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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

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

HOL1D4Y’s debut album "Topology" explores the invisible connections that bind us together in an increasingly fractured world. Created by Scott Holiday, lead guitarist of Rival Sons, The record blends dreamlike textures with cinematic psych-rock, while embracing dance rhythms and free-form instrumentals, themes of love, technology, identity, and healing. Both expansive and intimate, Topology looks for meaning and human connection beneath the noise of modern life.

The Version of Me You Get is a record about perspective, how life changes you, and who you are on the other side of it. Written and recorded in 2020 alongside longtime collaborator Sean McConnell, the album was born out of a rare stillness - a week spent holed up in the studio, building songs piece by piece with no outside noise and no deadline. Bowen had never had that kind of time with a record before. The result was something unhurried, deeply considered and wholly their own. Then life picked back up, and the album sat. Five years later, Bowen returned to the recordings and found something he didn't expect: the songs had grown. What was captured in 2020 as honest and uncertain had become something richer — shaped by everything that followed, personally and professionally. The distance didn't diminish the record. It deepened it. Spanning love, struggle, redemption, and vulnerability, The Version of Me You Get didn't just capture a moment in time, it gained meaning because of what came after. These songs finally found their moment. And it turns out, the wait made them better.

In 2024, Audrey Powne emerged as a compelling new voice in contemporary jazz with the release of her acclaimed debut album From the Fire; a self-produced and self-composed work celebrated for its lush string arrangements, soaring trumpet performances, and emotionally rich songwriting. Now, two years later, Powne returns with Bodies of Water, a bold and deeply introspective follow-up that continues her elemental exploration: from fire to water. An exploration of what it means to exist alongside others in an increasingly unstable world, Bodies of Water reflects on vulnerability, responsibility, and human interconnectedness. The album’s title and conceptual foundation were inspired by a passage from Caleb Azumah Nelson’s novel Small Worlds: “...to make himself a body, like water, a still surface, but beneath this, a ripple, and beneath this, an ebbing tide, and beneath that, a violent, constant tow…” Throughout the record, lyrics ruminate on the idea that like all bodies of water, we are vulnerable to disruption and catastrophe. Unlike inanimate bodies of water, however, we are conscious participants in both the damage and the repair. That tension between what we are made of and what we are responsible for became a grounding and harmonious thought. This album is a meditation on that idea, both in my personal life and in a broader, collective sense. Swollen, Broken Record, and Karma, reflect on moments of cruelty and error including her own that felt unbearable. Viewing them instead as forces moving through the landscape of a life, violent but temporary to survive their immediate impact. More socially conscious tracks Stay Awake, Creeds, RYV, and Two Sides confront frustration with political polarisation and the emptiness of language unaccompanied by action. The title and final track Bodies of Water brings these ideas together, reimagining both personal and societal upheaval as events shaped by bodies of water moving through the world destructive at times, transformative at others, and always in motion. Blending traditional jazz with Afrobeat rhythms, Dilla-inspired grooves, ambient textures, and expansive arrangements, Bodies of Water reveals the breadth of Powne’s artistic vision. The record moves fluidly between spiritual jazz, warped soul and rhythm-driven experimentation, while layered interludes and meticulous production thread its disparate influences into a unified and immersive sonic world.

Das sechste Studioalbum der amerikanischen Celtic-Punk-Band Dropkick Murphys, ursprünglich 2007 veröffentlicht.
Das Album stieg auf Platz 20 der US-Billboard-200-Charts ein und wurde in die Liste der besten Alben des
Jahres 2007 des *Rolling Stone* aufgenommen.

Errands is the first duo recording from Marja Ahti, Swedish-Finnish sound artist and electroacoustic composer, and John McCowen, a native of Southern Illinois, now residing in Iceland, whose work centres on a radical exploration of clarinet multiphonics. Working without the aid of electronics, McCowen has spent years finessing performance techniques that allow him to layer beating patterns and split tones that belie their source in a monophonic instrument. Ahti, in contrast, has built up a stunning body of work in recent years using a classic electroacoustic palette of electronic, field recordings and instrumental sounds. Sharing a bill at the 2024 iteration of Stockholm’s Edition Festival, the pair discovered a sensibility shared across their different sonic means, beginning the collaborative process that would eventually result in the mercurial side-long pieces heard on Errands.

The word ‘errand’ suggests something purposeful but routine, and Ahti’s and McCowen’s work is suffused with the everyday. Meeting with McCowen to record in Iceland, Ahti used the opportunity to gather field recordings, capturing not the natural sublimity often associated with the country—think Chris Watson’s shifting glaciers—but everyday life in Reykjavik. Snatches of bustling streets and what could be humming engines thread between static sinewaves, stretches of clarinet resonances and fleeting textures, the latter often at once visceral and impossible to identify. Errands: we are a long way from the grandiose framing devices favoured by the pioneers of electroacoustic music, yet many of their principles are at work here. The gradual metamorphosis of one sound into another, the carefully achieved ambiguity between the acoustic and electronic, the treatment of the stereo field as a compositional element: all of these link Ahti and McCowen’s music to the electroacoustic tradition, yet their sensibility is radically different. The overall effect is a kind of stillness, but one at peace with continuous change. Like the unwieldy but somehow stylish everyday forms captured in the Hertta Kiiski photographs that adorn the record's sleeve, the music seems to prize a kind of deliberate awkwardness, interrupting static held textures not with an abrupt cut, but with a quick fade, suddenly revealing background as foreground.

Ahti and McCowen’s world is everyday and unornamented, but also shadowed by the numinous. Halfway through 'Chorales', we hear an arrangement for overdubbed recorders of an early motet of Messiaen’s, O sacrum convivium! Played on recorders, the piece shrinks into delicacy and dim memories of childhood music lessons, while at the same time its harmonies retain the grandeur of their liturgical origin. This double quality inflects much of what follows on Errands, including snatches of field-recorded water or air, which seem at once elemental and domestic. Enlivened with countless details that repay repeated relistening, Errands is a record that leaves the listener ready to open their ears anew to their own sound environment.

The tenth Mindgames release reconnects with the roots — Kloke &Tim Reaper tracing the pulse of jungle through a focused, modern lens. Breaks surge, bass breathes, textures unfold with purpose. Raw yet measured — energy in balance, defining the Mindgames approach..

,Cotton Crown" zeigt The Tubs als eine Band, die ihren Indie-Rock-Sound weiter ausbaut und Einflüsse von Jangle Pop, Folk-Rock, Power Pop und Punk miteinander verbindet. Angeführt von Sänger Owen Williams, dessen oft düster-humorvolle Texte persönliche Krisen, Beziehungen und die Herausforderungen des Lebens als Musiker thematisieren, verbindet das Album emotionale Tiefe mit eingängigen Melodien. Im Mittelpunkt stehen Williams' Erfahrungen nach dem Tod seiner Mutter, der Folksängerin Charlotte Greig. Trotz dieser ernsten Themen bleibt die Musik lebendig und melodieverliebt: Gitarrist George Nicholls steuert virtuose Jangle-Gitarren bei, während die Rhythmussektion aus Max Warren und Taylor Stewart mit viel Energie und Dynamik für den unverwechselbaren Bandsound sorgt. Nach dem Erfolg ihres Debüts ,Dead Meat", das von Medien wie Pitchfork, The Guardian und MOJO gefeiert wurde, knüpfen The Tubs mit ,Cotton Crown" an diesen Erfolg an und präsentieren ein ebenso emotionales wie mitreißendes Indie-Rock-Album.

Life Creates Itself is the new album by Bill Baird, releasing September 25th, 2026 on Royal Oakie Records. After years of restless wandering that took him from the Bay Area to India to Abbey Road and back again, Baird has returned home to San Antonio, Texas. Inspired by Lone Star legends Doug Sahm and Roky Erickson, the album inhabits a world where outsider country, avant-garde pop, and psychedelic folk dissolve into one.


Produced by longtime collaborator Jasper Leach (Tony Molina, Color Green) and mastered by indie-rock legend KRAMER (Galaxie 500, Daniel Johnston, Will Oldham), Life Creates Itself was recorded at Sear Sound in New York City in a single remarkable day — fitting for an album as indebted to Arthur Russell and Captain Beefheart as it is to Sir Douglas Quintet and Townes Van Zandt. The sessions brought together a constellation of collaborators around Baird and Leach, including Pedrum Siadatian (Allah-Las, PAINT), Phil Carluzzo, Austin Day, Oliver O'Haver, Jordan Johns, Michael Vattuone, Clara Kennedy, and Carluzzo’s dog Ernie.


Lead single "Yanaguana" — the original Payaya name for San Antonio, meaning either "land of many waters" or simply "where I am right now" — serves as a thesis statement for the album, a restless soul reckoning with what it means to finally come home. Meanwhile, "Karma Loan" is a fuzzy, sprawling psych track that spilled out of Baird during a deep immersion in Bach that features cello by Clara Kennedy and closes with a sound collage of spiritual gurus hawking easy paths to enlightenment. Then there's "Horse Moon" — built around pedal steel that shimmers like rays of moonlight, drifting through vignettes from a late night walk across New York City, with Pedrum Siadatian's lead guitar lending the whole thing an unhurried, dreaming quality. The night they tracked it, Baird climbed to the roof of Sear Sound and watched a full moon wash the city in a warm glow.


Baird has never sounded more at home, and Life Creates Itself may be his most cohesive record yet – a songwriter record through and through that stands apart from the rest of his discography. Royal Oakie Records is proud to release Life Creates Itself on September 25th, 2026, available on vinyl LP, CD, and digital download/streaming worldwide.

The word ‘Tystnad’ – literally translated – means silence. In this case, the Silence is less that of zen buddhism or that of John Cage, rather the name of the studio where Flowers Must Die – carriers of the torch of Swedish psychedelia for now nearly 20 years – retreated to make their most head-expanding album to date. Located near the Norwegian border in the verdant rural Värmland region, Silence Studios has been a countercultural hub for decades, attaining a legendary status as a residential outpost where bands can retreat to stretch out creatively and focus their psychic powers.
From just such origins, Flowers Must Die have crafted a collection of expansive and incandescent jams that maps out a lysergic trajectory between the idealistic, anything-goes mania of early ‘70s psychedelia and the 21st century. Tystnad is the sound of a band buoyed by the afterglow of their last Rocket release, 2017’s Kompost and its attendant touring, and expanding into extrapolations that marry the wildest free improv with haunting melody.
If Tystnad, as the band claim, is to be their last recording made in one room at the same time, then it displays a formidable escape velocity. Who’s to say whether Flowers Must Die have tapped into a Swedish continuum, one including the like of Pärson Sound, Dungen or Goat. What’s clear is that Tystnad is a timeless treatise, and a potent channeling of spirits –transcending genre in search of enlightenment anew.

Originally conceived as the solo project of Izio Orsini (Rancho Bizzarro), Bantoriak has evolved into a collective sonic ritual, bringing together an impressive cast of friends and collaborators from the Italian and international underground scene. Steeped in warm 70s inspired sounds, hypnotic grooves, expansive jams and heavy psychedelic atmospheres, Vol. II travels from the dusty landscapes of the Californian desert to more mystical and introspective territories. The album features special appearances by Sergio Ch. (Los Natas, Soldati) on "Blu Bus" and Dome La Muerte on "Ritualism" and "La Muerte". For fans of: Kyuss, Los Natas, Colour Haze, Yawning Man, Monster Magnet, Dead Meadow and Black Sabbath.

The method is instability.

— Violeta Garcia & Hora Lunga

Violeta García & Hora Lunga return with 4ever, their second album and the follow-up to I’ll Wait For You In The Car Park. Released in 2025 on -ous, their debut received airplay on BBC and NTS and was selected for Bandcamp’s Best Experimental Music year-end list. 4ever picks up where that record left off: in ordinary moments, small scenes and the strange emotional weight of being somewhere between places. But here, these moments are stretched across a much larger, darker screen. A night flight, a terminal, a bad connection. When too many feelings are carried from one place to another, everyday situations begin to feel epic, empty, or apocalyptic.

Built from García’s cello and Hora Lunga’s synths, samples and field recordings, the album pushes further into emotion, letting fragile melodies, orchestral cello gestures, heavy low-end and compressed noise melt into something both dystopian and strangely familiar. Its warmth is not meant to be an escape from this world, but something that appears within it. Acoustically, the album lives through the closeness of the materials, the way sounds stay with each other, and in the feeling that even the most unstable moments are being carried together. The album presents itself in scenes that fade into each other: quiet melodic fragments that are interrupted and restarted, unpredictable changes of direction, held together by an inevitable melody, a bright synth harmony unfolding into an almost orchestral cello arrangement. Later, a broken organ-like sample turning in circles, cello melodies appearing as if they were trying to remember a song that never belonged to one voice alone. An endless loop that is placed under changing lights, briefly opening into emotional chords, then slipping back into emptiness.

It is this instability that Violeta García and Hora Lunga place at the center of their collaboration. They do not decorate the cello with production, or place electronics around an acoustic centre. They explain: “On 4ever, we become part of the same unstable surface. What holds the record together is not resolution, but the trust in staying together as things distort, overload, disappear and return.”

Violeta García, an Argentinian cellist known for her solo work and for her role in the punk band Blanco Teta, brings the instrument close to the body, as melody, pressure, texture, noise and sudden emotional weight. García has brought her distinct musical voice to KEXP, Rewire, Le Guess Who?, Bad Bonn Kilbi, Silent Green, TransMusicales, Roskilde and more.

Hora Lunga, a Zurich-based producer and composer working across unstable song forms, treats electronics less as a frame than as a weather system: something that can hold a scene together, distort it or make it disappear. In recent years, his compositions have ranged from experimental song forms, sound performances, ensemble compositions and film music. His ensemble WIRREN consists of up to fifteen performers.

The hardest part of ending is starting again.

After a seven-year hiatus following the devastating loss of their beloved bandmate, LINKIN PARK’S remaining members struggle to find their way forward. Their shared history and enduring friendship, combined with the fresh perspective of two new band members spark a renewed creative energy that leads them on a transformative journey of artistic reinvention.

Following the band from intimate 2022 studio sessions through their explosive November 15, 2024 FROM ZERO album release and concert in São Paulo, the film UNSHATTER weaves together rare vault footage, electrifying performances from sold-out shows, and candid interviews with band members and fans—capturing the raw, honest story of what it means to start over.

This accompanying Film Soundtrack (Live in São Paulo) features transcendent performances of songs spanning their entire career, including exclusive recordings not experienced in the film.

“What do you mean? Not everyone sees music in colors?” Paula whispered.
She froze. Tears filled her eyes and trickled down her cheeks as she realized the rainbow symphonies she had always thought were universal had belonged to her alone.
The song was blue, purple, and yellow.

Introducing the second release from Principauté de Bowl-Air — PBAVINYL002

Principauté de Bowl-Air is a label founded by DJ Bowlcut, a key figure in supporting Seoul’s underground scene through Seoul Community Radio. The project presents his vision of deep, glitchy minimal house music, woven with the story of a secret micronation hidden in the heart of Seoul.

Following the debut vinyl release, PBAVINYL002 features an original track by DJ Bowlcut alongside reinterpretations by his friends Slowmouth and Furz.

The cover artwork references one of the first K-pop acts to introduce rave sounds to Korean audiences — Seo Taiji and Boys. Their first techno album featured an image of the top of an aluminum can, and PBAVINYL002 draws from the same visual reference. The track “Dig This” also reworks elements from their song “You in Illusions (Techno Taiji Mix).”

The A-side opens with “Falling”, a hypnotic-groove track built around deep synths and designed for afterhours. It works as a perfect DJ tool for gently guiding the crowd into a subtle trance state, further enhanced by the vocal sample “Everybody Falling, Anybody Feel that Falling?”, which pulls listeners into a slow, spiraling moment.

The second A-side track, “Dig This”, takes direct inspiration from one of the earliest K-pop tracks to feature rave stabs, TB-303, and classic rave elements — “You in Illusions (Techno Taiji Mix)”. DJ Bowlcut reuses many of the same samples that Seo Taiji originally layered, reconstructing them into a deep minimal cut with a distinctive Mentasm stab woven into the minimal house framework.

The B-side features remixes by Slowmouth and Furz.

Slowmouth transforms “Falling” into a brighter, more festive exploration that reveals the hidden layers of the original hypnotic groove.
Furz, meanwhile, turns “Dig This” into a funky, dancefloor-ready banger aimed at a wider crowd.

Some recordings herald the future in ways that are impossible to see in real time. Teodros Makonnen With His Organ (ቴዎድሮስ መኮንን ከኦርጋኑ ጋር), by the artist Teodros Makonnen, also known as Teddy Mak, is one of those. Today, electronic sounds, synthesizers, and digital production are taken for granted in Ethiopian music, but in the early 1980s, they were novelties that polarized opinion. Even to this day, the story of Teodros Makonnen’s legacy has never been properly told. He played a decisive role in defining the sound of the digital era of Ethiopian music that emerged in the 1980s and beyond, both as a keyboard player and as a producer, songwriter, performer, and sound designer.

Ethiopian music was at a crossroads in the early 1980s. Much like music in the rest of the world, technology and automation heralded either a quantum leap in musical development or the annihilation of musicianship, depending on who you’d ask. The changes were incremental nonetheless, but with the benefit of hindsight one can clearly see that the changes meant different things in different contexts. Drum machines and electric organs came to replace many hotel bands because, all of a sudden, one musician could control drums, melody, and accompaniment. Teodros was one of the first musicians in Ethiopia to explore the possibilities this opened up.

Teodros’ father, Captain Makonnen Beri, was a chief pilot at Ethiopian Airlines and a music enthusiast at that. This would prove important to his development, as Makonnen brought back a piano from Germany, which would lead to the first steps in Teodros’ long musical career. Captain Makonnen’s work as Head of Flight Operations and as a pilot exposed him to the wider world that was far from commonplace for most Ethiopians. In a house where music captivated the whole family, the piano gave Teodros’ talent an outlet. Not only was a piano at home rare in Ethiopian households, his father also brought an Indian teacher to their home to teach Teodros and his brother, Captain Samuel Makonnen, music theory (solfeggio or ear training) and piano. Teodros and his youngest brother, the late great Dereje, a member of both the legendary Ibex Band and the Ethiopian reggae group Dallol, took up music from that point onward, with Teodros beginning to develop his proficiency at the age of eight. His father encouraged him to practice tirelessly at home, and Teodros later received musical schooling at the German School in Addis Ababa.

His obvious talent led to studies and formal education at the Yared School of Music, followed by continued studies in American jazz at Northern Virginia Community College in Virginia. Teodros cut his teeth professionally in his mid-teens, not only as a keyboardist, but also as an arranger for the Wabi Shebelle and Dahlak bands in the 1970s. He mastered electronic sequencing early, rising to prominence through the midnight recording sessions held during the military curfew. The pressures imposed by the curfew required precise and disciplined recordings, and Teodros delivered just that. This, in turn, led to collaborations with iconic artists such as Mulatu Astatke, Aster Aweke, Menelik Wossenachew, Tilahun Gessesse, Mahmoud Ahmed, and Alemayehu Eshete.

In those days, he sat in as a keyboardist with the Dahlak Band when Dawit Yifru took a hiatus to study in Russia, and also with the Ethiostar Band. He secured a residency at the Wabi Shebelle Hotel with the Shebele Band, together with Zelalem Tadese (drums), later succeeded by Elias Bekele, Mulugeta Hailu (bass), Teferi ‘Bibisha’ Mengesha (guitar), Kumelachew G/Selassie (trumpet), and Teshome Deneke (saxophone). A friendly competition developed between the bands associated with the Ras Hotel (the Ibex Band), Ghion Hotel (the Dahlak Band), and Wabi Shebelle Hotel (the Shebele Band). The music scene at Wabi Shebelle saw teenagers commanding the spotlight in an industry otherwise dominated by musicians of an older generation.

At the Wabi Shebelle Hotel, Teodros met a diplomat from Saudi Arabia and later visited him at his home in Addis Ababa, a meeting that had unexpected musical consequences. The man owned a Yamaha double-deck keyboard. That evening, they recorded Teodros Makonnen With His Organ (ቴዎድሮስ መኮንን ከኦርጋኑ ጋር) in one take. This recording, a cornerstone in the early digital sound of Ethiopian music, came about almost by chance, simply because Teodros got the opportunity. Traditional Ethiopian songs were cast in a wholly electronic style.

Once freed from backing duties, Teodros’ keyboards could explore dreamlike soundscapes that took Ethiopian music in new directions. Even though the cassette contained well-known Ethiopian songs, they were given highly original arrangements, performed on an electric organ with drum machine backing and rhythm patterns that left the listener with suggestive, lingering sounds. “Libesh Kabashen” (also known as “Anchi Bale Game”) and “Odu Gol Golesa” wrap you in the very stuff that dreams are made of.

Originally released on cassette only, this recording exudes a mystique that surpasses even some of the most obscure Ethiopian recordings of the day. It remained more or less unknown outside of Ethiopia until now. Some of the tracks, like “Addis Fikir,” are permeated with an almost naive buoyancy, free-floating sounds that lost contact with the ground the moment they were conceived. Others, like “Meche New Hageren Yemayew” and “Lelitu Alnega Alegn,” carry a moodier, quirkier timbre, with pulsating rhythms in the background. Yet even the darker pieces contain an unmistakable wave, something essentially Ethiopian. If most recordings of Teodros’s contemporaries at the time were teeming with atmosphere, his songs seem instead at home in the stratosphere, almost ethereal. Some of the music here could be filed under “lullabies,” were it not for the recurring, almost brooding feeling that engulfs the listener on the aforementioned tracks. You could easily be forgiven for drifting into a blissful haze as the music washes over you.

Up to the advent of electronic music production, Ethiopia was totally dominated by big bands on the one hand, and small groups on the other. The former were tied to large institutions such as the military, the latter emerged from the entertainment industry, in hotel bars and nightclubs. These groups were commercially driven, and bands ultimately had to foster a mercenary approach to employment, albeit not to the passion for music. In the light of this, Teodros’ musical legacy can be seen in two ways. On the one hand, he is a key player in Ethiopian music from the 1970s onwards, leaving an indelible mark through hundreds of compositions and arrangements, including soundtracks for numerous documentary films and advertisements for different companies. On the other hand, the way he and others employed electronics brought Ethiopian music onto a fork in the road.

The replacement of traditional instruments with electronic equipment was seen as impending doom by some. Others, like Teodros, saw new avenues for performance, production, and creativity. Just as later producers like Abegasu Shiota of Admas, Teodros was a trailblazer who opened paths that it took Ethiopian music as a whole more than a decade to rush into. The hotel scene had already been pushed toward electronic music by financial necessity and cost-cutting. Today’s revived global interest in Ethiopian music from the seventies and eighties, alongside a broader resurgence, has changed the reasons for using digital means of music production. They have become tools for musical dreaming. This is where the dreaming began.

Unncecessary is the first EP released on his own label by Nocturnerror, extremely appreciated by the Bass scene led by Zuli, who many times has played his tracks in Web Radios such as NTS, Rinse FM, etc..

“Unnecessary" is the title of the second release on A Flooded Need. Previously tangled in the most slippery meanders of electronic music with strong punk and wave reminiscences, 1/2 of Hyperlacrimae alongside 11xxx27, Nocturnerror approaches this work in a totally different way. The six tracks of the EP, in fact, represent a melting pot of hybrid influences between audacious bass music, cinematic and cacophonic IDM, totally deconstructed techno - stripped of its dance component - and dirty rave jungle.”
Insert — Web zine

Morikawa Seiichirou, vocals, bass
Yamagiwa Hideki, electric & classical guitar
Takahashi Ikuro, drums & percussion

je prie pour que la goutte ne tombe pas
(I pray that the drop does not fall) is the first international release by Japanese trio Chi To Shizuku. While they have released five albums and a 7” in Japan, their spectral, haunted rock songs haven’t yet reached a much wider audience overseas. With this album, then, a live recording taken at Koenji HIGH, Suginami, Tokyo on 23rd November 2021, the unique, quartz-like character of Chi To Shizuku’s music is writ large, the bleak bliss of their songs carved onto twelve-inch vinyl.
Perhaps the best-known member of Chi To Shizuku, at least for audiences with an ear turned to Japanese psychedelia, is drummer Takahashi Ikuro, known for his membership of almost every group worth a damn from that scene – Fushitsusha, Nagisa Ni Te, Ché-SHIZU, Kousokuya, High Rise, Maher Shalal Hash Baz, LSD March, the list goes on. But the core of Chi To Shizuku’s music is the collaboration between vocalist, bassist and lyricist Morikawa Seiichirou, and guitarist and arranger Yamagiwa Hideki. Morikawa is a member of long-running punk/goth group Z.O.A., and has also played with YBO , Zzzoo, and as collaborator with Takeshi and Atsuo of Boris in A/N; he’s also recently been performing with Mitsuru Tabata. Yamagiwa’s history takes in stints with Katsurei and Cock C’ Nell, and he also recently guested with la scene 裸身.

All this contextual information does relatively little, though, to prepare you for the unique vibration of Chi To Shizuku’s lustrous songs. They shimmer in the same half-light, perhaps, as Shizuka and the quieter moments of LSD March, sharing a similar poise and classicism, and there’s a tenderness and wracked poetry to Morikawa’s voice that reminds of the emotional intensities both of traditional Japanese folk, and of British folk music: on “Musuu No Nemuri No Naka De Kumo Wo Tukamu”, the combination of his singing, backed with gorgeously plangent guitar, reminds of no-one so much as it does The Pentangle or Spriguns Of Tolgus. Chi To Shizuku’s love for the ballad as form gifts their music an archaic, sometimes arcane resonance, and from what you can hear on this album, it’s clear they’re in love with graceful melancholy.

But this is not a folk album, by any means; it just shivers with the same eternal spirit. There are also hints of prog rock, and you can catch some passages of scratchy, distended free rock, on the extended spirit invocation of “Nanhito Hanhito”. je prie pour que la goutte ne tombe pas is an extraordinary album, a melancholy surprise, that reminds dedicated listeners of the seemingly bottomless well of great music to be found via the Japanese underground in its many forms. Perhaps Michel Henritzi says it best, though, in his liner notes, when he writes, “Chi To Shizuku’s music reminds us that our life is a dream that lasts only a season, and that oblivion will follow.”

Recorded at Koenji High Suginami, Tokyo, 23 November 2021
Mix & Mastering: Taku Unami, photography : Noriko Akiyama
Liner notes by Jon Dale Printed by Alan Sherry

Te Toca marks a new chapter for Cimafunk. For the first time, the Afro-Cuban funk powerhouse records an album with his electrifying band, La Tribu, capturing the chemistry and funkiness that has made their live performances legendary. Recorded live at Criteria Studios in Miami, the album embraces the raw energy of the full band playing together in real time, bringing the spirit and groove of the stage directly into the recording. Te Toca, which can mean “it’s your turn,” is a gift to Cimafunk & La Tribu’s loyal live show followers who have been asking for recorded versions of “Cocinarte,” “Relajao,” and “Se Acabó,” staples of Cimafunk & La Tribu’s dynamic live performances. It’s also a nod to Cimafunk formally introducing La Tribu as full creative partners. Te Toca features seven new original songs and a reimagined version of “Paciente,” one of Cimafunk’s standout tracks from his debut album Terapia. All eight tracks were recorded over three days with all musicians performing simultaneously in the same room with no rerecording: just raw, authentic, live music. In a time when so much music and communication is developed with technology and filtered through screens, Cimafunk & La Tribu’s Te Toca connects the artist and audience the old-fashioned way with real music.

Soul Quest Records proudly welcomes longtime friend and mastering engineer Coflo for his long-awaited debut on the label with the Gimme That EP. A rich collaboration with Egyptian American vocalist, bassist, and multidisciplinary artist, Aya Moor. With this EP, the label continues its commitment to meaningful collaboration, presenting a release that feels timeless, heartfelt, and effortlessly danceable.

Singer-Songwriterin, Multiinstrumentalistin und Produzentin Agnes Obel kehrt mit dem mit Spannung
erwarteten neuen Album ”The Meaning of Flowers” zurück, das auf die gefeierte Veröffentlichung von
”Myopia” (2020) folgt.
Die aus Dänemark stammende Wahlberlinerin hat das neue Werk vollständig in ihrem Berlin Studio
geschrieben, arrangiert, aufgenommen und produziert. Auf 12 atmosphärischen, genreübergreifenden
Tracks fängt ”The Meaning of Flowers” eine Phase tiefgreifender persönlicher und kreativer Transformation ein.
Inspiriert von der Geburt ihres ersten Kindes erkundet Obel Themen wie Neubeginn, Verbundenheit und
Metamorphose und reflektiert darüber, wie neues Leben den Körper, den Geist und die eigene Beziehung
zur Welt verändert.
Ihre neue Musik schöpft dabei aus vielen Quellen – von der Dichtung Enheduannas (der ersten namentlich
bekannten Autorin der Welt) und den philosophischen Ideen von Hannah Arendt und Emanuele Coccia bis
hin zur dänischen Popszene der 80er- und 90er-Jahre.

Shaped in the shadows and sounds of the legendary Topanga Canyon, California. The debut album from Biita Houdei is buoyed by a magic that feels wildly and beautifully untamed; wild-hearted sentiments that are shaped by the world around it, fascinated by the enchantment of it all, and delivered via a collective (harmony layered) voice that understands the complex nature of what it means to be alive in the here and now.

Produced by Haley Heynderickx, 'This Bed Was Made For Me' is a striking collection of stirring, signature folk songs animated by subtle instrumentation and orchestral flourishes. It feels lived in: vocals weave together in a beautiful harmonic dance, seasons shift, sunshine appears and bold psychedelic colours warm the horizon.

In the early stages of making her debut album, Biita Houdei knew two things: that she wanted the recordings to feel distinctly and palpably warm, and that she would sew a unique patch for every song on the album. The first of those things is subjective, though brightness pours in from all corners of This Bed Was Made For Me. The second became a laborious task she undertook throughout the process, the completion of which is testament to the slow process of it all, to the physical commitment and patience required to make a full work of art.

The patches she crafted during the making of This Bed Was Made For Me became a full quilt, one that now adorns the album’s front cover. Beneath it sits a striking collection of Houdei’s stirring, signature folk songs, brought into fruition with the help of fellow songwriter Haley Heynderickx, in her first lead production role, and the album’s producer/engineer Sahil Ansari. It’s also the first release Biita (pronounced “bee-tah”) is releasing under her newly-taken name, one that was gifted to her by her auntie and means "unique" in the Farsi language. “I proudly take this name,” Biita says of the change. “It makes me feel that much closer to my Persian heritage.”

Recorded across ten back-to-back and full days, the album touches on themes of love and heritage, of taking chances, the preciousness of time and the impact we all have on the world around us. A number of the songs were written in Topanga, California, while Biita settled into a new home as wild fires raged, and as she adjusted to a life which no longer held distinct seasonal changes, far from the Ozark Mountain home she felt so attached to. Such themes reveal themselves in a variety of ways across the album’s fourteen songs, that key sense of warmth retained in the bones of the album whether they are stepping into darkness or seeking out light.

The album feels lived in and alive; dust swirls, seasons shift, sunshine appears and is held. Biita calls it ‘psychedelic’ and there is indeed a sense of that in the world building, in the way the bold colours are always shifting. Formed of fourteen songs, and filling nearly forty-five minutes, This Bed Was Made For Me not only builds a whole world for listeners to inhabit but also implores you to stay a while. This was deliberate, indeed it’s Biita’s wish that listeners give the album dedicated time; to learn its shape, to explore it fully, away from the instant grab of playlists and skewed algorithms.

“Many of my favourite albums didn’t reveal themselves instantly to me,” Biita, now based in the Catskill Mountains of New York, explains. “Some did, of course, but I had to work to understand the full scope of the piece as a whole. I encourage people to dive deeper into everything that they choose to consume. It is not my intention to sound pretentious, but instead, I am trying harder to explain the gratitude I have for being able to craft every part of this album— using my hands, my brain, my voice, my visions. To me, it is an all encompassing work of art,” she continues. “Making the quilt was laborious. Taking the cover photo was laborious. No shortcuts, but rather a manual and tangible approach. I am thankful for the time it took.”

My fourth album begins and ends in nature, a space that has continually shaped and inspired my artistic work. I spend much of my time in forests and landscapes, listening, observing, and absorbing the subtle rhythms and structures of the natural environment. These impressions do more than accompany my music; they become an integral part of it, influencing its atmosphere, form, and sonic character. As a result, this has become my most emotional and profound album to date. The journey begins with captured moments from a Mediterranean island. Fragments of distant church bells, the ticking of a clock, and the hum of insects in the sun are gently joined by my piano... In this way, the opening piece, “Time,” serves as an introduction to the central idea behind Ellipsis. The term derives from the Ancient Greek word λλειψις (élleipsis) and refers to the deliberate omission of ἔ words or parts of a sentence.

What remains unsaid can carry just as much meaning as what is spoken. This idea runs like a thread throughout the entire album. A reduction to the essential, yet enriched with the necessary details that continually create space for imagination, personal interpretation, and those emotions that are not prescribed but emerge through the act of listening. Ellipsis exists within this tension between presence and absence, between acoustic and electronic sounds, between nature and the studio, between memory and perception. It is a place where meaning arises not only from what is audible, but also from what remains unspoken.

The record is largely sung in Scots language, one of Scotland’s three official languages along with Gaelic and English. “Scots gives me a way of expressing myself which is connected directly with the landscapes I love. It brings the songs alive and it is a fascinating language. The name of the record is in Scots - Forefowk means the people who came before, or ancestors. When we say ‘mind me,’ we can mean a few things- remind, remember, watch over or care for me. The record explores how tradition needs to be constantly reconnected with, built upon, looked after, and shared.”
Quinie sings with a style inspired by Scottish Traveller singers. “I began singing unaccompanied Scots Song in 2015 after hearing Scots Traveller singer Sheila Stewart on the radio. Initially I felt like I shouldn't sing these songs because I'm not a Traveller, and I saw people around me doing that in a way that made me uncomfortable. But on the other hand this music made sense to me and I felt driven to learn. Over the years I have met Traveller friends who taught me that settled people sharing these songs could contribute to raising awareness. Scottish Travellers are marginalised and discriminated against in modern Scotland, despite being custodians of so many of our important traditions. So I started to perform them and tell this story. From there I built on my repertoire and started writing my own songs”.
To develop this record, Quinie travelled across Argyll with her horse. They went on a pilgrimage of sorts through the ancient landscapes of the West of Scotland to explore the interconnected relationships between people, ancestors, animals, and place. The album’s vinyl release is accompanied by a book and film, documenting this unusual research process.
Forefowk, Mind Me was recorded in August 2024 at The Big Shed in Highland Perthshire with support from Creative Scotland. Quinie is accompanied by an ensemble of musicians: Ailbhe Nic Oireachtaigh (viola), Oliver Pitt (duduk, bouzouki, percussion), Harry Górski-Brown (small pipes, violin), and Stevie Jones (double bass, recording, and mixing). Each of these artists brings their own distinctive voice, bridging contemporary experimental practice with worlds of traditional and early music.

Inspired by a now-demolished artists' collective on the outskirts of Copenhagen, 'The House' is the debut album of Belgian-Dutch singer-songwriter Elis Floreen. Written during her years in the Danish capital, the album grew out of a place filled with decades of forgotten objects, artworks and stories. A temporary refuge for artists, dreamers and people caught between chapters of their lives.

As residents came and went, the house became a world of its own, shaped by shared meals, late-night conversations, evolving traditions and the countless stories left behind by those who passed through. When the building was eventually demolished, Floreen found herself holding on to its spirit through song. The result is an album that explores belonging, memory and the strange ways people become part of one another's lives.

Produced by Jo Francken and Pieterjan Maertens, known from their work with Tamino, 'The House' blends intimate folk, adventurous pop and richly layered arrangements into a musical world that feels both playful and deeply moving. Drawing on the storytelling spirit of Paul Simon, Kate Bush and Aldous Harding, Elis Floreen transforms everyday moments into something timeless, introducing a distinctive new voice with a debut album full of warmth, imagination and heart.

There was an immediate buzz surrounding This Is What I Know About Being Gigantic, the 2001 debut EP by Seattle indie phenomenon Minus the Bear. It wasn’t the kind of viral interest that translated into a string of sold-out tour dates, but it meant that the tuned-in crowd eagerly anticipated their next move. To help stir up the excitement for their first proper full-length, the band followed up Gigantic with a promo CD featuring two tracks from their upcoming album, a short instrumental interlude, an exclusive new song, and a demo version of another album track. Packaged in a cardboard slipcase, it was the kind of cheaply manufactured promotional item that could be handed out for free at shows or thrown in as a bonus in online orders—a relic of the final years of the CD age before the advent of the iPod and mp3. The sampler CD was christened Bands Like It When You Yell “YAR!” At Them in a nod to the upcoming album Highly Refined Pirates.

While these kinds of promotional items typically had an ephemeral existence, filed away in some neglected binder of CDs or tossed out during one of the many apartment-to-apartment moves of the band’s principal demographic of urban twentysomethings, Bands Like It When You Yell “YAR!” At Them had a curiously persistent presence. Perhaps it was because it was packaged more like a proper EP than a sampler. It certainly helped that it was a free release, meaning anyone who came to a show likely walked away from the evening with the cardboard slipcase tucked in their jacket pocket. It’s also noteworthy that the EP showcased three songs from the back half of Highly Refined Pirates rather than the album’s live staples and fan favorites from side A. Whatever the combination of factors at play, “YAR!” took on a life of its own and was ultimately re-packaged in a jewel case and sold as a proper EP in 2004 in the wake of Highly Refined Pirates’ success. And now in 2026, it’s getting its first proper release on vinyl.

Opening with the driving beat, chirping guitars, and funky low-end of “Spritz!!! Spritz!!!,” Bands Like It When You Yell “YAR!” At Them quickly cements Minus the Bear’s foundation of sophisticated revelry, a spirit further emphasized in the Highly Refined Pirates title choice. Part of the Bear’s lore involves them playing their first show three days after 9/11, and just as New York City’s indie rock scene took a sharp turn towards nightclub debauchery and a rejection of ‘90s rock’s dour fatalism in the wake of the World Trade Center tragedy, so did the Bear turn away from the Seattle’s scene’s penchant for gloom and angst towards a cerebral after-hours pop sound. The inclusion of “Women We Haven’t Met Yet” helped elevate what could have otherwise been seen as an album deep cut into a lead track. The fact that these first two songs essentially served as preview singles over future Pirates hits like “Monkey!!!Knife!!!Fight!!!” and “Absinthe Party At The Fly Honey Warehouse” speaks to the high quality of every song the band cranked out in their early years. The EP’s exclusive track “Drop It Like It’s Hot” presaged Snoop Dogg’s mega-hit single of the same name by two years, but whereas Snoop leaned into restrained minimalism, the Bear unleashes some of their fiercest work here, building off of interwoven riffs and electronic layers to a climax of stabbing guitars and hollered vocals. Much like Nirvana’s Hormoaning EP, Minus the Bear’s Bands Like It When You Yell “YAR!” At Them was initially more of a marketing gimmick than a proper release, but given the popularity of the pivotal studio albums that stemmed from the same recording sessions, these extended plays serve as compelling companion pieces that have earned a special spot in their respective fanbases’ hearts. Suicide Squeeze is proud to offer Bands Like It When You Yell “YAR!” At Them on vinyl on September 18, 2026, nearly 25 years after the band’s first show.

Remastered for vinyl by Bernie Grundman with lacquers cut at 45rpm, this limited edition pressing of 1000 copies on Puget Sound-colored vinyl helps document and preserve the exciting early years of one of American indie rock’s most beloved acts.

2026 Repress

To be far ahead of your time sometimes means that you have to wait a while for the right moment to be understood. The visionary approach of multi-instrumentalist Johnny Lamas led him to experiment with a world of hybrid jazz-funk, ambient and electronic sounds while keeping the rhythms of Venezuelan traditional music alive. From 1993 to today, small recognition has grown into true admiration for this so specific sound and his "Danza Cósmica" masterpiece.

TrueClass Records are pleased to present as their second release a complete restoration of this gem, beautifully remastered and redesigned, making it available now for the first time in fine audio quality on vinyl and digital formats.

Musique Domestique marks the debut full-length from French duo Adiciatz, a project that emerges from the shared musical curiosity of Manon Nogier and Guillaume Lespinasse. Living near Lyon and making music together since before the pandemic, the pair developed their sound during lockdown improvisations at home — a creative process that quickly revealed a unique musical chemistry rooted as much in folk tradition as in experimental exploration.

Drawing on a wide palette of influences — from Occitan poetry, delicate folk to drone and spontaneous sound exploration — Adiciatz makes music that feels both intimate and expansive. Nogier’s voice and amplified taisho koto weave through Lespinasse’s keyboards, machines and percussive touches, forming a sonic world where ritualistic soft folk melodies coexist with subtle electronic textures.

Their live performances, including an appearance at the Meakusma Festival, where their set blurred the line between concert and séance, have already shown how this blend comes to life in front of audiences, with hypnotic vocals, spiralling chords and slow, trance-like rhythms inviting listeners into a space that is both meditative and evocative.

On Musique Domestique, those live-rooted sensibilities are distilled into recorded form. The album moves fluidly between rich pastoral folk and instrumental meanderings. Musique Domestique announces Adiciatz as a compelling new voice at the intersection of folk, experimental and electronic music crafted with care and intuition.

For years, EYRE LLEW were defined by motion.

Cities blurred into one another. Borders became routine. Airports, night drives, ferry ports, backstage rooms, festival fields, hotel corridors, and long-distance journeys stitched together into a single continuous life of movement. Success, such as it existed, was measured in miles travelled, crowds gathered, and momentum sustained. The band moved because they had to. Because stopping felt like failure. Because “making it” always seemed to live somewhere just ahead.

Then the world stopped.

Lockdown didn’t just interrupt EYRE LLEW’s trajectory; it dismantled it. The relentless forward motion that had shaped their identity for over a decade disappeared overnight. Tours vanished. Plans dissolved. The infrastructure of their lives as musicians collapsed into silence. For a band built on movement, it felt devastating.

Written across lockdown and the years that followed, the album is not a record about absence; it’s a record about presence. About love that feels like home. About stillness as strength. About devotion without spectacle. About grief without melodrama. About healing without performative optimism. About growth that doesn’t announce itself loudly, but happens slowly, privately, and honestly.

After years of movement, it is EYRE LLEW learning how to stand still and discovering that this is where the real growth starts.

For years, EYRE LLEW were defined by motion.

Cities blurred into one another. Borders became routine. Airports, night drives, ferry ports, backstage rooms, festival fields, hotel corridors, and long-distance journeys stitched together into a single continuous life of movement. Success, such as it existed, was measured in miles travelled, crowds gathered, and momentum sustained. The band moved because they had to. Because stopping felt like failure. Because “making it” always seemed to live somewhere just ahead.

Then the world stopped.

Lockdown didn’t just interrupt EYRE LLEW’s trajectory; it dismantled it. The relentless forward motion that had shaped their identity for over a decade disappeared overnight. Tours vanished. Plans dissolved. The infrastructure of their lives as musicians collapsed into silence. For a band built on movement, it felt devastating.

Written across lockdown and the years that followed, the album is not a record about absence; it’s a record about presence. About love that feels like home. About stillness as strength. About devotion without spectacle. About grief without melodrama. About healing without performative optimism. About growth that doesn’t announce itself loudly, but happens slowly, privately, and honestly.

After years of movement, it is EYRE LLEW learning how to stand still and discovering that this is where the real growth starts.

MĀRARA, meaning flying fish, is a musical project born in the heart of a still largely unknown Polynesian island. While Tahiti commands attention and the spotlight, Mārara remains in the shadows, ignored by tourist circuits and dominant cultural narratives. This album aims to put Mārara on the map and give voice to an island that deserves to exist in all its richness.


Through this work, we offer an immersion into our traditions, customs, legends, and myths. These stories, deeply rooted in Polynesian culture, are transformed by the environment: for example, the legends of an atoll differ from those of a mountainous island, shaped by the climate, the terrain, and the elements. MĀRARA captures this diversity and reveals its unique character.


This album is not just a musical creation: it is an act of cultural transmission and visibility. Music becomes a vehicle for identity, a voice for an unknown territory, and a bridge between past and present.


"With MĀRARA, we make our island sing so that its voice resonates beyond its horizon."

Futaishitsu Souzou is the first vinyl album released by Japanese duo la scène 裸身, a duo of Saya on vocals and bass, and Eiji on guitar. They’ve been an understated but deeply impressive presence on the Japanese underground for the best part of a decade now, having self-released a debut album, Ten No Sekido, in 2018, which saw them co-producing by Atsuo of Boris, who also worked with them on the following year’s Corridor EP. The mystery and magic of their songs, which vibrate in a curious space between psychedelic rock, acid folk and slowcore, is at its strongest on Futaishitsu Souzou.

la scène 裸身 have long been interested in art that’s stripped back to its simplest, most elemental form, much as their name represents the Japanese word ‘rashin’, which means naked body. There is something unadorned about the three songs on Futaishitsu Souzou; Saya’s becalmed, unhurried vocal delivery reflects the gentle intensity of the simple, gem-like chord changes strewn through songs like “Futaishitsu Souzou” itself, and the bittersweet, folkish lament of “Reiyou”, a song inspired by the loss of the band’s friend, Gazelle.

Futaishitsu Souzou is steeped in melancholy, but it is not resigned to this emotional state; there are threads of rebirth and transcendence woven through the album’s three lovely, slowly enveloping, and deeply moving songs. Often, you can hear that transcendence in the soaring, sky- burning guitar playing that cleaves these songs in twain, from guest guitarist Hiroshi Kurosawa (of Asylum). At times, the music here recalls the drift-like psych-rock of the Paisley Underground; elsewhere, it explodes with vibrant intensity, swarming with noise and feedback, that runs alongside similarly delirious examples from the Japanese underground.

And yet, la scène 裸身 is entirely its own thing, a unique, singular vibration, a oneiric manifestation of hermetic visionary art.

10” black vinyl + DL card.

Josephine Foster's peculiar 2000 home recorded debut There Are Eyes Above is an essential introduction to her music that’s unfolded now for over two decades. Released for the first time on vinyl, this limited edition 10-inch pressing comes packaged with brand new artwork and is adorned by one of Josephine’s illustrations. Lo-fi and unaffected by tradition or commercialism these initial recordings are sepia-tinted, folk-art music with powered by uke minimalism; it’s outsider music that still doesn't fit in. Just 30-minutes caught in time before her 2001 follow up Little Life - this humble first incarnation includes here for posterity super personal lullabies and a glimpse into her songwriting evolution. It’s music from an era that only exists in your mind, with a bow to Tin Pan Alley for good measure. This super rare collection, originally only released on CDR and sold at shows, remains an essential part of the curious oeuvre of this unique songwriter and singer. “A dissonant soprano and lyrics about benevolence and old-time faith, Foster expertly weaves ancient and modern” The Guardian. Track listing: Side A 1 One Hundred Songs I Sing 2 Emily Told Me 3 Teeter Totter 4 Little Life 5 I Am A Guest In Here. Side B 6 Robber Song 7 Hey Matthew 8 There Are Eyes Above 9 Godcake 10 Yippee I'm Leaving 11Two Not One

Could it be that the world is finally ready for the tempestuous folk-rock opera that is "All the Leaves are Gone?" In 2004, only the truly informed and forward-thinking heads "got" this mini masterpiece. Critics scratched their heads and usually resorted to comparisons of past artists, like ol Grace Slick and her Great Jefferson Society, Fairport Convention (but which era? SURELY Judy Dyble's early reign?), and at best, Shirley Collins. A few fans attempted to connect the record to even more obscure "freak folk/rock" like Mellow Candle, Fear Itself, or Trees. "All the Leaves are Gone" was made by unique personalities not concerned with influences or copying any bygone era. Surely, some things are in our DNA or even early childhood, as Josephine Foster's roots in opera manifest themselves as much as any other influence in this organic song cycle. Sure, guitarist Brian Goodman may have heard Richard Thompson before, but his alchemical and molten guitar spray is purely his own, in tunings and intervals still not meant for normal humans to understand, mostly because his 2004 guts were poured into every sublime note (I think even Brian himself never even understood how good he was). That fiery emotion is also in every nuance of Foster's songs--like life, there's disquieting, jagged moments of unease, and there's calm both before and after the storm. There are moments of utter gentleness along the journey---because yes, every concept album should be a voyage, and this is one everyone should take. - Steve Krakow.

When Pouya dropped The South Got Something To Say in the summer of 2019, it wasn’t just a title—it was a definitive statement of growth. Nodding to André 3000’s iconic 1995 Source Awards declaration, the Miami pioneer used his third studio album to prove that his raw, independent formula had mutated into something deeper, more mature, and entirely unmatched in the underground rap landscape. Now, for the first time since its digital release, this pivotal moment in Florida hip-hop history is finally available on wax, offering listeners something tangible they have been anticipating for years.

The South Got Something To Say captures Pouya at a lyrical and sonic turning point. While maintaining the blistering flows, heavy bass, and visceral Florida energy that initially put him on the map, the album opens the door to intense themes of mortality, legacy, and the heavy toll of independent success. It bridges the gap between the frantic energy of the SoundCloud era and a mastery of songwriting, offering fans a remarkably transparent look into the mind of an artist surviving the very chaos that birthed him. Standouts like "Cruisin' in the MIA" and "Florida Thang" showcase his signature rapid-fire delivery, perfectly balancing the record's darker, more introspective moments.

The sonic diversity of the project is anchored by a stellar lineup of collaborators who push Pouya into new creative territory. He enlists Three 6 Mafia royalty Juicy J alongside heavy-hitting underground peers like Ghostemane and City Morgue, while seamlessly pivoting into the melodic, hazy soundscapes of indie-pop artist Cuco and longtime producer Rocci on tracks like "Talk to Me Before I Die" and "Mood Swing Misery." This striking balance of aggressive phonk and melodic vulnerability solidifies the album as a cohesive, genre-bending journey rather than a mere collection of singles.

For years, vinyl collectors and die-hard fans have begged for this underground masterpiece to be immortalized on wax. This first-ever vinyl pressing delivers the booming low-ends and intricate, therapeutic bars exactly how they were meant to be experienced. From the opening nostalgic chords to the final fading beats, this release stands as an essential artifact of the modern underground rap movement, finally giving a landmark Southern album the premium physical presentation it deserves.

Pioneering Ghanaian musician King Ayisobareturns September 4, 2026 with his forthcoming seventh album Pure Confusion, recorded and produced by On-U-Sound’s Adrian Sherwood.

Ayisoba is one of Ghana’s most distinctive musical voices. The world’s foremost player of the kologo - a homemade two-string lute fashioned from a calabash and covered in goatskin - he delivers fiercely political and socially observant songs using three different voices, including the voice of his grandfather that possessed him as a child. Sherwood meanwhile is the pioneering British producer and founder of On-U Sound whose hugely influential career has connected dub, post-punk, industrial, hip hop and experimental music through collaborations with artists including Lee “Scratch” Perry, Mark Stewart, Horace Andy, Sinéad O’Connor, Nine Inch Nails and Depeche Mode.

Ayisoba and Sherwood first collaborated during a BBC Radio 3 Late Junction session at Maida Vale in 2017, organised by Ayisoba’s long-time collaborator Arnold de Boer/Zea of The Ex. The pair immediately connected, and during the pandemic, when Adrian’s long-time African Head Charge collaborator Bonjo Iyabinghi Noah was in Ghana looking for musicians to collaborate with Sherwood suggested Ayisoba, who eventually featured on two tracks on African Head Charge’s 2023 album A Trip To Bolgatanga (Bolgantanga is the region Ayisoba is from). Ayisoba then returned to the UK in late 2024 and travelled to Sherwood’s Ramsgate studio where the pair laid down the songs that would become Pure Confusion: “All the songs were already in my head,” says Ayisoba. “This album is all recorded live, over one afternoon. Adrian only plays live, and I like that. And he works hard - he doesn’t sleep. I woke up in the night and he was still working.”

“In my role producing it, I just let it roll to make a good vibe,” says Sherwood. “We recorded it completely live, did some programming and processing on some tracks, using dub techniques live on the mixing desk and adding some slick touches. We wanted the colours on the album to swing off what Ayisoba was doing, so we invited some friends to participate. Doug Wimbish (Sugar Hill Gang) arrived from America and lent his services playing bass on a couple of tracks; the wonderful Ivan Hussey (Celloman) played bass, keyboards and cello - cello is not really featured on African recordings so we thought it would be really cool to try it. I'd been working with Alex White (Fat White Family/Primal Scream) on my album (The Collapse of Everything) and so he added sax to a few tracks and I brought Alan Glenn down especially - Alan was in Little Axe but also Nine Below Zero and played in the Yardbirds – to add some mouth organ; Mark Bandola added a bit of flavour with his Juno, Ayisoba’s long-time Ghanian collaborator Ayuune Sule added some percussion and vocals and Matt Smith did some programming.”

“King Ayisoba is quite amazing, so unique,” Sherwood continues. “He’s got his own handmade instrument and three different voices - when you’re listening you think it’s three different people. He’s a breath of fresh air, full of love for the music which he wants to share with everybody. Some tracks we kept very straight and others we experimented with - adding dubby psychedelic little touches to trip you out a bit. The added production we did at On-U has given it a shine while still keeping it vibrant, live and spontaneous. I’m really proud of this record”.

On Pure Confusion, Ayisoba documents the anxieties, contradictions and changing social realities of contemporary Ghana. “Land is a problem for everyone,” says Ayisoba of the opening track “Property”. “If you don’t build on your land they will take it away. Plenty corruption in Ghana, plenty confusion. They sell the land to two, three, four people and then everybody fights.”

Elsewhere Ayisoba explores illness, spirituality and social stigma on “Bemba”, warning against hiding sickness out of shame or fear of “bad juju”: “People hide their sickness and the sickness kills them.” “Tewigiloge” reflects on cultural difference and open-mindedness encountered through world travel: “We will tour the whole world and we will see many things we may not like or understand… your eyes will see, but don’t talk - you have to be open-minded.”

Spirituality runs deeply throughout the album. Ayisoba’s grandfather was a respected spiritual healer whose presence the musician says still guides him today. “The grandparents’ spirits are the ones you can contact,” he explains of the spiritual chant “Nkaase”. “This song talks about the forefathers.” The closing track “Leeda-Mampanga (It’s Not My Strength)” acts as a statement of humility and gratitude: “You have to be humble, even if you have talent. God gives you the power.”

For more than two decades, King Ayisoba has been one of Africa’s most distinctive musical innovators, transforming northern Ghanaian kologo traditions into a bold contemporary sound rooted in hypnotic rhythms, social commentary and spiritual intensity. Since the breakthrough success of 2006’s Modern Ghanaians, Ayisoba has built an international following through acclaimed albums, relentless touring and collaborations with artists including Lee “Scratch” Perry, Orlando Julius and African Head Charge. Performances at Roskilde, WOMAD, Le Guess Who? and the Barbican have further cemented his reputation as a singular live performer and cultural force.

Geoff Kirkwood (Man Power)

I’dgained some notoriety as a music producer and DJ but I hit a horrible case of writers block around 2018.

The problem I was finding was that I was trying to shoe horn every smart arsed clever dick musical reference I had into the music I was making, but the function of dance music is to make people dance, not to show people who broad your musical references are, so I was making pretty shitty music that landed in the middle and didn’t achieve either aim.

To tackle this I ended up committing to just trying to make the most expressive and wanky experimental stuff I could. I was immersed in club culture at the time so the whole enterprise started as a joke, hence the name “Bed Wetter”. However when I fully submitted to just naked exploration the really unexpected thing that happened was that I found myself unavoidably having to deal with a lot of my own bullshit. That bullshit turned into the “Billy Mill is Dead” album, which was essentially the sound of me excavating my own life and looking at how I felt about where I was from, where I was headed, my family, my history, my region and all of the things i have conflicting feelings about.

It was partially catharsis and also a bit of deprogramming around being able to call myself an artist after being raised to believe that wasn’t an option for me.

I self released Billy Mill is Dead in the months before the pandemic and it found it’s fair share of love in the places I hoped would connect with it, and just the right amount of being ignored by people who I’m pleased didn’t feel it. This all lead to me being emboldened enough to apply for an artist in residence position at a big regional opera house months later in the middle of lockdown.

My feeling was that if my DJ career was potentially over for the remainder of my lifetime then there was no harm in exploring this alternative method of expression to see where it could take me.

I submitted a ridiculously ambitious plan for what I would like to do as a project, and to my absolute shock I was selected for the position.

I was 40 years old and from a scarcity background so I had a potentially unique response to that kind of validation for the first time and what followed next was a process of me just coming back with bigger and more ridiculous ideas just to find out at whatstage they’d tell me to stop.

The thing is, nobody did. I got as far as suggesting writing a full symphony to be performed by an orchestra before my own nerve gave out and I decided that was probably as far as I should push things.

The problem with people giving you permission to do things is that you then need to go out and figure out how to do those things.

The biggest issue for me, beyond raising the money to pay for everything, was how does a person actually write a symphony?

I was introduced to Fiona Brice, a multi instrumentalist and orchestral arranger. She’s also a recording artist who releases on Bella Union. On top of that she’s a violinist who used to be part of the band Placebo and who used to appear regularly playing for other bands on things like Top of the Pops.

Not only was Fiona uniquely placed to not look down on the strange provenance of someone from an Acid House background wanting to write a symphony, but more to the point we really hit it off from day one.

Fiona coached me in the essentials of writing for an Orchestra, and then I went off and wrote the 8 movements.

I’d love to say I laboured for years over this bit, but it took about 2 weeks in total. I’d also love to say what I wrote was a complete symphony, but the version of this which is solely me feels like looking at something without your glasses on. The shape,feel and borders were all there, but the definition was absent. Fiona taught me the broad language of a symphony, but without her it would have lacked all intonation, nuance and detail. Where I had shaped ideas with a hammer, she brought out my meaning with precision using a scalpel.

I think the prodigiously quick turnaround for the music is as much proof of how conceptually and musically aligned Fiona and I are. I know we’re both incredibly proud of what we’ve created.

It took nearly 2 more years to stage the debut performance in what was potentially the most traumatic period of my life which saw me embroiled in an international crisis with my own family and the death of my father, all with the backdrop of COVID.

The work itself is inspired by the working class experience, but it’s also a comment on how we get to decide what we are and how we’re defined, and we get to choose what we do to prove these things.

The original recording was contractually impossible to ever share again, so we re-recorded it in a working men’s club with jobbing (albeit world class) players. In many ways it’s a record that feels like it shouldn’t exist, which is why we’re all so happy that it does.

From Berlin to Lagos: Jembaa Groove expand their sound on "Be A Lover"

Berlin-based outfit Jembaa Groove return with "Be A Lover", a four-track EP set for full release on 18 September via global soul imprint Agogo Records. Following two critically acclaimed albums and an intensive period of touring across Europe and the US — including a SXSW showcase and a widely acclaimed KEXP session — this latest release marks a new chapter in the band’s trajectory. Built around highlife rhythms and shaped by Afro-jazz and the more organic edges of Afrobeats, "Be A Lover" unfolds with a warm, languid and deeply soulful feel, capturing different strands of today’s multifaceted Afrofusion scene.

Here, the band strips back from a seven-piece ensemble to its two founding members, while at the same time opening outward into a deeply collaborative space. At its centre is a close creative partnership with celebrated Nigerian highlife revivalists The Cavemen., alongside contributions from London-based, Nigerian born soul artist Azekel, Lagos vocalist Tim Lyre, and Malian icon Fatoumata Diawara.

“This record has a different flavour,” says Owusu. “It’s really about collaboration — different feelings, different thoughts, different energies coming together.” While centred around the Lagos contemporary scene, the record is shaped by a wider diasporic network stretching across London, Lagos, Berlin and Amsterdam, cities producer and bass player Yannick Nolting describes as “the pillars where everything that is happening in today’s highlife and Afro-fusion scene.”

Formed in Berlin in 2020, Jembaa Groove began after a chance meeting between bassist, producer and composer Yannick Nolting and percussionist, vocalist and songwriter Eric Owusu. Drawing on their respective musical journeys — Nolting’s years working with Lusophone artists in Lisbon and Owusu’s deep roots in Ghana’s highlife tradition, including work with Pat Thomas and late highlife legend Ebo Taylor — the project quickly took shape: their debut album Susuma established a powerful, poly-rhythmic sound grounded in highlife, jazz and soul, while 2024’s "Ye Ankasa | We Ourselves" expanded that vision through collaborations with artists across Ghana and its diaspora, including UK based Ghanaian singer, rapper, percussionist, and arranger K.O.G and legendary Ghanaian highlife musician Gyedu-Blay Ambolley.

The collaborative spirit continues on "Be A Lover", most of which grew out of a meeting with sibling duo The Cavemen. at Supersonic Jazz Festival in Amsterdam in 2023, leading to a sustained exchange of ideas between Berlin and Lagos. With two acclaimed albums behind them, The Cavemen. have emerged as central figures in both Lagos’ alternative music scene and the wider contemporary highlife revival, bringing the genre to a new generation through a stripped-back, melody-driven sound. “There was some kind of magnetism towards Lagos,” says Nolting; for Owusu, who is Ghanaian but spent much of his life in Nigeria, the connection runs even deeper. “I feel lucky to be able to bring different cultures together and make something really beautiful,” he says. A key part of that process was a close working exchange between Nolting and The Cavemen.’s Kingsley Okorie, who effectively stepped into a co-producing role on three out of four of the tracks.

The one exception is opener No Pain No Gain, which features Nigerian-born, East London-based Azekel, whose smooth, R&B-leaning vocal moves through a slow-burning arrangement of bright keys, gently rising horns and atmospheric synths, anchored by Owusu’s organic percussion.

The title track Be A Lover, featuring Afro-fusion Lagos artist Tim Lyre, distills the EP’s central message into its most immediate form. Backed by syncopated percussion and a gently smouldering arrangement, Lyre’s voice moves with a laid-back, melodic ease, delivering a simple refrain: “be a lover, not a fighter.” “It’s a very simple message,” says Nolting, “It’s about showing more love, on a personal level but also more broadly… just show love.” That same sense of warmth runs throughout the record, reflecting its core idea.

On Obi, The Cavemen. take centre stage, with Kingsley Okorie leading through melancholic, plaintive vocals rooted in classic highlife. In contrast, his brother Benjamin James punctuates the track with high-pitched vocal interjections, heightening the emotional tension against a backdrop of slow, restrained instrumentation.

Waka follows with a more melodic, hook-led refrain from Eric Owusu, whose loose, almost conversational delivery creates a striking contrast with Fatoumata Diawara’s unmistakably powerful, raspy vocal. The collaboration grew out of a chance meeting while Owusu was on tour, with ideas exchanged quickly and Diawara returning a finished vocal within days. “We are so proud to have her. It’s a privilege” says Owusu. "Be A Lover" is a record shaped by connections like these — between people, scenes, and cities. “It was partly intention, partly destiny,” says Nolting. “We met these people along the way, and somehow Lagos was meant to come into our path.”