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»Baby Ghost« is the debut album by double bassist and vocalist Jordan Sand. Released through Hallow Ground, it blurs the lines between different genres and modes of expressions, improvisation and composition and showcases the unique playing style the composer has developed. Sand blends her voice with the bowed harmonics and subharmonics of her double bass. At once conceptually rigorous and musically open-ended, Sand’s wordless meditations on death and what comes after are both visceral and explorative.

Sand is a boundary-crossing instrumentalist, performer, and session musician who has worked in folk, free jazz, pop, classical and new as well as experimental music. In 2020, she took a hiatus. When she picked up the bass again, she began stripping down the relationship to her instrument to its core elements, searching for a way to melt the sounds of bow and voice together. This resulted in the appearance of ghost notes, tones emerging from the addition or subtraction of two frequencies, and harmonics that she adds with her falsetto.

On »Baby Ghost,« Sand utilises this acoustic sound and the spontaneous precision of her improvisational practice for pieces that deal with the subject of dying. They move from more polyphonic improvisations toward abstraction, touching upon harsh noise and minimalistic bow-chants before returning briefly to a melodic soliloquy, and finally landing on an extended subharmonic drone. This progression reflects the journey of the spirit after death; the experience of visions, memories, ecstasies and terrors before the dissolution of the self.

Sand performs this process physically, blending her voice with her instrument to explore how the senses might dissolve and merge when they enter a state between life and beyond-or-between-life. Born out of the moment and dedicated to a lost friend, »Baby Ghost« is quite literally an otherworldly achievement.

The third in a series of releases from the Digi Dub archives, Like it Here is a tribute to the poet laureate of Special Brew, the late Iffor Clarkson-Denbigh, who sadly departed us in 2021 to drink in the great park in the stars.

The infectious and futuristic late 90s vocal space dub of the A side finds Iffor waxing lyrically about both the nature of impermanence and the sentient ocean of Solaris over an irresistible bassline and low winding groove. The flip side features a suitably chugging version of the rail riding classic Loveborough Junction and a percussive early 90s acid dub of Heart like a Lion, the original of which dropped on the South East of the Thames collection. None of the tracks are traditional style dubs, but happily exist in the gaps between genres.


Iffor was a well-known multi-instrumentalist and vocalist on the South East London underground scene who lived life to the max without an off switch. He and label owner Lee Berwick truly had a laugh in the studio, producing Purple Boy (the classic ode to drinking in the park), the suitably named Clevor but Stupid album and many other uncategorisable musical wanderings.

“The hope is that Iffor, the dark son of Clenby, is cackling as he cracks another can while looking down on us from the great park in the stars.” Lee Digidub Berwick

This is the first full-length release from South Korea"s beloved pansori psych-pop band available worldwide. The release follows an extremely successful and eventful year for LEENALCHI. They had their first-ever North American tour, opening for Japanese Breakfast at Stern Grove, sessions at KCRW and (rumor has it) KEXP, and in the fall, they"ll be on the East Coast, including opening for Geese at Forest Hills on the very same date this record comes out. LEENALCHI is led by the great composer Jang Young-Gyu, who has undoubtedly scored all your favorite Korean horror movies, including The Wailing, Train To Busan, and the Good, The Bad, The Weird. Sugungga sounds like animals talking to each other over tripped-out bass lines. It gets its name from the old Korean folk tale about a clever and loyal turtle who tries to lure a rabbit underwater and into the lair of a Dragon King who has come down with an illness that can only be cured by the rabbit"s liver. What is the fate of the rabbit? This fall, you will find out.

The single is the latest collaboration from the pioneering electronic artist and follows “Intertwine,” which featured TT, aka Theresa Wayman of Warpaint. Other collaborations on A Body Of Voices include “Turns,” featuring the ethereal vocals of Nicole Miglis (Hundred Waters), and “True Love, Don’t Be Afraid” featuring Stephen McBean (Black Mountain & Pink Mountaintops), “Fight or Flight” ft. Aisha Badru, “Falling” ft. Maiah Manser and multi-instrumentalist Aaron Shaw, “Floating” ft. multi-instrumentalist and composer Spencer Zahn, and the unreleased track, “Take Me” ft. Raphaelle Standell-Preston (Braids, Blue Hawaii). A Body of Voices delivers the most collective and melodically driven project of his acclaimed quarter-century. Having spent decades mastering his natural instincts for space, tempo, and timing, LaValle set a deliberate goal to break beyond his usual parameters by inviting an expansive community of vocalists and marquee indie players into his realm. The resulting record pushes his sonic map entirely, seamlessly blending his signature, textural synthesis with a vibrant tapestry of voices spanning dream-pop, alternative, and R&B. Nearly thirty years into the project, A Body of Voices proves that while The Album Leaf remains unmistakably his, it is a pioneering musical universe he is never afraid to redefine.

This songwriting-focused approach on A Body of Voices marks a natural evolution for an artist who has been steadily making his mark as a soft-spoken innovator since 1999. Now based in Los Angeles, LaValle started out in the San Diego music scene, creating vivid, rhythmic, soaring instrumentals centered around the Rhodes piano. Over more than two decades of acclaimed releases on seminal labels like Sub Pop, City Slang, and others, he has become a definitive touchstone for meditative electro-organic music. While earlier milestones like 2023’s Future Falling and 2024's Blast EP found him increasingly renewed by outside perspectives, A Body of Voices brings that collaborative spirit to its full, unbridled potential.

“One day, I’ll be a ghost, a spirit, that moves with you along the winds,” pines Twin Atlantic’s Sam McTrusty on the beautiful and cinematic ballad ‘Your, The End’, the fitting opener to the Scottish alt-rockers’ eighth album ‘Separation From The Animals’. “It’s about the responsibility I feel around being a parent,” he says, revealing that he cried while recording his vocal over bandmate Ross McNae’s tender Beatles-y piano part. If the album says anything, it’s ‘All You Need Is Love’, told with maturity and reckoning with the past to make sense of the present. ‘Separation From The Animals’ is an album born of two tales of triumph and perseverance – one of McTrusty grappling with his own ghosts, and the other of their finest album to date coming after a time when band morale was at an all time low. When their friends’ bands and peers were all calling it quits, words of wisdom from those close to the band were urging them to take time off. The album started out as a McTrusty solo effort, isolated in his new home. The day the band finished work on their last album, 2024’s ‘Meltdown’, was also the day McTrusty packed up his entire life and studio to start a new life in Toronto with wife and two kids, unaware of the rich seam of songwriting that it would inspire.

2026 Re-Release

After smooth detours into Soul covers, French Neo-Disco, modern Sunset Disco and Brazilian AOR, in 2022 DJ Supermarkt's Too Slow to Disco series makes a joyous return to its original Westcoast AOR/Yacht roots. Celebrating the 10th TSTD compilation. Who would have thought….
The Berlin curator releases a killer 4th edition of the original compilation art form, "Too Slow to Disco", featuring forgotten and overseen gems from the mid 70s to the early 80s from a global world of smooth, brilliant lost and overproduced tracks from Finland via London and L.A. to Trinidad and beyond.
The great 'un-vanisher' of lost lazy classics, DJ Supermarkt once again unearthed some incredible music that labels, publishers (in many cases also those, who actually own the rights to those tracks…) and streaming services have often long overlooked. You're welcome, world!

LP ltd colored vinyl, 140 gram, gatefold, mp3 Download PostCard

After smooth detours into Soul covers, French Neo-Disco, modern Sunset Disco and Brazilian AOR, in 2022 DJ Supermarkt's Too Slow to Disco series makes a joyous return to its original Westcoast AOR/Yacht roots. Celebrating the 10th TSTD compilation. Who would have thought….
The Berlin curator releases a killer 4th edition of the original compilation art form, "Too Slow to Disco", featuring forgotten and overseen gems from the mid 70s to the early 80s from a global world of smooth, brilliant lost and overproduced tracks from Finland via London and L.A. to Trinidad and beyond.
The great 'un-vanisher' of lost lazy classics, DJ Supermarkt once again unearthed some incredible music that labels, publishers (in many cases also those, who actually own the rights to those tracks…) and streaming services have often long overlooked. You're welcome, world!

2026 Repress

'Quiet Pieces' initiates Abul Mogard’s personal imprint Soft Echoes with a definitive self-portrait of calm, contemplative, and discreet inner landscapes made audible. It is the first solo album on vinyl in four years. RIYL Alessandro Cortini, William Basinski, The Caretaker.

While sifting through archived material left idle from earlier projects, a chance encounter with a late uncle’s trove of beloved 78rpm classical and opera records prompted the reworking and completion of what would eventually become the album. Spinning dusty records at 33 and 45rpm, Abul Mogard recombined their enduring spectres with unfinished sketches from his archive. The resulting soundscape blurs distinctions between his memories and those of another, exquisitely short-circuiting the senses with its waking, dream-like lucidity.

This was a process I hadn’t explored in my earlier works. I began sampling brief moments from these records, altering them with studio effects and playing them at slower speeds. In many cases, I wasn’t entirely sure how the original music sounded. These fragments, once further processed, became a source of inspiration for my new compositions. Over time, I realised that the old pieces from the archive and the new material derived from the samples naturally complemented each other.”

The resulting pieces hover over a threshold, a liminal space that harmonises the old and older material. Voluminous waves of quiet and loud undulate between consonance and dissonance, conjuring imagery of a decaying grandeur that humanity’s decadence has surrendered to the elements. Abul Mogard’s seemingly abandoned yet vast landscapes are nevertheless intimate with timbral frissons of red-lined distortion. Elusive, yet as tangible as sea spray or smog, they affect the olfactory senses with a rarified, synesthetic quality that modestly engages one’s emotional register – a hypnotic, distinguishing feature long hailed as one of the hallmarks of his work. A fidelity to memory and dream recall is sensitively probed in the journey from the stately symphonic stasis of 'Following a dream' to the almost industrial, untethered brutality evoked by a looming silhouette that’s never fully visible in 'Constantly slipping away', culminating in the foreboding coda of 'Like a bird'. Those pieces appear to shield the album’s sentimental core, where the tempestuous play of light and shadow of 'In a studded procession' escalates to breathtaking, panoramic climax, while 'Through whispers' evokes an out-of-body-like experience encountered with visceral poignancy.

Looking back, Mogard notes an unexpected influence: “I realise being inspired by Phill Niblock, whose work I had barely known at the time but explored after his passing in 2024. His album 'Boston Tenor Index' changed the way I approached dissonance. It encouraged me to push my sound further, to the edge of a space where I began to feel uncomfortable.”

The album artwork, created by longtime collaborator Marja de Sanctis, features a photograph taken at the Temple of Jupiter Anxur, an archaeological site overlooking the Mediterranean Sea. Captured with an iPhone, the image traces the residual presence of construction techniques and architectural forms of the Romans, where material history is transcribed through contemporary tools. The convergence of ancient and modern technology aims to reverberate the site’s lasting spiritual presence – an echo persisting in what is now perceived as a quiet, emptied space. The spiral gestures towards infinity and light. Past and present dissolve into one another, reflecting 'Quiet Pieces' meditation on sound, memory, and time.

RIYL Alessandro Cortini, William Basinski, The Caretaker

Phill Niblock completed BLK+LND in late November 2023. It is one of Phill Niblock's final compositions and was commissioned by bassist Robert Black (who passed away in the summer of 2023). The piece is based on recordings of acoustic bass and bass clarinet performed by Neil Leonard and Robert Black under Niblock's direction in 2021.

Phill Niblock (1933-2024) as an artist whose fifty-year career spanned minimalist and experimental music, film and photography. He has been a maverick presence on the fringes of the avant-garde. In the history books he is the forgotten Minimalist. Since 1985, he served as director of Experimental Intermedia, a foundation for avant-garde music based in New York with a branch in Ghent, and curator of the foundation's record label XI. Known for his thick, loud drones of music, his signature sound is filled with microtones of instrumental timbres that generate many other tones in the performance space. He said: 'What I am doing with my music is to produce something without rhythm or melody, by using many microtones that cause movements very, very slowly.' In 2013, his diverse artistic career was the subject of a retrospective realized in partnership between Circuit (Centre d'art contemporain Lausanne) and Musée de l'Elysée (Paris). The following year he was honored with the prestigious Foundation for Contemporary Arts John Cage Award. Since 1968 he also put on over 1000 concerts in his loft space in New York.

"On January 6, 2024, two days before his passing, Phill called me to discuss the premiere and tour of BLK+LND. To distract him from his rapid decline, I engaged in his touring plan, only for him to reveal that all the details were still in his head and none of the events had been confirmed. He was entrusting the project to me. Phill would have been thrilled and honored by this concert at the Donaueschinger Musiktage. The thought of one more performance with Robert Black, whom he greatly admired, presenting his new work for low-pitched instruments that he was particularly fond of, andreconnecting with old and new friends in Donaueschingen would have meant the world to him." - Neil Leonard, Berklee College of Music, Boston

Oscar Perry may not be a household name even in soul/blues circles, but this Texan's fine and expansive body of work deserves greater recognition. Throughout his career, he demonstrated multifarious talents as a producer, arranger, singer, songwriter and guitarist. He first cut his teeth in the late 1960s on Don Robey's Duke/Peacock/Backbeat set-up, writing for Bobby Bland amongst others. Once his contract with Robey had lapsed, Oscar signed with the equally colourful character Huey P. Meaux, for whom he recorded a slew of excellent albums on the Crazy Cajun imprint. It is the source of the three self-penned tracks presented here. Echoes of Jerry Butler can be heard on the string-laden emotive ballad "We'll Spend Tomorrow Falling In Love" (co-written with studio engineer Mickey Moody) with its femme support, whilst the piano-led deep beat-ballad "End Of The Road" was subsequently recorded by Bland on his Dreamer LP for ABC-Dunhill in 1974. The strong, mid-paced, bluesy "I Give Up You Win" completes this wonderful EP.

If you've yet to succumb to the charms of Children of Zeus - and there can't be many out there who haven't - then this "odds and ends" LP offers a neat introduction. Five of the seven tracks have been plucked from the Manchester crew's previous full-length excursions, while the other two - seductively soulful two-step garage reworks of "Vibrations" and "Slow Down" by fellow Manchester resident Zed Bias - have previously been almost impossible to get hold of. Setting aside the club-ready remixes, what "Excess Baggage" proves is that Children of Zeus are one of British music's most essential outfits right now, delivering sensual and life-affirming cuts that brilliantly blend the best aspects of hip-hop, R&B and modern soul.

Led by Samantha Martin's unmistakable powerhouse voice, Samantha Martin & Delta Sugar deliver an explosive blend of soul, blues, gospel and rock 'n' roll Backed by an 11-piece band featuring a three-piece horn section and soaring vocal harmonies, Martin commands the stage with equal parts grit, grace and emotional force. Two-time JUNO Award nominees and internationally recognized as one of Canada's most compelling live acts, the band has built its reputation through electrifying performances and a catalogue that carries the classic soul DNA of Mavis Staples, Sharon Jones and Otis Redding, delivered with the urgency, volume and energy of a modern rock 'n' roll revue. Released in May 2026, A Beautiful Buzz captures Samantha Martin & Delta Sugar at full flight during the Love Is All Around tour. The album generated immediate international attention, topping the Euro Americana, Big Blues and UK Independent Blues Broadcasters Association and Roots Music Report charts. Rolling Stone France Editor in Chief selected A Beautiful Buzz as one of its "10 Albums to Listen to, "With blazing horns, gospel- charged harmonies and Martin's commanding voice at the centre, A Beautiful Buzz recalls the joyful abandon of Joe Cocker's Mad Dogs & Englishmen while remaining unmistakably their own. Blue Matters described it as "the front row experience, bottled with warmth, fire and unmistakable soul," while Blues in Britain placed Martin "up there with the best of contemporary female vocalists." Building on the album's international momentum, Samantha Martin & Delta Sugar will bring their show to Europe and the UK in May 2027, followed by a second run in November.

Norway's Aura Noir was formed in 1993 by Aggressor & Apollyon in pursuit of a more thrash- based form of black metal than much of what was coming out at the time - particularly in their homeland - citing bands such as Slayer, Sodom & Kreator as inspirations along with purveyors of the scene such as Venom, for a dirtier, stripped down, violent black/ thrash metal sound. Their first official release was the 'Dreams Like Deserts' EP on Hot Records, & from there-on the band became a truly cult act, releasing a string of albums among ongoing live performances over the subsequent decades. All members of Aura Noir have had illustrious careers to date, with Carl-Michael Eide (Aggressor) notable for his work in Ved Buens Ende, Dodheimsgard, Virus, & Fleurety, as well as being part of other scene icons such as Ulver & Satyricon in their formative years. Apollyon, currently also seen in Coffin Storm with Darkthrone's Fenriz, previously featured in Dodheimsgard, as well as Lamented Souls & Immortal. Completing the trio is Blasphemer, formerly of fellow Norwegian legends Mayhem, as well as being current mainman in his recently established band, Ruim. Originally released in 2012, 'Out To Die' was the band's fifth full length release, & a continuation of the savage raw & ugly feast offered by its predecessors, containing eight relentless tracks in praise of the old thrash masters & early primal black metal forefathers of the 80's. 'Out To Die' features additional guest lyrics by Dirge Rep (Gehenna/Enslaved), & Fenriz, whilst the fittingly underground cover art was created by the prolific artist, Costin Chioreanu.

The year 1956 when Tenor Conclave was recorded represented a transitional period in the musical career of John Coltrane . He had first joined the Miles Davis Quintet in 1955 and would form his own celebrated quartet with McCoy Tyner, Jimmy Garrison and Elvin Jones in 1960. What we have here with Tenor Conclave is Coltrane in equal collaboration with four other giants of the tenor saxophone, Hank Mobly, Al Cohn, and Zoot Sims. Presenting the four players together under the group name of Tenor Conclave was an imaginative A&R idea by Prestige, but because of Coltrane's growing fame and the obvious marketing opportunities it presented, later pressing had Coltrane as the headline name on the cover, and Tenor Conclave as the album title. Includes the bonus track 'Polka Dots & Moonbeams'.

Spring 2026 saw The Proclaimers recording their new album, You May Offend. It is brothers Craig and Charlie Reid’s first album since 2022’s hugely acclaimed Denture’s Out (“Proves you don't need to be a young pretender to land hit after palpable hit,” – MOJO magazine). Their 13th studio album’s 12 tracks – punchy and punky, rousing and carousing, tender and tough – were recorded at Monmouth’s legendary Rockfield Studios with producer Dave Eringa, their crack live band – Steven Christie, Garry John Kane, Zac Ware and Clive Jenner – and frequent guest guitarist, Manic Street Preachers’ James Dean Bradfield. The result is an album, as ever, concise as well as incisive, and about looking forward. Pushing on and digging into the issues and feelings that matter to them here, now and tomorrow, not yesterday, as with the title track, and first single, a lament for the state of free speech, with Charlie approving of the fact that the title can be taken two ways: “As in: ‘Look, careful what you do, you may offend someone.’ Or: ‘OK children, you may now offend.’ Is it an instruction or an invitation? Or a warning?” A powerful accompanying video for the You May Offend single is being created by Emmy & BAFTA award winners, director Douglas Mackinnon in partnership with Peter Anderson Animation. “My favourite band of all time. They write the most spectacular songs, big hearted, uncynical passionate songs.'” - David Tennant “There is a whole other world of music behind that song that I’ve just been discovering, and they’re a wonderful, wonderful band. Now we live in the age of coolness that doesn’t mean anything, it's just quality and soul. The Proclaimers make more sense than ever.” – Chris Martin after Coldplay performed Sunshine on Leith at BBC’s The Piano Room

Following one of 2025’s standout EPs, the CEO of the National Centre for Mark Fell Studies fires from the hip in brilliant, club-troubling motion. In step with 30 years of prism-pushing work — and particularly the »Nite Closures« EP, which signalled a concerted return to the dancefloor — Fell pulls aspects of hypermodern dance and electronic music from Chicago, Tanzania, and Japan into his own peculiar agenda.

The hugely distinctive results pull the body into thrillingly unusual, typically ascetic arrangements, activating every pointillist drum hit with attack and decay in a soberly ludic play of rhythmelodic tension and release, executed to delirious ends; 40 minutes of computer music.

As an artist who witnessed first-hand the explosion of electronic music in early ’80s Sheffield, and its interplay with house and rave as it refracted into wild new styles during the ’90s, Mark Fell is uniquely positioned to pursue his passion for the dynamics of electronic dance music to the nth degree. »Servitude In Context« continues to develop ideas around music for movement in the mid-2020s, placing decades of keen observation — from the macro and historical to the niche and hypermodern — at the service of flexing bodies in new directions.

Long-held notions of multistability manifest in what feels like two machines playing chess on the dancefloor, attempting to adapt to each other’s playing styles and patterns in real time, anticipating and zigzagging around the next move. The result is a plethora of options for limber dancers and those who only bust a move inside their heads.

The slow-fast play of accelerating and decelerating strikes, alongside monotonic chatter in »Actuations #1 (Extended)«, acclimatises the body to a uniquely sensual physics. This develops into the rudely screwed, asymmetric angularity of »Time-Slur« and the shatterproof elasticity of »Taut Manifold«, which feels like an LLM trained on Autechre.

»Low Energy Mantra« offers the EP’s closest resemblance to melodic structure, like gamelan and footwork refracted through lab-grown diamonds. Then »Anode« flashes its teeth with a rudeness recalling the latter stages of Fell’s Pat Thomas jams, before »3 Lost Contours (Pts 1–5)« tilts into 12 minutes of proper quicksilver madness, balancing the sexiness of his Sensate Focus work with an updated, clean-hoofed step and parry.

DJ Support Mark Knight, Dj Spen, Brian Tappert, David Penn, The Shapeshifters and many others.

Serge Funk’s "You Treat Me Right" EP on Groove Culture is a definitive masterclass in modern disco-house that belongs on every DJ and collector’s turntable. Impeccably curated by the Italian imprint Groove Culture, this four-track 12" vinyl balances future funk playfulness with crisp, contemporary production. It delivers high-octane dancefloor energy that rewards listeners both in a packed club and on a high-fidelity home setup.

The year was 1989, and Derrick May was at a creative peak as both a DJ and producer. Under his Rhythim Is Rhythim moniker, he released a string of landmark records on Transmat, while his residency at Detroit's The Music Institute showcased the distinctive DJ style that would soon take him onto the international stage. Around the same time, he hosted a weekly radio show on Detroit radio station WJLB, alongside influential programs by The Electrifying Mojo and The Wizard (Jeff Mills).

For one of these broadcasts, May assembled a 15-minute megamix in his studio during the week leading up to the show. He opened his radio set with this continuous mix, blending his own tracks and versions into a seamless introduction that reflected his approach to DJing at the time. It includes unreleased versions of classics such as ‘Nude Photo 88’ and ‘Strings Of Life’.

‘All of this is unreleased because I made it as I was playing it on the spot as a special Mayday Mix for my show on the radio station WJLB in 1989, edited together straight from the keyboards live to tape. There is no other recording of these tracks in this form, only here’.

The original WJLB master tapes have since been lost, and no official recording is known to survive. Fortunately, many listeners recorded the broadcasts at home. One such cassette, preserved by Richie Hawtin, eventually made it our way. It has been carefully restored and mastered, with the artist’s approval.

To highlight this remarkable document of techno history, the recording is now available as a limited-edition, one-sided 12-inch release. The mix has been cut as a continuous side, visually divided into eight sections, while the reverse features a custom engraving.

Kukangendai are the innovative three-piece Kyoto based experimental rock band formed in 2006 with Junya Noguchi on guitar and vocals, Keisuke Koyano on bass, and Hideaki Yamada on drums. Since 2016 the band have set up shop in their studio and venue space, Soto, which houses an incredibly well tuned and powerful sound system that has become a well known destination for touring musicians. In March of 2025, Marionette was celebrating a belated 10 years of activity with label showcases across Japan in collaboration with Dotei Records, and Soto was inevitably one of the stops as many label alumni have set foot in the venue over the years. This is where I got to experience Kukangendai perform for the very first time and knew right then we were destined to work together.

Kukangendai embody an undeniable sense of timing and precision through collage-like repetition of minimalist phrases that manifest as a single unified rhythm. Their latest offering for Marionette, titled Baquet Wheel, is a purely acoustic endeavor, remarkably recorded live using Taku Unami's special binaural microphone. The trio seamlessly twist polyrhythms and melodies rooted in jazz, krautrock, blues, and Tuareg producing a timeless sound that preserves the primitive and memory evoking narratives buried deep within the music. Over the course of five tracks, the visceral nature of Kukangendai’s dynamic evolves from playful riffs that are seemingly familiar yet strikingly original, making it impossible to discern exactly when this material was conceived.

Kukangendai have maintained a prolific yet relatively low profile for the last two decades, with a handful of self-released editions on their own labels (Soto and Leftbrain) as well as a collaborative album with pioneering electronic music composer Ryuichi Sakamoto in 2018, then venturing outside Japan in 2019 to release their first widely distributed album on Ideologic Organ, a label curated by Sunn O)))’s Stephen O'Malley. Other collaborative projects to date include an album produced with rap group Moe and ghosts, live performances with Keiji Haino and with poet Gozo Yoshimasu, productions with the Chiten theater company, and most recently a remix album of their works featuring Carl Stone and Madteo.

Roughly two years after the release of their initial statement of intent, debut single “Toutpartout PT2” with its hypnotic ripples, Andi Haberl and Florian Zimmer aka Bella Wakame have successfully channeled the magic of a 2024 live recording (captured at Berlin’s Donau115 & Silent Green) into their first proper studio offering. You can hear inspirations ranging from Bitchin Bajas, Jeremiah Chiu to Groupshow (Jelinek, Leichtmann, Pekler), the hypnotic, intricate battle between form and freedom (the fun of momentary formlessness) continues to unfold over the course of 10 new tracks, featuring album guest Indra Dunis (Peaking Lights). Their first single "Shades of Nambei" was very much inspired by the wonderful band Spirit Fest and their song "Nambei".

You can either shorten the reins, or you can loosen them – and give things more slack. With Bella Wakame, it’s definitely the latter. Constantly challenging each other, they’re tapping a whole new energy. Tons of different energies.

Based on the impulsive, propulsive interplay between drums/sensory percussion (Andi Haberl) and modular synthesizer (Florian Zimmer), the frenzied, free-form results take listeners into completely new dimensions – sonic worlds that don’t really sound anything like their other musical outlets (The Notwist, SUN, Saroos, Driftmachine etc.).

Whereas most bands tend to notoriously overthink names/monikers, these guys obviously only care about the ecstatic push-and-pull that occurs once their instruments meet and overlap: it’s wildly explosive textures with a booming heart. Moving restlessly between motorik club, electro-acoustic jazz experiments, ambient excursions, and fast-paced instrumental anthems that seem to explode at the seams, one can immediately tell how much they enjoy the newfound freedom, the turbulent encounters born on the spur of the moment.

It’s all about a quick-paced exchange of friendly blows, a chasing of tails into ever-new musical terrains. Relying on just enough form for that wildness to blossom within, their just-in-time dashes continually unfold, refold, return, grow bigger – and leave you startled.

Dich lieb ich, Erde! trauerst du doch mit mir! Und unsre Trauer wandelt wie Kinderschmerz In Schlummer sich und wie die Winde Flattern und flüstern im Saitenspiele

The third stanza of Friedrich Hölderlin’s poem ‘Dem sonnengott’ evokes a narrator who is tortured by Spleen until slumber makes his childlike gloom disappear with music. Although today’s readers might judge these nineteenth century musings of the Imagination as mere stylistic platitudes, they also still speak beyond the grave as universal truths. A mere two hundred years later similar anxieties and hopes are still channeled through various art forms, with changing success and reverberation. Brannten Schnüre are one of those neo-romantic music experimentalists who add to a long tradition of celebrating folk tale and exoticism. Their meticulously crafted loops, hesitant melodies and heavily nostalgic lyricism could easily be translated to what the late philosopher and music critic Mark Fisher called ‘hauntology’, a postmodern longing for a lost future. To describe the beauty of ‘Geträumt hab’ ich vom Martinszug’, however, the term seems somewhat dissatisfying. Romanticism is a hard nut to crack in the Anthropocene, and Brannten Schnüre’s realms of the cerebral are too deeply ingrained in a German tradition of story telling to define them within popular paradigm.

‘Geträumt hab’ ich vom Martinszug’ was recorded in 2014 in Würzburg and functions as the autumn part of the band’s seasonal cycle quadrilogy (the other segments being ‘Aprilnacht’ (SicSic), ‘Sommer im Pfirsichhain’ (Aguirre) and ‘Durch unser zugedecktes Tal’ (Youdonthavetocallitmusic)). It deals with the Saint Martin’s parade, a mostly European tradition to celebrate the medieval spirit of Saint Martin of Tours, friend of children and patron of the poor. Around 11 November children come out on the streets with lanterns and sing ancient songs in exchange for sweets. It’s a period of snugness and expectation, of yearning and dreaming, and therefore a consummate subject for the duo to scrutinize.

To the adult’s ear the dream of the Saint Martin’s parade isn’t all that consolatory. The dark and slow loops of Christian Schoppik rather sound like motifs for a welcome paralysis. Sometimes as a gentle backdrop for vocals by Katie Rich and Schoppik himself, the repetitive structures serve as tricksters that trade innocence for the uncanny. The dream becomes a fever dream which quickly absorbs the listener into a vacuum, an eternal post-panic attack semi-relief. Maybe that’s the amazing paradox of Brannten Schnüre. The space they occupy is never comforting – as if being locked up inside a Carl Grossberg painting – but it’s also a subliminal aural zone you do not want to leave. It’s music as being, as a stream, devoid of climax or catharsis. And because it is flux and being, and exists to be taken, it speaks in art’s purest form. ‘In place of a hermeneutics we need an erotics of art’ Susan Sontag famously concluded her essay ‘Against Interpretation’ with. Well, look no further …

The story of each re-release begins with the original. In the late 90s, Uwe Zahn (Arovane), along with Robert Henke (Monolake) and Stefan Betke (Pole), began releasing music on Torsten Pröfrock’s (Dynamo) newly launched DIN label. This was a very inconspicuous undertaking, but fans of the flourishing IDM, glitch, and constantly evolving abstract techno genres quickly picked up on the quality of sound coming out of Germany. After a few successful EPs, Zahn began working on his debut full-length, Atol Scrap. The release was a success, at least in the underground circles, where followers of the melodic harmonies, stuttering off-beat rhythms, and, most importantly, advanced sound design feverishly consumed the imprint’s output. There was only one thing missing – the album was never pressed on vinyl, and for decades remained in the digital domain. The fans, of course, inquired. There were multiple offers on the table, but Zahn retained control until he was assured that it was properly attained. “I thought of taking everything into my own hands and releasing the record myself,” says Zahn, “but at the end of last year, Matthias from Keplar asked me to re-release Atol Scrap on vinyl.” The label and its owner revolve in the Morr Music universe, and so it made sense for Zahn to trust the platform to treat the record right.

Listening to Atol Scrap over twenty years later it is inane not to admit how well it has held up. Where other genres clearly aged, becoming stale, bland, and dull, the music on eleven tasty tracks still keeps the neurons tickled with each note. More than an echo of the past, the bottled sound truly has matured. Many of the newly evolving techniques are recognizable on the album. “I created the digital artifacts with a digital multi-track recorder, the Fostex D80,” recalls Zahn. “The thing had a scrub wheel with which I could achieve wonderful glitch effects by winding through the audio data. I have sampled and further processed these artifacts.” And this approach is still embedded in Zahn’s sound design. “I still use my 24-track analog desk from Tascam to mix my audio. I love to use hardware synths and samplers. I’ve definitely built upon my studio experience in the 90s.” From this debut to the most recent output, Arovane’s sound has evolved to become more intricate, detailed, and pronounced. “My music has become much quieter and much slower. But that’s probably also due to the noise in the world.” And just as Atol Scrap reminds Zahn of the past, retaining charm preserved in a container traveling through time, it also jitters memories of long ago, when we were twenty years younger, less experienced, and bold. For me, among the many records of the time, this album held a special place in life, my heart, and many CD boxes moved across the world. And now I’m only happy to restock the vinyl space, where Atol Scrap belongs among the beloved records. Welcome home. - Mike Lazarev

Remastered and cut to vinyl by Kassian Troyer @ D&M. Cover art by Jim Kühnel based on a photograph by Uwe Zahn.

'Museum Of No Art is the pseudonym of the artist and musician Mona Steinwidder. The pieces on the album A Serpent Called Emit document a two-year engagement with the clarinet and other woodwind instruments. In the search for simplicity, one encounters complexity. But the Museum discovers connections between the poles and lets them circle around each other. Impurities have found their place in it and hard cuts are intended to underline the volatility of the moment, to highlight and admire imperfection.'

Previously unreleased jazz funk from Suriname, recorded in 1981 by keyboardist Sonny Khoeblal and his band Thalamus.

The music of Thalamus is a time capsule and the best kept secret of post-independent Suriname. During this turbulent time, the band used the language of jazz to express their desire for unity and freedom.

The generation of Thalamus envisioned a future beyond the ethnic divide their parents knew as social barriers. After independence, young people met at work or in universities and shared principles of unity and international solidarity. Jazz played an important role in translating tensions and experimenting with a sound of the future.

The band members of Thalamus shared interests in jazz-fusion from Weather Report, Chick Corea, Bob James and Carlos Santana. Compared to contemporaries with more pop appeal, their sound remained obscure in Suriname. Still, people listened to them bending conventional rules of jazz, pop, latin, rock and funk. This fusion reflected the band, its diverse members and their country: Suriname is a multi-ethnic country by colonial force. If diamonds are formed under pressure, love and solidarity emerge under oppression.

Thalamus is a unique recording of this revolutionary period, with new people finding each other based on a universal language: jazz-fusion. It culminated in six songs, two of which are 'Summer of Love and Music' and 'Lady Amazone'. This 7" vinyl brings you their story, their experimentation with jazz-fusion and tells the parallel history of Suriname.

The re-launch of mars assault records last year brings the possibility to re-issue its back-catalog: the tunes that were released during the first run of the label (1998-2003).
here we have 4 tracks from "Arach", from the studio concept "centiped sound system", ( a duo of composers, also including Peter Pan), which were originally released on two records ( mars assault 3.65b, mars assault 3.7r1) in the years 2000/2001: very sharply produced hard-tekno, very original also (the "sound of centiped" is like no other hardtechno), and yet 100% as relevant on the dancefloor nowadays as it was at the time.
Another mars assault record equality good to play in a party as to listen to at home.
2025 cut with Hervé at dK Mastering /Paris (cut in 33/45rpm for optimum sound quality); 300 copies limited re-press, 180g pressing; a very sober object on the outside, but translucide red within.

The unconscious element to the conscious process.

The practice of dub techno and its tendrils is a fundamental for me, both aesthetically and from an engineering perspective.

I start every recording session with a dub inspired jam, the first piece I ever recorded in 1996 was an effort to recreate Phylyps Trak with only a Korg X3 and an Ibanez PUE5 (borrowed from Gary Howell). It was an awesome introduction to jamming, and the footing stones of noise, delay and saturation were explored with my foot hard on the enthusiasm pedal.

These practice jams are in some sense cathartic, the first step taken again & again, which helps me move forwards each session and additionally helps to 'warm the circuits' both of myself and the machines.

After realising the genius of Basic Channel is akin to the genius of peasant food, using every ingredient with nothing left to waste, (up to and including the oft maligned working noise of the machines themselves), this was a watershed moment for my own subjective progression. No longer tied to just emulation of something inspiring, but taking these learned tools into other areas of music helped to break free from a strong current of influence and also to progress into other areas with the new toolbox.

Dub:

The importance of the dub pioneers should never be understated, in modern music and my own practice. Yet with my initial inspiration being two german dudes issuing extreme techno variants with obscured label designs, who then signposted their listeners to their own inspirations (via their Wackies re-issues or nodded to on their Rhythm & Sound/Burial Mix sub-labels), meant that I started late and travelled backwards.

Learning to notice the live mixing of Mikey Dread or Lee Perry when the faders are bleeding through even when turned down, (echoed in BC's Quadrant Dub), or the brash send effects literally thrown into the mix also taught me that 'rough' mixing can inject a recording with life, uniqueness and the most right wrongness. Looking back Basic Channels very few elements helped me realise that the rules to be understood, are also the best ones to be broken.

Push the mixer into the red.

Amp that noise up from the tape delay cos it sounds sick.

Pseudo side-chain effects cos the kicks are way too loud and the mixer can't sum it nicely.

Spam the send knob into the delay units now, now and now.

Carelessness.

Noise:

Once I wrapped my head around the intrinsic 'noise' element that set those records apart, this became a torchlight into the alt noise movements which I was tentatively exploring at the time, and also is evidently a connection or thread into them.

Whether the Industrial/Post Punk UK scene (This Heat, TG, A Tent, F.E.) or the prolific output of the US Noise scene (Wolf Eyes, Live & Shave in LA, and subsequently following the lineage all the way back to Chrome's Alien Soundtracks), I had finally discovered a connection from techno to this 'free for all' corner of music.

This input from the Noise arena of sound is, in my experience, an all important step for a sonic artist, taking it's roots and extending out from Stockhausen/Pierre Henry and utilised/warped/mangled by thousands of adventurous pioneers ever since, I now see the line separating the high brow and the low brow is actually an artery carrying information from the head to the heart.

Vault is a selection of these jams that precede each of my solo recording sessions, for 30 years I've recorded hundreds of these 'workouts'. They are never intended as serious statements, just moments of naive enjoyment, yet most importantly they are time & space captured as practice.

The objective is always a warm up exercise, but sometimes those exercises turn a different corner, with a certain focus or direction dependent on what random samples are left in my machines from the previous session, instead of conscious choices, these unconscious elements can facilitate those 'positive mistakes' that make a piece of sound retain a different feel or colour and thus become special, or at least special to the creator.

I am quite conscious that the 'record everything' aspect of my ethos has been invaluable in cataloguing and saving these jams, while the attitude of carelessness during this process (after all, it's only a warm up jam) invites more enjoyment than seriousness ever could. Even if you don't feel the piece at the time, record it, because some years later it may well fit, or become relevant in a way you never intended.

-Miles

Gilla Band are happy to announce their brand new album ‘Pugnello’ released on the 25th September 2026 on Rough Trade Records. The album was recorded from 2022 - 2026 across three studios, Hellfire, Yellow Door Music Studio, & Sonic Studios in Dublin, the album was produced by Gilla Band & it was recorded and mixed by Daniel Fox.


Gilla Band never know where they’re going next. For over ten years now, the Dublin quartet (vocalist Dara Kiely, guitarist Alan Duggan Borges, bassist Daniel Fox, and drummer Adam Faulkner) have been redefining what you could loosely call “rock music” in the 21st century, influencing a wide swath of similarly forward-thinking guitar acts along the way. Across 2015’s Holding Hands With Jamie, 2019’s The Talkies, and 2022’s Most Normal, the band perfected a vision that wasn’t quite post-punk, wasn’t quite noise-rock, wasn’t quite anything besides an idiosyncratic, ground-breaking hybrid that could only come from the four of them.


In the four years since Most Normal, each member embarked on other artistic endeavors. Kiely fostered a newfound love of painting, Faulkner played drums for Lankum on the road, Fox became an increasingly in-demand producer guiding ascendant acts like Sprints, Lambrini Girls, and Mandy, Indiana, while Duggan Borges launched his solo project the Null Club with collaborations featuring Mandy, Indiana’s Valentine Caulfield, the Horrors’ Faris Badwan, Miss Grit, and Brooklyn MC Elucid. All their extracurricular activity existed in parallel with the exploratory route towards Pugnello, but also informed the band as they reconvened to crystallize the album’s vision.

Mit"XXX" feiert die Istanbuler Kultformation BaBa ZuLa ihr 30-jähriges Bestehen und unterstreicht eindrucksvoll ihren Status als eine der innovativsten Stimmen der internationalen Psychedelic- und World-Music-Szene. Seit ihrer Gründung verbindet die Band anatolische Musiktraditionen mit Psychedelia, Dub, elektronischen Klangwelten, Improvisation und experimentellen Songstrukturen. Auf ihrem neuen Album schaffen BaBa ZuLa erneut einen unverwechselbaren Kosmos aus hypnotischen Saz-Klängen, treibenden Rhythmen und vielschichtigen Klanglandschaften. Inhaltlich widmet sich die Band Themen wie Natur, Erinnerung, gesellschaftlichem Wandel und kultureller Identität. Die kompromisslose künstlerische Haltung und die kontinuierliche Weiterentwicklung haben BaBa ZuLa weit über die Grenzen der Türkei hinaus zu einer prägenden Größe gemacht. XXX präsentiert die Band fokussierter denn je und dokumentiert eindrucksvoll, warum sie seit Jahrzehnten als Wegbereiter des modernen türkischen Psychedelic-Sounds gilt.

opo’s 666ridims (2020 - 2026), compiled by J.TRIPP, brings together tracks from his 666ridims netlabel, reflecting on the singular sound worlds of some of his solo work. Like a discovery made by neutrino sensors, opo’s tracks research the transformation of rhythm, swing, and structure, aiming for a new grid. Sketchy and raw, processing emotions and experiences, regaling stories, and asking questions, opo relates in trance verse. All tracks here breathe his focus on improvisation, experimentation, and collaboration. Some of the beats featured on 666ridims (2020 - 2026) are outlines for freestyles and songwriting ideas, a practice formed during a long-distance music conversation with illustrator, printmaker, painter, designer, and maker Billy Bigwood. Other tracks are more club-oriented, like speculative genres programmed in odd meters. Japanese Barcelona-based DJ Hanakito contributes to one track, using samples and chops sourced from her vinyl imports.

Through Afroelectronic experimentation and diasporic narratives, opo encodes his soul's past and future through his music. Encoded, activated, returned. Initiate only when you receive permission from all your mental fragments. Keep transmissions in mind and dislodge and follow the command cluster's trail. Strongly influenced by sci-fi, ancestral afro musics, jazz, performance art, and food, as musical lines and shards of meaning cascade, 666ridims (2020 - 2026) is a minimalist dive into strange meters, polyrhythm, and the transcendence of ideas. Fast, slow. Exhilarating. We don’t discover physical laws; we just collaborate on them.

"The grass is greener_ elsewhere_" Brain Damage told us with their debut album, released in 2002. Yet here, they've reached full maturity. Rarely has a "made in France" dub album strayed so far from the Jamaican model while still harboring, in every detail, so many references and tributes to the inventors of the style (King Tubby / Lee Perry), as well as to many of the key figures in its evolution (Tikiman / Rhythm & Sound, Dub Syndicate, etc.). The recording studio, 7/11 Laboratory, is used here as a true musical instrument. The optimal use of three-dimensional stereo effects will immerse the listener in soundscapes ranging from classic space echoes and Mont Blanc tunnel-style reverberations to crackles, electronic interference, exogenous samples, and other parasitic noises coming straight from Babylon. For this album, continuing in the vein of his previous collaborations with the international dub scene (Zion Train, Alpha & Omega, Disciples, Spectre, Lab°_), Brain Damage traveled to London to record two tracks at Conscious Sounds Studio with Jamaican-born singer Tena Stelin. With the melancholic "Spirit World," one is reminded of the fruitful collaborations between Massive Attack and Horace Andy, while on "Genetic Weapon," the tone becomes more overtly assertive. Two vocal tracks, then, woven into these ten compositions, where the emotional moods and atmospheres will shift with each listen. "Always Greener (On the Other Side)" emerges as the manifesto of music conceived as cinema for the ear...

The Yummy Fur’s first album of new material in over 25 years is seductive and ambiguous; a fast-paced flip through scenes from art, myth, life and fantasy; a witty whole made from glittering scraps. The band’s original incarnation – fronted by singer, songwriter and guitarist John McKeown from 1992 to 1999 – morphed from making quick-hit cartoon-art songs to Eno and Cale-influenced creepers, populated by characters from McKeown’s life in Glasgow and the films, books and poetry that he lived a parallel life through. Everybody Talks About The Weather delights in using every past iteration of the band as potent collage material: a melee of sounds and ideas existing at once, revealing themselves then dipping back into hiding.
Recorded by the original core trio of McKeown, Brian MacDougall (guitar) and Paul Thomson (drums), Everybody Talks About The Weather comes 17 years after the band reformed for sporadic live shows, and seven years after the release of their sorta-greatest hits compilation Piggy Wings (Rock Action). Ten tracks long with nothing to spare, it is as condensed and vital as their best songs, with a new clarity of sound that allows their ambiguities to come into the light.
The album begins with “Cogs”, a taunting inquisition from within. As McKeown stages a fight between his id and ego, the tension heats up between conversational guitar lines and minimalist repetition; threatening sing-song melody and real, palpable menace. The band members are forced in tandem only to break apart, sustaining a genuine sense of just-hidden danger throughout the whole record – except, arguably, “Headphones”, a looser moment which sees McKeown make an existential something out of nothing while waiting for someone in the car (“I should have brought a book.../My ears are bleeding from the compression on your album”)
The songs are riots of reference: “Unity Over Europe” is a slyly complex two act play about the Mitford sisters – Diana, Unity, and Nancy, in a wink to the YF canon – smashing tragic biographical detail together with allusions to Thomas Pynchon and Francis Bacon. Pynchon is also lifted to serve “Blue Sunshine”, a collision of school shooters, serial killers and fictional fuck-ups (“Fast forward to Compton/Fast forward to Pynchon/Fast forward to Columbine'”) whose buzzy guitar lines are taunting and confrontational like a smarmy teenager. The innocuous title of “My Lasagne” belies a song that exists in several time periods at once: a visit to see Guernica, 50 people with their backs to the portrait of Dora Maar; the time that Picasso painted from; the Reina Sofia and the dirty streets of the Malasaña; myth-making musicians and the myths they’re riffing off overlapping and leering at each other.
All this could be laboured in lesser hands, but cultural verbosity is second nature to The Yummy Fur, who transform all this source material into songs that are weird, sexy, funny and absurd. Meaning is not happily understood or flattened. Susan Sontag's essay Against Interpretation accompanied McKeown as he wrote this album, and she’s paraphrased in “Semolina Ballerina”, the album’s justification of artistic ambiguity. Thomson’s motorik beat leads a gathering of back-and-forth instrumental phrases – including a wiry contribution on saxophone – embodying the futility of trying to parse something definitive from repeated action. “Listen to the very first thing that’s in your head,” Sontag-via-McKeown commands directly, then slinks sideways: “Interpretation is a conversation in an unmade bed”
The album features two more focused portraits, or at least The Yummy Fur’s version of such a thing. “Wanda” merges the life of filmmaker Barbara Loden and the title character of her semi-autobiographical 1970 feature film, with Loden’s then-husband Elia Kazan joining the fray of no-good men in her film. It’s a mix of adaptation and avant-criticism, with McKeown’s wordplay and mannered pronunciation mirroring the way that non-fiction and fiction twist around each other in the song. The title track is a series of vignettes and impressions from the lives of the band’s ‘90s inner circle, positing painter Mac McNaughton as a kind of Falstaffian ringleader. As with Piggy Wings and the recent single “New T-Shirt”, McNaughton painted the cover of Everybody Talks About The Weather – like the album’s music, the image of a coy girl in a white dress is an uncanny amalgamation of styles, suggestions and references just out of reach, as though seen in an art museum in a dream.
The album ends with two reads of the same frustration. “King of Nothing” is the closest The Yummy Fur will ever get to sludge-rock: the band melts together into a dusty, dreary haze as McKeown drowns in a drudgery of personal struggle (“Two jumpers on in Babylon/And only cats to talk to”) and the rhythmic toppling of heroes (Rowlands, Duvall, Munro). The majority of visible dirt is cleaned off for “Say Hello”, an uncharacteristic depiction of throwing the windows open after a dark night of the soul. Here, the situation is still cold and hard (“When the sun burns gold, but the heat never reaches your fingertips”) but it feels surmountable. Everybody Talks About The Weather is an unpredictable album from an unpredictable group, but ending on a moment of almost uncomplicated light is maybe its biggest surprise. - Claire Biddles (2026)

The Yummy Fur’s first album of new material in over 25 years is seductive and ambiguous; a fast-paced flip through scenes from art, myth, life and fantasy; a witty whole made from glittering scraps. The band’s original incarnation – fronted by singer, songwriter and guitarist John McKeown from 1992 to 1999 – morphed from making quick-hit cartoon-art songs to Eno and Cale-influenced creepers, populated by characters from McKeown’s life in Glasgow and the films, books and poetry that he lived a parallel life through. Everybody Talks About The Weather delights in using every past iteration of the band as potent collage material: a melee of sounds and ideas existing at once, revealing themselves then dipping back into hiding.
Recorded by the original core trio of McKeown, Brian MacDougall (guitar) and Paul Thomson (drums), Everybody Talks About The Weather comes 17 years after the band reformed for sporadic live shows, and seven years after the release of their sorta-greatest hits compilation Piggy Wings (Rock Action). Ten tracks long with nothing to spare, it is as condensed and vital as their best songs, with a new clarity of sound that allows their ambiguities to come into the light.
The album begins with “Cogs”, a taunting inquisition from within. As McKeown stages a fight between his id and ego, the tension heats up between conversational guitar lines and minimalist repetition; threatening sing-song melody and real, palpable menace. The band members are forced in tandem only to break apart, sustaining a genuine sense of just-hidden danger throughout the whole record – except, arguably, “Headphones”, a looser moment which sees McKeown make an existential something out of nothing while waiting for someone in the car (“I should have brought a book.../My ears are bleeding from the compression on your album”)
The songs are riots of reference: “Unity Over Europe” is a slyly complex two act play about the Mitford sisters – Diana, Unity, and Nancy, in a wink to the YF canon – smashing tragic biographical detail together with allusions to Thomas Pynchon and Francis Bacon. Pynchon is also lifted to serve “Blue Sunshine”, a collision of school shooters, serial killers and fictional fuck-ups (“Fast forward to Compton/Fast forward to Pynchon/Fast forward to Columbine'”) whose buzzy guitar lines are taunting and confrontational like a smarmy teenager. The innocuous title of “My Lasagne” belies a song that exists in several time periods at once: a visit to see Guernica, 50 people with their backs to the portrait of Dora Maar; the time that Picasso painted from; the Reina Sofia and the dirty streets of the Malasaña; myth-making musicians and the myths they’re riffing off overlapping and leering at each other.
All this could be laboured in lesser hands, but cultural verbosity is second nature to The Yummy Fur, who transform all this source material into songs that are weird, sexy, funny and absurd. Meaning is not happily understood or flattened. Susan Sontag's essay Against Interpretation accompanied McKeown as he wrote this album, and she’s paraphrased in “Semolina Ballerina”, the album’s justification of artistic ambiguity. Thomson’s motorik beat leads a gathering of back-and-forth instrumental phrases – including a wiry contribution on saxophone – embodying the futility of trying to parse something definitive from repeated action. “Listen to the very first thing that’s in your head,” Sontag-via-McKeown commands directly, then slinks sideways: “Interpretation is a conversation in an unmade bed”
The album features two more focused portraits, or at least The Yummy Fur’s version of such a thing. “Wanda” merges the life of filmmaker Barbara Loden and the title character of her semi-autobiographical 1970 feature film, with Loden’s then-husband Elia Kazan joining the fray of no-good men in her film. It’s a mix of adaptation and avant-criticism, with McKeown’s wordplay and mannered pronunciation mirroring the way that non-fiction and fiction twist around each other in the song. The title track is a series of vignettes and impressions from the lives of the band’s ‘90s inner circle, positing painter Mac McNaughton as a kind of Falstaffian ringleader. As with Piggy Wings and the recent single “New T-Shirt”, McNaughton painted the cover of Everybody Talks About The Weather – like the album’s music, the image of a coy girl in a white dress is an uncanny amalgamation of styles, suggestions and references just out of reach, as though seen in an art museum in a dream.
The album ends with two reads of the same frustration. “King of Nothing” is the closest The Yummy Fur will ever get to sludge-rock: the band melts together into a dusty, dreary haze as McKeown drowns in a drudgery of personal struggle (“Two jumpers on in Babylon/And only cats to talk to”) and the rhythmic toppling of heroes (Rowlands, Duvall, Munro). The majority of visible dirt is cleaned off for “Say Hello”, an uncharacteristic depiction of throwing the windows open after a dark night of the soul. Here, the situation is still cold and hard (“When the sun burns gold, but the heat never reaches your fingertips”) but it feels surmountable. Everybody Talks About The Weather is an unpredictable album from an unpredictable group, but ending on a moment of almost uncomplicated light is maybe its biggest surprise. - Claire Biddles (2026)

Pressure is the medium of wind players. Wind instruments all sound thanks to pressure differentials, whether that’s the rush of wind over a lip plate or a steady, buzzing exhalation through pursed lips. Ka Baird and Chris Ryan Williams (HxH) are wind players well- schooled in the power of using pressure and movement to amplify the mystery of an invisible force animating a metal tube. They augment their instruments, flute and trumpet respectively, with electronics, sometimes obscuring the acoustic sound source, sometimes making it hyperreal. Flutters of lip and tongue slither over the listener’s ear, and sustained tones become a dense fog, pushing on other kinds of visceral, emotional pressure points.

On Enthalpy, Baird and Williams’ first album as a duo, the energy they conjure feels barely contained, the pressure built up to a breaking point before spilling out in multiple directions at various speeds. They borrow the title from thermodynamics, referring to the total energy of a system based on its pressure and volume. The music flies out in bursts; it seeps and oozes, flows with intention. It is an incredibly rhythmic work without any hint of meter, full of sounds that punctuate with the thud of a dart hitting a bullseye. Williams’ capability to conjure swirling atmospherics, as well as his remarkable ability to pull fragments of melody from the haze, fit puzzle-like into Baird’s exclamations and the eruption of electronics that often dovetail them. The duo draws on tones from nearly the entire range of human hearing, from nimble but bulbous throbs of sub-bass to pinprick flickers of ultra-high end.

The sessions that produced Enthalpy were completely improvised, showcasing a degree of mind-meld that belies each participant’s thrill at approaching the unknown. This isn’t a casual conversation, but an omnidirectional tangle that ties and reties itself into new knots as the album progresses. Williams and Baird have both become ubiquitous presences throughout the New York City experimental music communities, collaborating with innumerable others and learning how their unique approaches work in tandem with similarly expansive thinkers and players. Even in the album’s most spacious moments, there’s a tension between the feeling of being unmoored and yet completely locked in, like the abyss is just one more river to cross. They ford it together before moving on to the next idea in lock step.

For the listener, Enthalpy is often felt in the body as much as it reverberates within the ears. We’re tossed from side to side, made to shoulder the impact of detonating electronics, absorbing these sounds with the feet, gut, and crown. Baird reaches into the back of their throat for guttural growls, and we can almost feel the scratch. As we tread the border of the synthesthetic, it's a reminder of the physical nature of sound, that the space between our ears and the speakers is its own enthalpic system of energy conduction. Move with it, let it move you, and see how it feels.

In 2024, Audrey Powne emerged as a compelling new voice in contemporary jazz with the release of her acclaimed debut album From the Fire; a self-produced and self-composed work celebrated for its lush string arrangements, soaring trumpet performances, and emotionally rich songwriting. Now, two years later, Powne returns with Bodies of Water, a bold and deeply introspective follow-up that continues her elemental exploration: from fire to water. An exploration of what it means to exist alongside others in an increasingly unstable world, Bodies of Water reflects on vulnerability, responsibility, and human interconnectedness. The album’s title and conceptual foundation were inspired by a passage from Caleb Azumah Nelson’s novel Small Worlds: “...to make himself a body, like water, a still surface, but beneath this, a ripple, and beneath this, an ebbing tide, and beneath that, a violent, constant tow…” Throughout the record, lyrics ruminate on the idea that like all bodies of water, we are vulnerable to disruption and catastrophe. Unlike inanimate bodies of water, however, we are conscious participants in both the damage and the repair. That tension between what we are made of and what we are responsible for became a grounding and harmonious thought. This album is a meditation on that idea, both in my personal life and in a broader, collective sense. Swollen, Broken Record, and Karma, reflect on moments of cruelty and error including her own that felt unbearable. Viewing them instead as forces moving through the landscape of a life, violent but temporary to survive their immediate impact. More socially conscious tracks Stay Awake, Creeds, RYV, and Two Sides confront frustration with political polarisation and the emptiness of language unaccompanied by action. The title and final track Bodies of Water brings these ideas together, reimagining both personal and societal upheaval as events shaped by bodies of water moving through the world destructive at times, transformative at others, and always in motion. Blending traditional jazz with Afrobeat rhythms, Dilla-inspired grooves, ambient textures, and expansive arrangements, Bodies of Water reveals the breadth of Powne’s artistic vision. The record moves fluidly between spiritual jazz, warped soul and rhythm-driven experimentation, while layered interludes and meticulous production thread its disparate influences into a unified and immersive sonic world.

‘The Art Of Loving’ is a tender, intentional deep dive into the many dimensions of love – romantic, platonic, self, and everything in between. The album features the singles, ‘Nice To Each Other’, 'Man I Need' and ' Baby Steps'

The method is instability.

— Violeta Garcia & Hora Lunga

Violeta García & Hora Lunga return with 4ever, their second album and the follow-up to I’ll Wait For You In The Car Park. Released in 2025 on -ous, their debut received airplay on BBC and NTS and was selected for Bandcamp’s Best Experimental Music year-end list. 4ever picks up where that record left off: in ordinary moments, small scenes and the strange emotional weight of being somewhere between places. But here, these moments are stretched across a much larger, darker screen. A night flight, a terminal, a bad connection. When too many feelings are carried from one place to another, everyday situations begin to feel epic, empty, or apocalyptic.

Built from García’s cello and Hora Lunga’s synths, samples and field recordings, the album pushes further into emotion, letting fragile melodies, orchestral cello gestures, heavy low-end and compressed noise melt into something both dystopian and strangely familiar. Its warmth is not meant to be an escape from this world, but something that appears within it. Acoustically, the album lives through the closeness of the materials, the way sounds stay with each other, and in the feeling that even the most unstable moments are being carried together. The album presents itself in scenes that fade into each other: quiet melodic fragments that are interrupted and restarted, unpredictable changes of direction, held together by an inevitable melody, a bright synth harmony unfolding into an almost orchestral cello arrangement. Later, a broken organ-like sample turning in circles, cello melodies appearing as if they were trying to remember a song that never belonged to one voice alone. An endless loop that is placed under changing lights, briefly opening into emotional chords, then slipping back into emptiness.

It is this instability that Violeta García and Hora Lunga place at the center of their collaboration. They do not decorate the cello with production, or place electronics around an acoustic centre. They explain: “On 4ever, we become part of the same unstable surface. What holds the record together is not resolution, but the trust in staying together as things distort, overload, disappear and return.”

Violeta García, an Argentinian cellist known for her solo work and for her role in the punk band Blanco Teta, brings the instrument close to the body, as melody, pressure, texture, noise and sudden emotional weight. García has brought her distinct musical voice to KEXP, Rewire, Le Guess Who?, Bad Bonn Kilbi, Silent Green, TransMusicales, Roskilde and more.

Hora Lunga, a Zurich-based producer and composer working across unstable song forms, treats electronics less as a frame than as a weather system: something that can hold a scene together, distort it or make it disappear. In recent years, his compositions have ranged from experimental song forms, sound performances, ensemble compositions and film music. His ensemble WIRREN consists of up to fifteen performers.

Rochester, NY's The Jet Black Berries existed at the strange and fertile intersection of post-punk restlessness, roots-rock mythology, psychedelic revival, and science-fiction dread. Emerging from the band’s earlier incarnation as New Math, the group refocused in the mid-1980s with a new name, a new vision, and a sound that moved beyond the limits of punk rock and new wave. What followed was darker, stranger, and more ambitious: country-rock ghosts, rockabilly swing, western balladry, psych-punk atmosphere, and beat-inspired storytelling fused into one singular vision. After feeling stymied in their previous form, the renewed band set its sights on breaking out to other countries and, conceptually, other planets.

Recorded in two days in August of 1984, Sundown on Venus was originally released by Enigma/Pink Dust after the newly reconfigured band signed with Enigma. The original 1985 release, however, arrived with complications. Enigma wanted additional material included, so the album was packaged with a bonus 12-inch featuring extra tracks, including a song written for the film The Return of the Living Dead, ill-chosen cover songs, and re-recordings of older New Math material.

Now, the Sundown on Venus Definitive Edition restores the album to what the band originally envisioned it in 1985. Released on CD for the first time with 12 songs newly remastered & re-presented with focus, this "Definitive Edition" brings attention back to the album’s dark narrative arc & unusual genre chemistry. Though the original album received press coverage on both sides of the Atlantic in outlets including Cash Box, Billboard, CMJ, Interview, and the UK’s SOUNDS, Sundown on Venus never found the commercial audience its ambition deserved. What once slipped through the cracks of underground rock history now stands as a missing link between cowpunk, psych revival, rockabilly, goth, post-punk, Americana, & cinematic sci-fi storytelling.

The mastering was done from the master tapes from the studio recording of the album. The cover is a reproduction of the original. The LP includes a printed sleeve. The cover includes a Glossy finish in order to respect the original edition as much as possible.

Released in 1981, "Sibou Odja" is Orchestra Baobab's second studio album produced at the Golden Baobab in Dakar by the young producer Ibrahima Sylla. After their masterpiece "Mouhamadou Bamba" recorded the same year, "Sibou Odja" would once again mark the history of Senegalese music by propelling the group's success into a new musical decade. Under the direction of the hard-hitting saxophonist Issa Sissokho and the irremovable guitarist Barthélémy Attiso, it is notably the young singer future icon of Senegalese salsa Médoune Diallo who will deliver one of his masterpieces with the irresistible "Autorail", song locomotive which celebrates the opening of the railway line connecting Dakar to Niamey. The Baobab symbolizing both rooting in traditional Senegalese values ​​and the tree's ability to reach new heights, the group's sound is a perfect syncretism of Senegalese and Afro-Cuban imaginaries in which the montunos of electric guitars and the Vocal improvisations in the Wolof language subtly blend with the rhythms of Cuban sound and other boleros.