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Ekkehard Ehlers' seminal plays series was originally released on three 12inches (Staubgold) and two 7inches (Bottrop-Boy) in very limited runs. The entire series was previously only available as a CD compilation or digitally. Keplar finally presents it on double vinyl for the first time, featuring a new cover artwork.

Domestic ethnology: Ekkehard Ehlers plays.

‘Play’ is a word in English with many meanings attached. Each one sends you down a different cognitive pathway. When I think of ‘playing’, in the sense of a game, I think of an activity involving more than one person. When Ekkehard Ehlers plays, he is very much on his own. Or, at least, alone but at the same time keeping intimate company with the artistic innovators named in his titles. Robert Johnson. John Cassavetes. Albert Ayler. Cornelius Cardew. Hubert Fichte. Is he playing with them, against them, about them, for them, to them? This can never be known.

It is certainly a mistake to try to hear the ‘work’ of these originals in the sounds played by Ekkehard. They’re not cover versions. They’re hardly tributes in the conventional sense. Cassavetes and Fichte are not even musicians, although music played an important part in both their careers. Sure, there are little nods and flashes of recognition – tiny guitar licks among the minimal beats of ‘Robert Johnson 2’; rich bowed instruments in ‘Albert Ayler’, recalling the violin, cello and double bass arrangements on Ayler’s 1967 Live in Greenwich Village LP; the elongated organ lines of ‘Cornelius Cardew 1’ gesturing towards passages in Paragraph 1 of the British composer’s 1971 Marxist monolith, The Great Learning. Ekkehard is not so much playing these figures as allowing himself to be played by them.

Playing as an activity also suggests freedom. Maybe the only thing all five named persons have in common is that they were all quiet radicals. In music, literature and cinema, they all stepped, without self-promotion or fanfare, into unmapped territories. Once there they found it necessary to invent new languages in order to survive. Necessity was the mother of their inventiveness. They were also uncomfortable avant gardists. Lonely types, fighting their corners out on the margins, with little reward, often misunderstood, ridiculed or ignored.

All died unfairly young. Fichte a victim of HIV/AIDS, Cassavetes of cirrhosis of the liver. (‘Cassavetes 2’ sounds like a tender farewell played across the 59 year old alcoholic director’s death bed.) The deaths of Johnson, Ayler and Cardew have never been satisfactorily explained, and remain shrouded in myths and conspiracy theories. The pioneering expeditions of all five began in that spirit of playful freedom, but inexorably drew them towards the heart of darkness.

So these ‘plays’ are micro-dramas, sonic soliloquies, monolog-ins to the private accounts of various geniuses in Ekkehard’s ‘follow’ list. Hacked sensibilities. Artistic manifestos boiled down and distilled, skinned and dried in the digital smokehouse. (Ekkehard Ehlers Flays.) Each of these plays was originally floated out into the world alone on its own disc. The collected works play well as a team – a tranquil, introspective experience where each artist has his own identifiably unique sound character. As an album, Plays is a ‘Plattenragout’ – a ‘record stew’ – which was the title of Hubert Fichte’s LP review column in the leftist culture magazine konkret in the 1960s. The novelist’s work investigating the cultures of South America and the Caribbean islands has been called ‘domestic ethnology’. The writer himself referred to his ‘ethnopoesie’. Ekkehard Ehlers’s intuitive electronic portraits are a form of domestic ethnology in themselves. Invoking another of Ekkehard’s musical aliases, they are portraits of cultural ‘autopoiesies’ – creators whose works were strong enough to have their own self-regenerating life force. (by Rob Young)

All tracks written and produced by Ekkehard Ehlers.
Featuring Stephan Mathieu, Joseph Suchy, Anka Hirsch.
Tracks A1 to C2 originally released on three 12inches via Staubgold.
Tracks D1 to D4 originally released on two 7inches via Bottrop-Boy.
Plays originally released as CD compilation in 2002 by Staubgold.
Mastered by Rashad Becker.
Cut to vinyl by Lupo, Berlin, 2022.
Redesigned by Sandra Kastl, 2022.
Photos by Ludger Blanke

When IANNIS XENAKIS (1922-2001), who had fought against the occupation as part of the communist Resistance, moved to Paris in 1947 it was the start of a highly creative and impressive career. XENAKIS not only studied composition with MESSIAEN and became one of the most innovative composers of the 20thcentury, he also worked as assistant to LE CORBUSIER and realized a.o. the Philips Pavilion for the World Exhibition in Brussels 1958. His compositions often are based on mathematical principles (in 1966 he founded the CEMAMu - Centre d'Etudes de Mathematique et Automatique Musicales), which give his music an unprecedented aesthetic and "shocking otherness" (The Guardian). The most famous works of XENAKIS, who won the Polar Music Prize (considered the unofficial Nobel Prize for music) in 1999, are his compositions for orchestra Metastasis, Pithoprakta and Terretektorh (where the 88 musicians are spread within the audience) and the electroacoustic compositions Persepolis (to be re-released later on as part of the PERIHEL series), Concret PH, Bohor and La Legende d'Eer where XENAKIS integrated his stochastic synthesis sounds for the first time. As legendary as this piece itself is the impenetrable thicket of versions and stories around La Legende d'Eer - it exists in different releases, wrong sample rates, digitized backwards ..., this now is a new version, using the 8-track-version that XENAKIS himself presented at Darmstädter Ferienkurse in august 1978. As the automatic spatialization is lost, this became the only original version of this composition and is presented here (mixed down to stereo by MARTIN WURMNEST who tried to preserve the spatial movements as perceptible as possible - mastered by RASHAD BECKER at D&M) for the very first time. La Legende d'Eer not only became a milestone of electroacoustic music but is also an important reference for noise and industrial musicians up to the present day!

As a duo they embrace both sides of the coin, drums and guitar, chaos and order, male and female, ying and yang, the angel and the devil. They are more than the sum of both counterparts though, making for a maximalist auditory experience. PIKA brings her skills of mystifying performance to the table, all free-drum bluster and vocals veering between shrine maiden and wild spirit. Kawabata's guitar-work moves from a roar to a whisper, a yell to a sob, he's working on the same canvas of extremes. The aim of their unity is to write truly celestial hymns for the outer world and odes of love for the inner cosmic context.
 
No strangers to one another, the pair have not only gigged together with their respective bands but also recorded together, when these two outfits temporarily fused in 2005 to become Acid Mothers Afrirampo (releasing an album of the same name). Two years later they distilled their collaboration, all other players being stripped away to leave the core of Pikacyu's manic drums and pop vocal, and Makoto's schizoid guitar conjurings. In 2011 they spent five weeks touring the US and their first album, 'OM Sweet Home: We Are Shining Stars From Darkside', which was released by the esteemed UK label of all things heavy and brilliant, Riot Season. Last year they spent two weeks touring through Europe whilst writing a new album suffused with the outreaching sound and message of their impulsive live performances. This new album is entitled 'Galaxilympics' and will be released by Upset The Rhythm on August 4th on LP and CD.
'Galaxilympics' is an album of contrasts, so much colour, so much shade! 'Space Sumo' kicks off the record in explosive style. Pikacyu's drums jitter, crash and stumble, but steadfastly refuse to groove. Makoto attacks his guitar, cloaking himself in reverb to produce a wall-of-sound, alternating between melody and noise. 'Funifunikonefuni' follows with it's frenzied take on pop music, bubbling with energy and PIKA's multiple vocal layers. 'I'll Forgive' is chant-like in its devotion to following the tumbling melody line of the song even to absurd and unpredictable dimensions. 'Pika Mako Hall' is a more serene affair, with whispered echoes and guitar drones swirling amongst bursts of rapid sequencer ambience. 'Castle Of Sand' picks up on this more spacious approach with slowly developing programmed electronics, before the title track erupts with gurgling synths, soaring guitar trails and PIKA's most searching vocal yet.
 
The album concludes in reflective manner with the suitably titled 'Sayonownara', a song as much in the present as it is in the act of saying farewell. It's positively elegiac with washes of cymbal and deep acres of guitar drone for the first five minutes before PIKA's drums take things up a gear and into more psychedelic out-rock terrain. This insurgence eventually peaks and the album melts away to silence. PIKACYU-MAKOTO have made an album that takes you on a trip into your very soul before emerging once more at the edge of another galaxy. 'Galaxilympics' is a triumph of opposites united, it enjoys walking out into the unknown, but it's also a portal into the very real world of two musicians who find peace and semblance through their interaction. Hymns and odes to one side, this is a giant album of future-facing song and noise, where better to find harmony enthroned

Nina Kraviz released remixes for her "This Time" single by true masters of their craft: Four Tet, Moodymann, Lindstrom, Hieroglyphic Being, Terrence Dixon and Praecox. The release also features an unreleased extended instrumental of the original.

The Older I Get, the Funnier I Was, which follows Thomas’ brilliant 2020 HBO special The Golden One and his Can't Believe You're Happy Here EP released earlier this year, surveys a range of emotion and offers a broad sonic palette, moving between pop punk, electro, and the obvious influence of the singer-songwriters he grew up listening to in early childhood. It conjures the ennui of Bright Eyes alongside the barefaced storytelling of John Prine, the overstuffed lists of Fred Thomas with the lackadaisical humor of Colleen Green, among many others.

Thomas attributes the dexterity of the record to Duterte, who recorded and engineered most of it in addition to serving up plenty of encouragement when Thomas got down on the process. “As a comic, I used to test out new songs during sets to see if the funny bits were hitting, but since I wrote this in isolation I ended up writing lyrics and worrying less about making jokes,” Thomas says. That said, the album’s plenty funny. Stand-out and lead single “Rigamarole” opens with a Thomas-voiced infomercial that recalls his oft-cited lookalike Jim Carrey as the Grinch, before launching into a buoyant pop song about being depressed.

Whitmer Thomas will admit that when he traveled home to small town Gulf Shores, Alabama to record his HBO stand-up special, The Golden One, he expected to be greeted as a returning hero, a conquering king, or at minimum, a guy with a moderately successful career as an entertainer in Los Angeles. “I expected a big welcome home, open arms, but when I went back I realized: nobody fucking knows me. Nobody remembers me,” Thomas says. “In the years I’d been performing that show, I’d been romanticizing my childhood in this mythologized place, but the visit made me see that I’m not really from there anymore.”

The sense of alienation compounded when Thomas recognized how few people in town remembered his mom, to whom The Golden One is dedicated and largely about. Thomas grew up watching her perform with her twin sister at the legendary Flora-Bama Lounge, where he set the special, and still counts her as one of his musical influences. His new album, The Older I Get, the Funnier I Was, isn’t overtly about his mom, her presence is deeply felt throughout. While in Gulf Shores, Thomas discovered dozens of her old recordings, all of which had been wrecked by Katrina, but upon returning to LA, Thomas paid “a fancy place in Hollywood” to fix the tapes and hired Melina Duterte (Jay Som, Bachelor, Routine) to mix them. The two struck up a collaborative friendship, and Thomas had the sound of his mom’s voice back. “I was listening to songs she recorded when she was about my age, just these heartfelt, sweet Americana songs,” he says. “I decided then that I wanted to lose the Ian Curtis voice I always sing with; I wanted to do what came naturally, because my mom always sounded like herself, even when she was singing some cheesy reggae song about, like, Jamaica.”

Thus he went into The Older I Get, the Funnier I Was knowing it was time to retire his darkwave persona, and leaning into his natural, chirpier voice, which he says sounds “like a 12-year-old’s.” It makes sense: much of the album chronicles what Thomas calls “being a kid and feeling like you have no control and overcompensating by being annoying.” “So much of the album is about witnessing drug and alcohol addiction as a kid and seeing what it does to people, but also realizing that there's nothing you can do about it,” Thomas says. It’s familiar territory (see: “Partied to Death”) but the methodology is different this time around; true to its title, The Older I Get, the Funnier I Was isn’t always looking for laughs. Thomas might’ve left his hometown behind, but his kid self is still tagging along, a Peter Pan shadow he can’t untether himself from. The first line he sings on The Older I Get, the Funnier I Was is: “There should be a room at every party where you can just sit and watch a movie.” Find a 12-year-old who wouldn’t say the same.

The classic sci-fi series teleports to Demon Records for two thrilling full-cast radio adventures.
From 1977 to 1981, a heroic band of freedom fighters waged war against the merciless Terran Federation,
spearheaded by Supreme Commander Servalan. In the mid-1990s Terry Nation’s intergalactic epic switched from BBC
TV to radio with two new adventures, The Sevenfold Crown and The Syndeton Experiment. Both now come to vinyl
for the first time, alongside cast interviews and extracts from Zen and the Art of Blake’s 7.
Presented across 3 x 140g vinyl discs in three colours, these full-cast dramas star Paul Darrow as Avon with Jacqueline
Pearce as Servalan, Michael Keating as Vila, Steven Pacey as Tarrant, Paula Wilcox as Soolin, Angela Bruce as Dayna,
and Peter Tuddenham as Orac and Slave. Written by Barry Letts (Doctor Who) they feature incidental music by Jeff
Mearns as well as the familiar strains of Dudley Simpson’s iconic theme music.
The removable slipcase cover reveals a trio of coloured LPs - plus a frameable art print - in a widespine sleeve. The
discs are presented in individual sleeves which, when place side by side, reveal a landscape scene of Scorpio in flight.
Full cast and credits are accompanied by graphics illustrating the tech of Blake’s 7.
Make sure you’re Down and Safe with this exclusive limited edition.

Massimiliano Pagliara returns to Permanent Vacation with his fourth studio album "See You In Paradise". After the highly acclaimed "Nothing Stays In One Place For Long" EP from 2020, this is the first full-length from the Italian-raised and Berlin-based producer for the label. Albums in the dance music genre can often be a challenge in terms of finding the right balance between the dancefloor and listening at home. Massimiliano, however, mastered this craftmanship perfectly while reviving the art of the album format.
Mostly written and produced in the lockdown period of spring 2020 these 10 tracks offer the whole sonic spectrum from the "Massi universe". The hardware enthusiast blends analogue-heavy and bright synthesizer melodies, pop hooks, Chicago house groove with more technoid tracks and atmospheric soundscapes. Taking you on a journey through his mind, body and soul: From his underground disco passion and pulsating dancefloor moments to ethereal and meditative ambience.

Inspired, both musically and aesthetically - one of his favourite carnal catchphrases titles the album - by Disco hero Patrick Cowley, Massimiliano channelled past, present and future in searching for new adventures within his music. For the first time working with live musicians (saxophone and piano) to bring a new facet on the table, that flows with the production seamlessly.

Communication and getting into a dialogue is a crucial part for Massimiliano as an artist. Whether it used to be as a ballet dancer, as a DJ, most prominently as a resident of the legendary Berghain / Panorama Bar, a producer and in collaboration with other artists and musicians: Maestro Massi has gathered an illustrious group of friends and like minded artist such as Snax, Fort Romeau and Init (with whom he has worked before), as well as new collaborators including Curses, Coloray and Vanessa. Under the artistic direction of Massimiliano each artist was able to bring his own unique talent into the album's coherent production and together with Massimiliano they created something that is more than the sum of its parts: A refuge full of beauty and harmony and free from worries in an upside down world. In other words: "See You In Paradise”

Stellar Legions is four experienced space cadets from the Antwerp interstellar legion, led by Captain Andrew Claes (STUFF., BRZZVLL, Internal Sun). With a sound rooted in jazz, improv, hip-hop, dub and electronic music, brace yourself for an intergalactic trip through colourful musical worlds and allow yourself to be carried away to indefinable, otherworldly but always hospitable beacons.

Alongside Claes, the delegates on duty are all heroes from the Allied star: Bram Weijters (Raymond Van Het Groenewoud, Crazy Men), Klaas De Somer (Tourist Lemc, Selah Sue) and Fre Madou (ex-DAAU, Namid). With them, come stories and artifacts from the multidimensional cosmos to our beloved mother planet Earth and this autumn, they passionately present their first omnibus 'Stellar Legions', released 21st October via the groove-obssessed Sdban Ultra label.

The album consists of eight tracks recorded in the studio and live, resulting in one big cosmic experience that exhilarates down to every last arrangement. From Claes' twisted sax on the semi-electronic ecstatic dream world that is an 'An Arp in Tunisia' to the jazzy snatches of 'Wessel' where De Somer's hurried drum patterns and Weijters frenzied keyboard solos catch light, Stellar Legions unites the adventure and improvisation of jazz with contemporary sounds.

At the core of the Stellar Legions sound is a rhythm section Sly & Robbie would have approved of: loose and sticky, grinding and unwinding: De Somer's drums fizz with expectation while the relentless bass strokes from Madou provide the beating pulse. It's fresh, it's raw and it keeps us listening, grooving and wanting more. Elsewhere, 'Odyssey' is a cataclysmic mix of feverish sounds and melodies that take you to an extra-terrestrial place, while the live recording of 'Alcyone', basks in a spatial mix of futuristic grooves and ethereal soundscapes before album closer 'Covix', results in a spacious and wonderfully atmospheric affair.

Electronics wizard Andrew Claes has recorded music in a wide range of styles ranging from free jazz outfit Chaos of the Haunted Spire (duo with Teun Verbruggen) to techno icon Marco Bailey and New Wave hero, Marcel Vanthilt. In addition, he has collaborated with Zach Danziger, Zap Mama, Brussels Jazz Orchestra, Hermes Ensemble, Mauro Pawlowski, Josse De Pauw and many others and released music with the electro-jazz collective AAN/EOP and his solo project, Internal Sun.

Claes is also a teacher of 'Live Electronics' at the Conservatory of Antwerp and a doctorate in the arts, where he is currently investigating the possibilities of an electro-acoustic saxophone. He also regularly gives workshops on the Belgian synthesizer microcontroller platform, Axoloti. His latest achievement is AI-driven robot-jazz project 'BotBop' with Dago Sondervan and Kasper Jordaens, which explores the possibilities and limits of 'computer aided music performance'. Their latest project 'Integers & Strings' premiered at the Sònar festival in Barcelona in November 2021.

We're happy to report that the music on the 'Son of a Biscuit' EP from Kuwahara aka Mick Wilson and Scott Gray is every bit as colourfully eccentric as the title it bears. 'Ginger Cut' is dubbed up cloud of sound billowing over choppy hip-hop breaks, with an old skool female MC poking her head out of it to have her say every now and again. Rich Tea's edit of the track takes it into housier territory but, like one of those old Orb ambient singles singles on Wau Mr Modo, still gives plenty of work to the studio's echo chambers. 'Jaffa Quake' goes for snazzy, jazzy overtones and off kilter breaks, 'Kustard Cream' offers up reggae skank, again served up with plenty of sonic exotica, and there's even a more relaxed, Balearic bonus mix of 'Ginger Cut'. A thoroughly nutty record, but a genius one at the same time.

We Jazz Records presents the second volume of their reworks albums dealing with source material from the Helsinki-based label's catalog. This time around, it's Carl Stone's turn to tackle the source albums at hand and filter the label's output through his musical lens.

We Jazz Reworks is an idea that repurposes some of the label's output 10 albums at a time. That is, the label invites producers whose music they love on board, and one by one, they tackle 10 albums worth of source material, of which they are free to use as much or as little as they choose. The series evolves chronologically, so this volume being number two, the source material is pulled from We Jazz LPs numbers 11 through 20. The artist has complete freedom.

Volume 2 in the series happens with Carl Stone, a legendary figure in creative music. His career spans decades of unlimited musical innovation. Stone's recent output on Unseen Worlds, the label who has also been instrumental in issuing some of his remarkable earlier work, ranks among the most original art of our time and renders notions such as "genre" virtually meaningless.

Here, We Jazz originals by Terkel Nørgaard, OK:KO, Jonah Parzen-Johnson and more are met here with a fresh sense of discovery, spun around and delivered ready for the turntable once again.

Carl Stone says:

"It was wonderful that We Jazz gave me carte blanche to work with any materials from the set of ten releases in its catalog. This freedom to work with everything could have been a mixed blessing though, as it could be a challenge to try to deal with so much musical information. In the end I did what I almost always do: Let my intuition be my guide and to seize upon any musical items that seemed to fit into an overall approach."

"To make a new piece I usually start with an extended period of what really is just playing, the way a child plays with toys. Experimentation without necessary expectation, leading to (hopefully) discovery of things of musical interest, then figuring out a way to craft and shape these into a structured piece of music. Each track uses a different approach, which I found along the way during this play period."

This conceptual approach becomes complete with the design, in which album graphics are treated in a similar fashion, reworking what's there. This time around, the artwork is reinvented by Tuomo Parikka, a regular cover collage contributor for the We Jazz Magazine.

CURACAO BLUE TRANSPARENT VINYL, INSIDE OUT SLEEVE, OBI W/ LINER NOTES, PRINTED INNER SLEEVE WITH SOURCE ALBUM DESIGN REFLECTIONS.

The end of the Doc Pavlonium's trilogy has come. Third and final chapter of the series.

"Is 2333 dc and humanity decided to leave planet earth as they don't need it anymore. The Earth is only but a limit to the inescapable human evolution: from simple terrestrial to new outer space inhabitants who are able to live without a planet, nature, art or music. In this robotic, hi-tech, and perfectly controlled future, somebody will be wondering if they can discover another moon, another sun, another galaxy..."

Taylor Swift’s new studio album Midnights is available everywhere on October 21st. It’s a collection of music written in the middle of the night, a journey through terrors and sweet dreams. The floors we pace and the demons we face - the stories of 13 sleepless nights scattered throughout Taylor’s life.


Each Vinyl Album Includes:

13 Songs
Full-size gatefold photos
A collectible 8-page lyric booklet with never-before-seen photos

Heist Recordings has been pushing the envelope for house music since day one and we’re always on the lookout for artists that represent our vision on electronic music. Our next guest on the label fits that profile and more. He is the embodiment of modern-day electronic funk and a true wizard on the keys: Atlanta raised cool guy Byron the Aquarius.

Byron has a solid history on the label: He remixed Parker Madicine back in 2017 and did a mad solo on the 2019 released Dam Swindle track ‘The life behind things’. We’ve done some shows together and stayed in touch while Byron was working together with Jeff Mills on his 2020 jazz crossover record ‘Ambrosia’ on Axis. Now, after a solid string of releases on labels like Shall not Fade and Purveyor Underground, Byron is making his solo appearance on Heist. His ‘Akira’ EP goes from dark basement grooves to dreamy broken beats and features a remix by New York dance music wizard Kush Jones.

The Akira EP kicks off with ‘I love yo’. In this track, Byron decides to leave his keys at home and goes in deep with a moody club workout. ‘I love yo’ is a track that juxtaposes dreamy samples with rough percussion and vocal chops with a clear nod to the work of Mr. G. The melody is mellow, but don’t be deceived; clever drum programming and plenty of sub take this track into the club vibe just the way Byron likes it: warm, hazy and sexy AF.

Byron is not known for delivering straightforward house tunes, but when he does deliver them, he does it in style. Enter ‘Get up’; the A2 of the EP. There’s everything we love about house music: smart vocal chops, driving percussion, classic house keys and a booming sub to get you bumping to this beat.

The B-side sees Byron up the tempo and take a deep dive into bass territory with ‘Love’. In this track, there’s lush pads running over a percussive broken beat and chopped R ’n B vocals to add some serious sex appeal. It’s deceptively simple and clean but ever so catchy, which clearly shows Byron’s prowess as an electronic music producer.

Going back to classic house mode, we’ve got ‘Success’: A spoken word house track that fits right in with the classics. Byron sets the mood with some bumpy key-and synth work while brainstorming about originality and blackness throughout the track. Even though the message underneath might be a serious one, Byron succeeds in delivering this in a fun, uplifting way that never gets pretentious or divisive.

The EP finishes with a remix by New Yorker Kush Jones. This is an artist who understands how to build a groove. He could take you anywhere from house to juke, footwork and techno, which is exactly why he’s been getting so much love for his music recently. Kush is an artist who sees no boundaries in his music and still manages to create his own sonic universe. His remix of ‘I love yo’ takes a dreamy approach with soft chords running over an electronic groove with a pure and improvised feel. All elements fit together perfectly and it’s the clever ad-hoc programming and arrangement that suck you into his unbounded world from the first beat.

As always, enjoy the music and play it loud.

Yours sincerely,
Maarten & Lars

The Exaltics need no further introduction.. operating since 15 years now and become one of the stalwarts of the international underground electro scene. Robert Witschakowski-Jockel founded the project The Exaltics in 2006 as well as the electro/ techno label SolarOneMusic with his long term friend Nico Jagiella. Since then he published countless 12"s and several LP's with labels like Clone, Creme Organization, Bunker or his own label SolarOneMusic and worked during that time with outstanding artists like Drexciya's Gerald Donald, Helena Hauff or the legendary Martin Gore from Depeche Mode. He turned his deep cinematic and most of all charismatic electro into his own trademark. The collection contains 13 Tracks recorded between 2009-2019 including tracks from long out stock titles first time on vinyl. Probably the best overview over the world of The Exaltics.

Jan Anderzén and his partners celebrate the transcendental power of ecstatic music. Alas Rattoisaa Virtaa is the first Kemialliset Ystävät album in four years. It is the result of chance enhancing online collaboration methods, desire to get lost in the sound archives and the high art of meticulous editing. The album title is from visions of rivers running down from Heart of Darkness to the City of Joyful Noise. If contemporary music is a high speed train passing by then KY's music would be an orgy of light under a railway bridge.

A band member Lars Mattila experiences the music of Alas Rattoisaa Virtaa in spatial terms:

"There are worlds accessed only through our auditory system. I hear a Wunderkammer of freestanding sound objects. Rhythms like sequences of seemingly random stuff laid out on the forest floor: a pair of thrones, a Henry Moore sculpture, a watermelon, two thrones, a Moore sculpture, a melon... I trust the path to go on even if I can't see behind the hill. There's motion, wether it be drunk driving or super human rapid eye movement. The sheer amount of detail makes it impossible to take everything in at once. One's perception and shifting focus reshape the experience on each listen. I remember my visit to Cappella Palatina in Palermo where Normann architecture, Arabic arches and Byzantine dome form a harmonious whole. Various cultural and spiritual influences are recognized as equals. The sense of space also brings to mind the end scene of The Lawnmower Man when the dude is trying to escape the virtual world."

RE-CUT 2022 !!!

Red plate for the first time... The color it should be all time actually ^

Ugandan DJ and producer Authentically Plastic presents their debut full-length on the Hakuna Kulala imprint.
‘Raw Space’ is a brilliant display of their self-described style of “free form femme fuckery”, harnessing East African influences, unstable polyrhythms and glinting techno production flourishes

"UNITED", Tristesse Contemporaine’s new album is like a space shuttle, full of metropolitan and eccentric music makers.

Inside the shuttle: Narumi, Leo & Mike, respectively from Japan, Sweden and Jamaican-British. All "united" behind the unique Tristesse Contemporaine flag and led since the start by French label Record Makers (Kavinsky, Sebastien Tellier, Cola Boyy…).

After three rock & post-punk infused albums: "Tristesse Contemporaine" (2012), "Stay Golden" (2013) and "Stop and Start" (2017), they’re off to a new start and open a new cycle with their new opus "UNITED".

Who other than young prodigy Lewis OfMan, the one-man band behind hits like "Attitude" and renowned collaborations including Rejjie Snow or Carly Rae Jepsen, to join the joyous ride?

After hearing "Sly Fox"'s first demo in 2019, they convinced him to produce a whole album for them and became the fourth member of sorts, adding his pop sensibility, mixing genres and emotions with funky basslines, strong hooks, and digital arrangements.

A free-spirited album filled with irresistible beat-driven tunes thanks to Mike's thunderous voice, Narumi's sparkling synths and Leo's gleaming guitar, conquering new territories from reggae to 90’s breakbeat or New-York disco. A unique and united style glued together by a rare ability to switch moods and dynamics in a gleam of light, like a skilled DJ would.

'Big or profound sensations from small gestures which are carefully arranged. Using a mixture of sacred and profane, or classical and prosaic sound sources, knitted into intricate, fleet-footed compositions that virtually spring into the ear. Profondo Rosa is composer Ailin Grad’s first vinyl album following years embedded and loved in the Argentinian experimental music scene, with past treats on labels Krut, Sun Ark, Orange Milk Records and her own label Abyss, devoted to ‘connecting Latin Juke with the world’.

There’s a playfulness at the heart of Profondo Rosa that’s immediately charming, with a sense of scale and spatialisation in the sounds being toyed with, exploring the strange pleasures and satisfaction in her approach to delightful and fresh feeling sound design. Aylu is known to be as likely to deploy the sound of a finger click, a fizzy drink being cracked open, or a fly buzzing past the ear, as she is drawn to sampling gorgeous strings or instrumentation. Her debut album for Mana constantly builds territories that tug at your heartstrings and then have you grinning five seconds later. This versatility and acceleration has often resulted in her music being compared to footwork, alongside collaboration with other producers experimenting in that sphere; in 2017 she and Foodman put together a dizzying hour of sounds for NTS.

Her miniaturisation of rhythm and ringtone-like sample size could also bring to mind SND circa their warmer softer glitch Tenderlove phase, or perhaps the approach that Teenage Engineering take to designing tools for music making. Each are deriving pleasure from small and satisfying shapes, as well as advocating an object-oriented philosophy and minimalisation in their work that sidesteps a draining of colour. Sound is fun, and in Profondo Rosa it sounds like Aylu has that at the forefront of her mind.

Her hyperreal sound and its link to the languages of electroacoustic or computer music are clear, but she outmanoeuvres many of the overly-academic and formless examples of those genres. Profondo Rosa’s skeletal assembly of objects becomes tunes in an elegant, almost understated way; tactile elements quickly combine and roll into deeper and persuasively emotional places. These compositions give off an air of being very free, very experimental, despite being meticulously artful and studied arrangements on precise and nimble coordinates.'

We are excited to reissue Kuedo's classic 2011 album 'Severant' on double vinyl for the first time, and with a bonus track 'Work, Live & Sleep In Collapsing Space'. The cover artwork has been redesigned by Raf Rennie (Who also designed Kuedo's recent album on Brainfeeder, Infinite Window). In terms of feeling, ‘Severant’ explores the space between the detached world of the imagination and the real-time world; that feeling of coming out of a daydream, on the edge of the drift from the day-to-day grind. Jamie says of this moment ”As reality shapes imagination and escapism affects your choices in the real world, there is a strange relational loop between the two and the space in between the two. There’s a bitter sweetness in that gap, it has a certain emotive quality, kind of in between being and non-being”. Again, musically ‘Severant’ is inspired by related themes. It sounds as if it’s in a sweet spot between the emotive, innately futurist synth soundtracks of Tangerine Dream and Vangelis, borne from a time when the very idea of futurism was more prevalent, in combination with musical ideas and inspiration from the emotionally ambivalent, materialist fantasies of ‘coke rap‘ such as The Clipse. Rhythmically the record is influenced by what Jamie calls ”the two ultra modernmusics of modern times”, footwork from Chicago, which Planet Mu has explored in depth on its recent releases, and again the drum machine grids of coke rap. Jamie says ”I wanted to capture a really futurist sentiment, kind of melancholy and grand luminescent, so I used the instrument that most evokes that for me - that sweeping Vangelis brass sound.” And on coke rap he talks about the emotional ‘half being’ of the music, the energetically charged, detached ambivalence of the MCs, and the admission that the MCs could be ”fantasising without admitting to doing so.”