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‘Diré’, Idrissa Soumaoro new album, comes as a surprise to Malian and international audiences. Composer, singer, guitarist and master of the kamalen n’goni Idrissa Soumaoro presents here a beautiful collection of songs on his third album, Diré, named in honor of the town where he met his wife and where his first daughter, who is no longer with us, was born.
In 1971, after his studies at the INA in Bamako, Idrissa was transferred to Diré to teach music at the lPEG (Pedagogical Institute of General Education). He was 22 years old when he arrived in Diré. Idrissa has always been nostalgic for this beautiful place in the 333 Saints of Timbuktu region. As Idrissa sings in ‘Diré taga’ (Going to Diré), the track that opens the album, the city evokes deep emotions for the artist, as if it were a long-lost friend or lover. Celebrating the memory of the city of Diré leads the artist to retrace stories and lived situations that marked and animated him in years gone by: ‘I really miss the people, the colleagues, the friends and that period. Despite the time that has flown by, I would ardently wish to see Diré again’. Today, at the difficult time Mali is experiencing, remembering the city of Diré in the 1970s also means for the artist not giving up hope for peace: ‘The memory of Diré, a beautiful town in northern Mali, strengthens my hope for peace, union and real independence for the happiness of my people’; as he sings in ‘Sababou’, ‘Without hope, there is no life. Together we will succeed’.
The ten highly original compositions of the album are strongly based upon traditional music of Mali, but Idrissa’s life experiences, travels, education, collaborations and personal musical career have led him to compose and perform music with other influences. As Idrissa quotes: ‘My inspiration generally comes from the donso n'goni, a Bambara instrument played by and for hunters throughout Mali. This is a pentatonic instrument, similar to the blues exported to the USA by black African slaves. I've also spent so much time playing a variety of music that my music also reflects rumba, salsa (as well as Bamanan blues and a few derivatives: jazz, country, soul, rhythm and blues) etc. I have looked for and hope to have found my own form of expression from these influences’.
Throughout the album, his strong, clear voice sings in French, Bambara and English. It rides seamlessly upon a complex rhythmic sea of distinctly West African stringed instrumentation and percussion with accents of flute and balafon. There are keyboards in a few songs, but these, happily, do not dominate the music as we hear so often in today’s music. This album presents the music of a mature artist who has ‘been there, done that’ and returned to celebrate his country, his roots and his dreams in a flawlessly produced collection of songs of love, reassurance, fatherly advice and hope.
The album already has a long history: it was initiated in 2012 by Marc-Antoine ‘Marko’ Moreau, former producer and manager of Amadou and Mariam. Moreau had plans to produce the album and invited Idrissa Soumaoro to start recording in Manjul's studio in Bamako. When Moreau suddenly passed away, work on the album was still missing. The pandemic still added time for the production to continue. With the help of Climax Orchestra, arrangements and orchestrations were finalized in France. At the artist's behest, 'Diré' will finally be presented to the public by Mieruba, the independent label based in Ségou, the home of the blues in Mali. 'Let's stand together so that Mali can flourish': from conception to production and distribution, this is the message that 'Diré' carries.

Turman first came onto the industrial scene in the late 70’s as the ominous ‘other half’ of legendary noise outfit NON. Shortly after recording the classic 1977 single Mode of Infection, Turman went on to pursue his own unique vision as a solo artist. Fusing every possible influence at his disposal while laying his ideas down on self-released cassettes like Flux (1981), Spirals of Everlasting Change (1987), Way Down (1987) and the massive Chapter Eleven cassette box set (1988). After a hiatus Turman resurfaced in 2005 to team up with seminal noise musician Aaron Dilloway. Since then, he has been gradually adding new titled to his already impressive discography.

For this archival release Turman selected 7 tracks that were recorded between 1980 and 1984. A welcome supplement to his library of avantgarde music that was released in the 80s. This album fits in nicely between the early industrial noise, the long-form minimalism of Flux and the rhythmic industrial of Way Down. Focusing on slowly shifting hypnotic loop-based layers of sound, it covers a specific side of Turman. It feels like there’s a direct link to his earliest works but it’s also a precursor to some pieces that were recorded much later. A missing link that finally gives us the opportunity of a complete overview of his early audio work.

All 7 tracks on this album have a connection to the written word in the form of a poem. Scans of the original typewriter poems are included together with collages and drawings from this specific time frame to create an essential and singular piece of art.

A bit more than half a decade on from his widely acclaimed debut Vanishing Points from 2018, Swiss guitarist, composer, and improv musician Manuel Troller releases his new record Halcyon Future. A rhythmically dense and ambiguous, yet joyful ride for unstable times, a plea for warmth and hopeful resistance.

Troller’s mode of incorporating, zooming in, and expanding on small elements from improvised sessions creates a multilayered work of driving rhythms and abstract, vibrating textures. Opening with Halcyon Future I’s distinctive open pulse, this first piece guides us through subtle harmonic shifts that are almost unrecognizable as they take place over extended time, overlapping and creating a sense of ambiguity until the piece reaches an almost optimistic level with Mario Hänni’s unexpected introduction of driving acoustic drums. Relentlessly and with increasing excitement, heavy electronic 80s bass drums and an armada of layered hi-hats push them on, leading to the all-incorporating melodic finale.

The two long pieces Halcyon Future I and Halcyon Future II focus on forward momentum. In between them stands DNA, a purposely directionless contemplation on emotion as such. It is raw, naked, and confrontational, with a tender and subtly changing chord progression creating intimacy and proximity, abstraction and warmth, like a beautifully vibrant hologram for the listener to walk around in.

The B-side with its 20-minute Halcyon Future II features playful futuristic guitars, enhancing and challenging the stereo image that Troller is already well-known for. As it’s given time to develop and take root, the ever-varying guitar interactions densify and the staccato patterns jump out of the speakers with joy, creating excitement and building momentum. Compared to Side A, things turn to a slightly more complex rhythmical, melodic, and harmonic feel here. There are easy references, such as Manuel Göttsching’s E2-E4 or Pat Metheny performing Steve Reich’s Electric Counterpoint, but Troller goes a different and very much more concrete way. Although the piece has been recorded in various places and through a long process of overdubbing, there is an astonishingly strong live feel to it, from beginning to the end, from the slow rise to the full spectrum and the almost krautrock-like finale. Improvisers Hans Koch on soprano saxophone and Michael Flury on heavily fuzzed trombone join in, while Troller and Mario Hänni on many guitars, bass, drum machines, and acoustic drums provide a joyous driving entity, not giving up until it all breaks down again. There is overkill and brute force, though never without depth and a vision of future.

In the musical scope of Halcyon Future, there is no need for an absolute definition of things. A continuously changing interpretation of repetitive and variable elements fading in and out of focus tells a story of an excited sense of acceptance. Feelings of transcendence stem from Troller’s layering of constantly shifting rhythmic structures with unforeseen improvised harmonic changes. Drum machine parts overlayed with acoustic drums shift between musical modes, anchoring the album on the verge of a jazz-influenced, motorik, post-ECM balearic plateau. Abstract textural elements gently swirl around and behind all that is rhythm, providing a submissive counterpoint. As with much of Troller’s work, Halcyon Future is an album that unfolds slowly, revealing more of its richness, detail, and subtle beauty at each listen.

Halcyon Future is a joint release by three:four records and meakusma.

Following the release of Eric Chenaux's last album Say Laura (2022), The Guardian wrote "the Canadian songwriter has one of the all-time great singing voices in popular music, an intensely romantic Chet Baker-ish instrument that seems to float with piercing direction, like a paper aeroplane thrown hard through mist." With Uncut describing his songcraft "as delicate and lovely as a rare orchid" and Record Collector praising the album's "sublime alien balladry" such are the accolades that have accrued throughout Chenaux's unique and consummately uncompromising solo music for well over a decade now. Delights Of My Life opens a new chapter for the singer/guitarist and formally introduces the Eric Chenaux Trio, with Toronto-based musicians Ryan Driver on Wurlitzer organ and Phillipe Melanson on electronic percussion. Driver is a longtime collaborator, appearing on several of Chenaux's solo albums (even embedded into the very title of the 2010 masterpiece Warm Weather With Ryan Driver). Melanson has a long list of involvements that include Bernice, Joseph Shabason, and U.S Girls, and a recent release with his Impossible Burger project on Chenaux's own experimental label Rat-drifting, but this marks the first fulsome involvement between the two as players on a recording. In many ways Delights Of My Life also picks up right where Chenaux's previous album left off, in its subversions of a classic, timeless jazz-inflected balladry, while the interplay of the trio formation indeed unfurls many new delights. Recording together at Chenaux's spartan home studio in rural France, Driver's harmonically warped organ and Melanson's electroacoustic sampling and percussion hold time in newfound ways. Where previously Chenaux relied on a freeze/sustain pedal and minimalist rhythmic triggers to generate both pulse and chordal foundations, Melanson now paints timekeeping with expressive and intricate colourations, through live deployments of fluid sampled percussion (including orchestral timbres like timpani, kettle drums, and woodblock) that blur the boundaries between acoustic and electronic. Driver also ramps up his role in the song arrangements (prefigured in his support playing on Say Laura), teasing out chords and melodic filigree on Wurlitzer that percolate more prominently with Chenaux's signature fried guitar solos and succulent singing. Both trio members add dulcet backing vocals, most notably on the 10-minute tour-de-force of fuzzed and ring-modulated swing "This Ain't Life" that opens the record. All seven songs on the album groove and sway, simmer and sparkle, like nothing in the inestimable Chenaux discography to date. Chenaux's tunes have the uncanny ability to sound like jazz standards; songs you feel you've heard before, though certainly never quite like this. Yet these are of course all originals, compositionally and interpretively, bent through an inimitable avant/out-music lens. Delights Of My Life conveys warm familiarity, shot through with the exuberantly experimental subversion and playful, even mischievous, iconoclasm that continues to mark Chenaux as defiantly, virtuosically, and genially one-of-kind.

Released only eight months after his exhilarating debut, Bruce Springsteen's The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle contains rousing dispatches from the boardwalk, the street, the beach, and the bedroom. It explodes with energy, dares to dream, teases with humour, crackles with tragedy, clings to hope, and overflows with discovery, youthfulness, and personality. It features an unforgettable cast of characters — corner boys, teenage hustlers, doomed lovers, jazz men, junk men, factory girls, fortune tellers, alley cats, pimps, escorts, and more — illuminated by vivid colour, breathtaking detail, and poetic action.

Musically, the heartfelt 1973 record is inhabited by sympathetic vignettes and cinematic arrangements steeped in rock 'n' roll, soul, jazz, and R&B. It finds the New Jersey native looking beyond the parameters of his preceding record and seeking to move on from environments he knows well (and chronicles here) by rushing headlong toward unknown territories, adventures, and people. Underpinned by the singer-guitarist's ambitious poetic enterprise and will to succeed, The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle is the album on which Springsteen becomes the Boss.

Mastered on Mobile Fidelity's renowned mastering system, pressed at RTI on MoFi SuperVinyl, and strictly limited to 7,500 numbered copies, Mobile Fidelity's UltraDisc One-Step 180g 33RPM LP set is the definitive-sounding version of Springsteen's sophomore record. Benefitting from SuperVinyl’s nearly non-existent noise floor, superb groove definition, and dead-quiet surfaces, The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle plays with a clarity, energy, presence, and openness that complement the expressiveness, dynamics, and scope of the seven restless songs that comprise a work Rolling Stone ranked the 345th Greatest Album of All Time.

Beyond the audiophile sonics that practically place you behind the console at 914 Sound Studios — listen to the separation between the instruments, natural decay of the notes, interplay within the widescreen soundstaging, and nothing-to-lose youthfulness of Springsteen’s voice — this reissue takes seriously this record’s influential merit by presenting it in packaging that underlines its status. Tucked in a beautiful slipcase, the LP is housed in a special foil-stamped jacket with faithful-to-the-original graphics. This reissue is made for listeners who prize sound quality and who want to engage themselves in everything involved with the invigorating set that busted Springsteen loose from the club circuit and landed him on the radio

Determined to liberate anyone within earshot and unafraid to come on strong, The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle serves as the debut of the E Street Band — not only heard but seen for the first time by most of the public courtesy of the back-cover photograph. This is where saxophonist Clarence Clemons, organist-accordionist Danny Federici, and pianist David Sancious step out of the shadows — and drummer Vini Lopez and bassist Garry Tallent again stoke a fiery rhythmic engine that helps drive the untamed, reimagined big-band swing of “Kitty’s Back,” breathless R&B thrust of “Rosalita (Come Out Tonight),” and carefree dance steps of the funky “The E Street Shuffle.”

Of course, the main attraction remains a then-24-year-old visionary on the precipice of becoming a sensation and turning a then-bloated rock scene on its head. Recorded over three months while Springsteen and company were busy touring his debut LP, The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle reflects the high-octane approach the vocalist embraced onstage and drifts away from the label-dictated acoustic-based frameworks of his debut. The set also witnesses Springsteen deepening his observational skills, with narratives such as the romantically tinged “4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy)” and redemptive epic “Incident on 57th Street” mirroring changes taking place in the singer’s own life, small towns, and America at large.

A thrilling collision of memories, reflections, and composites — Sandy, Rosalita, and the latter’s parents are all based on actual people Springsteen knew, as is the community depicted in the opening track — the aptly titled The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle resonates decades on due to its truths, authenticity, and spirit. Those characteristics — as well as the fact that many of its lengthy songs come on as the equivalent of sweaty, feverish soul revue that won’t stop until you’ve been exhausted — also explain how this now-iconic album triumphed over the reservations of industry “experts” that both demanded Springsteen re-record it and instructed deejays not to play it.



Yet there’d be no stopping a record that saw the past, present, and future, a band whose will would not be denied, and a phenomenon who was born to run. A never-ending invitation to act real cool and stay up all night, The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle always feels alright.

The Slovak band Shallov releases their new track "Refrain" on the experimental label Weltschmerzen just one year after the release of "Coexist". Two tracks that both span more than 10 minutes in length, work together as one coherent audiovisual art piece and are out as an EP on 10" vinyl. Music videos do not only visually supplement both tracks but they are equally autonomous art pieces.

The visual feature of the music pieces is highlighted by the vinyl's cover painted by Slovak artist Michal Fízik. The previous back cover carries a photograph which served as an inspiration for the painting while the current back has been created via AI reinterpretation.

The musical component of Refrain is based on a repetition building into a hypnotic trance, gradually disintegrating so it eventually ends in a monumental climax. It contrasts the band's previous work as well as the track Coexist which uses rather neverending rhythmic variations, and a changeable vibe and atmosphere.

The concept of the visuals in Coexist is a result of a collective fusion between the theatre director Adam Dragun, Viktor Ori and dozens of other participating non-actors. The video depicts individualistic egoist actions shaping a contradicting and incomprehensible totality of the world which ultimately seems to be alienated to everybody.

Refrain is an introspective journey leading to the dissolution of the individualistic experience of human existence. The video's concept, direction and production was conducted by the visual artist and performer Jak Užovič who also tends to inter-media art and object installations.

As Shallov and Jak Užovič explain the track's conceptual background: "The idea of owning one's own body and mind is an unnatural way of looking at ourselves imposed by the dominant paradigm. It's a blind ideology - the view of a body as a machine or a commodity is incomplete and represents a materialistic utopia which is being systematically internalized. We're not a community that acts right or wrong, our intentions are determined by an ideology which pretends not to exist - our relations are relations of masters and slaves, of domination and exploitation. We are a society bound by these features and even though we refuse to admit it, the world presented to us is only a legend we're striving to keep alive at all costs, while believing that there is no alternative. Our quality doesn't stem magically from the inside, on the contrary, it's determined by the conditions within which we interpret it through collectively shared fictions. We don't get to know our consciousness through ourselves, but we recognize it through others as they create and form us."

Svart Records are proud to release the long-awaited full length album "SÁLA" by Kati Rán in May 2024

If the most profound treasures are often the most deeply buried, the journey to uncover them is vital process of discovery. Five years after the 15-minute single “Blodbylgje” signaled the birth of a new, more primordial, and immersive vision after the dissolution of her band L.E.A.F., Nordic dark folk artist Kati Rán has expanded on its oceanic theme for her long-awaited full-length album, “SÁLA”. Embarking on a far-reaching musical and personal travelogue, it’s a reawakening of both the feminine narratives submerged and fragmented within Norse mythology, and the enduring, healing powers held within.

Named after the Old Norse word for ‘soul’ and ‘sea’, “SÁLA” is an act of ‘soul retrieval’, the shamanic art of trauma recovery, be it illness, death, heartbreak or loss, and the reintegration of a splintered self. Across its 13, wide-ranging, elegantly unfolding tracks, the album is an embodiment of different feminine voices and perspectives – from the Norse nine daughters of the sea, or ‘billow maidens’, through various historical and fictional figures to the late-night voices we hear in our most liminal states – all with tales to tell, riddles to solve, challenges to be accepted and guidance to offer. It’s a multiplicity that, like the ocean itself, belongs to a vast, restless dynamic: a matrix of mysteries, unfathomable depths and ever-shifting currents, accumulating into an elemental, regenerative source of power.

Recorded in a barn in Húsafell, Iceland – home to glacier ice caves and a rare lava stone marimba rediscovered for the track “Stone Pillars” – as well as Finland, Norway and at home in Kati’s native Netherlands, “SÁLA” is as much chronicle of Kati’s own perspective-shifting recording process as it as a pilgrimage through different viewpoints and internal states. That itinerate urge is also reflected in the use of different languages, ranging across Norwegian, Old Norse, Icelandic, and, for the first time, English, her combination of ancient texts, historical reimagining’s and unguarded personal reflection backed up by deep research into the most resonant recesses of Nordic lore.

Spun throughout every thread of “SÁLA” is a sense of communion - with the power of stories to offer moral guidance and the thrill of the unknown; with the element of water, recreated across the album both in field recordings and the agelessly organic nature of the music itself; with the archetypes whose qualities we are called upon to embody at our most critical moments; and with the internal hidden realms forever whispering at us from the far edges of our consciousness.

Appropriately, it’s a collaborative venture too. As well as working closely together with Finnish producer Jaani Peuhu, there are contributions from across the musical spectrum, including extreme metal vocalist extraordinaire Gaahl, the Icelandic female choir Umbra Ensemble, renowned Norwegian jazz musician Karl Seglem, Björk and Brian Eno contrabassist Borgar Magnason, members of pagan folk acts Völuspá, Gealdýr, Heilung and Theodor Bastard and even Napalm Death’s Mitch Harris on vocals.

For all the many sources “SÁLA” draws from, the result is a singular, intimately transformative rite of passage, and a retuning of the heart to the reverent continuity of the sacred. It will take you from the opening title track’s chest-pounding rhythmic pulse emerging from a traditional Norwegian bukkehorn (recorded by Karl Seglem), a galloping horse-rider and Kati’s glacial, velveteen chant, through “Kólga’s” recounting of female persecution through the ages borne on the most gossamer-light yet unbreakable of timbres and “Stone Pillar’s” gently percolating, deep wells of abandonment and incantations to recovery. “SÁLA” closes with the track “Sátta” - Old Norse for ‘peace’ and ‘reconciliation’ – ending the album as it began with the bukkehorn, as it weaves rich drones and experience-stamped poems and prayers, Kati’s vocals the most sensitively tuned of emotional barometers. An album made in dedication, and in thrall to, its own sense of destiny, “SÁLA” is, as all quests must ultimately be, a homecoming.

Album introduction written by Jonathan Selzer.

Svart Records are proud to release the long-awaited full length album "SÁLA" by Kati Rán in May 2024

If the most profound treasures are often the most deeply buried, the journey to uncover them is vital process of discovery. Five years after the 15-minute single “Blodbylgje” signaled the birth of a new, more primordial, and immersive vision after the dissolution of her band L.E.A.F., Nordic dark folk artist Kati Rán has expanded on its oceanic theme for her long-awaited full-length album, “SÁLA”. Embarking on a far-reaching musical and personal travelogue, it’s a reawakening of both the feminine narratives submerged and fragmented within Norse mythology, and the enduring, healing powers held within.

Named after the Old Norse word for ‘soul’ and ‘sea’, “SÁLA” is an act of ‘soul retrieval’, the shamanic art of trauma recovery, be it illness, death, heartbreak or loss, and the reintegration of a splintered self. Across its 13, wide-ranging, elegantly unfolding tracks, the album is an embodiment of different feminine voices and perspectives – from the Norse nine daughters of the sea, or ‘billow maidens’, through various historical and fictional figures to the late-night voices we hear in our most liminal states – all with tales to tell, riddles to solve, challenges to be accepted and guidance to offer. It’s a multiplicity that, like the ocean itself, belongs to a vast, restless dynamic: a matrix of mysteries, unfathomable depths and ever-shifting currents, accumulating into an elemental, regenerative source of power.

Recorded in a barn in Húsafell, Iceland – home to glacier ice caves and a rare lava stone marimba rediscovered for the track “Stone Pillars” – as well as Finland, Norway and at home in Kati’s native Netherlands, “SÁLA” is as much chronicle of Kati’s own perspective-shifting recording process as it as a pilgrimage through different viewpoints and internal states. That itinerate urge is also reflected in the use of different languages, ranging across Norwegian, Old Norse, Icelandic, and, for the first time, English, her combination of ancient texts, historical reimagining’s and unguarded personal reflection backed up by deep research into the most resonant recesses of Nordic lore.

Spun throughout every thread of “SÁLA” is a sense of communion - with the power of stories to offer moral guidance and the thrill of the unknown; with the element of water, recreated across the album both in field recordings and the agelessly organic nature of the music itself; with the archetypes whose qualities we are called upon to embody at our most critical moments; and with the internal hidden realms forever whispering at us from the far edges of our consciousness.

Appropriately, it’s a collaborative venture too. As well as working closely together with Finnish producer Jaani Peuhu, there are contributions from across the musical spectrum, including extreme metal vocalist extraordinaire Gaahl, the Icelandic female choir Umbra Ensemble, renowned Norwegian jazz musician Karl Seglem, Björk and Brian Eno contrabassist Borgar Magnason, members of pagan folk acts Völuspá, Gealdýr, Heilung and Theodor Bastard and even Napalm Death’s Mitch Harris on vocals.

For all the many sources “SÁLA” draws from, the result is a singular, intimately transformative rite of passage, and a retuning of the heart to the reverent continuity of the sacred. It will take you from the opening title track’s chest-pounding rhythmic pulse emerging from a traditional Norwegian bukkehorn (recorded by Karl Seglem), a galloping horse-rider and Kati’s glacial, velveteen chant, through “Kólga’s” recounting of female persecution through the ages borne on the most gossamer-light yet unbreakable of timbres and “Stone Pillar’s” gently percolating, deep wells of abandonment and incantations to recovery. “SÁLA” closes with the track “Sátta” - Old Norse for ‘peace’ and ‘reconciliation’ – ending the album as it began with the bukkehorn, as it weaves rich drones and experience-stamped poems and prayers, Kati’s vocals the most sensitively tuned of emotional barometers. An album made in dedication, and in thrall to, its own sense of destiny, “SÁLA” is, as all quests must ultimately be, a homecoming.

Album introduction written by Jonathan Selzer.

“Depas strikes a fine balance between raw energy and subtle melodic hooks.” (DMY) “Throughout the pounding track Midnight Ride, the Italian beat smith expertly blends lush synths with intricate rhythmic components and gritty bass.” (EDM com)

“Depas' approach to techno is a veritable melting pot of influences, blending sounds from the 80s and 90s with contemporary symphonic and cinematic elements.” (Magnetic Mag)

Following his recent ‘Rave The Planet’ EP at the end of February, Milanese hard techno producer Maike Depas is back with a brand-new release on well-renowned label The Innovation Studio. His newest EP is named ‘The Age Of Chaos’ and features a five-track banger arsenal – including a special remix by Italo-American producer Matasism, which was also included in his recent BPtich Control mixtape.

“This EP is the result my own experience throughout an inner dystopic reality, where energy-ridden sounds and epics all collide into a very personal version of the hard techno legacy I’m devoted to.”

‘No Redemption’ is a proper big-room belter, with explosive drop divided by a big break and a statuesque vocal that feels like a claim: “Techno is my only drug”. Same goes for ‘Tesseract’ and it’s rave-like atmosphere and hypnotic hook. ‘Dystopia’ is pure groove and makes the listener dive into a distorted and futuristic metaverse, while ‘Cyber Attack’ and its remix include synthetic vocals tha aim to symbolize an artificial imposition: man against machine, fiction against reality.

‘The Age Of Chaos’ will be available from April 19th via The Innovation Studio.

Composed by Jim O’Rourke and pieced together by Jim together with longtime collaborator and trumpeter Eivind Lønning at Jim and Eiko Ishibashi’s home in the Japanese mountains, this engrossing new album blows brass wails and tense fanfares across O'Rourke's manipulated Kyma tapestries for a deep, captivating trip into the aether.

Eivind Lønning has been sharing ideas with O'Rourke for several years: the duo collaborated on music for the Whitney's 'Calder: Hypermobility' exhibition, and Lønning played trumpet on O'Rourke's brilliant 2020 album 'Shutting Down Here'. For this new work, Lønning headed to O'Rourke and EIko Ishibashi's home studio in the Japanese mountains, where he teased unfamiliar, alien textures from his trumpet to open the labyrinthine three-part composition. O'Rourke took the material and subsequently funnelled it through his Kyma system, transforming it into a swirl of sound that hums alongside Lønning's original takes. The album was composed, mixed and mastered by O'Rourke, with everything's based on Lønning's virtuosic performance.

The album begins by cautiously introducing us to its sonic palette: wavering, bird-like horn wails that O'Rourke contorts around quiet synth oscillations and computerised swarms. Lønning's spittle-drenched blasts are given the spotlight, but O'Rourke's manipulations - often gentle and illusory, and sometimes utterly lacerating - lift the sounds into completely new territory. When Lønning begins to turn rhythmic cycles using the trumpet keys, popping with his mouth to compliment its leathery timbre, O'Rourke replies with dense, hallucinatory drones, juxtaposing unstable electronics with Lønning's breathy, sustained notes. All these sounds coalesce into a dizzy vortex, but O'Rourke is careful not to overwhelm the senses, dropping to near silence as the first act transitions into the second. O'Rourke pelts Lønning's vertiginous wails, steadily mutating them into Xenakis-like stabs until they sound like cybernetic strings and icy tones that extract the tension from Lønning's brassy harmonics.

The third act is more screwed, with O'Rourke allowing Lønning's improvisations wail into cathedral-strength reverb, accompanying the sound with glassy penetrations and throbbing subs. Here, Lønning sounds as if he's heralding the arrival of a celestial being, piercing the atmosphere with bright, sustained tones and muted, jazzy flourishes. O'Rourke hangs back, carefully spinning the notes into naturalistic fibres and orchestral drapery, before he allows the electronics to subside completely and the trumpet to echo into the imposing negative space.

'Most, but Potentially All' is a dumbfounding piece that shifts the dial on contemporary experimental music; dizzyingly complex but never showy, it's the kind of record you can spin repeatedly and hear something different each time. As an exploration of the trumpet, it's a unique expression, and as a progression of electro-acoustic compositional techniques, it draws a deep trench in the sand, setting a new standard.

One of the most essential works from Nurse With Wound, coming in an extended luxury 3x picture LP and 2CD edition, with many unreleased, alternative versions and songs.

This album is the sister album to Current 93’s same titled album and it’s a crownjewel for collectors of avantgarde and experimental music.

The original release of Nurse with Wound’s gargantuan “Thunder Perfect Mind” in 1992 coincided with that of Current 93’s homonymous genre-defining album. Legend has it that the gnostic name initially appeared to Steven Stapleton in a dream as the title of Tibet’s then still nameless upcoming album. Both records feature contributions from David Tibet, Colin Potter, Rose McDowall, John Balance of Coil, Alan Trench of Orchis and Joolie Wood amongst others. The title and the partial overlap of the personnel on both albums isn’t quite where the similarities end, both albums have since become undisputed milestones in their respective artists’ oeuvre. At the core of the definitive 2023 Infinite Fog re-release fully overseen by Steven Stapleton are the two original tracks “Cold” – a classic unsettling rhythmic Nurse collage-fest, significantly closer to jittery psychelia than the oft-cited “industrial feel” and the epic “Colder Still”, easily one of the most mind-bending breathtaking NWW compositions up to this point and well beyond. The track soothes ghostly atmosphere and reveals new surprises with every listen, not least of which is a direct link to its sister release from c93 as well as the first appearance of the signature rhythm loop that would mutate and re-emerge on several later tracks. The album also is the first full-length collaboration with genius sound wizard Colin Potter who has since become a ubiquitous sidekick both on Nurse albums as well as in live performances. As a follow-up to what is widely acknowledged as one of the best-loved exercises in drone of the 20th century “Soliloquy for Lilith”, TPM is a much more varied but at least equally rewarding experience. Infinite Fog are beyond pleased to be able to offer a significantly enhanced, remastered and extended 3 LP version for old and new fans alike.

Church Andrews and Matt Davies weave intricate patterns from Fibonacci sequences on new mini-album, Yucca.

Producer and composer Church Andrews (aka Kirk Barley) and drummer Matt Davies return to explore the outer limits of rhythm on a six-track suite that is at once angular and fluid, natural and systematic. Drawn to the restrictions of working solely with one synth and live drums, the pair found creativity in limitation, developing a compositional dialogue between the sonic timbres of Kirk’s productions and Matt’s percussive practice.

Evoking the primitive yet complex form of the plant from which it takes its name, Yucca features tracks that are built around rhythmic ratios of the Fibonacci sequence. Mirroring spiral patterns exhibited in nature, each track evolves like a cellular structure of its own, from the livewire syntax of ‘Chirp’ and the deconstructed ebb and flow of ‘Ferns’, to the mini-album’s title track, where crisp grooves flit between modulated electronics like fireflies.

“I’ve always been inspired by music that is complex without sounding complex,” Matt explains. He maintains a sense of bounce amid the intricate phrasing and cites drummers Roy Haynes and his grandson Marcus Gilmore as inspirations, alongside sabar drummers from Senegal and Mridangam drumming of South India.

With a shared background in hip-hop and the swung beats of J Dilla and Flying Lotus, Kirk Barley and Matt Davies were also inspired by the minimalism of Terry Riley and the sparse palette of dub techno.

Written and recorded in Lewisham in the spring and summer of 2023, Yucca follows the release of Axis in 2022, with the duo having also performed at festivals such as Rewire and Waking Life, and recorded live sessions for FACT magazine and Worldwide FM.

The third release on Yorkshire-based Odda Recordings, following Kirk Barley’s Marionette and Flaer’s Preludes, Yucca confirms the label’s reputation for championing music on the unstable ground between the organic and the synthetic.

The legend continues. The pioneer cult band Esplendor Geométrico offers us their new album, Strepitus Rhythmicus, of machine-like and futuristic post-industrial music. The new album includes 9 tracks on a limited-edition vinyl LP and 11 tracks on the CD digipack version. After recording an album of the amazing new project ASA together with Uwe Schmidt/ATOM TM (Raster 2023), the pioneer cult band Esplendor Geométrico offers us their new album. Electric pulse of mechanical rhythms, hidden voices, and factory noises. E.G. reinvent themselves again and again without losing their unique essence. Based now in Islamabad and Rome, Arturo Lanz & Saverio Evangelista have not stopped their live performances all over the world in the last years with great success. Born in 1980 as a trio, and currently a duo formed by Arturo Lanz (founding member) and Saverio Evangelista (member since 1991), Esplendor Geométrico is an influential and international electronic cult band and also a rare case in the Spanish music scene, as they have developed their own independent path aside from tags, fashion or trends, in spite of being often classified as industrial music. Their career during this four decades hasn't had interruptions. They haven't stopped composing, releasing albums or playing live (with more intensity since the nineties), and they have continued for the simple pleasure of making music. Esplendor Geométrico has achieved a personal and distinct style that can be appreciated from their 80's albums, when they used analog synthesizers and primitive electronic percussion, to the present time with new digital tools. Their influence has marked many later artists, usually classified in the so-called industrial music or rhythm & noise, as well as artists from current techno and certain types of experimental noise music.

The singles also smashed onto Spotify's New Music Friday, All New Rock, The Rock List and shockwave playlists, alongside support from DORK Magazine, The Punk Site, Noizze and many more alternative tastemakers. Featuring the high- pitched snarl of Jamie Glass, the melodic guitar stylings of James Simpson, the rhythmic force of Rob Simpson on drums, and the ribcagerattling basslines of Oliver Nunn, Indoor Pets have finally returned triumphant from their self- imposed hiatus with the promise of tour dates, a behemoth sophomore album, and a far darker mood.

repress !

Following acclaimed singles from Powell, Blood Music, Shit & Shine and Prostitutes, the next release from Diagonal is a landmark. It marks both the London label's first full-length album release, and the return of abrasive and furiously funky hip-hop deconstructionists Death Comet Crew, one of the most quietly influential underground acts to emerge from the creative melting pot of 1980s New York.

Ghost Among The Crew documents the group's return to studio operations for the first time since the 80s, as well as their first ever full-length studio album. It's a remarkable trip: a consolidation of their early feral disassemblies of hip-hop and electro, but also broader in scope, chewing up and spitting out fragments of soul, jazz fusion, punk and industrial music.
Death Comet Crew were founded in New York City in 1983 by Stuart Argabright, a founder member of post-punk/industrial mavericks Ike Yard and the mind behind Dominatrix and later Black Rain. Their sound, then as now, was a singular proposition: urban in mood, exploratory, often compellingly danceable, yet confrontational. It emerged from the interweaving talents of the group's varied members: guitarist Michael Diekmann (of Ike Yard), bassist Shinichi Shimokawa (later of Black Rain) and Nick Taylor aka DJ High Priest, frequently joined by the late, great hip hop artist and graffiti writer Rammellzee. Having recorded two studio EPs - 1985's At The Marble Bar (featuring Rammellzee) and its follow-up Mystic Eyes - the group disbanded barely a year after forming. They left behind a reputation for their incendiary live performances, several recordings from which were gathered on crucial 2004 compilation This Is Riphop.
The musical climate that first birthed Death Comet Crew was one of fertile cross-pollination of styles. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, the seeds of modern day urban musics - hip hop, punk and post-punk, no wave - were taking root in the streets of recession-struck New York City. Argabright recalls dancing at the downtown Mudd Club around 1980 to a bold mixture of styles, with DJs cutting from synth-pop and post-punk to funk, soul and early hip-hop: Bowie and James Brown next to Run DMC, Ultravox and Gary Numan. Indeed, the names of his New York contemporaries operating around the same time - the likes of Liquid Liquid, Run DMC, Afrika Bambaataa, Arthur Russell, ESG, Swans, Sonic Youth, Bill Laswell and more - have since been inscribed in modern music history.
With previous projects Dominatrix and Ike Yard having recently become inactive, in 1984 Argabright formed Death Comet Crew as a means of exploring new sonic avenues. He'd been experimenting with tape, recording and procesing the sounds of his surrounding environment and dialogue from films and TV. Joined by Shimokawa, Diekmann and Taylor, and using drum machines, turntables, spidery guitar and bass, the group assembled a scrambled collage of rhythms and sampled voices. Their live performances were, in Argabright's words, "aurally violent, sharp-edged, downright lacerating", hacking gleefully away at hip hop and electro's rhythmic frameworks. Rammellzee joined the group to vocal 1985 debut EP At The Marble Bar; his MC turn on highlight 'Exterior Street' is all the more remarkable for having been entirely freestyled in the studio. When Death Comet Crew reformed in 2003 for a string of live shows, he continued as an active member of the group, touring and working with them during the recording of Ghost Among The Crew, until he sadly passed away in 2010.
After reforming, Death Comet Crew began writing and recording new material. Now, following on from their just-released Galacticoast 12" through Citinite, Ghost Among The Crew - its title a homage to Rammellzee - hones the group's abrasive early experimentations while tripping into bold and astrally minded new territory. Alongside the core quartet of Argabright, Diekmann, Shimokawa and Taylor are new voices, including Rapscallion (a friend of Rammellzee's), Jessica 6/Hercules & Love Affair singer Nomi Ruiz, and Carolyn 'Honeychild' Coleman. Its eight tracks are steeped in the impulsive spirit of electric Miles and the deep space romances of Sun Ra, and possessed of an enigmatic yet undeniable pop edge. But equally they're pricked with urban paranoia and dread, traits that have long been hallmarks of Argabright's musical projects.
'Me Czar Of The Magyars' opens the album in a twist of tension like the turning of a ratchet. Its taut electroid shudder is paired with machine gunned cymbal hits and a voice telling of "wormwood and opium dens" - the sound of being teleported from everyday city streets into the astral plane, where every sensory input is heightened and the promise of danger or pleasure lurks unseen around every corner. Later, Coleman's lyrics pay tribute to Rammellzee on the sci-fi funk of 'Deep Space Woman'. 'Let The Clubs Ring' melts lounge bar organs and frazzled guitar into freakishly unstable shapes, while 'Drag Racing' matches its title, rocketing along frantically atop clattering drums. 'Moons On Titan's Seas' is halfway interlude pause for rest, like an exotic cocktail in a bar orbiting some as-yet-undiscovered new world. These varied strands are somehow all summarised in album closer 'Ignition Spark', which sets Ruiz's vocals alongside Taylor's and Argabright's. The zone the trio inhabit in this final track exists in perpetual push-pull between contemplation, memory, intrigue and violence, a decisive opening of a new chapter in Death Comet Crew's history.

As with all Diagonal releases, the initial vinyl pressing will be packaged in unique, specially designed artwork.

"ECHOES PART 1 and 2 scheduled for release on 17th of May is the first of three singles set to introduce the next album project of Ulrich Troyer - TRANSIT TRIBE - to be released later this year.

Featuring the jazz vibes of Flip Philipp of the Vienna Symphony Orchestra, "ECHOES" has all the resonance of pure gamelan in dub, stately, processional and instrumentally rhythmic with its sparser second part isolating contrasting pulses as the complexity unfolds and dazzles.

Twenty years in the making, now the fully developed vision of multi-instrumentalist Vienna-based Ulrich Troyer can be heard coming to its final fruition. The interface of electronics and the unique warmth of human interplay is apparent on this track as well as all the other sounds to be heard on the album where a remarkable array of new and old friends contribute to the proceedings. Thematically the album, as may be gathered from its title, is a clear appeal for humanity to be shown as the people of the world struggle to cope with increasing problems, whether caused by movement or lack of movement."

Steve Barker (DJ, Radio Presenter - On the Wire, BBC 1984 – 2023,

now Slack City Radio & reggae/dub columnist and contributor to The Wire)

Credits:

Flip Philipp: vibraphone, c-marimba

Ulrich Troyer: analog synthesizers, drum-machine, sampler, field recordings, dub effects

Written & arranged by Ulrich Troyer

Recorded by Ulrich Troyer at 4Bit Studio & 4Bit Bungalow except Vibraphone, C-Marimba recorded by Ulrich Troyer at Konzerthaus, Vienna

Mixed by Ulrich Troyer at 4Bit Bungalow, Vienna

Produced by Osman Murat Ertel & Ulrich Troyer

Mastering & Lacquer Cut by Kassian Troyer at Dubplates & Mastering, Berlin

Cover Drawing by Ulrich Troyer

Kindly supported by the City of Vienna (MA7 - Kultur), Federal Ministry Republic of Austria (Arts, Culture, Civil Service & Sport), SKE-FONDS (AT) & Amt für Kultur, Bozen (IT)

Special Thanks: Steve Barker, Osman Murat Ertel, Eva Kelety & Flip Philipp

Our 20th celebration year continues with a very special comeback! It’s exactly ten years now since the last Ben La Desh release on our label, his sublime “Stellar Talk EP” hit big waves and together with the “Midnight Rendez-Vous EP” from 2012 he cemented himself in the lo-fi deep space house scene as an artist to look out for, no one produced deep house like he did back then. After a longer break from releasing music he is back and we think stronger as ever, with analogue gear and well curated sampling and live field recording we present you his “Fine Rise EP”.

The opener “Heel Goed” is an amazing track with that distinctive 909 beat and DX bass driven “La Desh” flavour and a truly wonderful vocal sample from a 90s TV commercial, hilariously funny and brilliant at the same time! We can’t wait to see the faces of people, especially on the Dutch dancefloors, when they try to figure out and discover what the ladies are talking about! Second A side track is the super funky “Lift Adrift” that flanges itself to outer space, etherical with chopped break beats and various percussive and rhythmic Pearl Syncussion layers running through effect pedals, Lift Adrift!

On the other side we start out with the deep title track “Fine Rise”. Here Ben treats us again to his trademark spaced out effects driven sound and on top a killer bass line and synth lead melody, reminiscent of the golden age of (good) trance music. Followed by the break beat gem that is “Asanti”, cautiously cut up breaks and layered machine drums with bubbly Syncussion sounds, rain drops falling down on different surfaces recorded in a garden in the French Drôme and processed African Kalimba. Did we already say Etherical? It is!
Closing out this great new record is the ambient piece “Expanding Signal”, an analogue tune that consists of field recordings and deep dubby chords, a building Juno pulse, swooshes and again a profound DX bassline, think of “Sun Electric” or “The Orb”.

Enjoy this one and play it loud on the dance floors or silently in your bedroom, it works everywhere as far as we are concerned!

All tracks mastered by Salz Mastering in Cologne. Photography & Art by Break 3000.

Mexican sensation Pahua comes to Razor-N-Tape via a huge remix project featuring some of the hottest producer names in current outer-national dance music. This special 7 inch version features two newcomers to the RNT remix roster.

On the A side, global groove merchant Poirer delivers a stripped down and hypnotic mix in his signature style Pahua’s uptempo anthem ‘Espantapájaros”.

On the B side, Detroit Latin production legend John Beltran adorns the melancholic ‘Flor de Jazmin’ with a samba-inflected rhythmic foundation and a lush horn arrangement that transports you straight to Cafe del Mar, Ibiza.

This package honors the essence of the original music, while flipping it in quintessential RNT club-ready fashion.

Music From Memory is delighted to present ‘Elevations’, a new album from Manchester based artist Tom Burford, aka Contours.

Drawing heavily on his background as a drummer and percussionist, ‘Elevations’ began as an exploration of the Balafon, a Malian tuned percussion instrument, before organically growing into its final form; a delicate suite of compositions centered around rhythmical interactions of percussion, synthesizer and strings.

Recorded during the pandemic and the period following, the album reflects a desire to lose oneself in the expanse of nature - the title ‘Elevations’ being a direct nod to the mountainous area of Cumbria where Tom grew up. The album also represents the joy of creating with friends; it features performances from several of his musical contemporaries, many of which were recorded at his home in Manchester. Slowly taking shape, the final result is a record that seamlessly blends electronic and acoustic, operating at the intersection of Minimalism, Jazz, Fourth World and Contemporary Classical music.

Who is Leon Dinero? From whence did he come? The soulful singer dropped his first single this past June, tearing up a ska version of Lee Fields & Sugarman 3's classic "Lover Like Me". Backed by The Frightnrs, and with Victor Axelrod in the producer's chair Leon returns with "If You Ask Me", a gorgeous piece of wax that draws inspiration from the deep vaults of Jamaican Rocksteady.

Originally penned for The Frightnrs' debut long player but never tracked as such, this version showcases Dinero's timeless vocal delivery - his voice etched with honey-dipped imperfections that call to mind the classic vocals of Alton Ellis and Hopeton Lewis. Gracing the flip-side is"Bandits", a lyrical takedown of the continuing gentrification of New York City that rides the A-Side's instrumental in pure Jamaican DJ style. Vocal duties for this stellar side are brought to you by Screechy Dan, who's often described as the glue that holds the NYC reggae community together.

Beyond his classic tunes like"Pose Off" and "Big Bills", Screechy has nurtured generations of young artists, sound systems and selectors, forging deep ties that bind Jamaica to New York and veteran artists to the new school. Victor Axelrod expertly handles the production by employing the rhythmic powerhouse that is The Frightnrs to help mine the sweetness of rock steady for the A-side whilst tempering it with the drum and bass toughness of classic rub-a-dub for the flip. We're looking forward to much more to come from this extraordinary group of musicians!

In 1984, Jasper Van’t Hof, a prominent European jazz pianist, propelled to fame with the energetic ‘Pili Pili’ a 15-minute trance collaboration with Guinea's Isaac Tagul Group. Inspired by a fiery red pepperoni, the track sold over 100,000 copies, leading the group to adopt the name Pili Pili, becoming a hit in the club and disco scene.

Pili Pili's musical roots trace back to Van’t Hof's 1982-83 tour in Central Africa, where he discovered a love for African music. The band embraced authenticity by collaborating with diverse African musicians from Mali, Congo, Senegal, and Guinea. In 2000, Van’t Hof initiat-ed a project with the young Zulu choir Phikelela Sakhu-la from Durban, South Africa.
Pili Pili's style, described as experimental fusion, blends intricate African rhythms with jazz, fusion, funk, and dance. Van’t Hof emphasized the importance of groove over complex solos, stating that intellectual approaches are lost in their music.

The band's performances, marked by their energetic fusion of jazz and African rhythms, gained acclaim across Europe. Regular tours and festival appearances, such as the Jazz Festival of Montreux, solidified Pili Pili's reputation as an excellent live band. Reviews praised the band's dynamic and explosive music, turn-ing every performance into a rhythmic and fiery expe-rience.

Kulku return to Phase Group with the release of their new album ‘Reset To Be’.

Formed in Berlin at the turn of the millennium, Kulku have evolved as a highly unique and free-formed collective of musicians that make trance-inducing, jazz-entwined, percussive and soulful (mostly) acoustic music that takes cues from the rhythmic propulsion of Jaki Leibezeit’s Can, the street-folk of Moondog, the minimalism of Steve Reich, and the droning rock n’ roll of the Velvet Underground, forming a sound that they themselves have coined ‘No-Age Krautrock’.

Following on from last year’s sold out debut LP ‘Fahren’, ‘Reset To Be’ offers 5 new songs across 2 sides of vinyl. This is a record that perfectly showcases the unique identity the band have been developing over the past 20 years, a sound crafted through experimentation and innovation with primarily acoustic instruments; droning harmoniums, repetitive and phasing xylophones, timpani, cello, scrap metal and woodwind reeds, all sitting alongside soulful saxophone and the voice of frontman Andreas Riska, singing in both German and English.

‘Reset To Be’ is a truly special offering that we’re proud to be able to share with you on Phase Group. The album will be available on April 30th 2024 on vinyl and digital, with distribution via Bordello A Parigi.

Hunting for rhythm, as if our lives depended on it, as if, without rhythm, we’d starve to death. Can body and soul live without rhythm? Seizing its different forms, dissecting it, ingesting it, digesting it, could very well be akin to the Rhythm Hunters’ creative process. What are the rhythmic principles that lead us to develop its polyphonic, groovy and trance-like aspects (Africa), or mathematically complex ones (India), or irregular pulsations that transcend asperities (Balkans), among others? To go on a rhythm hunt, why not explore all these places, appreciate the infinite diversity of rhythms and, back home, try to understand and experiment with enriching your own rhythmic vocabulary with the basic principles underlying each musical tradition. What can these principles contribute if you transcend borders and begin to adapt your musical knowledge and experience to the new ramifications of the rhythm you’ve just discovered? The music of The Rhythm Hunters is one of the answers.

A few years ago, the musicians in this band and I began a specific practice on unusual mixes of rhythmic ideas, inspired by traditions from various parts of the world, with the intention of integrating them until they became a personal vocabulary and means of expression. The result is on this album.

Stéphane Galland & The Rhythm Hunters by Stephane Galland & The Rhythm Hunters, released 26 April 2024, includes the following tracks: "Positivv ", "Artemis" and more.

This version of Stéphane Galland & The Rhythm Hunters comes as a 1xCD in a(n) O-Card packaging.

You get older, you have a family, and you start to slow down-that's how things are supposed to go, right? Not for Montreal band Corridor, who have returned on their fourth album, Mimi, with a sound and style that's more widescreen and expansive than anything that's preceded it. The follow-up to 2019's Junior is a huge step forward for the band, as the members themselves have undergone the type of personal changes that accompany the passage of time; even as these eight songs reflect a newfound and contemplative maturity, however, Corridor are branching out more than ever with richly detailed music, resulting in a record that feels like a fresh break for a band that's already established themselves as forward-thinkers. Mimi immediately recalls the best of the best when it comes to indie rock-Deerhunter's silvery atmospherics immediately come to mind, as well as the spiky effervescence of classic post-punk-but despite these easy comparisons, Corridor remain impossible to pin down from song to song, which makes Mimi all the more thrilling as a listen. "The goal was to work differently, which is the goal we have every time we work on a new album-to build something in a new way," Robert explains. "This time, we took our time." And so in the summer of 2020, Corridor's members-Robert, vocalist/bassist Dominic Berthiaume, drummer Julien Bakvis, and multi-instrumentalist Samuel Gougoux-holed away in a cottage to engage in the sort of creative experimentation that would lead to Mimi's ultimate creation. Corridor tinkered with the songs' raw parts digitally and remotely over the next few years, with co-producer Joojoo Ashworth (Dummy, Automatic) lending their own specific talents in the theoretical booth. The process was a byproduct of not having access to their rehearsal space due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but also a result of the four-piece leaning harder into incorporating electronic textures than on previous records. "For a long time, we identified as a guitar-oriented band, and the goal of making this whole record was trying to get away from that," Berthiaume states. Berthiaume also describes Mimi as a record about "getting older" and "figuring out new parts of life"-but despite any claims of transitional growing pains from the band, Mimi is a record bursting with new energy and life, a vibrance that's owed in no small part to Gougoux joining the band full-time after pitching in on live performances in the past. "I come more from a background of electronic music, so it was nice to involve that with the band more," he explains, and Mimi contains a distinct rhythmic pulse reminiscent of classic era-post-punk's own melding of dance and rock textures. Over bright, chiming guitars and ascending synths, Robert addresses his looming mortality on "Mourir Demain": "I wrote it when my girlfriend and I were shopping for life insurance," he laughs. With our little daughter growing up, we also considered making our will. I said to myself, 'Oh shit, from now on I'm slowly starting to plan my death." Don't mistake this as music about dead ends, though, as Mimi embraces and champions unfettered creativity while paving a way for Corridor's own bright future. "We just focused on making a record that sounded the way we wanted," Gougoux exclaims while discussing the band's aims. "There were no limitations when it came to what was possible."

Toe is a Japanese music group long revered in post-rock circles, while their song structures and dynamics have taken on elements from all styles of music, ranging from math-rock, jazz, pop, and R&B. toe is composed of Kashikura Takashi on drums, Mino Takaaki on guitar, Yamane Satoshi on bass guitar, and Yamazaki Hirokazu on guitar. The band has formally played with this lineup since their inception in 1998. The vast majority of the music is instrumental and features the swift, agile drumming of Takashi. The band is also known for melodic, clean guitar, often employing the juxtaposition of electric and acoustic. While the compositions feature the repetition of typical rock motifs, the subtle changes in beat and rhythm form a unique rhythmic dialect. The band has consistently expanded their sound throughout their musical tenure by incorporating singing, rhodes piano, mallet percussion, and electronic production elements.

Previously unreleased LP by two former Swell Maps, Epic Soundtracks & Jowe Head from 1981. A classic 12" single, 'Rain Rain Rain' b/w 'Ghost Town' was released by Rough Trade in 1981, but the duo ran oiut of funds to mix the LP, which has now been mixed by Jowe Head from the recently rediscovered original master tapes. Many of these pieces are intense rhythmic pieces, partly influenced by their emerging interest in African music, particularly the Burundi drumming style. They were also excited by some of the No Waqve sounds coming out of New York at the time, such as The Contortions, and Teenage Jesus & The Jerks, as well as the current German records by DAF, SYPH, Holger Czukay .

FUJI||||||||||TA returns to Hallow Ground with his second full-length for the label after we had released his international breakthrough album »iki« in early 2020. Active since 2006, the Japanese composer and sound artist has become prolific since the release of »iki,« releasing a slew of records while also touring the world. His new album »MMM« is Yosuke Fujita’s most complex so far. Changing the set-up of his pipe organ by switching to an electric air pump allowed him to activate new sonic and compositional potentials of the instrument, while he also expanded upon his experiments with his own voice. »MMM« is a masterpiece of conceptual and formal rigour—a testament to how multi-layered and versatile the music of FUJI||||||||||TA can be.

Previous releases had already showcased Fujita's interest in working with the rhythmic potentials of the organ he built himself in 2009. Replacing its hand-operated air pump with an electric one allowed him to work with it more freely and simultaneously record its sounds. This marked the starting point for the opener »M-1,« for which he recorded the pipes by waving a gun microphone close to it, thus creating shifting rhythmic patterns. The piece engages in a perpetual play of repetition and difference, balancing sonic intensity with compositional dramaturgy. For »M-2,« the artist uses his voice and works with a singing technique he has developed over more than a decade: constantly exhaling and inhaling, he puts a strain on his internal organs in order to create what he calls a »third voice.« The resulting piece is built on a throbbing rhythmic foundation topped by wordless melodies.

»M-3« closes the album as a synthesis of these two pieces, but is far more than the mere sum of its parts. The subtle tonal shifts of the organ take on a more subdued role this time, and Fujita’s scat growling and singing reappears in processed form. »M-3« combines the rhythms and melodies of the previous pieces to let something entirely new emerge out of them, much like the album is based on perpetual changes and recombinatory strategies. In fact, Fujita explains, the acronymic title can be read in many ways: this album is minimalistic, but freely mixes and mingles different materials in magical and even metaphorical ways while also paying its dues to his wife and daughter—M. and M. Just like its title can mean a lot of different things, »MMM« itself is ever-evolving, traversing different moods and opening itself up to a plethora of interpretations at each of its many turns.

Drummer Kendrick Scott and bassist Alexander Claffy join rising-star Danish pianist RasmusSorensen for the release of a special trio project - BalancingAct- recorded in true jazz spirit in the heart of New York City. Timeless repertoire and intricate originals combine in a piano trio session which captures thetradition of years gone by: three players meeting in a studio to produce music which somehow sounds as if they spent a lifetime together. Sorensenrelocated to New York City in 2018 to pursue his studies at the Manhattan School ofMusic on a full-tuition scholarship and within five years had proved himself as a compellingcreative force, playing alongside some of the scene"s most reputable musicians and performing his original compositions in some of the world"s mostrevered jazz clubs. In line with New York"s fast paced spirit, the session with Claffy and Scott was set up, planned and recorded within a matter of days, with the musicians meeting on the day and spending just three hours together in the studio. It"s something of a rite of passage for pianists to showcase their treatment of classic jazz repertoire;Sorensen choses a selection of Great American Songbook classics and a lesser-knownColtrane number for this, his sophomore album. Alongside a handful of originals, the recording with two veteransof New York"s prestigious scene is a masterclass in energetic, spontaneous, playful and exciting piano trio playing. Effortless groove, rich contemporaryharmony, virtuosic improvisations, dextrous rhythmiccomplexity and intricate arrangements make for an adventurous and thrilling listen; the first meeting of three fearless and experienced masters of their craft. Jazz is no stranger to the concept of passing the baton from one generation to the next, not through loud exclamations and accolades, but by who the greats choose to work with. With Balancing Act, Sorensenhas not only produced a beautiful trio album, but staked his claim - with the help of Scott and Claffy - as one of the ones-to-watch from the new generation of pianists.

Is this the future sound of black American jazz - an inclusive yet rhythmically complex groove based music that owes as a much to black urban culture - predominantly hip hop and trap music rhythms - as it does to jazz improv techniques and rhythms? It's certainly interesting that similar elements swim through the music of Robert Glasper and Kamasi Washington, who along with Scott are currently big box office, pulling-in substantial new audiences for their music. Ruler Rebel is the first album of a trilogy celebrating 100 years of recorded jazz, and will be followed by Diaspora and Emancipation Procrastination later. At the heart of this music are polyrhythmic grooves that might come from jazz, New Orleans black Indian music, trap, Malian rhythm Kassa Soro and the interplay between an SPD drum machine and live drumming. Largely featuring Scott's trumpet, the record introduces his articulate and frequently eloquent voice as the narrator of Ruler Rebel, much like the Persian Princess Scheherazade narrating her tales of the mysterious east to Sultan Shahriar over one thousand and one nights. A key track is `Encryption', a summation of Scott's direction of travel on the album. Here the running rhythm is derived from the New Orleansian Afro-Indian culture married with Malian Kassa Soro. This is in turn is layered with SPD-SX electronic drum machine and sampling machine played by Joe Dyson and Cory Fonsville that introduce rhythmic elements from trap and hip hop. Sounds complex? Well it is, but it works. Other highlights include `New Orleansian Love Song' and `New Orleansian Love Song II' and a celebration of Afro-Indian culture on `The Coronation of K. Atunde Adjuah'.

Is this the future sound of black American jazz - an inclusive yet rhythmically complex groove based music that owes as a much to black urban culture - predominantly hip hop and trap music rhythms - as it does to jazz improv techniques and rhythms? It's certainly interesting that similar elements swim through the music of Robert Glasper and Kamasi Washington, who along with Scott are currently big box office, pulling-in substantial new audiences for their music. Ruler Rebel is the first album of a trilogy celebrating 100 years of recorded jazz, and will be followed by Diaspora and Emancipation Procrastination later. At the heart of this music are polyrhythmic grooves that might come from jazz, New Orleans black Indian music, trap, Malian rhythm Kassa Soro and the interplay between an SPD drum machine and live drumming. Largely featuring Scott's trumpet, the record introduces his articulate and frequently eloquent voice as the narrator of Ruler Rebel, much like the Persian Princess Scheherazade narrating her tales of the mysterious east to Sultan Shahriar over one thousand and one nights. A key track is `Encryption', a summation of Scott's direction of travel on the album. Here the running rhythm is derived from the New Orleansian Afro-Indian culture married with Malian Kassa Soro. This is in turn is layered with SPD-SX electronic drum machine and sampling machine played by Joe Dyson and Cory Fonsville that introduce rhythmic elements from trap and hip hop. Sounds complex? Well it is, but it works. Other highlights include `New Orleansian Love Song' and `New Orleansian Love Song II' and a celebration of Afro-Indian culture on `The Coronation of K. Atunde Adjuah'.

Grain is the third Innode release following on from Gridshifter in 2013 and syn in 2021.

A new methodology to make the album is applied yet again from the trio of Bernhard Breuer, Steven Hess and Stefan Németh. The approach is more an anti approach where the trio let the process of creation itself steer the development of the recording, without any prior conceptual agenda.

Irregular rhythmic patterns often served as the initial springboard for each piece with Breuer creating a loop either by playing drums or with the aid of a modelling percussion synthesizer. The results often bypass existing formulaic grids. The outfit embraced these anti-precision steps building shapes around the tarnished templates.

The process of building upon the core structures laid forth alters throughout. In the case of "Splitter" you can hear an example of Bernhard´s core loops dominating a skeletal audio sphere. The title of the track "Impactopium" reflects the process of its construction being a conglomeration of individual titles meshed into a whole. The audio is a non-linear compendium of several fragments of individual elements. A conscious method of exploring a more decentralised architecture saw three disparate elements layered randomly on top of each other with some synths added as a sonic seasoning at the later stages.

Elsewhere sonic elements are restructured in unusual ways. One member's contribution is completely stripped away, quiet sounds captured with contact mics are highly amplified, the last track introduces twisted themes of the first track.

The title Grain refers to the roughness resulting from these explorations. It also takes note of the term grain as used in analogue photography or in the case of audio as a distorted signal, or "noise". All of these elements, normally eschewed, are here embraced as a thematic thread to instigate the exploratory proceedings.

This is a playbox of inventiveness, a hall of mirrors and an endless search for unusual tactics and fresh results.

Tackling the initial loop tracks from a wide variety of strategic approaches Innode has concocted a strangely cohesive work. From sparse source material to heavy overdubs of overdubs grain is a uplifting collection of works from this relentlessly curious and exploratory Austrian outfit. Humans make the work but the random embracing of unexpected processes means the gentleman of the outfit is not fully ruling what becomes of these works.

US progressive metal band EXIST make their return this Spring with their fourth album, Hijacking the Zeitgeist, set for release via Prosthetic Records on April 12. EXIST’s latest full-length sees the group expand upon their established dichotomy of extreme metal technicality and sanguine atmospherics with an intentionally more concise approach to songwriting, resulting in the most direct and emphatic album of their 14 year career. Similarly to 2020’s Egoiista, EXIST took on a keen co-production role as recording sessions commenced in early 2022, with the band emphasising a collaborative approach to the songs arrangements. Drum co-production was handled by John Douglass (Mr. Bungle, Entheos and The Contortionist) before vocals were handled by Mike Semesky in the winter. Hijacking the Zeitgeist’s sonic heft isn’t without its diaphanous counterpoints too, as Phelps and new addition Charles Eron (guitar and synths) craft deceptively complex interplay on album high points in Thief of Joy (featuring Sanjay Kumar of Inferi and Wormhole), Blue Light Infinite and soaring closer Window to the All. EXIST’s sonorous sonic landscape is bolstered by immersive rhythmic lock-ins between Alex Weber (bass and vocals) and Brody Smith (drums), that shine in Anup Sastry’s mix and Kris Crummett’s mastering work. At the core of Hijacking the Zeitgeist lies a multifaceted exploration of algorithmic rabbit holes, conspiratorial paranoia, and the universal traits that lie within humanity - these cautionary tales are tied together in striking detail with album art by Sebastian Jerke. EXIST treats both the allure and perils of both digital mazes and the real world, with equal parts wide eyed awe and horror.

Revision of new beats on the horizon
Every 20 years or so, certain musical movements come full circle. Young musicians are inspired by genres dating back two decades, channelling them through their modern sensibility. The legendary J Dilla’s Donuts album was released in 2006 and instantly marked a starting point for the work of musicians worldwide, laying the foundations especially for the beat scene in Los Angeles. A whole young generation of musicians brought up on the new, instrumental and abstract hip-hop has carried jazz into a new era. The four London-based musicians who make up Uniri have gone one step further by abandoning the idea of a jazz band and "bedroom production" in favour of collective composing, creating a new look at the new-beat aesthetics, framing it as a road novel set in an unspecified time and space.

Uniri translates as ‘one unified dream’ and is the key driving motto of the project conceived by Chiminyo (Cykada, Maisha), the band's founder and head honcho. The project materialised in his private studio, where he invited fellow jazz musicians Amane Tsuganami (Jorja Smith, Maisha), Al Macsween (Nubya Garcia, Gary Bartz, Kefaya) and Luke Wynter (Nubyan Twist, Golden Mean) to spontaneously compose together. Hence, despite this being the band's first album, it wouldn't be right to call them rookies. The result of Uniri's collaborative work is the psychedelic, rhythmic album Infinite Reflections, packed with cosmic and warm synths, which neatly balances hip-hop beat and jazz composition. It's safe to say this music is even more appealing when played live, although it's equally suited to the club dancefloor.

UK Jazz has become a permanent fixture in the London landscape, but also across Europe and the US. Today, the musicians who shape the new wave of jazz are drawing on more and more genres, reducing solo improvisation for the benefit of composition and increasingly drawing on influences from the beat scene. Among such formations are the British NOK Cultural Ensemble, the Polish Błoto, the Belgian ECHT!, and the Dutch Comité Hypnotisé. Uniri is part of this emerging yet already international trend, creating an entirely fresh aesthetic that echoes artists such as Flying Lotus, Samiyam, Dorian Concept, Ras G and Nosaj Things oriented around the Californian 'new beats generation' scene.

The title Infinite Reflections alludes to a phenomenon observable on the open sea or during intercontinental flights. Gazing at the horizon blurs the boundary between the ocean and the sky, forming an infinite palette of blue shades. This inspiration sparked an elusive musical narrative, navigating between a sea voyage and an astral journey, destination unknown.

Monika Enterprise welcomes a new act to her roster with Berlin based experimental pop duo Post Neo releasing their new EP. Individually known as Nicole Luján and Pauline Weh, both musicians pursued their own solo projects before forming the duo Post Neo. On “Alles Immer Wieder” they combine as more than the sum of their parts to produce 5 songs of dark and powerful experimental avant- pop which is released as an exclusive 10” vinyl.

Pauline and Nicole met making music in Berlin during the summer of 2019 and kept collaborating online, until Nicole moved to Berlin in 2022. The musicians' different musical backgrounds result in diverse intuitions which complement each other perfectly when producing tracks together - Nicole was more into synthesis and electronic music production in Mexico City while Pauline received a classical piano education in Munich before she started doing electronic music.

In 2022 they released their first EP, «do you?», which consists of five tracks that were composed and produced as an inter-continental project between Berlin and Mexico City. In autumn of that year Post Neo received a residency at Sternhagen Gut from Musicboard Berlin where they caught the ear of monika head Gudrun Gut who was so taken with their compelling mix of techno beats and dreamy melancholic atmospheres she immediately signed them to her label.

The EP’s opening and title track “Alles Immer Wieder” (trans. Everything again and again) is a reflection on repetition and monotony as transcendence in the form of sleep, dreams, work and other daily cycles. The rhythmic juxtapositions and tempo shifts make for a captivating opening track. “Ganz Schön Was Los” (trans. A lot happening) has a proper synthwave electro pop vibe while the vocals lend a little light hearted humanity to the otherwise calculated computer music aesthetic. With its fusion of synthesizers and drum machines track B1 “Die Verwirrung” (trans. The confusion) brings a sense of melancholic doom. The flow of B2 “Wenn Wir Wüssten” (trans. If we knew what would happen) is a future-focused reflection on the unidirectional movement of time's arrow. Sampled harmonies and instrumental breakdowns make it possibly the most emotive track on the EP. And the record comes to a close with “Dreh dich” (trans. Turn around) which lures us in with delicate vocals before menacing synthesizer sounds blast us into oblivion. It is an invitation to turn the record over and start listening from the beginning again.

Post Neo’s music is steeped in minimalism: at once managing to be hugely expressive and evocative while still retaining a sense of privacy and mystery for the listener to decrypt. Like all great pop music their songs are musically captivating while also conveying a strong message. As their band name suggests, Post Neo are essentially futuristic and with live shows at some of Berlin’s hottest underground venues under their belt as well as in their hometowns of Munich and Mexico City, plus the release of „Alles Immer Wieder“ in 2024, great things are in store for the electronic pop duo.

"The Night is The Night is the ambitious follow-up to singer, pianist and composer Rotem Geffen’s seminal debut You Guard the Key. For this new recording she’s been collaborating with producer Alex Zethson (keyboardist with Sven Wunder, Mariam the Believer, Goran Kajfes Tropiques, Angles 9, Fire! Orchestra) and co-producer/mixing engineer Anton Toorell (Dammit I’m Mad, Invader Ace), and together with some of Stockholm’s finest musicians they’ve created an irresistible masterpiece. The instrument setting varies, but the piano and voice form a common thread. However, on 'Ich vermisse dich,' the piano sound is abstracted by a felt-covered tone, while on 'River,' the spoken voice is intertwined with Hernandez's violin. 'I Always Know' stands out as the only song with a clear percussive rhythmic element, skillfully crafted by percussionist and sound artist Henrik Olsson.

Unlike her debut album, this release prominently showcases the harmonium as a recurring instrument in its sound palette. Additionally, the album introduces the flute as a new element. Isak Hedtjärn, a longstanding collaborator with Rotem Geffen, expands beyond playing clarinet and bass clarinet. Notably, on 'I Beg,' Hedtjärn's flute and Leo Svensson Sander's cello elegantly spiral upwards, as if entwined in each other. The lyrics, written in German, English and Hebrew, explore themes of memoring, love, grief, loss, and the night as a vibrating room. The ”I” and the ”You” are drawn as relational organisms, with boundaries that shift, blur and are redrawn in the encounter with each other. With a varied and dynamic instrumentation, the songs are imbued with a naïve shimmer that is balanced by darkness, depth and a low-key intensity – in both lyrics and music. This work is certain to resonate with fans of artists such as Julee Cruise, Björk, Nico, PJ Harvey and Fairuz, to name a few.

Recorded by award-winning mastering engineer Kevin Gray's record label, Anthony Wilson's Hackensack West is Cohearent Records' follow-up to Kirsten Edkins' Shapes & Sound album. Produced by Joe Harley and recorded all-analogue/all-tube at Gray's studio, Cohearent Recording, the AAA vinyl release is pressed on 180-gram vinyl at RTI and housed in a deluxe tip-on gatefold jacket.

From the liner notes:

The week before these sessions in the summer of 2023, I sat down each morning with the goal of composing one new song by day's end. I knew I'd soon be in the room with my dear friends Gerald Clayton, John Clayton, and Jeff Hamilton, three musicians whom I trust the most, and with whom I've played the most over the last couple of decades. I tried to imagine themes that would feel natural to us, the kinds of songs we could simply dive into without much thinking. When we headed to Kevin Gray's studio to record, I brought seven new songs along with me. Five are included on this album.

"Daido" is dedicated to Japanese photographer Daido Moriyama, who became known in the late 1960s for his grainy, sometimes blurry, high-contrast black and white images made throughout Japan. I love his pictures taken on the streets of various Tokyo neighbourhoods such as Shinjuku. His portrait of a menacing stray dong, from his series "A Hunter," is the kind of picture that, seen just once, is unforgettable. These days Daido is still out on the street making pictures, at the ripe young age of 85.

"Verdesse" has a sinuous, chorinho-like melody and rhythmic feel. The tune seems to weave and bob playfully in a space of brightness the way a grapevine seems to curl towards the sunlight. So I named it after a wine grape native to the pre-Alpine region of Isère, near Grenoble in eastern France, that makes a particularly delicious and drinkable white wine.

I wrote "Sunday," well...on Sunday. It unfolds slowly, like a good Sunday does when there's nothing to do, you can sleep in, you've got your person beside you, and you just relax into the day.

"The Lands" is dedicated to a family very dear to my heart: that of tenor saxophonist Harold Land. My mother met Harold when they were both teenagers growing up in San Diego, California. The two of them became lifelong friends, and a little later, Harold enjoyed a fruitful musical association and close friendship with my father, Gerald Wilson. Harold, his lovely wife Lydia, and their son Harold Jr. were extended family for us; they looked after me with love and care. Some of my first gigs ever as a young guitarist were with Harold's incredible band that included Oscar Brashear, Billy Higgins, Richard Reid, and Harold Land Jr.

I've loved Todd Rundgren's "Marlene" since I first heard it on his epic double-album Something/Anything. With its tender, well-contoured melody buoyed by a few special harmonic surprises, it almost seems like something from the pen of Burt Bacharach. It tells such a complete musical story. Rundgren's recorded version has a beautiful endlessly repeating tag. So we played the melody simply, and used the tag as a small staging area for a bit of improvising.

Hackensack West is our alias for engineer Kevin Gray's studio Cohearent Recording, a place inspired by Rudy Van Gelder's first studio in Hackensack, New Jersey. Located inside Van Gelder's parents' home, the musicians played in the living room! It was there, in 1954, that Thelonious Monk recorded his classic tune "Hackensack," a "contrafact" melody over the chord changes to the Gershwins' "Oh, Lady Be Good!" In contrafact-like fashion, my own bebop-spirited melody "Hackensack West" seems to nod toward the changes of a few recognizable standards, without corresponding to any particular one.

Miles Davis' boundlessly influential On the Corner was so far ahead of its time upon release in 1972, the jazz cognoscenti rejected its groundbreaking concoction as middling in nature. Yet time has a way of righting wrongs and shifting views by adding needed context and perspective to visionary ideas, music, and approaches — the likes of which fill Davis' boldest and most controversial — undertaking. Designed to bring the focus back on the groove and bottom-end frequencies, the funk-loaded On the Corner revolutionized jazz. It also set new standards for record production, presaging remixing and electronica by more than a decade. And the work has never sounded more thrilling thanks to this very special pressing.

Sourced from the original master tapes and pressed on MoFi SuperVinyl, Mobile Fidelity's numbered-edition 180g 33RPM SuperVinyl LP of On the Corner exposes the internal mechanisms, free-associated playing, and then-unmatched studio techniques in vivid fashion. The low end, crucial to every composition here, is both heard and felt, with locked-in bass lines and low-range percussion conveyed as taut, solid, and visceral passages. You can discern the multiple layers of rhythm Davis employed on complex tracks such as "Black Satin," as On the Corner stands as his first effort to use overdubbing and multiple tape machines. As a pioneer, Davis likely would’ve loved MoFi’s groundbreaking SuperVinyl profile that features the lowest-possible analogue noise floor as well as pristine transparency, dead-quiet surfaces, and superb groove definition.

New degrees of spaciousness and airiness — equally important to the musique concrete arrangements — give the impression Davis and Co.'s creations float in space. Instruments are portrayed in three-dimensional manners, rhythmic loops retain tonal purity, and horn solos skitter across an extra-wide soundstage that takes listeners into Columbia's Studio E. Mobile Fidelity's SuperVinyl LP captures Teo Macero's innovative production — and the trumpeter's cutting-edge aural collages — in definitive fashion.

Heavily inspired by Sly and the Family Stone, On the Corner portrays street vibes and remains Davis' Blackest-sounding record. The conscious attempt to connect with youthful audiences tapped into rock and funk is evident not only on the colorful cartoon cover art depicting hot-pants and zoot-suit revelers, but in the music's emphasis of recurring drum and bass grooves. Distinct from Davis' earlier fusion experiments, the record's long-misunderstood set dials back improvisation in favor of beats, loops, and atmospherics that generate trance-like effects. While Davis utilizes his band for core duties — Chick Corea and Herbie Hancock prominently figure — he also relies on an all-star cast of side-men for concentrated soloing and additional support.

With rhythm providing the basic foundation, other notes fall into place, with their positioning steered by Macero and Davis' editing-room techniques. Looking to the manipulation-based work of Karlheinze Stockhausen and teaming with Stockhausen disciple Paul Buckmaster, Davis re-imagines what grooves constituted and could accomplish throughout On the Corner. The shapes of the songs become completely transformed as they progress. Faint melodies, spacey chords, chunky riffs, wah-wah fills, and repeated motifs bounce in and out of a sonic funhouse that wouldn't be out of place at a Harlem block party.

Exotic, intrepid, and filled with Davis' "jungle sound," On the Corner remains daringly hip more than four decades later.

This Is Street Funk” is part of a new series aimed at vinyl buyers who want a genre specific compilation to excite their ears. They will appeal to long-standing, discerning music acolytes and recent converts alike. Two sides of fantastic music, at an affordable price, hand-picked with TLC from Ace and its associated catalogues.

Compiled by Dean Rudland, who also writes the liner notes, “This Is Street Funk” brings you 14 tracks of hard hitting, heavy funk, and sums up the sound of 70s Black America. A combination of fatback drums, syncopated bass, rhythmic guitars and explosive vocals.

The line-up of tracks includes classics from the Fatback Band and Millie Jackson, dancefloor favourites from Billy Garner and Billy Sha-Rae and screaming organ instrumentals from the Fame Gang and Larry & Tommy.

This is fourteen tracks that defy you to start dancing.

Mode_1 Reclaim EP by DIG Records

Cover // Augmented reality by Omer Avarkan


********************************AUGMENTED REALITY COVER ***********************************

After a stellar debut release in 2023, vinyl-only label Dust in Grooves, sees its anticipated second EP Reclaim, showcasing one of Dublin's gleaming underground talents Mode_1. Establishing DIG as a progressive sonic platform, founder Olivia Mendez is also curating a series of dynamic augmented reality covers for each EP. Adding more layers into the sound experience of the Reclaim vinyl is motion designer and visual artist Omer Avarkan.


Mode_1's dedication to uncovering layers of tough but rhythmic grooves, both as a DJ and a producer, has led him to make a mark on legendary techno imprints such as Knotweed, FiedelTwo, Truncate and Naked Lunch. Staying true to his advancing, dynamic sound laid with dexterous technique, Robert Kavanagh delivers a collection of four ominous tracks, pulsating with incandescent pads and pacey drums.


The EP opens with the relentless and driving Sigma, setting the tone for a swiftly moving ride across the record. With playful shifting of gears and jacking rhythms, the A2 flows into the next track Dusty Room, utilising the bleepy pitches in contrast to the expansive spheric tones, offering an energetic boost of a melodic techno work-out, with hints of sharp dub edges.


Reclaim on B1 highlights the versatility of Mode_1, comprising multi-layered scales, evolving spiral sounds and a build-up of reverberating tones that escalate with poise. As a closing track of the record, Platform 8 is one of those B2 sides that you keep reaching out to. This ultimate big-floor tool is loaded with advancing movement, keys with mystical undertones, and depth of texture that play with the infinite nature of the number eight.


Unlocking the animated cover of the EP and seeing it come to life virtually, adds a new dimension to the classic format of the vinyls. To unlock its motion, follow the riddle on the back.


All tracks mastered by Nihad Tule.


Words by Lora Mateeva, Orb Mag

Anna Gréta goes gentle...into her second album on ACT, “Star of Spring”. The Reykjavik-born pianist, singer and a songwriter, who has lived in Stockholm since 2014, has her own way of approaching the art of quiet, artful, deeply personal songs, often drawing inspiration from the beauty and power of Iceland’s natural landscape. Her 2021 ACT debut "Nightjar in the Northern Sky" was named after a bird, and this follow-up album lands gracefully on a flower, the “glory of the snow”, also known as the "star of spring", which symbolises the ending of winter and the arrival of spring.

But look closer, and there are always other levels of meaning. Her "Nightjar”, the rare bird she once saw in front of the northern sky, was a metaphor for the search for the things which are special and essential. In fact, almost all of Anna Gréta's lyrics have more than one significance, and her storytelling has now taken a leap forward on "Star of Spring". She says of the little flower on the title track: "I wasn't just inspired by the way it takes over the meadows in spring and turns them from green to blue, but also by the fact that it blooms because it is compelled to do so. It cannot do anything else."

Anna Gréta's starting point to creating music was and is the piano. She first studied classical music, then switched to jazz. She only started singing later, when she was writing the songs for Nightjar and wanted to express herself in words. Anna Gréta's debut as a singer, pianist and songwriter earned her international acclaim: Downbeat Magazine called it „an album with the metamophoric diversity of a year’s seasons and a voice like the everchanging colours of the Northern lights“, France Musique “a remarkably immersive experience” and Jazzwise “starkly beautiful”.

On "Star Of Spring" Anna Gréta has further developed her individual style. Her vocal lines can resemble piano motifs, often doubling them and resonating with an impressively quiet vibrato, sometimes quirkily reminiscent of Björk, at other times with the brooding ease of Norah Jones. The album also bears a very distinctive production style. For each of the songs, Anna Gréta has created her own little world of choirs, rhythmic textures and various smartly used keyboard instruments. The album ranges from the hymnal and elegiac - in "She Moves" or in the title track - to the playful and cheerful "Space Time" or the extremely pared-down melancholic ballad "Denouement". And even if the general mood of the music exudes above all warmth and comfort, Anna Gréta also deals with serious topics, such as the forced birth control of women in Greenland during the 60s and 70s in the song "The Body Remembers".

There is a directness of expression and emotionality, even sensuousness about the new album, and that is not least because Anna Gréta’s band has developed and become a properly played-in unit with the experience to take this album’s more complex arrangements in its stride. The sheen and brightness of her piano playing is contrasted with a deeper voice, that of her father Sigurður Flosason's bass clarinet, on three tracks. "This album is more playful and experimental," she says. "A lot of things were easier for me than on the first album. And while I was still completely focussed on my own world then, now I was even more conscious and aware of what was going on around me."

The result is music that is rooted in jazz, but at the same time goes far beyond it in a very subtle and deeply touching way.