + putting on one massive condom still won't allow you to go out raving. Shit is fucked pff...

Ok, well, on to the promo text we go:

Adamant Scream's brand new 4-tracker contains everything great about Industrial Hardcore. Proving once again that there actually is a movement working hard to "make hardcore great again".
Malin Kolbrink is one talented producer and this EP proves that. Sure she might be a woman but here at PRSPCT we don't give a fuck about what your downstairs mix-up situation is. All we care about is how banging your tracks are and damn these 4 tracks are BANGING!

75% solo tracks + 25% collab with Thrasher = 1000% awesome.

This Breaks My Fucking Heart EP is one of those records you need to own on black gold, so buy this fucker while you're still alive & kicking and not stuck to some breathing machine!

S&W and Gustaaf make up three fifths of Prongof108 which started out as a radio show on Berlin based Cashmere Radio in 2015 and turned into a record label a few years down the road. After some solo records and the release of a split EP on Turnland Records, they are now teaming up for their upcoming “It’s More Fun to Commute” EP on Prongof108. Combining the forces of three guys seems like a natural fit, or to put it differently: it just happened. They’ve been DJing together and sharing a mutual passion for UFOs and palm trees since quite a while. Expect a mix of 80s boogie and proto house vibes sending kisses to tropical and pacific sounds and taking you on a journey from proper house club crowd bouncing to teenage heartache downtempo electronica - always smart and with a smirk, definitely never too intelligent to dance to.

After releasing their critically acclaimed debut LP “NOW” just last September, The people at Malka Tuti felt it was the time to continue pushing the name SHARI VARI to new realms & territories... A Remix Pack was born. For the remix pack, Malka Tuti chose a few close friends of the family to give new life and new interpre- tations to the now “instant classic” songs by the Hamburg duo.... The Ep begins with Fantastic Twins’s mid tempo, Coil inspired, break-beat groove, slowly building up in emotion with warm pads and 90’s vibe acid lines to- wards an epic catharsis. Benedikt Frey takes it from there, remixing a personal favourite - New York City, turning it into a dark trip- hop inspired journey, cleaning those distinct vocals, echoing Beth Gibbons’s smokey high tones.... On the B-side we find Black Merlin’s 11 minute trippy mid tempo dance floor banger. Cuts and slices from the original vocals of the song Dance Alone, laid carefully on top of a repetitive modular bass line, and sprinkled on top - those out-worldly sounds and FX that makes the track simply HUGE. Last but not least, Düsseldorf’s very own Lucas Croon’s Dub Version, released digitally last year, final- ly sees its day on wax. 90’s Break beat beats, gated vocals and everything else that takes to make a dance floor hit the roof.

If you’ve visited Ibiza in the last few years, there’s a fair chance you’ll have encountered DJ Pippi and Willie Graff. The experienced duo has been DJing together on the White Isle for years, finding time between sundown sets to make music together in Italian veteran Pippi’s home studio. The pair’s first collaborative EP dropped on Drumpoet Community way back in 2007, with the belated follow-up appearing a decade later on Compost Disco. Here they make their bow on Leng with the “Lunares EP”, a typically warm and woozy collection of cuts named after the Spanish word for “polka dots” (a fashionable item in Spain and the Balearic islands throughout the 1980s).

They begin with the slow-burn sunrise bliss of “Lunares”, a shuffling and glassy-eyed affair in which evocative, emotion-rich strings, heady vocal samples, echoing sitars and lilting guitars slowly rise above a thickset backing track rich in dubby bass, swelling pads, starry electronics and snappy drums. Capable of tugging at the heartstrings, it’s a sublime slab of mood-enhancing bliss perfect for both weary dancing and sofa-bound relaxation. “Saxolicious” lives up to the premise of the title, with Pippi and Willie wrapping snaking, effects-laden saxophone solos around a languid, slow motion groove bristling with hazy intent. Expect chiming electric piano chords, dreamy pads, rolling grooves and another fine bassline that will worm its way into your subconscious, spark up a spliff and stay there for days.

The EP’s final musical moment is, if anything, even more spaced-out and intoxicating. Employing extra-slow beats and a prominent jazzy bass guitar part, the pair invites us to get locked in to a chuggy rhythm. Throw in druggy synth lines, tactile electric piano stabs and some suitably cosmic effects and you have a hallucinatory treat that would no doubt have gained the approval of the late, great Andrew Weatherall.