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When we think of the phrase Bonded By Blood, we think of two things: a brotherhood that is meant to outlast the trials of war, pain, and time... and the almighty EXODUS. With a bond forged in youth and decades-old friendship, the undisputed masters of thrash metal return with their eleventh studio album: PERSONA NON GRATA. Literally translating to “an unwelcome” or “unacceptable” person, PERSONA NON GRATA touches on themes of modern societal disgust and degradation. “The people that disgust you - cut ‘em out like cancer,” explains guitarist Gary Holt. “Who is that person? It could be anybody. That’s up to the listener. Who is ‘Persona Non Grata’ to them?”

For decades, EXODUS has impressed us with the ability to attract opposing factions to their music because of its intensity and versatility. A track like “The Beatings Will Continue Until Morale Improves” was inspired by the riots both in theme, and sound. “Without seeming insensitive to the riots, the song is tongue in cheek about what the people beating on the rioters were expecting to happen. Did you think you would beat a smile onto their face? At 3 minutes in length, it’s probably the shortest EXODUS song we’ve ever done. It gets in, gets out, and is just crushing,” describes Holt. While most of the songs do run on the shorter side, this album also comes equipped with crushing, epic tracks.

Whether it’s the music industry gossip sites, or the big players like CNN and FOX, we’re all aware of how news outlets love to set little rat traps; “Clickbait” discusses their methods of picking things out of context to grab your attention, add to their page views, and increase their revenue all while riling up your emotions. “It’s all journalistic dishonesty,” explains Holt, “it’s a modern-day version of Al Capone’s vault, everyone tunes in, and then there’s NOTHING.“ Evenly balanced with extraordinary speed and tremendous, catchy choruses, “Clickbait” is a song that explodes with vigorous energy. “As heavy as this album is, and it’s heavy as fuck, if times were different and there was still metal radio, this song, and probably over half the album, has single capabilities.”

Sitting as the second to last song on the album, “The Fires of Division” keeps PERSONA NON GRATA strong all the way through. “This album doesn’t operate on the normal parameters,” describes Holt, “we didn’t frontload this one, it’s strong right through to the end. It’s supposed to be a musical journey as the songs segway together.”

For the third time in the band’s history, EXODUS returned to Swedish artist Par Olofsson to create the album artwork PERSONA NON GRATA. “After this album, I feel like we probably won’t work with anyone else again, Par just gets it,” states Holt. A three-faced, winged creature sits atop a bloody pile of diseased and rotting humans as they scream in pain and reach their hands up desperately towards the beast. Undead riot cops beat mercilessly, and senselessly upon this pile of the dying and the world is red with fresh, sopping blood. “Is it an angel, a demon? Is the world being created or destroyed,” asks Holt, “you don’t really know.”

EXODUS don’t fall into the usual recording slump that most bands get stuck in. Gathering at Tom Hunting’s house up in the mountains, they avoided the need to book studio time or adhere to a certain schedule. “At first it was just Tom, myself, a half stack, and a drum kit; we call it jam camp. We lived there. We built the studio, we immersed ourselves in it. Number one, because we still enjoy each other’s company enough to do it. When we’re not actively rehearsing or recording, we’re still sitting there talking about the songs, working on them, plucking on acoustics until things really work,” explains Holt, “we’re not settling.” Working from three home-built studios, the band recorded PERSONA NON GRATA themselves with the help of Andy Sneap on mixing and mastering and with Steve Lagudi at the helm of engineering.

“As a band, I’m super grateful. I’ve seen a lot of things around the world and we’re still a band that loves each other, have each other’s back, and we genuinely like to hang out with each other,” explains Holt. “Take it how you will, but I’m this band’s biggest fan. We write songs that are designed to make us feel fired up - that’s why it’s still heavy.”

Originally released on 22nd April 1991, ‘The Beast Inside’ was Inspiral Carpets’ second record and reached #5 in the UK album charts, featuring the singles ‘Caravan’ & ‘Please Be Cruel’. This release sees ‘The Beast Inside’ re-issued on vinyl for the first time since its original release 30 years ago and will be housed in a widespine 12” sleeve on limited edition double 140g purple vinyl.

Restlessly awakening from the depths of a feverish slumber, doomed heavy metal masters KHEMMIS return to reveal their fourth full length studio album, DECEIVER, arriving via Nuclear Blast Records in November 2021. Six tracks of desolate, soul-awakening heaviness encapsulate a project that has been nearly three years in the making. With a title that reflects the internal struggles that many of us battle in our daily lives, DECEIVER is a ferociously honest and appetizingly raw piece of musical artistry.
The first single LIVING PYRE signifies far more than just the beginning of another musical endeavour for the band; it is a substantial benchmark for emotional struggle and growth. “When it comes to my own mental health, when I’m in a bad place, I can’t access the part of me that creates art. After reaching that understanding of myself, the bulk of this song came out in one sitting. I was feeling stable. I was feeling hopeful–even though so much outside in the world was not exactly inspiring. All of us needed a reason to feel a glimmer of hope,” recounts Hutcherson. With a big, quintessentially KHEMMIS chorus embellished by a swampy sorrow, this song incorporates familiar elements of the band’s sound with a touch of Swedish death metal in its latter half. “The reason that this was the song that came first lyrically was because I was juggling all the things that were happening with the inside and outside world intersecting. All the lyrics for me feel very ‘of the time.’ So much was happening in this world, and they were just my efforts to contend with it,” explains Pendergast. “Like Ben, this was a breakthrough moment for me. Once I got the song out, it allowed me to write other songs for the album. It’s less about the fire metaphor implied by the title than about the fact that in order to escape fire you have to find water. You find the deepest, darkest cavern…you just want to stay there forever. It slowly fills up and you eventually drown.”
HOUSE OF CADMUS was another deeply collaborative writing effort between all three members of KHEMMIS. “I thought the opening riff had this cool almost-swing to it...but evil,” recalls drummer Zach Coleman. “I was drawn to the atmosphere of that first riff, and it felt like it needed to be a song that was dark the whole way through. Ben and I discussed getting some New Orleans-style sounds somewhere on the album, and I think this is where we were able to sneak some in to tie together other aspects of the song.”
“I knew that I wanted the lead guitar line in the second half of the song to tie two very different parts together,” explains Hutcherson, “but the idea was all really abstract until we were in a room together. It wasn't until we jammed out that big funeral/death doom bridge and the slow, sad coda that we found out what we wanted that lead line to be: memorable and emotive. It was a very honest musical moment together.” The writing and recording processes of HOUSE OF CADMUS were so emotionally driven that even producer Dave Otero of Flatline Audio (Cephalic Carnage, Cattle Decapitation, Act Of Defiance) encountered his own deeply personal and intense connection with the song. “With the lyric turn at the end, I was inspired by Dave’s imagery,” says Pendergast. “This idea of a person leaving some important part of themselves behind as they float away and leave the thing they love on the shore. The sound of this song is like a lighthouse beam cutting through the fog in a dark night on the ocean.”
While the lyrical themes of DECEIVER;sorrow, pain, longing for hope, will no doubt be familiar to longtime fans, these six songs display a broader collection of musical influences than on any other KHEMMIS record to date. “It being our 4th album, especially after the transition between the last two albums, it felt really freeing. We felt that we could really do anything on this record,” explains Coleman. “There’s a lot here that we’ve never done before,” adds Pendergast. “In some areas it gets darkly psychedelic. I think we found a cool way to mutate things using transitions that feel really natural. There is a subtle symmetry between the first and last songs which is one of the things that makes listening to the full album a satisfying holistic experience. It builds from almost nothing, becomes very dark, and then you slowly crawl out of that lowest circle of hell.” KHEMMIS’s DECEIVER is a beautiful, musically ambitious journey from beginning to end drenched in impassioned melody and complex, unrestrained variations of sonic savagery adorned with chilling, intensely tragic cover art by frequent collaborator Sam Turner.

Restlessly awakening from the depths of a feverish slumber, doomed heavy metal masters KHEMMIS return to reveal their fourth full length studio album, DECEIVER, arriving via Nuclear Blast Records in November 2021. Six tracks of desolate, soul-awakening heaviness encapsulate a project that has been nearly three years in the making. With a title that reflects the internal struggles that many of us battle in our daily lives, DECEIVER is a ferociously honest and appetizingly raw piece of musical artistry.
The first single LIVING PYRE signifies far more than just the beginning of another musical endeavour for the band; it is a substantial benchmark for emotional struggle and growth. “When it comes to my own mental health, when I’m in a bad place, I can’t access the part of me that creates art. After reaching that understanding of myself, the bulk of this song came out in one sitting. I was feeling stable. I was feeling hopeful–even though so much outside in the world was not exactly inspiring. All of us needed a reason to feel a glimmer of hope,” recounts Hutcherson. With a big, quintessentially KHEMMIS chorus embellished by a swampy sorrow, this song incorporates familiar elements of the band’s sound with a touch of Swedish death metal in its latter half. “The reason that this was the song that came first lyrically was because I was juggling all the things that were happening with the inside and outside world intersecting. All the lyrics for me feel very ‘of the time.’ So much was happening in this world, and they were just my efforts to contend with it,” explains Pendergast. “Like Ben, this was a breakthrough moment for me. Once I got the song out, it allowed me to write other songs for the album. It’s less about the fire metaphor implied by the title than about the fact that in order to escape fire you have to find water. You find the deepest, darkest cavern…you just want to stay there forever. It slowly fills up and you eventually drown.”
HOUSE OF CADMUS was another deeply collaborative writing effort between all three members of KHEMMIS. “I thought the opening riff had this cool almost-swing to it...but evil,” recalls drummer Zach Coleman. “I was drawn to the atmosphere of that first riff, and it felt like it needed to be a song that was dark the whole way through. Ben and I discussed getting some New Orleans-style sounds somewhere on the album, and I think this is where we were able to sneak some in to tie together other aspects of the song.”
“I knew that I wanted the lead guitar line in the second half of the song to tie two very different parts together,” explains Hutcherson, “but the idea was all really abstract until we were in a room together. It wasn't until we jammed out that big funeral/death doom bridge and the slow, sad coda that we found out what we wanted that lead line to be: memorable and emotive. It was a very honest musical moment together.” The writing and recording processes of HOUSE OF CADMUS were so emotionally driven that even producer Dave Otero of Flatline Audio (Cephalic Carnage, Cattle Decapitation, Act Of Defiance) encountered his own deeply personal and intense connection with the song. “With the lyric turn at the end, I was inspired by Dave’s imagery,” says Pendergast. “This idea of a person leaving some important part of themselves behind as they float away and leave the thing they love on the shore. The sound of this song is like a lighthouse beam cutting through the fog in a dark night on the ocean.”
While the lyrical themes of DECEIVER;sorrow, pain, longing for hope, will no doubt be familiar to longtime fans, these six songs display a broader collection of musical influences than on any other KHEMMIS record to date. “It being our 4th album, especially after the transition between the last two albums, it felt really freeing. We felt that we could really do anything on this record,” explains Coleman. “There’s a lot here that we’ve never done before,” adds Pendergast. “In some areas it gets darkly psychedelic. I think we found a cool way to mutate things using transitions that feel really natural. There is a subtle symmetry between the first and last songs which is one of the things that makes listening to the full album a satisfying holistic experience. It builds from almost nothing, becomes very dark, and then you slowly crawl out of that lowest circle of hell.” KHEMMIS’s DECEIVER is a beautiful, musically ambitious journey from beginning to end drenched in impassioned melody and complex, unrestrained variations of sonic savagery adorned with chilling, intensely tragic cover art by frequent collaborator Sam Turner.

Reunited after some fourteen years, following the historic success of their first collaboration Raising Sand (2007), which reached #2 on the UK album chart, generated multi-platinum sales, and earned six Grammy Awards including Album and Record of the Year.
Like its predecessor, Raise The Roof was produced by T Bone Burnett, who worked with Plant and Krauss to expand their collaboration in thrilling new directions, accompanied by drummer Jay Bellerose, guitarists Marc Ribot, David Hidalgo, Bill Frisell, and Buddy Miller, bassists Dennis Crouch and Viktor Krauss, along with pedal steel guitarist Russ Pahl among others.
The album features twelve new recordings of songs by legends and unsung heroes including Merle Haggard, Allen Toussaint, The Everly Brothers, Anne Briggs, Geeshie Wiley, Bert Jansch and more. Other highlights include a Plant-Burnett original, “High and Lonesome,” and the Lucinda Williams classic “Can’t Let Go,”.

Reunited after some fourteen years, following the historic success of their first collaboration Raising Sand (2007), which reached #2 on the UK album chart, generated multi-platinum sales, and earned six Grammy Awards including Album and Record of the Year.
Like its predecessor, Raise The Roof was produced by T Bone Burnett, who worked with Plant and Krauss to expand their collaboration in thrilling new directions, accompanied by drummer Jay Bellerose, guitarists Marc Ribot, David Hidalgo, Bill Frisell, and Buddy Miller, bassists Dennis Crouch and Viktor Krauss, along with pedal steel guitarist Russ Pahl among others.
The album features twelve new recordings of songs by legends and unsung heroes including Merle Haggard, Allen Toussaint, The Everly Brothers, Anne Briggs, Geeshie Wiley, Bert Jansch and more. Other highlights include a Plant-Burnett original, “High and Lonesome,” and the Lucinda Williams classic “Can’t Let Go,”.

Ltd White vinyl LP w/ printed inner sleeve lyric insert (1000 copies ww)! Emma Ruth Rundle's forthcoming Engine of Hell is stark, intimate, and unflinching. For anyone that's endured trauma and grief, there's a beautiful solace in hearing Rundle articulate and humanize that particular type of pain not only with her words, but with her particular mysterious language of melody and timbre. The album captures a moment where a masterful songwriter strips away all flourishes and embellishments in order to make every note and word hit with maximum impact, leaving little to hide behind. "I really wanted to capture imperfection and the vulnerability of my humanity," Rundle says of the album's sonic approach. "Here are some very personal songs; here are my memories; here is me teetering on the very edge of sanity dipping my toe into the outer reaches of space and I'm taking you with me and it's very fucked up and imperfect.'" Emma Ruth Rundle has always been a multifaceted musician, equally capable of dreamy abstraction (as heard on her album Electric Guitar: One), maximalist textural explorations (see her work in Marriages, Red Sparowes, Nocturnes or collaborations with Chelsea Wolfe and Thou), and the classic singer-songwriter tradition (exemplified by Some Heavy Ocean). But on Engine of Hell, Rundle has opted to forego the full-band arrangements of her previous albums in favor of the austerity of a lone piano or guitar and her voice, which creates a kind of intimacy, as if we're sitting beside Rundle on a bench, or perhaps even playing the songs ourselves. It's an extremely up-close and personal confessional with a focus on the rich subtleties and timbre of Rundle's graceful performances. "For me this album is the end of an era to the end of a decade of making records. Things DO have to change and have changed for me since I finished recording it." In essence, Engine of Hell signifies a major turning point for Rundle as both an artist and as a person. The catharsis of this type of songwriting has effectively served its purpose, and to continue ruminating on the past going forward is less of a healing process and more like picking at a scab and refusing to let it heal. This may help explain why Rundle is less than enthusiastic about divulging the details about her muses, but it doesn't alter the fact that these songs served a purpose in their creation, and that they may continue to bring comfort to others.

Far View’ is a compilation of tracks from Joel Vandroogenbroeck’s series of library
music releases for the Coloursound label, a uniquely trippy catalogue of music
vignettes long overdue for their day in the library music sun, remastered from the
original analogue reels.
 The late Joel Vandroogenbroeck was among the rare breed of musicians who defy
all categorization, using music conventions to explore the far reaches of human and
cosmic consciousness. After passing through the jazz and rock worlds from the
1950s through the ‘70s, Joel found new outlets for his expansive vision in the ‘80s
with the Swiss library music label Coloursound. ‘Far View’ draws tracks from these
releases, which form a unique entry in the genre of library music. For the uninitiated,
this is just one way to begin a brilliant musical trip through Vandroogenbroeck’s
undersung career.
 A musical prodigy from youth, Joel arrived at Brussels’ classical Music Conservatory
in the early ‘50s, but his studies were curtailed by the revelation of jazz. Soon, Joel
was touring in groups around Europe and beyond with luminaries like Eje Thelin,
Stan Getz, Bob Brookmeyer and Zoot Sims. As time passed, his musical
consciousness continued to expand: time spent in Africa sparked a deep exploration
of the music of the Middle East. The new rock sounds from England, like The Beatles
and Jimi Hendrix, were mind-blowing. And from Germany came the krautrockers,
with something completely else again.
 Vibing on the eclectic energies of the day, Vandroogenbroeck formed Brainticket,
whose approach to composition fused jazz, rock and a mélange of global musical
traditions, combining a Western rhythm section and analogue synthesizers with an
astonishing array of acoustic instruments; ethnic flutes, sitar, harp, kalimba and all
manner of percussion. Steeped in diverse approaches of playing and listening,
Brainticket drew from prog rock and psych, traditional sounds and minimalist music,
all of which passed through their hands like the tributaries that formed the basis of
what would soon be known as New Age music.
 In the late 1970s, Vandroogenbroeck began composing for sound libraries, with
recordings to be used as underlay music in films, radio and television. Gunter
Greffenius’ Coloursound Library was formed in 1979 with an inclusive vision of
music, including experimental, progressive rock, and some of the earliest examples
of ambient music - styles not well represented in other libraries. Coloursound gave
Joel the freedom to create music in any style or genre, and over the next decadeplus, he embarked on a musical journey that is unmatched anywhere in the world of
library music. Working under the pseudonyms VDB, his output on Coloursound is
some of his most sublime and otherworldly - ranging from dark electronics to
imagined music of the ancient past to ethereal ambient sounds of the future, which
makes sense, as Joel’s records were always ahead and in and out of their time.
 Joel VandroogenbroeckJ passed away in in December 2019, while work was being
done assembling this collection. Curated by David Hollander, whose ‘Unusual
Sounds’ album and book of the same name delightfully explore the library music
world, ‘Far View’ draws from ten of Joel’s Coloursound albums with lovely cohesion.
Featuring brilliantly remastered sound, liner notes from David Hollander, album art
designed by Robert Beatty and reproductions of the Coloursound album jackets, ‘Far
View’ is an entry point to Joel Vandroogenbroek’s mind-bending body of work - sonic
soma to expand your consciousness and vibrate with the cosmos.

There are records with empathy, records which are your friends and then there's the others... There might be little difference between them, a certain "je ne sais quoi", an "almost nothing but still something" which makes the difference between almost pointless and vital records. Despite, or rather thanks to his cynical despair, Matt Elliott's music never holds up a moralizing mirror to us - on the contrary, it creates a compassionate dialogue with listeners like the rhythm of two steps that synchronize to become as one. In 2016, Matt Elliot brought out his seventh solo album The Calm Before whose obscure title is neither exactly threatening nor comforting... the calm before what? Before the storm for sure but maybe also before the great record, the immediate classic we felt might be coming for a long time in the dual discography of the Bristol-born artist working under his own name and his electronic alias Third Eye Foundation. The elegant details and perspectives of Little Lost Soul (2000) already hinted at the upcoming masterpiece from the English singer-songwriter. The Mess We Made (2003) was Matt Elliott's first solo album and portrayed a universe in a kind of flight towards Balkan horizons made up of visceral despair. With the Songs trilogy, he put aside the electronic side of his work to continue working with a minimalist, stark and lucid style of writing. The Broken Man (2012) was full of tears and long laments sometimes carried by Katia Labèque's piano on a record which painted new shades of grey. On this record Matt began working with the producer, arranger and multi-instrumentalist David Chalmin (La Terre Invisible) who has kept on collaborating with the Bristol-born singer since then. Their partnership continued on Only Myocardial Infection Can Break Your Heart (2013) and The Calm Before (2016). Stéphane Grégoire is the head of the Ici D'Ailleurs label which has accompanied Matt Elliott since 2005 and perhaps he describes this album the best: "This new record by Matt is without a doubt his best album to date, a record that takes him into another dimension where he fully asserts himself as a songwriter and singer of the calibre of artists like Bill Callahan, Leonard Cohen or Johnny Cash." Matt Elliott's other records all seemed like empathic links between each other. Farewell To All We Know is an instant classic based on the sensitive piano and superb arrangements of David Chalmin, the sensitive cello of Gaspar Claus, the subtle bass of Jeff Hallam (who has also played with Dominique A and John Parish). There is a clear form of alchemy in all of this and still we find Matt Elliott's usual atmospheres and scenery, the same Eastern European folk music, long songs that take time to settle over time. Everything is the same but also is transfigured. By making his music stark and purifying and redefining the subject matter, Matt Elliott's work became so much more delicate. However this work is never frail nor really turned in on himself and thus becomes like a vital tune that vibrates and unfolds. The opening song Farewell To All We Know seems torn between the fear of what tomorrow may bring, inevitability and hope for the future in a permanent and progressive dramatic tension expressed by his Spanish guitar, the impressionist style piano and Matt's voice teetering on the edge of whispers. A funereal tribute to endless twilights and the dawns we all dream of seeing. There are touches of Leonard Cohen from Songs from a Room or Thanks For The Dance in The Day After That with Gaspar Claus's counterpoint cello. There is no spirit of resignation in Matt Elliott's work - life's path has to be followed against all odds. We have to follow the river's flow to reach the immense ocean and its infinite freedom. The haunted instrumental Guidance Is Internal harks back to the atmospheres of Howling Songs (2008) with its guitar parts full of scansions and muted threats. The music is transcendental but never seems afraid of the risk of falling. This is also what Bye Now tells us with its quasi-obsolete simplicity and sunburst melancholy reminiscent of the work of Luiz Bonfá, Bill Evans on Peace Piece or laidback crooners of the 50s. In Farewell To All We Know, Matt Elliott incessantly alternates between the dual desires to face up to the world or to protect himself from it. Hating The Player, Hating The Game is a lucid statement about the dullness of our daily lives sometimes, our right to get out of the game and no longer want to be part of it. Matt Elliott is tender but spares no one, particularly himself. Aboulia speaks of the tiredness of living and of looming death while Crisis Apparition says that there is always a time for reconstruction after chaos. This is like initially wearying wandering in the ruins of Aleppo with the slow dilution of the melody into a hallucinated drone. However the smell of great fires always fades and the earth always regenerates. Matt Elliott seems to suggest that the survival instinct is stronger than any cold winds could ever be. Matt Elliott never sings of certainties and prefers possibilities. Possibly the worst is over? Maybe... Maybe the storm has passed and devastated everything, now we just have to rebuild and live again. Farewell To All We Know shows us the distance that still needs to be walked and he walks next to you - right next to you, he is the friend who doesn't spare you the truth like all true friends really do.

We used to enjoy presenting Chapelier Fou's work using the idea of music in the form of a treasure hunt. However, while the phrase in itself it still just as relevant today, we would never have imagined that it would become such an integral part of one of his albums. Or two of his albums to be perfectly exact - Méridiens and Parallèles. Two records with twelve songs each which answer each other back in the form of anagrams. They are like the two sides of the same planet - similar but simultaneously so different. They need to be discovered one after the other taking the time necessary to travel through the sound territories produced by his imagination. The starting point is a sombre night in Uqbar… Chapelier Fou's opening reference to Borgès was obviously not made by chance. He subsequently confided in us the objective of his diptych, namely to combine reality with fiction to question certainties and our relationships with the imaginary sphere. He has continued with his traditional classical-contemporary electronic approach which, although now known to a wide audience, has the advantage of opening up a whole range of possibilities right up to the infinite scale. Moving away from an "État Nain" (Dwarf State) to take refuge on an asteroid...Throughout Méridiens, each composition can be seen as a universe in itself or a specific landscape with its own temporality. Proof of this is the introduction to the chamber music format composed for and performed by only strings which can only be given the date we want to give it. This is "État Nain" in which violins are played like guitars. In some parts we find the spirit of the Penguin Cafe Orchestra and the idea of cheering up classical instruments and not taking everything too seriously. In other parts, we find something close to a mischievous and childish unplugged grunge anthem that could be from the French series Les Shadoks. This mischievous view of things is shown to full effect in Am Scharchtensee. The introduction shows Chapelier Fou's whole classical universe and mastery of orchestration in which "modular" electronics provide a subtle and discreet backdrop. Then, the record suddenly switches to a surrealist dialogue between these classical sounds and modular synthesizers with the flavour of the German pioneers Kluster/Harmonia to name but one example. Timelessness and imaginary places. La vie de cocagne confirms this choice of total freedom. It's traditional music with old sounds, a kind of forgotten bourrée (old French dance) in which electronic sounds disturb the established order and thus reach another musical dimension. Le méridien du Péricarde followed by Désert de Sonora push this idea of a trompe l'oreille and a hall of mirrors even further. The latter track ends almost like a catchy 80s melody and we can no longer find any logical meaning. We let ourselves be carried away by this profusion of madness and are a little amazed by this mastery of sound, composition and space. It sometimes all seems like a succession of conjuring tricks. Chapelier Fou takes not being serious very seriously indeed. The end song Everest trail is the perfect conclusion, a deadpan track in which the primary aspect of a totally classical melody in all its straightness is underpinned by a permanent exchange of electronic tweets which mocks the main musical posture. This impertinence harks back to Pierre Schaeffer who directed the ORTF's very serious experimental department in another era and allowed the development of Jacques Rouxel's series Les Shadoks thus introducing the general public to the notion of concrete music. This is also perhaps why Louis Warynski's stage name is French – because he has opted to use his French musical heritage. Thus the first singles selected from this album, Constantinople with its groovy and jazzy allure and Le Triangle des Bermudes evoke composers like Michel Magne or Michel Colombier both of whom have totally open minds and consider all music to have the same importance, namely that of sound. In absolutely all the tracks that make up Méridiens, you will find at least one detail - a pattern, melody, sometimes a simple sound - that will draw you back to explore it a little more. And the words are carefully weighed for sure. It's quite simple. This is undoubtedly his most hypnotizing and catchy album. Chapelier Fou has become a complete master of his own universe. He draws the start and finish lines himself and no one can follow him in a field that now belongs to him alone. Composed imaginary spheres, illustrated territories...Music is just as meaningful as the more visual arts. Therefore the artwork of Méridiens had to project each of the twelve tracks considered individually and not just the whole album as such. Chapelier Fou therefore asked his old friend the contemporary artist Corentin Grossman to create twelve windows to represent glimpses of the twelve worlds composed for the record. Windows or mirrors when it comes to that? You can never be sure of anything...Space OK. But what about time? The years go by and sometimes we forget that fact. But a simple glance back is often enough to gently touch the time that has passed. It is over 10 years since his first official record and he has been composing, recording and sharing his music for almost 20 years. 20 years is a long time. It makes some people look old while others fall into reassuring but sterile nostalgia. Chapelier Fou, on the other hand, has released his most ambitious project and tried to take a higher view of his discography that was itself nevertheless irreproachable. Although the journey is over we can see Parallèles universes on the horizon. Chapelier Fou has announced 12 additional tracks which are like echoes of the compositions on Méridiens' and will be released on the album Parallèles next spring. They are neither twins nor opposites – they are instead totally original new compositions which go further in exploring a universe which is already richly abundant.

‘Of Process and Progression’ is a perfectly balanced combination of hip-hop, jazz, and soul from longtime collaborators Tall Black Guy & Ozay Moore, who continue to push themselves creatively after a collective more than 30 years in the game. On each and every track on this LP, the duo beautifully blend Golden Era boom-bap with modern sounds to deliver something altogether timeless and inspiring. There’s just so much to love about ‘OPAP,’ an easy candidate for one of the year’s best releases, regardless of genre. Both TBG and Ozay have been on a tear these past few years with their respective careers, but it’s safe to say they’re reaching a new peak together with this release.

Both noted for strikingly forward-thinking bodies of solo work dating back to the 1990s, the duo of Andrew Pekler & Giuseppe Ielasi - collaborators for the better part of a decade - reemerge with 'Palimpsests’, their first outing with Shelter Press. Built from deconstructed layers of texture, tone, and arrhythmic percussiveness, the album’s 2 sides distill 6 years of work into 9 splintered, airy reimaginings of minimalism - each surprising, creatively rigorous, and startlingly beautiful - that rest at the outer reaches of contemporary electroacoustic practice and musique concrète.

Based in Berlin and Milan respectively, Andrew Pekler and Giuseppe Ielasi have individually carved singular paths across numerous disciplines within experimental music for more than 20 years, each deploying sampling, synthesis, and acoustic sources to weave their own, distinct worlds of sonorous abstraction. Brought together by years of friendship and a shared devotion to layered texture and complex, fractured structure, the pair first joined their creative energies in 2013, a collaboration that culminated as the LP, ‘Holiday For Sampler’, issued by Planam.

'Palimpsests’, the duo’s second outing, draws its material from a series of improvisations made by the Pekler and Ielasi in Milan during 2015. Over the ensuing six years, those recordings would undergo various transformations - cut, reworked, sampled, and added to by each artist, working at geographic distance between Berlin, Kyoto and Monza - before culminating, like the album’s title suggests, as a unique manifestation of musical palimpsest; “an object reused and altered, while still bearing visible traces of its earlier form”.

With each of the album’s compositions nodding toward a city with which Pekler and Ielasi hold biographical connections, 'Palimpsests’ constructs sound as poetic metaphor; a series of ghosts - traces of memory, image, and action - cut and reassembled, in cycling permutations, before been set into action at a glacial pace with layered, transparent forms.

Defined by remarkable restraint and pointillistic precision, across the album’s two sides Pekler and Ielasi weave the fractured remnants of their sessions - reduced to glitches and warbling fragments of texture and tonality - into pulsing expanses of spatial ambiance that defy imagism, blur the boundaries between the synthetic and organic - reducing their sources to a series of unknowns - recast the boundaries of electroacoustic practice on markedly singular terms.

Shelter Press is thrilled to present 'Palimpsests’, another brilliant outing from the duo of Andrew Pekler and Giuseppe Ielasi. Issued in a limited edition of 500 copies on black vinyl, with artworks on printed inner and outer sleeves by Traianos Pakioufakis.

When we think of the phrase Bonded By Blood, we think of two things: a brotherhood that is meant to outlast the trials of war, pain, and time... and the almighty EXODUS. With a bond forged in youth and decades-old friendship, the undisputed masters of thrash metal return with their eleventh studio album: PERSONA NON GRATA. Literally translating to “an unwelcome” or “unacceptable” person, PERSONA NON GRATA touches on themes of modern societal disgust and degradation. “The people that disgust you - cut ‘em out like cancer,” explains guitarist Gary Holt. “Who is that person? It could be anybody. That’s up to the listener. Who is ‘Persona Non Grata’ to them?”

For decades, EXODUS has impressed us with the ability to attract opposing factions to their music because of its intensity and versatility. A track like “The Beatings Will Continue Until Morale Improves” was inspired by the riots both in theme, and sound. “Without seeming insensitive to the riots, the song is tongue in cheek about what the people beating on the rioters were expecting to happen. Did you think you would beat a smile onto their face? At 3 minutes in length, it’s probably the shortest EXODUS song we’ve ever done. It gets in, gets out, and is just crushing,” describes Holt. While most of the songs do run on the shorter side, this album also comes equipped with crushing, epic tracks.

Whether it’s the music industry gossip sites, or the big players like CNN and FOX, we’re all aware of how news outlets love to set little rat traps; “Clickbait” discusses their methods of picking things out of context to grab your attention, add to their page views, and increase their revenue all while riling up your emotions. “It’s all journalistic dishonesty,” explains Holt, “it’s a modern-day version of Al Capone’s vault, everyone tunes in, and then there’s NOTHING.“ Evenly balanced with extraordinary speed and tremendous, catchy choruses, “Clickbait” is a song that explodes with vigorous energy. “As heavy as this album is, and it’s heavy as fuck, if times were different and there was still metal radio, this song, and probably over half the album, has single capabilities.”

Sitting as the second to last song on the album, “The Fires of Division” keeps PERSONA NON GRATA strong all the way through. “This album doesn’t operate on the normal parameters,” describes Holt, “we didn’t frontload this one, it’s strong right through to the end. It’s supposed to be a musical journey as the songs segway together.”

For the third time in the band’s history, EXODUS returned to Swedish artist Par Olofsson to create the album artwork PERSONA NON GRATA. “After this album, I feel like we probably won’t work with anyone else again, Par just gets it,” states Holt. A three-faced, winged creature sits atop a bloody pile of diseased and rotting humans as they scream in pain and reach their hands up desperately towards the beast. Undead riot cops beat mercilessly, and senselessly upon this pile of the dying and the world is red with fresh, sopping blood. “Is it an angel, a demon? Is the world being created or destroyed,” asks Holt, “you don’t really know.”

EXODUS don’t fall into the usual recording slump that most bands get stuck in. Gathering at Tom Hunting’s house up in the mountains, they avoided the need to book studio time or adhere to a certain schedule. “At first it was just Tom, myself, a half stack, and a drum kit; we call it jam camp. We lived there. We built the studio, we immersed ourselves in it. Number one, because we still enjoy each other’s company enough to do it. When we’re not actively rehearsing or recording, we’re still sitting there talking about the songs, working on them, plucking on acoustics until things really work,” explains Holt, “we’re not settling.” Working from three home-built studios, the band recorded PERSONA NON GRATA themselves with the help of Andy Sneap on mixing and mastering and with Steve Lagudi at the helm of engineering.

“As a band, I’m super grateful. I’ve seen a lot of things around the world and we’re still a band that loves each other, have each other’s back, and we genuinely like to hang out with each other,” explains Holt. “Take it how you will, but I’m this band’s biggest fan. We write songs that are designed to make us feel fired up - that’s why it’s still heavy.”

You have to know how to move away from the rich, strong and noisy streets, if you want to discover another Havana. A Havana far from the tourist circuits and preconceived images. A Havana where one discovers bucolic, but hard and stripped too after slow journeys in the crowded buses, a Havana with which Al Quetz maintains a passionate history since more than fourteen years.
Installed in one of those neighborhoods that can only be reached by going deeper into the alleys, from the open window of the studio comes the sound of banging drums and thumping bass. The sound reaches the streets on which the day rises.
The place wakes up in a growing tumult, with some rare engines coughing, conversations under the windows, songs of the street vendors , an urban ballet sets up as the sun darts its rays.
Far from the musical clichés with percussions and horns, Cuba is an island bombarded with influences that one discovers.
An island which vibrated for the jazz, the soul, the psychedelic rock , from the waves coming from the Caribbean to those of the bulky neighboring ogre.
A musical flowering as varied as abundant that the glorious post-revolutionary label Areito has on thousands of recordings,
and that Al Quetz has designated as the sole source of his samples to compose Habanologia.
From the ambiences that punctuate the local daily life caught by his samplers, he let the melancholy infiltrate his hip hop beats, the nostalgia melting in the depths of his grooves. Nostalgia in the Cuban air, even during moments of intense laughter, which never totally disappears.
Habanologia restores these moments when the song of the birds has extinguished those of the cars. Where, sitting on a doorstep, we comment on the life of the neighborhood, we watch the women's swaying at eye level. The whole day if necessary, the coffee at one peso, after a certain hour, which leaves its place to the Planchao rum. Wandering through its streets where a chance encounter can itself bring others and lead to the essence of the habanera life. From Regla, after a short trip on the bus-boat that crosses the bay, savor the end of the day, observe the capital from afar, let the nocturnal insects ensure some arrangements and drift towards mysterious horizons, bringing to the contemplation of the place and the moment.
A flute, a keyboard, percussions or a voice. Al Quetz also invited his friends from the island or elsewhere to decorate his productions with their live touch. To share with him this Havana for which he covered his tracks, mixed times and distorted space-time to make it timeless.
To write with Habanalogia, a declaration of love to the Cuban capital, to make Havana, His Havana.

Livity Sound is proud to present a 12” of lean, refined club tracks from UK stalwart Beneath. The Mistry and No Symbols boss has spent the past 10 years exploring a sound which nods to the legacy of bleep techno, dubstep and UK funky while leaning forwards into its own distinctive space.

His stripped-back blend of crisp drums, sprightly hooks and sub bass are instantly identifiable, but across four new tracks Beneath displays the versatility within his reach. Stomping four to-the-floor rollers on the A side face-off with minimalist dub and weighty, synth-rich expressions on the flip that move beyond the demands of the dancefloor.

Livity Sound is a label set up by Peverelist in 2011 as a vehicle for a raw and exploratory strain of UK techno, rooted in the heritage of UK dance music and sound system culture. It has since become one of the UK's foremost protagonists for cutting edge underground electronic music.

Marco Shuttle's third album, Cobalt Desert Oasis, features a varied collection of music recorded across a two year period. Often traveling to remote destinations, Marco would come back to Berlin with field recordings, images, and other inspirations to process in his studio and turn into sound.

The theme of the journey turns into a something more abstract than a travel diary, where environmental sounds blend in with modular synthesis, drum machines, effects and analog oscillators resulting in a cinematic listening experience where psychedelia, ritualism, and mysticism weave together in a sort of alien soundscape - that as the title of the album suggests, is reminiscent of a parallel utopian world.

The album is rich in complex rhythmics, and more than in any of his previous work, has strong acoustic elements. Amongst other percussion instruments, Marco used the Tombak, a traditional Persian hand drum capable of reaching a very wide range of frequencies - from deep round subby toms, to high pitched sharp rimshots, throughout the record.

Marco Shuttle is certainly not new to these sort of elements, but in Cobalt Desert Oasis he brings the environmental element of his sound into the forefront in a way that takes the listener into a hazy expanse where it is sometimes difficult to distinguish the machine elements from the natural - and where the music almost becomes a visual experience, which relates to Marco's own photography used throughout the cover and insert images.

The Acclaimed Arab-Levantine Contemporary Music & Art Project Returns With Its First New Album Since 2018. Led By Lebanese-Canadian Producer Radwan Ghazi Moumneh, Whose Many Credits Include Matana Roberts, Big | Brave, Sarah Davachi, Suuns. Featuring A Different Guest Collaboration On Each Track, Including Tim Hecker, Moor Mother, Beirut, Lucrecia Dalt, Greg Fox. Europe & Canada Tour In November 2021 With Experimental 16mm Analog Films By New Duo Member Erin Weisgerber.

One of the most renowned and uncompromising entities working in 21st century avant-garde Arab-Levantine art and music, Jerusalem In My Heart presents a new album of vital and haunting electronics and electroacoustics, framed by founder and producer Radwan Ghazi Moumneh’s spoken and sungArabic, buzuk-playing and sound design. Qalaq is the most distilled, variegated and finely wrought Jerusalem In My Heart album to date – featuring a different guest/collaborator on every track, yet as cohesive, emotionally resonant, sonically adventurous and narratively powerful as any release in JIMH’s celebrated discography. Guests across the album's 13 tracks include Moor Mother, Tim Hecker, Lucrecia Dalt, Greg Fox, Beirut, Alanis Obomsawin, Rabih Beaini and many more. “Qalaq” is an Arabic word with many shades of meaning but Moumneh particularly intends it as “deep worry” – on various obvious global levels, but also specifically with respect to Lebanon: its collapsing domestic politics, economy and infrastructure; the tragedy and aftermath of the 2020 Beirut port explosion; the intractable geography and geopolitics that continue to condemn the country to corruption, disruption, destabilization and violence. Moumneh writes: “The Side Two tracks are all named ‘Qalaq’ and then numbered, representing the degrees of layered and complex violence that Lebanon and the Levant have reached in the last couple of years, from the complete and utter failure of the Lebanese sectarian state that has driven the economy to a grinding halt, to its disastrous handling of the migrant influx from neighbouring failed states, to the endemic corruption that led to the August 2020 port explosion, to the latest chapter of Palestinian erasure and yet another brutally asymmetrical and disproportionate bombing campaign on Gaza.” Qalaq is shaped by a "dismantled orchestra" ofmusical collaborations, forged through long-distance file exchange during lockdown winter 2020-21 (and the inverted companion to JIMH's previous 2018full-length Daqa'iqTudaiq, which featured a 15-piece orchestra recorded live in Beirut). Moumneh initially through composed Qalaq in purposely stark and skeletal form, then gave each guest artist a section to decompose, edit, re-interpret and recompose as they desired, working their stems back into his own mixes for each piece/section and moulding newfound coherences in the overall work. The result is The album artwork with a front cover colour photograph by Myriam Boulous capturing a scene during the Beirut October Revolution of 2019.











k 11 Qalaq 6 (w/ VÍZ Réka Csiszér)

Portico Quartet announce Monument, the electronic driven follow-up to their acclaimed ambient-minimalist suite Terrain, presenting the band at their most direct

It's rare that a band releases two albums within six months of each other, rarer too that while both are so different, they are both as epochal in terms of the band's output as Terrain and Monument are to Portico Quartet. The irony is that Monument, a stripped-back, intentionally direct album, was the album that the band set out to write in May 2020, before the dream like long-form Terrain came into focus. Briefly they were two halves of the same record, but the band ended up developing these two distinct bodies of work concurrently. And although they were written side-by-side and recorded at the same sessions, they are records best understood as distinct from each other, each with opposing ideas and forms.

Monument is one of Portico Quartet's most accessible, direct records to date. If Terrain addressed the darker side of how Duncan Bellamy and Jack Wyllie made sense of the pandemic, then Monument resonates as an ode to better times. If not quite a dance record, it nonetheless pulses with an energy, radiance and a scalpel sharp focus. Jack Wyllie explains: "It's possibly our most direct album to date. It's melodic, structured and there's an economy to it that is very efficient. There's not much searching or wastage within the music itself, it is all finalised ideas, precisely sculpted and presented as a polished artefact."

Bellamy expands "Monument sits somewhere between our albums Portico Quartet and Art in the Age of Automation. It has perhaps a more overtly electronic edge to its sound – there are more synthesisers and electronic elements than we have used before and the music is often streamlined and rhythmic".

After the ethereal, stage-setting of Opening, the album kicks into overdrive with Impressions, a short energetic track that pairs a club influenced groove with hang drum and close, delicate saxophone. It's the balance between these elements that push and pull the track through a selection of melodic and rhythmic re-configurations, contrasting human touch with a machine-like focus. Ultraviolet is a kaleidoscopic, krautrock inspired track with a haunting introduction and an insistent pulse. The wistful Ever Present builds from a simple piano refrain; a nostalgic melody line floats over the top as drums and bass groove insistently underneath, before reaching a euphoric peak. The title track Monument builds around a looping vocal sample, drums and an enigmatic melody, the ending giving way to a gauzy, weaving synth line. The power here is in its economy and luminosity. AOE flips back and forth, like a dial that's been switched. Mining the tension between a pastoral inflected cello and saxophone melody, with an abrupt shift to jilted live drums, wailing delayed saxophone and a flickering synth line. Warm Data comes straight from the same Portico Quartet tradition as older tracks like Current History and Laker-Boo. It's a marriage of instrumental minimalism with drum machines and synths. Finally, the album closes with On The Light, a track that transmits a sense of suspense and freedom, driven by the twitching drums of Bellamy and evocative sax of Wyllie. It offers the perfect bitter-sweet and evocative ending to Portico Quartet's latest Monument.

"Live in Paris" - Nathan Davis, (sax); Georges Arvanitas (p, org); Jack Diéval (p); Jacky Samson, Jacques Hess (b); Franco Manzecchi, Charles Saudrais (dr)

Style is not a given. Not many musicians reach the level of artistic personality where you can unmistakably recognize them. It takes character, roots, honesty, soulfulness. Nathan Davis had style.

His tone on tenor was unique. So was his soprano sound and his distinctive approach to flute. His musical world was equally original and knew no boundaries.

This concert in Paris is audible proof that as a performer, his fluid phrasing, distinct articulation, booming bottom register, growls and shrieks were fuelled by tremendous drive and furious invention - the man was on fire!

These live sessions demonstrate the limitless invention of Nathan’s solos. Holding no punches, weaving signature phrases, shouts and riffs into his solos, he was a fierce and fervid performer. With a sort of hollow resonance at the heart of his reedy and warm sound, Nathan Davis was a highly original artist, from an era when having a distinct sound on your instrument was the grail of jazz artistry. Harold Land, Jimmy Heath, John Gilmore, Paul Gonsalves, Charlie Rouse, George Coleman, Booker Ervin, Clifford Jordan ... Jazz is made of such giants and Nathan Davis was one of them.

“I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve listened to Age of Exile in the past few weeks. I got a preview before it came out and on the first listen I was hooked. My first impression was that it sounded like Kaleidoscope (with whom Straw Man Army shares members), but it’s reaching toward something more like the song-oriented anarcho punk of Zounds and Crisis. I’ve been playing this record into the ground in the subsequent weeks, though, and there’s so much more to hear than a simple “this kinda sounds like this” comparison. One thing Straw Man Army shares with Kaleidoscope is a sense of rhythmic sophistication and inventiveness. We expect that a neo-anarcho band will have some interesting marching band snare patterns, but there’s so much more to the tracks on Age of Exile. Every song has a unique groove (or rather several of them, frequently overlapping), giving the album a sense of scope and breadth far beyond most contemporary punk records. And then there’s the sense of melody, which is equally sophisticated. While the interwoven rhythms make each song seem like a dense tapestry, the guitar melodies have a sense of sweetness and directness that makes Straw Man Army seem approachable and human. And then there are the lyrics, which I haven’t been able to dig into thoroughly, but are as dense, poetic, and vibrant as the music, focusing on how to live in the rubble of empire. Age of Exile is a striking album no matter which aspect of it you focus on, and it’s so distinctive and consuming that I can already tell it’s going to be a big part of the soundtrack to this part of my life.”

When Peter Rosenberg was hired by Hot 97 in July of 2007 his task was simple. His Sunday night show “Real Late” was to be a place where independent, underground, and boom bap artists could be featured. Rosenberg leaned into the gig and artists and fans, new and old, took note. In the years that followed Rosenberg world premiered music from future superstars such as Action Bronson, Joey Badass, A$AP Rocky, Childish Gambino, Frank Ocean, Tyler the Creator, Earl Sweatshirt, Travis Scott and countless more. He also became a star of Hot 97’s Morning Drive radio show, held a yearly concert to celebrate his favorite artists, and put out mixtapes in 2010, 2011, and 2013 that broke new music from a variety of these up and comers, including originals from Kendrick Lamar, Bronson, Badass, ASAP Rocky and Ferg, to name a few. Since 2013 Rosenberg has expanded his broadcasting range. He was hired by ESPN and instantly made an impact as a new cohost on “The Michael Kay Show.” Since arriving in 2015, the show has consistently grown in popularity and in 2019 reached the top of drive time ratings. Rosenberg’s passion for sports entertainment also led to him becoming a fixture on WWE pay per view events. It would have been easy to assume that Rosenberg’s next move would be a pivot away from underground music all together. Not so fast. As the pandemic hit, Rosenberg went back to his roots. He decided the time was right to finally put together an official album and in doing so he tapped some of the best artists in hip hop, from legends to newcomers, to put together a complete body of work aptly named after the late night show that put him on the map in the first place. Peter said: “I have considered making an album for years but it really was the pandemic that got me focused and led to me finally creating “Real Late”. I thought this was the perfect time to put together legends, new artists, and underground producers to create a project that sounded like my show “Real Late” on Hot 97. I was fortunate enough to get help from some amazingly talented people and the result is an album that I think truly represents the hip hop that I and so many others love.“ Features guest performances from Westside Gunn, Roc Marciano, Styles P, Smoke DZA, Method Man, Raekwon, Ghostface Killah, Flee Lord, Stove God Cook$, Eto, Willie the Kid, Meyhem, Buckwild, Crimeapple, Jim Jones, Rasheed Chappell, Homeboy Sandman and more!

absent origin’ reassembles and reimagines recordings and musical
scores composed by Mira Calix, globally, over the past decade. It’s a
collage album about edges and borders, cutting and tearing, and
composing new combinations that point to an audio visual manifesto for the 21st Century.

“Like Duchamp, I had started out wanting to make an album, or box, of approximately all the things I produced. In the end, I realised - as much as a collage is the coupling of two or more realities, it also offers the means to examine the materials and culture of an era, questioning and expanding its borders.” - Mira Calix

Every song on the album was created by applying a different collage
process relating to a different visual artist, spanning the history of collage to contemporaries of the practice. The sonic materials are subjected to a myriad of processes; layered, synthesised, constructed and assembled into electronic melodies, textures and complex, frisky dance rhythms that are constantly shifting in surprising ways. absent origin employs collage to make sense of the current moment of displaced voices, disjunction and political unrest.

Calix’s recording sessions from all over the world are the many
fragments we hear across the album; from India to Tasmania, Jordan to Belgium, China to Uganda, her former home of South Africa, to her
current home in Britain. Slicing into these are further recordings of
vocalists, percussionists, choirs, orchestras, quartets and soloists, never appearing in the form in which they were originally intended. The record is a polyphony of predominantly diverse female voices held together by pulsating baselines, haunting electronic sounds and orchestrated melodies and with them, we travel.

The album fizzes with a political energy and the interconnectedness of
everything. At this moment in time, there is an impossibility of separating one thing from another; the effect is strange and not exactly reassuring.

Collage suggests infinite possibilities and each track here is a singularly unique compositional combine, a dizzying hall of mirrors with its own unlikely harmony, its own distinctive rhythm. On ‘absent origin’, collage becomes the tool to make sense of a present that is often anything but.

2LP in printed inner sleeves with 5mm spine outer, printed insert and
digital download code.

The Black Keys release a special tenth anniversary edition of their landmark seventh studio. El Camino (10th Anniversary Deluxe Edition) will be available in several formats including a Super Deluxe edition of five vinyl LPs or four CDs, featuring a remastered version of the original album, a previously unreleased Live in Portland, ME concert recording, a BBC Radio 1 Zane Lowe session from 2012, a 2011 Electro-Vox session, an extensive photo book, a limited-edition poster and lithograph, and a ‘new car scent’ air freshener. A three-LP edition, which includes the remastered album and the live recording, will also be available. The Super Deluxe version will also be available digitally.

El Camino was produced by Danger Mouse and The Black Keys and was recorded in the band’s then-new hometown of Nashville during the spring of 2011. The Black Keys won three awards at the 55th annual GRAMMY Awards for El Camino – Best Rock Performance, Best Rock Song, and Best Rock Album – among other worldwide accolades. In the UK, the band was nominated for a BRIT Award (Best International Group) and an NME Award (Best International Band). The week of release, the band performed on Saturday Night Live, The Colbert Report, and the Late Show with David Letterman, and later that year, went on to perform their first Madison Square Garden show.

Rolling Stone, which featured the band on their cover around the release, hailed El Camino for bringing ‘raw, riffed-out power back to pop’s lexicon,’ and called it ‘the Keys’ grandest pop gesture yet, augmenting dark-hearted fuzz blasts with sleekly sexy choruses and Seventies-glam flair.’ The Guardian said, ‘They sound like a band who think they've made the year's best rock'n'roll album, probably because that's exactly what they've done.’

In the newly written liner notes for El Camino (10th Anniversary Deluxe Edition), David Fricke says:

The story of the Black Keys' seventh album, named after an automobile, long out of fashion and featured nowhere in the artwork, begins on a sidewalk in the middle of a blizzard. On the afternoon of January 9, 2011, singer-guitarist Dan Auerbach and drummer Patrick Carney stood on the pavement outside the Bowery Hotel in New York City, saw the weather turning vicious, looked at each other and came to the same decision: They had to get off the road.

The night before, the duo scored another first in a season getting crowded with them: The Black Keys' debut appearance on Saturday Night Live, performing ‘Howlin' for You’ and ‘Tighten Up’, the breakout singles from their latest release, Brothers. Two days earlier, Brothers – the Keys' first Top 5 album, released in May 2010 – became their first Gold record, passing a half-million in sales thanks to heavy FM rotation and a near-year of gigging, now set to run deep into 2011 including a prestige slot at Coachella and victory laps in Europe and Australia.

The Keys "tried to settle down" after cancelling the tour, Carney says. But that didn't last. "I said, 'We should just make another record.' And I asked Dan if we should get Danger Mouse" – the hip-hop and modern-rock producer, real name Brian Burton, who worked on the Keys' 2008 record, Attack & Release, and co-produced ‘Tighten Up’. Auerbach and Carney did not have any new songs, but as the drummer notes, "Most of our records – we don't have material when we start. Brothers was made up in the studio."

In the UK, the record gave the band their first top 10 hit, and in the US it debuted at #2 on the Billboard Top 200. The band was also the #1 most played artist at Alternative and AAA radio formats for 2012 in the US. The album’s first single, ‘Lonely Boy’: reached #1 on the Alternative and AAA charts; it also entered the top 10 at Rock radio. The second single, ‘Gold on the Ceiling’, also reached #1 on Alternative radio and the third single, ‘Little Black Submarines’, reached the top 3 at Alternative radio.

El Camino has been certified Double Platinum in the US; Platinum in the UK, Belgium, France, Ireland, and the Netherlands; Triple Platinum in Australia and New Zealand; Quadruple Platinum in Canada; and Gold in Austria, Denmark, Finland, Italy, Mexico, Norway, Spain, and Switzerland. Of the album’s singles, ‘Lonely Boy’ was certified Double Platinum in the US, nine-times Platinum in Canada, Triple Platinum in Australia, Platinum in New Zealand, and Gold in Denmark and the UK. ‘Gold on the Ceiling’ was certified Platinum in the United States, Australia, and Canada. ‘Little Black Submarines’ was certified Platinum in the United States. The Black Keys also were nominated for an MTV European Music Award in 2012.

Recently, the band announced their World Tour of America. The Black Keys will perform three intimate shows in Oxford, MS, Athens, GA, and St Petersburg, FL, surrounding their September 25 headlining set at Pilgrimage Fest in Tennessee.

The Black Keys recently released their tenth studio album, Delta Kream, which was recorded at Easy Eye Sound studio in Nashville. The album takes its name from William Eggleston’s iconic Mississippi photograph that is on its cover.

Formed in Akron, Ohio in 2001, The Black Keys, who have been called ‘rock royalty’ by the Associated Press and ‘one of the best rock ‘n’ roll bands on the planet’ by Uncut, are guitarist/singer Dan Auerbach and drummer Patrick Carney. Cutting their teeth playing small clubs, the band have gone on to sell out arena tours and have released nine previous studio albums: their debut The Big Come Up (2002), followed by Thickfreakness (2003) and Rubber Factory (2004), along with their releases on Nonesuch Records, Magic Potion (2006), Attack & Release (2008), Brothers (2010), El Camino (2011), Turn Blue (2014) and, most recently, “Let’s Rock” (2019), plus and a tenth anniversary edition of Brothers (2020). The band has won six Grammy Awards and a BRIT and headlined festivals in North America, South America, Mexico, Australia, and Europe.

The Black Keys release a special tenth anniversary edition of their landmark seventh studio. El Camino (10th Anniversary Deluxe Edition) will be available in several formats including a Super Deluxe edition of five vinyl LPs or four CDs, featuring a remastered version of the original album, a previously unreleased Live in Portland, ME concert recording, a BBC Radio 1 Zane Lowe session from 2012, a 2011 Electro-Vox session, an extensive photo book, a limited-edition poster and lithograph, and a ‘new car scent’ air freshener. A three-LP edition, which includes the remastered album and the live recording, will also be available. The Super Deluxe version will also be available digitally.

El Camino was produced by Danger Mouse and The Black Keys and was recorded in the band’s then-new hometown of Nashville during the spring of 2011. The Black Keys won three awards at the 55th annual GRAMMY Awards for El Camino – Best Rock Performance, Best Rock Song, and Best Rock Album – among other worldwide accolades. In the UK, the band was nominated for a BRIT Award (Best International Group) and an NME Award (Best International Band). The week of release, the band performed on Saturday Night Live, The Colbert Report, and the Late Show with David Letterman, and later that year, went on to perform their first Madison Square Garden show.

Rolling Stone, which featured the band on their cover around the release, hailed El Camino for bringing ‘raw, riffed-out power back to pop’s lexicon,’ and called it ‘the Keys’ grandest pop gesture yet, augmenting dark-hearted fuzz blasts with sleekly sexy choruses and Seventies-glam flair.’ The Guardian said, ‘They sound like a band who think they've made the year's best rock'n'roll album, probably because that's exactly what they've done.’

In the newly written liner notes for El Camino (10th Anniversary Deluxe Edition), David Fricke says:

The story of the Black Keys' seventh album, named after an automobile, long out of fashion and featured nowhere in the artwork, begins on a sidewalk in the middle of a blizzard. On the afternoon of January 9, 2011, singer-guitarist Dan Auerbach and drummer Patrick Carney stood on the pavement outside the Bowery Hotel in New York City, saw the weather turning vicious, looked at each other and came to the same decision: They had to get off the road.

The night before, the duo scored another first in a season getting crowded with them: The Black Keys' debut appearance on Saturday Night Live, performing ‘Howlin' for You’ and ‘Tighten Up’, the breakout singles from their latest release, Brothers. Two days earlier, Brothers – the Keys' first Top 5 album, released in May 2010 – became their first Gold record, passing a half-million in sales thanks to heavy FM rotation and a near-year of gigging, now set to run deep into 2011 including a prestige slot at Coachella and victory laps in Europe and Australia.

The Keys "tried to settle down" after cancelling the tour, Carney says. But that didn't last. "I said, 'We should just make another record.' And I asked Dan if we should get Danger Mouse" – the hip-hop and modern-rock producer, real name Brian Burton, who worked on the Keys' 2008 record, Attack & Release, and co-produced ‘Tighten Up’. Auerbach and Carney did not have any new songs, but as the drummer notes, "Most of our records – we don't have material when we start. Brothers was made up in the studio."

In the UK, the record gave the band their first top 10 hit, and in the US it debuted at #2 on the Billboard Top 200. The band was also the #1 most played artist at Alternative and AAA radio formats for 2012 in the US. The album’s first single, ‘Lonely Boy’: reached #1 on the Alternative and AAA charts; it also entered the top 10 at Rock radio. The second single, ‘Gold on the Ceiling’, also reached #1 on Alternative radio and the third single, ‘Little Black Submarines’, reached the top 3 at Alternative radio.

El Camino has been certified Double Platinum in the US; Platinum in the UK, Belgium, France, Ireland, and the Netherlands; Triple Platinum in Australia and New Zealand; Quadruple Platinum in Canada; and Gold in Austria, Denmark, Finland, Italy, Mexico, Norway, Spain, and Switzerland. Of the album’s singles, ‘Lonely Boy’ was certified Double Platinum in the US, nine-times Platinum in Canada, Triple Platinum in Australia, Platinum in New Zealand, and Gold in Denmark and the UK. ‘Gold on the Ceiling’ was certified Platinum in the United States, Australia, and Canada. ‘Little Black Submarines’ was certified Platinum in the United States. The Black Keys also were nominated for an MTV European Music Award in 2012.

Recently, the band announced their World Tour of America. The Black Keys will perform three intimate shows in Oxford, MS, Athens, GA, and St Petersburg, FL, surrounding their September 25 headlining set at Pilgrimage Fest in Tennessee.

The Black Keys recently released their tenth studio album, Delta Kream, which was recorded at Easy Eye Sound studio in Nashville. The album takes its name from William Eggleston’s iconic Mississippi photograph that is on its cover.

Formed in Akron, Ohio in 2001, The Black Keys, who have been called ‘rock royalty’ by the Associated Press and ‘one of the best rock ‘n’ roll bands on the planet’ by Uncut, are guitarist/singer Dan Auerbach and drummer Patrick Carney. Cutting their teeth playing small clubs, the band have gone on to sell out arena tours and have released nine previous studio albums: their debut The Big Come Up (2002), followed by Thickfreakness (2003) and Rubber Factory (2004), along with their releases on Nonesuch Records, Magic Potion (2006), Attack & Release (2008), Brothers (2010), El Camino (2011), Turn Blue (2014) and, most recently, “Let’s Rock” (2019), plus and a tenth anniversary edition of Brothers (2020). The band has won six Grammy Awards and a BRIT and headlined festivals in North America, South America, Mexico, Australia, and Europe.

Australia's biggest selling dance act and one of the most popular drum'n'bass acts of the early 21st century, Pendulum are an Australian group based in the United Kingdom. Formed in Perth in 2002, the group was originally comprised of producers Rob Swire and Gareth McGrillen, who worked in tandem with a local DJ named Paul "El Hornet" Harding. One of the team's initial releases, "Vault," became a sensation amid the drum'n'bass community in 2003, benefiting greatly from its high-profile placement at the beginning of J Majik's FabricLive mix album. In 2005, Pendulum made their full-length album debut, Hold Your Colour, featuring the singles "Tarantula" and "Slam."
Pendulum signed to Warner Music U.K. and made their major-label debut with 2007's "Granite," a Top 30 hit. Their second full-length album, In Silico (2008), spawned four singles, including U.K. Top Ten hit "Propane Nightmares". In Silico went on to reach platinum status in the U.K., as well as just missing out on the U.K. number one album chart spot. Their third album, Immersion, was released in 2010, and shot straight to the top of the U.K. albums chart. It featured collaborations with the Prodigy's Liam Howlett, Porcupine Tree's Steven Wilson, and Swedish metallers In Flames. In support of the album, Pendulum embarked on a world tour, playing two sold-out shows at London's Wembley Arena and headline slots at some of the U.K.'s largest festivals.
At the end of 2011, Pendulum took a break from live performing, with Rob Swire and Gareth McGrillen focusing their energy on their side project, Knife Party. In 2018, Pendulum returned from a seven-year hiatus, with Rob Swire, Gareth McGrillen and Paul Harding currently touring as Pendulum - Trinity.

When you’re trying to make it through tough times, you need a little light to find your way. That light blazes brightly on the alchemical second album from Penelope Isles, an album forged amid emotional upheaval and band changes. Setting the uncertainties of twentysomething life to alt-rock and psychedelic songs brimming with life, colour and feeling, ‘Which Way to Happy’ emerges as a luminous victory for Jack and Lily Wolter, the siblings whose bond holds the
band tight at its core.

 Produced by Jack and mixed by US alt-rock legend Dave Fridmann, the result is an intoxicating leap forward for the Brighton-based band, following the calling-card DIY smarts of their 2019 debut, ‘Until the Tide Creeps In’. Sometimes it swoons, sometimes it soars. Sometimes it says it’s OK to not be OK. And sometimes it says it’s OK to look for the way to happy, too. Pitched between fertile coastal metaphors and winged melodies, intimate confessionals and expansive cosmic pop, deep sorrows and serene soul-pop pick-you-ups, it transforms ‘difficult second album’ clichés into a thing of glorious contrasts: a second-album surge of up-close, heartfelt intimacies and expansive, experimental vision.

 Field recordings were made during a stay at a small cottage in Cornwall, where Penelope Isles began work on the album. With romantic heartache already in the air, things swiftly got worse:
lockdown began, claustrophobia kicked in and emotions ran high. As Jack puts it, “We were there for about two or three months. It was a tiny cottage with four of us in and we all went a bit bonkers, and we drank far too much, and it spiralled a bit out of control. There were a lot of emotional evenings and realisations, which I think reflects in the songs.”

 At different points along the way, Jack Sowton and Becky Redford left the Isles. An old friend, multi-instrumentalist Henry Nicholson, stepped in swiftly - “A godsend after a low time,” says Lily. Another friend, Hannah Feenstra, contributed drum parts; now, Joe Taylor is the band’s drummer. After Cornwall, the band redid many of the rhythm tracks, recorded a little in Brighton, then recorded more in Cornwall at their parents’ house. “It was,” says Jack, “a proper
rollercoaster ride.”

 The ride continued with Fridmann, whose recent credits include Isles’ favourites Mogwai’s No 1 album, ‘As the Love Continues’. As Lily puts it, the process of sending Fridmann a mix, receiving it back in the morning and then having five hours to make decisions on it resulted first in stress, then in something sublime. “I love everything he’s touched - MGMT, Mogwai, Mercury Rev. He would turn our mix into this electric, fiery thing. There were some moments that were
initially hard, like on ‘Miss Moon’, where he took out the bass when it gets to the chorus. But now it’s my favourite bit on the record. He made everything so colourful. It’s an intensesounding record - a hot record. It was so refreshing to have that blast of energy from Dave - it’s like he framed our pictures.”

 Away from the confines of the cottage, the Wolters also opened the door to a collaboration with storied composer Fiona Brice, whose credits include John Grant, Lost Horizons and Placebo. A
“big bucket-list tick” for Jack and Lily, the team-up results in glorious arrangements across the album: for Lily, ‘11 11’ stood out. “I was in absolute tears when she sent back the strings for ‘11 11’. It was like, oh my goodness, she’s nailed it.”

 On its release, ‘Until the Tide Creeps In’ received rave reviews from Q, DIY, The Line of Best Fit and many others, while finding champions in Steve Lamacq and Shaun Keaveny. It also become part of a lifeline for music fans during the 2020 lockdown when the band participated in Tim Burgess’s Twitter Listening Party. Meanwhile, extensive touring saw the Isles develop into a formidable live force, with ‘Gnarbone’ emerging as a sure-fire showstopper.

 Now, the Isles have 11 more showstoppers to add to the mix. At the album’s heart, the band’s core traits have never been stronger: the bond between the Wolters, a sensitivity towards complex feelings, a desire to celebrate life in all its facets and an ambitious reach combine to create an album that feels utterly, emphatically present on every front, rich in depth and uplift.

 LP pressed on 180g clear vinyl with A4 print.

Over the course of two EPs, two singles and a stripped-back
live album, Puma Blue has established himself as one of the
UK’s most vital new talents, quietly amassing over 50 million
streams in the process and selling out shows from London to LA
and Paris to Tokyo.
 His long-awaited debut album, ‘In Praise Of Shadows’, was a
delirious dreamland of soulful vocals, D'Angelo-ish guitars and
muted electronic beats. Its fourteen tracks are a contemplation
on “the balance of light and dark, the painful things you have to
heal from or accept, that bring you through to a better place,”
says the 25-year-old Puma Blue, real name Jacob Allen. “It's
about finding light in darkness and realizing that it’s what got me
here today.”
 Described by NME as “a brief moment of relief for those lost in
the darkness,” the album found his storytelling at its most
honest and vulnerable to date whilst his production reached
new heights, retaining its characteristic bedroom intimacy. Yet
for all the intimacy of his ‘voicemail-ballads’ on record, his songs
carry a different resonance in a live setting; a mix of
improvisation, in-the-moment escapism and the collective
power of an audience taking his music to new heights.
 ‘In Praise Of Shadows: B-Sides & Live Versions’ features
rarities and live recordings, mostly taken from rehearsals in
early 2021. With limited opportunities for people to hear the
album in a live setting thus far, this represents an intimate first
glimpse at the magic unique to the full band arrangements.
 This edition is completed by two new bedroom studio
recordings with new single ‘All I Need’ (a Radiohead cover)
perfectly extending the album’s small hours spirit, the raw
emotion of Puma Blue’s voice growing in tandem with the scale
of the initially skeletal production, and the previously unreleased
‘Postcard From Toyko’ exploring loneliness with brutal honesty
and a sparse acoustic atmosphere.
 Crystal clear LP in a deluxe clear PVC sleeve.

Hungry for some modern melodic death metal with ridiculously catchy pop influences? Well, your dinner has just been served. This steaming nine-course setting is called "Origin" and it is honoringly brought into the table by the renowned Finnish heavy metal band Omnium Gatherum. Omnium Gatherum – OG for close friends – has been offering remarkable pieces of melodic death metal for already twenty-five shining years. While storming through these ferocious decades, Omnium Gatherum has convinced worldwide legions of heavy metal lovers by releasing unstoppable musical onslaughts and touring relentlessly all over the world. "Any sort of popularity hasn't come overnight for OG, and rising to that "next level" has sometimes taken a considerably long time, but one thing has been set in stone: progress has been inevitable. In other words: a lot of great things have happened along the way but the journey hasn't been the easiest one", says longtime singer Jukka Pelkonen. ... And recent times are no exception. Contrary to what you might think, we are not talking about a global scourge that gripped the entire world about a year and a half ago. "Although most of the things around "Origin" have been really good – we have never had so much time to compose and sharpen the material for instance –, there have been some serious roadblocks as well. This, of course, has not come as a big surprise as OG was not born under the happiest stars", laughs guitarist extraordinaire and the band founder Markus Vanhala. "Above all, our dear fans should know that since the previous studio effort "The Burning Cold" (2018), half of the band's line-up has changed. I would say quite surprisingly as we haven't really had any major problems, at least to my knowledge." "This internal turmoil lifted dark clouds into the band's vast sky and everything was falling apart... well, for a few hours at least. After that, as many times before, we decided to turn these difficulties into something better!" Before the arrival of "Origin", Omnium Gatherum's colourful discography features eight studio albums, but the newcomer does not pale in comparison. The truth is, in fact, quite the opposite... By the stylish, majestic and melodic splendor of "Origin", it really feels like the band's original style called AORDM – adult oriented death metal – has reached its peak. Well, so far... "Over the years, OG's material has been deliberately moving further away from the anxiety of the windy Northern shores and traditional melodeath's gloomy despair. These days our music is a powerful mixture of older deadly roots and newer AOR-vibes that you get while listening to Survivor and driving a Corvette along the sunny shores of Miami of us, we will not forget the original enthusiasm for playing heavy metal... And therefore we will never give up!"

• Within a year of her ground-breaking Double-Album “Bad Girls”, Donna Summer left Casablanca Records
to become the first Artist signed to the new Geffen Records label.
• The third album released for the label was 1984’s “CATS WITHOUT CLAWS”, which was produced by
Michael Omartian, who followed-up his production duties on “She Works Hard For The Money” by giving
the album a mid-80s dance/pop themed sound. The album includes the singles ‘Supernatural Love’, ‘There
Goes My Baby’ and ‘Eyes’.
• “CATS WITHOUT CLAWS” reached the Top 30 in several countries across Europe, also becoming a Top 40
album in the USA and Japan.
• Michael Omartian’s production credits include albums with Michael Bolton, Peter Cetera, Christopher
Cross, Amy Grant, Whitney Houston, The Jacksons, and Rod Stewart. Alongside Quincy Jones, he coproduced USA For Africa’s 1985 No. 1 hit, "We Are the World".
• Donna won a Grammy Award for Best Inspirational Performance for the album’s final track, ‘Forgive Me’.
• This special edition revisits the original album on 180g Pink Colour vinyl.

• Within a year of her ground-breaking Double-Album “Bad Girls”, Donna Summer left
Casablanca Records to become the first Artist signed to the new Geffen Records label.
• The fourth album released for the label was 1987’s “ALL SYSTEMS GO”, was recorded in both Los
Angeles and Munich and was predominantly produced by long-term Giorgio Moroder
collaborator and movie soundtrack composer, Harold Faltermeyer, giving the album a slightly
harder-edged, FM-radio friendly sound with a heavier R&B influence.
• Out of the two further tracks recorded for the album, ‘Dinner With Gershwin’, which was
produced by Richard Perry and written by Brenda Russell, gave the album that desired FMradio sound, with the single becoming a worldwide hit reaching #13 in the UK singles chart.
Other singles include ‘Only The Fool Survives’, a duet with Starship’s lead-singer Mickey Thomas
and the album’s title track ‘All Systems Go’.
• This special edition revisits the original album on 180g Orange Colour vinyl.

This is a super-limited strictly 1000 copy one-off only edition pressed on white coloured vinyl of this in-demand Trees Speak classic debut album.
When the band Trees Speak, coming out of nowhere, released an exclusive one-off 100-pressing white label 45, described as CAN/NEU! meets LIQUID LIQUID, it sold out so quickly (in less than 30 min) that Soul Jazz Records decided to release their album almost immediately.
Soul Jazz Records rarely release new music but found the music of TREES SPEAK’s album ‘OHMS’ so stunning and to have so many elements of music that they admired that they felt compelled to release it.
The group Trees Speak are from Tucson, Arizona and create new music that sounds like GERMAN KRAUTROCK meets NO WAVE/POST-PUNK and PSYCH ROCK – music for fans of CLUSTER, TANGERINE DREAM, CAN, NEU!, SILVER APPLES and early KRAFTWERK.
The album ‘OHMS’ sounds at times like a tripped out & moody JOHN CARPENTER/GOBLIN/MORRICONE soundtrack that seamlessly segues into propulsive, ‘motorik’ Krautrock instrumentals loaded with fuzzy, hypnotic mellotron, synths and analogue effects, as well as elements of ART ENSEMBLE free jazz, and all at times reaching a kind of post-rave psychedelia. More recent comparisons would include BEAK and GHOST BOX who draw upon similar themes and styles.
Trees Speak are Daniel Martin Diaz and Damian Diaz plus musicians from the Tucson, Arizona scene such as Giant Sand, XIXA and James Hunter. ‘Trees Speak’ relates to the idea of future technologies storing information and data in Trees and plants – using them as hard drives – and the idea that Trees communicate collectively.

“ When I started working on the piece in March of 2020, I had only decided to record it in the way I wanted to. The coronavirus was spreading globally, and the situation was gradually changing into something very serious. With no gigs scheduled and hardly seeing anyone, I felt as if my spirit was in a slightly deeper place than usual during the production. I sat down in front of my equipment as if I were dropping a fishing line into a quiet lake. I kept feeling that something new was lurking beneath the water surface. I was trying to catch that something that seemed to be just out of reach, that floated in and out of sight like a speck of smoke. “ ＿Referenced from: Afterword of 7FO「Ran - Bouten」

2021 brings a new album by Osaka electronic musician / producer 7FO. This work is a departure from the recent global ambient / new age approach, and the unique sound aesthetic created using only hardware equipment is a new frontier of 7FO or a return to his origin. "Ran - Bouten" is a new electronic music album with a poetic sensibility using machines.Discovered by overseas labels such as RVNG intl., Bokeh Versions, and Metron-and with the release that followed EM Records in his hometown Osaka, it's like his personal folk craft that was once quietly played at his own pace. Music has reached listeners around the world. In recent years, he has been touring from a famous performance with Tapes at the Belgian "Meakusma Festival 2019" to a Japan-Korea tour. "Ran - Bouten" was born as a result of facing the sound alone without being asked by anyone to cool down the heat when the steaming and intense experience had settled down. Inside the cool electronic sound like a water bath, you can feel the maker's heart sending hot blood.Peep into the condensed universe of a home-recorded miniature world that looks like an independent production of unknown age. He was alone in a dark room, making full use of KAWAI's 1990 digital and FM synthesizers , tracing the shape of nature and resonating the micro and macro sound worlds. The Rhythm and melody that continues to the Paradise Pure Land, which floats in a dreamy atmosphere, is the true value of 7FO even without his guitar play.Mastering by Makoto Oshiro, which supports everything from home listening to club sound systems. Hiroaki Hidaka designed the jacket to make the image of the sound appear cool and friendly everywhere.

But Only After You Have Suffered is a densely layered and deeply personal new work from multidisciplinary artist, composer, percussionist & producer Jamire Williams. Conceived as a spiritual, autobiographical artistic statement, Jamire applies sound collage practice to modern jazz composition, beat production, MC/vocalist features, and his uniquely impressionistic drumming style - making an album as akin to minimalist painting as an art-house film soundtrack or a classic hip-hop mixtape. A "self-reflective, almost testimonial work" that swiftly cycles across a vast spectrum of styles, it's the culmination of his five-year musical journey to the outer reaches of his own sound. It's the album he has always wanted to make.

Diving into the archives of Alter Ego - the Italian experimental ensemble of Manuel Zurria, Paolo Ravaglia, Aldo Campagnari, Francesco Dillon, Oscar Pizzo, and Eugenio Vatta - Die Schachtel is thrilled to present Microwaves, a never before released body of recordings of works composed by Atli Ingólfsson, Giovanni Verrando, Yan Maresz, and Riccardo Nova, made with Pan Sonic (Mika Vainio and Ilpo Vaisanen) in 2005. Resting at the outer reaches of avant-garde chamber and electronic music, the LP’s blistering structures, tones, and textures - plowing forward with frenetic energy - remain radical and ahead of their time, more than 15 years after they were first laid to tape.

A modular chamber ensemble with a pointedly anti-academic approach to music, over the course of its activities - running roughly between 1990 and 2010 - Alter Ego developed a devoted following among some of the most forward thinking voices in experimental music, all the while collaborating widely with artists spanning a vast range of practices and disciplines, including Robin Rimbaud, Philip Jeck, Matmos, Gavin Bryars, Andrew Hooker, William Basinski, David Moss, Alvin Curran, Terry Riley, and near countless number of others.

Alter Ego’s diverse activities can be understood as interventions with the disposition toward formality within contemporary chamber music, often pairing themselves with artists working well beyond their own context as a means to develop highly original interpretations of a specific composer’s work. In 2004, this process led them to instigate a collaboration Pan Sonic, the Finnish duo of Mika Vainio and Ilpo Vaisanen, pioneers of a remarkably distinct form of rhythmic, experimental electronic music, and regarded by many as one of the most visionary and irreverent projects working in the field during the '90s and 2000s.

Initially conceived with Fausto Romitelli in 2004 before being sidelined by the composer’s untimely passing the following year, Microwaves acts, in part, a remembrance in sound, featuring four works by some of his closest friends, the composers Atli Ingólfsson, Giovanni Verrando, Yan Maresz, and Riccardo Nova. Each composition, Ingólfsson’s Snap, Verrando’s Harmonic Domains #3, Maresz’s Link, and Nova’s Thirteen13x8@Terror Generating Deity, have roots in a pallet of samples and fragments drawn by each composer from existing works by Pan Sonic. Upon completion, these compositions then entered into a collaborative process between Mika Vainio and Ilpo Vaisanen (Pan Sonic) and Alter Ego (Manuel Zurria, Paolo Ravaglia, Aldo Campagnari, Francesco Dillon, Oscar Pizzo, and Eugenio Vatta), and were performed collectively by both groups during an extensive tour that year.

Distinct and free-standing, while operating as a seamless whole, the four works encountered across the album’s two sides - built from the sounds of flute, clarinet, violin, cello, piano, electronics, and further treatments - present an engrossing intersection between electronic and acoustic sound that diverges from most standing conceptions of electroacoustic music. Each composer’s carefully rendered structures rise and fall within the startling, conversant interplay between the two groups, finding perfect balance - between the frenetic and restrained - in what can only be regarded as one of the most striking and singularly unique expressions of contemporary chamber music realized during the 2000s.

Vast in scope, visionary in concept and artistry, and sonically engrossing, Die Schachtel is thrilled to present these never before heard recordings from the archives of Alter Ego. Microwaves is available on black vinyl, in a limited edition of 350 copies.

Diving into the archives of Alter Ego - the experimental ensemble of Manuel Zurria, Paolo Ravaglia, Aldo Campagnari, Francesco Dillon, Oscar Pizzo, Fulvia Ricevuto, and Eugenio Vatta - Die Schachtel is thrilled to present Pranam - A(Round) Giacinto Scelsi, a never before released body of recordings interpreting the works of the legendary Italian composer Giacinto Scelsi, made with Matmos (Martin Schmidt and Drew Daniel) in 2005. Resting at the outer reaches of avant-garde chamber and electronic music - moving at a glacial pace of tightly wound energy - Pranam’s two sides radically rethink the terms electroacoustic music in ways that still feel radically ahead of their time, more than 15 years after they were first laid to tape.

A modular chamber ensemble with a pointedly anti-academic approach to music, over the course of its activities - running roughly between 1990 and 2010 - Alter Ego developed a devoted following among some of the most forward thinking voices in experimental music, all the while collaborating widely with artists spanning a vast range of practices and disciplines, including Robin Rimbaud, Philip Jeck, Pan Sonic, Matmos, Gavin Bryars, Andrew Hooker, William Basinski, David Moss, Alvin Curran, Terry Riley, and near countless number of others.

Alter Ego’s diverse activities can be understood as interventions with the disposition toward formality within contemporary chamber music, often pairing themselves with artists working well beyond their own context as a means to develop highly original interpretations of a specific composer’s work. In 2005, this process led them to invite Matmos, the American duo of Drew Daniel, Martin Schmidt - acclaimed for a body of visionary albums at the vanguard of electronic process and sampling - to collaborate on a series of interpretations of works by the legendary Italian composer Giacinto Scelsi.

Realized in collaboration with The Fondazione Isabella Scelsi, which holds Giacinto Scelsi’s archives, and performed at the Festival Roma Europa and the Festival Aeterforum during May of 2005, the album’s four works - Estratti dal Quartetto per archi n.3 (1963), Ko-Lho (1966), Riti: I Funerali di Carlo Magno A.D. 814 (1976), Aitsi (1974) - shift the boundaries of 20th Century chamber music toward markedly new and contemporary terms, incorporating everything from the sounds of the Revox tape machine that Scelsi used to record his own improvisations and processed electronics, to the plastic trumpets used by fans during football matches.

From intertwining, shifting lone-tones that render startling resonances and dissonances, to passages guided by a vast pallet of electronics and flurries of acoustic sounds, joined as a single ensemble, across the two sides of Pranam, Alter Ego and Matmos infuse these four works by Scelsi with humor and playfulness, while retaining all the urgency and rigour with which they were initially composed.

Delicate and meditative, while tightly wound and brooding, Pranam brings the works of Giacinto Scelsi to life in ways that almost no group ever has. Riveting and immersive from start to finish, Die Schachtel is thrilled to present these never before heard recordings from the archives of Alter Ego. Pranam is available on black vinyl, in a limited edition of 350 copies.

"The art of the remix has been around for several decades, from the fervid imaginations of JA pioneers like Coxsone Dodd, Duke Reid or King Tubby to the disco enthusiasts of New York, such as Tom Moulton, who bequeathed us the modern iteration of the remix and provided a template from which most remixers still work. Moulton's first commercial remix, a reworking of BT Express' appropriately-named `Do It 'Till You're Satisfied', which stretched it from three minutes to a luxurious five, assisted the band in securing its first Billboard R&B Number One, as well as providing a pathway for remixers like Walter Gibbons, Larry Levan, Richie Rivera and Tee Sott, to completely reinvent the concept of a remix (and in some instances, deconstructing the idea of what comprised a song). It has subsequently been used as a marketing tool, a dancefloor-devastator, a gimmick (both cheap and expensive) or even as a way of reaching a different audience (think Tori Amos' `Professional Widow'). Khruangbin are no slouches when it comes to the remix themselves. They've been reworked before, in 2016, with the highly collectible EP on Boogiefuturo. But this time, they're taking it a step further with an album dedicated to the art. Entering the tight-knit world of a Khruangbin song can be a little daunting. They have created this entire universe in which the trio seem to function telepathically in the way the music is composed, arranged and played. To mess with their delicate eco-system can invoke feelings similar to that of an unwanted guest crashing a good-time party. "We write our music to be interpreted; this is another wonderful interpretation of the music," reassure Khruangbin. "There is something very vulnerable about letting others work on your music. But through the correspondence with the different artists, we gained a bigger connection to the songs themselves." The choice of remixers for this album is neither arbitrary nor accidental. They're not names picked randomly out of a hat or chosen via a throw of the dice. All have some connection to the band, sometimes personal friendships, musical connections, or simply mutual musical appreciation. Harvey Sutherland and Ginger Roots have both toured with the band, Kadhja Bonet and Ron Trent had their own mutual fan club going on, Knxwledge sampled `White Gloves' on a recent mixtape, Natasha Diggs and Soul Clap's Eli's are recent buddy-ups, Quantic is a mutual friend of Bonobo (crucial in the KB origin story), while I've known Laura for number of years; plus she is also godmother to one of Felix Dickinson's kids. Doesn't get much more intimate than that, right? Some of these remixes were specifically made so you can dance your ass off while getting down to the Khruangbin sound, while some might better be appreciated horizontally with headphones on, wearing fashionably loose clothes. The choice is yours. But all were made with love and respect for Khruangbin. "A good remix deconstructs, recontextualizes, or simply extends a good time," say the band. Amen and out." - Bill Brewster

For Delft-based label Omen Wapta's first release, Japanese musician/sound designer/coder/producer JEMAPUR explores the far reaches of abstract experimental techno on his album Mode Cleaner. Pulling from music made between 2016 and 2020, JEMAPUR demonstrates his distinctive use of glitch, microsampling, live coding, and granular synthesis techniques. The album was made when the producer was drawn to subjects like physics, geometry, murals, ancient civilisations, the logic of nature, and the observation of the universe.

Non-binary artist and producer peachlyfe emerges from the high-speed, forward-thinking Copenhagen Techno scene; known for their energetic approach to production coupled with an affiliation for peculiar rhythms and a desire to explore the outer reaches of dance music.

‘Creeper’ sets the standard; unveiling as a fast-paced, itchy and foreboding blend of highly charged kickdrums, rolling hats and sticky, palpitating synths. Nene H, a dynamic producer with strong ties to the Danish capital through her residency at one of the cites most loved parties ‘Endurance’, is on hand to remix- turning in a late-night tale that moves amidst the shadows.

The low-slung groove of ‘Trashman’ is as hypnotic as they come; the type of mind-bending composition that leaves you questioning what exactly just happened, bringing the A-side to a gripping close.

Industrial and brooding, ‘Burst’ opens the B-side with a bang, followed by ‘Elemental Friend’, a trance-leaning cut, blended with percussion that strikes down like metallic fists.

It’s been said that writing about music is like dancing about
architecture but what about singing about movies? Sufjan
Stevens and Angelo De Augustine have paired up for a
collaborative project that does just that. ‘A Beginner’s Mind’ is
their debut album and contains 14 songs (loosely) based on
(mostly) popular films.  The source material is highbrow, lowbrow and everything in
between. The music is folksy, sweet, sincere and harmonically
effervescent - Simon & Garfunkel with New Age flourishes. This
album runs the gamut and has fun with it, even while its
songwriters remain fully rooted in the melancholy folk idioms
they are known for.  Daniel Anum Jasper, a pioneer of Ghanian movie poster
painting, was commissioned to paint a series of new works for
‘A Beginner’s Mind’. His paintings are a graphic simulacrum for
the same sense of wonder, wordplay and intrigue that shape ‘A
Beginner’s Mind’. By transforming old films into vital new songs,
Stevens and De Augustine ask us to consider ourselves from a
previously unconsidered vantage point - a new way of seeing
and hearing - an exercise that’s as necessary and relevant now
as it’s ever been.  “In the dizzying chime of his careful fingerpicking and highpitched howls, De Augustine captures love’s bright blaze.” - Pitchfork
 “What we find here, on what is arguably the pinnacle of his
output to date, is De Augustine achieving the beautiful balance
between introspection and grandeur; straddling the place where
pain and hope intersect.” - Line of Best Fit

A month before the pandemic hit Norway – and the rest of the world for that sake – Darling west released their fourth album, «We’ll Never Know Unless We Try». They managed to get through two or three shows before everything was canceled, and the country went into lockdown. It may sound a bit counterintuitive to records a live album while in lockdown, but that is exactly what Darling West decided to do. When Norway partly opened during the fall of 2020, the band recorded their gigs at Parkteatret in Oslo and at Folken in Stavanger, and these recordings make out the songs on «Live 2020». Even though the gigs were played at venues with restricted capacity, it’s nice to see that they can reach bigger a bigger audience with this recording. «Live 2020» consists of songs from Darling West’s entire catalogue, and you can almost hear that they’ve been longing to play live on a stage. It had been six months since they’d been in front of an audience when these recordings were made, and the energy in the rooms were very special. This record is a document of this.