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the tale of the mythic pentaki mountain has been engraved on a two-sided circular piece of wax. the north face of the peak is steep, abrasive, and has been the subject of many legends in the region. it is said that whoever would manage to climb it would find a plateau, leading to a place called "the single source of truth". considered as the ultimate goal by both psychedelic gurus and database optimization corporations, and as an ideal retirement destination for a couple of lost souls in search for coherence and objectivity, the source diffuses endless loops of haunted voices, apparently sampled from a discarded call center, running low on power, encouraging listeners to shorten cycles, deliver requests and improve user experience. it is also said that anyone climbing from the south side would never reach the summit or find his way to the plateau, and would always end up on a lower altitude than where he started. this topographical anomaly is probably the reason why the south face of the pentaki has always been favorited by locals, with its sunny weather and its luxurious vegetation flourishing along the soft downward slope, leading to a slow and peaceful end.

repressed now !!!!

Mentalics debut EP on his own imprint after his great Desperado EP on Microtonal which was remixed by Gabriel Ananda & Dominik Eulberg. Trippy and freaky techno with neverending build-up´s and some great glitching beats. Early support by Gabriel Ananda, Konrad Black, Xpansul, Jennifer Cardini, Mark Henning, Alland Byallo, Oliver Ho, Frankie, Perc, Jeff Samuel, Jamie Stevens, Terje Bakke, stephan bodzin, ...!!

William Onyeabor was born outside Enugu, a small, rural town in Eastern Nigeria, he created his own genre of African electronic funk in the late 70s and early 80s, making music completely unique for his time. Today, he is reaching cult status among a growing list of admirers, including everyone from Damon Albarn and Hot Chip to Carl Craig and Madlib, with some likening him to the Kraftwerk of West Africa, or a precursor to LCD Soundsystem.

Among the crate-digging few that knew of him, he is considered a complete myth. While he has never performed live and almost never given interviews, his fantastical biography is scattered and has to this day not been verified. And, though he is still alive, he refuses to speak about anything regarding the past.

According to various rumors, he left home following the Biafran War and went to study cinematography in the Soviet Union, returning in the mid-70s to start his own film company and record label, Wilfilms. He then self-released eight remarkable records from 1978-1985. He wrote and produced everything on his own, and possibly played every instrument himself. Then, at some point of his life, he became born again and denounced his earlier music, deciding it is something he would never speak about.

Darwin Chamber is a veteran of the prog game, and now that sound is very much back en vogue, it's no wonder new generations are falling for the American's sounds. Back in March, he dropped this EP which was inspired by a San Fran acid trip, and it became an instant classic that meant the initial translucent yellow vinyl edition, limited to 303 copies, soon sold out. Now it reappears on black wax and obviously it still bangs. 'The Acid Test (DJ Spun mix)' is a heavy, raw jam with plenty of trippy details, warped pads and vocals that come and go so subtly you can't really be sure they're there. 'Never Coming Down' is a deep and dark workout with cold analogue hits and paranoid vocals, then '25th Century Acid Cat' is a little brighter with its synths but no less of a mind-fuck. 'Get Down' is gurgling, coruscated, sleazy and mid-tempo acid techno for the freaks. Brilliant.

We have released two Darrow Fletcher CD on Kent but he has never had a vinyl LP of his own - of any description.

This compilation concentrates on his Chicago years, though it adds a rare demo, ‘Hope For Love’, only previously available on a “Masterpieces” Kent CD. Also, we have included his one-off late-70s version of fellow Chicago-born writers Grey & Hanks’ ‘No Limit’, also originally a “Masterpieces” track and a now-deleted Kent Select 45; these fetch £100+ on some sales lists.

The mid-60s sides speak for themselves. He began his career with the acclaimed soul blast of ‘The Pain Gets A Little Deeper’ (an Elton John favourite of the time!) and followed up with dancefloor classics ‘My Young Misery’, ‘What Good Am I Without You’, ‘Infatuation’ and ‘Gotta Draw The Line’.

As was common in those days, the hip dance sides were coupled with tender ballads such as ‘Sitting There That Night’, ‘Little Girl’ and ‘My Judgement Day’. Those were particularly well received in his Chicago homebase and have been admired by slow-groove scenes like Lowriders in Los Angeles ever since.

Darrow’s late 60s recordings, though recorded in Chicago, were issued on Los Angeles labels controlled by Universal. By 1971 his producer - stepfather Johnnie Haygood - had reverted to using his own Chicago imprint Genna for the last recording.

Fresh from the success of his debut solo LP ‘How To Kill A Butterfly’ out last year on High Focus Records, Farma G returns with the anticipated full-length follow up ’Nearly Nothing’s Enough’.

An album anchored in his notorious musical adventures as 1/2 of Task Force, Bury Crew and Mud Family, but very much informed by the state of 2026 Britain and beyond, Farma’s new body of work is fuelled by equal parts venom and deep introspection across 12-tracks courtesy of Brighton based producer Relense.

With one eye on following ‘How To Kill A Butterfly’ with something of equal standing, Farma revisited the fundamentals in the hope of better understanding what he really wants to say with the music he makes. By channelling feelings of familiarity and seeking out emotional connections to his past he created a record that feels both concise and expansive.

With the help of Relense’s gritty analog instrumentals, Farma found himself journeying across subjects and bandwidths; from exploring the mind of a conspiracy theorist on ‘X-Files’, to being a zen master with a mountain on his back on ‘Sun Wukong’, before returning to earth for a typical day in the life on ‘Mr Moany’, ‘Nearly Nothing’s Enough’ is an album that took Farma home and he is delighted to welcome you on the journey.

There is an abruptness to waking up to the sight of the other person’s back, a quiet violence hidden in the impression of intimacy, that’s leaving an aftertaste of emptiness. The feeling of losing oneself completely in a love that is given but never returned. Or the slower, less immediate one - the gradual disintegration of a world into which so much was once invested.

Love, Diskito is like a worn out overdubbed cassette found in a drawer, with its underlying tracks flickering between contrasting emotional states. Written, produced and mixed by GbClifford, the release follows up on the elusive, multifaceted output of the Prague-based experimental artist, who dresses fleeting glimpses of youthful yearning, sentiment and fragility in the blunt apparel of distortion and immediacy.

Drawing from their idiosyncratic, collage-like approach to music production, GbClifford condenses on Love, Diskito a varied palette of field recordings, samples, distorted instruments and ambient sounds. They resemble doodles in the corner of a school notebook, tightly overlapping with the evocative, minimalistic artwork by Czech artist Kateřina Šípová.

The guidance of GbClifford’s personless, at times highly decomposed vocals modulates the emotional urgency of the recording and reflects on the past. “I’m so close to relapsing, I’m here for you, closer than ever,” echoes in the elusive track So Only Yours, carrying the undercurrents of surrendering to the sole necessity of caring, even at the cost of individual ache. While the album does not forgo its earthbound, bare setting, there is something deeply pastoral and sky-gazing in the layered, multi-pitched vocals, horn-like tones and sense of space that Love, Diskito evokes.

In a Secret Room is a retrospective that reopens the sonic and visual archive of KKD, bringing back to light a trajectory that long remained underground within the history of Italian new wave. The tracks, recorded between 1979 and 1986, reflect a constantly evolving process shaped by experimentation, improvisation, and a drive toward new languages. The project takes shape inside a former hotel in Italy’s Po Valley, transformed into a studio, rehearsal space, and visual lab.

Here, among analog synthesizers, homemade electronics, and multitrack recorders, Kriminal Killer Division experimented with and pushed their available technology to its limits, developing a hybrid language: sounds captured from radio and the street, synthetic voices, guitars, and electronic sequences intertwine in compositions that move between art rock, minimal wave, and more industrial directions. This collection aims precisely to reactivate that imaginary. The vinyl is accompanied by a risograph fanzine that restores the project’s visual dimension: collages, photographs, and graphic materials reflecting the same experimental attitude found in the recordings. Sound and image move together, as parts of a single expressive device. In a Secret Room offers access to a hidden space where interference, noise, and intuition take form without mediation. Not a nostalgic operation, but a re-emergence: a living archive that continues to generate meaning in the present.

Mildred have announced their debut album Fenceline (out 24 April via Memorials of Distinction / Dog Day Records), they have also shared the Nick Roberts directed video for lead single ‘Fish Sticks’. Speaking of ‘Fish Sticks’ and the album, Mildred say: “Fish Sticks is a song of scenes from two worlds. Conversations with your boss. Acute workplace mediocrity. Riding home and eating fish sticks with your friends. For UK audiences, a fish stick is a fish finger, ideally Alaskan-caught cod. The song comes packaged in Fenceline, an album about conversations with old friends, little cousins, ceaseless piles of dust in your crumbling duplex, loves and theologians and their books. Fencelines mark two places but belong to neither. Neither nor, either or.”
Ahead of Fenceline, at the end of last year Mildred released their debut twin EPs mild and red, an insatiable collection of songs birthed before Mildred even knew they were a band. Arriving purposefully on the scene in that gentle, approachable Mildred way, the EPs picked up support from The Guardian, The Line of Best Fit, Uncut (‘We’re New Here’), The New Cue, Clash, DIY and more. Mildred is a band from Oakland, CA of four equal parts. They don’t have a lead singer, no one person writes the songs. The songs that make up Fenceline come together as a group with their genesis sprouting from any one of their members - Henry Easton Koehler (vocals, guitar), Jack Schrott (vocals, guitar), Matt Palmquist (vocals, bass, woodwinds) or Will Fortna (drums, production) - each time.

The songs are often wrestled from the lead writer by the other three, a lyric might have been mumbled absentmindedly for a few days before one of the other three grabs at it. Summed up neatly by Clash “imagine if Pavement went Americana and you’d be close”, Mildred make music that is pure and poetic, gently addictive and never overwrought. The lyrics for their songs are written largely alone and often draw from their own individual lives and experiences but there’s a shared something there. “It makes sense when common threads emerge” they say, “because we do things together a lot as friends: cook, laze about on a weekend, listen to an album, go walkabout, read, go see movies etc.
Strikingly literal or intriguingly oblique, Mildred have a remarkable way with lyrics that lodge themselves in your head softly but with such determination that they begin to feel like shimmering memories from your own life. Fenceline is a collection of songs that you want to hold close and delve into, and yet play to everyone you know.

The second installment of The Tape Masters series by German film music maestro Peter Thomas. Audiophile pressing in deluxe 2x10" vinyl set, limited to 500 copies.
While volume one of the series compiled Thomas' dopest library music cuts, this album dives deep into the soulful side of the Peter Thomas Sound Orchester, featuring the mystique house band of Afro-American Munich GI club Tabarin Bar, Donna Summer's first solo recordings, stunning cinematic funk instrumentals and a healthy amount of breaks and beats.

Out of the 20 scorching tunes on this compilation, only three were released at the time of their recording and are nearly impossible to find on the 2ndhand market, ten have never been released anywhere before, others celebrate their first outing on vinyl or in stereo.

Peter Thomas is widely acknowledged as Germany's most inventive film music composer of the 1960s and 1970s, best known for his iconic soundtracks. Today, his work is cherished not least for its incredible groove factor. The story of this compilation traces the origins of the Peter Thomas Sound Orchester's rhythm section and its soul music background, shines a light on unsung heroes like singer Joe Quick and unearthes nuggets that have been lying dormant on tape for decades.

All music was carefully transferred from Peter Thomas' private master tapes and cut in full dynamics, housed in a beautiful fold-out cover with liner notes and private pictures. The compilation is released in cooperation with Peter Thomas' son Philip who represents the Peter Thomas Sound Orchester catalogue since his father's passing in 2020.

Belgian-based guys of Lemakuhlar are back on Goldmin Music with their first vinyl release: Lauper.
More subtle and abstract than anything we've put out yet, this 3-tracker record definitely demonstrates full
range of their talent with "Sigulha" a more than 12 minutes epic deep minimal track starting with an eternal
organic groove leaning towards this absolutely unusual break that you're not going to forget. Nevertheless, B
SIDE "Night comes soon" & "Lauper" keep the same intriguing and damn rare quirky imperfection, brought in part
by tape recordings, studio noise recordings and of course artists' huge creativity.

There’s a song on There’s A Whole World Out There, the second album by Canadian four-piece Arm’s Length, called “Palinopsia”. Derived from the Greek for “again” (palin) and “seeing” (opsia), it’s a visual phenomenon marked by the persistent image of something that’s no longer actually there. Singer and lyricist Allen Steinberg wrote the song wrote about “pure devotion or love towards someone that may no longer be a part of your life”, but it also applies to the record as a whole.

Because throughout this album’s 12 songs, Steinberg wrestles a with the part of life that’s been and gone. Yet there’s a noticeable difference between the person who wrote this record compared to the one who wrote Arm’s Length’s 2022 debut, Never Before Seen, Never Again Found. “This record speaks more to my life at the moment than the past,” he explains, “even though there’s still a good amount of past on it. But it’s how I’m dealing with it now, as opposed to being enveloped in it—there’s more a sense of being on the other side of it, of seeing it with hindsight. The tone has shifted a little. I’m probably just a bit more mature, as my frontal lobe is developing as we speak.” Produced by Anton DeLost—who worked with the band on Never Before Seen, Never Again Found and 2021’s EP, Everything Nice—There’s A Whole World Out There does indeed expand Arm’s Length’s horizons in accordance with Steinberg’s developing frontal lobe, presenting him as more self-reflective contemplative than he was before. He wrote the parts for all the instruments, as well as the vast majority of the lyrics, alone in his room, and then brought those initial sketches, recorded as voice memos, to drummer Jeff Whyte, who added percussion to Steinberg’s song skeletons. While the majority of the creative process was in Steinberg’s hands, it was only when these songs were recorded as a full band with Jeremy Whyte, who played bass on the record, and Ben Greenblatt that their full potential was realized. The result is that the feelings driving these songs burst and bloom with full force, building on the incredible foundations set by the band’s previous recorded output.

‘An Undying Love For A Burning World follows Converge’s Love Is Not Enough this year as a pivotal metal album about acknowledging the darkness for what it is and trying to accept it.’ - the QUIETUS

‘Neurosis Know You’re Hurting. Their Stunning New Album Is a Life Preserver.
An Undying Love for a Burning World, the band’s first album with new member Aaron Turner, is a reminder of how even the darkest music can be a guiding light’ - 9/10 ROLLING STONE

Evolution can be ugly and beautiful, painful and euphoric. An Undying Love For A Burning World is the first new release from Neurosis in a decade, and a potent statement of intent and rebirth - one that marks the first new steps of resolve and resilience.

An Undying Love For A Burning World is an epic album of colossal hypnotism - beautiful, fearsome and utterly compelling in a way that only Neurosis can be. Aaron Turner (Sumac, Isis) joins the band on vocals and guitar, a name whose legacy is intertwined with the band’s own and a true kindred spirit.

“From the moment I first heard Neurosis over 30 years ago, I felt this was the music my heart and mind had been seeking but not yet heard. Now after many years travelling along various musical paths of my own, the singular sound and spirit embodied by Neurosis continues to speak to the depths of my being. It is an honor and a true pleasure to have been welcomed so warmly into a band that not only shaped my perspective on the limitless possibilities of music - but has lived and exemplified the necessity of upholding creative integrity and camaraderie above all else.” - AARON TURNER

Neurosis have never been afraid of change, and here they embrace endless regeneration, surrendering to the emotional exorcism through heaviness and distortion that their music incites. Just as the universe tends towards balance, Neurosis’cacophony of noise, rhythm and dissonance always resolves towards moments of beauty. The addition of Turner's powerful vocals and wildly creative and unhinged approach to guitar proves to be a vital force as Neurosis find themselves again at the mercy of evolution and expression.

On every song in the band’s history, Neurosis shifts restlessly between tension and relief, invoking a feeling both feral and transcendent in listeners. The band describe their songwriting process as an inescapable impulse to create with each other - a need rather than a choice. Indeed, the band insist that their return is “not a reunion - we never broke up.”

The album was recorded by Scott Evans (Kowloon Walled City, Sumac, and Great Falls) at Studio Litho in Seattle during three weekends this winter, and mixed in three days just six weeks before release at Evan's Antisleep Audio in Oakland.

Neurosis will play their first show in seven years on the traditional lands of the Blackfeet Nation in Montana as part of Fire in the Mountains festival by special invitation of Firekeeper Alliance, a non-profit dedicated to reducing youth suicide in Indian Country.

FITM, is a unique festival known for bringing epic music to epic landscapes with the intent of reconnecting and immersing oneself with the natural world, and strengthening our ancestral roots as human beings - an aim which aligns directly with Neurosis’ deep-rooted power.

Stay tuned for further news over the coming months.

PREVIOUS PRESS:

‘In less skilful hands, this relentless sonic oppression would be gruelling, but by expressing human frailty with such visceral abandon, Neurosis have once again turned darkness into euphoria.’ - 4/5 THE GUARDIAN

‘The Oakland band has evolved from gritty metallic punk to harrowing post-hardcore prog to the majestic doom of their current phase’ - 7.9 PITCHFORK

‘It’s not often an album of such stature exceeds one’s anticipations, but Honor is too astounding to not be revered.’ - The QUIETUS

“Fires Within Fires is the summation of thirty years of experimentation in tonality and texture. Yes, NEUROSIS are firmly positioned within the extreme metal underground yet their music, with its ability to generate images of beauty akin to those many of us have experienced in our own lives – not to mention the loss that accompanies them – challenges this categorization. ‘’ - WIRE MAGAZINE - FULL PAGE REVIEW.

"Their intensity remains undimmed on Fires Within Fires...The already converted will take heart from the evidence that age is unable to wither the fury of this heaviest of bands." - KERRANG! 4K REVIEW

"Every monstrous sludge riff gnashes menacingly for the right amount of time and every delicate moment of folk-inspired drift is emotionally exacting. Neurosis continue to create art without equal, and Fires Within Fires is another worthy addition to an awe-inspiring canon containing a number of truly pioneering and timeless albums." - METAL HAMMER - 8/10 LEAD REVIEW

In Sheep’s Clothing announces the long-awaited vinyl pressing of Marc Leclair’s beloved 2005 album Musique pour 3 femmes enceintes. The album will also be available on streaming for the first time via Community Music Group.

For years after Marc Leclair released Musique pour 3 femmes enceintes, he heard from listeners who had lived with the record in an unusually intimate way. Many described how the music became part of the emotional landscape of the months leading to birth. “I never expected that,” Leclair says. “Many women told me they listened to the record throughout their pregnancies. They said it made a real difference, that it helped them. It became more than just a record.”

First issued on CD in the early 2000s, Musique pour 3 femmes enceintes (Music for Three Pregnant Women) now returns in a new edition from In Sheep’s Clothing Hi-Fi, appearing on vinyl for the first time as a double LP. The record is being pressed in Detroit at Archer Record Pressing, the historic plant behind deep-groove classics by Juan Atkins, Kevin Saunderson, Underground Resistance, UR’s Jeff Mills, and J Dilla.

Listeners who know the Montreal-based Leclair through his better-known work as Akufen might be surprised by the tone here. During the same years he was shaping the intricate micro-sampling tracks that made Akufen a cult figure on labels including Perlon, Force Inc. and Trapez, Leclair was quietly developing this far more personal project. The meticulous craftsmanship remained the same, though the focus shifted from the hyper-detailed cut-up rhythms of his dance records toward something slower and more atmospheric. “I always compare my work to a jeweler,” Leclair says. “It’s really very precise. I’m a bit of a detail freak. I can spend hours or days on just one phrase in one song. Everything has to be perfectly put together.”

The project began almost accidentally. A few members of Leclair’s circle became pregnant nearly simultaneously, including one who had long believed she couldn’t conceive. The first track he recorded for the project wasn’t meant to advance a larger concept, he says. “It was meant to highlight the fact that three of my closest friends became pregnant at exactly the same time.”

Leclair was already a father with a three-year-old daughter, so the emotional terrain of early parenthood was familiar. Gradually the idea expanded. “I began thinking, why not make a whole album that celebrates this and also follows the entire pregnancy, the nine months,” he says. The music developed piece by piece, including a track originally commissioned by the Berlin experimental duo Rechenzentrum that would later become the album’s opening movement.

Nearly seven years passed between the first composition and the finished album, and the music mirrors the strange arithmetic of pregnancy itself. What begins as a single idea multiplies outward, sounds layering and branching until the album feels less like a sequence of compositions than a living process unfolding in time. “I work very slowly,” Leclair says. “Everything has to be something I’m completely behind. I never want to rush anything. I want things to come naturally.” Across its 72 minutes, the album blossoms with the patience of a long meditation on time, growth and emergence.

When Musique pour 3 femmes enceintes first appeared via Mutek, it circulated quietly but steadily. Critics who discovered it later recognized its unusual scope. In a 2006 Pitchfork review, Mark Richardson gave the record an 8.1, calling “150e Jour” “an unfailingly gorgeous and tightly sequenced quilt of guitar and piano samples reminiscent of Tangerine Dream,” and describing “85e Jour” as infused with “viscous pop ambient drift, the gauzy synth pads ebbing and flowing with rhythm.” Boomkat described the album as “a majestic opus from a producer that's always promised so much — here delving into a panoramic construction of almost visibly radiant music that works so beautifully through each and every second of its 72 minute lifespan.”

The new In Sheep’s Clothing Hi-Fi edition finally presents the record in the format Leclair long imagined. “I always thought that record deserved a vinyl edition,” he says. Spread across two LPs, the music now has room to unfold at its natural pace. More than twenty years after it first appeared, Musique pour 3 femmes enceintes remains what it was from the start: a carefully shaped meditation on transformation and the quiet miracle of life beginning.

Cult reissue label Sticky Buttons returns with ‘Sweet Edits’, their first official foray into dancefloor edits featuring 4 remixes of Nigerian boogie legend Dizzy K by a hand picked set of superstar producers specially designed to get the party moving.

Starting with a bang, the A Side features a double hit of remixes to Dizzy K’s 80’s sleeper hit “Afrikan Jamboree”. First up is Clive From Accounts, frequent contributor to Razor-N-Tape and hot off the heels of his 2025 debut full length LP, Clive’s edit has gifted us a complete foot stomper, filled with popping synths and squelchy baselines the track has already been getting big plays by the likes of Optimo over the past 18 months. On track A2, well known dance floor magician Lipelis takes the reins, creating his Disco Dub version, expertly layering traditional african drums and vocal loops from the original to build a wonky club track laden with energy and soul as come to be expected from the artist.

Over on the B Side, South London based duo Make A Dance (M.A.D) take the formula from their own widely popular house inspired edits imprint to take apart Dizzy K’s “I’ll Never Love Again”, stripping it down into a teetering, chugging acid sprinkled weapon overlaid with a ferocious drum pattern destined to move even the stiffest hips. Last but not least, Japanese producer Mayurashka brings her signature subversive style to Sticky Buttons, flipping Dizzy’s K’s “Konga Mama” into a hypnotic tribal masterpiece, pulsating with a psychedelic techno edge ripe for blending in smokey club venues and dark mainrooms.

Four heaters not to be slept on. Hearing is believing and on this limited edition vinyl release the legend of Dizzy K sings again, finely tuned for 2026 dancefloors but always carrying the raw spirit of the original.

Mastered by Submarea Estudio
Cover Art Illustration by Alex Ram

First new album in 6 years along with being their EVR debut album. Brett Romnes (Hot Mulligan, The Front Bottoms, Mom Jeans) produced the record along with being the drummer of the band. I Am The Avalanche features members of The Movielife, Head Automatica, Crime In Stereo, and Such Gold. Vinyl White Swirl LP limited to 250 available, Rude Records Exclusive

Experience ‘stardust’ like never before with this stunning limited edition coloured vinyl. Spin Freya Skye's sensational vibe, including her viral anthem "silent treatment", and let every note shimmer with starry energy! Each vinyl comes with an exclusive Freya Skye poster for every fan to enjoy! Available on translucent cobalt blue vinyl.

Sixteen killer 70s reggae funk and soul cuts from the likes of John Holt, Lee Perry, Cornel Campbell, The Cimarons, The Chosen Few and more featuring superb reggae takes on songs by artists including The Jackson 5, William DeVaughn, Diana Ross and The Supremes, War, The Temptations, Roberta Flack, The Stylistics and others!

Well-documented is the influence of American black music on Jamaican styles of the 1960s – from the birth of ska music, when The Skatalites ska-ified the jump-up southern USA rhythm and blues music of Rosco Gordon, Louis Jordan and Fats Domino, through to the creation of rocksteady when Jamaican artists like The Techniques, The Paragons, Alton Ellis and The Melodians turned to the slower rhythms and soulful harmonies of groups such as The Impressions and The Drifters for inspiration. 

Less-well established is that in the 1970s Jamaicans didn’t (shock!) stop listening to American black music styles, with many 70s reggae artists as invested in soul, funk and the proto-disco sounds of Philadelphia, as was the case with rhythm and blues in the previous decade. In the 1970s, while Jamaica promoted its own roots reggae styles around the world, powerhouse USA soul labels such as Motown, Philadelphia International and Stax Records were at the same time all popular on the island.
This interaction between American and Jamaican music was not limited to Jamaica. In Britain, first-generation Caribbean-émigré children in the 1960s and early 70s grew up with an equal love of both soul and reggae, which manifested itself in the home-grown arrival of lovers rock in the mid-1970s.
Soul Jazz Records’ new ‘Reggae Island Soul’ tells this story of how soul and funk-infused reggae in the 1970s united the sounds of Jamaica, USA and the UK into a highly addictive cultural hybrid of styles.

New album by french rapper Sheldon, including featurings with Chilly Gonzales, Jazzy Bazz, Tuerie, Asfar Shamsi...



Monsters are never where we expect them to be. They take shape in silences, in vague fears, in the baggage we carry without always understanding it. Sometimes, we also encounter them along the course of a life. On this new album, Sheldon chooses to dance with them, to tame them with wit, grace, and a sense of peace.



Following a powerful return with Grünt 75, an iconic format to which the 75e Session collective brought particularly ambitious visual staging, Sheldon unveils a fourth album that unfolds across fourteen tracks like a chiaroscuro landscape, revealing the full depth of his emotional and musical range. Through intimate narratives, the record explores identity (Être une fille), family and fatherhood (La Fenêtre and Les Monstres, the title track), as well as friendship (Eh le reuf). These are themes that run through all of us, approached here with writing that is vivid, demanding, and deeply sensitive.

Driven by a strong narrative arc, the album features songs like Être une fille, which challenges and questions us. On it, Sheldon reflects on his relationship to gender, his doubts and discomfort with the codes of masculinity, and the idea that he has sometimes imagined himself elsewhere. Tracks like La Fenêtre and Avec ça illuminate the album like moments of communion, sincere, warm, and unifying, carried by a childlike lightness that makes tomorrow disappear.

True to his open minded and ever curious artistic approach, Sheldon draws from a wide range of musical genres while keeping rap as the album’s guiding thread, giving each song its own singular identity and contributing to the balance of the whole. To shape the project, Sheldon surrounded himself with a new generation of musicians and beatmakers whose influences span rap, indie rock, pop, and experimental music. Among them are Johnny Ola, who has notably composed for Zamdane, Jazzy Bazz, and Edge, Rodolphe Babignan, Carbonne’s flamenco guitarist, and Jeune Oji, an artist signed to Friends of Friends Music. Together, they bring melodic and acoustic richness, as well as a collective generosity that deepens the album’s intimacy.

This new album also opens the door to new collaborations.

On L’école primaire, Chilly Gonzales joins Sheldon for an unconventional piano and vocals piece, driven by cinematic, deeply intimate storytelling. Using his primary school as a point of reference, Sheldon retraces his path from childhood to adulthood, somewhere between nostalgia and serenity.

On Cowgirl, Tuerie joins Sheldon for a soft, melodic ballad with an 80s tint, capturing the weightlessness of a sunlit summer.

On Sidequest, Sheldon reunites with Asfar Shamsi, who had already appeared on his Grünt. Over a delicate cloud trap production, the two artists open up about everyday pain, finding in introspection a way to put things into perspective.

Finally, Vol de nuit brings Jazzy Bazz and Sheldon together for an intimate exchange over an ethereal, mysterious production, as both artists look back on their journeys with calm and clarity.

Conceived alongside Sheldon’s closest circle, the project celebrates family, friendship, and love as its founding pillars. Sheldon chooses to step away from the images, allowing his story to be embodied instead through the faces and gestures of those around him. This approach runs through all of the project’s visuals. Rejecting the excess of spectacular image making, he chose instead to hand a camera to his loved ones so they could offer their own vision of a song from the album. By opening a small window onto his intimacy, and that of the people closest to him, Sheldon finds a way to say a great deal with very little, turning deeply personal trajectories into something universal.

Like the music videos, the album cover is rooted in a deliberately simple approach, where the fantasy of childhood disrupts reality. Designed by Tenzin, the graphic designer behind Sheldon’s recent projects, Ptite Sœur, and also work for Jul, it is based on an archival photograph taken during a traditional carnival in Tenzin’s native village. With no staging involved, the image captures children in costume mid parade, caught in a spontaneous burst of movement, embodying the free innocence of childhood.



Les Monstres marks a new chapter in Sheldon’s journey. Like a rainbow after the storm, this fourth album reveals new colours in the artist’s discography, as he delivers a record that is both demanding and accessible, intimate and open, one in which music becomes a love letter to friendship and to love itself. Set for release on April 24, 2026, the album will be followed by a tour culminating at La Cigale in Paris on December 3, 2026.