quête:persona

A personal record for Mike shaped by memory, places, and renewal. Walking the streets of his birthplace, St. Louis, Zito reconnects with the sounds, stories, and hard lessons that forged his signature blend of soul-driven blues and fearless storytelling. Thirteen years after Gone to Texas, this album feels like a defining moment, marking a new chapter for Mike, his family, and a life reclaimed in the city that started it all. The songs paint vivid snapshots of city life and personal reckoning, from late- night regret and self-awareness to raw portraits of neighbourhood survival and street-level truth. Tracks like "Downtown at Midnight" and "Grand Avenue" capture the grit, temptation, and consequences of the past with unflinching honesty, grounding the album in lived experience and emotional weight . Zito's writing is direct and cinematic, pairing tough reflection with compassion and hard-earned wisdom.

At its heart, Outside Or The Eastside is a celebration of second chances, an album dedicated to better days, family, friendship, love, and joy found in everyday moments. Life's unpredictable paths open doors you never expect, and for Mike Zito, this record embraces that truth with warmth, humour, and swagger. It's a record about choosing connection over chaos and moving forward with gratitude, purpose, and the volume turned up

Transversales is very glad to announce the release of « Mémoire Magnétique, vol.3 » spanning 1967-1971, revelatory collection of short and secret music by electronic music pioneer Bernard Parmegiani.

The third volume of this compilation allows us to discover some of unreleased rarities from Bernard Parmegiani’s personal archives and unpublished recordings which were composed for the screen or the performing arts.

Remastered high-resolution audio transferred directly from the original master tapes.
Deluxe Edition with OBI

Tony Njoku returns with All Our Knives Are Always Sharp, a sonically expansive and emotionally charged second album that brings together a remarkable cast of black British voices. Featuring powerful collaborations with Tricky, GAIKA, Ghostpoet, Coby Sey, James Massiah Space Afrika and Labi Junior, the record serves as a landmark moment for Njoku, a culmination of both the singular musical style and nuanced, socially-engaged storytelling he’s been crafting throughout his career.

Rooted in themes of spiritual preparedness, cultural resistance and emotional clarity, the album unfolds through Njoku’s signature blend of electronic abstraction, falsetto-led songwriting and cinematic composition. It’s a work that cuts deep. Philosophical, political and personal, each guest brings a vital new layer to the conversation.





“ALL OUR KNIVES….” will be the first release on Tony’s new imprint ‘Studio Njoku’, which Tony says will serve as a space to facilitate his collaborations with his wider creative community. In addition the album will be pressed on heavyweight 180g vinyl limited-edition, with 300 copies worldwide. It will be the first run of physical production for Studio Njoku

Ariane Bonzini is a French singer-songwriter who is gradually establishing herself as one of the unique voices of the new French-speaking alternative scene. Her first notable project, Magenta, lays the foundations for a deeply personal universe: atmospheric RnB, tinged with sensitive pop, where the softness of her voice meets a refined, cinematic production. With this project, Ariane attracted attention thanks to an authentic sound identity, far removed from the codes usually associated with the genre.

Matt Gold and Dustin Laurenzi present Devotional Fade, a collaborative record of electroacoustic rhythmic improvisations – equal parts meditation and dance, released on We Jazz Records, 24th April. Laurenzi and Gold, key collaborators in the Chicago creative scene and with genre spanning artists such as Bill Callahan and Makaya McCraven, step forward here with a major artistic statement, a product of extended improv sessions capturing the duo's hypnotic interplay. This is the sound of two of Chicago's most vibrant instrumental voices listening deeply, communing in sound.

Recorded in Laurenzi's attic studio, Devotional Fade emerged from a series of weekly sessions over the course of a single month. The duo kept the tape rolling continuously each day and selected a number of immersive sonic worlds to present, oscillating between patient, sacred minimalism and wild, dancefloor-worthy combustion.

The pair set two parameters to heighten the sessions' stakes: editing would be kept to a minimum, and a rule of "no pitched overdubs" was put in place – ensuring that all melodic and harmonic gestures would have to be committed in real time. Laurenzi and Gold held true, only sparingly adding a stray shaker or brush to these already largely complete improvisations. Devotional Fade is imbued with quiet propulsion and ecstatic repetition.

Matt Gold is a guitarist, multi-instrumentalist, songwriter, and producer based in Chicago, IL. His work pulls from diverse traditions of electric and acoustic music. Matt has performed across six continents and contributed to over fifty recordings as a collaborator and instrumentalist, garnering critical praise from Pitchfork for playing "one of the most exhilarating guitar solos of recent memory, in any genre." Gold has several long-running collaborative bands spanning jazz, folk, experimental, and chamber music including Sun Speak, Storm Jameson, and Tin. He performs and records with an array of creative artists including Makaya McCraven, Marquis Hill, Jamila Woods, Natalie Merchant, and Greg Ward. Gold co-curates the record label and concert series Flood Music.

Chicago saxophonist/multi-instrumentalist Dustin Laurenzi has developed a personal approach to improvisation and composition that has garnered the attention of the city's creative music community. Laurenzi's music is inspired and informed by jazz, folk, and improvised music. His inventive improvisational sensibilities have made him a sought-after musician in many circles of Chicago's vibrant music scene and beyond. Laurenzi has toured extensively with songwriter Bill Callahan and is featured on Callahan's 2024 release Resuscitate! He has toured with Grammy award-winning artist Bon Iver and appears on the band's critically lauded 2016 release 22, A Million. Laurenzi has also performed with Jeff Parker & The New Breed, Marquis Hill, Makaya McCraven, Matt Ulery, Japanese Breakfast, and This Is The Kit.

Artist and multi-instrumentalist Flaer looks to the landscape to explore pastoral melancholy on debut release, Preludes. It is released in a second edition black vinyl, with an alternate cover artwork.

Ensconced in his family home in rural Leicestershire in the early months of 2020, painter and musician Realf Heygate (b. 1994) picked up his childhood cello for the first time in several years and began to play. Setting himself parameters to only record onto 4-track tape with acoustic instruments – cello, piano and acoustic guitar – he assembled a suite of instrumental compositions that form the basis of Preludes, his debut album as Flaer and the inaugural release on Odda Recordings.

Channelling the tension and unease between the pastoral idyll of the English countryside and the darkness which lurks beneath the surface, the mini-album draws inspiration from the analogue aesthetic of 1970s folk horror films, weaving field recordings of birdsong, church bells and the natural environment into chimerical melodies that reflect on Heygate’s childhood experiences of rural England.

“It was really important not to isolate the sound from its environment,” he explains, describing the compositional and recording process as “site-specific”. Developed over a series of intuitive musical enquiries, the mini-album’s uncanny quality emerges from combining raw demo takes with overdubs of almost orchestral grandeur.

Heygate points to the final track as indicative of the work as a whole: “‘Follow’ really is the mantra for the release and embodies the practical approach I was taking to music making: not to force the music but see where it takes you.”

As a painter, Heygate’s practice takes artefacts through sequences of reproduction that embrace the fluctuating materiality of the copy. Since obtaining a degree in Fine Art from Central Saint Martins in 2017, he has exhibited solo at Peter von Kant and Springseason galleries in London, and has participated in group shows at Saatchi Gallery, Cob Gallery and Senesi Contemporanea.

Describing his artistic practice as one of self-erasure, music instead provides Heygate with a more personal and autobiographical outlet. Where the two worlds combine is on Preludes’ striking artwork, which features paintings of 13th century stone carvings from the font of the church in the town where he grew up.

Speaking to a time where people were connected to the land in a more profound way, each symbol is assigned to a track on the album, which Heygate likens to giving them a title.

“To add that one juxtaposition might open a whole new interpretation or language that might be hard to find otherwise,” he explains.“Over time it might reveal itself to you, which is why I'm excited about it being released. To throw them out there and see what comes of it.”

Matias Aguayo drops debut single on Rekids‘El Internet’ is a prelude to the Coméme founder’ upcoming album on the label. Chile’s Matias Aguayo debuts on Rekids with ‘El Internet’, the first single of his upcoming album on Radio Slave’s acclaimed label. Coméme co-founder Aguayo’s ‘El Internet’ is a dancefloor-tested, pumping and uptempo track with personal, intimate vocals phoning in.

“El Internet” tells about walking through the city in hot summer nights looking for the perfect dancefloor and about moments in life where you feel (musical) freedom and change, revolutions in music and dreams in community, about YouTube, MySpace, Fotolog and about people who dance in their houses, yards and on the streets to primitive, raw, and direct music (like the rhythm of the track itself).” - Matias Aguayo

Chilean-born musician and DJ Matias Aguayo has been active for three decades, co-founding the Cómeme label in 2009 and releasing work on the likes of Kompakt, Pschent, Hard Fist, and Permanent Vacation. Beyond music, he has organised underground parties and led social projects, including a theatre production at Le Châtelet in Paris.

Radio Slave’s Rekids was founded in 2006 and has since spawned successful offshoots with the Techno-focused Rekids Special Projects in 2017 and its newest sublabel, REK’D, in 2024. With Matt Edwards as the sole A&R, Rekids has been crucial in developing early artist careers and has become a haven for established acts operating in House and adjacent genres, having recently featured the likes of Hilit Kolet, William Kiss, Tal Fussman, Tiger Stripes, Harry Rimero, The Hacker, Sean Johnston, and many more.

XKatedral Anthology I is the first in a series of archival releases dedicated to presenting music by XKatedral affiliated composers working within the realm of slowly evolving harmonic and timbral music. This double-vinyl set contains an array of pieces dating from 2010 - 2020. Four of the works included here were originally released on cassette tape early on in the label's history, while the two remaining pieces are presented by the label for the first time.

"The works Ir Himinn, Grooenn by Kristoffer Svensson, Disquiet (Heart) by Marta Forsberg and Lamé by Isak Edberg were first released on the compilation XKatedral Volume II in 2016. Svenssons piece from 2014 combines justly tuned gamelan percussion and prepared piano intricately interwoven in a way that obscures the boundaries between the two instrument groups. Forsberg and Edbergs pieces both use a monolithic form to explore the timbral and harmonic spaces provided by the Düben Baroque organ situated in Tyska Kyrkan in the oldest part of Stockholm. While similar in terms of instrumentation the two works differ formally - Edbergs Lamé composed in 2010 uses the registers of the organ to articulate a seamless spectral transformation while Forsbergs Disquiet (Heart) from 2014 deals in blocks of sound with a varying degree of opacity, saturation and intensity.

Glory for two electric guitars by Caterina Barbieri and Kali Malone was composed and recorded in Tempo Reale in Florence, Italy, and was originally released on the cassette compilation XKatedral Volume III in 2016. This music takes the form of an ever-evolving hypnotic pattern shared by the two instruments articulated through an additive and subtractive canon. Dissolving Ceremony, composed in 2012 by Edberg/Erlandsson/Lisinski, was first presented publicly on the self-released record Stratum. The music contained in that release was formed from a collection of gamelan percussion instruments augmented by two sets of live-electronic instruments tuned to the harmonic framework formed by the partials of the metal percussion. Originally positioned in the center of the record running order between two long monolithic process-based pieces, Dissolving Ceremony now stands on its own as a memory of a time and methodology from the not so distant past.

The newest piece in this set is Shipwrecks by Daniel M Karlsson. While this work is a recent one Karlsson should be considered one of the forerunners of the musical expression contained within this record set. Active within new music for two decades his strongly articulated musical ideas and constantly evolving craftsmanship has resulted in an enormous body of work, and has served as an inspiration for many of his fellow composers. This piece is a celebration of transposition and its immense capacity for timbral transformation using a vast array of instruments performed, recorded and electronically treated by the composer to form a liquid uncanny topography where a deeply personal harmonic language constantly shifts, slides and shivers."

Regal delivers his first full EP on Backspin, marking a defining moment for the label he founded. More than just another release, the Forgotten Heroes EP captures the essence of Regal's vision: groovy, forward-moving techno that balances raw club energy with atmosphere, emotion and narrative.

The title track 'Forgotten Heroes' sets the EP in motion with a sense of controlled urgency. A rolling, slightly breaktinged groove pushes forward relentlessly, while an eerie, almost nostalgic synth melody hovers in the background, giving the track an emotional pull. 'Concentrate' shifts the focus inward_ bleeping motifs, tight claps and restless hihats circle around spoken fragments that feel like thoughts caught between the peak of the night and the quiet hours before sunrise.

On the B-side, 'Forte' accelerates into pure momentum: sharp, bleep-led sequences and forward pressure combine into a rush that feels like racing through the city at night. 'Soft Killer' deepens the mood with a darker, dominant edge, its stripped back power and razor-sharp sounds cutting clean through the mix. Closing track 'Wild Magic' offers a final release of tension, slowing the pace into a lighter, more house-leaning groove. Warm pads and a catchy, uplifting melody bring a sense of air and openness, letting the EP drift out on a hopeful, almost euphoric note.

Regal's comeback EP 'Forgotten Heroes' stands as a personal statement and a cornerstone release for Backspin. It's techno built on groove, contrast and character, made to leave a lasting impression on the dancefloor.

Scissor and Thread presents Tailored Cuts, Vol. 06, a four-track selection that accompanies the digital compilation album. All four tracks appear on vinyl for the first time. Opening the A-side is a brand new and exclusive dub mix of Soela & Module One’s Drowning, reworked by Matthias Reiling (one half of Session Victim). Originally taken from Soela’s Dark Portrait album, the track is reshaped here into a spacious and hypnotic dub that emphasizes texture, atmosphere and patient groove. "I have been a fan of both Soela's and Module One's music for quite a while now," says Reiling, "so getting the chance to remix their collaboration from Soela's beautiful Dark Portrait album is a huge honor. I tried to keep the elegant and somewhat tender synth work close to it's original spirit and combine it with simple drumkit samples, acoustic guitar, electric bass and a dash of space echo. The process put me in a slightly eerie, yet romantic mood, which, so I hope, translates a little when listening to the result."
Also on the A-side, Black Light Smoke’s Love Triangle appears in ZG’s remix, a lush and understated reimagining that balances warmth with rhythmic precision. On the B-side, Hidden Spheres remix of Francis Harris’ Earth Moves feat. Eliana Glass appears alongside DaRand Land’s Passion Motion from his album Wander Being, "a more upbeat ride, with melodic overtones that drive the “passion”. Personally, it’s my interpretation of some of the sounds from mid-90’s Chicago." says DaRand Land.

Preceded by Piazza Centrale and the subsequent Seia the album of the singer-songwriter, producer, and multi-instrumentalist, new promise of the Italian music scene, moves along the traces of memories to tell a timeless story, using a very personal language in which singer-songwriter music, pop, and electronic experimentation naturally coexist. Hypnotic and magnetic, her music is a subtle, elusive seduction, an emotion that delicately insinuates itself into the mind, an invitation to get lost in its beauty. A passion that touches the deepest chords of the soul, without the overwhelming rush of the senses, but with the intensity of a pure and profound feeling. Gaia Banfi was born in Milan, has been living in Bologna for years, but in her album, it is Genoa that resonates, the place of her childhood, which here becomes an imaginary setting for a symbolic dimension in which everyone can recognize themselves, through seven tracks in which all those melancholies that swell as we grow up, the lacks, the turbulent and dark loves, the unrequited ones, but also the vitality, the discovery, the absence of judgment, and finally the awareness, the inner conquests, the clemency, and the love for oneself, take voice.

Between elegant and dark electronic beats and cosmic ambient breaths, seven tracks enveloped in the voice of a multi-talented artist, dedicated to deconstructing the song form and breaking down language to create an esoteric sonic world where the archaic, contemporary, and futuristic entwine like the gravitational dance of two galaxies about to merge. Born in 1992 in Gallura, with a jazz background that allows for absolute compositional freedom, Daniela Pes is a unique personality in today"s scene. Her distinctive features include the use of voice as an instrument and textual exploration: in Spira, the Sardinian artist sings in a language that does not (yet) exist. Ancient Gallurese words, fragments of Italian terms, entirely invented words form the organic molecules of an unprecedented language where verses are free from metrics, and words are not conveyors of a concept but pure sound, like beads of an articulated phonetic rosary, inaccessible rationally but intoxicating emotionally. Spira is an album of visionary music interpreting the sonic dramaturgy as utopia.

Der Wiener SALAMIRECORDER präsentiert mit seinem aktuellen Album "Inside The Cage" wieder einmal stilsicheren 60s-Garage Sound. Nach seiner letzten LP auf Bachelor Records, die er noch mit seiner Band "The Hi-Fi Phonos" eingespielt hat, hat er für "Inside The Cage" zehn Songs zur Gänze allein mit 4-track Taperecorder aufgenommen. "If you have to describe the music, its probably like a weird slightly annoyed outsider but with a melting heart for love songs. A perfect shake between 60s Back from the Grave Garage punk and a little breeze of early trash mixtape Powerpop. or something... ...weird, loud, rocknroll noise!!!" (Elmar, Bachelor Rec.) Natürlich ist der 23-jährige SALAMIRECORDER viel zu jung, um selbst die weltverändernden Zeiten des Rock'n'Roll erlebt zu haben. Doch seine Persona als trägt dessen historisch aufsässiges Programm in sich. Stilprägend war dabei seine beim Skateboard-Fahren entwickelte frühe Leidenschaft für Genre-Größen der 2010er wie Ty Segall oder Bass Drum of Death. Dieser Tage ist Salamirecorder bestens vernetzt, aber weniger per Sozialen Medien als im echten Leben. Er genießt Respekt, sowohl bei Beat-begeisterten jungen Kids als auch bei ergrauten Szene-Altvorderen wie Wild Evil & The Trashbones oder den Jaybirds, spielt bejubelte Gigs mit seiner perfekt eingespielten Begleit-Combo The Hi-Fi Phonos und gehört als Schlagzeuger, Gitarrist und Sänger Bands wie Laundromat Chicks, Sux Sux Sux und Telebrains an. Als Produzent hat er neulich das Solo-Debüt von Vic Velvet auf Band gebannt. Das Analoge ist ihm dabei nicht bloß puristisches Glaubensprinzip, sondern eine ebenso praktische künstlerische wie - ja doch! - politische Entscheidung. In einer Welt endloser digitaler Möglichkeiten findet der Salamirecorder eine paradoxe Freiheit, indem er sich selber auch ein bisschen limitiert.

Released independently and on her 30th birthday, "Water Baby" is Giorgia-May's stunning debut album. Spanning over 8 tracks & recorded live at The Famous Goldwatch Studios in Berlin, Giorgia collaborates with some of Berlin's finest musicians to enhance her craft at putting emotions into songs. Each track highlights something different in her ability to channel pain, desire, lust and heartbreak, all whilst (most of the time) making you want to dance & smile.

Stemming originally from Brighton (UK), Giorgia-May has been pursuing a musical career through the means of travel. Now based in Berlin, she combines sensual lyrics, mesmerising tones and exciting arrangements which draw upon her personal experiences of love, loss and coming into womanhood. Blending soulful melodies with jazzy chords and hints of RnB, she takes influence from writers such as Olivia Dean & Amy Winehouse.

Extensive independent European tour in August & September 2026 through the following cities: Berlin, Paris, Bilbao, Porto, Lisbon, Valencia, Barcelona, Marseille, Cannes, Milan, Lake Como, Zurich, Luxembourg, Brussles, Cologne, Amsterdam and more ...

Dino Lenny returns to Rekids with the ‘Piano Lessons at Eight’ EP, complete with a Tal Fussman remix. It follows Lenny’s ‘Not About The Volume’ EP, released in December 2025.

London-based DJ, producer, vocalist, and Fine Human Records label owner Dino Lenny returns to Radio Slave’s Rekids with the ‘Piano Lessons at Eight’ EP 24th April 2026, alongside a remix from label regular Tal Fussman. The EP follows Lenny’s ‘Not About The Volume’ EP, which released late 2025, and won support from Laurent Garnier, Chloé Caillet, Catz ‘n Dogz, and more.

‘Piano Lessons at Eight’ centres Lenny’s own vocals over a dark, chugging rhythm that develops steadily, tracing a personal journey from formal piano training to the discovery of electronic music. The biographical thread running through the record gives it an identity that sits apart from purely functional dance music. Rekids regular and Survival Tactics boss Tal Fussman then provides the accompanying remix, a crunchy, percussive rework that brings his characteristic blend of deep house and raw techno to bear, adding melancholic piano stabs that add texture without crowding the arrangement. The outcome is focused, atmospheric, and built for extended play.

With releases on R&S, Diynamic, Innervisions, Crosstown Rebels, Strictly Rhythm, Bedrock, and his own Fine Human Records label, and collaborative work alongside Underworld, Missy Elliott, Wu-Tang Clan, and Madonna, Lenny holds a long-established position within both underground and mainstream electronic contexts. Consistently supported by Pete Tong, Solomun, Carl Cox, and Groove Armada, he maintains a presence that spans scenes without being defi ned by any single one. Since 2021, he has hosted Tomorrowland’s CORE radio show, platforming artists including Nina Kraviz, Ellen Allien, and DJ Tennis.

The Amity Affliction return with one of the most personal and devastating records of their career. Following a decade-plus run as one of Australia’s most influential heavy bands, marked by ARIA chart-topping albums, platinum certifications, and global touring off landmark releases like Let The Ocean Take Me and This Could Be Heartbreak, the new album turns inward with unflinching honesty. Largely written about frontman Joel Birch’s relationship with his late mother, the record explores grief, trauma, faith, and self-reckoning through a series of deeply connected songs. “I’ll Break These Chains” confronts the confusion surrounding her death, “Afterlife” questions belief beyond this life, while the closing track “Eternal War” captures the ongoing internal struggle and the hope for change that never came. Musically massive and emotionally raw, this album stands as The Amity Affliction at their most vulnerable, cathartic, and fully realized.

Born from Amsterdam’s intimate dance night, Notturno now steps into a new phase as a record label. Simon Paw unveils the debut release on his new imprint with Inner Space, a deeply personal two-track EP that sets the tone for the label’s sonic identity.
The title track, “Inner Space,” is an introspective and atmospheric journey rich in texture and feeling. With additional keys by Marco Airaghi and expressive flute and saxophone from Maurizio Moscatelli, the track unfolds with haunting elegance and organic warmth.
On the flip, “Eternal Sunshine” reveals a deeper, spiritual side of Simon’s production. Warm grooves carry evolving melodies and delicate piano moments, creating a track suited for immersive dance floors and reflective listening alike

In Sheep’s Clothing announces the long-awaited vinyl pressing of Marc Leclair’s beloved 2005 album Musique pour 3 femmes enceintes. The album will also be available on streaming for the first time via Community Music Group.

For years after Marc Leclair released Musique pour 3 femmes enceintes, he heard from listeners who had lived with the record in an unusually intimate way. Many described how the music became part of the emotional landscape of the months leading to birth. “I never expected that,” Leclair says. “Many women told me they listened to the record throughout their pregnancies. They said it made a real difference, that it helped them. It became more than just a record.”

First issued on CD in the early 2000s, Musique pour 3 femmes enceintes (Music for Three Pregnant Women) now returns in a new edition from In Sheep’s Clothing Hi-Fi, appearing on vinyl for the first time as a double LP. The record is being pressed in Detroit at Archer Record Pressing, the historic plant behind deep-groove classics by Juan Atkins, Kevin Saunderson, Underground Resistance, UR’s Jeff Mills, and J Dilla.

Listeners who know the Montreal-based Leclair through his better-known work as Akufen might be surprised by the tone here. During the same years he was shaping the intricate micro-sampling tracks that made Akufen a cult figure on labels including Perlon, Force Inc. and Trapez, Leclair was quietly developing this far more personal project. The meticulous craftsmanship remained the same, though the focus shifted from the hyper-detailed cut-up rhythms of his dance records toward something slower and more atmospheric. “I always compare my work to a jeweler,” Leclair says. “It’s really very precise. I’m a bit of a detail freak. I can spend hours or days on just one phrase in one song. Everything has to be perfectly put together.”

The project began almost accidentally. A few members of Leclair’s circle became pregnant nearly simultaneously, including one who had long believed she couldn’t conceive. The first track he recorded for the project wasn’t meant to advance a larger concept, he says. “It was meant to highlight the fact that three of my closest friends became pregnant at exactly the same time.”

Leclair was already a father with a three-year-old daughter, so the emotional terrain of early parenthood was familiar. Gradually the idea expanded. “I began thinking, why not make a whole album that celebrates this and also follows the entire pregnancy, the nine months,” he says. The music developed piece by piece, including a track originally commissioned by the Berlin experimental duo Rechenzentrum that would later become the album’s opening movement.

Nearly seven years passed between the first composition and the finished album, and the music mirrors the strange arithmetic of pregnancy itself. What begins as a single idea multiplies outward, sounds layering and branching until the album feels less like a sequence of compositions than a living process unfolding in time. “I work very slowly,” Leclair says. “Everything has to be something I’m completely behind. I never want to rush anything. I want things to come naturally.” Across its 72 minutes, the album blossoms with the patience of a long meditation on time, growth and emergence.

When Musique pour 3 femmes enceintes first appeared via Mutek, it circulated quietly but steadily. Critics who discovered it later recognized its unusual scope. In a 2006 Pitchfork review, Mark Richardson gave the record an 8.1, calling “150e Jour” “an unfailingly gorgeous and tightly sequenced quilt of guitar and piano samples reminiscent of Tangerine Dream,” and describing “85e Jour” as infused with “viscous pop ambient drift, the gauzy synth pads ebbing and flowing with rhythm.” Boomkat described the album as “a majestic opus from a producer that's always promised so much — here delving into a panoramic construction of almost visibly radiant music that works so beautifully through each and every second of its 72 minute lifespan.”

The new In Sheep’s Clothing Hi-Fi edition finally presents the record in the format Leclair long imagined. “I always thought that record deserved a vinyl edition,” he says. Spread across two LPs, the music now has room to unfold at its natural pace. More than twenty years after it first appeared, Musique pour 3 femmes enceintes remains what it was from the start: a carefully shaped meditation on transformation and the quiet miracle of life beginning.

妖精の通る道 (The Path Where Fairies Pass) is the debut vinyl release by Reimaki, the duo of Rei Yokoyama (Triggers Flowers, Stakaidan, Lapiz Trio, 新井薬師自警団, and Fujio, Chiko Hige and Rei), and Maki Miura (Tsubamegami, Les Rallizes Dénudés, Shizuka, Fushitsusha, Ohkami No Jikan and Katsurei). The duo has been an understated presence in Tokyo, playing occasional under-the-radar shows and self- releasing a few CD-Rs, but they’ve recently started to break cover, with a recent cassette on UFO Creations, released in support of a late 2024 tour of China. It’s also a welcome reappearance on the scene for both musicians; Miura’s musical history, in particular, is being reevaluated thanks to a recent string of welcome Shizuka reissues.

But the music Reimaki make together is a different thing entirely, much as it shares some psychological and aesthetic interests with both Miura’s and Nokoyama’s other projects. Their sound is split between two main interests – an extension of glacial, deoxygenating psychedelic improvisations, and a deep interest in medieval European music. They’ve also been known to cover compositions by English prog/improv musician Fred Frith. These various elements of the Reimaki aesthetic are all present through 妖精の通る道, from the fragility of the opening “Novel Amor” through to the smeared, hazy textures of the three extended pieces that comprise the album’s flipside.

There’s a beautiful sympathy in these performances, and a generous simplicity, too; you can sense that this music is informed by decades of finding just the right way to say the right thing in the clearest manner possible. Yokoyama and Miura never overstate things; make the statement, play the song, let it hang in the air for a while, and then move on to the next essential expression. The music is unburdened by self- consciousness. Their take on medieval music cuts to the core of melody and melancholy; their psych- improv side is blurred and drifting without ever lapsing into rote generic gestures.

There’s some shared space with other artists who suspend the timeless within the kaleidoscopic possibilities of the psychedelic – Kendra Smith & The Guild of Temporal Adventurers; Emmanuelle Parrenin; Rosina de Peira – and a tangled folksiness that might put listeners in mind of Jan Dukes De Grey, Comus, Current 93, and Tower Recordings. Accompanied by beautiful photography from street photographer Takehiko Nakafuji, who was also personally chosen by Mizutani to document Les Rallizes Dénudés, 妖精の通る道 is a most unique and necessary trip.

4-track EP from Milan-based producer Michele Manzo. Deep, driving cuts for the floor. Manzo’s commitment to analogue gear ensures a raw, tactile warmth, offering listeners a sonic journey that feels personal yet universal. Capturing the richness and depth of classic house while maintaining a minimalist, modern edge.