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Die Wurzeln der NWOBHM-Legende Tokyo Blade gehen zurück bis in die frühen achtziger Jahre, als die Schulfreunde Andy Boulton (Gitarre), Andy Robbins (Bass) und Steve Pierce (Schlagzeug) in Wiltshire unter dem ursprünglichen Namen White Diamond starteten. Irgendwann tat man sich mit Sänger Alan Marsh zusammen und machte zuerst als Killer und dann als Genghis Khan weiter. Die Doppel-Single »Double Dealin’« erschien 1982 und sicherte Tokyo Blade einen Plattenvertrag beim neu gegründeten Label Powerstation Records. Im November 1983 stand schließlich das Debütalbum in den Läden.
Gründungsmitglied und Gitarrist Andy Boulton erläutert: “Die Platte wurde im Wickham Studio in Ost-London aufgenommen. Wir hatten lediglich vier Tage zur Verfügung und es war ein Albtraum. Immer wenn wir fertig waren, fielen wir todmüde um und schliefen sofort auf dem Studioboden ein. Und am nächsten Tag ging alles wieder von vorne los.“
Es wundert demnach kaum, dass Andy die Atmosphäre im Studio als angespannt bezeichnet: “Wir dachten, uns würden wenigstens zwei Wochen zur Verfügung stehen, aber am Ende mussten wir alles mehr oder weniger live aufnehmen. Im Grunde genommen haben wir die Songs für das Album ausgewählt, die uns am besten gefallen haben zu diesem Zeitpunkt.”
Während die Pressereaktionen im Vereinigten Königreich, speziell beim Kerrang!, nicht überwältigend waren, wurden Tokyo Blade in Kontinentaleuropa von Magazinen wie dem Aardschok (Niederlande) und Rock Hard (Deutschland) bereits als die neuen Iron Maiden gefeiert.
Diese erweiterte Re-Issue des ersten Albums von Tokyo Blade kommt mit einer Fülle von Bonus-Material: als da wären die vier Songs der »Midnight Rendezvous«-EP, nämlich “If Heaven Is Hell”, “Highway Passion”, “Midnight Rendezvous” und “Mean Streak”, sowie “Powergame” und ”Death On Main Street” von der »Powergame« 7”, plus ein Stück namens “Machine Run”, das 1982 auf der Ebony-Compilation »Metal Maniaxe« unter dem Bandnamen Madame Guillotine erschienen ist und in Hull aufgenommen wurde.
Transfer, Audio-Restaurierung und Mastering durch Patrick W. Engel bei TEMPLE OF DISHARMONY im Februar 2021 / Januar 2026. Cutting durch SST Germany auf Neumann-Geräten für optimale Qualität auf allen Ebenen. Die ultimative audiophile Ausgabe dieses zeitlosen NWOBHM-Klassikers!

Creole Culture is the triumphant return of Dawn Richard’s King Creole era. Steeped in history but with its flag planted firmly in the future, Creole Culture pulls elements from Richard’s heritage as a Black and Native American woman who has spent a lifetime making and engaging with music. Following New Breed (2019) and Second Line (2021), Creole Culture is akin to a panel of a triptych: a fully-realized sonic and narrative universe in which Richard, as King Creole, rebuilds her hometown of New Orleans in her image. She not only honors her city for what it was or what it gave her, but stakes a claim for it as a cradle of global culture now and for all time.


Creole Culture follows two acclaimed avant-garde R&B albums with composer Spencer Zahn — the later of which, 2024’s Quiet in a World Full of Noise, found Richard exorcising the specters of grief and trauma in the wake of her father Frank Richard’s health struggles and the killing of her cousin Cisco. It is a softer take on the brass-soaked swagger of Richard’s previous King Creole efforts, an evolution brought about when she realized she had left a crucial viewpoint out of her exploration of New Orleans: her own. “New Breed was the story of New Orleans through my father’s eyes,” Richard explains. “I used his samples, his music, his cultures, his work with Chocolate Milk, his side of the family. Second Line was my mom — her interludes riddled the album with her depiction of what is meant to be a Creole woman in New Orleans. The masculine and feminine sides of King Creole had expressed themselves through them, but the story felt unfinished, like my version of the story was untold.”
That story is, for lack of a better word, complex: at turns triumphant and tragic, sexy and mournful, braggadocious and contemplative. Creole Culture presents Richard’s New Orleans as a utopian soundscape — an intoxicating blend of R&B, soul, hip-hop, pop, and jazz — that’s survived and thrived despite the dystopian circumstances visited upon it. Richard presents the melange of influence and artifact on Creole Culture with the care of a botanist nurturing new hybrids in a rose garden.


What emerges from that care is at once delightful and unexpected, enlisting a crew of guest stars including Big Freedia, Anjelika “Jelly” Joseph, Tarriona “Tank” Ball, and Durand Bernarr for features that play against type. Tank’s turn at spoken word verse on “l v r” serves to add dimension to King Creole’s New Orleans, as does Joseph’s undeniable voice on “chuuuurch.” “I’m not normally a features girl,” says Richard, ”but King Creole can’t build a world from scratch without help. What’s beautiful about the features here — which is also true of my band and producers — is they come from people who understand the materials of the world they’re from, they’re people I love, and they’re people who are just extraordinary at what they do. They’re part of the atmosphere of this place. You need them for the record to breathe.”
In the end, that’s what King Creole creates: a space where Dawn Richard can breathe, can be at peace with herself, and let loose with others. From finding love in opening single “enough” to relishing in the Afrocaribbean futurism of “fiesta,” Creole Culture is a tremendous, freeing breath of fresh air. It captures the resolve of a woman and a place who’ve survived the unimaginable and sees the future not as something to be endured, but as something to be created. Dawn Richard has been making that future one album at a time over the course of her career. Creole Culture is her most stunning one yet.

Creole Culture is the triumphant return of Dawn Richard’s King Creole era. Steeped in history but with its flag planted firmly in the future, Creole Culture pulls elements from Richard’s heritage as a Black and Native American woman who has spent a lifetime making and engaging with music. Following New Breed (2019) and Second Line (2021), Creole Culture is akin to a panel of a triptych: a fully-realized sonic and narrative universe in which Richard, as King Creole, rebuilds her hometown of New Orleans in her image. She not only honors her city for what it was or what it gave her, but stakes a claim for it as a cradle of global culture now and for all time.


Creole Culture follows two acclaimed avant-garde R&B albums with composer Spencer Zahn — the later of which, 2024’s Quiet in a World Full of Noise, found Richard exorcising the specters of grief and trauma in the wake of her father Frank Richard’s health struggles and the killing of her cousin Cisco. It is a softer take on the brass-soaked swagger of Richard’s previous King Creole efforts, an evolution brought about when she realized she had left a crucial viewpoint out of her exploration of New Orleans: her own. “New Breed was the story of New Orleans through my father’s eyes,” Richard explains. “I used his samples, his music, his cultures, his work with Chocolate Milk, his side of the family. Second Line was my mom — her interludes riddled the album with her depiction of what is meant to be a Creole woman in New Orleans. The masculine and feminine sides of King Creole had expressed themselves through them, but the story felt unfinished, like my version of the story was untold.”
That story is, for lack of a better word, complex: at turns triumphant and tragic, sexy and mournful, braggadocious and contemplative. Creole Culture presents Richard’s New Orleans as a utopian soundscape — an intoxicating blend of R&B, soul, hip-hop, pop, and jazz — that’s survived and thrived despite the dystopian circumstances visited upon it. Richard presents the melange of influence and artifact on Creole Culture with the care of a botanist nurturing new hybrids in a rose garden.


What emerges from that care is at once delightful and unexpected, enlisting a crew of guest stars including Big Freedia, Anjelika “Jelly” Joseph, Tarriona “Tank” Ball, and Durand Bernarr for features that play against type. Tank’s turn at spoken word verse on “l v r” serves to add dimension to King Creole’s New Orleans, as does Joseph’s undeniable voice on “chuuuurch.” “I’m not normally a features girl,” says Richard, ”but King Creole can’t build a world from scratch without help. What’s beautiful about the features here — which is also true of my band and producers — is they come from people who understand the materials of the world they’re from, they’re people I love, and they’re people who are just extraordinary at what they do. They’re part of the atmosphere of this place. You need them for the record to breathe.”
In the end, that’s what King Creole creates: a space where Dawn Richard can breathe, can be at peace with herself, and let loose with others. From finding love in opening single “enough” to relishing in the Afrocaribbean futurism of “fiesta,” Creole Culture is a tremendous, freeing breath of fresh air. It captures the resolve of a woman and a place who’ve survived the unimaginable and sees the future not as something to be endured, but as something to be created. Dawn Richard has been making that future one album at a time over the course of her career. Creole Culture is her most stunning one yet.

OTHELLO is the debut album by pianist and composer Orson Claeys. Bringing together influences from jazz, hip-hop, urban culture, and everyday life, the record offers the clearest portrait yet of an artist shaped as much by the worlds around him as by music itself.

The title refers to Claeys' full name, Orson Dwight Othello Claeys, and reflects the album's central concern:identity. Throughout the record, personal experiences, cultural influences, and artistic inspirations converge into a body of work that seeks to understand how an artist is formed, both within and beyond music. Musically, OTHELLO builds on jazz, strongly intertwined with hip-hop, contemporary culture, and ideas beyond traditional musical frameworks. For Claeys, music is not a fixed genre, but an open and evolving form of expression.

This broad perspective is evident in the album's carefully chosen collaborations. A track like "WHAT A NIGHT" first took shape during a studio session with indie-soul singer Sevens, whose harmonic ideas laid the foundation for the track. As the composition evolved, Claeys felt it called for a stronger hip-hop voice. Through a recommendation from Mixmonster Menno of STUFF., he was introduced to L.A. rapper IAMOMNI, whose contribution brought exactly the energy and perspective the track needed. The result unfolds like a late-night journey through Los Angeles, with IAMOMNI's contribution adding a sense of movement, character, and place.

Elsewhere on the album, "SPIRAL", featuring Belgo-Brazilian vocalist Helena Casella, grew out of a long-standing mutual admiration. Conceived as a meeting point between R&B and jazz, the composition balances the groove and emotional depth of the former with the improvisational spirit and spontaneity of the latter. The collaboration developed naturally from the outset, with Casella instinctively understanding the atmosphere Claeys envisioned while enriching the music with her own warmth and nuance.

A long-held ambition materializes on "SHADOWBOXING", where Claeys is joined by drummer, producer, and one of the key figures in contemporary Belgian jazz, Lander Gyselinck. Gyselinck's work, particularly his collaboration with Zwangere Guy on Pourriture Noble, was instrumental in showing Claeys how the language of hip-hop could coexist naturally with jazz, an idea that runs through OTHELLO. Drawing inspiration from boxing, the track is a musical equivalent of a fighter's walk towards the ring: focused, intense, and driven by the sense of anticipation that precedes stepping into the fight.

After this heightened intensity, the album gradually moves toward its closing statement. OUTRO / HANIN", featuring oud player Akram Ben Romdhane, a longtime collaborator whose playing forms a natural bridge between Claeys' previous work and the broader musical landscape explored across the album. The title references the Tunisian Arabic word hanin, meaning "nostalgia", a fitting conclusion to a work deeply concerned with memory, identity, and personal history.

Beyond music itself, OTHELLO is informed by a wider cultural landscape. Urban culture, with its visual language, creative independence, and sense of community, forms an important backdrop to the record. Sport also plays a significant role, particularly boxing and basketball, whose emphasis on discipline, focus, and resilience mirrors Claeys' own creative process. Rather than being treated as separate influences, these worlds coexist without hierarchy, reflecting an artistic vision that resists rigid boundaries and allows different disciplines, communities, and experiences to inform one another.

A space is often described by its dimensions. The height of the ceiling, the expanse between walls. Division into functional elements of varying density follows. We have ideas of how such dimensions should be balanced to work well for sound — the classical concert hall, a Northward mastering room.

It’s tempting to try and use this idea of space to understand Space the group (Lisa Ullén, Elsa Bergman, Anna Lund). To calculate their cartesian co-ordinates: dynamics that run from whisper soft to punishing, shaking force; Ullén’s piano running the full expanse of the frequency spectrum; the mix of sudden, surprising and suggested variations in density (the space) that generates their musical structures.

But (a) space is a social phenomenon where meaning is accumulated and possibilities created by and through a constantly shifting set of social relations and their histories and entanglement inside and beyond the physical structures of a room or building. Reduced to its raw dimensions, Cafe OTO shouldn’t sound good: the low ceiling, the hollow void underneath the stage-not-stage, the hard glass windows out onto the street. But OTO as a social space — for gathering close to listen; the serious pursuit of a convivial good time (its productive mythology that an OTO audience is both up for it but also expects more); and then the idea of all that has happened before and what will come; that this is also part of ‘the music’ and changes what sounds to the point that none of those cartesian co-ordinates matter.**

It’s less of shock that Space sound good. Lisa Ullén is easily the most singular pianist in Sweden right now and Elsa and Anna’s ability to reroute in realtime reaffirms just how well they function as a group. The trio might have got their shit together holding down the rhythm section for the first incarnation of Anna Högberg Attack — but much like Högberg’s ongoing pursuit of artistic renewal, the trio avoid being shackled to any ideas about what a piano trio should be and there is something that happens (happened) in that room, on that night, with those people that made for something beyond just good.

It’s a gift that the sound of every concert at OTO gets recorded. A choice handful of these transcend their decoupling from that social space and radiate the room’s attendant energies. This record is one of them.

** See Jack Halberstam in Fred Moten & Stefano Harney, The Undercommons (2013): “…we must refuse the idea that music happens only when the musician enters and picks up an instrument; music is also the anticipation of the performance and the noises of appreciation it generates and the speaking that happens through and around it, making it and loving it, being in it while listening."

With the amps still warm from 2024's coruscating comeback Life Knife Death, veteran Swedish punk-metal masters Wolfbrigade strike back like a wounded cobra with their loudest, fullest, thickest-sounding record yet. And that's no happy accident. On their twelfth LP (the first three released under the Wolfpack monicker, 1996–99), the quintet concertedly resolved to shake up their habitual processes and interrogate their customary methodology. "As the songs started to fall into place, we decided to do something we hadn't done in many years," explains the band. "For the last decade we've recorded, produced and mixed our albums ourselves. This time we wanted to work with someone from outside the band whose work we respect and who we felt would understand what Wolfbrigade is about."

With the amps still warm from 2024's coruscating comeback Life Knife Death, veteran Swedish punk-metal masters Wolfbrigade strike back like a wounded cobra with their loudest, fullest, thickest-sounding record yet. And that's no happy accident. On their twelfth LP (the first three released under the Wolfpack monicker, 1996–99), the quintet concertedly resolved to shake up their habitual processes and interrogate their customary methodology. "As the songs started to fall into place, we decided to do something we hadn't done in many years," explains the band. "For the last decade we've recorded, produced and mixed our albums ourselves. This time we wanted to work with someone from outside the band whose work we respect and who we felt would understand what Wolfbrigade is about."

DPRTNDRP make a long-awaited return to Infernal Sounds with 'Byrnei', a release that's been quietly building anticipation across the 140 scene. Following their acclaimed 'What Ya Mean' EP in 2020, the duo are back with five heavyweight cuts that showcase exactly why they've remained one of dubstep's most respected production outfits for well over a decade.

Opening with the title track, 'Byrnei' wastes no time setting the tone. Rolling with DPRTNDRP's unmistakable swing, weight and groove, it's a certified soundsystem weapon - built to lock dancers into its hypnotic rhythm while delivering devastating low-end pressure.

Next up, 'Jiaozi' shifts into overdrive. A relentless barrage of razor-sharp percussion, cavernous basslines and seismic energy, it's an uncompromising slice of peak-time dubstep designed to hit with maximum impact from the first drop to the last.

'Fury' explores a deeper side of the duo's sound, drawing influence from their dub-focused alias, D-Operation Drop. Rich in space, texture and heavyweight sonics, it perfectly blurs the line between traditional dub and modern 140, combining meditative atmospherics with chest-rattling low-end.

Adding another dimension to the EP, Causa steps in to rework 'Fury', twisting the original into a hypnotic, distorted roller. Layered with his unmistakable wobble-heavy aesthetic, the remix pushes the track into darker territory, delivering an immersive journey of oppressive bass weight and razor-sharp sound design.

Bringing the release to a thunderous close, 'Backfire' is pure, uncompromising pressure. Stripped back, direct and devastatingly effective, it's arguably the heaviest moment on the EP; a no-nonsense soundsystem destroyer that leaves a lasting impression.

From start to finish, 'Byrnei' is a statement of intent. It's a masterclass in weight, groove and precision, reinforcing DPRTNDRP's status as true innovators within the 140 landscape. With five expertly crafted cuts destined for dancefloors and soundsystems worldwide, this is another landmark release from two producers operating firmly at the top of their game.




[d] B2. Fury [Causa Remix]

A sought-after collaborator in Chicago’s indie music scene for over a decade, V.V. Lightbody’s third LP is a marvelous showcase of her singular production and arrangement skills, ear-catching melodies, and signature frank lyricism. Period Piece presents a deeply relatable audit of Lightbody’s own anxieties, imperfections, and charming peculiarities as she falls in love, ages, dabbles in divination, and re-evaluates her place in the world.

Notably, Period Piece also marks Lightbody’s debut as a lead producer on her own album – a dazzling and welcome emergence. With layers of perfectly tucked backing vocals, swirling guitars in harmony, chugging bass lines, and romantic, melodic flutes, Lightbody has crafted a playful and pristinely recorded collection of indie-folk songs, veering between 70s Brazilian samba and contemporary electro-pop. Think, Cate Le Bon strolling through an overgrown meadow. Dave Vettraino provided additional production and mixing support, and Lightbody called in a robust team of friends to contribute throughout, including Macie Stewart, Sam Cantor, Emma Hospelhorn, Jack Henry Lickerman, and Cassandra Jenkins.

A sought-after collaborator in Chicago’s indie music scene for over a decade, V.V. Lightbody’s third LP is a marvelous showcase of her singular production and arrangement skills, ear-catching melodies, and signature frank lyricism. Period Piece presents a deeply relatable audit of Lightbody’s own anxieties, imperfections, and charming peculiarities as she falls in love, ages, dabbles in divination, and re-evaluates her place in the world.

Notably, Period Piece also marks Lightbody’s debut as a lead producer on her own album – a dazzling and welcome emergence. With layers of perfectly tucked backing vocals, swirling guitars in harmony, chugging bass lines, and romantic, melodic flutes, Lightbody has crafted a playful and pristinely recorded collection of indie-folk songs, veering between 70s Brazilian samba and contemporary electro-pop. Think, Cate Le Bon strolling through an overgrown meadow. Dave Vettraino provided additional production and mixing support, and Lightbody called in a robust team of friends to contribute throughout, including Macie Stewart, Sam Cantor, Emma Hospelhorn, Jack Henry Lickerman, and Cassandra Jenkins.

EM Records is proud to present the first new album release in 25 years from Australia's Sheriff Lindo, dubmaster of the Southern Hemisphere.
His "Ten Dubs That Shook The World" EM1119CD/LP, released in 1988, has been growing in stature since its release, supported by its re-issue on EM Records, and in the meantime the Sheriff has been working steadily, deep-local style, honing his skills with the Australian sound systems Firehouse Sound and Earthlink Sound. The tracks on "Aftershock Dubs", recorded between 1990 and 2005, while never officially released, have been played as dub plates at sound system parties, proved movers, tested in the heat of action. Recorded at Lindo's 4/5 Studios, these specials were chosen by Japanese sound system savants Takuto Kuratani (Ruv Bytes) and Atsushi Muneshige (Touch the Sky/Corner Stone Music) from a cornucopia of goodness supplied by Sheriff Lindo, mastered by Kuratani for maximum impact. EM Records' first-ever Dancehall release is available on vinyl and CD, with two bonus tracks on the CD. One track features the vocals of Ras Roni; all tracks feature the experience-forged Dub sense of the Sheriff. More than a quarter-century of love, knowledge and soul-science has been distilled here. Don't miss it.

Der belgische Pianist Jef Neve, sowohl klassisch als auch im Jazz ausgebildet, legt ein sehr persönliches Soloalbum vor. Die elf Titel führen bis in seine Kindheit zurück, wo er schon am Klavier saß und in seiner Fantasie den verschiedenen Tönen bestimmte Farben zuordnete. Nach 25 Jahren auf der Bühne, Tourneen um die ganze Welt und zahlreichen Begegnungen mit Menschen und Orten stellt "Key Energy" eine Art Zwischenbilanz dar.

Cologne based DJ and producer Barnt has been bottling his own weather system since 2010: captivating techno where melodies flirt, rhythms evaporate, and structure is something to tease rather than obey. An attitude, that pierces the average definition of techno. With an album and endless EP’s, he turned club orthodoxy inside out. Barnt has sent his tracks out via labels like Cómeme, Mule Musiq, Hinge Finger, Hivern Discs, Kompakt, or Magazine from Cologne, the enterprise he co-runs with a bunch of friends.

After his 2014 debut album on Magazine, that came out as catalogue number 13, Barnt is back with number 25, a new album, titled “After completing the Hex”. Eleven tracks, each grinding lowkey skewed. This is techno for dramatic entrances. Dance music for confusion. Freely played chords oscillate with intention. Alluring melodies glide across stoic beats. Peaktime vibes stripped to the bone. An album that provides Barnt’s most complete release until today, displaying his unique sound world effortless assembled. Mastered by longtime accomplice, producer Matt Karmil, it features playful, seemingly unintentional, meandering club spirits. There are melodies made from 100 notes and hooklines fashioned from just one. In-between calmer electric enchanters, minimal, free-spirted, tempting. His slinky madness occasionally presents sublimely embedded environmental sounds or oral samples, taken from sources like Torn Hawk’s “Trustfall” TTT cassette album. There is a touch of sadness, that veils the recordings at times, always defied by lightness and optimism. A record made with true inspiration, that overrides all fears. Drawn frankly from emotions, bringing the ultimate flow state, that unlocks a new techno gate.

We welcome back one of Ireland’s most important electronic music pioneers, Roger Doyle for his third solo release on our Allchival label. For those who don’t know, Doyle is a composer, producer, founding member of the influential music-theatre company Operating Theatre, and friend to the label. Doyle has been exploring the possibilities of electronic sound since the 1970s which we have been mining.
Idir brings together new fixed electronic works, software piano improvisations and voice, alongside a new recording of music from Operating Theatre’s 1986 production of Sebastian Barry’s The Pentagonal Dream, performed by Olwen Fouéré. Also included is a response to the dreamlike language of James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake.
Meaning “between” in Irish, Idir feels like a fitting title for an album that moves between eras, technologies, theatre and electronic composition: connecting Doyle’s pioneering past with his continuing practice. Returning back to an electronic foundation, the majority of tracks were composed between 2023 and 2025.

| Palace Vinyl presents Brixton Row’s third instalment from US tech-house pioneer, Adam Collins alongside Torin Lawson and featuring Harrison Andrew.

With a breaks record on each side paired with two 4X4 tracks, the four-track EP displays the aesthetic Adam is known for whilst also pushing new territory. A nod to late 90s / early 2000s breaks can be heard on either side with measured, rolling groove and warm low-ends permeating throughout.

The B2 features a spoken vocal from Adam over a rhythm track punctuated by piano chords and playful percussion reminiscent of the acid house flavour.

Written and produced by Adam Collins & Torin Lawson. A2 ft. Harrison Andrew. B2 by Adam Collins.
Mastered by Justin Drake.
Pressed by Vinyl Presents.
Distributed by Palace Vinyl.

Risk/Reward’s fourth release sees one of the UK’s most prolific and recognizable Producer/DJ’s take the elevator all the way down to the basement of the Tech House sonic spectrum…

Archie Hamilton has achieved superstar status after over a decade of consistently excellent musical output. As the name suggests, Friends in Low Places sees him return to the underground with the rolling, acid-laced, “for the heads” sound that first saw him explode on to the scene 10+ years ago, supplying 3 original tracks that will surprise and delight in equal measure!

A1: NyLon blends the dreamy shades of 90s Italo with the rugged bounce of golden era UK Tech House, to create a beautiful, bold fever dream. Intricate synth melodies, rudeboy vocal cuts and transcendant pads play out over crunchy swinging drums. A bold opening statement to kick off the EP.

A2: The energy kicks up to 11 on Trance-Tech bomb No Signal, a certified weapon of mass dance floor destruction! Vintage Archie rolling 303 bass layered with complex acid lines, haunting siren calls and relentless, gritty drums make for a powerful peak time standout that will have jaws dropping!

B1: On the flip side Archie takes you Higher with another signature roller that’s instantly familiar yet enigmatic. Punchy yet intricate drums, deeply groovy bass, a variety of ear worm melodies and an oh so familiar voice take you up, up and away in to the atmosphere. An instant classic from a man who’s made his fair share.

B2: Returning to the scene he played a key role in building after almost a decade out, UK Tech House DON Gideon Jackson delivers a gargantuan remix that could very easily reduce the club to rubble if not handled carefully. No element of Higher was spared in this rework, but the weight and pressure get cranked up to the absolute fullest - tougher than tough stuff from the OG!

Long overdue reissue of classic Scottish ambient techno banger ‘Mindweeds’, originally released in 1993 on the Pure-affiliated T&B Vinyl label run by Keith McIvor (JD Twitch) and Andy Watson (Brainstorm). With a Discogs demand ratio at about 300 have : 2000 want, and used prices peaking at over £100, now seems to be the right time for a re-release.

State of Flux were Roger Elliott and Dave Clark (aka Sparky, LUMA, Truffle Club and main man behind Kübler-Ross). They first met at Glasgow’s Strathclyde University in 1990, bonding over a shared love of weasel racing, German sausages and “man-duos” like The KLF and The Shamen. Dave was fully pubescent and already had a synth and drum machine, while Roger – a late developer – bought “another cheap synth, a Commodore Amiga for sequencing and a tiny mixer with no EQ”. For two long years they concentrated hard on “churning out unlistenable pish”, admittedly clueless about what they were trying to do.

Then – out of nowhere in the summer of 1992 – a flatmate’s Jello Biafra spoken word CD (‘I Blow Minds For A Living’) provided the inspiration to unlock the spark of dynamite that set the raving world on fire. Sampled using a Walkman* cassette** tape*** on playback (a decision the pair soon came to regret every time the track was subsequently performed live), Jello’s pilfered rant would soon become the crucial glue that held together the burgeoning kaleidoscopic helicopter spliff that is ‘Mindweeds’, loaded as it was – and indeed still is – with a veritably seething morass of cheeky electronic blims, nasal filter cheese and gay Caledonian spunk.

* a vintage portable listening device roughly the size of 4 iPhones stacked on top of one another and weighing the same as a small tub of yoghurt

** a plastic cartridge enclosing 2 miniature spools of magnetically coated, polyester-type plastic film (magnetic tape), notoriously convenient for pirating copyright material and secreting in one’s underpants for transporting between illicit market trader stalls

*** thin ribbon coated with ferromagnetic particles, usually ferric oxide but also chromium dioxide, "pseudochrome" ferricobalt or iron-cobalt-nickel “metal” formulations – with the latter types sounding marginally less crap

Playing demos of the track to friends, one thing led to another and a copy arrived with Twitch. Meeting the legends behind Pure in late 1992, a release was scheduled for summer 1993… but not before a promotional live gig in February of that year, supporting their heroes The Black Dog. Confessing that they “didn’t have a clue how to play live”, the duo played it safe, “went to a studio near Edinburgh airport to record the ‘live’ show” and then “mimed it off a DAT” at the gig, “standing in front of unplugged synths”. Soon after this, they recorded the full EP at Finitribe’s ‘Finiflex’ studio in Leith, Edinburgh and the record came out as planned that summer – the same week as Underworld’s ‘Rez’.

The record received high praise, appeared in many big-name DJ charts, sold out very quickly and was repressed within a few weeks, selling several thousand copies by the end of 1993 – no mean feat in an era when people had to use landline phones ****, faxes ***** or good old-fashioned carrier pigeons ****** to ascertain literally anything about the outside world, what was cool, where to buy the cool shit, or how to meet people and have fun.

**** a fixed communication device that connects to a telephone network using physical wires, cables, or a stationary base unit tied to a specific geographic address, using a handset incorporating a mouthpiece featuring a small metal disk and carbon grains, converting sound pressure from the human voice into a flow of electrical waves caused by these grains being squeezed together, before the variable signal is transmitted down DC voltage-powered copper wire and rerouted by a central exchange to arrive at the earpiece magnet of the target receiver’s handset, moving a small speaker cone accordingly so the message is intelligible WITHOUT THE PERSON SPEAKING ACTUALLY BEING PRESENT

***** as above, but for the d/Deaf

****** flying vermin riddled with diseases and capable of surviving nuclear armageddon

Soon Roger and Dave became sick of the Walkman being the only instrument played live in their set: with their new found fame and riches, they invested in a case for their Amiga to transport it around Scotland, while also putting in the hours on how to pretend to play live better with a sequencer and synths that were FINALLY plugged in. Following the release of ‘The Mercury EP' in April 1994, they embarked on a full tour of the UK and even managed to part ways and end the band by June that year.

This reissue includes the two original mixes of ‘Mindweeds’ recorded at Finiflex (‘Original’ and engineer ‘Fred's Fancy’), the original cassette demo (mastered directly from the actual recording sent to Twitch & Brainstorm in 1992) and a live version recorded at the Birmingham club night 'Oscillate' in April 1994.

ERSTMALS AUF VINYL! Ursprüngliche 2-CD-Veröffentlichung: 1995. 32 Improvisations- und Dub-Tracks von The Ex! Die Verbindungen zwischen einer Punkband und improvisierter Musik liegen also auf der Hand: Ablehnung von Autorität, Hinterfragung traditionell gepriesener Maßstäbe, Erforschung von Kreativität jenseits der Zwänge kommerzieller Verkäuflichkeit. Kein Instantkaffee, kein Instant-Frühstück, kein Instant-Geld - INSTANTS, DIE BEWIRKEN. Momente, die bekräftigen: ,Das ist jetzt; hier sind wir, das tun wir." Auch improvisierte Musik braucht so einen Energieschub, um nicht engstirnig, verfestigt, elitär, kleinlich oder elitär zu werden. Wie Misha Mengeberg sagte: ,Ich bin im Moment sehr weit davon entfernt, Aussagen zu treffen wie ,Komposition sollte so oder so sein` oder ,Improvisation war bisher so und so`. Das hebe ich mir für den Moment auf, in dem ich tatsächlich in eine musikalische Aktion einsteige. In solchen Momenten habe ich vielleicht ein paar Definitionen. Aber jetzt noch nicht." - John Corbett ,32 Miniaturen. Manche sind ehrlich gesagt faszinierend, andere auf jeden Fall umwerfend. Aber es wird nie langweilig oder glatt. Praktisch ohne Gesang reisen The Ex durch eine Traumwelt, in der Überraschungen sich gegenseitig überraschen und in der sich neue und bisher verborgene Welten offenbaren." - The Wire THE EX: Terrie, Luc, Andy, Katrin, Han Buhrs, G.W.Sok & Gäste: Ab Baars, Wolter Wierbos, Han Bennink, Dolf, Tristan Honsinger, Michael Vatcher.

Grammy-nominated German producer and DJ, Mousse T is set to headline the next installment of Defected's celebrated House Masters vinyl series with a sprawling three-LP retrospective of his remix career. Spanning six sides of wax, the collection pulls together two decades of dancefloor alchemy, tracing his signature style from disco- inflected house to breakbeat- tinged funk and back again. Including four brand new "Shizzle" and "Re-Rub" productions that are exclusive to this compilation and one remix that has previously never been released on vinyl before, makes this a particularly essential release, offering vinyl access to mixes that may otherwise circulate only in DJ pools or digital crates. House Masters Mousse T. features classic and fresh takes on the likes of Dennis Ferrer, Martin Solveig, Moloko, Camelphat, Spiller, Shakedown and many more, cementing Mousse's reputation as one of house music's most versatile and prolific talents.

Liberation Front is a statement of pure intent from Sydney, Australia's TO THE GRAVE. Brutal and uncompromising in both sound and message, TO THE GRAVE create ugly music for uglier times. They rage against animal cruelty and environmental destruction, translating their death metal-infused deathcore into something unforgettable and utterly uncompromising. From the breakdown-laden assault of opener "MEAT THE HUMANS", Liberation Front is a suffocating return to form for the veganism-espousing quintet. While recent releases explored more hardcore-oriented territory, this album embraces deathcore at its most savage and relentless. Lead single "EYESTALK ABLATIONS" is a devastating statement, accompanied by a video every bit as violent and unforgettable as the music itself. Over the past 15 years, TO THE GRAVE have established themselves among the leading names of Australia's emerging deathcore scene, sharing stages with fellow Australians Thy Art Is Murder as well as international heavyweights including Lorna Shore. The band continues to tour extensively throughout Europe and North America, returning to the US and Canada in Fall 2026 alongside Crown Magnetar. Liberation Front is more than an album—it is a musical and lyrical call to arms, designed not only to rage against the machine but to educate, provoke and challenge listeners on every level.

Belgian artist Jennifur announces MAZDA, an album inspired by long car rides, emotional transitions, and the strange beauty of existing between places, people, and versions of yourself.

Musically, MAZDA moves fluidly between genres and emotional textures, blending electronic love songs, indie rock structures, UK bass influences, cinematic electronica, and flashes of classical composition.

The project began when Jennifur's brother sent him a playlist called MAZDA, filled with songs their father used to play in the car. What started as a nostalgia gesture quickly became the emotional blueprint for the album.

While writing MAZDA, Jennifur realized he was unknowingly creating the soundtrack to a fictional romcom film that existed only in his imagination. Rather than avoiding clichés like love, heartbreak, growing older, or transition, he chose to embrace them wholeheartedly.

"In a car, you exist in a kind of in-between space," Jennifur explains. "You've left something behind, but you haven't arrived yet. That feeling became the entire record."

The album opener, From A to B, sets the emotional framework for the entire project. Its extended introduction mirrors the exact moment you pull out of your street and realisethat something new has begun.

Highlights include "I Need You To Hold On", written for Jennifur's brother as a message of encouragement. The song "I Once Had a Dream Where I Could Fly" originated from a conversation with his father about recurring dreams of flying. Meanwhile, "From The Sideline" confronts a quieter existential fear, becoming a coming-of-age anthem for anyone who suddenly realizes they have become more of a spectator than an active participant in their own life.

Tracks like "In The Sun" bring a softer, almost cinematic intimacy to the album. Written around the image of spending one final Sunday at the seaside with someone who is seriously ill, the song captures the beauty and fragility of fleeting moments. The closing track "The Dialogue Before We Left" serves as the emotional final scene of the album.

"For me, it's the moment after a long drive when you turn off the engine but stay seated for a minute," Jennifur explains. "You realise something happened. You listened to my story, and we travelled from A to B together."

While composing the music for The Juniper Tree, Hirano drew on her own memories of touring Iceland, which included a stop at a waterfall featured in the film and rendered in sound on “Mother’s Path.” Folktales, like the origins of The Juniper Tree, are often attempts to contend with humans’ place in the natural world, with all its mysteries and intricacies, and both the film and Hirano’s soundtrack draw their sense of breathless wonder in part from the sensation of being engulfed by one’s environment. Margit, played by Björk, possesses a sublime sensitivity to her environment that allows her to receive messages from her mother, who was murdered for their shared inheritance of witchcraft. Hirano captures the relationship between the transcendental awe that is felt as supernatural and the private feelings of being immersed in that experience, creating a musical dialogue between the self and what lies beyond.

In the final sentences of her liner notes describing the film’s philosophical and feminist throughlines, Anna Bogutskaya says, “what we call Margit’s witchcraft is maybe just her willingness to listen.” This is the magic of music, and Hirano composes with an alchemist’s pen. Just as Keene seems to break down barriers between binary poles, Hirano uses both electronic and acoustic means to communicate the film’s emotive cues, uniting approaches she has explored under her own name and the alias MimiCof. There is an understanding that stillness can be understood as peaceful or foreboding, that dissonance and consonance are contextual, that efforts to protect one’s own kin can lead to tragic ends. At the film’s end we see Margit enthralled with birdsong, understanding it as something deeper, a connection to those she has lost. Through sound, we understand what lies beyond sight, beyond convention, and with this new soundtrack we hear the story anew.

Surprises are nice. Unexpected, delightful - Vision Fortune last released music in 2015, and so odds were off that we’d hear from them again.

But against all odds, Vision Fortune III is coming out on Gringo Records, following the release of their last album ‘Country Music’ on ATP Records.

The trio first agreed to record a new album as somewhat of a dare over a marathon pasta and wine heavy luncheon in Palermo, Sicily. Waking up with sore heads, they realised in mild panic that flight tickets had been purchased, a cottage in rural Wales was booked, and it was too late to pull out.

And so it was - the Fortunes arrived in Machynlleth Wales in Spring of the following year. The rules were simple - takes were live, songs minimal and the fireplace kept roaring.

Drummer Andres Ayerbe’s strict roast lamb dinner cooking schedule resulted in an album less frenetic and agitated than previous work - instead, III explores a softer, more subdued and subtle side of Vision Fortune. Additional overdubs were recorded in New York City and Birmingham, by AC Williams and Alex Townend. III was completed - a new, leaner Vision Fortune. Like a good lamb dinner - more meat, less fat.

Press Quotes for Country Music:
"An impressively brutal record" NME 8/10

"Immersive and introspective musique concréte rippling rippling with dub rhythms, orchestral strings, tolling bells and discordant drones coming close to the alien beauty of Mica Levi's sonically extreme soundtrack work." Uncut 7/10

"Unsettling, strangely cathartic and hook-free (in a good way)." Dazed ("Twenty albums to look out for in 2015")

"Assembling whole scrapyards of sound and turning them into something better than what went before" The Guardian

"Swaddling the senses in soundwaves, Minimal ambient sketches and harsh electronics abound on this fascinating 12-song affair" The FADER

"Basically just one long, connected droney throb. But it's an awesome long droney throb." Brooklyn Vegan

Linda’s Head is the first new album in over a decade by the Pacific Northwest trio of Liz Harris (guitar, vocals), Scott Simmons (bass), and Jed Bindeman (drums) .

Like its predecessor, 2015’s The Original Faces, the album maps a uniquely intimate and potent vision of bedroom dream pop. Theirs is a shoegaze of half-light and silhouettes, attuned to the shadowplay of melody, melancholy, and undertow.

The record’s title is a refraction of meanings: a head in the clouds, a severance, a fictitious landform jutting into the sea. The music is similarly layered, both yearning and weathered, its edges blurred by years in the wild. Lyrics of waves, storms, and escape further shade the songs in subcurrents of desperation and beauty, tinged in the palette of the New Zealand pop underground. But at its core Helen’s chemistry is one of warmth and release, powered by the kinship of old friends in dark times.

Stone Age Is Now: Poems from Lithic is the new album by musician and poet Caleb Nichols - both a companion piece to his book Lithic: A Hyperballad (Harbor Editions 2026) and a follow-up to his album Stone Age Is Back (Royal Oakie 2025). Across twelve tracks Nichols interpolates poems from Lithic: A Hyperballad with tracks from Stone Age Is Back, bringing new depth to his indie-rock and alt-folk compositions. A meditation on grief, but not in the ways you’d expect, the album explores what it means to be living and dying right now, in this moment of extraordinary change.


Inspired by the raw immediacy of Neil Young, early REM, and Califone, Nichols adhered to a first-take best-take rule and tracked the album in just five days. Produced by Nichols, the album was engineered by Jay Pellicci (Deerhoof, Om, Sleater-Kinney) at Brother’s (Chinese) Recording in Oakland, CA, with Nichols later recording the spoken word overdubs after hours at an empty bar in San Luis Obispo, CA. Pellicci later mixed the tracks and David Glasebrook (Patti Smith, Peter Case, Sugar Candy Mountain) mastered the album at The Garden Shed in Oakland, CA.


Featuring even more experimentation than Stone Age Is Back, the album is peppered with field recordings captured by Nichols from many locations, including Kew Gardens, London; Llan Tysilio, Yns Mon; Treborth, Gwynedd; a secret beach in Bangor; Kelvingrove Park, Glasgow; and Broad Street in San Luis Obispo, CA. In addition to contributions from band members John Metz and Aaron Kroeger, the album features saxophone by Lorenzo Coretese , and Rhys Trimble provides the Welsh translation and performance you hear on “Orme Dream At The Car Park”. Additionally, Nichols took some liberties adapting the poems from the book to the recordings. “You’ll notice that there are differences between the printed poems and the poems recorded here. That is because a poem is never finished and can exist in multiple instances at the same time, like in quantum mechanics. The cat in Schrodinger’s box is both alive and dead; at the bottom of the cliff, our eyes are both: closed and open” says Nichols.

R.M.F.C. sound like? Let’s stay with the overused descriptors – I think R.M.F.C. is rock music band, more specifically a post-punk band. Indulge me. If you could say anything about post punk it means post-Wire, who were past punk before punk had an opportunity to codify and become everything brilliant and stupid that we’ve spent 40 years unpacking. Wire’s opening Pink Flag jab – Chairs Missing straight – and 154 hook knockout has haunted the mixing desks of ambitious post-punk bands since, and every major city in the western world has at least one Pink Flag band, one Chairs Missing band, one 154 band. Few bands manage to sound like all 3 records, but R.M.F.C. are a Rock Music Fan Club...

Anyone paying attention to underground Australian guitar overdose would relate: the R.M.F.C. Club Hits LP has been the culmination of five years of work, patience and discipline. If you’ve heard these songs live at any of their shows over the past couple of years you’ll understand – the wait is over and the result is exhilarating.

‘Bands like Devo, The Fall, and The Birthday Party have set the way for this type of post-punk rock (all in their own way). Surely, also, the rock scenes of the past fifteen years in Australia have also been influential. Thinking of bands like Royal Headache, Dick Diver, and Eddy Current Suppression Ring, there’s even been a fairly recent tradition of expanding styles of rock and roll (let alone the bigger, famous rock-centered acts). The Sydney based R.M.F.C., and the scene (or friend circle) from which it’s emerging, is carrying a torch of rock music which has the potential of a wider appeal.’ - POST-TRASH

LA native The Koreatown Oddity returns for his fourth album on Stones Throw. Purdy is the proving ground for an avant-garde rapper tackling being a father and partner with the boundless confidence of a child’s imagination.
Purdy sees Koreatown soundtrack a knight’s first battle, document the cultivation of a beautiful lawn and contemplate if anyone really means it when they say "have a great weekend" – all while realising that he's now part of something bigger.
Purdy paints the complete portrait of the man Dominique Purdy and artist The Koreatown Oddity together: musician, father, and peddler of the absurd.

GoldFord’s soul music is rooted in truth. His raw, unvarnished songs are a balance of introspection and catharsis, grappling with heartbreak, healing, and the quiet revelations that come with growth. After spending a decade in corporate America, the St. Louis native (now based in Los Angeles) turned to music as a means of survival following a devastating personal loss. “I was more afraid of dying with regret than I was of failing,” he says of his decision to finally choose the path at 30, a choice that set his entire trajectory in motion.



That initial fearlessness has since fuelled extraordinary momentum. With over 4 million monthly listeners on Spotify, GoldFord has rapidly become one of the most compelling emerging voices in contemporary music. His breakout EP, Orange Blossoms (Oct 2024), has surpassed 100M streams, and his latest project, Space of the Heart (Sept 2025), has already generated 90.8M streams, 2.7M saves, and over 153,000 pieces of user-generated content across TikTok and Instagram. The standout track “Easy Does It” has reached 43.5M streams and continues to accelerate with more than 250K new weekly discoveries on Spotify.



GoldFord’s touring trajectory has followed the music's rapid ascent. He began in intimate rooms like Los Angeles’ Moroccan Lounge and New York’s Baby’s All Right before embarking on a debut North American tour that sold over 25,000 tickets. This momentum carried over to his first UK and European run, which required multiple venue upgrades in cities like London and Manchester. The international momentum continued with an Australian debut in March 2026, alongside key festival appearances at Austin City Limits and Noah Kahan’s Out of the Blue. He is currently headlining 1,000+ capacity venues on the Space of the Heart North American tour, including sold out shows in historic rooms like The Fonda and Webster Hall, with upcoming festival slots at Shaky Knees and Oceans Calling.

Pressed to Olive-Green vinyl colour for its 30th anniversary! Released 30 years ago in 1996, Propagandhi's Less Talk, More Rock is the defining masterpiece of political punk. By injecting radical activism into fast-paced skate punk, the album boldly confronted the era's apolitical scene. With unapologetic anthems on veganism, anti-fascism, and gay rights, it endures as a foundational text for activist punk. 30th anniversary of the iconic sophomore album from Canadian band, Propagandhi Produced by Ryan Greene of Motor Studios (NOFX, Bad Religion, Nerf Herder) pro-feminist/animal-friendly/anti-fascist/gay-positive Ranked as one of the best political punk albums in history (Phoenix New Times) Features hit singles "The Only Good Fascist Is A Very Dead Fascist" and "And We Thought Nation-States Were A Good Idea"

Valley of the Sun's sixth studio LP, "The Blacklight Sessions", is a deep dive into the sonic roots of the band who continues to defy genre norms. With tracks ranging from blues jam to psychedelic desert trip to driving stoner riffage, the band continues to demonstrate that their music knows no bounds, nor should it.

Hot Pink Vinyl. Valley of the Sun's sixth studio LP, "The Blacklight Sessions", is a deep dive into the sonic roots of the band who continues to defy genre norms. With tracks ranging from blues jam to psychedelic desert trip to driving stoner riffage, the band continues to demonstrate that their music knows no bounds, nor should it.

Hailing from Athens, Georgia, Now It’s Overhead is the acclaimed indie rock band fronted by Andy LeMaster. Emerging in the early 2000s alongside the era-defining Saddle Creek scene, LeMaster collaborated with artists including Conor Oberst (Bright Eyes), Michael Stipe (R.E.M.), Orenda Fink (Azure Ray), and Maria Taylor (Azure Ray).

During this period, Now It’s Overhead released three acclaimed full-length albums: Now It’s Overhead (2001), Fall Back Open (2004), and Dark Light Daybreak (2006). Available on vinyl for the first time, these long-awaited editions are essential for listeners and collectors exploring the indie rock landscape of the early 2000s. All three albums have been newly remastered by Andy LeMaster—musician, songwriter, engineer, producer, and visual artist.

The Associated Press described Now It’s Overhead as “a unique brand of organic and synthetic dark pop—made possible by LeMaster’s studio prowess—that remains distinctive even when Conor Oberst and Michael Stipe briefly stop by.”

Accompanying these reissues, Now It’s Overhead is also releasing new music for the first time in nearly twenty years. The five-song EP, in the beginning, arrives digitally on September 18, 2026.

Lily Juniper's debut album, 'Bloom Gloom' is set for release via Friends of Friends. Co-written and produced by long term collaborator and partner yours.truly, the record holds a mirror up to ourselves and the world around us. Inspired by sounds of the early 2010's post dubstep and indie scenes and written with feelings at the forefront, the album explores themes of self discovery, nostalgia and the endless battle between light and dark, with each track telling a story of what it means to be human:

Living Weapon returns with Death In The Family, a full-length that confronts mortality, meaninglessness, and the aftermath of existence. The release broken down over 23 minutes toward an unresolved end — life examined at its start and its finish, with the universe indifferent to either. Recorded, produced, and engineered by Jeremy Martin over fall 2025 into spring 2026 — the band's first time tracking a full album internally. Mixing handled by Taylor Young of The Pit Recording Studio and Mastering by Nick Townsend. The album is introduced with "The Leaving Process” laying out the album's core idea: life as connection, not permanence — matter created and destroyed, briefly aware of itself in between.

Phill Niblock completed BLK+LND in late November 2023. It is one of Phill Niblock's final compositions and was commissioned by bassist Robert Black (who passed away in the summer of 2023). The piece is based on recordings of acoustic bass and bass clarinet performed by Neil Leonard and Robert Black under Niblock's direction in 2021.

Phill Niblock (1933-2024) as an artist whose fifty-year career spanned minimalist and experimental music, film and photography. He has been a maverick presence on the fringes of the avant-garde. In the history books he is the forgotten Minimalist. Since 1985, he served as director of Experimental Intermedia, a foundation for avant-garde music based in New York with a branch in Ghent, and curator of the foundation's record label XI. Known for his thick, loud drones of music, his signature sound is filled with microtones of instrumental timbres that generate many other tones in the performance space. He said: 'What I am doing with my music is to produce something without rhythm or melody, by using many microtones that cause movements very, very slowly.' In 2013, his diverse artistic career was the subject of a retrospective realized in partnership between Circuit (Centre d'art contemporain Lausanne) and Musée de l'Elysée (Paris). The following year he was honored with the prestigious Foundation for Contemporary Arts John Cage Award. Since 1968 he also put on over 1000 concerts in his loft space in New York.

"On January 6, 2024, two days before his passing, Phill called me to discuss the premiere and tour of BLK+LND. To distract him from his rapid decline, I engaged in his touring plan, only for him to reveal that all the details were still in his head and none of the events had been confirmed. He was entrusting the project to me. Phill would have been thrilled and honored by this concert at the Donaueschinger Musiktage. The thought of one more performance with Robert Black, whom he greatly admired, presenting his new work for low-pitched instruments that he was particularly fond of, andreconnecting with old and new friends in Donaueschingen would have meant the world to him." - Neil Leonard, Berklee College of Music, Boston

Oscar Perry may not be a household name even in soul/blues circles, but this Texan's fine and expansive body of work deserves greater recognition. Throughout his career, he demonstrated multifarious talents as a producer, arranger, singer, songwriter and guitarist. He first cut his teeth in the late 1960s on Don Robey's Duke/Peacock/Backbeat set-up, writing for Bobby Bland amongst others. Once his contract with Robey had lapsed, Oscar signed with the equally colourful character Huey P. Meaux, for whom he recorded a slew of excellent albums on the Crazy Cajun imprint. It is the source of the three self-penned tracks presented here. Echoes of Jerry Butler can be heard on the string-laden emotive ballad "We'll Spend Tomorrow Falling In Love" (co-written with studio engineer Mickey Moody) with its femme support, whilst the piano-led deep beat-ballad "End Of The Road" was subsequently recorded by Bland on his Dreamer LP for ABC-Dunhill in 1974. The strong, mid-paced, bluesy "I Give Up You Win" completes this wonderful EP.

Written in collaboration with British jazz pianist and organist Kit Downes, the album was recorded in the hushed, reverberant atmosphere of Bragernes Kirke in Norway in November 2024 - a setting that lends the record an intimate, almost sacred stillness. The album was mixed and mastered by Jorgen Traeen. The album takes its title from the landmark 14th- century mystical text by Julian of Norwich - the first book known to have been written in English by a woman. Sundfor encountered Julian's writing around the same time she and Downes were performing together in churches in 2024, and the timing felt fated. Drawn to the text's extraordinary themes of hope, resilience, and its quietly radical feminine perspective, she found in Julian's words a natural spiritual and artistic continuation from her acclaimed 2023 album Blomi . The connection felt so immediate and profound that she invited Downes to join her as a full collaborator on the project.

The Modern Jazz Quartet had become a jazz institution by the time Pyramid was recorded. Formed out of the rhythm section of the Dizzy Gillespie Big Band (1946 -48), founding of the members The MJQ , pianist Lohn Lewis and vibraphonist Milt Jackson , brought a sophisticated blend of jazz and classical music to audiences around the world. Active from 1952 through to 1997 (with a seven- year break in between), the MJQ's 38- year reign counts as being among the most enduring ensembles in jazz history. Presented here is their classic album Pyramid , featuring three compositions by the quartet's pianist John Lewis (including his hit 'Django), alongside jazz standards by Ellington, Ray Brown ('Pyramid'), and Jim Hall; plus, a unique take on the Nancy Hamiton & Morgan Lewis' popular standard, 'How High The Moon'.




[d] Vendome [Original 1952 Version]



[h] Django (John Lewis) [original 1954 Version]

Spring 2026 saw The Proclaimers recording their new album, You May Offend. It is brothers Craig and Charlie Reid’s first album since 2022’s hugely acclaimed Denture’s Out (“Proves you don't need to be a young pretender to land hit after palpable hit,” – MOJO magazine). Their 13th studio album’s 12 tracks – punchy and punky, rousing and carousing, tender and tough – were recorded at Monmouth’s legendary Rockfield Studios with producer Dave Eringa, their crack live band – Steven Christie, Garry John Kane, Zac Ware and Clive Jenner – and frequent guest guitarist, Manic Street Preachers’ James Dean Bradfield. The result is an album, as ever, concise as well as incisive, and about looking forward. Pushing on and digging into the issues and feelings that matter to them here, now and tomorrow, not yesterday, as with the title track, and first single, a lament for the state of free speech, with Charlie approving of the fact that the title can be taken two ways: “As in: ‘Look, careful what you do, you may offend someone.’ Or: ‘OK children, you may now offend.’ Is it an instruction or an invitation? Or a warning?” A powerful accompanying video for the You May Offend single is being created by Emmy & BAFTA award winners, director Douglas Mackinnon in partnership with Peter Anderson Animation. “My favourite band of all time. They write the most spectacular songs, big hearted, uncynical passionate songs.'” - David Tennant “There is a whole other world of music behind that song that I’ve just been discovering, and they’re a wonderful, wonderful band. Now we live in the age of coolness that doesn’t mean anything, it's just quality and soul. The Proclaimers make more sense than ever.” – Chris Martin after Coldplay performed Sunshine on Leith at BBC’s The Piano Room

Fohn conjures a dreamlike landscape of introspective beauty, loneliness and transience from analogue tape and field recordings on new album, Porcelain.

A late summer evening in southern France. The dry mistral wind billows the washing that hangs outside the windows on narrow streets, bringing with it the first whispers of autumn. In the distance children are playing in the square, their shouts caught in the dust whipped up by their feet. A bell tolls, the light dies, and a rich, compelling solitude descends.

Violinist and multi-instrumentalist Fohn, aka Tom Connolly, describes the act of making music as “building fictional environments that become places of solace,” and a process of translation and projection that bridges his internal and external worlds.

While musicians like John Also Bennett, Oren Ambarchi and Connolly’s own group Quade drift behind his sound, Porcelain draws its temperamental inspiration from films like Call Me My Your Name and Andrei Tarkovsky’s The Mirror, as well as the sculptures of Anthony Gormley, whose solitary figures stand isolated in expanses of water along the UK coastline.

How does Connolly describe the atmosphere he wants the music to evoke? “It's the feeling of the inevitability of something having to pass,” he answers. “It's compelling because it's fundamentally unattainable. You're searching and grasping for something that you can never fully hold.”

A moving, intimate and deeply personal album, Porcelain shimmers in the illusive light of melancholy. For Connolly it provided the release of catharsis, but it’s a feeling that will mean something different to everyone who listens.

1982 4-Piece Demo' is the first official, fully-licensed and unreleased material to be released under the name Strawberry Switchblade in 30 years. Since disbanding amid major record label acrimony and personal differences in 1986, the already-cult band have since grown in stature and legend. Trailblazers in many ways, the band's mythology justifiably centers around the charismatic duo of Jill Bryson and Rose McDowall, but that isn't a complete picture. Bryson and McDowall's growing friendship, having met some years earlier on the punk scene, became a creative partnership: Bryson's art school background and McDowall's history in avant-punk group The Poets meant Strawberry Switchblade was a band pitted against many established norms. The band's very first incarnation, an all-female 4 piece, recorded one demo at Glasgow's Hellfire Club and played a handful of gigs. Friends Janice Goodlett and Carole McGowan completed the line up on bass and drums respectively. Strawberry Switchblade would eventually pair down to a duo and go on to chart success but it's in these raw, passionate recordings that the songwriting and vocal elements were being hammered out and explored in real time.


Spanish Song' is a previously unreleased song. With Rose McDowall's instantly recognizable lead vocal dovetailing with Bryson's harmonies and lead guitar, it's the first glimpse at an alternative history of Strawberry Switchblade. This incarnation could easily have been featured on a Nuggets compilation or a precursor to the indie-pop revolution that would take over British bedrooms a couple of years later. "Trees & Flowers" is instantly recognizable, a bona fide classic that would earn the band its first record deal. Here it's given a more forceful rhythm section: Goodlett and McGowan's playing is in fact accomplished and doesn't hint at the bands' youth. "Go Away" would also surface later on the band's debut LP but here it is a moody-garage stomper with a psychedelic, haunting refrain. These 3 songs point to a tantalizing future of the band that was never realized.


Remastered and restored by Sean Pennycook from the original cassette, with artwork based on a single photographic contact sheet (the only visual evidence of the band in this form) and with a booklet of photographs and new text. Pa

opo’s 666ridims (2020 - 2026), compiled by J.TRIPP, brings together tracks from his 666ridims netlabel, reflecting on the singular sound worlds of some of his solo work. Like a discovery made by neutrino sensors, opo’s tracks research the transformation of rhythm, swing, and structure, aiming for a new grid. Sketchy and raw, processing emotions and experiences, regaling stories, and asking questions, opo relates in trance verse. All tracks here breathe his focus on improvisation, experimentation, and collaboration. Some of the beats featured on 666ridims (2020 - 2026) are outlines for freestyles and songwriting ideas, a practice formed during a long-distance music conversation with illustrator, printmaker, painter, designer, and maker Billy Bigwood. Other tracks are more club-oriented, like speculative genres programmed in odd meters. Japanese Barcelona-based DJ Hanakito contributes to one track, using samples and chops sourced from her vinyl imports.

Through Afroelectronic experimentation and diasporic narratives, opo encodes his soul's past and future through his music. Encoded, activated, returned. Initiate only when you receive permission from all your mental fragments. Keep transmissions in mind and dislodge and follow the command cluster's trail. Strongly influenced by sci-fi, ancestral afro musics, jazz, performance art, and food, as musical lines and shards of meaning cascade, 666ridims (2020 - 2026) is a minimalist dive into strange meters, polyrhythm, and the transcendence of ideas. Fast, slow. Exhilarating. We don’t discover physical laws; we just collaborate on them.

The unconscious element to the conscious process.

The practice of dub techno and its tendrils is a fundamental for me, both aesthetically and from an engineering perspective.

I start every recording session with a dub inspired jam, the first piece I ever recorded in 1996 was an effort to recreate Phylyps Trak with only a Korg X3 and an Ibanez PUE5 (borrowed from Gary Howell). It was an awesome introduction to jamming, and the footing stones of noise, delay and saturation were explored with my foot hard on the enthusiasm pedal.

These practice jams are in some sense cathartic, the first step taken again & again, which helps me move forwards each session and additionally helps to 'warm the circuits' both of myself and the machines.

After realising the genius of Basic Channel is akin to the genius of peasant food, using every ingredient with nothing left to waste, (up to and including the oft maligned working noise of the machines themselves), this was a watershed moment for my own subjective progression. No longer tied to just emulation of something inspiring, but taking these learned tools into other areas of music helped to break free from a strong current of influence and also to progress into other areas with the new toolbox.

Dub:

The importance of the dub pioneers should never be understated, in modern music and my own practice. Yet with my initial inspiration being two german dudes issuing extreme techno variants with obscured label designs, who then signposted their listeners to their own inspirations (via their Wackies re-issues or nodded to on their Rhythm & Sound/Burial Mix sub-labels), meant that I started late and travelled backwards.

Learning to notice the live mixing of Mikey Dread or Lee Perry when the faders are bleeding through even when turned down, (echoed in BC's Quadrant Dub), or the brash send effects literally thrown into the mix also taught me that 'rough' mixing can inject a recording with life, uniqueness and the most right wrongness. Looking back Basic Channels very few elements helped me realise that the rules to be understood, are also the best ones to be broken.

Push the mixer into the red.

Amp that noise up from the tape delay cos it sounds sick.

Pseudo side-chain effects cos the kicks are way too loud and the mixer can't sum it nicely.

Spam the send knob into the delay units now, now and now.

Carelessness.

Noise:

Once I wrapped my head around the intrinsic 'noise' element that set those records apart, this became a torchlight into the alt noise movements which I was tentatively exploring at the time, and also is evidently a connection or thread into them.

Whether the Industrial/Post Punk UK scene (This Heat, TG, A Tent, F.E.) or the prolific output of the US Noise scene (Wolf Eyes, Live & Shave in LA, and subsequently following the lineage all the way back to Chrome's Alien Soundtracks), I had finally discovered a connection from techno to this 'free for all' corner of music.

This input from the Noise arena of sound is, in my experience, an all important step for a sonic artist, taking it's roots and extending out from Stockhausen/Pierre Henry and utilised/warped/mangled by thousands of adventurous pioneers ever since, I now see the line separating the high brow and the low brow is actually an artery carrying information from the head to the heart.

Vault is a selection of these jams that precede each of my solo recording sessions, for 30 years I've recorded hundreds of these 'workouts'. They are never intended as serious statements, just moments of naive enjoyment, yet most importantly they are time & space captured as practice.

The objective is always a warm up exercise, but sometimes those exercises turn a different corner, with a certain focus or direction dependent on what random samples are left in my machines from the previous session, instead of conscious choices, these unconscious elements can facilitate those 'positive mistakes' that make a piece of sound retain a different feel or colour and thus become special, or at least special to the creator.

I am quite conscious that the 'record everything' aspect of my ethos has been invaluable in cataloguing and saving these jams, while the attitude of carelessness during this process (after all, it's only a warm up jam) invites more enjoyment than seriousness ever could. Even if you don't feel the piece at the time, record it, because some years later it may well fit, or become relevant in a way you never intended.

-Miles

Hailing from the West side of St. Louis, Missouri, Mikahl Anthony’s sonic roots spread far across the global Alt-Soul / Hip-Hop scene. A highly soughtafter multidisciplinary artist (who has collaborated with the likes of Mick Jenkins, Chance The Rapper, Joey Purp, Smino and more), as well as being a founding member of Chicago’s THEMpeople collective, he now prepares to unveil his masterful full-length debut Muse via R&S Records.

Accompanied by several beautiful, self-directed film pieces, Muse is a record with storytelling at its core. Interspersed with commentary from a range of sources telling their stories to Mikhal, whilst collaboratively analysing their personal experiences, it speaks a candid and honest narrative, which reinforce the heartfelt lyrics within. With the project’s name anchored around a dual meaning acronym (1. Ms. Using sensual energy and 2. Making use of seclusion every day). The record is an audio version of docufilm, that creatively interprets the idea of self-therapy, an internal/interpersonal reflection of life experiences that serendipitously connect to Mikahl’s personal romantic relationships. Mikahl explains: ‘I wanted to use a unique style of songwriting, arrangement and filming with the intention of soundtracking my self-development/maturation process’.

On the project’s lasting impression on the listener, Mikahl elaborates ’The exploration of inner truth and vulnerability is key to the future of good music. I want this project to act as symbolism that highlights the mantra that honest approaches and authenticity still has the most value. I also want people to see how important the use of community is when you can connect them to your subject matter...I'd like my audience to observe and engage in their own self-reflections, approaches by way of listening or interacting with the story.’

Drifting to an elevated state of consciousness, Muse is a deeply intoxicating and engrossing listening experience from front to back. From the sliding, kaleidoscopic shadows of opening track ‘La Flare’, via the trepidation-laced atmosphere of ‘Polyamorous’ and the hazy, reverb drenched saxophone notes of LP closer ‘Eddie Kane’ - Mikahl channels moments of joy and pain, infused with spirit enriching instrumentation and gritty textures.

Visual stimuli play an integral role within Mikahl’s music. His songs represent transparency and openness dipped in funk. Layers of soft velvety vocals emerge from jazz harmonies, trap rhythms, and social commentary sourced from voiceovers/excerpts. His creations are the musical representation of documentary films. His art is imagery embodied.

Leo Gibbon returns to Mudline with barbed, a six-track suite of dust-worn, sample-driven constructions pieced together from a balcony while travelling. Built from fragments that retain the emotional weight of their origins, the EP finds Gibbon paring his sound back to its essentials, letting cracked loops, negative space and tactile percussion carry a quiet sense of intimacy. There's a subtle tension throughout, music suspended between memory and movement, where worn textures and carefully preserved imperfections become part of the composition itself.

James Massiah appears on the record with a characteristically measured performance, his delivery drawing on the cadence and phrasing of archived poet freestyles, less spoken word than an act of excavation, recalling a lineage of recorded voices whose authority comes from rhythm, restraint and lived experience. His presence folds seamlessly into the EP's weathered textures, becoming another fragment in Gibbon's collage rather than a conventional guest appearance.

The first half drifts through reflective, inward-looking terrain before the second side gradually opens towards the dancefloor, never abandoning the emotional pull that defines the record. Even at its most club-focused, barbed favours understated pressure over obvious peaks, allowing atmosphere and texture to carry as much weight as rhythm. Mastered by Miles Whittaker, every grain, scrape and imperfection is left intact, balancing grit with clarity and reinforcing Mudline's instinct for raw, emotionally resonant club music that feels as honest as it does functional.

PRAANA unveil their highly anticipated album Insight Out on Colorize, a deeply immersive body of work that explores reflection, connection and emotional growth through the duo’s signature cinematic lens.

Built around themes of reflection, presence and human connection, Insight Out creates a rich sonic landscape where atmospheric textures, subtle rhythms and emotive songwriting coexist with effortless grace. Featuring collaborations with Susie Ledge, Tina Parol, Freddie Elmberg and Courtney Storm, the album showcases PRAANA’s ability to create music that feels both intimate and expansive. An alias of Tritonal, PRAANA have amassed over 30 million streams, earned sustained support on SiriusXM Chill and recently completed U.S. tour dates in Chicago, Denver and a sold-out Elsewhere Rooftop show in Brooklyn.

Insight Out stands as a fully realised artistic statement, offering a space for stillness, reflection and meaningful escape through sound.

Modern Apartments arrive on Dark Entries, with Light on Water, an LP featuring 8 cuts of instrumental cosmic-kosmische analog synth workouts. Modern Apartments is Ryan Ambridge, the musician and producer best known for his work with dark synth projects Linea Aspera and Lust Pattern. While both of those outlets lean towards the greyscale and robotic, Ambridge wanted to explore a more colorful palette with Modern Apartments, a livelier, looser sound. The medium of film plays a major role here; Ambridge works as a projectionist, screening archival prints of 35mm and 16mm films, and the textures and temporality of the medium fed directly into the Modern Apartments aesthetic. But it isn’t all blurry edges and fuzzy optimism on Light on Water. Says Ambridge, “Regular beats from old rhythm boxes and the sharp angles of post-punk found their way in. The contrasting imagery from those old film prints, of dense cities and open countryside, is reflected back in the dialog between looser sounds and rigid stylistic choices.” This tension shines through on tracks like album opener “Completely,” which pairs the icy minimalism of John Foxx with the meandering grooves of Cluster, or the eponymous “Light on Water” which leans even further into the sun-bleached vibes of Roedelius. Artwork for this record was designed by Eloise Shir-Juen Leigh. Light on Water is perfect late-summer listening, as the last gasps of seasonal radiance fade into autumnal splendor.

,Dead Meat" ist das Debütalbum der Londoner Band The Tubs, gegründet von den ehemaligen Joanna Gruesome-Mitgliedern Owen Williams und George Nicholls. Musikalisch verbindet die Band Jangle Pop, Post-Punk und britischen Folk-Rock zu einem eigenständigen Sound, der ebenso von Fairport Convention, Richard Thompson und der Canterbury-Folk-Szene geprägt ist wie von modernen Indie-Bands wie The Goon Sax oder Twerps. Charakteristisch sind die hell klingenden, treibenden Gitarren, eingängige Pop-Hooks und die Verbindung von traditioneller britischer Folk-Melodik mit der Energie des Indie-Rock. Über diesen Klangteppich legt Owen Williams seine scharf beobachteten, oft melancholischen Texte, die zwischen Selbstironie, Enttäuschung und emotionaler Verletzlichkeit pendeln. Mit Songs wie ,Round The Bend", ,Duped" und ,I Don't Know How It Works" gelingt The Tubs eine faszinierende Mischung aus Folk-Rock, Jangle-Pop und Post-Punk, die gleichermaßen zeitlos und modern wirkt und ,Dead Meat" zu einem der bemerkenswertesten Gitarrenalben seines Jahrgangs macht.

Meg Lui is a Northern California-born singer-songwriter, based in the Hudson Valley since 2015. In her songs, vivid lyrics and poignant melodies intertwine with a voice that feels both intimate and lasting. Through reflections on love, resilience, and the human experience, she offers listeners a window into her world.


A Californian by birth, Boston-educated at Berklee College of Music, musically raised in Brooklyn, and now settled in the Catskills, Meg has released music under the names M. Lui, Grover, and as part of the trio Ember Isles.
Her influences-ranging from Freddie Mercury, The
Cranberries, No Doubt, Sheryl Crow, and Bonnie Raitt-reflect her love for artists whose fearless individuality continues to shape her dynamic songwriting and performance.


Over the past two years, Meg has lent her voice to records including Sufjan Stevens' Javelin (2023), Sam Evian's Plunge, Denison Witmer's Anything At All, John Legend's My Favorite Dream, Keenan O'Meara's forthcoming record Bathe In The Everlasting Light, and Liam Kazar's Pilot Light. She performs regularly with Keenan O'Meara and Hannah Cohen and occasionally when the stars align, with the Hudson Valley country band Critter Bonus.

Soulful, future-leaning house & hip hop distilled into wax form. Standout cuts by AKA ZEB & LIL DAVE 215, with appearances from J-LIVE, BLU and BLOOMY MEADOWS, bridging the gap between classic andy with contemporary with warmth and depth. Support from CRACKAZAT

,fantastische Songs" - The Sunday Times ,hypnotisch und eingängig" - Brooklyn Vegan ,7ebra sind auf lange Sicht dabei" - So Young Magazine Es gibt keinen Fahrplan für die Mitte bis Ende der Zwanziger, und auf ,How to Land a Plane" verwandeln die schwedischen Zwillingsschwestern Inez und Ella Johansson von 7ebra diese Ungewissheit in ihr bisher fesselndstes Werk. Das zweite Album des Duos aus Malmö erkundet die Unsicherheiten, Frustrationen und stillen Absurditäten des frühen Erwachsenenalters durch ihr bisher direktestes und weitreichendstes Songwriting. Aufbauend auf dem eindringlichen Minimalismus ihres gefeierten Debüts ,Bird Hour" aus dem Jahr 2023 verbindet das neue Album mitreißende Hooks, summende Synthesizer und treibende Rhythmen mit scharfsinnigen Beobachtungen über Identität, Arbeit, Beziehungen und den Druck, in einer zunehmend unwirtlichen Welt seinen Weg im Leben zu finden. Geschrieben im Anschluss an ausgedehnte internationale Tourneen und gemeinsam mit Produzent Jens Lindgård gestaltet, fängt ,How to Land a Plane" eine Band ein, die in ihr Selbstbewusstsein hineinwächst, ohne dabei die Verletzlichkeit zu verlieren, die sie ursprünglich auszeichnete. In Songs, die dunklen Humor, Selbstreflexion und spätkapitalistische Ängste miteinander verbinden, verwandeln 7ebra persönliche Kämpfe in hypnotischen, emotional mitreißenden Indie-Pop. Im Kern ist das Album ein Zeugnis der einzigartigen kreativen Verbindung der Schwestern, zweier Stimmen, die sich verflechten, gegenseitig herausfordern und unterstützen, und bestätigt 7ebra als eine der markantesten und spannendsten Bands, die in den letzten Jahren aus der schwedischen Indie-Szene hervorgegangen sind.

,fantastische Songs" - The Sunday Times ,hypnotisch und eingängig" - Brooklyn Vegan ,7ebra sind auf lange Sicht dabei" - So Young Magazine Es gibt keinen Fahrplan für die Mitte bis Ende der Zwanziger, und auf ,How to Land a Plane" verwandeln die schwedischen Zwillingsschwestern Inez und Ella Johansson von 7ebra diese Ungewissheit in ihr bisher fesselndstes Werk. Das zweite Album des Duos aus Malmö erkundet die Unsicherheiten, Frustrationen und stillen Absurditäten des frühen Erwachsenenalters durch ihr bisher direktestes und weitreichendstes Songwriting. Aufbauend auf dem eindringlichen Minimalismus ihres gefeierten Debüts ,Bird Hour" aus dem Jahr 2023 verbindet das neue Album mitreißende Hooks, summende Synthesizer und treibende Rhythmen mit scharfsinnigen Beobachtungen über Identität, Arbeit, Beziehungen und den Druck, in einer zunehmend unwirtlichen Welt seinen Weg im Leben zu finden. Geschrieben im Anschluss an ausgedehnte internationale Tourneen und gemeinsam mit Produzent Jens Lindgård gestaltet, fängt ,How to Land a Plane" eine Band ein, die in ihr Selbstbewusstsein hineinwächst, ohne dabei die Verletzlichkeit zu verlieren, die sie ursprünglich auszeichnete. In Songs, die dunklen Humor, Selbstreflexion und spätkapitalistische Ängste miteinander verbinden, verwandeln 7ebra persönliche Kämpfe in hypnotischen, emotional mitreißenden Indie-Pop. Im Kern ist das Album ein Zeugnis der einzigartigen kreativen Verbindung der Schwestern, zweier Stimmen, die sich verflechten, gegenseitig herausfordern und unterstützen, und bestätigt 7ebra als eine der markantesten und spannendsten Bands, die in den letzten Jahren aus der schwedischen Indie-Szene hervorgegangen sind.

Jason Dungan (aka Blue Lake) and Johan Carøe find beauty in the rhythms
and repetitions of domestic life for collaborative album, 'Routine' - out September 25

Copenhagen-based multi-instrumentalists Jason Dungan and Johan Carøe didn't set out to make an album. Instead, as the title 'Routine' suggests, they found their way there through a process of habitual making and listening, developing an intuitive musical language to reflect the dreamlike meanderings and creative play of life's quiet moments. 'Routine' blends pop orientated sounds, Avant-garde minimalism, folk and new age with the emotive depth of film-score.

Their meeting was not entirely coincidental. Previously in bands such as Squares and Triangles, Jason Dungan has since recorded multiple albums under the moniker Blue Lake, including the lauded 'Sun Arcs', pursuing his passion for self-built percussion and multi-string instruments. Johan Carøe meanwhile is a composer whose film soundtrack work has seen him collaborate with Angelo Badalamenti, Arp, and Sofie Birch, at whose Andersabo residency (curated by Dungan) the pair first met, resulting in the highly praised album 'Repair Techniques' written by Birch and Carøe.

'Routine' emerged organically over many years against the backdrop of great personal change. As Carøe said goodbye to his father and welcomed his first child, the pair sent each other fragments of melodies and patterns, working up responses when time allowed to assemble a sonic palette that combined acoustic instrumentation of zither, clarinet, cello, saxophone (among others) with the textures of tape, drum machine and Yamaha DX7 synth. Inspired by the vulnerability and DIY ethos of Arthur Russell's home recordings, the vision of labels like Disques de Crepescule, and the art pop, experimentation inherent to late '70s and early '80s recordings from NYC and Japan alike, Dungan and Carøe conjured new forms for their folk, leftfield pop and avant garde influences from the low-lit living rooms of Copenhagen and rural Sweden. "I'm very interested in the ways in which music and art emerge from our wider experiences as people, workers, parents and in the daydreaming activity of making music," Dungan explains of a process which allowed the duo's individual styles to drift apart and merge together seamlessly. "I think the process was definitely capturing moments in time, but over a long time," Carøe adds. "It was a bit like improvisation, but with time stretched."

The music floats with grace and humility, remaining sophisticated yet acutely introverted.
Whether on 'Clouds', where soft layers of zither and clarinet are moved along by a featherlight bass riff and the hypnotic clip-clop of the primitive groovebox, or the gentle grandeur of cello rising and falling through 'Routine 1', the album reveals itself over 10 instrumental tracks, evoking the ineffable calm that descends when the light changes and the world turns inwards. The act of time passing became a key creative ingredient to the evolution of the album, enriched with the exciting challenge to transform their passing rounds of home recordings via a slow release musical dialogue. Jason found creative moments in the twilight hours to lay down zither, melodica, acoustic guitar to name but few, while Johan utilising "line-in and headphones" would manipulate, stretch and pitch Jason's melodic pathways during newly born naptimes.

Carøe rhythmically plucks and slides the stringed cello instrument, leaving palpable foundations on 'Hymn' and 'Chords', in a treated, stylistic approach akin to Mabe Fratti, while 'Silence' draws to a close with a gospel touch. Dungan's harp-motion zither flourishes reveal more classical connotations on 'Reunion' with inspiration of Bedroom Community's Nico Muhly as organs rise with Moogs, culminating with a climatic choral outro from friend, mezzo-soprano Anna Caroline Olesen.

'Routine' then is their first collaboration, an album of deep and sincere reflection with inviting overtones that gesture with unrushed authenticity. A document of a new-found friendship that opens a window into the most personal of spaces, where the daily practices of music and life exist side-by-side to wondrous effect.

The Yummy Fur’s first album of new material in over 25 years is seductive and ambiguous; a fast-paced flip through scenes from art, myth, life and fantasy; a witty whole made from glittering scraps. The band’s original incarnation – fronted by singer, songwriter and guitarist John McKeown from 1992 to 1999 – morphed from making quick-hit cartoon-art songs to Eno and Cale-influenced creepers, populated by characters from McKeown’s life in Glasgow and the films, books and poetry that he lived a parallel life through. Everybody Talks About The Weather delights in using every past iteration of the band as potent collage material: a melee of sounds and ideas existing at once, revealing themselves then dipping back into hiding.
Recorded by the original core trio of McKeown, Brian MacDougall (guitar) and Paul Thomson (drums), Everybody Talks About The Weather comes 17 years after the band reformed for sporadic live shows, and seven years after the release of their sorta-greatest hits compilation Piggy Wings (Rock Action). Ten tracks long with nothing to spare, it is as condensed and vital as their best songs, with a new clarity of sound that allows their ambiguities to come into the light.
The album begins with “Cogs”, a taunting inquisition from within. As McKeown stages a fight between his id and ego, the tension heats up between conversational guitar lines and minimalist repetition; threatening sing-song melody and real, palpable menace. The band members are forced in tandem only to break apart, sustaining a genuine sense of just-hidden danger throughout the whole record – except, arguably, “Headphones”, a looser moment which sees McKeown make an existential something out of nothing while waiting for someone in the car (“I should have brought a book.../My ears are bleeding from the compression on your album”)
The songs are riots of reference: “Unity Over Europe” is a slyly complex two act play about the Mitford sisters – Diana, Unity, and Nancy, in a wink to the YF canon – smashing tragic biographical detail together with allusions to Thomas Pynchon and Francis Bacon. Pynchon is also lifted to serve “Blue Sunshine”, a collision of school shooters, serial killers and fictional fuck-ups (“Fast forward to Compton/Fast forward to Pynchon/Fast forward to Columbine'”) whose buzzy guitar lines are taunting and confrontational like a smarmy teenager. The innocuous title of “My Lasagne” belies a song that exists in several time periods at once: a visit to see Guernica, 50 people with their backs to the portrait of Dora Maar; the time that Picasso painted from; the Reina Sofia and the dirty streets of the Malasaña; myth-making musicians and the myths they’re riffing off overlapping and leering at each other.
All this could be laboured in lesser hands, but cultural verbosity is second nature to The Yummy Fur, who transform all this source material into songs that are weird, sexy, funny and absurd. Meaning is not happily understood or flattened. Susan Sontag's essay Against Interpretation accompanied McKeown as he wrote this album, and she’s paraphrased in “Semolina Ballerina”, the album’s justification of artistic ambiguity. Thomson’s motorik beat leads a gathering of back-and-forth instrumental phrases – including a wiry contribution on saxophone – embodying the futility of trying to parse something definitive from repeated action. “Listen to the very first thing that’s in your head,” Sontag-via-McKeown commands directly, then slinks sideways: “Interpretation is a conversation in an unmade bed”
The album features two more focused portraits, or at least The Yummy Fur’s version of such a thing. “Wanda” merges the life of filmmaker Barbara Loden and the title character of her semi-autobiographical 1970 feature film, with Loden’s then-husband Elia Kazan joining the fray of no-good men in her film. It’s a mix of adaptation and avant-criticism, with McKeown’s wordplay and mannered pronunciation mirroring the way that non-fiction and fiction twist around each other in the song. The title track is a series of vignettes and impressions from the lives of the band’s ‘90s inner circle, positing painter Mac McNaughton as a kind of Falstaffian ringleader. As with Piggy Wings and the recent single “New T-Shirt”, McNaughton painted the cover of Everybody Talks About The Weather – like the album’s music, the image of a coy girl in a white dress is an uncanny amalgamation of styles, suggestions and references just out of reach, as though seen in an art museum in a dream.
The album ends with two reads of the same frustration. “King of Nothing” is the closest The Yummy Fur will ever get to sludge-rock: the band melts together into a dusty, dreary haze as McKeown drowns in a drudgery of personal struggle (“Two jumpers on in Babylon/And only cats to talk to”) and the rhythmic toppling of heroes (Rowlands, Duvall, Munro). The majority of visible dirt is cleaned off for “Say Hello”, an uncharacteristic depiction of throwing the windows open after a dark night of the soul. Here, the situation is still cold and hard (“When the sun burns gold, but the heat never reaches your fingertips”) but it feels surmountable. Everybody Talks About The Weather is an unpredictable album from an unpredictable group, but ending on a moment of almost uncomplicated light is maybe its biggest surprise. - Claire Biddles (2026)

The Yummy Fur’s first album of new material in over 25 years is seductive and ambiguous; a fast-paced flip through scenes from art, myth, life and fantasy; a witty whole made from glittering scraps. The band’s original incarnation – fronted by singer, songwriter and guitarist John McKeown from 1992 to 1999 – morphed from making quick-hit cartoon-art songs to Eno and Cale-influenced creepers, populated by characters from McKeown’s life in Glasgow and the films, books and poetry that he lived a parallel life through. Everybody Talks About The Weather delights in using every past iteration of the band as potent collage material: a melee of sounds and ideas existing at once, revealing themselves then dipping back into hiding.
Recorded by the original core trio of McKeown, Brian MacDougall (guitar) and Paul Thomson (drums), Everybody Talks About The Weather comes 17 years after the band reformed for sporadic live shows, and seven years after the release of their sorta-greatest hits compilation Piggy Wings (Rock Action). Ten tracks long with nothing to spare, it is as condensed and vital as their best songs, with a new clarity of sound that allows their ambiguities to come into the light.
The album begins with “Cogs”, a taunting inquisition from within. As McKeown stages a fight between his id and ego, the tension heats up between conversational guitar lines and minimalist repetition; threatening sing-song melody and real, palpable menace. The band members are forced in tandem only to break apart, sustaining a genuine sense of just-hidden danger throughout the whole record – except, arguably, “Headphones”, a looser moment which sees McKeown make an existential something out of nothing while waiting for someone in the car (“I should have brought a book.../My ears are bleeding from the compression on your album”)
The songs are riots of reference: “Unity Over Europe” is a slyly complex two act play about the Mitford sisters – Diana, Unity, and Nancy, in a wink to the YF canon – smashing tragic biographical detail together with allusions to Thomas Pynchon and Francis Bacon. Pynchon is also lifted to serve “Blue Sunshine”, a collision of school shooters, serial killers and fictional fuck-ups (“Fast forward to Compton/Fast forward to Pynchon/Fast forward to Columbine'”) whose buzzy guitar lines are taunting and confrontational like a smarmy teenager. The innocuous title of “My Lasagne” belies a song that exists in several time periods at once: a visit to see Guernica, 50 people with their backs to the portrait of Dora Maar; the time that Picasso painted from; the Reina Sofia and the dirty streets of the Malasaña; myth-making musicians and the myths they’re riffing off overlapping and leering at each other.
All this could be laboured in lesser hands, but cultural verbosity is second nature to The Yummy Fur, who transform all this source material into songs that are weird, sexy, funny and absurd. Meaning is not happily understood or flattened. Susan Sontag's essay Against Interpretation accompanied McKeown as he wrote this album, and she’s paraphrased in “Semolina Ballerina”, the album’s justification of artistic ambiguity. Thomson’s motorik beat leads a gathering of back-and-forth instrumental phrases – including a wiry contribution on saxophone – embodying the futility of trying to parse something definitive from repeated action. “Listen to the very first thing that’s in your head,” Sontag-via-McKeown commands directly, then slinks sideways: “Interpretation is a conversation in an unmade bed”
The album features two more focused portraits, or at least The Yummy Fur’s version of such a thing. “Wanda” merges the life of filmmaker Barbara Loden and the title character of her semi-autobiographical 1970 feature film, with Loden’s then-husband Elia Kazan joining the fray of no-good men in her film. It’s a mix of adaptation and avant-criticism, with McKeown’s wordplay and mannered pronunciation mirroring the way that non-fiction and fiction twist around each other in the song. The title track is a series of vignettes and impressions from the lives of the band’s ‘90s inner circle, positing painter Mac McNaughton as a kind of Falstaffian ringleader. As with Piggy Wings and the recent single “New T-Shirt”, McNaughton painted the cover of Everybody Talks About The Weather – like the album’s music, the image of a coy girl in a white dress is an uncanny amalgamation of styles, suggestions and references just out of reach, as though seen in an art museum in a dream.
The album ends with two reads of the same frustration. “King of Nothing” is the closest The Yummy Fur will ever get to sludge-rock: the band melts together into a dusty, dreary haze as McKeown drowns in a drudgery of personal struggle (“Two jumpers on in Babylon/And only cats to talk to”) and the rhythmic toppling of heroes (Rowlands, Duvall, Munro). The majority of visible dirt is cleaned off for “Say Hello”, an uncharacteristic depiction of throwing the windows open after a dark night of the soul. Here, the situation is still cold and hard (“When the sun burns gold, but the heat never reaches your fingertips”) but it feels surmountable. Everybody Talks About The Weather is an unpredictable album from an unpredictable group, but ending on a moment of almost uncomplicated light is maybe its biggest surprise. - Claire Biddles (2026)

The Lp is ble marble be released on the 25th September Part celebration, part reflection, THE TIME OF OUR LIVES arrives as both the final release of Lancey’s twenties and the closing chapter of a creative world he has spent the last decade constructing. The most expansive statement of his career to date, moving freely between trap, alternative R&B, dance music, Afro-influenced rhythms and more, Lancey explores triumphant highs and lows of stark vulnerability across the album, interrogating ideas of success, freedom, loneliness and what it truly means to have the time of your life. Lancey Foux stands at the forefront of UK rap’s evolution, blending elements of hip-hop, cloud rap, trap, Jersey club, drill, and more into a sound that’s uniquely his own.

Since emerging from Newham, East London in 2015 with a clutch of freestyles and SoundCloud singles, Lancey has occupied a lane entirely of his own making. As he closes out his twenties, Lancey looks ahead to the next decade full of more unpredictable artistry as he continues to break the rules and change the game.

Knock Off präsentieren ihr siebtes Album "Pain Or Madness" _ ein Album, das nicht nur für die Band selbst in diesen Zeiten wichtig ist. Die Welt ist völlig verrückt und es scheint, als habe die Menschheit vergessen, wie man Konflikte löst, miteinander spricht und den Kreislauf der Selbstzerstörung stoppt. Und wenn die Schläge im persönlichen Umfeld näherkommen und das Schicksal zuschlägt, kann man schnell den Boden unter den Füßen verlieren. Wut, Hass, Aggression zusammen mit Depression, Lustlosigkeit, oder halt "Pain or Madness". Auf dieser Grundlage entstand Knock Offs siebtes Album. Punkrock war schon immer am stärksten, wenn die Zeiten düster sind, und dieses Album ist einfach eine musikalische Therapie und Offensive gegen alles was Dich zerstört. Knock Off spielen immer noch klassischen UK Oi! und Punkrock und haben ihren eigenen Stil über die Jahre perfektioniert, sorgen dabei aber stets aufs Neue für Überraschungen. Mit jeder verdammten Note spürt man, dass die Songs direkt aus dem Herzen kommen! Ein Schlag ins Gesicht, ohne Rücksicht auf Empfindlichkeiten, in Songs wie "Go Fuck yourself". Dieses Gefühl, wenn Hilflosigkeit in "Violence" umzuschlagen droht. Kein Diskutieren oder Erklären über Punk, denn "My Punk!" (is whatever I choose). Wenn die Jungs auf die '70s football youth' oder 'Good Times' zurückblicken, sind keine weiteren Erklärungen nötig, das ist und war deren Leben, hier gibt es nicht zu romantisieren. Selbst heutzutage kann man noch seinen Ärger rauslassen, und Knock Off tun das perfekt mit Songs wie "Anger is an energy" oder der dreckigen kleinen Selbstironie-Hymne "Middle age rage". "Pain or Madness" enthält ein Dutzend neuer Songs: Energiegeladene Punkrock-Hymnen mit großartigen sing-along Refrains und aggressiven Shoutings. Solch ein Album nach sieben Platten rauszubringen, ist ein auf keinen Fall zu verpassendes Statement! Zwei unterschiedlich mehrfarbige Vinyl-LP-Versionen erhältlich