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Our beloved Legofunk Records is back with a new fresh and vibrant wax perfect for your summer. This time with Matalo! and his 4 tracks Ep. Really hot stuff!

Gallegos, first name Oliver - deals in feelings rather than genres. The productions on his debut effort for RS INTL channel a 90’s rave euphoria. Luscious pads swirl amidst pitched down jungle drums, celestial strings and philosophical vocal snippets that evoke ecstatic joy.

It’s no mean feat to induce a feeling of elation without the means of a synthetic intervention - but Ollie seems to have cracked the code - taking us there with harmony, texture and rhythm alone - nothing synthetic here: this is alchemy at play... The EP - which in all honesty feels more like a mini album - is a real journey across 5 songs and 29 minutes. It’s about equally split between driving rhythmic compositions created with movement in mind, and pensive ambient detours that are more sonic meditations than anything else. The album reaches its most dizzying heights when these two elements come together in unison for the title track, “Memories You’ve Memorised'' - a widely road-tested future classic which blends scattered Juno chords, arpeggiated church organ and 80s vocal samples to a tear-jerking crescendo.

Memories You’ve Memorised elevates Oliver Gallegos to the top tier of modern electronic composition. There’s comparisons to be made to Primal Scream, Underworld and even Aphex Twin - but after all is said and done, we’re witnessing the coming of age of a future pioneer.

Island Boogie arrives four years after Meecham’s previous full-length, Music Not Safari, and sees the veteran producer deliver his most ‘personal’ set yet – a collection of kaleidoscopic, cosmic-leaning, dub disco-influenced neo-boogie excursions inspired by his love of the custom-built soundsystem at Rotation Garden Party, an annual micro-festival founded by a group of friends including his former Chicken Lips production partner Dean Meredith. It's fitting, then, that the EP begins with a superb interpretation of ‘'Dévoilez-Vous’ by T-Kutt, AKA Meredith and long-term studio partner Ben Shenton. The pair’s ‘AM FM Club Mix’ sits somewhere between classic Prelude-style electrofunk, NYC proto-house and early British interpretations of American house music. Séverine Mouletin’s chopped-up improvised vocals weave in and out of sun-bright keyboard riffs, colourful synthesiser motifs, heady synth-strings, D-Train style synth-bass and delay-laden machine drums. It’s a superb re-imagination of one of the album’s most stellar moments.

The EP’s other headline-grabbing remix comes courtesy of Leng co-founder Paul Murphy AKA Mudd. He reworks title track ‘Island Boogie’, teasing out the spacey synths and languid jazz-funk grooves of Meecham’s original mix and dialling them up to the max. The resultant revision sparkles with crunchy clavinet licks, mazy synth and electric piano solos, and spacey chords rising above a mid-tempo dancefloor groove. To complete a strong package, Meecham adds two dubs in his distinctively stripped-back, tape echo-heavy style. He first takes on EP title track ‘Dévoilez-Vous’, wrapping vintage drum machine hits in oodles of space echo and dub delay while devoting more time and space to the killer bassline, Rupert Brown’s infectious hand percussion, and Mouletin’s vocalisations.

To round off the EP, he dubs out album epic ‘La Cassette’, another collaboration with Mouletin that also features additional percussion by Brown. Like the original synth-powered dancefloor dubs of the early-to-mid-80s that have long been an inspiration, Meecham’s ‘La Cassette’ dub features key musical elements – many drenched in trippy effects – popping in and out of the mix, while his sturdy drums and memorable bassline spar with Brown’s percussion below.

"Two-pronged, remix attacks don't come much more exciting and potent than this... as here - thanks to our good friends at Nervous NYC - we're beyond hyped to bring you the legendary Masters At Work and Dave Lee on one single, fully weaponised package.

Putting their own, inimitable spins on Louie Vega's ˙Music Is My Life˙ - which features the unique talents of Unlimited Touch - we're treated to a pair of wonderfully complimentary, but no less idiosyncratic re-rubs from these two stalwarts of the scene.

With a production hand and artistic touch like no other - Masters At Work lead the way here, with their main remix. Characterised by that trademark looseness and deliciously warm, organic approach - their rework is awash with woozy psychedelia and layered so expertly, that getting lost in the music is both gloriously simple and an absolute pleasure. But no true Vega & Dope remix suite, would be complete without a bonafide Dub version. And for ˙Music Is My Life˙ - this sees the dynamite duo take proceedings down a distinctly more mesmeric and mood-laden path… one where the vocal is instead used as a powerful rhythmic weapon, and the star of the show, is a surreptitiously morphing and shape-shifting, delicately acid-laced synth lead.

Next up - having recently switched his attentions to productions under his own namesake - is Z Records' head honcho, Dave Lee. Snapping into life with its crisp and punchy drum work - what Lee's remix does share with that of the Masters is in the over-arching, tripped-out haze which douses proceedings. However - where his remix opts to stick its head well and truly above the parapit, is in it stylistic flavouring. As when it comes to slicing that genre cake, so to split the worlds of Disco and House perfectly down the middle - there's simply no one who does it finer.”

Foundation ska from the cradle of Jamaican music...

Federal Recording Studios nurtured the talents of innumerable Jamaican artists in the early sixties... this set showcases seriously sought after rarities and previously un-released tracks from Don Drummond, The Maytals , Lynn Taitt and many more

Jazz-infused prog rock act Catapilla began in London in 1970, with saxophonists Robert Calvert (who later worked with Daevid Allen in various Gong spin-off projects) and Hugh Eaglestone, bassist Dave Taylor (of chart-topping pop act Edison Lighthouse, and later active in hard-rock group, Liar), along with drummer Malcolm Frith, guitarist Graham Wilson and clarinet player/flautist, Thierry Rheinhardt; original vocalist ‘Lady’ Jo Meek quit early (to work with the keyboardist, poet and science fiction author, Julian Jay Savarin) and was duly replaced by her sister, Anna, whose gutsy gasps gave the band its noteworthy difference, along with the woodwinds and horns. Former Millionaires’ bassist Cliff Cooper (who had worked with producer Joe Meek before founding Orange Amplifiers), brought Catapilla to the attention of Black Sabbath’s manager, Patrick Meehan, who swiftly got them a contract with Vertigo, Philips’ prog subsidiary; this self-titled debut has four freaky tracks, including the side-long closer, “Embryonic Fusion.”

Hard-rocking Brooklyn trio Sir Lord Baltimore’s highly sought-after debut album is a legendary precursor of the heavy metal genre, a 1971 Creem review of the disc perhaps the first to ever use the term. The group benefited from the songwriting and production team of Mike Appel and Jim Cretecos, Appel the future manger of Bruce Springsteen and Cretecos already heady from success with The Partridge Family; recorded at Vantone Studios in New Jersey, it
was mixed to fine effect by Eddie Kramer at Electric Ladyland, fresh from his work with Jimi Hendrix. Guitarist Louis Dambra co- arranged the material with Appel and Cretecos; he had earlier played in garage band The Koala as Louis Caine, and here his screeching guitar
is a major draw, backed by plodding bass from Gary Justin, as front man John Garner shrieks his vocals while pounding furious drumbeats. Aside from a tough cover of Ray Charles’ “I Got A Woman” and a track inspired by Yeats’ poem “Lake Isle Of Innersfree,” the album features heavily-stoned acid rock originals, delivered the Sir Lord Baltimore way.

"Androids may not yet dream of electric sheep, but maybe computers do sing sad songs."

In 2013, Tzoukmanis released ‘Hope Is The Sister Of Despair’, issued here for the first time on vinyl with 4 previously unreleased tracks.
The album was made following the end of a relationship and the happy/sad feeling is everywhere in this music. Sequences twinkle and nag, soft pads pour balm on tired ears and when drums do appear they provide an intimate framework rather than a call to the dance floor. The album taps into a rich vein of sequencer romanticism, from Tangerine Dream-obsessed-‘Berlin School’ daydreamers to the whole nebula of music inspired by Warp’s Artificial Intelligence series. It also looks forward, prefiguring the return today, in troubled times, to the comforting inner space of ‘90s-worshipping ambient techno.

The German word ‘weltschmerz’, roughly translating as ‘world sadness’, fits this music well. The melancholy it inspires feels collective, almost heartening. Sorrow might be said to infuse the technology’s basic building blocks – Leibniz’s binary ‘one’ bereft of its ‘zero’, its presence twinned with absence. But there is hope, too, in the network of actions and decisions that have been fashioned here into melody and rhythm.

The core membership of free jazz act The Trio ensured its output was captivating, comprised as it was of double-bassist Barre Phillips, who had played with Archie Shepp, Chris McGregor, and Gong; saxophonist John Surman, who had played with John McLaughlin, Lester Bowie, and Alexis Korner; and drummer Stu Martin, who had played with Count Basie, Donald Byrd and Herbie Hancock. On the gripping sophomore set Conflagration, guest players include Chick Corea and trumpeter Harry Beckett, ensuring their take on abstract jazz contains melody as well as jarring exchanges. Another great Trio free jazz set!

Psychedelic pop act Jawbone had ample talent and keen industry connections yet remained unjustly obscure. Core members had been active in The Mirage, who signed with CBS and later recorded for Phillips; drummer David Hynes and bassist/future Elton John Band mainstay Dee Murray briefly joined the Spencer Davis Group, but regrouped as Portobello Explosion, which became Jawbone. Their rare self-titled debut, released by Carnaby in 1970, had an undercurrent of Americana, and there’s a one-off cover of The Beatles’ ‘Across The Universe’; this edition features bonus track ‘Way, Way Down,’ a non-LP Carnaby 45.

After playing with Mingus, Coltrane, Lady Day and Abbey Lincoln, inventive jazz pianist Mal Waldron moved to Europe and first reached Japan in 1970, where he met Idahoborn double-bassist Gary Peacock, who had played with Art Pepper, Bud Shank, Bill Evans and free-jazz giant, Albert Ayler before moving to Japan to study zen buddhism. First Encounter, recorded in Tokyo in 1971 for French producer Herve Bergerat, shows that the intense pairing was quite natural, the harmonic dissonance of Waldron’s “She Walks In Beauty” contrasted by the up-tempo groove of Peacock’s “What’s That”; future Native Son founder Hiroshi Murakami makes important contribution on drums.

Sometimes music is supposed to feel weird and indescribable. It’s the moments of clarity within the dense, sonic mess that often feels the most satisfying. That’s the space that Earth Tongue occupy. At times, their songs are shrill and disorientating, other times their reverb-washed textures and instantly- familiar hooks can wrap you in a warm, loving embrace. The one consistent thread through their music, however, is the thick and all encompassing fuzz. Guitarist Gussie Larkin has become a master of the fuzz-smothered riff, and along with Ezra Simons’ off-kilter drumming, they’ve been sending punters into transcendental states since they began gigging in their home town of Wellington, New Zealand in 2016. Floating Being will be released this June 21st. The album was pieced together throughout their travels of Australia and Europe, with the finishing touches being added in their hometown. The album contains songs they’ve been playing live for the past year, and it captures the raw, primitive energy that exists within their live performance. Earth Tongue embrace the imperfections in their playing and recording - drawing influence from early 70s psych and prog rock. The last thing they wanted was to create a shiny, over-produced record - with that in mind, they recorded the drums to an old 8-track Tascam reel-to-reel in a friend’s garage in Melbourne. The result is a punchy, raw and fuzzy journey into psych-rock with songs that weave between melodic and jarring. Unexpected twists and turns leave the listener in a disorientated yet satisfying haze.

** TRILOGY ***
post-punk experiments

VOLUME 1 of a series of 3 re-releases of the 80s underground solo cassette tapes by Menko Konings (aka EM / Menko / eM.)
This first re-release/remaster is the cassette tape “dedicated to Charles Bronson” (1986) by Menko, with almost one hour music

TAPE RESTAURATION / REMASTER (2024) by the grand master RUDE 66

Vocals on Debra by Tonny Timmermans (aka Antonia)

Limited edition of 50 (hand numbered) golden cassette tapes with original J-card

“When I went solo in 1983 I only had a guitar, a bass and a four track cassette tape recorder. Sometimes I borrowed a rithmebox or a synth for a couple of days. These solo cassette tapes were created in that period.” (MK)

Music journalist Oscar Smit described these tapes in the 80s - in his column Dolby of the legendary Dutch magazine Vinyl - s.a.: “Big city music, metropolis beat, drum composers, funking basses, nervous rhythm guitars, radio and TV sounds in the background and intonationless vocals.”

Dando Shaft’s self-titled sophomore set continued to build on the reputation established by their excellent debut, and now the arrival of female singer Polly Bolton added another textural dimension, as heard most clearly on the soaring ‘Riverboat,’ the absence of drums throughout allowing us to fully appreciate the players’ excellent musicianship, with Martin Jenkins’ masterful mandolin, flute and fiddle drawing the sound to higher realms. As it was issued on RCA’s prog sub-label Neon, which folded soon after its release, the LP is as rare as it is excellent—another must-have for fans of progressive folk and psychedelic folk rock.

Influential Detroit band Destroy All Monsters mashed up punk, garage and noise rock, their atypical work notably influencing Sonic youth’s Thurston Moore. By the time of their first recordings, the group included pedigree members such as guitarist Ron Asheton of the Stooges and bassist Mike Davis of the MC5, as well as drummer Rob King, apoplectic vocalist Niagara, and assorted friends. Bored is a must-have compilation that brings together their early singles from the late 1970s, including ‘You’re Gonna Die,’ ‘Nov 22’, ‘Meet The Creeper,’ ‘What Do I Get?’ and the outstanding title track that began their acceleration.

After briefly replacing Eric Clapton in John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers, guitarist/bassist Geoff Krivit formed Doctor K’s Blue Band with pianist Richard Kay and singer/harmonica player Mick Hasse, the lineup completed by bassist Harold Vickers, slide guitarist Roger Rolt and future Steve Hillage drummer Eric Peachey. Their self-titled debut had top-notch renditions of blues classics such as ‘I Can’t Lose,’ ‘Key To The Highway’ and ‘Pet Cream Man,’ as well as spirited originals such as ‘Strobe Lemming’s Lament’ and the piano stomp ‘Crippled Clarence,’ but the album failed to break through. Grab a copy of this rarity to be blown away!

Experimental prog act East Of Eden’s daring debut album Mercator Projected was released by Deram in 1969. Former Graham Bond Organisation bassist Steve York and drummer Dave Dufort supply the tough rhythmic backbone on which frontman Geoff Nicholson weaves his edgy guitar, with Dave Arbus’s electric violin supplanting what would normally be played on rhythm guitar, Adrian Martins’ sax and flute completing the picture with central European melodies. Hard rocking, melodically meandering, and including a one-off take of ‘Eight Miles High,’ this is prog with a bold difference. A killer set from start to finish!

In the 1971 counterculture comedy You Gotta Walk It Like You Talk It, Zalman King tries to find the meaning of life, with Richard Pryor and Robert Downey Jr among the cameos; who better to cut the soundtrack than Steely Dan? Except that the Dan had not officially formed yet! With typical tongue-in-cheek touches, Donald Fagen and Walter Becker rise to the challenge, with fellow Dan guitarist Denny Diaz and drummer John Discepolo of previous vehicle, Jay & the Americans; if you’re a Steely Dan fan, you really need to check out this one-off soundtrack, cut just before they upset the rock applecart with Can’t Buy A Thrill.

Non-standard prog act Gryphon made their mark by incorporating abandoned instruments and ancient classical elements in their work, giving their self-titled 1973 debut outstanding differences to standard rock fare. With co-founder Richard Harvey on recorders, mandolin, harpsichord, and glockenspiel and Brian Gulland, on bassoon, crumhorns, and vocals, backed by guitarist Graeme Taylor and drummer/percussionist Dave Oberlé, Gryphon expertly channelled contemporary English folk through forgotten medieval and Renaissance styles; unlike later rock-oriented work, Gryphon showcases the band’s unadorned beginnings.

Exact Repro OF THE Original With 4 Bonus Tracks. Japanese country rock act Gypsy Blood must be heard to be believed. Released on Vertigo in 1971, their sole LP showed the group simply bursting with talent, Kiyoshi Hayami’s mandolin exceptional and the masterful soft-rock production courtesy of Miki Curtis; drummer Eiichi Tsukasa had earlier been in the Helpful Soul, organist Katsuo Ohno had been in the Spiders, and guitarist/vocalist Hiroaki Nakamura later played in Buzz with future YMO member Yukihiro Takahashi, while none other than Alan Merrill of ‘I Love R‘n’R’ fame completes the picture on piano. A beautiful album, and a very rare beast!