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

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


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


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

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


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


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

Bonding over a shared love of soul, jazz, funk and hip-hop, rapper Essa and producer / multi-instrumentalist J-Felix assembled a dream-team of top notch vocalists and players for this collective effort.



The result? Driving beats, poignant bars, soulful hooks and stirring brass.



The collective includes vocalists Avijè, Vanya Lyma, Marshall Mandiangu and Jerry Clavier, with Jack Kendon on horns and a guest appearance from your favourite drummer’s favourite drummer, Richard Spaven.



With his customary wit and masterful flow, Essa speaks on finding truth, confronting ego, eloping to the tropics and breaking generational curses. The esteemed lyricist was a key figure in UK Hip-Hop’s heralded “golden era”, alongside contemporaries and collaborators Jehst, Klashnekoff and TY, performing and recording with such luminaries as De La Soul, Wu-Tang Clan, Guru, Slum Village and Pharoahe Monch, winning praise from Nas and Mark Ronson.



J-Felix’s rich production takes in neo-soul, UK Jazz, boogie and hip-hop. His signature “J-Funk” style evokes classic samples but with all-original playing from the versatile multi- instrumentalist, who has worked with Swindle, Kojey Radical, Mahalia and Alice Russell.



The Fifth Foundation’s explosive live experience ranges from a versatile MC/DJ set-up to a full live band, with horns and multiple vocalists, mixing originals from this bold debut with inspiration from timeless soul, jazz, funk and rap classics.

Courant Zéro is the new moniker of Montréal multi-media installation artist and Kohlenstoff label co-founder Maxime Corbeil-Perron, signalling his return to purely recording-based electronic music production following several years focused on award-winning experimental film and audio-visual works. Solari channels his cinematic sensibility and decade-long exploration of sound art and electroacoustic counterpoint into deep cuts of maximalist ambient electronica. Drawing on his early background as a pianist and jazz drummer, Corbeil-Perron weaves a fabric of melodic and rhythmic vectors with his unique timbral palette, intersecting modern composition, IDM, ambient, glitch, and noise on a debut album brimming with sonic detail and emotive resonance. A fixture of Montréal's sound art community as both creator and curator since the early 2010s, Corbeil-Perron's work has ranged from "hypnotic A/V onslaught" (FACT Magazine) to the "richly nuanced acousmatic journey" of his 2018 EP Polychrome (Bandcamp Best Contemporary Classical Of The Month), with earlier electronic and techno-adjacent projects like Political Ritual, Dresden, and Le poisson d'argent garnering accolades from avant-music outlets A Closer Listen, Silence and Sound, and Musicworks, among others. Courant Zéro mobilizes this cumulative wealth of explorative sonic experience in the service of distinctive compositional architectures and electronic music pathways that fans of Floating Points, Jan Jelinek, Squarepusher, Tim Hecker, and Oneohtrix Point Never should find compelling. Title track "Solari" opens the album with a cavernous ambient glitch-drone soundscape that envelops ever-shifting timbres of modular arpeggiation, serving as introduction to the clarion call of "En deçà du réel", an homage to video artist Manon Labrecque, where layers of interweaving melodic counterpoint played on Buchla and other synths slowly build to widescreen immersive intensities; "I have this vision of Labreque vibrating eternally between two frames of magnetic VHS tape_ the slow pace of the piece also inspired by Tarkovsky's approach to scenography" says Corbeil-Perron. "Strange Aorta" is ectoplasmic ambient with wistful melody lines transmuting along a central filament, awash in shifting waves of low-end and ricocheting tonal glitch, the title a reference to "the thumping rhythm beating around the main melody_and the heavy remnants of grief related to my father's passing and a brutal confrontation with my own mortality a few years back." Tracks like "La peau des dents" and "Eroding Us" are more firmly rooted in electroacoustic and aleatory systems music, where colliding loops are shaped into unstable flows of deconstructed slippage and reconvergence. Those two pieces bookend the album's pivotal center: the gorgeous piano digitalia of "Horizon n'arrête" and the skittering electronica of 9-minute opus "Unyeldd", its loping broken beat and cascading melodic glitter like a cluster of wind-up music boxes in a dappled forest _ and for Corbeil- Perron also partly inspired by now fellow Constellation labelmates Do Make Say Think: "I spent a lot of time rediscovering their records after seeing them last September 2024 which definitely influenced this piece." Courant Zéro's debut is a vibrant sonic rebus at the junction of electronic, electroacoustic, noise and ambient music that resists easy categorisation. Solari strikes a compelling balance of unsettled disorientation and hospitable warmth, teeming with real feeling throughout. The album's cover art painting Cryptography I by Yen-Chao Lin represents this prevailing sensibility, its mazelike circuitry distinctly carved and crisply rendered, while filigreed with handmade detail and artisanal patina. Thanks for listening.

The debut album from Glasgow's Homework is fuzzy, sentimental indie rock for fans of Teenage Fanclub, Pavement, and The Vaselines. Bang Here if Stuck was recorded live at Chime Studios and arrives on vinyl September 25 vía Meritorio Records. Homework is a quintessential Glasgow band - overstimulated and a little rough round the edges, but with a pretty streak and a big, sentimental heart. They make fuzzy 90s-indebted indie rock that's bursting with ideas and sounds like home. Twin songwriters Michael Newton and Santiago Taberna trade off driving lopsided anthems and fuzzy baroque pop experiments, their voices and guitars tangled together in a way that feel less like a band and more like a shared language. Rhythm section Lizzie Quirke and Andrew Gordon provide a loping centre of gravity - steady enough to hold everything together, loose enough to let it breathe. Bang Here if Stuck, their debut album, delivers a kind of enthusiastic chaos where everything fits exactly where it should. Recorded at Chime Studios in Glasgow with Melissa Brisbane, the band tracked the core of the album live to best capture the playful spontaneity of their gigs. Drawing from the likes of Pavement, Teenage Fanclub, The Vaselines and Urusei Yatsura, it offers a familiar sound that's easy to love, punctuated by oddball diversions that lead somewhere unpredictable and unique. For fans of Teenage Fanclub, Pavement, Guided By Voices, Dinosaur Jr, Sebadoh, The Vaselines, Urusei Yatsura.

Ancient spirits come alive as SKÁLD extend an invitation into times long gone but not forgotten. Ørlǫg, coming September 25, 2026, is their first album via Napalm Records, and it is our destiny. As the Norns weave our future, this album is a fascinating passageway into our pristine origins and the consequences of our choices. Ten new songs as stepping stones, Ørlǫg is an offering to listen, to dwell, to reflect—and to find something within yourself previously unknown. SKÁLD don’t just play music, they awaken ancient ways.

Released 50 years on from the bands' formation, the forthcoming Psycho Tornado features 10 blistering new tracks recorded in 2025. Psycho Tornado will be unleashed on coloured vinyl and CD, and will rumble into your home in September 2026. The Rezillos are a new wave/ punk band formed in Edinburgh, Scotland in 1976. Known for their colourful, retro-futuristic style and playful attitude, they stood out from the darker punk acts of the time. Their music blended fast punk rhythms with pop melodies, sci- fi themes and a sense of humor. Their debut album, Can't Stand The Rezillos (1978) is considered a classic of the era. The band initially split in 1978 and with some members going on to form The Revillos, with a similar name and sound. But The Rezillos later reunited in 2001 and continue to perform live, maintaining a cult following for their energetic performances and distinctive style.

Released 50 years on from the bands' formation, the forthcoming Psycho Tornado features 10 blistering new tracks recorded in 2025. Psycho Tornado will be unleashed on coloured vinyl and CD, and will rumble into your home in September 2026. The Rezillos are a new wave/ punk band formed in Edinburgh, Scotland in 1976. Known for their colourful, retro-futuristic style and playful attitude, they stood out from the darker punk acts of the time. Their music blended fast punk rhythms with pop melodies, sci- fi themes and a sense of humor. Their debut album, Can't Stand The Rezillos (1978) is considered a classic of the era. The band initially split in 1978 and with some members going on to form The Revillos, with a similar name and sound. But The Rezillos later reunited in 2001 and continue to perform live, maintaining a cult following for their energetic performances and distinctive style.

»Pipe Dreams II & III« presents two new, side-long organ works by Mary Jane Leach, extending the sonic investigations of her 1989 landmark »Pipe Dreams«. Recorded in Ghent and Cologne, the two side-long pieces use shifting stops, resonance and beating tones to turn the pipe organ into a vivid, physical field of sound.

When »Pipe Dreams« was issued on vinyl for the first time by Blume in 2017, it was effectively the first time many of us encountered Mary Jane Leach’s music, finally placing her work in its proper historical context amid the searching Downtown milieu of Julius Eastman, Arthur Russell, Arnold Dreyblatt, Ellen Fullman, Philip Corner, Daniel Goode, and Peter Zummo. Leach collaborated with most of these artists at one point or another, either in Downtown Ensemble or as a guest on their records.

Now »Pipe Dreams II« and »Pipe Dreams III« arrive, recorded in 2023 and 2024 at Miry Concertzaal in Ghent, Belgium, and Kunst-Station Sankt Peter in Cologne, respectively.

»When I was a young child, my family lived next door to a church, where my mother was the organist. I spent many hours lying on the floor of the sanctuary listening to the music, letting the sound of the organ envelop me. I also liked to play the piano loudly with the pedal down, producing clouds of sound, much to my family’s annoyance. These two organ pieces explore some of my earliest musical interests and aesthetics.

In 1989, I lived in a tower attached to St Peter’s Church in Cologne, where I had access to its organ. It had two sets of pipes, front and back, which could create antiphonal effects. I spent countless hours exploring the possibilities of all the permutations of notes, space, and the resulting sound phenomena. I wrote »Pipe Dreams« for that organ. Fast forward to 2023, when I was asked to create a piece for organ for a concert at the Miry Concertzaal in Ghent, Belgium: »Pipe Dreams II«. I had a few days to familiarise myself with the organ, its available stops, and the layout of the console. I choreographed stop changes for a volunteer, as I couldn’t reach them myself. Some amazing sounds began to happen, and at one point the sound was so visceral that I felt as though I were taming a wild beast.

»Pipe Dreams III« was performed in 2024 on the organ that I had spent so much time playing in 1989–90. One big difference, though, was that the console was totally new and computerised. Having access to the organ for only a few hours before the concert, I decided that I did not have enough time to feel comfortable with the console and should not attempt to recreate the piece I had written in 1989. I would instead use the same sequence of stops and perform an improvised piece. I loved the sounds that were being created, and I was having so much fun that at one point I even started to laugh quietly. I began to visualise the beating notes as if they were atoms, opening them up to expose their innards, with the beating, higher-pitched notes — neutrons and protons — shimmering at the top, and the lower notes — the electrons — throbbing away at the bottom. I was playing notes not so much for their pitch value, but for how they affected the notes and sound phenomena already being played. Instead of a time signature, I timed the entries by listening to the beating patterns, waiting for the right moment to enter. And no, I wasn’t hallucinating.«

Mary Jane Leach, 2026

Some recordings herald the future in ways that are impossible to see in real time. Teodros Makonnen With His Organ (ቴዎድሮስ መኮንን ከኦርጋኑ ጋር), by the artist Teodros Makonnen, also known as Teddy Mak, is one of those. Today, electronic sounds, synthesizers, and digital production are taken for granted in Ethiopian music, but in the early 1980s, they were novelties that polarized opinion. Even to this day, the story of Teodros Makonnen’s legacy has never been properly told. He played a decisive role in defining the sound of the digital era of Ethiopian music that emerged in the 1980s and beyond, both as a keyboard player and as a producer, songwriter, performer, and sound designer.

Ethiopian music was at a crossroads in the early 1980s. Much like music in the rest of the world, technology and automation heralded either a quantum leap in musical development or the annihilation of musicianship, depending on who you’d ask. The changes were incremental nonetheless, but with the benefit of hindsight one can clearly see that the changes meant different things in different contexts. Drum machines and electric organs came to replace many hotel bands because, all of a sudden, one musician could control drums, melody, and accompaniment. Teodros was one of the first musicians in Ethiopia to explore the possibilities this opened up.

Teodros’ father, Captain Makonnen Beri, was a chief pilot at Ethiopian Airlines and a music enthusiast at that. This would prove important to his development, as Makonnen brought back a piano from Germany, which would lead to the first steps in Teodros’ long musical career. Captain Makonnen’s work as Head of Flight Operations and as a pilot exposed him to the wider world that was far from commonplace for most Ethiopians. In a house where music captivated the whole family, the piano gave Teodros’ talent an outlet. Not only was a piano at home rare in Ethiopian households, his father also brought an Indian teacher to their home to teach Teodros and his brother, Captain Samuel Makonnen, music theory (solfeggio or ear training) and piano. Teodros and his youngest brother, the late great Dereje, a member of both the legendary Ibex Band and the Ethiopian reggae group Dallol, took up music from that point onward, with Teodros beginning to develop his proficiency at the age of eight. His father encouraged him to practice tirelessly at home, and Teodros later received musical schooling at the German School in Addis Ababa.

His obvious talent led to studies and formal education at the Yared School of Music, followed by continued studies in American jazz at Northern Virginia Community College in Virginia. Teodros cut his teeth professionally in his mid-teens, not only as a keyboardist, but also as an arranger for the Wabi Shebelle and Dahlak bands in the 1970s. He mastered electronic sequencing early, rising to prominence through the midnight recording sessions held during the military curfew. The pressures imposed by the curfew required precise and disciplined recordings, and Teodros delivered just that. This, in turn, led to collaborations with iconic artists such as Mulatu Astatke, Aster Aweke, Menelik Wossenachew, Tilahun Gessesse, Mahmoud Ahmed, and Alemayehu Eshete.

In those days, he sat in as a keyboardist with the Dahlak Band when Dawit Yifru took a hiatus to study in Russia, and also with the Ethiostar Band. He secured a residency at the Wabi Shebelle Hotel with the Shebele Band, together with Zelalem Tadese (drums), later succeeded by Elias Bekele, Mulugeta Hailu (bass), Teferi ‘Bibisha’ Mengesha (guitar), Kumelachew G/Selassie (trumpet), and Teshome Deneke (saxophone). A friendly competition developed between the bands associated with the Ras Hotel (the Ibex Band), Ghion Hotel (the Dahlak Band), and Wabi Shebelle Hotel (the Shebele Band). The music scene at Wabi Shebelle saw teenagers commanding the spotlight in an industry otherwise dominated by musicians of an older generation.

At the Wabi Shebelle Hotel, Teodros met a diplomat from Saudi Arabia and later visited him at his home in Addis Ababa, a meeting that had unexpected musical consequences. The man owned a Yamaha double-deck keyboard. That evening, they recorded Teodros Makonnen With His Organ (ቴዎድሮስ መኮንን ከኦርጋኑ ጋር) in one take. This recording, a cornerstone in the early digital sound of Ethiopian music, came about almost by chance, simply because Teodros got the opportunity. Traditional Ethiopian songs were cast in a wholly electronic style.

Once freed from backing duties, Teodros’ keyboards could explore dreamlike soundscapes that took Ethiopian music in new directions. Even though the cassette contained well-known Ethiopian songs, they were given highly original arrangements, performed on an electric organ with drum machine backing and rhythm patterns that left the listener with suggestive, lingering sounds. “Libesh Kabashen” (also known as “Anchi Bale Game”) and “Odu Gol Golesa” wrap you in the very stuff that dreams are made of.

Originally released on cassette only, this recording exudes a mystique that surpasses even some of the most obscure Ethiopian recordings of the day. It remained more or less unknown outside of Ethiopia until now. Some of the tracks, like “Addis Fikir,” are permeated with an almost naive buoyancy, free-floating sounds that lost contact with the ground the moment they were conceived. Others, like “Meche New Hageren Yemayew” and “Lelitu Alnega Alegn,” carry a moodier, quirkier timbre, with pulsating rhythms in the background. Yet even the darker pieces contain an unmistakable wave, something essentially Ethiopian. If most recordings of Teodros’s contemporaries at the time were teeming with atmosphere, his songs seem instead at home in the stratosphere, almost ethereal. Some of the music here could be filed under “lullabies,” were it not for the recurring, almost brooding feeling that engulfs the listener on the aforementioned tracks. You could easily be forgiven for drifting into a blissful haze as the music washes over you.

Up to the advent of electronic music production, Ethiopia was totally dominated by big bands on the one hand, and small groups on the other. The former were tied to large institutions such as the military, the latter emerged from the entertainment industry, in hotel bars and nightclubs. These groups were commercially driven, and bands ultimately had to foster a mercenary approach to employment, albeit not to the passion for music. In the light of this, Teodros’ musical legacy can be seen in two ways. On the one hand, he is a key player in Ethiopian music from the 1970s onwards, leaving an indelible mark through hundreds of compositions and arrangements, including soundtracks for numerous documentary films and advertisements for different companies. On the other hand, the way he and others employed electronics brought Ethiopian music onto a fork in the road.

The replacement of traditional instruments with electronic equipment was seen as impending doom by some. Others, like Teodros, saw new avenues for performance, production, and creativity. Just as later producers like Abegasu Shiota of Admas, Teodros was a trailblazer who opened paths that it took Ethiopian music as a whole more than a decade to rush into. The hotel scene had already been pushed toward electronic music by financial necessity and cost-cutting. Today’s revived global interest in Ethiopian music from the seventies and eighties, alongside a broader resurgence, has changed the reasons for using digital means of music production. They have become tools for musical dreaming. This is where the dreaming began.

Cello player and electronic artist Martina Bertoni returns with her 2nd album for Karl: Hypnagogia delivers six new, masterfully crafted tracks between experimental ambient, drone and modern composition.

Cellist and composer Martina Bertoni started playing the cello at a very young age. Classically trained, her career further developed around experimental and film music, for which her cello has been featured in numerous records, works and soundtracks for films and series. After two EPs and her debut full length All The Ghosts Are Gone (2020), Bertoni joined the Karl roster where she released Music For Empty Flats in January 2021 to critical acclaim (a.o. one of the Top Ten drone albums of 2021).

On her new album Hypnagogia she continues to explore the sonic possibilities of her cello which she uses as primary source for composition and sound processing through reverbs, feedbacks and sub-bass frequencies, thus crafting sonic sculptures, rich of atmospheres and frictions, fed by ambient as much as drone and modern composition.

In the words of Martina Bertoni:
"The six tracks that constitute Hypnagogia have been written during 2021 and partially inspired by the reading of Stanislaw Lem's book Solaris. The title refers to a transitional state of consciousness from wakefulness to sleep, during which one might experience sensorial hallucinations and lucid dreaming, and can tap into the pristine structures of the subconscious. Hypnagogia portraits an imaginary cosmic journey of the Self that crash ends into a blinding sun."

Morikawa Seiichirou, vocals, bass
Yamagiwa Hideki, electric & classical guitar
Takahashi Ikuro, drums & percussion

je prie pour que la goutte ne tombe pas
(I pray that the drop does not fall) is the first international release by Japanese trio Chi To Shizuku. While they have released five albums and a 7” in Japan, their spectral, haunted rock songs haven’t yet reached a much wider audience overseas. With this album, then, a live recording taken at Koenji HIGH, Suginami, Tokyo on 23rd November 2021, the unique, quartz-like character of Chi To Shizuku’s music is writ large, the bleak bliss of their songs carved onto twelve-inch vinyl.
Perhaps the best-known member of Chi To Shizuku, at least for audiences with an ear turned to Japanese psychedelia, is drummer Takahashi Ikuro, known for his membership of almost every group worth a damn from that scene – Fushitsusha, Nagisa Ni Te, Ché-SHIZU, Kousokuya, High Rise, Maher Shalal Hash Baz, LSD March, the list goes on. But the core of Chi To Shizuku’s music is the collaboration between vocalist, bassist and lyricist Morikawa Seiichirou, and guitarist and arranger Yamagiwa Hideki. Morikawa is a member of long-running punk/goth group Z.O.A., and has also played with YBO , Zzzoo, and as collaborator with Takeshi and Atsuo of Boris in A/N; he’s also recently been performing with Mitsuru Tabata. Yamagiwa’s history takes in stints with Katsurei and Cock C’ Nell, and he also recently guested with la scene 裸身.

All this contextual information does relatively little, though, to prepare you for the unique vibration of Chi To Shizuku’s lustrous songs. They shimmer in the same half-light, perhaps, as Shizuka and the quieter moments of LSD March, sharing a similar poise and classicism, and there’s a tenderness and wracked poetry to Morikawa’s voice that reminds of the emotional intensities both of traditional Japanese folk, and of British folk music: on “Musuu No Nemuri No Naka De Kumo Wo Tukamu”, the combination of his singing, backed with gorgeously plangent guitar, reminds of no-one so much as it does The Pentangle or Spriguns Of Tolgus. Chi To Shizuku’s love for the ballad as form gifts their music an archaic, sometimes arcane resonance, and from what you can hear on this album, it’s clear they’re in love with graceful melancholy.

But this is not a folk album, by any means; it just shivers with the same eternal spirit. There are also hints of prog rock, and you can catch some passages of scratchy, distended free rock, on the extended spirit invocation of “Nanhito Hanhito”. je prie pour que la goutte ne tombe pas is an extraordinary album, a melancholy surprise, that reminds dedicated listeners of the seemingly bottomless well of great music to be found via the Japanese underground in its many forms. Perhaps Michel Henritzi says it best, though, in his liner notes, when he writes, “Chi To Shizuku’s music reminds us that our life is a dream that lasts only a season, and that oblivion will follow.”

Recorded at Koenji High Suginami, Tokyo, 23 November 2021
Mix & Mastering: Taku Unami, photography : Noriko Akiyama
Liner notes by Jon Dale Printed by Alan Sherry

Japanese acid pop outfit Cho Co Pa Co Cho Co Quin Quin channel the globe-trotting spirit of Haruomi Hosono’s 1970s tropical boogie on their debut album, Tradition.

Named after one of the basic rhythms of Cuban folk music and drawing on influences from across the globe, Cho Co Pa Co Cho Co Quin Quin are quite simply a world unto itself.

Comprised of three childhood friends, Daido, Yuta and So, who reconnected during the coronavirus pandemic, Cho Co Pa initially emerged as a playful way for the three 23-year-olds to pass the time. Tapping into their youthful connection, they created a sound that exudes confidence and curiosity, a homage to the masterful world of YMO’s and Happy End’s Haruomi Hosono, rooted in the trio’s own idiosyncratic experience of the present.

Recorded at home and promoted on hugely popular DIY TikTok videos, their debut album Tradition is a technicolour exercise in armchair travelling – a kind of lockdown exotica for the housebound whose nostalgic flights of fancy are laced with a sense of whimsical melancholy for the lost freedoms of youth.

Referencing everything from Afro-Cuban percussion to lo-fi beats, Buddhist spirituality to trap, each member of the band brings different musical inspirations to the table. Latin American and Middle Eastern styles sit adjacent to a fascination for the electronic music of Aphex Twin, Dorian Concept, Underworld and Daft Punk. At times, the music verges on acid pop bliss, at others, it grooves with the instrumental funk sensibility of BADBADNOTGOOD.

“In the first place, when I create a song, my goal is to transport the listener to a mysterious place,” vocalist Daido explained in a recent magazine interview. Using lyrics as another sonic texture in the composition of ideas, Cho Co Pa paint beguiling sonic postcards of far-flung moods across 12 highly original tracks.

Marrying the organic and the electronic on rhythmically sophisticated compositions like ‘Chichibu’ and ‘Watatsumi’, it is on the album’s standout track ‘Gandhara’ that the experimental sound of Cho Co Pa comes to the fore. Referencing the ancient city of Gandhara through which Buddhism made its way from India to China, the track is a vocoder-trap-inspired, Udu drum-driven pop jam that lilts with unmistakable Balearic flair. If that’s difficult to imagine, then know simply that ‘Gandhara’ sounds like nothing else on this side of Saturn. Even Daido seemed surprised by the outcome: “I feel like we were able to create something that exceeded our abilities. That was huge!”

Hugely popular in Japan, with festival appearances lined up alongside BADBADNOTGOOD at Asagiri Jam in October, it's safe to say the success of Tradition has taken Cho Co Pa by surprise. You won’t have heard anything like it."

Recorded at Absolute Studio & Soundfirm Melbourne, jan - june 1990.
Engineered by Steve Burgess.

Special thanks to : Steve Burgess, all at Soundfirm, Philip Brophy, Robert Goodge,all the Tunisian extras who sang & played for us between scenes during the shooting of Isabelle Eberhard & finally to Sylvie Partiot for her marvelous sound recordings & atmospheres.

When the first JIM album Love Makes Magic was released in 2023, it was the end product of an experiment that had begun during the strange days of the pandemic. Cooped up in his studio, James Baron started fiddling about with an as-yet unnamed new album idea. It became Vicious Charm’s first LP release. Labelled variously as Balearic, folktronica, blue-eyed soul and Laurel Canyon, Love Makes Magic was perhaps all and none of those things: a record rooted less in Californian mythology than in Baron’s own musical world, somewhere between Sherwood, Nottingham, classic songwriting, electronic soul and the no-nonsense good times that have long run through his work under his other monikers (principally the anagrammatic Ron Basejam and, of course, Crazy P) One thing was indisputable, it connected with people... and still does.

The album was a minor hit, appearing in many a Best of 2023 chart and voted Album of the Year in Bill Brewster’s Furtive 50. A tour and a few memorable festival appearances – his 2024 We Out Here Festival being one of those wonderfully timed ‘moments’ - perfectly captured the horizontal vibes on the album, while injecting some live energy into its delivery. While there was a follow-up remix album for Love Makes Magic, JIM was already preparing a sophomore LP: “I wrote the majority of The Curious Case Of Existence in a couple of months at the beginning of 2024, then it was just a case of making the record over the next couple of years in between everything else.”

Children of Zeus return with their third studio album ‘As The World Burns…’

Five years on from their highly-acclaimed sophomore album ‘Balance’, Manchester’s kings of hip hop soul, Tyler Daley and Konny Kon, bring us a brand new 16-track opus.

Sonically the duo continue their story where they left off; crafting an amalgamation of street soul, alternative r&b and boom bap hip hop, with a sprinkle of flavours taken from their original multi-genre pirate radio influences, and a dash of forward-thinking new sounds, ensuring all tracks are destined to become future classics.

The features are sparing but powerful, enlisting the talents of revered UK rapper Knucks (‘Before We Drown’), Colorado-native Young Old Soul (‘Dopamine’), MCR family K S R (‘Do You Want To Get High’, & Australian/Mauritian up & comer Anieszka (‘Water & Vibes’).

As with previous projects, this album is largely produced by the duo themselves, though there are guest productions from previous collaborators too, including Grammy Award-winner Beat Butcha, Grammy-nominated Teo, and broken beat pioneer K15, along with an assortment of new players making moves in the underground neo-soul & beats circuit.

Conceptually, this project continues on with the story to date. An eternal search for sunsets and soulfood, as a respite to the anxieties of the modern world; personally, professionally and globally. Assertive swagger is matched with brutal but sincere candidity. As ever, it encapsulates the rough with the smooth, with reflections on where they’ve been, where they’re at and where they’re headed. There’s no preaching to be found here; just an acceptance of things as they are, an embrace of the environment and people they were nurtured by, and a celebration of some of the finer things in life; slow jams, weed & rum, water & vibes. Raps for listeners, blunt heads, fly ladies and prisoners. All packaged together as another perfect sonic love letter to sound system culture. 50 minutes of big people music.

Since the release of their anthemic debut single ‘Still Standing’ a decade ago, to the subsequent EP ‘The Story So Far’, and their critically-lauded debut album ‘Travel Light’, the duo have received numerous accolades, including nominations for AIM Awards & Worldwide Awards both, along with tons of ‘Album of the Year’ nods care of Clash Magazine, Bandcamp, Complex, Wordplay and many more. This along with huge swathes of support from DJs, radio stations, press outlets, tastemakers, luminaries & fellow artists across the globe.

Children of Zeus have performed sessions for COLORS, Soulection (Apple Music), DJ AG, Boiler Room, BBC 6 Music and at the infamous Maida Vale studios for BBC 1Xtra as well as touring across Europe, Australia and South Africa. This is in addition to collaborating & touring with Mercury Award Winner’s Ezra Collective, including a Wembley Arena show. Other collaborations over the years have included Shy FX, Juls, Goldie, Black Milk, Kofi Stone and the late great Lenzman.

From the Broke ’n’ English / Hoodman-era, to the present day, Children of Zeus have been omnipresent in the fabric of British black music. Proud ambassadors of Manchester music, and of UK soul, it really is “Zeus to the world”.

Children of Zeus have been adorned with plenty of flowers over their career. The unbridled quality and poignance of the music and the message on display throughout this project will see the algorithmic needle move some more. It’s undoubtedly set to be a Zeus Summer. As the world burns…

Available on all digital platforms and physical formats, Friday September 4th 2026.







t 07: Do You Want To Get High? (feat. K S R ) - Children of Zeus03:26







t 07: Do You Want To Get High? (feat. [ K S R ]) - Children of Zeus03:26







[t] 07: Do You Want To Get High? (feat. [ K S R ]) - Children of Zeus03:26







[g] B3 | Do You Want To Get High? (feat [ K S R ]) - Children of Zeus03:26

Born and raised in Oklahoma City, Jason Scott & The High Heat return with their boldest statement yet on Play Boy, a gritty, swagger-filled collection that pushes the band's signature blend of heartland rock, Americana soul, and country grit into new territory Following the breakout success of American Grin and viral momentum surrounding "Too Good Too Bad," Play Boy captures the chaos, charm, and late-night recklessness that have made the band one of the most exciting rising acts in roots-driven country music. Fueled by razor-sharp songwriting, lived-in storytelling, and the electrifying chemistry that's earned them stages alongside acts like Morgan Wallen, Wyatt Flores, and 49 Winchester, Play Boy leans into the band's wild side without losing the honesty and substance at the core of their music. Equal parts dive-bar confession, desert highway soundtrack, and modern outlaw anthem, the album reflects a band fully embracing who they are: loud, fearless, and impossible to box in.

Pioneering Ghanaian musician King Ayisobareturns September 4, 2026 with his forthcoming seventh album Pure Confusion, recorded and produced by On-U-Sound’s Adrian Sherwood.

Ayisoba is one of Ghana’s most distinctive musical voices. The world’s foremost player of the kologo - a homemade two-string lute fashioned from a calabash and covered in goatskin - he delivers fiercely political and socially observant songs using three different voices, including the voice of his grandfather that possessed him as a child. Sherwood meanwhile is the pioneering British producer and founder of On-U Sound whose hugely influential career has connected dub, post-punk, industrial, hip hop and experimental music through collaborations with artists including Lee “Scratch” Perry, Mark Stewart, Horace Andy, Sinéad O’Connor, Nine Inch Nails and Depeche Mode.

Ayisoba and Sherwood first collaborated during a BBC Radio 3 Late Junction session at Maida Vale in 2017, organised by Ayisoba’s long-time collaborator Arnold de Boer/Zea of The Ex. The pair immediately connected, and during the pandemic, when Adrian’s long-time African Head Charge collaborator Bonjo Iyabinghi Noah was in Ghana looking for musicians to collaborate with Sherwood suggested Ayisoba, who eventually featured on two tracks on African Head Charge’s 2023 album A Trip To Bolgatanga (Bolgantanga is the region Ayisoba is from). Ayisoba then returned to the UK in late 2024 and travelled to Sherwood’s Ramsgate studio where the pair laid down the songs that would become Pure Confusion: “All the songs were already in my head,” says Ayisoba. “This album is all recorded live, over one afternoon. Adrian only plays live, and I like that. And he works hard - he doesn’t sleep. I woke up in the night and he was still working.”

“In my role producing it, I just let it roll to make a good vibe,” says Sherwood. “We recorded it completely live, did some programming and processing on some tracks, using dub techniques live on the mixing desk and adding some slick touches. We wanted the colours on the album to swing off what Ayisoba was doing, so we invited some friends to participate. Doug Wimbish (Sugar Hill Gang) arrived from America and lent his services playing bass on a couple of tracks; the wonderful Ivan Hussey (Celloman) played bass, keyboards and cello - cello is not really featured on African recordings so we thought it would be really cool to try it. I'd been working with Alex White (Fat White Family/Primal Scream) on my album (The Collapse of Everything) and so he added sax to a few tracks and I brought Alan Glenn down especially - Alan was in Little Axe but also Nine Below Zero and played in the Yardbirds – to add some mouth organ; Mark Bandola added a bit of flavour with his Juno, Ayisoba’s long-time Ghanian collaborator Ayuune Sule added some percussion and vocals and Matt Smith did some programming.”

“King Ayisoba is quite amazing, so unique,” Sherwood continues. “He’s got his own handmade instrument and three different voices - when you’re listening you think it’s three different people. He’s a breath of fresh air, full of love for the music which he wants to share with everybody. Some tracks we kept very straight and others we experimented with - adding dubby psychedelic little touches to trip you out a bit. The added production we did at On-U has given it a shine while still keeping it vibrant, live and spontaneous. I’m really proud of this record”.

On Pure Confusion, Ayisoba documents the anxieties, contradictions and changing social realities of contemporary Ghana. “Land is a problem for everyone,” says Ayisoba of the opening track “Property”. “If you don’t build on your land they will take it away. Plenty corruption in Ghana, plenty confusion. They sell the land to two, three, four people and then everybody fights.”

Elsewhere Ayisoba explores illness, spirituality and social stigma on “Bemba”, warning against hiding sickness out of shame or fear of “bad juju”: “People hide their sickness and the sickness kills them.” “Tewigiloge” reflects on cultural difference and open-mindedness encountered through world travel: “We will tour the whole world and we will see many things we may not like or understand… your eyes will see, but don’t talk - you have to be open-minded.”

Spirituality runs deeply throughout the album. Ayisoba’s grandfather was a respected spiritual healer whose presence the musician says still guides him today. “The grandparents’ spirits are the ones you can contact,” he explains of the spiritual chant “Nkaase”. “This song talks about the forefathers.” The closing track “Leeda-Mampanga (It’s Not My Strength)” acts as a statement of humility and gratitude: “You have to be humble, even if you have talent. God gives you the power.”

For more than two decades, King Ayisoba has been one of Africa’s most distinctive musical innovators, transforming northern Ghanaian kologo traditions into a bold contemporary sound rooted in hypnotic rhythms, social commentary and spiritual intensity. Since the breakthrough success of 2006’s Modern Ghanaians, Ayisoba has built an international following through acclaimed albums, relentless touring and collaborations with artists including Lee “Scratch” Perry, Orlando Julius and African Head Charge. Performances at Roskilde, WOMAD, Le Guess Who? and the Barbican have further cemented his reputation as a singular live performer and cultural force.

Bachar Mar-Khalifé Plays Christophe

The album title, Bachar Mar-Khalifé Plays Christophe, inevitably comes as a surprise: the Lebanese composer, singer, and multi-instrumentalist ventures into the world of the pop dandy who escaped the yé-yé era… From the very first notes, one thing becomes clear: splendor flows effortlessly from melodies restored to their fragility and simplicity. Bachar Mar-Khalifé explores the hypnotic melancholy of a world that is both sophisticated and crystal clear. A fascinating plunge “into this collapsing luxury,” as the lyrics of Paradise Lost say. Seven tracks with his collaborators Dogan Poyraz on drums and Aleksander Angelov on bass, seven narratives unfolding the musical richness of Christophe’s songs as much as that of Bachar Mar-Khalifé’s playing and singing. A captivating journey, both on record and on stage. It all started there, in fact. In April 2025, BMK dared to pay tribute to Christophe at the Fragile Festival, at the Cirque Zingaro, five years after his death. At first glance, it wasn't his familiar world. "I haven't idolized him my whole life," he explains. "I really knew Christophe personally before I knew his work in detail." During his childhood in Lebanon, and then after arriving in France in 1989 at the age of six, the music played at home left little room for Christophe's pop. "We listened more to Brassens, Brel, Ferré, Barbara. I hardly knew anything more than 'Les Mots bleus.' Then we met. Christophe loved the night, young musicians, exploring together..." In 2018, Bachar and Christophe recorded a Unik session for FIP, which involved recording a 45 rpm single live, followed by a concert at the Maison de la Radio. The younger brother has the opportunity to discover a legend, but also how it works: “His melodies allow you to go very far—even him, who seems to be searching for a new version with each interpretation, as if he wanted to return to the organic aspect of the song. A researcher who, out of a need for freedom, wants to escape the image people have of him.” So there was no question of overproducing these covers as one might do with the stage fright of tackling an intimidating work. “I tried to go very fast to deliver each song, as if I had composed it myself.” Working instinctively, very spontaneously, the bulk of the album comes from the trio's rehearsals and the concerts that followed. “I chose songs that moved me. Very beautiful melodies and very beautiful lyrics.” Whether the lyrics are by Jean-Michel Jarre or Alain Kan, “they often speak of love in danger.” “I like to hear this quote from Paradise Lost: ‘Dandy, a little cursed, a little aged / In this crumbling luxury.’ Here and there, he pruned the lyrics, as if to make them more audible, in Les Mots bleus, ‘The winter wind blows in April / I love the still silence’ – an evocation of the month of Christophe’s death. And he chose a little-known song from the yé-yé era, Les Amoureux qui passent, in which we hear the young trumpeter Siméon Petrov, who further expands the play on the archetypes of vintage romantic song. Between accepted fragility and the vertigo of feeling, between virtuosity of lightness and unfathomable depths, Bachar Mar-Khalifé unfolds an unexpected kinship with Christophe.” A kinship of silences and sonic surprises (a synthesized zurna sound in "Emporte-moi," for example) that will continue on tour. He is also preparing an album of original songs, his first since 2020, after many compositions for film and collaborations with other artists. He writes songs of love and dance, at a time when Lebanon and the world are experiencing such dark times. Perhaps this is yet another lesson from Christophe: to love and sing "in this crumbling luxury."

Clear Vinyl


Her sound remains vast and yearning, with gut-punch drums pushing through explosions of colored powder; her voice is a chrome-plated sigh, and her agile melodies soar effortlessly. - Pitchfork *BEST NEW MUSIC*
she achieves some serious cinematic grandeur. - Stereogum
Simply too sublimely crafted to ignore. - Consequence of Sound
A catchy ethereal piece of pop - Brooklyn Vegan
Rose's layered, reverb-laden vocals hit like waves of sunlight, warming her lines almost to the point of wordlessness. - Paste Magazine


"Hila. A record about loss. What persists beyond the range of ordinary perception? The place mourning keeps returning to - not quite transcendence, not quite doubt. The edge of what we can see."
Frankie Rose has spent fifteen years building one of the most quietly distinctive bodies of work in American independent music. Bursting out of the shackles of her legacy on 2024's Love As Projection, 2026's Hila builds on the muscular, dance-ready songwriting and transcendent melodies to result on Rose's most exploratory and affecting record of her career. Imbued with yearning melodies and brooding post-punk dynamics, Hila is Frankie Rose at her most impressionistic and expansive.

Self-produced at her home studio featuring collaborations with drummer Justin Welch (Elastica/Lush), Hila was recorded following extensive touring with The Jesus & Mary Chain and Swervedriver. The result is the most confident, searching music Rose has produced; muscular in its production yet emotionally vulnerable in its diffracted neon glow. A record informed by loss and the way grief mutates our senses, it's fitting that Rose channels the nuanced darkness of later Coil, at times the pounding EBM-production of Skinny Puppy and the near-spiritual alien-ness of Cocteau Twins. On Hila, the doors of perception are constantly melting, revealing the porous nature of the seen and unseen. The result is a synesthesia that flips the senses.

If Love As Projection was an outward-looking record looking to embrace the world, Hila brings the dark cosmos into inner space. Rose's love for 80s production and soaring melodies remain, they're cornerstones to her craft after all, but there's something more assured and gothic underneath the massive waves of sound. Opener Olo shimmers into a pulsating, cinematic brooder, Rose's vocal transcending and swan diving between registers in the chorus breakdowns. First single Cant Be Wrong serves as a transition from the optimistic pop of Rose's previous album, introducing a thumping 80s funk rhythm track under the soaring vocal performance. The ebullient Shadow Twin is that song's sibling, recalling major label-era Strawberry Switchblade melancholy mixed with Robin Guthrie's twinkling guitar work.

Hila blossoms darkly from here on in, blowing out into a glacial wide-screen sonic dynamic. On Rainman and the title track the listener is transported to a rain-soaked, nocturnal cityscape ridden with desire, moonlight cutting through blinds, intoxicating chasms without bounds. Rose's use of saxophone and digital synthesis recalls the nightmusic of Hats-era Blue Nile or the more ambient end of Emeralds' catalog. Indeed, in the towering synthetic cello sounds that climb into the mind on Hila, there's a distinct flavour of the instrumentals on Bowie's Low. This is musick to play in the dark, to light the way a little, just enough to trick the senses.
Leading into the strobe-filled haze, single Manifest pounds forward with a massive Industrial 4/4 beat and post-punk/goth musicality, an exercise in unlit ecstasy. For Best Of Times, the liberal saxophone passages feel like a suppressed, 80s Michael Mann soundtrack with Frankie Rose's effortless, melodic vocal performance probing, searching for connection. Navigating through the dry, iced landscape into a rising sun, closer Velvet Refrain flips the melancholy of the preceding passages. With a massive sound dripping with harmony, the clanging guitar and vocal duet feels they're sound-tracking an unexpected happy ending after bouts of darkness."

Shaped in the shadows and sounds of the legendary Topanga Canyon, California. The debut album from Biita Houdei is buoyed by a magic that feels wildly and beautifully untamed; wild-hearted sentiments that are shaped by the world around it, fascinated by the enchantment of it all, and delivered via a collective (harmony layered) voice that understands the complex nature of what it means to be alive in the here and now.

Produced by Haley Heynderickx, 'This Bed Was Made For Me' is a striking collection of stirring, signature folk songs animated by subtle instrumentation and orchestral flourishes. It feels lived in: vocals weave together in a beautiful harmonic dance, seasons shift, sunshine appears and bold psychedelic colours warm the horizon.

In the early stages of making her debut album, Biita Houdei knew two things: that she wanted the recordings to feel distinctly and palpably warm, and that she would sew a unique patch for every song on the album. The first of those things is subjective, though brightness pours in from all corners of This Bed Was Made For Me. The second became a laborious task she undertook throughout the process, the completion of which is testament to the slow process of it all, to the physical commitment and patience required to make a full work of art.

The patches she crafted during the making of This Bed Was Made For Me became a full quilt, one that now adorns the album’s front cover. Beneath it sits a striking collection of Houdei’s stirring, signature folk songs, brought into fruition with the help of fellow songwriter Haley Heynderickx, in her first lead production role, and the album’s producer/engineer Sahil Ansari. It’s also the first release Biita (pronounced “bee-tah”) is releasing under her newly-taken name, one that was gifted to her by her auntie and means "unique" in the Farsi language. “I proudly take this name,” Biita says of the change. “It makes me feel that much closer to my Persian heritage.”

Recorded across ten back-to-back and full days, the album touches on themes of love and heritage, of taking chances, the preciousness of time and the impact we all have on the world around us. A number of the songs were written in Topanga, California, while Biita settled into a new home as wild fires raged, and as she adjusted to a life which no longer held distinct seasonal changes, far from the Ozark Mountain home she felt so attached to. Such themes reveal themselves in a variety of ways across the album’s fourteen songs, that key sense of warmth retained in the bones of the album whether they are stepping into darkness or seeking out light.

The album feels lived in and alive; dust swirls, seasons shift, sunshine appears and is held. Biita calls it ‘psychedelic’ and there is indeed a sense of that in the world building, in the way the bold colours are always shifting. Formed of fourteen songs, and filling nearly forty-five minutes, This Bed Was Made For Me not only builds a whole world for listeners to inhabit but also implores you to stay a while. This was deliberate, indeed it’s Biita’s wish that listeners give the album dedicated time; to learn its shape, to explore it fully, away from the instant grab of playlists and skewed algorithms.

“Many of my favourite albums didn’t reveal themselves instantly to me,” Biita, now based in the Catskill Mountains of New York, explains. “Some did, of course, but I had to work to understand the full scope of the piece as a whole. I encourage people to dive deeper into everything that they choose to consume. It is not my intention to sound pretentious, but instead, I am trying harder to explain the gratitude I have for being able to craft every part of this album— using my hands, my brain, my voice, my visions. To me, it is an all encompassing work of art,” she continues. “Making the quilt was laborious. Taking the cover photo was laborious. No shortcuts, but rather a manual and tangible approach. I am thankful for the time it took.”

A recent signee to Chess Club Records, Jo Geller aka jo from school, finds herself among the independent label’s pedigree of homegrown artists who have gone on to attain major success. Alumni such as Billie Marten, an artist long admired by Jo, as well as Wolf Alice, are just a couple of names who found their initial support through Chess Club.

At 22-years-old, jo from school’s graceful, carefully crafted but devastatingly delivered songs hit with an air of maturity that lands far beyond her years. An embrace for spontaneity and imperfection gives her material its character; primarily as an artist focussed on doing things her own way.

Writing on the piano since the tender age of nine, Jo self-taught herself guitar as a teenager during lockdown, joining the illustrious Brit School: “I was the only musician in my world until I went to Brit School, then I was the worst musician there,” she says. “It gave me a kick. I went from thinking that it was cooler to not care about anything, to realising the more you cared, the cooler and more individual it made you.”

Largely produced by Rich Cooper (CMAT, Billie Marten), so far both singles from the EP have been supported by BBC Radio 1, Radio 2 & 6Music. Huw Stephen's has invited Jo to feature in his Huw You Are segment airing on 6Music on 29th July, and Jess Iszatt has already had Jo as her Introducing featured artist on BBC Radio London. Rolling Stone UK featured jo as their Play Next artist last month, along with CLASH who just confirmed a Next Wave feature to run on EP release. Outlets like Line of Best Fit, DORK, DIY and Wonderland have all came to the table to champion jo too. We've also seen impressive audience growth in just 2 months – with jo adding more than 3k new followers across platforms since her debut single 'Chicken' was released on 6th May.

On the live front, jo was invited by Dirty Hit's Skullcrusher to support on her UK + European headline tour in June, with past supports also including TTSSFU, Daffo, Esme Emerson. Jo has been booked for Night Currents festival in Portsmouth and invited to support 1000 Rabbits, both in October, and will be Playing Estrella Soundhood Festival in London in September too.

Spiral code is the second album released on An’archives by the Japanese trio archeus, after 2023’s Kusōzu: Nine Death Stages, and their seventh release altogether. It’s also the most staggering evidence yet of the single-minded pursuit of group-sound explored by Keiko Higuchi (voice, drums, percussion, trombone), Shizuo Uchida (4 strings), and TOMO (hurdy gurdy). For two tracks, “awakening, beyond recurrence” and “where points and lines intersect”, they’re joined by Kiyotaka Moriuchi, an improviser who’s played with the likes of Shoko Numao and Ensemble Shippolly, on percussion and darbuka (a goblet-shaped drum played widely across South East Asia).

Always able to scour magic from both their relationships with their instruments, and their non-idiomatic interplay, on spiral code they’ve widened their net further; the results oscillate from humid and claustrophobic blocks of noise to rivulets of tone coursing across post-volcanic landscapes, and on into simple gestures suspended in arctic space. Spiral code was recorded in a single day, on March 20 th 2025, at a studio in Koenji, Tokyo, the morning session with the original trio, and afternoon and evening session with Moriuchi – the first time archeus have played with a guest musician.

When asked about the music archeus makes together, TOMO is quick to isolate the singular characteristics of their collaboration: “we are trying to explore some new, unknown musical vocabulary every time we play. And what we are trying to achieve from every session is something unique, an interesting chemistry or, I should say, alchemical reaction among the three of us.” You can certainly hear that alchemy in the dynamic arc of their performances, the way they seem to be able to switch on a dime and push the music into unexpected terrain, all while sounding intimately archeus. “We have been playing for many years,” TOMO continues, “so I think that among three of us, we can telepathically sense, feel and understand what each of us is trying to express while we are playing.” It’s telling that guest musician Moriuchi fits so effortlessly into the archeus soundworld, able to hitch a ride on the intimate telepathy of Higuchi, Shizuo and TOMO; “I think he gave us some fresh air to our music,” the latter smiles. But that telepathy extends, even, to the name of the album itself, with all members pointing toward spiral imagery when naming the title track, whether TOMO’s evocation of Kundalini serpent imagery and Caduceus, to the spiral shape of DNA, what TOMO calls “the code of life.” It’s certainly deeply entwined music: spiral code is a helix of sound, a cylindrical coiling of possibility.

"Business Spice" the debut LP by Big Benny Bailey isn't your grandpa's bluegrass album. It's unapologetically playful, and grunge- and pop-tinged, unafraid to break tradition and reimagine what a modern take on the genre can look like, complete with Charli XCX references and anxiety attacks during Uber rides.

Liam Hayes is an acclaimed American musical artist known for his songwriting and uncompromising approach to making records. He started cassette multitracking while a preteen and made his first real studio recording at twenty one. This started an obsession that ultimately led to his releasing a 7” single (Found A Little Baby/Three Quarters Blind Eyes) on a small US indie label. Those tracks garnered the attention of the UK music press, and on the strength of those songs a career was launched. The follow up was highly anticipated by critics and listeners alike, but rather than playing to expectations he delivered a highly personal album of solo piano/vocal songs (More You Becomes You). Not one to repeat himself, Hayes started off the millennium by serving up the extravagant pop/soul opus (Fed). Both records are now considered to be masterpieces.

Hayes’ songs are recognised for their exquisite melodies, poetic lyrics and distinctive vocals. He’s released seven albums, two singles and a soundtrack, and applies his craftsmanship to a variety of genres from orchestrated pop to stripped down rock. Comparisons to Brian Wilson, Laura Nyro, Carole King, Harry Nilsson, Badfinger (and even Prince) are numerous. His music takes the best of radio and stellar classic pop records of the 60’s and 70’s and brings it into the present.

Along with making records Hayes has appeared on screen performing his music in High Fidelity (directed by Stephen Frears) and A Glimpse Inside the Mind of Charles Swan III(directed by Roman Coppola) which he also wrote the soundtrack for.

In this, their first production for Hayes, are (executive producer) Terrence Washington and (multi-instrumentalist/producer/arranger) Vincent Carlo with additional contributions from Terrence’s father, legendary arranger TOM TOM 2084 (Chi-Lites, Phil Collins, Plush).

His latest album, Dancing Backwards, sees Liam stepping through the shadows in his life and into a new musical day.

Following the “immaculate and eternal soul” (The Guardian) of The Indications’ 2019 album, American Love Call, Private Space unlocks the door to a wider range of sounds, boldly launching the band into a world of synthy modern soul and disco beats dotted with strings. Anchored by the high-low harmonies of Aaron Frazer (drums/vocals) and Durand Jones (vocals), and rounded out by Blake Rhein (guitar), Steve Okonski (keys), and Mike Montgomery (bass), The Indications are true masters at melding revival sounds with a modern attitude. The ten tracks across Private Space provide for both an escapist fantasy and a much-needed recentering after a tumultuous 2020.In conjunction with today’s announcement, they share Private Space’s lead single/video “Witchoo.” Reflective of the track’s vibrant, playful energy, the Weird Life-directed video features the five band members and close friends, transitioning from a live performance 
to an electric backstage soirée.“At the end of the day, I just want people to close their eyes and forget where they are. Just the way a Stevie Wonder album does for me,” says Jones. Developed after being apart for much of the year, Private Space is creatively explosive and delights in upending expectations. Throughout, The Indications highlight a collective resiliency – as well as the power of a good song to be a light in the darkness. From an Indiana basement (where the band recorded their 2016 self-titled debut LP as college students), The Indications have catapulted into the soul limelight and an international stage. Following their sophomore album American Love Call
 — a dreamy but pensive record of big string arrangements and sweet soul stylings — The Indications became revered by vintage music fans, the lowrider community and late-night television.

"Emergence of Shadow" (Mint Condition Records / Self Distribuzione)—the new album by Davide
Ghidoni, produced by Gianluca Pighi—is arriving: its digital release is set for Friday, September 11,
while the vinyl will be available starting Friday, September 18.
A trumpeter with a career marked by international collaborations, Ghidoni here signs his most
personal project to date. It is a predominantly instrumental record in which the trumpet becomes a
voice, a narrative, and an emotion. The only vocal track is "Come On Closer," performed by Heidi
Vogel (The Cinematic Orchestra), creating a moment of suspension and intensity within the project.
Davide Ghidoni’s passion for music and the trumpet was born in his childhood around the age of ten,
fueled also by Western films and Ennio Morricone’s soundtracks: those melodies, where the trumpet
played a central role in the duels of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, deeply shaped the artist's
imagination and sound.
Ghidoni has always maintained an open and curious approach, letting himself be inspired by different
genres, artists, and musical cultures. His projects naturally coexist with influences ranging from rock
to soul, jazz to blues, and other languages that have left a mark on his path. Rather than identifying
with a single genre, he prefers to view music as a guiding thread capable of uniting different styles
through emotion, sensitivity, and respect for artistic identity.
"Emergence of Shadow" represents a new chapter in his journey. After numerous collaborations with
various artists, the musician felt the urge to undertake a completely his own project, giving shape to
ideas he had nurtured for a long time.
The record is inspired by the 1970s soul, rock, and blues sounds, but the goal is not to faithfully
reproduce or imitate those genres: the atmospheres, themes, and arrangements recall that sonic
world, yet are reinterpreted through a personal and original sensibility. The trumpet remains the
primary narrative element, supported by meticulous arrangements and a solid rhythm section that
enhance its character and expressive intensity.
Alongside the sounds that distinguish his path, the album also explores deeper emotional
dimensions. Some tracks are fluid and atmospheric, born from the desire to recount vibrations
without rigid schemes, letting melodies and dynamics guide the listener on an inner journey. The aim
is to offer an engaging listening experience in which music communicates directly, beyond words.
The album encapsulates everything Davide Ghidoni wanted to express and fully represents his
artistic identity: a timeless instrument to communicate emotions and engage in dialogue with different
musical traditions, always keeping the pursuit of musical quality and sharing with the public at its
core.

Geoff Kirkwood (Man Power)

I’dgained some notoriety as a music producer and DJ but I hit a horrible case of writers block around 2018.

The problem I was finding was that I was trying to shoe horn every smart arsed clever dick musical reference I had into the music I was making, but the function of dance music is to make people dance, not to show people who broad your musical references are, so I was making pretty shitty music that landed in the middle and didn’t achieve either aim.

To tackle this I ended up committing to just trying to make the most expressive and wanky experimental stuff I could. I was immersed in club culture at the time so the whole enterprise started as a joke, hence the name “Bed Wetter”. However when I fully submitted to just naked exploration the really unexpected thing that happened was that I found myself unavoidably having to deal with a lot of my own bullshit. That bullshit turned into the “Billy Mill is Dead” album, which was essentially the sound of me excavating my own life and looking at how I felt about where I was from, where I was headed, my family, my history, my region and all of the things i have conflicting feelings about.

It was partially catharsis and also a bit of deprogramming around being able to call myself an artist after being raised to believe that wasn’t an option for me.

I self released Billy Mill is Dead in the months before the pandemic and it found it’s fair share of love in the places I hoped would connect with it, and just the right amount of being ignored by people who I’m pleased didn’t feel it. This all lead to me being emboldened enough to apply for an artist in residence position at a big regional opera house months later in the middle of lockdown.

My feeling was that if my DJ career was potentially over for the remainder of my lifetime then there was no harm in exploring this alternative method of expression to see where it could take me.

I submitted a ridiculously ambitious plan for what I would like to do as a project, and to my absolute shock I was selected for the position.

I was 40 years old and from a scarcity background so I had a potentially unique response to that kind of validation for the first time and what followed next was a process of me just coming back with bigger and more ridiculous ideas just to find out at whatstage they’d tell me to stop.

The thing is, nobody did. I got as far as suggesting writing a full symphony to be performed by an orchestra before my own nerve gave out and I decided that was probably as far as I should push things.

The problem with people giving you permission to do things is that you then need to go out and figure out how to do those things.

The biggest issue for me, beyond raising the money to pay for everything, was how does a person actually write a symphony?

I was introduced to Fiona Brice, a multi instrumentalist and orchestral arranger. She’s also a recording artist who releases on Bella Union. On top of that she’s a violinist who used to be part of the band Placebo and who used to appear regularly playing for other bands on things like Top of the Pops.

Not only was Fiona uniquely placed to not look down on the strange provenance of someone from an Acid House background wanting to write a symphony, but more to the point we really hit it off from day one.

Fiona coached me in the essentials of writing for an Orchestra, and then I went off and wrote the 8 movements.

I’d love to say I laboured for years over this bit, but it took about 2 weeks in total. I’d also love to say what I wrote was a complete symphony, but the version of this which is solely me feels like looking at something without your glasses on. The shape,feel and borders were all there, but the definition was absent. Fiona taught me the broad language of a symphony, but without her it would have lacked all intonation, nuance and detail. Where I had shaped ideas with a hammer, she brought out my meaning with precision using a scalpel.

I think the prodigiously quick turnaround for the music is as much proof of how conceptually and musically aligned Fiona and I are. I know we’re both incredibly proud of what we’ve created.

It took nearly 2 more years to stage the debut performance in what was potentially the most traumatic period of my life which saw me embroiled in an international crisis with my own family and the death of my father, all with the backdrop of COVID.

The work itself is inspired by the working class experience, but it’s also a comment on how we get to decide what we are and how we’re defined, and we get to choose what we do to prove these things.

The original recording was contractually impossible to ever share again, so we re-recorded it in a working men’s club with jobbing (albeit world class) players. In many ways it’s a record that feels like it shouldn’t exist, which is why we’re all so happy that it does.

“An amazing new project…” Tony Minvielle, Jazz FM

“A lush, heatwave-friendly piece of dancefloor innovation…” Clash Magazine


First Word Records is delighted to bring you the debut EP from Ships of the Pharaohs.


Ships of the Pharaohs are a London-based collective led by producer Last Nubian, who’s had releases in his own right on labels like CoOp Presents, Eglo Records & Touching Bass. Blending jazz, soul, bossa nova, d&b and house-influenced grooves, the band also consists of vocalist Achanté, keys player Goldbar & bassist, Dougan.

The 7-track EP kicks off with the high-energy, vitamin D-saturated lead single ‘Sun is Rising’, featuring the guest vocals of brilliant Berlin-based singer Red Bird, who appears on three tracks on this project (‘For You’ and ‘Seasons’). ‘Can’t Quit’ follows on a smooth soulful house/bruk tempo, and invites in the thought-provoking spoken word prose of AKEEM. ‘Seasons’, ‘For You’ and recent single ‘Joys’ add another element to the band’s eclectic take on fusion, leaning heavily into the bossa side of the quartet’s influences. The latter track sees Achanté’s soulful harmonies gracefully float across a warm bed of keys, percussion, guitar picks & synth strings. We take a short jazzy breather on the ‘Interlude’ cut, featuring the resplendent sax of multi-talented Norwegian artist, Bror Havnes, who also features on the outro cut ‘One’ - this one seeing the crew ride out with a sonic salute to jungle/d&b, closing this first opus from the group with the energy levels remaining high.

Tre Wright (aka Last Nubian) explains “Our debut EP is a reflection of who we are, both individually and as a collective. Drawing inspiration from jazz, jungle, bossa nova, house, r&b and the music that's shaped us, we've explored our own interpretation of these sounds and how they come together in a way that feels true to us. It gave us the space to experiment without boundaries, trust our instincts, and create something that genuinely reflects where we are creatively right now.”


Originally conceived to perform Last Nubian material live for a Touching Bass showcase at We Out Here festival in 2023, the project soon took on a life of its own, as the group effort unleashed a unique chemistry & sound of its own merit. Thereafter followed numerous sessions in a studio-converted bedroom of a Brixton flat, developing this new sound. The finishing touches were taken care of at the infamous Total Refreshment Centre in North London, resulting in the formation of captivating new original material, which appears across this first extended release.

Ships of the Pharaohs have additionally performed live across London at Brick Lane Jazz Festival, House of KOKO, Jazz on Wick Festival, Peckham Levels, 91 Living Room & GROW in Hackney. Developing their powerful stage presence has gone hand in hand with the creation of their own material.

The initial singles from this project received praise & support from a variety of DJs, press outlets & tastemakers from the worlds of jazz, soul and clubland, including Shy One (NTS), Tony Minvielle (Jazz FM), Rohan Rakhit (Worldwide FM), Somewhere Soul & Clash Magazine to name a few.


With sonics somewhat reminiscent of Acid Jazz legends Incognito, merged with the class of Nuyorican Soul, and the dynamic fluidity of 4Hero, the 4-piece have cooked up a set of style & flavours uniquely their own, fresh for modern dances, incorporating organic improvisation with more contemporary club sounds.

The Ships of the Pharaohs are about to set sail for what is sure to be an exciting journey ahead.

‘Part 1’ will be released on 12” vinyl & all digital platforms on September 18th 2026.

The follow up to her UK number 1 album This Is How Tomorrow Moves, the stark and striking fourth album by beabadoobee is named for the electricity towers that dot every major artery in the world—the strong, spindly structures that reminded Beatrice Laus of her connection to friends and family at home while she was staring down extreme disconnection and isolation on tour over the past few years.

The title can also be read as an allusion to Laus’ spiky, forceful new sound—the waves of distortion that crash and shatter across this record’s 14 songs mirroring the intense crackle you hear when walking under power lines. The pylon is also a fitting symbol for an album that reckons with the repetitive anxieties of your mid-twenties: What if I’m always going to be this way? What if life is just pylon after pylon on the road?

The album’s first single is available to stream and buy from today: “Sun Has Set” introduces Pylon as, in essence, a set of songs that began as diary entries, words that Laus thought she’d never be able to say out loud. “A lot of the songs on this record are things I wish I could have said to someone,” she says. “This song has this petty tunnel vision—it’s like, I hate you. You’re gonna stay here and listen to how much I hate you. Because I never got to say that.” The single comes accompanied by a striking first person video directed by Bea’s partner and longtime visual collaborator Jake Erland.


Ever a devotee of pure rock music—both as something to be cherished and something to be played with—Laus casts these feelings in songs that touch on classic grunge, midwest emo and ‘90s radio rock, zeroing in on a sound that is both harsher and more direct than any of her previous records. She says the music she’s loved has “always been an influence” on her music, and so for B4 she went straight to the source. A fair few of Beabadoobee’s composite influences contributed to Pylon, a fact that speaks to the goodwill and respect Laus has amassed over the course of her relatively brief career.

Hayley Williams sings on “Nothing to Prove,” a deeply anthemic indie-rock song about getting your power back from fairweather friends who just want a bit of your success. The moody “Powerlines” features a verse from Turnstile singer Brendan Yates, a master of matching vocal force with emotional nuance. Elsewhere, you’ll find contributions from Pinegrove’s Evan Stephens Hall, Deftones’ Chino Moreno, and Title Fight’s Shane Moran, as well as, on “Write Me A Letter”, production work from Laus’ longtime friends and collaborators Matty Healy and George Daniel of The 1975.

Beabadoobee will debut songs from the record on the Powerlines Tour, her first ever arena shows and biggest tour to date, taking in shows across North America, the UK and Europe this autumn-winter. The Powerlines Tour kicks off 1 October and includes stops at Madison Square Garden, The Kia Forum, The O2 and more (full routing below). Support comes from Wisp in the US, Canada and UK and Violet Grohl in France, The Netherlands, Belgium and Germany.





Born in the Philippines and raised in London, Beatrice Laus emerged as a British alternative music icon across three acclaimed albums and five EPs. She has garnered multiple BRIT Award and BBC Sound Of nominations, and won NME’s Radar award, whilst amassing over 10 billion streams worldwide and more than 12 million followers across her social channels.

This Is How Tomorrow Moves became her first record to reach number 1 on the UK Official Album Chart in 2024, following her Top 10 albums Fake It Flowers (which reached number 8) in 2020 and 2022’s Beatopia (#4). Earlier this year, beabadoobee released the one-off single ‘‘All I Did Was Dream Of You,” teaming up with Grammy-nominated best New Artist The Marías, the result of a longtime mutual creative admiration between María Zardoya and Bea.

Over 10 years ago, Leon Michels released his first full length record, Sounding Out The City. It was Michels' first full length record under the moniker El Michels Affair. At the time, the budding retro soul scene consisted of mostly organ quartets a la The Meters and of course, Sharon Jones & The Dap Kings were in the early days of their ascent to world domination. Leon Michels, who was 18 when recording Sounding Out The City began, had just released Thunder Chicken, the first record by his high school band The Mighty Imperials. At the time of SOTC, Michels was just discovering early rocksteady, afrobeat, and 60's garage rock, which inevitably crept its way into the songwriting. He purchased a Tascam 388, an 80's 1/4" reel to reel 8 track intended for home recordings, and began recording music in a 10x10 box with no windows that also doubled as his childhood bedroom. Along with fellow Mighty Imperials Nick Movshon, Homer Steinweiss, and Sean Solomon, and Michael Leonhart, Thomas Brenneck, and some of the musicians from The Dap Kings, Michels recorded the LP over a two year period. Upon it's release, it received some rave reviews and the small deep funk community ate it up, but due to the lack luster promotion and distribution the rest of the world was slow to catch on to the instrumental gems featured on SOTC, which Michels appropriately labelled as "cinematic soul". However, in 2005 it found it's way into the hands of the people who were organizing a series of concerts for Scion that paired bands with MC's. El Michels Affair was contacted about playing one show with Raekwon The Chef of Wu Tang Clan fame. The show was such a success it led to a tour, and then to another set of concerts that featured multiple members of the Wu-Tang Clan. This eventually led to the release of El Michels Affair's second record, "Enter the 37th Chamber" which introduced them to a much larger audience and has been their most successful release to date. Michels has since gone on to produce and co-produce numerous records for powerhouse soul artists like Lee Fields. He shares songwriting credits with Adele, Jay-Z, Ghostface Killah, Aloe Blacc, and has played on records by Ray LaMontagne, Lana Del Rey, The Black Keys and Dr. John.

In 2001, Shin’ichi Ogawa of Sugar Plant was working for the SAL Disc record label and came up with the idea of doing an E2-E4 tribute album with his friends. This album would come off the back of a Neil Young tribute album which might have seemed odd but these two artists, Neil Young and Ashra (Manuel Göttsching), would be played regularly as equals at after-parties that Shini’ichi would throw at his house. Longtime friend and collaborator, Taro Yoda, noted that the eclecticism of these after-parties were influenced by the variety of parties they were attending at the time, from the legendary Japanese open-air rave party Life Force to Cream at Amnesia in Ibiza. Taro was obsessed with European trance and left-field downtempo while the two members of Sugar Plant were into ’70s soul—especially Marvin Gaye and William DeVaughn and at the same time, they were listening to Phish and the Grateful Dead too. All three of them were of course inspired by the DJ’ing and selections of Larry Levan.

A- Side – Sugar Plant – “Just Be There” – Production began in my home studio. Since I was frequently attending a house party called “Life Force” (with DJ Nick the Record as the resident DJ) at the time, I thought deep house would be the perfect style for a Sugar Plant cover.
I looped a two-chord electric piano track and applied filters using plugins and outboard gear to create a “sound I could listen to forever.” I recorded the bass on guitar and converted it to an analog synth (Doepfer MS-404).

From there, I layered synths improvisationally, listening to the track over and over again to make fine adjustments. I think I worked on it for days, mostly late at night.
I recorded the guitar at the very end of the track. After playing it a few times ad lib without any set plan, I suddenly had the idea to add vocals during the bridge, so I set up a mic in my hallway and recorded them.

I think this track is packed with the emotions I felt when listening to “E2-E4” back then, as well as the vibe I experienced at that party. – Shin’ichi Ogawa

“I like to work with a variety of instruments and set ups,” says Mark Van Hoen, sometimes known as Locust or Autocreation but here working under his own name on the excellent Plan For A Miracle, his first physical release of solo music since 2018’s Invisible Threads. ”Sometimes it’s literally in my studio, with all the hardware electronics available. Sometimes the laptop, using software instruments. Some of the tracks on this record were recorded in the desert (Joshua Tree) using a 4-track tape machine and small modular synthesiser set up. Each track was recorded in different location using different instruments, which accounts for the distinction between each piece. It’s also about my own reaction to my environment, and what’s going on in my life at the time.”

The Croydon-born Van Hoen started musical life in the early 1990s, signing for R&S records in 1993 but developing his own, myriad and distinctive style across a range of releases on Touch, Editions Mego and other labels, using a battery of instruments, including analogue synthesizers and taking a number of different approaches to recording, rather than ploughing a single sonic furrow. He has worked on a number of collaborations, including with Nick Holton and Neil Halstead of Slowdive, under the moniker of Black Hearted Brother - their Stars Are Our Home was released in 2013. “I have known Neil Halstead since 1992,” says Van Hoen. “He shared a house with me for a couple of years, and the music I was making and listening to along with clubs I was attending had an influence particularly on Pygmalion, the final Slowdive album on Creation.”

Each track on Plan For A Miracle does indeed sound like a world unto itself, a mini-environment, a weather condition, an ecosystem created for the moment. It’s a collection of tracks recorded over the past few years, released on Bandcamp - despite his apparent absence, Van Hoen works constantly. Opener “Climates”, in its exquisite limpidity, feels like a homage to Brian Eno, one of his most formative influences in his teen years, commencing with Music For Films, which he bought in 1979. “This Is For Them”, feels like a ghostlike throwback to early drum & bass or electronica, reminiscent of his own, earliest outings. “There have been a number of requests from labels to make some more music like my very early releases on R&S,” says Van Hoen. “This is part of ‘letting go’ and realising that there’s nothing less creative about going back to those styles again.”

“Pencil Of Spheres” is something else again, a magnificent, imaginary glass structure, shimmering, refracting, without visible means of suspension, a thing of impossible beauty. “Electric Lights” evokes an abandoned fairground, its lights still pulsating, its music lingering. “The Underpass”, meanwhile, insofar as it reminds of anything at all, is faintly reminiscent of Cluster or Neu’s! West German ambience, the urban mundane rendered magical, the sodium lights, the whitewashed walls. The reverberant, faintly oriental chimes of “Insight” transport us yet again, burgeoning and intensifying.

The landscapes, the skyscapes rendered on Plan For A Miracle feel unpopulated as a rule - but when he does introduce vocal elements, Van Hoen has a history of doing so to spectacular effect - think of “Real Love” from 1998’s Playing With Time, the seductive intonation of its title recurring throughout like a series of massive holograms, echoing, stuttering, breaking up, surging. Here, there are just the faintest of vocals, barely distinct, disquieting. “There’s been a bit of a game changer in recent times,” explains Van Hoen. “AI software that enables you to extract vocals and instrument parts from virtually any recording. That means sampling individual parts from existing sources is no longer limited to the original mix exposing certain parts soloed. The vocal parts I use are from multiple sources and often pitch shifted altered rhythmically and melodically.“ There’s further vocal chatter on “I Really Do”, proceeding at a faster pace as if giving chase, or being pursued - distant, enigmatic. “The Music”, meanwhile, its beat tolling, lost in its own fog of static, features a curious intonation, like the ghost of a lost Walker Brother.

Sadly, the album’s title is in reference to a personal tragedy on Van Hoen’s part - the loss of his wife. Titles such as “I Won’t Give Up”, which faintly reminds of another Eno masterpiece, Another Green World, in its nautical hurly-bury, or the pastoral strains of “Mrs Who”, heavily clouded with sadness, seem to allude to this. “In fact the record was recorded entirely before she passed away,” says Van Hoen, “most of it before she even became very ill. The title was given to the album when it started to look like she wasn’t going to make it beyond a few months. It was something Osho said - “plan for a miracle” - so it was a statement of hope. Unfortunately it was not to be.” Although the album is non-thematic, non-specific in its atmospheres, sound paintings, elegant structures it most certainly stands as a magnificent monument to Osho’s memory.

-David Stubbs.

Tommy McCook was not only a founding member of the legendary Jamaican Ska group The Skatalites, but also a brilliant musical arranger. His informed understanding of Jazz, R&B and in fact most music styles would always add another layer to any song put his way. This made him the go to guy for most of the Jamaican producers, who would use his arrangement skills to pepper up their latest tunes.

Tommy McCook, (b1927, Havana, Cuba) came to Jamaica with his mother from Cuba aged 11 and entered renowned Alpha Boys School for underprivileged children, a school that placed great emphasis on musical tuition. At the tender of 14, such was his talent he has left to join Eric Deans Orchestra and took on stints with other bands led by Don Hinchman and Roy Coburn. All the bands played in the Swing and Jazz style of the times. He relocated to the Bahamas in 1954 where he further developed his Jazz technique and upon his return to Jamaica in 1962 began working Coxsone Dodd’s Studio One and became involved in the development of Ska. His knowledge of Jazz, R& B and Jamaican musical forms helped set the tone for the group of musicians he was working with and would name the Skatalites. The group, consisting of Don Drummond (Trombone), Roland Alphonso (Tenor Saxophone), Jackie Mitoo (Piano), Lloyd Brevett (Bass), Lloyd Knibbs (Drums), alongside Tommy himself on Tenor Saxophone. The group would back all the major Ska vocalists pf the day and would also go on to cut a catalogue of instrumental music. The Skatalites split up in 1965 and Tommy McCook moved over to work with Duke Reid’s Treasure Isle Studios where he formed The Supersonics. A set of musicians under his guidance that consisted of Lynn Tait and Ernest Ranglin (Guitar), Neville Hinds and Winston Wright (Organ), Gladstone “Gladdy” Anderson (Piano), Hugh Malcolm and Arkland “Drumbago” Parks (Drums), Clifton “Jackie” Jackson (Bass), and Tommy and Hernon Marquis (Saxophone). The more laid back sounds from 1966-1968 would be given the name Rocksteady of which again McCook was at the forefront. The top producers like Bunny Lee would use the musicianship of Tommy McCook and his arrangement skills to enhance this new sound.

We have compiled a great selection of rhythms that featured McCook blowing over tracks stripped of their vocals and replaced with some fantastic lead lines played by Tommy and some of his fellow horns men.
We hope you agree like we do that they do this in fine style.

There is a pivotal scene in “August in the Water” (dir. Sōgo Ishii, 1995) where the surface of a pool turns into a stone wall. The water that gave the protagonist's life its meaning becomes a threat. As you fall through this stone wall, you appear in a set of underwater coral-reef corridors, and one of the most beautiful musical themes begins to play: Aquatic Ambience, composed by David Wise for Donkey Kong Country (1994). It's a theme that represents the weightless vibe of your new deep-sea life, where you go about your mundane errands, collecting bananas while driving on a swordfish, or, as HerzMayhem put it: "Poor monkey... always swimming, never going anywhere..."

Synthetic Water Music is the second of three compilations, following Synthetic Bird Music and timed to mappa's 10th anniversary. As with the birds, it gathers friends of the label, artists who have released with mappa or played our shows. Most of the music is new, made to measure for this compilation, much of it from Central and Eastern European hands. Birds and water mix well, so please feel invited to play them together, creating your own environments.

Where the birds were in one flock, water is dispersed across four chapters. You live your life as a droppity drop: vapour in the heavens, condensing in clouds, falling into a swamp, trickling into the deepest sea.

Tlālōcān (Cassette 1, Side A)
A place of eternal spring, of aquatic energy that nourishes everything and allows all things to bloom. Bubbly and splishy-sploshy, it is full of dripping sounds and moist caverns (“Emerald Pool” by Pauline Anna Strom), a landscape filled with living fountains (“Oh, to be a Fountain” by Eva Sajanová) and winding streams that flow through the area, forming part of its organic architecture. It is also a paradise reserved for those whose deaths were water-related, where the aquatic and terrestrial beings live in symbiosis and perspectives shift rapidly, from observing a single droplet (Shakali, Lau Nau) to dew (Feronia Wennborg & Lucy Duncombe) and on to flowing currents (Visible Cloaks) that gradually transform into river music (Ursula K. Le Guin & Todd Barton).

Nephelora (Cassette 1, Side B)
A celestial anti-gravity sound world made of evaporation, steam and the formation of clouds, as if looking at “The Sky At The Bottom of the Well” (by Natalia Beylis) or at “The Cloud That Never Rains” (by Henrique Vaz).

If a cloud never rains,
it is not a cloud at all, but a veil that parches the earth with its gaze.
It generates only its own shadow —
a looming mass of suspended longing,
a sky that hoards but never yields,
a reservoir that swallows every river and returns nothing but echoes.

The water in this world is often invisible but sometimes all the more present, as Bint Mbareh describes it: “Recently been obsessed with invisible waters because I come from a place where you have to imagine the water is there even though you cannot see a river, a sea, usually no rain, so water is in the air, the voice and the imaginal realm, drought is imagined to be negotiable.”

Žaboglach Zha-bo-glahch (Cassette 2, Side A)
A fusion of Scottish lochs and Slovak ponds: a misty, foul-smelling, swampy realm, the kind of place that swallowed Artax from The NeverEnding Story. Stagnant waters full of decay become a blooming habitat for sirens (“thereby losing the weightless delight of being swept along with it” by Adam Badí Donoval) and beings straddling the line between fauna and flora, inventing their own communication systems (“Water-lily phase” by Action Pyramid).

R'lyeh (Cassette 2, Side B)
A brooding sunken city at the bottom of the ocean. It’s a journey to get there. Let this chapter guide you, from the shore down to the depths, to the gates of an unexplored world that is inherently dark, unfathomable, and beyond the limits of human perception: starting with seasickness ("Seasick" by Nikolaienko), passing through a classic Poe-esque maelstrom ("Flurry at the Whirl-pull" by Atte Elias Kantonen), a gateway into the darkness and emptiness of the ocean floor, and finally traversing the city itself (“last waves of 2025” by Jules Reidy).
But what is pulling you to a place like this that only a few explore and even fewer leave? Maybe “the darkness that water can contain, the expanse of things we don't know and that can trigger fear instincts even as we try to rationalise them and think we are in control of the rest of nature” (“supercritical fluids” by Diane Barbé).

Dive in and surface wherever you like. Always swimming, never going anywhere. Just don’t forget to take water breaks.

P.S. Birds, then water, can you guess what comes next? Synthetic Soil Music, an elegy for insects and worms? Synthetic Glaciers, or maybe Pollinators? Which sounds would you miss the most if they disappeared? Or what if the third one never comes at all, and somebody, or something, makes Synthetic mappa Music instead. Don't you worry, with the right training data, it can all be replicated, better than the real thing.

Recorded in Los Angeles over the course of a single day at a studio in the Eagle Rock neighborhood, Dois Desertos was produced by Mario Caldato Jr. and emerged without a predetermined plan or schedule. The project took shape during Portuguese musician João Pimenta Gomes' stay in Los Angeles with his family. During that time, through Rodrigo Amarante, João met Mario and Samantha Caldato, as well as musicians Abe Rounds (drums and percussion) and Gabe Noel (bass and cello). From those encounters, the album began to unfold organically.

Working from simple scores—some containing little more than chord progressions—the sessions left plenty of room for improvisation. Every performance was captured live, in a single take, with no overdubs. The mixing process, also carried out live by Mario Caldato Jr., followed the same philosophy: effects and level adjustments were performed in real time and printed directly to the final two-track master.

At the heart of the album's sound is the Cristal Baschet, a rare instrument played by rubbing glass rods with the hands, causing metal resonators to vibrate and produce an ethereal, resonant tone. João describes its sound as "a trace, almost like a shadow." Rather than taking the lead, the instrument serves as a textural foundation, while the bass and cello carry the melodic lines. Some of these melodies are original compositions, while others draw from traditional Portuguese fado, reimagined through an open and exploratory approach.

The album has a dreamlike atmosphere, reflecting the perspective of someone experiencing Los Angeles from the outside—not in a rush to belong, but fully receptive to the city's unique energy. Two films helped shape this imaginary landscape: Model Shop (Jacques Demy, 1969), in which the French filmmaker uses Los Angeles as a pretext to simply observe and inhabit the city, and Thom Andersen's Los Angeles Plays Itself. The result is Dois Desertos, an album that, in João's own words, "could never have been made anywhere else."

With Dois Desertos, João Pimenta Gomes invites listeners into a deeply immersive experience, revealing a more exploratory side of his artistic practice while reinforcing Amor in Sound's commitment to releasing original works that engage with the many languages of contemporary music.

Silver Vinyl
Simon Popp is back on Squama with his fourth album Trio.
At its heart, Trio is a work about collaboration, playfulness and unification. It is music as a means of coming together, a sonic equivalent to the Japanese philosophy of Kintsugi, in which broken ceramics are repaired with a visible golden lacquer. Rather than hiding the breaks, Kintsugi embraces them, making them part of the story, a form of delicate transformation. Popp and his collaborators Flurin Mück and Sebastian Wolfgruber take a similar approach: three distinct drummers, three different temperaments, three personal styles. Fused together into a single expressive instrument.
The album is a celebration of timbre, texture, and touch, its sound palette drawn from across continents and traditions. Human beings at all points of time, across all cultures and continents have used music to celebrate, mourn, worship and bond. Along with our voices, creating rhythm with our bodies. Clapping, stomping, hitting with sticks. A celebration of rhythm as both a shared human memory and an audible expression of close bonds.
Trio is a reflection of the beauty of imperfection and the timeless pull of rhythm as a shared human force. The cracks are not hidden. They are filled with gold.

Essex punk duo The Meffs return with their second album BUSINESS, due this September via Frontiers Label Group, following their 2024 release What a Life. After a huge 2025 touring with major acts, selling out shows across the UK and Europe, and playing festivals like Glastonbury, 2000 Trees and Download, Lily (vocals/guitar) and Lewis (drums) headed into the studio with producer Dan Weller to create 11 of their most intense and politically charged tracks yet. Blending frantic punk energy with sharp commentary on the music industry and modern life, BUSINESS captures the raw sound of their live shows while showcasing the band’s anger, vulnerability and refusal to be pigeonholed.

In an era where pedalboards, laptops and samples have become commonplace, American blues-rock/metal guitarist and singer Eric Steckel goes against the grain and harkens his listeners back to the days when great guitars were played loudly through great amps. Hailed by many as the top rising star of Blues/Rock, Eric delivers a powerhouse performance that has left audiences in 30 countries (and counting) mesmerized. "My forthcoming new album, 'Sandstorm' is the most fun I’ve had making a record in my career thus far," comments Eric Steckel. "The incredible vibe in the studio brought forth tons of new and spontaneous material such as the title track 'Sandstorm' which instantly became my favorite track on this album and a perfect representation of this body of work." Eric has toured worldwide sharing the billing with Steve Vai, Gregg Allman, Johnny Winter, John Mayall, Ray Charles, Larry Carlton, Robben Ford, and others and was voted into Total Guitar magazine's list of "The 100 Greatest Blues Guitarists of All Time" and named one of "10 Future Blues Stars” by Guitar Player.