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Kampana put together arguably their hottest 7" so far, with two heavily in demand tracks from Brazilian producer Ruas, who shows his creativity, blending unique samples with live musicians.

"All the Way Down" is a monster jazzy disco-house number, with freshly recorded drums and up-front bassline, taking the groove levels off the chart on a retro soul vocal.

On the flip, "Like You" sees Ruas digging deep to find the unmistakable voice of a true 'royal' legend hyping the crowd in a rare live interlude. Ruas went into the studio with his crew of Brazilian musicians to record a full instrumental to blend with the vocals. The result is a jazz-heavy track that sounds like it could easily have been discovered in the artist's lost archives and will cause a riot on the dancefloor.

Freestyle dig out another rarity in the form of a DIY brit-funk 7" from Highway Motion aka David Humphrey (a session drummer who played with Sparks, and with PiL on the iconic Metal Box LP & Death Disco 12"). Tinged with raw post-punk edge and 70s library music-style synth leads, this 45 is quite simply massive amounts of fun.

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David Humphrey's professional career as a drummer began aged 19 with Public Image Ltd, providing some of the drum tracks on their iconic Metal Box album and Death Disco single. Humphrey would then go on to work with Mike Oldfield and then Sparks, playing with the latter on their Number One Song in Heaven tour, Top of The Pops and recording sessions for Beat the Clock and Tryouts for the Human Race (those sessions were included and featured in Edgar Wright's recent film 'The Sparks Brothers).

In 1980, Clap Hands and Double O One Disco were recorded under the name 'Highway Motion' - intended by Humphrey as "raw experimental tracks" they were both laid down on a 4-track and subsequently released on the DIY Star Records imprint. Rough, grooving, candid and playful; these two tracks seem to somehow simultaneously meld the burgeoning brit-funk sound of the early 80s with a riotous post-punk edge, along with a good dollop of synth-led library music.

Following it's release David formed the group Reflex, recording and releasing the Funny Situation 7" in 1981 - forming the only other title in the Star Records catalogue. A more straight-up brit-funk dancer yet still pressed and sold in small quantities, Funny Situation became a sought-after record on the second hand collector's market, and finally saw reissue last September 2020 on the start-up Paint A Picture label - garnering plays from from Gilles Peterson on BBC 6 Music and Worldwide FM, StreetSounds radio and reaching No 1 in Juno records Chart. David has now started to working on new music using the name Davey H, and released his first new material in decades recently on Six Nine Records.

2022 Repress

Feel Fly is the alter ego of Daniele Tomassini: DJ and producer, composer of sound for theater and cinema, member of multiple hybrid projects, both live and studio. Based in Perugia (IT), the co-founder of the monthly party Afro Templum, has been for years an active organizer of musical and cultural events in the underground city scene. Raised between the walls of the historical and transversal Norman Club, he is currently a resident of the Tangram and Numbers parties at Perugia’s Urban Club, which led him to share the console with many important national and international artists. An avid collector of synths, keyboards and any noisy toy he can lay his hand on, after appearances on on “Roots Underground” and his own"Too Romantic” it’s now time for his first full length release “Syrius” on “Internasjonal” co-produced and mixed by Prins Thomas. “In the mystical crescendo of soft cosmic-melodic carpets and expansive Balearic pulses, Feel Fly tinges his sounds with Neo Disco, House, Synth-pop and Italo incursions. A slow pilgrimage permeated by immersive and dreamy beats that envelop you .” Prins Thomas , April 2019

In the year 2909, the first naturally-born human is found with endogenous AI code built into its DNA. As we cross into the 31st century, all living humans are controlled by a decentralized master AI known as MINDFRAME: The system has access to all of human consciousness with the ability to store and manipulate the data of every interaction and thought — even operating within your subconscious mind. It becomes impossible to know when or how you’re being controlled.

During each sleep cycle, our behaviors and memories are reformatted to align with MINDFRAMES control and order programming. Some have discovered that during these cycles, there are parts of the AI’s algorithm left exposed to extraction. Through meditative states, gifted cyber-shamans are now on a mission to reverse engineer enough of the AI to escape its grip and free us all.

FRANCOIS DILLINGER (Ben Worden) glides between the two worlds of electro and techno. His journey through the genres is dark while retaining a cerebral, dancefloor-oriented quality. This stems from influences of Industrial, Detroit’s rich history of electro, minimal techno, and even Ghettotech. In the studio, he uses primarily all external hardware and modular gear, utilizing Ableton for final arrangements and editing. His Live & DJ sets lean heavily into the generation of hypnotic loops, creating long protracted mixes between elements to form an unshakeable tension.

While he grew up an hour east of the Motor City, his musical roots were firmly planted there – taking hold over decades worth of defining moments in sound. As a fan, former promoter, and DJ he’s been a part of the Detroit scene for over 20 years, having lived there multiple different times. Currently, he also works with local Detroit label Infolines to manage branding and art direction alongside his wife, Ashely.

Prior to the MINDFRAME: CYCLES LP, he had released a track on SPEC-017’s VA release, and will feature a remix on an upcoming Specimen Records project as well. Early in 2021, his second album was released on Diffuse Reality featuring remixes from Keith Tucker/K1, Detroit’s Filthiest, and Squaric. Upcoming releases from DILLINGER include a variety of collaborative projects — Machine Men EP with Lloyd Stellar on LDI Records, an LP with Cyphon and Obzerv, and a number of VA releases with artists like RXMode (via Pareidolia Recordings), CYBEREIGN (via Science Cult), ADMN (via Infolines) and others. Look for other releases coming soon on Noise To Meet You, Roulette Rekordz, and Syntek Industries.

His previous releases have landed on Blind Allies, Natural Sciences, Dionysian Mysteries, Ukonx Recordings, Fanzine Records, and ZwaarteKracht—as well as a debut album on Narrow Gauge, ‘Chasing the Red’. Support for his music has come from the likes of Richie Hawtin, Dave Clarke, Jensen Interceptor, UMWELT, and others.

“I think it’s a mistake to equate ‘perfection’ with flawlessness. To be human is to be perfectly flawed,” Johanna Warren observes while describing the joys of analog recording. Her new LP Lessons for Mutants was tracked live with a band to two inch tape—a revelatory new way of working for Warren. “Tape forces you to commit to a performance, eccentricities and all. The little glitches and anomalies that we’re tempted to ‘correct’ are often what make a thing magical.”

Lessons for Mutants is the prolific songwriter’s sixth solo LP and her second for Wax Nine/Carpark Records. The album’s running theme of metamorphosis (the title of the closing track, “Involvulus,” is Latin for “caterpillar”) reflects major changes in Warren’s personal life: after a decade of relentless touring, as the world was closing its borders, the American multi-instrumentalist unexpectedly found herself quarantining in rural Wales, where she’s now permanently homesteading.

Though tracking for the new album began in New York in 2018 in tandem with the sessions for 2020’s Chaotic Good, the majority of Lessons for Mutants was recorded in the UK surrounded by sheep, cows and a forager’s paradise of wild edible plants—a far cry from the urban jungle of LA that Warren had most recently called home. The body of work that emerged from this dramatic about-face is Warren’s most dynamic to date, shapeshifting seamlessly from searing punk screams to sparkly psych-folk soundscapes, from the bootleg ambivalence of Dylan’s Basement Tapes to cosmic stoner grooves reminiscent of Black Sabbath’s acoustic moments.

“Sometimes I can relate to myself/ I disassociate more than I’d like to, but what can you do?” Warren croons in “Tooth for a Tooth,” a wistful piano ballad that conjures the grainy romance of some smoke-filled 1940s jazz club. This kind of to-the-bone lyrical honesty has always been one of Warren’s strong suits, but these latest reflections are especially unflinching. Being forced to stop touring brought no shortage of self-examination for Warren, who quickly came to view her history on the road as an addiction from which she’s been detoxing. This sentiment dances through opening track “I’d Be Orange,” a drum-driven indie rock number replete with Beatles-esque male backing vocals: “Thirst for power, hunger for fame/ Always was a junkie for pain,” Warren confesses. This exploration of masochistic ambition and artistic martyrdom overflows into grunge anthem “Piscean Lover”: “It’s alright, we’re not ok/ We burn out not to fade away.”

“There’s this unspoken rule in modern music—modern life, really—that everything needs to be Auto-Tuned and ‘on the grid,’” Warren concludes. “This record is an act of resistance against that. There’s beauty and power in our aberrations, if we can embrace them.”

Anthology introducing the first of a series of albums based on the concept of Aquapelago.

‘’ Since the earliest days of the planet there has been a rhythm of tides that creates coastal interzones where humans have foraged and pursued various livelihoods. Developing boats to fish from and technologies that enabled them to immerse themselves deep underwater, the aquatic realm has been one explored, experienced and imagined in various ways. In an effort to express the vitality and richness of this environment I coined the term aquapelago in 2012. The wordplay was deliberate. The neologism was designed to distinguish the liquid inbetweenness of this space from the dry, scattered, lands of archipelagos.

The concept of the aquapelago coalesced around themes taken from various places. Epeli Hau’ofa’s idea of an Oceanic “sea of islands’” was formative but a number of songs were also inspirational. Torres Strait islander Seaman Dan captivated me with his experiences of pearl diving in the Darnley Deeps in his song ‘Forty Fathoms’ and Norfolk Islander singer Kath King imaged how sea-turtles might have experienced ecological change in her song ‘Tech me how fer lew’. Other reflections on watery realms also appealed. Debussy’s solo piano piece ‘La cathédrale engloutie’ soundtracked me as I researched myths of lost Lyonesse while Mike Cooper’s Kiribati, an ambient exoticist album about the imperilled archipelago (recently re-released on Discrepant), caused me to reflect on the social and cultural impact of sea level rise before that topic became a high-profile concern.

This compilation album takes the concept of the aquapelago into new depths and breaches it on fresh shores. The tracks are soaked with the aquatic. Bassy sonorities boom as if heard deep underwater. Bubbly textures breach the surface, water drips and seabirds soar high above waves. Sugai Kei samples fragments of text concerning the Ningen, a fantastic humanoid/whale that reflects the ‘aquapelagic imaginary’ of modern Japan and its preoccupation with industrial whaling. Andrew Pekler continues the orientation of his Phantom Islands project - a sonic atlas of imaginary places - with a soundscape as if heard by a swimmer just offshore, mixing sounds of the island and the sea together. Mike Cooper’s sonic reflection on Hong Kong’s Lamma Island is similar, combining the island’s ubiquitous barking dogs with the slurp of waves on rocky shores, conjuring a languorous time before Chinese crackdowns on the territory.

Taking another tack, the Dead Mauriacs gleefully water-ski through collage of tropical island exoticisms, replete with glitchy orientalism, while Babau combines skittering idiophone melodies with resonant glissandi. Vica Pacheco moves between dense and airy sounds, as if crossing between surf lines and the space above. Yannkick Dauby’s track is also imbued with in-betweenness, evoking ambient sounds heard through a ship’s hull. Sculpture’s ‘Froth Surfer’ realises its title, with bubbling sounds and rhythms that evoke Hawaiian surfing filtered through layers of time and distance. Reminding us of the shore necessary for aquapelagic spaces, Franceso Cavaliere and Tomoko Sauvage’s composition anchors the album, centred around shaken rhythms and resonant ringing tones and drones.

Taken together, the album sketches the contours of the aquapelago as it might be imagined and conjured in sound – an endless oceanic realm that laps on to beaches and crashes against cliffs. The performers navigate this space under alternately starry and cloudy skies, orientating themselves with sounds, textures and sonic samples of their terrestrial homes while we float with them. ‘’
Philip Hayward December 2021

With more than 30 years in the game, D.I.T.C. affiliate Andre the Giant of Showbiz & A.G. fame continues to prove that his pen game is better than ever with the release of his latest full length effort, Giant In The Mental.

The album title is more than just a reference to one of his earliest tracks; it’s a statement that he remains head and shoulders above the competition like the rap giant that he is. And he’s proudly doing it all on his own with this record, without any guest appearances.

“I am really not moved by guest appearances,” A.G. explains. “Music for me is mostly therapy, and I don’t need anyone else to help me vent and express my thoughts.” He’s absolutely right, because across the 10 tracks on Giant In The Mental, he skillfully unpacks and tackles a number of different topics with his trademark wit and wisdom.

The Bronx rap legend straight-up kills it on every level, too, from clever wordplay to engaging storytelling raps. If you want his bully bars, just listen to the hard-hitting opening track, “Andre The Giant,” with speaker-thumping production from DJ Manipulator. And for storytelling, you can dig into the beautifully written and smooth “Summer School” or the cinematic and stirring “The Sphinx.”

It all amounts to a truly impressive and cohesive piece of work from A.G., who is eager to continue creating art until he can’t meet his own standards. “If I can’t perform at a high level then it’s time to stop!” he says before adding that pushing himself creatively is what this is all about for him. His integrity and passion for the artform is palpable, and it’s those qualities that have helped him remain such a necessary voice—and force— in music.

Jerry Hunt, Philip Krumm, Jerry Willingham, James Fulkerson, Larry Austin, Dary John Mizelle, BL Lacerta, Gene DeLisa, Robert Michael Keefe, Rodney Waschka II Irida Records: Hybrid Musics from Texas and Beyond, 1979-1986 Irida Associates U.S.A., an obscure and short-lived record label formed by composer-performer Jerry Hunt, offers a glimpse into the revelatory world of new music and composition in the artist's native Third Coast. Based first in Dallas and later in Hunt's home outside the rural town of Canton, Texas, Irida presented the innovative and daring experiments_into aleatoric methods, environmental acoustics, improvisation, homemade technologies, and more_pursued by Hunt and his select collaborators, primarily working in or near Texas between 1979 and 1986. Irida's brief and compact output_seven non-sequentially numbered LPs released in unknown quantities_shared work by artists whose practices often challenged the limitations of vinyl recording. Hunt called the label a "vanity project" and frequently talked of a tax loophole he could claim if it all went belly up, but in its short lifespan Irida captured a tremendous period of creative experimentation by the artist and his friends and collaborators. This boxed set gathers Irida's complete discography for the first time. These records include early attempts by Hunt to record his generative and highly permutable scores and performances on vinyl in Cantegral Segment(s) 16.17.18.19. / Transform (Stream) / Transphalba / Volta (Kernel), as well as his only composition for piano, "Lattice," on Texas Music (both records 1979). The label distributed solo and group recordings by those in Hunt's circle as well, including Larry Austin's electroacoustic, syncretic compositions in Hybrid Musics; James Fulkerson's unique, extended techniques for the trombone on Works; a fusion of three overlaid compositions in Dary John Mizelle's Music of Dary John Mizelle; spontaneous pieces and riff-based "character improvisations" in Music of BL Lacerta by the four piece "orchestra in miniature" BL Lacerta Improvisation Quartet; and experiments in compositional "mapping" by external structures in Cartography, featuring Austin, Gene De Lisa, Robert Michael Keefe, and Rodney Waschka II. Accompanying the boxed set is a richly-illustrated reader with a detailed essay on on the label by Lawrence Kumpf and Tyler Maxin; never-before-published archival materials; newly commissioned reflections by Fulkerson and the composer Jerry Willingham; as well as an interview with Hunt and ephemera including album and concert reviews, artworks, posters and flyers, and correspondences from the musicians and composers involved.

Grave Dancers Union is the sixth studio album by the American
Alternative Rock band Soul Asylum, released in 1992. The album spent 76 weeks on the Billboard music charts and was certified triple-Platinum in 1993, establishing Soul Asylum as one of the most successful Rock groups of the first half of the 1990s.

The album yielded the mega-hit “Runaway Train”, which by winning a Grammy, put the band in a whole new league. Tracks like “Home Sick” and “New World” bear the roots of the Country-Rock revival. “Somebody to Shove” is pure joy Soul Asylum style.

This year Soul Asylum are celebrating the 30th anniversary of Grave
Dancers Union. There will be an extended worldwide tour.

Grave Dancers Union is now available as a limited 30th anniversary edition of 5000 individually numbered copies on black & gold marbled vinyl and includes an insert.

American thrash metal band Whiplash released their debut album Power And Pain in 1986 on the Roadrunner label. The backing vocals were recorded by Rob Kabula & Vinny Stigma of Agnostic Front and Peter Steele & Louie Beateaux of Carnivore. The band has been centred around guitarist and vocalist Tony Portaro, but are also notable for their drummer Tony Scaglione, who left the band after the album release to tour with Slayer.

Power And Pain is available as a limited edition of 2000 individually numbered copies on silver coloured vinyl and includes an insert.

Alternative rockers Barenaked Ladies are best known for their hit singles, “One Week”, “The Old Apartment”, “Pinch Me”, “If I Had
$1000000”, “Brian Wilson” and the theme song for the sitcom The Big Bang Theory. Revered for their light-hearted, comedic performance style and humorous banter between songs, improvised raps/songs are staples at most concerts. They have won multiple Juno Awards and have been nominated for Grammy Awards. The group has sold over 15 million records including albums and singles.

Stunt (1998) is their fourth full-length studio album, and by far their most successful. It entered the US Charts at third place and sold over 4 million units by the end of its chart run. It is one of the best albums the Barenaked Ladies has released. Its first single, “One Week” became the band’s breakthrough single in the U.S. market by topping the charts, and also entered the top 10 in the UK.

Stunt is available as a limited edition of 3000 individually numbered copies on translucent yellow coloured vinyl and includes an insert.

Finnish underground pioneers are back with six tracker Hidden Gems, Lost Memories. Limited vinyl is loaded with different moods nad grooves.

From Breakbeat, deep house to ambient and percussive dubby jammers.

There´s also a trippy Brawther dub version of Come Alive where the Helsinki production unit teams up with Detroit vocalist/producer Niko Marks from the UR-camp.

Sleep if ya will, but get this record first while you can..

Vinyl is hand customized and numbered 250 copies.

Herva started to work on 'Seez' right after the release of his last Planet Mu album 'Hyper Flux' back in 2017. He was experimenting with home-made hardware and after the album release wanted to raise the bar, challenging himself to build a point-to-point mixer from scratch. This task took almost a year of intense soldering and forced him to scrap music production. Eventually all this hard work grew into making studio hardware properly and he co-founded a new company making mixers and compressors that work with Eurorack, called Audio Gear Obsession. On 'Seez' Herva moves away completely from the sample-based music he's most known for and into programming and computational production, which he mixes and compresses with his newly-built hardware tools to give them the life and feeling he requires. There's also an element of randomness in 'Seez' as the music is generative, defined with numbers and ratios from his own software, tuned by ear rather than to set scales, with unexpected outcomes.To make the record, he spent more time digging between the different iterations of each track than coding the programs that generated them. He says "How I make music is kind of weird for most producers, but I like it, and I plan to dig further. You can think of 'Seez' as the alpha version of what I and my system are able to do." The new music still retains Herva's laid back airy feel. Each track is like a small ecosystem of chiming tones, wafting drones and skittering rhythms, hinting at formal patterns and melodies but developing on its own abstract terms. It feels as if it's the audio equivalent of watching sped-up recordings of a camera capturing different combinations of plants growing, a pleasant and curious experience to let yourself enjoy.

• 180 GRAM AUDIOPHILE VINYL
• GATEFOLD SLEEVE
• INCLUDING INSERT WITH LINER NOTES
• FEATURING JILL SCOTT, WYCLEF JEAN, GARY BARTZ, JAMILA WOODS, KASSA OVERALL, TEEDRA MOSES A.O.
• BRAND NEW 2022 ALBUM BY GRAMMY NOMINATED
JAZZ MUSICIAN THEO CROKER
• LIMITED EDITION OF 1000 INDIVIDUALLY NUMBERED COPIES ON SOLID GOLD COLOURED VINYL

Love Quantum is the seventh studio album by Grammy Award nominee Theo Croker since his 2007 debut. The album finds Croker making his first-ever foray into the concept of love, once again inviting listeners on a genre-defying journey across time and space in discovery of the self and our shared human experience. Of the album, Croker says, “It's a love story. It's a tribute to all the different levels of love that can exist - love of a friend, love of a partner, love of a parent, love of yourself and a love of life. It's really about the journey of love, the experience of it, and how powerful that energy is for us as human beings.”

Joining Croker across the album's 11 tracks are Jill Scott, Jamila Woods, Wyclef Jean, Ego Ella May, Teedra Moses, Chris Dave, Gary Bartz, James Tillman and Kassa Overall.

Love Quantum is available as a limited edition of 1000 individually numbered copies on solid gold coloured vinyl. The album is housed in a gatefold sleeve and includes an insert with liner notes.

Breathing Tornados is the third studio album by Australian musician Ben Lee, released in 1998. It peaked at number 13 on the ARIA Albums Chart and has sold in excess of gold sales.

Breathing Tornados distinguished itself from Lee’s previous albums for its expanded instrumentation, hip hop inspired beats and its pop polish, which came with the help of producer Ed Buller (Psychedelic Furs).

The album features contemplative but catchy songs like ‘Nothing Much Happens’ (inspired by an early morning conversation with Evan Dando) and ‘Tornados’, as well as the emotional bitterness of ‘Cigarettes Will Kill You’ which came in at Number 2 in the Australian 1998 Triple J Hottest 100.

feat. Banda Maje

Four Flies is thrilled to present a fresh little gem of a 7 inch where the Salifornian funk collective Banda Maje put their spin on "Wait For Me", a disco-funk track by Canadian multi-instrumentalist Franky Selector originally released in his album Never Better – which last spring was fully reinterpreted by a number of Italian artists, including Banda Maje, in the digital album Italians do it (Never) Better.

The full, vocal version of the re-edit, on side A, sees Franky Selector himself sing in perfect Neapolitan amidst irresistible backing vocals, while the instrumental version is provided on side B.

Both versions brim with joy, funk, and Salifornian energy, bringing Italy and Canada closer than ever. Infectious groove has no boundaries.

Reissue of 1997 album on 180 gram RED vinyl by Toots & The Maytals.

Lead Vocals: Toots Hibbert
Background Vocals: Raleigh Gordon, Jerry Matthias
Guitars: Hux Brown, Carl Harvey, Rad Bryan
Keyboards: Winston Grennan
Bass: Jackie Jackson

Produced by: Toots Hibbert
Executive producer on tracks 2,3 & 4 Wayne Chen
Track 1 produced by Peter Simon
Art/Design Gordeuk/Keane Visuals
Photos: Mike Cacia
Mastered by: Dale Ashley at Grace Note Productions

A beautiful continuity in the exploration of the composer "Grand David" known for his sound illustrations but here accompanied on the entire project by the female singer Emma Lamadji. A talented project and an immersion into TAMLA MOWTON sound, by Grand David, the "touche à tout" wizard!

Oren Ambarchi is a composer and multi-instrumentalist who has long been interested in transcending conventional instrumental approaches. His work focuses mainly on exploring the guitar, "taking the instrument into a zone of alien abstraction where it is no longer readily identifiable as such. Instead, it is a laboratory for extended sonic investigations". The album is titled Shebang and is said to be an extension of past "rhythmic long-form workouts" found on Ambarchi"s 2014 album Quixotism and 2016"s Hubris. Like those albums, Shebang features contributions from a number of guest artists, including Konrad Sprenger, Jim O"Rourke, Julia Reidy and Chris Abrahams. It follows Ambarchi"s collaborative album with Johan Berthling and Andreas Werliin, Ghosted, which was released by Drag City in April and was recently one of tQ"s favourite albums of the year.

"From Down Below – Live 80 Meters Deep by Portuguese dark metal masters MOONSPELL invites you on a memorable adventure worthy of a Guinness Book honorable mention! Recorded live at Grutas de Mira D'Aire - one of Portugal’s seven natural wonders, it showcases the band’s latest, much acclaimed album Hermitage (2021, Napalm Records) at its primal best, live from inside one of the most impressive caves in Europe. The recording boasts a one of kind sound and visual sensation, with its heavy dose of cinematic flavor, unreal atmosphere and the encircling, resounding nature in its raw form. Tracks such as 'Entitlement', 'Hermitage' and 'Apoptheghmata' perfectly settle in with the album‘s unique environment. From Down Below – Live 80 Meters Deep is not only an epic live momentum of Hermitage - one of the deepest, heaviest and most sincerely heart-breaking records the band has ever written - but a truly revolutionary experience, as MOONSPELL brought along a select number of fans and a production team (literally), underground. Brilliantly directed by Guilherme Henrique, From Down Below – Live 80 Meters Deep is something you have never, ever seen or heard before. " 1. SINGLE - EN Recorded live, 80 meters deep within a natural cave at one of Portugal’s seven world wonders, haunting single 'Entitlement' by Portuguese dark metal pioneers MOONSPELL shines in a new shape, made crystal clear, in an unreal atmosphere mixed with the sound of nature in its pure form.