Suche:man make music

In this electrifying 2024, we're buzzing with excitement as we celebrate 40 years of Flexi, the record emporium that's weathered countless storms amidst the ever-shifting tides of the music industry, catering to vinyl aficionados across the ages. Alongside the raves and swag, no doubt, there's a killer compilation dropping on the indie label "Flexi Cuts," dubbed evocatively as "Musica Solida" spread across 3 or perhaps 4 12-inch samplers, boasting a carefully curated selection of singles from cherished Flexi-affiliated artists and producers. The vision? To cultivate a virtuous movement of sublime tunes, echoing the fervor and zeal to persist within the realm of quality that Flexi embodies within the Italian scene, alongside kindred spirits... despite the daunting challenges of the market in recent years.



Musica Solida # 1 showcases

DJ Rocca: One of the most solid producers on the panorama, a respected maestro of the clubbing scene in Italy and worldwide.

Club Soda: Live electronic ensemble, still dreamin' from their latest EP 'Basso e Batteria', which packs an unreleased track recorded directly from their house-flavoured jam sessions.

Lex (Athens) & Locke : A Greek producer who is well established in today's dance house scene, with quality-vibey releases and a very nice and classy and groovy sound. We will definitely hear from him in the future!

Hiroyuki Kato: Emerging Osaka-based multi-instrumentalist makes his debut with a very punchy and catchy track!

The Mechanical Man (feat. Bob Vito) : Neapolitan super producer. Raw-sounding, gritty, powerful and never dull, a pleasure to have him with us.



The record will be released in about 200 vinyl copies no more.

Packaged in the classic discobag 2- holes, with a distinctive letterpress print in a beautiful silver cover.



Compiled by Simone Guerra aka Relative

Mastered by Francesco Brini (except track B1, Mastered by Marco Spaventi)

Distributed by Rubadub, Glasgow

Pressed by Desslab

Design by GLZ

"A Singular Blend of Dynamic Post-Pop & Electronic Production Featuring The Vibraphonist’s Remarkable Quartet Special Guests Gerald Clayton and Marquis Hill Named One Of Downbeat's 25 For The Future

“His music is fresh, it speaks to everyone. Never heard anyone play vibes like that before.” -Herbie Hancock

“Best vibes player I’ve heard...” -Quincy Jones

In discussing Elements of Light, his fifth album as a leader, the vibraphonist-composer Simon Moullier often returns to a specific term: unfolding.

“This is an important word — the unfolding of a song,” says Moullier, who was born in France and lives in New York. “It’s something I’m very attached to, and something I’m always working on.” As he explains, many of his essential influences —Wayne Shorter, Milton Nascimento, Toninho Horta, Radiohead’s Thom Yorke, Ravel, — have been masterful unfolders in their writing. Moullier admires the movement and design in their music and harmony, the way one section of a tune leads into the next, everything flowing in a natural, beautiful, inviting way. Even the most serious intellectual musical concepts are rendered with a directness, a simplicity that can captivate a general audience. “For me, no matter how complex an idea can get,” he says, “clarity is always key.”

That’s a mature, evolved outlook for a millennial jazz musician to embrace, and it’s shared among Moullier’s youthful quartet featuring pianist Lex Korten, bassist Rick Rosato and drummer Jongkuk “JK” Kim. What’s more, these musicians of astonishing technical facility interact with the selflessness and good taste that Moullier’s song-focused music requires; to say it another way, they use their virtuosity to make the bandleader’s compositions sound as human and affecting as possible — never to preen."

What an unbelievable record. From the wild cover to the iconic breakbeats, Roots from Ian Carr’s Nucleus is one of the dopest albums we know. This is seriously thick, funky-prog jazz-rock heaven. Originally released on Vertigo in 1973, other than a couple of versions at the time for other territories, Roots was never re-pressed since so it’s gone on to become another one of those impossible to find records.

Maybe it was a little too out there for the time, but it’s aged very, very well indeed and this Be With re-issue, re-mastered from the original analogue tapes, shows off just why this deserves to be back in press.

Genius trumpeter and visionary composer Ian Carr was one of the most respected British musicians of his era. He was a true pioneer and saw the potential in fusing the worlds of jazz with rock, just as Miles Davis and The Tony Williams Lifetime did in the US. In late 1969, following the demise of the Rendell-Carr quintet, and tiring of British jazz, Carr assembled the legendary Nucleus. Regarding music as a continuous process, Nucleus refused to “recognise rigid boundaries” and worked on delivering what they saw as a “total musical experience”. We can get behind that.

Under bandleader Carr, Nucleus existed as a fluid line-up of inventive, skilled musicians. This constant evolution and revolution was all part of the continuous musical exploration and discovery that took jazz to new levels.

Working together with producer Fritz Fryer and engineer Roger Wake, the seven compositions by Carr, Brian Smith and Dave MacRae that make up Roots flirt with perfection, and Nucleus at that time made up of the cream of 1970s UK jazz with Brian Smith on tenor saxophones and flutes, Dave MacRae on piano and electric piano, Jocelyn Pitchen on guitar, Roger Sutton on bass, both Clive Thacker and Aureo De Souza on drums and percussion, Joy Yates delivering the vocals and of course Carr on trumpet.

The spellbinding title track immediately renders the album indispensable. Riding the illest of loping breakbeats, “Roots” is low-slung, doped-out heist-funk. An absolute monster. If it sounds familiar then that’s likely down to it being sampled by Madlib for Lootpack and Quasimoto’s “Loop Digga”, as well as by a whole host of beat manipulators. “Roots” conjures prime instrumental hip-hop / beat music, only 20 years ahead of its time. Truly, these are the roots. Through sinuous bass, twinkling keys and a hypnotic guitar riff, a smoky brass motif weaves its way into a gloriously deep haze around Carr’s solos. “Roots” is over 9 minutes long, but there’s not a single wasted second, not surprising given that this is a condensed version of an originally 40 minute long commissioned composition.

The soothing vocal fusion delight of “Images” follows. Meticulously constructed, with gorgeous flute work from Brian Smith, with Joy Yates’ silky vocals and Dave MacRae’s Rhodes never sounding better. The cool, driving “Caliban” closes out the first side. Originally the third movement in a four part commission to celebrate Shakespeare’s birthday it stands up on its own, all robust rhythms and blended brass. Keyboard colour and Carr’s trumpet are splashed across the funk drums and basslines (and there’s even some bamboo flute). This really is fusion: the elements of jazz and rock coming together in beautifully synthesis.

Side two opens in riotous fashion with the short, thrilling samba of “Wapatiti”. Next up, “Capricorn” forms a smoothed-out, jazzy constellation. Mellow and dreamy, its twinkling percussion and languid horns slowly build the vibe before head-nod drums and a killer bassline enter the fray. With a distinct heaviness that Black Sabbath would’ve envied, “Odokamona” is a venomous slice of riff-soaked jazz metal (yes, you read that right), elevated by Carr’s wah-wah horns.

The album closes with MacRae’s exceptionally cosmic “Southern Roots and Celebration”. Very much in conversation with Weather Report, it opens as a languorous, spiritual jazz of chiming keys and serene guitar that turns slowly, gorgeously into a mid-paced, brass-laced banger. It’s another sure-fire party starter and the sound of the band having a righteous blast, building an ecstatic chaos that ends with Yates screaming.

And of course we need to talk about Keith Davis’ cover for Roots. Perhaps the coolest record cover of all time? Certainly one of the most bonkers. Just your run-of-the-mill high-gloss, acid-tinged airbrush dystopian/utopian living-room party scene. Consider this your chemical flashback trigger warning.

Front-and-centre the hip-to-death green robot holds court with their giant ball of yellow barbwire wool, hooked up to… something(?) being teased out from under the stairs (probably best not to ask). A thoroughly zoned-out, long-legged Pop Art party-goer lounges half-plugged in to the painting behind her as a pair of legs flail into shot from the the top of the stairs opposite. We won’t even begin to guess what the chap’s up to in the middle, but the view out of the windows is rather nice, and someone’s already got the hoover out ready to tidy up. All of the Nucleus sleeves are something special, but this particular one? Crikey.

This Be With edition of Roots has been re-mastered from the original Vertigo master tapes, Simon Francis’ mastering working together with Pete Norman’s cut to weave their usual magic with these wonderful recordings. The crazy cover has been restored at Be With HQ as the finishing touch to this long overdue re-issue.

In 2013, a New Zealand teenager named Daniel Johann Lines quietly uploaded his debut album, melanchole, to Bandcamp under the moniker salvia palth. The LP was a homespun collection full of vulnerable, self-recorded songs about the overwhelming messiness that comes from growing up and figuring out who you are. Despite modest intentions, the record resonated profoundly with millions on platforms like Tumblr and Youtube, maintaining momentum through the TikTok and streaming era. menchole remains a wildly influential lo-fi release, a moving portrait of youth in turmoil. Over a decade later, Lines returns to the project with a new full-length titled “last chance to see”. Out February 16 via Danger Collective Records, the now 27-year-old musician offers his most fully formed and ambitious effort yet. last chance to see is not only a complete artistic reinvention but one that gracefully closes the chapter on a formative period of the songwriter’s life. His decision to revisit the salvia palth moniker is intentional and integral to the album.

crys cole returns to Black Truffle with Making Conversation, her third solo release for the label. After the intimate song-like constructions of Other Meetings (BT096), Making Conversation documents a different facet of cole’s work, presenting three rigorously conceptualised commissioned pieces, each of which extend her signature approach to highly amplified small sounds into new directions.

The side-long title piece is a stereo version of an 8-channel sound installation exhibited in 2023 at the Tabakalera Art Center in Donostia / San Sebastian, Spain. The piece uses a multitude of instrumental, vocal, concrete and electronic sounds to evoke the soundscapes cole encountered during nocturnal listening session in Bali, Indonesia in 2018 and 2019. In this world of night sounds, she explains, she ‘observed the complex interplay between amphibian, lizard, bird and insect communication, domestic animals (roosters, dogs), man-made sounds (airplanes, vehicles, conversations and evening activities) and sounds that were difficult to place’. Drawing on field recordings as memory aids (but including none in the finished piece), cole’s piece uncannily reproduces the spatiality and pacing of environmental sound without attempting strictly to replicate it. We hear insect-like twittering and birdsong fragments, resonant thuds and distant roars, furtive crunches and taps, muffled breath and metallic scrapes. While at times it can be difficult to imagine the source of these sounds, at other points they are clearly instrumental or electronic in origin; in its placement and layering, though, the whole assemblage suggests the glorious, unthinking richness of a non-musical sound environment. Suggesting at once the electronic gardens of Rolf Julius and the little instrument expanses of classic AACM, the piece is a brilliant enactment of the Cagean drive to ‘imitate nature in her manner of operation’.

‘Valid ForeverrRrrRRrrr… (pt. 1)’ began as cole’s contribution to an Issue Project Room commission to realise a score from Alison Knowles and Annea Lockwood’s Women's Work, a 1975 collection of text and conceptual scores by women artists and composers. cole’s piece begins from Beth Anderson’s Valid for Life, a complex arrangement of the letter R in various typefaces. Where the composer suggests a realisation on a trio of acoustic instruments (playing rolls with velvet beaters), cole translates the piece into her characteristic sound and object language as a trio of rolling sounds on ‘two large similar paper things and one 5-pin bowling ball’. Rolling from one side of the stereo field to the other, the bowling ball’s uneven movement is the heart of this immersive textural array, created with the simplest materials, which generates phantom sensations of pitch and phasing effects solely through amplified friction.

On ‘Valid ForeverrRrrRRrrr… (pt. 2)’, cole makes a first foray in translating her signature approach into conventional instrumental sounds, here in the form of a transcription for MIDI percussion ensemble. The result is refreshingly puzzling, comparable perhaps only to the sparsest moments of Keiji Haino’s classic “C’est parfait…” Accompanied with extensive liner notes, photographic documentation and a download code, Making Conversation is an exciting next step in cole’s work, extending her signature concerns in new sonic and conceptual directions.

For years, Benjamin Herman has formed a frighteningly tight trio with Ernst Glerum and Joost Patočka. Whether its compositions from Misha Mengelberg, jazz evergreens or original works, these are all interpreted with vision and “rollicking virtuosity’’ (Volkskrant). Erupting from Herman's creative spirit and the two worlds of Glerum (ICP Orchestra) and Patočka (Rita Reys), the formation’s work is always of the highest class.

The new album Trouble with the young and exceptionally talented singer/pianist Daniel von Piekartz adds a new chapter to their collaboration. Songs from Fats Waller, Henry Mancini and Sly Stone get a postmodern make-over that will inspire many concert-goers to willingly miss that last tram home. And naturally, the musical fireworks that we’ve come accustomed are still

REISSUED!!! Received an 8.1 rating from Pitchfork. "Sadly, many will hear Chris Corsano & Bill Orcutt's latest LP, Made Out of Sound, as 'not-jazz,' though it would be more aptly described as 'not-not-jazz.' In a better world, it would warrant above-the-fold reviews in Downbeat, or an appearance on David Sanborn's late-night show (if someone would only give it back to him). More likely, we can hope for a haiku review on Byron Coley's Twitter timeline to sufficiently connect the various improvised terrains trodden by this long-time duo—but if you've been able to listen past the overmodulated icepick fidelity of Harry Pussy, it should surprise you not an iota that Orcutt's style is rooted as much in the fractal melodies of Trane and Taylor as it is in Delta syrup or Tin Pan Alley glitz. As for Corsano, well, it may seem daft to call this particular record 'jazz' (because duh, it has a drummer), but to me Corsano is beyond jazz, almost beyond music, his ambidextrous, octopoid technique grappling many stylistic levers and spraying a torrent of light from every direction. Corsano's ferocity has elevated many 'mere' improv records to transcendence, but here he's crafted his polyrhythms within more narrative channels, bringing to mind his 'mannered' playing in the lamented Flower-Corsano duo. It's not 'groove' playing precisely, but it follows many grooves simultaneously, much like Orcutt's own melodic musings—which is why they're so naturally lock-in-key here. Which maybe makes it all the more surprising that Made Out of Sound was in fact recorded in different rooms on different coasts at different times, and stitched together by Orcutt on his desktop. Corsano recorded the drums in Ithaca, NY, and (as Orcutt states), 'I didn't edit them at all. I overdubbed two guitar tracks, panned left/right. I'd listen to the drums a couple times, pick a tuning, then improvise a part, thinking of the first track as backing and the second as the 'lead', though those are pretty fluid terms. I was watching the waveforms as I was recording, so I could see when a crescendo was coming or when to bring it down.' Fluidity ties the tracks together. With a little more groove and a little less around-the-beat maneuvering, one could almost hear the boiling harmonic layers as Miles-oid in 'Man Carrying Thing,' but with new-found Sharrockian modalities, Corsano accentuating the tumbling nature of the falling notes. The Sharrock vein continues with 'How to Cook a Wolf,' its Blind Willie-esque melodic simplicity and repetition extrapolated 360-style in a repetitive descending riff that falls into Cippolina-isms (by way of Verlaine ) until the end crashes upon the shore. Much like Orcutt's last solo album, Odds Against Tomorrow, there's a gentler, almost pastoral flow to some tracks ('Some Tennessee Jar,' 'A Port in Air,' 'Thirteen Ways of Looking') that calls to mind the mixolydian swamplands of Lonnie Liston Smith—but unlike Odds , other tracks ('The Thing Itself') smash that same lyricism into overdriven, multi-dimensional melodic clumps that push several vector envelopes at once in an Interstellar Space vein. With the help of Corsano, Orcutt has managed to slither even further out of the noise/improv pigeonhole lazy listeners/writers keep trying to shove him into. Looking at the back cover of Made Out of Sound , we should not see Orcutt hurling a guitar into the air with post-punk bravado, Corsano toiling behind him in the engine room—we should witness an instrument levitating from his hands, rising on invisible major-key tendrils of melody, fired by percussion, spiraling into an invisible event horizon..."—Tom Carter

Beloved Spanish indie rockers Hinds are back with their utterly triumphant fourth album, VIVA HINDS. Written by the band’s co-founders, co-vocalists, co-guitarists and co-songwriters Carlotta Cosials and Ana Perrote, it features their first-ever fully Spanish language songs, as well as first collaborations with the likes of Beck and Fontaines D.C.’s Grian Chatten. Recorded in rural France, the album was produced by Pete Robertson (Beabadoobee), engineered by the GRAMMY-nominated Tom Roach, and mixed by GRAMMY-winning engineer Caesar Edmunds (The Killers, Wet Leg).

Shortly after the band made their debut ten years ago, they hit what felt like an insurmountable obstacle – they had to change their name from Deers to Hinds for legal reasons. But, as their fans began to greet them at shows by cheering “¡VIVA HINDS!”, the band soon realized that what initially felt like an ending was actually just the beginning. Fast forward to 2023, and VIVA HINDS was written by Cosials and Perrote after a series of endings. They hit a creative rut after releasing their 2020 album The Prettiest Curse, and their bassist and drummer devastatingly decided to leave the band. They also split with their management team, lost touring revenue due to lockdowns, and were without a label for the first time. But when Perrote and Cosials got together to write again it became clear that their connection, one so special that they call themselves “millionaires in friendship,” would be all they needed to get them through. VIVA HINDS – the most accomplished, sonically adventurous, honest and celebratory record of Hinds’ career – is only the beginning.

PRESS/ONLINE: “The track, though signaling a new era for Hinds, arrives rapturous and catchy, as Perrote and Cosials trade verses and riffs. ...'Coffee' is a sweeping first chapter of where the duo aims to
“‘Coffee’ is a a gorgeous punk-indie cross contamination, instantly memorable, grungy” - Wonderland


“They bring the energy of a thousand rock bands, entrancing the crowd with their searing indie riffs, the constant interlocking of guitars and smiles, and deeply charming banter” - Rolling Stone

“The Prettiest Curse is an evolution. It is striking, complex, uncompromising indie-pop. More than that, it makes a bold statement: it canonises Spanish indie-rock” – Loud and Quiet 9/10
“They’ve taken their sound and unashamedly experimented with it. They’re all the better for it” – NME 4/5

“The Spanish group’s second album displays the superior songcraft of the band, as vocalists Ana Perrote and Carlotta Cosials wade through love’s messy feelings with confidence and exuberance” - Pitchfork

Hassan Abou Alam is next to step up to the unconventional Nerve Collect label with six tracks of futuristic club-ready chaos. The finely crafted EP arrives in August and comes on 12" vinyl and via all digital platforms.

Hassan Abou Alam has established himself as one of Egypt's most innovative underground musicians over the last 10+ years. His music is a meeting of disparate worlds - organic and synthetic designs, digital and analogue tools, the traditional and the futuristic, and it has come on the likes of YUKU, Rhythm Section, Banoffee Pies and Casa Voyager. His versatile sound pulls apart existing genres and reconstructs them as something entirely new.

Opener '3asabi' is a stylish sonic assault with thumping rhythms and trippy oscillations that will get any dance floor bouncing. It's fun yet functional, serious yet seductive and 'Basha' Ft. ZIAD ZAZA, Ismail Nosrat & Aly B is another kinetic fusion of hand claps and complex drum funk, Egyptian vocal gymnastics and punchy bass. 'Ghalat' has lurching drums and plunging bass driving on beneath mangled synths, odd vocalisations and percussive splatters drawn from a unique sound palette. The drilling low ends of 'Khalsana' Ft ZIAD ZAZA are offset by fluttering percussive details up top while spare but booming kicks shake every bone in your body and the bassline devastates.

There is no let up on 'Mesh Mafhoom' which is a ritualistic workout with moments of melancholic synth soul shining through the jumble of tin-pot percussion and crashing hits. Closer 'Zein' is more body-popping brilliance that channels ancient spirits into warped synths and rhythms so complex they melt the mind.
Hassan Abou Alam's blurring of the lines between the real and the imagined is second to none on this EP. It's a sub-heavy mix of the human voice, machine-made sounds and inventive rhythms that make for something new, weird and wonderful.

Riding a wave of critical praise and positive feedback for his most recent Emperor Machine album, the fabulous Island Boogie, Andrew Meecham returns with a typically wild and dancefloor-focused set of dubs, ‘versions’ and remixes.

According to Meecham, Island Boogie is his most personal set to date – a full-length excursion that not only delivers perfectly formed expressions of his dub-tinged, off-kilter synth-boogie sound, but also tracks that draw deeply on his earliest influences and long-held musical expressions.

It’s fitting, then, that this remix EP begins with his own sparse, stripped-back ‘version’ rework of ‘S-S-S-Single Bed’, a fine cover of the mid-80s Fox single featuring the vocals of Michelle Bee. Meecham’s dub-wise revision is a skeletal and driving affair, with snippets of echoing guitar, colourful synths and Bee’s distinctive vocalisations rising above a weighty dub disco bassline and rock-solid percussion.

It's followed by two revisions of album favourite ‘Wanna Pop With You’ from A Love From Outer Space main man Sean Johnston under his now familiar Hardway Brothers alias. Combining his own love of raw, analogue-sounding electronics and trippy dancefloor psychedelia with select elements of Meecham’s original – percussion, synth sounds, crisp guitar licks and elements of Severine Mouletin’s lead vocals, Johnston’s main ‘remix’ is a weighty, mid-tempo treat. Arguably even better is his accompanying dub, which is more groove-and-effects focused and makes more of Beecham’s superb original bassline. It’s heavy, spaced-out and undeniably intoxicating.

To round off the package, long-time friend of the label (and sometime contributor) Rose Robinson dons her Tigerbalm pseudonym and gets to work on ‘La Cassette’. Brilliantly cutting up Severine Mouletin’s vocals, she delivers a driving slab of spaced-out, synth-heavy dub disco that adds more weight and energy to Meecham’s original. It’s a fittingly on-point way to close out a superb selection of club-ready revisions.

returning, dream’ is the second album from Paradise Cinema – the‘Fourth World’ inspired project led by multi-instrumentalist Jack Wyllie (Portico Quartet/Szun Waves). While Wyllie’s other projects move between tightknit electronica, widescreen minimalism and improvised ambient sounds, ‘returning, dream’ contains nods to Jon Hassell, Terry Riley, Don Cherry and Midori Takada as well as more contemporary electronic, ambient and non-western music and even draws inspiration from physics and science fiction.

The first, eponymous, Paradise Cinema record, released in 2020, was recorded in Dakar (Wyllie lived in Senegal for a while in the late 2010s) and featured the dense rhythms of Mbalax music combining with Wyllie’s textural saxophone and synth playing, but here he takes a step into the unknown:

The music is no longer built primarily around the rumbling
propulsiveness of Mbalax, but takes its inspiration from the Many-Worlds Interpretation of quantum mechanics, which suggests that there are many different worlds that branch off from our own. Wyllie explains: “It is an imagining of what music could be like in a different time and space, ancient and futuristic from everywhere and nowhere at once. I was listening to a lot of physics podcasts when I created this record. I loved the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics; about the multiple paths we are taking each time a quantum decision is taken. The different worlds then splitting off like branches on a tree. I could imagine different histories and worlds and multiple versions of myself, others and even other societies existing. In this album I’ve dug into these ideas andattempted to make music that would come from those different spaces, trying to poke my finger through to the other selves and stories. Effectively a form of composed science fiction, the music is an idea of what might be occurring or have occurred on a branch of the tree in a different world. But I like to think the tracks might actually have been composed somewhere or sometime.”

Created in London by Jack Wyllie with additional recordings from Dakar and Sydney, ‘returning, dream’ blends sounds that do not typically live together. It features Khadim Mbaye (sabar drums) and Tons Sambe (tama drums) who provide the dense Sengalese rhythms, plus Szun Waves colleague Laurence Pike, also on drums.

In their musical journey spanning 15 years, Jungle by Night always knew their music isn't about individual talent, but in the blend of all elements its members bring to the table. This realization birthed the theme of their seventh album, “Synergy”. With the mantra "the whole is greater than the sum of its parts" echoing in their minds, Jungle by Night embarked on a mission to make an album that is recorded right in the moment, and as live as possible, to capture the energy between musicians. And to take it a step further, they threw open the doors of their studio in Amsterdam and invited some of Holland’s most prolific vocalists such as: Spinvis, Sef, Merol, Pitou, and Meral Polat. Each vocalist brought their unique style to the mix, infusing the tracks with depth and emotion. Recorded in their beloved studio in Amsterdam Noord, "Synergy" captures the essence of Jungle by Night's creative spirit. Here, imperfection is embraced, and spontaneity reigns supreme. It's about capturing the energy of the moment, where music comes alive in all its vibrant glory. So, dive into the world of "Synergy" and experience the crazy world Jungle by Night, and friends. It's more than just an album – it's a testament to the beauty of coming together and creating something greater than the sum of its parts. Jungle by Night are seven Dutch guys who together form a live act to be reckoned with. This Amsterdam band consists of a lot of synths, drums, bass, guitar and percussion enhanced by a trumpet and trombone. From more brass-heavy earlier albums to a stronger focus on the electronic groove on their latest, they bravely go where no band has gone before and now find themselves in the goldilocks zone between analogue dance music, nu-disco, Krautrock, 70’s funk and 80’s electro. The transfer to a more electronically driven sound might have been a small step for this merry band of highly skilled musicians, but it became a giant leap for the people on the dance floor. Their radiant and energetic live shows have become the must-see festival act that festivalgoers all over Europe include as a staple in their concert schedule. They know this won’t be a show, it’ll be a downright party. It’s like that tree in the forest. Was it really a festival if you didn’t see Jungle by Night? What constitutes this ever-present attraction is the highly danceable and addicting build up of their set, in which they take their audience by the hand and lead them into the groove. What happens when you come out on the other side? Depends. Just know you won’t be the same.

Blood Smoke Vinyl. The Instrumental version of the underground classic El Michels Affair & Black Thought collaborative album Glorious Game When Leon Michels and El Michels Affair released their ­rst record, Sounding Out The City, in 2005, it was hard to guess what was next for Michels and his then-introduced, now-patented "cinematic soul" sound. Now, four EMA studio albums and scores of tribute and remix projects later_all while producing for some of the biggest names in the industry_Michels has trademarked his sound, with each project taking audiences somewhere new and pushing the boundaries of what he is known for. The man is a river, not a lake and this time he takes his golden touch into the realm of hip-hop laying down a musical bed for one of the greatest to ever rhyme into a microphone: Black Thought of The Roots crew. Releasing on Big Crown Records, the LP is called Glorious Game and it is a remarkable debut partnership in more ways than one. Michels provides his bottom-heavy, soul-tinged production for Black Thought who gives us some of the more personal and transparent verses we've ever heard from him. Michels and Black Thought have been in each other's orbit for a while now. The two ­rst met in the 2000s when Thought was ­rst getting familiar with the contemporary soul scene. "Out of that whole world, Menahan Street Band was probably my favorite," recalling the funk and soul group Michels was a founding member of back in 2007. Fast forward a few years and musicians from that collective_Dave Guy on trumpet and Ian Hendrickson-Smith on sax _are now full time players with The Roots. This connection eventually led Leon and Thought to doing a few fundraising events around NYC and Philly together. "Before long, Black Thought was coming around the studio and would jam with us from time to time," Michels explains. "Then, fast forward to 2020 and COVID lockdowns, he just hit me up out of the blue, wanting me to send him stuff to write to. We both were looking to stay busy." Being that Black Thought is the co-founder and emcee for, hands down, the best live-band group in hip-hop. Michels took a decidedly different approach to this project and instead of sending recorded tracks of live compositions, he pulled out the sampler and sampled himself and some records from his collection. "I'm a big fan of soul music," as if Michels has to remind us. "And part of hip-hop's appeal to me has always been the sample-based production" For Glorious Game, Michels would make wholly composed and recorded soul songs in his studio, sample himself, then chop and/or loop up his sounds and create instrumentals for Black Thought. On some tracks he took a more traditional hip-hop approach, starting from samples of other people's music but then adding live instrumentation on top. But for the most

Im Kopf eines Vigilanten tobt ein Krieg. A Killer's Confession erzählen ihn laut auf ihrem vierten Album und MNRK Music Group Debütalbum Victim 1.
Die Band um Sänger und Mastermind Waylon Reavis geht über den Punkt ohne Wiederkehr hinaus und kanalisiert die fesselnde Abscheulichkeit
wahrer Verbrechen zu einem Soundtrack aus melodischem Hardrock mit Anflügen von hämmerndem Metal und heimtückischem Industrial. Eine fast
ein Jahrzehnt dauernde Reise führte zu diesem Punkt. Nach drei bahnbrechenden Alben mit Mushroomhead zog sich Waylon von der Musik zurück,
bis sie ihn 2016 wieder einholte. Er tauchte wieder an der Spitze von A Killer's Confession auf und lieferte drei kultige Lieblingsalben: Unbroken
2017, The Indifference of Good Men 2019 und Remember [2021]. Auf dem Weg dorthin verzeichnete die Band zig Millionen Streams und arbeitete
mit jedem zusammen, von Brian "Head" Welch von Korn und Love And Death bis hin zu Chad Gray von Mudvayne und HELLYEAH.2022 ging Waylon
mit seinen Kollegen und Produzenten Dusty Boles [Make Me Famous] und Evan Mckeever [Nine Shrines] ins Studio. Als er diese Vision zum Leben
erweckte, entstand das zehn Tracks umfassende Äquivalent zu "falling down a YouTube rabbit hole of unsolved mysteries". Am Ende erzählt A Killer's
Confession eine Geschichte, von der man sich nicht mehr abwenden kann.

Im Kopf eines Vigilanten tobt ein Krieg. A Killer's Confession erzählen ihn laut auf ihrem vierten Album und MNRK Music Group Debütalbum Victim 1.
Die Band um Sänger und Mastermind Waylon Reavis geht über den Punkt ohne Wiederkehr hinaus und kanalisiert die fesselnde Abscheulichkeit
wahrer Verbrechen zu einem Soundtrack aus melodischem Hardrock mit Anflügen von hämmerndem Metal und heimtückischem Industrial. Eine fast
ein Jahrzehnt dauernde Reise führte zu diesem Punkt. Nach drei bahnbrechenden Alben mit Mushroomhead zog sich Waylon von der Musik zurück,
bis sie ihn 2016 wieder einholte. Er tauchte wieder an der Spitze von A Killer's Confession auf und lieferte drei kultige Lieblingsalben: Unbroken
2017, The Indifference of Good Men 2019 und Remember [2021]. Auf dem Weg dorthin verzeichnete die Band zig Millionen Streams und arbeitete
mit jedem zusammen, von Brian "Head" Welch von Korn und Love And Death bis hin zu Chad Gray von Mudvayne und HELLYEAH.2022 ging Waylon
mit seinen Kollegen und Produzenten Dusty Boles [Make Me Famous] und Evan Mckeever [Nine Shrines] ins Studio. Als er diese Vision zum Leben
erweckte, entstand das zehn Tracks umfassende Äquivalent zu "falling down a YouTube rabbit hole of unsolved mysteries". Am Ende erzählt A Killer's
Confession eine Geschichte, von der man sich nicht mehr abwenden kann.

After dipping into the archive to deliver a series of essential reissues, Bureau B continue to encourage the chaotic brilliance of Faust with an LP of brand new music curated by originator Zappi Diermaier and a band of musical friends, including fellow founder Gunther Wüsthoff. Over the years Faust has become many things, each as separate as the fingers, but as together as the hand which makes up their eponymous fist. From 1971 to 1974 the Hamburg band blazed a bold sonic trail, helping to create the distinct and delirious strand of German music we"ve come to know as Krautrock. Uncompromising, innovative and experimental, their releases in that period, and the stories accompanying their creation, are nothing short of legendary, and the fact that after a hiatus, the band returned and remained active in a variety of separate and simultaneous incarnations is entirely fitting for these musical revolutionaries. On Blickwinkel, Diermaier"s incarnation embrace synchronicity and chance in order to capture the moment in a six track snapshot of industrial churn, unsettling ambience and psychedelic motorik.

Step inside the world of Ginger Root. Cameron Lew makes it easy to do so; every considered detail is his own manifestation, written, designed, and executed as an all-encompassing diorama of sound and sight. A multi-instrumentalist, producer, songwriter, and visual artist from Southern California, Lew has crafted his project steadily since 2017, inviting a fervent and growing legion of fans into storylines drawn across mediums: captivating albums with accompanying films and globe-spanning tours. The Ginger Root sound _ handmade yet immaculately polished synth-pop, alt-disco, boogie, and soul _ takes shape through Lew's lens as an Asian-American growing up enamored by 1970s and '80s music, specifically the creative and cultural dialogue between Japanese City Pop and its Western counterparts from French Pop to Philly Soul to Ram-era McCartney. He spins his retro-minded influences and proliferates savvily in the present, synthesizing a songwriter's wit, an editor's eye, and a producer's resource into something singular and modern. SHINBANGUMI, his long-awaited third LP, and Ghostly International debut set for physical release in 2024 with a visual album component, translates roughly to a new season of a show. It finds Lew more poised, idiosyncratic, and intentional than ever in a new chapter of life, unlocking "exactly what Ginger Root should sound and feel like," he says. "In terms of instrumentation and musicality, it's the first time that I felt very confident and comfortable with what everything should be comprised of. On the more personal side, I'm coming out of the last four years of writing, touring, and living as a different person; SHINBANGUMI is a platform to showcase my new self."

Step inside the world of Ginger Root. Cameron Lew makes it easy to do so; every considered detail is his own manifestation, written, designed, and executed as an all-encompassing diorama of sound and sight. A multi-instrumentalist, producer, songwriter, and visual artist from Southern California, Lew has crafted his project steadily since 2017, inviting a fervent and growing legion of fans into storylines drawn across mediums: captivating albums with accompanying films and globe-spanning tours. The Ginger Root sound _ handmade yet immaculately polished synth-pop, alt-disco, boogie, and soul _ takes shape through Lew's lens as an Asian-American growing up enamored by 1970s and '80s music, specifically the creative and cultural dialogue between Japanese City Pop and its Western counterparts from French Pop to Philly Soul to Ram-era McCartney. He spins his retro-minded influences and proliferates savvily in the present, synthesizing a songwriter's wit, an editor's eye, and a producer's resource into something singular and modern. SHINBANGUMI, his long-awaited third LP, and Ghostly International debut set for physical release in 2024 with a visual album component, translates roughly to a new season of a show. It finds Lew more poised, idiosyncratic, and intentional than ever in a new chapter of life, unlocking "exactly what Ginger Root should sound and feel like," he says. "In terms of instrumentation and musicality, it's the first time that I felt very confident and comfortable with what everything should be comprised of. On the more personal side, I'm coming out of the last four years of writing, touring, and living as a different person; SHINBANGUMI is a platform to showcase my new self."

WE ARE WINTER'S BLUE AND RADIANT CHILDREN (WAWBARC) is the new quartet of Mat Ball (BIG|BRAVE), Efrim Manuel Menuck (Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Thee Silver Mt. Zion), and Jonathan Downs and Patch (both Ada). On "NO MORE APOCALYPSE FATHER" they present six modal lullabies drenched in seared distortion, slathered across striding electronic pulses. Ball and Menuck began creating music in and for the bleakest moments of Montréal winters: "We're honoring that idea of winter, when you come inside and your house is warm, a place that only exists because of how cold it is outside," says Menuck. They later recruited Downs and Patch to flesh out their initial ideas. Menuck met them in 2015 when recording Ada's final album at Montréal's Hotel2Tango _ where they reconvened to make this record. "NO MORE APOCALYPSE FATHER" is an album about witnessing bleakness from a place of safety. Carrying newfound descriptive depth, thanks to the quartet's open-ended songs freeing him from writing in meter, Menuck likens his lyrics to photorealism. On opener `Rats and Roses' he sings of an unnamed city struck by an unknown cataclysm, but the details are local: specifically, his neighbors inadvertently poisoning birds when tackling a rat infestation. It's backed by blown out synths and guitars reaching a soaring crescendo. "Seeing things from a distance and not being able to intervene happens a lot on the record," Menuck explains. "If you're a feeling and thinking person, that's just part of the human condition. We watch horror unfolding from afar, unable to do anything concrete to change it." A powerless witness, able to describe but not intervene. `Dangling Blanket From A Balcony (White Phosphorous)' references Michael Jackson holding his child over a hotel balcony in 2002_the bizarre media spectacle still lodged in Menuck's psyche. This and the album's closing track also elegize white phosphorous, a technology of war designed to light up battlefields but capable of inflicting horrific burns on those it touches. Illumination and horror in one, here underpinning scenes picturesque and terrifying. "The last song `(Goodnight) White Phosphorous' is deliberately like a lullaby," says Menuck. "Written from the viewpoint of watching white phosphorous falling outside your window." Scorched and tarnished and laden with harrowing imagery, "NO MORE APOCALYPSE FATHER" is also a record bathed in light: the bewilderment of hopeful spirits witnessing despair, watching a blizzard of distress unfold outside from a place of relative shelter and comfort. You could call that emotional ambivalence, maybe numbness. But those words are too passive for the weight of conflicted feeling resonating through the album. "I never know how I feel on an overcast day when the sun is still bright despite the grayness and the light is very flat. The colours become more saturated, and you see a single flower, say a morning glory, whose colour is so vibrant beneath the gray, I don't know if that's a lovely sensation or a terrible sensation. It's both," says Menuck.

Lovers of Italo disco music will consider Cyber People as one of the most important acts in its scene. The Space-synth sound Cyber people brought in the mid 80’s, was highlighted by their 1985 ‘Void Vision’ release, which became a hit both in Europe, as well as in South America. On top of that, Cyber People paved the road for acts like Koto, Laserdance and Hipnosis, just to name a few. Cyber People were disbanded though in 1988, but left behind a series of most important Italo Disco records.

Now, build on the ashes of the former and legendary ‘Memory Records label from Parma – Italy, Memix International is pleased to announce its return, and the return of Cyber People. In its original form, headed again by the Maestro Giorgio “Theo” Spagna himself, as leader of the pack, with a tribute to Anfrando Maiola, the founding father of Mamory Records’ most important act, Koto, who left us in 2023.

As a tribute, Anfrando’s “Dragon’s Legend” get’s a complete new overhaul by Cyber People, respecting its original structure, concept and spirit, bringing it however into the 21st century.

Besides the almost 8-and-a-half-minute tribute of Dragon’s legend on the MEM-side, on the MIX-side you will find the DJ friendly ‘DJ DUB’, bringing you the compact essential of ‘Dragon’s Legend’ for any up-to-date Italian Disco set. (And if you want to call it Italo Disco, that’s perfectly fine with us too!)

With this release, Memix International continues where it’s predecessor stopped in 1989. Paves the road into a new era, and pays with this rerelease it’s respect to Anfrando Maiola and his Koto releases , such with full support from his heir.

With this release Memix International also brings a tribute to Alessandro Porta, the great Italian designer and visual artist, whose heirs were as kind to participate also, and made one of Alessandro’s drawings available for the sleeve of this unique release. It was Porta who was, on many occasions, responsible for the characteristic artwork of various Koto releases and, all together it will for sure make this release a well sought item which comes in a strictly limited edition of 500 units, so distributed on a ‘first to come, first to serve’ basis. Expected release and shipment: end of September/begin of October 2024.