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as in, a borgesian term of imprisonment in which you come to learn that stasis is an illusion. you attune and collect evidence. long shadows swing from the room’s sharpened edges, contracting and rotating with each passage of the sun, cumulatively tilting toward the next season. the cyclical heating and cooling of the concrete inscribes what you eventually recognize as an insistent rhythm onto your skin. it feels as though you’re preparing yourself to haunt the place. the first visitation comes in winter. sound bubbles from a crack in the wall, a conversation you can’t follow and hardened repeating codes that splash off the walls like rain. it had to be, and you’re looking away.

New York-based producer Kurilo opens Tripsitter Records’ debut vinyl with "Take the Excitement", a hypnotic blend of rumbling bass and spacey synths. It's an immersive soundscape, perfect for both psychedelic journeys and late-night afterhours.

Next up, KVRK delivers a mind-bending techno cut—an intense, pulsating ride that feels like crossing an event horizon. Relentless and otherworldly, it transports listeners into uncharted sonic territory.

On the flip, Spain’s T.S.O channels '90s tech house with a bass-heavy roller full of nostalgic flair and modern groove. It's a confident dancefloor weapon, bridging classic vibes with a contemporary edge.

Closing the release, Jubley shifts into darker territory. With punchy percussion and eerie textures, his track oozes tension and atmosphere. A bold departure from his usual style, it’s a gripping end to a standout first release.

Wasteland EP - debut solo from Tomie - six cuts running from electro to techno - 808drive, rough edges and stripped to its core.

Berlin-based, half Italian and half Moroccan. Runs the /xex label and the project torcidas mentes. Produces electro, techno, and EBM. Plays both live and DJ sets. Upcoming releases on Sismo 005 and XEX 002.

Beat Machine Records is proud to present the fifteenth chapter of its iconic Swinging Flavors series, starring Ac1d Vicious—a brutalist force in underground jungle and acid rave—backed with a remix from high-speed specialist Samurai Breaks.

“Screamer” is exactly that: a hardware-driven sonic assault that draws from 90s breakbeat chaos and acid techno ferocity. Think distorted amen breaks colliding with tortured 303 riffs, all arranged on glitchy hardware gear with no safety nets. Every snare slices through, every bass stabs deep—it’s raw, unstable, and unapologetically intense.

The B-side flips the script with Samurai Breaks’ signature footwork‐meets-jungle rework. Twitchy, fast-paced and percussively scattered, his remix injects hypermodern energy while preserving the original’s rave DNA. The two tracks together form a high-pressure 7” that captures both the nostalgia of old-school warehouse violence and the momentum of cutting-edge club experiments.

Following artists like DJ Sofa, Ornette Hawkins and naco, to name a few recent ones, Ac1d Vicious marks a new evolution for the Swinging Flavors series—one where tempo and texture are weapons, and the dancefloor is a war zone.

This release continues Beat Machine Records' mission to highlight forward-thinking club music rooted in global underground culture, with a sharp focus on physical formats and hybrid rhythms.


b b1. Screamer Samurai Breaks Remix

We’re happy to announce the “Planetary Shift” EP by our friend O-Wells with an additional remix by Bangkok’s finest Sarayu from More Rice. An EP that combines friendship and a long overdue Ozelot-cosmos release. After we heard “Planetary Shift” a while ago for the first time, we kept insisting on releasing it- Now we’re happily presenting it to you in the form of a 4 track EP.

The record orbits around O-Wells’ signature style: dub-inflected drums, slithering synth lines, and percussive patterns that never sit still. There’s a sleek futurism to these tracks, but they feel worn-in, like spacecraft that have already charted the edges of known space. Across the EP, O-Wells embraces tension and release—rolling low-end pressure that swells, only to dissolve into weightless melodic fragments.

The result is music that feels in constant flux, forever shifting through sonic terrain without losing its pulse. Anchoring the EP is a remix from Sarayu, a key voice from Southeast Asia’s flourishing electronic music scene. Known for threading traditional rhythmic sensibilities into contemporary club frameworks, Sarayu flips O-Wells’ abstract groove into something tactile and urgent. His version turns the track inside out—primal percussion and humid atmospheres pushing the original’s spacious minimalism toward a more grounded, earthy palette. It’s a vital rework that expands the release’s global reach, bridging Frankfurt and Bangkok through the shared language of rhythm and friendship – Overall, the reason why we do what we do.

Songs for Nothing was written upon Olan Monk’s return to the west coast of Ireland. The album is imbued with the influence of sean-nós singing, Irish language songs in the “old style” that often proclaim tales of love, loss and landscape; and also heavily indebted to the late Sinéad O’Connor’s confessional songwriting. Reconstructing these influences through their unique perspective has resulted in a fragmentary album veering between collaged pop, machinic rock and slow airs, “dedicated to Conamara and all who have called it home”. The western, Atlantic-facing edge of Ireland has a particular feeling and energy, one that permeates the release: the granite pulsates, the ocean and sky reflect intensities, seaweed rots on shingle shores, plants bloom, ancient trees come up for air from the drowned forest in Galway Bay, the sun splinters through the low clouds.

All songs written and arranged by Olan Monk
Vocals, guitars, piano and tin whistle performed by Olan Monk
Drum programming by Olan Monk featuring recordings of percussion performed by Michael Speers
Vocals on ‘Down 3’ and ‘Fate (Reprise)’ performed by Maria Somerville
Cello on ‘Blank Page’, ‘Oatmilk’, ‘Pomegranate’ and ‘Fate (Reprise)’ performed by Risteárd Ó’hAodha
Violin on ‘Corp’, ‘Down 3’ and ‘Drón Feadóige’ and accordion on ‘Amhrán Mhaínse’ performed by Peadar Tom Mercier
Bodhrán on ‘Corp’ and ‘Drón Feadóige’ performed by Aindriú De Buitléir
Harp on ‘10 Days’ performed by Róisín Berkeley
Flute on ‘10 Days’ performed by Dylan Kerr
Accordion on ‘Blank Page’ performed by Olan Monk

Recorded and mixed by Olan Monk
Additional mixing on ‘Can’t Wait’ by Patrick Burniston
Mastered by Noel Summerville
Photography by Charlie Joe Doherty
Artwork by Nicola Tirabasso
Thanks to Nic Tasker

With love to friends and family for their support in making this record
Dedicated to Conamara and all who have called it home

A legend of the Chicago house scene, befriending Ron Hardy and Frankie Knuckles in his teens before forming influential house trio Risque III, and still prolific today via releases on Marcel Dettman’s ‘Bad Manners’ imprint, K'Alexi Shelby partners with Tony Loveless for their Planet E debut, ‘Ancestral Rhythm’.

Across a rolling nine-minute odyssey of old-school but future-facing jack, ‘Ancestral Rhythm’ finds the pair tapping into their most uncompromising rhythmic instincts, melding the tough machines of their studio with organic percussion and oscillating plunges into raw, escalating electronics.

In complimentary fashion, Carl Craig expands on the existing material for a subtle, tight C2 edit of the pair’s original material. Roadtested over the summer season in Ibiza and beyond, Craig masterfully sharpens the original’s frenetic edges, while adding another chorus of chants to Shelby and Loveless’s psychedelic soup.

MJ Lenderman is a songwriter born and raised in Asheville, North Carolina. The anatomy of an MJ record might go something like this: warped pedal steels and skuzzed out guitar; a voice reminiscent of the high-lonesome warble of a choirboy; the keen observations and reflections of a front stoop philosopher. Songs snake their way from a lo-fi home recording to something glossier made with longtime friends at Asheville's Drop of Sun studios, but the recording setting
doesn't seem to matter much - at its core, a Lenderman song rings true.

MJ Lenderman was recorded, mixed and mastered for digital in 2019 by Colin Miller in Asheville NC, and was self-released online to quiet but firm acclaim. Now available as a Double LP and remastered for vinyl by Heather Jones, it offers a glimpse into the formative steps of a style; focused and precise, yet expansive and rough around the edges, that remains consistent across MJ's catalogue to date.

Looking as firmly to the legacy of 90s slowcore as it does to the tenor of Magnolia Electric Co. and sound wall of Neil Young and Crazy Horse, these 9 songs clock in at just over an hour and offer warm, patient worlds of heavy colour that blow by breezily. These are songs that wrap mysterious and urgent feeling in layers of patience and clarity that unfold anew with each timeless listen.

Swimming Paul’s music has always lived in the push-and-pull between euphoria and melancholy; the rare kind of electronic music that can make you cry while your body keeps moving.



On Smiling Through the Pain 2 (out October 24 via Headroom Records), the French-born, London-based producer doubles down on that emotional duality, delivering an album that feels as much like a diary as it does a DJ set.

Over the course of 15 tracks, Paul stitches together late-night catharsis, suburban nostalgia, and the jagged tenderness of early adulthood. The record is sequenced like an unbroken night out: the giddy anticipation, the sudden moments of reflection, the quiet comedown as the sun edges in. It’s an album that refuses to treat joy and sadness as opposites, they coexist here, often in the same chord progression.



“I don’t want to escape the feelings, I want to bring them with me” Paul says. “If you can’t stop thinking about something, you might as well dance with it.”

That philosophy runs through the singles: the emotional release of Holly (with Junior Simba), the aching nostalgia of Different Time, the hypnotic haze of Hard 2 Sleep, and the house-driven Drinking to Get Drunk, a bittersweet ode to nights spent outrunning your own thoughts. Elsewhere, Liza M1 folds heartbreak into an almost triumphant piano hook, while Shine a Light urges listeners to take risks and live without hesitation—as if youth’s boldness could be bottled.



Since debuting in 2023, Swimming Paul has quietly built an empire on emotional resonance: 150 million streams across platforms, 1.9 million monthly listeners on Spotify and more than 50 editorial placements (including Dance Party, Crying on the Dancefloor, Electronic Rising….), 10,000+ radio spins worldwide, and sold-out tours across Europe and North America. His sound has earned co-signs from BBC Radio 1, Triple J, KCRW, Sirius XM and a wave of DJs who value melody as much as momentum.

But Smiling Through the Pain 2 isn’t chasing charts, it’s chasing connections. Paul’s global fanbase, nurtured through a lively Discord community and nights on the road, has become a two-way conversation, with fans’ stories feeding back into the music’s emotional core.
This autumn, Paul takes the album to stages that match its ambition, from London to a string of US club dates, festivals and intimate pop ups designed for shared release.



Smiling Through the Pain 2 is an invitation to feel everything at once. To sweat through the sadness. To let your guard down under strobe lights. To realise that the best nights out don’t make you forget; they help you remember.

For its first vinyl release, Shakshouka Records proudly presents the first ever reissue of the Algerian Kabyle band Syphax, a 7-inch featuring two irresistible disco gems that set the dancefloor alight while channeling a kaleidoscope of psychedelic textures and North African Amazigh spirit.


Born in exile on the outskirts of Paris, Syphax fused psychedelic rock, funk, and North African rhythms with the lyricism of Amazigh poetry and the rebellious energy of the 1970s. This record pairs the celebratory "Thamghra" meaning "party" in Amazigh and originally featured on their long-forgotten LP, with the disco-infused "Skate Dance," released years before skate culture spread across the globe and a testament to the band's cutting edge.


Remastered by Nick Robbins and compiled by Cheb Mimo, this reissue restores the bold sound of Syphax: a voice of diaspora, freedom, and boundless creativity.

Footwork pioneer Traxman presents "Tekvision Volume 4," the highly anticipated new album set to drop this November on Teklife. A defining force in Chicago’s House, Ghetto House, Juke, and Footwork scenes for over 30 years, Traxman continues to innovate with a cutting-edge release that builds on decades of influence and expertise, featuring tracks that pay homage to Chicago’s West Side roots.

With "Tekvision Volume 4," Traxman reaffirms his legendary status as one of electronic music’s most influential figures, delivering an album designed for both footwork veterans and a new generation of listeners ready to experience the genre’s next evolution.

When people think of Yacht Rock-those smooth, sun-drenched sounds that once drifted from Californian radio stations in the late '70s and early '80s-they rarely imagine it echoing through rehearsal rooms in Hamburg or Linz. Yet even far from the Pacific coastline, the appeal of shimmering chords, laid-back grooves, and polished production found fertile ground.
This compilation gathers rare and overlooked tracks from Germany and Austria. These artists embraced West Coast aesthetics with sincerity and subtle twists, resulting in music that feels both familiar and refreshingly new-smooth sounds for cloudy skies. So drop anchor, pour something cool, and enjoy this unexpected cruise through the lesser-charted waters of Euro Yacht Rock.

Our journey begins in Austria, where Reflection's Because (1981) set the tone with blue-eyed soul and analogue warmth-a sunlit blend of Doobie Brothers polish and local charm. Its creator, Dieter Heyduk, reappears with Austrian Sky, a heartfelt nod to his homeland that fuses mountain calm with oceanic longing.
From the North Sea island of Föhr, Ara Pacis dreamed of California on their 1979 self-release To the Westcoast. Inspired by Steely Dan and Lake, they turned German rock precision into breezy, melodic sophistication. Meanwhile, in Düsseldorf, Mainpoint fused funk and jazz-rock on Frisbee, their 1980 single bursting with rhythmic drive and optimism before the tide of the Neue Deutsche Welle swept such grooves aside.
Bremerhaven's Nuages offered the compilation's only instrumental gem, Strange Weekend (1985)-a gentle blend of jazz-funk and rock and largely lost to time. Its cool restraint captures the European interpretation of Californian ease.
Around the same period, British traveler Gavin James recorded River of Laughter in southern Germany, backed by the blues-rock band Black Cat Bone. His acoustic reflections on water and flow mirrored the soft, meditative pulse at Yacht Rock's core.
Berlin's Top Spin kept things playful with Bikin (1985), a funk-fusion snapshot of urban joy that showcased the city's finest session players. From the Ruhr area, the Jan Pack Band is up next. While not a typical Yacht Rock track, Cable Dance is driven by an effortless, groovy '80s vibe.
Peter Seiler's Goldfinger project reimagined Walkin' in the Sand as a relaxed reggae-tinged track, while Munich's Major Seven closed the voyage with Silverboat, a wistful soft rock ballad gliding between melancholy and light.

Across these hidden harbors of German and Austrian pop, the West Coast dream took on new forms-reflected in rivers, skies, and studio lights half a world away from L.A. Under and Above the Clouds celebrates that spirit: the enduring pull of smooth music, wherever it's made.

Slip is Paul Abbott’s response to his 3 day residency at OTO in 2023. It’s a continued exploration of the acoustic-digital hybrid drum setup Abbott has been developing for some time, which involves drum kit and synthetic sounds combined closely—through an entanglement of limbs and cables—in an intimate but strange relationship with each other.

Paul Abbott hasn’t had any formal musical training, but has a long history of making music, having collaborated for years with Seymour Wright, Pat Thomas, Michael Speers, Cara Tolmie, Anne Gillis and many others. Eventually, led by a profound suspicion of what is fixed or limited, Abbott began finding other ways to organise sound - or what he calls ‘material’:

“I wanted a way to 'persuade' or guide the possibility of something happening - my activity or the events of an algorithmic composition - for example, but without certainty or formalism. It felt to me, during playing, that certain ideas had a particular sort of shape, but more than the form of a line. I began to write alongside (before/after) playing the drums, and ‘characters’ began to enter the scene as a more wobbly, and therefore appropriate option to notation. Working with these characters allowed me to simultaneously approach body, imagination, language and music: without dividing things up or separating these aspects from each other. It allowed me to leave things messy and entangled, whilst trying to deal with form and specificity: wanting to have some things feel or respond differently to other things at other times.”

In approaching his residency, Abbott developed a fixed cast of characters - crystal, lleaf, reiy.F, reiy.C, strike, nee, qosel, sphu and aahn. They each communicate using different kinds of movement and drum kit/s, and Abbott choreographed them as ‘dances’ based on different feelings, or outlines of behaviours suggestive of ways of moving (body, drums, sounds). He then arranged these characters into ‘compositions’: one for each performance day, with each composition featuring multi-layered activity - options for behaviours, ways to move around the rooms, play drums, develop synthetic sounds, change the lights or re-distribute the sound in the space.

After the performances, Abbott took home 9 hours of recordings split into up to 28 multitrack channels for each day, and re-organised his cast once more into a performance for 2LP, CD and digital. It’s an enormous amount of work - but Abbott is activated by the process. For him, the pleasure of unstable edges, possibilities, slippages, is the vital attraction. Like all living organisms, Abbott’s characters have malleability and responsivity. They stimulate a bundle of possible behaviours, a tendency to act a certain way, a temperament, a boundary of respective limits or affordances.

It’s an affective way of working, inclusive of Roscoe Mitchell, Sun Ra, Nathaniel Mackey and Milford Graves. In ‘Pulseology’(2022), Milford Graves reminds us, ‘Breath varies, so cardiac rhythm never has that (metronomic) tempo. It’s always changing. All the alignments of the heart are determined based on the needs of the cells, specifically tissues and organs. The heart knows if it needs to speed up.’ In Slip, to slip, in a heartbeat, is to descend not into the grid of the even metre accorded to the heartbeat, but into a play of mutability and modality. To change is the condition of the heart.

AOKI takamasa and Tujiko Noriko’s 2005 album »28« has become a cornerstone in the artists’ respective discographies. 20 years after its initial release, Keplar issues it on vinyl for the very first time. Three years in the making, »28« saw the sound artist and the avant-pop singer-songwriter combine their distinct aesthetics for an album that defied categorisation. Their combination of advanced electronic experimentation and pop appeal paved the way for a new generation of artists and turned »28« into an enduring fan favourite. Remastered by Stephan Mathieu, the reissue comes with a brand-new artwork by Joji Koyama and a changed track listing—authorised by Takamasa and Tujiko—for the vinyl version to fit it on a single LP, while the digital version remains identical to the original release.

Tujiko and Takamasa first shared the stage together after the turn of the millennium. Both were emerging solo artists, with Takamasa a mainstay on the Progressive Form label and Tujiko forging a connection with Mego in Vienna, Austria. »I simply liked Noriko’s voice and music, and since we often performed at the same events, it felt like a natural progression for us to start working together,« remembers Takamasa. They first collaborated in 2002 for two shows at the Fondation Cartier in Paris and at SonarLab in Barcelona, respectively. The first joint piece was a rework of Tujiko’s »Fly« from »Hard Ni Sasete (Make Me Hard)« by Takamasa, appearing as the album opener »Fly2« on »28.«

After that, the Paris-based Tujiko and Takamasa, still based in Osaka, worked sporadically and remotely on new material. For the first two years of their collaboration, the two met in the context of live events or Takamasa’s visits to the French capital to discuss their process and exchange hard drives while also occasionally sending each other CDrs in the mail. »Aoki made beats and sounds that complemented my music perfectly, building the foundation on which my voice could float,« Tujiko says today. Takamasa used hardware such as the Nord Modular, the Korg Z1, and the Korg ER-1, while also working with different kinds of software and plug-ins as well as Logic. Tujiko was using Cubase, her preferred piece of gear at the time being an AKAI MPC.

After Takamasa moved to Paris in 2004, this enabled the duo to finish the album together in person. Starting with its subtle use of glitches to the almost-anarchic way in which it deals with the structures of a song, »28« came to be an incomparably intricate album. 20 years on, it remains timeless because of its flawless synthesis of the cutting-edge avant-garde ideas of early 2000s electronica with an idiosyncratic but accessible pop sentiment. Both artists look back fondly—though not uncritically, with Takamasa noting a certain »youthfulness« in his contributions—to the album that was titled after their respective age at that time. »Maybe we should make ›51‹ now?,« quips Tujiko. See you in three years, perhaps.

From the humdrum to the huge; Tiia explores heartbreak, disappointment, climate change, and dying house plants. The record plays with contrasts, light and shadow, fizz and gloom. Keys melt into darker textures before guitars and drums lift them back into sparkle. It's heaviest moment is the title track, written in an airport bathroom after Tiia's father passed, yet even here, hope breaks through in irresistible vocal harmonies and inventive melodies. "To me, 'Kind Eyes' is a feelings record," Tiia says. "The grief for my dad passing sits at the centre and expands towards the edges, but there's a range of other feelings too. Sometimes they're hard to pin down and navigate but the songs are my map, trying to chart where you are and where you're going. And listeners should remember that sometimes X does mark the spot."

Lead single 'Healing' hits like a mascara- smeared midnight drive through Lynch's America. First sketched with Prince in mind, it finally found its teeth on a long, lonely walk in north-east London: a rock song hiding in plain sight. Tiia says "As soon as I had a rough idea for the driving beat, I knew I had to get Sean Berry (fellow bandmate from the once mighty Comet Sands) involved on the guitar, and the hooks all fell into place". Dusted with plush keys, on 'Numbers Game', Tiia leans into classic rock drama - warmth turning suddenly cold, the floor falling away from underneath you. "The lesson here is don't spy on your exes, but when you do, be prepared to write a song about it. It was the first track I asked Paul Rains (of Allo Darlin' fame) to play guitar on and he instantly got where I was trying to go with it. Now he's my partner, I have no idea how he feels about the lyrics!" Tiia laughs. Having also worked with Tiia's previous cult all-girl indie band The Minor Characters, Seb Kellig lent his trademark dub- inspired production influences at the legendary sonic heaven of Sausage Studios, east London, which Tiia calls "My happy place".

Tiia will again be playing keys for Allo Darlin's four UK tour dates this October followed by tour dates as Count Jaakola. 'Kind Eyes' is set for release 21st November 2025 via Tip Top Recordings (Mandrake Handshake, Japanese Television, Pearl & The Oysters, Golden Toad).

Househead London launch their 2nd 12" release - a limited-edition Chicago Vs London sampler featuring Glenn Underground and Emmaculate Remixes.

Following a string of critically acclaimed events featuring Chi-Town royalty, Househead London further cement their relationship with Chicago on this vinyl release which features two of the city’s esteemed producers - Glenn Underground & Emmaculate - remixing two sterling new tracks from two of the UK’s most exciting producers - Prefix One and Wez Whynt.

Opening the EP is an artist who needs very little introduction, Glenn Underground. A leading international producer & DJ who seems to effortlessly slide between Deep, Soulful, Disco, Jazz and beyond, Glenn boasts an exceptional discography that very few could compete with. His Cosmic Disco Journey Mix here weaves its lo slung groove in a funky off-kilter disco style with piano ripples as Nambi’s voice shimmers on top. Nambi’s heartfelt soars across Glenn’s Cosmic Journey remix unfurling beautiful piano and taut Chi-town beats. Deep and vocal, it’s got that raw soul power that both Glenn and Chicago are known for.

Known for his exquisitely high attention to detail and quality, Emmaculate is one of the go-to producers and sound engineers in Chicago. Working closely with Terry Hunter on a multitude of projects and a shining light across the global soulful house scene, he’s regularly featured across impressive labels such as Dopewax, Yorubasoul, United Music, Soulstice Music and S&S Records. His lush, tough-edged Remix of ‘Feelin’, rolls on with melodic piano hooks to unlock the groove and boosted with extra keys and vocal refrains before the full vocal unfolds. Solid and deep, “Feelin’ is pure joy for the dance floor.

Leviathan Whispers is an album of longings, laments, deliriums and drones, savage and sublime. Within are breaths, hums and bone songs for shadows and fl ames to dance to. Tim Hill is an inspirational fi gure within the UK arts, jazz, noise and improv world. A shapeshifting maverick exploring Britain's diverse musical traditions, from rough music to industrial folk, free jazz to dub, post-punk to avant-rock, incorporating ambient electronics, hymns and noise. Having worked with pioneering arts company Welfare State International, Tim’s performed inside Stonehenge, on the back of trucks at Notting Hill Carnival, leading giants through the streets of London, Dublin and Galway, at Olympic Torch events, celebratory feasts and leading humanist funerals. Tim is also festival director for The Sound of the Streets, a charity promoting outdoor music and musical director of the Wye Valley River Festival where he helps street bands across the country including The Big Noise in Taunton and Horns of Plenty in Oxford.

Leviathan Whispers is a spectral, contemplative selection of Tim's recorded work, including material created for art installations, outdoor projects, solo performances and personal meditations. Inspired by landscape and the eternal pull of Blake's Albion, baritone, alto and soprano saxophones are mixed with tape loops, old synths, recycled live recordings, woodwinds and reeds. Other sounds are processed by Colin Potter (Nurse With Wound) and drone artist Jonathan Coleclough. The album artwork and accompanying videos feature sound sculptures by Michael Fairfax (Royal Society of Sculptors) alongside unsettling visuals by fi lm-maker and junk-alchemist David Young. "an amazing player - there's a weight to his music with a wonderfully dark edge" Corey Mwamba / BBC Radio 3 Fans of Colin Stetson, John Surman, Anna Von Hausswolff , William Basinski and La Monte Young will fi nd much to savour on this new 12" LP. LAUNCH PARTY: we're holding a special launch event with a live performance and talk by Tim Hill on Saturday, 15th November inside a beautiful Victorian chapel beneath Royal Berks Hospital, Reading.

EPICA’s seventh full-length studio effort “The Holographic Principle” signified a significant upping of the musical ante for this most adventurous of modern bands. Recorded once with esteemed producer Joost van den Broek at the controls, “The Holographic Principle” represents the most impressive and powerful expression of EPICA’s boldly inventive sound yet. One listen to thunderous songs like ‘Edge Of The Blade’ and ‘Universal Death Squad’ will confirm that “The Holographic Principle” is EPICA’s heaviest album to date. Meanwhile, the shimmering soundscapes and multi-layered melodrama of ‘Once Upon A Nightmare’ and the towering 11-minute title track confirm that “The Holographic Principle” is also the band’s most musically extravagant and daring release so far. With lashings of sumptuous orchestration and a never-ending stream of ingenious but brutal metal riffs and propulsive rhythms underpinning the whole explosive enterprise, this is an album that raises the bar for the entire symphonic metal genre.

Sex Tapes From Mars presents Outdom Records' boss, LATENT, who shares a brand-new four-track EP that spars with breakbeat, electro, house, and left-field electronics, neatly centring them all into a steady, sexy collision. The record as a whole captures genuinely original-sounding, rough-edged b-boy breaking badness - nostalgic, but never polite. It's a few BPMs slower than Sex Tapes' last few outings, but no less effective. Arguably, it's more late '80s sounding than ever, although, in fact, it's a brand-new, stonking release that showcases the label's versatility and unpredictability.

The opening track, "Break Machine", sets the pace with a clear nod to the '80s US group of the same name, bringing tidy drum workouts and clipped vocal samples that recall early Chicago, as well as choppy rave and street party energy at its most unfiltered.

"Disco Hijack" pushes the clutch into a more functional gear, merging delay-heavy, druggy, chuggy, sludgy bass with more robotic vocoder tropes, sharing something playful but IDM and European skewed. It's a dancefloor tool with a wink - just the style this now accomplished label has made its identity. Oh, don't forget the amens and clattering jungle breaks. 1990 or 2040? Fuck knows.

On "Distress Robot", pneumatic percussion and malfunctioning android chatter bring a darker, more mechanical edge, while "Virtual Body" closes with a spacious, garage-leaning shuffle that pulls the EP into recognisable contemporary yet still very much peak-time territory.

LATENT gives lean grit, pushes the edges, and lets the tracks feel alive in their imperfections. It’s music that thrives on tension between old-school reference points and modern floor pressure.

Bristol's label head Elon Dust HAS done it again.

Vinyl-only as per, don't sleep."

Sealand returns with its fourth vinyl release, bringing together Mykoz, Inqoherent and RVOLT for a fierce and emotional journey through cutting-edge hardcore sounds.
The title track Net runners by Mykoz and Inqoherent has already been tearing up festivals across Europe - a high-impact banger built on distorted energy, razor-sharp percussion and a dark futuristic pulse that defines the Sealand spirit.
Inqoherent's Sense of Touch dives deeper, blending haunting melodies with relentless drive, while Mykoz's I'm Losing My Mind captures the tension between emotion and chaos in pure dancefloor form.
To close the record, RVOLT reshapes Mykoz's There Is A Storm Coming into a powerful, crossbreed/industrial remix - heavy, raw and built to destroy big systems.
Net runners marks a new chapter for Sealand: 12'' format vinyl, high quality full coloursleeve in a protective shrinkwrap sleeve

MD008 is here! — a bold new chapter in theever-evolving world of re-edits. This latest instalmentis a masterclass in versatility and emotion: four distinct cuts, four immersivesoundscapes, each crafted to ignite the dancefloor in its own unforgettableway. From hypnotic vocal firestorms to cinematic tributes, MD008 is a recordthat transcends trends and celebrates the timeless art of groove. Vinyl-only,limited edition — a future classic in the making.



A1 –TVGLips
A relentless vocal workout built to commandattention from the very first beat. “TVGLips” is a powerhouse opener —hypnotic, high-energy, and unapologetically intense. Its driving rhythm andsoaring vocal lines lock dancers into a euphoric trance, pushing momentumhigher with every bar. A weapon of choice for peak-time sets.



A2 –Tu Sei
Radiating pure nostalgia, “Tu Sei” channelsthe neon-lit spirit of the 1980s with a contemporary twist. Shimmering synths,heartfelt melodies, and a groove steeped in retro romance make this track anirresistible dancefloor moment. Equal parts cinematic and soulful, it’s a loveletter to a bygone era — and a timeless anthem for now.



B1 –Inquinada
Where new wave attitude meets disco power.“Inquinada” is a darkly seductive cut that pulses with underground energy — rawbasslines, mechanical percussion, and shimmering synth layers collide to createa sound that’s both nostalgic and futuristic. Perfectly balancing edge andallure, it’s a track that keeps the floor moving deep into the night.



B2 –Gatto Fresco
Closing the EP is aheartfelt homage to one of music’s greatest icons. This is a tribute toFreddie, and it’s pure celebration — anthemic, uplifting, and full of life.With its soaring melodies and infectious groove, it captures the unbreakablespirit and theatrical brilliance of Freddie’s legacy, leaving dancersexhilarated and inspired as the lights come up.



LimitedEdition, Vinyl Only
True to form, MD008 ispressed in strictly limited quantities — once it’s gone, it’s gone forever.Collectors, selectors, and lovers of the edit craft: this is a piece you’llwant in your collection.

E23 Records is an independent label from Amersfoort that releases music moving between electro, wave, EBM, and acid—sounds that feel familiar, but not quite at ease. Each release is built with care, made to be both an object to collect and a small joke at the universe’s expense. Patterns appear where they want to, chance plays its role, and sometimes the numbers line up in ways that feel more than coincidental. Tune in, and see what reveals itself.

E23 Records launches its catalog with three dark electro transmissions from Amersfoort residents Son of 8-Bits, Mavanov, and Law Of Fives. Opening with Son of 8-Bits’ “Deliverance”, the record sets an ominous tone: heavy bass pressure and sharp machine rhythms push forward with a cold, driving pulse built for late hours. Mavanov’s “Dark Romanticism” drifts into sparse, hypnotic territory, where cold mechanics meet faint traces of emotion. Law of Fives’ “Primer” closes the trip with an urgent workout that turns rhythm into a labyrinth—metallic strikes, pulsing bass, and restless sequences coiling together, building toward moments where chaos threatens to take over but never quite does.

Together, the three cuts form a statement of intent: E001 is moody, uncompromising electro with just enough strangeness to keep the floor on edge. A first chapter that hints at many more signals to come.

Fragments was a completely new way of working for us. We’ve always worked with an internal brief, creating documents, pictures and videos, simply because keeping an idea on track with three individuals can be difficult. It's easy for someone to be edged out of the creative process when the focus is not clearly defined.
It’s a formula we’ve used since the early 2000s, but things have changed a lot since then, particularly when we decided to dip our collective toes into supporter memberships with Patreon. It made us think about what we could do directly for our support- ers rather than just the next album or project. At first, the whole thing felt odd and uncomfortable, but we decided that we’d try a few things and ask for feedback.
"Fragments" was initially a way for us to see how we could include others in an ongoing creative process. There was no over-arching concept, no defined characteristics or purpose, just the promise that there would be at least one new track for members to download every month. Consequently, we never knew what was coming next, so the old, very focused working method was irrelevant. It was difficult for us to let individual tracks go without knowing what was coming next, but this also made the project more interesting.
And then C19 hit and we were forced to continue the project remotely from our home studios. As difficult as the disruption was, it was during this period that we realised we could re-organise and remaster the individual tracks into a coherent album, captur- ing a specific moment in time and drawing a line under the first phase of the project.
Like our "Allegory" EPs, we’ve tried to keep everything stripped back. We used to hide many subtle elements within the layers, but not so much this time.
Fragments is our journey through many changes, both self-im- posed and those imposed upon us, and it ultimately led us to create things differently. We hope you like it.




b A2















r D1 b Yes Hello (Remastered BONUS) 1:53
s D2 No JuJu (Man Power Version - Remastered BONUS) 4:27
t D3 Cup Noodle (Unemployed Youth Version - Remastered [BONUS]) 5:43
[u] D4 Black Smoke (They Never Got Started) (Remastered [BONUS]) 2:18
[v] D5 Concrete Concentration (Remastered [BONUS]) 3:21
[b] They All Live In The Past (Remastered [BONUS]) 1:06

Massano’s Debut Album Natural Arrives on Vinyl

Following the success of his acclaimed debut album Natural, Massano announces the release on vinyl. Originally released digitally in April 2025, Natural marked a defining chapter in Massano’s artistic evolution and now fans can experience the project in a new tangible format.

A collection of 15 tracks that capture five years of growth, Natural showcases Massano’s ability to craft hard-hitting sonic stories that balance power, depth and emotion. This vinyl features a private edit of fan favourite “The Feeling,” alongside “Angel In The Dark” with Anyma, “Oblivion” with CamelPhat, and “Healing” with Stephan Bodzin. Digging deeper into the album, you'll find long-awaited tracks like “Welcome To The Underworld,” “Fade Away,” and “Over The Edge”, the vinyl release offers an analogue immersion into the full narrative arc of Natural.

Old-time and traditional music stay exciting for their contrasts. Exacting instrumentation honed through mentorships and late-night jams at fiddler's conventions tangles with a community-sourced inventiveness that influences variants and new sounds. Joseph Decosimo is a master of this genre for this very reason, blending deep technique with an openness and curiosity that keep his music crackling with life. A "marvelous fiddler" (No Depression) and banjo player who braids "exultation and veneration" (INDY Week) into his music, on his third solo album Fiery Gizzard Decosimo gathers a close-knit ensemble of friends from his musical career to infuse his interpretations of fiddle and banjo pieces with a contagious communal joy. As an artist working with traditional music from the South and Appalachia, Decosimo chooses songs based not only on historical significance and lineage but also his own sensory approach. For Fiery Gizzard, his ear was tuned to otherworldly tones and mystery, sourcing from field recordings such as Virginia fiddler Luther Davis' hypnotic version of "Shady Grove" while amping up the music's psychedelic potential. On the middle Tennessee banjo composition "Flowery Girls," a VHS of bluesman Abner Jay inspired Decosimo to rig up a pickup inside a fretless banjo and play it thr ough a tube amp to capture some of Jay's edge and funkiness. But to round out the sound and keep it kinetic meant galvanizing a genre-eschewing crew to jam out - and not in a "spaced-out drooly" kind of way, he laughs, but as a sort of "responsive conversation." Decosimo has always been a community-minded artist. He began playing as a seventh graderin Tennessee, fostering relationships with older players at jams and in homes, a learning mode natural to his inquisitive nature and desire for musical connection. A folklorist by intuition, he later became one by profession, studying with old-time legend Clyde Davenport, teaching in East Tennessee State University's renowned bluegrass program, and receiving his PhD at the University of North Carolina with a dissertation titled "Catching the `Wild Note': Listening, Learning, and Connoisseurship in Old-Time Music." In North Carolina, Decosimo kicked about in the verdant environment of Durham and Chapel Hill's folk and indie scenes, collaborating with artists including Alice Gerrard, Hiss Golden Messenger, and Jake Xerxes Fussell. This community has influenced his own music, including his "sublime and strangely heartening" (Bandcamp Daily) 2022 release While You Were Slumbering and Beehive Cathedral, Decosimo's 2024 "Appalachian mountain music treasury" (New Commute) trio album with Luke Richardson and Cleek Schrey for Dear Life Records. Continuing on this path, Fiery Gizzard is home base for a loose outfit of mostly Tarheel-based musicians from within and beyond traditional music. Inspired by a tour with fiddler Stephanie Coleman (Nora Brown), guitarist Jay Hammond, and synth builder and multi-instrumentalist Matthew O'Connell, Decosimo assembled studiomates based on close friendships and comfort. Coleman, O'Connell, and Hammond contribute to Fiery Gizzard, along with bassist and producer Andy Stack (Helado Negro, Wye Oak), horn player Kelly Pratt (Beirut, David Byrne), Mipso and Fust's Libby Rodenbough, Joseph O'Connell (Elephant Micah), and trad/experimental artist Cleek Schrey. Decosimo's fiddle and banjo work is virtuosic, intricate and simple simultaneously, a testament to his many years of study. On some tracks, his playing or lovely, plain-hearted singing is the centerpiece, such as on his interpretations of Texan street preacher Washington Phillips' 1929 recording "I Had a Good Father and Mother" or the Eastern Kentucky fiddle barn-burner "Glory in the Meetinghouse," famously played by Luther Strong for Alan Lomax. But there's also a trusting open-door policy, like where Southern Appalachian tune "Ida Red" relaxes into Coleman's sweet, confident fiddling and Hammond's loping guitar. As a bandleader, Decosimo's confidence and enthusiasm for the music reveal the heart of traditional music and how it can come to life through community. Fiery Gizzard is Joseph Decosimo as a powerful champion of traditional music - a sponge who soaks up as much as he squeezes out, a responsive artist who makes his genre accessible, and a magnet who can bring musicians of all sorts into his orbit with his same passion.

In 2023, k.d.b lived in a crumbling farmhouse on the edge of the River Maas. Each morning, he’d wake at 6:00 and walk along the river’s bank with his dogfriend Miemel, pausing at sunrise for a cup of coffee.

It’s 6:34, and a thick rug of mist rolls out across the river. It’s so dense that k.d.b can’t see the water beneath it. Then comes the sun: a single ray cutting through the mist like a tube of light, landing on Miemel’s face. In her mouth is a CD she’s picked up, and on the CD is the title Instrumental Romance.

'What is Instrumental Romance?' thinks k.d.b. 'Romantic instrumentals? Or a romance used instrumentally? As in, a romance used to get something—like love?'

Miemel drops the CD and turns her attention to a stray purple grape on the path. Grapes are poisonous to dogs, and as she bends toward it, k.d.b. shouts, “NO!” At that precise moment, a large fish rises from the mist. It launches into the air, mouth wide open, and hangs there above the clouds. His shout, having traveled across the river, bounces back towards k.d.b with a “NO,” and in perfect synchrony, it appears the fish is also shouting at Miemel. The timing is so perfect, they can’t be sure it isn’t.

The fish falls back down, entering its watery world with an eerie, splashless silence, leaving k.d.b and Miemel standing open-mouthed on the bank. Before they can register the perfection of this duet, another fish (or maybe the same one again) rises from the mist in the exact same spot and launches into the air. Without thinking, k.d.b shouts again. The word “ROMANCE” comes out. This time, however, he is slightly too late, and the word is too long, so “ROMANCE” lingers on after the fish has already fallen back down.

'What even is romance?' thinks k.d.b. 'The construction of mystery or excitement with dead red flowers and timing?'

A foghorn sounds behind him, and k.d.b turns 180 degrees to see a boat moving freight, right to left, along the River Maas. 'That’s strange', he thinks. 'If the river is there, then what’s that behind me, below the mist?'

Staring at the boat and its shipping containers as they float out of sight, k.d.b imagines a man. The man is standing at the bottom of a small valley, holding a fish. 'Who is this man, and what does he want?'

- Jacob Dwyer

DJ Support: Axel Boman, Coyote, Rune Lindbaek, Dr Rob (Ban Ban Ton Ton), Lefto, Johan Blende, Feel Fly, Marco Gallerani and many more

Secret Soul Society, aka South Wales's Cal Gibson, continues his red-hot streak of form with four original jams for Hell Yeah that effortlessly weave decades of influences into intimate, unusual sounds that go from Balearic daydreams to after-hours soul burners.

Gibson was one-half of Nottingham's deep house and downtempo outfit Neon Heights back in the 2000s, a collective that label head Marco has long admired. He has landed here before with the superb Keep The Mystique in 2023, a 15-track collection of brand new curveball cuts built from lovingly sourced samples. Since then, he has continued to collide jazz, funk, Afro, beats, dub, soul and reggae on Paper Wave and Magic Wand.

'To Be Happy' opens with gentle, sun-soaked grooves, swirling keys and dreamy pads that evoke a hazy Mediterranean sunset. Nostalgic soul samples tug at the heart while the track’s laid-back vibe is perfect for golden-hour moments. 'Orange Surprise' is a magical slice of downtempo bliss with hints of romantic vocals. It's built on soft broken rhythms and drifts between ambient soul and laid-back electronica, perfect for introspective moments or late-night winding down.

'Keep On Trying' flips the script with more texture. The synths are crystalline, the pads are sugary, and the meandering bassline unfolds in wonky fashion while soft male vocals bring a steamy edge. Last but not least, 'What You Do To Me' is funky and slow motion disco with 80s synths and reverb that drowns you in good vibes.

This EP is Secret Soul Society at his most expressive and emotive.

Aitcher Clark steps out from his work as one half of LOFN (Veyl, 2021) with a first solo long-player that draws a sharp line between the club and the cinema.
The 6-track LP moves with intent across ambient space, industrial techno frameworks, and restrained neoclassical harmony. It favors patience over peaks, detail over spectacle, and a narrative arc that rewards a
start-to-finish listen.
The campaign begins September 19th with the lead single “Improperly Planned Experience”, an industrialleaning cut driven by a relentless drum pattern and an eerie, immersive atmosphere. Stark and physical, it sets the tone for the album with its focus on tension, texture, and shadow rather than melody. On the same day, Clark will debut a new live and visual show at Lunchmeat Festival in Prague in collaboration with visual artist OXOO, translating the record into an immersive set where sound design and reactive visuals lock to the micro-gestures that run through the album. The performance is built around custom stems, live resampling, and dynamic lighting cues that mirror the music’s push and pull.
Across the LP, Clark threads field-recorded texture with precision drum programming and layered harmonies, avoiding predictable drops in favor of pressure that accumulates over time. The palette is cool and tactile: detuned pads, clipped low-end, and percussive details at the edge of audibility. Moments of clarity, strings, voice-like synths, negative space, arrive as structural markers rather than ornaments.
For Veyl, the album sits comfortably within a catalog that values forward motion and atmosphere, while opening a more composition-driven lane. For listeners who followed LOFN’s 2021 release, this solo debut widens the frame: less collaborative call-and-response, more solitary architecture, with the same focus on tension and timbre. The live show with OXOO extends that idea beyond the record, using visual rhythm and color to render the music’s internal logic in real time.

Shortly after the breakup of Flower Travellin’ Band, guitarist Hideki Ishima released his first and only solo album in 1973—a hauntingly beautiful work that stands apart in the landscape of ’70s Japanese rock. Known for his later work as a sitar player, Ishima showcases a signature floating guitar sound throughout the album, blending psychedelic rock, acid folk, and introspective singer-songwriter elements into a deeply personal and atmospheric record.

Contributing to this richly textured sound are some of the most notable names from the era: fellow Flower Travellin’ Band member George Wada (drums), future Transam collaborators Chito Kawachi (drums) and Nobuhiko Shinohara (keyboards), and Katsuo Ohno (keyboards) of PYG.

Now reissued with a bold, powerful remaster by Makoto Kubota, this overlooked gem captures a vital moment in Japan’s underground rock evolution and demands a fresh listen from those exploring the outer edges of the genre.

Mona Steinwidder (Museum of No Art) and Mitko Mitkov have spent years exchanging sounds and words across Hamburg's creative landscape - Swimming Pool Reflections is where those exchanges accumulated in Steinwidder's studio beneath the slanted roof of a former barracks. Premiered in November 2024 for Gesa Troch's exhibition "you say water is sweet", the work intertwines Mitkov’s texts (originally composed as emails to members of a swimming club, as imaginary as they are real) with Steinwidder’s clarinet and synthesizer, full of dubby resonance.

Swimming Pool Reflections isn't about swimming. It's about standing at the edge and watching - the way light fractures through water, how shadows play across tile, everything that forms and dissolves in the viewer's eye. The libretto moves through straits where bodies of water collide, small lakes with white slides, pools suspended in generic landscapes generated from uploaded photographs. Binary gods and transparent shadows. Sediment and cosmic hands weaving existence on overdimensional looms.

Across two uninterrupted sides, words float like those oil spots Mitkov describes: "swallowing light, drifting between the waves, forming a strange pattern". The music holds space for these reflections without trying to contain them. Everything stays permeable. Everything keeps moving.

Noumen returns to Central Processing Unit after a six-year absence with Altum. This bumper record, the Ukrainian artist's fourth release for the Sheffield label and first since 2019 double-LPObscurium, serves to remind us all why Noumen's music has been lauded by the likes of Mixmag and Resident Advisor in the past.Altumis a consummate piece of contemporary electronic production, a technoid exploration of outer-edges electronica that nods to genre greats like Autechre while still maintaining its own unconventional charm.

Across well over an hour of music here we find Noumen repeatedly playing punchy mid-tempo beat work off of some more cerebral tuned synths.Altumkicks off with the epic 'Oion' - beginning in that Autechre/AFX mid-tempo zone, full of deep-sea bangs and whirrs, the track slowly builds to a final stretch of delay-drenched keys which set us free amidst the outer cosmos, almost Sun Ra-style. It's a perfect liminal-space roller and an apt scene-setter forAltum.

'Oion' provides a blueprint for several of the album's other highlights - plenty of the joints here adopt that same approach of hitting hard with the drums and soft with the synths. Second track 'Splitter' takes on the baton from 'Oion' while souping up the kick to warehouse levels; the beats in 'Far Wind' splutter like a needle skipping on a mid-90s Tresor drop; 'Fate Carette', all eerie looped synth leads, is a highlight as the album enters the home straight.

The rhythm production (which, it should be noted, is exemplary throughoutAltum) is ratched up in intensity on a handful of numbers. 'Telemask' displays a delightful breakbeat - if you'd told me this was sampled from golden age A Tribe Called Quest, I'd have believed you. Mid-section anchors 'Awe' and 'Axis' are glitchers in the Mike Paradinas mould, with the latter showing off some pleasing steel pan-esque synth leads for good measure. And whileAltumgenerally maintains a processional pace throughout, there are points where Noumen toughens up the drums for club deployment - 'Unveilness' shows off a real chunkiness in the low end, closer 'Spurling Sign' plays a satisfying rolling groove off of ever-layering synths, and the title-track is an alien machine-funker in keeping with fellow CPU electronauts like Silicon Scally and Cygnus.

Noumen's third album for Central Processing Unit is a pleasingly hefty double-LP which builds on the zany invention of acts like Modeselektor and Autechre to delightful effect.

FFO: Autechre, Aphex Twin, Modeselektor, Bochum Welt, LFO

What began as a nostalgic nod to Camden Market’s bootleg culture has become the next chapter of in the Running Back Mastermix series. At once deeply personal and openly communal, it shows how a lifetime of production can be condensed into 90 minutes without losing its edge — proof that the mixtape, even in 2025, still has stories left to tell.
What followed was a patient excavation. Old DATs were pulled out of storage, forgotten files surfaced from hard drives, and new material was written to sit alongside them.
Together, these fragments revealed a body of work stretching back more than 25 years — tracks that moved across the spectrum of house and techno but shared a common thread of character and atmosphere.
In May of this year, the archive finally found its form. Recorded live on three decks using Serato, the resulting mix brings together 24 tracks: unreleased material from the past and brand new productions, all stitched together into a continuous narrative. It’s equal parts retrospective and statement of intent — less a museum piece than a living document.

The perfect accompaniment to that deep fall feeling, Frank Maston's beloved 2025 single finally gets its long overdue vinyl release! As our friends New Commute articulated beautifully, "Foreign Affairs" drifts through London fog and Paris shimmer, its avant-lounge glow wrapping each melody in a wistful ache. On B-side "Liaison," ghostly strings and a solitary piano paint a deserted twilight shoreline, Pacôme Henry's distinct 16mm cinematography hovering nearby." We've pressed just 500 of these gorgeous records so, be quick, Maston always flies.

Originally written for a film Maston was scoring in 2024, he decided to keep it aside for himself. And, well, us all. The song has a vibe Maston has previously flirted with; he wanted to dive in...all the way: "The arrangement is huge, definitely the biggest I've written, and it merited live musicians playing together. Also another experiment, to do it with all live musicians playing my arrangements. I wanted to make something that you'd want to put on when you bring a date back to your place. It's on the edge of sappy but that's sort of the point. I decided to give myself an unlimited budget - just spend whatever was necessary to get the right musicians and record it the best way possible."

It's this dedication to sonic perfection which Maston is rightly lauded for. We couldn't not put this on a cute wee 7" when we heard it.

The A side, "Foreign Affairs", is a brilliant, Bacharach-esque romp with a bit of that unapologetically romantic Morricone angle. Says Frank: "I was trying to synthesize that sort of jazzy/sexy/classy/romantic mature sound, where the edginess is in these surprising chord changes and subtle arrangement cues."

A wonderful complement, the flipside "Liaison", evokes Martin Denny, but Eden's Island was in Frank's head, too. He wanted to take a deep dive into that exotica sound - a genre he'd referenced a bit but never fully committed to - so the piece is lavished with those big sighing strings and a pretty lush arrangement. Happily, it all sounds super rich. Also, "Umiliani is always a reference for this sort of thing (Il Corpo etc.), That almost mechanical arrangement of things moving together and a simple melody over it (something I nicked from Ennio)".

The two songs were recorded in Paris and London in the summer of 2024. Aside from the rhythm section and piano, there's vibraphone, a full string section, trombones and alto and concert flutes. "Liaison" boasts strings, vibraphone, a female choir and tenor sax. Maston played piano and acoustic guitar but that's it (as opposed to playing basically everything on Tulips). His friend Oscar Sholto Robertson played drums and percussion whilst Maston mainstay Elie Ghersinu (formerly of L'Eclair) played bass.

The theme for a lot of Maston's titles is that they have two meanings. So "Foreign Affairs" is both a reference to him living abroad and the idea of constant cultural diplomacy and then there's this sexy/cheeky interpretation of foreign affairs in a literal way - "an affair abroad, ooh la la!". The artwork for this 7" single has Roman campaign flags, referencing the foreign affairs in sort of a sassy way. There's a violence implied. But then if you look from a bit of a distance it looks like a bouquet of flowers. So Frank thought it went with the spirit of the title. Also, he's used a lot of roman motifs now so he kept that theme going, even with the terracotta cover.

This is a vitally important project for our Frank. He explains why, here: "For whatever reason, these songs really resonated with me. I feel like they are either the end of a stylistic era for me or the beginning of a new one. They're sonically the culmination of what I'd been working towards and trying to get better at since I started. If I heard this when I was making Tulips I would have said "YES! *This* is what I want to be doing!". So that's the essence of it. It's a statement and the intended reaction is "This is really good, but why now?". Like the edge to it is the context of someone making this sort of thing in 2025, which I think is a huge strength. The real heads will get it. My music always has like a 2-3 year latency until people really catch onto it, and these ones will have a nice payoff I think."

We couldn't put it better ourselves. So we haven't.

The Eves celebrate the first anniversary of their acclaimed EP Both Sides with
a special vinyl edition to be released in November 2025
Produced and co-written with Dan Gautreau (Alicia Keys, Paolo Nutini) Both Sides was
released only on CD and digital in 2024. The new vinyl edition of the EP features a
previously unreleased bonus track The Silence produced by Mark Morrow (wrest,
Swim School). Title track Both Sides features prolific drummer and percussionist Ash
Soan (Snow Patrol, Tori Amos, Del Amitri). The EP showcases the duo's distinctive
songwriting style that encompasses smooth vocal harmonies and thoughtful
production, culminating in a fresh yet timeless sound that delivers their signature
blend of melodic pop.
The Eves have been played across BBC Radio 2, BBC Radio Scotland, BBC Introducing.
Their song Brand New Day has over 137k streams on Spotify and spent 5 weeks on
the BBC Radio 2 playlist. It was also made 'Single of the Week' on BBC Radio Scotland,
played on Bauer Media's Forth 1 radio station, reached No. 6 and No. 15 in the iTunes
pop charts and iTunes main download chart respectively, charted in the Amazon 'New
Hot Releases' UK Chart, and made an impressive debut in the UK Official Charts
Company download and single charts in the top 65. The song also features on an
episode of 'The Kardashians' on Disney Plus and Hulu across America.
'Big Love' was adopted as the official anthem for Scottish Women's Football for the
2022/2023 League Season, and was the pair's first release as a co-write, written with
Jim Duguid (Paolo Nutini) and producer Lewis Gardiner (Ellie Goulding, Nick Jonas).
The track was also featured on BBC Scotland's most popular football show 'Off the
Ball' with Tam Cowan and Stuart Cosgrove.
The pair are seasoned performers having opened for major artists at sold out shows
including Belinda Carlisle, Sister Sledge and The Shires. They've toured extensively
with Skerryvore and Horse across the UK, opened for Callum Beattie, and have
performed at festivals including TRSNMT, Country to Country, Edge Fest, Tiree
Festival, Moonbeams and Fringe by the Sea, sharing stages with Wet Wet Wet, Sophie
Ellis-Bextor, Gabrielle, Tony Hadley and Heather Small.
Other highlights include performing at the Guinness Six Nations rugby for Scotland v
Wales at BT Murrayfield, recording a live session for BBC Scotland's 'The Quay
Sessions', and several TV appearances on BBC Scotland's 'The Edit' on national TV
and BBC i-Player and STV's 'What's On' and 'The Braw and the Brave' chat show.

Heavyweight psychedelic improvisers EarthBall are back with their third and most monstrous record to date: ‘Outside Over There’, released on Upset The Rhythm (Nov 7th). Born from the haunted basements of Nanaimo, Canada, the quintet thrives on spontaneity, shaping improvisation into jagged hallucinations and ecstatic eruptions.
Recorded live-off-the-floor in 2024 in Jeremy, Izzy, and Kellen’s basement, and mixed by drummer John Brennan, ‘Outside Over There’ is an album that feels both summoned and inevitable. Each track lands with uncanny purpose, as if uncovered rather than written.
The opener, 100%, features a cameo from comedian and English icon Stewart Lee, who lent his blessing for the band to use a fragment of his stand-up. The album was mastered by John Dieterich (Deerhoof), with liner text contributed by longtime comrade John Olson (Wolf Eyes). Olson describes the album in his unmistakable style:
“This eight-track odyssey unfolds like a dreamscape, where whispered incantations brush against the shadowy fringes of the cosmos, and wild, Cézanne-inspired rock anthems erupt like geysers of color in the midst of a western warm and wet rain storm… culminating in the sprawling eleven minute masterpiece, ‘And The Music Shall Untune The Sky,’ aptly dubbed the Earth Crusher. A creation so utterly deconstructed and intertwined with the pulse of nature itself that if AI was called upon to conceive ‘Outside Over There’ anew, it would just spit back, “F.U. in Tree Font”. An enchanting invitation for even the flat-earthers to join the circle, if only just a little.”
EarthBall’s trajectory has been relentless. Their 2024 album ‘It’s Yours’ was praised by The Quietus as “fully aggressive and fully life-affirming,” and by The Wire as "a boisterous mind-melting album”. The band’s live double set LP ‘Actual Earth Music Vol. 1 & 2’ (2025) captured blistering performances: a performance opening for Wolf Eyes at the Fox Cabaret, and a Café OTO improvised throw-down featuring Chris Corsano and Steve Beresford. These releases on their own confirm them as one of Canada’s most vital experimental exports, not to mention the impressive self-released discography on their Bandcamp. The band’s reach has stretched far beyond their west coast roots with a UK tour May 2024, plus this past June, EarthBall closed Montreal’s Suoni Per Il Popolo Festival alongside Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Raven Chacon. This November they will perform at Le Guess Who? Festival in Utrecht, with a European tour to follow (tour dates below). Outside of EarthBall, each member carries their own torch. Jeremy Van Wyck, founding member of the legendary Shearing Pinx, has toured extensively, released over 100 records, and has been a vital force in the Vancouver and West Coast underground for the past 25 years. He and Isabel Ford (Izzy) play together not only in EarthBall, but also in Psychedelic Dirt, Shearing Pinx, Behaviours, and Crotch.
John Brennan collaborates widely, including recently with Endlings (Raven Chacon and John Dieterich), Evichen (Victoria Shen), Francesco Fonassi, Plan Your Future (with Greg Saunier of Deerhoof), Brennan/Corsano duo and Physics with John Dieterich. Kellen Maclaughlin performs with KVMP and Ora Corgan, while saxophonist Liam Murphy is a west coast staple, playing with the best across Vancouver Island and the mainland. On three of the tracks of ‘Outside Over There’, the band is joined by their comrade Justin Patterson, who also plays with Brennan in the duo Modale. This cross-pollination fuels EarthBall’s sound - a collective improvisation, psychically overdriven, and grinding into bloom.
Outside Over There’ is more than an album though, it is a ritual, a gathering of sound at the forest’s edge; where feedback, saxophone screams, and ecstatic vocals dissolve the boundary between chaos and clarity. EarthBall invite you into their circle, to share in the joyful terror of spontaneous creation. ‘Outside Over There’ will be released on November 7th through Upset The Rhythm digitally and as a limited blue-in-black vinyl LP.

Sasha & Henry Saiz deliver evocative new single 'Love Is All You Need'

Henry Saiz and Sasha are two of electronic music’s most visionary figures, each renowned for blending emotional depth with cutting-edge production. Saiz is a DJ, producer, and live artist who crafts genre-defying soundscapes on his own Natura Sonoris as well as Sasha’s Last Night On Earth. His work resonates far beyond the dancefloor, much like that of Sasha, a pioneer with an enduring creative streak who continues to push boundaries, most recently through collaborations with forward-thinking producers like Artche, Jody Barr, and Joseph Ashworth. Together on this new single, the pair balance transportive grooves with meticulous synth work to perfection.

The wonderfully luminous 'Love Is All You Need' radiates breezy melodic charm while riding a light, uplifting rhythm that feels as airy and warm as the rush of a new romance. Shimmering, sun-kissed melodies evoke the glow of an outdoor Ibizan party with emotive female vocals drenched in reverb, adding a dreamy, blissful layer to round out this hazy and heartfelt electronic trip.

The Dears have made some of the most beautiful music of the past quarter century, but also some of the most defiant, with an attitude and emphasis that seems to blend the operatic with a punk sensibility. On their new album, "Life Is Beautiful! Life Is Beautiful! Life Is Beautiful!", The Dears are again at the top of their form, coming back with passionate, compassionate, urgent music that uplifts, explores dark corners, and ultimately shines out in a way that's absolutely gorgeous, with an edge.

""Life Is Beautiful! Life Is Beautiful! Life is Beautiful!" feels like a new masterpiece and provides further evidence that The Dears are a vital part of the musical landscape, and also just completely doing their own thing, as ever." "If I love The Dears, if you love The Dears, it's because that orchestral, symphonic feel, those gorgeous melodies, are grounded in a gritty, gonna-die-on-this hill mentality and a heady intellectualism." "... my heart skipped a beat from the opening chords of "Gotta Get My Head Right"—a masterpiece of rising tension and killer melodies, layered and precise and yet roving and wild, with changes in the music and the progressions that alter your brain while listening. What follows is an album that's as various and yet as unified as that first track. Few bands can achieve this kind of complexity while also making it seem timeless and so very perfect." "There's no one like The Dears and there never will be, and I really appreciate that so very much." - excerpts from the album bio, written by New York Times bestselling author Jeff VanderMeer

The Dears' 9th studio album, "Life Is Beautiful! Life Is Beautiful! Life Is Beautiful", pressed on gold vinyl in a limited edition of 1000, will release worldwide 11/7 via Next Door Records.

The engine idles low. The story is almost told. Jaguar On Palisade 3 marks the final descent in a trilogy carved from fog, memory, and cold chrome — a farewell wrapped in smoke and steel.

CRIMEAPPLE weaves through late-night laments and razor-edge reflections, cruising past ghosts and gilded silence, traveling over cinematic productions by trusted collaborators: DJ Muggs, DJ Brown 13, Michaelangelo, Buck Dudley, Loman, DJ Skizz, and Comma Uno. Each beat is a scene; each bar, a flicker of something lost. There’s heat, there’s hunger, and the creeping calm of finality.

It’s not about where we’re going — it’s about what we’ve already left behind. Pressed on limited edition vinyl for those who’ve been riding since the ignition turned. No reruns. No reissues. Just one last ride.