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"This album is a superb collection of Frank and friends from a part of Frank’s career that’s long been underrated. Here, Sinatra scales the jazz summit with Louis Armstrong on “Birth Of The Blues” and does three electrifying collaborations with one of his favorites, Ella Fitzgerald. Ella’s voice is at her best in each. Rival Elvis Presley gets the Chairman’s respect on a wonderfully playful meeting-of-the-icons medley of “Witchcraft”/”Love Me Tender.” The tunes are bright and lively and many benefit from Nelson Riddle’s arranging genius. Frank and Dean are great, improvising and playing off one another as always. But wait until you hear “Together” in which Bing joins Dino and Frank for a happy, hilarious threesome.

2LP - 180 Gram Vinyl Trumpet player, pianist, composer, producer, and DJ born in Ibiza, Pere Navarro is recognized as one of the brightest young talents in the Spanish jazz scene and a rising name in Europe. Known for his innovative and experimental approach, Navarro masterfully blends the sophistication of Black American Music with the eclectic essence of Ibiza, his homeland, crafting a sound that is both unique and boundary-pushing. His music - fresh, emotional, and accessible - resonates effortlessly with audiences, delivering a truly one-of-a-kind experience in every performance. With the addition of this third album to his discography, Navarro has solidified his place as an original and unmistakable voice in the jazz world, gaining recognition at international festivals and collaborating with artists across diverse genres.

2LP - 180 Gram Vinyl Trumpet player, pianist, composer, producer, and DJ born in Ibiza, Pere Navarro is recognized as one of the brightest young talents in the Spanish jazz scene and a rising name in Europe. Known for his innovative and experimental approach, Navarro masterfully blends the sophistication of Black American Music with the eclectic essence of Ibiza, his homeland, crafting a sound that is both unique and boundary-pushing. His music - fresh, emotional, and accessible - resonates effortlessly with audiences, delivering a truly one-of-a-kind experience in every performance. With the addition of this third album to his discography, Navarro has solidified his place as an original and unmistakable voice in the jazz world, gaining recognition at international festivals and collaborating with artists across diverse genres.

Anxious’ second album Bambi arrives this winter on Run For Cover Records. It’s been a whirlwind few years for the Fairfield, Connecticut five-piece – since the release of their debut album Little Green House, there’s been little time for anything other than consistent touring with bands like Hot Mulligan, One Step Closer and The Wonder Years. Somewhere during that endless grind, vocalist Grady Allen was sitting in a hotel room and stumbled upon a name typed into a long-forgotten memo on his phone: Bambi. “We should have named the band Bambi,” he recalls admitting to his bandmates. Bambi stuck with the band after that night and eventually it evolved from a “what-if” into the name of Anxious’ second full-length album.

Bambi is a record of remarkable growth, depth, ambition, and energy. It takes all the unsolvable and unavoidable problems of exiting adolescence and makes them resonate in urgent and authentic new ways. The album has deep roots in the storied lineage of Northeast tri-state hardcore and emo, but it also fully embraces the widescreen alternative rock songwriting at which Anxious have previously only hinted. It’s a statement of purpose, the kind of album that comes from a band reconciling where they’ve been with where they want to go. Bambi is the sound of Anxious putting everything on the line–and coming out on the other side better than ever.

Inspired by “big swing” records like Blink-182’s self-titled or Jimmy Eat World’s Clarity, Anxious set out to redefine the band without losing sight of what made them work in the first place. Tracks like “Head & Spine,” “Sunder,” and “Tell Me Why” showcase the scope of Anxious’ evolution, tapping crunchy ‘90s rock guitarwork, layered ‘60s-esque harmonies, and crisp, modern production that captures the unrivaled energy of seeing the band play live.

Raw, violent, and catchy, Blitz’s 1982 debut album sounded like a shot of pure rock and roll through the violence of the English working class. Made up of two punks and two skinheads, with a lot to say about violence and football, Blitz appealed to all kinds of lowlifes, who finally had a voice for their generation. This new version of the long out-of-print classic includes three bonus tracks (two from the ‘Carry On Oi!’ comp and one from the ‘Total Noise’ comp).

Patchwork Inc. is a multi genre music collective based in Chicago. Inspired by the intricate and repetitive patterns on a quilt, deep grooves are stitched together with vibrant threads of analog synths, fat bass, Fender Rhodes, and a plethora of percussion to form a uniquely personal piece of art. "Whatever Makes You Happy," comes on like one of those unseasonably warm days in late fall. Flute, synth, and congas flutter like a cool breeze before giving way to a sunny and sultry hook. North Carolina native Taylor Williams brings a D'angeloesque vocal to a Roy Ayers style instrumental resulting in a mosaic of neo-soul and jazz-funk. The record's flipside evokes more of an idyllic fall day. The kind of day where you can throw on your favorite jacket and endlessly stroll down a tree-lined path as amber leaves fall to the ground. Chicago journeyman and musical prodigy Wyatt Waddell effortlessly layers his voice over the backbeat of "Last Forever," resulting in a medium-fidelity banger that could be confused for a I Want You-era Marvin demo.

Loyle Carner will release his highly anticipated sophomore record, 'Not Waving, But Drowning' on 19 April via AMF Records.

'Not Waving, But Drowning' follows Loyle's BRIT (Best Male, Best Newcomer) and Mercury Prize nominated, top 20 debut 'Yesterday's Gone'. The bedrock of honest and raw sentimentality that you heard on 'Yesterday's Gone' left an inextinguishable mark on music in general and UK Hip Hop in particular, standing out as an ageless, bulletproof debut.

'Not Waving, But Drowning', Loyle's new album, gives yet more evidence - as if it were needed - of his razor-sharp flow and his unique storytelling ability. Yes, he can rap, but he allies that with the sensitivity of a poet, the observational skills of a novelist, and warmth of your best friend. The album opens with 'Dear Jean', a letter to his mother in which he's telling her that he has found the love of his life, 'a woman from the skies', and he's moving out.

It goes without saying that Loyle's music is hard to categorise, but what is even more impressive is that for someone who grew up listening to Mos Def, Biggie Smalls, Roots Manuva, and Wu Tang Clan, he doesn't sound like any of them. Although he might from time to time give lyrical nods to them, he's no imitator.

Loyle loves cooking. There are two tracks on this album named after chefs. The British-Israeli chef Yotam Ottolenghi, and the now deceased Italian chef Antonio Carluccio. 'Ottolenghi' the first single from the album was featured on the BBC Radio 1 B-list, BBC 6 Music A-list and has already been streamed over 5 million times.

Loyle refers to real life for everything, the title of 'Yesterday's Gone' came from a song of his step father, the title of his new album 'Not Waving, But Drowning' comes from a poem by his grandfather, which in turn came from a Stevie Smith poem. What you hear on the track 'Krispy' is real. He is pouring his heart out to his best friend Rebel Kleff after their relationship went downhill, he invites him on the track to say his piece but he doesn't turn up, so we get a flugel solo instead.

Loyle also has his own personal black consciousness movement. When he refers to his 'fathers' in the track 'Looking Back' he really is referring to two fathers. His biological father, a black man who he knows, but knows very little of, and his step father, a poet and musician who happens to be a white man but died a sudden unexpected death from epilepsy (SUDEP). With no real emotional ties to his biological father, but a deep connection with a deceased step-father, where does a young child turn He succinctly captures many of the great, unspoken, cultural and historical paradoxes of multicultural Britain on 'Looking Back'.

An album like this is hard to find. It is for those who like their Hip Hop to have soul, and their soul to have spirit. This is because it works on so many levels, but it is reflecting the personality of its creator. There are a host of collaborators here, Jorja Smith, Rebel Kleff, Kiko Bun, Kwes, Jordan Rakei, Sampha, Tom Misch and more, but none are overpowering. They blend righteously into place.
Loyle is not bitter with people who have let him down, or a society that lets so many down, but the combination of anger and love he has gives his voice the perfect blend of strength and vulnerability. This might be a coming of age album, but it's also a coming of ageless album. Loyle's 2019 Spring tour - which includes London's Roundhouse - sold out within 20 minutes of being on sale.

Not Waving, But Drowning



A rapper that raps about family is hard to find. The boys in the 'hood' tend not to be that interested in how much a 'brother' loves his mother, or how much he misses his dad, or even how much he misses his best friend. The boys in the 'hood' tend to be obsessed with the size of their cars, girls, bank accounts, and other personal 'possessions'. Loyle Carner's Mercury and BRIT Prize nominated debut 'Yesterday's Gone' (Released 2017), made it clear that he wasn't that kind of rapper. In fact, every time I talk to him about his work we talk about the world, and we tended to confuse ourselves by calling his work rap, poems, or songs, sometimes in the same sentence. They are in truth all of these things.



Here's some poetry.



Honestly I need them.

I hate them but I grieve them

I think I've finally found the reason

Trust

Like the fire needs the air.

I won't burn unless you're there.





'Not Waving, But Drowning', Loyle's forthcoming new album, gives us yet more evidence, (if it were needed), that he still has what rappers call, flow, but he hasn't lost any of his story telling qualities. Yes, the boy can rap, but a rapper with the sensitivity of a true poet, the observational skills of a novelist, and warmth of your best friend. The album opens with 'Dear Jean', a letter to his mother in which he's telling her that he has found the love of his life, (a woman from the skies), and he's moving out. He really loves the woman from the skies, but he still loves his mum, and so he reassures her that there is no competition, and tells her that 'She's not behind me or behind you, but beside we and beside two', his words. Or to put it another way, moving out without moving out. My words.



It goes without saying that Loyle's music is hard to categorise, but what is even more impressive is that for someone who grew up listening to Mos Def, Biggie Smalls, Roots Manuva, and Wu Tang Clan, he doesn't sound like any of them. Although he might from time to time give lyrical nods to them, he's no imitator. He says finding his own voice was something he always found easy. Although young, (in terms of a musical career), he has confidence in his own words and his own voice, and has never been tempted to sound like he's been hanging out in the USA, or rolling in 'Grime' on the mean streets of East London. And so when it comes to the creative process he doesn't simply find a beat to jump on and ride. Beats are important, but they are tenderly layered with samples, keyboards, or live drums, all imaginatively assembled for the laying on of words. Some tracks start with the idea, some with poetry, and some with a verse from a singer or some other melodic inspiration, but there is no formula.



Here's some poetry.



Don't hold any memories of us

Rather hold you everyday until the memories are dust

Yo we only caught the train

Cos you know I hate the bus





A prolific reader, who has dyslexia is hard to find. Add ADHD (Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder) to that and life should become even more difficult. To deal with your difficulties you devise coping strategies, which can differ from person to person. Loyle loves cooking. There are two tracks on this album named after chefs. The British-Israeli chef Ottolenghi, and the now deceased Italian chef Antonio Carluccio. Loyle describes himself as 'weird' because he is happy to read a cookbook as if he was reading a novel or a book of poetry. He has opened a cookery school for young adults not just because he loves food and wants to make more of it, but because it is one of the few things that can focus the ADHD mind. And when it comes to his other love, football, his approach is the same. Focus. He wanted to be a striker he says, up front scoring goals, but found his best position was in midfield because he was able to focus, check options, and see passes ahead of time, providing passes for other players just when they needed them. He says, 'You don't grow out of ADHD, you grow into it.' Loyle is also working with Levi's® on their music project where he is mentoring young musicians over a six month period, culminating at Liverpool Sound City festival.



More poetry.



When the going is tough

I wait till it falls on deaf ears

Hearsay

Without the boundaries of love



He also said, 'Ask most people and they will say that they love their mothers, but most are not going to rap about her'. On his first album Loyle's mum Jean wrote about the 'scribble of a boy' that growing up would take things apart to see how they worked. On this album she speaks with pride about a man who has found his place in the world.



Yes, poetry.



I'm still looking for the answers

Trying to find the right questions

Still waiting for my fathers

But can't break them in to sections



This poetry is serious. Loyle has his own personal black consciousness movement. He told me that he always felt safe at home, and being the darkest one in the family never meant a thing, but then when he had to face the outside world he felt hostility. It shook him up. Now he had to start asking questions, but what were the questions. This is serious. When he refers to his 'fathers' in the verse above taken from the track 'Looking Back' he really is referring to two fathers. His biological father, a black man who he knows, but knows very little of, and his step father, a poet and musician who happens to be a white man but died a sudden unexpected death from epilepsy (SUDEP). So to whom would a young black (or mixed race) kid turn He succinctly captures many of the great, unspoken, cultural and historical paradoxes of multicultural Britain when he says, 'My great grandfather could of owned my other one.' We are a people descended from enslaved people on one hand, and enslavers on the other, something we are still struggling to come to terms with, and this can be apparent in one family. A big book could have told you that, but here we get it in one line on the track, Looking Back.





Loyle refers to real life for everything. The album is peppered with captured moments that he records on his phone. These moments can range from conversations with taxi drivers, to capturing the moment when England scores a goal in the world cup. The title of 'Yesterday's Gone' came from a song of his step father, the title of his new album 'Not Waving but Drowning' comes from a poem by his grandfather, which in turn came from a Stevie Smith poem. What you hear on the track 'Krispy' is real. He is pouring his heart out to his best friend after their relationship went downhill, he invites him on the track to say his piece but he doesn't turn up, so we get a flugel solo instead. Yes people, this is real.



An album like this is hard to find. It is for those who like their Hip Hop to have soul, and their soul to have spirit, this is an album for those who have, (I'm sorry, I'm going to say it), emotional intelligence. This is because it works on so many levels, but it is reflecting the personality of its creator. There are a host of collaborators here, Jorja Smith, Rebel Kleff, Kiko Bun, Jordan Rakei, Sampha, Tom Misch and more, but none are overpowering. They blend righteously into place. Loyle is not bitter with people who have let him down, or the society that has let him down, but the combination of anger and love he has gives his voice the perfect blend of strength and vulnerability. This might be a coming of age album, but it's also a coming of ageless album. His first album worked, and this second album is a continuation of that work. Not creating a form, but being formless, as someone like Bruce Lee once said.

And here's some poetry from mum.



We talked long in to the darkest hours

Until we saw the burnished sky

And our eyes stung

As our words blurred and became thoughts

As we were silenced by the dawn

We clung to each other like sailors in a storm

'Liberamente' is now available for the first time on cassette. Dawn Chorus and the Infallible Sea create soft-textured and slowly unfolding sonic landscapes, somewhere between guitar-oriented drone music and modern classical. Liberamente is the kind of album that demands attention and patience from the listener, yet it's ultimately a very rewarding one. Stylistically Dawn Chorus and the Infallible Sea sums up several decades of American soundscape and drone music, taking threads from Windy & Carl, Auburn Lull, and Stars of the Lid then weaves them into a contemporary, and sonically adventurous whole. On the surface it suggests simplicity, but dig deeper and the seven pieces on Liberamente reveals a rare compositional dexterity. This is minimalism at its finest.

In the late 1980s, as techno and house made its way around Europe, mutating as it hopped from city to city, one young DJ from Curacao made a mistake that would inspire a brand new sound. While he was performing at Den Haag's Club Voltage, DJ Moortje accidentally dropped a dancehall track at 45RPM rather than 33, and let it play out. Thirsty for a hi-NRG sound, the crowd loved the squeaky vocals and rapid beat, and bubbling (or bubbling house) was born.For the next couple of decades, bubbling was a crucial part of Holland's Afro-diasporic club landscape. And as a new generation of wide-eyed young DJs and producers began to take the reins, it evolved accordingly. In the late-2000s, Den Haag-based teenage prodigy Guillermo Schuurman followed in the footsteps of his uncle DJ Chippie (one of the genre's co-founders) and cousins DJ Daycard, DJ Master-D, Stiko Jnr and DJ Justme, and began performing and writing beats. Using Fruityloops, he fused familiar bubbling rhythms with rap and R&B samples, trance synths and electro house wobbles, and his tracks quickly became a regular fixture on the Dutch circuit."Bubbling Inside" is a collection of Schuurman's most essential cuts from the era (2007-2009), with a couple of newer productions added for context. Crafted solely for the dance, most of these tracks were never properly released and have been painstakingly hunted down and collected by the Nyege Nyege Tapes together with Sascha Roth from Pantropical in Rotterdam and De Schuurman himself. Hearing them together highlights just how forward thinking the young producer was, steering a Dutch institution into the future.2008's 'First One' is a proto-Berghain belter, with booming bass-heavy kicks underpinning the kind of cheeky melodies that remain the calling card of the genre. 'Pier Je Bil!!' ratchets up the tempo, twisting bubbling's syncopated dancehall kicks into a rapid-fire club clatter and decorating them with steel-pan melodies. Elsewhere, 2019's 'Domina' shows how Schuurman's production style has developed as he mutates trap percussion, dubstep bass and eerie synth textures, while retaining the DNA of bubbling. "Bubbling Inside" is a testament to the evolution of the bubbling genre, as witnessed by one of its most visionary producers.

In the late 1980s, as techno and house made its way around Europe, mutating as it hopped from city to city, one young DJ from Curacao made a mistake that would inspire a brand new sound. While he was performing at Den Haag's Club Voltage, DJ Moortje accidentally dropped a dancehall track at 45RPM rather than 33, and let it play out. Thirsty for a hi-NRG sound, the crowd loved the squeaky vocals and rapid beat, and bubbling (or bubbling house) was born.For the next couple of decades, bubbling was a crucial part of Holland's Afro-diasporic club landscape. And as a new generation of wide-eyed young DJs and producers began to take the reins, it evolved accordingly. In the late-2000s, Den Haag-based teenage prodigy Guillermo Schuurman followed in the footsteps of his uncle DJ Chippie (one of the genre's co-founders) and cousins DJ Daycard, DJ Master-D, Stiko Jnr and DJ Justme, and began performing and writing beats. Using Fruityloops, he fused familiar bubbling rhythms with rap and R&B samples, trance synths and electro house wobbles, and his tracks quickly became a regular fixture on the Dutch circuit."Bubbling Inside" is a collection of Schuurman's most essential cuts from the era (2007-2009), with a couple of newer productions added for context. Crafted solely for the dance, most of these tracks were never properly released and have been painstakingly hunted down and collected by the Nyege Nyege Tapes together with Sascha Roth from Pantropical in Rotterdam and De Schuurman himself. Hearing them together highlights just how forward thinking the young producer was, steering a Dutch institution into the future.2008's 'First One' is a proto-Berghain belter, with booming bass-heavy kicks underpinning the kind of cheeky melodies that remain the calling card of the genre. 'Pier Je Bil!!' ratchets up the tempo, twisting bubbling's syncopated dancehall kicks into a rapid-fire club clatter and decorating them with steel-pan melodies. Elsewhere, 2019's 'Domina' shows how Schuurman's production style has developed as he mutates trap percussion, dubstep bass and eerie synth textures, while retaining the DNA of bubbling. "Bubbling Inside" is a testament to the evolution of the bubbling genre, as witnessed by one of its most visionary producers.

Last May, Hard Times captivated us with The Lost D.A.T.S (Part One)—a remarkable collection of unreleased and freshly unearthed gems from the vaults of NYC legend DJ Romain. But the story didn’t end there. To our surprise and delight, Romain had delivered an even larger treasure trove of beats—too many to reveal all at once.

Now, Hard Times is proud to present the next chapter: DJ Romain – The Lost D.A.T.S (Part Two).

"1996-97? Yeah, that’s when New York was still NEW YORK!

That was around the time we really started to get hold of exotic herbs. Copper Haze, hydroponic! The vibes in the studio were always lovely. I had hair at the time! Dread-Locs down to my shoulders... I was still rockin’ the Wallabees, or British Walkers as we called them - representing for Brooklyn and my West Indian roots!

There was no social media, no supervision, nobody all up in our business… It was classic "mind your own business" NYC Vibes! I was DJing at a lot of the hot clubs and THE hottest afterhours in the city. There were nights when I saw Micheal Douglas roll into the afters with Grace Jones - they were there to party and unwind and I was there dropping the dope tracks for the people.

When it was studio time, with my homie Matt Echols...I was probably setting things off with some quality herbage, a big ass bag of Funyuns and my trusty SP-1200, lol. I had picked up some tips and tricks from Todd Terry and by '96-'97 I was a Shaolin with it myself! This was around the time tracks like "Flowers" and "Only Love Can Break Your Heart (Dub)" were tearing up the clubs. I wanted to be able to get my ideas out with no problem, and by then I had a lot of confidence...

Being able to Dj in some of the hottest NY hot spots at the time, I was able to really see what worked and what didn't on the dancefloor. The best House Dancers from around the world and around the Tri-State area would be at my jams. I'm talking Ejoe, Voodoo Ray, maybe kids from the Mop-Top Crew... I was definitely taking note of the kind of rhythms and sounds that would make them go crazy on the dancefloor!

And that's how we went about it - I laid down the rhythms that made it happen in my sets and translated the vibes I was picking up from NYC itself. Matt threw down musically and we were just being as creative and inventive as possible! But we always kept in mind that our job was to make the people on the dancefloor jump!

A lot of the jams from those days got signed to various record labels, we dropped a lot of them on our own label...and some of them ended up in the archives - until now!"

WRWTFWW Records is honored to present a one of a kind collaboration release between buzzing UK producer and DJ Pizza Hotline and Swedish electronic and synth icon Mitch Murder, delivering 3 gigantic tracks each for the Anti Gravity Tournament album, now available as a limited-edition LP housed in a heavyweight 350gsm sleeve illustrated by the legendary junkboy. It is also available in digital formats.

Inspired by the classic WipEout video game series, this high-energy boosted split-album transports listeners into the futuristic world of anti-gravity racing, a colorful turbo adventure soundtracked by 6 mega tracks of fast-paced atmospheric jungle, thunderous breaks, and liquid drum & bass. The adrenaline-fueled collection delivers maximum energy and dreamy vibes, a true paradise for fans of 90s/Y2K video games, LTJ Bukem, Peshay, Soichi Terada, and previous efforts by Mitch & Pizza.

Anti Gravity Tournament follows 2 critically-acclaimed albums by Pizza Hotline – Level Select and Polygon Island, both still available on WRWTFWW Records, as well as the limited Low Poly Breaks cassette series which sold out in a few minutes.

Mitch Murder is known as one of the originators of synthwave and has released timeless albums on Rosso Corsa Records, Mad Decent, and My Pet Flamingo (TimeSlave Recordings). He is also the man behind the Kung Fury soundtrack and has collaborated with…David Hasselhoff himself!

The astonishing exclusive artwork comes from the one and only junkboy, creative director at Mojang Studios (Minecraft) and all-around design grandmaster.

Fasten your seatbelt and join the fun.

Miki Yui is a musician, artist, and composer, originally from Tokyo, who has been based in Düsseldorf since 1994. Her whose work has long explored multiple forms of media, while documenting liminal zones of perception. On her latest album, As If, Yui creates a subtly connected suite of electronic music, drawn from improvisations and randomised processes that she has engaged with modular synthesis. Deeply poetic in its expression, even at its most minimal, the six pieces on As If have a curious tenor – they are, each of them, intensely sensuous, almost haptic listening experiences, as though the laser focus that Yui displays towards her compositions allows her to engage them as almost physical presences in the world.

One of the keys that unlocks the intimate complexity-in-simplicity of As If was Yui’s encounters with the Amazonian rainforest in Manaus, Brazil in 2018. Finding that the sounds in the rainforest both shadowed and echoed the music she had been making for two decades, she embraced the possibilities of modular synthesis, the sounds of which she discovered “have astonishing similarities to the sounds I experienced in the rainforest.” There is, indeed, something natural about the way these sounds bloom in real time; in their dedicated focus to the subtle development and mutation of several discrete parameters of sound, they grow slowly, gradually, their rhizomic structures suggesting that we are always situated within the middle of sound.

Sometimes, the material here has a kind of febrile energy, as on the ticking, clacking electronics of “Generativ”, a track that seems to rotate in the air in front of the listener, the light reflecting off its multiple surfaces as we catch the intricacies of its micro-patterns. Elsewhere, we slide into a cooled but welcoming environment, like the late-night fire-fly horizon of “Song 4”; there’s also the humid, dripping tropical sunset that’s documented on “Summernight”. It’s a music that’s hard to locate external coordinates for, though there are, perhaps, some parallels with the work of Laurie Spiegel, Eliane Radigue’s Vice Versa, and Pauline Oliveros’s “Roots of the Moment”. But As If is an extraordinary collection of naturally developing, rich studies for slowly mutating, enveloping, elemental electronics.

Fragility, modesty, delicacy... Frànçois’ voice evokes illustrious contemporaries, from Devendra Banhart to Vincent Gallo, whose vocal inflections sometimes echo behind the uniquely French timbre.

Artists like Malik Djoudi with his captivating pop, in-demand jazzman Thomas de Pourquery, and British folk artist Rozi Plain all lend their talents to Âge Fleuve. These three delightful collaborations blend seamlessly into the album’s 10 tracks. But the album’s fluidity is also felt in the flavor of certain compositions, like the upbeat “Où mène la nuit,” a kind of mystical inquiry into the whirlwinds of youth. Then there’s “Aïeul inconnu”, whose apparent melancholy pairs perfectly with its elegant groove. “Adorer”, the duet with Thomas de Pourquery, is an uplifting track that jumps wholeheartedly into the joy of living in the “present moment”.

Âge Fleuve—or rather, a “liquid inspiration”— is built on a heritage of memory. And when one delves into the mystery of this heritage, the answer becomes clear: “We’re here, under this part of the river, further downstream. Everything communicates, everything is in motion.” In other words, an album flowing through the river of our sensory, intimate, and universal heritage.

Unfamous prose Australian songwriter Jakson is one of the most satirist corrosive artist from our era. Originally a painter, he describe our 21st century world with a sad reality. In a kind of nonchalant spoken word. Accompanied with guitar, bass and drums, his musicians friends are truly deserving that realistic observation of that world going up in flame in a noisy folk mood.

David Allred is a prolific composer and producer based in Portland, Oregon. His new album The Beautiful World captures an enriched, realised understanding of why he composes in the first place. Dedicated to the expression of existential themes such as death, grief, longing and loss, the album’s core theme centres around the suicide of a young girl Lauren, who was a family friend to Allred. For as long as he could remember, Allred always created music out of a kind of dissociative state which he finds alluringly easy to lapse into. A repetition of a motif is usually where he begins composing. But unlike his previous works, The Beautiful World firmly has one foot in reality and is deeply intertwined with Allred’s relationships, past and present. Through his correspondence with Erased Tapes label head and the album’s producer, Robert Raths, over the past year, he came to realise that everyone has a Lauren in a way – someone they’d lost. Through writing to Raths, Allred was able to draw out this thread from the work and position it more clearly as the central concept to this work. The music doesn’t reflect the chaos of trauma, instead it has a therapeutic quality. It was through this dialogue that Allred was able to create what may be his most cohesive body of work to date. The 11 track album unfolds around Oh Lauren, providing the core of the album’s sentiment – how grief returns to us throughout life over and over. Embedded more than halfway through the album, Allred allows listeners to cohabit a meditative space through ambient textures, drones and ballads echoing the vocal sincerity of Arthur Russell, Daniel Johnston and the hypnotic storytelling of Robert Ashley. To truly reckon with The Beautiful World’s emotional position, listeners must understand the importance of the figure of Lauren, and the significance she has had throughout Allred’s life. Lauren’s suicide as a child provided the catalyst for Allred’s lifelong grief. But it was death anxiety and grief itself which provided Allred a link to a universal relationship that people have with each other and the world they live in. Impermanence and loss are the driving force behind all of our connections. The trance-like nature of the album perhaps comes from David Allred’s time sense – particularly when it comes to memory and trauma. Time becomes non-linear rather than a straight line – where one can repeat or return to the same themes but older and in a different frame of mind. Grief continues to manifest itself in life and despite personal growth, there will always be moments where the same feeling will manifest itself again. The album encourages listeners to sit with the concept of grief, and Allred is hopeful they can find comfort and learn to process it in a healing way. The Beautiful World is therefore heavily influenced by Allred’s work in therapy, particularly his relationship to writing music. In the past, Allred would be composing music as a means to dissociate from his life, but the album sees him engaging and connecting more authentically than ever with others and himself. Despite his prolific previous works being made in the company of others, Allred needed to step back from the scenes that he’s worked in to discover what he really wanted to create. Allred concludes: “In the power of love, curiosity, humour, and reconciliation, we give you The Beautiful World.”

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.

The combination of their musicianship and the cutting-edge technology at the studio resulted in a masterpiece of pure, state-of-the-art funk and boogie. The album features all the hallmarks of great 80s music: fresh synths, drum machines, and powerful lead vocals from John Davis. Upbeat tracks like "The Cat (Puma)" and the title track sit comfortably alongside more soulful songs like "Tears" and "Hearts of Gold," while "Dancing Shoes" remains one of the era's catchiest dance tracks.

Still, Shake It - Make It Loose holds a few mysteries. Why was it released under the unusual name J.D. (Puma) Lewis? And what's the story behind tracks like "The Cat"? While J.D. Lewis stood for John Davis Lewis's full legal name, Hudson sheds light on the "Puma" connection: "At the time, I was working as a promotions manager for Puma sportswear. Jörg Dassler, son of Puma founder Rudolf Dassler, was a friend of mine and financed our studio sessions." As said, these sessions took place at Hartmann Digital, a state-of-the-art studio in Untertrubach, Bavaria, where iconic artists like Nena, Yello, Visage, DAF, and Soft Cell recorded.

The use of such an expensive studio would have been out of reach for the two musicians without Puma's backing, which also explains why there is a title like "Dancing Shoes." When we had licensed the track for the Boogie On The Mainline compilation in 2018, we had the chance to speak with John Davis (who sadly passed away in May 2021 due to COVID-19). Davis revealed that there were plans to make a video for the song in collaboration with Puma, but those plans fell through. In the end, the album was signed to the Deggendorf-based Metrovynil label.

Interestingly, the original contract reveals that the first version of the album only contained six tracks. Metrovynil added two more: "Sexy Highschool Lady," a track Davis recorded solo, and "Party Rap" by The Dynamite Two, which had no connection to Davis or Hudson at all. The album's credits also list a "Fred Fiore" as the person "who made all of this possible." Hudson, who sees himself as the producer, has no idea who Fiore was - likely another fabrication from the label. "That's just the kind of thing Metrovynil did," Hudson comments with some regret.

Despite the behind-the-scenes confusion, the music spoke for itself. The original pressing looked and sounded fantastic, featuring a stylish cover shot of John Davis in a sharp suit. Now, with this first-ever vinyl reissue, we're thrilled to include additional photos and more background information in a deluxe gatefold sleeve.

This reissue includes all six tracks from the original Hartmann Digital sessions, plus two bonus tracks. From the original reel tapes, we unearthed additional material that Hudson and Davis produced together in the early to mid-80s. We're excited to share the previously unreleased tracks "Life's A Party," and "Walk Out On Me." The digital version of the reissue will also feature two more songs: "Red Drops" and "Pick It Up Off The Ground."

Shake It - Make It Loose is a classic boogie-funk album that belongs in every serious funk and disco collection. It showcases the undeniable talent of two true musicians and stands as a testament to the friendship between Reg Hudson and John Davis.

Maverick musician and artist Edvard Graham Lewis returns with ‘Alreet?’: an exciting album of majestic, experimental pop. Yet, the cheery North Eastern greeting of the album’s title belies the tension and drama that lies within. Here, you’ll find visceral rhythms, warm electronics and multiple melodic layers, with words that are sometimes sung, sometimes spoken. Lewis’s deep, distinctive voice has matured into a rich baritone: portentous yet immediate - and it serves his material exceptionally well. Although he is perhaps best known as bassist/ vocalist/lyricist with post-punk titans Wire, Lewis’s solo work is equally powerful. Lyrically he remains one of our finest wordsmiths. His desire to edit his text to its essentials is smartly counterbalanced by an ability to seed double or triple meanings in his phraseology. Consequently, the whole enterprise is studded with lines and couplets that snare our attention with unexpected hooks and barbs. The album is co produced with Swedish songwriter, producer and musician Max Lorentz, who has worked with everyone from acclaimed composer Magnus Lindberg to ABBA’s Agnetha Faltskog. As ‘Alreet?’ clearly demonstrates, Lewis is still firmly facing the future and determined to unearth new sonic treasure. Indeed, this is one of the most starkly original albums you will hear all year

Back with a bang! "Road To Happiness" marks the triumphant return of Manchester"s one and only Dislocation Dance - after a 7-year long hiatus. The new album - their sixth - features ten new and fresh songs. Main songwriters Ian Runacres (guitar/vocals) and Phil Lukes (bass/vocals) most probably never sounded better. Kinda like Manchester"s Nile Rodgers & Bernard Edwards they create killer grooves a la Chic and The Real Thing. Melodies galore & disco euphoria plus beautiful vocals. To Love And Be Loved! Daft Punk meets Everything But The Girl. Ian Runacres formed DD in Manchester, and soon got trumpet player Andy Diagram on board who later joined The Pale Fountains and James. They created their unique mix of Post-Punk, New Wave, Jazz, Disco, 60s French Pop and Soundtracks. The band played their first ever gig at the legendary Factory in Manchester, recorded sessions for John Peel, Janice Long and Kid Jensen, and went on their own eclectic journey. Always maintaining their unique DD sound. Now they are back. With a truly fabulous album. On Marina - the perfect home for them. Let"s get (it) on... the road to happiness.

While 1995's Washing Machine LP moniker was a thinly-veiled jab at the corporate aesthetic ("no, you cannot turn Sonic Youth into a household appliance brand", the band even considered changing its name to Washing Machine but settled on the album title instead), their major label relationship was indeed a curious buzzpoint of talk on the street after their intake to DGC in 1990. It wouldn't be fair to say that this state of existence propelled the band to reinforce its independent mindset by releasing a series of opaque-looking, French-language-dipping, highbrow-looking releases on their own that focused on the more abstract improv/compositional side of the band; in all truths they had been heavily steeped in self-releasing spillover material prior to that. But after a pressure pot of the early 90's indoctrination into a new operational mode for the band and its visibility, and the forces around it attempting to shape their direction, it seemed like a good time to create a strong show of radical concept.

The Anagrama EP became the first in a series of the SYR label's Perspective Musicales releases seemingly cementing Sonic Youth's connectivity to an increasing public awareness in experimental composers of the 20th century (French or otherwise). The irony was that many of those original avant composers being rediscovered by the indie audience (Partch, Neuhaus, Reich, Messaien) often found themselves on major labels anyway! So, perhaps this reverse approach was a necessary concept/comment given the music biz climate of the 90's. Regardless of how apples and oranges fell in Xenakian probability/theory, it was clear that both Sonic Youth's stature in progressive music, aided by now unlimited taperoll time thanks to a home base studio downtown established after their Lollapalooza stint, gave the band plenty of trailblazing time for their self examination of untraveled avenues.

"Anagrama" unfolds into nine minutes of delicate textures, starting with thick drone segueing into moments reminiscent of the post-crescendo flutter/comedown of "Marquee Moon's" trail-out; Thurston, Lee and Kim's guitars all circling round each other taking delicate pokes and stabs before drifting into some post-rock rhythmic moves tapered with delicate percussive guidance from Steve Shelley. "Improvisation Ajoutée" reaches further out into dissolve with whirring oscillations, guitars hissing and clanking radiator-style in a short blast format that continues into "Tremens" and a spooked-out landscape of gelatinous notes snaking up slowly. The sparseness of attack is colorful, textures emit and linger, silent spots shine, all flanked by tasteful drumming that provides the thread to all the abstraction. Shelley's approach here is interestingly sideways to any kind of usual rock action, it's tempered, mutant and metronomic simultaneously. The finale track "Mieux: De Corrosion" is a real pedal-palatte showcase. Here, Plutonian guitar wash flanges upwards to buoy a myriad of colorful eruptions of amp-spuzz, chopped up tone blasts and general confusion. Out of the blue, some metallic one-note choogle kicks in and threatens to explode into some Judas Priestly motion, before it all sputters into aural glass showers, clang, and finally a ferocious wave of more flange hiss that crashes down on a dime.

This initial foray into SY's Perspectives Musicales series continued onward with releases featuring other co-conspirators, peaking with the ambitious 2CD Goodbye 20th Century that finally connects the band into full-on interpretations of other composers' pieces (as well as displaying their own new ones). The whole series is not so much an outlet for another "side" of the band, but a run that went hand in hand building new approaches of songcraft onto their own, more overground direction which included Jim O'Rourke (who hopped on during SYR3), adding additional density to A Thousand Leaves and other LPs of his era. Fans of the '86 Spinhead Sessions as well as the recently-exhumed later jams of In/Out/In will take in the sounds of SYR1 with glee.

Gerson King Combo's 1977 album is a masterpiece of Brazilian soul, emerged within the Black Rio movement, which was recorded with União Black as the backing band. It features the kind of full-on funky sound you'd only expect to hear from a rare few American groups of the time. Its ten songs mix political statements, which primarily address issues of racial pride, and dancefloor-oriented music. The album has achieved cult status over the years, becoming one of the most sought-after Brazilian funk records of all times. Remastered from the original tapes and pressed on 180g vinyl in a gatefold sleeve. This release is part of a new reissue series that will include many other outstanding Brazilian classics

Recorded 1979 at Pathway studios, an eight-track studio in Islington, North London, this is an album of inventive, timeless electro-pop. Mastered from the original analogue tapes, the album still sounds incredible thanks to Foxx’s minimalist approach, which was partly inspired by his experience of watching Lee “Scratch" Perry produce records at Island Records’ studios in the 1970s. Engineer Gareth Jones - who later worked on some of Depeche Mode’s finest recordings - also proved to be a fantastic collaborator and innovator on this record.

John Foxx:
"I was in retreat from bands, touring, etc, mightily convinced that electronics were the future, and reading too much J.G. Ballard. I lived alone in Finsbury Park, spent my spare time walking the disused train lines, cycled to the studio every day and wobbled back at dawn, imagining I was the Marcel Duchamp of electropop. Metamatic was the result. It was the first British electronic pop album. It was minimal, primitive technopunk. Carcrash music tailored by Burtons.”

For our first ever Vinyl release we are celebrating a one of a kind party that has been happening for the last three years in South of France. We teamed up with « L’archipel » and invited 4 Producer that have all been part of making this festival a formidable adventure between Trance, Techno and Electro.

Lombroso goes first with his sharp dark and religious atmosphere. A1, The Last Midnight, a slowly building Techno belter, not to remember his infamous project « La Decima Vittima » released on « La nota del diablo ».

A2, Delayscura takes you on a beautiful trance infused techno trip. Nativo grants us of his deep crazy synths that are progressively taking this beautiful ambiance to an all other level.

After two appearances on his own label, IVOE, Kamyar Keramati opens that side with an intense electro banger. B1, Elements of a Thread get more and more complex to finally unravel all his mysteries.

Tibahuult has been for the past two years traveling all around France with an unforgettable live act. He is also one of the founder of « L’archipel » where he played that live act for the first time. With B2, Feel some of my Jam, he delivers for us an incredible belter track that
kick with a sunny vibe only to unfold all the producer madness all along the track.

Signed to Death Row Records by Snoop Dogg, the 2025 Grammy-nominated artist channels the spirit of Marvin Gaye in this deeply heartfelt tribute to one of music's most iconic voices. With The Rebirth of Marvin, October captures both Gaye’s timeless influence and his own unique artistry, creating a seamless fusion of the past and the present. The album’s lead single, "Back to Your Place," has already made waves, topping the Billboard Adult R&B Songs chart, while earning three nominations at the Soul Train Music Awards.

FEBRUARY 2023 MARKED THE ARRIVAL OF AN ALBUM THAT’S REDEFIFINING THE SOUND OF SOUL FOR A NEW GENERATION: OCTOBER LONDON’S THE REBIRTH OF MARVIN. SIGNED TO DEATH ROW RECORDS BY SNOOP DOGG, THE 2025 GRAMMY NOMINATED OCTOBER LONDON CHANNELS THE SPIRIT OF MARVIN GAYE IN THIS HOMAGE TO ONE OF MUSIC’S MOST SOULFUL VOICES, CAPTURING BOTH GAYE’S TIMELESS INFLFLUENCE AND LONDON’S OWN UNIQUE ARTISTRY.

REFLECTING ON THE PROJECT, OCTOBER LONDON SHARED, “DEAR MARVIN, I’M NOT TRYING TO BE YOU. THAT’S IMPOSSIBLE. YOU’RE ONE OF A KIND. I JUST WANT TO PAY HOMAGE TO YOU, BROTHA. YOU PAVED THE WAY FOR THIS SOUND, AND I’M JUST HERE TO MAKE SURE THEY DON’T FORGET.”

THE ALBUM’S LEAD SINGLE ‘BACK TO YOUR PLACE‘ HAS ALREADY TOPPED THE BILLBOARD ADULT R&B SONGS CHART, CAPTIVATING LISTENERS AND EARNING THREE SOUL TRAIN MUSIC AWARD NOMINATIONS. FROM HIS BEGINNINGS AS A RISING ARTIST UNDER SNOOP DOGG’S MENTORSHIP TO HIS PLACE AS A FORCE IN MODERN R&B, OCTOBER LONDON’S JOURNEY HAS LED TO THIS PIVOTAL MOMENT.
THE REBIRTH OF MARVIN IS BOTH A TRIBUTE AND AN EVOLUTION, A SOULFUL REMINDER OF THE LEGACY GAYE LEFT BEHIND - AND OF THE NEW PATHWAYS LONDON IS CREATING FOR IT TODAY.

Signed to Death Row Records by Snoop Dogg, the 2025 Grammy-nominated artist channels the spirit of Marvin Gaye in this deeply heartfelt tribute to one of music's most iconic voices. With The Rebirth of Marvin, October captures both Gaye’s timeless influence and his own unique artistry, creating a seamless fusion of the past and the present. The album’s lead single, "Back to Your Place," has already made waves, topping the Billboard Adult R&B Songs chart, while earning three nominations at the Soul Train Music Awards.

FEBRUARY 2023 MARKED THE ARRIVAL OF AN ALBUM THAT’S REDEFIFINING THE SOUND OF SOUL FOR A NEW GENERATION: OCTOBER LONDON’S THE REBIRTH OF MARVIN. SIGNED TO DEATH ROW RECORDS BY SNOOP DOGG, THE 2025 GRAMMY NOMINATED OCTOBER LONDON CHANNELS THE SPIRIT OF MARVIN GAYE IN THIS HOMAGE TO ONE OF MUSIC’S MOST SOULFUL VOICES, CAPTURING BOTH GAYE’S TIMELESS INFLFLUENCE AND LONDON’S OWN UNIQUE ARTISTRY.

REFLECTING ON THE PROJECT, OCTOBER LONDON SHARED, “DEAR MARVIN, I’M NOT TRYING TO BE YOU. THAT’S IMPOSSIBLE. YOU’RE ONE OF A KIND. I JUST WANT TO PAY HOMAGE TO YOU, BROTHA. YOU PAVED THE WAY FOR THIS SOUND, AND I’M JUST HERE TO MAKE SURE THEY DON’T FORGET.”

THE ALBUM’S LEAD SINGLE ‘BACK TO YOUR PLACE‘ HAS ALREADY TOPPED THE BILLBOARD ADULT R&B SONGS CHART, CAPTIVATING LISTENERS AND EARNING THREE SOUL TRAIN MUSIC AWARD NOMINATIONS. FROM HIS BEGINNINGS AS A RISING ARTIST UNDER SNOOP DOGG’S MENTORSHIP TO HIS PLACE AS A FORCE IN MODERN R&B, OCTOBER LONDON’S JOURNEY HAS LED TO THIS PIVOTAL MOMENT.
THE REBIRTH OF MARVIN IS BOTH A TRIBUTE AND AN EVOLUTION, A SOULFUL REMINDER OF THE LEGACY GAYE LEFT BEHIND - AND OF THE NEW PATHWAYS LONDON IS CREATING FOR IT TODAY.

Signed to Death Row Records by Snoop Dogg, the 2025 Grammy-nominated artist channels the spirit of Marvin Gaye in this deeply heartfelt tribute to one of music's most iconic voices. With The Rebirth of Marvin, October captures both Gaye’s timeless influence and his own unique artistry, creating a seamless fusion of the past and the present. The album’s lead single, "Back to Your Place," has already made waves, topping the Billboard Adult R&B Songs chart, while earning three nominations at the Soul Train Music Awards.

FEBRUARY 2023 MARKED THE ARRIVAL OF AN ALBUM THAT’S REDEFIFINING THE SOUND OF SOUL FOR A NEW GENERATION: OCTOBER LONDON’S THE REBIRTH OF MARVIN. SIGNED TO DEATH ROW RECORDS BY SNOOP DOGG, THE 2025 GRAMMY NOMINATED OCTOBER LONDON CHANNELS THE SPIRIT OF MARVIN GAYE IN THIS HOMAGE TO ONE OF MUSIC’S MOST SOULFUL VOICES, CAPTURING BOTH GAYE’S TIMELESS INFLFLUENCE AND LONDON’S OWN UNIQUE ARTISTRY.

REFLECTING ON THE PROJECT, OCTOBER LONDON SHARED, “DEAR MARVIN, I’M NOT TRYING TO BE YOU. THAT’S IMPOSSIBLE. YOU’RE ONE OF A KIND. I JUST WANT TO PAY HOMAGE TO YOU, BROTHA. YOU PAVED THE WAY FOR THIS SOUND, AND I’M JUST HERE TO MAKE SURE THEY DON’T FORGET.”

THE ALBUM’S LEAD SINGLE ‘BACK TO YOUR PLACE‘ HAS ALREADY TOPPED THE BILLBOARD ADULT R&B SONGS CHART, CAPTIVATING LISTENERS AND EARNING THREE SOUL TRAIN MUSIC AWARD NOMINATIONS. FROM HIS BEGINNINGS AS A RISING ARTIST UNDER SNOOP DOGG’S MENTORSHIP TO HIS PLACE AS A FORCE IN MODERN R&B, OCTOBER LONDON’S JOURNEY HAS LED TO THIS PIVOTAL MOMENT.
THE REBIRTH OF MARVIN IS BOTH A TRIBUTE AND AN EVOLUTION, A SOULFUL REMINDER OF THE LEGACY GAYE LEFT BEHIND - AND OF THE NEW PATHWAYS LONDON IS CREATING FOR IT TODAY.

Signed to Death Row Records by Snoop Dogg, the 2025 Grammy-nominated artist channels the spirit of Marvin Gaye in this deeply heartfelt tribute to one of music's most iconic voices. With The Rebirth of Marvin, October captures both Gaye’s timeless influence and his own unique artistry, creating a seamless fusion of the past and the present. The album’s lead single, "Back to Your Place," has already made waves, topping the Billboard Adult R&B Songs chart, while earning three nominations at the Soul Train Music Awards.

FEBRUARY 2023 MARKED THE ARRIVAL OF AN ALBUM THAT’S REDEFIFINING THE SOUND OF SOUL FOR A NEW GENERATION: OCTOBER LONDON’S THE REBIRTH OF MARVIN. SIGNED TO DEATH ROW RECORDS BY SNOOP DOGG, THE 2025 GRAMMY NOMINATED OCTOBER LONDON CHANNELS THE SPIRIT OF MARVIN GAYE IN THIS HOMAGE TO ONE OF MUSIC’S MOST SOULFUL VOICES, CAPTURING BOTH GAYE’S TIMELESS INFLFLUENCE AND LONDON’S OWN UNIQUE ARTISTRY.

REFLECTING ON THE PROJECT, OCTOBER LONDON SHARED, “DEAR MARVIN, I’M NOT TRYING TO BE YOU. THAT’S IMPOSSIBLE. YOU’RE ONE OF A KIND. I JUST WANT TO PAY HOMAGE TO YOU, BROTHA. YOU PAVED THE WAY FOR THIS SOUND, AND I’M JUST HERE TO MAKE SURE THEY DON’T FORGET.”

THE ALBUM’S LEAD SINGLE ‘BACK TO YOUR PLACE‘ HAS ALREADY TOPPED THE BILLBOARD ADULT R&B SONGS CHART, CAPTIVATING LISTENERS AND EARNING THREE SOUL TRAIN MUSIC AWARD NOMINATIONS. FROM HIS BEGINNINGS AS A RISING ARTIST UNDER SNOOP DOGG’S MENTORSHIP TO HIS PLACE AS A FORCE IN MODERN R&B, OCTOBER LONDON’S JOURNEY HAS LED TO THIS PIVOTAL MOMENT.
THE REBIRTH OF MARVIN IS BOTH A TRIBUTE AND AN EVOLUTION, A SOULFUL REMINDER OF THE LEGACY GAYE LEFT BEHIND - AND OF THE NEW PATHWAYS LONDON IS CREATING FOR IT TODAY.

“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 Ghentian skyline has low peaks and hides its horrors in full view ~ walk streamside and you’ll quickly be confronted with façades that leer with their tales and secrets, the angels and demons that built this city holding up its mortar and stone in an inextricable embrace. It is within this incongruous backdrop that Benoît Monsieurs has fostered the Venediktos Tempelboom persona. Using the 12-string guitar as his main instrument, the self-taught musician creates passages that take fingerpicking Americana and Eastern transcendence into the Flanders fields, with winding compositions that distill the essence of giants like John Fahey, Robbie Basho and Jack Rose and folds them into the dark drone melancholia of Funeral Folk/KRAAK stalwarts like Silvester Anfang, Helvete and Ignatz. The results are ringing meditations of awe and terror, flamboyant and grotesque yet utterly mesmerizing in their unrooted sonic imagery.

In his debut LP, Syne Vuyle Hoeck, the Tempelboom amalgamates his influences - East, West and deep Flanders alike - into a flurry of acid-drenched tracks that spread out into a distinctive musical iconography. Each composition carries a facet, highlighting angel and demon in equal measure: the solemn opener “De woelige rit op een roze wolkje” is a threading of melodies that carry pensive heft and hopeful asides, as hints of ragtime buoyancy lead into sullen ruminations in a fully lucid change of course; “Ocharme Ochgod” is a sober penitence, slowly and almost imperceptibly building up into a tangle of lines that inexorably coil back into their brooding backbone; the echoing tape loop of “In Flock” reverberates and torments, steel sharpness and frayed magnetic disintegration finding improbable common ground; “El Contrario” swerves unforgivingly in an Eastern-infused openness reminiscent of Six Organs’ rawer days and unnervingly giving way to a forceful - dare we say upbeat - conclusion. And so one treks into the depths of the Tempelboomian universe, a place of high drama and low morals inhabited by a prankster creator who deploys euphoria and distress in equal measure. Just as the strings of his guitar are left to echo like sparkles in the dark, so his music lingers in the soil of our humanity, redolent of the kind of peace one can only make with the demons of the self.

The 1998 Norwegian Black Metal classic ‘Soulblight’ re-issued! “Soulblight” is a worthy contender for one of the best Black Metal albums of the 90’s! 1997’s “Witchcraft” wass a challenging album to follow up with its cult status as one of the greatest Black Metal releases owing to its complex compositions and intricate orchestration. Yet Obtained Enslavement did exactly that, as “Soulblight” is a very different release but it maintained the quality and musicianship the band made themselves known for with “Witchcraft”.

This release discards the openness and mystique of the orchestral arrangements in place of a more guitar and drum-oriented sound, but this works for the much darker and aggressive tone of “Soulblight”. The structure of the album is a highlight compared to its predecessor as it feels more conceptual and complete as a whole, rather than just a collection of songs.

This makes sense as the lyrics tell an epic tale of a great war against the ‘soulblight’, a story that can be followed through the music itself too, thus making it a conceptual album in many ways. Speaking of instrumental work, the iconic and untouchable classically influenced composition (it would be insulting to call it songwriting) of guitarists ‘Heks’ and ‘Døden’, with its weaving and developed melodies to the complex chord sequences and intricate structures, is still an aspect that is so unique to this band; the composers truly have a great understanding of music in its high-art form.

The performances delivered by the band are done with terrifying precision and clarity, unusual for the genre where commonly a ‘that will do’ attitude is employed; nowhere on this album can you hear sloppiness of any kind. Pest’s vocals are consistent and hair-raising, nothing about it sounds human and this works in favour of this otherworldly suite. Pytten has once again cemented himself as one of the greats in the Black Metal world and even just knowing this album was recorded in the infamous Grieghallen, adds to its grandeur and appeal. To conclude, “Soulblight” is a worthy contender for one of the best Black Metal albums of the 90’s. The world will likely never again see two Black Metal albums as perfect as “Soulblight” and “Witchcraft”, evil in its intent yet majestic and epic in its final form.

First EP for this Massaïl sound system... Lets check in detail ! The first tune, Snakecharmer, is a superb oriental hardfloor tune, that could be place in a hardcore mix as well... Superb massive kick with a full ambiance oriental obsessing vocal backward... Then comes Phantasia, a bit faster and in the same kind of structure, with guitar larsen obsessing sound and a solid dynamic kick. B side opens on a Gaz-Gaz remix, happy hardfloor style. Record ends on a good pumpin tribe electro punk beating tune, with a full electronik bugging sounds. A very interesting song for all kind of mixes actually... All-in-one we got here a good record, very tribe but offering a good variety of style to bring some storytelling in the mixes. Mastered at EMS studio :) FAT !

Mount Jacinto is the creative vision of Costa Rican artist Sonya Carmona, formerly a member of Colornoise and Las Robertas. Inspired by the majestic Mount San Jacinto in Palm Springs and the expansive landscapes of Northern California, Sonya sought to embody a sense of freedom and openness in her new musical project.

The band lineup includes Gini Jungi of Annie Taylor on guitar, drummer Adrian Oesch, and a touch of Latin American flair with Peruvian Joel Morales on bass and Mexican Yan-Cey on synthesizer.

In their music, chamber music elements intertwine with gentle bass lines reminiscent of Air’s Moon Safari and melodic compositions rooted in raw alternative rock. Their debut EP, Outward Signs, released in March 2023, explores modern pop-rock psychedelia with a groovy touch of twang.

The album was recorded with JooJoo Ashworth from Froth and mixed by Alex Newport (Bloc Party etc.).
The title track, Silver Lining, is a standout on the album, showcasing the evolution of Mount Jacinto's sound over recent years. Sonya explains:
"This song is my favorite at the moment from the album. I think it kind of represents it well and reflects that there is always a 'Silver Lining' in everything, where something good can come from a difficult or bad situation. It’s very exciting to play it live and marks the evolution of our sound through this last year. It has its own character and creates its own sonic universe. It’s a homage to the synth wave era, a mix between Depeche Mode, Eurythmics, and Lebanon Hanover."

The debut album Silver Lining is more than a collection of songs—it’s a deeply personal journey through love, loss, and self-discovery. Created during a period of transformation in Sonya Carmona's life, it captures raw emotions and the resilience required to find one’s true self. Tracks like Forest delve into the path to self-acceptance and the importance of confronting inner struggles, whileThe Reason explores the inner dialogues we have during pivotal moments. The album blends heartfelt, intimate lyrics with lush, soulful soundscapes.
Musically, Silver Lining combines classic 60s and 70s influences with a modern indie vibe. It reflects the profound changes Carmona has experienced, offering listeners a moving musical journey.

In 1969, producer and boogaloo godfather Bobby Marin conceived this undeservedly obscure funky, psychedelic Latin soul gem. Released on Ralph Lew’s short-lived Dorado label and engineered by Jon Fausty, Bobby was backed by a top-notch studio band that included Ricardo Marrero, Joey Pastrana, Bernard Purdie, Louie Ramirez, Orlando Marin and Ozzie Torrens. Includes liner notes by genre expert Pablo Yglesias telling the story behind the music. 180g vinyl. Generally, when discussing the first wave of Latin soul and boogaloo, it’s the bands and their leaders, the singers and the songs that get all the recognition. But what of the producers, composers, and arrangers? One of the top old-school New York Latin music producers, Bobby Marin, was behind the scenes for some of the best independently produced boogaloo and salsa of the ‘60s and ‘70s. “Saboreando - Pot Full Of Soul”, is the album Bobby created in 1969 for his friend Ralph Lew’s newly launched Dorado label. Fifty-five years later, Bobby confirms that he commemorated his humble Barrio beginnings playing stickball on West 107th Street and singing doo-wop while some kids played percussion on junkyard drums, by christening the band The 107th Street Stickball Team. The 107th Street Stickball Team was basically the same pool of friends as Ricardo Marrero’s group (Bernard Purdie on drums, Mike Viñas on guitar, Ricardo Marrero on vibes), with the addition of Louie Ramirez playing piano and organ, Orlando Marin, Joey Pastrana and Ozzie Torrens on percussion, Mike Viñas handling the electric bass, and Butch Johnson and Danny Agosto on lead vocals for a few numbers. At that time, soul music was seen by the present Latin generation, indeed the youth market in general, as something that was different, that broke with tradition. The record, with Bobby singing several of the best tunes including ‘Mojo Shingaling’ and ‘Rhythm and Soul’, highlights an affinity or connection between African American and Cuban music in a convincing blend that was emblematic of the scene and allowed the young generation to feel they had a fresh kind of music all their own. No wonder the LP notes boast The 107th Stickball Team is “a bunch of groovy youngsters.” We are now happy to make this undeservedly obscure funky, psychedelic Latin soul gem available again!

Side A comes Revision ! Long time no see... With a first tune in its lyrical domain, playing with melodies and tempos... Restless creative tune... Second one is a more Banger, regular Speedcore bumper.

The flip by the label manager, Armaguet Nad is a 2-in-1 shampoo^^ The first part of the tune is a kicker reward, while the second part brings a bBeakbeat attitude, kind of a long drop, finishing 4/4 Soeedcore too... But it's only one tune we present here in 2 differents parts because really.. it looks like a possibmle 2 tunes way :)

The Holiday Album That Turned Mariah Carey into the Queen of Christmas: Featuring the Standard “All I Want for Christmas Is You,” the Singer’s Blockbuster Merry Christmas Exudes Joy, Spirituality, and Conviction
Sourced from the Original Master Tapes, Presented in Audiophile Sound for the First Time, and Strictly Limited to 3,000 Numbered Copies:

Mobile Fidelity’s UltraDisc One-Step 180g 33RPM LP Set Plays with Superb Detail, Openness, and Definition
1/2" / 30 IPS / Dolby SR analogue master to DSD 256 to analogue console to lathe

Mariah Carey didn’t become the Queen of Christmas just because of her fervent love of the holiday. Or as the result of a brilliant marketing plan. The iconic singer earned her title by way of her blockbuster Merry Christmas, a 1994 album that quickly joined the likes of Bing Crosby’s White Christmas, A Jolly Christmas from Frank Sinatra, and Nat King Cole’s The Christmas Song as an all-time holiday vocal classic. Featuring a balanced mix of inspired originals and well-chosen covers, Carey’s fourth studio record has only grown in stature as new generations discover its magic. Mobile Fidelity’s 30th anniversary edition reissue of Merry Christmas makes her spellbinding performances and upper-tier register come alive like never before.

Sourced from the original master tapes, pressed at Fidelity Record Pressing, and strictly limited to 3,000 numbered copies, the pioneering label’s UltraDisc One-Step 180g 33RPM LP set of Merry Christmas plays with superb detail, depth, and dimensionality. Available in audiophile quality for the first time since its original release three decades ago, and featuring the bonus track “God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen,” the nine-times-platinum set breathes with a newfound openness and transparency that enhance the spirituality, passion, and festive tenor of Carey’s singing.

Benefitting from superb groove definition, a nearly inaudible noise floor, and dead-quiet vinyl surfaces, the music takes on a heightened energy and anticipatory emotion synonymous with the holiday season. Carey’s signature vocals explode with liveliness and dynamics, the full scope of her acrobatic range presented in clear, transparent sound that practically places her on a small stage in your listening room. This collectible version also breathes with the kind of warmth, intimacy, and coziness you want from a landmark vocal album.

Recorded when Carey helped put “diva” back into everyone’s vocabulary, Merry Christmas gave the New York native another smash right out of the box. What nobody knew at the time was the degree of the album’s staying power — and how, many years removed from its initial promotion cycle, its legend would still grow and even spark a 2010 sequel. Having re-entered the Top 200 charts every year since 2019, Merry Christmas ranks as one of the three most commercially successful holiday LPs ever made and, in due time, will likely earn the top distinction in that class. A global blockbuster, it seamlessly ties together Christian, gospel, and secular threads and speaks to a boundless audience, independent of denomination.

Most obviously, the record remains inescapably connected to “All I Want for Christmas Is You,” an uptempo anthem that towers as a holiday standard and one of the biggest-selling singles in history. Punctuated with celesta chimes, sleigh bells, springy keyboards, and joyous beats, the song echoes the simple albeit engaging melodies and doo-wop style of beloved holiday classics of yore — and blends such elements with contagious dance-pop rhythms to create an atmosphere rich in joy, wonder, and excitement. Radiant with golden soulfulness and sincere conviction, Carey’s exuberant singing and on-point phrasing put it all over the top. And how.

The song stands as the only effort in Billboard history to top the Hot 100 chart during at least three separate runs. Carey’s blockbuster has already hit No. 1 during five runs, spanning every year between 2019 and 2024. That’s just one of the many records the singer holds — and only one of the multiple highlights from Merry Christmas, which includes two other Carey-penned originals, “Miss You Most (At Christmas Time)” and “Jesus Born on This Day.”

Though slightly lesser known, Carey’s remarkable rendition of Darlene Love’s “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)” further links her album with the big, lush, Wall of Sound heritage that helped inspire its production. Carey’s heartfelt take and transformation of the traditional “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town” into an animated tune that even adults can believe, as well as her clairon reading of “Joy to the World” — cleverly augmented with bits of Three Dog Night’s 1971 hit of the same name — further reinforce her status as Queen of Christmas.

At the peak of her powers, Carey finds equivalent success when tapping more spiritual veins. Witness the reverence she brings to the timeless carol “Silent Night,” the piousness she invests in “Jesus Oh What a Wonderful Child,” and the sacred feeling she conveys throughout “O Holy Night.” You’ll also never think of “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing” and “Gloria (In Excelsis Deo)” the same way again after hearing Mimi pour her heart and soul into them, and pair the songs together.

Indeed, it’s Carey’s pliable voice, melismatic technique, and five-octave range — on display here in definitive fashion — coupled with her undeniable love for Christmas and understanding of the religious significance of the season that make Merry Christmas a must-have holiday staple. And on Mobile Fidelity’s LP, something you better add to your wish list.

Well-versed in vintage vernaculars, Oakland-based producer/musician Mike Walti is about to return with his sophomore offering under the Organi moniker – as new album “Babylonia” follows 2020’s “Parlez-vous Français?,” a landmark in vibe acquisition ever since.

Wyldwood Studios is a portal. It’s a secret gateway to analog spheres. Cross the threshold and you’ll feel the difference: you can pick any ol’ time, any place, any tongue or vibe, in fact. Hit the dancefloor in 1967, feel that plushy loveseat in the early 70s. It’s a welcoming place where better, saner vibes are still within reach. Fueled, at least in part, by those long-classic 12”s on the walls – just imagine the sepia-tinted countenance of Melody Nelson alongside actual Birkin sans wig, right next to Shadow’s immortal crate diggers, forever blurred –, and channeled through ancient time travel devices such as the MCI 416B only to arrive on classic 2-inch tape (MM1000 aka Ol’ Bessy), it’s a haven for all things organic, for all things imbued with that warm élan. Built and run by Oakland’s own Mike Walti, countless artists from many different genres have felt that flair, creating sonic spheres and moving back and forth along the malleable axis that is space-time. Capturing magic.

Emerging from this unique portal back in 2020, Walti’s aka Organi’s first studio album was a stunning answer to its titular question – “Parlez-vous Français?” It was a soothing, somewhat psychedelic trip so magnétique and alluring that it immediately brought back those bits of Franglais you never knew you remembered. Whereas the debut LP indeed felt like a spontané voyage to the French Riviera ca. 1968, its follow-up “Babylonia” is so much more than linguistic confusion and ancient Akkadian Rhythms. Using that hidden portal near Alameda’s finest port to access all kinds of remote regions and sonic spheres, it’s super tight and feels, well, decent, even though, just like the ol’ Babylon, it’s full of surprising tongues and dreams, schemes and melodies.

“Where do we go from here?,” someone asks in opening “Organii-“ – all majestically cinematic boom bap, buoyant bass, sick strings. A fittingly massive opener that feels like cracking open a cold one after long weeks at work (that ecstatic “ahhhh”), it perfectly sets the tone for another half hour of pure time traveling, globe-spanning bliss. Whereas that certain prédilection pour all things French makes “La Rockette” so tempting and tantalizing (think MalMalNonBien), the sophomore album’s Berlin-based guest singer Nana Lacrima soon takes us elsewhere: title track “Babylonia” spins ever so softly, like a magic lantern, with images of dreamier Stones Throw funksters or Savath y Savalas looming over the steady flow of an arrangement that washes you clean like an ancient, unpolluted River Euphrates or Brazil’s actual Amazon. A sexy Portuguese-flavored anthem, occasional guest singer Alix Koliha also enters the scene to add yet another layer of French chic to this Brazilian landscape. Next, we’re back at the Riviera, but the “Italiano” version of it, splendido sunsets and bell towers in the distance, the ragazze laughing and shaking it up, perhaps even some Portofino Gin so you can really feel that “me ne batto il belin,” as your fingers align form some half-serious “ma che vuoi?”

Tim Maia-penned “Padre Cicero” (1970) deals with the stunning transformation of the titular hero – “De reverendo a lutador,” and what a soaring, sensual hook –, and Organi’s take on Elephant Memory’s “Old Man Willow” (now an “Old Man Waltz”) perfectly underlines what Walti’s Wyldwood endeavor is all about: Easy-Going Experimental Dream Pop, fueled by Gainsbourg, Broadcast, Stereolab, etc.

Later on, even though something seems to be tres complique in “Remembering Anna,” it all sounds carefree like a spontaneous Friday afternoon with a bottle of fine wine. Right before the outro, key album guest Yea-Ming Chen (of Yea-Ming & The Rumors) returns to the mic, adding her dark and dusky trademark timbre to melancholy anthem “Pictures Of Your Face”. Reminiscent of Nico and Trish (rip & rip), it’s a track that’s both dark and strangely propelling, hypnotic and hip-shaking.

A third generation Bay Area native, Mike Walti aka Organi has been running Wyldwood Studios in Oakland CA for some 15+ years (recording artists like Tommy Guerrero, Spelling, Why?, Latyrx, Del, Dan The Automator, and Big Freedia, to name but a few). A multi-instrumentalist who’s obviously in love with the 60s/70s, he loves to work with analog equipment (“We just love us some analog!” “Just listen to those relays purr…”). Recorded and mixed by Mike Walti at Wyldwood, “Babylonia” will be released on vinyl/digital by Alien Transistor.

Indian born, UK artist Michael Diamond, co-founder of Vasuki Sound label and club night, announces new EP Placid Wakefulness, featuring single ‘Reverse Entropy’. available on all platforms 5th December via Vasuki Sound.

A uniquely multifaceted talent, Michael Diamond’s unforgettable ‘jazzed electronic’ sound is informed by a spectrum of influences, not least by intersection of the scientific and practical worlds of electronic music. From the music scholarship he won to read Medicine at Oxford where he quickly discovered new ways in which the two worlds can co-exist, his days were spent immersed in academic studies of music perception and cognition, while his nights were spent alongside the likes of Ben UFO, Batu & Ross From Friends, playing at one of UK’s most long-established nights ‘Simple’. A chance encounter there also led him to connect with musical collaborator Alex Wilson – the BBC Young Jazz Musician of the Year semi-finalist and then musical director of Oxford’s Jazz Orchestra – who appears frequently across Diamond’s compositions and on Placid Wakefulness.

No stranger to a concept piece, Diamond’s previous project, the highly personal and critically acclaimed exploration of culture and identity, Third Culture (album of the month/year acknowledgments from Stamp The Wax, Juno and Phonica Records, also earning him a DJ Mag ‘One To Watch’, a Youth Music Awards ‘Rising Star’ nomination and a Gilles Peterson’s ‘Future Bubbler’ accolade) explored the experience of being a ‘third culture kid’ born in Kerala, India and growing up in the UK with a sense of fractured identity.

On Placid Wakefulness, Diamond honours his academic research working alongside world-renowned musicologist Professor Eric Clarke. Specifically how music may affect our sleepfulness and wakefulness, how instinctively we are soothed by some sounds and energised by others - ‘what it is about dance music that makes people go hard all night long?’ and ‘what is it about ambient music that makes people feel the opposite way - to lull them into this sense of calmness or rest?’, mindful of the unconscious ways his findings were already manifesting in his work as an artist. And while his research provides a framework for some of the ideas within the piece, Placid Wakefulness can be viewed as more of an unintentional byproduct, or case-in-point of his findings, rather than a piece consciously constructed in their image.

Across Placid Wakefulness’s four tracks we find the artist unpacking a range of sonic ideas on this theme, from ambient calm to club-adjacent rhythms. The EP opens with hypnotic lullaby of ‘A Way of Listening’ complete with transcendent flutes provided by Alex Wilson, cello by George Lloyd-Own and a mellow groove. On the more energised ‘Reverse Entropy’, rhythmic ambiguity moves to rhythmic disambiguation with a four-to-the-floor beat as the track progresses, releasing tension and inviting an urge to dance as a jazz sax moment transmutes into glorious techno percussiveness.

On ‘Turning and Turning’ the bpm shifts down a gear, a sonic dreamstate where tough textural rhythms create a kind of liminal state tension. Closing out the EP we return to a sense of restfulness with the EP’s title track, where a gorgeous picked guitar loop interplays with vibrating ambient pads and a slow and steady beat. The Placid Wakefulness EP is a captivating testament to Diamond’s singular artistic talent and the fascinating interplay of neuroscience and how we experience and enjoy music.

It’s abundantly clear from the first bars of their 5th studio album Through Other Reflection, that this is, and could only ever be, The Soundcarriers. From the enchanting vocal duets of folk-bidden Chanteuses Leonore Wheatley and Dorian Conway; to the precise bass lines of Paul Isherwood and the limber, jazz-cool, Hal Blaine-esque drums of his his co-songwriter Adam Cann; from the fairy-like flutes, 60s-garage guitars and organ sounds pilfered from the archives of exotica - listening to the Soundcarriers resembles a rediscovery of all the most prized, esoteric corners of the 1960s, all bundled up, warped and refracted through the quartet’s astutely modern cultural lens. Channelling Tropicalia, Middle Eastern psychedelic Jazz/Funk, The French Library sounds of Nino Nardini, and a whole host of lavish obscurites beside, Through Other Reflection delivers another sonic adventure from one of the most unique and distinctive voices of British Psychedelia. After an 8 year wait for their album 4 - 2022’s Wilds - it thankfully didn’t take so long for the follow-up this time round. In many ways, this feels like a companion to Wilds; recording again at their Nottingham warehouse studio, Through Other Reflection retains that same organic glow, all the passions and imperfections of a tightly clipped unit jamming out these living, breathing pop-art nuggets as if straight onto the acetate.”We wanted to keep an air of spontaneity with this album and not get too bogged with the recording process”, explains Cann, “It was more a case of getting the songs as tightly written and arranged as possible first so we could get them down quickly in the studio. It always takes longer than you think” Less packed with strident pop hooks as its predecessor however, the music of Through… has been given extra licence to breathe, stretch out, and wander more uncharted terrains. While gleaming psych-pop of tracks like ‘The City Was’, or ‘Already Over’ confidently carry on from where they left off, from the album’s 2nd track ‘Always’, the trip becomes a little less predictable. Starting out as a smoky Procol Harum-meets-French-Psych organ ballad, the music drifts, as if of its own accord into an eerie, garage trance that lingers, cycles, and hypnotises, growing ever stranger, reaching ever-further away from its point of conception. And almost every track on Through Other Reflections holds that outer-body moment, where the band fix themselves on a limber, lysergic groove, lose all grip on time and reality, and melt themselves away into a liquid state of blind euphoria. There are sequences on this record that feel more like rituals than songs, built upon a single hypnotic rhythm which, like the centre of a vortex, pulling everything under its beatific command. Take the finale to ‘What We Found’ for instance, sounding like a ghostly march across the psychedelic moors, or ‘Feel The Way’, where a single athletic drum-loop rises and rises, growing ever more urgent and suspenseful underneath its frantic harpsichords and rasping flutes. Full of such rich stylisms as these, The Soundcarriers showcase themselves as abstract storytellers par excellence by virtue of their textures and arrangements alone. Resembling Romantic composer Maurice Ravel, but if he had just a four-piece rock band at his disposal, Through Other Reflects is rich with detail; there’s shakers, rattles, clarinets, booming drums; there’s synthesiser swarms, chiming xylophones, vintage organs and experimental Cluster & Eno-esque ambiences. Within all this nuance the music flows like some undisclosed narrative swathed in a magnetic secrecy. “It almost comes across like a story in some ways”, says Cann of the album, “the music is quite sectional with elements of exotica and cinematic type layers, it's a good balance of grooves, tunes and weirdness”. No more is this “epic cinematic feel” heard more proudly than on short instrumental ‘Sonya’s Lament” - its innate, hauntological atmospheres befitting a Peter Strickland soundtrack, or the classics of Lex Baxter, the so-called ‘Founder of Exotica’ himself. On the other hand, providing a greasier undercurrent to all these bucolic sounds is a leaning towards a more “direct” lyricism referencing more “external concerns. Laying down the first tracks for the album in the wintry gloom of pre-lockdown 2020, and drawing inspiration from time spent in Berlin, Through Other Reflections returns to some of the post-apocalyptic futurism explored in 2014’s Entropicalia - a loose concept album inspired by J.G Ballard’s The Drowned World. “The songs explore a disillusionment with the way things are going particularly after 40 years of neoliberalism”, says Cann, “They follow that folk-song tradition of wanting to escape to an imagined time, but here it’s more urban than pastoral. The first couple of ideas I came up with when doing some music in Berlin and had some time to wander aimlessly. And think the atmosphere seeped in, particularly on The City Was and Already Over. He continues, “One aspect of the title, ‘Through Other Reflections’ is about synthesis and layers of influence. How things can be filtered through other things and change the perspective. This is something you get in cities as well.” Though, as with everything The Soundcarriers make, “It can mean anything. It also just sounds kind of cool.”