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Soulful selector and skateboarder extraordinaire Hugh Hardie is back with his latest EP, ‘Learning To Fly’, consisting of four sublime cuts, hot on the heels of his recent‘7 Tunes In 7 Days’ lockdown project. Produced from his home studio in Bristol, Hugh’s new release features collaborations with DJ Marky and singer/songwriter Cimone.

Named after the Indian mountain city in West Bengal, opening track ‘Darjeeling’ is a faultless embodiment of Hugh’s trademark jazz-inspired groove. Filled with transcendent piano chord progressions, rolling breaks and an enchanting upright bassline, ‘Darjeeling’ is a classic example of the soulful liquid beats the Bristol-based DJ has become known for.

‘Said & Done’ sees the commanding vocal talents of Cimone take the lead as Hugh Hardie and DJ Marky team up on the buttons to create a smile-inducing bouncer drenched in feel-good summer vibrations. Infectious descending bass wobbles lay the foundations below swinging piano licks and sharp-edged, shuffling percussions. With DJ Marky being an avid supporter of Hugh and Cimone’s initial link up on ‘Raindrops’, it only made sense for the trio to jump on a track together.

‘Learning To Fly’ with graceful strings and arpeggiated plucks, leads seamlessly into a crisp drum track and driving bassline. Hugh’s delicate yet powerful and uplifting pieces of music explore a broad range of emotions, taking the listener on a stimulating musical journey.

Drawing for original jungle sounds whilst staying true to his soul-heavy style, ‘Late Night Harp’ does exactly what it says on the tin as captivating harp melodies and acoustic guitar riffs are infused with fizzing sub-heavy basslines and steamrolling breakbeats generating a no-holds-barred banger.

His ‘Learning To Fly’ EP is the second project to emerge from Hugh Hardie in the 2020 lockdown. His previous ‘7 Tunes In 7 Days’ extended EP saw him create a track from scratch every day over the course of a week, and received support from DJs across the board including the legendary LTJ Bukem. With the success of both his ‘Shadows & Silhouettes’ and ‘Colourspace’ LPs under his belt, Hugh’s dedication to ensuring that soul remains the main ingredient in his productions is cementing him as a staple figure in the world of liquid drum & bass.

Fragile X is an exciting new collaboration between vocalist Inga Schunn and producer Dylan Chase.

The group began in 2019 when Schunn posted an iPhone voice recording on Facebook in which she sang an acapella in her native German. Her friend Chase, who was recording and releasing at that time as Caffeine Worldwide, heard the 30-second clip and immediately asked Schunn, at that time only an acquaintance, if she might like to record something. Neither of them realised at the time that the first sessions would lead to a debut 4-track EP that capably references as many styles as most full-length albums from established artists, while also setting a blueprint for a project that could go anywhere from here.

The opening track alone, 'Lifetime', opens with a woozy blend of UKG rhythms and Royksopp synths, before giving way to Schunn's sedate rendition of Daniel Johnston's 'Some Things Last A Long Time'...basically the years 1990-2002 distilled into 5 furious minutes of 5am energy.

Across the whole release, Chase's productions show the same cinematic flair that made his previous releases on French Press Lounge, Third Try and Human Concrete Block must-haves for your late-night record bag.
A2 'Prix' with the kind of R&S attitude that would make forebears like LFO or Lone proud, could be the soundtrack for an illegal outback rave or a sunset drive over a Big Sur overpass.
The album closer, 'Fragile X Theme,” sounds something like if late 90's Bjork was commissioned to soundtrack the movie Hackers with Akai samplers on loan from the Hartnoll brothers.

The whole release may be overshadowed by the B1, 'Karaoke Girl', a track Schunn and Chase wrote in Mexico City in 2019 after a rough night at a Zona Rosa karaoke bar.
Opening with dripping synths as soft and inviting as the last drink before sunrise, Schunn tells a story of a woman who overstays her invite at an intimate birthday party between friends, taking the mic from the birthday girl and singing "Seal, Rush and Kate Bush" with a "death grip on the mic."
It's a bizarre, vivid song for such new artists to have come up with, and the lyrics are underpinned by Chase's equally adventurous combination of Nordic disco elements with heavily treated bursts of Japanese koto.
The Lifetime EP's title is a reference to the laborious process that it took to make the record, with multiple recording sessions across two countries followed by endless edits and a Covid 19 related vinyl slowdown bringing its release to a crawl.
The record itself is a fast-paced, dopamine rush debut that we are proud to share with you as both the culmination of a long process, and the beginning of a strange new story.

Over the years, the sonic world of Heist has grown into a place where energetic house, live instruments and worldly electronics move together in the most natural way. We're very proud of the fact that we can showcase artists that cross boundaries or simply create their own universe, while keeping a strong connection with the identity of the label.

Our next release, the 'Exposures EP' by Teleseen, fits perfectly into this aesthetic. Teleseen is the main project of nomadic DJ, producer and multi-instrumentalist Gabriel Cyr and draws influence from deep house, afro house, samba, batucada as well as the experimentalism and sound system cultures of his home town NYC. His sound leans heavily on polyrhythmic programming and he's nothing short of a synth wizard. His 'Exposures EP' features 3 originals, and a remix by Berlin based Italian house guru Black Loops.

The record features a number of collaborators and recordings of various instruments, ranging from percussive sections to synths and guitar. This live approach to electronic music is one that is deeply rooted into Gabriel's work. His upcoming release on Soundway as 'Thaba' is another good example of this approach and also shows how diverse his sounds really is.

The title track is a thrilling synth affair with tribal-like chants running through a vocoder. The combination of handclaps, crunchy synths and steady drums make for a thrilling afro house track that hints towards early motor city electronics.

Black Loops is known for his deep grooves and built his fame with his releases on Freerange, Pets and Shall not Fade. His take on 'Exposures' sees him upping the tempo to a pacey 130 bpm, where an introvert vibe of reverbed hits and bleeps take you into full dream mode. He expertly chops up the original into a contemporary track that fits somewhere between high tempo tech-house and minimalistic deephouse.

On the flip we get to hear more of the sonic world Teleseen has to offer. 'Dekalb' is a track that seems impossible to box into a genre. Its mood is set by a lovely section of free-flowing Rhodes chords and the chopped vocals and open synth- bass give the track a whole new feel. It is that ballsy electronic edge combined with dreamy textures and live rhythms that give 'Dekalb' its unique vibe.

The final track of the EP -'Transfer'- takes us down to a mid-tempo percussive workout with a balearic twist. The steady electronic groove and the free flowing guitar take you to yet another corner of Teleseen's beautifully crafted universe.

Enjoy the music and play it loud!

Yours Sincerely,
Lars & Maarten

LIMITED REMASTERED VINYL REPRESS WITH NEW COVER ART AND SLEEVE NOTES.

The mythology that has grown around The La’s has made them one of the most enigmatic bands of the last few decades. The story began in a hard hit Liverpool in 1984, when Mike Badger teamed up with local lad Lee Mavers to write and sing their way out of the rut the city was in.

Over the next two years they co-wrote material inspired by their love of 'roots' music such as: Bo Diddley, raw 1950s Rockabilly, Captain Beefheart and the punk bands they had both seen in local club Eric's a few years before. Early reviews called them ‘Surreal Rock ‘n’ Roll’ (Melody Maker) or 'Tom Waits could have dreamt up The La's 'Sweet 35' (NME)

These earliest La's recordings that now appear here on limited edition vinyl are raw & spirited, defining a unique, creative time in the band’s history and firmly point the way to future success.

'Had The La's been able to accommodate Badger and Mavers could world domination have been far away?'MOJO

Black Truffle is pleased to announce Ashioto, the first international solo release from Japanese drummer-percussionist-composer Tatsuhisa Yamamoto. Active for over a decade, Yamamoto has performed and recorded extensively with artists such as Jim O’Rourke, Eiko Ishibashi and Akira Sakata, as well as participating in innumerable improvised and ad hoc groups.

Ashioto presents two wide-ranging pieces that combine Yamamoto’s percussion work with piano, field recordings, electronics, and contributions from guest musicians Daisuke Fujiwara and Eiko Ishibashi.

Beginning with a passage of chiming metal percussion, the first side slowly builds into a rolling, open groove reminiscent of Yamamoto’s work on Eiko Ishibashi’s acclaimed Drag City LP The Dreams My Bones Dream. Spacious piano and synth notes, along with Ishibashi’s spare melodic figures on processed flute, hover above this propulsive rhythmic foundation, the whole effect adding up to a more abstract take on the area explored on Rainer Brüninghaus’s ECM classic Freigeweht. The LP’s second side opens up a cavernous space filled with ominous electronics and shimmering metallic percussion, which organically transitions into a passage of rumbling piano chords and mysterious concrète sound. Later in the piece, Daisuke Fujiawara’s saxophone enters, playing melancholic melodic fragments that are looped and layered, creating a seasick swaying effect familiar to listeners of James Tenney’s works with tape delay systems. Beginning as delicate bass drum pulses, Yamamoto’s accompanying percussion eventually builds the piece into a raging torrent of free-improv splatter, processed sax and fizzing electronics.

Though grounded in instrumental performance, Ashioto is very much a studio construction, making inventive use of electro-acoustic principles in its editing and mixing. Together with its sister Ashiato – a different take on the same ‘script’ released simultaneously on Japanese label Newhere – Ashioto demonstrates to an international audience for the first time the true breadth and ambition of Yamamoto’s work.

Mastered by Jim O’Rourke. Cover photos by Kuniyoshi Taikou. Design by Lasse Marhaug.

Westcoast Goddess first came to our attention at the end of 2018 following his debut release on Canadian label Heart To Heart, but his productions actually date right back to ’93 (under various different guises) when he first began making music with his trusty Roland DR550 and Kawai K1. With a fresh and distinctive sound, WG successfully fused soulful touches and late 80’s-era digital synths with raw, punchy grooves and a euphoric, ravey atmosphere. Since then, the Berlin-based producer has built a solid following amongst underground house heads with subsequent releases dropping on esteemed labels such as Omena, Slam City Jams and Let’s Play House.

Opening up the EP we have Step Inline (The Narcotic Soul), which is a piano driven, uplifting slice of house heaven. A simple repeating 2 bar chord pattern lays down the foundation for soaring strings, cascading chimes and seductive echoing vocal hook.

Next up we have The Devil In Mr Holmes (The Erotic Soul) which once again goes heavy on the piano stabs but this time developing the arrangement into something that feels more like an instrumental dub of a long lost Prelude release. Crystalline synth lines come and go, whilst electronic tom hits add pace and energy to the unrelenting house groove.

Flipping over we have the epic I Might Be Ok (The Faithful Soul) coming in at over 9 minutes and being all the better for it. A dirty Moog bassline leads the charge with beautiful synth lines layering up on top, creating a blissed-out vibe which can’t fail to lift your spirits.

Appearing on Echovolt for the very first time, Vancouver-based producer Wolfey offers up a four-track excursion that draws direct inspiration from the often-rainy climate of his sleepy home city.

"Powell St. Blues" E.P. is a dance record of rare emotional depth that sees the Canadian bring out an impressive amount of warmth and soul from the machines he uses to make music. Drawing inspiration from early house and techno producers out of Chicago, NY and Detroit, Wolfey likes to work with a small selection of synthesizers, drum machines and outboard effects processors - only using the computer to record, edit and mix-down long multi-track takes and improvised jams. The resultant tracks bristle with vivid detail and texture while evoking distinctly hypnotic and alluring atmospheres.

Side A opener “Powell St. Blues” is a bittersweet melancholic chunk of deep house with spacey chords and subtle acid style motifs slowly undulating over dusty drum machine rhythms. Wolfey’s deep and emotive electro influences come to the fore on “No Fun City”, where tech-jazz style electric piano motifs, bleeping lead lines and dubby rhythmic delays dance around a tactile 808 groove. On languid B-side opener “Overcast”, aural storm clouds gather menacingly above a moody bassline and the crunchiest of machine rhythms. S.M.P (Slim Media Player) guests on the EP’s lusciously loved-up conclusion, “Southlands Transmission”, where morphing synth arpeggios, rich sunrise-ready chords and swinging skittering hi-hats recall the pitter-patter of rain on the windows of Wolfey’s Vancouver studio. It’s a fitting conclusion to an atmospheric, mood-enhancing EP.

2020 Re-issue of Keith Kenniff's debut under his Goldmund moniker. Originally only released on CD in 2005 via John Twells' Type Recordings, this album of rare and unusual minimalist beauty is now presented as a vinyl edition for the first time.

Multi-instrumentalist Keith Kenniff is a busy man. He has appeared as Helios on a number of acclaimed releases, including Deaf Center’s ‘Neon City EP’, and released a debut album ‘Unomia’ on Merck records which has appeared on many best of 2004 lists. All this while studying at the prestigious Berklee College of Music, and playing drums, guitar or contributing production to a host of amazing musicians. Kenniff lives and breathes music, something that is very obvious when hearing tracks under any of his pseudonyms.

As Goldmund, Kenniff has disregarded the electronic elements of his music almost entirely in favour of just a piano, a microphone and occasionally a guitar. ‘Corduroy Road’ is thirteen tracks of pure recording, the sound of the piano being opened and the feet on the pedals, the sound of fingers pressing lovingly onto the keys. This is a record of rare and unusual beauty, so shocking and yet unpretentious in its simplicity. When the guitar does emerge from beside the delicately touched piano, it serves as a balancing point for the record. Weaving in and out of the melodies, it adds another layer to what is already incredibly moving music.

‘Corduroy Road’ is rooted in Kenniff’s love of folk music from the American Civil War. We can hear this directly from his rendition of Civil War era classic ‘Marching Through Georgia’, but the influence carries throughout the record. There is an unheard voice which propels each track through history, maybe the ghosts of dying soldiers whispering in a long forgotten bar. Every haunting note drifts deep into the psyche and is lost in the ether of nostalgia. In this way it is a concept recording of sorts, it certainly has a narrative and has to be listened to in sequence. The story has clear themes; loss, history, friendship, camaraderie, forgiveness and hope, all clearly marked out by musical segments. It is no surprise that Kenniff’s passion for cinema shines through so strongly.

It would be hard to draw comparisons to music so rooted in folk traditions, but the music evokes traces of Ryuichi Sakamoto, Mark Hollis, Keith Jarret or even Eno’s more piano based compositions. Yet influence seems unimportant when listening to this deeply personal work. Just let it sink in and drift into the psyche.

New album from the Parisian producer.

Label say:
Because, at La Creme Garcia Club, a private circle of discerning smokers in Barcelona, Blundetto was in heavy rotation in the playlists. So heavy that these people of good taste for legal activity on this side of the Pyrenees yet prohibited from profits, had the idea of becoming the privileged partners of a new album. Without scrutiny, without intervention in the artistic, but with a single watchword: let Blundetto return to his first love of world sound.

The result is a stereo trip illustrated by Mossy Giant's artwork. A trip around the world without leaving your couch.
An offer that cannot be refused.

Ten years had passed since Bad Bad Things; it was the occasion to celebrate this decade by reviving its state of mind. The one who mixes collaborations, atmospheres, and styles. Exiled to the green, in musical autarky from several albums, Blundetto has therefore returned to the rhythm of city life and studios. He has changed his way of operating, opened his repertoire, and invited friends to new titles that he had written for them.

The circle of intimates already present on Bad Bad Things (Hindi Zahra, General Electric, Chico Mann) has widened to include regular accomplices (Biga Ranx) and to extend to artists with whom Blundetto felt an obvious connection (Crime Apple, Leonardo Marques). Guided by this roadmap written by Blundetto, all succeeded in painting with their colors and spreading their musical soul in the project, either taking the rhythmic direction of Brazil, Africa, or Latin America, getting dizzy in Jamaican fumes or chopping at the salient angles of hip hop.

Dive into the new openings of Clément Petit’s arrangements, now more sophisticated than those on which Blundetto evolved, and now capable of bringing an orchestral dimension made of strings and brass, creating a direct opening on the emotions, an automatic generator of images to accompany the soundtrack by the producer Blackjoy.

Whatever the orientation, each guest becomes a unique and essential part while Blundetto remains the common thread, the cement and the final varnish of a musical mosaic called Good Good Things.

Outfitted with anthemic romps, tongue-in-cheek pastiches, and percussions that pivot from rolling adventures to rain hitting the windowpane, Intimacy's 'Across the Bridge' marks the artist's fifth release on vinyl and first release on Bouquet.
A grab bag of fun, dancefloor-ready tracks written across 2019, the EP delivers his aesthetic of old computers, sci-fi movies, and science class educational videos configured into deep, spacey line-toting bedroom techno and melancholic house.

The title track features a catchy electroclash-esque (!!!) saw wave bassline, complete with emo Roland D50 strings and bells, all laid over a very beefy electro beat. It crossbreeds a Drexciya strain of low-end thump with a chewy, Eurotrash bassline evoking that time you lost your wallet at Tresor in '98. Strings and bells from the Roland D50 introduce the same euphoric high found in most of the products crawling out of Perdue's lab these days.

'Angelo's House' is a full-forced banger built around a well-traveled sample of Angelo Badalamenti's theme from Twin Peaks, recorded from an Intimacy live set early last year.

The flipside leads with the spiritual acid techno masterpiece 'Datalore 66'. Bubbling basslines hit a boiling point when placed in sequence with flutes showing genetic linkage to the Hartnoll family. Highly reactive material.

'Eternal September' opens a portal to the earliest hours of morning via synthesis of swirling pads and snapping drums. Closing the EP in introspective fashion, the track shows just how much emotional range Intimacy can pull out of decades-old disciplines.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Parks Perdue is a Memphis-born electronic musician. A culmination of internet research and home listening in the club-barren Tennessee city, his style draws from stoned out Dutch West Coast concept albums, video game soundtracks, and old-school midwest house and techno. Perdue made his vinyl debut under the alias Intimacy in 2016 on the short lived UK, DJ Haus-run label Vector Works. Perdue is now based in Los Angeles, California.

If you are passionate about local music scenes as much as we are you might already know about the current brood of great bands going on in Cardiff, Wales.
Chain Of Flowers were the first to hail from the Welsh capital, followed by related side projects such as Night Thoughts, more recently came Private World of which the two boys we’re about to introduce are also live members of.
A new wave/synth act from the same city called Plastic Estate is emerging this year.

The duo composed by Nicholas James and Stanley Fouracres have released a few digital singles in 2019 as they’ve opened for The Murder Capital at Sŵn Festival and played alongside the likes of M!R!M, Josiah Konder and The Love Coffin. This Place is their first physical release and it’s due on 7-inch vinyl and digital on June 19.

On the two songs that compose the single, Plastic Estate clearly draw influence from the best UK new wave and pop artists such as Dave Gahan, Paddy McAloon, Roddy Frame and yet there is a sophisticated casualness and an innate freshness in their songwriting that makes them not sounding dated at all.
Amazing composition skills for such a young band and a perfect balance between electronic dance elements and acoustic instruments allow them to pay homage to the above-mentioned masters and to be a perfectly contemporary group at once.

Although it’s possible to pick out some darker lyrics, the overall feel is up-beat and breezy. It’s a contrast that runs through a lot of their music – like a dichotomy between dark, melancholia and happier, brighter feelings.
Whether it’s a happy pop synth riff mixed with sombre lyrics or vice versa, the young Welsh duo is delivering the best 80’s-inspired modern pop craft.
RIYL: Echo & The Bunnymen, Prefab Sprout, Depeche Mode, Orange Juice, Wild Nothing.

The Oystercatcher is the first collaborative LP from Cucina Povera (Maria Rossi) and ELS (Edward Simpson)

Recorded in London over two days, hours' worth of improvisations have been edited down to form these six tracks.

A fragile interplay is at work between Maria's drifting vocals and the ominous churn of Edward's modular synth. Each sonic element takes a turn at leading the way.

The opening track 'Mantle' is formed from sparse, monolithic electronics, woven gently with a thread of vocals. In the closing track 'Eon' Maria's voice shepherds spontaneous bursts of sounds, almost Rave-like if order were imposed, through 15 minutes of turmoil and resplendent until the end.

Maria's vocals make their own trails amongst the noise, bringing to mind the the exploratory language from Ursula K. Le Guin's album 'Music and Poetry from the Kesh', recalling the same understated mystery.

The overall effect of this collaboration is a completely unique creation albeit within a recognisable lineage of predecessors.

The artwork reflects the vision of these two artists, collaged together. Both images are from a trip to Helsinki. Edward's photograph of Tulips caught after dark are reviled by a flash. Maria's seemingly abstract drawing is a graphite rubbing taken from a granite slab of a pavement somewhere in Kallio. Together the two images represent two different methods for capturing a city's haptic landscape.

The album moves with a feeling of transience, which is no surprise given that the idea to collaborate was formed in Helsinki, realised in London and edited together in Rotterdam.

The Oystercatcher tells a fragile tale, one that spins out into the unknown. A cold union of voice and machine, still tentative and probing, learning to co-exist. A kind of fundamental shift whereby shared moments have been turned to sound.

The Oystercatcher is a bird that can freely travel between the earth, sea and sky. The motif is taken from a Tove Jansson short story. A dead bird washes ashore, two different versions of events are presented to how the bird came to die. The album feels like two different stories being presented on top of one another but ultimately coming to the same tragic conclusion.

Cucina Povera is Maria Rossi - Vocals
ELS is Edward Simpson - Synthesisers
Recorded in London across two days during the Summer of 2019
Mastered by Russell Haswell

We are happy to welcome UK-based producer Native Cruise on Slam City Jams. The guy was on our radar since his releases on No Bad Days and Fruit Merchant that easily combined house music with new-age synths, a wave/EBM touch and balearic sounds.
His „Human Nature“ EP is no exception with five outstanding tracks that differ in tempo and vibe.
The opener „Crew Talk“ is a percussion heavy tune with lots of cowbells, a funky DX7 bass line, deep pads and dramatic chords that build up and up towards the end.
„Elsewhere" is the most housey track on this record, with four-to-the-floor 808s and bittersweet strings that burst out into euphoria. Closing down the A-side is „Fooled Again“, a balearic cut that feels like a day in the sun with it's little synth blips and arps.
On the flip we find the title track „Human Nature“ that might be the hidden jam on this EP. Hard hitting Linn Drums, digital synth bells and those haunting vocals we can’t get out of our heads. Finally we have „Not Long Now“ a perfectly atmospheric deep tune, that sits somewhere between ambient and reggaeton and will make fans of DJ Python more than happy.

The latest project by belgo-moroccan producer Reda Senhaji, alias Cheb Runner, focuses on breeding a new style of music between electronics and Gnawa. Taking inspiration from New Beat to Techno, Acid House and Gabber, the grooves are relentless, stiff and club oriented, relying heavily on analog synths and drum-machines. The sound is darker, more experimental and mature than his previous Gan Gah project.

Cheb Runner digs into the acoustic sounds of his youth, for an organic feeling of warmth and celebration. The syncopation of the classic Gnawa percussions, the “Tagnawit”, its groove is undeniable. Featuring two traditional Gnawa singers based in Brussels, Mâalem Driss and Mâalem Hicham, the EP is a reunion for the belgian Gnawa scene, keeping the vibe alive.

In a world of dematerialized culture, we tend to forget where we come from : by putting Gnawa music at the center of his production, Cheb Runner creates a bridge with the past. The young producer is a son of Gnawa himself, this is the music he grew up with and played as a kid.
Now he brings it to the club scene; Cheb Runner’s first EP is experimental, brutal, innovative. Getting past definitions and genres, it opens new horizons for North-African producers, showing them how to use their roots to make new beats. It encourages both tradition and modernity in Music. In 2019, Gnawa music, dance and culture was added to the UNESCO Intangible Cultural
Heritage list, demonstrating both the relevance of the genre and the necessity to preserve it.
of the genre and the necessity to preserve it.

Cheb, the Arabic word for “young boy”, is traditionally used to describe the young generation of Raï singers – like Cheb Hasni, Cheb Mami or Cheb Khaled. It means the new generation is here, to create something new with something old. The reference to the Ridley Scott movie Blade Runner is just that: while the Cheb comes from the bled, a moroccan village in the Agadir region, the beats come from the club scene of an industrial city, like Berlin, Detroit or Molenbeek/Brussels.

Cheb Runner takes you on a trip through space and time, as well as to pass on ancient rhythms to inspire the next generations.

Composed as a means to map the cultural translation between Chinese culture and European traditions, Piotr Kurek’s A Sacrifice Shall Be Made / All The Wicked Scenes is comprised of pieces composed between 2016 and 2018 specifically to accompany theatre performances directed by Tian Gebing (500m and The Decalogue) and Grzegorz Jarzyna (Two Swords). Kurek attended performance rehearsals in Beijing and Shanghai, with additional preparations and recording sessions taking place back in Warsaw.

While most of Kurek’s past work is unaccompanied by other musicians or outside help, A Sacrifice Shall Be Made / All The Wicked Scenes features various Polish and Chinese musicians both from classical and experimental scene (Barbara Kinga Majewska, Grzegorz Hardej, Łukasz Rychlicki and Hubert Zemler) as well as by actors of Paper Tiger Theatre Studio from Beijing. This approach of Kurek exploring new players and places is further juxtaposed as Kurek recycled samples from his own past, including various recordings with musicians he did throughout years, found sounds from the Internet, or cannibalised old solo work.

Recorded over the course of several years, this aural report of a monumental multi-disciplinary venture is in the end an enthralled and enthralling survey of a contemporary composer who is unencumbered by geographic or cultural boundaries. Concurrently, ditching any resemblance to local musical traditions and rearranging the compositions for all three performances, Kurek has formed an architecture that allows the phases of rituals to unfold while projecting social structure assumed in myth making. The regrouping of different moments in these stories is a curious way of narrating another myth — a synthetic, polyvalent story set in a city that strangely reassembles Beijing, Giza, and Prague at the same time.

Piotr Kurek is a Warsaw based musician and composer who straddles the world of electronic music taking inspiration from various genres but fitting comfortably in none. Through his unconventional use of a wide array of instruments both electronic and acoustic, he built a reputation for himself as a qualified inventor of hypnotic worlds drenched in uncanny arrangements.

Kurek has already released a range of idiosyncratic, forward-thinking works on a variety of imprints (including but not limited to Sangoplasmo, Black Sweat Records, Hands In The Dark, Dunno Recordings, Crónica, Foxy Digitalis) and participated in numerous music festivals including Unsound, CTM, OFF, TodaysArt and UH Fest as well as participating in extensive tours in Poland and abroad. In 2014 and 2015 he opened for Bonnie “Prince” Billy’s two European mini-tours. In 2016 he has been selected as a part of Shape platform for innovative music and audiovisual art from Europe.

In the late 90’s, east-side LA was in the throws of a post-indie explosion; a network of stoned bands ranging from neo-psychedelia to pseudo-country overran Spaceland (our generation’s Troubadour) and the local Silverlake Lounge. I was playing freakbeat records twice a week in dive bars, half of Spacemen 3 was crashing at my house (my drop-out roomate was Sonic Boom’s tour drummer) and it was during this blur that I met Raymond Richards, a clean-cut all-American pedal steel guitarist playing in Mojave 3 (the country-tinged side project of 4AD shoegaze royalty, Slowdive). I was instantly swept off my feet, head over heals in love with Raymond's weeping tone—the most chill-inducing, emotionally responsive dialog I’d had with music since discovering Satie as a child—it was then and it is now, truly haunting. After a year of personnel trials, my roomate and I stole Raymond for our own band, and not only did he smother our songs with his enchanting steel, he was virtuosic with a variety of atypical instruments such as baritone guitar and theremin, he utilized them all. The band was short-lived—I joined Ariel Pink, Raymond fled to Portland and me subsequently to New York City—but in founding the ESP Institute years later, there was always a recurring mental note; we must make Raymond’s pedal steel album. I had managed to wrangle his blessed performance on a remix for Project Club’s El Mar Y La Luna, but it took almost a decade until I once again wore the producer hat and we began working on The Lost Art Of Wandering, a title borrowed from Sam Shepard’s Stories. Spiritually candid, expansive yet enveloping, this is the strung-out, visceral country music that simply radiates from Raymond. Each song is his set of coordinates in a vast open terrain, holding a sentimental familiarity, a truthful longing for the simple comforts that diffuse life’s complications, a place to get lost. –Lovefingers

Repress

Leading lights of the neo ambient rhizome alongside Huerco S’ West Mineral label, Experiences Ltd has already amassed a cult following after just one release - ULLA’s ‘Tumbling Towards A Wall’, now returning to relay a sublime, probing debut of crackling, cross-continental communications from mdo, Ultrafog, and Nikolay Kozlov, aka Folder.
Weft from dematerialised ambient tropes spooled between their respective bases in Kansas City, Tokyo, and Samara in Russia, ‘New Path’ slots fuzzily into an expanding prism of contemporary ambient music which echoes the purpose and effect of the original thing via traces of ‘90s/‘00s experimental techno and minimalist rhythms. Their sound effectively recalls K. Leimer’s systems music as much as the Pole’s eerie dub malfunctions; running a lushly frayed and decentralised style that embraces a gently psychedelic sort of chaos and lysergic, hallucinatory vision in an up-to-the-moment way shared by the likes of Huerco. S and uon.
If original ambient was analogous to THC and LSD, and in the ‘90s MDMA, then the effect of Folder’s music, and that of their peers, adds the putative, lushly dissociative effect and non-linearity of Ketamine and psilocybin to that formula. As such ‘New Path’ attempts to follow new routes through your neurons, sparking at new junctures of style and form that better reflect and counter a current psychic state of stasis and anxious anticipation.
Coming from the label behind those cult ‘bblisss’ volumes of 2016-2018, listeners can trust their needs for relaxation and otherworldly curiosity will be sated by ’New Path’, as it courses from iridescent ambient noise in the titular opener, to the laminal diffractions of ‘Plasma’, and soothing textural abstraction of ‘Reset’, shoring up in ‘Node’ as though oceanic ambient currents have individually lead them to this bobbing buoy inthe middle of a noumenal ocean.

Ital Tek (a.k.a. Alan Myson) returns to Planet Mu with his sixth album ‘Outland‘. The album was written during a period of new beginnings following a move out of the city to a quieter space and the birth of his first child. During this time of self-imposed isolation Alan recorded a huge amount of source material and spent weeks and months sitting up at night with his newborn, listening back and making notes on how the new record should take form, focusing and developing ideas to shape this lean ten-track album.

Alan talks of the record being a collaboration between two parts of himself, something that definitely comes across as the album unfolds. Textures are something Alan excels at and on his last album, the largely beatless ‘Bodied’, it felt as if he was building a new sound-world. On ‘Outland’ he expands upon this. The album brings together the extremes of Alan's sound, contrasting roughened bass and beats with starker more detailed atmospheres and emotions.

The most beat-driven song here is ‘Deadhead’, with its gnarled bouncing bass, angular distorted melodies and cavernous textures. On tracks like ‘Bladed Terrain’ the contrasts are even more defined with buzzing drones and razor sharp drums plunging into a grainy fog, giving the track a dramatic 3D feel.

Then there are the stop-start pauses of ‘Leaving The Grid’, where the song evaporates into space before reemerging with shuddering rhythms and ghostly textures. Melodies crawl around these tracks as if they’re just waking up, as heard on the atmospheric ‘Angel In Ruin’.

The sleep-deprived fraying of the senses became Alan’s routine and one which he says gave him a renewed creative energy; half-asleep, working through the night, and then into the daytime super-focused but exhausted. Prone to audio hallucinations whilst writing the album, he aimed to capture these distortions in his perception of pitch and time, and you can hear these effects interpreted on tracks like ‘Endless’ and ‘Open Heart’ as melodies phase and slip out of time like an emotional Doppler effect.

This is also true of the soaring atonal synths at the peak of ‘Diamond Child’, which feel like the aural equivalent of eye floaters. These intuitive feelings and functions are a difficult thing to capture in sound, but Alan manages it beautifully and always makes the result feel warm and adventurous, heartfelt and epic.

Planetary Notions boss Joe Rolét debuts on Infuse to open April with his ‘Maximum Width’ EP, backed by a remix from Rich NxT.

A rising name within his home city of London, Joe Rolét is a DJ and producer whose passion for subbed out club music with a cosmic twist has seen him become one of the scenes hotly tipped talents – a sound that’s also reflected in full via his bubbling label, Planetary Notions. Releasing music from artists such as Per Hammar, Lopaski, stevn.aint.leavn and Desert Sound Colony whilst welcoming the likes of Vlad Caia and more to join as guests on the imprint’s Rinse FM show, 2020 now sees Rolét follow up releases via Beeyou, Courtesy Of Balance and his own Planetary Notions imprint as he makes a debut label appearance on Infuse with ‘Maximum Width’ EP this April, accompanied by a remix of the title cut provided from FUSE resident Rich NxT.

Lead cut ‘Maximum Width’ sees Rolét introduce his blend of slinking, reduced grooves atop of bumping low-ends whilst working an infectious vocal throughout, whilst ‘Rounding’ sees warped synths, off-kilter melodies and further tripped out vocal snippets come to the fore. On the flip, FUSE favourite Rich NxT puts his stamp on the title track in impressive fashion as he raises the tempo and introduces sizzling bass stabs and rolling hats, before rounding out proceedings with the hypnotic ‘Amber Road’ – a paired back cut that harnesses soaring sci-fi leads and wriggling percussion arrangements to great effect to shape up an impressive debut offering.

Substance, the second album by producer Moisture, sets out to deliver an immersive tech-noir fantasy of emotional and physical deconstruction. Inspired in part by William S. Burroughs 1959 novel Naked Lunch, the conceptual narrative of the album follows a humanoid subject through an urban landscape and the exploration of its depravations.

Sampling and filtering sounds from other music, movies and own field recordings, the tapestry of Substance is a three-dimensional world of hard industrial spaces and fluid organic matter. While it's conception is rooted equally in literature and film as well as music, one can draw comparisons in particular to Barry Adamsons 1989 album Moss Side Story, in that it also works as a chronological narrative; the tracks aligning to make a world of its own.

And while Adamson was aiming to create an imaginary soundscape of his native Manchester, the geography of Substance is based on the city of Malmö. Using field recordings from it's city streets, the album paints a rain soaked, neon-clad portrait of the city's hedonistic nightlife.

On the opening "The Marketplace" we are teleported to Bergsgatan at night (the track title a subtle nod towards Eden Ahbez 1960 song of the same name).

This introduction is similar in line with the experience Burroughs once had in 1957 upon entering Malmö for the first and only time, which he details briefly in Naked Lunch: "averted eyes and the cemetery in the middle of town (every town in Sweden seems to be built around a cemetery), and nothing to do in the afternoon (...)"

This image of Malmö portrayed with dread and loathing holds a longstanding narrative tradition over the cultural geography of the town. Yet it is often paired with an image of great promise and bohemian splendor, seemingly a paradox but often perversely intertwined. This duality has always been a vital mindset in the underground music scene of the town and its illegal after hours clubs. Substance is a work steeped in the grayscale prism of techno and its post-industrial fetischism. Yet in picking it apart, one can find elements of everything from post-punk, drum & bass, trip hop and new age.

The theme of depravation that soaks through Burroughs Naked Lunch seems oddly befitting to this side of Malmö (one wonders what the author would have made of it had he stayed longer) Through rhythmic excursions and the exploration of repetition, the tracks of Substance are arranged to convey this self-destructive longing for depravity. Michel Foucault's ideas on limit experiences serves as context for this peculiar form of endeavour, as he puts it: "the point of life which lies as close as possible to the impossibility of living, which lies at the limit or the extreme."

Lisbon pals Photonz and Shcuro are two of the city’s most active DJs and music makers, sharing a penchant for a moody yet electrifying brand of dance sonics. They’ve created Shermanworx together in the studio, recording machines live using an ethos of improvisation while relying on their fine-tuned dancefloor intuition. The Sherman Filterbank was the go-to piece of equipment, appearing in every track and eventually naming the EP. Tribal techno swirls menacingly backed by dark melodies in the opening track, a hypnotic yet vivid peak-time belter that could go on and on. A synth so textured you can almost touch it is the centrepiece of Sherman2, another driving club beast complete with modulated arpeggios and industrial-tinged percussions. The record comes to close with a dreamier exercise in Sherman3: a dubby electro beat conducts melodic mutant synth lines and pads to achieve a slow-burning, expansive euphoria.

Clear Vinyl

Detroit Underground label head Kero returns to his sonic roots with the first of the Detroit Map Series originally featured on the limited DUTT-181 Series functional record player designed by Neubau Berlin. As a kick-start, Kero reveals Highways—a 5-track extended player of (abstract) electronics that is cleverly pulled together with a downbeat flow and tracks aptly sub-titled as major freeway arteries of the Motor City.


"Davison" commutes through glitch bits, bobbles, and broken beats flickering back and forth as it eventually opens midway through the traffic jam and hopscotched potholes with a synthesized melodic stream. Fisher displays its minimized techno flurry and rumbling low-end growl tempered by subtle blips'n bleeps and clinical precision. Southfield busts apart with modular maneuvering and heavy percussion showcasing an opportunity for Kero to cruise in the passing lane as the piece gradually mutates into a crunchy experimental electro epic. Lodge ebbs and flows with The Detroit Escalator Company-styled minimalism felt many miles away from its source. Chrysler expands and contracts with its 7-minute acid-electronic sprawl—here we see Kero carefully downshift to allow an ambient undercurrent to traverse a moonlit sky in the late night hours creating perhaps the finest soundtrack to (minimal) Detroit-inspired techno of yesteryear with a thumping heartbeat. ~PDS

Welcoming, 'Come Together' - a five track various artists EP drawn from our network of associates locally and internationally. With artists hailing from Japan, Italy, the USA and Australia the 12" features the sounds that bring our families together on dance floors around the globe.Italy's Matisa opens the record with a designer italo-house trip "Garbadine", armed with punchy drums, a warped guitar loop and hypnotic bass line. Melbourne group Polito's "Wallis Axiom" juxtaposes this with a guttural, gurgling outsider-techno piece. Frenetic percs and crunchy distortion collide with alien FX and bleepy modular synthesis for a dark journey.On the flip, New York City master producer Physical Therapy jumps into the deep end with "10000% Pure Love", a raw, hard hitting club weapon. The Allergy Season boss distils the pure, unbridled energy of a sweaty dance floor through a woozy bassline and manic cowbell action. Slowing the pace slightly, Berlin via Japan producer Yuzo Iwata delivers "Acid House" a rugged, growling beast which trips and chugs along as a monstrous 303 weaves in an out of the penetrating vocals "ACID HOUSE". The mysterious Serpent finishes you off with "In The Garden" a syncopated drum workout imbued with a ritualist, primitive energy by the heavily layered percussion and flickering synths.

From the cosmic creative musical mind of Swiss/Catalan studio whizz, Zeleste Nightclub engineer, video nasty film composer, occasional Jaume Sisa (Muìsica Dispersa) collaborator and future electronic music therapy pioneer J. M. Pagaìn comes the synth-ridden, vocoder-loaded 1984 sci-funk soundtrack to Barcelona’s daytime TV response to the universal E.T. phenomena. Get ready to meet your new alieniìgena amic and the unidentified flying object of thousands of Catalonian kids’ affections through the 1980's as Finders Keepers present Pagaìn’s lost lunar modular synth score to ‘Kiu I Els Seus Amics’ (Kiu And Friends aka Kiu Is Your Friend).

From the same intergalactic phenomenon that brought such delights as Turkey’s exploito cash-in ‘Badi’ or South Africa’s lo-rent homage ‘Nukie’ to our unregulated small screens and the same craze which filled international airwaves with the likes of Extra T’S electro smash single ‘E.T. Boogie’ or the million selling Columbian ‘Cumbia De E.T. El Extraterrestre’ smash hit... not to mention a wide range of unofficial theme-tune cover versions from Holland, Austria, France and Germany (lest we forget an inspired late period Lee Scratch Perry Album).

In 1982 the diaspora from Steven Spielberg’s small fictional mid-American neighbourhood that played host to everyone’s favourite torch fingered, three toed, Skittle-scoffing space goblin touched virtually every family home in every major city resulting in one of the biggest cinematic merchandise phenomenas of the 21 st Century, resulting in an unexpected high-demand / short-supply play-off in which bootleggers, copyists and counterfeiters rose to the challenge like never before.

When Spielberg regrettably told interviewers that he had no intention of making a sequel to ‘E.T. The Extra Terrestria’ it instantly became open-season for the imitators... but way before somebody squeezed-out ‘Mac & Me’, ‘ALF’ and ‘The Purple People Eater’, a team of kid’s TV executives in Catalunya were ready to fill the widening gap in the market without haste. Created in 1983 by Luna Films and Televisioì de Catalunya (TV3) and screened exclusively in Catalunya, ‘Kiu I Els Seus Amics’ was one of the first E.T. ‘tributes’ to make it out of the gate and with a crew of five individual directors and writers to ensure that the five episode, one-off series hit the wave of phone-home-fever, Kiu has since remained a short but sweet micro- memory in the hearts of an entire generation of Catalonian cosmonauts.

This special Finders Keepers edition comes complete with all of Pagaìn’s cosmic synthesiser soundscapes fully intact (barring striking comparisons with the likes of Tangerine Dream, John Carpenter, Vangelis and the soundtrack music of Suzanne Ciani), as well as some rare, unreleased, incidental TV edits. The bulk of this LP is made up of tracks taken from the rare full-length album, which was released after the TV programme had already been aired and coincided with sales of jigsaws and rubberised play figures in an attempt to catch-up with the unexpected mega-success of the show, needless to say, with a short promotional window, the LP (and cassette edition) did not benefit a re-press and with most copies sold to children, few vinyl pressings have escaped repeat needle scratches and decorated sleeves.

Dukwa is back with the second chapter of his own personal output with a new killer four tracker EP: first cut on A side is the stunning motor city anthem Akira, an epic soulful winner which reminds some of the best Inner City’s moments thanks to its catchy vocal parts and twisted up grooves. If you are more a fan of instrumental club tracks on the second cut instead you will find Akira’s dub version where drum parts , strings, its original wicked bass line and the romantic piano solo totally stand out!

We stuck in the Detroit with the raw jam of Violet opening the flip-side, a wonky lost brother of Strings of Life that through its original arrangement and a clever broken beat will be able to amaze any dance floor. Dukwa’s pinnacle of poetic and compositional intensity happens with the poignant combination of dramatic strings together with beautiful piano notes and acid tinged bass within the closing track Water. Timeless stuff and absolute burners to enrich your record collection.

Ism opens audaciously with the spiritual mic-check “You Are Free To Choose,” a track that features bassist Junius Paul alongside Vincent Davis (drums), Justin Dillard (piano), and Corey Wilkes (horns). This is by no accident. In many ways, “You Are Free To Choose” captures the spirit of Junius Paul’s artistic roots. Corey, Justin, and Vincent were among the multigenerational cadre of Chicago musicians present when Junius chose to follow his own path of creative discovery at the storied Velvet Lounge on the South Side of the city in 2002.

Though he began learning his craft playing in church, Junius’s creative voice really developed during jam sessions at clubs like The Velvet alongside members of the AACM. It was iron sharpening iron, the most natural form of knowledge transfer. He explained The Velvet’s vibe in 2018: “It’s like in Africa.... If you had this society of diviners or medicine people, or you know, sages… The Velvet stuff is not secret; but there are certain aspects of it… if you weren’t there, you weren’t there.” The Velvet Lounge closed in 2010. But, of course, the spirit of the Velvet Lounge is not dead. “Tune No. 6,” recorded live at the Co-Prosperity Sphere in Chicago, is a sweet interlude here to remind us that jazz is alive, bristling with what’s yet to come.

As Junius pushes forward as a creative musician, he is careful to carry with him the spirit and the knowledge he’s gathered from those who have come before him. He is very literally a bridge between generations of the Chicago vanguard, currently playing in a handful of combos with Makaya McCraven (who produced several of the tracks on Ism) as well as a few of Roscoe Mitchell’s working groups – most notably the Art Ensemble of Chicago – in addition to fronting his own band.

Please find enclosed one 'Deluxe' stereophonic gramophone record from Concept City, containing thirteen recordings of musics entirely produced upon 4-track portastudio for your pleasure and discourse - the sole work of Mr Robert Grant of this parish.

So states the photocopy insert from the 1985 November LP on Cordelia Records. Home to R. Stevie Moore, Rimarimba recently reissued by Freedom To Spend - and label owner Alan Jenkin's The Deep Freeze Mice, Cordelia was home to a menagerie of sound collage plucked from the ether.

Included is the only vinyl release from Concept City, spreading across 13 instrumental tracks of samples and noise. The Welsh choir and robovox meets hypnotic bass of Open The Network glides to the acoustics of Jayne Andrews and Filament, before Steam amasses TV ad cassette archives. As Etruria and Lapse Wine's Durutti meets reel-to-reel to the cold wave of War, Children and wasp synth of Helsinki, Grant slowly unfolds a masterpiece.

Looped drum samples, multiple layered to tape, sped up and slowed down for phasing, the title track is a pinnacle of 80s DiY genius. 'Crossroads' multi-sampling Meg leads to the exotica 'muzak' closings of Penetration and Friends. With just 5 albums over 40 years the music of Mr Concept can be a discovery and cherished.

Rich NxT heads to FUSE to deliver his ‘Suburban Skool’ EP this November, backed by fellow London favourite East End Dubs on remix duties.

An artist that has remained a central part of the London electronic music scene for over a decade, FUSE residentand NxT records boss Rich NxT is an artist that embodies the sound of the city’s evolution throughout the years, taking influences from all pockets of the scene - from drum’n‘bass and jungle through to the minimal and tech house sounds that later took hold of the blossoming after-hours circuit.

Having touched down on the label earlier this year alongside East End Dubs as the pairing released the impressive ‘The Four Slip’ EP, whilst also recently providing two collaborative cuts on label boss Siragusa’s latest ‘A Decade Of Rave’ LP project, November sees Rich return to home turf to deliver his second solo EP on the label of the year, with Eastenderz head East End Dubs also returning to provide an energy-fueled remix on the flip.

Opening proceedings, title track ‘Suburban Skool’ offers up a trademark slice of rolling house music as slick percussion arrangements meet bumping bass stabs and scintillating electronic melodies swirl around old school rave samples, whilst the slinking ‘Rex Press’ keeps the energy high as echoed vocals ebb and flow amongst bright lead lines, crisp drum licks, intriguing breakdowns and builds throughout. Shaping up the package, East End Dubs steps up to offer up a dynamic interpretation of ‘Rex Press’, utilising punchy kicks alongside soaring synth lines and driving snare rolls to impressive effect.

Microdosing is a series of compilation 12”s selected by Julienne Dessagne aka Fantastic Twins, and designed in collaboration with French visual artist Geff Pellet. Microdosing is a collective experiment aimed at helping you fighting back your modern obsession with happiness. You may deserve a nice day but the day does not need a nice you, nothing should be forced, everything is permitted. Microdosing will provide you with sonic healing weapons on regular basis and at irregular dosage. Those doses will favour psychedelic social techniques against self help tyranny, creation over soma, provoking over numbing, our outer-selves over our inner-selves. Microdosing refuses the fatality of the pleasure principle. Life is a struggle, time to embrace it. —— “The cure 4 pain is in the pain” The Microdosing community is an endless Tibetan geometric tattoo on a thousand backs, a black well opening on infinite space. Let us embrace the void in our lives as it is fruitful. Cooper Saver hails from L.A, a city of fallen angels. “Phase 0” is a demonic weapon of choice, its beauty rising from urban ashes. Borusiade’s “Worlds” is an industrial mantra, tribal rhythms driving you through the seven circles of agony, the voyage being the destination itself. Zillas On Acid’s “S-Test” slowly pours acid into your retina, its groove showing you that the blind are the true see-ers. Scott Fraser’s “Deliria” concludes this chapter with the serenity only known to true martyrs. This is not a soothing piece, just the realisation that peace comes from eternal damnation. Microdosing is happy to lead you through the dances that know no threshold. To the chant of “the only cure for pain is in the pain”, you will travel further through an empty eternity. (Ivan Smagghe)

PGS 011 comes to us from Gustav Brovold, an essential player in Detroit's latest wave of underground electronic music. His début EP, "Hyperbolic Space" is the first release solely dedicated to the local legend, with influences ranging from 90s UK rave, apocalyptic techno, and bright, post-Drexciyan electro. Since the late-aughts, Brovold has been a fixture of Detroit's dance community; first as a member of Randy Chabot's Deastro project, and then a pillar of the after-hours scene through raves with the ADULT Contemporary collective, all the while sprinkling in rare, must-see all-hardware-based live shows around the city. Moments of brilliance have boiled over the surface globally, with appearances on Don't Be Afraid as Radio Brovold in 2015, the Detroit Electronic Quarterly's "DEQ Vol. 7" in 2016, and on the punishing opener of PGS 009's with "Temple of the Circuit" earlier this year.

Following a live show at Detroit's Donovan's Pub in late 2018, Zach (Shigeto) came to the obvious realization–this music is the reason why we started PGS, and needed to release the music to a wider audience. Brovold handed PGS a flash drive with hours of completed music, a gold mine in bits and bites. "Hyperbolic Space" represents a cohesive sampling of the mountain of tracks from Brovold's vaults, propelling PGS into the next decade. Play it in your car, or at unauthorized raves, and dance to the airwaves of Radio Brovold.

"Oakland Ave"
The vibes of forgotten 90s raves: UK techno made with digital synths, resampled as a low-bitrate soundtrack for the night time level of a PlayStation racing game. Building, dancing hi-hats, slow building chord stabs, dubby techno feels. A triumphant finish, 1st place in fifth gear. (*If you play this at 45rpm, you can Jit).

With their third album ‘Fluid Motion’, Melbourne’s 30/70 are set to soar into higher territory as the face of Australia’s newest wave of soul-influenced brilliance.

From the swirling opening pads of “Brunswick Hustle” all the way through to the sax-laden shimmer of “Flowers” at its close, ‘Fluid Motion’ is an instant classic, effortlessly shifting between neo-soul and languid, Dilla-esque tendencies, astral-facing jazz textures and authentic vignettes of UK club music history.

It’s a formula that those already caught in 30/70’s celestial web are fully aware of; first defined on the local heat of their 2015 debut ‘Cold Radish Coma’ and majestically expanded upon with their critically acclaimed 2017 release ‘Elevate’ on Bradley Zero’s Rhythm Section INTL (mixed by Hiatus Kaiyote’s Paul Bender). ‘Elevate’ did exactly that - elevating both the scope of the band’s sound as well as their standing in the local and international community.

Since the last record was released, the music has brought the band on world tours and to the attention of the wider public and key tastemakers alike. Strongly supported by the likes of Gilles Peterson, Tom Ravenscroft, Jamie Cullum, Matthew Halsall and Bradley Zero, the UK has become something of a second home for 30/70.

London in particular has openly embraced the soulful sounds of Melbourne, as evidenced by Gilles’ latest Brownswood compilation ‘Sunny Side Up’ which features three tracks from 30/70 members: Ziggy Zeitgeist, Horatio Luna and Allysha Joy. The record is a follow up to his era-defining survey of the UK Jazz scene ‘We Out Here’, the compilation that kickstarted a whole generation of London’s under-the-radar Jazz kids to global headlining heights. It would appear we’re about to witness this same effect take place for the Melbourne contingent, of which 30/70 lead the charge. The city’s invasion is well and truly upon us.

While London is undoubtedly in love with what’s happening in Melbourne right now, this is no one way love affair. The 30/70 collective have had their ears to the ground and plugged into the sound of the UK underground. This new album takes inspiration from the syncopation of Broken-Beat, the immediacy of Grime’s and Dub’s sonic aesthetic to create something that is a truly global amalgamation of local sounds, finessed by Allysha Joy’s instantly recognisable vocals; the rawest and realest of voices.

Hailing from one of the world’s most famous harbours, Rotterdam, a true multicultural melting-pot, the music by 6-piece band called the Greyheads mirrors the daily life of this busy city. They approach jazz from a hip-hop point of view, or hip-hop from a jazz point of view, always carefully adding a perfect dose of other influences (all the members are heavily influenced by artists like Miles Davis, J Dilla, Herbie Hancock and Robert Glasper) with an exciting, groovy and vibrant tone.

After having self-released their debut EP "GREYHEADS × KYTOPIA" in 2017, they recently finished recording "HOMES", their first full length album.

Led by drummer Nello Biasini, this truly international band of like minded musicians was formed in 2016 and have since been busy creating their own, fresh and unique sound. Whether an intimate jazz club or the main stage of a big festival, they are all about creating a feel-good groovy vibe using live rlectronics, drum 'n bass, jazz, hip hop and pop fused together.

GreyHeads performed at NN North Sea Jazz 2019 and several other festivals such as So What's Next Festival, Jazz Delft Festival, Cutting Edge, ProJazz, Big Rivers Festival, as well as opening for the bands Moonchild and Knower.

'Homes' is a journey through space and time, travelling in opposite but jointed paths that lead to the places we call home. The concept of the record is to carry the listener to experience what every place and time can in any way, represent home, characterized by different atmospheres, sounds, images and sensations.

Funky soul-jazz organist Caesar Frazier crafted superior Hammond funk. 75, his second LP, is a rare gem. It’s comfortably his greatest artistic statement.

The follow-up to Hail Ceasar!, it’s a taut, grooving set that expands his sound and, put simply, it’s got better songs. The key elements of his debut album are all there – production from maestro Bob Porter, accompaniment from hip players (Bernard “Pretty” Purdie, Cornell Dupree, John Tropea) and arrangement from Horace Ott - but the overall sound is elevated. The tightly jamming, expressive jazz-funk makes for a richer, fuller, more satisfying experience.

75 is a mixture of hard-driving originals, deeply beautiful slower numbers to vary the tempo and a couple of classy covers. The crazy bombastic “Mighty Mouse” - a riot of horns, organ and in the pocket drums - became an acid jazz classic at Dingwalls and it’s easy to see (hear?) how. A blissed out, lushly instrumental take on Seals and Crofts’s “Summer Breeze” follows, perfect for those sunshine sets.

Side A closes with the heavenly “Sweet Children”. A loping, funky jazz masterpiece famously sampled by Kanye West for Common’s “Real People” from Be. It opens beautifully, with soaring sax and a funky horn section combining with weightless keyboard tones atop snapping drums. Unsurprisingly, the excellence endures right through to the end.

The B side opens with perhaps the album’s most famous track. "Funk It Down” contains the familiar “I can feel the funk” vocal refrain throughout. But it’s the gorgeous, insouciant bridge that you should all know and love, having been used as the hook for Gang Starr’s “Ex-Girl To Next Girl”. A great cover of Stevie Wonder's “Living for the City” comes next, with an unforgettable bass-line which anchors the entire heavy rhythm section workout. Dizzying organ, triumphant horns and sun-dappled guitar grooves combine to create “Walking On The Side”, rounding out a pretty smoking set.

This is one of those rare 70s funk-soul-jazz LPs on which a bad track cannot be found. It’s all essential. So of course finding original copies on vinyl at affordable prices has been tough for years.

Mastered brilliantly by Simon Francis, cut by Pete Norman and with painstakingly reproduced artwork by the Be With team, this fresh Be With reissue ensures this legendary LP now sounds, looks and feels as sensational as it should.

"We Can Do Anything We Want Because They Say We Can't Afford The Police"

Talking Heads lost in Ancoats. Prince in a Berghaus. The Compass Point All-Stars meet the Piccadilly Gardens Spiceheads.
Welcome to the world of SEE THRU HANDS.

Here to bring salvation to a Broken Brexit Britain, See Thru Hands is a fresh band from Manchester with hooks for days and a SERIOUS live vibe. Their debut EP on Manchester legend RUF DUG's label RUF KUTZ - "The Hot City EP" - brings you two new songs backed with remixes tested on the world's best dance floors.

Opener HOT CITY's energetic punk/funk conveys a dark story of British city life outside the London bubble.
Our councils are fucked, our public services neutered and all anyone cares about is when Deliveroo is gonna be available in their neighbourhood. Throw away your post-apocalyptic fantasies because it's already like that - the only option is to dance. It's grim up north.

After dancing ur arse off and simultaneously coming to the realisation that we're all fucked pls don't worry - See Thru Hands are here to pick up your pieces with NOTHING TO LOSE, a whimsical modern pop banger with shades of New British House that will instil in you a sense of freedom and ease all your worries.
Yes we are all going to hell in a handcart but with See Thru Hands as our companions, I think it's all gonna be just fine.

The package comes backed with a pair of deadly remixes - boss man RUF DUG strips back Hot City to the bare bones, rigs up a couple of jazzy neon lights and a DMX drum machine and brings you his 'Metrolink Vibes In The Area' version, while young upstart METRODOME completes the all-Mancunian lineup on this record with a twisted Marmite 2-step interpretation that is either gonna make you buzz or spew. It's not for everyone.

MUSAR continues to explore the healthy landscape of underground and alternative electronic music with the debut release on the label from Nightwave. 'The Journey' is a fitting title for the Glaswegian producer, DJ and promoter, who has been a lynchpin for the city's vibrant music scene since her first release in 2010. In the time since, Nightwave has a developed a punchy and highly original sound that blends potent influences of acid, techno and forward-thinking bass music, with releases on DABJ, UTTU, Fool's Gold, DEXT and her own imprint Heka Trax.

For her MUSAR debut, Nightwave celebrates, in her own words, "joy, dance, exploring inner worlds, the celebration of nature and life and how it all interconnects". On a delicate tip, opening and title track 'The Journey' establishes the EP's "rainforest rave" aesthetic, spiralling upwards with weightless energy. It's underlying percussion steps forward on 'Jiboia Groove', which blossoms thrillingly into wave upon wave of ethereal, breakbeat-led rave.

'Monkey Puzzle' pulls a similar, if more uncompromising trick, only with its rhythmic timber instead succumbing to layers of rough-hewn, squealing acid synthesis and pounding snare drums. 'Forest Guru' meanwhile restores much of the record's spiritual equilibrium in one fell swoop, finding a clearing in the landscape to sculpt a rolling, detailed jam that's as playful as it is creative.

Naive founder and Lisbon's rave goddess, Violet generously remixes 'The Journey' in intriguing fashion, unravelling a trippy and tense riddle at the heart of the rainforest.

In early 2018, Jas Shaw, one half of Simian Mobile Disco was diagnosed with a rare health condition – AL amyloidosis – a disorder of bone marrow cells. Having just completed SMD’s 7th studio album Murmurations and with a special show at the Barbican scheduled for April, things were thrown into confusion. At the time, no one, including Shaw, knew how the prognosis would pan out. Jas had to start chemotherapy almost immediately, which meant cancelling the tour. The duo decided to go ahead with the Barbican show in spite of Shaw’s illness, which was especially poignant as all involved knew it could potentially be SMD’s last ever live performance – in the end it turned out to be a tour-de-force. If this was SMD’s swansong, so be it.

In the year that followed, Jas spent months receiving weekly chemotherapy, learning to live with his condition, and when he felt well enough, spending hours in his studio making music.

The result of this was twofold, firstly a collaborative album with Derwin Dicker (Gold Panda), released as Selling – On Reflection, on City Slang Records Secondly, a growing archive of solo work, which is now ready for release. Entitled “The Exquisite Cops”, this 20+ track growing body of work will see the light of day via SMD’s Delicacies label – with a 2-track single released every fortnight /month and a limited
edition double LP scheduled for 27th September.

At the end of 2018 a difficult year was capped with hopeful news. With his condition in remission, able to stop chemotherapy Jas is able to start DJing and playing live again.

Jas: “The Exquisite Cops tracks seem to have made their own system for creation. Normally I record electronic music like a band would, as a take. So, it’s kind of surprising to me that that this batch of tracks wasn’t made this way. Instead of a single take that gets edited and developed these tracks were all made in bits, usually months apart. Some days I’d make a drum track, often editing it down so that it’s some sort of semblance of a structure; on other days I’d end up just making a synth sound or texture. This wasn’t something that I gave into reluctantly, it’s nice to be able to give a feedback based pad your whole attention rather than just set it up and only attend to it if it gets really out of hand.

The process of matching these misfits together was originally born out of laziness, rather than break open the synths to make something to develop an idea, what if I could just use something that I already had; slack. The interesting thing was that in pulling two takes together that were done months apart, they cast each other in a different light and though sometimes making them fit together was a hatchet job, sometimes they locked up together in an improbable way, making the rough structures that I’d improvised make a different sort of sense; often a more interesting sort of sense.

The more I did this the more it felt like this was not just a slacker’s way to use up offcuts, this resulted in combinations that I’d probably not have chosen if I’d done the tracks in one go. Also, and I know this isn’t something that’s important to everyone, there was a level of fastidious detail that I’d never have got if I’d had the textural and rhythmic elements playing together. It’s a longwinded process but it’s changed how I record and how I think about recordings I’ve made; plus I enjoy all parts of it so why cut it short?”

PLR is proud to host a variety of talented producers from around the hemisphere, from Berlin to Montréal to San Francisco. The label is a brainchild of independent artist Experimental Housewife and was kicked off by prolific producer Roche (100% Silk, Jacktone, Hobocamp) and his breath-taker A Genuine Effort To Make You Comfortable. Soon after, the spring saw italo-sprinkled dance floor beats followed by slamming techno and weirdo-tronica, a non-genre made of intriguing sounds that play tricks on DJs. In closing, the roster will be opening ears up with a wonderful miniseries of ambient releases before the final EP: arpeggiated pop from conceptual two-man band Star Service .

Premiere producers like Lily Ackerman (As You Like It, Mioli Music), CMD (Jacktone, basic_sounds), Golden Diskó Ship (Monika Enterprise, Spezialmaterial, Klangbad), BLEIE (B.O.D.I.E.S., 3am Devices), Mo Kudeki (Noctuary, Public Works), and Tape Ghost (Asterisk, Night Sea) have all signed up to the roster, releasing fierce and excitable works that they have had for a while but hitherto were not able to release to the public.

Reverenced names like Ryan Merry (now Elexos Park but formerly Ghosts On Tape), Roy England (Make Mistakes, Communikey), Caltrop (In The Dark Again), Loren Steele (Wolf + Lamb, Jacktone), and Philadelphia warriors Sean Thomas (Drumsong, Sound Between Movement) as well as bpmf (Schmer, Serotonin, Prototype 909) have all offered exclusive productions.

Mysterious and up-and-coming producers like Emmett Perlman (Wage Slave, Make Mistakes), Bad Person , gayphextwin (Jacktone), BIlagáana (VODER), and Atlas Of Nothing can be explored in the catalog alongside new names like Memeshift, The Hug , and Jaclyn Kendall .

Our spotlight mastering engineers for digital releases include David Last, Abe Duque, Dark Star Audio, David Tatasciore, and Helen Heß. Our resident and extremely generous/talented engineer for the year has been the one and only Roy England.

Slam City Jams is back with its sixth release and welcomes a new face to the label: the
mysterious producer, Westcoast Goddess, with his „Soul Out Of Time” EP.
After releases on Shanti Celeste’s Peach Discs (under his Videopath moniker) and Canada
based Heart To Heart Records, this guy caught our attention with his amazing analog take
on house music.
Written and produced between 2002 and 2018, this record contains everything house music
heads could wish for:
Sweet chords and strings, topped with heavy 909s, plus a cheeky little vocal shot on
„Satisfaction & Clarity”. Title track „Soul Out Of Time” sounds like a late night drive with the
top down. Meaning - shiny bells, swinging 80s drums, a funked up bass line and Balearic
breaks. The B-side kicks things off with “Open Heart”. A sample-based house tune, heavy on
the low end and super sweet on the tops, with Rhode pianos and catchy guitar licks. The EP
comes to an end with „In Search Of Darryl P”: A perfect track for the late hours, when those
trancey synths and euphoric strings go on and on... till the first rays of dawn!

The first album on Numbers from Complete Walkthru aka US producer Max McFerren, titled Scrolls, is out on 20th September 2019.

Scolls plays around with themes of privacy, disillusionment and personal development over eleven tracks, representing a transitional time in McFerren’s life. Through Scrolls’ early stages he moved from New York, where he was holding down a residency at Brooklyn’s Bossa Nova Civic Club and playing regularly in downtown Manhattan at the iconic China Chalet and the now much missed Santos Party House, to the open, rural setting of South Carolina.

The albums personality, and the thematic preoccupations underlying it, reflect the impact of this contrast. It’s sound textures cast widely into what McFerren describes as “the ephemera of the saturated digital realm” while moving through arcane rhythms, chiming melodies and expansive, metallically tinged ambient passages. First single Lean In, streaming in full now, is a dusty breaks-tight miasma of fragmented cyber-consciousness. There are playful, hyperactive refrains on Getting Ridiculous. Leavin’ Church Early is an expansive beat free meditation, while NYC’s dynamic momentum is a cityscape of bad-faith corporate aspiration.

McFerren refers to his motivations with Scrolls as being “anti-nihilism”, as reacting against a dark emptiness he perceives in certain forms of techno. Ultimately with the record, he is seeking the potential of centring joy in the present moment, in a conscious awareness of now.

Okinawan talent City1 has been making some serious moves with his unique dark productions as of late and we are honoured to welcome him to the Subaltern family.

* Speak Out feat. Rider Shafique
In the mighty title track City1 delivers a clinical slab of bass science which gravitationally pulls deep into a different dimension. The dreamy yet dark atmosphere and vibrant basslines are graced by the elevating bars of none less than the notorious Rider Shafique - one of bass music’s finest vocalists hailing from Bristol.

* Koroga
Going even darker, City1 opens up another world in this trip of a track. Koroga rides on relentless dark synths and keeps switching up the pace, leading the listener through a maze of eerie sounds - be careful though, the walls are closing in. Dangerous!

* Zee
Zee is just as otherworldly as the first two tracks. With heavy hitting basslines and snappy percussions, City1 delivers yet another absolutely unique roller. Whenever you thought the track had arrived at its peak, it takes another, even wilder turn.

Hamburg-based Mireia Records is ecstatic toannounce their thirteenth release: Julian Stetter’s “Sensual EP”.
You’ve probably crossed paths with Julian in thelast couple of years. Not only because he’s the tallest guy in Cologne, but the producer and DJ has been actively shaping modern dance music
with his flourishing, melancholic sound. He’s been releasing music with Permanent Vacation, Kompakt, Correspondent and hometown labels Ancient Future Now and PNN.

It’s also not his first time on Mireia Records. Remember the beautiful “Porto” on “We’ll Sea
Pt.1?” Here, Julian presents two original tracks which are reinterpreted by SONNS and Matt
Karmil.
The title track “ Sensual ” manages to erase the mundane, the world’s vanishing around you.
It’s pitched shaker and airy bells evoke introspective tones. The bassline on the other hand
keep you steady - the dancefloor is still visible through the clouds!
“ Rumors ” picks up the pace. Kick drum and syncopated hi-hats set the stage for a serious
bassline, interwoven with fleeting melodies.
Bright and euphoric brushstrokes from Julian’s synth elevate the pace and catapult the track
towards a crescendo. Booming snares signal the peak.
New Release Information
Strobe lights, sweat and ecstasy.
SONNS opens up the B side with the first remix by whispering “ Rumors ” in your ear. A
brooding bass line takes you on a trip to the dark corners of the city. Hypnotically chugging
toms highlight the sights. Let’s get lost tonight!
With his releases on Kompakt and strong DJ Sets SONNS’ been a long time favored entrant
into Mireia Record’s catalogue.
Matt Karmil’s version of 'Sensual', although on B2 of the vinyl, doesn’t hide its assets.
Kicking off with frantic high hats and a distorted glitch, he pushes the track forwards
intriguingly. Arpeggiated melodies layered supremely over the percussion drive the track
forwards, the simplicity of the track and sharp cuts and drops create an interesting dynamic
to the single creating a perfect juxtapose to the other tracks on the release.
Matt’s also been on Mireia’s radar for a long time. His atmospheric adventures for Studio
Barnhus, Smalltown Supersound or Beats in Space always convey a spirit of living, breathing
leeway.

Since completing his two-decade-long hip-hop trilogy as Dabrye in 2018, Ann Arbor-based artist and Bopside label head Tadd Mullinix has engaged his arsenal of aliases with renewed heat. First came the debut of X-Altera, a new project flexing a wildstyle hybrid of drum & bass and deep techno. Now, he returns to James T. Cotton, a moniker which dates back as far as Dabrye and helped define Spectral Sound, the dance imprint of Ghostly International. While historically tagged as Mullinix’s acid house alias, JTC has always expressed with a more pliable sense of genre, freely fusing an eclectic blend of classic electronic sounds; helpings of Chicago acid, Belgian New Beat, and the leftfield techno stylings popularized both in Berlin and Detroit. With Indigo, Flesh and Fire, Mullinix moves closer to the latter city, adopting a bright, optimistic tone informed by minimalism and futurism.

"I have been more withdrawn and introspective on a personal level, in a positive sense, and I think that fact has made my creativity reach toward feelings about peace, positivity, fantasy, wonder, and openness,” says Mullinix.

The EP is packed, but still playfully ambiguous; a club-ready set built to max out mixing boards with spacious and nuanced melodies and motorized percussion. Five tracks, each with roughly five-minute run-times, offering all but a few breaths in a quest for highly operative dancefloor hypnosis. The record wastes little time locking in; on the first track, “Innerloire Rendezvous,” a dense square kick plows through a brisk four-on-the-floor routine phasing over harmonious synth stacks of rubbery fifths and sevenths. The title track splatters a lenticular static spray between thumping kick, billowy melodic swells, and staticky clicks, snaps, and claps.

Mullinix’s distilled musical vocabulary, developed by his many years in the game, gives the set a misty-eyed quality without compromising its contemporary merit. This is music, inspired by history but fiercely forward-thinking, that feels both subterranean and airborne; in the grind on the ground and soaring above in an iridescent super-charged fog.

key selling points: - Debut release on Spectral Sound - Past releases on Firm Tracks, Nite Owl Diner, Sweat Equity, FCR, Clave - Limited to 300 copies worldwide.

Untameable Anatolian feline fuzzy folk funk finally uncaged. A spontaneous Turkish-Norwegian-Dutch expedition, where seafaring jazz cats entangled with fugitive roadies and Tee-Set mods, makes the story of Durul Gence’s highly anticipated/ill-fated Asia Minor Mission group the stuff of lost-rock legend and remains one of Turkish music’s great “what ifs?” The black cat is finally out of the bag...

Having forged a celebrity status as one of Turkey’s premier percussionists and bandleaders, Durul Gence assembled the underground fusion group known as Asia Minor Mission (AMM) in early 1972 (with Irfan Sumer, Oguz Durukan and Ugur Dikmen) while trying to escape the constant daze of paparazzi camera flashes that followed him across Turkey. During a far-fetched post-gig brainstorm the group pondered relocating to Norway (based on fact that none of them had ever visited the country) when a local seaman who claimed to have recording studio connections in Oslo overheard them. Enlisting the roadie services of a streetwise Istanbul taxi driver friend on the run from the police AMM took the plunge, accepting the sailor’s offer of passage on his next sailing.
In these new idyllic surroundings, the same region that played host to fellow Turkish percussionist Okay Temiz, Durul found the peace he desired discovering a muse in Norway’s welcoming creative climate. Much like Barıs Manço and Mogollar in France, Cem Karaca and Gökçen Kaynatan in Germany, Gence’s relationship with Norway rekindled a passion for composition in ways he couldn’t have imagined in his homeland, opening doors thought previously unreachable. As a potential prodigal son for Anadolu pop Durul joined a wider pop-cultural diaspora alongside electronic pioneer Ilhan Mimaroglu, Tülay German (aka Tuly Sand) Kardasllar’s “Alex” Wiska (collaborator with Krautrockers Can) and Maffy Falay from the band Sevda.
Despite a blooming fan base and original repertoire the Nordic dream was not to be and after two years without a studio session, AMM called it quits during a tour of Holland after which Durukan and Dikmen went home to join Cem Karaca’s band Dervisan - Dikmen’s keyboards feature on Finders Keepers releases by Turkish singer Selda (FKR011). Retreating to the city of Delft to ponder his next move, Durul met Peter Tetteroo, former vocalist from successful Dutch psych-pop combo Tee-Set, who also found himself in a lonely boat after the demise of his long-running group. As an AMM fan, Tetteroo suggested they record two Gence penned AMM demos for Dutch Philips signed exotic songbird Sasi Naz at Peter’s home studio. A session was hastily arranged and a talented, yet unconfirmed, guitarist was enlisted. Durul maintains it was the work of Ferry Lever from Tee-Set/After Tea, something Ferry has denied, and with Tetteroo having died in 2002 the question remains. Upon entering the humble studio Durul stumbled upon a skeletal drum kit. Lacking hi-hat, toms or even a snare he cobbled together a bongo and a tambourine and set to work. Together, under the watchful eye of Tetteroo, the pair jammed stripped back versions of the AMM live staples Black Cat and Boo Song, with an added freak factor otherwise missing from their jazzier approach. Laid down in just 30 minutes, with Gence’s accomplished guide vocals and fuzzy overdubs, the rudimentary but professional recordings never made it to Philips execs and the tapes returned to Turkey under Durul’s arm as one of only two documented AMM recordings (the other being a live performance in Oslo’s Hennie-Onstad Art Centre in May 1973).
Unintended for commercial release, curiouser and curiouser, Finders Keepers proudly present these previously unheard tracks sourced directly from original tapes, which stand as a testament to the inimitable talent of Gence and the only studio document of the mythical AMM Turk jazz funk troubadours, representing a pop-psych Hollandaise holiday postcard which has taken five decades to be delivered. 45 revolutions later... The cat’s got the cream.

Following up on the 2017 debut EP 'Don't Get Me Wrong’, Dazion returns with his second release on Second Circle.

On his latest EP; 'A Bridge Between Lovers’, we hear the Dutch multi -instrumentalist take even more unexpected swerves and turns in the form of fi ve new tracks recorded in his home studio in Den Haag. Setting himself loose from any musical confines, his process develops spontaneously; a Spanish guitar connects with an Indonesian wind instrument, wood sticks are channelled through a gritty sampler, while weird drum pattErns make their way out of Alesis HR 16-B and Yamaha computers. The results of these recordings are a fluid yet familiar Dazion sound; typically utilising electronic and organic sounds in his own distinctIve way. As with its predecessor, the tracks on ‘A Bridge Between Lovers’ are heavily rhythmically fuelled as well as rich in melody. Not least during another collaborati on with the Portugese vocalist Paulo on the alluring opening track ‘Eu Ñ ao Sei’, where Dazion again radiates what he himself calls, his "musical message of love to everyone".

Available on vinyl for the first time in 40 years, Outernational Sounds proudly presents a cornerstone document from the Los Angeles jazz underground, Flight 17 – the first appearance on record of the legendary Pan-Afrikan Peoples Arkestra, led by their founder and mastermind, Horace Tapscott.

"The Arkestra would allow the creativity in the community to come together, would allow people to recognize each other as one people and ask, “Now what can we do to make this community better? What can we do for this community together?”...That’s how the Pan-Afrikan Peoples Arkestra – the Ark – began, with the knowledge that we wanted to preserve the black arts in the community."
Horace Tapscott

Horace Tapscott’s Pan-Afrikan Peoples Arkestra (P.A.P.A.) was one of the most transformative, forward-thinking and straight-up heavy big bands to have played jazz in the 1960s and 1970s. Countless musicians passed through its ranks, and in Tapscott it was led by a musical visionary who should be ranked with the very greatest names in the music. If P.A.P.A. doesn’t have the interstellar rep of that other famous Arkestra, and if the name Tapscott doesn’t ring bells like Monk or Tyner, there’s a reason why: in an industry dominated by record labels, a band that doesn’t record doesn’t count. And the Pan-Afrikan Peoples Arkestra didn’t record for nearly twenty years. But recording success was never their concern – they weren’t about that.

First formed as the Underground Musicians Association in the early 1960s, Tapscott always wanted his group to be a community project. From their base in Watts, UGMA got down at the grassroots. They played for the people, organising fundraisers in parks and coffee houses, hosting teach-ins and workshops for young and old, and mixing it with radical theatre groups, firebrand poets, political radicals, Black separatists, community groups and churches. They lived communally, supporting each other and their people, and built an ark for the Black arts in the heart of the city. The group was renamed the Pan-Afrikan Peoples Arkestra in 1971, and soon after they established a monthly residency at the Immanuel United Church of Christ which ran for over a decade, while still playing all over LA and beyond. But through all this, they never released a note of music.

It was the intervention of Tom Albach, a fan of Tapscott and the group, that finally got them on wax. Determined that their work should be documented, Albach founded Nimbus Records specifically to release the music of Tapscott, the Arkestra, and the individuals that comprised it. The first recording sessions in early 1978 yielded enough material for two albums, and the first release was Flight 17. From the surging avant-gardism of Herbie Baker’s title track to the laid- back summertime groove of Kamonta Lawrence Polk’s ‘Maui’, or Roberto Miranda’s uptempo Latin jam ‘Horacio’, Flight 17 showcased the radical voices of the Arkestra’s members. Led out by Tapscott’s hard-swinging piano, this is the first flight on wax of the West Coasts’ foundational community big band – energised, hip and together. Open up the gates and prepare for departure!

This edition of Flight 17 contains two tracks previously only available on the 1997 CD edition: ‘Coltrane Medley’ and ‘Village Dance’, recorded live at the Immanuel United Church of Christ. It is released as a limited vinyl-only edition on a 180g pressing by Pallas. Fully licensed from Nimbus West founder Tom Albach.

On ‘Ways Of Seeing’ Konx-om-Pax has switched up the mood and hit gold. He has made an album that is filled with joy and sunshine, saturated with the classic feel of Berlin Techno.

Tom Scholefield has moved on from the dark ambient and brittle rave of the first two Konx-om-Pax albums, which were a reflection of his hometown Glasgow's electronic music scenes. After a recent move to Berlin, the textures of Glasgow's musical strains have fused into an accessible and friendly mix of poppy melodic electronica built from a stricter 'less is more' sound pallete, closer in spirit to the music of his adopted city. It is also a record which was made in opposition to recent music he has been hearing, in particular the troubled, dark and noisy experimental music coming out of Berlin. Tom wanted to focus on more joyful qualities, making this a record imbued with warmth and happiness, a panacea to the darkness and disorientation all around in 2019.

Having a social scene full of producers has also influenced the album. The opening track 'LA Melody' came from staying with Ross Birchard (Hudson Mohawke) at his house in LA, hanging out in the glorious sunshine with him and Lunice working on tracks.
"Initially Ross asked me to write some melodies to use in a project he was producing, but I ended up liking it so much I decided to keep the riff. I generally write music alone, but being around other producers gave me a certain excited energy that reminded me of after-parties back in Glasgow where Ross and myself spent our youth together. Spending time in Clark's studio also helped me improve my workflow and sequencing the album by seeing the way he does things". On 'Säule Acid' he collaborates with Silvia Kastel and in 'I’m For Real' the vocals of Glaswegian DJ/producer Nightwave filter around the track.

Juan Ramos opens his debut album with The Problem With Ambiguity and Finding Space—speaking to a societal confusion, a fragmented sense of self, and a pull toward many (often unwelcoming) directions—this turmoil in which he’s spent considerable time, sees him invest grave efforts to express the inexpressible. Changing Hands is a time capsule of that dark period in his life, an overtly honest musical diary which puts his emotional coming-of-age on full display, hoping to reach kindred listeners. While his previous output for the ESP Institute used a certain level of complication to push limits on the dancefloor, this immersive work cuts deep in to a frayed psyche, dismantling our preconceptions of Juan and plunging listeners deep into a stew of jarring textures, incomplete phrases, and circus-like abstractions of pop culture. There is a nonchalant and unhurried experimentation that accumulates over the album’s first half—disconnected and anxiety-riddled personality traits constitute various musical roles, sporadically converging in fleeting moments of optimism although never fully climbing out from the abyss—and yet amidst this chaos there is a watershed moment in which the artist successfully gleans a golden morsel of hope from his emotional junkyard, guiding us across the threshold into the album’s second half while diligently protecting the glow of this rock bottom treasure. Juan begins to reveal his inner b-boy—a distorted view on golden-age Hip Hop roots, an affinity for muddy break-beats, sultry loops and metaphoric interludes—the crown prince of a newly-found safe space. It’s as if he had us searching on all fours for a misplaced joint, but now that it’s finally lit, he assures us that everything’s going to be alright.

Inspired by warm climates, shaped in a rainy city. Native Cruise's Desert Theory opener Late Nights is a relaxed jam filled with crispy drum-machine percussion and new age-ish pads with delicate nature sounds in the background. The energy rises towards the title track, a marching rhythm characterised by chugging wooden drums and floaty pan flutes. Bermuda Clouds brings you on a shore presenting a dreamy 4 to the floor session with an FM bass line, atmospheric pads and a wave of ocean sounds. The journey ends with Whispers which reminds of an imaginary 80s digital world vaguely influenced by the aesthetic of labels like Innovative Communication or Les Folies Art.

Canadian John Varuhin serves up the second tasteful EP on Clyde Records , a sublime minimal techno affair across 4 standout tracks.

This Vancouver artist is a techno DJ and producer who has also played a purely digital live set in the past. He has a clean, crisp style that comes back from the future and is rich in hi fidelity details that make it truly cinematic.

Opener ‘ Bunker ’ is a spacious track with gooey kick drums rolling deep as slithers of synth and tiny metallic sounds glint and glisten up top. It’s perfectly transcendental, while the excellent ‘ Retribution ’ picks up the pace with a sense of silky techno urgency. The unsettl ing sound of distant automation and darkened synths recall the best of Motor City techno and ensure this one will have the floor locked in.

The expertly designed ‘ Rainy Day ’ is pure minimalism, with icy hi hats and scuttling little details sure to find favour with fans of Robert Hood. Hugely atmospheric and absorbing, it’s the sort of deep and late night track that’s designed for intimate club rooms. Last of all, ‘ Detached Screen ’ is another deep, rolling, perfectly elongated groove design to melt your mind and trap you in the beautiful repetition.

This is a classy and timeless EP of meticulously crafted minimal techno.

Mid-July signals the arrival of Rossko’s debut solo EP on his home imprint FUSE, delivering two tracks accompanied by a remix from Burnski in the form of his ‘Blossom’ EP.

An artist immersed within London’s rich electronic scene for the last 20 years, Rossko remains a central figure at the heart of the city’s ever-evolving sound. A DJ first and foremost, known for his slick and powerful sets and his ability to unearth forgotten gems from across the electronic sphere, his journey as one of FUSE’s core residents now stretches over 10 years, with the Berlin-based talent also featuring as a head resident DJ and A&R for the label’s sister imprint Infuse as well as heading up his own label ‘Late Night Skanking’ and ‘Arkityp’, the project with Archie Hamilton. Following on from his recent collaborative EP alongside Swedish talent Per Hammar on Infuse, here we him step out on home turf to offer up his debut solo EP and the most complete and matured example of his sound to date via the aptly titled ‘Blossom’, whilst Constant Sound boss Burnski also joins on remix duties.

A-side production ‘The Step Up’ opens the EP in slick fashion, as rolling organic percussion arrangements weave amongst slinking bass licks to reveal a stripped back yet dynamic lead cut. Next up, second original ‘Cerca Trova’ takes things a little deeper as off-kilter sonics and vocal murmurs work amongst skipping hats and rich low-end tones, before Burnski’s remix of ‘The Step Up’ sees the production paired back even further to reveal swinging drum grooves, floating, hazy melodies and playful synth flourishes throughout.

Patience began as bedroom synth project for songwriter Roxanne Clifford after the break up of her acclaimed indie pop band Veronica Falls. Born out of a desire to experiment with a new sound and analogue synthesizers, the project has since grown to become an all-encompassing persona and serves as the main vehicle for the full emotional spectrum always latent in Clifford’s songwriting. From her first long-sold-out 7” singles on Night School, her knack for melodic hooks and oblique emotional stances already contained a glistening sheen of promise. ‘Dizzy Spells’ serves as an intimate portrait of Clifford’s creative adventure, almost diaristic, conceived and recorded in her home studio, as well as with collaborators Todd Edwards (Daft Punk/Uk Garage fame), Lewis Cook (Free Love/Happy Meals) and engineer Misha Hering (Virginia Wing). Dizzy Spells delivers a debut album that twists Clifford’s songwriting into new shapes and ecstasies. The album dances around melancholy, thrown to the floor like a bad dream to be circled, emerging bright-eyed into the early morning full of hope. The Girls Are Chewing Gum (produced by Todd Edwards) bursts open Dizzy Spells like fresh fruit: sweet and rich with a synth-bass line beamed down from Chicago House heaven. Exquisitely sung by Clifford, it’s a wonderful, funky, instant-classic hinting at sexuality and memories dredged from our bodies’ secrets. The bouncy production expertly renders the addictive power of our ephemeral pleasures. Living Things Don’t Last chases themes of longing and loss, opening up into a life affirming chorus that sings of transience, the passing of time and railing against inertia. It’s the perfect example of a song formula that Roxanne Clifford has almost patented: simple and cutting straight to the point. There are shades of Strawberry Switchblade or French synth pop pioneer Jacno in the happy/sad dichotomy and it is all the better for it. Dizzy Spells features all three long-sold out singles, embedded in the full depth of Patience’s soundworld they fit like pieces of a puzzle. White Of An Eye, The Church and The Pressure—all recorded in Clifford’s former home of Glasgow—crackle with razor sharp melodies and dancefloor-ready dynamics. There are exciting additions to Patience’s sonic palette, brought into sharp relief on Voices In The Sand. In this song, a plaintive Clifford enunciates a heart-torn plea to the antagonist, a mournful cascade of synths and haunting vocals evocative of AC Marias, a sepia-toned ode to anxiety, “a storm is on the way”. On No Roses, a Vince Clarkesque production belies a sunburnt sadness. Clifford defiantly sings “you would go out tonight, but there’s nowhere you like,” describing a disenchantment with her adopted city of Los Angeles, she longs for home in a singular refrain “No roses… no roses for us.” An ode to English folk singer Shirley Collins, a surprising yet innate influence throughout Clifford’s work. On Moral Damage, former Veronica Falls bandmate Marion Herbain joins Clifford on an anglo-french duet that feels instant and spontaneous, a cutting comment on emotional accountability. More than a vehicle for Roxanne Clifford’s songwriting prowess, Patience is holding our hand through the night, dancing with tears in our eyes, dizzy and spellbound.

“The year is 1982. Rita Mitsouko has not yet recorded its eponymous debut album. The pile of ashes that once was Disco is still smoking on the field of Comiskey Park. New Wave is a phrase, Post-Punk Rock a thing. In France, young musicians dream of New York City – some with more devotion than others. Lapassenkoff are to early 1980’s downtown New-York what seminal New Wave act Marie Et Les Garçons (who met John Cale on their way to CBGB) are to the city’s musical scene in the late 1970’s: an unexpected cousin from Lyon.

Indeed, going through Shing ‘n’ Tsé! sometimes feel like an impromptu meeting between John Lurie and Tom Tom Club in the basement of some French record store. If we press pause for a minute, a question comes to mind: how on earth such a unique blend of funk, post-punk, jazz fusion & hip hop (!) – more easily associated with, say, The Mudd Club, than with Les pentes de la Croix-Rousse – made its way to the brains of three French musicians?

The answer probably lies in a Swiss chalet, some 40 kilometers away from Zurich. Sent there by the wise people from Mosquito (the label which also gave Ramuntcho Matta and Carte de Séjour the opportunity to record their first album), the band experiences Alpine ennui and mysterious neighbours (a certain Carlos Peron, for instance). That is probably during this stay in Swiss meadows that they opened a Pandora’s box called experimental music, leading them into recording the mind-blowing sample-based – and accidentally proto-everything – M Le Maudit,, that would later grace Belgian airwaves via the famous Liaisons Dangereuses radio show.

But if we’re looking for a bigger picture, M Le Maudit is just an example of how inventive their approach to music was. This compilation is a testimony of a decade-long feverish flirt between the Lyon trio and dance music. From the infectious electric boogie cuts Shing A Ling and Roadie to the somehow euro-house-fuelled Ma Poubelle Angelina, via many unclassifiable yet iconic songs like Bossi Le Bosseman or Fièvres, Frissons, the compilation demonstrates one thing: Lapassenkoff took the road less traveled by and contributed to a different history of French Pop music.”

Pierre-Arthur Michau.

The runic inscriptions of the ARP 2600's circuit boards foretold the coming of "three explorers" who will reveal the ancient truths that lie within the pulsations of its ever-shifting squarewaves. The result of weeks of intense exploratory sessions in an NYC celestial echo chamber, this record documents the efforts of Tim Wheeler, David Kitt, and Conor Creaney to fathom and harness the sounds emitted by the ARP, Minimoog, CS60, and Jupiter 4 in a strictly live fashion. No overdubs or editing took place, just the sound that filled the room as the jams emerged. The results are two extended, hypnotic synth odysseys that unfurl organically as their melodic layers reveal themselves over time.

Side A 'Locked In' opens with tranquil, sparkling synth chimes that give way to a pulsating (but largely beatless) Krautrock-meets-dub groove, anchored by an insistent bassline a
nd interlocking layers of synth lines that unfurl over its 15 minutes. Side B ‘Locked Out’ takes us to the outer reaches of the cosmos with its quavering, otherworldly arpeggios and tempestuous asteroidal outbursts.

"I love it. SO beautiful"
Josh Rosenthal [Tompkins Square]

Songs For A One-String Guitar is the debut instrumental acoustic guitar LP from Jonny Dillon. Better known for his analogue electronic music productions and all-hardware live sets under the ‘Automatic Tasty’ moniker [Lunar Disko, CPU, Wrong Island], Jonny’s records (bearing heavy acid and electro influences), along with live appearances at venues like Berlin’s Panorama Bar and Kiev’s Closer belie the fact that he has been quietly exploring the musical landscape of the guitar for nearly twenty years.

Recorded as a series of sketches over the last 10 years, Songs For A One-String Guitar represents a snapshot taken over a long exposure; one individual’s private response to a variety of currents and inspirations both musical and emotional. While informed in large measure by the world of Irish traditional music and song (of Sweeney’s Men, Planxty and Seán Garvey) along with that of primitivism and the American Spiritual (of John Fahey, Hank Williams and Mississippi John Hurt) these songs are equally a personal attempt to give expression to an inner landscape, from the experience of sorrow and loss to the promise of redemption and renewal.

The LP opens with ‘Turning Invisible In An Imaginary Rose Garden One-Evening’ a contemplative piece played in free-time; “I’ve been playing this piece for years, and it’s gone by so many different names in that time. It’s a sort of shoe-staring daydream, to my mind at least. I want people to disappear when they hear it, and think it suits the LP to open up slowly and reflectively”. While a contemplative strain underpins some of these songs, others are informed more directly by the experience of grief; “I wrote ‘A Requiem For Joe Dillon’ at the death of my uncle. He used play lots of wonderful songs of his own at family gatherings when I was a child, and while a very gifted and sensitive soul, was also troubled by his own demons. The last time I saw him alive was at my family home with my father; I was going out to see some friends and Joe called me back, gave me a hug and made the sign of the cross with his thumb on my forehead, to bless me. It still chokes me up when I think about it. A song of his ‘Light A Penny Candle’ I included to finish the piece in his honour.” A sense of longing and hope is present in other pieces; “Songs like ‘Again But With Feeling This Time’ and ‘Start Again (Carry On)’ come from a sort of hopeful yearning feeling which is always within me; a melancholic sort of joy in search of redemption. For me, music has the strange capacity to express contrary positions simultaneously; to console, redeem and offer transcendence while also expressing suffering and pain. I don’t know what any of this means, but feel as though I’m trying to find my way home by writing the same song over and over again.”

Songs For A One-String Guitar may seem to represent a departure for those who know Dillon for his electronic productions alone, though the reality is that these songs merely represent a new opening onto an old landscape; they are an invitation to more fully share in one individual’s yearning to find meaning through creative expression. “These songs are very personal to me, so there’s a certain nervousness in my seeing them released. I hope that they prove of some use, and that they do some small good to those who hear them.”

Project Runaway brings together two of Tel Aviv's new breed of talented DJ / producers in a meeting of tripped out, expansive, psychedelic, club music. Landing on Especial to expand horizons is Met, their debut EP of deep, percussive dubs for late night tribes. A name on many leftfield lips, Alek Lee's journey continues following two acclaimed solo releases for the wonderful Antinote crew and new project, Shame On Us (alongside Naduve and Yovav Arzi) for that brightest star, Hivern Discs. Teaming up with the sound production skills of Stephan Bazbaz they create Project Runaway. Holding down his own citywide residencies, Bazbaz has developed a studio mastery of minimal dub, crispy house and trippy techno via a growing stream releases on numerous labels, as well as setting up his own No Wave records in 2016. After their welcoming, simple, yet wall quacking remix of Persian (EES031), Met, or 'dead' in Hebrew, bring their strands together as one sound. In original form, a vibrating drum takes on bass backbone is broadened with tight layers of percussion overtones and warped vocal interplay. Lee's psychedelic imaginings are a perfect fit across Bazbaz's wide production expanse, before horns raise the heat to extreme. For deeper DJs and big system dwellers, Met (Dub) does as it should, stripping away and opening wide. Hand percussion and vox ride the channels, coming in and out of the mix, while dub stabs transfix and could run for days. A meeting of minds, drums, psychedelics and pure club love.

Cosmo Vitelli hasn’t slept since 1973. Instead, he’s replaced slumber with the tireless exploration of electronic music, sharing his finds as an accomplished DJ and label manager as well as an esteemed producer, with heaps of records, remixes and edits under his belt. With his upcoming two-part LP on Malka Tuti, Cosmo brings forward his more diverse and somehow mature musical side, combining elements of post-punk, krautrock, electronica and pop on this first of 2 four-track records. The songs on the LP transcend style and genre. They manage to hold and playfully sustain an idea that echoes throughout them all - a musical “saying” as well as a personal life experience, and they reflect Cosmo’s prolific studio work of the past 2 years since he moved to Berlin. On the opening song A Brand New City he collaborates with longtime friend Julienne Dessagne (aka Fantastic Twins). Dessagne's vocals cut through the quirky and addictive percussion groove and synth sequence, leading to a a strong emotional melancholic melodic catharsis. On the following two songs Groupe Surdose & Die Alraune we find Cosmo collaborating with Sebastian Lee Philipp (of Die Wilde Jagd fame) to show his more post-rock/krautrock side. Groupe Surdose is an instant classic slow burning dance floor Krautrock tune while in Die Alruane we find poetic German lyrics sung by Lee-Philipp on top of organic grooves, guitars and an epic Saxophone line that together create a distinctive highlight for the record. The closing track Kuldip is the curve ball of them all, sealing the first part of his album with a Mediterranean mid tempo dance tune for the selectors and the middle-eastern inspired electro aficionados.

Parallel Minds Is A Group Of Like-minded Musicians, Djs, And Graphic Artists Working Together To Bring Compelling, Progressive Electronic Music From Toronto, Canada To The Rest Of The World. Spearheaded By Ciel, And Newcomers Daniel 58, And Yohei S.—who Have Variously Released Music On Labels Like Shanti Celeste's Peach Discs, Allergy Season, Coastal Haze, And Neo Violence—the Collective Offers On Its Inaugural Va Release Four Diverse Cuts Of House, Breakbeat, And Hardcore To Energize Your Body And Comfort Your Soul. The A Side Features Two Slamming House Cuts, With The A1 Offering By Discwoman Signee Ciel And A2 By Yohei S. Clocking In At A Frenetic 134bpm, "hind Sight Is 360" Is A Peak-time Dancefloor Banger Featuring What Has Become Trademark Characteristics Of Ciel's Productions: Intricate Drum Programming And Lush, Jungle-inspired Pads. "eastern Rankin" Is A Slower, More Hypnotic Percussion Track That Demonstrates Incredibly Effective Use Of Space And Delay. Its Minimalist Structure And Echoing Drums Would Sound Ideal In A Dark Warehouse. The B Side Opens With An Even Bigger Bang, With A Track That Would Best Be Described As Indian Hardcore. "mana Sadhana" By Raf Reza Under His New Alias, Radiant Aural Faculty, Is A Vibrant Mixture Of Hindi Vocal Samples Layered Meticulously In Between Freaked-out Synths And Thumping Breakbeat Drums. Completing The B Side Is The Aptly-titled "space Bubble" By Daniel 58. Drawing On Influences From Ambient, Trance, And Breaks, The Promising Toronto Artist Closes Out The Release On A Dreamy Note, Employing Nostalgic Melodies On Top Of Tough-as-nails Drums And Deep Rolling Sub-bass. As First Releases Go, Parallel Minds One Offers A Taste Of Something For Everyone, From A City That Has Perhaps Been Overlooked But Deserves A Second (third, And Fourth) Listen.

Although Itta (Vocals, Harmonium) and Marqido (Analog Synthesizers) have been regular fixtures in Seoul's experimental music community for years, the vinyl release of Spiritual reflects the growing international recognition of their singular sound, described by The Wire as 'meditative synthesized vistas.' Spiritual certainly embodies the meditative element of their music, layering hypnotic modular synth with Indian harmonium drone and Itta's transcendental vocals. This is more than functional music for the metaphysically curious, however. Perhaps more than any of their previous releases, Spiritual offers an open accessibility, owing at least partly to the channeling of krautrock-influenced rhythms. Tracks like 'Luft' and 'Morgen Tempel' wouldn't sound out of place in any DJ set with kraut or psychedelic leanings, while 'Barabonda' and 'Dodeuri' dig deep into a more meditative place, serving as perfect expressions of the album's title and intent. Fans of Neu!, Kraftwerk, Laraaji or Klaus Schulze might find themselves in a comfortable yet unexplored place.

Spiritual was originally released in 2017 as a limited-edition cassette of 250 copies, produced in collaboration with Seendosi, an arts enterprise in Seoul Euljiro district, the city's heart of printing, packaging and electronics manufacturing. The cassette sold out within a year of its production, prompting Extra Noir, who had previously released Tengger's 'Breathe In, Breathe Out' on their Extra Noir Vol. 1 compilation, to propose reissuing Spiritual on vinyl. Working with Seendosi once again, the result is a beautifully produced piece of work. Closely attentive to the band's vision, the gatefold sleeve features rich landscape motifs that evoke Tengger's commitment to earthly travel and the less accessible places beyond. Pressed onto clear vinyl, the design of Spiritual has been carefully constructed to reflect the entirely unique music within: heavy ephemerality, dense transcendence and grounded wanderlust.

Dean Zepherin is truly a producer who has managed to find his lane and appeal.
Born and raised in London - a suitably eclectic city for a man of his musical persuasion - he is renowned for his consistently genre-pushing productions.
In other words, a perfect match for Local Talk, a label not afraid to go beyond the classic 4/4 sound and explore different styles within house music.

Opening track Blue Moon is an organic, warm and enveloping chunk of deep house bliss and there's no doubt that Dean loves his house served with with plenty of horns.
Next up is Flying High, a jazzy uptempo house cut smothered in expansive percussions, trading organ and trumpet solos over elastic synth lines.

Music that speaks to the senses

The long awaited new LP from Hunter Complex features 10 tracks of supreme synth goodness that are at the same time retro and yet totally futuristic. It's musically rich in ideas; melodies intertwine with soaring synths and '80s style drum machines, but it never once feels like pastiche or a carbon copy of a bygone era. The hooks on this record are incredible; it's mix of warm analog and bright digital synths feature a layer of complexity that most records in this genre can't hope to achieve.

MODU:LAR Music is a new label project born from established Liverpool-based collective, which has now been running for five years. Promising to release straight-up party tracks made for the dancefloor, the label will showcase and expose emerging talents from it's home city and beyond.

First up is a debut four-track EP from Scouse duo, Danny Mc and James Hall a.k.a. UZU. 'The A1' fires off with a swinging, housey groove that's brought to life by danceable pads, kicks and hats, interweaving warm melodies across the duration of the opening track - before a sharp change of direction with 'The A2' sees the feeling head down a contrasting electro-tinged beat with percussive highlights coming through strongly once again, likely the product of Danny Mc's influence on this debut vinyl release as an accomplished musician and drummer.

On the reverse, 'The B1's glossy and sophisticated breakbeat core sweeps into warm synths and vocal constructions that put forward a real garage-like note that'll be a strong fit with different environments and play times. Rounding up the record is a punchy, driving roller that features complex electronic, spacey accents polished off finely by Jim Hall - a signature of both artists production style that'll become more and more evident in future work.

Imagine if you could put together a dream line-up of MCs and producers from all four corners of the rap world
That's what artist and illustrator Gangster Doodles set out to do when he put together a stellar collection of tracks by the rappers and talent that inspire his work.

The all-star line-up features everyone from hotly-tipped emerging producers like Eets, Caleb Stone, Maze Mountain and LoVibe next to underground perennials like Onra, Mndsgn and Jon Wayne all the way up to top flight producer Kaytranada and established rap vets like Madlib, Oh No, Blu and Defari.

This second collaboration between All City Records and Gangster Doodles is a jam-packed sonic adventure featuring 27 killer tracks from some of the finest creators out there. Doodles had the idea for a comp two years ago. Hyped after partnering with All City for Knxwledge's "Wraptaypes" project back in 2015, they initially set out to put together an EP but as the tracks kept coming in it exploded into the sprawling double LP of low-slung grooves and bangers from the best in the business.

With everyone on the record being a friend or friend of a friend, the comp just kept growing as GD went to work with the hustle he has learned from penning his post-it sketches day in day out for the last decade.
Word spread fast and soon he was being sent beats from all over, even reaching behind the prison walls of Bergen County Jail, New Jersey and securing a track from former Dipset affiliate Max B.

The last few years have been busy for Marlon "Gangster Doodles" Sassy. He released his acclaimed Gangster Doodles (The Book) alongside an ever-expanding array of prints, original works, apparel and exhibitions across the globe. Topping that off with animation projects, a graphic novel in the works and now, with this LP titled " Gang$ter Music Vol 1", he is about to debut his first ever music compilation.
He says himself: 'Every time a new track came in it was like running down the stairs on Christmas morning to open a present. What started as a slow trickle of work coming in soon turned into a tsunami with some of my heroes like Onra, House Shoes, Blu, Jeremiah Jae joining up with young guns Kojaque, Kean Kavanagh, Dream Panther and others to beef up the record'

'When an email pinged through with a track from brothers Oh No and Madlib it felt like the final gift and Gang$ter Music Vol. 1 was complete.'

Joe Hart and Scott Fraser's Body Hammer, London's legendary jack party has been capturing the hearts, minds and feet of Londoners for 11 years strong. Having kicked off in 2008 at the Korsan Bar, and now comprising only of residents Scott & Joe, it takes place in various venues every month. Their open minded music policy commands a friendly, spirited, diverse and fiercely loyal crowd making it consistently one of the best nights out in the city, hands down. More recently, taking the party out of London they have been touring at clubs and festivals from New York to Berlin in and everything in between. They now have their own label and its 100% Body Hammer dancefloor certified.

The first release, of course, features two banging club tracks written and produced by Fraser and Hart at Fraser's East London basement studio, mastered and cut by Keith Tenniswood at Curve Pusher.

The A side, 'Spit from the Sun' is a peak-time jacking acid number which will set any dancefloor on fire. Its rattling drums and pulsing bass stabs capture all the intensity of the convict poet on the vocal telling his story and lamenting the waste of his life behind bars.

Over on Side B, 'Igniter' strikes a more subtle tone with its gently rising strings and breathy vocal. But don't let the subtlety deceive you as those kicking drums and thumping bassline come through to get the dancers screaming for more as it hits its crescendo.

Heavy-weather, beyond-good-and-evil soundsystem poetics, channelling raw and rootical techno, Isolationist abstraction, and dub at its most turbulent and raw-nerved and space-time-warping. New worlds ahead... Equal parts tuff, tail-thrashing dancehall pressure - see 'Hell Dub' - and art-of-darkness ambience and introspection, culminating in the slow-burning, third-eye-opening 23-minute dreamweapon, 'Vertigo'. Part of the Young Echo crew, Ossia embodies the best tradition of Bristol underground music in that he doesn't pay much mind to tradition, just does his own thing. Yes, Devil's Dance shares DNA with those sullen masterpieces we will always associate with the city, from blunted 90s street-soul/hip-hop to sub-loaded dubstep - but like his forebears Ossia is ultimately a mongrel breed, drawing from his own, very contemporary and idiosyncratic well of influences: grime, jazz, steppers, dub, post-punk and industrial abrasion, concrète minimalism... Devil's Dance could easily be not just a forbidding, but a suffocating proposition. But even at its most angst-ridden it feels lithe and aerodynamic, its darker impulses both intensified, and offset, by a pure soundboy's delight in detail and colour and higher dancefloor mechanics. The music pulses with energy, a fever to communicate...and Raki Singh (violin), Jasmine (vocals) and Ollie Moore (saxophone) add vivid flesh-tone to the punishing, plasmic electronics. The record was mixed at an infamous, subterranean Bristolian recording studio, using an arsenal of spring and plate reverbs, modded pedals, tape-delays and compressors: systems of black magic crucial to the album's intense presence and physicality and carefully modulated dread. In the end what we are witnessing, and experiencing vicariously, is a purging, an exorcism: find the devil, dance with the devil... and then chase, chase, chase him out of the earth

This March, the New York City-based imprint Absence Seizure will see its joint founders Abe Duque and Matuss join forces once more to deliver 'Seizure No. 11', following up on their recent collaborative effort 'Seizure No. 10' with another four tracks of soulful, stripped-down techno.

The EP begins in quintessential Duque fashion, running quirky and soulful melodies over a throbbing bassline and emotionally charged synths, whilst tying in the acid sounds that have been a staple of his music since his very earliest releases all the way back in 1993 as a regular in the New York wave of acid house and underground techno. '22 October' presents us with a progressive and skilfully executed cut, toning down some of the more muscular techno he sometimes produces in favour of a more freeform and chilled out vibe that layers funky synth melodies over bouncy rhythms and drawn-out sonic ambient textures.

The baton is then passed to Matuss for the remainder of the EP, beginning the journey straight off the bat with 'Between 4AM and Basement', beginning as an altogether more threatening number than the release's opener. The minimalism of the stripped-back beats instantly builds a dark atmosphere, creating a compelling flow through the track that opens up into a shuffling house-tinged beat and dreamy background soundscapes that carry you gently along for the ride.
The muted rhythms of 'Meet You at the Back Door' morph and skip around from one beat to the next to forge a jumpy and infectious musical trip that will instantly catch you up in its driven grooves. The EP's finale 'Moon Guardian' then opts for a different tack entirely, starting out with a confident, breaky beat and adding layer upon layer until the track reaches an exhilaratingly multifaceted climax. Unsettling cosmic ambience, distorted vocal samples, crescendos of noise and the ongoing and constantly evolving beats are brought to a perfect balance in this track, bringing the EP to a mysterious and gripping conclusion.

Lisbon pals Photonz and Shcuro are two of the city's most active DJs and music makers, sharing a penchant for a moody yet electrifying brand of dance sonics. They've created Shermanworx together in the studio, recording machines live using an ethos of improvisation while relying on their fine-tuned dancefloor intuition. The Sherman Filterbank was the go-to piece of equipment, appearing in every track and eventually naming the EP.
Tribal techno swirls menacingly backed by dark melodies in the opening track, a hypnotic yet vivid peak-time belter that could go on and on.
A synth so textured you can almost touch it is the centrepiece of Sherman2, another driving club beast complete with modulated arpeggios and industrial-tinged percussions.
The record comes to close with a dreamier exercise in Sherman3: a dubby electro beat conducts melodic mutant synth lines and pads to achieve a slow-burning, expansive euphoria.

TUTTI is comprised of eight soundscapes: an audio self portrait comprising of manipulated sound recordings from Cosey's life, music and art:
'It's the only album I've made that is an all encompassing statement expressing the totality of my being. A sense of the past in relation to the present and everything in between.'

These eight pieces were originally conceived as the soundtrack to the autobiographical film 'Harmonic Coumaction', and performed live in February 2017, part of a series of events that accompanied the COUM Transmissions retrospective which opened Hull UK City of Culture 2017. Later that year, 'Harmonic Coumaction' was presented as an audio-visual installation for Cosey Fanni Tutti's solo exhibition at Cabinet Gallery, London.
Cosey Fanni Tutti explains: 'Working on the COUM Transmissions exhibition also coincided with writing my autobiography - collating archive material and re engaging with my past. My work is a continuum, the past feeding the present and vice versa. The album is an interpretation of my past and present, of my understanding the shifting perceptions of how they inform one another. One form creating another through a metamorphic process.'

On TUTTI, the music has been updated and enhanced with elements of the original tracks re-recorded and further processed specifically to create a unique stand-alone document, separate to the live performance and installation. Recorded at Cosey Fanni Tutti's studio in Norfolk, the album, as on her debut release, Time To Tell, merges Cosey's art activities with her exploration of sound: The album's autobiographical theme is not locked into any specific time or place, the 'voices', instruments and sounds together span decades of my life, music and art. In this context my name 'TUTTI' shifts from its role as a noun to perfectly represent the concept of the album, also acting as sign for me the artist.
TUTTI is Cosey Fanni Tutti's only solo album release since 1982's Time To Tell. Time To Tell was recently given its first release on vinyl, on a long awaited official deluxe edition. The interim years between solo releases has seen a blisteringly prolific output as an artist and musician. Renowned for her art, her work in the sex industry, as co-founder of Industrial music and Throbbing Gristle, and her pioneering electronic music solo and as Chris & Cosey, Carter Tutti and Carter Tutti Void, she has created throughout with the motto 'my life is my art, my art is my life'.

Cosey's autobiography ART SEX MUSIC was published to worldwide acclaim by Faber & Faber in 2017, a Japanese edition has just been published with further translations and an audio book to follow. TUTTI

The four tracks on this EP represent a bit of a transitional phase for Louis Jaquet (aka Kid Who), marking a move from a basic setup with an MPC2000XL sampler and a computer to a fully-fledged hardware studio. The initial versions of these tracks were quick jams that he had made early on in this change, but which had lay dormant on his hard drive for some time, before being revisited and reworked for this release with the new equipment.

'Rhythm Code' began life as an exercise in using only freely distributed software synths, and the majority of those sounds are still there, bar some additional acid sequences and tweaks to the rhythm parts.

On 'ZF Cut' his focus switched to samples, in an effort to squeeze the most he could out of his MPC, which at the time had only recently been upgraded. The unassuming beige box gives colour to anything you feed into it (breakbeats in particular), and a host of basic onboard effects add further quirky character, in this case hollow drones and rumbles which are the core of the track.

One of Kid Who's early purchases was a cheap old Yamaha multitrack cassette recorder, which presents many opportunities for sound manipulation. Different tape speeds, tape types and manual manipulation during playback open up a world of noisy, woozy atmospheres, some of which formed the basis of 'Spool Night'.

Of all four, 'Timescape' required the least revising, and the version presented here is very close to the original, 100% computer-based draft. Although the beat was built with Roland 707 drum machine sounds, a staple of early Chicago house records, he wanted to juxtapose these with a more up-to-date techno aesthetic, with a handful of final touches added in the new studio to finish

The four tracks on this EP represent a bit of a transitional phase for Louis Jaquet (aka Kid Who), marking a move from a basic setup with an MPC2000XL sampler and a computer to a fully-fledged hardware studio. The initial versions of these tracks were quick jams that he had made early on in this change, but which had lay dormant on his hard drive for some time, before being revisited and reworked for this release with the new equipment.

'Rhythm Code' began life as an exercise in using only freely distributed software synths, and the majority of those sounds are still there, bar some additional acid sequences and tweaks to the rhythm parts.

On 'ZF Cut' his focus switched to samples, in an effort to squeeze the most he could out of his MPC, which at the time had only recently been upgraded. The unassuming beige box gives colour to anything you feed into it (breakbeats in particular), and a host of basic onboard effects add further quirky character, in this case hollow drones and rumbles which are the core of the track.

One of Kid Who's early purchases was a cheap old Yamaha multitrack cassette recorder, which presents many opportunities for sound manipulation. Different tape speeds, tape types and manual manipulation during playback open up a world of noisy, woozy atmospheres, some of which formed the basis of 'Spool Night'.

Of all four, 'Timescape' required the least revising, and the version presented here is very close to the original, 100% computer-based draft. Although the beat was built with Roland 707 drum machine sounds, a staple of early Chicago house records, he wanted to juxtapose these with a more up-to-date techno aesthetic, with a handful of final touches added in the new studio to finish

Left Ear are issuing two previously unreleased Full-Length versions of Space Farm's mid 90's Egyptian inspired tracks. Both, 'The Dawn of Birds' and 'Camels in Desert Air' were initially cut short to allow for additional remixes on the original release. For their 2019 issue, Left Ear have decided to focus only on these downtempo original songs allowing the heavy percussion and synth workouts to shine through on a loud 45RPM press.

Space Farm is the story of three friends Darrin, Bill and Waleed their love for 80's NY culture, Egyptian music and a cross continental business plan that never materialised. Darrin and Bill grew up in North New Jersey only a few miles from NY city and met while studying in '90. Bill spent his formative years listening to the emerging sounds of 80's left-leaning New York radio stations, while Darrin immersed himself in the DJ and B-Boy culture. Fast-forward to '94 and the two found themselves living in Boulder, Colorado. By this time the tag-team had started producing music and would look to their NJ roots for a group name, deciding on the title 'Space Farm' after a kooky local petting farm they often cracked jokes about. Armed with an open mind and a bunch of old studio gear the duo began producing music inspired by 80's NY, however after a budding friendship began with Egyptian native Waleed they were inspired to start experimenting with Egyptian and Arabic sounds. After hearing their output Waleed pushed for the release of an Egyptian inspired record saying 'it would sell like crazy in Egypt', that 'he would bring it back to Egypt on his next visit and get it to all the right people that need to hear it'. The record got done but, due to circumstances beyond their control it never made it over to Egypt. The duo performed live a few times in Boulder before finally returning to NJ. Darrin recalls playing their final party in Boulder in which the Space Farm record was played from start to finish, 'Some joker ran up to us while we were playing and kept signalling to up the tempo we were like F Off! raver boy'.

Rebar continue their geography-infused musical journey with the second EP, Lost in New York City. While the first release unveiled the majestic anthropophony of the Japanese capital, this release is centered around the city of New York. As in the previous offering, the three tracks all pertain to different styles, exploring different facets of techno, while carrying the common soundprint of the American metropolis. The first cut unveils a mesmerizing techno construction, while the second makes for a groovy interlude, rounded up by rolling techno in the third track. A mysterious and compelling affair, released on vinyl and digital at exactly one year from the inaugural opener.

iPM is proud to announce its very first vinyl, fruit of the inspiration of iPM's label heads A-Kintero and Mateo Holguin. NYC based Dj/Producer PJay has performed Live at many of the old school New York City Clubs. He is a Teacher of analog sound and modular synthesis and he is behind iPM's very first vinyl. With two tracks, one ambient and one Techno mix, both are characterized for their immersive and profound analog sound. "Crawl" is a laid back relaxed track which takes us on a journey of atmospheric synthesizers and deep bass lines with consistent drums that are sure to delight us, perfect for openings and closings. Brendon Moeller needs no introduction and he's on remix duties with "Space Jam", taking this track on a groovy happy vibe. This is definitely one to get people moving on the dance floor. "Space Jam" complements this Ep with a funky vibe where the cosmic synths takes the roll along with a moving and bouncing bass playing in sync with the consistency of the drums.

Returning for his second full-length LP of 2018, DJ Bone steps up once more to his own Subject Detroit imprint to present 'Beyond', a full-length and physical rumination on his own emotive and psychedelic contribution to contemporary techno. Loaded with the dynamics, charisma and widescreen appeal of his finest work, 'Beyond' sees Bone enter a musical state that reflects it's ambitious title, celebrating underground ideals in a style that could only be his own.

The second in a trilogy of albums to be completed in early 2019, 'Beyond' is culled from a sequence of no less than fifty tracks completed by the esteemed Detroit DJ and producer upon returning to his home city in 2017. With it being "unfathomable" to release an LP of that length, Bone has nonetheless captured this wave of creativity and a reconnection with his home city, along with the cathartic sense of soul and energy at the heart of his attitude to dance music.

Across 'Beyond' listeners can sink into an unrelenting sequence of tracks that speak from his experimental, musical and always unexpected mind. LP opener 'Dreamers 7' reaffirms his taste for offbeat electronics shot through with rigid dance floor dynamism; a theme reaffirmed quite literally on the forceful centrepiece, 'With A Vengeance'. Elsewhere, Bone delights in blurring the lines between exotic, futurist ambience on tracks such as 'Techno Aint Techno' and 'Ahhh Life', while further cementing his reputation as master of sheer, unrelenting rhythm on 'True Definition' and 'Rosedale Park'.

For this third release on Dais, Drew McDowall reaches into concept, ritual, and immersion, in an exercise of unravelling the DNA of hallucination. The Third Helix is McDowall's product of deconstructive exploration, twisting the fibers of being into new structure, shape, pattern, and pulse, without reconstituting its inscribed template.

The result is a true third act,in McDowall's career, that has seen him peregrinate from the late-70s art-punk of the trio Poems to his work with Psychic TV and Coil throughout the 80s and 90s, into his current home of New York City, where he has composed with CSD, Compound Eye, as well his solo work. That triangulation is central to The Third Helix, as it begins with his dive into the existence of a sensory toolkit unique to McDowall before twisting faculties and reconfiguring consciousness by honoring inherent power, cognizant of memory yet agnostic of context.

With the tenet that journey is rarely linear, but rather an omnipresent oscillation of matter, sound is stripped to salient and primal, propelled by McDowall's boring into the core of memory and impulse, suturing together the silent awareness of excogitating experience.

Featuring eight new tracks of McDowall's dark, experimental electronics, including the opener "Rhizome", The Third Helix is a churning descent into emotion, provoking thought and reflection while carving out haunting space only to fill it with baffling and wondrous structures of layered sound. McDowall solidifies himself as an architect who transforms otherworldly materials into something fascinating and challenging in the process.

Unnerving, trancelike anthems for nervous meditation and anxious relaxation, fans of Coil will immediately connect and immerse, while the complex compositions welcome listen for drone and ambient enthusiasts.

Packaged within a thick sturdy matte sleeve jacket featuring artwork/design by artist J.S. Aurelius (Ascetic House/Marshstepper).

Cat.no.: DAIS 122 LP

Tracklisting

For this third release on Dais, Drew McDowall reaches into concept, ritual, and immersion, in an exercise of unravelling the DNA of hallucination. The Third Helix is McDowall's product of deconstructive exploration, twisting the fibers of being into new structure, shape, pattern, and pulse, without reconstituting its inscribed template.

The result is a true third act,in McDowall's career, that has seen him peregrinate from the late-70s art-punk of the trio Poems to his work with Psychic TV and Coil throughout the 80s and 90s, into his current home of New York City, where he has composed with CSD, Compound Eye, as well his solo work. That triangulation is central to The Third Helix, as it begins with his dive into the existence of a sensory toolkit unique to McDowall before twisting faculties and reconfiguring consciousness by honoring inherent power, cognizant of memory yet agnostic of context.

With the tenet that journey is rarely linear, but rather an omnipresent oscillation of matter, sound is stripped to salient and primal, propelled by McDowall's boring into the core of memory and impulse, suturing together the silent awareness of excogitating experience.

Featuring eight new tracks of McDowall's dark, experimental electronics, including the opener "Rhizome", The Third Helix is a churning descent into emotion, provoking thought and reflection while carving out haunting space only to fill it with baffling and wondrous structures of layered sound. McDowall solidifies himself as an architect who transforms otherworldly materials into something fascinating and challenging in the process.

Unnerving, trancelike anthems for nervous meditation and anxious relaxation, fans of Coil will immediately connect and immerse, while the complex compositions welcome listen for drone and ambient enthusiasts.

"In 1978, Nova performed for Obama. Well, kind of: Nova was the band for the Punahou School prom in Honolulu, Hawaii, and a young student named Barack (known then as 'Barry') was in attendance.

Backtrack to 1976, and Nova was the opening band for Donald Byrd at the nearby Blaisdell Arena. The day was Sunday, June 27. The following day, Isaac Hayes would perform on island for the admission price of $1.

Nova, led by singer Checo Tohomaso, was one of several go-to party bands during the golden era of Hawaii funk and soul music in the mid-1970s through early 1980s.

The band's infectious gospel-funk-disco can be heard on their sole release, a self-titled 1980 LP that feels like one big party recorded live in the studio. (Check out the Marvin Gaye-inspired 'I Feel Like Getting Down' on the 2016 'Aloha Got Soul' compilation on Strut Records).

The story is all too familiar, however: funk band releases LP, the music goes dormant in years to follow, and today original copies sell for hundreds online.

Not long after the album's 1980 release, Checo met Marvin Gaye, who was living on Maui (where George Benson also resided). Shortly after, Marvin invited Checo and his counterparts to join his multi-city tour across Europe. Videos of Checo rocking keyboards, percussion and singing background vocals for Marvin Gaye's last European tour can be found online.

Checo, born in Florida yet raised in lush Manoa Valley as well as Okinawa, Japan, now resides in Vancouver, Canada, where he leads the VOC Sweet Soul Gospel Choir and continues to deliver his signature sound: high energy, positive, 'sweet soul' music.

AGS-7010 features two non-stop groovers with a 7' edit by Roger Bong on the A-side. LP reissue in the works!"

UK Techno heavyweight Mark Broom and Berlin's Discrete Circuit have teamed up before - but this is their first fully-fledged collaboration aimed squarely at conveying just how well this combination works. A heavy hitting merger from both sides of the channel, boldly stating that form follows function. This collaboration is to the point.

MBDC The A side opens with a superbly engineered kick and counterpoint texture that allows for an otherworldly synth to slowly worm it's way out of the abyss. Frequencies open and shut to allow for the exact exchange of energy welcome in the mix. With no trickery, and at just the right moment, a pulsating binary hook reveals itself in the track and guarantees the desired effect. The A2 tilts the hat toward a stripped back motor city influence. Groovy, tooly, slightly dissonant. Blips, claps, punctuation where it works. Just the right shade of reverb and modulation, push and pull in the arrangement, reveal the versatility of the track and round out the opening side with punch. The flip side, and third track from the collab is also direct, firing up with the ubiquitous clap on the one. Looping acid and a purist minor stab alongside sizzling hats and rides force the energy ever upward. The break is needed as the expertly air drenched acid line opens up the whole space before driving back down into the intensity for the remainder of the cut. The final track of the EP features a remix of the B1 by Astray's other in-house producer, H4L. Back with a frenetic, broken, idm influenced belter of a remix with scattered and distorted 808's - all reigned in cohesively with some stellar beat science and gnarly touches. These 4 numbers are built for impact.

For Fans Of Hot Chip, J-pop, Dada. Perlita Is Responsible For 'sex Instruments', The First Ever Song Made Entirely Out Of Sounds Produced By Sex Toys, Including Guitars Played With Vibrators, Bass Notes From Anal Beads And Strokers For Rhythm. The Track Was Made Especially For A Pornhub Toys Ad Campaign.

Caballo Rojo ("red Horse") Is The Second Album By Perlita, A Band From Cádiz, Spain, Once Described By A British Critic As "a Hot Chip Fronted By Freddy Mercury". For The Follow-up To Their 2016 Debut Cangrejo Yeti ("yeti Crab"), The Threesome Have Come Up With A Titanic Piece That, Mood-wise, Jumps Around And Gallops Between Pop, Flashes Of Andalusian Folkloric Music, Drum Machines, Japanese Voices, Synths And Verses By Spanish Poet And Nobel Prize Laureate Juan Ramón Jiménez, Among Many Other Things.

Perlita Are Based Part-time Between Puerto De Santa María, Cádiz, And The Madrid Borough Of Lavapiés. That In Itself Could Constitute A Music Genre, But It's Not On Wikipedia Yet. Their Music Speaks Many Languages, Some Of Them Invented. There's Something In It That Echoes The South - The South Of The Andalusian Psychedelic Rock Bands Of Yore, But Also Of The Typical Cádiz Brand Of Humour, Of The Famous Carnival, And Of The Northwest-african Radio Waves Reaching The Beaches Of The City From Across The Gulf Of Cádiz.

Having Cut Their Teeth In Many Spanish Indie Bands, With Perlita, The Three Band Members Decided To Explore Other Worlds - Worlds Where Synths And Drum Machines Rule, Yet With Plenty Room For Wild Percussion And Marvellously Poppy Melodies. The New Direction Became Clear On Their First Effort Cangrejo Yeti, And Is Continued On Caballo Rojo: Electronic Pop Made With An Open Mind, With A Special Fondness Of The Poetry In Details, And With A Production That Is Morphing Throughout The Record - From A Sophisticated Accompaniment Gently Rocking Some Precious Verses To A Raw And Forceful Sound Slinging Almost Dada-like Shouts, Like A Poet At A Rave Hollering About The Dunes.

In the sweltering North-Eastern Brazilian state of Pernambuco lies the coastal city of Recife, where Amaro Freitas is pioneering the new sound of Brazilian jazz. For the prodigious young pianist, the spirit of his hometown runs deep. From the Afro-Brazilian maracatu born on the sugar plantations of slavery, to the high intensity carnival rhythms of frevo and baião, Amaro's heavily percussive approach to jazz is as indebted to these Pernambuco traditions as it is to Coltrane, Parker and Monk.

As with many of the greats before him, Amaro began playing piano in church aged 12, under the instruction of his father, leader of the church band. As his natural talents became obvious, the young prodigy quickly outgrew his father's instruction. He won a place at the prestigious Conservatório Pernambucano de Música but had to drop out as his family could not spare the money for the bus fare. Undeterred, Amaro gigged in bands at weddings and worked in a call centre to fund his tuition. The transformative moment came at age 15 when Amaro stumbled across a DVD of Chick Corea concert, 'he completely blew my mind, I'd never seen anything like it but I knew that's what I wanted to do with a piano'.

Despite not actually owning a piano, Amaro devoted himself to studying day and night - he would practice on imaginary keys in his bedroom, until eventually striking a deal with a local restaurant to practice before opening hours. By the age of 22 Amaro was one of the most sought-after musicians in Recife and resident pianist at the legendary jazz bar Mingus. It was during this time he met and begun collaborating with bassist Jean Elton and the pair went in search of a drummer. 'We kept hearing about this crazy kid who was playing in 7/8 or 6/4, we knew we had to meet him'. Hugo Medeiros joined, and the Amaro Freitas Trio was born.

'I want to show the simplicity of music, to break the stigma that the piano is for a particular social class. Yes, it's a difficult instrument, which many people do not have access to, but with it you can express everything.'

Following his critically acclaimed debut album Sangue Negro (black blood), the title of his sophomore release Rasif is a colloquial spelling of Amaro's home town. A love letter to his native northeast, Amaro explores its traditional rhythms through the jazz idiom, employing complex mathematical patterns reminiscent of some of the most challenging works by fellow Brazilian masters Hermeto Pascoal, Egberto Gismonti and Moacir Santos.

Preferring to see the piano as a though it were a drum with 88 unique tones, Amaro's intelligence and emotion intertwine on every track, from album opener 'Dona Eni': a scorching reconstruction of the baião rhythmic structure, played in seven measures instead of two, to the serene homage to the coastal reef and its ecosystems on the title track 'Rasif'. 'Aurora' is a suite of three parts, representing the sun's journey from the light and soft of the rise, to the aggressive dissonance at its midday zenith and descending chromatic cadences as the sun sets.

Due for an Autumn release on Far Out Recordings, Rasif sees Amaro Freitas take a deserved step onto the world stage. Having already made a name for himself in Brazil, Amaro and his phenomenal band will embark on their first European tour later this year.

Amaro Freitas - Piano

Hugo Medeiros - Drums & Percussion

Jean Elton - Double Bass

Henrique Albino - Baritone Sax, Flutes & Clarinet

All compositions by Amaro Freitas

Produced by Amaro Freitas

Recorded by Bruno Giorgi @ Carranca Studio, Recife, Brazil

Mixed and mastered by Bruno Giorgi @ Quarto Studio, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Executive producer and management: Laercio Costa

Marti Caine's infamous Point Of View is a groovy blend of slow-mo funk, dark disco and precise pop. Originally released on BBC Records in 1981, it has attracted a considerable cult following this century. The odd charity shop score aside, it has been impossible to find a copy for less than eye-watering sums (often selling for over £200) and, as such, it's an honour to present the first officially licensed vinyl reissue of this sublime record. Featuring expert liner notes written by Bill Brewster - perhaps the record's most notable champion - this lovingly curated release is limited to just 500 copies.

Marti Caine was a popular UK TV entertainer in the late 1970s onwards and Point Of View presented her with an opportunity to proceed in a hip direction by working with British R&B heavyweight Barry Blue. His legendary reputation was secured with a string of great records, among them the first three Heatwave albums, the Balearic hit "Afro Dizzi Act" by Cry Cisco and the cult smash "Breakin' In" by Javaroo. However, despite the array of talent working on the album, Point Of View sank without trace at the time. It's something that Blue attributes to the bizarre way BBC Records worked, and he entertainingly expands upon this within the liner notes.

Musically, the highlights are many and memorable. Its most notorious track is the sublime soul stepper "Love The Way You Love Me", the reason most people covet this album so profoundly. However, from the dark dubby disco of "Snowbird City" to the moody ballad "Love Is Running Through Me", the lesser heralded tracks are nothing short of exquisite. Indeed, the chugging elegance of sleazy disco opener "Can I Speak To The World Please" showcases a string-drenched strutting-funk that would've been enviable the world over. It's that good.

The outlandish artwork - presenting a striking, green-eyed Marti treating a tiger to a headlock - has been faithfully restored and is arguably worth the price of admission alone. With access to the original tape transfers, Simon Francis' sensitive mastering elevates the sound throughout and, as ever, it has been pressed at a reassuringly weighty 180g. Sadly, Marti died of lymphatic cancer at the tragically early age of 50 in 1995, so is not here to experience what we hope will be a long overdue reappraisal of the hitherto underheard genius of Marti Caine, the singer