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Jane Handcock transforms heartbreak into clarity with her new album, It’s Me Not You. Reframing the familiar breakup phrase, this release explores self-awareness,

accountability, and emotional growth with honesty and depth.

Blending atmospheric production with a steady rhythmic drive, Handcock delivers a dynamic vocal performance that moves from intimate reflection to confident,

resonant moments. The result is a mature, empowering album that captures the complexity of modern relationships.

Highlights include themes of irresistible attraction and A Beautiful Woman, a lover’s anthem that sets the tone for the album’s grown-and-sexy vibe.

Originally released in 2008. Although this album invites aesthetic comparisons to works by the likes of Philip Jeck, William Basinski, and Janek Schaefer – draped as it is in an obfuscating, soupy crackle – there’s a very specific conceptual agenda at work here.

Part of the success of »Persistent Repetition of Phrases« comes from the attention it pays to the function of »the loop«, not only as a narrative ordering system in modern music, but as a means by which the brain itself recalls and interprets information; it’s as old as recorded sound itself, but in this context the repetition of small shards of auditory information becomes an elegy to fading memory and the worn-out synapses of old age. The track titles offer signposts through Kirby’s labyrinth of faulty remembrances, pointing their way towards the peculiarities dictating the manner by which the mind stores and attempts to recover information: »Lacunar Amnesia« references a condition that leaves a specific event absent from the sufferer’s memory, and Kirby’s music sounds suitably stuck on a prelude to something that never happens.

Bathed in gusts of crackle, the piece gets stuck on what might be a start of something, but we never get to hear what. Many of the pieces refer to different ways the memory might find itself caught in a holding pattern: »Von Restorff Effect«, »Rosy Retrospection«, and the title track itself are all suggestive of reliving a single event or point in time – here, both music and memory are united by the notion of »glitch«, whereby a fault or fissure causes the replaying of the same pocket of data over and over again, but what distinguishes Kirby from so many other musicians operating within the field of loops and broken recordings is the unnerving, ghostly sentimentality that courses through this process. »Long Term (remote)« is particularly explicit in its reaching back through the first half of the 20th century, exhuming snatches of music hall romance, now warped into a sinister new form by the erosions of time. It’s like watching John Carpenter’s »The Fog« only to find that instead of vengeful phantoms emerging from the mist, it’s The Glenn Miller Band. Which is infinitely more disturbing. More eerie still is the detachment from authorship endemic to this sound – at no point do you really sense the presence of a composer’s hand; this album just... is. A remarkable thing that only seems to have improved with age (which is either highly appropriate or highly inappropriate, I can’t quite decide which), »Persistent Repetition of Phrases« is an even better fit on vinyl, a medium which itself wears and fades just as the memory does.

In spring 2025, Abul Mogard and Rafael Anton Irisarri created the source material for their second album, Where Light Pauses in the Silence of the Sun, during a three-day residency at Morphine Raum in Berlin. Functioning as both recording studio and performance venue, the space has no stage, with the audience gathered around the performers. Working within an open framework, the duo reshaped the music each evening while recording the performances live to multitrack. Rotary speakers, modular synthesizers and bowed guitar formed the core of their sonic language, captured through a 1970s mixing console and microphones placed around the room.

Back in Mogard’s studio in Rome, the material was further crafted as motifs were stretched, fragments isolated, and tempos dissolved. Irisarri recorded additional guitar textures and treatments in New York, while passages recorded by Martina Bertoni and Andrea Burelli in Berlin reinforced the harmonic centres and brought breath, refinement and a new sensibility to their compositions. The process continued as Mogard’s layering and subtraction reassembled everyone’s parts into the final arrangement.

The album opens with “In the Eastern Wild,” building from a sparse outline into a monumental formation of low-frequency weight, its internal motion shaped by the rotating Leslie speaker. “Over the Domes” widens into a broader acoustic field, where sustained modular tones meet waves of softly plucked guitar. The music then turns inward with “A Blue Descent,” centred on Bertoni’s cello, whose growling timbre introduces a melancholic depth.

At the album’s centre, “In a Quiet Radiance” unfolds around a slow guitar ostinato, its luminous stillness opening into a more expansive and reflective state. Across its ten-minute span, Burelli’s violin lines and Bertoni’s lower cello phrases gradually surface, weaving through the harmonic field. Mogard brings Burelli’s processed voice to the fore, its emotive, operatic presence becoming one of the record’s pivotal moments. “Of Blessed Ages” suspends the sonic flow, shifting between parallel major and minor chords as lingering, slowly decaying melodies shape the music’s internal drift. The closing “Among Shadows” settles into a darker resonance as layered textures recede.

Mogard and Irisarri’s shared language balances restraint and maximalism. UK magazine Crack describes the music as “a tidal wave held in suspension,” while Dutch newspaper de Volkskrant writes, “What a colossal sound, and how this music strikes at the emotions.” Reflecting on the residency sessions, Irisarri recalls: “At moments I genuinely couldn’t tell if a sound was coming from me or from Abul. It stopped feeling like two people making decisions and began to feel like we were inside a system moving on its own."

Marja de Sanctis’ cover artwork revisits the vessel sculpture from the duo’s first album, Impossibly Distant, Impossibly Close. There it appeared as raw, unfired clay. Here it has been fired in the kiln and finished with a glaze. Light gathers on its polished surface and spills into the surrounding space. As she explains, “I wanted to convey the idea of continuity within the duo, and the vessel became a kind of container for that idea. However, their music felt different this time, and with the collaboration of Martina and Andrea, I felt it should have a sleeker, softer, more glamorous look, very distant from the first raw appearance.” The transformation of the vessel from raw clay to fired form suggests a passage from immediacy toward permanence, mirroring the music’s gradual expansion.

In spring 2025, Abul Mogard and Rafael Anton Irisarri created the source material for their second album, Where Light Pauses in the Silence of the Sun, during a three-day residency at Morphine Raum in Berlin. Functioning as both recording studio and performance venue, the space has no stage, with the audience gathered around the performers. Working within an open framework, the duo reshaped the music each evening while recording the performances live to multitrack. Rotary speakers, modular synthesizers and bowed guitar formed the core of their sonic language, captured through a 1970s mixing console and microphones placed around the room.

Back in Mogard’s studio in Rome, the material was further crafted as motifs were stretched, fragments isolated, and tempos dissolved. Irisarri recorded additional guitar textures and treatments in New York, while passages recorded by Martina Bertoni and Andrea Burelli in Berlin reinforced the harmonic centres and brought breath, refinement and a new sensibility to their compositions. The process continued as Mogard’s layering and subtraction reassembled everyone’s parts into the final arrangement.

The album opens with “In the Eastern Wild,” building from a sparse outline into a monumental formation of low-frequency weight, its internal motion shaped by the rotating Leslie speaker. “Over the Domes” widens into a broader acoustic field, where sustained modular tones meet waves of softly plucked guitar. The music then turns inward with “A Blue Descent,” centred on Bertoni’s cello, whose growling timbre introduces a melancholic depth.

At the album’s centre, “In a Quiet Radiance” unfolds around a slow guitar ostinato, its luminous stillness opening into a more expansive and reflective state. Across its ten-minute span, Burelli’s violin lines and Bertoni’s lower cello phrases gradually surface, weaving through the harmonic field. Mogard brings Burelli’s processed voice to the fore, its emotive, operatic presence becoming one of the record’s pivotal moments. “Of Blessed Ages” suspends the sonic flow, shifting between parallel major and minor chords as lingering, slowly decaying melodies shape the music’s internal drift. The closing “Among Shadows” settles into a darker resonance as layered textures recede.

Mogard and Irisarri’s shared language balances restraint and maximalism. UK magazine Crack describes the music as “a tidal wave held in suspension,” while Dutch newspaper de Volkskrant writes, “What a colossal sound, and how this music strikes at the emotions.” Reflecting on the residency sessions, Irisarri recalls: “At moments I genuinely couldn’t tell if a sound was coming from me or from Abul. It stopped feeling like two people making decisions and began to feel like we were inside a system moving on its own."

Marja de Sanctis’ cover artwork revisits the vessel sculpture from the duo’s first album, Impossibly Distant, Impossibly Close. There it appeared as raw, unfired clay. Here it has been fired in the kiln and finished with a glaze. Light gathers on its polished surface and spills into the surrounding space. As she explains, “I wanted to convey the idea of continuity within the duo, and the vessel became a kind of container for that idea. However, their music felt different this time, and with the collaboration of Martina and Andrea, I felt it should have a sleeker, softer, more glamorous look, very distant from the first raw appearance.” The transformation of the vessel from raw clay to fired form suggests a passage from immediacy toward permanence, mirroring the music’s gradual expansion.

In spring 2025, Abul Mogard and Rafael Anton Irisarri created the source material for their second album, Where Light Pauses in the Silence of the Sun, during a three-day residency at Morphine Raum in Berlin. Functioning as both recording studio and performance venue, the space has no stage, with the audience gathered around the performers. Working within an open framework, the duo reshaped the music each evening while recording the performances live to multitrack. Rotary speakers, modular synthesizers and bowed guitar formed the core of their sonic language, captured through a 1970s mixing console and microphones placed around the room.

Back in Mogard’s studio in Rome, the material was further crafted as motifs were stretched, fragments isolated, and tempos dissolved. Irisarri recorded additional guitar textures and treatments in New York, while passages recorded by Martina Bertoni and Andrea Burelli in Berlin reinforced the harmonic centres and brought breath, refinement and a new sensibility to their compositions. The process continued as Mogard’s layering and subtraction reassembled everyone’s parts into the final arrangement.

The album opens with “In the Eastern Wild,” building from a sparse outline into a monumental formation of low-frequency weight, its internal motion shaped by the rotating Leslie speaker. “Over the Domes” widens into a broader acoustic field, where sustained modular tones meet waves of softly plucked guitar. The music then turns inward with “A Blue Descent,” centred on Bertoni’s cello, whose growling timbre introduces a melancholic depth.

At the album’s centre, “In a Quiet Radiance” unfolds around a slow guitar ostinato, its luminous stillness opening into a more expansive and reflective state. Across its ten-minute span, Burelli’s violin lines and Bertoni’s lower cello phrases gradually surface, weaving through the harmonic field. Mogard brings Burelli’s processed voice to the fore, its emotive, operatic presence becoming one of the record’s pivotal moments. “Of Blessed Ages” suspends the sonic flow, shifting between parallel major and minor chords as lingering, slowly decaying melodies shape the music’s internal drift. The closing “Among Shadows” settles into a darker resonance as layered textures recede.

Mogard and Irisarri’s shared language balances restraint and maximalism. UK magazine Crack describes the music as “a tidal wave held in suspension,” while Dutch newspaper de Volkskrant writes, “What a colossal sound, and how this music strikes at the emotions.” Reflecting on the residency sessions, Irisarri recalls: “At moments I genuinely couldn’t tell if a sound was coming from me or from Abul. It stopped feeling like two people making decisions and began to feel like we were inside a system moving on its own."

Marja de Sanctis’ cover artwork revisits the vessel sculpture from the duo’s first album, Impossibly Distant, Impossibly Close. There it appeared as raw, unfired clay. Here it has been fired in the kiln and finished with a glaze. Light gathers on its polished surface and spills into the surrounding space. As she explains, “I wanted to convey the idea of continuity within the duo, and the vessel became a kind of container for that idea. However, their music felt different this time, and with the collaboration of Martina and Andrea, I felt it should have a sleeker, softer, more glamorous look, very distant from the first raw appearance.” The transformation of the vessel from raw clay to fired form suggests a passage from immediacy toward permanence, mirroring the music’s gradual expansion.

A master class of shimmering, surrealistic '67 British psychedelia that is widely considered a holy grail of the genre and currently fetches huge prices in the collectors' market. 'Baby Your Phrasing is Bad' boldly rides the surging psychedelic wave that was about to crest in London that summer with swirling fuzz guitar, a spiraling solo, and a hazy, spaced-out vocal.First-ever legit reissue. Caleb Quaye only released one single in the sixties under his own name, but what a record it is! Released on Philips in June 1967, 'Baby Your Phrasing is Bad' boldly rides the surging psychedelic wave that was about to crest in London that summer with swirling fuzz guitar, a spiraling solo, and a hazy, spaced-out vocal. On the other side, 'A Woman of Distinction' is only fractionally less freaky with treated vocals and a short but gracefully-executed guitar solo. Contrary to hearsay, rumors and guesswork, it can be confirmed that Elton John did not play on the session. However, shortly afterwards, this same core lineup, with Caleb producing, recorded an album with Elton, "Regimental Sgt Zippo", a superb psychedelic pop work that remained unreleased until 2021.

Danish quintet David Miilmann Group return with You Belong, their third album and a vibrant, uplifting statement built around guitarist David Miilmann"s distinctive slide guitar voice. Rooted in soul and blues but shaped within a genre-defying jazz context, the band brings a life-affirming energy to music that moves between groove, melody, and open improvisation with ease. Set for release on April Records on June 12th, 2026, You Belong centres on Miilmann"s approach to the guitar, drawing on the phrasing of singers like Curtis Mayfield, Freddie King and Aretha Franklin. His slide playing - developed as a way of emulating the human voice - sits at the core of the group"s sound, cutting through a warm, rhythmically grounded backdrop that blends jazz, rock, and Brazilian influences. At its core, the album captures a working band in motion. The five musicians move fluidly between composed material and looser, more exploratory sections, guided by close listening and a shared sense of direction. That chemistry comes into focus on "It"s Happening Again," a groove-led track steeped in a warm, 1970s-inspired production style. Built on a relaxed but propulsive feel, it captures the simple joy of time spent with close friends - familiar, unforced, and full of possibility. "The Day After" offers a more spacious counterpoint. Written as a reflection on those rare, quiet mornings following a meaningful moment - a concert, a celebration - it unfolds with a sense of ease and openness, led by Miilmann"s melodic slide guitar and supported by a restrained, attentive rhythm section. The band"s take on "My Favorite Things" reshapes the well-known material through their own ensemble sound, acknowledging the influence of John Coltrane while carving out a more textural, guitar-led approach. The album"s title, You Belong, points to the group"s broader outlook: an inclusive, community-driven approach to making music. That idea runs through both the compositions and the band"s dynamic - less about spotlighting individuals, more about building a collective sound. Since their debut Waiting for Myself (2021), David Miilmann Group have carved out a space with their emotionally direct, genre-fluid approach - earning two DMA Blues nominations, reaching the finals of the Jazz Competition, and receiving regular airplay on P8 Jazz. With You Belong, they refine that approach into something more defined: a warm, groove-driven sound shaped by song, feel, and the unmistakable voice of Miilmann"s slide guitar.

Limited edition Candy Apple Red 7inch vinyl. DJ Because (Sushi Breaks, Dungeons & Krakens & Toxic Hamster Scratchz) teams up with UK producer Imperial to bring you another themed release. Lock in photon torpedoes - packed with fresh retro space samples to fight all your galactic scratch battles and epic beats to explore the universe with. Includes 8 skip proof phrases plus lots of extra scratch friendly samples, beats & breaks!

With Agenda EP, Tom Carruthers closes a landmark trilogy on Skylax Records, following Neutralise EP and Deepline. Three records. Fifteen tracks. One coherent vision of machine-driven house music stripped to its raw, functional core. This final chapter dives deeper into direct, club-focused energy, where groove, repetition and tension do the talking. Agenda is less reflective, more physical — built for movement, sweat, and long transitions in dark rooms. Opening track “Chrome” sets the tone: sharp drum programming, metallic pressure, and looping synth phrases that lock the body into motion. “Agenda (Raw Mix)” follows with a tougher, stripped-down approach — no excess, just pure rhythmic insistence rooted in early Chicago jack and warehouse discipline. “Beat Down” pushes further into machine funk territory, where relentless patterns and rugged textures meet in hypnotic repetition. On the flip, “Fade Away” brings a deeper, moodier tension — a late-night track where subtle emotion seeps through minimal structures. Closing cut “What You Want” is classic Carruthers: jacking drums, understated melody, and a groove that feels timeless rather than retro. As with the previous releases, the visual identity is handled by H5, whose modernist, reduced artwork mirrors the sonic philosophy: clarity, impact, and purpose. Agenda EP completes the Skylax trilogy as a statement of intent — not revivalism, not nostalgia, but dance music reduced to its essential elements.

Ryo Fukui, who passed away in 2016 after releasing only five albums, recorded this fourth work in 1999. Featuring bassist Lyle Atkinson and drummer Leroy Williams—the longtime rhythm section of Barry Harris this New York-recorded album captures the full appeal of Fukui as a bebop pianist. Centered around standards, the track selection, structure, and of course the performances all radiate intent and vitality. His assured and weighty touch, the firm yet elastic swing, and the emotion and lyricism that permeate his dynamic phrasing everything here conveys Fukui’s breath, will, and presence in vivid form. The re-performance of his signature piece “Mellow Dream” is also a welcome highlight.

The masterpiece dance anthem that set 1990s Japan ablaze is finally available on vinyl!

Still shining as a J-POP dance classic, the dance & vocal group ZOO's signature song “Choo Choo TRAIN” is finally released on 7-inch vinyl. A track that swept Japan's club scene with its lighthearted beat, uplifting synth phrases, and an ear-catching chorus. Long-beloved classics from across Japan, now on vinyl!

In 1979, the Soviet label Melodiya released a record that immediately stood apart from most Soviet jazz of its time and perhaps for that very reason never became widely known. Oriental Suite by Oleg Gotskosik Quintet is a rare example of jazz, Eastern musical tradition, and compositional thinking coming together not as an exotic stylization but as a fully formed artistic statement.

This is not “Oriental colour” used as decoration, nor folklore treated as an ornament. Oriental Suite grows from within another musical tradition, with its monody, modal logic, slow unfolding of form, and focus on inner states rather than outward effect. The music is calm and concentrated. It does not try to impress, but gradually draws the listener into its own space.
Oleg Gotskozik was born in Tashkent in 1951, a city where Eastern music was part of everyday life rather than something distant or exotic. That may explain why his engagement with traditional material sounds so natural. He does not quote or stylize; he thinks in the same musical categories. By temperament, he was closer to a composer than to a jazz musician in the conventional sense. For him, jazz was not a style but a way of working with form and improvisation.There is no standard “theme and solos” logic in Oriental Suite. Improvisation is woven into the fabric of the music itself and unfolds in the same way as in oral traditions, gradually, with rising tension and a clear sense of arrival. Individual sections refer to traditional Uzbek genres such as lullabies, lyrical songs, and funeral laments, but these are not genre sketches. They are states of being. The music unfolds slowly, avoiding familiar harmonic drama and relying instead on modal scales and subtle internal movement.

A special role is played by trumpeter Yuri Parfyonov. His approach, with delayed vibrato, micro-glissandi, and melismatic phrasing, sounded unexpected at the end of the 1970s and still feels remarkably fresh today. This is not expressive jazz virtuosity but a focused, almost meditative voice, where improvisation becomes a form of inner speech.
It is also important to note that the original recording was not without technical flaws. Like many Soviet jazz releases of the time, Oriental Suite was captured under far from ideal conditions, and the master contained audible imperfections that were never part of the music itself. For this edition, the restoration was approached with great care and respect, working through the recording moment by moment to remove unwanted artifacts while preserving the character and atmosphere of the original. The aim was simple: to make sure nothing stands in the way of fully experiencing the music.

In the early 1980s, Oleg Gotskozik left the Soviet Union, and after that his name virtually disappeared from Soviet music journalism and literature. There were no official bans or public statements. He was simply no longer mentioned. Oriental Suite continued to exist on its own, without an author and without context. The record never entered the canon, received no continuation, and was never officially reissued. It seemed to fall out of time.
The original vinyl pressing was released in a run of around 32,000 copies, but most of them remained within the republic and never reached wide circulation. Today, original copies are hard to find and have long become objects of interest for collectors. There have been no official reissues, only attempts that never went beyond test pressings.
Today, Oriental Suite sounds surprisingly contemporary. It is music that can be described as deep ethno-jazz and even, in a certain sense, spiritual jazz. There is no exoticism here, no decorative borrowing, only a complete immersion in another musical way of thinking. It does not require explanations and does not need to be justified by its time.
This is not a forgotten curiosity revived for collectors’ sake. It is music that simply waited for the moment when it could be heard without ideological filters or genre expectations. Now it is returning quietly, without noise or hype, but with the clear sense that this is not an artifact of an era, but a living and genuinely rare artistic statement.

The album is a powerful reaffirmation of human creativity: "My music has always been about connection, bringing enduring old stories into conversation with contemporary life," Portman says. "This album is a collective, entirely human-made effort, and it's richer because of it." Renowned for her luminous songwriting and distinctive voice in contemporary folk, Portman steps into bold new territory with an album that charts a heroine's midlife journey through dark woods in search of wonder. Drawing on ballads and folktales, Dominion of Spells explores themes of burnout, misogyny, motherhood, miscarriage and personal transformation, weaving lived experience with mythic imagery and traditional folk narratives. The title track, Dominion of Spells , reclaims a 17th- century phrase once used to diagnose women as "disordered", drawing on the myth of the wandering womb and the long history of medical misogyny. Portman transforms these ideas into a vision of a freer, fairer realm where women's bodies are understood rather than feared. The first single, Turn Again , is a tender meditation on parenthood, inspired by her young son's imaginative shapeshifting games and echoing the Tam Lin ballad, where steadfast love breaks a powerful spell. Elsewhere, the album explores women's right to move safely after dark, genderswapped retellings of heroic quests, miscarriage, phone addiction and the restorative power of creative practice.

First time reissue of JP / US free jazz rarity.

The 1970s were Marion Brown’s most searching decade, a period during which he sought to move beyond the free jazz of the previous era and find more personal approaches to structuring improvisation and composition. After leaving New York for Europe in 1967, Brown began reshaping his music into what he described as “a more deliberate kind of music that had more structure to it,” pacing it so that moods and modes could develop over time. Albums such as In Sommerhausen, Afternoon of a Georgia Faun, Geechee Recollections, and Sweet Earth Flying trace this evolution: rhythmic structures moved to the foreground, harmony receded, and composition became a matter of orchestrating interlocking rhythmic parts as one would polyphonic lines.

Released in 1976, Awofofora is an overlooked but crucial entry in that sequence. At the time, its use of funk and reggae beats, electric guitars, and grooves drawn from contemporary Black popular music led some to misread it as a jazz-rock detour. In retrospect, it is entirely consistent with Brown’s methodology. As he admired in the Art Ensemble of Chicago, the stimulus comes from within the community. Here Brown filters Afro-Caribbean rhythms and funk through his own sensibility, abstracting their structural qualities rather than adopting surface style.

“La Placita,” making its first recorded appearance, layers distinct rhythmic phrases in a manner reminiscent of African drum ensembles, over which Brown and trumpeter Ambrose Jackson spin extended improvisations. The standard “Flamingo” is reshaped through diasporic rhythm and lyrical soloing, while “Pepi’s Tempo” and “Mangoes” harness crisp funk and reggae grooves to generate what Brown called a “manifestation of community” through collective improvisation. Even the overdubbed solo feature “And Then They Danced” reflects his structural thinking, ingeniously re-voicing a duet composition for two alto saxophones performed by one player.

This was the only recording by a short-lived band that briefly polarized audiences during festival appearances in 1976. Yet Brown consistently sought unity across change: different sounds, same principles — rhythm as structure, melody as architecture, collective improvisation, and above all, the primacy of tone. Awofofora stands not as a departure, but as a vivid synthesis of the elements he had been refining since the late 1960s, its grooves and golden alto lines conveying a sound drawn, in his words, “from life and from the world of experience.”

Following their debut 7" on Les Disques Lexi (2021), Musica Mosaica expand their unpredictable geometry. In their 'laboratorium dilettanti' notes and musical phrases weave a mind boggling tapestry, in which sounds often find themselves in awkward situations. "Clock In, Clock Out" refers to time as a key element both in musical composition and in the organisation of labour. New causes, new consequences.

A defining transmission in the history of Skylax Records. Originally released across different moments of the Skylax catalogue, these recordings are now assembled as the final chapter of the Skylax House Explosion series — a project exploring the architecture, memory and survival mechanisms embedded within house music culture. The record opens with Move D’s “Outer Rim 64”, originally released in 2018 as part of the Skylax House Explosion narrative. Suspended between motion and distance, the track establishes the conceptual perimeter of this final chapter — a space where rhythm no longer functions only as propulsion, but as orientation. Here the listener stands at the outer edge of the dancefloor’s architecture, where structure persists even as its original social conditions begin to disappear. The sequence continues with Hardrock Striker’s “Motorik Life (DJ Sprinkles Dub)”, originally released in 2011. Rather than operating as a conventional remix, the Dub reinforces the motorik continuum of the original composition, transforming repetition into endurance. DJ Sprinkles preserves the infrastructural skeleton of the dancefloor — its capacity to sustain bodies through duration alone, without narrative resolution or emotional release. The record culminates with “Motorik Life (DJ Sprinkles Mountain Of Despair Remix)”, one of the most politically explicit works ever associated with Skylax Records. Through the relentless repetition of the phrase “mountain of despair,” Terre Thaemlitz dismantles the traditional function of dance music, transforming remix culture into structural critique. Referencing Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous metaphor, the remix removes the promise of redemption and leaves only the architecture of struggle. The dancefloor is no longer presented as escape, but as a temporary condition of survival. Together these recordings reveal house music’s true function: not to resolve despair, but to create temporary conditions in which bodies can continue to exist despite it.

AFTER THE DANCEFLOOR

you cannot preserve a dancefloor
by archiving its sound
because the dancefloor was never sound

it was bodies
finding temporary protection
inside systems designed to erase them

house music was never a genre
it was a survival strategy

when the lights disappeared
the structures remained
and so did we

Guided By Voices’ last album Thick Rich And Delicious (October 2025) was lauded by NPR’s All Things Considered and picked #1 on Magnet Magazine’s Best Albums Of 2025. The single “We Outlast Them All” from this latest, Crawlspace Of The Pantheon, is an anthemic victory lap on album #44 from the indie rock stalwarts. Robert Pollard told Rolling Stone: “ ‘We Outlast Them All’ could be our ‘We Are The Champions’ but it’s not necessarily about us.

It’s about anyone who perseveres over a long period of time.” On Crawlspace Of The Pantheon: “I worked much more diligently on this set of lyrics. I chiseled away at lines and sections and phrasings...I wanted them to have an overall emotionally conceptual feel. At times it feels somewhat autobiographical.” Guided By Voices will not be on tour in 2026. Pollard recently told Magnet: “Why would we stop playing live and make these kinds of records? I don’t know. We do what we wanna do.” “Pollard is the greatest rock lyricist of all time.” —Dennis Cooper

Maybe it was inevitable that Vilhelm Bromander and Fredrik Rasten would find each other. A symbiotic musical alliance of suggestive combinatory magic that stretches back to the interstitial two day space that separates their dates of birth and manifests here as the movement between ‘perfect’ or ‘just’ intonation and the ragged, psychoactive energy of the slippages from and towards that togetherness that render otherwise simple patterns or generally understood repetitions as wildly other and alive.

Astral Twins shares ‘twin’ works by each composer. The patiently unfolding real time retuning of Fredrik Rasten’s guitars on the a-side’s Sojourns and Vilhelm Bromander’s quickened steps and spry looping melodies on the flip’s Partially Dancing.

Both artists have history of going deep into the aesthetic and acoustic impact of intonation (how you think about what is ‘in tune’). Where their first LP (...for some reason that escapes us, 2019, Differ Records) shared a gorgeous set of sustained tone colour fields, this time they lean more explicitly into the folk music traditions of Scandinavia and further afield, whilst echoing the zoned minimalist atmosphere of Arthur Russell’s classic Instrumentals.

Recorded up close and in real time at Fylkingen’s soon-to-be-abandoned temporary location in Stockholm’s southern suburb of Bredäng, Astral Twins sings with the possibility that one plus one can equal more than two.

Fredrik Rasten:
 Sojourns explores the live retuning of guitar and double bass in a sequence of just intonation harmonies. A guitar ostinato runs throughout the piece where the retuning becomes an integral part of the composition. The slow pace reveals every detail in the transition from one harmonic arpeggio to another — how interfering waves emerge and disappear as the tonal interactions settle in electric clarity. The double bass shadows the guitar's process and comments with occasional pizzicato tones and register jumps, at times providing a low foundation for the sound and sometimes soaring together with the guitar. This is music that is deeply listening; experimental and at the same time humbly inviting many kinds of being with sound.

Vilhelm Bromander: 
As the title suggests, this song has a partially dancing character. The title also has a double meaning with reference to the partials and harmonics that dance together. The basic idea was to write music in just intonation that instead of being drone-based is reminiscent of a lightly dancing folk music, where the joyous feeling of just being in the music — “musicking" — is allowed to lead the way.

The double bass plays repeated overtone double stops in an open harmonic progression with subtle modulations that is inspired in equal parts by Steve Lacy's persistent repetition of phrases as east-asian khaen music. The guitars and mandolin have a freer role, with plucked retuned strings that enhance the bass's modulations and provide forward movement. The music invites to both melodic and spectral listening, suddenly halting so that other focal points can reveal themselves. For example, a chord sequence suddenly transitions to a more spectral part where Fredrik is playing a bowed guitar with a chain, several plucking guitars, voices, and pitch pipes. I wanted to make something ‘orchestral’ with just two people and no overdubs: a dance of overtones and open resonant strings, where we seamlessly take turns standing in the foreground.

A legendary chapter of hard rock history comes to a thunderous conclusion with The Final Ride, the ultimate live release from Lynch Mob, capturing the band’s final run on stage with uncompromising power, precision and attitude. Available on CD/DVD, Blu-ray and LP, The Final Ride delivers a fully immersive live experience, meticulously recorded, mixed and mastered by Chuck Alkazian at Pearl Sound Studios, ensuring outstanding sonic clarity while preserving the raw intensity and immediacy of a true Lynch Mob performance. The setlist is a powerful career-spanning journey, combining cornerstone Lynch Mob classics with three iconic Dokken-era songs that remain inseparable from George Lynch’s legacy. Explosive performances of “Lightning Strikes Again,” “It’s Not Love,” and “Paris Is Burning” ignite the crowd and serve as a direct bridge between past and present, while Lynch Mob anthems such as “River of Love,” “No Good,” “Hell Child,” “Let the Music Be Your Master,” “Street Fighting Man,” and the timeless closer “Wicked Sensation” showcase the band at full force. At the heart of The Final Ride stands George Lynch, whose unmistakable guitar tone, phrasing and musical authority continue to define generations of hard rock and metal guitarists. He is backed by a formidable lineup featuring Gabriel Colon (vocals), Jaron Gulino (bass) and Jimmy D’Anda (drums), delivering a tight, aggressive and emotionally charged performance worthy of the band’s legacy. The Final Ride is more than a live album—it is a farewell, a celebration and a definitive statement. Captured with premium production values and released across multiple physical formats, it stands as an essential document for fans, collectors and anyone who has followed the enduring impact of George Lynch and Lynch Mob on hard rock history. The final curtain falls—but the fire still burns.

Josh Mason’s new collection, "Wave Salt +7," emerges from an oblique origin. Unearthed from a dormant hard drive, it documents a set of work sessions only partially recoverable, their original continuity and intent fractured by time and technical failure. What remains is a constellation of mercurial gestures that proves, against all odds, to be entirely consonant with Mason’s ongoing musical concerns.

In a sense, the very condition of partiality proves generative, with elision operating on multiple levels - structural, sonic, and archival - shaping both the music itself and the circumstances of its (re)appearance. Phrases surface only to be truncated or displaced, hovering at the edge of resolution, and transitions are implied rather than fully enacted. Absence functions not as a deficit, but as an important compositional resource.

Central to the album’s sound is a distinctive use of vocoding. Deployed not to simulate vocal presence but as a tool for tonal sculpting, it yields a shifting lattice of smeared harmonics, angular melody, and attenuated noise. Sounds are pressed through one another, their edges softened, shifted, or selectively erased, producing surfaces simultaneously articulated and porous. Rather than reconstructing a lost whole, the album posits a mode of listening attuned to gaps, interruptions, and unstable forms. Even so, in keeping with Mason’s broader practice, this music remains grounded in melodic logic and a distinctly human scale, ensuring that its fragmentary structures register not solely as experiments, but as expressions of proximity and feeling.

Season 2 formed in late 2024, bringing together seasoned Melbourne musicians with previous and current projects including Parsnip, The Stroppies and Phil and the Tiles. The five piece, comprising Carolyn Hawkins, Claudia Serfaty, Charlotte Zarb, Freya McLeod and Matt Powell, quickly set to work writing winsome, DIY, shimmer-pop hits that careen through your mind in a gratifying dizzy rush.

With a clear collective vision and little time to waste, Season 2 spent 2025 writing and recording, appearing live only a handful of times. Finally, this April, the band are primed for their debut release, a full-length album entitled 'Power of Now'. ‘Power of Now ‘is a cerebral explosion of melody, hooks, drones and rhythm. In the vein of The Feelies, The Vaselines and The Clean, Season 2 have whipped up a sonic whirlwind. It's a giddy thrill of snappy slap, catchy gang vocals and crystalline guitar refrains.

'Abundance of Power' is a bittersweet bop of ponderous bass, crisp chord flashes and grounded vocals that dwell on slighted futures and bored realities. 'Becomes a Dream' is a delirious race of scrappy strumming and flying phrases that unsettle as much as they pinball endorphins - "pour the ink into the sand, watch the dog it bites the hand". "Tell me something, elbows on the table, I'll tell you nothing, leave you tugging at the cable" they sing on the peppy future single 'Tugging at the Cable', capturing a certain innocent, wide-eyed expressiveness. Season 2 do sparky well, their songs are instant rewards, tunnelling into your subconscious and testing the dance floor. They keep everything moving, the beat and the conversation. Season 2 sound barely controlled and all the better for it, you have no choice but to be swept up.

'Power of Now' was recorded by Alex Macfarlane (The Green Child, Chateau) and mastered by Mikey Young. It will be released digitally and on LP (black vinyl) on April 24th, internationally via Upset The Rhythm and locally in Australia by Spoilsport Records.

“Come On In My Kitchen” remains one of Johnson’s most covered and celebrated songs. Said to draw inspiration from the Mississippi Sheiks’ hit “Sitting On
Top Of The World,” the song’s repeating guitar phrases create an unmistakable sense of melancholy and depth.

“They’re Red Hot,” on the other hand, stands out as one of Johnson’s most unusual recordings, performed in a lively hokum style. Featuring brisk, jive-inflected
guitar and Johnson’s rapid-fire vocal delivery, the track has even been described as a possible precursor to early rap music.

Shaped from fragile, emotionally charged piano motifs that distort, disappear and transform into dense, cinematic textures, 'CANALS' is a debut that's finely matured, the result of years of friendship and growth. Italian artist Vanja Sturno and Montréal-based Belgian-Spanish composer Pablo Geeraert (aka Sanea Ima) have worked together extensively on various projects up until now, but 'CANALS' is their first official release as a duo. Having both studied music academically, the pair were eager to work more intuitively, so applied their well-honed set of skills to sound that, instead of fitting into a conceptual box, reflected more personal experiences.

Back in 2023, Geeraert travelled to Rome to support his friend at a difficult time and, during the trip, received some bad news of his own. The complicated feelings unconsciously surged through a series of delicate Ryuichi Sakamoto-inspired piano improvisations and a new project began to coalesce. They didn't realize it at the time, but once the record was finished, Sturno and Geeraert began to understand that the entire process had been a form a joint catharsis - a release of pressure. They were able to function so effortlessly and swiftly because they had already provided the space for each other to resonate emotionally and the music flowed from that point.

So the album's title, while remaining ambiguous, suggests its formation: a sequence of eight interconnected channels that feed a creative whole. On the first segment, Sturno and Geeraert's initial recordings can be perceived most nakedly, the melancholy, Satie-like phrases floating peacefully for a moment before the tranquility is agitated by stormy distortions and swelled into thick waves of harmony. The piano provides the record with its emotional anchor, offering focus and clarity as multi-dimensional noise wells up around it before inevitably dissipating, leaving gentle, unadorned sounds once again.

And the familiar instrument is reshaped into a wheezing artificial organ on the animated 'CANALS III', punctuated by percussive, tape-warped pitch fluctuations that seem to bite into its very essence. Gauzy acoustic granulations snowball into a powerful, bass-heavy crescendo on the fourth part, setting the tenor for the album's second half. But after the crushing 'CANALS VI', possibly Sturno and Geeraert's heaviest track, a brief tremolo-heavy vignette that ripples through experimental rock and ambient music's braided history, the duo clear the air with a jazzy diversion, introducing soft woodwind blasts as a palate cleanser before an epic, widescreen finale.

It's an album that's best absorbed as a whole, a vortex of ritualistic, rhythmic repetitions that Sturno and Geeraert appropriately refer to as "spiral listening".

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.

Carlos Dafé (born October 25, 1947) is a singer and songwriter from Rio de Janeiro, recognised as one of the iconic voices of the Brazilian samba-soul era. Born into a family of musicians and trained at the conservatory, he rose to prominence in the 1970s alongside Tim Maia, Cassiano, and Hyldon, shaping the sound of Rio Noir with his warm baritone voice and soulful phrasing. His 1977 album, Pra Que Vou Recordar, became a cult classic among collectors and DJs worldwide, earning him the title of "Prince of Brazilian Soul." Still active today, Carlos Dafé remains an essential reference for artists exploring the boundaries between samba, soul, and MPB (Brazilian Popular Music). Released in 1977, Pra Que Vou Recordar reveals Carlos Dafé at the peak of his art, blending samba-soul, MPB, and the warm groove of the 1970s Rio de Janeiro scene. Surrounded by some of the city's finest musicians, Dafé showcases his baritone voice in deeply melodic arrangements and a series of songs that have become fan favourites. An album imbued with soul and elegance. The sound of BrazilianBlack music at its most sincere and timeless.

To celebrate the 20-year anniversary of our label Jamaican Recordings and to mark the sad one year passing of the musical maestro reggae producer Bunny `Striker’ Lee, we have pulled together a brand new collection of some great Bunny Lee rhythms.

Our label started way back with initial meetings with Bunny Lee and a promise to keep his music available, out on the streets. He will be sorely missed but will live on through his extraordinary musical legacy and we hope to add to this by including this release to the stable of an unbeatable catalogue.

Legendary record producer Bunny `Striker’ Lee’s vast selection of rhythms were ever present at any Sound Clash or Dance worth talking about in the early to mid-1970’s.
Where the version found on the b-side of a single or special dub cut on acetates, would be played to win over the people and conquer the dance. Bunny Lee was the undisputed rhythm master and on this special release he is also the MC telling the crowd how it is and that any rival sound system should watch out as he has the rhythms that can reign supreme. The band cutting these timeless rhythms were a group of top Jamaican musicians Bunny had put together called The Aggrovators.

The Aggrovators were a group of reggae musicians that usually featured Carlton `Santa’ Davis on drums playing alongside Robbie Shakespeare on bass, with other musicians added like Earl `Chinna’ Smith on guitar and Tommy McCook and Vin Gordon and Lennox Brown added for horn arrangements. Keyboards and organ duties normally fell
to musicians Ansel Collins and Bernard ‘Touter’ Harvey. The band was named after singer Eddie Grant had repeated the phrase to Bunny Lee on one of his many trips to England, that such and such artist was giving him `Aggro’. This was a term used in England in the 1970’s by the Skinhead followers of reggae music. A term shortened
from the word `Aggrovation’, meaning trouble, fighting or making the situation worse. Bunny Lee was so taken with this term that on returning to Jamaica, not only did he name his group of musicians the `Aggrovators’ but he also named his record shop situated at 101 Orange Street `Agro Records’.

We have compiled some great tracks recorded by this fantastic group of musicians. With the added extra magic of Mr Bunny Lee calling it out as only he can on the microphone.
Yes Run Sound Boy Run the version master is here…Respect

"K8A a.k.a. Kaethe Hostetter is a New York–based violinist. composer, and bandleader, whose work grew out of eleven years living and collaborating in Ethiopia. As a founding member of Debo Band and QWANQWA, Hostetter has been performing Ethiopian music for over two decades, and her solo debut, Woradj Alle, builds on this legacy by reimagining Ethiopian songs through live-looped violin and electronics.
"The album unfolds as a hypnotic, ritual-like performance that expands the instrument into an immersive sonic landscape, that refracts Ethiopian classics through dub, psych rock, and avant improvisation. It is not fusion, but transmission - music that blurs memory, place, and time.
"This collection of musical vignettes is based on my time in Ethiopia, the place I called home for 11 years", Kaethe explains. "The phrase 'Woradj Alle' is one of the first colloquial expressions I learned upon arriving in Addis Ababa, used on public transportation, simply meaning 'let me off right around here'. In choosing this name, I invite you to join me on the rickety minibus journey through my time in Ethiopia, and step off 'the bus' into scenarios, atmospheres, and soundscapes that describe moments I experienced, people I met, and other lasting impressions, striking and mundane."

Late Bush presents “Hoarses” on the label Vlek Records, an original repertoire in which he blends electronic music - power ambient, IDM, avant-pop - and early music, which share the same affective intensity, a taste for ornamentation and a form of sonic excess.

At the heart of this material, AI-cloned voices, both human and spectral, extend the idea that any baroque interpretation is a reconstruction of the unknown. They contrast with organic strings recorded with Echo Collective, in a temporal and radical hybridization, creating a fluid and unstable material, between memory and simulation.

One of the conceptual starting points is essential: we have no sonic trace of baroque music as it was played. Only scores remain, and sometimes contradictory indications, a sensitive archaeology, even an imaginary projection.

Everything that is played today is therefore, in fact, a reconstruction, an interpretation of a vanished material. According to this logic and to pursue this reflection, the cloned voices, transformed by AI, are not a rupture but propose a natural continuation of this chain of reinvention, of this relationship to the invisible, to the indefinite. They do not aim to replace a human voice, but rather to embody the fact that any baroque restitution is already a fiction.

The project does not seek to imitate the real, but to play with the thresholds of the plausible, of the spectral. The music then becomes a fluid material, manipulable, alterable, and the performers, musicians or machines, are its vehicles.

The strings, carried by the sensitive and expressive interpretation of Echo Collective, breathe into the project a vibrant authenticity. Their presence brings an organic and tactile dimension that contrasts with the fluid and intangible aspect of the voices and the electronics.

One of the all-time Balearic greats gets an official re-rub by friend of Balearic London, Holmes Price. Taking the charms of the classic Cool And Breezy Jazz Version- produced by Pete Waterman's in-house team at his '80s powerhouse PWL Records, and also included here in all its glory - rearranging the phrasing and adding a meatier contemporary house groove, it's the perfect update for the modern dancefloor that we hope will also introduce the timeless 'original' mix to some new ears.

Analog Tara’s Life of the Mother is a sonic meditation on the depth, expansiveness, complexity, and power that this phrase holds. This album is made from layers of generative processes and interactions with them. Analog Tara uses a Zillion sequencer and Xone mixer as system guides, and sounds of the ARP 2500, Jealous Heart, Access Virus, Oberheim OB-6, Jomox XBase, Moog DFAM, and more to create a compelling electronic narrative.

Composed, recorded + mixed by Tara Rodgers. Mastered by Piper Payne, assisted by Colby Gustafson, at Neato Mastering in Nashville, TN. Art by Jackie Milad, She Goes Ancient, mixed media, 2019.

With Dispersion, Loom & Thread return to the volatile architecture of the expanded piano trio - and quietly fracture it from within.

Daniel Klein (drums), Tobias Fröhlich (double bass) and Tom Schneider (keys, sampler) remain the sole agents on stage and in the final recording. The triangle holds. And yet, the field has expanded. For their second studio album, the trio fed their improvisations with the timbral signatures of guest saxophone and vibraphone players - not just as additional voices to be featured, but also as material to be absorbed, atomized and redistributed. The result is not augmentation but thorough refraction.

Where the debut album explored the recursive labyrinth of Schneider's live sampling of his own piano, Dispersion introduces an external grain into the feedback system. Breath and metal. Reed turbulence and struck resonance. The trio sampled extended improvisations by saxophone and vibes players: Victor Fox, Asger Nissen, Volker Heuken, and L&T's own Daniel Klein; dissected their attacks, overtones and decay curves, and integrated these fragments into the trio's internal circuitry. What emerges is a play of presences without bodies - instrumental ghosts circulating through the dense weave of rhythm and keys.

At first, one might hear the familiar relational tension: Klein's polyrhythmic elasticity interlocking with Fröhlich's tensile double bass figurations, Schneider poised at the hinge between tonal field and percussive impulse. But soon, the surface splinters - again. A vibraphone shimmer appears, yet no mallets are visible. A reed multiphonic surges through the texture, bending space between bass and drums. These events are neither quotations nor overlays; they are redistributed energies, dispersed across the trio's grammar. A digital multidimensional interplay ensues.

If the first album unfolded as a two-tiered game - live phrase and sampled reflection - Dispersion adds a further axis. The sampled materials from other improvisers are stripped of their erstwhile two-way interaction and reconstituted as malleable particles. Signifier detached from origin, resonance detached from gesture. The trio navigates a constantly shifting topology in which acoustic memory and electronic manipulation are indistinguishable.

Crucially, the album never abandons the physical urgency of three musicians reacting in real time. The additional timbral layers do not thicken the texture into opacity; rather, they introduce stark points and arrows of diffraction. Density opens into prismatic clarity. Lines splinter and regroup. What seems like a quartet or quintet collapses back into three bodies negotiating an expanded field.

Dispersion is not about addition but about distribution - of agency, of timbre, of temporal perspective. It is an album in which the trio setting becomes a site of multiplicity without surrendering its immediacy. A dissolution not only of the divide between present experience and memory, but between inside and outside, self and other.

Three musicians. Countless vectors. A music that fractures in order to cohere.

CREDITS:
Tom Schneider: piano & sampler
Tobi Fröhlich: double bass
Daniel Klein: drums & percussion

sample sources:
Victor Fox: tenor saxophone
Asger Nissen: alto saxophone
Volker Heuken: vibes
Daniel Klein: vibes

Recorded by Martin Dressler at Bauer Studios, Ludwigsburg.
Mixed & mastered by Martin Ruch.
Artwork by Viet Hoa Le.

Dj T-Kut Team Leader of Skratcher Madrid, Skratch Elementz & Tablist Lounge Spain, publishes a new volume of Skratch Practice. After the success of the previous volumes, this time it will be called Skratch Fu-Finger Practice. Side A consists of 12 seamless loops at 100 BPM and Side B consists of 12 seamless loops at 133 BPM. This vinyl is a perfect tool for battle routines, freestyle scratching, in which you will find classic original sounds, phrases, Fx sounds and much more. This Battle Breaks & Scratch Tools vinyl promises hours of practice and is focused both for DJs who are beginning and advanced DJs. This work is published on 12" and 7" vinyl in black plus a limited edition in colour oxide blood for 12" and gold for 7". The 7" vinyl sides A and B consist of 6 loops per side at 100 BPM. Artwork: Adolfo Gerrero Mastered: Le Jad Producer: Dj T-Kut I hope you enjoy it and Happy Skratching!

Chris Acker’s latest collection of songs, Famous Lunch, is in his words, a “growing pains album.” When writing the record, the New Orleans' based folk musician found himself hunting for a voice that wasn’t just an imitation of the one he’d been using on the last 30 songs he’d made. “At the same time, I worked hard to find a certain voice for myself over the previous 3 records and I didn’t want to abandon that.”

While the album finds him continuing to transcribe life’s fleeting and provocative banalities with refreshing grace, the songs on Famous Lunch are intentionally more absurd, stylizing his lyricism as both poetic and disarming simultaneously— commencing with “Sh*t Surprise”—an earworm with a vernacular that stays true to its title. Inspired by George Saunders and Sasha Pearl (and wanting to make a song that sounds like Eagles saying the word “sh*t” over and over), “Sh*t Surprise” is the most Chris Acker song possible, in that its earnestness arrives in spades and comes varnished with a one-of-a-kind, spectacular gnarliness. “We’d match our breath in the upstairs room and we’d hold together ‘til I smelled like you,” Acker sings, before nose-diving into that unforgettable chorus about stepping in a smelly, disgusting pile of sh*t.

More than anything else, Famous Lunch finds Chris Acker at his most sentimental and grateful, as he sings about Bunn coffee machines, gas pumps smelling like “the underside of a fingernail” in August, “10-inching” bread, stealing country club lawn-mower motors, father-son fables, impatient buffet lines, and a broom that “hasn’t been used since the last time I used it.” Acker’s eye for detail remains, and his lexicon includes phrasings that spin out like a hypnotic wash cycle. Seeing the world through his eyes, language remains something worth falling into—growing pains and all.

Here is the record you have been waiting for! The first ever scratch vinyl by DMC world triple champion Skillz, entitled You Know My Skillz.
The record includes original sounds, phrases, sounds Fx and much more. To celebrate this release like it should be done, the famous artist Grems did the artwork of this beautiful yellow clear record. Turntablists, switch on your turntables!

The first resonant space Zosha Warpeha played in was the Emanuel Vigeland Museum in Oslo, Norway. Built as a mausoleum, its walls reach up into a gradual archway, creating an environment where sound expands and reverberates for twelve seconds before decaying into silence. Warpeha was greeted only by dim lights when she entered, and it wasn’t until she had spent several minutes listening that she was able to make out the frescoes that covered every inch of the room: graphic depictions of the cycle of life from conception through death. As the sound of her Hardanger d’amore encountered the walls and these slowly emerging scenes, they obscured its point of origin in both time and space, augmenting its own life cycle. The experience sat in the back of her mind over the next several years as she developed her own patient style of composition and performance, one that comes into full bloom on her new album I grow accustomed to the dark.

When Warpeha was selected as an artist in residence at Brooklyn’s ISSUE Project Room in 2025, she saw it as an opportunity to more intentionally explore how her music might fill a room with ample natural reverb. I grow accustomed to the dark documents two single-take solo performances for Hardanger d’amore and voice at IPR, with both pieces composed in a unique tuning system developed to interact with the space itself. Listeners can trace resonance from the contact of the bow on gut strings into the body of the instrument, its five sympathetic strings offering another layer of refraction, before the sound is thrown about the cavity of the room. The echoes emerge like a photographic double exposure, or wisps of smoke that linger in the air, creating ghostly harmonic convergences that blur the line between what is there and not-there. Sound begins to act like light, a synesthetic alchemy that transforms drones into beams and ornamental trills into flickers.

Both side-long compositions, “filament” and “visual purple,” exemplify a duality that animates Warpeha’s music: an expressive, individualistic style that draws on extensive knowledge of her instrument’s history in folk traditions, and an austere, devotional quality maintained by focus and precision. Though very different in character and structure, both pieces evolve slowly through numerous repetitive phrases, passages of stillness, and bursts of intensity. “filament” opens with a cycle of delicate melodic fragments played and sung around a drone before blossoming into an outpouring of swooping arpeggios, harmonics flying from the strings like sparks off a bonfire. The disorienting pulsation of harmonic beating forms the core of “visual purple,” the close-tone dissonance building to a swarm of open strings ringing boldly throughout the space. After the knotty tones reach their climax, the piece collapses into studied quietude, hushed, but without any drop in intensity.

When Warpeha first visited the Vigeland Museum in 2019, she was in Oslo to deepen her relationship to the Hardanger fiddle through the study of Norwegian traditional music, which is primarily passed down aurally. The experience of learning songs by ear, not only internalizing the tune but also absorbing the techniques and tonalities by listening, was a crucial step in her development as a composer. The years since have seen her sharpen those skills as a prolific member of the New York avant-garde and improvised music communities. Warpeha’s music encourages listeners to join her in this journey, to listen closely with each repeated phrase and through each dramatic shift. Like the frescoes on Vigeland’s walls, with time and intention, the depth of I grow accustomed to the dark comes on like a revelation.

Strut Records presents a fresh look at Oblivion Express, the 1971 album that marked Brian Auger’s shift into a new musical frontier. After years spent shaping the sound of British jazz-soul with the Trinity, Auger stepped into the new decade with a leaner, electrified ensemble and a renewed sense of purpose. This record captures the moment that transformation took shape.

Oblivion Express introduced a sound that was distinctly Auger’s own. Rather than echoing the fusion emerging in the United States, Auger developed a language rooted in the UK’s jazz underground, culminating in a spaced out jazz- rock / prog-fusion album awash with larger than life drum fills and Auger’s virtuosic organ playing. Between bassist Barry Dean and drummer Robbie McIntosh the album moves effortlessly between tight, articulated phrases and broader, improvisational passages. The trio’s interplay forms the backbone of the album and sets the tone for the sound that would define the early years of the Express.

Album opener “Dragon Song” launches with a restless drive that immediately signals Auger’s new direction. Auger chose to record this version of John McLaughlin’s piece (his friend and former bandmate in 'The Niddy Griddys') after hearing McLaughlin’s album Devotion during its mix at New York’s Record Plant Studios. Auger was blown away, recalling, “Oh my god, this is amazing. I wanted to record that myself - and I did!”. Pieces like “Total Eclipse” demonstrate the Oblivion Express’ command of dynamic contrast, and title track “Oblivion Express” explores the cinematic and compositional prowess of the group through stripped back, building moments vs. explosive melodic breakdowns. Riff-heavy “The Sword” later became known through Madlib’s usage in 2014 tracks “Yeti Movie” and “Parodies”.

In retrospect, Oblivion Express stands as a jazz leaning, prog-rock masterpiece and foundational moment in Auger’s catalogue. It captures the starting point of a new sound that is more focused, more urgent, and fully committed to the possibilities of jazz-rock at the dawn of the seventies. The album remains a vivid document of a band discovering its identity and setting the stage for the further array of influential releases that would follow.

Für Chantal Michelle ist das Komponieren von Musik wie eine Art Choreografie. In surrealen Klangwelten verbinden sich verschiedene Töne miteinander - sie bewegen sich zusammen und entfernen sich dann wieder voneinander - in einem Prozess, der sich ständig im Hörfeld wiederholt. Diese sich ständig verändernde Konstellation zeigt, wie zerbrechlich und veränderlich Wahrnehmung sein kann, ein Thema, das in Michelles Arbeit immer wieder auftaucht. Michelle, die schon früh eine Tanzausbildung absolvierte, bringt eine ausgeprägte räumliche Sensibilität in ihre Arbeit ein: ein intuitives Verständnis dafür, wie Formen koexistieren und sich durch drei Dimensionen bewegen, sowie eine Wertschätzung für die Schönheit, die sich in ungewöhnlichen Gegenüberstellungen von Materialien und Ideen findet. Seit sie 2021 ihre Solokarriere gestartet hat, hat sie internationale Anerkennung für ihre geduldigen, akribischen Aufnahmen bekommen, die oft zusammen mit Installationen, Mehrkanalkompositionen und Klangskulpturen entstehen. Innerhalb dieser subtil verwirrenden Klangarchitekturen können neue Beziehungen entstehen, neue Grenzen gezogen werden, und die Zuhörer werden zu einer Erfahrung von Zeit eingeladen, die sich der Linearität widersetzt. All Things Might Spill, Michelles erstes Album für Shelter Press, ist eine Auseinandersetzung mit anhaltender Spannung und der mysteriösen Erfahrung der Zeitdehnung in den Momenten kurz vor einem Bruch oder Zusammenbruch. Die Musik bewegt sich in einem Raum der Instabilität, und obwohl sie durchgehende Töne und definierte melodische Phrasen verwendet, herrscht eine Atmosphäre der Unentschlossenheit - wie ein Moment der Unruhe, der auf unbestimmte Zeit in der Schwebe bleibt. Ein Großteil des Albums wurde in den Wintermonaten 2024 in Berlin aufgenommen, wobei viele frühe Morgenstunden in einem Raum subtiler Unruhe verbracht wurden. Man sagt, dass Licht in die Dunkelheit eindringt, und diese Übergangszeit, die von Erwartungen geprägt ist, ist in der Musik zu hören. In ,Presence of Border" winden und verflechten sich nebulöse Stimmen, während sie über mehrdeutigen Harmonien schweben, die sich in unendliche Ferne zu erstrecken scheinen. Die beiden kurzen Stücke ,Magnetic Field I" und ,Magnetic Field II" enthalten bearbeitete Aufnahmen einer Tromba Marina, gespielt von der argentinischen Klangkünstlerin Alma Laprida. Die Gegenüberstellung von kratzigen Tönen und hauchzarten Obertönen erzeugt tamburaähnliche Drones, die den Zuhörer in einen schwer fassbaren Mittelpunkt ziehen. Später auf dem Album gibt es in ,Drying of Frozen Soils" modale Klarinettenlinien von Severin Black, die anfangs in dem nebligen, synthetischen Hintergrund fast nicht zu hören sind, bevor sie sich zu einem gespenstischen Kontrapunkt entwickeln. Eine ähnliche Struktur aus Unklarheit und Klarheit prägt den Titeltrack, in dem wortlose Gesänge eine laute Feldaufnahme durchdringen, die auf einer Fähre aufgenommen wurde, die den East River von Brooklyn nach Manhattan überquert. Das ist Musik mit einem weitläufigen Terrain und einer dichten Atmosphäre. Veränderungen sind langsam, aber dramatisch, jede Verschiebung ist sorgfältig geplant, um Gefühle des Staunens und der Vorfreude zu wecken und gleichzeitig eine erhabene Sensibilität dafür zu bewahren, wie einzelne Klänge mit der Bewegung ihrer Umgebung in Beziehung stehen. Michelle verzichtet meisterhaft auf Narrative und komponiert in drei Dimensionen. Wir bleiben mit der Mehrdeutigkeit des Wortes ,might" zurück - der anhaltenden Möglichkeit des energetischen Ansturms des Bruchs, des Ausbrechens, mal am Horizont, mal unmittelbar bevorstehend, irgendwie beides gleichzeitig.

Taupe’s latest album release, waxing | waning delivers jazz experimentalism, ‘skronk’, avant-rock, and electronics, by the Glasgow-based trio, due out via Minority Records. Across its seven tracks, waxing | waning captures Taupe’s approach – bold and boundary pushing – shaped by a fresh shift in the band’s dynamic and compositional approach.

Taupe’s waxing | waning, co-composed and realised by its players in a studio that was once an undertaker’s premises in Glasgow, is an absolutely affirmative album, an act of cultural defiance in desperate times.

Comprising Mike Parr-Burman (guitar, bass guitar, electronics), Jamie Stockbridge (alto and baritone saxophones) and Alex Palmer (drum kit, percussion), Taupe work up a storm of skronk, free jazz and harmolodic frenzy whose closest relations include Zu, Melt Banana and John Zorn. However, waxing | waning is from its opening, stuttering blasts, an exercise in seeking out and claiming new territory, finding unique and novel permutations in which jazz, rock, electronics interbreed at breakneck pace. Here is a group determined to say and do things they don’t get to say and do elsewhere in their musical lives.

‘Lemonade Tycoon’ hits the ground skronking. It’s cubistic jazz, cumulative in its impact, avoiding the white lines of the conventional freeway, bridling, bustling, coming at you from all angles – a three way conversation of astonishing rapidity, fast track, telepathic communication – everyone from James Chance to Albert Ayler coming at you at once, before morphing in to a spidery scrawl of electronics and furious percussion. ‘Anti-Bird-Spike BirdNest’s‘ title somehow sums up the sort of mental images evoked by the music – its sheer creative disobedience, as if being chased in vain, like a delivery rider evading capture by ICE agents -– shapeshifting, assuming different shades, sprouting metal quills and, in its midsection, seeming almost to swallow itself alive, before regurgitating itself in a sublime mess.

‘Interlude (Stride)’ is not exactly ambient, more a horizontal enmeshment of percussion, drones, reverberant noise, electronics, a sonic mulch. ‘allcapsallbold' reminds of early Aksak Maboul, in its playfulness, a haywire series of short phrases, subject to mechanical interference, a complex weave of irregular rhythms, increasingly eloquent sax phraseology and caustic guitars, which land heavier and heavier. ‘Pet Boss' is the new jazz equivalent of a highly evolved, mature conversation among brilliant equals, sharp, empathetic, complementary, rising to a collective, joyful noise. On the title track, electronics descend like a shower of bright particles, intensifying in their luminosity, whitening the skies, as sax and drums kick up a tempestuous, spontaneously sculpted noise that summons the ghosts of the great free jazz players, before a dark calm descends slowly. Finally, ‘Turn Push Kick’, a burgeoning chatterstorm of electronics, before the group kicks in, at angles to one another, led by abrasive guitars, reminiscent of Sunn O))) in their ritualistic concussion, riffing, digging deep amid squealing sax and piledriving percussion.

Luciano Cilio was born in Naples, Italy, in 1950. He studied music and architecture and, in the late '60s, collaborated with local artist Alan Sorrenti, American expat Shawn Phillips and various avant-garde theater groups. A virtuoso guitarist and self-taught composer, Cilio released only one LP before his untimely death at the age of 33.

Dialoghi Del Presente (1977) is a work like no other, one that sounds both ancient and ahead of its time. Produced by Renato Marengo, it features a series of muted tableaux for strings, woodwinds, guitar, chorus, piano and percussion. Cilio carves out a space where subtle, repetitive phrases yield – almost imperceptibly – to breathtaking silence.

As Jim O'Rourke writes, "These recordings sound as if they were to please no one but himself; they feel self-contained, introspective, and determined ... You can feel in the music a sort of necessity that can be rarely found, like in This Heat's debut or Nick Drake's Pink Moon."

While each subsequent "quadro" grows slightly more abstract, Cilio draws the listener into an expansive, pastoral soundscape. The closing piece, "Interludio," begins with a plaintive guitar, which is joined by haunting strings and woodwinds before concluding, poignantly, as the album began, with Cilio and his guitar, alone once more.

Superior Viaduct's edition reproduces the original sleeve design. Recommended for fans of Johann Johannsson, Talk Talk's Spirit of Eden, Arvo Part and Popol Vuh.