Cerca:real thing

“Imagine a man at the end of his rope. Perhaps he's made a fool of himself one too many times, or perhaps despite a lot of hard work has failed miserably at all the things he's endeavored, and the once smug upstart has over time let go of all his ambitions. At the very end of a descent into disillusionment and cynicism, when all hope and even the last sliver of willpower has left him, he unexpectedly finds a form of calm. Complete exhaustion has freed him from the torments of past and future, and in that moment of peace, reality seems to reveal itself with a freshness that he hasn't experienced in a very long time, perhaps since childhood. Let's call this a rebirth of innocence.

In a world threatened by environmental decay, a passionate young man embarked on a daring quest to save the planet.

Will his vision of a sustainable future become a reality, proving that the passion of one young man could ignite a revolution and ultimately save the planet for generations to come?

Find out by following the Chronicles Of Bru, the new series of EP composed by Jesse Bru and produced by Happiness Therapy!

Pissed Jeans has never been a band that goes halfway-they're known for their feral vocals, biting lyrics, buzzsaw guitars, and unhinged live shows, and their sixth album, Half-Divorced is no exception. These songs skewer the tension between youthful optimism and the sobering realities of adulthood, and when viewed through frontman Matt Korvette's scowl, everything takes on a level of violent absurdity. Pissed Jeans' notorious acerbic sense of humor remains sharper than ever as they dismember some of the joys that contemporary adult life has to offer, from helicopter parents to stolen catalytic converters to being $62,000 in debt. On "Seatbelt Alarm Silencer," Korvette growls, "Call it a death drive but that ain't fair / Drive implies I'm headed somewhere." Korvette, Brad Fry (guitar), Randy Huth (bass), and Sean McGuinness (drums) weren't in any rush to finish Half-Divorced, which was recorded by Don Godwin at Tonal Park in Takoma Park, Maryland. "We're not the kind of band that bangs out a new record every two years," Korvette said. "Pissed Jeans is truly like an art project for us, which is what makes it so fun." This lack of restraint rages within the songs that unexpectedly veer into classic hardcore punk territory-often coming in at under two minutes long and erupting like the "butane tank explosion" Korvette sings about in "Junktime." In the last song, "Moving On," Korvette sneers, "Cheesing into my camera phone / Pretending that I'm not alone / Life's the first thing that we all postpone." One gets the sense that Pissed Jeans refuses to "postpone" life in quite the same way-life, like art, is something that happens now, not later. - Chelsea Hodson

Pissed Jeans has never been a band that goes halfway-they're known for their feral vocals, biting lyrics, buzzsaw guitars, and unhinged live shows, and their sixth album, Half-Divorced is no exception. These songs skewer the tension between youthful optimism and the sobering realities of adulthood, and when viewed through frontman Matt Korvette's scowl, everything takes on a level of violent absurdity. Pissed Jeans' notorious acerbic sense of humor remains sharper than ever as they dismember some of the joys that contemporary adult life has to offer, from helicopter parents to stolen catalytic converters to being $62,000 in debt. On "Seatbelt Alarm Silencer," Korvette growls, "Call it a death drive but that ain't fair / Drive implies I'm headed somewhere." Korvette, Brad Fry (guitar), Randy Huth (bass), and Sean McGuinness (drums) weren't in any rush to finish Half-Divorced, which was recorded by Don Godwin at Tonal Park in Takoma Park, Maryland. "We're not the kind of band that bangs out a new record every two years," Korvette said. "Pissed Jeans is truly like an art project for us, which is what makes it so fun." This lack of restraint rages within the songs that unexpectedly veer into classic hardcore punk territory-often coming in at under two minutes long and erupting like the "butane tank explosion" Korvette sings about in "Junktime." In the last song, "Moving On," Korvette sneers, "Cheesing into my camera phone / Pretending that I'm not alone / Life's the first thing that we all postpone." One gets the sense that Pissed Jeans refuses to "postpone" life in quite the same way-life, like art, is something that happens now, not later. - Chelsea Hodson

Since the early 80's Allan Crockford has been a major figure in Medway's garage rock scene, including playing for The Prisoners, Billy Childish's Thee Headcoats, the original line-up of the James Taylor Quartet, The Solarflares and many more. Since 2010 he has fronted his own band, The Galileo 7, as writer, guitarist, and lead vocalist. Their unique blend of powerful '60s garage rock'n'roll, psychedelic vocal harmonies and quality songwriting has now featured on no less than eight albums. Their ninth, You, Me and Reality, sounds like the work of a seasoned rock 'n' roll band dialling things up one and approaching its zenith. The group performances of the quartet of Allan Crockford, Viv Bonsels, Paul Moss and Mole ooze energy and dynamics - whether it's the garage ramalama of opener 'Can't Go Home', the woozy psychedelics of 'Slow Down', the chipper folk-rock of 'A Simple Man' or the '60s mod-pop stomp of the title track. As with 2019's last album proper, There Is Only Now, all four group members share lead vocal duties, with Viv's contributions adding an affecting indie-pop flavour that coyly suggests new directions. You, Me & Reality largely eschews its predecessor's predilection for ambling unplugged off the beaten path, instead sticking with up-tempo ensemble performances that showcase the players' musical chops and vocal interplay in the kind of warm, fizzy, analogue soundscape that's become a touchstone of many Medway bands.

Mannequin Pussy"s music feels like a resilient and galvanizing shout that demands to be heard. Across four albums, the Philadelphia rock band that consists of Colins "Bear" Regisford (bass, vocals), Kaleen Reading (drums, percussion), Maxine Steen (guitar, synths), and Marisa Dabice (guitar, vocals) has made cathartic tunes about despairing times. "There"s just so much constantly going on that feels intentionally evil that trying to make something beautiful feels like a radical act ," says Dabice. "The ethos of this band has always been to bring people together." Their new album, I Got Heaven, which is out March 1 via Epitaph Records, is the band"s most fully realized recording yet. Over ten ambitious tracks which abruptly turn from searing punk to inviting alternative pop, the album is deeply concerned with desire, the power in being alone, and how to live in an unfeeling and unkind world. It"s a document of a band doubling down on their unshakable bond to make something furious, thrilling, and wholly alive. Following the 2019 release of their critically acclaimed third album Patience, Mannequin Pussy returned in 2021 for their EP Perfect. They toured that release relentlessly and added guitarist Maxine Steen to the band"s official lineup. The band changed their entire creative formula, choosing to write together in the studio in Los Angeles with producer John Congleton , over slowly crafting tracks at home. "Everyone felt empowered to speak up about their own ideas to make this thing the best it could possibly be," says Regisford.

Mannequin Pussy"s music feels like a resilient and galvanizing shout that demands to be heard. Across four albums, the Philadelphia rock band that consists of Colins "Bear" Regisford (bass, vocals), Kaleen Reading (drums, percussion), Maxine Steen (guitar, synths), and Marisa Dabice (guitar, vocals) has made cathartic tunes about despairing times. "There"s just so much constantly going on that feels intentionally evil that trying to make something beautiful feels like a radical act ," says Dabice. "The ethos of this band has always been to bring people together." Their new album, I Got Heaven, which is out March 1 via Epitaph Records, is the band"s most fully realized recording yet. Over ten ambitious tracks which abruptly turn from searing punk to inviting alternative pop, the album is deeply concerned with desire, the power in being alone, and how to live in an unfeeling and unkind world. It"s a document of a band doubling down on their unshakable bond to make something furious, thrilling, and wholly alive. Following the 2019 release of their critically acclaimed third album Patience, Mannequin Pussy returned in 2021 for their EP Perfect. They toured that release relentlessly and added guitarist Maxine Steen to the band"s official lineup. The band changed their entire creative formula, choosing to write together in the studio in Los Angeles with producer John Congleton , over slowly crafting tracks at home. "Everyone felt empowered to speak up about their own ideas to make this thing the best it could possibly be," says Regisford.

DJ and producer Gratts returns to his own imprint with the third instalment of the "Balearic but bumpin'" trilogy. Here, the Belgian puts forward a captivating piece of organic, Body & Soul NY inspired deep house, assisted by Cata Mansikka-aho on vocals. As always, an instrumental is provided for maximum nightclub daydreaming. On the flipside, British duo Faze Action up the energy levels with an equally musical disco version that hits in all the right spots. Artwork once again by Mads Cooke.

Glenn Underground:
"Bad Ass'd Project, The whole thing"

Laurent Garnier:
"Really cool tracks :) Looking forward to hearing more stuff in the future."

Colleen Cosmo Murphy:
"Great release! I like the original best! I will be supporting on the show once I’m back in February."

Groove Armada:
"Sounds great and Faze remix is great too!"

Severino (Horse Meat Disco):
"Great stuff and amazing remix!"

Kevin Reynolds (Transmat):
"I remember this voice! Both tracks are incredible, has this classic Dinosaur L vibe that is super dope!"

Gareth Sommerville (Athens Of The North):
"Love Gratts’ productions - this is no exception. Spiritual for optimists."

Shane Johnson (Fish Go Deep):
"Really enjoying the original mixes here... such a relaxed, musical groove that perfectly suits that lovely, drifting vocal. Looking forward to playing."

From out of nowhere - if nowhere is the febrile, warped and twilit imagination of Julia McFarlane - comes Whoopee, the second album by J.McFarlane’s Reality Guest. Whoopee is an esoteric, kaleidoscopic movie in music form directed by Julia McFarlane and co-conspirator Thomas Kernot. Full of life, breakbeats and smokey vignettes on the fragile nature of interpersonal relationships, Whoopee is a stylistic evolution from everything McFarlane has done before. Surreal, beautiful in parts and replete with the aching wisdom McFarlane’s songwriting has always promised, this Reality Guest pulls back the curtain on a whole scene of naked truth. Recorded in Melbourne in bursts since the release of 2019’s Ta Da, Whoopee features a new sound palette and band member in Kernot. The duo dive deep into electronic pop tropes, mining digital synths, samples, breakbeats and deep bass grooves, largely dispensing with live instrumentation. If Ta Da took twists and turns with your expectations, offering a Dada-ist, monochromatic take on pop music, Whoopee is McFarlane’s subterranean love-sick pinks, reds, greens, purples and blues. Becoming something of a tradition, the album starts with an instrumental intro pilfered from a 90s’ spy film or cinema intro music, puffing up the listener for the heart-squeezing bathos of Full Stops. Over a bleary backdrop of walking bass lines, jazz- inflected keys and smoked-out atmosphere, McFarlane’s poetry narrates the fragile state of a relationship: “You put a full stop where I thought there’d be a comma, I want the story to continue even with all the drama.” Over a palpable pain, the narrator is revelling in the drama of a relationship, addicted to tumult and heightened emotion. On Sensory, a space age bachelor lounge pad ballad, the converse state of the previous song is explored, here the narrator is battling the numbness of being out of the drama, stuck in a sensory-deprivation tank, anaesthesized and battling to emerge from the fog. Wrong Planet explores an otherworldly pop music, hewing a bright hook out of a sense of confusion. A bona-fide, sing-along chorus bursts out of the narrator musing on the absurdity of existing in this reality. It speaks of one of Julia McFarlane’s main talents, her knack of inspecting human relationships and states with a clear perspective, like an alien visiting Earth and realising everything we are is really, really strange. Whoopee is both more accessible than previous Reality Guest work and somehow more obfuscated. Where the production on Ta Da was dry, sharp and strange, this Reality Guest is blurred, almost smeared with the effluvium of 90s+00s culture and existence. Through it all, it’s hard to deny the undeniable pull of the songs. Precious Boy carries on the lounge theme with a whole sampler of cut up sounds fading in and out of the haze as McFarlane’s voice is right up to the speaker cooing and free- associating, maybe in love or maybe in confusion... maybe they’re the same thing? Sometimes the listener is invited to just bathe in the tone of the vocal, as on Apocalypse, where the texture and timbre of the vocal is luxurious, bathing in piano tinkles and double bass throb. On lead single Slinky, a cut up beat reminiscent of Washingtonian Go-Go drum patterns leads, the song slipping through your fingers, elusive and presenting sound as pure pleasure. Closer Caviar jumps back into the broken breakbeats of a surreal funk, fuelled by the sensory pleasure of the music, a hedonistic whirl in rapture, the narrator now living life to the fullest in all its giddy heights and deep troughs. This is the album’s main character fully-actualised and in the terrible, beautiful moment.

This vinyl re-pressing of Martin Carthy's Debut album is released to commemorate Topic's 85th anniversary in 2024 - Limited edition of 1000 copies - Black vinyl, standard weight with black, polylined inner sleeves. In the early 1960s, the approach Martin Carthy took to folk music was nothing short of revolutionary, albeit a relatively quiet revolution befitting of his humble nature. You wouldn't find Carthy's music clambering up the singles charts; his was not a face adorning the teen magazines. Instead, his influence was felt at a grass-roots level. He plied his trade in the folk clubs, which is where the likes of Bob Dylan and Paul Simon sought him out, enamoured of his traditional repertoire and keen to learn songs like 'Scarborough Fair' and 'Lord Franklin' directly from him before adapting them for their own purposes.

His debut eponymous album, re-released here, on vinyl by Topic Records as part of their ongoing Topic Treasures series, is a snapshot of the work he was doing at the time.

Originally finding its way into the world in 1965, courtesy of Fontana Records, Martin Carthy pulled together 14 songs from his burgeoning repertoire. Produced by Terry at the Philips Recording Studios in Marble Arch, the album was a must-learn checklist for budding guitarists and folk club orgas, and, to this day, remains an essential listen for anyone attempting to find their way into traditional English folk music. Most people turn up for 'Scarborough Fair', very few leave without getting hooked on 'High Germany', 'Sovay' and 'Ye Mariners All'.

The album also introduces Carthy's earliest collaborations with Dave Swarbrick, an enduring and much-copied partnership that lasted, off and on, until Swarbs death in 2016, and became a blueprint for how guitar and fiddle duos ought to sound. While Carthy had been building up his solo repertoire over the previous five or six years, several of the duo arrangements on this album ('Lovely Joan', 'A Begging I Will Go', 'Broomfield Hill') were thrown together in the studio, adding a fizz and freshness to the recordings. This became the pair's standard way of working. "We used to rehearse on stage, in front of the audience," he explains today.

In the years since, Martin Carthy has become the veteran of over 40 studio albums and a veritable beacon for musicians and music lovers seeking "the real stuff." Pressed to name his favourite, he needs no time to think it over. "I always stand by the first album," he says of his 1965 debut. "I love it. There are some things on it I think I couldn't have done better. There was a clarity of purpose."

And, with this re-release, we can be sure that newcomers get to hear that sense of purpose in the best possible quality, as clearly as Bob Dylan, Paul Simon and a generation of folk lovers did six decades ago.

Danish imprint Inherent Futurism returns with its second release in 2024, entitled 'Merger' and made up of a selection of cuts from the Copenhagen Electro Alliance. Inherent Futurism is the new label launched by Morten Kamper, an intrinsic member of the Copenhagen electronic music scene and the man behind the city's 313vinyl_collective record store. He launched the label with a reissue of the Autobot-1000 '3 Dimensions Of Space', a hidden gem from 2001 and the golden era of Electro. Here though, he brings things closer to home and revisits an array of select compositions from the Copenhagen Electro Alliance, compiled together to make up the aptly titled 'Merger'. The package is made up of twelve tracks across two twelve-inch vinyl from artists in the alliance, Nixxon, Brain Enterprise, Deimos Defender and Kruzh'em. As the name of the Copenhagen Electro Alliance collective would suggest, the aesthetic leans heavily towards experimental sounds and draws influence from the soul of Detroit electro, which paved the way for the future of the genre. The twelve-track collection explores all of the classic Electro tropes from punchy and crunch 808s, intricately intertwined synthesizer melodies, murky bass lines and dynamically unfolding, heavily modulated constructions, some leaning towards dance floor friendly while others lay more in the realm of sonic exploration of futuristic music.

Warehouse find!

Since emerging in the early 2000s with releases on the seminal Merck label, Proswell (Joseph Misra) has proven to be one of the most original voices in IDM. People Are Giving And Receiving Things At Incredible Speeds (PAGARTAIS), his debut on Sheffield's Central Processing Unit, is another Proswell record which overflows with creative energy. Containing five widescreen electronic epics, PAGARTAIS showcases some of the most ambitious work in the discographies of both artist and label.

The core sonic palette of PAGARTAIS is one schooled in the IDM and electronica sounds of imprints like Rephlex Records, B12 and Skam. These tracks are helmed by thick washes of keys, an array of playful synth tones and drums so deft it's sometimes hard to tell whether they have been programmed or played live. However, across almost forty minutes of music here Proswell explodes preconceptions about genre and form, his music gleefully jumping from one new sound to the next while assimilating electro, prog, computer game music, post-jazz and pretty much everything in between.

Opener 'PAGARTAIS I' sets the tone for the rest of the record. This is a track which never sits still - beginning with a distorted melee of drums that comes off like a strange new version of breakbeat, 'PAGARTAIS I' moves through some thrillingly idiosyncratic takes on Rephlex-school IDM, stargazing Detroit electro and The Comet Is Coming's futurist electronic jazz across its near-ten-minute runtime. Following number 'PAGARTAIS II' is no less impressive, referencing the hyper-modern computer sounds of Iglooghost and Kai Whiston while containing a driving opening section which could have soundtracked one of the legendary Wipeout games.

Although this fabulously unpredictable record often zips along at high speeds, Proswell is also able to dial things back when he needs to. Indeed, the second half of PAGARTAIS finds him slowing down a tad in order to deliver some of the album's most atmospheric material - 'PAGARTAIS III' blends cutting-edge electronics with sonorous jazz harmonies and fizzing improvised lead lines, the mysterious 'PAGARTAIS IV' is a sort of freeform variation on the maximalist, colourful electronica of Galaxy Garden-era Lone, and the slinking computerised Braindance number 'PAGARTAIS V' recalls Calum Gunn's recent CPU drop Addenda.

Really, though, none of these comparisons quite do justice to the inventive capacity of this music - Proswell's in a lane of his own here. An incredibly innovative fusion record that takes in IDM, prog, computer music, electro and plenty more besides, People Are Giving And Receiving Things At Incredible Speeds (PAGARTAIS) is the sound of a unique musical mind in full flight.

RIYL: Calum Gunn, Kai Whiston, Iglooghost, Rustie, Bogdan Raczynski

Following her contribution to this Spring’s Gudu & Friends Vol. 1 compilation, Lady Blacktronika steps out with a full EP for Peggy Gou’s Gudu label.

Whether operating as Lady Blacktronika or her Femanyst alias, Akua Grant has built a deserved reputation as one of house and techno’s most daring and unique artists - one that dates back 25 years now, when she first debuted as a vocalist.

“House and techno” can be a cliched catch-all term, but in Grant’s case, she really has explored the extremes of both sides. Her early Lady Blacktronika work, when she earned the nickname The First Lady of Beatdown, saw her produce and narrate a style of deep house that was both sensitive and transgressive, while as Femanyst, she explores some of techno’s darkest corners, all distorted kicks and serrated edges.

Her EP for Gudu kicks off with some serious intent: ‘Baby I Got It’ chops its vocals rough and raw, pairing them with marching drums and the sort of idiosyncratic synth-work that feels like a Blacktronika signature at this point. ‘Sing the Blues’ and ‘Hold My Hand’ take things smoother, but without ever deferring to type — as ever with Grant’s music, she works with such sleight of hand that it’s easy to skip back three minutes previous and wonder how the hell we got here. Her tracks are just that hypnotic and hallucinatory.

Closing the EP, Octo Octa provides a remix of ‘Hold My Hand’ that extends things to a full 12 minutes (note: slightly shorter on the vinyl due to time constraints), taking us out with crushed percs and held pads over some undeniable drum work.

This EP marks the final release of Gudu’s busiest year to date, with music on the label in 2023 coming from Special Request, Matisa, Mogwaa, Hiver, Matrefakt, DMX Krew, Dukwa, Brain de Palma, Lady Blacktronika, Salamanda and Closet Yi.

2023 Repress

Frank Maston’s Tulips is a sample-ready film score to the best 70s movie never made. Originally a super-limited self-release on his Phonoscope label in late 2017, Tulips has already become incredibly sought-after. Be With were introduced to Maston by mutual friends Aquarium Drunkard and it didn’t take long before we decided this modern classic deserved a reissue.

Inspired by the deep-grooving soundtracks of Italian cinema - think Morricone, Umiliani and Alessandroni - Maston conceived the entire Tulips project as a continuation of these revered works. Frank designed the artwork and made two 16mm films to accompany the music: “It wasn’t just the LP… it was kind of a whole vibe I was trying to create. Not really trying to emulate the things that influenced me but more trying to make something that could sit alongside those records on a shelf. I’m still very proud of the project.”

There’s a distinct library music feel too, with wiry organ, spacey keyboards and loping 60s guitar hinting at KPM and DeWolfe. Like the best library music, Tulips creates a cinematic universe through sound alone, evoking moving images in the listener’s technicolour imagination. It turns out that was accidentally on purpose: “I was discovering a lot of library music for the first time… listening to a composer’s entire catalog or finding all this obscure stuff. I wasn’t entirely conscious of the influence until I started making this music and realized I was channeling the vibe. That’s when I began focusing more on weaving melodic themes throughout the record to make it function more like a soundtrack”.

Tulips was recorded between 2015 and 2017 in a small studio in a village called Zwaag in Holland, during downtime from Frank’s touring duties with Jacco Gardner’s band. “Tulips” comes from the title of the very first demo he made in Holland, it was the first thing that came to mind. Makes sense.

Recording in Europe with some very European influences in mind, Frank wanted to eschew any American influences. But we can still feel the studio wizardry of the likes of Brian Wilson and Harry Nilsson in there somewhere. A psychedelic bedroom-pop song-cycle, full of hypnotic hooks and dusty drums, Tulips manages to sound charmingly homemade yet wholly widescreen.

Dreamy opener “Swans” is an exquisite soul instrumental and recalls the soft-psych of Koushik, which Be With loves of course. Tropicalia influences abound in the cool and breezy “New Danger” and the KPM-references are loud and proud on the lush organ pop of “Old Habits”. Fast-paced “Chase Theme No. 1” manages to be both tense and laid back, decorated by acid-drenched spaghetti Western guitars. The glorious Gainsbourg-esque melancholia of “Infinite Bliss” is all gauzy flutes and happy-sad vocalizing and the title is almost perfect: it’s bliss, no question; *if only* it went on forever. Side A closes with “Evening”, a subtle bossa nova beat thing. Gorgeous.

Side B opens with the heat-shimmer guitars of “Rain Dance”, evoking an unreleased Byrds or Buffalo Springfield backing track. Yes, it’s that good. “Sure Thing” is music to accompany an elevator ride you never want to end, but in a good way! The ornate “Garçon Manqué” is as beautiful as the instrumentals on Pet Sounds (think “Let’s Go Away For A While”) and the wistful “Turning In” starts like a stroll in the park before Maston introduces a scorched-Earth guitar solo that would startle if it wasn’t so pitch-perfect. “Chase Theme No. 2” is a briefer, more keening counterpart to what we hear on side A. The head-nod bass-drums-keys funk of “Hues” rounds out this staggeringly assured set; still opening each phrase with a plaintive strum, but using vibrato and heavy reverb to accent the electric organ melody. Sublime.

All these top drawer musical references might sound like just more of the usual release notes hyperbole, but there’s a reason that this still-young LP already changes hands for big money. It really is that good. Of course that first pressing didn’t hang around for long and Frank’s regularly been asked about a re-press pretty much ever since.

Re-issuing Tulips on Be With made sense to Frank “because the record would fit in so well with the catalogue”. Having already delved into the archives of KPM and Themes, and beginning to do the same with Coloursound and Selected Sounds, the collaboration “just makes sense and seems inevitable”. We agree.

Frank wasn’t sure a record of instrumentals with obscure soundtrack references would be an easy sell when it was originally released, and was surprised when Tulips turned out to be exactly what some people wanted to hear. We reckon its timeless beauty ensures that it’ll *always* have an audience.

The record was originally cut to be played at 45rpm, a technical quirk that grants the home listener the opportunity to go deeper, for longer. Played at 33rpm, the more languid unfurling of the tracks proves just as wonderful a trip. As a psilocybin-soaked case study from Aquarium Drunkard back in January of 2019 describes, some of the songs sound as if they were intended to be heard that way. The slower speed allowing the listener to step inside and perhaps even “crack the code” of the music’s meaning.

Mastered for this vinyl reissue by Simon Francis and featuring alternative burnt orange artwork from Maston himself, this Be With pressing is limited to just 500 copies. Hypnagogic it may be, but please don’t sleep.

It was winter. Six Parts Seven had returned to Ohio after touring out to Washington State, to record Casually Smashed to Pieces. There was down time between the recording and the actual release of that album in January 2007, and we were rehearsing, playing local shows, and collaborating, with most of us involved in other projects to keep the momentum going (Mike w/ Talons, Al w/ Beaten Awake), but the one we all came together over was recording an album with Joey Beltram, the songwriter behind Goodmorning Valentine, a local band we shared players with, a band we deeply admired. The music on Kissing Distance came together over two weekend days. There were a lot of people around; 6P7 and GMV players coming and going from the Saint Ledger House. There were handles of whiskey, there was weed, stacks of Marlboro Reds for the ones still dragging butts. We all went 'dancing' at Thursday's, in Akron, Ohio, on Saturday night. Not sure how we were productive the following day. Chalk that one up to relative youth. Over those two days, songs were cut without any prior rehearsal time. None of us remember how the idea came up. In hindsight, it seems inevitable. The first song on the album, "Mediation in D," had been written a couple of years before, and was the decided spark that set the fire blazing: for both bands, this song was the starting point, an invitation to take things further, to expand, combining players from both bands, our 'toolbox' had increased in size from a single hammer to a toolbox. Everything came easily at this point. "Drunk from the Bottle," is the first of the one-take/one mic songs: an SM58 used for both vocal and guitar, making it impossible to over-think anything: You got the version, or you did not, that simple. "Instrumental #2," is the last full/core band recording by Six Parts Seven. The first piece in our catalog written/arranged by Tim Gerak. This song would have been developed on our follow-up to Casually Smashed to Pieces. Alas, an album never came to be. The ache in this is real. It's there in the bass guitar, tuned high and open, played with a slide, and utilizing one of Jamie Stillman's pre- Earthquaker Devices fuzz pedals. "Lonely Daughter," is another one-take/one-mic song, notable for the lead-guitar, played by James Matthew Haas, who overdubbed his part, months later, standing alone on the deck at Joey's folks place, playing to the moonlight, making magic...

Psychedelic Anxiety, as a mood, goes something like this: overwhelming, existential, vertigoic, arising when we stare into the void. This metaphysical unease also serves as the title for Brooklyn-based musician Frances Chang’s second album, and as a feeling it’s present throughout, charged by all things occultish. Recorded by Chang and engineer Andrea Schiavelli, featuring a cast of revered NYC DIY players, including Schiavelli (Eyes of Love) and Liza Winter (Birthing Hips), Psychedelic Anxiety relishes in the refining of aesthetic, in the electricity of improvisation, in balancing bleakness with humor. It embodies an idiosyncratic genre Chang calls slacker prog — offbeat, but brimming with spiritual and emotional resonance. The record infuses artifacts of the mundane with otherworldliness— even the love songs live more in the realm of fantasy (or horror) than the romantic. The psychic twin and mirror image of Chang’s 2022 debut full-length Support Your Local Nihilist, Psychedelic Anxiety by comparison is less urgent, leaving space for more nuance and storytelling. Together, these albums represent a new cycle of creativity for Chang, a reset to zero. “Eye Land,” captures Chang on a tour around the Irish and English countryside, in a moment of major life change. “Lying around your spare room,” she sings, “Sky is cloudy here in June.” Around her, guitar sputters and stops. Vocals branch off like vines on the side of an old house. It is a profoundly lovely song, a freaky miniature in the way that a Broadcast song is a freaky miniature. “Darkside” opens up with a particularly memorable narrative moment. “Last night I saw Parasite,” sings Chang, describing how she saw it alone, how regular life that week was acute, weird, intense. How she found comfort in resignation. After all: Psychedelic Anxiety is a serene, bizarre record full of alien sounds and big introspection.

"Atlanta Millionaires Club" von Faye Webster ist für die 21-jährige Songwriterin und Fotografin aus Atlanta bereits die dritte Albumveröffentlichung, aber die erste für Secretly Canadian. "Atlanta Millionaires Club" ist eine Sammlung von Songs, die dem Gefühl der Einsamkeit inmitten einer vorhandenen Gemeinschaft auf den Grund gehen. Die Musik basiert auf Alternative-Folk, bedient sich jedoch einer weiten Vielfalt von musikalischen Einflüssen und Genres, auch beeinflusst durch Websters Zeit in der Hip-Hop-Szene Atlantas in den Rap-Kollektiven von PSA und Awful Records. Die genreübergreifende Sammlung an Songs verbindet Websters federleichten Gesang, intimes Songwriting und ihren Scharfsinn, weil sie auffallend verletzlich und mutig aus ihrer eigenen Introvertiertheit und Herzschmerz schöpft. Den zehn Songs des "Atlanta Millionaires Club" unterliegt eine ganz eigene Traurigkeit, die von flüchtigen Beobachtungen und einem unerwarteten, schlitzohrigen Sinn für Humor unterbrochen wird: "Everything is way personal. I've never been that kind of person who can read a book and then write a song about the book," so Webster. "I have to write about very personal things for me to even want to write". "Atlanta Millionaires Club" wurde von Webster und Drew Vandenberg koproduziert und bei Chase Park Transduction in Athens, Georgia, aufgenommen. Der Titel geht auf Websters Vater zurück, der zusammen mit seinen Freunden während der Schulzeit regelmäßig an Aktionen für wohltätige Zwecke teilnahm und irgendwann dieser Gruppe den ironisch zu verstehenden Beinamen verpasste - als protzigen Kontrast zur harschen Realität.

People Of Earth strides into the New Year with a new project called The Elements Series. Part one welcomes some serious names, not least Detroit's ambient and techno master John Beltran who kicks off with 'Nuyorico' a joyous, chord-laced house groove laden with organic percussion. Javonntte's 'Tropical Feelings' is another of his textbook deep house cuts with whispered vocals bringing a spiritual vibe. Atlanta's main man Kai Alce does his do with the jazzy synth energy of shuffling house cut 'Benefit' (NDATL instrumental mix) then Byron The Aquarius pairs things back to dusty drums and humid chords on 'Sun Gods'. This one is only for the real heads.

Canadian artist Jay Tripwire delivers his new three-track EP ‘Gone Insane’ via Jamie Clarke’s Either imprint this February.

Vancouver, Canada’s Jay Tripwire has long been a beloved producer in the world of stripped back house and techno with releases dating back to the turn of the millennium on the likes of Steve Bug’s Pokerflat, D’Julz’ Bass Culture, Roger Gerressen’s Irenic and of course his own Witching Hour among many others. Here though, we see him joining the roster of Irish artist Jamie Clarke’s Either imprint which has played host to numerous releases from the label boss himself and featured remixes from Silverlining, Ryan Crosson, Barac and more.

Title track ‘Gone Insane’ opens the release and perfectly sets the tone with Tripwire’s signature murky atmospheric style, crisp driving rhythm, gritty bass and intricately programmed effects. ‘Workhorse’ follows next and diverges into haunting minimal realms with swirling synth textures, glitched out bass flutters and crunchy low-slung drums.

‘Still A Raver’ then rounds out the EP, shifting things back up a gear with bouncy, twitchy synth melodies, twisted vocal murmurs and pulsating subs all underpinned by heavily shuffled, raw percussion.

Harm’s Way is Duck Ltd.’s most intuitive and organic album yet, the result of keen observation, self-possessed songwriting, and a collaborative spirit. Building on the successes of their previous releases, the deeply relatable album displays a band operating at a nuanced, lyrical and musical best.

Ducks Ltd. make inviting and frenetic guitar pop for when life feels overwhelming. While the band’s songs are ostensibly breezy, a palpable anxiety boils underneath that communicates something deeper about everyday existence. On their latest album Harm’s Way, the Toronto duo of Tom McGreevy and Evan Lewis hones in on interpersonal and societal collapses, urban decay, and the near-impossibility of keeping a level head when everything around you seems to be falling apart.

“They’re songs about struggling,” says singer and lyricist McGreevy (who also plays bass and rhythm guitar). “About watching people I care for suffer, and trying to figure out how to be there for them. And about the strain of living in the world when it feels like it's ready to collapse.” 

Even with its often dark subject matter, Harm’s Way is Ducks Ltd.’s most vividly rendered and collaborative collection yet. It’s an undeniable evolution for the band, not just in how these songs soar, but in their entire writing and recording processes. Composed on tour while supporting acts like Nation of Language, Illuminati Hotties, and Archers of Loaf, the album displays the band’s finely tuned songcraft and well-earned, road-tested confidence. “When we got signed, we had played maybe five or six shows ever. After last year, it’s in the hundreds. That experience can change your perception of your own music and songwriting,” says McGreevy. “In the past when we got stuck on a song we had a tendency to look at our favourite records to see how they tackled it. But now, instead of asking ‘what would Orange Juice do?’, we’d ask, ‘what would we do?’.” Lewis adds, “We have this really great thing where every decision with the band is filtered through both of us. Here especially, we really figured out how to make something that truly sounds like us.”

The band, fortified by this strong sense of sonic identity and a self-assurance in their new material—and in contrast to their critically acclaimed 2021 debut Modern Fiction and 2019 EP Get Bleak, both self-recorded and self-produced in a Toronto basement—wanted to bring Harm’s Way to life in a new city, with an outside producer, and with some of their favourite musicians. “We realised that so many of our favourite bands who are making guitar music right now are from Chicago,” says McGreevy. Working with producer Dave Vettraino (Dehd, Deeper, Lala Lala), they enlisted a marquee cast of Windy City collaborators to round out the tracks on Harm’s Way, including: Finom’s Macie Stewart (violin, string arrangements); Ratboys’ Marcus Nuccio (drums on most tracks); Dehd’s Jason Balla (who helped arrange the backing vocals, to which he also contributed); and backing vocals from Julia Steiner (Ratboys), Nathan O’Dell (Dummy), Margaret McCarthy (Moontype), Rui De Magalhaes (Lawn), and Lindsey-Paige McCloy (Patio). The band’s touring drummer, Jonathan Pappo, and bassist Julia Wittman also appear on the LP.

Ducks Ltd. are a band that already thrives on skirting the edges of buoyant jangle pop and driving power pop, and the duo credits these collaborators with helping to push their sound even further. “Historically our process has been really tightly controlled and insular. On this record, we worked with people who we trusted with a pretty wide range of musical backgrounds and they had approaches and ideas that helped open up the record's sonic palette,” explains McGreevy. “Jason thinks about backing vocals in a totally different way than I do and is super intuitive with melodic ideas. Julia and Margaret have a really deeo understanding of harmony. Macie and Dave were comfortable with the idea of improvising string parts which took some of those layers in some surprising directions. Dave also has an amazing ability to create atmosphere on a recording, and encouraged us to use a bunch of different techniques, tones, and processes to achieve that.”

Harm’s Way’s lush, melodic swagger is clear from the first notes of opener “Hollowed Out.” A song about living with decline (inspired by a Toronto sinkhole), its bright, indelible catchiness serves in contrast to its lyrical unease. Anchored by Lewis’ shimmering electric guitar, “The Main Thing” laments growing apart from a person whose views you once shared while managing to toss in references to both the unglamorous lives of middle relief baseball pitchers and the occult. Other songs split the difference between country and krautrock, like the rollicking “Train Full of Gasoline,” which uses the 2013 Lac-Mégantic rail disaster in Quebec as a metaphor for self-destructive patterns. Meanwhile, “Deleted Scenes” mourns the absence of someone no longer in your life (even if for very good reasons) and recalls The Cure at their most direct, and closer “Heavy Bag” employs enveloping, mournful strings to evoke a sense of how misery frequently loves company.

Kali Malone's anticipated new album "All Life Long" is a collection of music for pipe organ, choir, and brass quintet composed by Kali Malone, 2020 - 2023. Choral music performed by Macadam Ensemble and conducted by Etienne Ferschaud at Chapelle Notre-Dame-de-L'Immaculée-Conception in Nantes. Brass quintet music performed by Anima Brass at The Bunker Studio in New York City. Organ music performed by Kali Malone and Stephen O'Malley on the historical meantone tempered pipe organs at Église Saint-François in Lausanne, Orgelpark in Amsterdam, and Malmö Konstmuseum in Sweden. Kali Malone composes with a rare clarity of vision. Her music is patient and focused, built on a foundation of evolving harmonic cycles that draw out latent emotional resonances. Time is a crucial factor: letting go of expectations of duration and breadth offers a chance to find a space of reflection and contemplation. In her hands, experimental reinterpretations of centuries-old polyphonic compositional methods become portals to new ways of perceiving sound, structure, and introspection. Though awe-inspiring in scope, the most remarkable thing about Malone's music is the intimacy stirred by the close listening it encourages. Malone's new album All Life Long, created between 2020 - 2023, presents her first compositions for organ since 2019's breakthrough album The Sacrificial Code alongside interrelated pieces for voice and brass performed by Macadam Ensemble and Anima Brass. Over the course of twelve pieces, harmonic themes and patterns recur, presented in altered forms and for varied instrumentation. They emerge and reemerge like echoes of their former selves, making the familiar uncanny. Propelled by lungs and breath rather than bellows and oscillators, Malone's compositions for choir and brass take on expressive qualities that complicate the austerity that has defined her work, introducing lyricism and the beauty of human fallibility into music that has been driven by mechanical processes. At the same time, the works for organ, performed by Malone with additional accompaniment by Stephen O'Malley on four different organs dating from the 15th to 17th centuries, underscore the mighty, spectral power that those rigorous operations can achieve. All Life Long simmers in an ever-shifting tension between repetition and variation. The pieces for brass, organ, and voice are alternated asymmetrically, providing nearly continuous timbral fluctuation across its 78-minute runtime even as thematic material reiterates. Each composition's internal framework of fractal pattern permutations has the paradoxical effect of creating anticipated keystone moments of dramatic reverie and lulling the listener into believing in an illusory endlessness. On an even more granular level, the historical meantone tuning systems of each organ used, and the variable intonation of brass and voice, provide further points of emotional excavation within the harmony. The titular composition "All Life Long" appears twice on the album, first as an extended canon for organ and again in the final quarter, compactly arranged for voice In the latter, Malone pairs the music with "The Crying Water" by Arthur Symons, a poem steeped in language of mourning and eternity. For organ, "All Life Long" moves with a patient stateliness, the drama concentrated in moments when shifting tonalities generate and release dissonance and ecstasy. For voice, each word is saturated with feeling, the singers swooping gracefully downward to capture the melancholy of the narrator's relationship to the timeless tears of the sea. "Passage Through The Spheres," the album's opening piece, contains lyrics in Italian pulled from Giorgio Agamban's essay In Praise of Profanation. In it, Agamban defines profanation as, in part, the act of bringing back to communal, secular use that which has been segregated to the realm of the sacred, a process Malone enacts each time she performs on church organs. This is not music of praise, or of spiritual revelation, but it is an artistic enactment of translating the indescribable. It carries the gravity of liturgical chant, and its fixation on the infinite, but draws its weight from the earthly realm of human experience. A music that draws the listener into the present moment where they can discover themselves within the interwoven musical patterns that can come to resemble the passage of days, weeks, years, a lifetime.

From 1967-1980, Kansas City's Forte Records captured nearly every iteration of popular Black music; basement beehiver-y from The Ray-Ons and Four Darlings, funky soul from Gene Williams Lee Harris, Louis Chachere, and The Fantastiks, downtempo disco ballads from James W hitney and Sharon Revoal, and the newly independent work of James Brown's former Soul Sister # 1 Marva Whitney. Compiled here are 28 of the label's enduring sides, contextualized with copious photos, ephemera, and essay, all housed in heavy weight gatefold jacket. Who knows how to do "The Hen"?

From 1967-1980, Kansas City's Forte Records captured nearly every iteration of popular Black music; basement beehiver-y from The Ray-Ons and Four Darlings, funky soul from Gene Williams Lee Harris, Louis Chachere, and The Fantastiks, downtempo disco ballads from James W hitney and Sharon Revoal, and the newly independent work of James Brown's former Soul Sister # 1 Marva Whitney. Compiled here are 28 of the label's enduring sides, contextualized with copious photos, ephemera, and essay, all housed in heavy weight gatefold jacket. Who knows how to do "The Hen"?

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

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

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

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

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

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

-David Stubbs.

NOW Music is proud to present the next instalment in our ongoing ‘Yearbook’ series – and the second to celebrate the ‘90s, NOW – Yearbook 1990; 79 tracks from a fantastic year in Pop! Available on 4CD deluxe book format with 79 tracks , 4CD std digi with 79 tracks and 44 tracks from a fantastic year in Pop, pressed on gorgeous translucent triple orange vinyl. Disc One includes #1s from New Order, New Kids On The Block, Steve Miller Band, and The Beautiful South, as well as Pop smashes from The KLF, The B-52’s, Kylie Minogue, Whitney Houston Kim Appleby, and concluding with the theme from Twin Peaks, Julee Cruise’s ‘Falling’, Chris Isaak with ‘Wicked Game’ and Pet Shop Boys defining ‘Being Boring’. Dance floor-fillers kick off Disc 2 from Deee-Lite with ‘Groove Is In The Heart’, #1s from SNAP!, and from Adamski & Seal plus club classics from Bass-O-Matic and Adventures Of Stevie V with ‘Dirty Cash (Money Talks)’, plus the unexpected collaboration between DNA & Suzanne Vega. Disc 3 opens with the still-breathtaking interpretation of Prince’s ‘Nothing Compares 2 U’ from Sinéad O'Connor. Up next are film related hits; Maria McKee’s ‘Show Me Heaven’, from the ‘Days Of Thunder’ soundtrack, and the ‘Young Guns II’ track ‘Blaze Of Glory’ from Jon Bon Jovi

COTONETE is back!

After releasing numerous and now collectable standalone singles, plus some now famous collaborations with Dimitri from Paris, 2019 saw Parisian based 8 piece, Cotonete release their first long player in 15 years! Under the guidance of Melik Bencheikh from Paris’ rare record emporium, Heart Beat Vinyl. The dark moody mover "Super-Vilains" came out to great success on Heavenly Sweetness.

After playing some packed live shows around France and the UK, including the acclaimed Sunday at Dingwalls in Camden, hosted by Gilles Peterson and Patrick Forge. Somewhere along this part of the journey, they came across the Brazilian music legend and vocal powerhouse, Di Melo. He softened their souls, and from this love affair came the album "Atemporal". Released on Favourite Recordings, this 8 track album would end up being sampled by Canadian superstar Drake, for his 2023 album ‘For All the Dogs Scary Hours
Edition’.

So now into 2024, and we have Cotonete full length number two. They’ve enlisted the producer Guts to guide them towards sunshine, groove, warmth and all the colours in his rainbow. With their tongues firmly in their cheeks, the album is titled ‘Victoire de la Musique’ - a dig at the annual French music award ceremony. Taking the band deep, producer Guts showed them new and exciting rhythms from all corners of the world. The record’s first example of this is ‘Venezuela’, a track directly inspired by the jazz funk from the great Caribbean nation.

Other key musical exploration on the record can be attributed to the late composer Francis Lai. On ‘Cinq Pour L'aventure’ - an almost 15 minute epic monster showcasing the band’s love for 70's French movies soundtracks. “L’aventure c’est l’aventure”, was a movie by one of the most famous French directors Claude Lelouch The single from the soundtrack was sung by French music superstar Johnny Halliday.

Guests are scattered very tastefully across the album, on the only cover version of the record, the Brazilian master Jorge Ben’s ‘Bebete Vãobora’, Sabrina Malheiros was invited to lend her lungs. The daughter of Azymuth’s Alex Malheiros helps join perfectly the dots from a band that are without a doubt Cotonete’s biggest influence. Brazilian jazz funk, now with an added French touch.

On ‘Day in Day Out’ a powerful performance is given from Leron Thomas on vocals and trumpet. Perhaps also known for his role as the musical director for Iggy Pop and touring member of his band. This track is an already tried and tested dance floor filler, emphasizing just how tight the band really can play - the track even found its way into BBC Music’s Craig Charles’ ‘Track Of The Year’ selection.

No record so soulful would be complete without a trip to the UK. Omar, London’s Godfather of New Soul pops in. Having recorded with artists like; Courtney Pine, Level 42 & Erykah Badu, in his distinctive smooth style, he blesses the track ‘What Did Run You For?’ The final vocal visitor is Gystere Peskine, a Parisian based musical hero, who shows off his retro future funk feels on ‘O Ceu es Preto’ - which literally translates as ‘the sky is black’ - although given the hugely uplifting and almost Gospel Soul of this Russian/Brazilian singer, he
has us seeing things far brighter.

Cotonete have endeavored to build a worldwide rainbow warrior team of merry boys and girls. Fighting the brave fight to shine light towards the fact that music will always win…. "Victoire de la Musique" - a symphony of spring, songs of the new world, a "Victory Of Music”

What Do We Do Now is the fifth solo studio LP recorded by J Mascis since 1996. This is obviously not a very aggressive release schedule, but when you figure in the live albums, guest spots, and records done with his various other bands (Dinosaur Jr., The Fog, Heavy Blanket, Witch, Sweet Apple, and so on), well, to paraphrase Lou Reed, "J's week beats your year." What Do We Do Now began to come together during the waning days of the Pandemic. Utilizing his own Bisquiteen Studio, J started working on writing a series of tunes on acoustic with a different dynamic than the stuff he creates for Dino. "When I'm writing for the band," he says, "I'm always trying to think of doing things Lou and Murph would fit into. For myself, I'm thinking more about what I can do with just an acoustic guitar, even for the leads. Of course, this time, I added full drums and electric leads, although the rhythm parts are still all acoustic. Usually, I try to do the solo stuff more simply so I can play it by myself, but I really wanted to add the drums. Once that started, everything else just fell into place. So it ended up sounding a lot more like a band record. I dunno why I did that exactly, but it's just what happened." Two guest musicians are playing this time out; Western Mass local Ken Mauri (of the B52s) plays piano on several tracks. Since J himself has some experience with keys, when asked why he needed a hired gun, he says, "Ken is great, and he plays all the keys. I tried playing some keyboards on the first Fog album, but I'm really only comfortable playing the white notes, so it's kind of limiting. laughs Nowadays, I could just turn the pitch on a mini Mellotron to play different sounds, but black keys just seem hard. For whatever reason, I just like banging on the white ones. Seems like it's harder to figure out how to stretch your fingers around the other ones." Mauri has no such qualms and plays all the keys very damn well. He sounds especially great on "I Can't Find You," where he is Jack Nitzsche to J's Neil Young, creating one of the album's loveliest tunes. The other guest musician, Matthew "Doc" Dunn, is also prominent on this track. Dunn's steel guitar manages to both widen and soften the musical edges of the music, giving it a full classicist profile. Dunn is an Ontario-based polymath who J met through Matt Valentine. After J played on Doc's great 2022 Sub Pop single, "Your Feel," he figured it was time for payback. Both Dunn and Mauri add beautifully to the songs here, helping to transform them from acoustic sketches into full-blown post-core power ballads. What Do We Do Now is the finest set of solo tunes J has yet penned, and the way they're presented is just about perfect. Asked if he would be touring to support the album, J says he'll be doing some weekend dates, but he probably won't be putting a band together. And I'm sure these songs will sound great solo and acoustic, but the arrangements on this album are truly great and put a cool, different spin on Mascis' instantly Recognizable approach to making music. So, what do we do now? Not sure. But apparently, what J does is to make one of his most killer records ever. Hats off to him. - Byron Coley

What Do We Do Now is the fifth solo studio LP recorded by J Mascis since 1996. This is obviously not a very aggressive release schedule, but when you figure in the live albums, guest spots, and records done with his various other bands (Dinosaur Jr., The Fog, Heavy Blanket, Witch, Sweet Apple, and so on), well, to paraphrase Lou Reed, "J's week beats your year." What Do We Do Now began to come together during the waning days of the Pandemic. Utilizing his own Bisquiteen Studio, J started working on writing a series of tunes on acoustic with a different dynamic than the stuff he creates for Dino. "When I'm writing for the band," he says, "I'm always trying to think of doing things Lou and Murph would fit into. For myself, I'm thinking more about what I can do with just an acoustic guitar, even for the leads. Of course, this time, I added full drums and electric leads, although the rhythm parts are still all acoustic. Usually, I try to do the solo stuff more simply so I can play it by myself, but I really wanted to add the drums. Once that started, everything else just fell into place. So it ended up sounding a lot more like a band record. I dunno why I did that exactly, but it's just what happened." Two guest musicians are playing this time out; Western Mass local Ken Mauri (of the B52s) plays piano on several tracks. Since J himself has some experience with keys, when asked why he needed a hired gun, he says, "Ken is great, and he plays all the keys. I tried playing some keyboards on the first Fog album, but I'm really only comfortable playing the white notes, so it's kind of limiting. laughs Nowadays, I could just turn the pitch on a mini Mellotron to play different sounds, but black keys just seem hard. For whatever reason, I just like banging on the white ones. Seems like it's harder to figure out how to stretch your fingers around the other ones." Mauri has no such qualms and plays all the keys very damn well. He sounds especially great on "I Can't Find You," where he is Jack Nitzsche to J's Neil Young, creating one of the album's loveliest tunes. The other guest musician, Matthew "Doc" Dunn, is also prominent on this track. Dunn's steel guitar manages to both widen and soften the musical edges of the music, giving it a full classicist profile. Dunn is an Ontario-based polymath who J met through Matt Valentine. After J played on Doc's great 2022 Sub Pop single, "Your Feel," he figured it was time for payback. Both Dunn and Mauri add beautifully to the songs here, helping to transform them from acoustic sketches into full-blown post-core power ballads. What Do We Do Now is the finest set of solo tunes J has yet penned, and the way they're presented is just about perfect. Asked if he would be touring to support the album, J says he'll be doing some weekend dates, but he probably won't be putting a band together. And I'm sure these songs will sound great solo and acoustic, but the arrangements on this album are truly great and put a cool, different spin on Mascis' instantly Recognizable approach to making music. So, what do we do now? Not sure. But apparently, what J does is to make one of his most killer records ever. Hats off to him. - Byron Coley

What a collection of talent on this rarity from the Brunswick label— production by disco maestro Tony Valor, arrangements by Chi-Soul legend Eugene Record, and mix by the great Tom Moulton. Not to mention instrumental accompaniment from Valor’s highly esteemed Tony Valor Sounds Orchestra...no wonder this 1976 release is deemed a stone-cold proto-disco classic across the globe (it’s been reissued on CD in Japan multiple times).

For its first vinyl reissue, we’re giving it the Real Gone treatment, with a new remastering for vinyl by Mike Milchner at Sonic Vision, and a clear with blue, green, and pink swirl (to match the cover art) pressing limited to 900 copies (note: check out the version of the Chi-Lites’ “Stoned Out of My Mind” for instant soul salvation).

NERDS! Unless you were head cheerleader or captain of the football team, watching this film was a rite of passage (and indeed, sweet revenge) for any ‘80s high schooler or college matriculator; in fact, Revenge of the Nerds was such a classic that it spawned three sequels. But none of them compare to the 1984 original, which substituted the socially challenged “I.T. guy” for the slobs of Animal House in its classic underdog story complete with nerd gets girl happy ending. Along the way it offers something to offend just about everyone, especially in today’s “woke” climate, but one thing about the movie has stood the test of time: its killer new wave soundtrack! “One Foot in Front of the Other” by Bone Symphony—produced by Giorgio Moroder protégé Richie Zito—might be the highlight, but “Are You Ready for the Sex Girls” by Gleaming Spires and “Right Time for Love” by Pat Robinson & Jill Michaels have their share of devotees. And any soundtrack with two tracks by The Rubinoos is just fine in our book! For this 40th anniversary reissue, we at Real Gone Music have pressed up 500 copies in limited edition “lemonade swirl” vinyl (sans alcohol, of course)... gentlemen, start your turntables (and your slide rules)!

and the novelty goes on: mule musiq welcomes another fresh producer to its vast catalogue of music from all around. this time andro gogibedashvili aka saphileaum. he is coming from tbilisi, georgia and already released an impressive body of work, considering he just publishes music since 2016. countless eps and albums, digital, on tape, documenting his feverish creative urge on labels like not not fun records, good morning tapes, diffuse reality, or vodkast. they cover a comprehensive stylistic range from ambient and downtempo to tribal, house, and techno nuances. a deeper shade of soul, precisely fashioned, growing from different playgrounds of inspiration. he was born into a musical family. as a kid he studied georgian folk. in his school rock band, he sang, and the guitar was his love. then electronic music called the tune, and techno hit his heart. in the midst of it all the 26-year-old never lost contact with his spiritual home. “i find deep inspiration in georgian myths and legends, occultism and esoteric teachings, lost civilizations, earth, unity, truth, information, and the secrets of the universe. these things, to name a few, inspire me daily and help me create the music I make.” saphileaum reveals. “exploring together”, his debut album for mule, navigates all these elements through a merry-go-round of gentle driven rhythm zones. fourth-world spheres, balearic tropes, field recording zones, tropical downbeat, tribal percussions, trancing sounds, balafon hums, mallet airs, hooky house – it’s all there, circling the eavesdropper into a dreamland of melodic undercurrents. “my loops come from tribal and cosmic inspirations. tribal, as below, and cosmic as above. the combination of these two, is very interesting to me”, he clarifies, while joking “but, to put it super simply, loops are super handy for djing”. which brings us to the final promotion of “exploring together” - it’s playability. its vast. multifunctional. spiritual. made for gatherings, were all dance time away. lost in music actions, only touched by the hand of rhythm and sound. his ten tracks are created for such flashes, wide spreading a musical narration of illuminating durability. “cosmic, relaxing, fun, tribal, and mystic.”, as saphileaum declares.

Planned in the early 90's executed in the early 20's: »The Arctic Salon.« Another Cranioclast Expedition, this time to the Pole. A long time between planning and execution, but much shorter than the time between the first fake reports of having reached the North Pole on foot across the ice and the first expedition that really made it without motorization. But also a long time in which things in the Arctic and Antarctic got worse and worse and continue.

Very limited vinyl pressing, 500 copies, housed in a full colour sleeve & printed inner sleeve & download. CD in a 4 panel digipack with a 4 page lyric booklet. New Heavy Sounds are always on the lookout for new bands that are looking to push the boundaries of what is considered as inhabiting the ‘heavy’ or ‘metal’ spectrum’. Stuff that pricks up the ears, a bold new voice within a maelstrom of genres and sub-genres. We believe we have found such a band. New York-based GUHTS (pronounced ‘guts’) declare themselves to be an ‘avant-garde post-metal project, delivering larger than life sounds through, deeply emotional music’. We are thrilled to be able to deliver that statement in the form of their debut album ‘Regeneration’. By their own admission, GUHTS' musical style is influenced not only by iconic metal bands like Gojira, Cult of Luna, YOB and Deftones, but more unconventional acts like Bjork, Subrosa, Isis, Julie Christmas, and even PJ Harvey. It’s undoubtedly heavy, with a strong feminist streak, it’s cathartic and weighty, a formidable debut for such a new band. Founded in 2020 as a passion project by Scott Prater (Witchkiss), and Amber Burns (Witchkiss) and then Dan Shaneyfelt (Black Mountain Hunger), GUHTS became its members’ main focus following the release of their first EP 'Blood Feather' which itself received rave reviews from the likes of Decibel Magazine, Invisible Oranges, The Obelisk, Cvlt Nation, and more. Brian Clemens Sleaping Dreaming) & Daniel Martinez (Nefariant) joined GUHTS in 2022 and the band swiftly started booking tours and making plans to record 'Regeneration'. Since then GUHTS have been steadily making a name for themselves with their powerful live performances., sharing stages with the likes of Yob, Cave in, Marissa Nadler, plus appearances at the Maryland Doom Fest, Crucial Fest and Ohio Doomed and Stoned Fest. ‘Regeneration’ is set to cement their status as one of the coolest and most interesting bands on the scene. Of the album, vocalist Amber says. "Regeneration" symbolizes the power of self-renewal, often overlooked. Embracing it means shedding old layers and welcoming new beginnings. Without this, life stagnates and is “sustaining”. Through regeneration, change becomes empowering, allowing new facets to emerge. It's a courageous, transformative process, inspiring others to overcome fear and embrace change. The album embodies the human spirit's resilience and capacity for growth. Musically ‘Regeneration’ is a powerful and intense series of songs, topped off by some seriously powerhouse and expressive vocal performances. It’s slow-moving chords, moving like sheets through sludge. High guitar lines above, ranging from piercing and shimmering to nasty. Drums pound but not without groove. There are strings, pianos and synths widening the palette. Atmospheric sludge, Metalgaze, maybe, but there’s also that link to the New York Noise lineage from The Velvets and Sonic Youth, becoming a type of post-hardcore in the process, while gaining a connection to metal partly due to the sheer heaviness. A raft of creative experimentation that pushes beyond the realm of post-metal. And then of course, the very first thing that hits you is Amber Gardner's unbelievable, hypnotising vocals - as scary as a banshee while also intimate and persuasive. Amber means it for sure and almost dominates the proceedings. Her lyrics are eclectic, thoughtful. Immersed in women's narratives frombooks like "Women Who Run With the Wolves" or works like "On Our Best Behavior" by Elise Loehnen. Amber advocates stepping beyond comfort zones, believing it's transformative for individuals and vital for Earth's future. Hokey occult rock it is not. In short ‘Regeneration’ is a bold and startling debut, that will reward and enthral listeners the deeper they delve into its many layers.

Belgian artist Jennifur is a bit of an enigma in today’s contemporary music climate. While most bend over backwards to satisfy the algorithm’s constant need for content, Jennifur (real name Hector Devriendt) has been quietly crafting spell-binding music that stands the test of both time and decreasing attention spans, blurring genre and emotion seamlessly through a sonic DNA that is diverse and colourful.

Having locked himself in his basement for eighteen months in order to produce the soundtrack for PS5 and XBOX ONE snowboarding game Shredders – which was later released by Jennifur himself under the title Nowhere, Now Here – the Ghent based artist is preparing the release of his next full length; Things Don’t Change Until They Do on Supreems’ new label Sweet Sun.

Tears-on-the-dancefloor aesthetics meet with polyphonic, nostalgia-inducing patterns, coming-of-age breakbeats and heart-string tugging classical ambient on an album that sounds completely unlike anything else you will hear this year.

The MENZINGERS are an absolute institution. The Philadelphia punk legends’ multi-decade reputation as road warriors with an unbeatable catalog is cemented as hard truth—and their seventh album, Some Of It Was True , stands as their most immediate-sounding and energetic record to date. The follow-up to 2019’s sensational Hello Exile accomplishes the daunting task of capturing The MENZINGERS’ distinctive live energy in the confines of the studio, resulting in a sound that’s both rich, raw, and complementary to the group’s increasingly prismatic songwriting approach. More than 15 years in, the MENZINGERS are still holding their listeners square in the immediate present, and Some Of It Was True documents that power in thrilling fashion. “We wanted to make a fun record and write songs that we wanted to play live, and that’s exactly what we did,” co-vocalist/guitarist Greg Barnett says “We’ve always said that we want every album to sound live, but we never recorded an album live before. This was the first time we committed to that idea. We wanted to sound like how our band sounds onstage.” Making the process easier: Grammy-nominated producer Brad Cook (Bon Iver, the War on Drugs, Waxahatchee), who joined The MENZINGERS in El Paso’s legendary Sonic Ranch studios and lent his incredible ear for raw, immediate sound to help the band achieve Some Of It Was True‘s in-the-room live feel. “ T H E M E N Z I N G E R S are as real as it gets,” Cook says on his time in the studio with the band. “I had an absolute blast working with these guys and was moved to tears many times. They are truly dedicated to artistic growth, and to each other, in ways I found both refreshing and beautiful. I am now a lifer.”

The MENZINGERS are an absolute institution. The Philadelphia punk legends’ multi-decade reputation as road warriors with an unbeatable catalog is cemented as hard truth—and their seventh album, Some Of It Was True , stands as their most immediate-sounding and energetic record to date. The follow-up to 2019’s sensational Hello Exile accomplishes the daunting task of capturing The MENZINGERS’ distinctive live energy in the confines of the studio, resulting in a sound that’s both rich, raw, and complementary to the group’s increasingly prismatic songwriting approach. More than 15 years in, the MENZINGERS are still holding their listeners square in the immediate present, and Some Of It Was True documents that power in thrilling fashion. “We wanted to make a fun record and write songs that we wanted to play live, and that’s exactly what we did,” co-vocalist/guitarist Greg Barnett says “We’ve always said that we want every album to sound live, but we never recorded an album live before. This was the first time we committed to that idea. We wanted to sound like how our band sounds onstage.” Making the process easier: Grammy-nominated producer Brad Cook (Bon Iver, the War on Drugs, Waxahatchee), who joined The MENZINGERS in El Paso’s legendary Sonic Ranch studios and lent his incredible ear for raw, immediate sound to help the band achieve Some Of It Was True‘s in-the-room live feel. “ T H E M E N Z I N G E R S are as real as it gets,” Cook says on his time in the studio with the band. “I had an absolute blast working with these guys and was moved to tears many times. They are truly dedicated to artistic growth, and to each other, in ways I found both refreshing and beautiful. I am now a lifer.”

Jakes was the commanding voice behind the Lonely The Brave sound. A master of melody, his lyrical talents enthralled audiences across Europe from supporting Neil Young in Belgium, to arenas with Biffy Clyro, to the main stage at Reading and Leeds festival. Jakes has always been uncomfortable with being the centre of attention; when playing live he would stand at the back of the stage, side on, barely saying a word to the audience between songs. A total juxtaposition to the anthemic tunes he wrote-songs that felt like they could move mountains. As Lonely The Brave grew in reputation and audience, so did Jakes' discomfort with attention and adoration. He left the band in March 2018. Fast forward five years and Jakes is back with Interlaker, a new musical project, with a new musical partner, Jack Wrench of Arcane Roots. Wrench, a skilled drummer, but also a multi-instrumentalist, became the perfect partner for Jakes. Jakes says: “Jack and I got chatting about doing some music over Instagram in the spring of2022. I'd seen Jack, a couple to times, playing with Arcane Roots, so I knew what an amazing drummer he was. It was when he started to send over fully instrumental pieces that he'd done-drums, guitar, bass and all-that I realised we could be onto a really good thing. I think the first demo we put down-we did all the demoing together over the airwaves on Logic Pro-was a track called 'Ghost ride'. So we thought we were off to a good start. It certainly wouldn't be for everyone-putting together music without being in the same room together (me in Cambridge and Jack in Brighton) but it worked out really well for the two of us. Around a year later we had 12 tracks ready to go and began the process go beginning to make a record...”

Sasu Ripatti's complete "Dancefloor Classics" series. Music for imaginary dancefloors, released on Ripatti's own label Rajaton.

”Look up, into the light” she said, while the camera shutter clicked. ”Like this? Does it look holy?” His neck felt stiff. Her reply: ”Yes, just like that. What do you mean holy? Like religious? ”No, more like trying to look very far, somewhere beyond what we can see.” ”Okay, stand still, I’m going to come close to you now. The light hits your face great.” click, click, click.
He noticed her fingernails. They were not polished. Natural. Even somewhat rugged, as if something wore out the fingers slightly. What had these hands held besides the camera? What made the edges of her fingernails drift off?
He thought it’s weird to look straight into the camera. The photographer had closed her left eye, the one not looking into the lens. Then it opened, she looked up, perusing the surroundings, then she closed her eye again, then looked up, closed, looking up, very quickly. It all seemed very professional. Maybe she calculated the light, making sure it’s close to perfect. ”What will these photos look like?” – the thought popped into his head briefly. It was liberating to think it wouldn’t matter.
”What’s that song playing?” he asked. ”Wait a sec, Ol’ Dirty Bastard?” she replied. ”Oh yeah, right. But the sample?” ”Hey, could you look up again, like that. No, lower.”
New directions: ”Look out from the window, turn left.” ”My left or yours?” ”Yours, I always try to think from the direction of my model.” How professional! This is a good shoot, so natural. Should I worry about how the photos look like? No, I don’t want to. His thoughts bounced around. What would the story be like? It’s a big newspaper, everyone will read it. Maybe someone drinks coffee and eats a stroopwafel while they do it. Will they place the waffle on top of the mug for a brief while, so that it gets hot and the syrup melts a little? Then it feels wet, and you can bend the cookie.
She broke his train of thought off midway through: ”Now turn right, but look left, and slightly up, but don’t turn your face right.” ”Umm, like this? Sounds like a set of pilates instructions.” she laughed ”You do pilates?” ”Yeah, it’s hard sometimes. Have you tried?” ”No”, she said. ”I’m not good for sports that are done in groups.” ”Yeah, but in pilates you can just be inside your mind, drowning in your private thoughts.”
”What are you thinking in pilates?” she asked, taking more photos. ”Well, mostly just which way is right. And which left.” click, click.

Q&A with Sasu Ripatti:

1) Tell us something about the EP series ”Dancefloor Classics”, what’s the idea and what can we expect?

I’ve been slowly writing these sort of dance music pieces and finally curated them together for a conceptual release. I like to create music for a dancefloor that exists only in my imagination and doesn’t try to suck up to the standardized reality.

2) Your vinyl format is 10” which is quite special (as opposed to LP / 12”). Why did you choose it?

It’s my favourite format, absolutely. The size is perfect, and you can make it sound really good @ 45 rpm. And you still can make great artwork.

3) You seem interested in sampling/repurposing, what does it mean to you as an artist to approach something already existing from a new angle? How does the source material inform you about the approach to take?

I guess i could flip it around and just say I’ve outgrown synths or electronic sounds to a great extend, and having gotten rid off all my synths already good while ago I’ve used samples as my main source material a lot. It’s obvious on this series that i’ve sampled existing music, but I also sample instruments and things in the studio and resample my own library that I have built over the years, it’s quite large. To me the end result matters, not so much how I get there. Once I have something on my keyboard and play around, it’s all an instrument, though with sampling other music it becomes a really interesting and complex one as you’re possibly playing rhythm, but also harmonic content and maybe hooks or whatever, all at once.
I never sample premeditadedly, like listening to records and looking for that mindblowing 3 sec part. I just throw the cards in the air and see what lands where, just full intuition and hopefully zero mind involved, playing tons of stuff, trying things, just recording hours of stuff. Then comes the interesting part to listen to hours of mostly crazy stuff and finding that mindblowing 3 sec part.

4) What is your relationship with the dancefloor (conceptually and/or in experiences / as a performer)?

Very complicated. I have never really felt comfortable on a dancefloor but have always wanted to. There’s something in club music, in theory, that really speaks to me. It has never really materialized for me – speaking mainly from a performer’s point of view who goes to check on a dancefloor for a moment after a concert. I never have DJ’d or felt much interest towards it. But again, I love the idea and concept of DJing. As well as producing music for imaginary DJs. Lately, as in the past 10+ years, I haven’t even performed in any sort of club spaces. So my relationship to the dancefloor is quite removed and reduced, but there’s quite a bit of passion and interest left.

All tracks composed and produced by Sasu Ripatti.
Artwork & photography by Marc Hohmann.
Mastering by Stephan Mathieu for Schwebung Mastering.
Vinyl cut by SST Brueggemann.
Publishing by WARP Music Ltd.

plastic death - the second album by glass beach - is a follow-up record almost five years in the making. The band's 2019 debut, aptly titled the first glass beach album , has over the years grown a cult fanbase for its unflinching depiction of queer life as mediated through social media, its oversized ambition, and its scrappy yet adventurous production. And while it took some time to arrive, plastic death sounds like the logical expansion of all the things that made their first album so special. Years and years of relentless writing, tinkering demos, cancelled tours and a few lockdowns only strengthen the chaotic core of what makes glass beach' s maximalist approach work so well. Frontperson and primary songwriter J McClendon is joined by lead guitarist Layne Smith, bassist Jonas Newhouse and drummer William White to create something adventurous on each song. Trumpet, trombone, violin, and even marimba dance and bloom alongside the band's own creative and dextrous instrumentation - a stunning, transformative creation that pulls from indie rock, jazz, prog, hardcore, metal, experimental, and beyond. Songs like lead single "the CIA," are examples of the band's ambitious writing. It's a dark, dancy, post-punk/jazz hybrid, a coordinated, breathless braid of synth and saturated guitar. Tension and confusion explode into a brutal modern metal climax to close the track, flickering with glitchy production zaps and razor-sharp stops. The artwork of plastic death is similarly rich with detail, resulting in a bioluminescent, fully-realized double album depicting sprawling scenes where moments of neon brightness shine momentarily in a dark undersea - a metaphor for the moments of optimism and catharsis glass beach provide on these songs. "This album is the Pacific garbage patch: cultural trash strewn together seemingly by accident, standing in stark juxtaposition to each other ," says McClendon. plastic death is a complete, uncompromising, playful work of art; every corner and crevice of the record's 13 tracks, each arrangement and timbre and texture, is alive with intention and possibility.

plastic death - the second album by glass beach - is a follow-up record almost five years in the making. The band's 2019 debut, aptly titled the first glass beach album , has over the years grown a cult fanbase for its unflinching depiction of queer life as mediated through social media, its oversized ambition, and its scrappy yet adventurous production. And while it took some time to arrive, plastic death sounds like the logical expansion of all the things that made their first album so special. Years and years of relentless writing, tinkering demos, cancelled tours and a few lockdowns only strengthen the chaotic core of what makes glass beach' s maximalist approach work so well. Frontperson and primary songwriter J McClendon is joined by lead guitarist Layne Smith, bassist Jonas Newhouse and drummer William White to create something adventurous on each song. Trumpet, trombone, violin, and even marimba dance and bloom alongside the band's own creative and dextrous instrumentation - a stunning, transformative creation that pulls from indie rock, jazz, prog, hardcore, metal, experimental, and beyond. Songs like lead single "the CIA," are examples of the band's ambitious writing. It's a dark, dancy, post-punk/jazz hybrid, a coordinated, breathless braid of synth and saturated guitar. Tension and confusion explode into a brutal modern metal climax to close the track, flickering with glitchy production zaps and razor-sharp stops. The artwork of plastic death is similarly rich with detail, resulting in a bioluminescent, fully-realized double album depicting sprawling scenes where moments of neon brightness shine momentarily in a dark undersea - a metaphor for the moments of optimism and catharsis glass beach provide on these songs. "This album is the Pacific garbage patch: cultural trash strewn together seemingly by accident, standing in stark juxtaposition to each other ," says McClendon. plastic death is a complete, uncompromising, playful work of art; every corner and crevice of the record's 13 tracks, each arrangement and timbre and texture, is alive with intention and possibility.

It's the pair you've all been waiting for! FINALLY!

Alan Tew's Drama Suite Part II. What can we really say? Honestly? We guess the first thing that strikes you is how clean the drums are. Almost impossibly slick but dripping so, so heavy with the neck-snapping funk you'd expect from perhaps the most sought-after library funk set of them all! The cheapest on Discogs is, currently, £1300+. Now's your chance to remedy that. If you know, you know. And we think you know...

"The Rub" is a cool, low-slung heavy-funk roller with relaxed brass and alto flute phrases. Up next, "Money Runner" is another edgy funk glider, its easy-tempo moving in harmony with slinky rhythmic riffs and featuring a seemingly ad-libbed electric piano solo. Strutting along after, "White Elephant Walk" is another laconic, deeply stoned walking theme with electric piano and alto flutes. There follows a couple of brief "walking" links before the brilliantly tense "Master Plan" slowly builds. Expectancy grows to the main theme around a minute in and then a melodic theme builds slightly to the 3 minute mark before floating down gradually and elegantly to its climax. It's utterly fantastic. The smoky, after-hours "Night Watch" is a slow, cool gem featuring alto flutes and synths.

Now we're talking, "The Fence (a)" is just sensational and worth buying this album all on its own. It's likely the reason you're here, anyway. Another impossibly funky, slow and easy tempo with a bass riff to die for, dramatic guitar with gorgeous electric piano and alto flute phrases. It was sampled for "Action Satisfaction" by J5, way way back. "The Fence (b)" is a slower, more deliberate version of the previous heater, but it's no less essential. Indeed, it's absolutely jaw-drooping. Closing out this remarkable side, "Surveillance" is another horizontal masterpiece of relaxed yet dramatic jazz-funk. Vibes ad-lib in centre section and give you an idea of how Roy Ayers making library funk in the mid-late 70s might've sounded. Sensational.

Flip over for "Total Silence", a near-beatless and understated scene-setter featuring neat interplay of guitar and synthesizer themes over bass and hi-hats. The slow "Eyes" follows, a brief gem with subdued electric piano solo and a light climax. The fantastic "Drama Backcloth (1a)" is up next, a repetitive piano and bass refrain with guitar figures over the top. Its creeping crime-funk vibe was pilfered for "Outta Town Shit" by Ghostface Killah in 2006. "Drama Backcloth (1b)" is a short, subdued version without the guitar figure. "Drama Backcloth (2)" features an expectant, background marimba figure over light rhythm whilst the cool "Drama Backcloth (3)" centres around a relaxed riff and the angular "Drama Backcloth (4)" presents eerie progressions with piano interjections. It's decidedly non-rhythmic!

We're then onto 14 (!) different half-minute "Scenechanges", all jazzy and funky, some cool and dramatic, some slow and rhythmic. All ace and groove-fuelled. The aptly-titled "Final Statement" closes proceedings, a slow, pensive theme on guitar joined by cool brass and a solo trumpet to its climax.

As with all of our KPM re-issues, the audio for Drama Suite Part II comes from the original analogue tapes and has been remastered for vinyl by Be With regular Simon Francis. And as usual, the sleeve reproduction duties were handed over to Richard Robinson, the current custodian of KPM’s brand identity. We're not quite sure what else to say about this landmark record, other than, GET IT!

Vladislav Delay's complete "Hide Behind The Silence" series. Intuitive and raw music, momentary and reflective, released on Ripatti's own label Rajaton.

Stillness is a myth. Consider concepts such as ”still water”, or ”still air” for that matter. Go to a restaurant, ask them for a glass of still water, hold it against the light and see where we’re at. Even though the water itself has been captured and imprisoned in the glass, it never stops breathing. It’s filled with tiny particles, dancing. Everything can be explained on a molecular level, but since we’re not scientists – and even if you happen to be – it’s the natural world of perception that moves me.
Still air is very similar. A hot summer’s day with zero wind feels completely still. It’s the closest I have felt to complete stillness. Or for a more urban adaptation, imagine the same vibe inside a normal apartment. In those moments, revelations and mind- blowing experiences can be had with experiments in stillness.
Try this: Just sit down for a minute on a sunny day, making sure there’s enough natural light. Do absolutely nothing. Try not to breathe for a bit. (If you need a mental anchor, you can play Cage’s 4’33” in your head but nothing else.) Watch the tiny dots of dust dancing :..’ ̈.:; ́ ́*°.,’:,. ̈ ̈ ̈ ̈:,.’
The movement is crazy, but the feeling of stillness comes from witnessing how subtle it is. In (perceived) complete stillness, every act of microscopic mobility seems to speak volumes. Yet, it feels both reassuring and oddly threatening that the stillness is never complete. What if we would need absolute stillness? Or is it just enough that we can perceive something as such? Extremes attract, so for both water and air, extraordinary movement is equally fascinating. That is also a luxury item of sorts. For us to enjoy a very ”loud” body of water or air, we need to be safe, in enough control of the situation. So when you are, it’s worthwhile to pay attention and take it all in.
A rapid flowing free with extreme strength and just barely in control. Look at that water go! No still water on this one, only ”sparkling”. A windy day when birds seem surprised how hard it is to fly, but in the end they make it. Trees bend but don’t break. The wind shows you its movement but doesn’t hurt you. It feels friendly, like a big clumsy dog that doesn’t quite understand its size.
It’s beautiful to be a guest of the elements, but not at the mercy of them. A new kind of dialogue forms.

Q&A with Sasu Ripatti:

1) Tell us something about the EP series ”Hide Behind the Silence”, what’s the idea and what can we expect?

Exploration of inaction. Of many kinds. In arts and in personal life, or at bigger and more serious levels. Questioning myself as a human being as well as an artist. Acknowledging the growing activism all around, and the very clear need for it, and how it reflects my own inaction.
Musically speaking, after Rakka, Isoviha and Speed Demon, I finally found some relief, but more importantly lost the need to go musically ever more outward and intensive. I felt quite strongly certain periods/moods from the past and they made me revisit some musical ideas or states of mind I was exploring early on.
It’s about live moments being captured, not much premeditation or editing. More intuitive and raw, even though the end result (to me) feels and sounds quite introspective and calm. It’s not very ambitious. Momentary and reflective.

2) Your music doesn’t sound very silent. Does it come from somewhere behind the silence?

Oh, this time to me it sounds quite quiet and playing with space if not silence. I don’t know what’s actually behind silence, but I think silence is the source of everything. We just don’t understand it yet.

3) What kind of thoughts or experiences gave inspiration to this series?

Writing this in Nov ’22, it’s not a stretch to say the world has been really unwell. Sometimes, like Mika Vainio put it, the world eats you up. I feel a bit like that. And I try to hide in my studio and stay away from it all, but it’s getting harder by the day. I’ve been questioning myself and thinking if what us artists are doing is worth anything, and whether it’s just a selfish thing I’ve been doing for the past 25 years, running away from everything. I haven’t come to a conclusion yet.

4) Is it easy for you to be in silence, or around silence?

Absolutely. I not only hide behind silence but I also love silence. It’s only since I started going back to nature as a grown-up person that I sensed and was enveloped by silence, true silence. I have begun to appreciate it a lot. I think all the people should spend more time in silence.

All tracks composed and produced by Sasu Ripatti.
Artwork by Marc Hohmann, photography by Shinnosuke Yoshimori.
Mastering by Stephan Mathieu for Schwebung Mastering.
Vinyl cut by SST Brueggemann.
Publishing by WARP Music Ltd.

Good things take time. What’s 17 years? Not even a quarter of Keith Richards! 17 years lay between Heiko Voss’ debut album “Call Me Killer” and the incredible follow-up “3:30 Minutes To Live”, which saw the light of day in 2022 on Michael Mayer’s “other label” IMARA. There are serious voices saying that the 80s were only really complete with the release of this album. Now it took the blink of an eye of a year for the remixes to be finished. And they turned out so well that Michael Mayer from KOMPAKT licensed the “3 Remixes for Heiko Voss” without further ado.

Running back guru GERD JANSON was an early adopter of the album. Highly motivated, he twirls “Follow Your Line” rhythmically somehow in the direction of Kate Bush’s “Running Up That Hill”. How did he do that? Never mind. It grooves like crazy and keeps even larger floors moving.

ADA, the Hamburg grand dame of techno pop, has taken on the in tongue speaking funk banger “Talking Man” and dipped it in fairy dust. The result is probably the most sensational, soulful club track ever. Honestly.

The package is rounded off with a powerful Dub Version of “Follow Your Line” by the IMARA and KOMPAKT boss himself. Because he can do it.

Open your heart, let the remixes in.

Gut Ding will Weile haben. Was sind schon 17 Jahre? Nicht mal ein Viertel Keith Richards! 17 Jahre lagen zwischen Heiko Voss’ Debutalbum “Call Me Killer” und dem unglaublichen Nachfolger “3:30 Minutes To Live”, der 2022 auf Michael Mayers “anderem Label” IMARA das Licht derWelt erblickte. Es gibt ernstzunehmende Stimmen, die besagen, dass die 80er Jahre eigentlich erst mit der Veröffentlichung dieses Albums vollendet waren. Nun hat es einen kurzen Wimpernschlag von einem Jahr gedauert, bis die Remixe fertig waren. Und die sind so gut geworden, dass Michael Mayer von KOMPAKT die “3 Remixe für Heiko Voss” kurzerhand lizenziert hat.

Ein “early adopter” des Albums war Running Back Obermotz GERD JANSON. Top motiviert zwirbelt er “Follow Your Line” rhythmisch irgendwie in Richtung Kate Bush’s “Running Up That Hill”. Wie hat er das nur gemacht? Egal. Es groovt wie Bolle und hält auch größere Floors in Bewegung.

ADA, die Hamburger Grand Dame des Techno Pop hat sich des in Zungen sprechenden Funk Kloppers “Talking Man” angenommen und ihn ordentlich in Feenstaub getunkt. Dabei entstand der wohl sensationellste, soulfulste Club Track ever. Ehrlich.

Abgerundet wird das Paket mit einer kräftigen Dub Version von “Follow Your Line” vom IMARA bzw. KOMPAKT Boss selbst. Weil er’s kann.

Herzklappen auf, Remixe rein.

The heavyweight trio of Keiji Haino, Jim O’Rourke and Oren Ambarchi return with their 12th and most epic release to date, the triple LP With pats on the head, just one too few is evil one too many is good that's all it is. Documenting the entirety of their final performance at the dearly departed Roppongi home of Tokyo underground institution SuperDeluxe in November 2018, the music spread across these six sides splits the difference between the guitar-bass-drums power trio moves and experiments with novel instrumentation that have defined the trio’s decade of working together. Containing some of the most delicate music the three have committed to wax since the gorgeous 12-string acoustic guitar and dulcimer tones of Only wanting to melt beautifully away is it a lack of contentment that stirs affection for those things said to be as of yet unseen (BT011), this wide-ranging release also offers up some of their most blistering free rock performances yet.

The side-long opening piece finds Haino on a single snare drum in duet with O’Rourke on unamplified electric guitar, playing in the lovely post-Bailey vein heard on his classic 90s recordings with Henry Kaiser and Mats Gustafsson. Spiky dissonance and ringing harmonics interweave with flowing melodic fragments as Haino single-mindedly explores the resonance of the snare like an untutored Han Bennink. On ‘Right brain, left brain; right, left; right wing, left wing. Just how many combinations can be made from these?’, O’Rourke moves to synth and electronics, joined by Ambarchi on drums, who at first focuses on sizzle cymbals before hypnotic cycles of gentle tom rhythms combine with electronic burbles and flutters to suggest a dream collaboration between Masahiko Togashi and Jean Schwarz. Ambarchi’s percussion is then joined by Haino on wandering, overblown flute, before the man in black switches back to the snare for a bizarre, stuttering drum duet.

For the first trio performance, Haino makes another new addition to his seemingly infinite catalogue of instruments, this time a homemade contraption he refers to as ‘Strings of Dubious Reputation’. Joined by O’Rourke on increasingly spaced-out electric guitar and Ambarchi on skittering percussion, Haino’s wonky, slack strings adds a definite ‘musique brut’ edge to this side-long performance, certainly one of the most enchantingly odd in the trio’s discography. When the group reconvene for the second set, spread out across the final three sides, they seem ready to breathe fire from the first instant. O’Rourke slashes distorted chords on the six-string bass, Ambarchi breaks into his signature irregular caveman thump, and Haino squeals and squawks on heavily delayed oboe before unleashing an overpowering electrical storm when he first picks up the guitar. For over half an hour, the trio pound out one of their most relentless performances, a constantly rearranging kaleidoscope of tortured fuzz guitar, insanely busy bass riffing and propulsive, tumbling drums. A hushed atmosphere initially reigns on the final long piece, given the mournful title ‘There are always things I wish to say but I can only convey them in this language August 6 August 9’. Haino’s clean guitar strumming calls up the shimmering tones of his PSF classic Affection, gradually building to a surging wall of sound, bass and drums lumbering through a roar of jet-engine guitar. Arriving in a deluxe trifold package with photos by Lasse Marhaug alongside inner sleeves with extensive live images, this epic release is perhaps the most remarkable document yet of this unique trio’s stamina and continuing inventiveness.

On Natura Morta, Sven Wunder is exploring art as a bridge between nature and the human ability to judge and observe in eleven musical compositions with brightly colored textures and an emphasis on vibrant melodies.

Throughout human history, we have depicted the world we live in through art. By reworking what we see in the world, the simplest things have helped us understand the beauty of nature and to evaluate the material world that we have created around us, as a window to a constantly changing reality, through our own perception. It is that absolute reality that appears in the seam of human and nature and that can be revealed through art.

Still life painting, also referred to as Natura Morta (”dead nature”) in Italian, stretches back to ancient times. Some of the earliest works, found in Pompeii, depict commonplace objects such as fresh autumn fruits alongside man-made objects such as a small amphora and a small terracotta heap with dried fruits. These two-thousand-year-old paintings give a snapshot of Roman life, and also creates a link to time and space. A slice of life has been created by binding the earth’s pigments with extracts of oil, made from nuts and seeds, painted with brushes, made from a variety of fibers, such as trees and hair from animals. While life wanes with each brushstroke, by shifting reality into the past, art exists to make us come alive, being a living image of a dead thing, a surface and a symbol with symbolic powers of its own. Still life works celebrate material and ephemeral pleasures by returning to nature as the ultimate source for our standards in art as well as in life itself.

Natura Morta collects pieces from a continuous variety of melodies — supported by a decisive rhythm section — creating a musical kaleidoscope of ever-changing colors. Sven Wunder brings life into this rich assortment of musical implications by fusing and combining melodic instruments with each other in a setting that spans from a classical to a modern idiom. The author evokes this panoramic portrait by articulating an instrumental dialog between a chamber orchestra and a jazz ensemble. The result is a musical celebration of material pleasures that also serves as a reminder of the brevity of human life. This album was produced with financial support from the Swedish Arts Council.

Impulse’ was a band of Milwaukee, Wisconsin musicians whose members included Michael Reese (Rhodes Piano and background vocals), Cedrick Rupert (Lead and Rhythm guitar), Jeffrey Williamson (Drums and background vocals) and Robin Gregory (Bass and background vocals). They would become a group in their own right with the eventual addition of another local artist John Gee, who joined them as their lead singer. The Impulse musicians formed the backing/touring band for another Milwaukee outfit, a vocal quartet, The Quadraphonics who recorded the solitary 45 single “Betcha If You Check It Out/Prove My Love To You” for the Carl Davis/E. Rodney Jones owned ‘Innovation II’ Record label during 1974. This release would later be nationally distributed by the major Warner Brothers label. With import copies of “Innovation II” single finding their way into the UK the record became popular with the devotees of Blackpool Mecca’s Highland Room.

During 1976 the members of Impulse migrated to Oakland California, they had hoped that, The ‘Quadraphonics’ would join them but instead The Quadraphonics chose to remain in Milwaukee and eventually broke up. It was fellow Brewtown producer/recording artist Harvey Scales who was responsible for inviting ‘Impulse’ to the west coast. Under the auspice of Scales, Impulse recorded their self-titled debut album project at Wally Heider’s Studio in San Francisco. The album was initially offered to Casablanca Records but no firm interest was to materialise, a subsequent approach to Jerry “The Ice Man” Butlers newly formed Chicago label, Fountain Records again failed to secure a release of the album, sadly leaving the project unreleased in the can. In the ensuing years, the former group members have continued with their respective careers, the late John Gee embarked on a solo career, recording the 1980 release “Not Enough Love Makin’/ you Are That Man (Why Don’t You Be That Man)” for Leroy Smith’s Oakland C.A, Pashlo label followed by his 1985 modern favourite “So Good To Me/Just Get On” recorded under the artist name of Jon Pierre Gee on his own newly formed Kandi Inc, Record label. Later Kandi projects included the 1995 Jon Pierre Gee & Touch album and the 2005 Ah’VantSoul cd album project, which featured Jon’s business and real-life partner, Kathryn Hannemann (a.k.a the performing artist Kat Webb).Throughout all the aforementioned projects Jon continued to use and enjoy performing with his former fellow ‘Impulse’ musicians of which the two surviving members Robin Gregory and Michael Reese can still be found jamming to this day in the renowned Milwaukee Restaurant/Coffee House by the name of ‘Coffee Makes You Black’. Sadly, drummer Jeffrey Williamson passed away during 2015 with Coley Jackson coming in to pick up the sticks! Lead and Rhythm guitarist Cedrick Rupert left the group in the 1970’s moving to Lake Charles, LA, sadly, he too passed away in 2020.

The Impulse album project having lain dormant since the 1970’s was resurrected during 2018 when Jon Pierre Gee in conjunction with Stephen Chin of Nice Choice Records (USA) and Soul Junction Records (UK) breathed new life into the project. Beginning with the release of the first of two ‘Impulse’ 45 singles on Jon’s Kandi imprint. Firstly “What’s that Sound/You Changed Me” followed in 2020 by a second 45 “I Really Love You/Get The Funk Off my Back” with all four soul and funk tracks receiving worldwide acclaim. Initial plans for the release of the whole album project had been set in place but we’re unfortunately brought to an unexpected halt with the passing of Jon Pierre in November 2020.

Undetered Soul Junction have finally been able to bring this amazing ‘Impulse’ project to life as a limited vinyl press I’m sure once heard, the old adage of “Good Things Come To Those Who Wait” will certainly ring true, enjoy.

Saint Abdullah & Eomac is a long distance, ongoing collaboration between New York based Iranian-Canadian brothers Mohammad and Mehdi Mehrabani (Saint Abdullah) and Ian McDonnell a.k.a. Eomac, based in Wicklow in Ireland. They tested the waters with their first album on Nicolas Jaar's Other People label last year, but 'Chasing Stateless' is their fullest expression so far.

The creative mindset behind the album starts with bravery and eschews escapism. Says Saint Abdullah's Mohammad, "As a collective, we exist to test the revolutionary possibilities within sound and sonic storytelling. As a means to finding a vision of the future and for building cultural dialogue today. Our belief is that the expressiveness of this vision should be pushed to its utmost limits to reveal anew. I always felt that the intensity of the middle eastern soul needs to be revealed more potently. Ian and the Irish have it too. I suspect most historically oppressed cultures do."

The music on 'Chasing Stateless' avoids easy middle eastern tropes — "I think what we're proposing here is that you don't need to water down our culture, you don't need to take only the bits that fit your idea of who we are, what we are. You ought to take it in its entirety."

Musically, the album approaches established genres and re-orientates them towards middle eastern rhythm and melody with an iron soul. Songs are rough and intense. Rusty polyrhythms, daf drums wrapped in a thick coating of distortion or punchy kicks with micro-edited samples of middle eastern life spiralling across them. Mournful melodies are squeezed out until the music teeters on the edge of rhythmic collapse. 'Chasing Stateless' is rough and energetic but also tender and reflective too. It's a human sound, utilising technology but not about technology. Sample heavy with expressions of anger, sadness and hope present and deeply felt.

The album's title speaks to a loss of collective societal imagination; of 'chasing status'. As Moh says "This generation, man, we're really good at putting up walls, despite all our openness. But where does this all lead to? What exactly are we chasing? This is where I especially love the name 'Chasing Stateless,' because if all this continues, we indeed will end up stateless, society-less, community-less, neighbor-less. Just a bunch of same-sies, living in an imaginary bubble, where we all look / think / say / CHASE the same things."

In den letzten fünf Jahren hat sich Kenny Beats zu einer der wichtigsten Persönlichkeiten im Rap entwickelt. Er hat karrierebestimmende Musik für Leute wie NBA Youngboy, FKA twigs, Dominic Fike, Rico Nasty, Freddie Gibbs und Vince Staples produziert, absurden christlichen Rap mit dem Komiker Zack Fox gemacht und Agit-Punk für IDLES aus Bristol aufgenommen. Er hat auch neu definiert, was es heute bedeutet, ein Produzent zu sein, indem er eine Generation von Heim-Beatbastlern durch seine verschiedenen Tutorial-Livestreams und die episodische Produktionsserie "The Cave" angeleitet hat. "LOUIE" ist Kennys allererste Veröffentlichung als Solokünstler. Er schöpft aus der reichen, soulgetränkten Tradition von Ausreißern wie J.Dilla, Madlib und D"Angelo, um zum ersten Mal Themen seiner eigenen Familie, Kindheit und Erziehung zu erkunden. "LOUIE" ist eine Hommage an Kennys Beziehung zur Musik insgesamt und bietet mit einem Ensemble von Kollaborateuren und Musikern von Mac De Marco bis Thundercat ein neuartiges Produzentenalbum, das seiner eigenen, immer noch wachsenden Stimme ganz neue Schichten hinzufügt.

A real soul gem from 1970 on the James Brown affiliated Deluxe label, the first and only album by this mysterious singer: Marie Queenie Lyons.
It is perhaps apropos that Queenie Marie Lyons’s best known song is titled ‘See And Don’t See.’ For all the acclaim that song has accrued, and all the times it has been compiled, reissued and, yes, bootlegged — for all the times it has been seen — Queenie herself has somehow remained unseen. How did a singer from Ashtabula, Ohio record one of the great female-led soul albums and then simply fall off the map, never to record or perform again? Queenie was a natural performer and a gifted singer. At the age of fifteen, she was doing three shows a week at a local venue. In early 1962, Queenie moved to Queens and was soon playing gigs across the city — an early engagement was with Gene Krupa at the famous Metropole Café in Times Square — as well as touring with established acts like Fats Domino and Ray Charles. The following year, Queenie made her debut recording, for a subsidiary of RCA called Groove, credited to an entirely fictitious “Shelley Shoop and the Shakers.” It remained Queenie’s only presence on wax until early 1968, when a Nashville-based label called Sims gave her her first accurately attributed single, “A Minute Of His Goodtime / Good Soul Lovin’.” Although the 45 is now a highly collectible part of the Northern Soul and Lowrider Oldies pantheons, it made no impact at the time, as Sims was focused on more typical Nashville sounds. A few months later Queenie was back in New York City, performing R&B and pop covers with her band when a man passed her his business card at a performance. The card read James Brown Enterprises. James Brown “was my idol,” she says, and someone whose business acumen and stage presence she strove to emulate. Although Queenie ended up on tour with James Brown for only a month or so, when the group reached Cincinnati in mid-’68 she entered the King Records studio there to record what would become the
album you hold in your hands. The songs were a combination of covers, some of which she’d been doing in her live shows, like ‘Fever’ and ‘Try Me,’ and originals written by producer Henry Glover and pianist Don Pullen, who was the bandleader on the session. The album opener, ‘See And Don’t See,’ was also recorded by the veteran R&B singer Maxine Brown, but Queenie’s version blows hers away. “Soul Fever” is a supremely funky and soulful affair, with Queenie’s powerful and captivating voice magnetically attractive, with an urgency that is impossible to ignore. ‘Your Thing Ain’t No Good Without My Thing,’ ‘Your Key Don’t Fit It Anymore,’ and ‘I Don’t Want Nobody To Have It But You’ are as funky and soulful as the best of Tina Turner and Aretha — a statement not to be made lightly!
The album was critically acclaimed — the October 10, 1970, issue of Billboard listed it as their sole “four star” pick in the Soul category — but perhaps due to the tumult at Starday-King, whose stewardship had turned over several times in only a few years, it never seemed to be able to break through to a larger audience.

There can be no doubt about it, when it comes to making speakers move, Leo Cap is something of a scientist; lurking around the Deep, Dark & Dangerous realms. Following a number of EPs and track features on DDD, ‘Underground Business’ is his debut full-length album. 11 slices of audio genius, the kind of tracks that make you question your very sanity when they drop.

Leo Cap’s style is well represented across this release, and as an album is the perfect showcase of his sound. One which is known for pushing the physical boundaries to which you can exert sound systems and speakers. Literally pushing insane amounts of air when these basslines drop.

The album tells the story of Leo Cap the artist, creating beautiful things only to destroy and break them. Not only is the music a parallel for his life, it is also a form of armour, pieces collected from here and there. A protection from a paranoid existence in the dark and murky underground.

This music is his kind of Undergound Business, “it’s really deep, it’s really dark and it’s really fucking dangerous man”. All the demons, all the darkness, and also all the fun. But there are no mistakes, this is how things are meant to be, life is is both dark and light, with music as it’s abstraction.


You can turn on the music and feel these things, this is real, this is Underground Business

2023 Repress

Noisia & Foreign Beggars are extremely proud to present I Am Legion's much anticipated self-titled, 16 track, debut album.
"The album was made during countless sessions (no more than 40 full studio days max) over the last five years. Many passes of production and scrutiny reached every track, alongside a plethora of feedback spread sheets and whiteboard summaries. We never set a deadline for ourselves; the whole idea of a full album only took shape later in the process when we realized how much material we had generated and how cool it could be to put it out as one big thing." I Am Legion nods to rap's erstwhile forays into electronica, absorbing elements of its present whilst laying out a reassuringly disturbed vision of what's to come.

Music On Hold's second album raises to its climax an altogether well-cultivated ambiguity between new ambitions and the waiting posture of a band which has never lived up to its name so well. Produced in a cellar in the 7th arrondissement of Paris, supported by Ray Jane and "surrounded by a group of people who manage to concentrate on something for more than 15 minutes", "MOH4Ever" is one of the most personal things that Emile Cartron-Eldin delivers today, "from the salt-dough workshops in kindergarten". Opening, "His Master Voice" transforms the tribute to a recently deceased loved one into a sad clown's dancing homily. With no surprise follows "Wander" and roaming in a Paris traveled up and down at least ten thousand times already. "Music On Hold 4 Ever" then releases the title of this album in a cry accompanied by an invitation to "unplug" his singer. We hear a bit of the group's very first single, "Bread", taken through the prism of Beck's "Up all night". "Citadel", 6'30" end of side A, loudly proclaims as a chain-breaking the nostalgia of truant school and a desire not to die (at least not like Darby Crash). Mixed in - like this entire album - are the versatile ingenuity of LCD Soundsystem and Gorillaz with Italo-disco arrangements from Roberto Zanetti (aka Savage). With "Over", "Home", "Taming a Tiger" and "Last Laugh", side B prolongs the tightrope walker's delirium by summoning in no specific order, memories in Vienna, resumption of excessive consumption, the fact that "the director of the US Federal Reserve is a real fake-ass" and the cynical humo(u)rous swings of a guy overwhelmed by them in an everlasting after-party. From the first LP, "30 Minutes Of..." and its already delayed release, its chopped tour, "Music On Hold 4 Ever" digs a refined pop, no longer as "solar" as some could have described it when everything seemed to be going quickly. Retaining a semblance of immediacy, the 8 pieces of this second album open up new perspectives with their elegant sophistication, in a quite French and truly original touch of DIY and experimentation that the group can pride themselves on. " I'm twenty-nine, and i don't wanna die ".

High Vis were formed in 2016 from the ashes of some of the UK's best hardcore bands. Gild-toothed frontman Graham Sayle's anguished lyrics about life in working class Britain were familiar to fans of Tremors' full-throttle thrash, but alongside his former bandmate Edward `Ski' Harper and veterans of Dirty Money, DiE and The Smear, High Vis sought to transform that energy and intensity into something entirely new.Like scene-mates Chubby and the Gang did by pulling in unlikely source material from classic doo-wop or Micromoon have by combining everything from psychedelia and metal into their high potency mix, High Vis' 2019 debut album, No Sense No Feeling showed the band were never going to be constrained by any sense of genre rules or regulations. Its claustrophobic rattle bore traces of Joy Division, Bauhaus, Crisis, The Cure and Gang Of Four lurking in the shadows. 2020's synth-driven EP, Society Exists, was further evidence of the band's restless creative MO.High Vis' second album Blending sees them open their viewfinder wider than ever before. Alongside longstanding favourites such as Fugazi and Echo and The Bunnymen; Ride and even Flock Of Seagulls were shared reference points as the band worked on the album together.From the anthemic sweep of opener "Talk For Hours", through the title track's psychedelic swirl and "Fever Dream"'s baggy groove, it sees High Vis' sound blossoming into something with an unlimited richness. The hazy drift of "Shame" or the melodic jangle of "Trauma Bonds" may take them until uncharted waters, but they still have all the power and bite that made No Sense No Feeling so remarkable.Lyrically, the album represents another leap forward too. Talking frankly about poverty, class politics, and the challenges of everyday life, Sayle's lyrics have always addressed the downtrodden and discarded communities across Britain slipping below the waterline. This time around, Sayle's lost not of that social consciousness, but he's looked at himself and his own emotional landscape, and in the process created something that feels more universal, that reaches a hand-out to people and ultimately gives a message of hope."To me, the lyrics are less selfish," reflects Sayle. "In the past, I couldn't see past whatever was going on with me. It's about accepting things and being open to conversations and learning to talk to people rather than just thinking that we're all doomed."The song "Talk for Hours" is a prime example of that. Born out of an afternoon meeting up with an old group of mates "repeating the same thing and not actually learning anything about each other" it offers to actually break the cycle and to listen and speak frankly about shared feelings and experiences. "Trauma Bonds", meanwhile, traces the broken lines of those living in lost communities, but ultimately realises that despite our shared scars, there's still hope to move on to a better future."The message of the album is you're not who you're told you are," Sayle summarises. "You're not your class background. Whatever it is, you're not that. Don't resign yourself to thinking you can't be this and you can't be that."It's a vitally important message right now, and one that could be the motto for not only Blending, but for High Vis themselves.

2023 Repress

New York, early 90's, the haydays of the New York and Jersey clubhouse! With labels such as NuGroove, Nervous, Freeze, Strictly Rhythm, Henry Street Music taking all the spot light, there is Jovonn working on a small but sensational catalogue of music that somehow gets overshadowed by the popular releases on the mentioned labels. The honest productions, jazzy melodies and playful vocals (rooted in gospel) were taking things into a more musical, more spiritual way, lacking gimmicks or dispensable samples. For the real diggers, the true lovers of House music Jovonn always was a name to watch, a producer of some of their favorite NY house tracks, tracks that have a raw edge combined with a sincere human touch and pure underground house vibes. People such as Rex resident Dj Deep was a huge fan, and also collaborated on couple later productions with Jovonn. Slowly he started getting recognition from europe which resulted in a handfull of records on European labels such as Distance, Coco Soul and Estereo. Now after almost 25 years since his first release the man's small discography on his own Goldtone label and Emotive records stand out with his unique musical personality. More then 20 years after their original release dates these tunes are still very relevant and stand for many things we love about house music! We are happy to offer this selection of his hard to find early works remastered by Alden Tyrell and pressed on fresh clean high quality vinyl.

KID FRANCESCOLI, leader of the French Riviera Touch is back with the stellar album SUNSET BLUE out Sept 22nd 2023.

After a first sold-out world tour (over 200 concerts in Europe, USA, Asia...), and successful hits such as Nopalitos, Blow Up or Moon (now certified diamond, with more than 200 millions streams), the Marseille-based producer, crooner and multi-instrumentalist, Mathieu Hocine, is eager to share his most accomplished LP ever. This fine collection of soulful songs honor his Mediterranean roots, with elegant and pop melodies. His most recent success and the creation of his first original soundtrack with AZURO, installed him as one of the best French songwriters of his generation, with a unique signature sound.

"I live in Marseille, I spent my childhood in Corsica, I have Algerian origins, my first vacations with friends were in Barcelona, vacations with my first girlfriend in Roma,... Then, I had the chance to perform in Morocco, Greece, Turkey and Egypt: each time I spent time in the Mediterranean region, the people I met there made me feel like I was part of the same country. This shared multiculturalism is really comforting, it has its own poetry and strength, bringing uniqueness and empathy to the people. It is essential for me. I love my city: it’s the perfect place to feel good with sun, sea, family, friendships, love... It gets me emotional, bringing tears with a smile".

With his new musical gem, Mathieu Hocine unveils 11 elegant tunes of his finest craft: sunbathed French Touch (Run Run, 1986), romantic chillwave (Corsica), uplifting synthpop (You Are Everywhere, Like Magic), electronic-soul (Casino Soul), cinematic disco (Solaris), cosmic R&B (Sweet and Sour, Take Time), … Everything is in this record.

For the first time ever, Kid Francescoli paid tribute to his mixed origins with his collaboration with world-renowned lute and mandolin player Hakim Hamadouche (Rachid Taha, Patti Smith, Brian Eno, Tricky...), whom added Algerian patterns to the introspectives songs Drift in Blue and The Morning After.

"My ambition is to create pictures in people's heads with music, to transport them instantly into a movie"

SUNSET BLUE is an instant-crush album: crystal-clear, strong, personal but universal at the same time.

It's an ecstatic soundtrack for this moment when time is suspended, the golden hour when everything seems possible. It feels like Love is in the air, you're living your best life and you're at the right place at the right time. This album embodies this magic moment where we would like to last forever… Like an epiphany, Kid Francescoli's new album is a moment of pure pleasure, a soothing way to escape reality.

"I see myself as a melodist.I would like my music to feel like velvet. There's something cinematic, classy about it, and yet comforting. It's very simple, popular and synonym of love and passion"

His friend French 79 co-produced the album, while the american rapper Bamby H2O brought his NYC swag (on Sweet & Sour), Stan Neff (Polo & Pan, Kungs, Christine and the Queens...) took care of the mix and Alex Gopher (Daft Punk, The Blaze, Bon Entendeur...) added a final touch of magic when mastering. Nicolas Despis (known for his work with Etienne Daho, Hoshi, Juliette Armanet... and many famous French rappers) later joined this dream-team to craft custom-made artworks. SUNSET BLUE is a deeply personal quest, a human adventure for Mathieu Hocine (whom explores his maghrebian origins, his feminine side, his subconscious space, ...). It's a male's work, but don't get it wrong, this LP would be nothing without women’s touch : Julietta (on Run Run and Take Time), Sarah Gaugler from Turbo Goth (on You Are Everywhere and Like Magic), and iOni (on Drift in Blue).

“Music has this magical power to broaden your vision of the world. It's fascinating because, like dreams, it's the kind of irrational things science can't explain and that makes life exciting."

Planets aligned perfectly on this project and thanks to this five-star cast of collaborators, Kid Francescoli achieved his personal holy grail : he orchestrated a great 21st century pop-music album.SUNSET BLUE is a new turning point between organic and electronic, both a mediterranean travel and a Californian dream, a bridge between Ennio Morriconne and modern electronic music.

Also, while it might be called SUNSET BLUE in honor of the sea and the Portuguese / Brazilian concept called “saudade”, but it is a really optimistic album, whose true colors would rather be "yellow-orange-red" in nod to the sun.

Created in the midst of the world tour, SUNSET BLUE is a direct result of the lives’ energy and fans’ joyful vibes: going back in the studio after smiling, singing and dancing with people all around the world inevitably gave Kid Francescoli the desire to retranscribe this ecstatic feeling in music. This album is a sensitive experience, from sunrise to sunset, from first track to last one. It’s an exploration of an everlasting summer, reaching its climax in the very final seconds of the track Corsica, making us want to press play and dive into this jewel all over again.

A beautiful cosmic trip, whether you like to stay in bed cocooning, to travel far, far away or to dance ‘till dawn, to catch the first rays of light.

Make sure to catch Kid Francescoli on his next world tour to have a good time.

Big Crown Records is proud to present the debut full length offering from Les Imprimés, Rêverie. The stirring and ethereal sounds of Les Imprimés have been making fans of anyone who hears them since their first 7” single hit the speakers. Morten Martens is the man behind the band. Born, raised, and working in Kristiansand, Norway, he keeps a low profile while making his heartfelt, highly infectious, and unique music. This album is a long time coming for Martens and it is sure to make him a name to be reckoned with.

The first thing you notice listening to Les Imprimés is the high level of musicianship. Martens plays nearly every instrument on the recordings and handles the production and arranging. He has been making records for decades, winning a Spellemann Award (aka, the Norwegian Grammy) in 2006 for producing a Hip Hop album as well as getting nominations across three other genres. While awards and accolades speak to the level of his talent, this new album really shows who he is as an artist on his own terms.

Moving away from being a hired gun on the touring scene naturally led him to start doing more studio work. Slowly collecting gear and getting more experience behind the boards he built his own studio on the island of Odderøya and was making a living playing with and recording other people's music. As the story goes, after those sessions would end he would work on his own project into the wee hours of the night. From these late night sessions, Les Imprimés was born and Rêverie began to take shape.

However, "it wasn't until COVID, when things locked down, that I was really able to find the time to focus on Les Imprimés" Morten says about creating and leading his own solo project. "It was a scary time. But I knew I had to do something with it." He took the sum of his influences, combined them with his own vibe and got busy writing the music, playing the instruments, and singing the songs. "It's soul music, but I don't exactly have the soul voice," Morten explains humbly. "But I do it my own way, in a way that's mine."

It is his sound, his fingerprint, his sensibility, that makes his music hard to categorize. He has crafted an album of songs with different energies that all fit together to make one gorgeous record. The lead single “Falling Away” starts with a raw drum break and turns into a lushly arranged tune that paints the picture of love when it slips away. On “Still Here” he professes his resilience through life’s twists and turns over a thundering track that puts a new spin on the B side ballad genre. Songs like “You” and “Our Love” mix tones from 60s and 70s Soul with arrangement nods to Doo Wop records while Martens’ lyrics and delivery leave you singing the melodies long after they finish. “Love & Flowers” finds Martens in a moment of clarity with a song that fits the niche sub genre of happy break up tunes, the four on the floor track will move the dancefloor while the message will resonate with anyone who put too much effort into the wrong situation in their lives. However, it is songs like “Muse” and “Chess” that really encapsulate the uniqueness of Les Imprimés as they push the boundaries of genre, one a profession of love for music and the other a cover of an electronic record respectively. Martens’ lyrics, emotion, and delivery truly make the whole thing come together and stand out from any of his peers. There’s an infectiousness and a pop sensibility in the writing that is done with the utmost class and taste giving Les Imprimés the rare quality of immediate attraction that only deepens the more you listen.

Hush Hush is thrilled to present the debut album 'No Such Thing As Free Will' by Los Angeles-based guitarist and composer Deniz Cuylan. "Deniz Cuylan seems to invent new languages for the guitar: nylon-strung takes on Reichian minimalism, fluttering arpeggios that recall Vini Reilly's spidery flamenco and atmospheric pieces pitched between Glenn Branca and Bert Jansch." -The Guardian "It's certainly an album that will soundtrack those moments when you sit and gaze at the world for a stretch, whether it is from behind a screen or in a park. An understated work, yes, but a miniature marvel." -A Closer Listen "A bright, studious, harmonic, pastoral gem. 'No Such Thing As Free Will' is a much prettier and more enveloping record than words can convey; it has a really nice poise between the disciplines of the leftfield, the guitar soli and that of bright folk melody." -Backseat Mafia

NOW Music is proud to announce NOW Presents…Disco, a stunning 5LP boxset featuring 80 of the greatest Disco classics ever!

Kicking off with the genre defining #1 from Donna Summer ‘I Feel Love’ followed by Earth, Wind & Fire with The Emotions and their timeless hit ‘Boogie Wonderland’, this boxset features the most enduring tracks from dance-floor legends, including Chic, Sister Sledge, Gloria Gaynor, Village People, and Grace Jones - together with Saturday Night Fever gems - ‘Disco Inferno’, ‘More Than A Woman’, and ‘If I Can't Have You’.

LP 2 opens with Amii Stewart’s stunning version of ‘Knock On Wood’, followed by Candi Staton’s ‘Young Hearts Run Free’ and Chaka Khan’s hugely successful debut solo single ‘I'm Every Woman’. Other massive debuts include ‘Boogie Oogie Oogie’ from A Taste Of Honey, Alicia Bridges’ ‘I Love The Nightlife (Disco 'Round)’, and Cheryl Lynn’s ‘Got To Be Real’. Up next is the often-covered ‘Lady Marmalade’ together with Diana Ross’ ‘Love Hangover’ which lead into #1s from Frankie Valli & The Four Seasons, (‘December, 1963 (Oh, What A Night)’), Tina Charles (‘I Love To Love’), Odyssey (‘Use It Up And Wear It Out’) and Irene Cara (‘Fame’).

LP 3 Side A is packed with groovy and romantic chart-toppers from Elton John (‘Are You Ready For Love’), George McCrae (‘Rock Your Baby’), Barry White (‘You're The First, The Last, My Everything’), and The Spinners with their ‘Working My Way Back To You / Forgive Me, Girl’ medley. Flipping over to the other side, we have the timeless smash from Baccara ‘Yes Sir, I Can Boogie’, Boney M. with ‘Daddy Cool’, and Village People’s ‘In The Navy’. Viola Wills’ Hi-NRG cover of ‘Gonna Get Along Without You Now’ and Gloria Gaynor’s ‘Never Can Say Goodbye’ bring LP 3 to a close.

Lipps Inc., Kool & The Gang, Frantique, and KC & The Sunshine Band keep the dance-floor energy levels high on LP 4 with ‘Funkytown’, ‘Ladies Night’, ‘Strut Your Funky Stuff’, and ‘That's The Way (I Like It)’. The disco-mania of the late-70s also saluted the late-70s craze for Space themed movies & tv with early Electro-pop-dance, and included here from Space and Dee D. Jackson, before Sarah Brightman’s debut with Hot Gossip, ‘I Lost My Heart To A Starship Trooper’, and Meco’s remake of the ‘Star Wars Theme / Cantina Band’ as a dance-floor classic… Giorgio Moroder productions for Sparks with ‘Beat The Clock’ and The Three Degrees with ‘Givin’ Up Givin’ In’ lead the side to a close with ‘Souvenirs’ from Voyage.

LP 5 is filled with truly monster sized dancefloor-fillers, beginning with a run of Nile Rodgers & Bernard Edwards productions: ‘Le Freak’, ‘We Are Family’, ‘Spacer’ and ‘Upside Down’ from Diana Ross. It wouldn’t be a Disco album without Earth, Wind & Fire’s ‘September’, the Bee Gees-written ‘Nights On Broadway’ covered by Candi Staton, and the Grammy award-winning ‘Best Of My Love’ from The Emotions, before another hit cover from Amii Stewart, ‘Light My Fire’. Side B features some fabulous European Disco, including Belle Epoque and Amanda Lear, and signature hits from Patsy Gallant and Vicki Sue Robinson before drawing to a close with Rose Royce’s celebrated ‘Car Wash’, and Cher’s biggest disco hit ‘Take Me Home’ – and the last dance is left to Thelma Houston with her defining anthem ‘Don’t Leave Me This Way’.

NOW Presents…Disco – the perfect collection and collector’s item for every 70s Disco lover.

Señor Sapo is a character created based on the Mesoamerican deity Quetzalcoatl:

while capturing Sr. Sapo atop The Pyramid of the Sun at Teotihuacan
in The Valley of Mexico; dawn…

Augie Robles (the photographer) spotted an elementary school class of around 25 children with two teachers suddenly appear scaling the momentous stair case behind our subject!

They shouted;

“Sr. Sapo! Sr. Sapo!”
the name has stuck! they wanted to have their pictures taken with Sr. Sapo? however; they did not want to touch him as they thought his skin might be “viscoso” or “slimy”?

“Q’uq’umatz” (as it is known amongst the K’iche’ Maya) goes back to the Olmec culture and represents the duality of flight to reach the skies; whereas the reptilian (in most cases a snake) represents the ability to mingle amongst other creatures of the Earth;
Among the Aztecs he was related to the gods of wind; of the dawn; of merchants and arts; crafts; knowledge and the planet Venus: as well as their patron god of the priesthood…

THE FUTURE S0UND 0f YESTERDAY is as well a construct of the imagination; a fictitious “orchestra” with many imaginary characters; KENT CHESTERFiElD; LEE NAilZ; PHATTITUDE; EPiPHANY TALEUR; ThE ClARKETTES (they actually exist in the “real” world)…

The titles:
“0de to A Tree”;
is the culmination of a night out in Berlin; “…met a young man in a bar close to the “atelier”; he said he wanted to play something on a piano; we go to the place and he plays this melody over a rhythm though not in rhythm?
…basically edited none of it; then used a series of tone generators and filters to change the sound into all the soundscapes you hear in the final piece; the title was simply a tribute to the trees…” Eric D. Clark

“is it good for Ya’?”;
is a slow pumping House song with a message in the form of a question; “is it good for you?” as in “I could do it; however; should I? you know; look in a mirror and ask the question”…
the Music came about as an experiment at NADEL EiNS Studio in Berlin; Heavy bass at around 116bpm plus Erix’s cheeky vocal stylings weaving in & out of frame (as well key) deliver a unique aural experience!

the final track:
“Elsewhere playback”
is literally the playback of a track Eric did under the guise of KENT CHESTERFIELD for a party series he did in Sacramento CA with AJ Sachs…
it’s really just a tool; the good thing is you can drop -8 (or -16 assuming your tables are tuned) to bring it to a tempo one could easily rap over OR push it up to +8 and have a dry Tech number? Either way it BANGS! Dub Plates & Mastering did a swell job!!

overall a must for any Dance Music aficionado’s collection out on October 10th on SHADDOCK RECORDS !

High Vis were formed in 2016 from the ashes of some of the UK's best hardcore bands. Gild-toothed frontman Graham Sayle's anguished lyrics about life in working class Britain were familiar to fans of Tremors' full-throttle thrash, but alongside his former bandmate Edward `Ski' Harper and veterans of Dirty Money, DiE and The Smear, High Vis sought to transform that energy and intensity into something entirely new.Like scene-mates Chubby and the Gang did by pulling in unlikely source material from classic doo-wop or Micromoon have by combining everything from psychedelia and metal into their high potency mix, High Vis' 2019 debut album, No Sense No Feeling showed the band were never going to be constrained by any sense of genre rules or regulations. Its claustrophobic rattle bore traces of Joy Division, Bauhaus, Crisis, The Cure and Gang Of Four lurking in the shadows. 2020's synth-driven EP, Society Exists, was further evidence of the band's restless creative MO.High Vis' second album Blending sees them open their viewfinder wider than ever before. Alongside longstanding favourites such as Fugazi and Echo and The Bunnymen; Ride and even Flock Of Seagulls were shared reference points as the band worked on the album together.From the anthemic sweep of opener "Talk For Hours", through the title track's psychedelic swirl and "Fever Dream"'s baggy groove, it sees High Vis' sound blossoming into something with an unlimited richness. The hazy drift of "Shame" or the melodic jangle of "Trauma Bonds" may take them until uncharted waters, but they still have all the power and bite that made No Sense No Feeling so remarkable.Lyrically, the album represents another leap forward too. Talking frankly about poverty, class politics, and the challenges of everyday life, Sayle's lyrics have always addressed the downtrodden and discarded communities across Britain slipping below the waterline. This time around, Sayle's lost not of that social consciousness, but he's looked at himself and his own emotional landscape, and in the process created something that feels more universal, that reaches a hand-out to people and ultimately gives a message of hope."To me, the lyrics are less selfish," reflects Sayle. "In the past, I couldn't see past whatever was going on with me. It's about accepting things and being open to conversations and learning to talk to people rather than just thinking that we're all doomed."The song "Talk for Hours" is a prime example of that. Born out of an afternoon meeting up with an old group of mates "repeating the same thing and not actually learning anything about each other" it offers to actually break the cycle and to listen and speak frankly about shared feelings and experiences. "Trauma Bonds", meanwhile, traces the broken lines of those living in lost communities, but ultimately realises that despite our shared scars, there's still hope to move on to a better future."The message of the album is you're not who you're told you are," Sayle summarises. "You're not your class background. Whatever it is, you're not that. Don't resign yourself to thinking you can't be this and you can't be that."It's a vitally important message right now, and one that could be the motto for not only Blending, but for High Vis themselves.

FIVE CLASSIC ARETHA ALBUMS PRESENTING AN EARLY-’70S PORTRAIT OF THE QUEEN!

Also Includes A SIXTH BONUS LP of Session Alternates, Outtakes & Demos!

Original Albums Remastered From the Analog Master Tapes by Grammy® Award-Winning Engineer, Chris Bellman at Bernie Grundman Mastering Produced by Grammy® Award-Winner Cheryl Pawelski with Liner Notes from Billboard’s Gail Mitchell & British Ambassador of Soul, David Nathan Includes the hit Young, Gifted, & Black, released in 1972, which hit #2 on Billboard’s R&B albums survey and #11 on the Billboard Top 200 as well as being certified GOLD.

Aretha won the 1972 Grammy Award for Best Female R&B Vocal Performance the album ranked at number 388 on Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.

Also includes This Girl’s In Love With You which features the first commercial release of “Let It Be,” and came out 2 months ahead of The Beatles. Both this album and Spirit In The Dark feature the Muscle Shoals Rhythm section and an appearance by Duane Allman. Along with production on both from Jerry Wexler, Tom Dowd & Arif Mardin.

Big Thief's music, rooted in the songs of Adrianne Lenker, paints in vivid tones "the process of harnessing pain, loss, and love, while simultaneously letting go, looking into your own eyes through someone else's, and being okay with the inevitability of death," says Adrianne.

Masterpiece, Big Thief's debut album, is -lled with characters and visceral narratives, songs that pivot in the space of a few words. Adrianne's voice and guitar playing speak of rich emotional territory with grace and insight. In her words, the record tracks "the masterpiece of existence, which is always folding into itself, people attempting to connect, to both shake themselves awake and to shake o­ the numbness of certain points in their life. The interpretations might be impressionistic or surrealistic, but they're grounded in simple things.'

Adrianne met her longtime musical partner, guitarist and singer, Buck Meek, in Brooklyn a few years ago, and they quickly formed a creative bond tempered by the experience of traveling and performing for months on end in old dive bars, yards, barns, and basements together. They recorded a pair of duo albums (A-Sides and B-Sides), and Adrianne showcased her songs on a solo album, Hours Were The Birds.

Now, as a full rock and roll band, with Buck on guitar, Max Oleartchik on bass, and James Krivchenia on drums, they bring a steady wildness, giving the songs an even deeper layer of nostalgia. "These guys feel like a pack of wolves at my back," says Adrianne, "they make the songs howl and bark with a fierce tenderness that gives me courage."
After spending last July in an old house that they turned into a studio on Lake Champlain with producer Andrew Sarlo, the resulting collection soars on what Big Thief fan Sharon Van Etten calls "...a real journey, with intelligent stories and twist-and-turn melodies.

Temple, Bassey, MacLaine and now, Hurt; in a world of Shirleys, the name Sophia Ruby Katz has chosen for her music is perhaps prophetic as it captures her stunningly emotive vocal approach. And whilst Shirley Hurt might be the perfect nom de plume for the creative Toronto-based artist, it’s her self-titled debut album which positions her as protagonist of her own universe.

Traversing sonic landscapes, Shirley Hurt’s vocals ebb and flow like lyrical Ley lines tracking the contours of her own well-travelled map. By the age of 18, Hurt had travelled extensively, having lived in upwards of 20 different apartments and houses, as a result never really feeling “at home” anywhere. At this age was when Hurt found herself in New York, dipping her toes into various scenes and musical realms. The first and only place she ever felt at home, and a partial home-base for her, she travelled between Toronto and New York until the age of 26.When the project she was working on in New York reached a dead-end she returned West, moving in with musicians Harrison Forman (Hieronymus Harry, Zones) and Patrick Lefler (Roy, Possum). Being surrounded by their improvising at all hours, a new approach emerged. “Harrison is a virtuosic guitar player, and I hadn't picked up a guitar in any serious way since I was 16,” she says, “by osmosis I started playing again for fun.” Without agenda, the process grew organically from there.

Hurt and Forman decided to travel across the US and Canada in a trailer for half a year, with the entire album written in the final months of their trip. Hurt had been writing loose ideas here and there but felt blocked creatively. When the pair reached Berkley, they wound up house-sitting for a tuned-in friend who recommended she pray, in a very direct way, to remove the block. “I took her advice and to my surprise it worked. The album was conceptualized and finished within a couple of months.” Shapeshifting in tone and phrasing, Hurt’s music alchemizes the furthest corners of experimental indie folk, pop, and country into a singular sound with elegant unpredictability.

Whilst Shirley Hurt’s lyrical and structural ideas may have emerged on the road, the album was self-produced and recorded at Joseph Shabason (The War on Drugs)’s Aytche studio in Toronto’s West End. It was engineered by Nathan Vanderwielen and Chris Shannon (Bart), and Hurt enlisted collaborators Jason Bhattacharya, Nick Dourado, Patrick Lefler, and Harrison Forman to hone her vision. “I wasn’t sure what was going to happen with the songs until we returned to Toronto,” she recalls. “Joseph and I had been talking about working together after sending across some demos and Jason happened to recommend his studio at the exact same time, so everything came together naturally at that point.”

Whilst her most recent adventures may have seen Shirley Hurt bound for Texas as an official SXSW artist (hand-picked by Gorilla Vs Bear to perform at their own showcase), she currently resides in her native Canada, more specifically rural Ontario, close to friends and family, and is already working on her second album. The ties to lineage are interwoven in the fabric of the music. Hurt’s mother, artist Leala Hewak, instilled a lust for life and innate value of creativity in her from a young age as she explored the role of gallery owner, vintage jewellery show host, mid-century modern furniture expert, real estate agent, painter. Hurt’s father, a civil litigation lawyer and new-wave obsessed music lover with an extensive vinyl collection, introduced Hurt to a wide-range of artists at a young age such as Nina Hagen, Laurie Anderson, Tom Tom Club, and endless others.

In her video for ‘Problem Child’ Hurt’s grandmother walks her through a generationally revered pie-making process. One would be tempted to hear this, and other songs, as autobiographical. Yet, Hurt’s lyrics are rarely pulled from her relationships or personal history––at least not consciously. Rather, they arise from somewhere less tangible or defined. “Lyrics tend to come to me when I am doing non-musical things - washing dishes, brushing my dogs, walking to the grocery store. I have a lot of voice memos on my phone and half-filled notebooks and when I hear something, I have to stop what I'm doing to get the idea down. Usually it’s bits and pieces. It's rare a full song comes to me in one go, but it's great when they do, and those are often my favourites.”

Carving out a space of her own in an all-encompassing universe, Shirley Hurt is the introduction to a long artistic story, and if the journey so far is anything to go by, it will be stippled with evermore unpredictable chapters.

Me Neither is a 29 track double album of instrumental guitar music. While juggling a number of other projects James Elkington began writing "music for which there was no purpose." It became a new way of working for him - waking up each morning and improvising and recording the first thing that came into his head. "The only rules I gave myself were that I should make most of the sounds with a guitar, changing the speed or processing the recordings afterwards to get the effect I was looking for." Before long he had an albums worth of material. About mid-way through the second album Elkington had a liberating thought: he was making his own version of library music "if you're writing library music, you don't have to know what it's for - that can be someone else's job."

Svart Records proudly presents the reissue of Bleed From Within's 2018 album Era! Bleed From Within is a heavy metal band formed in 2005 at Glasgow, Scotland. Era, originally released in 2018 by Century Media, is the band's fourth studio album. This is the first reissue of it on vinyl and features the two bonus tracks that were originally only available on the first CD pressing. "Bleed From Within have breathed life into a kind of metal that has long become stagnant and they have done this on their own terms. No backing down and no comprising can be found within Era, they have shown here just what can be done if you really believe in the music you’re writing. One of the standout releases of the year." -Ghost Cult Magazine "If you are a fan of riffs then Era is definitely going to be an album for you. Every song is packed several great riffs. The influence of bands like LAMB OF GOD and PANTERA can certainly be heard but things never sound completely derivative." -Distorted Sound Magazine

Svart Records proudly presents the reissue of Bleed From Within's 2018 album Era! Bleed From Within is a heavy metal band formed in 2005 at Glasgow, Scotland. Era, originally released in 2018 by Century Media, is the band's fourth studio album. This is the first reissue of it on vinyl and features the two bonus tracks that were originally only available on the first CD pressing. "Bleed From Within have breathed life into a kind of metal that has long become stagnant and they have done this on their own terms. No backing down and no comprising can be found within Era, they have shown here just what can be done if you really believe in the music you’re writing. One of the standout releases of the year." -Ghost Cult Magazine "If you are a fan of riffs then Era is definitely going to be an album for you. Every song is packed several great riffs. The influence of bands like LAMB OF GOD and PANTERA can certainly be heard but things never sound completely derivative." -Distorted Sound Magazine

The Royal hangmen are exited to announce the release of our third full-lenght album "Paranoid Nightmares" on Foggy Notion Records. Swiss garage heroes The Royal Hangmen are back with their third album. Imagine fuzz-driven guitars, a grinding Vox organ, a stompin' backbeat and some high energy screaming vocals, mix that with some real dedicated sixties attitude and you dig what the The Royal Hangmen were all about. These swiss wildmen play vintage instruments with a sound reminiscent of The Sonics, 13th Floor Elevators and Small Faces but with a style and energy all of their own."Paranoid Nightmares" is an adventurous and eclectic trip through the glorious sixties. 12 tracks that lead you fromfuzz-driven Beat to Surf, from Folk-Jangle to R'n'B and Soul. Always authentic and raw, the band's sound is a lovely combination of shredding vocals, nasty guitars and organ sounds with strong melodies and hooks on top. For fans of The Sonics, The Pretty Things, The Fuzztones, The Chesterfield Kings. The very limited coloured vinyl comes as violet/black marbled LP (DLC included)!

The Royal hangmen are exited to announce the release of our third full-lenght album "Paranoid Nightmares" on Foggy Notion Records. Swiss garage heroes The Royal Hangmen are back with their third album. Imagine fuzz-driven guitars, a grinding Vox organ, a stompin' backbeat and some high energy screaming vocals, mix that with some real dedicated sixties attitude and you dig what the The Royal Hangmen were all about. These swiss wildmen play vintage instruments with a sound reminiscent of The Sonics, 13th Floor Elevators and Small Faces but with a style and energy all of their own."Paranoid Nightmares" is an adventurous and eclectic trip through the glorious sixties. 12 tracks that lead you fromfuzz-driven Beat to Surf, from Folk-Jangle to R'n'B and Soul. Always authentic and raw, the band's sound is a lovely combination of shredding vocals, nasty guitars and organ sounds with strong melodies and hooks on top. For fans of The Sonics, The Pretty Things, The Fuzztones, The Chesterfield Kings. The very limited coloured vinyl comes as violet/black marbled LP (DLC included)!

Javier Jiménez Rolo surprises with Saint Malo, a project that explores the intersections of neoclassicism, folk, ambient and electronic textures.

That Saint-Malo is a town in Brittany is the least of it. Even the fact that it exists is unimportant. Javier has never been there. Similarly, his album takes us to remote or not so remote places without moving from where we are. Javier composed these twelve songs between 2019 and 2021 from his room: "One of the problems with recording at home rather than in a studio is that when you move, your recording space changes too. In the case of this album, I was involved in three moves during its whole process. Trying to see the positive side of this situation, I realised that, as well as a collection of songs, it was a testimonial to the different places where I had lived during those years and their respective views: 'Promenade' is an imagined walk from an interior flat; 'Picture In A Frame' is a sunny afternoon in a park in Ciudad Lineal, Madrid, and 'Bells Of Nowhere' is a stroll through the neighbourhood that was once my grandparents' and is now mine."

It's an eminently evocative album but also powerfully narrative, which moves through different emotional states. Along the way, references as heterogeneous as Javier's own tastes come up. From the inevitable Arvo Pärt, Max Richter and Steve Reich to the more unsuspected Thom Yorke, Burial, Caribou, Vulfpeck or even Dua Lipa. Stéphane Grappelli, Andrew Bird, Nils Frahm, Olafur Arnalds or Rene Aubry are other names Javier mentions when he talks about something similar to influences.

The journey, during which the songs miraculously fit with magical precision to the landscapes we are travelling through, begins with the promising 'Beware Of The Dogs' and 'Maltravieso'. It is followed by the obsessive arpeggios of 'Le Havre' that give way to the luminous 'Fields Of Gold', the emotion of 'Cais do Sodré' and the passionate 'Le pont roulant', reminiscent of a restrained Alexandre Desplat. Along the way, dogs will bark, rain will fall on the 'Promenade' and the sun will come out with the perfectly playful 'Dolce Far Niente' ("a mix between elevator music and a song announcing the arrival of summer" according to Javier) in which echoes of Isao Tomita and Raymond Scott resound.

The result of this captivating, unexpected and suggestive mixture is Saint Malo, Javier Jiménez's first album and the empirical demonstration that he does not have, despite his classical training, any red lines. "I've always flirted with jazz, with swing... Then I moved on to messing around with loops, to doing more ambient and experimental things. I also had my folkie phase with the klezmer group Barrunto Bellota Band..."

In Saint Malo the melodies grow, become small, return and intertwine with loops and improbable aromas, to form an album that describes a journey through emotions. From melancholy to joy and the surprise of first discoveries.

In the collection 'I Got Soul', this new release, 'Groove Wash', is a reference to the movie 'Car Wash'. Same ingredients as the the previous volume : a bit of Blaxploitation, some seventies Soul mood, wah wah guitar and lots of groove !


180g audiophile vinyl reissue of American blues guitarist Melvin Taylor's 1995 album 'Melvin Taylor & The Slack Band', which is appearing on vinyl for the first time with remastering by Cicely Baston at Alchemy/Air Mastering, London "The U.S. release of Melvin Taylor's two early-'80s LPs by Evidence a decade later was a shock introduction to a blues guitarist who seemingly blazed out of nowhere - outside of Rosa's Lounge in Chicago, that is. "Blazed" is the right word, too, because Taylor is a total maximalist who unleashes torrents of notes to fill up every space. But he's so convincing a player that the concept of "blues guitar hero" might get a good name again, even with fans dead- tired of excess who never thought they'd think things like, "Man, can Melvin Taylor play the ever-loving (add the expletive superlative of your choice) out of the guitar" again. Taylor's first real-time release, Melvin Taylor & the Slack Band, is a pretty straightforward affair - basic trio with minimal overdubs, serviceable vocals in an Albert King mode, and a mix of originals and very classic covers. The opening "Texas Flood" lets him rip on a slow blues, constantly changing up his playing with wah-wah blitzes as the real ace in his sonic hole. The originals "Depression Blues" and "Groovin' in New Orleans" add some funk flair, while "Talking to Anna Mae" is a straight- up Chicago boogie instrumental that Taylor shines on. But he's even more in his element on the unadorned slow blues "Tin Pan Alley" and King's "Don't Throw Your Love on Me So Strong." It's partly the speed but even more the phrasing - the unexpected stops and starts, the spiky and blazing runs and flurries, the unusual note selections he tosses in - that sets his playing apart. The other covers have their sporadic moments - "TBone Shuffle" is inconsequential, but Otis Rush's "All Your Love" and "Voodoo Chile" are worth listening to, even if the latter doesn't add anything to the famous Hendrix wah-wah workout. Taylor actually doesn't sound that radical here, like he was playing to establish blues circuit credentials by putting his stamp on familiar songs more than indulging offbeat personal touches like the mellow lounge jazz take on the Champs' "Tequila." But his playing can be truly electrifying and Melvin Taylor & the Slack Band is recommended for anyone, especially Stevie Ray Vaughan fans, looking for a distinctive new blues guitar voice." - Don Snowden, AllMusic Personnel: Melvin Taylor, guitar, vocals / Willie Smith, bass guitar / Steve Potts, drums Recorded and mixed on March 27-30, 1995 at Dockside Studios, Maurice, LA