quête:rat

Ben Pest and ARA-U unite for the next release on No Static / Automatic. Kaos Sympatic EP started life with the pair recording jams of various vintage studio kit, including an EMS VCS3, Roland VP330 and an Orgon Systems prototype known only as the “Silver Box”, which developed into full tracks over subsequent sessions. Ben Pest has been busy releasing high grade club tracks including collabs with Radioactive Man and Kursa for Asking For Trouble and Love Love Records last year, and with solo EPs dropping on Cultivated Electronics and Posh End music. Here he links with NS/A boss ARA-U, turning out some of their headiest material to date.

The EP kicks off with ‘Err Hello’, it’s wholly discordant, lairy, and unapologetically weird. ‘‘Get A Grip’ drifts in with hallucinatory wafts of sound over a warped riff, building into a granular, distorted headfuck of a hoover-bass moment. This one will make the subs rattle on the right side of distortion. On the B Side title track ‘Kaos Sympatic’ gets stuck in with a big broken beat and guttural sub that transforms into a techno drop to drive this track home. Finishing up, ‘Slapback’ serves up a cut of high energy electro funk, coming off like classic ERP on heat. Limited edition purple vinyl.

Auf seiner dritten Studio-LP präsentiert Werkha einen einzigartigen Blend aus jazziger, Breakbeat-angehauchter Elektronik und analoger Ästhetik. Mit Ríoghnach Connolly und Daudi Matsiko sind zwei renommierte Künstler mit Wurzeln in der Folkmusik dabei, die Werkhas enge Verbindung zur Natur unterstreichen. Werkha (aka Tom Leah) ist ein Multiinstrumentalist aus Manchester mit Releases auf First Word und Tru Thoughts. Seine bisherigen Kollabos umfassen Quantic, A Certain Ratio, Marcos Valle, Eska, Chunky, Andrew Ashong, Keisha Thompson und Bryony Jarman-Pinto. Er tourte zusammen mit Bonobo, Chet Faker, Mr Scruff, Crazy P, GoGo Penguin, Todd Terje, Lefto und MCDE. Zu seinen Supportern gehören Gilles Peterson, Nemone, Don Letts, Jamz Supernova, Mo Ayoub), Julie Adenuga, Scratcha DVA, Tom Ravenscroft und Afrodeutsche

The Sator Arepo, or Sator Square, is an ancient word puzzle comprising five palindromes that's etched on various historical sites throughout the Western world. Its origins are unknown, but the square has long been thought to hold magical properties, used as a charm against illness and evil, to cure insanity or to determine whether someone was guilty of witchcraft. Self-styled "punk ethnomusicologist", acoustician and musician Julien Hairon uses this mystical symbol as the starting point for his debut Judgitzu album in an attempt to reconnect with his Celtic heritage, exploring how its hallowed messages might harmonize with contemporary Tanzanian dance music.Hairon has been traveling across the world for over a decade, collecting field recordings from countries such as Indonesia, Australia, Cambodia, China and Bangladesh, and presenting them on his Les Cartes Postales Sonores label, re-issuing any curious cassettes and CDs he came across on the PetPets' TAPES imprint. It was during this time that he became fascinated by rituals that involved spirits, prompting him to examine his own ancestry when he returned to Brittany. "Many artifacts in the landscape remain," Hairon explains, "and the power of spirits is still palpable." He represents this Celtic mysticism on 'Sator Arepo' with murky drones and magickal synth tones, using xenharmonic scales (tuning outside of standard 12-tone equal temperament) that reach back to the ancient world. These sounds are augmented with fast-paced, sci-fi rhythms informed by his time in Tanzania; "Singeli has contaminated me," admits the producer.The most astonishing example of this is 'Miracle', a thrusting soundsystem experiment that layers serpentine, bagpipe-esque electronic wails over extravagant clusters of blocky percussion. Driven by the frenetic 175BPM pulse that echoes through the streets of Dar Es Salaam - popularized globally by forward-thinking producers like Sisso, Duke and Jay Mitta - Hairon opens up a rare conversation, seeking to draw parallels between today's most urgent dance forms and the archaic rituals of antiquity. On 'Vitalimetre', Hairon drives his sonic palette into the red, harmonizing with Dutch hardstyle and gabber, and splaying distorted drones over maddeningly blown-out kicks and ratcheting percussion. 'L'or Des Fous' takes a more meditative route, prioritizing Hairon's eccentric tonality with expressive sheets of pitch-warped sound that ghost walk across energized, rattling beats.If you heard Hairon's last Judgitzu release 'Umeme / Kelele', described by Boomkat as "one of 2019's deadliest dancefloor sessions," then you'll know how mindboggling this material can be. And with 'Sator Arepo', the French producer deepens his reach, grasping a world that we've almost forgotten and juxtaposing it with a landscape most of us barely comprehend.

Zum 30-jährigen Jubiläum legen Kreidler zwei ihrer frühesten Werke neu auf: RIVA (1994) und das unbetitelte Mini-Album (1995). Beide Veröffentlichungen waren lange vergriffen und erscheinen nun remastered in einer hochwertigen Edition auf Bureau B. Die Aufnahmen dokumentieren die Anfänge einer Band, die sich seitdem als feste Größe zwischen elektronischer Musik, Post-Rock und Avantgarde etabliert hat. Die Düsseldorfer Kunstakademie, das Umfeld von Ratinger Hof und Creamcheese, sowie die Nähe zu Bands wie Kraftwerk, NEU! oder DAF bildeten den kulturellen Nährboden. Kreidler entwickelten daraus ihren ganz eigenen Sound: hypnotisch, reduziert, elegant.

A reissue of a cassette that was originally released on Uramado in 2020, this is the first time this live session appears on vinyl. The performance, featuring Kudo on piano and 3C123 on clarinet, was recorded on October 18, 2009, at the Uramado venue in Shinjuku. A beautiful and quixotic forty-minute set, that reconnects both Kudo and 3C123 with various musical histories, including those of classical composition and free improvisation.

The performance documented on Tori Kudo & 3C123 is a curious one. While they both appear to slip into improvised ruminations at times, for the most part, Kudo performs pieces by Erik Satie on the piano, over which 3C123 teases an excoriating stream of improvisation from the clarinet. His playing here is wild in its poetry: sometimes lushly nestly alongside Satie’s melodies, elsewhere loosing Ayler-esque squalls from the instrument, it’s a bravura performance that is matched, in an indirect manner, by the poise and pacing of Kudo’s generous, fluent recital.

When asked about the thinking behind the performance documented here, Kudo explains by describing the historical juxtaposition of Satie with Takehisa Kosugi’s improvised violin as “an essence of the Japanese art of collective improvisation.” The playing here, as within Japanese collective improvisation, is about sitting ‘alongside’ each other, not necessarily in direct (or even indirect) reference, but rather sharing the space; “just being there together,” Kudo says, and letting go of the need for performers to engage in interplay.

Tori Kudo & 3C123 is certainly part of that tradition, and this is where its curious poetry resides; in that ‘third space’ that sits in between, but not directly connecting, the two performers. Kudo makes an analogy with Fluxus, which is appropriate. But you can also hear their shared history here, somehow, as Kudo and 3C123 have known each other since the eighties, when they shared a house in Kunitachi City, Tokyo. Their musical paths have been multiple – Kudo, of course, best known perhaps for his Maher Shalal Hash Baz ensemble; 3C123 as a member of Vedda Music Workshop, and with other Japanese musicians like Koichiro Watanabe.

Shadows fold into colour. Memory dissolves into noise. You brush up against the walls of the mind. Touch is soft as breath. On ‘B side’, Areliz Ramos follows her work’s current into its more “fantastic and elusive… and even romantic” side; a place where fantasy loosens the bolts of reality and memory, and emotion is alluringly refracted into musical collages and loose-strung compositions. Across the album, voices drift in and out of an intimate space, while pensive guitar lines stumble and bloom like scribbled unresolved notes in a diary. Beneath its icy, often chaotic surface, ‘B side’ radiates a deep sense of joy and fragility. Ramos sketches out an entire world by free association, collaging notions and echoing quiet thoughts into deeply honest snapshots of daydreams.

Areliz Ramos is a Peruvian producer living in London, recognized for an evocative palette weaving lo-fi and downtempo threads into dreamlike, abstract emo narratives. While her debut ‘Frío’ (Where to Now?), orbited around homesickness and estrangement, ‘B side’ embraces imperfection, incorporating her guitar (named "Frank"), pedals, synthesizers, and her own vocal textures for the first time, privileging emotional immediacy over technical precision. The creative process behind this album reflects a conscious decision to let go, loosen control, let intuition lead, and engage her own ‘B’ side.

Rather than constructing a safe haven from hardship, Ramos offers a cracked mirror, staring right at it, embracing that vulnerability. The gentle and beautiful ‘B side’ explores fleeting satisfaction, or the elusive comfort sitting just out of sight.

ULURU is a large sandstone rock formation in Australia. It's sacred to the Anangu, the local Indigenous of the area. For many years it had been deprived of its spiritual significance, due to mass tourism, capitalism, as well as greedy and selfishness of people who just want to make money out of it. However, as a result of the Anangu’s resilience, care and staunchness, huge changes took place in the national park around Uluru as well as in the broader public's consciousness, giving again to the Uluru the sacred identity that had been lost.

You might be reading and thinking now: so what's the point? Actually, there's no real point. I would rather say, there’s hope. The hope of seeing humans all around the world following the example of the Anangu. The hope of seeing humans finally stopping to treat the earth and all what’s part of it, what’s on and what’s in it, as a slave without soul. The hope of changing today, and if not today at latest by tomorrow. This system is failing. It's no longer sustainable, and there's no much time left. So everybody, don't sleep, be critical.

ULURU is a large sandstone rock formation in Australia. It's sacred to the Anangu, the local Indigenous of the area. For many years it had been deprived of its spiritual significance, due to mass tourism, capitalism, as well as greedy and selfishness of people who just want to make money out of it. However, as a result of the Anangu’s resilience, care and staunchness, huge changes took place in the national park around Uluru as well as in the broader public's consciousness, giving again to the Uluru the sacred identity that had been lost.

You might be reading and thinking now: so what's the point? Actually, there's no real point. I would rather say, there’s hope. The hope of seeing humans all around the world following the example of the Anangu. The hope of seeing humans finally stopping to treat the earth and all what’s part of it, what’s on and what’s in it, as a slave without soul. The hope of changing today, and if not today at latest by tomorrow. This system is failing. It's no longer sustainable, and there's no much time left. So everybody, don't sleep, be critical.

Returning to Curvature for his eagerly awaited second EP, Senses brings an impressively varied array of atmospheric jungle to the table, drawing from a multitude of influences across the musical spectrum with Convex Reflex.

A1 - Ratio
A break-laden intro lays the groundwork for a considered foray into the old-school - Senses flecking the mix liberally with synths and female vocal hits of yesteryear, before the welcome crunch of thunderous amens takes over. A cascade of rip-roaring edits
floods the track taking you on an epic ride through the ages, breaks chopped with riotous energy confirming this track as a perfect DJ tool for the dancefloor.

A2 - Sun Runner
Beautifully crisp drums open a DJ-friendly intro to Sun Runner, delightfully clear sounding with distinctive cymbals, a thick snare and subtle bongos. An airy soundscape soon washes into the mix with calming synths and flutes, creating a delicately jazzy blend of styles with soothing melodies contrasting perfectly with the breaks. More pronounced synthwork follows to spice things up as the bassline rumbles along below.

B1 - Spirit Vector
Dense atmospherics are the order of the day as Senses deploys Spirit Vector, opening with an array of synths and strings to create an intro reminiscent of Intense's work in the late 90's. Soon we are treated to a paradoxical assortment of heavy amens that work impeccably in the mix - thundering forth with pads soaring high and a heavy sub bass below. Various instrument samples litter the breakdown before a vocal sample declares "Yes". Yes indeed.

B2 - Still
Closing the EP in style, Still opens with sparse breaks, lightly building with extremely subtle apache breaks in the backdrop with sporadic keys and smooth pads. The drop arrives with warm, room-filling basslines and synths to elevate the atmosphere alongside luscious flute samples.Layers are added to the excellent breaks as Senses sprinkles instrument samples, keys and a classic female vocal, completing a joyous composition for Curvature.

Words by Chris Hayes (Spatial / Red Mist)

In 2005, Felt 2: A Tribute to Lisa Bonet brought together two of underground hip-hop’s most respected voices of the time—Murs and Slug—for a second collaboration that felt looser, livelier, and more charismatic than its predecessor. The album captures a moment of creative freedom, where both MCs were firing on all cylinders, trading verses with sharpness, humor, and effortless chemistry. Their interplay reflects a deep mutual respect and a shared drive to push boundaries while keeping things rooted in style and substance.

Working with different producers for each volume allowed Murs and Slug to bring a unique energy to each release, and Ant’s masterful production was central to the chemistry of Felt 2.


With roots in classic soul and West Coast bounce, his beats created a warm, funk-laced foundation that allowed both rappers
to experiment with new cadences and ideas. Rather than lean on moodiness or melodrama, the soundscape of Felt 2 is expansive, colorful, and rooted in rich, infectious rhythm—an aesthetic that has aged gracefully and continues to draw new listeners into its orbit. While undeniably fun, Felt 2 is also structurally tight and full of moments that reward repeat listens. The chemistry between Murs and Slug is effortless, and their shared sense of humor, timing, and respect for the craft creates a lasting impression. It’s a standout entry in the canon of early-2000s indie hip-hop, and one that’s long overdue for a proper vinyl reissue.

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.

HOLLY GOLIGHTLY ist zurück mit ihrem ersten neuen Album seit "Do The Get Along" vor sieben Jahren! "Look Like Trouble" enthält zehn neue Originalsongs in ihrer Mischung aus Pre-Rock-Electric-Blues, Folk-Rock und weniger hektischem Rock'n'Roll, die wieder einmal HOLLYs einzigartige Sicht auf das Leben widerspiegeln und dessen viele Höhen und Tiefen aufzeigen. Dabei dient der Album-Opener "Black Tongue" als "ein melodischer Fluch", so HOLLY, "nutzt ihn ruhig, er funktioniert!" Ein weiterer herausragender Titel auf dem neuen Album ist "It's All", den HOLLY als Gedenksong beschreibt. "Dieser Song ist mehreren alten Freunden gewidmet. Ein Beitrag zu Beerdigungen, an denen ich nicht teilnehmen konnte", sagt sie. Wie immer werden die düsteren Songs durch hellere Titel ausgeglichen - ",Rolling Along' ist ein fröhliches Liedchen, das allen Mut machen sollte." Aber es wäre auch kein HOLLY GOLIGHTLY-Album, wenn es nicht ein oder zwei bissige Songs gäbe. ",Miss Fortune' ist ein unverblümter Ratschlag für alle, die keinen Funken Verstand haben", sagt Holly zur ersten Single-Auskopplung aus dem Album.

In 2005, Felt 2: A Tribute to Lisa Bonet brought together two of underground hip-hop’s most respected voices of the time—Murs and Slug—for a second collaboration that felt looser, livelier, and more charismatic than its predecessor. The album captures a moment of creative freedom, where both MCs were firing on all cylinders, trading verses with sharpness, humor, and effortless chemistry. Their interplay reflects a deep mutual respect and a shared drive to push boundaries while keeping things rooted in style and substance.

Working with different producers for each volume allowed Murs and Slug to bring a unique energy to each release, and Ant’s masterful production was central to the chemistry of Felt 2.


With roots in classic soul and West Coast bounce, his beats created a warm, funk-laced foundation that allowed both rappers
to experiment with new cadences and ideas. Rather than lean on moodiness or melodrama, the soundscape of Felt 2 is expansive, colorful, and rooted in rich, infectious rhythm—an aesthetic that has aged gracefully and continues to draw new listeners into its orbit. While undeniably fun, Felt 2 is also structurally tight and full of moments that reward repeat listens. The chemistry between Murs and Slug is effortless, and their shared sense of humor, timing, and respect for the craft creates a lasting impression. It’s a standout entry in the canon of early-2000s indie hip-hop, and one that’s long overdue for a proper vinyl reissue.

Many Amerindian cultures share the belief that the future lies behind us, while the past is what we face ahead. This challenge to Western chronology is, however, rooted in common sense: the open possibilities of what is to come are, in theory, what we cannot see—the uncertain—whereas the events that have already happened unfold before our eyes and are available for us to learn from.



This second album by Chilean producer, live performer, and DJ Valesuchi could be described as an experiment with time through music. Some years after relocating to Rio de Janeiro, she released Tragicomic LP (2019) on MAMBA rec—a label founded by the boundary-pushing Brazilian party Mamba Negra—and the self-released EP Cascada (2024). In both works, we can already appreciate her musical imprint: rhythmic and emotional timbral lines—wet, filtered, mathematical,

devotional, multilingual, fantastic, and unreal. However, in Futuro Cercano (Discos Nutabe, 2025), we can hear a leap: the sedimentation of her lived experiences in electronic communities across Latin America, her search for a universal yet personal language to convey emotion and new spiritual meaning, finds in this release a consistency and spontaneity that is rarely heard these days.



In a time when all cultural expression is not only expected to be taggable, but is also increasingly produced from templates that precondition our perception—favoring categorization and connections to works or scenes of the past—the tracks on this album are generically unclassifiable. They represent an openness to experiment without prejudice with electronic instruments and rhythms that are asancestral as they are futuristic. They publicly reveal an intimacy born from the compositional process, a bond formed through the encounter—sometimes tense, sometimes harmonious—between human will and that of the machines themselves. Or, as Valesuchi put it, "cyborging my friendship with the machine and becoming a tempest." Tempest as an eruption of the unknown into the present, the result of opening oneself to a nearly meditative state to uncover the deepest feelings through improvisation on cybernetic feedback and loops. And in that improvisation, to develop “técnicas para estirar o medir el tiempo”

“techniques to stretch or measure time” as she sings in 22, the album’s first track. “Connecting knowledges” as a portal to access that future so near it lies behind us, and to anticipate it as intuition and prospection.



That’s why Futuro Cercano is more than just electronic music: it is a technological ritual, an immersion into the secrets that machines hold as artifacts of human and non-human knowledge, as mysterious objects that allow us to connect with our own otherness—the personal alien hiding beneath the skin that opens us up to uncertainty as possibility rather than catastrophe.

Clear Vinyl. Mit ihrem Debüt The Empty Space Between A Seamount And Shock Headed Julia hinterließen The Black Cat's Eye 2023 ein bemerkenswertes Echo in der Szene - ein energetisches und atmosphärisches Werk, das Psychedelic- und Postrock-Elemente auf einzigartige Weise vereinte und schnell vergriffen war. Nun, zweieinhalb Jahre später, präsentiert das Frankfurter Quintett sein neues Album Decrypting Dreams Of Weird Animals And Strange Objects. Auch diesmal lotet die Band die Grenzbereiche zwischen Psychedelic-, Kraut- und Post-Rock aus. Die Musik oszilliert zwischen hypnotischem Drive, verträumten Gitarrenflächen und dynamischen Spannungsbögen. Das Album umfasst sechs Songs, deren Spannweite von fünf- bis zehnminütigen Klangreisen reicht. Neu ist, dass diesmal zwei Bandmitglieder Kompositionen beisteuerten: Neben Gitarrist und Bandgründer Christian Blaser stammt die Hälfte des Materials von Bassist Jens Cappel. Sein kraftvoller, direkter Stil ergänzt Blasers atmosphärischen Ansatz ideal. Blaser: ,Auf dem Debütalbum stammten alle Stücke von mir. Als Gründer der Band lag mein Fokus zunächst darauf, eine musikalische Vision und Richtung vorzugeben. Jens war zu diesem Zeitpunkt noch nicht so in die kreativen Prozesse eingebunden, obwohl er ein außerordentlich talentierter und umtriebiger Musiker ist. Er veröffentlicht regelmäßig großartige neue Musik auf den Bandcamp-Seiten seiner eigenen Projekte, zum Beispiel The Black Black Paint. Als es dann an das Schreiben neuer Songs für das zweite Album ging, brachte Jens einige wirklich tolle Demos mit ein." Stilistisch verbindet das Album, wie schon der Vorgänger, klassische 70er-Einflüsse mit zeitgenössischer Rockmusik - man hört Anklänge an Can, Motorpsycho, Neu!, Indie- und Stonerrock, aber auch an David Gilmours Gitarrenästhetik. Die Musik ist instrumental, einzig im finalen Stück ,The Magic Balloon" übernimmt Jens Cappel den Gesang. Ähnlich rätselhaft wie bei der ersten Platte klingt der Albumtitel: Decrypting Dreams Of Weird Animals And Strange Objects. Blaser erklärt: ,Der Titel ist inspiriert von einem faszinierenden Aspekt der US-amerikanischen TV-Serie Westworld. Dort werden humanoiden Robotern Gefühle und Träume einprogrammiert. Doch weil diese Androiden dadurch immer menschlicher werden, geraten sie außer Kontrolle - die Programmierer suchen daraufhin den Fehler in den von ihnen geschriebenen Quellcodes, analysieren die künstlichen Gefühle, Gedanken und Träume mithilfe ihrer Computerprogramme. Übertragen auf unsere Realität ist der Titel durchaus ironisch gemeint. Unsere moderne Technik vermittelt den Eindruck, wir könnten jeden Bereich unseres Lebens vollständig steuern. Selbstoptimierung und die Kapitalisierung des eigenen Ichs werden zum obersten Prinzip. Eine trügerische Illusion, denn wir sind nur winzige Teile eines größeren, für uns unergründlichen Ganzen. Vor diesem Hintergrund stellt sich die Frage: Was kann Kunst zu unserer Wahrnehmung der Welt beitragen? Welche Bedeutung hat es, sich mit musikalischen Mitteln auszudrücken? Durch Technik, Mathematik, Physik und reine Vernunft kommen wir dem Wunder des Lebens und dem Sinn unserer Existenz nicht wirklich näher. Was uns bleibt, ist das Ritual, die Beschwörung, die Ekstase. Musik, Tanz, Malerei, Geschichten - sie offenbaren für kurze Momente den wahren Kern des Lebens, richten unser Verhältnis dazu neu aus und verbinden uns mit dem Universum." Aufgenommen hat die Band wieder im Tonstudio Bieber in Offenbach am Main. Oli Rüger, Studiobetreiber und selbst Musiker, hat langjährige Erfahrung mit dem Aufnehmen von Gitarrenbands. Innerhalb von drei Tagen spielte die Band die Basic Tracks live ein, anschließend ergänzten sie diese durch Overdubs. Rüger war auch als Co-Produzent beteiligt. Cappel: ,Oli hat das richtige Händchen für die perfekte Balance zwischen rohen, heftigen und filigranen Sounds, ohne gleichzeitig den Blick für das große Ganze zu verlieren." Das Werk wurde final von Krautrock-Legende Eroc gemastert - eine passende Wahl für eine Band, die sich nicht nur als Erben der 70er sieht, sondern diese Tradition aktiv in die Gegenwart weiterdenkt. Das monochrome Cover-Artwork unterstreicht eindrucksvoll die dunkle Atmosphäre der Musik. Es verdeutlicht den konzeptionellen Ansatz der Band, Musik nicht nur als Klang, sondern als Raum, Konzept und visionäre Erzählform zu begreifen. Das Titelbild - eine scheinbar endlose Spirale, Symbol für DNA-Strukturen und Ewigkeit - wurde vom italienischen Grafiker Daniele Stochino entworfen. Die Innenseite des Gatefolds verbindet dieses Motiv mit einer Illustration des in Berlin lebenden Grafikers und Musikers Max Emil Hurlebaus. Durch farbige Akzente eröffnet sie kontrastreich neue Perspektiven.

Im Sommer 1968 traf sich der 18-jährige Genesis P-Orridge (damals Neil Andrew Megson) mit Freunden in einem bescheidenen Dachgeschoss, um mit Klängen zu experimentieren. Das Ergebnis war "Early Worm", eine Sammlung von Aufnahmen, die die aufkeimende Kreativität eines Künstlers einfing, der später eine Schlüsselfigur der Avantgarde-Musik werden sollte. Diese Sessions, die 1969 auf ein einziges Acetat gepresst wurden, zeigen eine furchtlose Erforschung von Geräuschen, Improvisationen und Tonbandexperimenten, die Einflüsse von Psychedelia, Fluxus, John Cage und Beatnik Bohemia widerspiegeln. "Early Worm" ist ein Zeugnis für P-Orridges frühes Engagement, musikalische Grenzen zu überschreiten. Die rohen und ungefilterten Klanglandschaften des Albums bieten dem Hörer einen seltenen Einblick in die Gründungsmomente, die schließlich zur Gründung von COUM Transmissions, Throbbing Gristle und Psychic TV führen sollten. Remastered und in einer limitierten Vinyl-Pressung, mit Linernotes geschrieben von Genesis Breyer P-Orridge, die den Zeitgeist des UK Undergrounds der späten 60er Jahre in Erinnerung rufen. "If nothing else, (Early Worm) revealed that P-Orridge's approach to music was defiantly left-field from the start: noise, improvisations and tape experiments that sounded a little like a more chaotic version psychedelic folkies the Incredible String Band." . The Guardian

Unlike anything we have heard from her before, Okkyung Lee returns to Shelter Press with "Just Like Any Other Day: Background Music For Your Mundane Activities", a deeply intimate body of recordings at the juncture of ambient music, minimalism, and the baroque, that stands as radical intervention with what experimental music can be, and the place that organisations of sound occupy in our lives. For more than two decades, Okkyung Lee has stood at the forefront of the most radical trajectories of experimental music: a virtuosic cellist and improviser, renowned for her creative rigour and emotive depth. Particularly noteworthy for her range, dexterity, and adaptability, over the last five years Lee's output has revealed unexpected shifts and developments that move far afield from the realms of free improvisation for which she is most well known. 2020's "Yeo - Neun", a heart-wrenching, ambient chamber work - drawing inspiration from the Korean popular music of her youth - was issued by Shelter Press to great critical response, followed closely by "Teum (The Silvery Slit)" - one of a series engrossing electroacoustic works created at Groupe de Recherches Musicales in Paris - on Portraits GRM, and then "Na-Reul" in 2021, regarded by Lee as a closing statement of more than two decades living in New York, which set the precedent of her allowing her emotions to fully occupy the forefront of the music for the first time. Marking her return to Shelter press, "Just Like Any Other Day": Background Music For Your Mundane Activities", encounters Lee upturning the apple cart once again, weaving a profoundly intimate artistic statement on completely unexpected terms. Like its three aforementioned predecessors, "Just Like Any Other Day" belongs to broadening shift in Lee's approach to composing that roughly aligns with her return to her native South Korea, having lived in the United States since her late teens. Infused with a deep reengagement with her own culture and relationship to memory, it is equally a response to those critical challenges and questions provoked by significant life change. Worked on in isolation, and continuously returned to, over the course of four years, the album's nine pieces began with a simple recognition that experimental music is not always what we imagine it to be. It is a practice and a pursuit - a music for which, at its inception, the outcome is unknown - rather than an idiom defined by certain syntaxes, approaches, and qualities of structure and sound. From this departure point, Lee began to inquire after the utility of music itself: what is it for, what does it do, and what place does it (or can it) occupy in our lives? This solitary and durational journey, each composition gradually moving through different phases and evolutions over years, led Lee toward uncharted ground: a music that is not only playful, introspective, and seductive, but also intended to provoke a relationship to experimental music beyond its normative expectations. Rather active or deep listening, it pursues passive listening. Rather than a grand statement, it is discreet. Rather than virtuosity, it embraces the elegant and direct. Even more strikingly, for the first time, the music of "Just Like Any Other Day" encounters Lee leaving the cello entirely behind. Created at home on keyboard, computer, and an inexpensive cassette recorder, "Just Like Any Other Day" presents a remarkable form of ambient music - organisations of sound that become their own environment, to be occupied - intended, as the album's subheading infers, as Background Music For Your Mundane Activities. An expansion of the creative pathways opened by the Korean pop imbued compositions of Yeo - Neun, aspects of electronic process explored by "Teum (The Silvery Slit)", and the emotive foregrounding of "Na-Reul", each of the pieces presented across the two sides of "Just Like Any Other Day" implies something far greater than the limits of its own temporarily: a mood, provocations of memory and place, mirrors for the solitude within which it was made, and palpable emotion lingering just out of grasp. For Lee, each of the album's compositions could be continued or looped for an indeterminate duration: straddling a ground between the minimal and the baroque, enveloping the listener in endless cycles of appreciating, repetitive and rhythmical notes, flirting with the melodic and implying a disembodied imagism that borders on the profound. Remarkably beautiful and direct, Okkyung Lee's "Just Like Any Other Day: Background Music For Your Mundane Activities" - issued by Shelter Press on vinyl - represents a radical reconfiguration of experiential music, stripped to its bare essence in defiance of the widely presumed aesthetic signifiers. Unlike anything we've heard from her before, this immersive body of intimate recordings not only reveals new dimensions of Lee's striking range as an artist, but also of how we might regard and occupy music itself: an ambience to lived and felt like a second skin.

STANDFIRST Titanic, the project spearheaded by Mabe Fratti and Hector Tosta (aka I. la Católica), return with a sumptuous and life-affirming new album.



In her sensational 1929 biography Tiger Woman, dancer and socialite Betty May claimed her ‘coster’s eye’ meant she liked to wear as many colours as possible. “Colours to me are like children to a loving mother. Each is my favourite, yet I can never bring myself to deny the others by preferring one.” May’s bold and inclusive strategy is one that manages to transfer itself, almost a century later, to Hagen, the new record by Titanic.


Many will know Titanic as the Mexico City-based brainchild of cellist and singer Mabe Fratti and multiinstrumentalist Hector Tosta who is now operating under the pseudonym, I. la Católica, (taken, rather unusually, from the name of the street the pair live on). With Hagen, and their previous release, Vidrio, (2023), the pair are creating a distinctive signature sound in modern alternative pop music. Nobody else sounds quite like them. Both records have an open hearted nature and simple, winning melodies that play off against a taste for drama, spectacular orchestration and a feeling of otherworldly mystery. Hagen is the more ambitious, sometimes more mystical effort. From the opening handclaps of ‘Lágrima del Sol’, (a wonderfully uptempo playground chant translating as a tear from the sun but, surely, not referencing the brand of pineapple wine?), the record dances its way through various mid-to-late-eighties inspirations, lush and widescreen passages of melancholy and vertiginous contrasts.


Mystery is often found in the simple but slightly odd song titles. English translations of various track titles give, ‘you swallowed the gum’, ‘leak’, ‘a tear from the sun’, ‘raising the trophy’ ‘digging dimensions’, ‘the owner’, ‘the decapitated hen’ and ‘the trap is exposed’. All denote striking images, metaphysical hints and emotional cues or simple, even childlike actions. Though Fratti and Tosta don’t reveal its provenance, the album’s title could even be a crafty play on words: the listener would be forgiven in thinking the moments of brash contrast and eyebrow raising theatricalism in the music constitute a musical nod to German punk chanteuse, Nina Hagen.


On Hagen, singer and cellist Mabe Fratti once again displays her brilliant knack of speaking to us directly. There is never the suspicion of her playing to the gallery, and the directness of many of the lyrics don’t allow it. Parallel to this, Fratti has an almost magical ability to give Hector Tosta’s melodies, and her and Tosta’s lyrics ones imbued with an insight and meaning that feels otherworldly. Tosta admitted it was “pretty wild to hear Mabe take the interpretations to a different place” and the listener can pick up on the delight Fratti takes in (literally) adding a voice to the many narratives.


Two examples can be shown here: ‘Gotera’ (Leak) uses harsh slashes of cello and tough, gunfire-like guitars and drums and multiple vocal lines that could be acting as a Greek chorus. They play off brilliantly against Fratti’s soft, slightly baleful vocal take that delivers lyrics such as: ‘nobody knows where the leak is / but I know where it is / they fight in front of the door and / nobody can go in’. With ‘La Gallina Degollada’ the somewhat blithe melody melody line, sung with what could be sarcastic brio by Fratti, plays against an itchting rhythm and rasping guitar part. The punch comes when you see that the song is about a chicken that has been decapitated and read lyrics such as: ‘I already saw it, it moved, the decapitated chicken’ / ‘could it be that I'm broken’ and ‘Two people hurt each other by thinking that they no longer agree’/ ‘Hours pass and the chicken represents what scares me’.


There may be death and fights to deal with, but there is also a quality of chirpy self-reliance about Hagen that is a key part of its nature. Like Betty May and her colourful outfits, Hagen’s sound often revels in its own sense of richness. Throughout, the record delivers vaulting string sections or glutinous guitar squeals that could, like the powerful, driving ‘Escarbo Dimensiones’ (Digging Dimensions) have come directly from a glossy 1980s TV series. Fratti sees this “glam sound” developed by Tosta on the aforementioned track and ‘Te Tragaste el Chicle’ (You Swallowed The Gum), as moments that were truly “revealing” for the album as a whole during its making.


What else? The thud and thump of ‘La Trampa Sale’ (The Trap is Exposed), and its sudden change of tempo and mood betrays a monstrously ambitious piece of music, the players almost greedily creating the sounds. Other moments are heart wrenching: ‘Libra’ ends on a poppy chord switch that cleverly ramps up the emotion inherent in the music’s notation. You could almost imagine a teenager in a bedroom forty years ago, rewinding the track over and over on a small, cheap cassette player, unable to get enough of that sugarsweet switch. Elsewhere, Oneohtrix Point Never adds stardust and an unearthly sense of space on the changeable, slightly moody meditation, ‘Pájaro de Fuego’ (Firebird). The record ends with ‘Alzando el Trofeo’ (Lifting the Trophy), a track that could soundtrack a state wedding, what with its beautiful cascading piano parts, a sugary vocal and short triumphal guitar riffs that add a rich patina to the overall sound. Fratti: “When I doubled those vocals on ‘Alzando el Trofeo’ I felt there was an epiphany happening, right at that moment.”


Making a good record is a team game. Tosta and Fratti recall seeing Randall from Circular Ruin Studios in NYC “tweak the drums in ‘Libra’ to make that amazing effect of the gated reverb”, or the shaping of ‘Gotera’, “when (recording engineer) Nate Salon added some synths to the track.” Drummer Eli Keszler, “an amazing and versatile player” had the songs down pat in a couple of days” and, according to Tosta, Oneohtrix Point Never “just came to one of the sessions and we hung out, and after all the recordings he and Nate were together in some studio and out of nowhere they sent us some beautiful tracks for ‘Pájaro de Fuego’! Fratti concurs. “He decided that he wanted to record because he was listening to the record (Nate works closely with him) and he really liked it! It was a total honour, indeed!”


Bedazzled by the playing, the skyscraping ambition in the arrangements and the giddy moments of contrast thrown up by Hagen, we could allow ourselves a brief moment of flippancy and state that Titanic’s new record is Yacht Rock meets Aeschylus, full-on. It’s also worth speculating that, in this hyper-sensitive, intemperate age, Titanic’s music has the power, however fleetingly, to heal hurts. Hagen is a brilliant showcase for a fresh and enriching form of pop music: displaying a magpie eye for what glints and plundering what has gone before.


Like Vidrio, Hagen was partially and additionally recorded at Fratti and Tosta’s house, aka Tinho Studios in Mexico City, as well as Golden Girl Studios & Circular Ruin Studios in New York City. Mixing was done by Santiago Parra in Pedro y el Lobo Studios, Mexico City and mastered by Rafael Anton Irisarri at Black Knoll Studios, New York City. The recording engineer was Nate Salon.


Hagen featured Mabe Fratti on cello, vocals & backing vocals, I. la Católica on guitar, keyboards, prepared piano, bass & backing vocals, drums by Eli Keszler and synths in ‘Pájaro de Fuego’ from Daniel Lopatin and Nate Salon.


All compositions on Hagen are written by I. la Católica, except ‘Escarbo Dimensiones’ & ‘Pájaro de Fuego’, which were composed by I. la Católica and Mabe Fratti. The record was produced by I. la Católica and co-produced by Nate Salon & Mabe Fratti. And all lyrics are by I. la Católica except ‘Escarbo Dimensiones’, ‘Gotera’, ‘Gallina degollada’ & ‘Pájaro de Fuego’, which were written by I. la Católica & Mabe Fratti.

STANDFIRST Titanic, the project spearheaded by Mabe Fratti and Hector Tosta (aka I. la Católica), return with a sumptuous and life-affirming new album.



In her sensational 1929 biography Tiger Woman, dancer and socialite Betty May claimed her ‘coster’s eye’ meant she liked to wear as many colours as possible. “Colours to me are like children to a loving mother. Each is my favourite, yet I can never bring myself to deny the others by preferring one.” May’s bold and inclusive strategy is one that manages to transfer itself, almost a century later, to Hagen, the new record by Titanic.


Many will know Titanic as the Mexico City-based brainchild of cellist and singer Mabe Fratti and multiinstrumentalist Hector Tosta who is now operating under the pseudonym, I. la Católica, (taken, rather unusually, from the name of the street the pair live on). With Hagen, and their previous release, Vidrio, (2023), the pair are creating a distinctive signature sound in modern alternative pop music. Nobody else sounds quite like them. Both records have an open hearted nature and simple, winning melodies that play off against a taste for drama, spectacular orchestration and a feeling of otherworldly mystery. Hagen is the more ambitious, sometimes more mystical effort. From the opening handclaps of ‘Lágrima del Sol’, (a wonderfully uptempo playground chant translating as a tear from the sun but, surely, not referencing the brand of pineapple wine?), the record dances its way through various mid-to-late-eighties inspirations, lush and widescreen passages of melancholy and vertiginous contrasts.


Mystery is often found in the simple but slightly odd song titles. English translations of various track titles give, ‘you swallowed the gum’, ‘leak’, ‘a tear from the sun’, ‘raising the trophy’ ‘digging dimensions’, ‘the owner’, ‘the decapitated hen’ and ‘the trap is exposed’. All denote striking images, metaphysical hints and emotional cues or simple, even childlike actions. Though Fratti and Tosta don’t reveal its provenance, the album’s title could even be a crafty play on words: the listener would be forgiven in thinking the moments of brash contrast and eyebrow raising theatricalism in the music constitute a musical nod to German punk chanteuse, Nina Hagen.


On Hagen, singer and cellist Mabe Fratti once again displays her brilliant knack of speaking to us directly. There is never the suspicion of her playing to the gallery, and the directness of many of the lyrics don’t allow it. Parallel to this, Fratti has an almost magical ability to give Hector Tosta’s melodies, and her and Tosta’s lyrics ones imbued with an insight and meaning that feels otherworldly. Tosta admitted it was “pretty wild to hear Mabe take the interpretations to a different place” and the listener can pick up on the delight Fratti takes in (literally) adding a voice to the many narratives.


Two examples can be shown here: ‘Gotera’ (Leak) uses harsh slashes of cello and tough, gunfire-like guitars and drums and multiple vocal lines that could be acting as a Greek chorus. They play off brilliantly against Fratti’s soft, slightly baleful vocal take that delivers lyrics such as: ‘nobody knows where the leak is / but I know where it is / they fight in front of the door and / nobody can go in’. With ‘La Gallina Degollada’ the somewhat blithe melody melody line, sung with what could be sarcastic brio by Fratti, plays against an itchting rhythm and rasping guitar part. The punch comes when you see that the song is about a chicken that has been decapitated and read lyrics such as: ‘I already saw it, it moved, the decapitated chicken’ / ‘could it be that I'm broken’ and ‘Two people hurt each other by thinking that they no longer agree’/ ‘Hours pass and the chicken represents what scares me’.


There may be death and fights to deal with, but there is also a quality of chirpy self-reliance about Hagen that is a key part of its nature. Like Betty May and her colourful outfits, Hagen’s sound often revels in its own sense of richness. Throughout, the record delivers vaulting string sections or glutinous guitar squeals that could, like the powerful, driving ‘Escarbo Dimensiones’ (Digging Dimensions) have come directly from a glossy 1980s TV series. Fratti sees this “glam sound” developed by Tosta on the aforementioned track and ‘Te Tragaste el Chicle’ (You Swallowed The Gum), as moments that were truly “revealing” for the album as a whole during its making.


What else? The thud and thump of ‘La Trampa Sale’ (The Trap is Exposed), and its sudden change of tempo and mood betrays a monstrously ambitious piece of music, the players almost greedily creating the sounds. Other moments are heart wrenching: ‘Libra’ ends on a poppy chord switch that cleverly ramps up the emotion inherent in the music’s notation. You could almost imagine a teenager in a bedroom forty years ago, rewinding the track over and over on a small, cheap cassette player, unable to get enough of that sugarsweet switch. Elsewhere, Oneohtrix Point Never adds stardust and an unearthly sense of space on the changeable, slightly moody meditation, ‘Pájaro de Fuego’ (Firebird). The record ends with ‘Alzando el Trofeo’ (Lifting the Trophy), a track that could soundtrack a state wedding, what with its beautiful cascading piano parts, a sugary vocal and short triumphal guitar riffs that add a rich patina to the overall sound. Fratti: “When I doubled those vocals on ‘Alzando el Trofeo’ I felt there was an epiphany happening, right at that moment.”


Making a good record is a team game. Tosta and Fratti recall seeing Randall from Circular Ruin Studios in NYC “tweak the drums in ‘Libra’ to make that amazing effect of the gated reverb”, or the shaping of ‘Gotera’, “when (recording engineer) Nate Salon added some synths to the track.” Drummer Eli Keszler, “an amazing and versatile player” had the songs down pat in a couple of days” and, according to Tosta, Oneohtrix Point Never “just came to one of the sessions and we hung out, and after all the recordings he and Nate were together in some studio and out of nowhere they sent us some beautiful tracks for ‘Pájaro de Fuego’! Fratti concurs. “He decided that he wanted to record because he was listening to the record (Nate works closely with him) and he really liked it! It was a total honour, indeed!”


Bedazzled by the playing, the skyscraping ambition in the arrangements and the giddy moments of contrast thrown up by Hagen, we could allow ourselves a brief moment of flippancy and state that Titanic’s new record is Yacht Rock meets Aeschylus, full-on. It’s also worth speculating that, in this hyper-sensitive, intemperate age, Titanic’s music has the power, however fleetingly, to heal hurts. Hagen is a brilliant showcase for a fresh and enriching form of pop music: displaying a magpie eye for what glints and plundering what has gone before.


Like Vidrio, Hagen was partially and additionally recorded at Fratti and Tosta’s house, aka Tinho Studios in Mexico City, as well as Golden Girl Studios & Circular Ruin Studios in New York City. Mixing was done by Santiago Parra in Pedro y el Lobo Studios, Mexico City and mastered by Rafael Anton Irisarri at Black Knoll Studios, New York City. The recording engineer was Nate Salon.


Hagen featured Mabe Fratti on cello, vocals & backing vocals, I. la Católica on guitar, keyboards, prepared piano, bass & backing vocals, drums by Eli Keszler and synths in ‘Pájaro de Fuego’ from Daniel Lopatin and Nate Salon.


All compositions on Hagen are written by I. la Católica, except ‘Escarbo Dimensiones’ & ‘Pájaro de Fuego’, which were composed by I. la Católica and Mabe Fratti. The record was produced by I. la Católica and co-produced by Nate Salon & Mabe Fratti. And all lyrics are by I. la Católica except ‘Escarbo Dimensiones’, ‘Gotera’, ‘Gallina degollada’ & ‘Pájaro de Fuego’, which were written by I. la Católica & Mabe Fratti.

Docile is a reaction to the stimulus that is Detroit. The “my way e.p.” is a product of a turbulent time of readjustment. Made from Weathering confusion and standing strong. Docile refines a style of minimal that is authentic and independent from mainstream dogma. Docile belives in the vinyl record; a.garcia presses and checks every copy himself. Docile is, and will remain for itself.

"1 more day” builds a bed of unfocused synth for a healthy and life sick melody to nuzzle in. A heart felt tune of 4/4 simplicity grounded by an easy knock and an array of ticks. ”Hold up bro” a topsy turvy funk swing of chopped sound, voice and bassline escorted and overwhelmed by a mystic serenade of a synth. “Almost gone” assembles random sound into a soulful fragmented rhythm made steady by a poppy kick and stiff tick that breaks and stumbles into a dramatic melody. ”Detroit Rumble” struts tuff with a belligerent bassline and a menacing minimal kick that rattles and deforms chimes across a spartan and haunted landscape,

Mit dieser besonderen Jubiläumsausgabe feiern Nathaniel Rateliff & The Night Sweats 10 Jahre ihres
explosiven Debütalbums. Mit den zeitlosen Hits, die ihren kometenhaften Aufstieg einleiteten, darunter
das unaufhaltsame „S.O.B.“, ehrt diese Veröffentlichung den rauen Soul, die Vintage-Grooves und den
kraftvollen Gesang, die Fans auf der ganzen Welt in ihren Bann zogen.
Auf dieser Anniversary Edition kommen elf bisher unveröffentlichte Demos zum Original-Album hinzu.
Dazu ein paar Worte von Nathaniel Rateliff selbst:
”Die Reise eines Songs muss irgendwo beginnen. Lieder können Ideen sein, die jahrelang schlummern.
Manchmal verstecken sie sich in unserem Inneren und es liegt an uns, uns ihnen zu öffnen und ihre melodische Geburt zu begrüßen. Hier sind elf ungehörte Ideen, die vor etwas mehr als zehn Jahren auf meinem
Dachboden entstanden sind. Ich hatte ein Mikrofon, ein zweikanaliges Interface, einen zweikanaligen
Vorverstärker und meinen Laptop. Ich habe diese Werkzeuge damals gerade gut genug genutzt, um die
Ideen in dem Moment einzufangen, in dem sie auftauchten.”
Erleben Sie das Album, das den modernen Soul-Rock neu definierte und eine Band bekannt machte, deren
Musik nach wie vor Herzen und Tanzflächen auf der ganzen Welt bewegt.

10 year anniversary edition of Kreng's massive »Works for Abattoir Férme 2007 - 2011”« 4 LPs worth of slow, skin crawling cinematic ambience made for the Belgian theatre group Abattoir Fermé.

It could hardly be a better time to again dive deep into Kreng and Abattoir Fermé's disturbingly beautiful underground worlds. Through 8 full- length vinyl sides we are transported through the most terrifying, shadow- filled, down-right bizarre moments of the subconscious. What could be the sound of your darkest dreams or most surreal fantasies gradually unfolds throughout the three and a half hour duration. Exactly this is what Abattoir Fermé specialises in, and Pepijn Caudron's scores perfectly reflect and accompanies both this theatricality as well as our own fears and desires in a masterful way.

Each extended side is crafted from an arsenal of samples, disintegrating vinyl and corroded tape, and Pepijn Caudron manipulates these sounds in a way that belies the sources. Rather than allow the sounds to emerge, they stay trapped beneath swathes of noise, tape delay and oppressive bass giving us a compositions that emerge like a cross between William Basinski, Jerry Goldsmith (circa Alien) and Henryk Górecki.’ »Works for Abattoir Fermé« is not for the faint of heart, but for the rest of us it might be just what the Doctor ordered...

Furthering the passionate exploration of cinema that has guided her two previous LPs - 2017’s ‘Fassbinder Wunderkammer’ and 2020’s ‘I Should Have Been a Gardener’ - the Milanese guitarist/composer, Alessandra Novaga, returns to Die Schachtel with ‘The Artistic Image Is Always a Miracle’, two sides off shimmering, tense compositions – culminating as one of her most creatively ambitious and conceptually rich outings to date – freely inspired by the life and work of the Russian director Andrej Tarkovsky and the music of Johann Sebastian Bach.

Classically trained at the Musik Akademie in Basel, Switzerland, over the last decade Alessandra Novaga has emerged as one of the leading figures within northern Italy’s thriving new, experimental, and improvised music scene, rendering striking solo efforts, in addition to collaborations with Loren Connors, Stefano Pilia, Elliott Sharp, Nicola Ratti, Paula Matthusen, Sandro Mussida, Kid Millions, Travis Just, Francesco Gagliardi, and others. Remarkably ambitious and forward thinking, her approach to the guitar embarks upon a relentless deconstruction and rethinking of her instrument’s unique properties through distinct applications of structure, resonance, space, and tone, creating in a deeply personal and emotive music, seeking narrative and meaning within the abstractions of sound.

In 2017, with the LP, ‘Fassbinder Wunderkammer’, issued by Setola Di Maiale, Novaga embarked upon the exploration of her love of film. Having begun with Rainer Werner Fassbinder, this was followed in 2020 by Die Schachtel’s release of ‘I Should Have Been a Gardener’, a deeply intimate mediation on the life and work of Derek Jarman. Rather than focusing on a fixed point of inspiration or a single film to work from, these pieces achieve a form of abstract portraiture, distilling elements drawn from these filmmaker’s life and work into ambient networks of texture and tonality. ‘The Artistic Image Is Always a Miracle”’ freely inspired by the Russian director Andrej Tarkovsky and the music of Johann Sebastian Bach, finds Novaga radically expanding her sonic palette within this approach.

The seeds of ‘The Artistic Image Is Always a Miracle’ can be traced to a conversation that Novaga had with Alan Licht (contained in the highly regarded Common Tones: Selected interviews with artists and musicians 1995–2020, Blank Forms, 2021), relating to the connections between music and cinema, which led her to consider Andrej Tarkovsky’s use of Bach's music within a symbiotic framework: how the music illuminates the imagism of the films, and the film illuminates new dimensions of the music. Slowly developing over the subsequent years, the resulting album comprises six individual works, some of which draw directly upon pieces of Bach’s music that Tarkovsky used in his films – specifically 'Erbarme dich, Mein Gott', 'Das alte Jahr vergangen ist', and 'Ich ruf zu dir, Herr Jesu Christ' - while others draw upon the sensibilities and moods evoked in the imagination by the director’s films.

As a point of departure and illumination into the process and spirit that underscored the creation of the album, Novaga points toward a passage in Tarkovsky’s "Sculpting in Time”:

“Art is born and takes hold wherever there is a timeless and insatiable longing for the spiritual, for the ideal: that longing which draws people to art. Modern art has taken a wrong turn in abandoning the search for the meaning of existence in order to affirm the value of the individual for its own sake. What purports to be art begins to look like an eccentric occupation for suspect characters who maintain that any personalized action is of intrinsic value simply as a display of self-will. But in artistic creation the personality does not assert itself, it serves another, higher and communal idea.”

‘The Artistic Image Is Always a Miracle’ can be understood as a realisation of the collectivism of which Tarkovsky speaks, in the service of something far beyond the expression of self. Encountering Novaga moving into fairly uncharted waters, three of the album’s pieces incorporate the human voice we encounter the voices of others: that of the poet Arsenij Tarkovsky, the director’s father; a singer from Bach’s ‘Erbarme dich, Mein Gott’, capturing a broadcast in an underground parking lot, and Novaga’s own, rendering the melody from Bach’s “Ich ruf zu dir, Herr Jesu Christ”. Roughly alternating between solo excursions on guitar and bristling electroacoustic pieces, over the course of the album’s two sides Novaga weaves one of her most abstract and ambitious bodies of recordings to date, shifting between the complex tonal mediations generated by the six strings of her instrument, and phycological densities activated by the expanded pallet of sonority made possible by the tactics and approaches of musique concrète.

An immersive, deeply engaging meeting of beauty and melancholy within a labyrinth of voices and ideas, ‘The Artistic Image Is Always a Miracle’ transfigures the life and work of Andrej Tarkovski – one of the greatest auteurs in the history of cinema – into a singular, experimental statement of collective truth. Belonging to recent, ambitious stream of contemporary new music releases on Die Schachtel that’s already included Novaga’s ‘I Should Have Been a Gardener’, Stefano Pilia’s ‘Spiralis Aurea’, Jim O'Rourke & Giovanni Di Domenico’ ‘Immanent In Nervous Activity’, Claudio Rocchetti’s ‘Labirinto Verticale’, and Damāvand’s ‘As Long As You Come To My Garden’, among others, ‘The Artistic Image Is Always a Miracle’ is available on as a limited edition of 300 dark turquoise vinyl LPs released on June 21, 2024. The LP, designed by Bruno Stucchi / dinamomilano, comes with an 8-pages insert illuminated by Alessandra’s text as well as the lovely and intense photographs of Matilde Piazzi.

Returning to Die Schachtel with his fourth full-length with the label, the Genoa born, Bologna based, guitarist and electroacoustic composer, Stefano Pilia, delivers “Lacinia”, a new, immersive cycle of compositions, delving deeper into the realm of metaphysical, spiritual, and divine meaning, weaving astounding arrangements of sonority from a palette of synths, strings, brass, organ, various electroacoustic instruments, and percussion. Resting at a refined intersection of the acoustic and electroacoustic, drone, and chamber music - overwhelmingly beautiful, delicate, and bold, - “Lacinia” stands as a high-water mark in Pilia’s already remarkable and forward-looking career.

Since its founding in Milan during the early years of the new millennium, Die Schachtel has occupied a singular place in the landscape of experimental music, issuing a carefully curated body of reissues and archival releases by historically significant figures and projects like Christina Kubisch, Luciano Cilio, Marino Zuccheri, Prima Materia, Claudio Rocchi, Lino Capra Vaccina, Gruppo di Improvvisazione Nuova Consonanza, Roland Kayn, and numerous others, balanced against bristling contemporary counterparts by the likes of Jim O'Rourke, Giovanni Di Domenico, Nicola Ratti, Luigi ArchettI, Valerio Tricoli, etc. Running like a spine through the label’s output is a deep dedication to the work of the Italian guitarist and electroacoustic composer Stefano Pilia. Now Die Schachtel returns with “Lacinia”, Pilia’s forth full-length with the label and their first release of 2024. Building on the ground of deeply personal engagement with metaphysical, spiritual, and divine meaning, explored within his previous LP with Die Schachtel, 2022’s “Spiralis Aurea”, “Lacinia” encounters the composer working in close calibration with various ensembles, including the Bologna based Ensemble Concordanze and Comunale di Bologna String Orchestra, weaving synths, strings, brass, organ, various electroacoustic instruments, and percussion into an astounding reconfiguration of immersive, contemporary minimalism that stands among Pilia’s most noteworthy releases to date. Issued by Die Schachtel in two special double vinyl editions and a CD edition, “Lacinia” features artwork by Bruno Stucchi/Dinamomilano, and is an absolute marvel that draws you in and doesn’t let go.

First emerging during the early 2000s, over the past two decades – via solo releases and numerous collations with artists like Oren Ambarchi, Valerio Tricoli, Alessandra Novaga, Z'EV, Andrea Belfi, David Grubbs, and numerous others - the Genoa born, Bologna based, guitarist and electroacoustic composer, Stefano Pilia has presented a singular voice within Italian experimental music, harnessing visceral energy and hands-on immediacy within delicately woven tapestries of sonority, each investigating the sculptural properties of sound and illuminating its relationship to space, memory, and the suspension of time. “Lacinia”, Pilia’s forth solo venture with Die Schachtel, encounters the composer reentering his longstanding practice of collaboration with various ensemble forms, including the Bologna based Ensemble Concordanze, for the albums central piece, “Lacinia Off Axis”, spinning stunning string confirmations by Pietro David Carami and Elena Maury on violin, Alessandro Savio on viola, and Mattia Cipolli on cello.

A new, important cycle of compositions by Pilia, “Lacinia” (meaning "lace" in Latin) builds upon the exploration of the metaphysical, spiritual, and divine dimensions through numbers, geometry, and the creation of tonal forms explored by 2022’s “Spiralis Aurea”, mirroring archetypal, immutable forms at the juncture of the abstract realm of mathematics and architectural structures in the physical world, expands the poetics and compositional ideas featured in its predecessor. Regraded by Pilia as both a series of individual compositions and a single work, “Lacinia” was conceived to “define a circular path (a sort of "rhizomatic lace") where the beginning and end touch, suggesting the concept of time not only as linear but also cyclical and ritualistic—an eternal return, a process of transformation where matter changes, its state changes, but without altering the invisible internal principle of mutation”, embarking upon a a series of “steps, degrees, and energetic quanta in a progression of archetypal whole numbers and transcendent creation.”

The resulting 16 tracks unfold as a series of complex sonic meditations. While deeply resonant with the minimalism of composers like Arvo Pärt, LaMonte Young, Pauline Oliveros, and Eliane Radigue, Pilia digs deep and moves far beyond the predictable tonal relationships and structures of that idiom, echoing the ancient liturgical and devotional music of composers like Gesualdo da Venosa, Monteverdi, and John Dowland, at a refined intersection of the acoustic and electroacoustic, drone, and chamber music.

Fascinatingly structured as a whole to include a number of motif returns, across which we encounter works like “Lacinia Off Axis” appearing in slightly different rendering, states, or evolutions three times, and compositions like “Eve” appearing twice in subtly different forms and arrangements - first for four oscillators, guitar and voice and then for string orchestra - as well “Maris Stella”, which similarly makes two appearances, first for horn trio, organ and percussion, and then for string orchestra, with “Lacinia” Pilia delves further into the world of chamber music than ever before, creating a deeply inward, mediative body of work the totality of which, guided by its rich string arrangements of arching, sorrowful tone, feels almost like a mass for some unproclaimed loss; simultaneously locked in the nuances of a moment, while managing to suspend time.

Perhaps most remarkable is Pilia's ability to create a remarkable sense of sonic cohesion while using such a varied number of ensembles and instrumentation. From the sprawling string arrangements delivered by Comunale di Bologna String Orchestra, under the direction of Paolo Mancini, and Ensemble Concordanze, and a flute trio (Cadux / Plectere) brilliantly played by Manuel Zurria, to pieces for sax, organ and percussion, violin duo and percussion, organ and percussion, Pilia manages to create a sense of singular, encompassing world that flows forward like a shifting stream.

Overwhelmingly beautiful, delicate, and bold, “Lacinia” is unquestionably a high-water mark in Stefano Pilia’s already remarkable, forward-looking career. Nothing short of a marvel of contemporary Minimalism that, through its shifting arrangements of harmonics, tonality, and texture draws flickering images of ancient forms of music into the present day, “Lacinia” is Issued by Die Schachtel in two special editions on double vinyl and a CD edition, featuring artwork by Bruno Stucchi/Dinamomilano. This is an immersive all-consuming listen that can’t be missed.

A hill repeating its own name.

Ben Beinn — mountain mountain — an imagined summit, recursive and unstable.

Poole’s new album Ben Beinn follows 2024’s In a River Shadow, and deepens his exploration of environment, voice, and abstraction. If the previous record moved with flowing water and submerged hymns, Ben Beinn climbs into elemental instability: passing storms, coded skies, and sodden ground.

Across ten tracks, Poole entangles the Celtic New Age sound world — traditional instrumentation (flute, low whistle, bagpipe, piano, strings) — with synthesis, environmental recordings, and abstracted voice. The sound palette is tactile — marked by microtonal harmony, swelling dissonance, and a breathy naïvety. Voices in Gaelic, Norwegian, and English surface and dissolve, stretched beyond recognition — more weather than word.

The album’s title refers to a tautological hill — Ben Beinn, or “mountain mountain” — a recursive site where motifs surface, fracture, and re-emerge. On 365 Days of Rain, rainfall data becomes a rhythmic lattice that slips from metrical order. 1000 opens the record in cinematic emergence: mountain icicles and frozen streams swell into strings and breathy melodic weight. Pulling from the connective folktales of hill and mountain trolls — “Dance for a thousand years,” Poole writes, “for jeg har sovet tidlig så lenge.”

Recorded in Scotland between 2024–2025, Ben Beinn draws from environmental recordings of frozen hill passes, storm drains, and peat bogs using contact mics and hydrophones. Rather than simply reflecting place, these recordings press against it — layering the sonic materiality of landscape with synthesis and song. An inflection point between fabrication — folk music as performed identity, a carrier of story — and its obfuscation through digital networks, where tradition is refracted into plural forms.

Musical reference points include the emotionally saturated textures of Inoyama Land, the folk-electronic hybrids of Eli Storbekken, the hyperrealist collage practices of Noah Creshevsky, and the disquieting sonic simulations of James Ferraro. While Ferraro captures the uncanny surfaces of networked life, Ben Beinn turns inward — toward a located listening, shaped by weather, memory, and terrain.

The second in a triptych that began with In a River Shadow, Ben Beinn continues Poole’s excavation of environmental and folk material through contemporary methods. If the first record submerged itself in flowing water and submerged hymns, this one is shaped by the slow pressures of land and sky — a music of erosion, recurrence, and elemental presence.

With this album, Heleen Van Haegenborgh returns to her roots as a pianist.
In recent years, she has primarily composed works on commission for a diverse range of ensembles, from recorders to foghorns.
On this solo album, her entire journey of musical encounters and compositions comes together subtly.
Van Haegenborgh doesn't think in terms of stories or boxes, but rather in colours, energy, and texture - without drifting into the abstract.
She remains true to her personal inside piano world, including the use of wires she has been experimenting with since 2008. These are given a place here as fully-fledged musical elements, communicating on different levels, in various contexts and forms.
The electronics sometimes become completely one with the piano, but often follow an entirely different path: at times calm, subtle and refined; at other times nervous and under the surface. Always within specific atmospheres and with precise timing.
Van Haegenborgh took charge of every detail from start to finish - electronics, composition, and performance.

Wrong Filament embodies Robert Piotrowicz's creation of fictional traditional music - not studied but invented, a utopian and oniric construct that becomes tangible in sound. These imagined traditions act as communal forces of music-making, resisting dominant structures of power.

The album unfolds in six dense compositions built on rhythm, repetition and minimal melodic gestures that draw on archetypal patterns of Eastern European traditions. Entirely synthetic yet strikingly instrumental in character, they develop as autonomous sound events, expanding into multi-part forms that evoke the physicality of ensemble performance - as if played by an imagined community of musicians.

Rather than reconstruction, Piotrowicz invents forged dances - a pre-techno of sorts, where complex meters and dense textures point to a parallel history of collective sound beyond industrial uniformity. They imagine a utopian and fictional genealogy of collective sound: one where industrial modernity yields to more unstable, communal energies.

This is celebratory music with invocatory charge: calls to dance, echoes of ceremony, microtonal melodies shaped by emotional weight, and traces of Eastern ornamentation stretched through synthetic means. Wrong Filament sacralises performance through sound alone, spinning a world where spectres of collective experience vibrate against the limits of rupture and resistance.

These pieces confront the traces of violence inscribed in body and memory, yet also affirm freedom, emancipation and integration. They manifest celebration, identity and resistance while opening a path toward liberation and shared needs that exceed social, private and intimate categories.

"Eight tracks of jagged electronics, heavy basslines, and fractured spoken word collide in a body-jerking soundclash that is both raw and vital."
Good On Paper enjoyed "Baldauf’s crisp, distanced tones accompanied by Roe’s ominous, pulsating programmed bass line and four-to-the-floor whack, coaxing pure pop out of tension and incongruity." Electronic Sound Magazine hailed the LP as "a blistering, club-forward workout", with "top-drawer, nose-bloodying electronics,’" positioning the Stroud duo as "rather like a wonky Tom Tom Club with added grit."

In syrupy slow pursuit of a strong 2023 debut, Yungwebster's somnolent sequel is bolstered by pitch-perfect production from Space Afrika and Nathan Melja, who vaporise the rapper's auto-tuned post-Future drawl with euphoric orchestral drones, brittle micro-trap beats and weightless pads.

Over a decade ago at this point, Future released 'Codeine Crazy', the decelerated finale of 'Monster', one of his best-loved mixtapes. The track neatly summarised themes the Atlanta rapper had been circling for years at that point, layering his slurred, lean-dizzy rhymes over producer TM88's rubbery, melancholy synths. "Take all my problems and drink out the bottle," he moaned robotically, using the track's minor key bounce to represent the crushing delirium that followed fame and its tasting menu of intoxicants. It's still Future's high water mark creatively, and its traces can be observed in a full spectrum of contemporary sounds, from 6LACK's downtrodden, self-aware R&B to Lil Uzi Vert's feverish trap. But it's Yungwebster who's taken the haze to its logical conclusion, reimagining the Magic City-sculpted bumps as hypnagogic Actavis- 'n Xanax-hued ambient music. You could argue it was bound to happen - the more you sip, the slower it gets - and plays as a cracked mirror to cloud rap's long-smoked hybrid of Southern psychedelia and post-OutKast eccentricity.

Webster's opiated POV is clearer than ever before on 'II'. Just peep the cracks in his voice on the Space Afrika-produced opener 'Skyfall' as he coughs and splutters over watery samples, booming subs and SA's patented collage of soundtrack-ready strings and sirens. Presented at regular speed and in chipmunked form, it sets the pace for an album that, like its predecessor, constantly fucks with the timeline, pitching the whole master into doubletime or slowing it down to a crawl to present a curved, inebriated narrative rather than a straight line. Even without the tempo switches, Webster singles out beats that accent his warbled rhymes that sound as if they'll fall apart at any moment. French DJ and producer Nathan Melja backs 'Disheveled' with Black Ark-styled oscillations and airlock'd echoes, filtering the bassline until it almost disappears entirely; with room to breathe, Webster's able to take the lead - you might not be able to pick out the words, not entirely at least, but you get the message.

In fact it's Webster's voice that's the revelation on 'II' - with a coherent mix from producer tnotsobad, the nuances and fluttering tonalities emerge more vividly than they have before. It makes the flip between the regular speed and fast on 'Txts Red on iMessage' a textural decision, the different pace shifting the warbled cadences so Webster's voice becomes far more important than the additional elements. And on the album's Space Afrika-produced eight-minute centerpiece 'Crochet / I Swear', Webster's mumbled bio-mechanical whines create a much-needed foil for the decelerated boom-clack and suspended save room ambience. We get to encounter a personality here, not just an aesthetic, so as the album moves into its twilit fourth side, the beatless, voice-led somniferousness of 'YA SA' and ululating 'Phone' come off like a descent into tranquillised sedation. Rap has rarely sounded so chimeric.

ciccio bomba cannoniere (chunky monkey)

Is the sound weapon of the A-zienda rthz, illustrated by the render called M.E.R.I.C.O.O. (Erect, rechargeable intelligent machine with organic dog) This project of a definitive media A-ssailant presents all the necessary elements for the domination of social hierarchies:

trace of a human face for identification

a stalker server for omnipresence in digital field

a system of locomotion for moving in any field

a genetically modified dog for keeping counterfeiters away

comfy clothes and an M60 around the neck

The name derives from an A-ncestor rthz called Merico. Police officer who in the late 1800s left a tavern and rode on the back of his mule Cina with the objective of stopping a train so that he could light his cigar. And this happened. Merico was then tried and dishonourably discharged.

Gravitate, in case you didn't know, is yet another label from James Burnham aka Burnski aka Instinct. It's hard to keep up with the man's unrelenting yet brilliant work rate, but worth making the effort to do so if you like minimal, tech and garage. The latest on this fledgling project goes deep and arrives just in time for some balmy Ibiza party nights. 'Gravitate 03-1' is loopy and lazy and invitingly mid-tempo, 'Gravitate 03-2' picks up the pace a touch but is still couched in warm, roomy grooves and soul-drenched chords. The flipside brings more gritty and turbo-powered tech on 'Gravitate 03-3' then a nice silky and blissed out cruiser to close on 'Gravitate 03-4'. Four more functional but well-formed sounds from the brilliant Burnham.

Demuir marks an inaugural release on Hot Creations with High. Alive. And Dirty., a
diverse four track EP made up of all original records.

The EP opens with Santa and The Elf. A penetrating bassline ratchets up and down, as horn
like synths whir occasionally in the background, alongside tassel-like hi-hats. Up next, the title
track High. Alive. And Dirty. provides stunning contrast. A happy, funk-fuelled number, the
track incorporates disco elements with “positive and soulful vibes”, before Rawness - Beat 3
features a “raw native structure”, bongo sounding drums and tropical vocals to from a well-
rounded, feel-good record. Eerbawdy Wants to Deeezsko rounds off the EP in fine form, with
more disco elements and chiming, emotional keys.

Canadian-based Demuir is a distinctive talent in the electronic music sphere. A prolific
producer, Demuir has already made a home on labels including I’m A House Gangster as well
as Cassy’s Kwench Records, whilst he is soon set to release on Loco Dice’s iconic Desolat
imprint.

Ramirez returns with THA PLAYA$ MANUAL II, the long-awaited sequel to his cult classic that helped solidify his place as one of underground rap’s most distinctive voices. Steeped in Southern-fried funk, Bay Area swagger, and Memphis-style menace, this new chapter finds Ramirez sharper, smoother, and more seasoned—delivering game like a streetwise sage with a gold grill grin.

Where the original Playa$ Manual was gritty and raw, THA PLAYA$ MANUAL II sounds like a player who's leveled up. The beats knock harder, the flows glide slicker, and the game is deeper. Ramirez weaves tales of betrayal, come-ups, late-night drives, and cold-hearted reality with the same charismatic cool that made him a standout in the $uicideboy$-adjacent G59 movement—but this time with a more refined, cinematic approach.

From trunk-rattling bangers to syrupy smooth cuts that soundtrack late-night escapades, THA PLAYA$ MANUAL II feels like a ride through Ramirez’s world with tinted windows up and the bass on max. It’s a record for the hustlers, the heartbreakers, the loners, and the legends in the making.

This is more than a sequel—it’s a statement: the playa’s still active, and the manual’s been updated.

frozen reeds presents Mark Fell’s ‘Psychic Resynthesis’, an instrumental work performed by Explore Ensemble. This double LP is the label’s 8th release, arriving 13 years after its foundation.

Fell is a multidisciplinary artist, composer, and theorist based in Rotherham, UK. Renowned for his rigorous and conceptual approach to electronic music and sound art, his work explores the limits of structure, rhythm, and perception through a blend of computational systems, philosophical inquiry, and cultural critique.

Over the last decade, Fell’s practice has visibly shifted from a world of technical intricacy and myopic microdetail to one of collaboration and community. He has purposefully sought out diverse musical partners from a wide variety of traditions and disciplines and found equally diverse ways to work and create together – not to integrate their playing into a musical fusion, but rather to discover how such combinations of approaches and experience can stimulate unique and heretofore unheard results.

The music here emerges from a commission for contemporary chamber group Explore Ensemble, situating Fell’s work in a new context entirely. Having been a notable critic of classical music’s slavish adherence to traditional musical notation, “the score”, and its associated issues of control and hierarchy, one might expect a provocative or abrasive approach. Instead, a work of deep, tonal introspection unfolds - an elegant structure navigating the artist’s antipathy for linear or timeline-based musical approaches.

In Fell’s selection of timbres and events, the dynamic of composer and performer is interrupted by his twin adoption of system and flexibility. Mathematical determination and sonic fixation vie for dominance. The conflict governing combinations. Upsetting preconceived strategies.

Published in an edition of 777 double LPs, with included digital download, the result, ‘Psychic Resynthesis’, represents both a prismatic object for repeated examination and an abstruse table of musical correspondences.

Names Records in conjunction with Two Piers Editions are delighted to announce the long awaited 21st Anniversary reissue of the debut album from The Earlies.

'These Were the Earlies' was released on Names Records / 679 Recordings in July of 2004 and quickly became one of that summer’s essential albums.

"The Best Debut Album of 2004” – UNCUT
"Insane Pop Genius. Scintillating” - 10/10. NME
NME #1 Top Rated Album 2004
There is much here to love” - The Sunday Times
"This rustic hymn to imperfect pop is a reminder that Britain and the States still have a special relationship.” - The Observer

This Numbered Limited Edition Vinyl (1000) will be issued on Double Cream Vinyl, includes a poster and new refreshed artwork by Rina Donnersmarck. Produced by the band and Tom Knott. Beautifully Remastered by Shawn Joseph (Portishead, Beak, PJ Harvey).

“It’s not often you find yourself recording alone in a churchat 3am. I’m not religious, but I experienced somethingunique while playing through the night as the streetsaround me slept. It felt like the music was telling me whatto play and I was the passenger. Lumen grew out of avariety of compositional seeds - from composed songsthat remain true to the score, leaving little room forfreedom, to wide open improvisations recorded in themoment with nothing predetermined.
“It’s in the space between composition and improvisationwhere the magic happens - and where, if the musiciansare willing, the music can lead. I recorded day and nighton a Yamaha grand and an upright felted piano. It felt likesome sort of solo retreat: sitting in a building of faiththrough the night, delving ever deeper into the music.When I finally resurfaced, I felt profoundly that it was themusic that had led me, rather than the other way around. “As a composer, it’s simplicity that I’m searching for - howto say the most with the least. My previous albums wereabout filling the space, both texturally and dynamically. Butsolo performance is different. There’s unlimited freedom,and while that can be liberating, it also comes with addedresponsibility. Beyond the recording, the music takes on anew life. The piano, the room, the acoustic, the mood ofthe audience, even how much sleep I’ve had - all of itinforms how the music evolves. So, each performance iscompletely unique and unrepeatable.
“The recording of Lumen is just the beginning of itsjourney. Where and how it evolves from here is whatkeeps me searching.” - Bill Laurance

New Source presents a new release from Juan Barraco under his alias Bunda. On this four-track EP, Bunda builds a personal and physical journey through his distinctive take on contemporary club music. Rather than following trends, Bunda draws from deeper sources: Latin American rhythmic traditions, post-industrial energy, and a classical music-rooted instinct for improvisation. The result is a release that feels expressive, tactile, and refreshingly off-grid.

From the heavy percussion and orchestral flashes of “Dvořák’s New World” to the stripped-back, jazzy minimalism of “New Source,” each track offers a distinct mood and approach. “Frente en Alto” brings a sense of urgency with its forward-driving rhythm and subtle tension, while “Game Over” closes the release with a raw, broken groove and distorted textures aimed straight at the sweatier corners of the club.

After their epic run with Channel One beginning in the mid 1970's, the Mighty Diamonds moved to producer Gussie Clarke for a string of albums starting in 1979 and running thru the 1980s. Among the many many great tunes from this run, the title track of their 1982 album "The Roots Is There" is simply one of the Diamond's best ever, and probably the most lyrically militant tune they ever made. This tune was never released as a single at the time, though new mixes were released as a single in 2017. But prior to the release of the album back in the day, this song was played on dubplate in a raw mix without the horns and added percussion that made it onto the final album mix. This raw vocal cut, followed by a raw instrumental version, changes the whole tone of the tune and brings it into another level of militancy right up there with the hardest stuff you can name, even in an era filled with so many extra tough stepping classics. Rather than remaster from an old dubplate, for this 45 we had producer Gussie Clarke and Music Works' close associate engineer Curtis Lynch go back to the original tapes, and with an original dubplate as reference, perfectly recreate the original raw cut, now released in pristine tape quality. Again we present this release on Music Works' original early 1980s dubplate label design, just like the original slate would have been adorned with. If you only know the sweet harmony side of the Diamonds, give this one a try to see their other tuff side, and listen to the lyrics, as relevant to the struggles of right now as they were in 1982.

Clement "Minkie" Moore's introduction to the music business came via his friend the great deejay U Roy. Back in the mid 1970s, Minkie and U Roy were both living in the Tower Hill area of Kingston, and U Roy was resident deejay on King Tubby's sound system. Minkie followed his friend and the sound, and occasionally U Roy let him hold the mic and deejay on Tubby's set. U Roy encouraged Minkie to take music more seriously, and with that encouragement, his first record "Wickedness" was made. Minkie got a cut of a rhythm from his friend the late Sydney Wilson, and voiced and mixed the rugged deejay tune "Wickedness" at King Tubby's studio. Sydney had earlier voiced this rhythm as a tune called "Why Do I Cry", but alongside "Wickedness", voiced it again with a new vocal called "Time Has Gone". In fact that tune and "Wickedness" share the same dub version. Clement continued to move in the music scene, next recording for Harry J's Jaywax label in 1979 with a tune called "Jah Is Real", as a duo named UNI-TONE along with his friend Denzil. Then in 1980, Clement revisited the great rhythm of "Wickedness", deciding to this time sing rather than deejay on the rhythm. He returned to Harry J studio, adding some choice new instrumental overdubs on the rhythm for this new cut, "Every Time I Do My Thing." In the decades since, astute roots collectors have honed in on this excellent rhythm and its several cuts, not least of all this pair of them by Mr. Clement "Minkie" Moore. It should be noted that in the manner of the day, other associates of Tubby's studio, Prophets Yabby You and Alric Forbes, also utilized this rhythm. Minkie's musical journey continued thru the 1980s, when he linked with American group Lambsbread, writing and performing on their second album which was recorded at Channel 1 in early 1987. In the 1990's Clement returned to self-production on his Allah label, in addition to cutting a 45 for Chinna Smith's High Times label. Nowadays Clement is still going strong, occasionally dropping new music like "Greedy", recorded at Bravo's Small World studio in downtown Kingston.

Clement "Minkie" Moore's introduction to the music business came via his friend the great deejay U Roy. Back in the mid 1970s, Minkie and U Roy were both living in the Tower Hill area of Kingston, and U Roy was resident deejay on King Tubby's sound system. Minkie followed his friend and the sound, and occasionally U Roy let him hold the mic and deejay on Tubby's set. U Roy encouraged Minkie to take music more seriously, and with that encouragement, his first record "Wickedness" was made. Minkie got a cut of a rhythm from his friend the late Sydney Wilson, and voiced and mixed the rugged deejay tune "Wickedness" at King Tubby's studio. Sydney had earlier voiced this rhythm as a tune called "Why Do I Cry", but alongside "Wickedness", voiced it again with a new vocal called "Time Has Gone". In fact that tune and "Wickedness" share the same dub version. Clement continued to move in the music scene, next recording for Harry J's Jaywax label in 1979 with a tune called "Jah Is Real", as a duo named UNI-TONE along with his friend Denzil. Then in 1980, Clement revisited the great rhythm of "Wickedness", deciding to this time sing rather than deejay on the rhythm. He returned to Harry J studio, adding some choice new instrumental overdubs on the rhythm for this new cut, "Every Time I Do My Thing." In the decades since, astute roots collectors have honed in on this excellent rhythm and its several cuts, not least of all this pair of them by Mr. Clement "Minkie" Moore. It should be noted that in the manner of the day, other associates of Tubby's studio, Prophets Yabby You and Alric Forbes, also utilized this rhythm. Minkie's musical journey continued thru the 1980s, when he linked with American group Lambsbread, writing and performing on their second album which was recorded at Channel 1 in early 1987. In the 1990's Clement returned to self-production on his Allah label, in addition to cutting a 45 for Chinna Smith's High Times label. Nowadays Clement is still going strong, occasionally dropping new music like "Greedy", recorded at Bravo's Small World studio in downtown Kingston.

Some things simply need time to brew. Loek Frey returns to Omen Wapta with his third release on the label: Nayan. The Amsterdam-based artist shares a long-standing friendship with label head Woody92 - keeping each other in motion as artistic peers since the label's inception. Over time, they've built a shared archive of material: sound sketches, tracks, and sonic touchpoints - an ever-evolving third space where their paths continue to meet as they move in parallel. Nayan emerges from this deep-rooted exchange: a distilled six-track release that fuses Frey's cerebral intricacy with the label's primordial uncanniness, reaffirming both as key voices in a yet-to-be-defined sonic realm. Diving into the release, Frey's signature remains intact - tactile, spatial, and rhythmically precise - but a subtle shift is at play. A paring down. A move toward something more reduced, maybe even more patient, yet no less absorbing. The A side leans inward: deep pressure, spectral traces, and an undercurrent of tension that never quite resolves. It's music for staying with, not escaping from. Flip to the B side and the palette widens - kicks land heavier, patterns loosen, textures fill the full frequency field. Still deeply rooted in the Wapta world, but with an assertiveness that whispers rather than shouts. Somewhere between absence and force. With Nayan, Loek Frey carries his Omen Wapta narrative into new territory - merging restless experimentation with dancefloor intention.

FONCEDALLE is a high-volume amplified trio, a warm wave of acid guitars fuelled by addictive bass and electronic beats. In late 2021, they released their Traboule EP and went on a tour that saw them perform 40 gigs between 2022 and 2023, half of which were in Europe. Their debut, self-titled album is set to be released in March 2024 on EXAG’ Records (BE). It's rawer, with tracks meticulously crafted and reworked live. While still exploring the realms of rock fused with machines, electronic trance, and melodic flights, the album also has its share of oppressive sections, unbridled chaos, and ambient, ethereal passages. FONCEDALLE serves as the missing link between the Manchester scene of the 80s, Gilla Band’s noise rock, Soulwax’s electronic rock, and the motoric turbines of Turing Machine. Preferring not to choose between being an open door or an impertinent product, the band chooses to concoct a recipe it envisions coming from the future rather than flipping through a book filled with references

GAISTER (Olivia Salvadori, Akihide Monna and Coby Sey) release their self-titled LP.

The record captures the embodiment of an encounter, one moment of the trio’s ongoing relationship as artists who communicate with each other through sound, voice and music.
After orbiting in the same circles at each other's shows around 2016 in London, Sey and Salvadori eventually crossed paths. In 2017 Sey joined Salvadori’s artistic collective Tutto Questo Sentire on a residency in Capalbio, the southernmost part of Tuscany, Italy, and started working together. Down the line the pair ended up joining with Akihide Monna (of Bo Ningen), performing together in 2019 at Camden Art Centre on Cork Street in London.

When the trio come together something new is created, brought out after laying dormant, like an Icelandic Geysir. The setting of this particular encounter amongst the trio is essential in the album’s sonic palette, process and emotion. The album was recorded in Iceland at
Greenhouse Studios, where the trio formalised a set of intuitions; how nature can provide a guideline in the choices of the instruments, their materials and related rhythms; reflections on the voice as a sculptural element, pure sound and words.

As Akihide has said of the experience during their short and intense recording period: “The sound spontaneously spun out as if we were pulling at each other's hearts and minds with a strange internal connection and sensation. Something pure was brought out.”

‘Gaister’ itself is a made up word, sprung from the German ‘Geist’ to mean ‘spirit’, and made into a sound of its own. A purity, spirit and essence is pulled from the trio, in spite of their varying mother tongues (Italian, Japanese and English), musical genres and identities to create something new. Olivia Salvadori’s operatic vocals run free, flowing and moving in
synergy with Monna’s rhythmic drumming. Sey sings freely with Salvadori, their voices braided together like a waterfall.

This flowing nature is reflected in the album itself, its timestamps and scores are marked by encounters rather than tracks themselves. This album can be considered as one constant piece and a journey of its own that is not foreclosed, in keeping with the band’s ethos of
constant conversation and collaboration.
As Sey speaks of the trio’s relationship: “Olivia, Monchan and I had performed live together once before, several years before this song and this album came to be… and yet, we fully trust each other’s intuition when performing and creating music together because of our unified belief in the ability of sound and music to communicate and connect.”
credits
releases November 1, 2024

Olivia Salvadori: voice
Akihide Monna: voice, drums, percussions
Coby Sey: voice, percussions, synths, wurlitzer

Recorded at Greenhouse Studios in Reykjavik, Iceland

Recorded and producer: Sandro Mussida
Sound engineer: Francesco Fabris
Studio assistant: Domiziano Maselli and Jakob Vasak

Mixing engineer: Kristian Craig Robinson at Total Refreshment Centre, London, UK

New compilation by Coco Maria on her own new founded imprint Club Coco. Comes with a 4 page folded insert.

There are albums that aren’t just listened to—they’re lived in. Club Coco – New Dimensions in Latin Music is one of them. This compilation, curated by Coco María, marks the first release on her own label and serves as a sonic portrait of what Latin music can become when it’s guided by intuition rather than labels. Eleven tracks open the windows and cross continents as effortlessly as changing a song. Here, Neapolitan synthesizers coexist with digital cumbias, voices whisper from within the groove, and rhythms invite movement—without urgency or pretense.

This selection isn’t defined by a genre but by a feeling: that of someone dancing with an open heart and keen ears. Each track is a postcard from a corner of the world, and also a love letter to rhythm and the emotions it stirs. From Bogotá to Naples, passing through Lima, Amsterdam, and New York, this compilation offers a journey where past and future brush against each other in the present moment. Club Coco doesn’t aim to define a sonic truth, but to invite listeners to discover new ways of hearing and feeling.

The party has already started. Come on in.

“Tunggak Semi” is the third album from Indonesian musician and producer Bambang Pranoto. Originally released in 2000, it’s an exemplary slice of what has become his signature style, a dream-like meditation on aspects of nature, combining elements of accordion, acoustic guitar, flute and percussion. The compositions cross eastern and western notation to inhabit a world of their own, a world between worlds, where harmonies reflect the beauty and joy of nature.

Bambang had a rather atypical entry into music, and studied electronics and telecommunications, before he took advantage of the wave of computer software like Cubase and Protools in the 1990s that enabled him to set about recording his own compositions and soundscapes. After playing in groups, he developed his own approach to constructing his productions. He invites musicians to record interpretations of his themes, which he then pieces together in Protools like a jigsaw puzzle. “The musicians have never even met!” he chuckled on a Skype call.

“Tunggak Semi” refers to the giant trees that appear all over Bali, and their process of renewal and regeneration. “If you cut the tree, and leave the roots, they will grow again. Everytime we cut, they grow again. It’s limitless. This philosophy means there’s always something new coming, whether an idea or music, anything.” This approach has grown out of Bambang’s studies into meditation, including Indian and Chinese scriptures, also Balinese and Indonesian religions. Music, like meditation, is a daily practice, and acceptance of the music and its ‘unfinishedness’, forms a central part of the process.

“We must not just think, but we must also feel, and we must accept that feeling,” explains Bambang, and that’s a step of opening one’s mind to possibility. It seems in keeping with two of Bambang’s musical inspirations, namely Ryuichi Sakamoto and Peter Gabriel, both known for their love of world folk music, and fusion of musical traditions. That’s mirrored in Bambang’s own collage-like approach, recording elements and piecing them together to make something unimagined. While the acoustic sound palette for “Tunggak Semi” is rooted in live recordings, Bambang is not afraid to put the digital technology to good use.

“We have to use the computer as a tool in the best way we can,” Bambang says. “Sometimes people say music is made by people, not by the computer, but it’s just another piece of equipment. What can we compose from this equipment? It’s technology music!”

Written and produced by Bambang Pranoto at interactive garden studio, Depok, Bogor between September and December 2001. 2025 version remastered by Wouter Brandenburg at Brandenburg Mastering.

Still staged in the gritty atmosphere and philosophical weight of post-metal, sludge, and ambient noise, `idsungwüssä' sees Abraham march even further into dissonant and defiant territory. "The three albums are clearly linked together thematically" comments the band, "although, rather than an additional chapter, idsungwüssä is more like a parallel narrative to 'Débris de mondes perdus'. The latter was a jump in time after 'Look, Here Comes the Dark!, whereas 'idsungwüssä' is a jump in space, a journey away from earth. It should be the final piece of this little jolly ride." This album isn't just heavy, it is absolutely drenched in delicious filth, and yet by embracing even more the melodic interludes and melancholic passages, they create a devastating contrast to the wall of power coming from stacked guitars, catastrophic drums and raging, sharp vocals - delivered in Swiss-German dialect. From the patient grandeur of coming extinction, to the chaos and fevered urgency of the aftermath, in `idsungwüssä' Abraham move forward from prophetic lamentation to an elegiac visceral response. The emotional closure of this expression is felt, something final that will leave you speechless and with only one real option; listen to it again.

Still staged in the gritty atmosphere and philosophical weight of post-metal, sludge, and ambient noise, `idsungwüssä' sees Abraham march even further into dissonant and defiant territory. "The three albums are clearly linked together thematically" comments the band, "although, rather than an additional chapter, idsungwüssä is more like a parallel narrative to 'Débris de mondes perdus'. The latter was a jump in time after 'Look, Here Comes the Dark!, whereas 'idsungwüssä' is a jump in space, a journey away from earth. It should be the final piece of this little jolly ride." This album isn't just heavy, it is absolutely drenched in delicious filth, and yet by embracing even more the melodic interludes and melancholic passages, they create a devastating contrast to the wall of power coming from stacked guitars, catastrophic drums and raging, sharp vocals - delivered in Swiss-German dialect. From the patient grandeur of coming extinction, to the chaos and fevered urgency of the aftermath, in `idsungwüssä' Abraham move forward from prophetic lamentation to an elegiac visceral response. The emotional closure of this expression is felt, something final that will leave you speechless and with only one real option; listen to it again.

This is Music: The Singles, ist ein Kompilationsalbum der englischen Alternative-Rock-Band The Verve:
Richard Ashcroft (Gesang), Pete Salisbury (Schlagzeug), Simon Jones (Bass) und Nick McCabe (Gitarre).
Ursprünglich wurde das Album im November 2004 veröffentlicht und enthielt zwei Nicht-Singles, die aus
den Aufnahmen zu ihrem dritten Album Urban Hymns stammten: „This Could Be My Moment“ und
„Monte Carlo“.
2024 markiert den 20. Jahrestag der Veröffentlichung eines Albums, das nie auf Vinyl gepresst wurde,
und unter der Leitung der Gruppe ersetzt diese längst überfällige Neuauflage die Bonustracks durch die
kraftvollen Singles aus dem 2008er Reunion-Album Forth - ’Love is Noise’ und ’Rather Be’ - und enthält
auch die zweite Single ’She’s A Superstar’ (1992) in ihrer ursprünglichen, achteinhalbminütigen Form (statt
der fünfminütigen Bearbeitung). Somit repräsentiert das Album nun die komplette Geschichte der Singles
von The Verve.
Benannt nach der sechsten Single der Band, der ersten aus ihrem zweiten Album A Northern Soul, dokumentiert es auf brillante Weise die Kraft der relativ kurzen, aber epochemachenden Reise von The Verve
durch den musikalischen Kosmos.

Conceptualized and written during the chaotic fall months of 2020, Hiss Golden Messenger’s O Come All Ye Faithful recorded shortly after the widely hailed Quietly Blowing It is a meditation on grace, loss, hope, and community. Explains songwriter M.C. Taylor, “Big, brash holiday music the type that we hear in big box stores in the middle of December has never resonated with me, and this past year it felt absolutely dissonant. I wanted to make a seasonal record that felt more in step with the way that I, and so many others, experience this time of year: quiet, contemplative, searching, and bittersweet.” Contributors to O Come All Ye Faithful include many members of Hiss Golden Messenger’s extended family, as well as special guests like GRAMMY Award winner Aoife O’Donovan, Nathaniel Rateliff, Erin Rae, and Buddy Miller. The tracklist includes new tunes written by Taylor, classic hymns, and renditions of songs by Spiritualized, Creedence Clearwater Revival, and Woody Guthrie, all arranged in the inimitable Hiss Golden Messenger style. Adorned with a beautifully spare design created by celebrated artist Cody Hudson. The deluxe vinyl version of O Come All Ye Faithful includes an additional collection of remixes by Revelators, Taylor’s spiritual jazz and dub-influenced project with Cameron Ralston.

[c] 3Oskar & Eli (Synth Rat Redux) [feat. Pumpkin Guts]

Can a self-portrait be a collage? Can empathy be autobiographical? What's the point of living if we're not trying to understand all the horror and humor that surrounds everything? These are a few of the questions lurking under the bleachers of Wednesday's new album Bleeds, an intoxicating collection of narrative-heavy Southern rock that_like many of the most arresting passages from the North Carolina band's highlight reel so far_thoughtfully explores the vivid link between curiosity and confession. Bleeds is not only the best Wednesday record_it's also the most Wednesday record, a patchwork-style triumph of literary allusions and outlaw grit, of place-based poetry and hair-raising noise. Karly Hartzman_founder, frontwoman, and primary lyricist_credits Wednesday's tightened grasp on their own identity to time spent collaborating on previous albums, plus a tour schedule that's been both rewarding and relentless. "Bleeds is the spiritual successor to Rat Saw God, and I think the quintessential `Wednesday Creek Rock' album," Hartzman said, articulating satisfaction with the ways her band has sharpened its trademark sound, how they've refined the formula that makes them one of the most interesting rock bands of their generation. "This is what Wednesday songs are supposed to sound like," she said. "We've devoted a lot of our lives to figuring this out_and I feel like we did." Just like Rat Saw God, one of the defining rock & roll records of the 2020s so far, Bleeds came together at Drop of Sun in Asheville and was produced by Alex Farrar, who's been recording the band since Twin Plagues. Hartzman again brought demos to the studio, where she and her bandmates _X andy Chelmis (lap steel, pedal steel), Alan Miller (drums), Ethan Baechtold (bass, piano), and Jake "M.J." Lenderman (guitar) _ worked as a team to bulk-up the compositions with the exact right amounts of country truth-telling, indie-pop hooks, and noisy sludge. More than ever, the precise proportions were steered by the lyricism_not only its tone or subject matter, but also the actual sound of the words, as well as Hartzman's masterfully subjective approach to detail selection. Every image or scene is filtered through Hartzman's agile, writerly brain. The particulars deemed essential all contain revelations about Hartzman's specific obsessions and vulnerabilities, about the fragmented way she processes the world. Maybe sometimes the best way to locate truth or pain or dignity within your own life story, Bleeds suggests, is by crawling into someone else's.

Can a self-portrait be a collage? Can empathy be autobiographical? What's the point of living if we're not trying to understand all the horror and humor that surrounds everything? These are a few of the questions lurking under the bleachers of Wednesday's new album Bleeds, an intoxicating collection of narrative-heavy Southern rock that_like many of the most arresting passages from the North Carolina band's highlight reel so far_thoughtfully explores the vivid link between curiosity and confession. Bleeds is not only the best Wednesday record_it's also the most Wednesday record, a patchwork-style triumph of literary allusions and outlaw grit, of place-based poetry and hair-raising noise. Karly Hartzman_founder, frontwoman, and primary lyricist_credits Wednesday's tightened grasp on their own identity to time spent collaborating on previous albums, plus a tour schedule that's been both rewarding and relentless. "Bleeds is the spiritual successor to Rat Saw God, and I think the quintessential `Wednesday Creek Rock' album," Hartzman said, articulating satisfaction with the ways her band has sharpened its trademark sound, how they've refined the formula that makes them one of the most interesting rock bands of their generation. "This is what Wednesday songs are supposed to sound like," she said. "We've devoted a lot of our lives to figuring this out_and I feel like we did." Just like Rat Saw God, one of the defining rock & roll records of the 2020s so far, Bleeds came together at Drop of Sun in Asheville and was produced by Alex Farrar, who's been recording the band since Twin Plagues. Hartzman again brought demos to the studio, where she and her bandmates _X andy Chelmis (lap steel, pedal steel), Alan Miller (drums), Ethan Baechtold (bass, piano), and Jake "M.J." Lenderman (guitar) _ worked as a team to bulk-up the compositions with the exact right amounts of country truth-telling, indie-pop hooks, and noisy sludge. More than ever, the precise proportions were steered by the lyricism_not only its tone or subject matter, but also the actual sound of the words, as well as Hartzman's masterfully subjective approach to detail selection. Every image or scene is filtered through Hartzman's agile, writerly brain. The particulars deemed essential all contain revelations about Hartzman's specific obsessions and vulnerabilities, about the fragmented way she processes the world. Maybe sometimes the best way to locate truth or pain or dignity within your own life story, Bleeds suggests, is by crawling into someone else's.

If there is one person, who has been causing a stir on the international club circuit recently, it is Barcelona's John Talabot. Already his debut “My Old School“ (which is meant literally by the way) on Permanent Vacation in 2009 and shortly after that the single “ Sunshine”, which he put out on his own Hivern Disc imprint, made him one of the most promising musicians of the Spanish electronic scene. And those two releases also already set the mark for John Talabot’s unparalleled music: raw, loopy, heavy on the kick drum, sample based, moderate on the tempo, distorted on the drums and light years away from the clean and ever revolving house sound of today. This unique style which also blends influences from afro beat, Detroit techno, Chicago house and cosmic disco, but also northern soul or the energy of Flamenco, immediately turned some heads around. James Murphy, Âme and Aeroplane started including Talabot music in their sets like it was the most natural thing. However - and this is quite rare - he not only gained legions of fans in the house and disco community, but also amongst the leftfield pop and indie rock followers. NME and Resident Advisor both had “Breakthrough“ features on John Talabot and he can be proud of a “Best New Music“ dubbing on
Pitchfork. (Being rather elusive on showing his face in magazines or the web it also came to some funny rumors that John Talabot was the alter ego of a well-known techno producer from Detroit).
At the same time he drew the attention of like-minded artists like James Holden and Luke Abott from Border Community, Blondes or Delorean, which lead to a bunch of fertile collaborations: Luke Abbott and Blondes remixed Talabot’s “Sunshine“ single , John Talabot remixed a track by Delorean and vice versa Delorean’s Ekhi contributed vocals to the track “Journeys “ on John’s album). Another example is the Young Turks Label (home of Jamie XX, Holy Fuck, El Guincho or SBTRKT ) on which he released the “Families“ EP in 2010. It was praised beyond limits. Pitchfork for
instance hailed: “… where pop and house influences sweetly buffer up against one another to provide an unyielding sense of elation“ and even brought Talabot a comparison with artists like Four Tet or Caribou.
While staying true to his sound, John Talabot has nevertheless shown a constant evolution as a producer since his first release. He has traced a solid musical path that has turned him into one of the big references of European House and has made him also a highly in demand Remixer (for the likes of The XX, Francesco Tristano’s “Aufgang” project, Shit Robot on DFA, Thaiti 80, Joakim or Teengirl Fantasy to name just a few ).
A progression that now crystallizes in “ƒin”, his first full-length album for Permanent Vacation. A record, in which the Barcelona mastermind sets aside the danceable immediacy to expand his stylistic palette more than ever. For that purpose, Talabot melts all the elements that have constructed his distinctive sound until now and makes them emerge from a new perspective, in which the construction of complex song structures, intricate rhythms and superpositions of ever-evolving melodies and atmospheres pick up the baton of the “a kick-drum and a sampler” philosophy of his initial productions. The result brings us 11 tracks (we should call them songs really!) dominated by dark ambiances, gaseous textures and bittersweet moods that, above all, reveal a kind of vivacity that’s really hard to find in contemporary electronics. “Fin” is far from being a track collection. From the majestic opener “Depak Ine“ to it’s solemn ending with
“So Will Be Now“ , one of the two tracks that features Talabot’s soul and label mate Pional, each song traces an overall dialogue with the rest, culminating a highly emotional journey through Talabot’s always compelling and unique musical vision.

After a ten-year absence that left a palpable void in the hearts of millennial emo kids, MOTION CITY SOUNDTRACK are finally back-and yes, it"s everything we hoped for. The Same Old Wasted Wonderful World feels like coming home: a dizzying, emotionally articulate blast of guitar-laced pop-punk that reminds us why this band meant so much in the first place. It"s a sonic time machine, sure, but it never gets stuck in the past. Instead, it builds on it-older, a little bruised, but somehow more alive. Justin Pierre"s voice still wobbles gloriously between a scream and a sigh, only now it carries the weight of experience, not just anxiety. Rather than reinventing themselves, MOTION CITY SOUNDTRACK double down on what they"ve always done best: big hooks, bigger feelings, and that perfect tightrope walk between chaos and control. Tracks like "Particle Physics" (with Patrick Stump of Fallout Boy) and "Your Days Are Numbered" (featuring Mat Kerekes of Citizen) channel the kind of clarity that only comes after surviving your own worst years. In a world drowning in lazy nostalgia, The Same Old Wasted Wonderful World is a rare and welcome return that feels less like a reunion and more like a long-overdue continuation.

After a ten-year absence that left a palpable void in the hearts of millennial emo kids, MOTION CITY SOUNDTRACK are finally back-and yes, it"s everything we hoped for. The Same Old Wasted Wonderful World feels like coming home: a dizzying, emotionally articulate blast of guitar-laced pop-punk that reminds us why this band meant so much in the first place. It"s a sonic time machine, sure, but it never gets stuck in the past. Instead, it builds on it-older, a little bruised, but somehow more alive. Justin Pierre"s voice still wobbles gloriously between a scream and a sigh, only now it carries the weight of experience, not just anxiety. Rather than reinventing themselves, MOTION CITY SOUNDTRACK double down on what they"ve always done best: big hooks, bigger feelings, and that perfect tightrope walk between chaos and control. Tracks like "Particle Physics" (with Patrick Stump of Fallout Boy) and "Your Days Are Numbered" (featuring Mat Kerekes of Citizen) channel the kind of clarity that only comes after surviving your own worst years. In a world drowning in lazy nostalgia, The Same Old Wasted Wonderful World is a rare and welcome return that feels less like a reunion and more like a long-overdue continuation.

Exklusive Vinyl-Sammlung mit Demos, Skizzen und Outtakes vom neuen Album "Season Of The Peach" von Black Lips. Mit einem Feature von King Khan sowie alternativen Versionen und Mixen und exklusiven Songs aus den Sessions. Gleichzeitig mit ihrem richtigem neuen Album "Season Of The Peach" wird die Outtakes-Sammlung "Bebop Armageddon (Detours & Offcuts From Season Of The Peach)" veröffentlicht, ein wildes, limitiertes Kompendium: Demos, alternativen Versionen und klingende Missgeschicke der jüngsten Sessions zum neuen Album, für echte Fans auf Vinyl gebannt. Wenn "Season Of The Peach" eine farbenfrohe Halluzination ist - teils Garagenrock-Fantasie, teils verbranntes Americana-Land - dann ist "Bebop Armageddon" sein zerfetzter, magnetischer Schatten. Diese 14 Tracks nehmen einen orientierungslosen Weg durch dasselbe Terrain und bieten mutierte Skizzen, wunderschöne Trümmer und freakige Umwege, die vor rohem Charme und chaotischer Erfindungsgabe nur so strotzen. Es gibt alternative Mixe (,Kassandra"), Demoversionen (,Judas Pig", ,Zulu Saints") und schwindelerregende Neuinterpretationen wie ,The Illusion Pt. 1 (dream mix)". Das Exklusive ,Colt 44" (mit King Khan) rattert wie ein Güterzug, der zu entgleisen droht, während ,Satan" und ,Back To Kiev" gleichermaßen versengten Psych, Saloon-Gospel und gespenstische Front-Porch-Melodien bieten. Alle Tracks wurden auf Analogband im Sound At Manor Studio von Oakley Munson in den Catskills aufgenommen. Bebop Armageddon fängt den Geist der Sessions in roher, ungekünstelter Form ein. Keine sauberen Linien. Keine Wiederholungen. Kein Glanz. Das ist das Chaos unter der polierten Oberfläche des Mutteralbums - die Black Lips, die sich nicht benehmen wollten. Limitiertes klassisch schwarzes Vinyl (1000 Stück weltweit) mit DLC dabei.

"Impressed are thrilled to be presenting The Bamboos Best, a compilation in celebration of twenty five year anniversary of the formation of The Bamboos.

The definitive collection of one of Australia’s most celebrated, influential and enduring Soul & Funk acts - tracing the history of the band that laid the foundation for the now internationally recognised Australian Soul scene.

Twenty songs taken from across their extensive catalogue, including many that have been unavailable on vinyl since their original release, and one track appearing in the format for the very first time.

From their raw Deep Funk origins through their own genre defying musical path, The Bamboos have reinvigorated a classic sound whilst seamlessly incorporating contemporary influences to create something altogether brand new.

Managing to appeal to both Soul/Funk purists as well as casual music fans along the way, the band have always focused on what’s important: songwriting, groove and powerful vocals.

With »Roto«, Derek Piotr revisits the aqueous terrain first explored in his 2016 album »Drono«, where the paradox of water’s stillness and perpetual motion was refracted into looping voices and glitching textures. Conceived as a »spiritual successor« and recorded in 2019, the album has lain dormant for six years before surfacing on Discreet Archive. That stretch of silence seems to have deepened its charge – the sound feels unearthed rather than made, like a whirlpool biding its time in obscurity until now.

Unlike »Drono«’s mosaic of shorter pieces, »Roto« unfurls as two expansive half-hour tracks, allowing Piotr to probe repetition with greater intensity. Vowels accumulate until they shimmer with alien sentience, drones grow dense and psychoacoustic, and the smallest digital artifacts flicker like neural sparks. The result is a work that denies familiarity; recurrence here only breeds strangeness, unspooling into a procession of hidden pulses and altered voices that resist prediction, drawing the listener deeper into a submerged, otherworldly space.

Derek Piotr is a folklorist, researcher and performer whose work focuses primarily on the human voice. His work covers practices including fieldwork, vocal performance, preservation and autoethnography; and is primarily concerned with tenderness, fragility, beauty and brutality. He has collaborated with artists including Scott Solter, Nathan Salsburg and Thomas Brinkmann across various disciplines.

He is lead archivist and creative director of the Fieldwork Archive.

Die Boomtown Rats waren eine der erfolgreichsten Bands der 1970er Jahre in Großbritannien. Ihr erwachsener Ihre realistischen Geschichten beflügelten die Fantasie des Massenpublikums. Als Anführer der Rats
führte Bob Geldof seine Band aus Dubliner Post-Punkern mit den britischen Nummer-1-Hits ”Rat Trap”
und ”I Don’t Like Monday’s” direkt an die Spitze der britischen Charts . ”THE FIRST 50 YEARS: SONGS
OF BOOMTOWN GLORY” auf Vinyl feiert die Höhepunkte der geschichtsträchtigen Karriere der Gruppe.
In der Klappcover-Hülle mit brandneuem Artwork und Kommentar wurden alle Titel von der Band selbst
ausgewählt. Dies wurde zeitgleich mit ihrer 50. Jubiläumstour veröffentlicht und ist das Allerbeste von
den Boomtown Rats und eine Zusammenstellung ihrer Texte und Melodien aus eigener Hand.
Erhältlich ab dem 19. September!

If you're a serious music fan but not a native Kiwi, your first awareness of New Zealand's fab music scene may have come from the debut of The Chills' mesmerising Kaleidoscope World collection of early singles. Within a few years, a great number of NZ acts saw music released by various UK and US labels . . . generally to great praise and enthusiasm. That this occurred without any of these acts having to move abroad to further their chances was nearly as delightful a feat as the music itself. The exception to this was Dead Famous People, radical in a snap decision after a five-song 12" for Flying Nun, Lost Persons Area, to change hemispheres and make a go for it in London. It started well. Three London recordings were added to three from their Flying Nun EP and put out by Billy Bragg's Utility label - about as perfect a mini-album as there's ever been. Response was positive, more songs recorded, the group did a John Peel session and played out often, but the vaguely impoverished group began to fall apart. Singer and primary writer Dons Savage - determined to make it - had a near-miss at becoming Saint Etienne's singer on an early take of their 'Kiss And Make Up' cover, and there was a fine performance from her on The Chills' 'Heavenly Pop Hit' . . . but dismay had set in. Upon learning of her mum's passing back home, Dons returned to NZ and was quiet for decades. Most of their London recordings were later released later in minuscule quantities by very small labels, but these saw scant press or attention and enjoyed next-to-no sales. Their moment had passed, and the band has suffered the strange fate of being the least-known of the truly brilliant acts associated with Flying Nun. Listening to these `lost' songs, it seems unfathomable that they could have fallen by the wayside. No NZ songwriter comes as close to equalling Martin Phillipps' pop brilliance as Dons. Her superbly sweet vocals, delicious harmonies and sophisticated arrangements aside, the songs dealt perceptively with universal follies of youth and yearning in tandem with a then-unusual twist of lyrics dealing matter-of-factly with her sexuality at a time when `women's music' was seen as exclusionary (segregated into its own bin in shops, if it existed there at all), and the riot grrrl movement was years away, later breaking through due to its radical stance. Dons is a pioneer in myriad ways, the irony of her transcendent brilliance failing to propel a greater career may rest in the fact that she leapt to the head of the class too quickly for people to grasp it; a fate that's befallen so many musical geniuses acknowledged today but less in their time - something rather tragically acknowledged in old pal Martin Phillipps' song with The Chills, 'A Song For Randy Newman, Etc.' None of these thirteen songs fails to deliver something both immediate and unique. And we're proud to debut 'Vampirella"', a magical fantasy song of longing and intrigue - surely one of the most perfect tunes to ever sit around unreleased for decades! Dons is again busy conjuring new songs; in the meantime we're delighted to unveil these obscure gems from the past.

Tin Fingers takes on a darker, melancholic direction on their second full album. Felix Machtelinckx' weeping vocals, preaching, searching, and trying to understand God, form the leitmotif. With rich melodies, haunting piano sounds, improvisations, first takes and no overdubs, Tin Fingers is searching for pureness and keeping things human and simple. The band is playing together intuitively, without a computer, without ego, just for the sake of music

The creation of the album was very fluent and spontaneous. Singer Felix wrote the backbones of the songs and the lyrics on acoustic guitar and piano. He wanted to have songs ready in order to be able to record and write arrangements fast. With an eye for details but without overthinking, keeping the ideas fresh. 'I wanted to stay in love with the music.' he explains. 'It needed to go fast, very fast, in just two weeks the entire album was recorded and ready to be mixed.'

In the studio, the band especially focused on picking the right mood rather than playing the right notes.

They were fed up with working on a computer for many hours, overthinking production choices, and adding instruments on top of each other as if they were Lego blocks. This time they decided to work in a more traditional way, going for first takes, jams, and essentially working with analog gear. No computers, no screens, no distractions. Only four humans in a studio trying to make a sound together by keeping things spontaneous and raw. They said goodbye to perfection and worked towards an unfinished product, a snapshot.

Tin Fingers also didn't want to sound like any other artist on this record. They decided not to listen to music during the sessions, and to never express ideas by referencing other bands. Just before the studio session, however, bass player Simen Wouters broke the rules and shared Bonnie 'Prince' Billy's, I See Darkness. Its dark and searching sound ended up inspiring the band unmistakably.

Once the recording was finished, the band decided to keep the volatile rhythm going and asked reputable NYC-based mixer and producer D. James Goodwin to finish the job. Goodwin, known for his analog folk productions with a real American punchy sound but a tender touch, proved the right man for the job. He opened up the songs and kept things poetic, minimal but impressive.

*Long overdue reissue of the first album by The Hanging Stars to coincide with their tour support slot with Edwyn Collins – initial 300 copies come with 12 x 12 print*

“In late-Sixties California, the Byrds and Flying Burrito Brothers combined traditional country music with hippy rock to great success. The influence lingered and whatever cultural relevance it has this is a delightful, transporting listen” – The Times 4/5

London-based psych-folk outfit The Hanging Stars re-release their much-loved debut album Over the Silvery Lake on Crimson Crow. Blending folk pastoralism with swampy 60s Americana, they sound like the missing link between the California desert sun and the grey skies of London Town. The album was recorded between LA, Nashville and Walthamstow, with each of these vastly different places leaving an indelible mark on the songs.

Now signed to the Loose Records label and fronted by London-based songwriter, singer and guitarist Richard Olson (The See See, Eighteenth Day of May), The Hanging Stars are essentially a loose collective of people who weave together a blissed-out psychedelic tapestry. The rest of the core band is made up of Sam Ferman on bass and Paulie Cobra on drums, Horse on pedal steel and Patrick Ralla on banjo, guitar. They jam rather than write and hang out rather than rehearse, harnessing a kind of tipsy euphoria resplendent with luscious arrangements and glorious vocal harmonies.

During 2015, prior to this album’s original release the band released two critically acclaimed singles via The Great Pop Supplement (both of which also appear on the album). “Golden Vanity” was premiered by The Line of Best Fit who said; “you'd be forgiven for thinking you'd just unearthed a rare deep cut from the late 60s/early 70s boom of psychedelia infused Americana” and “The House on The Hill” was described by The Guardian as; "a hazy, desert-dream of a song, nicely sharpened with steely-eyed guitars, Mersey-laced harmonies and just a whiff of the Gun Club”.

There are a number of allusions to nature and the weather on the album, borne in part out of the contrasting surroundings in which it was produced. The band’s fascination with Americana led them to record some of the material Stateside, laying down some of the parts at Battle Tapes Studios in Nashville (Lambchop, Paperhead), as well as at Vision Quest Studios in Los Angeles with Rob Campanella. His work with The Quarter After, The Brian Jonestown Massacre, Beachwood Sparks The Tyde, and GospelbeacH was a perfect match to capture their sound and they even had San Franciscan legend Chrystof Certik step in on lead guitar for a couple of tracks.

Following the LA recordings, a trip to the Californian desert provided the core notion of what they wanted to produce - a shard of light that they clung on to whilst recording the rest of the album in the significantly more rain-soaked atmosphere of Walthamstow, London, under the watchful eye of Brian O'Shaughnessy at Bark Studios (The Clientele, Comet Gain). As the band explained at the time: “Ultimately we hope you can hear both the sand and the rain in this record.”

The Hanging Stars place themselves firmly as part of a long folk tradition encompassing European and North American influences – as a continuation rather than a pastiche of these styles. This is the sound of a band really coming in to their own, fully formed and in no doubt of their vision. With Over the Silvery Lake they succeeded in producing a record, which has the country, blues and folk traditions at its heart.

Black Truffle is thrilled to present the first ever solo Donso n’goni recording from octogenarian Swedish multi-instrumentalist Christer Bothén. Active in the Swedish jazz and improvisation scene since the 1970s, often heard on bass clarinet, Bothén travelled to Mali in 1971, eventually making his way to the Wassoulou region in the country’s south where he encountered the Donso n’goni, the sacred harp of the hunter caste of Wassoulou society. Though playing the instrument has traditionally been restricted to those who belong to the hunters’ brotherhood, Bothén found an enthusiastic teacher in Brouema Dobia, who, after many months of intensive one-on-one lessons, gave Bothén his blessing to play the instrument both traditionally and in his own style. Returning to Sweden, he would go on to pass on what he had learned to Don Cherry and play the Donso n’goni in a wide variety of inventive settings, including the driving Afro-jazz-fusion of his Trancedance (reissued as BT118).

The seven pieces of Christer Bothén Donso n’goni offer up a stunning showcase of Bothén’s work on this remarkable instrument, heard entirely unaccompanied, except for the final piece where he is joined on a second Donso n’goni by his student and collaborator, the virtuoso bassist Kansan/Torbjorn Zetterberg, and Marianne N’Lemvo Linden on the metal Karanjang scraper. Recorded in three sessions in Stockholm between 2019 and 2023 in richly detailed high fidelity, the instrument’s buzzing, sonorous bass strings make an immediate, overwhelming sonic impression. Hyper-focused on hypnotically repeating pentatonic patterns, the seven pieces are at once relentlessly single-minded and endlessly rich in subtle variations. The concentrated listening environment turns small details, such as the deployment of the instrument’s segesege rattle on two of the pieces, into major events. Six of the seven pieces are traditional, with Bothén contributing the remaining ‘La Baraka’, but the line between tradition and the individual talent is imaginary here: as Bothén explained in a recent interview with The Wire’s Clive Bell, ‘I play traditional and untraditional, and I play the music forward and backward’. While the traditional Wassoulou pieces provide the rhythmic and harmonic elements, Bothén’s individuality as a performer is alive in every moment, felt acutely in boundless variations of attack, improvisational flourishes, and unexpected accelerations and decelerations. Captured entirely live and bristling with spontaneity, this music is undeniably the product of almost half a decade of Bothén’s devotion to the Donso n’goni and its traditional music.

Accompanied by detailed new liner notes by Bothén and stunning colour photos from his time in Mali, Christer Bothén Donso n’goni is a stunning document of a remarkable instrument, played with an almost spiritual intensity by one of contemporary music’s great explorers.

Teresa Rotschopf, a musician and composer from Vienna, presents her second solo album, »Currents and Orders« – a radical, delicate, yet grandiose sonic journey between experimental pop, new music, and improvised composition. The album will be presented live on August 27 as part of the »Pop-Kultur« festival (silent green, Berlin) and at the »ORF RadioKulturhaus« (Vienna) on 12 September.

»Currents and Orders« was recorded in an unusual location: a stalactite cave in Styria, Austria. Together with a small group of musicians (Maria Gstättner: bassoon, contraforte; Alex Kranabetter: tuba, trumpet, French horn; Patrick Dunst: saxophone, duduk; Florian Klinger: marimba, vibraphone, glockenspiel, cymbals, gong, stalactite; Patrick Pulsinger: gong, stalactite; Ulrich Schleicher: gong) and in co-production with Patrick Pulsinger, Rotschopf recorded the album in June 2023 – deep underground, far from daylight, but all the closer to archaic sounds and resonances.

The cave becomes not only an acoustic stage, but also a symbolic space of memory, retreat, and transformation. The album comprises four pieces – including two large-scale tracks:
- the opening, mantra-like title track »Currents and Orders« (over 10 minutes)
- the final, free-jazz, expressive »I Open My Gates (for You)« (over 20 minutes)

With a minimalist structure, choral voices, vibraphone, percussion, and wind instruments, fragile yet powerful soundscapes emerge, whose spatial depth is also palpable through the cave reverberation.

Rotschopf first developed the desire to record in a cave in the summer of 2022. What began as a visual and sonic image became a concrete project – supported by the Austrian Cave Association. In June 2023, Rotschopf and her musicians spent three days in a cave in the Styrian forest. Almost a kilometer of cable was laid, and equipment and instruments were carried deep underground. Rotschopf describes the recording situation as a kind of return to herself: »I descended into this cave, as if I could descend into myself, into my own womb ... What we did in the cave could just as easily be called ›recording music,‹ but it could also be called ›remembering‹ – remembering the earth, the cave, and humanity.«

»Currents and Orders« is an album like a ritual: haunting, atmospheric, bold in its form, and deeply rooted in both physical and emotional space. Music that takes its time, uses space, and pushes boundaries.

The pre-release single »O Please My Soul (Rest On My Back)« (release: July 17, 2025) is accompanied by a striking music video shot by Antoinette Zwirchmayr on 16mm film: Teresa Rotschopf holds a real owl in her hand – an image that is as magical as it is enigmatic.

Label owner Martin Hossbach read a review of Rotschopf's first solo album, »Messiah,« in 2018 and contacted the artist. Joint releases followed, including a drone album on the sub-label Martin Hossbach Score and a Pet Shop Boys cover version on Martin Hossbach Cover.

Teresa Rotschopf, Musikerin und Komponistin aus Wien, präsentiert mit »Currents and Orders« ihr zweites Soloalbum – eine radikale, zarte und zugleich groß angelegte Klangreise zwischen experimentellem Pop, Neuer Musik und improvisierter Komposition. Das Album wird am 27.8. im Rahmen des Festivals »Pop-Kultur« (silent green, Berlin) und am 12.9. im »ORF RadioKulturhaus« (Wien) live vorgestellt.

»Currents and Orders« entstand an einem ungewöhnlichen Ort: in einer Tropfsteinhöhle in der Steiermark, Österreich. Gemeinsam mit einer kleinen Gruppe von Musiker:innen (Maria Gstättner: Fagott, Kontraforte; Alex Kranabetter: Tuba, Trompete, Waldhorn; Patrick Dunst: Saxophon, Duduk; Florian Klinger: Marimbaphon, Vibraphon, Glockenspiel, Becken, Gong, Stalakmit; Patrick Pulsinger: Gong, Stalakmit; Ulrich Schleicher: Gong) und in Ko-Produktion mit Patrick Pulsinger nahm Rotschopf das Album im Juni 2023 auf – tief unter der Erde, fern von Tageslicht, dafür umso näher an archaischen Klängen und Resonanzen.

Die Höhle wird nicht nur zur akustischen Bühne, sondern auch zum symbolischen Raum der Erinnerung, des Rückzugs, der Transformation. So umfasst das Album vier Stücke – darunter zwei großformatige Tracks: - das eröffnende mantraartige Titelstück »Currents and Orders« (über 10 Minuten) - das finale, free-jazzig-expressive »I Open My Gates (For You)« (über 20 Minuten)

Mit minimalistischer Struktur, Chorstimmen, Vibraphon, Schlag- und Blasinstrumenten entstehen fragile und zugleich mächtige Klangwelten, deren räumliche Tiefe auch durch den Höhlenhall spürbar wird.

Der Wunsch, in einer Höhle aufzunehmen, kam Rotschopf im Sommer 2022. Was als visuelles und klangliches Bild begann, wurde zu einem konkreten Vorhaben – unterstützt vom Österreichischen Höhlenverein. Im Juni 2023 begab sich Rotschopf mit ihren Musiker:innen drei Tage lang in eine Höhle im steirischen Wald. Fast ein Kilometer Kabel wurde verlegt, Equipment und Instrumente tief unter die Erde getragen. Rotschopf beschreibt die Aufnahmesituation als eine Art Rückkehr in sich selbst: »Ich stieg in diese Höhle hinab, so als ob ich in mich selbst hinabsteigen könnte, in meinen eigenen Schoß [...] Was wir in der Höhle taten, könnte man ›Musik aufnehmen‹ nennen, genauso gut aber auch ›Erinnern‹ – Erinnern von Erde, Höhle und Menschsein.«

Currents and Orders ist ein Album wie ein Ritual: eindringlich, atmosphärisch, mutig in der Form und tief verwurzelt im physischen wie emotionalen Raum. Musik, die sich Zeit nimmt, Raum nutzt und Grenzen sprengt.

Die Vorab-Single »O Please My Soul (Rest On My Back)« (VÖ: 17.7.205) wird begleitet von einem eindrücklichen Musikvideo, das Antoinette Zwirchmayr auf 16mm-Film drehte: Teresa Rotschopf hält darin eine echte Eule auf ihrer Hand – ein Bild, das genauso magisch wie rätselhaft wirkt.

Labelbetreiber Martin Hossbach las im Jahr 2018 eine Rezension des ersten Rotschopf-Soloalbums »Messiah« und nahm Kontakt zu der Künstlerin auf. Es folgten gemeinsame Veröffentlichungen – etwa ein Drone-Album auf dem Sub-Label Martin Hossbach Score und eine Pet-Shop-Boys-Coverversion auf Martin Hossbach Cover.

Artist and multi-instrumentalist Flaer embraces the search for quiet miracles on first full-length LP Translations.

In 2023, Realf Heygate - who makes music as Flaer - released his debut mini-album Preludes, composed on his mother’s piano and his childhood cello.Returning to ODDA for his debut full-length album, Heygate is now looking in another direction. A record that embraces transition and movement, Translations is in many ways more internal, less rooted to a single place and reflective of the process of laying new foundations in Cornwall.

Like Preludes, Translations is coloured with found sounds and field recordings, from the starlings which can be heard singing through the open window of his studio, to the brittle recordings of his mother, who was a linguist, learning Spanish on a set of language tapes. In both cases, Heygate embraced the translations and memories inherent to the sounds.

“When I digitised my mother’s tapes, they warped and stuttered in a very similar way to the starling’s song,” he explains. “They had this uncanny rhythm and pulse that I couldn’t quite decode, but was saying something." These decayed transmissions hint at loss, resisting clarity in favour of the ineffable.

Translations is also a record of ambiguities and in-betweens, suggested by the double meaning of the album’s opening track ‘Entre’. At once intricate and expansive, threaded with birdsong and acoustic guitar motifs, this and ‘Starling Descends’ (a reference to Vaughan Williams’ ‘The Lark Ascending’) act as a bridge away from the pastoral themes of Preludes towards a more assertive sound. At times intimate in its textured instrumentation and at others more overtly grand in orchestration, reflecting awider palette of influences.

“Flaer began in many ways when I picked up my mother’s instruments, seeking a form of reconnection. Where words evaded me, they became the tools through which I found a language for grief – and above all, for love.”

Recorded between 2023 and 2025 – what Heygate calls “A gradual process of sowing and harvesting ideas rather than a single intense creative period” - each track follows a rhythm similar to the small maquettes and sculptures he has been working on in his visual practice, whereby structures and melodies form intuitively in moments that are as rare as they are fleeting.

“It's that feeling of searching that I really enjoy,” Heygate continues. “I never know what the destination of the composition is going to be, and I never really find what it is."

Translations is released on limited edition off-white vinyl LP (500 copies worldwide) with one of five signed and numbered handmade risograph prints. It's also available as standard black vinyl LP and digitally.

Horse Vision – Another Life
Limited Edition Clear Vinyl – via Scenic Route Records

For the first time, Horse Vision’s Another Life—the Swedish duo's critically acclaimed 13-track debut—is pressed to vinyl. The limited edition clear vinyl comes housed in a sleeve designed by the band themselves, complete with an inlay featuring extensive liner notes that offer a rare glimpse into the album’s creation plus an exclusive vinyl-only acoustic rendition of “Partly Get By.”

Released in March this year, Another Life set out “to depict the world of music, rather than the world itself.” The result was met with critical acclaim from the likes of The Guardian and Pitchfork, who hailed it as “a well-studied, lovingly referential album—feels like a gift—a way to strengthen the bond between past and future.”

The reissue arrives fresh off the band’s standout performances at Way Out West, by:Larm, and Les Nuits Botanique, and ahead of their debut UK tour with Danish duo Snuggle.

Another Life on vinyl is a chance to hold one of 2025’s most celebrated debuts in physical form.

Celebrating 20 years of defining, and redefining, electronic alt-pop - Metronomy ‘GREATEST HITS’ is the first comprehensive collection of their “smash hits” spanning across all 7 studio albums, and will be release alongside a separate album of BBC Sessions.

Formed in 1999 by Joseph Mount, Metronomy has released six acclaimed studio albums and become one of the UK's most influential electronic acts. Known for their distinctive visual aesthetic, innovative production techniques, and energetic live shows, Metronomy continues to bridge the gap between experimental electronic music and accessible pop. From the charm of early tracks like "You Could Easily Have Me" to the sophisticated pop of "The Look" and the dance floor magic of "Love Letters," Metronomy's distinctive sound has consistently pushed boundaries while maintaining their unmistakable identity.

The previously unreleased BBC Sessions reveal another dimension to these songs, capturing their magnetic live energy and Joe’s evolving approach to arrangement and performance, all recorded between 2009-2019 across BBC6Music, BBC Radio 1 & BBC Radio 2.

Wah Wah 45s present a unique moment from 1982 where New Wave and Post Punk collided with Afrobeat in the shape of Norwich DIY outfit Vital Disorders and their subversive yet instantly memorable version of the Fela Kuti classic, Zombie.

Band member Suzy Cox explains more:

"The song came to the band through our vocalist Lenneka Van Gilst who was in the group between January 1980 and December 1981. Lenneka grew up in Nigeria and had the original track on vinyl. When she moved to Trowse House, Norwich, the flat under Chris, the VD's bass player, he heard the vibes floating through the floorboards. One thing led to another and it was in our set for ages. Lenneka had left the band to travel to Mexico by the time we recorded the track. We did well to choose it as the song has really stood the test of time. Lenneka had a lot of African Beat which was a big influence on us."

The track came to label boss Dom Servini's attention having been unearthed by BBC 6 Music DJ Gilles Peterson in late 2024, and a vinyl reissue of this rare and one-off gem was the obvious choice. Rather than pairing it with its original punky B-side though, Dom enlisted new signings to the label - young Afro-dub outfit Kotoa - to record their take on the Kuti classic. The quintet delivered what is a three minute, intense take on the Afrobeat genre, complete with youthful voices of protest echoing those of over 30 years ago.

The 7-inch vinyl only release of Zombie comes with re-worked art courtesy of our award winning designer Animisiewasz, taking the home-made look of the original cover and updating it respectfully for 2025.