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Cypress Hill’s self-titled debut album was hard as nails, with very few pop concessions. There was humor, but it was laced by cackling, homicidal sneering. Not well known outside of the hardcore hip-hop scene at first, faces of the three group members weren’t usually shown clearly in press photos; they preferred the shadows. As their first singles began hitting the airwaves and record racks, the press and music fans started to take notice.


From the opening notes of the group’s first single, “The Phuncky Feel One,” to deeper album cuts like “Stoned Is The Way Of The Walk” and “Tres Equis,” it was clear that Cypress Hill was something different. And very, very dope. The world Cypress Hill espoused was gang-ridden and far from cheery, but they managed to laugh through the pain. Lead rapper B-Real took each fuzzed-out, rock-hard DJ Muggs beat as a challenge, jumping around it like a spark off a joint as it makes its way to the concrete. MC Sen Dog always had B-Real’s back, to bring intensity and a no-bullshit gruffness that made the group both menacing and unpredictable.


When they introduced percussionist Eric Bobo to the mix in the early 90s, it brought new dimension to the band, making their live performances one of the most unique and accomplished shows in hip-hop. Journalist and author Chris Faraone highlights the group’s relationship in the reissue’s liner notes (which is included only in limited edition Skull) saying, “By the late ‘80s the undisputed Cypress unit finally formed. B and Sen realized that their diametric styles - the latter’s deep wrangle, the former’s inimitable high notes - complemented one another righteously. By then Muggs had bangers in the bag, as well as industry experience from a jaunt with the New York duo 7A3. B and Sen waited while Muggs messed with 7A3, and in that time began to build the blueprint for their raucous and weeded no-holds-barred style. Besides getting schooled on industry pitfalls, Muggs had also grown into hip-hop’s most formidable young producer, while straddling the bi-coastal gap.”

Cypress Hill’s debut went gold by the end of 1991 and has since pushed past double platinum status, making it the first album for a Latino-American hip hop group to do so. The album received raves from the likes of Rolling Stone and the Los Angeles Times, saw a #1 Hot Rap Single with the release of “The Phuncky One” and helped the band win Artist Of The Year at the 1992 Source Awards. After 25 years, it should come as no surprise that Cypress Hill is a cornerstone of the group’s live set to this day.

After a meteoric rise over the past decade, acclaimed Australian rapper Iggy Azalea drops the third and (possibly) final album, The End of an Era. Signifying a time to potentially take a step back from music, Iggy surely doesn't go out without a bang. With standout hits such as "Brazil," "Iam The Stripclub," & "Sex on the Beach (feat. Sophia Scott)," the 14 track album is filled with bangers returning to the sound of her mixtape roots. Features include BIA, Sophia Scott & Ellise.

After a meteoric rise over the past decade, acclaimed Australian rapper Iggy Azalea drops the third and (possibly) final album, The End of an Era. Signifying a time to potentially take a step back from music, Iggy surely doesn't go out without a bang. With standout hits such as "Brazil," "Iam The Stripclub," & "Sex on the Beach (feat. Sophia Scott)," the 14 track album is filled with bangers returning to the sound of her mixtape roots. Features include BIA, Sophia Scott & Ellise.

R&B, funk and soul icons Kool & The Gang are returning with a new album release – People Just Wanna Have Fun is out July 14, 2023 on Astana Music Inc. With six decades of hits, the internationally celebrated group continues to tour the world and recently performed on Good Morning America. The band is led by founding members Robert “Kool” Bell (bassist) and George “Funky” Brown (keyboardist, drummer & producer of this album), whose book Too Hot: Kool & the Gang & Me will be released on July 11, 2023. Continuing to release music that makes the good times better and the bad times more bearable, this collection will be the band’s 34th studio album, featuring some of the last studio work by founding horn players, Kool’s brother Ronald “Khalis” Bell and Dennis “D.T.” Thomas, who passed in 2020 and 2021. Lead vocals on the album also include Sha Sha Jones, Shawn McQuiller, Lavell Evans, Dominique Karan, Rick Marcel and Walt Anderson, plus rappers Ami Miller & Ole’. Both Bell and Brown view People Just Wanna Have Fun as a summation of their long career, during which they sold 70 million albums worldwide with hit singles like “Celebration,” “Ladies Night,” “Get Down on It,” “Hollywood Swinging” & beyond. Since their start in 1964, the group has amassed two Grammy Awards, seven American Music Awards, a BET Soul Train Lifetime Achievement Award and star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Kool’s bass guitar is even featured in the Smithsonian Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, DC. From Newark to Nairobi, Kool & the Gang have performed continuously longer than any R&B group in history and are the most sampled R&B band of all time, including by Madonna, Jay-Z, Beastie Boys, Janet Jackson, Cypress Hill and P. Diddy.

A crime is committed on board the Orient-Express. During the journey, Hercule Poirot finds himself surrounded by a group of singular characters, all suspects, each with their own secrets and motivations, as he attempts to solve the murder that has just taken place. The soundtrack was composed by Jean-Luc Briançon (Abigoba, Kurtz Mindfields), assisted by Roman Perreton and featuring a host of guests from Nuage7 Studio. This soundtrack is coloured with mystery, suspense and cinematic atmospheres to take you irresistibly on board this Orient Express to the end of the journey ...

The Strangers brings together Hervé Salters AKA General Elektriks and two exceptional rappers: Frenchman Leeroy (ex-Saïan Supa Crew) and American Lateef The Truthspeaker (Blackalicious) in a new project. Evolving in the year 2222, "The Strangers" is a testament from the future in the form of hip hop with a strong funk undertone, a timeless and playful sound where the languages of Shakespeare and Molière combine and clash to describe a world of tomorrow in 2023 that no one has yet heard of: requiring the earthlings of the future to travel from an early age, society abolishes the fear of the unknown. Lateef, Leeroy and General Elektriks have therefore chosen to set their narrative in the future to better speak of today"s world. The environment, individual freedom, police violence and communitarianism are all subjects that permeate the record. But the 3 Strangers inject a healthy dose of humour and energy into their music. This album is a sonic road movie of anticipation, zig-zagging between athletic and poetic flows soulful choruses, and darker downtempos. The sound developed is fluorescent and infectious, speaking to the hips as much as the head.

All the essential tracks of Funk, sung by the greatest legends of the genre, gathered in a double vinyl, with :

Johnny "Guitar" Watson - Imagination - Grandmaster Flash - James Brown - Loleatta Holloway - The Whispers - First Choice - Barry White - The Sugarhill Gang - Syl Johnson...

Adrian Borland and Graham Bailey might be better known as members of legendary post-punk group The Sound, but the two were childhood friends and had been playing together even earlier in The Outsiders, and continued their deep musical rapport as a duo, creating these intense and engaging songs as Second Layer at the same time as their higher profile band output. Following our release of Courts Or Wars, combining their early material, we are proud to reissue their only full length album, World Of Rubber.

Fueled by experimentation in both song construction and recording techniques, the duo leave you enveloped in what The Quietus described as, “a monochrome worldview morbidly obsessed with the dehumanizing effect of war, nuclear weapon annihilation, and the fracturing and negation of the self within an increasingly distorted and technologically mediated society.” Indeed, the goal had been to make each album a concept album, with this to be titled: Second Layer’s World Of Rubber. Alas, this was to be the first and last of those efforts. New detailed liner notes from Graham Bailey shed considerable light on the creation of this cold classic and its immediate aftermath.

Bailey’s inventive construction and deconstruction of various electronics, effects boxes and tape loops form the propulsive base for these songs. Borland’s guitar playing is jagged and unleashed. Above it all is an undeniable sense of melody and Adrian’s distinctive vocals. Soon, they would wonder where Second Layer ended and The Sound began, but World Of Rubber would stand as a document of this fertile period. It would also be a lasting testament to their desire to push the boundaries of their creativity. Dark and brooding the result is what Bandcamp described as “brutally bleak, blank-eyed post-punk that remains chillingly compelling.”

Hector Oaks, Ill Pekeno & Ergo Pro joined forces in Berlin to record their collaboration, blending the pounding beats of techno with the raw lyrics of rap. Inspired by the city's club scene, they captured the energy of their night out in Eso Es G.

As Ergo Pro put it, "Man, when we were at Tresor, it was like we were in another world. Everyone was vibing, the sweat was dripping, and we knew we had to take that energy to the studio. And look at us now - we've got "Eso Es G brx".

Wie klingt der Ballermann - betrachtet durch eine volkstümliche Sonnenbrille? Heino interpretiert die größten " Lieder meiner
Heimat".

Eine der größten Volksmusik- und Schlagerikonen Deutschlands schnappt sich in diesem Jahr das Mikrofon und damit auch die Krone als neuer Partykönig - wenn Heino die erfolgreichsten deutschsprachigen Partyhits der letzten Jahre in seine unvergleichliche Klangwelt überführt.

Auf dem neuen Album, das die seit gut 65 Jahren im Rampenlicht stehende Ikone mit der Trademark-Sonnenbrille gemeinsam mit Hitproducer Christian Geller aufgenommen hat, präsentiert Heino nur
die größten Party-Hits auf seine Art und widmet sich erstmals der balearischen Hoch(stimmungs)kultur.

HEINO knüft damit an das gefeierte Rock-/RapCoveralbum "Mit freundlichen Grüßen" aus dem Jahr 2013 an - denn auch jenen #1-Longplayer hatte er gemeinsam mit Christian Geller aufgenommen.
Das Produkt ist als CD & Doppel-Vinyl erhältlich.

During their original run, Stornoway achieved immense critical acclaim, fan adoration and two Top 20 albums, one of which (their debut ‘Beachcomber’s Windowsill’) was certified Silver. But in 2016 they announced that they were ending on a high (2015’s ‘Bonxie’ being “their best album yet” according to The Guardian) with the following year’s farewell tour, although their rapturously received WOMAD set (“a magnificent farewell”, The Spectator) was delayed until 2022. They still earned new fans, however, when their version of ‘The Only Way Is Up’ exceeded 2 million streams after being used in an advert and in various TV shows.

Vocalist/guitarist Brian Briggs stopped songwriting altogether and instead pursued a new career passion managing a wetland for water voles and lapwings. Nonetheless, Brian and bandmates Jon Ouin (keyboard) and Oli Steadman (bass) stayed in torch, and step-by-step they reconnected with the love of creating music that had first inspired them to start a band.

Don Cherry's downtown Paris funk masterwork produced in 1985 by Ramuntcho Matta and originally released by Barclay in France only, finally gets a worldwide release on Wewantsounds. Featuring French post-punk muse Elli Medeiros, avant garde poet Brion Gysin and cult Senegalese drummer Abdoulaye Prosper Niang (Xalam), this is a unique soundbite of Paris in the early 80s at its coolest when funk, jazz and new wave were mingling with sounds from Africa, Jamaica and Latin America. Newly Remastered, the album is augmented by a second LP worth of bonus tracks and a deluxe gatefold sleeve with a new essay by French journalist Jacques Denis (Liberation).

For over two decades Jonathan Katsav has used his Crave project to fray rap at its fringes, using Memphis and Houston's low-and-slow legacy to inform sounds that have as much in common with Merzbow as they do Tommy Wright III. Working under a variety of different monikers such as Lieu Noir, Sniper Bait and Soul Collector, the French producer is most prolific as Crave, and "Inner War Delirium" is a substantial and broadly cinematic addition to his canon. Katsav approaches each track as if it's a scene from a movie, using real life experiences to explore separate characters and contrasting emotions. Using different narrators and disparate vocal styles, he navigates grim, blown-out landscapes, driving neon drenched trap synths and horror choirs against overdriven kicks and waterlogged industrial atmospheres. Mangled field recordings, squealing static and gurgling synthesized bass opens 'PHYLLIS', goading the cautious with serrated, carnival synths and cacophonous vocals that sway lugubriously between rap and grindcore. The relationship between dark and light, death and rebirth, is at the heart of "Inner War Delirium", rippling through every track's oozing amalgamation of inebriated hip-hop and buzzsaw noise. Katsav's sounds are an attempt to subject us to the physicality of his own life's puzzle, and he cuts them into vignettes like a director. On the album's final track, listeners are swiped from in front of the speakers and bundled into the trunk of a car, rain rattling on the metal and the album playing on in the distance. It's a way for the producer to turn the camera back on the audience and ask them to consider their own complicated reality - it's Crave's story, but everyone's a part of it.

Clear Vinyl

Repressed! Get On Down proudly present Mecca And The Soul Brother, the critically acclaimed 1992 full-length debut from Pete Rock & CL Smooth. The album is considered as one of the greatest Hip Hop albums of all time. Boasting tracks such as the first single, “They Reminisce Over You (T.R.O.Y.)”, a dedication to their deceased friend; “Trouble T-Roy”, which went on to become not only their signature hit, but also one of Hip Hop’s all-time great songs. The album is propelled forward by Rock’s quick, soulful interludes; usually bits of old R&B tunes layered with his signature trumpet and sax loops. Smooth’s liquid freestyle delivery pieces together the perfect vocal match that, together, creates a sprawling, nearly 80-minute-long album on which not a single song or interlude is a throwaway or a superfluous piece.
Mecca And The Soul Brother has stood the test of time. The release has been named one of the essential recordings of the 90s by Rolling Stone, appears on Ego Trips listing of the Top 25 Hip Hop albums released from 1980-1998, and appeared on The Source’s 100 Greatest Rap Albums of all time.

Although Beyond Belief was completed in only a handful of all-night sessions, 38 Spesh and Harry Fraud took their time crafting this high level Hip-Hop music. Harry didn’t simply send Spesh a folder of beats to rap to, Spesh made the trip to Harry’s lab, and all the beats and lyrics were created on the spot. Fans and critics agree that this 10-track offer- ing is some of the strongest work in both artists’ catalogues. The LP boasts monster tracks like “Speshal,” “Band of Brothers,” and “Warm Winter.” Guests on the album include Benny The Butcher, Conway The Machine, Stove God Cooks, Ransom, Wiz Khalifa, Curren$y, Jim Jones, and ElCamino.

Following nearly 20 years of working together as a trio, and numerous cross-collaborations in different configuration between them, Ideologic Organ presents Placelessness, the debut full-length by Chris Abrahams, Oren Ambarchi, and Robbie Avenaim, comprising two long-form works at juncture of ambient music, minimalism, rigorous experimentalism and improvisation, and machine music. Having carved distinct pathways across a diverse number of musical idioms for decades, Chris Abrahams, Oren Ambarchi, and Robbie Avenaim are each, respectively, among the most noteworthy and groundbreaking figures to have emerged from Australia's thriving experimental music scene. Ambarchi and Avenaim first encountered Abrahams when seeing the Necks - the project that has served as the primary vehicle for his singular approach to the piano since its founding in 1987 - together during the late 1980s, not long after having met in Sydney's underground music community. The pair's collaborations date back more than 35 years, criss-crossing Ambarchi's pioneering solo and ensemble work for guitar and Avenaim's visionary efforts for SARPS (Semi Automated Robotic Percussion System), robotic and kinetic extensions to his drum kit. In 2004, fate brought the three together in a trio performance at the What Is Music? Festival, the annual touring showcase of experimental music founded and run by Ambarchi and Avenaim between 1994-2012. For the nearly two decades since, Abrahams, Ambarchi, and Avenaim have intermittently reformed in exclusively live contexts, in Australia and abroad, cultivating and refining the fertile ground first tilled in that early meeting. Placelessness is the first album to present this remarkable trio's efforts in recorded form. Placelessness is the joining of three highly individualised streams, working in perfect harmony; the point at which friendship, mutual respect, and decades of creative exploration produce a singular spectrum of sound. Featuring Abrahams on piano, Ambarchi on guitar, and Avenaim on drums, the album's two sides draw on each artist's enduring dedication to long-form composition. Its two pieces, Placelessness I and Placelessness II, initially began as a single, 40 minute work, before being divided and reworked into distinct, complimentary gestures for the corresponding sides of the LP. Beginning with restrained clusters of reverberant piano tones, Placelessness I progresses at an almost glacial pace, with Abrahams' interventions increasing met by sparse responses, darting within vast ambiences, on guitar and percussion by Ambarchi and Avenaim. Remarkably conversational within its convergences of tonal, rhythmic, and textural abstraction, over the work's duration a progressive sense of tension unfurls and contracts, refusing release, as each of the ensemble's members contribute to an increasingly tangled sense of density at its resolve. While an entirely autonomous work, Placelessness II rapidly realises a distillation of the energy hinted at across the length of its predecessor. Following a luring passage of harmonious calm, Abrahams' launches into shimmering lines of repeating arpeggios, complimented at each escalation of tempo by Avenaim's machine gun fire percussion work and Ambarchi's masterful delivery of tonality and texture, as the trio collectively generate dense sheets of pointillistic ambience within which individual identity is almost lost, before slowly unspooling into unexpected abstractions and dissonances that deftly intervene with the work's inner logic and calm. What could easily be termed a maximalist take on Minimalism, Placelessness is a masterstroke of contemporary, real time composition, that blurs the boundaries between ambient music, experimentalism, free improvisation, and machine music. Drawing on Chris Abrahams, Oren Ambarchi, and Robbie Avenaim's decades of respective solo and collaborative practice, and the culmination of nearly twenty years of working together as a trio, it's two durational pieces - Placelessness I and Placelessness II - take form with a startling sense of effortlessness and grace, neither shying away from explicit beauty or rigorously tension within their forms.

A long-in-the-works project of ours, here comes A Tribe Called Kotori's first foray into full-length territories, as the immensely talented Rampue takes us on a melancholy-riddled ride across his phantasmatic mindscapes. A true sound explorer, deftly steering his ship down the junction of electronica, abstract and balearic-infused prog house, the Berlin-based vibist has us transfixed and elevated throughout the twelve cuts that form the backbone to this lushly textured promenade in sound - at times understatedly euphoric, at others rivetingly exotic.

Of the creative process that lead to 'Bubblebath Trance', Rampue explains "It all started and ended in the same moment: my cherished feline companion, my laptop awash with an unintended bath, and alas, a dearth of backups. The resultant calamity, an echo of chaotic tranquility." Under the generous layer of irony lies some unaltered truth about Rampue's debut long-player for A Tribe Called Kotori: this sense of serenity that goes with stepping into this warm and bubbling primitive chaos of sorts infuses the listening experience far and wide. Distantly emulating the "euphonious strains" of iconic PS1 video games soundtracks from his youth days, the album has us surfing a constant paradox of emotions, wistful but not abandoning itself to sorrow, dynamic yet suspended in some sort of mind-expanding stasis. As if you were looking at the world beneath you in exploded view, conscious of all thing, slowly moving up the many layers of our atmosphere towards uncharted skies.

A paragon of Rampue's most poignant take on classic electronica tropes, 'Harmonie' blazes with a poetic fire that engulfs about everything in its wake. Just figure yourself riding a chocobo across the sand-covered expanse of North Corel (toasting to the FFVII nerds here) as this blasts out in the distance. From this trancey bubblebath emerge lots of musical shades and nuances, from the nicely dubbed-out, brass-heavy coastal jazz of 'Schattenschranz' to the choppy, trip-hop-adjacent future electronics of 'Inside', via the exuberantly joyous mess of faux-organic number 'Tripomatic' and cinematic charisma of 'Ich hasse Sonne' high-flying orchestrations.

Connecting the dots between that trance-indebted ebullience and further downtempo-friendly attraction, 'Verfahren' perhaps encompasses best what 'Bubblebath Trance' is about: gracefully walking the tightrope in-limbo nostalgia-soaked inner movements and a powerful outward thrust, burning to let the feelings ooze out from the shell that holds them.Clad in purely 90s-compatible breaksy motion, 'Salz' is another attempt to reconcile emotional and physical dissonance, like kneading all states - solid, liquid and vaporous - into an impossible mega-vibe of its own; malleable, strong and enveloping in equal measure. Borrowing from two-step and UK garage, 'Take Away' is a definite high in Rampue's master unfolding of musical twists and turns, summoning a Boarder Community-esque atmosphere and clashing it alongside floor-ready footwork motifs to fascinating effect.

An ode to his studio companion, 'Buchla Trip' finds Rampue's exploring his machinic friend's quirky yet soulful array of electronic potentialities - making it sound like a conversation you'd have with R2-D2 in the heart of a Sandcrawler, whereas 'Kajal' beams us up to a fragmented headspace, halfway altered PC-Pop and arps-loaded electronica on amphetamines. Effusive and transporting, the title-track 'Bubblebath Trance' could well figure as the album's no.1 medley in essence: a bountiful lucid dream of dancing forms, colours and sentiments to wrap your head around, confidently drifting from a liminal state of consciousness down the rapids of one's troubled inner workings.

Rounding off the package, the languid ambient finale of 'Die Leiden des hungrigen Fruehstuecks' rubber-stamps the feeling that 'Bubblebath Trance' belongs to that rare category of albums. The ones that mint their own alphabet aside from typical norms and expectations, teaching you the ropes of their new language as it unreels between your ears - real and unreal, elusive to any other meaning than the one your guts and brains will be inclined to give it to, in real time. A crystal-pure object if you will, that shall not reveal its secrets, even after a thousand listens and just as many wowing moments.

Anchored by the powerhouse precision drumming of Felix Lehrmann and the resounding groove of electric bassist Thomas Stieger, augmented by kaleidoscopic contributions from Raphael Meinhart on vibes, marimba, MalletKAT Pro and synth and pyrotechnic shredding from six-string marvel Arto Makela, this potent collection of intelligent high- energy music conjures up favorable comparisons to everyone from Philip Glass and Frank Zappa to Joe Zawinul, Allan Holdsworth, King Crimson and Tribal Tech.

And while those varied influences may seep into the fabric of the ten
compositions here, the members of Marriage Material apply their own personal touch to the material, which they've come to define as "cinematic jazz."

Before he was old enough to legally drink, there were "Best Of," rarities compilations, and .zip files floating through the ether.

Whenever industry prospectors earmarked him as the next big thing, he disappeared back underground, only to reemerge sharper, leaner, weirder.

Though only 26, the St. Louis- born rapper and producer has seen enough for several lifetimes--and raps as if he's tapped into many more. But after a few years of highs, lows, and traumatic odysseys, he was able to stare straight into the abyss and conquer it. This regained confidence is exhibited on fish don't climb trees, the largely self-produced new album that reaffirms him as one of rap's great auteurs.

While working on "fish", he vowed to be more true to the emotions and experiences he'd endured. Being true to those fractured, discordant feelings requires a prismatic approach. And so you get fish's exhilarating hairpin turns: from downtempo dub ("bora bora") to 808s rattling through a haunted house ("tourniquet"), beats that sound as if they're molting into new shapes in real time (the two- song suite of "daze" and "grey theory") to ones that that plunge to the
bottom of a pocket ("spirits").

The album's title comes from the maybe-apocryphal Einstein quote, about how a fish judged by its ability to climb trees will "spend its whole life believing it is stupid." For Watson, this meant embracing the cheery first half of the quote ("Everybody is a genius"), but also being cognizant of the dark undercurrents that flow just beneath seemingly innocent misjudgments and mis-categorizations.