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Volume 1 of this expertly curated project of 90s Italian House - put together by Don Carlos.

If Paradise was half as nice… by Fabio De Luca.

Googling “paradise house”, the first results to pop up are an endless list of European b&b’s with whitewashed lime façades, all of them promising “…an unmatched travel experience a few steps from the sea”. Next, a little further down, are the institutional websites of a few select semi-luxury retirement homes (no photos shown, but lots of stock images of smiling nurses with reassuring looks). To find the “paradise house” we’re after, we have to scroll even further down. Much further down.

It feels like yesterday, and at the same time it seems like a million years ago. The Eighties had just ended, and it was still unclear what to expect from the Nineties. Mobile phones that were not the size of a briefcase and did not cost as much as a car? A frightening economic crisis? The guitar-rock revival?! Certainly, the best place to observe that moment of transition was the dancefloor. Truly epochal transformations were happening there. From America, within a short distance one from the other, two revolutionary new musical styles had arrived: the first one sounded a bit like an “on a budget” version of the best Seventies disco-music – Philly sound made with a set of piano-bar keyboards! – the other was even more sparse, futuristic and extraterrestrial. It was a music with a quite distinct “physical” component, which at the same time, to be fully grasped, seemed to call for the knotty theories of certain French post-modern philosophers: Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari, Paul Virilio... Both those genres – we would learn shortly after – were born in the black communities of Chicago and Detroit, although listening to those vinyl 12” (often wrapped in generic white covers, and with little indication in the label) you could not easily guess whether behind them there was a black boy from somewhere in the Usa, or a girl from Berlin, or a pale kid from a Cornish coastal town.

Quickly, similar sounds began to show up from all corners of Europe. A thousand variations of the same intuition: leaner, less lean, happier, slightly less intoxicated, more broken, slower, faster, much faster... Boom! From the dancefloors – the London ones at least, whose chronicles we eagerly read every month in the pages of The Face and i-D – came tales of a new generation of clubbers who had completely stopped “dressing up” to go dancing; of hot tempered hooligans bursting into tears and hugging everyone under the strobe lights as the notes of Strings of Life rose up through the fumes of dry ice (certain “smiling” pills were also involved, sure). At this point, however, we must move on to Switzerland.

In Switzerland, in the quiet and diligent town of Lugano, between the 1980s and 1990s there was a club called “Morandi”. Its hot night was on Wednesdays, when the audience also came from Milan, Como, Varese and Zurich. Legend goes that, one night, none less than Prince and Sheila E were spotted hiding among the sofas, on a day-off of the Italian dates of the Nude Tour… The Wednesday resident and superstar was an Italian dj with an exotic name: Don Carlos. The soundtrack he devised was a mixture of Chicago, Detroit, the most progressive R&B and certain forgotten classics of old disco music: practically, what the Paradise Garage in New York might have sounded like had it not closed in 1987. In between, Don Carlos also managed to squeeze in some tracks he had worked on in his studio on Lago Maggiore. One in particular: a track that was rather slow compared to the BPM in fashion at the time, but which was a perfect bridge between house and R&B. The title was Alone: Don Carlos would explain years later that it had to be intended both in the English meaning of “by itself” and like the Italian word meaning “halo”. That wasn’t the only double entendre about the song, anyway. Its own very deep nature was, indeed, double. On the one hand, Alone was built around an angelic keyboard pattern and a romantic piano riff that took you straight to heaven; on the other, it showcased enough electronic squelches (plus a sax part that sounded like it had been dissolved by acid rain) to pigeonhole the tune into the “junk modernity” section, aka the hallmark of all the most innovative sounds of the time: music that sounded like it was hand-crafted from the scraps of glittering overground pop.

No one knows who was the first to call it “paradise house”, nor when it happened. Alternative definitions on the same topic one happened to hear included “ambient house”, “dream house”, “Mediterranean progressive”… but of course none were as good (and alluring) as “paradise house”. What is certain is that such inclination for sounds that were in equal measure angelic and neurotic, romantic and unaffective, quickly became the trademark of the second generation of Italian house. Music that seemed shyly equidistant from all the rhythmic and electronic revolutions that had happened up to that moment (“Music perfectly adept at going nowhere slowly” as noted by English journalist Craig McLean in a legendary field report for Blah Blah Blah magazine). Music that to a inattentive ear might have sounded as anonymous as a snapshot of a random group of passers-by at 10AM in the centre of any major city, but perfectly described the (slow) awakening in the real world after the universal love binge of the so-called Second Summer of Love.

For a brief but unforgettable season, in Italy “paradise house” was the official soundtrack of interminable weekends spent inside the car, darting from one club to another, cutting the peninsula from North to centre, from East to West coast in pursuit of the latest after-hours disco, trading kilometres per hour with beats per minute: practically, a new New Year’s Eve every Friday and Saturday night. This too was no small transformation, as well as a shock for an adult Italy that was encountering for the first time – thanks to its sons and daughters – the wild side of industrial modernity. The clubbers of the so-called “fuoriorario” scene were the balls gone mad in the pinball machine most feared by newspapers, magazines and TV pundits. What they did each and every weekend, apart from going crazy to the sound of the current white labels, was linking distant geographical points and non-places (thank you Marc Augé!) – old dance halls, farmhouses and business centres – transformed for one night into house music heaven. As Marco D’Eramo wrote in his 1995 essay on Chicago, Il maiale e il grattacielo: “Four-wheeled capitalism distorts our age-old image of the city, it allows the suburbs to be connected to each other, whereas before they were connected only by the centre (…) It makes possible a metropolitan area without a metropolis, without a city centre, without downtown. The periphery is no longer a periphery of any centre, but is self-centred”.

“Paradise house” perfectly understood all of this and turned it into a sort of cyber-blues that didn’t even need words, and unexpectedly brought back a drop of melancholic (post?)-humanity within a world that by then – as we would wholly realise in the decades to come – was fully inhuman and heartless. A world where we were all alone, and surrounded by a sinister yellowish halo, like a neon at the end of its life cycle. But, for one night at least, happy.

X-Coast unveils 9-track 2xLP The Riviera Collection on his label Riviera Records.

Hot on the heels from remixing instant dance hits such as Shygirl's '4eva' and DJ Gigola's 'La Batteria' and spotted in the studio with adored vocalists Eartheater and Miss Bashful, Serbian-born, NYC-based DJ/producer X-Coast returns with a collection of signature tracks that feel like the lost treasure chest of his dance island.

X-Coast is your favorite DJ's favorite producer, whose tracks you’ve undoubtedly danced to, whether on a massive festival stage or at an intimate, underground rave. Over the past decade, he has quietly but consistently shaped the pulse of dancefloors worldwide, with a distinctive style that traverses genres like house, techno, electro, drum and bass, and trance. This rare versatility has led X-Coast to release on the likes of Mall Grab’s Steel City Dance Discs, Diplo’s Higher Ground, Anetha’s Mama Told Ya and DJ Haus’s Unknown To The Unknown, to name a few.

What sets X-Coast apart is not just his ability to move fluidly between styles but the unique character embedded in every track. His productions have an undeniable warmth and authenticity, often evoking the raw, euphoric spirit of the 90s and 00s rave era. This nostalgic yet forward-thinking approach makes his music feel timeless, effortlessly blending old-school rave energy with modern production techniques. It's a quality that has made him a go-to for DJs across the board, whether they’re playing peak-time techno sets or deep, groovy house sessions.

On The Riviera Collection, released on his own label, Riviera Records, X-Coast opens the vault to reveal a diverse range of tracks that showcase his deep connection to multiple eras of electronic music. This collection reflects the breadth of his eclectic DJ sets, where various sounds and styles converge into a cohesive journey. Each track feels like a contemporary reimagining of a classic moment in dance music history.

From the early 2000s tribal influences layered with X-Coast’s signature chord work on ‘Neapolis,’ to the soaring, synthetic trance energy of ‘Desert Storm,’ and the infectious, camp vibe of the diva house ‘Hold Me Baby,’ the collection takes us on a nostalgic trip back to the origins of rave culture. It echoes a time when DJs crafted a journey through genres, playing everything from house to trance to techno in one seamless night.

The collection’s first hidden gems and long-awaited singles are “Da Boing Boing Trak” and "Put Your Hands Together". Both staples in his sets at iconic venues and festivals like Pitch Music & Arts, fabric, Circoloco, AVA Festival, Melt!, and Intercell, this track has been in high demand among fans, finally seeing its release. With The Riviera Collection, X-Coast continues to cement his status as a versatile producer capable of bridging the gap between past and present, while delivering music that moves crowds everywhere.

2025 Repress

DJ Quik is a giant of West Coast hip-hop. With 1995’s Safe + Sound, he scaled new levels of musical magnificence with his signature new age P-Funk/laconic G-Funk. A quintessential, sun-scorched LA album, this is pretty much essential. Typical for mid-90s albums the original vinyl copies are now rare so here’s the Be With re-issue, complete with “Tanqueray”, the hidden track from the original CD release.

A preternaturally gifted producer/rapper, DJ Quik has produced scores of LA gangsta rap classics. He’s released platinum and gold records of his own, as well as helped craft them for the likes of Tupac, Snoop Dogg, and Dr Dre. Quik has always been quirkier and more interesting than his gangsta rap peers, both musically and lyrically. An old-school funk producer at heart, he’s also incredibly nice on the mic. His raps often deal in boasts, jokes and good times but also cover his beefs, his trials and his trauma. Partying and pain, all mixed up. DJing and producing hype beat tapes from age 14, Quik’s tracks blended the languid funk and rubbery synths of Zapp and George Clinton with a gangsta aesthetic, creating a more danceable foil to Compton’s more typical nihilistic hedonism. Ultimately, his records sound custom engineered to drift out over sun-soaked barbecues.

By the time of his third album DJ Quik was a household name on the West Coast - California’s premier rapper/producer not named Andre Young. Released on Profile in 1995, Safe + Sound was certified gold. Less reliant on samples and more focused on live instruments, it elevated him from producer to fully-fledged composer. This sound — the quick, winding basslines, tinny high hats, smooth instrumental solos, soulful pipes, and Roger Troutman’s talkbox — defined him. This is an album of full-blown masterpieces. Rich soundscapes and masterfully arranged orchestrations with dense layers of sounds, intricate rhythms, and well-balanced songwriting.

The first track proper, “Get At Me” samples Cameo whilst Quik takes aim at the Judases in his life, the horn-laced chorus providing a triumphant feel. On the horizontal “Diggin’ U Out”, the soulful electric piano of Warryn Campbell lays a relaxed groove for Quik to talk over about one of his favourite topics: sex. Title track “Safe + Sound” chronicles Quik’s formative years over a slick instrumental. The moody bass locks a laidback infectious groove, the hook is catchy and Quik’s delivery is in fine form. On the uber-chilled “Somethin’ 4 Tha Mood”, Quik cooks up a breezy, feel good track of sparkly keyboards, syncopated claps, shuffling hi-hats, woozy synths and a floating two-minute flute solo courtesy of Robert “Fonksta” Bacon. Analysing the highs and lows of an average day in the hood, it echoes Cube’s “It Was a Good Day”.

“It’z Your Fantasy” is a silky smooth soundtrack to Quik’s detailed retelling of a sexcapade with a young lady and whilst “Tha Ho In You” is musically perfect for that midsummer family BBQ, its lyrical content is unsurprisingly decidedly less family-friendly. A real highlight, the infamous “Dollaz + Sense” is one of the most ruthless diss tracks of all time. The brutal lyrics ride a laidback West Coast beat, flipping a sample from Young & Company’s “I Like (What You’re Doing To Me)” as Quik fires lyrical shots at his arch Compton nemesis, MC Eiht. On the loping, hazy “Let You Havit”, Quik is again in gangsta mode, with more bars of barbs aimed at Eiht, rhyming over sun-kissed synthy-rollerskate funk.

Some of the finest tracks on Safe + Sound are those designed to de-stress. The evocative “Summer Breeze” is a classic warm-weather jam, anchored by a twangy funk guitar, breezy string arrangement, and a soulful hook delivered by Dionne Knighton. Quik’s nostalgic lyrics are not far from DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince’s “Summertime”, reminiscing over barbecues at the park, young love, and the brevity of halcyon youth. The relaxed and jazzy “Quik’s Groove III” is another highlight, as bass, guitar, piano and flute combine to create a smooth, soulful instrumental.

The swaggering “Shack Up”-sampling “Sucka Free” features a cameo from Playa Hamm, all funky braggadocio and over much too quikly (pun thoroughly intended). The jazz-flavoured “Keep Tha ‘P’ In It”, again featuring Playa Hamm but this time extending the cameo invitations to Hi-C, 2nd II None and Kam, is pure laidback P-Funk. The deep bass and industrial drums make sure the groove hits hard.

“Tanqueray” was originally a hidden track on the CD version of the album, but it’s too good to hide. This wild party samples Brass Construction’s gigantic “Get Up To Get Down” and soars in its drunk-ebullience. An apt way to close this party-driven set.

This 2022 Be With double LP re-issue has been mastered for vinyl by Simon Francis, cut by Pete Norman and pressed at Record Industry. Unusual for the time, Safe + Sound was originally pressed as a double, so all that was missing was the CD’s hidden bonus track “Tanqueray”, so we’ve fixed that. The original vinyl release never got a picture sleeve, so we’ve recreated the original’s promo-style silver-sticker and plain black jacket. A subtle cover for a wonderfully unsubtle record.

Waxwork Records is thrilled to present GODZILLA 70th Anniversary Original Motion Picture Soundtrack by composer Akira Ifukube. Released in 1954 by director Ishirô Honda, Godzilla holds the record for being the longest- running franchise in film history. Waxwork Records worked closely with Toho to create this deluxe 70th Anniversary release, featuring a re-mastered score and all-new art.

When ships begin to go missing near Odo Island off the coast of Japan, the locals look to the government for help. Paleontologist Kyohei Yamane (Takashi Shimura) is sent to investigate the situation. There, he discovers the horrors of Godzilla, who soon begins attacking the Japanese mainland. As the military’s efforts to destroy the monster continuously fail, scientist Daisuke Serizawa (Akihiko Hirata) is called upon to use his “Oxygen Destroyer” to kill the beast. Finding Godzilla in Tokyo Bay, Serzawa’s machine is used and finally, the beast is felled.

Since its release, Godzilla has continued to terrorize audiences around the world. The film has influenced countless filmmakers, with both Akira Kurosawa and Steven Speilberg citing it as one of their favorite films. The genius use of practical special effects and miniatures changed how the Japanese film industry made movies for decades. Godzilla has spawned over thirty sequel films and countless video games, comic books, toys, TV shows, and more becoming a pop culture phenomenon in the process.

The film’s score by Akira Ifukube has become an instantly recognizable piece of film music. Given only the script and a week in which to compose, Ifukube crafted a score that feels as enormous as the kaiju himself. Godzilla’s theme has become a staple of nearly all subsequent Godzilla films and was considered by Ifukube to be the greatest piece of music he had written. Using low-pitched brass and string instruments, Ifukube gives the score a massiveness and weight that complement the terror and destruction brought about by the rampaging monster. Ifukube also used a deeply resonant stringed instrument to create Godzilla’s iconic roar, a trick used to create the roar throughout the franchise.

Waxwork Records is beyond excited to present this vinyl release of Godzilla for its 70th Anniversary. Re-mastered, pressed to colored vinyl, housed in a deluxe gatefold jacket with matte satin coating, an art print, and featuring all-new artwork throughout by Robert Sammelin.

Studio, the influential project of Swedish musicians Dan Lissvik and Rasmus Hägg, presents their legendary 2006 debut in remastered form, in partnership with Ghostly International. Available in limited edition "Fog Machine Vinyl", CD, and cassette. "One of the finest pieces of electronic music you'll hear this year.” - The Guardian (2006). Included in year-end best-of write-ups by Pitchfork, FACT Magazine, and Rough Trade. Physical copies have long been out of print for West Coast, and the album has also been notably absent from most streaming services until now.

“Somehow, I knew I wanted to make a conceptual record that, although only imaginary at that point, could represent or define how our city sounded,” says Lissvik of Gothenburg's influence on West Coast. Some called Studio, the project of Swedish musicians Dan Lissvik and Rasmus Hägg, “the missing link between The Cure and Lindstrøm,” Pitchfork heard Durutti Column and Can, as the duo’s story became swept up in a loosely developing scene — adjacent first to the label Service (Jens Lekman, The Whitest Boy Alive) and later Sincerely Yours (The Tough Alliance, jj) — and a precursor to the 2010s boom at the axis of electronic and psychedelic music guided by indie greats like Caribou, Four Tet, and Darkside.

West Coast, their seminal 2006 debut, captured a faraway romanticism of Balearic brushed up against Krautrock, disco, dub, and afrobeat, with pop lyricism lifted from new wave, all made modern by two art school grads in Gothenburg. First pressed in a small vinyl-only run via their own Information label, the album has been notably absent from most streaming services, and the internet’s record of its initial impact is all but fossilized from a bygone blog era, while its sound is simply untraceable to any one moment in music.

Outside of three 7” releases, they’d keep the music to themselves for several more years. In 2005, Hägg remembers, “We got our degrees and were kicked out of our studio spaces so all these recordings were just piled up. A year later we dusted them off and started to deconstruct and assemble them in a more drawn-out fashion.” In the same breadth, they cite DJ Screw, J Dilla, and Joy Division, along with early ‘80s European live DJ sets from the likes of Beppe Loda, Dj Mozart, and Baldelli as reference points.

“The anything-goes mentality was very encouraging and was a big cornerstone to the Studio sound,” says Hägg. “But there’s so much more to the picture, we were not that young then and had lots of musical baggage in our suitcases, the new thing was that we finally let it all come through, not bound by any borders that was often the case with music identity in Sweden during the 90s.” In the afterglow of the record’s 2007 reception, Studio receded from view, clouded behind a mountain of remix requests (including one for Kylie Minogue that saw release) and label bureaucracy. “It’s easy to wish we would have done some proper recordings of our own instead,” Hägg reflects. But both artists, now well into respective careers beyond Studio, have come to peace with West Coast as their most enduring effort together. Lissvik adds, “It serves as a good reminder for me to keep to that decision and promise and to continue exploring and growing

In a continued disruption to the airwaves following releases from Bondo and Monde UFO, Quindi returns to the Californian noise rock scene-not-scene to dig on the gnarled riffs of Expose. On their new release, the LA outfit double-down on a unique blend of bloated guitar fuzz and grimy analogue synths, and come out with a curiously cosmic kind of kick-ass.
If there was a dreamy, sun-bleached quality to Bondo and Monde UFO, their label mates Expose sound more wrought from sweat-drenched jam sessions under halogen strip lights in grease-stained garages. But the guttural quality of their blown-out guitar tone is matched for vibrancy by the dexterity of their playing, bringing angular free jazz to post hardcore and sludge rock, capped off with the unearthly sonic possibilities of flamboyant synthesis.
This dual-layered wall of sound lends extra weight to the likes of shit-kicking 'Speed Dial', which thunders like a kosmische juggernaut with amped up leads and a dead-eyed vocal condensed into a visceral minute, all with enough time for a dramatic breakdown, synth eruption and a final thrust. Similarly scooped out of the trash compactor, 'Description' rides for longer with one foot pressed firmly on the fuzz pedal, letting the electronics squeal around the punked-up rush of the guitars.
But Expose are not a one-dimensional band constantly thrashing it out. By contrast, 'The Constant' hits a crushing emotional note in its more structured push and pull between delicacy and heaviness, hitting bittersweet notes along the way throughout the peaks and troughs of the arrangement. 'Self Terror' washes languid, discordant guitar strum into swirling FX accompanied by sax from Monde UFO's Ray Monde.
Smart as a whip, sharp as a tack and boiling over with an untameable urgency, Expose make their presence felt in brilliant, bruising form on this particularly fierce addition to the Quindi catalogue.

LP + 7". Portland indie rock band charts novel sonic territory, exploring resilience of the human spirit in the aftermath of tragedy and trauma, over 5 years in the making. Conceived in the wake of a worldwide quarantine, the entire West Coast being on fire, and the horrific murder of one of the band's own - then recorded, finished, and now released in defiance of it all. Harnessing all that of chaotic change and catastrophe, the band took it all as an opportunity to boldly blaze some new trails for themselves, carving out new sonic territory by exploring everything from spacey Fusion-Funk bass Moogs and Hip-Hop drum machines, to New Wave-ish synths and flourishes of Samba, Blues, Soul, and Sunshine Pop - all while still delivering the goods that Aan fans have come to know them for: to-die-for melodies, inebriating primal belt-along therapy, and face-melting guitar solos. For Fans of Unknown Mortal Orchestra, STRFKR, Pixies, Dungen, Grizzly Bear, TV On The Radio, Stereolab and Modest Mouse.

Legendary 7X GRAMMY and Emmy Award-winning artist/producer Dr. Dre celebrates the 30th anniversary of his magnum opus, The Chronic by announcing the album will be re-released. The Chronic, which is not currently available on streaming services, will again be available to fans on all major DSPs .

Steve Berman, Vice Chairman of Interscope Geffen A&M, said: “Dr. Dre is without a doubt one of the most iconic and groundbreaking artists in the modern era. He has also used his platform to fuel some very impactful philanthropic efforts that will ensure his legacy is felt for generations to come. Dre’s solo career all started with the The Chronic, one of the most celebrated recordings of all time.

First released on December 15, 1992, The Chronic peaked at No. 3 on the Billboard 200 and has spent 97 weeks on the chart since its release. The album also spawned three top 40 hits on the Hot 100, including top ten records with "Nuthin' But a “G” Thang" (No. 2) featuring Snoop Dogg and "F— Wit Dre Day" (No. 8). The Chronic topped the Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart for eight weeks, while "Nuthin’ But a "G" Thang" hit No. 1 for two weeks on Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs. Last June, Rolling Stone placed The Chronic on its 500 Greatest Albums of All-Time List, boasting how the album "redefined the West Coast Hip Hop sound." Pitchfork also holds the seminal album in high standing, saying The Chronic lives on as a “timeless show of strength” and “gave shape to L.A.’s present and future.” Videos from The Chronic are also available on Dr. Dre’s official YouTube channel.

Last year, Dr. Dre dazzled during the Super Bowl LVI Halftime Show in Los Angeles. His enormous set was star-studded, as Dre performed alongside some of music's biggest stars, including Snoop Dogg, Kendrick Lamar, Mary J. Blige, Eminem, and 50 Cent. Dre commanded the stage – just a few miles from his birthplace of Compton – with a groundbreaking setlist anchored by hits such as "The Next Episode" and the 2Pac-led "California Love." The historic performance earned Dr. Dre his first-ever Emmy for Outstanding Variety Special (Live). The Hollywood Reporter called the halftime show "thrilling and nostalgic," while Billboard credited Dre for his "seismic impact" on music.

Bluish Green was 15 + years in the making, passively percolating bi-coastly in the background of three family members' lives, waiting for the perfect opportunity to present itself. That moment came in January 2024 when Ball Sisters & N1_Sound settled into the Spiritual World home base of Studio Z in Toronto, Canada. What started as three casually blissful days, resulted in a debut album, combining a unique blend of dub, neo soul, ambient & downtempo. Bluish Green sits halfway between a low-key dance floor and late night back room.

The album was almost entirely created live in the studio with very little discussion, conversation or conscious direction. There were no goals or future plans, just mutual appreciation for the moment. Repeat takes were few and far between, with the group moving fluidly from one track to the next. This preservation of emotion and human touch is deeply embedded into the music, allowing the listener to share in the raw moments that were experienced while Bluish Green was organically taking shape.

Sonic themes of the natural world run throughout the five song, 30 minute album. “R U 4 Real” welcomes the listener into T3AL’s unique ecosystem with intimate cicade-esque shakers. A reverberous güiro frog (acquired on a family trip one year ago) and synthesized ocean waves create an ambient wetland on the album's 8 minute instrument track “Frog Legacy ''. Bluish Green comes to a shimmering close on “Flip That Switch” with dubbed out crystalline slide-flute melodies resembling ocean birds that fade into an iridescent horizon.

Digital drum patterns skip & stride around contemplative circular lyrical themes on four of the five album tracks, while spatial flute melodies simultaneously spin just under the surface. The bass guitar on Bluish Green is a continuous harmonic support system, repeating on a different tectonic rotation, much slower and deeper, offering familiar footing that stops the listener from drifting out in the rippling undertow of analogue delay feedback.

“R U 4 Real”?... A question that T3AL revisits frequently when thinking of the surreal weekend that resulted in the trio’s debut album, Bluish Green

With the release of Love (the) Ominous World, Blu & Exile have returned with an album that brilliantly builds on their soulful, reflective foundation with stunning musicality and sharp songwriting. Their shared history as one of hip-hop’s best duos continues to grow, especially as they venture into new territory while embracing and refining what made them special.

“This album is our most unique work to date,” Blu says. “We took a different approach with the direction while still staying true to the culture our music has built with our fan base.” That direction is one that finds the two California natives crafting records that would sound right at home on the radio and hip-hop charts. Like “Suga & Butta,” for example, which features recent Def Jam signee Rae Khalil and rising star Ahmad Anwar. Every element of the track is as sweet and smooth as its namesake, from the lyrics to the production. There’s also the raw G-funk banger “Chucks,” a snarling collaboration with West Coast stalwarts KXNG Crooked and Kurupt.

Over 19 tracks, Wayfaring Strangers: Cosmic American Music mines gold from dollar bin country-rock detritus to reconstruct events as seen from the genre's wild west - Americana's vast private press substructure. As progenitor and contemptuous poster boy for the music that came to be Cosmic American, Gram Parsons found himself mired in a recording career spent mostly in scouting the perimeters of chart success. "He hated country-rock," Parsons collaborator Emmylou Harris would later reflect. "He thought that bands like the Eagles were pretty much missing the point." Parsons had been orbiting the idea of Cosmic American Music for some time. In 1968 he'd parted ways with the Byrds and was looking to take air with a new project. "It's basically a Southern soul group playing country and gospel-oriented music with a steel guitar" he told Melody Maker, on the subject of The Flying Burrito Brothers. So it was that when A&M's Burrito Brothers debut The Gilded Palace of Sin made it to shelves in February of 1969, early adherents to the Cosmic American gospel were already echoing its message from areas flanking Gram Parsons' Southern California hills and canyons. There was F.J. McMahon in coastal Santa Barbara, Mistress Mary further inland in Hacienda Heights, and Plain Jane of Albuquerque, New Mexico, each responding by committing their own private readings to tape before day one of the 1970s. Parsons himself might've disdained them, had he even been aware of such minor ripples, shimmering at the edges of his desert oasis. But these were true believers all the same, given over fully to his roots music concept, each filling vinyl grooves with non-rock instrumentation like fiddle, banjo, and pedal steel guitar, the last undoubtedly Cosmic American Music's most distinguishing stringed signifier. Only too predictably, big labels did the grunt work of confining and defining the movement, as ABC, United Artists, RCA, and more played catch-up with Asylum's raptor rock juggernaut, via backwoods crossover also-rans with names like Gladstone, American Flyer, and Silverado. Twang reigned, the shitkickers kicked shit, and the vaguely western-sounding guitar records piled up. Country-rock became "the dominant American rock style of the 1970s," as Peter Doggett's comprehensive Are You Ready for the Country put it much later. Wayfaring Strangers: Cosmic American Music picks up and dusts off golden ingots from the dollar-bin detritus of that domination, to reconstruct events as seen from the genre's real Wild West-America's one-off private press label substructure.

“My introduction to “noise” came from a record shop in Lake Worth, Florida ran by a musician named Kenny 5. Kenny had left Detroit sometime in the mid nineties and had begun selling used records and CD’s from the downtown strip of this tiny southern Florida city in a humble shop sandwiched between a deli and a dog grooming business. Kenny previously was on labels like Amphetamine Reptile and timeSTEREO, and the records and videotapes that would be on repeat at his shop were a vast sonic expanse that spoke to the eclecticism of his experience as a touring musician participating and adjacent to American noise culture through the early to late 90’s. In 1998, I was eleven years old and I would order a pizza with him and watch VHS tapes of Japanese noise and deathmatch bootlegs, as well as any other sonic and subcultural rarities that far outstripped my age to comprehend (notably the RRR “Journey Into Pain” compilation and various Vanilla Tapes videos). This widecast net of information formed an introduction to a reality that did not fall deaf on me, but it took many years later for me to reorient the specific freedoms of what this dense and cathartic sound culture had imparted on my life and would continue onward to.

What does this have to do with this selection of choice recordings from the Secret Boyfriend catalog for the enmossed label? For the uninitiated, Secret Boyfriend is the long running moniker of Ryan Martin, North Carolina musician and label proprietor of the Hot Releases imprint. For over a decade from this writing I have watched Secret Boyfriend, and Hot Releases by extension as a curatorial and archival effort, embodying the multiplanal capacity that noise loosely functions from as an umbrella ideology and formalist avenue for sound creation. For anecdotal purposes, from (before) 2006 until roughly 2023 the East Coast of the United States showcased a vibrant network of eclectic regional festivals that saw wide swaths of artists addressing and negotiating the notion of what qualified “noise” from a conceptual and ideological perspective. Some festivals honed in on particularities in aesthetics and tropes, and others had a kind of “catch-all” implementation that allowed for a salvation of the sort of alienated and singular artistry that was amassing throughout these territories. While clear guidelines had been set from regional predecessors as to how noise with a capital “N” should maneuver, Secret Boyfriend is emblematic in the spirit of fluidity that was either implicitly coupled to the notion of the genre, or grew to evolve towards or devolve from.

Within Secret Boyfriend performances, I have seen and admired a mirroring from a ravenous appreciator of this culture at large back towards itself. Typical of a Secret Boyfriend set is an interchangeable narrative arc wherein blistering feedback laden scrap metal improvisations are forayed into naive ambient or “pop” songs, or skipping CDs, or mixer feedback play, or delayed Roland 707 drum workouts all at once and in a unique hegemony. Secret Boyfriend's stylistic mastery of each endeavor is at once an homage to a history of loving listening and enacting, while a brave step into the realm of actualizing the unique fluidity of his own practice. In performance and the action of network engagement, Secret Boyfriend operates a survey of that which he sought to hear and that which he cultivates around his work. His operations are mirrors, and the project (alongside his other peers) is a reflection on the ethos of his time.

Conversely his recording practice narrows in on these moments and allows for a different kind of intimacy or alienation for the non live listener. This record of selected “pop songs” (let's call them that) is particularly poignant at a time when the culture Martin mirrors is at a strange crossroads with itself. The aforementioned festival networks necessarily change and shift. The onlookers become the artists, the artists find new horizons, and the spaces for these cycles fade into locales of a distant memory. It seems, from my perspective, that audiences currently yearn for a more bottlenecked experience, searching for some ontologically vetted manifestation of an idea, of a sound and less for an experience that functions in opposition to our collective banalities. This makes sense in the face of general global catastrophism that plagues us. We need certainty of what something is somewhere, don’t we? Noise as an idea has expanded and contracted to so many iterations of itself it is hard to tell what it even is, and it is particularly difficult to identify in the absence of solid network activations a moment to reflect on its own complexities and nuances. In the face of so much change, I argue that the language of noise culture at large has on one hand become increasingly didactic and predictable, and laughably inclusive and non linear on the other. Probably has always been this way, but now we are in the midst of a moment of extreme access and indexicality, which somehow cauterizes expansion and naivety and chance.

This record highlights the Secret Boyfriend that obscures didacticism by highlighting output that opens up for more challenging catharsis and emotive signal processing. It provides an entry to the materialism of a cultural field full of ecstatic complexity and beautiful inconsistency. In these muted moments Secret Boyfriend has given us over his career we have an argument for evolving languages that further challenge our notions of what is supposed to happen and how it is supposed to be presented. In his more song oriented expansiveness, we can punctuate the ability to think in new modalities. Listening to these recordings reminds me of the polarity of sitting in the record store as a kid and understanding that His Name Is Alive is on 4AD and (gasp!) timeSTEREO. This trite early impression that nothing is really as different as our imaginations might want them to be, and that we can do whatever we want mostly within the creative realms we work through is an important filter to look through Secret Boyfriend as a project and a vessel. If we can achieve abandon and vulnerability through our artistic endeavors, then we have a sound model for, maybe, new potentialities. If that’s too much projection, or just complete liberal bullshit, I am fine with that. Secret Boyfriend's oeuvre at best offers us moments of reprieve to ponder these complexities, or at least a moment to zone out on a drive through North Carolina Highway 54.

You have one pocket of life that you must do whatever you want to inside of. Secret Boyfriend does it affectionately, in a variety of forms, and always with deep sentimentality. These recordings are a wonderful set of songs to begin further investigation from. Thank you Ryan for allowing as many avenues as possible to continue a broad cultural exchange and conversation that intersect and refract while being the kind of artist that is brave enough to not phone in the effort.”

- Nick Klein , May 2024

The collective has completed many tours together, & its debut album Escape From New York comes across as a collection of high level cyphers from Joey Bada$$, Nyck Caution, Kirk Knight, CJ Fly, Flatbush Zombies & more. Not surprising as the Brooklyn natives, a lot of them friends since childhood, have never shied away from the lyrics-centered tradition of New York hip-hop. Their distinctive voices and skills on the mic, as well as NY-centric storytelling drive the album, & the chemistry is undeniable. The production is tight, but this is also where the supergroup shifts away from musically, perhaps what the title of the project is alluding to. Erick Arc Elliott, Power Pleasant, Sam Wish, and Tyler Dopps lay down slick, bouncy instrumentals as opposed to boom bap, & it's refreshing and fun to hear the group expand its sound. Check out "Distance," "Left Hand," "Snow In The Stadium," "Far Away," and "Coast/Clear." The RSD Black Friday edition features 2LPs on translucent orange color and a Beast Coast Sticker.

Introducing "Royal Blu," the highly-anticipated collaborative EP by Blu and Roy Royal. Bursting onto the scene with undeniable chemistry, the dynamic duo from the heart of California delivers an electrifying fusion of boom-bap beats and soulful samples that redefine the essence of West Coast hip-hop.

From the moment you hit play, "Royal Blu" captivates with standout tracks like 'The Same OG', 'LA Blue', and the mes-merizing 'The Priceless' featuring Cashus King. Each song showcases Blu's unparalleled lyricism and Roy Royal's masterful production, creating an immersive journey through LA and beyond.

Following Blu's acclaimed projects in 2023, including the collaborations with Real Bad Man and Nottz, "Royal Blu" marks a triumphant return to his roots, solidifying his status as one of the West Coast's finest MCs. With Roy Royal's soulful chops and Blu's unwavering conviction, every track feels like a passionate ode to their beloved city.

For Fans Of... Monophonics, David Axelrod, The Rugged Nuggets, Adrian Quesada. Debut LP from The Ironsides. Founded and produced by Monophonics member Max Ramey. Featuring members of Monophonics, including Kelly Finnigan. Reminiscent of a cinematic soundtrack from a 60s European film. The Ironsides have arrived. Changing Light is the first full-length effort from this masterful group of Bay Area musicians. It melds classic psych-soul sounds with sweeping orchestral arrangements – reminiscent of a cinematic soundtrack from a 60s European film. The Changing Light evokes strong imagery of an open road, a breathtaking view, and scenes of a vast landscape begging to be explored. Cruise up the coast, where sweeping orchestral arrangements rise and fall with the tide. As you head North, the countryside opens to an undeniable groove. Tremolo-soaked guitar tones grow on the vines, and timeless, soulful bass lines flow like wine. In higher altitudes, French horns and trumpets soar like eagles. A river below carries bellowing cello tones through a mountain pass into an expansive canyon. Down in the desert, fuzzed-out electric guitar cuts through the dry heat and leaves the listener thirsty for more. Plot a course, or just turn on the car and drive. Max recommends the latter. "The songs are inspired by landscapes - Each one could mean something to someone and create a completely different meaning for someone else." At the end of a long road, The Ironsides have found the perfect place to begin. Also Available From The Ironsides: Changing Light 7", The Raven / Song For Adrian 7"

Writing music, for singer-songwriter and producer Fine, “feels like being entrusted with a secret.” On Rocky Top Ballads, the Copenhagen-based musician’s debut album, these secrets take the form of minimalist compositions that search for glimpses of beauty in the everyday. Recorded, produced, and mixed by Fine, the album is a mystical soundtrack to a captivating songwriter’s explorations of process and intuition.

“The whole album is about the moments when you see a crack in something,” Fine explains, “where you briefly see another side of yourself or of someone you've known forever.”

Fine grew up in Denmark’s rural Northern Jutland; there, her father’s guitar and banjo playing formed the sonic backdrop of her childhood. In the years since, her musical curiosity has led her to work across a range of styles and sounds. In her early twenties, she became part of Danish electronic trio Chinah, which released three albums. You might also have caught her sampled vocals on the joyfully rollicking Two Shell song “Home,” from 2021. Then, last year, she — along with Erika de Casier and Smerz — co-wrote three songs for the massive, critically lauded K-pop group New Jeans. Fine is also a part of Clarissa Connelly Canons group back home in Denmark, and writes music under the moniker Coined with composer and songwriter Astrid Sonne.

But Rocky Top Ballads is a turn back towards a more personal, stream-of-consciousness songwriting style. Fine wrote and recorded these songs sporadically over the course of the last few years. In light of Chinah’s collaborative, piecemeal production style, Fine craved a more organic, intuitive process for these songs. Her work on the record combines sample-based production with the sounds of instruments she and her collaborators could hold in their hands, ones that inspired free-flowing improvisation: electric and acoustic guitar, even the Ensoniq keyboard that was in her childhood home. The resulting songs are equally inspired by the country and folk of her childhood, the hazy beauty of Mazzy Star, the avant-garde pop of Dean Blunt, and the songwriting of ’90s singer-songwriters like Suzanne Vega.

Fine describes her songwriting process as a “magical thinking method”: being in contact with the present moment and pretending as if she already knows the song she’s about to write. Many of the songs on Rocky Top Ballads use the original takes of Fine’s vocals, an attempt to capture a song’s initial essence and avoid disturbing the song’s generative idea as much as possible. You can hear that well-preserved spark on songs like “Losing Tennessee,” a minimalist and wistful reflection on the inherent loss and change of growing older. She wrote other tracks, like the piano-led “Whys” and the woozy “Coasting,” through a process of cutting and layering her improvisations, carefully merging multiple musical snippets into newly seamless compositions. And the stunning closing track “A Star” is the product of a slow process of evolution: beginning as an understated expression of sincerity before dissolving into a rich, distorted guitar-driven exploration.

As a songwriter and producer, Fine’s work often peers into the universes of experience that can be hidden inside a fragmentary moment. Sometimes she explores this literally — as in “Days Incomplete,” which she built off a short sample from “A Star.” This impulse — to zoom in, to recontextualize, to excavate — threads throughout her lyrics, too. What happens, her songs ask, when we pay close attention to those everyday images and physical realities we might otherwise ignore: the sky, the rain, the sun, the sea? On the spacious and swoony “Big Muzzy,” with its gentle sway and Cocteau Twins-inflected vocals, Fine sings about watching the “summer turn blue”; the grooving, propulsive “Remember The Heart” is a love letter to the sea where she grew up. In her airy voice, Fine traces meandering melodies that continually unspool with fresh insights.

A particular mantra guided Fine’s songwriting throughout the creation of Rocky Top Ballads: “Everything has potential.” In these songs, small moments are worthy of deep contemplation, and gentleness can evoke worlds of emotion. The resulting songs offer a gift of momentary pleasure, flowing and unhurried as a gentle breeze.

Marissa Lorusso

Bienvenue Recordings is back on wax with two originals and a deep driving remix from the home base. We are delighted to present Gratts ‘The Lifestyle EP’ via the label, a high quality addition to his plentiful repertoire of dance delights.

Gene Tellem met Gratts in the South Australian city of Adelaide in 2022 while visiting family and touring the country for some gigs. Gratts, originally from Belgium, also finds himself in the sun for similar reasons. Being from two different French speaking parts of the world, able to communicate in a familiar way but in a whole new place really laid down the vibe for this release. Songs as much for the radio as the club, for a cold wintry night or on the shores of an Australian sunset.

'Sunsets (FBI Mix)' is Gratts & Biancolato's tribute to Sydney veteran DJ Simon Caldwell's long running 'Sunsets' radio show on FBI Radio. Gratts and Caldwell DJ'ed together in Sydney on various occasions, whereas Biancolato is a veteran Melbourne DJ and producer. The track was inspired by the dubby West-Coast deep house sound from the turn of the millennium. Adelaide's Lesley Williams provides the vocal mantra.

'Sundays With U (Neapolitan Mix)' is a jazzy and percussive venture, loosely inspired by the West London bruk sound and Charles Webster. Andreas Poppelbaum, Gratts' studio neighbour in Berlin can be heard on soprano sax. The lyrics are performed by Italian friend Ambra, who delivers them in the Neapolitan dialect.

'Sundays With U (GT Remix)’ is Gene Tellem pulling at all the elements that make the original a scorcher, stretching it out, turning the stomp up, and offering a version for a deep dance floor moment. The voice, sax, atmosphere with the snap on the one. One moment it starts, and soon you won’t know how long it’s been that your eyes are closed, body moving through the room.

The Confidence of Knowing by Talib Kweli and J Rawls offers a quintessential hip-hop experience that honors the genre’s classic roots. This album marks the duo’s first collaboration since Rawls produced “Brown Skin Lady” on the influential Mos Def and Talib Kweli are Blackstar album, a hip-hop landmark from 25 years ago.

With this release, Kweli and Rawls showcase their artistic growth and maturity, blending masterful lyrics with authentic boom-bap beats to take listeners on a journey through hip-hop’s soul. Tracks like the introspective “Breath, Eyes, Memory,” the nostalgic “Turnstyle,” and the homage to the Native Tongues in “Native Sons” exemplify their dedication to preserving hip-hop’s essence.

Featuring an impressive lineup of guests—including Jimetta Rose, Blu, DJ Rhettmatic, TriState, Coast Contra, Buckshot, Skyzoo, Planet Asia, Phil Da Agony, IDK, Middle Child, Georgia Anne Muldrow, Diani, Solene, and NIKO IS—the album celebrates the depth and diversity of hip-hop culture.

This album is a gritty yet sophisticated journey through life’s harsh realities and ultimate triumphs. Hailing from two vastly different worlds, Fashawn and Little Vic bring unique stories and sounds that blend the raw with the refined. Fashawn, raised amidst the gangs and struggles of Fresno, California, brings an unapologetic realism to his verses, detailing the roads that took him from survival to success. Meanwhile, Little Vic’s roots trace back to Long Island, New York, where he grew up with the influence of the Orena family’s notorious reputation. Known for his lyricism and mastery of the MPC, Vic’s production is the perfect companion to Fashawn’s storytelling, layering gritty boom bap beats with live instruments that add richness and texture.

The theme of the album is like a fine dining experience—a nod to elegance—while peeling back the layers to reveal the raw, often darker realities simmering behind the scenes. Little Vic’s production flexes between hard-hitting rhythms and delicate, soulful sounds, creating a soundscape that mirrors the rags-to-riches journey both artists represent.

Brought together on the East Coast by executive producer Ricky Grey, Fashawn and Little Vic spent an intense week creating this project, crafting a work that feels as alive and textured as the streets that shaped them. Each track is an experience, serving up an unfiltered taste of both struggle and success, designed to leave listeners both stirred and inspired.

In the fall of 2022, celebrated UK chill-out institution Seahawks landed in Los Angeles for the first time in their 15-year history, with plans to record a sweeping new age downtempo "exploration of visionary California."

Instead, they immediately fell ill with flu (Fowler collapsed next to a taco truck; 911 was called), and were bedridden for the better part of a week. Upon recovering, they resituated at the synthesizer sanctuary of Brian Foote (Peak Oil, Kranky, Leech), channeling their post-sickness psychedelia into one of the band's lushest and most elevated creations to date: Time Enough For Love. Inspired by the "groove and mood" of Harry Nilsson demos, as well as its wider 70's wavelength - Rhodes, Wurlitzer, wood paneling - Seahawks transposed their classic post-rave ambient exotica onto a warm and woozy Golden State palette. Buoyed by the liquid touch of English maestro Kenny Dickenson on keys, the results rank high among the duo's smoothest and most multi-sensory voyages. "Sail Across The Moon" delivers on its title, a simmering, phaser-smeared cruise through the beauty of the night. "Messengers" echoes the cosmic lounge of Air's Moon Safari, shuffling, weightless, and ethereal, while "Falling Deep" reaches for the stars, pure cascading bliss, the ecstatic moment writ large.

The album skews steadily more astral as it progresses, drifting towards jazzy, galactic outer reaches. "Like A Grain Of Sand" opens with a spoken sample by the celebrated late American poet Rachel Sherwood ("The children watch, breathless / with the birds / They feel an emanation / from this shuddering place"), before taking flight on a Balearic trip through island house, PM Dawn gold dust, upright bass meditation, and kaleidoscopic light. A remix of the title track by Chicago trio Purelink closes the record in a suitably subdued and skittery state of mind. Time Enough For Love radiates color, complexity, and positivity, infused by the "life enhancing" nature of the band's time in Los Angeles - sunsets, sound systems, and sativa, framed by coastlines and cloudbanks, the city's mystic sprawl glittering beneath purple dusk.