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'This is a journey into sound...,' These familiar words, accompanied by the rumble of a distant train, signal the opening of 'Let's Take A Trip', the sophomore album from Terrel Wallace aka Tall Black Guy. Since 2013's '8 Miles To Moenart' TBG has cemented his position as a standard bearer for the current hip-hop / beats scene. Born in Detroit and now residing in the UK, Wallace's signature style of incredibly clever sample flips and deft production chops has won fans across the globe including Gilles Peterson, Lefto, Jazzy Jeff and House Shoes.

Since his debut release in 2011 (a daring and addictive flip of Fela Kuti), TBG has become revered for his unique take on soulful hip-hop production. The swing of the drums, the textures of the instrumentation as well as a fearlessness in taking on the classics (his Soundcloud page includes flips and chops of tracks from James Brown, De La Soul and Michael Jackson) have marked him out from the crowd. One of the best-kept secrets in the scene, his singular talent is now beginning to get the recognition it deserves. In the last 12 months he has remixed Little Dragon and been invited to take part in Jazzy Jeff's Playlist Retreat alongside the likes of Eric Lau, James Poyser, Ali Shaheed Muhammed, Questlove and countless others.

For this album Wallace had a simple inspiration: 'This album is all about taking a journey. As simple as that. Be it physical, emotional or spiritual. It's asking and answering personal questions from myself within some of the tracks and also touching on social issues i.e. racism, inequality and privilege...that have been at the forefront of my mind over last three years.' Sonically there is also a shift: 'Jazz has definitely been more of an influence in this project, as I have been really inspired by so many up and coming musicians who I've been blessed to connect with'. Some of these musicians, including Kenny Keys, Miles Bonny, Diggs Duke and Dee Jackson feature on the project as well as regular collaborators Ozay Moore and Mario Sweet and fellow Playlist alumni Daniel Crawford and Masego. But this is one man's vision, and for Tall Black Guy this trip is just the beginning...,.

Juxtaposing acid-tipped breakbeats with influences of acoustic behaviour in nature, Sully unveils a debut release for Critical Music with two-track 12” ‘Flux’ b/w ‘Chatter’. Sully says: "‘Flux’ and ‘Chatter’ were another attempt to take the groove and feel of the breakbeats I've been previously working with and build them from the ground up. The aim was to find space for the tonal elements to breathe and end up in a place I'd not been to before." Birdsong became an unexpected reference point during the writing process, with Sully using synthesis to analyse and recreate natural calls as compositional material. The resulting dialogue between acoustic behaviour and digital sound generation forms part of the release's underlying methodology rather than a surface aesthetic. "The contrast and contradiction of the organic world captured by digital processes is always a pull for me," Sully explains. "It never fails to inspire." Jack Stevens aka Sully has spent much of the last two decades developing a body of work that sits slightly outside the obvious cycles of revival that have shaped UK bass music. While his records draw from established rhythmic forms, they rarely settle within a single tradition, instead examining the shared characteristics between them. His releases have consistently explored the points where 2-step swing, breakbeat construction, and jungle's rhythmic vocabulary begin to overlap. Sully’s records retain a relevance that extends beyond the moment of their release, continuing to circulate through DJ sets and specialist record collections. This 12” adds another chapter to a catalogue defined by sustained investigation into rhythm, texture and soundsystem music.

On Last Night At Marienbad's latest, the imprint brings together three of the brightest souls found within the realms of Jazz, namely Mauricesax, 9ick and Milan93, with their collective talents synergising effortlessly on 'A Garden Between Us', alongside a stellar cast of remixers who add even further delight between the grooves….

As a genre, Jazz has perhaps lent itself the most to other musical universes, in that its curious heart, endlessly experimental nature, and parameter-defying spirit have wrapped itself deep within the core of countless albums, scenes, and music makers. It's a genre that welcomes reinvention, consistently defying its contents and always reaching out to find new methods of expressionism. Electronic music, in its many forms, has truly embraced Jazz perhaps like no other movement of music has, with a truly astonishing array of records surfacing in the past 40 years which have blended Jazz's unique motifs with grooves, chords, and emotive excellence. From 90s Jazz house and UR Techno, through to Future Jazz, downtempo, and Hip Hop, and around many other suns, there remains such an intrinsic and symbiotic relationship between the two musical realms that caters to those who wish to live music both within and out with themselves.

As practitioners of blending electronica and Jazz, few do it like the trio of Mauricesax, 9ick, and Milan93. All three are known for their distinctive soundscapes, yet share commonalities in terms of musical language, feel, and sense of progression. Bringing them together allows for overlaps in their sounds to emerge, and just like Jazz itself, this is where the intrinsicness of sound begins to blossom. 9ick brings his softly evolving vibe to the table, one which was so prevalent and celebrated on his 2025 album 'SMIL'; Milan93 draws from his focal point of exploring fill-laden grooves and a myriad of emotive sensibilities; and Mauricesax draws up his extensive musicality that exists at the corner of jazz, electronic, and experimental music, along with running musical workshops all over the globe.

'A Garden Between Us' represents the trio's core tenets, with this immediately obvious from the record's opener, 'Rhodora'. A gentle solo piano quickly evolves into a series of powerful rhythmic pulses, with brass lines bringing vitality and feel to proceedings. The track shifts gears with purpose, transitioning between musical vignettes of the highest order, with the synth work doing much to bind the transitions together. 'Tulip' emerges slightly differently, with glossy Rhodes tones and an unravelling rhythmic undercurrent setting an enthralling stage. The track flourishes amongst sweeping textures, coming up for air amongst a deeply hypnotic rhythmic section that holds on and never lets up. 'Honeysuckle' lands next, which sees the trio emerge with a boundless, dynamic soundscape. The drums shift within the undertones, as keys, chords, horns and hip-hop vocal samples dance around the pulse, capturing the imagination with their narrative-like placement. Wrapping up the A side comes 'Camellia'. A dazzling array of harmonic sounds converges around the transfixing rhythm section, which emerges from deep below to lavishly roll out over the midsection, with the delicateness of the instrumentation a real highlight here.

The B side features two exquisite remixes, with Pacific Coliseum's version of 'Tulip' landing first. Beginning with a signature four to the floor to get things going, his careful handling of the source material is seen in the tactful introduction of the blissful elements that made the original cut so impactful, with great focus placed on emotive fidelity. The result is a summer-bound house number that reimagines the original in all the right ways, flipping it into a euphoria-driven jazz-laden pacer that reaches for the heavens as much as it drives right into the heart. Teuteu then showcases their take on 'Honeysuckle', and at 9 minutes long, represents the longest cut on the record - and the experience is all the richer for it. Leaning heavily into dance music flavours, Teuteu shifts perspective totally into the realm of the club, with the walls beating hard to the kicks. The sax lines that drift ethereally up top keep eyes closed and souls full, as the dance shifts into the next phase.

An experience that drifts from the daydreaming, to soul-warming through to the club shaking - what else is left to experience, except for 'A Garden Between Us' and how it will brighten up life itself….

Voodoo Glow Skulls are an American ska punk band formed in 1988 in Riverside, California, by brothers Frank, Eddie, and Jorge Casillas and their longtime friend Jerry O'Neill. Voodoo Glow Skulls first played at backyard parties and later started playing shows with the Angry Samoans, The Mighty Mighty Bosstones, Firehose, Murphy's Law, and The Dickies.

Voodoo Glow Skulls' 1995 album Firme has been one of the high points in popularity for the seven-member band. Unlike some more laid-back performers in the genre, Voodoo Glow Skulls are a bit more heavy-handed on the punk part of the mix, resulting in consistently fast-paced and chugging song structures that occasionally erupt into triumphant horn breakdowns and chanted group vocals. The album also includes "Fat Randy," one of the group's more convincing ska-punk hybrids.

Firme is avavilable as limited numbered edition of 400 copies on green vinyl and includes an insert

Environments are sticky, they stick to whatever happens within them. They can’t help it. And neither can you.

Land of the Few and Far Between / Songs for St. Michel is a collection of musical ‘figures’ written and recorded in 2022 and 2023 using a method Lyckle and Kim call the ‘snelkookpan’, translated as the pressure cooker. The ’snelkookpan’ in essence is trying to write and live-record as many musical figures in a given timeframe in a specific place. For ‘Land of the Few and Far Between’ this was an afternoon and evening in an exhibition Kim had curated about collecting and memory in The Hague. For ‘Songs of St. Michel’ this was 6 days in the basement of an art institution in Maastricht where they were joined by Otto de Jong on guitar. The figures are usually worked out by ear, sometimes improvised, sometimes written down, but often they are simply remembered and soon after recording forgotten. For ‘Land of the Few and Far Between’ they recorded ten figures. For ‘Songs for St. Michel’ fifteen. Of each a selection of five ended up on this seven inch.

F. van Abeelen (one of whom’s drawings is pictured on the sleeve of this seven inch and of whom 750 drawings were part of the exhibition mentioned above) was forced as a boy to hide in a basement for years. Only a small window gave access to the outside world. That sliver was his reality. After these years in hiding he began drawing his sliver of reality obsessively. Daily series of similar drawings that he would meticulously catalogue in an organizer. We never met F. Our friend who discovered the drawings in a closet of psychiatric nursing home Dorestad never met F. We only recorded ten musical figures next to 750 drawings by F.

St. Michel is a house that stands on the outskirts of Maastricht. It is built on the floodplains of the river Maas and living there you see the river change daily. It is a river fed by rain. No rain means a low river. Rain means a river that sometimes comes frighteningly close to flooding. Which it sometimes does. Due to the ebb and flow of the Maas, stuff is deposited in the boggy areas that are its floodplains. A shoe, a CD, a drone, some wood.

Places impress themselves onto what you are doing. You become an unwitting prop in the place’s story.

The first ‘snelkookpan’ happened in 2017 in the water-basin of one of the earliest concrete structures in the Netherlands; a bunker that was part of Amsterdam’s defensive line, built around the 1890’s. Something that used to house water was now empty. For three days Kim and Lyckle recorded improvised music there, which is still alive on a hard drive somewhere. In 2020 they recorded ‘the third of May’ at an old pumping station in Den Helder; an eleven part piece of auditory historical-horror which was released by South of North in 2024. Since 2023 Lyckle and Kim have mainly recorded live shows. With a Clarinet, kawai K1, Ipad, organelle, samplers and a variety of instruments curated for their minimal size or odd sound they’ve made chains of brief and improvised mini compositions inspired by browsing environments (digital and otherwise).

Land of the Few and Far Between / Songs for St. Michel adds to this growing collection of recordings for environments that are somehow sticky.

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

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

There is a hush most of us only knew as children, the warm drift between familiar household sounds and being carried to bed, a place that belongs to you and to some self you have not met yet. June McDoom’s debut full-length, Follow the Light, lives in that dream space and then keeps walking, slipping out of time and waking somewhere new, barely familiar enough to feel like home yet wholly your own. She came up in a Jamaican household on the edge of the Florida Everglades, an existence built of extended family, communal care, bass and harmonics. Her father, a carpenter and a student of sound, built his own speakers and kept three sound systems going across as many rooms. His low end would rise through her bedroom floor like some wayward cat while she lay above it with folk records, finding harmonies that were new and hers alone. Two musics in one room. Lushness as past and premonition. She found folk on her own, somewhere between the cast recording of The Sound of Music and Simon and Garfunkel, while everyone around her called it sleepy music. She did not mind being the only one. The solitude let her fall for harmony first, before words, before anything else, and harmony is still the thing she reaches for. Generationally speaking, the music was already in the air. Her grandfather, Colin Smith, is a distinguished mento man who played banjo and guitar and built his own rumba boxes, worked to keep Jamaica’s oldest acoustic folk form alive. Mento is the root of all of it: ska, rock steady, reggae, dub and everything after. He is the one who put a guitar in her hands. An inheritance, a gift and a map. Even her name is part of it, though she will tell you she landed on it more by feel than reason. She records as June McDoom, born Alyssa, June being a nickname one of her grandmothers, Joan, went by, a name she thought was cool to carry and simply liked the sound of. An etheric channel that reverberates all the same. A dub all its own.


Made slowly and by hand with her longtime partner Evan Wright, Follow the Light lays the harmony of folk over the rhythm of dub, with Dionne Warwick, Minnie Riperton, Pentangle and the washed guitars of Cocteau Twins haunting its outer edges. Voice and guitar seeking each other out first, then everything else stacked across long days in the studio they keep at home, restraint kept on purpose. The lead single “Without You” is the whole method surfacing, split open and sparkling like a geode in a creek bed. Angelic heroics, and nothing less.


At the heart is family. Her grandmother Aggie, the light behind “Memory,” guiding still. And underneath, the quieter truth the record keeps: none of us are only one person, but a continuum of selves, the ones who shaped us and the ones we have yet to meet. Future you is an ancestor your current self gets to greet. Press play and the same invitation is yours: A few minutes out of time, a place that turns familiar the longer you stay until you surface somewhere new and find it was yours all along

There is a hush most of us only knew as children, the warm drift between familiar household sounds and being carried to bed, a place that belongs to you and to some self you have not met yet. June McDoom’s debut full-length, Follow the Light, lives in that dream space and then keeps walking, slipping out of time and waking somewhere new, barely familiar enough to feel like home yet wholly your own. She came up in a Jamaican household on the edge of the Florida Everglades, an existence built of extended family, communal care, bass and harmonics. Her father, a carpenter and a student of sound, built his own speakers and kept three sound systems going across as many rooms. His low end would rise through her bedroom floor like some wayward cat while she lay above it with folk records, finding harmonies that were new and hers alone. Two musics in one room. Lushness as past and premonition. She found folk on her own, somewhere between the cast recording of The Sound of Music and Simon and Garfunkel, while everyone around her called it sleepy music. She did not mind being the only one. The solitude let her fall for harmony first, before words, before anything else, and harmony is still the thing she reaches for. Generationally speaking, the music was already in the air. Her grandfather, Colin Smith, is a distinguished mento man who played banjo and guitar and built his own rumba boxes, worked to keep Jamaica’s oldest acoustic folk form alive. Mento is the root of all of it: ska, rock steady, reggae, dub and everything after. He is the one who put a guitar in her hands. An inheritance, a gift and a map. Even her name is part of it, though she will tell you she landed on it more by feel than reason. She records as June McDoom, born Alyssa, June being a nickname one of her grandmothers, Joan, went by, a name she thought was cool to carry and simply liked the sound of. An etheric channel that reverberates all the same. A dub all its own.


Made slowly and by hand with her longtime partner Evan Wright, Follow the Light lays the harmony of folk over the rhythm of dub, with Dionne Warwick, Minnie Riperton, Pentangle and the washed guitars of Cocteau Twins haunting its outer edges. Voice and guitar seeking each other out first, then everything else stacked across long days in the studio they keep at home, restraint kept on purpose. The lead single “Without You” is the whole method surfacing, split open and sparkling like a geode in a creek bed. Angelic heroics, and nothing less.


At the heart is family. Her grandmother Aggie, the light behind “Memory,” guiding still. And underneath, the quieter truth the record keeps: none of us are only one person, but a continuum of selves, the ones who shaped us and the ones we have yet to meet. Future you is an ancestor your current self gets to greet. Press play and the same invitation is yours: A few minutes out of time, a place that turns familiar the longer you stay until you surface somewhere new and find it was yours all along

The duo Jolie Gentiane come to us straight from a wild and unpredictable mountain peak, a perched place far from civilization, where the beauty and cruelty of mother nature reign but harmonize the elements. They walk the high, steep paths, looking down on the chaotic and industrial world. This increasingly smoky world, which, from the top of the mountains, looks metamorphosing dangeroulsy, but would only need a few changes to make it less crazy. Or perhaps infinitely more so. Jolie Gentiane is a skilful concoction of sound and daring. Unclassifiable, impalpable, the contemporary embracing the tradition and the acoustic swinging with the electronics. Autotuned/vocoderized vocals, 4th world, kitsch sax, psychedelic arpeggios, acoustic guitar, techno, it's all there: the story told by Jolie Gentiane on this album is rich and complete. Nature, love, celebration, struggle, work. Yes, even work. Because the energy deployed to create this album was surreal, patient, extremely methodical, and the abnegation of the protagonists has been vertiginous: the cliff of the highest peak is finally climbed. This album is like an ode to the earth, to the respect we owe it, an ode also to music in its purest essence, that which does not confine itself to borders, but shout for federation, dance and uprising.

Metal is the debut EP from elisanyhm, an electronic and experimental musician who is based in Berlin.

The tracks that constitute Metal draw on a variety of materials and methods, yet they are commonly marked by an attempt to compose music in connection with a logic of refusal. This results in pieces that are both singular and capable of being set together.

A central tendency of the pieces on Metal is to stretch out time. This tendency could also be understood as: sounding time itself, without the rush of determination.

What might initially seem static can also, eventually, and ultimately be encountered as moving through dense layers. The deconstruction of direction leaves one affected by an indeterminate multiplicity of rhythms, voices, field recordings, and electronic sounds that are more than what one is supposed to construct.

Berlin-based trio Roomer weave noise, melody, and memory into expansive guitar-driven songs. Formed by long-time friends and collaborators Ronja Schößler, Ludwig Wandinger, and Luka Aron, the band brings together distinct voices from across Europe's avant-garde, folk, and electronic scenes, folding these lineages into a sound that moves between shoegaze density, diaristic songwriting, and sonic exploration. Their music often holds opposites in suspension: clarity and blur, structure and drift, intimacy and collapse.

Their debut album Leaving It All to Chance (2025,) introduced this language in full, pairing emotionally direct songs with shifting textures and dense layers of distortion. With Staircase Made of Rope, their second album on Squama, Roomer widen the frame further. Built largely from improvisations and first takes, the record embraces instability as method, moving between density and silence while allowing melodies to surface and dissolve in unexpected ways.

Tokyo-based producer aus debuts on Squama with his new album Mere Meer.
Grounded in the question of how a specific environment can emerge through voice and memory, rather than through recording of an objective reality, the album stands in the tradition of modern Japanese Ambient and Kankyo Ongaku.
aus is the solo project of composer, producer, and curator Yasuhiko Fukuzono. His music is characterized by a precise combination of cinematic strings, acoustic instrumentation, and concrete sound design derived from everyday life.
In recent years, he released music on EM Records, WRWTFWW and his own flau imprint. As a remixer, he put his touch on tracks by Matthew Herbert, Tenniscoats and Craig Armstrong, among others.
His sonic research also extends beyond traditional formats into spatial sound installations and site-specific works, collaborating with experimental figures like Ulla, Li Yilei, and Hinako Omori for institutions such as the Tokyo National Museum.

Much of the album consists of sketches made with synthesizer and voice. Sampled from social media clips, field recordings or a heavily processed version of Fukuzono's own vocals, the voice became a central element of the record. "I have long been interested in the relationship between words and melody.", aus says. In his former work as a speech therapist, he witnessed patients with severe dementia or aphasia, who all of a sudden could recall lyrics when they were sung with familiar melodies. An experience that left a deep impression on him.
During the Covid years, when hearing voices of friends and family sometimes was the only way to feel connected to the outside world, aus began reflecting on the connection between voice and environment. "Every voice represents an encounter with a person, but it's also an encounter with a place."
Unable to travel as freely as before, that limitation became part of his method: rather than just recording actual field material capturing the real world, he would write and perform melodies that simulate a sense of place - an imagined room, an imagined street.
"My interest lies not in the dichotomy between artificial and environmental sounds, but in how they collectively shape a single perceptual field."
By observing and mapping our world, aus creates his own and his new record is a prime example of that process.

You know the pattern: someone calls their album "Balearic," and you immediately expect chill-out terraces, pan-flute samples, and the umpteenth return of the Café del Mar sunset. Devi G. refuses this reflex almost maliciously. The title is a trick—an invitation to disappointment for those hoping for postcard exoticism. What is actually being negotiated here is erosion, but that of the body itself: the abrasion one inflicts upon oneself in the excess of the night, when partying turns into wear and tear, and a rush becomes a graze that only becomes visible in the morning. No backdrop, then, but a wound one has voluntarily acquired.

Instead of the usual Ibiza xylophones, Devi G. digs into the rift between idyll and wear. The result reads like a séance—less José Padilla, more as if Kevin Martin had re-recorded a Manuel Göttsching record on a dying four-track deck. The target area lies somewhere between the waterlogged ambient sketches of Huerco S. and the faded dub-afterglow of Actress, but Devi G. remains consistently on his own, grainier frequency.

Balearic Abrasions (title track) opens without haste, demanding almost without impatience: no motif, no rhythmic handhold, just a slowly tilting balance between warm texture and rough surface. The grain never feels forced—it is not a lo-fi costume, but an integral part of the statics themselves. Where other ambient producers strive for perfection, Devi G. consciously seeks the breaking point. Rhythm remains a tool, never an ambition. Those expecting quick resolution will be disappointed; those willing to listen will receive a depth effect that is rarely this vivid.

Exit Through Thee Gift Shop tips into harder territory: dub-techno reduction meets industrial edge, carried by a stoic kick drum that knows no mercy. Metallic textures slice through the sub-bass, while repetitive chords hypnotize like a defective loop. Central to this is a rare Terence McKenna recording, which functions less as spoken-word ornamentation and more as a disruptive spirit between memory and media archaeology. The title—Banksy reference included—turns this into a biting punchline: radical electronic abstraction positioned against the hyper-commercialized art world.

Morning Depth pushes the claustrophobia further, somewhere between post-industrial and deep-sea dub. The track refuses any peak-time logic, preferring to disintegrate into itself, subcutaneously, methodically. At the end, a casual, almost banal vocal sample (“i defiantly prefer chocolate”) breaks into the cool machinery—a small, profane fissure that makes the coldness of the rest of the piece all the more apparent.

Desiré Algorithmic is the album's most calculated moment: a stoic, repetitive bassline as a foundation, topped with fragile melody fragments that flash like glitches in faulty code. The title reads like a promise from nightlife—a figure that suggests much and delivers nothing, because behind the façade there is simply nothing, only simulation. The track carries exactly this principle: promise without substance, desire without body, just rendering. Only in the final third does a melancholic saxophone break into the sterile structure—organic, imperfect, and for that very reason more credible than everything before it. It is the moment in which the real briefly flashes through the surface of the dummy before it closes again.

All-inclusive Residue concludes the album as sedimentation rather than dramaturgy: dub-techno remnants, industrial patina, salty ambient surfaces that settle rather than compose. The refusal of consumption as a sonic principle—brittle, stubborn, with a gravity that lingers long after.

Verdict: Balearic Abrasions is not easy listening with a sea view, but an exercise in patience and friction. The restraint with which Devi G. avoids climaxes will frustrate some—for everyone else, that is exactly where the record's strength lies. No sunset. Rather, what remains on the rocks afterward.

The legendary Charlemagne Palestine returns to Black Truffle with KKKAAARRREEENNNIIINNNAAA, capturing a 2025 performance in London alongside two close collaborators of recent years, multi-instrumentalist Daniel O’Sullivan and guitarist Oren Ambarchi. While perhaps still best known for the ecstatic piano clouds of his ‘strumming music’ performances, Palestine’s life-long search for what he calls the ‘golden sound’ has taken in an enormous variety of methods of sound production. Now stretching back an incredible six decades, his exploration of continuous sound forms has led him to mega-instruments from the carillon bells of the Saint Thomas Episcopal Church to the synthesizer armada of the Moog Sound Lab, with stops along the way at many of Europe’s grandest church organs. Just as important, though, has been Palestine’s practice as a singer, beginning with his childhood experience of sacred Jewish music and growing through his studies of Indian and Javanese musical traditions in the 1970s.

KKKAAARRREEENNNIIINNNAAA reimagines a key work showcasing Palestine’s voice, the haunting ‘magic song’ Karenina for falsetto singing and harmonium, recorded in Paris in March 1997 to honour the spirit of Palestine’s recently departed black labrador. In this trio version, which Palestine describes as the ‘karaoke’ version, O’Sullivan controls three cassette machines playing the original recording, their slow drift out of phase creating complex patterns of delays and ricochets as the recorded voice chants the syllables of Karenina’s name and other trance words. Beginning with a held organ tone that gradually expands to fill out the frequency spectrum, the piece soon grows into a dense psychedelic mass, as Palestine’s electric organs and the echoing pre-recorded voices are joined by Ambarchi’s swirling Leslie guitar tones and O’Sullivan’s viola, synthesizer and additional vocals. Atop it all sits Palestine’s live voice, in an extraordinary performance of keening, shamanic intensity, sometimes delivered in melodic unison with his keyboard playing.

Though clearly a work of Palestine’s design that sits squarely within his oeuvre, Ambarchi and O’Sullivan are far from simple accompanists on KKKAAARRREEENNNIIINNNAAA. As the elements of the teeming, emotionally charged stew writhe and twist, different elements come momentarily to the surface, O’Sullivan’s spaced-out viola taking the lead in moments that recall Kosugi’s Catch Wave, Ambarchi’s gliding chords and signature stuttering tones enriching the details of many of the quieter episodes. Throughout all its transformations, the music is buoyed up by a sacred aura, as Palestine intones his hypnotic prayer for the soul of his departed pet. Arriving emblazoned with a striking labrador painting by O’Sullivan on the cover, KKKAAARRREEENNNIIINNNAAA is an essential slice of modern ritual music.

Hanne Lippard and Renato Grieco's Today's Special is a suite of language works synthesising melody and diction that integrates the literary and the audible in a repertoire of songs that bask in the melody of voice and the punctuations of structured composition. Working with methods of reduction rather than opulence in both tonal composition and rhetoric, each piece pegs the poetic to the musical with compositional schematics and methods. It is important to state that there is little to none improvisation here, instead, the duo set up matrices, rules and structural links that facilitated meaningful locus of exchange between their two practices. Lippard's texts are a collection of new and previously completed works. In these, as is typical for her work, she enjoys the easy pleasure of wordplay, iterative language, and decontextualised anecdote, as in opener Portrait of a Betrayal, a piece about the loss of a phone and the way it haunted the owner who dropped it, based on a lived experience. Grieco's instrumentation works with Lippard's language art as a form of acoustic typography. "I studied graphic design and I think about how you can express typography through voice," she says. "Renato's use of the viola da gamba becomes like an underline, or a font's brushstrokes, in ways that feel typographical." In this, the classically-trained composer Grieco often finds and echoes the pitch movements of Lippard's voice, intonation mirrored and revealed, linguistic meaning doubled and shadowed by plucked, strummed or bowed strings. His main instrument is the viola da gamba, the instrument considered closest to the human voice for its tonal range and ability to mimic inflections and timbre, and here he brings it even closer to the voice, building systems by which it moves with and around Lippard. He also plays piano and Wurlitzer, and joins her in speaking on Receiver and in conversation for final track The Black Rose. "Hanne's voice is an artist's voice, embodied as the artwork itself," he says. "But where my approach is from the perspective of a composer, hers is around rhetoric and language. We worked towards each other in this sense, Hanne finding a space to welcome my voice, and me designing an acoustic space to enhance her vocal persona." In some tracks the structural connections are obvious - the matched tumbling delivery and stepped pitches of voice and piano in Aficionado sounding like two tipsy friends descending a staircase. In others, like the triptych of tracks Three Rungs Ladder, structured with rules derived from nursery rhymes, or cumulative song (akin to the 12 Days of Christmas). For the Colour 1 and Colour 2 pieces, the duo worked from palettes of colours connected to clusters of harmonies, which underlined the power of the word and its articulation. The absurd Labradorable personifies a people pleaser, A Story About Being Blue is an imagined playful monologue from the Deep Blue supercomputer - requesting in sing-song stop motion to be called Debbie, and Larry - as Grieco echoes in factual reportage. Hurtbeat unpacks and recomposes a tweeted non-apology by a Russian art collector about owning a piece of racist art, Grieco shadowing Lippard's generating a third `drop-shadow' performer from the resonances between the duo, typographic re-articulation of the source material. The Receiver includes lines from Robert Ashley's Improvement (Don Leaves Linda), Ashley existing as a spiritual parent of sorts to the practices contained on Today's Special, and here interpolated as if he is being quoted and written through within the audible world of the piece in a palimpsest of borrowed sentences. Closing track The Black Rose contains its own self-aware comedy, a lightly distorted conversation sourced from a Reddit thread about whether black roses exist, recorded as if it were an internet radio or a low budget podcast, the casual exchange stilted in the delivery of platitudes as scripted speech. Today's Special was developed in person over the course of a series of small residencies - at Deutsche Akademie Rom Villa Massimo, Rome; Fondazione Morra, Napoli; Callie's, Berlin. In these limited periods that rarely stretched beyond a week, Lippard and Grieco developed strategies for the works, keeping tightly locked to musical concepts. This, for Grieco, is about maintaining a solid, meaningful connection within the compositions, and committing to everything having a purpose for existing within the work. Each element pulls its weight; has something to say, literally and metaphorically speaking. In the same way that Lippard's work leaves nowhere for her to hide, he wants the music to exist with its own naked purpose: "It's is about exposing nudity via reduced materials," says Grieco. "This is a form of courage we want to embrace. Once we take off everything, it needs to be extremely precise to maintain a connection with the audience. We have a lot of tools to hide behind now, to protect ourselves and our identities as artists, performers, and in life more generally. It's something I don't want to do. I want extreme reduction: no hiding."

Aaron Dilloway kehrt mit ,No Skill Comedy Mind Reading" zu Dais Records zurück - seinem ersten echten Album in voller Länge seit 2017, einer Sammlung von typisch verstörendem, absurdem Material. Geprägt von seinen typischen Verzerrungen und Verformungen - von Feedback umhüllte Fundstücke, Feldaufnahmen und Gesangsimprovisationen - versammelt ,No Skill" fast ein Jahrzehnt ausgewählter Soloarbeiten und wirkt dennoch ganz und gar zeitgemäß: ein sprunghaftes Produkt der Unbeständigkeit, zugleich hart und humorvoll. Nur wenige zeitgenössische Experimental-Künstler des letzten Vierteljahrhunderts sind so produktiv und verehrt wie Dilloway, ein Pionier der amerikanischen Noise-Szene im Mittleren Westen, ehemaliges Mitglied von Wolf Eyes und Gründer des in Oberlin ansässigen Labels und Plattenladens Hanson Records. Doch trotz seines immensen Gesamtwerks hat er nur zwei richtige Solo-LPs veröffentlicht, neben einer regelmäßigeren Produktion von Kassettenveröffentlichungen und Kollaborationsprojekten. Mit ,No Skill" vollendet er nun eine vieldeutige Albumtrilogie, die mit seinem wegweisenden Werk ,Modern Jester" aus dem Jahr 2012 begann. ,Ich habe fast das Gefühl, dass sie irgendwie Teil eines Ganzen sind. Alle drei Alben versuchen, in den schlimmstmöglichen Situationen Humor zu finden. Je nachdem, wer zuhört und wie die jeweilige Einstellung ist, könnten sie als lustig oder einfach nur als grauenhafte, schreckliche Alben empfunden werden." Halb im Ernst fährt Dilloway fort: ,Für mich ist dieses hier das Ergebnis von, na ja, verkorksten Sachen: psychische Erkrankungen, Medikamente, Scheidung, komischer Scheiß. Das Eintauchen in seltsame Dinge fasziniert mich immer auf die eine oder andere Weise." Neben den bereits erwähnten Einflüssen aus der menschlichen Erfahrung greift ,No Skill" auf verschiedene technische und ästhetische Kuriositäten zurück: das methodische Sounddesign von Alvin Lucier, Andy Milligans Low-Budget-Kult-Horrorfilm ,The Weirdo" aus dem Jahr 1989 und die pop-exzentrische Art des Filmkomponisten Hugo Montenegro. Dilloway stieß bei einer Lagerraumversteigerung auf dessen skurrile Habseligkeiten, darunter Notizen zu den frühen elektronischen Experimenten des Komponisten. Einige der beunruhigendsten Momente des Albums, wie das Lachen, das ,Bring Me The Head Of The Unknown Comic" heimsucht - klanglich eine Anspielung auf die Avantgarde-Größen Nurse with Wound und thematisch auf den Komiker aus den 1970er Jahren mit der Papiertüte über dem Kopf -, lassen sich auf den Einfluss dieses wahrhaft ungewöhnlichen Fundes zurückführen. ,No Skill" knüpft zudem an Dilloways jüngste künstlerische Ausflüge an: seine Umsetzung von John Cages 88-Band-Loop ,Rozart Mix"; die Originalmusik für ,The Absence of Milk In The Mouths of the Lost"; Gemeinschaftsalben mit Lucrecia Dalt (Lucy & Aaron) sowie Kim Gordon & Bill Nace (Body/Dilloway/Head). Während er an diesen und anderen Projekten arbeitete, legte er in Gedanken einen Ordner für sein nächstes Dais-Album an und sammelte Aufnahmen, die zu einer ziemlich vagen Vision passten. ,Dieses Album hat mich irgendwie völlig in Beschlag genommen, seit ich ,The Gag File` 2017 fertiggestellt habe. Zuerst dachte ich, es würde eher ein Pop-Album werden, aber dann hat mir das Lucrecia-Projekt diese Idee irgendwie aus dem Kopf getrieben. Es begann, eher wie meine Live-Sets zu fließen." Er entschied sich für eine Abfolge, die den Hörer ein wenig im Ungewissen lässt - ob erschrocken, amüsiert oder verwirrt; der Effekt soll absichtlich den Eindruck erwecken, dass etwas kaputt ist. Das Album beginnt mit schrillen Kreischen, bevor es in Drone-Passagen eintaucht, die durch zwei aneinander geriebene nepalesische Sarangi-Bögen entstehen, begleitet vom ersten Auftauchen seiner ogerartigen stimmlichen Präsenz. Anschließend werden mehrere Minuten von weißem Rauschen verschluckt (,Forced Auctioneer"). Dilloway verweist auf The Weirdos seltsamen Einsatz ausgedehnter Übergänge mit schwarzem Raum und seine lebenslange Liebe zum Bandrauschen. Er bekam Kassetten von älteren Kindern und hörte diese Geräusche als Teil der Songs, nur um später zu erfahren, dass es sich um klangliche Artefakte handelte, die von Generationen des Kopierens auf Kassette übrig geblieben waren. ,Ich stehe total auf die Idee, all diese Schichten aufzubauen und sie in etwas anderes zu verwandeln. Wenn ich zum Beispiel live spiele, kann es rauer zugehen als bei meiner aufgenommenen Musik, und dafür wollte ich genau dieses Gefühl einfangen - dass diese Ausbrüche laut sind, aber ein bisschen gedämpfter. Dieser totale Rauschklang, fast so, als wärst du unter Wasser." Dilloway sammelt Tonpoesie-Platten, und obwohl er seine eigene Arbeit nicht gerne in dieses Genre einordnet, spricht die Absurdität dieses Handwerks - die Verwendung von phonetischen Lauten und nonverbalen Geräuschen als Ersatz für traditionelle semantische Bedeutung - durch sein Werk. Auf ,Possession Audition Tape" liest er verschiedene Passagen aus einem Buch vor, das von einer französischen religiösen Gruppe aus dem 18. Jahrhundert handelt, die zu öffentlichen Unruhen neigte, und schneidet diese digital auseinander, wodurch er im Mix seine eigenen, echoartigen Stotterausbrüche erzeugt. ,No Skill Comedy Mind Reading" endet mit einem Stück aus Synthesizer und Orgel-Rhythmusmaschine, das auf Musik basiert, die er für den Film ,Supporting Actor" von Pieter Schoolwerth und Phil Vanderhyden komponiert hat - in dem ein Avatar von Dilloway in ein Portal gezogen wird. Dort trifft er in einem fantastischen Club auf posthumane Wesen. Die Szene, die sich irgendwie auf Audio übertragen lässt, versetzt das Set in einen passend verwirrenden Traumzustand. Ein Star der Noise-Musik, ein moderner Hofnarr, der aus dem Unbekannten berichtet.

Alveromancy is a method of divination performed by attending to and interpreting certain sounds, so that the loudness of sound is taken to indicate the severity of predicted event and from its proximity how soon the event will come to pass.
The label’s first divination session is made up of 4 selected cuts originally composed between 1994 and 1996 coming from Fred Exelby’s archives, bringing his All Broken solo project back to a renewed life more than 30 years after his last release.
Rooting its core into Canada’s 90s DIY electronic scene and drawing inspiration from themes such as anti-pop culture, shared knowledge, music programming and his formative frequentation of the seminal Rivoli in Toronto, this record might also be seen as a picture in time, a reflection of Fred’s world back then.

Renegade Methodz pushes deeper into the depths of real, underground Techno with its thirty-first catalog delivery, welcoming Jerical to the roster. 'Strange Patterns' is a showcase in uncompromising, machine-driven functionalism. Timeless music stamped with the Renegade Methodz seal of approval.

In alten Zeiten, wenn sich Nebel um ein Schiff legte, war der einzige Weg nach vorne, langsamer zu werden und zuzuhören. Vögel, brechende Wellen, Schiffsklokken, Gongs und Hörner wurden zur neuen Sprache der Navigation, neben Tiefensondierungen, die den Meeresboden mit einer Bleileine abtasteten und seine verborgenen Formen enthüllten. Die Technik hat diese Methoden zwar weitgehend überflüssig gemacht, aber es hat immer noch etwas Faszinierendes, wenn man das Sehen gegen Hören und Fühlen eintauscht. Dieser Wandel steht im Mittelpunkt von AEAEA dem neuen Duo aus Patrick Higgins & Nicolas Jaar und ihrem Debütalbum Mist", einem Album, das fragt: Wie findest du dich zurecht, wenn die Welt um dich herum verschwimmt? Die Anfänge des Duos reichen zurück bis zum Le Guess Who?-Festival 2019, bei dem Higgins als Künstlerkurator fungierte. Benannt nach dem nebligen, mythischen Land der Eichen- und Buchenwälder, wurden die Insel und die sie umgebenden Geschichten zu einer Inspirationsquelle für beide Musiker, die schon lange eine Mischung aus altertümlicher Harmonie und elektronischem Experimentieren bevorzugen. Das Album entsteht aus der Erforschung einer neuen gemeinsamen Sprache durch das Duo, bei der Higgins' Gitarre und Percussion live durch Jaars Echtzeit- Effektketten geleitet werden, wodurch Sampling, Dubbing und Verarbeitung zu eigenständigen Musikinstrumenten werden. Aufgenommen über drei Jahre hinweg in Berlin und in Higgins' Studio im Bundesstaat New York, verwebt Mist" die neblige, intuitive Logik von Bearbeitungsketten und Improvisation in den Kern der Komposition. Die Platte entwickelt eine Reihe melodischer Themen, die aus Higgins' Gitarre hervorgehen und sich in ein Meer aus Elektronik, Percussion und schließlich einem volleren Ensemble aus Keyboards, Orgeln, Schlagzeug und den Cello-Improvisationen der Komponistin Judith Hamann brechen. Die Klanglandschaften von Mist" sind traurig und langsam, mit Tönen, die oft von einem blaugrauen Dunst umhüllt sind. Manchmal nehmen wir Strahlen fernen Lichts wahr, die die Unschärfe durchdringen, doch meist hören wir Echos ferner Ufer, deren Rhythmen es uns vielleicht endlich ermöglichen, ohne zu sehen zu sehen.

Nueen follows production for Iceboy Violet and a string of releases for Quiet Time Tapes, Good Morning Tapes and Balmat, with a sprawling an ambient drill epic –the methodology is laid bare on »Searchtiers«, obscuring its UK drill-style sliding bass with weightless synths and gaseous FX, featuring guest spots from Dawuna, Space Afrika, Loraine James, Xzavier Stone and RenzNiro.

Ghost Dubs, real name Michael Fiedler, aka Jah Schulz, announces a rebirth with 'Damaged', his first album for The Bug's PRESSURE label..

Having recently dropped two criminally overlooked, experimental dub LPs, with his 'Dub Over Science' series, the German producer/bass specialist, now stretches his own parameters of outwardness still further, with these twelve fresh explorations of dub deviance. For those who feel the fusion of dub techno and ambient drone had creatively ended with the demise of the short lived, Berlin based Chain Reaction label. Ghost Dubs now upgrades, and extends that legendary blueprint's abstract methodology even further and deeper, floating away upon a wonderfully warm sea of hiss and static bliss. This is dub so atomized that it disintegrates within your eardrums. Its music, where the machines take over and virtually all traces of humanity are erased. But thankfully, the warmest soul still oozes seductively from the pores of Fiedler's robo riddims. Relentlessly hypnotic, seriously sedated, 'Damaged' celebrates the point of departure within it's mesmerising low end grooves. Album opener 'Chemical', provides an opiated slo-mo skank, which sounds like Plastikman's 'Consumed' era pulsations drenched heavily in sub aquatic fx. A triumph of surface noise surfing and sub woofer testing relentlessness, it provides the perfect intro to this compellingly immersive album. For batty shakers and headtrippers alike, there's added thrills aplenty, as Ghost Dub's richter scale tremor rhythms remain impressively massive, and the atmospheric depths of 'Damaged' appear tantalisingly oceanic. Throughout the duration of the dreamy selection, there is an obsessive balance of bewitching ambience and heavyweight bassbin shaking. The lead single 'Thin Line' itself provides a missing link between African Headcharge's early percussive body probes and Rhythm & Sound's addictive radiance, with the slightest hint of Burial's doomed romantic hauntology added for good taste. Alternately, and no less gracefully, 'Dub Lobotomy' bizarrely resembles Miles Davis 'Get Up with it' chopped, screwed, and relocated to a futuristic Kingston Town. Impressive indeed, Fiedler's mastery of live dubbing on his mixing desk shines accross the duration, and gives the album an improvised edge, and sense of peripheral chaos. Elsewhere, spooked steppars('Hot Wired'), haunting house ('True to life') and 4th World psychogeography('Undone'), combine to ensure there is a forever changing mixture of flavours percolating within the admirable consistancy of the overall sound.

With a tip of the cap, and nod of the head to Pole('Second Thoughts'), its no surprise then that PRESSURE would then turn to the great, Berlin based producer Stefan Betke, to master/cut this collection at his infamous Scape mastering room. And a fine job he did too, as high quality sound and levels are definitely maintained throughout.

If you like your melodies submerged, your dub narcotic, your basslines obese, and your beats evaporating, 'Damaged' provides the perfect prescription and entry point into Ghost Dub's spectral soundworld.

When Khalab and Baba Sissoko first recorded together in 2015, they produced something definitive: a record where electronics and griot tradition achieved genuine synthesis rather than polite cohabitation.

Not layered genres maintaining separate identities, but two forms evolving into something singular. "Tata" took Track of the Year at the 2016 Gilles Peterson Worldwide Awards, found champions in Laurent Garnier, Ben UFO, Matthew Dear, Bonobo, and many others — but more significantly, it established a working method built to last.

Eleven years on, they return with Foli Bah on Hyperjazz Records. Theirs is a relationship built on trust. Khalab constructs structures that don't develop linearly but spiral inward — loops that reveal something new with each rotation, tightening until the listener stops resisting and surrenders. Sonic architectures that don't expand outward but deepen over time, layering toward saturation. Baba Sissoko inhabits these structures with instruments from Malian tradition, not as ornamentation but as load-bearing elements: the tradition becomes structure, not decoration. Electronics and griot practice stop negotiating terms and start speaking the same language.

Swooped Records would like to introduce our limited series of vinyl only edits We love many of the edit labels with 1-2 tracks per release, and we’re going to help you value up with 4 top-shelf cuts on every record! We kick it off with Chainsnatcher “Jump Up In It” Vox that is straight up, dirty, bumping House music! It’s also featured on Derrick Carter’s for The 6 Mix w/ Mary Anne Hobbs on BBC’s flagship BBC Radio 6 Music. Next up Ric Viera of Guided Methods fame teams up with Elrose for “Only Ewe”. This funky House take on an afro-boogie jam will shake the dance floor and keep the discerning heads nodding. The flip side brings us Chainsnatcher “Jump Up On it” Dub. This is for those that want a stripped back version of the Vox with well placed, minimal vocal snippets and that dance floor boogie. Agent 818 rounds it off with “Don’t Let Nobody” and it’s time to get the summer time vibe started pronto! This jam will do the trick whether it’s day party-fun to after-hours strutting, just ask DJ Heather as she’s been playing it for a minute now.

Hope you dig!

DIVA AS TECHNOLOGY
Arca announces the details of her highly anticipated new studio album, XXXXX, arriving via XL Recordings. Five years after the twice GRAMMY-nominated KiCk i and subsequent KICK pentalogy, the Venezuelan-born musician, producer, vocalist, and visual artist returns with her first full-length album since concluding one of the most ambitious chapters in contemporary music.

If the KICK era expanded Arca's universe outward, XXXXX turns inward and fractures it apart. Across 16 tracks, the album excavates vastly different emotional landscapes to deliver a body of work that is darker, more aggressive, more experimental, and unwilling to settle into fixed form. Initially conceived as a mixtape before revealing itself as an album, XXXXX embraces contradiction as a core methodology. In the spirit of her previous mixtapes @@@@@ (2020)—released as a 62-minute single—and &&&&& (2013), XXXXX thrives on raw exploration and instinct. It arrives as a deliberate interruption of expectation.

“It seems playful, also mischievous, to interrupt that autopilot,” says Arca.

The album's striking artwork depicts Arca as a biomechanical entity, accompanied by two owls—symbols of protection and the underworld in Greek mythology. Like the music itself, the imagery inhabits a space between worlds where transformation is both terrifying and liberatory. Suspended between posthuman augmentation and raw emotion, XXXXX exposes the mainframe. It is a record born from uncertainty, contradiction, instinct, and surrender—a becoming-machine that continues Arca's lifelong project of redefining what it means to be human both in, and against, the machine.

For Arca, rebirth has never been a metaphor, but a practice. She continues to exist in multiple states simultaneously, collapsing boundaries between human and machine, high and low culture, and experimental noise and pop music. Following her first-ever painting exhibition at London’s ICA earlier this year, XXXXX arrives as the latest transmission from a continuously evolving creative process. Over the last year, Arca has remained prolific: unveiling the double-sided single "Puta" / "Sola"; remixing tracks for Addison Rae, Robyn, and Hikaru Utada; collaborating with Tokischa on “Chama”; and contributing production to Madonna’s CONFESSIONS II. She walked the runways and made appearances at major international fashion weeks, while also composing the original motion picture soundtrack for Stillz’s film, Barrio Triste.

Now, after years of transformation beneath the surface, her next musical evolution reveals itself.

2026 Repress

ANNE and Sera J close their Symbiosis series on Mutual Rytm with third and most refined EP yet.

This final chapter reflects everything the collaboration has stood for across a trio of inventive techno releases on SHDW's imprint. Creative and life partners ANNE and Sera J have been two voices growing in parallel, evolving separately but moving with the same pulse. ANNE is well established thanks to standout EPs on the likes of Soma and Hardgroove, while Sera J has released on the likes of Life in Patterns and Renegade Methodz, and both have featured on Mutual Rytm's 'Federation Of Rytm' series before now. 'Symbiosis III' is the moment where everything comes full circle: the culmination of a journey built on respect, creativity, and the freedom to explore their own paths while lifting each other forward.

Sera J kicks off with 'Ransomware', a commanding and driving techno cut lit up with flashy synths but always moving with urgency. 'Phosphate' keeps the energy levels high with stripped-back drums and bass designed to perfection, while 'Anthrax' has an anxious edge. The synths are wispy but evocative as bass kills and swiping filters bring the drama.

ANNE then ups the ante with the acid-tinged 'Dementia', which is loopy and unrelenting before 'A Taste of a Real Woman' gets more seductive with a sultry spoken word and sustained chords that bring the paranoia. 'Heart Rate' is propulsive with Detroit-style synth soul and an aching vocal, before Sera J returns with 'On the Run' - a percussive, trippy and eerie roller. His final Cut 'Similar Minds' has a searching synth surveying a desolate landscape, before ANNE then closes the EP with the punchy drum patterns and icy hi hats of 'Primal Howl Of Ego' and a blend of deep drums and evocative synth work on the 'Analog Heartbeat' - which proves potent techno can be beautiful.

Since the early 2010s, photographer and producer Izaak Schlossman has been surreptitiously using the Topdown Dialectic moniker to frame his most enigmatic and most psychedelic productions: faceless pure sound experiments that ogled dub and techno archetypes from somewhere far beyond the veil. This generous 2LP collection surveys over a decade of persistent activity, pulling together recently unearthed gear written between 2013 and 2016 (the same time period as the iconic Peak Oil trilogy) and muddling it with more contemporary material. It's a rare chance to fully comprehend the slow, measured evolution of the project: its genesis as a method to fractalize various bass music frequencies with suggestion rather than over-compression, and its ongoing advancement through sensitively finessed ASMR ambiance towards spangled neo-psychedelia.

So it's no surprise that the lengthy suite of five-minute snapshots was initially devised while Schlossman was preparing for his first ever Topdown Dialectic live appearance in 2025. A hazed early morning, open air performance that's still lodged in the memory banks of anyone who witnessed it, the set provided the narrative anchor for the album, blurring the past and present and reaching tentatively into the future - ideal material for audiences whose brains are fully plasticized. The tracks, while divided, sound as if they're breathing over and into one another; beats and phrases materialize and dissolve just for moments, leaving the mind to fill in the gaps with any available sonic material. What might reflect the bright neon light of acid house at first soon embodies the flicker of a candle over a desk of drum machines in a Midwestern basement, or the first blush of sunlight over a tiny campground as subwoofers creak in the distance.

It's music that asks the listener to be involved in the creation itself, projecting their own shapes on the negative space, their discreet fantasies on haunted stretches of near silence. Schlossman's identity was never the point, Topdown Dialectic was always a scrying stone intended to divine far more personal revelations.

2026 Repress
The Greek artist comes back with a fully realized EP this time, that goes deeper into his personal world. This is not pointless or flashy music. It has soul and character.

It is music that you can listen the personality of the artist beneath the layers and sound design.
Another strong statement from a producer who is quietly building his own language.

BODJ launches his Methods Of Dance label with a long awaited personal EP titled “Methods Of Control”.

4 rolling club cuts in his signature off kilter style.

2026 Repress

Augusto Taito makes his mark on Renegade Methodz with Rough Skin - a raw, powerhouse Techno record that confirms his place among the genre's most exciting talents. Known for his unfiltered, high-octane approach to techno, Taito has already captured the attention of the scene, with respected releases on labels like Mord and Tar Hallow. The sound of 'Rough Skin' is a fearless fusion of techno's physicality and dynamic rhythmic patterns, with each track a testament to his constant evolution while staying true to the genre's roots.

Constant Black is one of the many, many labels that Burnski heads up. It's where he focuses on stripped-back minimal and tech house with a moody undercurrent. Kerouac is a mainstay in his orbit and here takes one side of a new 12" that opens with 'This Method,' a rigid thumper with an eerie edge. 'Produce To The Max' has a dark bassline and ghoulish vocal sounds, while 'Talking About' is a more light and bumpy percussive number. Mees Mattern takes care of the flip with the dusty, garage-y loops of 'Sloppy Tekniic,' rubbery bass minimalism of 'Reeses Pieces' and grittier '404 Not Found. Six fresh tools for rewiring a dancefloor.

A Collision of Worlds. A Convergence of Sound.

Czarface opens another portal. On Czarface Meets Frankie Pulitzer, the boundary between comic book canon and hip-hop reality dissolves. Frankie Pulitzer, also known in certain dimensions as FacePuller, is no ordinary collaborator, character, or catalyst. He is a hybrid entity: part human, part alien force, fully embedded in the expanding Czarface universe.

Following landmark team-ups with MF DOOM and Ghostface Killah, Czarface continues its “Meets” saga with a full-scale crossover event that pushes deeper into story and sound. Frankie’s presence is both lyrical and mythological, bringing a chaotic, shape-shifting energy that challenges and complements Czarface’s razor-sharp precision. Dusty drums, cinematic soundscapes, and razor-edged bars bring the classic Czarface sound, yet mutated.

The universe widens with appearances from Busta Rhymes, Method Man, and El-P (of Run the Jewels), each adding their own gravitational pull to the project, thus grounding it in hip-hop legacy while amplifying its larger-than-life scope.

The Temptations Get High on Psychedelic Soul: Cloud Nine Soars with Ambitious Arrangements and Production, Features Standout Vocal Performances and Instrumentation by the Funk Brothers

The Temptations’ Cloud Nine announced that Motown — and “The Sound of Young America” — would never be the same. Influenced by the emergence of cutting-edge rock and pop currents, as well as increasing sociopolitical turmoil, the album broke down barriers between rock, psychedelia, and soul while heralding the arrival of visionary arrangements and production techniques. Bookended by traditional R&B numbers, the 1969 record sent the Temptations in bold new directions and signaled the advent of psychedelic soul.

Sourced from the original master tapes, strictly limited to 3,000 numbered copies, pressed at Fidelity Record Pressing, and housed in a Stoughton gatefold jacket, Mobile Fidelity’s 180g 45PM 2LP set presents Cloud Nine in audiophile sound for the first time on a domestic pressing. This collectible reissue bestows Norman Whitfield’s extraordinary production with the grand-scale dynamics, natural tonality, expansive openness, and low-end weight it deserves. The timbre of each of the five members’ voices is readily identifiable — even within the group harmonies — bestowing a realism never experienced outside the recording studio.

Making its debut on 45RPM, the album further benefits from the wide groove space by playing with greater separation and more realistic presence than prior editions. Everything from the brassiness of the horns to the dry snap of the snare comes across with reference-grade clarity and positioning. And since Motown’s renowned Funk Brothers backing band plays on many of the cuts, you’ll want to savor every note. The imaging, soundstaging, and organic bloom-and-decay of the notes make that possible.

Amid Cloud Nine, the instrumentation and architecture stand out as much as any element. Never before had a Motown album contained such ambitious patterns and complex passages. Seemingly conscientious of the departure from their past methods, the Temptations and Whitfield bunched together the tracks that mark a deep dive into psychedelic territory and counterbalance them with seven sterling soul cuts that dovetail with Motown tradition drenched with heartfelt vocals, swelling strings, and finger-snapping beats.

On the original 33RPM release, traditional Motown soul — laden with heartfelt vocals, swelling strings, and finger-snapping beats — occupies Side Two. These songs reveal an ensemble still very much on top of delivering pristine pop-soul material graced with romantic sweetness, persuasive insistent, and soaring highs. Re-energized after the departure of lead singer David Ruffin, who was fired for a variety of reasons in June 1968, the Temptations seamlessly meld with his replacement, Dennis Edwards, on one melodic gem after another.

The collective tackles five songs co-written by the legendary Motown team of Barrett Strong and Whitfield. Not the least of which are the smooth, shuffling “Why Did She Have to Leave Me (Why Did She Have to Go)” and deceptively simple, horn-spiked “Gonna Keep on Tryin’ till I Win Your Love.” On these tracks, as well as on a lush rendition of the ballad “Love Is a Hurtin’ Thing” and pleading, tender send-up of the Gerry Goffin-Carole King classic “Hey Girl,” Edwards and Paul Williams take turns on the lead with the estimable Eddie Kendricks, Melvin Franklin, and Otis Williams providing backing support.

All five vocalists trade-off leads on the simmering title track, a groundbreaking composition shot through with wah-wah-pedal effects, liquid funk, deep bass lines, Cuban percussion, saturated reverb, and gang choruses. Whitfield mines each member’s natural vocal range with spectacular results, keeps time with cymbals, and channels both the heated temperatures and escapist desires of a society embroiled in war, conflict, and experimental drugs.

Amazingly, the Temptations top themselves on the similarly revealing “Run Away Child, Running Wild.” Nearly 10 minutes in length, the song explodes R&B parameters and harbors a cinematic scope. Urgent pianos, distorted guitars, stripped-down percussion, steamy Hammond organs, minimal bass motifs, five distinct voices narrating the tale of a boy who fled home and now finds himself amid the scary, unforgiving external world: They combine to give the urgent tune a walls-closing-in atmosphere where fear and desperation reign. Bolstered by an extended instrumental section that precedes a climactic return of the singers’ voices, “Run Away Child, Running Wild” equaled the success of the record’s title track, with both reaching No. 6 on the pop charts.

2026 Repress

With his first full techno album ANFS returns to the label in full form.
Delivering a cohesive, introspective piece of work shaped by tight sound design and an intuitive sense of flow. The music is minimal yet expressive, exploring a detailed palette of textures, subtle groove manipulations and low end pressure that sits gently beneath the surface. A work of art that sounds like nothing else out there at the moment. It's a focused and forward- thinking piece of music creation that shows artistic maturity, profound inspiration and masterful execution.

There was nothing in contemporary music like Chris Isaak’s Heart Shaped World when it hit shelves in June 1989. More than three decades later, the singer-songwriter’s third album still sounds unique — and claims a backstory nearly as fascinating as the retro-leaning material and standout performances that propelled it to sales of more than 2.5 million copies. Home to the Top 10 smash “Wicked Game,” the set remains a masterful mood piece that invites you to pour a late-night drink, sit in a dimmed room, and relish Isaak’s elegant albeit raw ruminations on love, relationships, and questionable decisions.

Sourced from the original master tapes, pressed at Fidelity Record Pressing, strictly limited to 3,000 numbered copies, and featuring the bonus track “Diddley Daddy,” Mobile Fidelity's UltraDisc One-Step 180g 45RPM 2LP box set of Heart Shaped World unearths the staggering inner details, saturated tones, and brilliant atmospherics of the crisp production. It brings you up close and personal with Isaak’s spectacular singing — impeccably controlled, tense, brooding, steamy, smoldering, haunted — situated amidst stripped-down backdrops that allow every note to fully bloom and decay.

While Isaak’s ever-steady baritone remains the anchor, the contributions of his trusty backing band, the aptly named Silvertone, come across with just as much cool, command, and realism. The indispensable playing of guitarist James Calvin Wilsey particularly emerges with superb clarity and dimensionality. The character of his 1965 Fender Stratocaster, shivering twang of his spring-coiled fills, and his signature use of reverb, delay, and vibrato seamlessly match Isaak's patient deliveries and the band’s unhurried rhythms. Experienced on UD1S with ultra-black backgrounds and a nearly invisible noise floor, Heart Shaped World is in every regard a demonstration disc.

The premium packaging of this UD1S pressing befits its elevated status. Housed in a deluxe slipcase, it features foil-stamped jackets and faithful-to-the-original graphics. Aurally and visually, this reissue is for discerning listeners who desire to immerse themselves in everything involved with the album, not the least of which is the cover art depicting a lost-in-thought Isaak staring ahead and sitting in what appears to be an efficiency apartment. The image epitomizes the record’s lonesome temperaments and pensive themes.

Of course, if not for director David Lynch hand-picking two cuts from Heart Shaped World for his 1990 film Wild at Heart, the record would’ve probably suffered the same fate as Isaak’s prior efforts and gone unnoticed by the mainstream. Despite receiving raves from outlets such as NME, Chicago Tribune, and Rolling Stone upon its original release, the album stalled in the lower quadrants of the Billboard charts and, after a few weeks, dropped off.

Cue the ear of Lee Chesnut. Then the music director for a large Atlanta radio station, Chesnut heard the instrumental version of “Wicked Game” on Lynch’s soundtrack and started airing the album rendition at all hours of the day. Aided by a sensual video featuring Isaak and supermodel Helena Christensen, the song found its way into the public consciousness by early ‘91 and helped make Isaak a most unlikely mainstream star in an era where his techniques had little to nothing in common with popular tastes.

Despite its vintage vibes and shared DNA with legends such as Roy Orbison, Chet Baker, and Glen Campbell, Heart Shaped World transcends nostalgia, rockabilly, and throwback tropes. For all the melodrama and sadness at hand, Isaak’s gorgeously transparent singing dives deep underneath emotional surfaces. He mines subtleties that indicate his feelings go beyond heartbreak and anguish, and occasionally suggest frustration, menace, and anger. You can hear it in his quivering falsetto, and the slow and methodical ways he allows delicate whispers to break into shadowy phrasing that crosses over to the darker sides of romance and desire.

That approach bolsters the title track, which suggests calm yet moves on ominous currents — its simmering pace and snare-drum snappiness foreshadowing Isaak raising the volume and urgency during the coda. The southwestern-tinged “Wrong to Love You” plays with similar concepts of hesitation, unease, and discord, Isaak careful never to fully erupt and give anything away. His poised deliveries offer a master class in the art of insinuation and hurt on “Nothing’s Changed,” sent up with a wordless backing chorus and crackling guitar lines straight out of a Memphis blues joint.

Heart Shaped World further boosts its merit via its abundant stylistic variations, from the upbeat country-and-western trot of “I’m Not Waiting” and Spanish acoustic shimmer of the jazz-based ballad “Blue Spanish Sky” to the swinging horn-accompanied grooves of “Don’t Make Me Love You” and desert smokiness of the understated “Kings of the Highway.” On the latter, Isaak comes across as resigned and absolute. His singing and pain worm their way into your soul, and echo akin to the way the music prepares to strike when you least expect.

“Trouble going 'round,” Isaak croons right as the album begins. “Trouble going down.” Damn straight.

2026 Repress

Field Records proudly presents the first complete vinyl edition of Monolake’s seminal excursion into experimental dub techno, Hongkong. Originally released on the now-classic Chain Reaction label in 1997, this collection of early singles by Robert Henke and Gerhard Behles has gone on to become a vital listening experience in its own right - a genre classic alongside the other groundbreaking works from the likes of Porter Ricks and Vladislav Delay.

The tracks which make up Hongkong were made while Henke and Behles studied computer science and immersed themselves in Berlin’s techno scene. Their early forays into computer-based music production were enabled by the use of the Max/MSP programming environment, forming a backdrop to the landmark work they would undertake in developing the Ableton Live DAW. Henke and Behles travelled to Hong Kong in 1996 to attend the annual International Computer Music Conference, and while there recorded extensive field recordings. These recordings became the glue that pieced together their collaborative tracks into a fluid listening experience for a CD-compilation at Chain Reaction’s request.

While absolutely rooted in the embryonic sound of European dub techno, Monolake’s early work possesses a back room, headphone-ready demeanour which lends itself to the album listening experience. In the cascade of rhythms created by precision engineered delays and subliminal, expansive spatial world building occurring throughout Hongkong, the stage is set for a full and thorough immersion. Before the Monolake sound progressed into a more pointillist form of computer music as Henke’s solo project, Hongkong presented a gritty, grainy sonic still tied in some way to the traditional methods of techno production, even as the artists’ ideas were sending the sequencing and arranging in exciting new directions.

Remastered and presented for the first time as a complete double 12” package, this is the definitive edition of an essential work in the evolution of experimental techno. As Henke himself explains, “twenty-five years later, this record still holds immense value to me in many ways.”