quête:point no point

Satan’s history is storied, their albums and incendiary live shows, iconic. The Newcastle, England-bred lineup may quip that their career has been “44 years of prolonged mayhem with a 20-year lunch break”—forming in 1980, eventually pausing before reuniting in 2011—but circa 2024 finds the band thriving, writing, recording, and touring at the top of their game. Proof positive is their seventh studio album, and third for Metal Blade, Songs in Crimson. If 2022’s Earth Infernal album was brutal, up-tempo and with loud guitars, guitarist Russ Tippins calls Songs in Crimson “concise. It’s more to the point and gets there quicker. One of the reasons behind the title Songs in Crimson is that this record is very ‘song’ focused. There’s more punch this time around. Each chorus speaks for itself.” An eminently relatable song is “Era (The Day Will Come).” “There is nobody on this planet who is not familiar with the feeling of loss. When you get to the age we are at in this band, it becomes a weekly occurrence. If there is a message in the lyrics, it is pretty much ‘do not take anything for granted.’ Especially people. You just don’t know what is around the corner that you can’t see coming.” Satan’s chemistry, honed by years of collaboration, brotherhood and love, is unbreakable. “We played at a metal festival where the headlining band had zero original members,” Tippins says. “I cannot get my head around that, though I admire their bravery. We are the genuine article.” To be clear: “We did not reunite just to trade on past glory,” he concludes. “If you want nostalgia, this is not the band for you. We look only ahead and always will.”

Through X Scroll Era, Gabo Barranco, aka AAAA, conducts a rigorous overhaul of the aesthetics and statements of low-profile IDM, trance, and progressive-acid music typical of the early 2000’s. In addition to this inherent and undeniable veneration for the era, the pieces on this album — which originated from recordings and experimental exercises with gear and accidentally became an album — serve also as a kind of retrospective inspection of Mexico City's suburbs (Lomas de Sotelo), with landscapes full of indiscriminate concrete, highways of two and three levels, factories, and parking lots that have supplanted nature with their own detached beauty. It is a sound memory, a specific melancholy that praises skate squads of the area, friends from the past, parties, and substances. It reviews the decline of rave culture but also its resilience and capacity for transformation. What AAAA offers us with X Scroll Era is an almost multigenerational soundtrack, a memory that feels collective and recollects euphoria, ecstasy, and nostalgia.

After several LPs and EPs (Acid Test, Omnidisc, Janushoved) and several years active in the dance and contemplative electronic music circuit (MUTEK, BERGHAIN, iii Points, RBMA), X Scroll Era is the first album by Gabo Barranco, aka AAAA, published on the Mexican label Umor Rex.

The 2nd album from the Franco-Swedish songwriting duo. An album that blends airy poetry and pointillist pop, accompanied by the groove of drummer Larry Mullins (Swans, Nick Cave, Iggy & The Stooges redux) along with superb brass arrangements.

MJ Lenderman is a songwriter born and raised in Asheville, North Carolina. The anatomy of an MJ record might go something like this: warped pedal steels and skuzzed out guitar; crackin" a cold one with some buds; a voice reminiscent of the high lonesome warble of a choirboy. Songs snake their way from a lo-fi home recording to something glossier made withn longtime friends at Asheville"s Drop of Sun studios, but the recording setting doesn"t seem to matter much - at its core, a Lenderman song rings true. Manning Fireworks is a remarkable development in MJ Lenderman"s story as an incredibly incisive singer-songwriter, whose propensity for humor always points to some uneasy, disorienting darkness. The punchlines are still here, as are the rusted-wire guitar solos that have made Lenderman a favorite for indie rock fans looking for an ernerging guitar hero. There"s a new sincerity, too, as Lenderman Iets listeners clearly see the world through his warped lens.

Wehbba returns with an impressive two-tracker ‘Awaken’.

Anything the on-point Brazilian contributes to Drumcode is always top notch. From his 2020 album ‘Straight Lines & Sharp Corners’ to the cracking ‘Catarse’ EP from 2018 to last year’s sci-fi themed ‘Premonition’, the vast collection of quality music the artist has dished up on Adam Beyer’s label always stands out amongst the crowd.

The producer, who’s a practitioner of Vipassana meditation, takes inspiration from the spiritual realm for his latest production work. ‘Awaken’ is a hyper euphoric anthem inspired by light that packs plenty of bottom end power. We can’t wait to hear this played during the upcoming festival season. ‘Revelation’ is a spitfire trippy techno outing, which utilises Eastern scales and takes influence from ritualistic ceremonies from Middle Eastern and South Asian cultures. Mark this down as another timeless Wehbba EP on Drumcode.

A new album by Medway's premier alt-folk outfit The Singing Loins! Yes indeed. We caught up with Rob Shepherd to find out more about their brilliant new LP Twelve_ Q: "The new album is called Twelve. Could you settle an office debate - is it your 12th album or have you called it that because it has twelve songs on it? (We thought Here On Earth was your 12th but not according to Discogs. Also, our ability to count accurately has diminished over the years!)" A: "A bit of both. Course, there's the 12 songs, but then, depending on how you count, it's also our 12th album (from 91-98, there's the 1st 4 LPs that Damaged Goods collected together on The Complete & Utter - that's a comp though, so we can't count that eh - then there's At The Bridge with Billy, so that's 5_..we can skip Alive In Dunkerque as well cos it's a live album....then there was 2004-13 where we made four more with you, then in 2019 we got back together and made 13 Moon Songs From Merry Hell, released on the Vacilando 68 label...so that's 10_and then we did another record with Billy, The Fighting Temeraire_ so yeah, that makes this one number 12)." Q: "The album has features newly recorded versions of several Loins classics. Was it a difficult decision deciding which back catalogue songs to record?" A: "No, pretty easy - it's basically the 12 songs we enjoy playing the most with the current lineup. Saying that, it's been a bit of a meandering road getting to this point. Since Brod passed away, Arf & me have done few nights of Loins songs - and it's felt good - celebrating the songs we all wrote together - so that started the selection process. Oli, Arf's lad, joined us on percussion and then Rich, who Billy had introduced to us, joined on violin - then Chris came along to play the drums, so Oli switched to guitar - and through all that we were refining the set of songs, and we got a point where we felt that, yeah, we've sort of worked out how to do this (you know, respecting and celebrating our past, without coming on like a tribute band to ourselves), so it made sense to make the album - just to reflect where we'd arrived at....so we went into Jim's Ranscombe Studios and bashed them all out live in a couple of hours....no overdubs, no fussing over mistakes....just sing and play the songs as if it was a gig." Q: "It's been 33 years since the debut Loins' LP - How does it feel to be the elder statemen of Kent's alt-folk scene?" A: "Ha ha, are we? We don't know any other folk bands, alt or not, so it doesn't feel as though we're qualified to be the statesmen of anything! Elder, certainly, but statesmen? Nope." Q: "There's been plenty of gigs recently with more to come around the album's release, including some European dates. For people who've not seen you before what can they expect from a Loins gig?" A: "Yeah, as I said, now that we've worked out how to do this, and as we're having so much fun with it, we thought we'd get out & about. We're off to Serbia immediately after the album's release, so that'll be an adventure - Serbia was always special for us (Aleks, the promotor, took us out there to play seven or eight times in all) and we've stayed in touch over the years, so it'll be lovely to see everyone out there again. As for what can anyone expect when they see us? "Riotous fun filled joy" I've just been told, but best let everyone else be the judge of that!" Q: "The Singing Loins wouldn't have existed of course if it wasn't for Chris Broderick. Chris sadly passed in 2022. What would he have thought about the fact you're carrying on with the band and recording new music?" A: "Yeah_ he'd be happy. In the week before he passed away, he asked Arf & me over, basically to say goodbye and tie up any loose ends. And he told Arf that we should carry the Loins on. So yeah, I think he'd be pleased and proud that we're keeping the songs, and his words, alive."

On their seventh long player The Breaks - their second for Joyful Noise Recordings - SUUNS are lost in limbo. For some artists, being caught in flux may result in songs that are either naive, out of touch or both, simply as a consequence of being cut off from human civilization. But for SUUNS, a band who have grown more than comfortable in the oblique and the intermediate, it actually had the opposite effect. The Breaks marks the Montreal experimental rock outfit's most emotionally resonant and tonally rich collection of music to date. The trio of Ben Shemie, Joseph Yarmush and Liam O' Neill leans more zealously than ever into their pop instincts. Yet remarkably enough, with that same dauntless abandon, SUUNS have mined a more extreme sonic palette this time around, one that stretches far beyond their core fundamentals as a band. The Breaks finds Shemie, O'Neill and Yarmush gleefully experimenting with loops, synths, samples and MIDI-instruments like a post-millennial Tangerine Dream messing with downtempo triphop beats. O' Neill took point in the producer's chair for The Breaks, arranging, structuring and editing many of Shemie and Yarmush's ideas from sporadic rehearsal sessions into Pro Tools, reimagining the songs over and over during a two-year time frame. Forged between countless plane rides, road trips, van tours and text threads, The Breaks became a product of endurance and a lot of trial-and-error. It's a record forged in tight fissions of freedom, where spells of whispered intimacy - like on the stunning ballad "Doreen" - are allowed to branch out into the vast glacial dreamscapes of the album's majestic title track. It captures SUUNS at their most panoramic, curious and exuberant: a constant relay of being adrift and enlightened anew, geared up to eleven. And guess what: the wheels keep on spinning.

Hidden Notes Records (Spindle Ensemble, Fran & Flora, Josh Semans) and Tardigrade Records (Cosmo Sheldrake, Howl) are excited to announce a unique collaboration to release ‘Selected Worlds’, the monumental and ambitious debut triple album by composer and pianist Daniel Inzani. Over the past 2 decades you might have seen Inzani performing with dozens of bands from Bristol’s underground alternative and avant-garde scene, blending classical, jazz, contemporary, improvisation, unusual harmony and rhythms as a band leader and collaborator. He’s released an avant-garde collaborative album with Alabaster dePlume, is the musical director and arranger for Cosmo Sheldrake’s 19 piece live band, leads his own critically acclaimed modern chamber quartet Spindle Ensemble and (the now disbanded) 8 piece Ethiopian Jazz meets Frank Zappa group Tezeta, He has toured worldwide as a keys player, collaborated with Canadian ensembles Evergreen Club Contemporary Gamelan and London Symphonia and co-founded Bristol’s experimental collective Bloom, leading to tours and releases with UK rocksteady favourites Count Bobo, the psychedelic space doo-wop of Dubi Dolzcek and many more. After years of recording, touring and eclectic composing he has gathered a trusted set of musicians who are both skilled improvisers and virtuoso players to record an instrumental triple album for release under his own name. The 3 vinyl discs act as albums in their own right, each with different sets of musicians, instrumentations, genres and intentions. The 3 discs were recorded live over 3 day periods in quick succession, with Daniel’s regular collaborator Cosmo Sheldrake engineering the recording sessions. It’s quite possibly the only album you’ll ever hear that starts with a neo-impressionist string quartet, goes on to merge avant-garde symphonic arrangements with group improvisation and ends with an 8 piece cosmic jazz band wigging out, yet Inzani’s voice is clear throughout making for a cohesive 2 hour odyssey from the mind of a composer whose idiosyncratic style thrives through variety Listeners will hear influences from the aforementioned composers including Mingus, Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou, Ravel and Moondog in Inzani’s music but might also find the soundtracks of Morricone and Jonny Greenwood nestled alongside the loose freeform leanings of Alabaster dePlume, the contemporary jazz of Kamasi Washington and the unique collaboration by Floating Points and Pharoah Sanders (minus the electronics perhaps.) Daniel will be performing a special preview of the album with an 11 piece band at WOMAD Festival (27.07) and a launch concert at this year’s Hidden Notes Festival in Stroud (21.09), with further tour dates to be announced

`Think Differently' is the debut LP by the duo of Callahan & Witscher. Jeff Witscher has been one of the most daring voices in underground American music for two decades, highlighted by releases on Pan and NNA Tapes. Jack Callahan's focused, uncompromising approach to sound caught the attention of both Demdike Stare's DDS label and Swiss composer Jürg Frey, who took Callahan on as his first composition student. Fans of their individual work might expect opacity, disruption, or rhythmic irregularity from their collaboration, but `Think Differently' sounds like a pitbull in a convertible, a sand-kicking beach party, the dopamine hit you get from 311 or Smash Mouth. It's a punchy, crunchy, highly infectious record. How did Callahan & Witscher cut the path from the ghostly margins of avant garde musics to the gutters of post-grunge American hard rock? In the words of Callahan, "at some point, you start to need a stronger drug." The most potent characteristic of this stronger drug is the guitar. And not just any guitar, but a sassy, contagious, blithe guitar. Its presence is a drastic shift for two guys who've combined to make dozens of records over the years, not a single one of which has a recognizable guitar sound on it. Alongside the cool breezes and hyperactive fretwork of Callahan's guitar playing, the songs are backboned by strutting, groove-happy vocals: all bark, all bite. Every song is a careful collage, light but dense, ornate with gang choruses, soulful femme vocals, autotune and whisper scratches. This accumulation almost manages to hide the record's potent undertow of dread. `Think Differently' unfolds carefully, a slow-motion demolition that reveals the anxiety of second guessing, the exhaustion of tour, creative bankruptcy, willful misunderstanding, the pain of caring. Setting this lyrical cynicism against such sonic glee isn't a spoonful of sugar, it isn't a bait-and-switch, it isn't a prank. After all, the dumb bliss of Sugar Ray's "Fly" shades a song about Mark McGrath's mom dying. "All Star" is about climate change. Most Sublime lyrics are a bummer. But there's still room for a raised beer, for a dumb grin. Like these ancestors, Callahan & Witscher aim at maximum uplift, at sounds that warm and dazzle like a sped-up sunrise. In spite of overdraft fees, in spite of bad art, in spite of self-doubt.

Isik Kural returns with Moon in Gemini, a luminous scrapbook of slow-flowing narratives couched in intuitive and symbolic storytelling. Bending a playful take on environmental music to the folk song form, Isik's vocals coo atop pastoral field notes, airy chamber instrumentation and archival recordings culled from a curious musical life. A tender pastiche coalesces across the suite of Moon in Gemini's fourteen pieces, and Isik invites the listener to daydream as-deep-as-possible. "The songs on Moon in Gemini don't mind being slower or taking their time to reach the listener," says Isik, who wanted the title to speak to the album's dreamy, liminal nature. "I enjoyed how the phrase could be used to describe an object, a time or a place simultaneously," he explains. Similarly and subsequently, these songs contain a multiplicity of sonic artifacts, moments and spaces that span Isik's rich musical career to date. With the bulk of the album realized between Amasya, Turkey and Isik's current home in Glasgow, in both domestic and studio recording environments, additional tracks unearthed from his personal recording archive lend their lush patina. The record emerged as a fertile space to reimagine a handful of previously unreleased songs and unfinished ideas spanning the past fifteen years of his life and work, including streetside sounds documented while growing up in Turkey and recordings made while studying music engineering in Miami, Helsinki and Glasgow. Looking to the more recent past, Isik found himself wanting to build upon some of the methodologies and textures explored on his 2022 album in february, seeking a newly intimate, vocal-forward sound. He points to the track "film festival" from that album as a door through which to enter Moon in Gemini, where sample-based arrangements are presented in the context of asymmetrical "build ups and progressions" and ambience and vocals intertwine. Inspired in part by listening to iconic, if not sometimes misunderstood, singers such as Nina Simone, Aldous Harding and Ed Droste of Grizzly Bear, Isik aimed to carve out a new space for his voice on Moon in Gemini, experimenting with novel recording and mixing techniques. Captured at his aunt's farmhouse in Amasya during an extended three week recording session, we find Isik's vocal high in the mix, front-and-center and on newly expressive terms. As a songwriter, Isik is an intuitive and playful lyricist who allows his deep love of literature to flow through his off-kilter texts. Here, echoes of Silvina Ocampo's poem "Dialogues of the Silence" reverberate from the margins of "Most Beautiful Imaginary Dialogues". Likewise, Elliott Smith and Virgina Astley shapeshift through "Behind the Flowerpots," some lines of which were based on misheard lyrics from Smith's "Stickman" and Astley's "Some Small Hope." Attuned to the magic of happy coincidences, other unexpected "themes and connections between tracks flourished" during the recording process, resulting in some songs being more "thematically and lyrically connected to each other compared to previous records." The duos "Prelude" and "Interlude" as well as "Grown One Iota" and "After a Rain" explore connected stories, while "Almost a Ghost" and "Behind the Flowerpots" serendipitously emerged out of a conversation with Stephanie "Spefy" Roxanne Ward, whose balmy vocals heard highlighting in february return and call out to Isik's in sweet dialogue. Plumbing these new potentials of structure and songwriting, Isik also developed a taste for an expanded sonic palette, one enriched by the lulling undertones of live woodwinds and strings. The resulting collaborations with flutist Tenzin Stephen, harpist Kirstin McCarlie and clarinet player Giulia Tamborino envelop the record in an altogether "dreamier sound," swaying pastel and awash in lunar light. Moon in Gemini, brimming with natural imagery and lullaby-inflected tones, tunes into states of being where the wonder filled sound of everyday is heard and felt, perfectly imperfect in its poetry; where the invisible steps forward; where dauntless ghosts wait around every corner and play enriches the soul; where bird song fills sun-soaked afternoons and carries us on its wings into each enchanted evening. Isik Kural's Moon in Gemini will be released on vinyl, Japanese import CD, and digital editions on September 6, 2024. On behalf of Isik and RVNG, a portion of the proceeds from this release will benefit Mor Çaty Women's Shelter Foundation, whose social work at their solidarity centers and shelters supports women building lives unhindered by gender-based discrimination and male violence under free and equal conditions.

Almost 3 years after the release of "Mathusalem", François Ier reveals his fiery successor, "Incendie". In keeping with his previous releases, this new opus has been conceived on the basis of enveloping layers, deep bass and harmonies that are always very rich. The melancholy dimension characteristic of his music is also omnipresent, although it sometimes asserts itself with a form of violence.

Like its abundant cover, this new opus deploys an extremely varied range of sounds, most often evoking strong English influences, with breakbeat, jungle, drum'n'bass and new-wave rhythms, all supported by vocal samples with dancehall, reggae, r'n'b, reggaeton and hip-hop accents, resulting in a hybrid sound to say the least. "Incendie" is marked by the systematic use of the Prophet 8 synthesizer, whose wild, constantly shifting sound underlines the fiery character of this new opus.

It is on dark and sweaty dance floors that we get inspired, connect and leave our differences away to live in the present. With this compilation of music pressed in two parts and written by a set of artists from very diverse horizons, it is Polychrome’s perspective on the rave that we want to share. One where sound and light are the only points of reference, opening the space for liberating experiences.

Diffraction EP takes you through the full journey of waveforms traveling through our beloved clubs. Sparking the A-side, Hong Kong’s wonder producer and Mihn Club resident Xiaolin fires up with a progressive and flamboyant house cut, opening an ambitious dance. The tension is taken one notch deeper with Barcelona’s duo Iro Aka signature hypnotic and driving techno sound, dimming the lights for an introspective groove. On the B-side, Lyon’s Desire flirts with an electrifying psy-infused track where pounding beats and floating melodies dance in harmony and psychedelia. It is in a firework that Dublin’s prodigy Dylan Forbes closes out the EP, with an energetic progressive anthem that will light up the space

** INITIAL 400 LPs CONTAIN A BONUS 7" SINGLE **

MOVEMENTS Vol.12 – A bag full of rare rhythm & blues, mod-jazz, and mid 70s funk.

Side A starts with rhythm & blues from the 1960s. Most of the tracks were pulled from hopelessly obscure 7" singles. The only names of which some of you might be familiar with are most likely Mat Mathews and Lu Elliott. However, both original 45 RPM singles are pretty hard to find these days, especially in playable condition.

Side B is all about deepfunk this time. "Hipper Snapper " is a prime example of that genre. Some say its groove is reminiscent of Charles Wright's "Express Yourself. Agreed! The Villagers are responsible for the first 'aha' moment. Their (previously unreleased!) version of "Funky Broadway" would have certainly astounded even Dyke & The Blazers. Representing Germany on this volume: The Rippers, also called the "Offenburg Beatles"! Back in the USA, John Fogerty has probably never heard of this heavy school-funk cover of "Proud Mary". Drum breaks galore!

Side C begins with another German contribution. Saxophonist Gus Brendel delivers a mod-jazz belter of the highest order as do The Hornets. Definitely sure-shots for any dance floors! High time for 'aha' moment #2. Many bands have tried their hands on a cover version of the Nat Adderley jazz classic, incl. vibraphone player Bret Breitinger! The perfect choice to finish this side is Downtown Trio's smooth and groovy cover of Gershwin's "Summertime ".

Side D is reserved for proper 1970s funk. ONYX's "Break It Loose " has become a certified Rare Groove classic. Here you can enjoy it for the first time with the blessing of the band! Glenn Doughty and his Baltimore Colts Shake and Bake Band of the 70's is the first musical group consisting of former NFL All-Pro players that Tramp Records has partnered with in its history! Watch out, "Shake and Bake " will be re-released on a good old 45 RPM single, too!

Those of you who have been enjoying the detective work of the people behind the label over the past 21 years know that the Movements series can be easily considered as the flagship compilation series on Tramp. So, after having listened to the entire selection of this brand new volume we sincerely hope that we will have achieved our aim to surprise, delight, and enlighten you once again!

Key selling points:

- initial 400 LPs contain a bonus 7" of a SUPERRARE funk 45

- incl. full album download code
- deluxe double-gatefold LP with detailed liner notes & unseen photographs

- ALL but three songs appear on CD, LP & digital for the very first-time

Kato Hideki's Statement: "The Walk is the first collaboration between me and my brother from another mother, Kramer. We started working together in the late summer in 2023, discussing the thematics and the sonic palette of the album. We shared strong connections with the writings by Robert Walser and Basho - both of them walked, dreamed, lived and died on the road. Ambient music was our natural plane for us to transduce the power of their literature into our music as signifiers. Neither of us imagined just to make 'another ambient record', nor a direct translation of their writings. My instinct was to use various modal colors with modulation - slow yet structured music that sounds deceivingly similar to ambient music. Kramer's genius was apparent to me: his ability to elaborate the music as a composer / musician with his keen ears; to frame the album conceptually, sonically and musically as a producer. What you hear in this album is a true collaboration between two artists who trusted each other to let the music transcend. Here you have it, enjoy YOUR walk - dream, live and die well!" Kato Hideki - Brooklyn, NY on April 3rd, 2024 Kramer's Statement: "Sometime in the latter 20th Century, I became aware of the art of The Brothers Quay, two American animators living in London and making the most beautiful works of art I'd ever experienced in cinema. I noted that some of their work was inspired by_ 'the writings of Robert Walser'. Fast forward to 2024 and I have now read every word there was to read (translated into English) by this unique Swiss-German writer. I'd waited decades to find the right 'environment' in which to create music in dedication to this great prose writer and poet, and in 2023, I found that it was not 'the right environment' that I'd been waiting for, but rather, the right collaborator. Kato Hideki and his extraordinary work as composer for film, dance and just about every other creative discipline you can imagine, was equally as inspiring to me for this project as the words and worlds of Walser and Basho. Our journey in collaborative composition began all over the global map, but arrived at the same physical endpoint, and at the very same point in time. I'm not sure that I would even be interested in music at all, unless there were other artists to partner with as I worked. Working alone means Nothing to me. This months-long act of co-creation i have shared with Kato for "THE WALK" has made me as happy to be alive as Walser and Basho were so happy to be alive while on their walks, as evidenced by their extraordinary descriptive powers, knowing that the world around them - so simple yet so very complex - made life so wondrous, and so well worth the sometimes seemingly insurmountable struggles of finding a way to survive Today, so that we might try again Tomorrow." - Kramer, April 9, 2024 (Asheville, NC)

Black Truffle is thrilled to present a Song for two Mothers / Occam IX the first ever solo release from Laetitia Sonami. Born in France in 1957, Sonami studied with Éliane Radigue in Paris before moving to California in 1978 to study electronic music at Mills College, going on to make important innovations in the field of live electronics interfaces and multi-media performance. Sonami is perhaps most closely associated with one of her inventions, the Lady’s Glove, an arm-length tailored glove fitted with movement sensors allowing the performer fluidly to control digital sound parameters and processing, as well as motors, lights and video playback. Having performed with the Lady’s Glove for 25 years, Sonami retired it in 2016, turning her attention to the interface/instrument heard and pictured here, the Spring Sprye.

In Sonami’s own description, “The Spring Spyre is composed of three thin springs that are attached to reverb tank pickups, mounted on a metal ring. The audio generated when the springs are touched, rubbed or struck is analyzed in Max/MSP. The extracted features are then used to train machine learning models in Wekinator and Rapidmax and control the audio synthesis in real time. We never actually hear the springs.” After decades of aversion to documenting her work on recordings, a Song for two Mothers / Occam IX treats listeners to two side-long performances with the Spring Spyre: the very first piece developed for the instrument and the most recent, the two contrasting remarkably in sound palette, energy and form. A Song for two Mothers (2023) spins an intricate web of rippling synthetic burbles, rapid sweeps and fizzing textures. Performed in real time with the sensitive and partly uncontrollable Spring Sprye ("a bit tyrannical," Sonami calls it), the music is delicate yet chaotic. Abrupt gestures hover against a backdrop of silence, "devoid of spatial or temporal direction". After several minutes, the sound-world becomes metallic and percussive, tapping and ticking in pointillistic flurries before a wavering harmonic cloud emerges, sprinkled with resonant drips and pops.


Occam IX is a radically different proposition. At the outset of Sonami’s exploration of the Spring Sprye, she asked her former teacher Éliane Radigue to compose a piece for it—and her: like all of Radigue’s work since she ceased working with analogue electronics at the beginning of the 21st century, Occam IX is written not only for an instrument but also for a particular performer. These scores are developed verbally, through meetings and conversations between performer and composer; each is grounded in an image (usually kept from listeners, to avoid influencing their experience); all magnify the subtlest acoustic phenomena and require great commitment and patience from the performer. Sonami’s is one of the few Occam pieces to make use of electronics, bringing it closer to Radigue’s famous longform pieces for ARP 2500. Beginning from a rumbling low tone, the listener is gradually immersed in slowly lapping waves of synthetic tones, eventually thinning out into delicate bell-like pings against a background of white noise, reminiscent of one of the most beautiful sections of Kyema from the Trilogie de la Morte.


Accompanied by notes from Sonami, her longtime collaborator Paul DeMarinis, and Radigue, and illustrated with scores, photographs and images of the Spring Spyre, a Song for two Mothers / Occam IX is an essential document celebrating an under-recognised pioneer of electronic music and performance.

Rose Main Reading Room, the fourth full length by Peel Dream Magazine, is a lush, inviting headphones record; the kind of album made to accompany city bus rides and rainy-day solo trips to accidental destinations. The band, whose name nods to the BBC Radio 1 legend John Peel — arbiter of all things underground, quality, and (it must be said) "cool" — has since its inception been a genre-hopping experiment, jumping from motorik krautrock to shoegaze and space age pop, and their newest work is a perfect starting point for the uninitiated, beckoning toward a newfound romance and nostalgia with their catchiest collection of songs to date. Across its fifteen songs, Rose Main Reading Room ultimately proposes a world of marvels and compelling complexity: “Oblast” cheekily prods at mutually assured destruction; “Ocean Life” explores the infiniteness within ourselves; while “R.I.P. (Running in Place)” unpacks an all too familiar stagnation. It’s all part of, and crucial to, Rose Main Reading Room’s transportive power, ever reaching for the wonder and magic of the world we live in.

Rose Main Reading Room, the fourth full length by Peel Dream Magazine, is a lush, inviting headphones record; the kind of album made to accompany city bus rides and rainy-day solo trips to accidental destinations. The band, whose name nods to the BBC Radio 1 legend John Peel — arbiter of all things underground, quality, and (it must be said) "cool" — has since its inception been a genre-hopping experiment, jumping from motorik krautrock to shoegaze and space age pop, and their newest work is a perfect starting point for the uninitiated, beckoning toward a newfound romance and nostalgia with their catchiest collection of songs to date. Across its fifteen songs, Rose Main Reading Room ultimately proposes a world of marvels and compelling complexity: “Oblast” cheekily prods at mutually assured destruction; “Ocean Life” explores the infiniteness within ourselves; while “R.I.P. (Running in Place)” unpacks an all too familiar stagnation. It’s all part of, and crucial to, Rose Main Reading Room’s transportive power, ever reaching for the wonder and magic of the world we live in.

The next album in our Cuban Classics series is a hard one to pigeonhole. It’s a real oddity, unique and not in keeping with the majority of Cuban albums we know, but it's all the better for this. Coming courtesy of Juan Almeida, the Fantasia LP is an eclectic and epic, instrumental ride through Latin jazz-funk, trippy electronics and orchestrated classical music. Sounding at points like a full-blown orchestrated score to a dusty animated film extravaganza, with phrases and passages repeating like the appearance of ghostly spectres throughout the recording. At others, it busts into exotic funk, psychedelic-trippiness and Afro-Cuban percussion.

As rich and varied as the record, so too was Juan Almeida's (Juan Almeida Bosque) life. A descendant of African slaves born in a poor neighbourhood in Havana in 1927, Almeida went from bricklayer to university law student, through which he would meet Fidel Castro. He played a key role in the Cuban revolution, becoming the only black commander and famously voicing “Aqui no se rinde nadie!” (“Nobody here surrenders!”) when outnumbered at the start of the offensive. Castro would later make him one of his vice presidents, but Almeida’s legacy does not stop there. He also became the composer of over 300 popular Cuban songs, many of them recounting his days as a guerrilla.

Produced, orchestrated and conducted by Rafael Somavilla, who worked on a vast array of Cuban recordings including Raúl Gómez's 'Instrumental' which we also reissued on Mr Bongo, the feel of Fantasia is big, luscious, grand and pop-classical. It has become a highly sought-after, cult Cuban rarity amongst collectors and like many great albums, every repeat listen brings with it new elements previously unnoticed. Such is its richness and depth. A truly mesmerising, off-the-beaten-track instrumental record.

This original three-track set questioned all sorts of norms, the standout item “Chasin’ The Trane” lasting 16 minutes with the tenor man the only soloist and a 12-bar grid the only thing for performers and fans to hold on to. “Spiritual”’ was the first time Trane opened and closed a piece entirely out-of-tempo, while the conventional “Softly As In A Morning Sunrise” began with over three minutes of just the rhythm trio before his soprano solo. Bonus track on this LP “Blue Train” recorded in Sweden. Not merely the first live Trane to be issued, but a turning-point for him and essential listening for us. This version is limited on Solid Purple & Solid Red mixed vinyl.

Following last year’s Cyber Sunshine single and Vantage Point EP, plus the former’s expansion into a Deluxe Remix Pack EP just this Spring, trusty Dutch trance traders Match Box are miraculously back with their fourth consecutive glistening Goddezz release. This time, it’s a double offering whose boundless celestial charm again centres around the star we owe it all to: think of High En3rgy as the sunset daydream and Clint’s remix the sunrise epiphany.

Spanning 8 minutes and 7 seconds that slip by all too soon, High En3rgy is a lucent, dreamlike journey not easily forgotten. Layering a faintly melancholic and hauntingly simple melody over a nonetheless pulsating bassline, it accomplishes something rare: an emotive marrying of the wistful and the rousing. The effect is a plucky, heartening sound that walks a tightrope between nostalgic reflection and enduring anticipation. It’s delicate yet driving - the gorgeous sonic expression of a sunset daydream that could leave you leaning either way.

Whether you emerge from that musing trance with a lump in your throat or a fire in your belly, Clint’s remix is the impossibly ideal next step. Faithfully refracting its originator’s sound whilst instantly supercharging the mood from spirited to high-spirited, its giddy rhythm and buoyant-turned-bouncy beat inject pure, immediate, perhaps emergency enlivenment. It’s more than fun, playful or invigorating: it’s irresistibly, heroically stirring - and once its sunrise synths come scorching over the horizon, you’re passing through gleeful exhilaration into sublime elation, with no hope of holding back any tears.