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Neutrals return with a stunning new 4 track EP on Static Shock, after an album on Emotional Response in 2019 and two 7”s on Slumberland and Domestic Departure in 2020. Each song on this EP is a golden nugget of DIY Indie pop with clean and jagged guitar work, tunes at every corner and a joyous naivety. Go straight to Gary Borthwick Says - a song about a full time bullshitter with lyrics akin to I, Ludicrous’ Preposterous Tales with music which has the charm of prime The Television Personalties and The Times. New Town Dream is another gem and if it had come out in 1979 as an obscure DIY / Post Punk 7", the kids would be paying £200 for it. Honestly, it’s love at first listen and pure infatuation after repeated plays. This EP will not leave you turntable. The 7" is limited to 550 copies on blue vinyl and housed in wraparound sleeve.

Note vinyl rel date is later. 10 Year Anniversary Reissue. 2LP / 2CD featuring the album proper & demos of each song + rarities. Colored clear vinyl, includes digital download. Recommended If You Like: The original ‘151a’ release, of Montreal, Regina Spektor, Andrew Bird. They say that you spend your entire life writing your first album, piecing every formative moment, scribbled turn of phrase, and thematic epiphany into a fantastical collage. Multi-instrumentalist K. Ishibashi (aka Kishi Bashi) disproves that old adage. The title of Kishi Bashi’s 2011 debut album,‑151a, is a riff on the Japanese phrase‑“ichi-go ichi-e,” roughly translating to “one time, one place.” That’s exactly what this debut is: A singular time, an inimitable place, a launchpad for bigger and better things to come. “It’s a play on words that translates as a performance aesthetic of having a unique performance in time, with imperfections, and enjoying it while you can,” Ishibashi‑told NPR at the time of the album’s release. “The saying reminds me to embrace my mistakes and move forward.” From the deconstructed Beach Boys-esque doo-wop of “Wonder Woman” to the menacing marriage of Eastern Hues and Western operatics of “Beat the Bright out of Me,”‑151a‑is a mediation between opposing drives, offering possible reconciliation but never promising it. The album’s emotional wellspring, “I Am The Antichrist To You” was reimagined in 2021 when it was featured on the animated sci-fi sitcom‑Rick and Morty, introducing Kishi Bashi to a new generation of awestruck fans. Kishi Bashi uses‑151a‑as a vehicle to explore his cultural background. Using Japanese refrains as a compositional and textural device (the polyrhythmic grandeur of “Bright Whites”; the gleeful surrealism of “It All Began With a Burst”), Kishi Bashi celebrates his heritage with earnestness. Japanese phrases and couplets are sung as the response to Kishi Bashi’s resplendent calls, offering listeners a conversation that dovetails with the album’s themes of love, sentimentality, and self-discovery. Today, the “one time” and “one place” that­151a‑inhabited seems further than ever, almost broaching celestial realms of time and space. But, rest assured, with each listen, the world that Kishi Bashi built springs back to life. The world of‑151a‑never left—it was just waiting to be rediscovered.

DJ Stingray 313's highly-praised FTNWO LP returns to heed its sonic warnings and powerful messages on his own label, Micron Audio. Originally released on WeMe Records in 2012, FTNWO displays the high-tempo, ever forward production DJ Stingray 313 is known world around for. DJ Stingray 313 says "FTNWO was conceptually centered on conspiracy theory, science, prepper doomsday preparation / survivalism and social commentary," and the foreboding introduction of "Evil Agenda" sonically explains just what lies ahead for the listener. The stark warning leads into DJ Stingray 313's stomping "Dark Arts", beginning the FTNWO experience. "Room Clearance" gets straight to business with raw, gritty and true-to-the-art Detroit electro sounds, along with a heavy, quivering lead to piece the track together.

FTNWO's cyber-explorations continue with "Denial Of Service". "I NEED a computer!" shouts a destitute voice throughout the track, as a hypnotic siren lead weaves through pounding 808s. The uptempo onslaught continues with "Interest Rate" - pads that give a feeling of falling accompany samples lamenting the realities of debt in modern society. These statements in the samples permeating the aptly titled track eerily foretell many present-day situations in 2022, as well as prove testament to DJ Stingray 313's ahead-of-the-curve production techniques. "No Knock" also carries on with arpeggiated square waves and dissonant FM stabs laced intricately over thundering drums. "Outsourced" has a call and response feel, with lush, bright tiny synths talking with each other over a thundering rhythm akin to a drum & bass arrangement.

DJ Stingray 313's sound also stretches to more melodic planes, as "Reverse Engineering" displays. Brooding pads and icy percussion engage in a sonic dance. In the same on "Image Search", cold drums and riffs intertwine the warmer layering pads and leads. Both create two powerful compositions on FTNWO that move unlike any other. "Remote Viewing" only moves lower in tempo compared to the rest of FTNWO, DJ Stingray 313's keen ear to melody still burning brightly. F.T.N.W.O. remains an ageless album - an ominous piece from a near-distant past, back again as part of the Micron Audio catalog to soundtrack the new and uncertain times we live in.

Hope was first released in partnership with The Daily Mirror in April 2003 as a response to the Iraq War, the artist community came together for War Child once more with some of the biggest names in music recording an album of exclusive tracks in just three weeks to raise vital funds to give hope to the children of Iraq. The vinyl release of Hope features alternate artwork using the original concept designed by Nick Robertson that has never been used before. Hope is part of a series of four re-releases by War Child Records making the amazing music artists have donated to the charity available on DSPs and vinyl for the first time. All proceeds from these releases will directly fund War Child’s life saving work with children affected by conflict.

Kadi Yombo, published in 1989, is the most successful album in the quest for a fusion between tradition and modernity in Bwiti harp music of the Tsogho people of Gabon. Combining beating rattles with a layer of synthesizers, Papé Nziengui blends in a contrapuntal dialogue characteristic of harp playing: male song in appeal and female choir in response, male voice of the musical arc and rhythms of female worship. But above all it’s Tsogho ritual music and modern studio orchestration. The result is an initiatory itinerary of 10 musical pieces which are all milestones likely to be simultaneously listened to, danced, meditated on, and soon acclaimed. In the years since, Nziengui has traveled he world from Lagos to Paris, from Tokyo to Cordoba, from Brussels to Mexico City to become a true icon, the emblem of Gabonese music.

Like Bob Dylan, "electrifying" folk and Bob Marley mixing rock with reggae, some purists have criticized Nziengui for having distorted the music of harp by imposing a cross with modern instruments. They even went so far as to claim that Nziengui was just an average harpist covering his shortcomings with stunts that were only good for impressing neophytes; like playing a harp placed upside down behind his back or playing two or three harps simultaneously. Sincere convictions or venomous defamations, in any case, Nziengui never gave in to such attacks, imposing himself on the contrary to pay homage to the elders (Yves Mouenga, Jean Honoré Miabé, Vickoss Ekondo) while instructing the maximum of young people. He is thus the promoter of many young talents, the most prominent of which is certainly his nephew Jean Pierre Mingongué. In a conservative society where the sacred is confused with secrecy, exposing the mysteries of Bwiti in broad daylight can be punished by exclusion or even execution.

Papé Nziengui has always claimed that he faces such risks because he never felt enslaved to a community that governs his life, that regulates his conduct, that has a right of censorship over his activities. Like Ravi Shankar, the famous sitarist, Papé Nziengui is a man of rupture but also of openness, a transmitter of culture. As proof, he has established himself in Libreville, Gabo’s capital, as the main harpist for sessions and concerts, accompanying the greatest national artists (Akendengué, Rompavè, Annie-Flore Batchiellilys, Les Champs sur la Lowé, etc.) as well as foreign artists (Papa Wemba, Manu Dibango, Kassav', Toups Bebey, etc.). In 1988, he was the first harpist to release an album in the form of a cassette produced by the French Cultural Center (Papé Nziengui, Chants et Musiques Tsogho). At the same time, he created his own group (Bovenga), combining traditional music instruments (musical bow, drums, various percussion instruments, etc.) in the framework of a true national orchestra, which gave the first concert and the first tours of a traditional music that was both modern and dynamic, thus "democratizing" the harp, to the dismay of certain purists.

On the other hand, in modern music, dominated by the logic of profit or even commercialism, artistic creation must often be adjusted for a specific audience based on reason rather than heart. But instead of allowing himself to be distorted, Papé Nziengui has always tried to produce music that is not a caricature, worthy in its expression as in its content, of the sacredness and transcendence of the music of the Origins. This is what makes Nziengui not only the musician, but the man someone whose age hasn’t altered any of his freshness or authenticity

Kadi Yombo, published in 1989, is the most successful album in the quest for a fusion between tradition and modernity in Bwiti harp music of the Tsogho people of Gabon. Combining beating rattles with a layer of synthesizers, Papé Nziengui blends in a contrapuntal dialogue characteristic of harp playing: male song in appeal and female choir in response, male voice of the musical arc and rhythms of female worship. But above all it’s Tsogho ritual music and modern studio orchestration. The result is an initiatory itinerary of 10 musical pieces which are all milestones likely to be simultaneously listened to, danced, meditated on, and soon acclaimed. In the years since, Nziengui has traveled he world from Lagos to Paris, from Tokyo to Cordoba, from Brussels to Mexico City to become a true icon, the emblem of Gabonese music.

Like Bob Dylan, "electrifying" folk and Bob Marley mixing rock with reggae, some purists have criticized Nziengui for having distorted the music of harp by imposing a cross with modern instruments. They even went so far as to claim that Nziengui was just an average harpist covering his shortcomings with stunts that were only good for impressing neophytes; like playing a harp placed upside down behind his back or playing two or three harps simultaneously. Sincere convictions or venomous defamations, in any case, Nziengui never gave in to such attacks, imposing himself on the contrary to pay homage to the elders (Yves Mouenga, Jean Honoré Miabé, Vickoss Ekondo) while instructing the maximum of young people. He is thus the promoter of many young talents, the most prominent of which is certainly his nephew Jean Pierre Mingongué. In a conservative society where the sacred is confused with secrecy, exposing the mysteries of Bwiti in broad daylight can be punished by exclusion or even execution.

Papé Nziengui has always claimed that he faces such risks because he never felt enslaved to a community that governs his life, that regulates his conduct, that has a right of censorship over his activities. Like Ravi Shankar, the famous sitarist, Papé Nziengui is a man of rupture but also of openness, a transmitter of culture. As proof, he has established himself in Libreville, Gabo’s capital, as the main harpist for sessions and concerts, accompanying the greatest national artists (Akendengué, Rompavè, Annie-Flore Batchiellilys, Les Champs sur la Lowé, etc.) as well as foreign artists (Papa Wemba, Manu Dibango, Kassav', Toups Bebey, etc.). In 1988, he was the first harpist to release an album in the form of a cassette produced by the French Cultural Center (Papé Nziengui, Chants et Musiques Tsogho). At the same time, he created his own group (Bovenga), combining traditional music instruments (musical bow, drums, various percussion instruments, etc.) in the framework of a true national orchestra, which gave the first concert and the first tours of a traditional music that was both modern and dynamic, thus "democratizing" the harp, to the dismay of certain purists.

On the other hand, in modern music, dominated by the logic of profit or even commercialism, artistic creation must often be adjusted for a specific audience based on reason rather than heart. But instead of allowing himself to be distorted, Papé Nziengui has always tried to produce music that is not a caricature, worthy in its expression as in its content, of the sacredness and transcendence of the music of the Origins. This is what makes Nziengui not only the musician, but the man someone whose age hasn’t altered any of his freshness or authenticity

Kadi Yombo, published in 1989, is the most successful album in the quest for a fusion between tradition and modernity in Bwiti harp music of the Tsogho people of Gabon. Combining beating rattles with a layer of synthesizers, Papé Nziengui blends in a contrapuntal dialogue characteristic of harp playing: male song in appeal and female choir in response, male voice of the musical arc and rhythms of female worship. But above all it’s Tsogho ritual music and modern studio orchestration. The result is an initiatory itinerary of 10 musical pieces which are all milestones likely to be simultaneously listened to, danced, meditated on, and soon acclaimed. In the years since, Nziengui has traveled he world from Lagos to Paris, from Tokyo to Cordoba, from Brussels to Mexico City to become a true icon, the emblem of Gabonese music.

Like Bob Dylan, "electrifying" folk and Bob Marley mixing rock with reggae, some purists have criticized Nziengui for having distorted the music of harp by imposing a cross with modern instruments. They even went so far as to claim that Nziengui was just an average harpist covering his shortcomings with stunts that were only good for impressing neophytes; like playing a harp placed upside down behind his back or playing two or three harps simultaneously. Sincere convictions or venomous defamations, in any case, Nziengui never gave in to such attacks, imposing himself on the contrary to pay homage to the elders (Yves Mouenga, Jean Honoré Miabé, Vickoss Ekondo) while instructing the maximum of young people. He is thus the promoter of many young talents, the most prominent of which is certainly his nephew Jean Pierre Mingongué. In a conservative society where the sacred is confused with secrecy, exposing the mysteries of Bwiti in broad daylight can be punished by exclusion or even execution.

Papé Nziengui has always claimed that he faces such risks because he never felt enslaved to a community that governs his life, that regulates his conduct, that has a right of censorship over his activities. Like Ravi Shankar, the famous sitarist, Papé Nziengui is a man of rupture but also of openness, a transmitter of culture. As proof, he has established himself in Libreville, Gabo’s capital, as the main harpist for sessions and concerts, accompanying the greatest national artists (Akendengué, Rompavè, Annie-Flore Batchiellilys, Les Champs sur la Lowé, etc.) as well as foreign artists (Papa Wemba, Manu Dibango, Kassav', Toups Bebey, etc.). In 1988, he was the first harpist to release an album in the form of a cassette produced by the French Cultural Center (Papé Nziengui, Chants et Musiques Tsogho). At the same time, he created his own group (Bovenga), combining traditional music instruments (musical bow, drums, various percussion instruments, etc.) in the framework of a true national orchestra, which gave the first concert and the first tours of a traditional music that was both modern and dynamic, thus "democratizing" the harp, to the dismay of certain purists.

On the other hand, in modern music, dominated by the logic of profit or even commercialism, artistic creation must often be adjusted for a specific audience based on reason rather than heart. But instead of allowing himself to be distorted, Papé Nziengui has always tried to produce music that is not a caricature, worthy in its expression as in its content, of the sacredness and transcendence of the music of the Origins. This is what makes Nziengui not only the musician, but the man someone whose age hasn’t altered any of his freshness or authenticity

Gondwana Records sign LA bassist and composer Seth Ford-Young's Phi-Psonics project and announce a remastered deluxe-edition of The Cradle featuring bonus material

Phi-Psonics is a meditative, immersive instrumental group from Los Angeles, led by bassist Seth Ford-Young and featuring Sylvain Carton on woodwinds, Mitchell Yoshida on electric piano, and Josh Collazo on drums. Their deeply soulfulmusic draws on jazz and classical influences together with Ford-Young's own musical experiences, relationships, and his introduction to spirituality, yoga and philosophy at a young age, to create something uniquely its own. Phi-Psonics' name and ultimate aim is to find 'Phi' – the golden mean – in art, nature and self. Ford-Young explains:

"It's a bit of a cliché, but music saved my life many times and instilled in me a belief in the great power of healing through art. It is my hope and intention that this music provides healing to someone somewhere."

Originally from Washington DC area, Ford-Young moved to California in the early 90s and fell in love with the deep sounds of the upright bass and the music of Charles Mingus, John and Alice Coltrane, and Duke Ellington along with Bach, Chopin, Pärt, and Satie. He immersed himself deeply in music and keen to learn combinedintense personal study with collaborations, tours, and recordings with artists such as Tom Waits, Beats Antique, and John Vanderslice. In 2010 he moved from the San-Francisco Bay area to the Los Angeles hills and continued his explorations. But great music is rarely just about music and Ford-Young's meditative, soulful music draws on more than just the twin wellsprings of jazz and classical music:

"My mother was a yoga teacher from the early 70's until recently and taught me yoga and meditation at an early age, my stepfather is an Aikido instructor and student of the teachings of Gurdjieff. Those were all early areas of study that I came back to many times throughout my life. Phi-Psonics has been a project that unapologetically synthesizes some of these ideas into our music".

It's this mixture of influences, musical and extramusical, that gives the music of Phi-Psonics it's immersive quality and quiet power. Revealingly the music that would becomeThe Cradle, wasn't written specifically for an album, originally Ford-Young was just writing down what was coming through. As time went by and the album began to take shape, the world situation seemed to be getting darker and his compositions aim to offer hope as a response to the negative influences that abound today. Remarkably for such a beautiful sounding record, it was recorded at the composer's home, rather than in a studio, but the relaxed nature of this process gives the music an airy lightness that propels the music to some magical spaces.

Originally self-released on vinyl in a limited run just as the world went into lockdown, The Cradle reached Matthew Halsall (founder of Gondwana Records) when he aws looking for music for his Worldwide FM show and he was blown away, hearing a kindred spirit at work. Halsall explains:

"Phi-Psonics make beautiful, humble and honest music, it's not showy, but it has a deep vibe that will elevate your mind and soul if you let it. When we heard The Cradle we reached out and are really super delighted to welcome Seth and his band to our label". Whereas for Ford Young: "Connecting with Matthew and the Gondwana records family has been a light in the darkness of the last years - to have my music make connections even as we are more isolated."

Ford-Young is currently putting the finishing touches to the second Phi-Psonics record, but aware that only a select few had heard The Cradle, let alone had the chance to buy a copy, and entranced by its deceptive simplicity and elevating energy, Halsall suggested that Gondwana present the album as a remastered 'deluxe edition' with an extended running time featuring extra tracks and new artwork from Daniel Halsall.

The Cradle starts with First Step, perfectly setting the tone for the whole album, it is a beautiful, soulful slice of musical calm gently propelled by Ford-Young's resonant bass and elevated by sublime flute and Wurlitzer electric piano solos. The seductive title track The Cradle was written way back in 2011 during a time of great personal change that led the composer to a feeling of newness and nurture. The magical, winsome Desert Ride is inspired by many rides through the grandly cinematic Mojave Desert. You can experience how incredibly full of life it's harsh landscape is if you slow down to its tempo. The gentle, sublime Mama is a tribute to mothers of all kinds, beautiful and heroic. Drum Talk was largely improvised, Ford-Young and the band agreed on a topic and recorded their conversation. Choosing their notes based on how Josh's drums were tuned. Like Glass is named for the special properties of Glass. Like some music, glass is delicate, yet has structure. The first of the two bonus tracks Still Dancing was written during the early days of 2020 in response to the challenges we all were facing then. It's a reminder that the figurative dance continues and that real dancing is essential. And the second, The Searcher, also written as a response to 2020, is a gently hypnotic song about the introspection and growth that can spring from a difficult situation.

This then is The Cradle, a quiet self-contained masterpiece, life-affirming and elevating in equal measure and the first offering from a wonderful new voice in spiritual jazz and the latest members of the global Gondwana Records family.

The song, subtitled “A Garden of Personal Mirrors”, was written in 1968 by the film’s marketing strategist Mike Kaplan. Kubrick proposed it immediately following an unsuccessful pitch by MGM Records, who wanted to release a single to tie in with the film, and amid reports the Beatles were also writing a song. Presented by Wave Theory as a historical release, 2001: A Garden of Personal Mirrors adds a new chapter to the film’s mythology. This limited edition 7” vinyl will be available for the first time ever on 26th November 2021
2001 is infamous in the annals of film music history for the way that Kubrick abandoned Alex North’s original score in favour of classical and popular pieces that have become synonymous with the movie. Following a digital release last year that caught the imagination of the film’s fans, Wave Theory is now releasing a limited edition vinyl that will give the opportunity for soundtrack aficionados to own a piece of movie history.
Mike Kaplan explains, "The Single's intent was to capture the different responses 2001 was generating from audiences and the media, the many levels of interpretation and appreciation, from its hypnotic visuals to its metaphysical illuminations. We also wanted to instil curiosity among audiences who had not yet seen what was becoming a cultural phenomenon.”
Co-founder of Wave Theory Records Dan Jones said, “Attempting to write any music for Kubrick would be a daunting task, as Alex North — and now we discover Mike Kaplan — were both to discover. Both of them are examples of the complex creative interactions that Kubrick’s films distilled.”

The Accra-born pianist and frontman only released a few albums in small quantities, yet two of them are among the most sought-after records from 70's Africa. This was the first.

So what do we know After learning his craft in Benin and playing with the likes of Orchestre Poly-Rythmo de Cotonou, ROB returned to Accra to write his own material and find a sound.

Hooked on the driving funk and raw soul of stars such as James Brown and Otis Redding, he would often imitate his heroes on his father's piano during school holidays.

The title track sets the pace with a JBs-like rhythm, ROB almost shamanic with his sparse yet commanding vocal. The organ and wah-wah guitar spin us out before those imperious horns bring us back in.

And what better way to close this set than with 'More', swept up in a call and response between Rob and his backing singers as a 'Blow Your Head' synth flares and the brass blasts. Good times guaranteed.

As the man himself says, 'Funky music is in my blood. What you hear is the coming out of my mind.' No one sounds like Rob, because there is no one like Rob.

Second album from the Wipers. Mastered by Greg Sage. Now available on cassette for the first time on Jackpot Records. Simply obliterating any conception of the Wipers as a mere punk band, Greg Sage released this follow-up to "Is This Real?" in 1981 - a sophisticated, overwhelming response to the evil times marked by the turn of the decade. Broken up into six long songs, "Youth of America" is a much colder, harrowing experience than the teen angst of their debut.

Rudolf Abramov hit all Optimo Music's buttons at once. Drums, energy, songs, instrumentals, super production, Post Punk echoing, dance floor destroying, home listening friendly, and completely unique.

Who are they and what are they about? Read on...

Rudolf Abramov is a duo based in Berlin. They seem to open a door to unexpected musical encounters. It's an almost impossible task to sum up their sound in a comprehensible way, but in their own words their music is 'a response to a seemingly endless conflict about disgust, acceptance and love.' Since the duo likes to invite other musicians and fellow humans to add to their pieces, this often creates another layer to their unexpected musical encounters.

"Losing Perspective" is the result of a journey that began with a week-long recording session outside the city. Back in Berlin the skeletons of the track gradually grew in flesh, experience and emotion, describing this time in a vibrant and ever-changing city; a city where the faded colours sometimes seem more appealing than the unifying glow of the new.

In order to preserve for ourselves the conflicting colours in their fantastic disharmony, we have therefore watched the pieces change rather than moving them in a particular direction. The result is a number of tracks with different facets that derive from different moods and voices, indulging in diversity.

At the end of this process, we look back at this colourful collage and connect our own very personal history with it and both resolve in harmony. When asking the cat from our studio’s courtyard for example, she said that "Losing Perspective" was about stray tomcats who have lost their old home port to a newfangled establishment wandering randomly through the days in search of songbirds, distraction and rest. And we feel like she kinda has a point there.

The Brkn Record is a new project led and produced by Jake Ferguson, the co-founder and bass player for the UK's foundational deep jazz outfit the Heliocentrics. With fellow Heliocentrics co-founder and legendary drummer Malcolm Catto, Ferguson has been a regular collaborator with globally recognised artists including Archie Shepp, Mulatu Astatke, Melvin Van Peebles, Orlando Julius and many others. The Architecture of Oppression Part 1 represents Ferguson's debut as a bandleader and orchestrator, and manifests as a committed and soulful response to ongoing and systemic anti-black racism, social oppression and state violence both at home in London and across the globe. Combining poetry, testimony and song with rich and cinematic backdrops, Ferguson has produced a sui generis sound that conjures flavours of Arthur Verocai, Ennio Morricone, classic library productions, Madlib-style deep-jazz beat science, and psychedelic soul. With bandmate Malcolm Catto on drums, Ferguson draws on their long years of collaborative experience in the Heliocentrics to build an album of striking texture and depth.

The Brkn Record is a new project led and produced by Jake Ferguson, the co-founder and bass player for the UK's foundational deep jazz outfit the Heliocentrics. With fellow Heliocentrics co-founder and legendary drummer Malcolm Catto, Ferguson has been a regular collaborator with globally recognised artists including Archie Shepp, Mulatu Astatke, Melvin Van Peebles, Orlando Julius and many others. The Architecture of Oppression Part 1 represents Ferguson's debut as a bandleader and orchestrator, and manifests as a committed and soulful response to ongoing and systemic anti-black racism, social oppression and state violence both at home in London and across the globe. Combining poetry, testimony and song with rich and cinematic backdrops, Ferguson has produced a sui generis sound that conjures flavours of Arthur Verocai, Ennio Morricone, classic library productions, Madlib-style deep-jazz beat science, and psychedelic soul. With bandmate Malcolm Catto on drums, Ferguson draws on their long years of collaborative experience in the Heliocentrics to build an album of striking texture and depth.

The debut album from Conduct, ‘Borderlands’, (nominated for ‘Best Album’ in DJ Mag’s annual awards.
Organic clashes with electronic in a whirlpool of tribal head banging, fragile introspection and beautiful sonic architecture.

Striving to show the world what can be achieved at 170 beats per minute, Conduct’s palette is a dramatic juxtaposition between electronic and acoustic instrumentation, with a cinematic approach to composition influenced by the likes of Hans Zimmer and Jesper Kyd. While it’s common for drum & bass producers to concentrate on dance-floor impact, Conduct‘s primary focus is the evocation of an emotional response in the listener, creating a body of work that lasts far beyond the club.

Following their critically acclaimed 2016 debut album, ‘Borderlands’, (nominated for ‘Best Album’ in DJ Mag’s annual awards), Conduct’s highly-anticipated second major work drops in 2017 via Blu Mar Ten Music.

‘Oma' is an immense LP, taking its sonic cues from 'Borderlands' while expanding them into far wilder territories. Organic clashes with electronic in a whirlpool of tribal head banging, fragile introspection and beautiful sonic architecture. Skittering rhythms, rock solid basses, angelic vocals and heartbreaking instrumentation are guaranteed to make 'Oma' one of the most notable drum & bass albums of 2017 and Conduct one of its prominent acts.

Striving to show the world what can be achieved at 170 beats per minute, Conduct’s palette is a dramatic juxtaposition between electronic and acoustic instrumentation, with a cinematic approach to composition influenced by the likes of Hans Zimmer and Jesper Kyd. While it’s common for drum & bass producers to concentrate on dance-floor impact, Conduct‘s primary focus is the evocation of an emotional response in the listener, creating a body of work that lasts far beyond the club.

Gondwana Records sign LA bassist and composer Seth Ford-Young's Phi-Psonics project and announce a remastered deluxe-edition of The Cradle featuring bonus material

Phi-Psonics is a meditative, immersive instrumental group from Los Angeles, led by bassist Seth Ford-Young and featuring Sylvain Carton on woodwinds, Mitchell Yoshida on electric piano, and Josh Collazo on drums. Their deeply soulfulmusic draws on jazz and classical influences together with Ford-Young's own musical experiences, relationships, and his introduction to spirituality, yoga and philosophy at a young age, to create something uniquely its own. Phi-Psonics' name and ultimate aim is to find 'Phi' – the golden mean – in art, nature and self. Ford-Young explains:

"It's a bit of a cliché, but music saved my life many times and instilled in me a belief in the great power of healing through art. It is my hope and intention that this music provides healing to someone somewhere."

Originally from Washington DC area, Ford-Young moved to California in the early 90s and fell in love with the deep sounds of the upright bass and the music of Charles Mingus, John and Alice Coltrane, and Duke Ellington along with Bach, Chopin, Pärt, and Satie. He immersed himself deeply in music and keen to learn combinedintense personal study with collaborations, tours, and recordings with artists such as Tom Waits, Beats Antique, and John Vanderslice. In 2010 he moved from the San-Francisco Bay area to the Los Angeles hills and continued his explorations. But great music is rarely just about music and Ford-Young's meditative, soulful music draws on more than just the twin wellsprings of jazz and classical music:

"My mother was a yoga teacher from the early 70's until recently and taught me yoga and meditation at an early age, my stepfather is an Aikido instructor and student of the teachings of Gurdjieff. Those were all early areas of study that I came back to many times throughout my life. Phi-Psonics has been a project that unapologetically synthesizes some of these ideas into our music".

It's this mixture of influences, musical and extramusical, that gives the music of Phi-Psonics it's immersive quality and quiet power. Revealingly the music that would becomeThe Cradle, wasn't written specifically for an album, originally Ford-Young was just writing down what was coming through. As time went by and the album began to take shape, the world situation seemed to be getting darker and his compositions aim to offer hope as a response to the negative influences that abound today. Remarkably for such a beautiful sounding record, it was recorded at the composer's home, rather than in a studio, but the relaxed nature of this process gives the music an airy lightness that propels the music to some magical spaces.

Originally self-released on vinyl in a limited run just as the world went into lockdown, The Cradle reached Matthew Halsall (founder of Gondwana Records) when he aws looking for music for his Worldwide FM show and he was blown away, hearing a kindred spirit at work. Halsall explains:

"Phi-Psonics make beautiful, humble and honest music, it's not showy, but it has a deep vibe that will elevate your mind and soul if you let it. When we heard The Cradle we reached out and are really super delighted to welcome Seth and his band to our label". Whereas for Ford Young: "Connecting with Matthew and the Gondwana records family has been a light in the darkness of the last years - to have my music make connections even as we are more isolated."

Ford-Young is currently putting the finishing touches to the second Phi-Psonics record, but aware that only a select few had heard The Cradle, let alone had the chance to buy a copy, and entranced by its deceptive simplicity and elevating energy, Halsall suggested that Gondwana present the album as a remastered 'deluxe edition' with an extended running time featuring extra tracks and new artwork from Daniel Halsall.

The Cradle starts with First Step, perfectly setting the tone for the whole album, it is a beautiful, soulful slice of musical calm gently propelled by Ford-Young's resonant bass and elevated by sublime flute and Wurlitzer electric piano solos. The seductive title track The Cradle was written way back in 2011 during a time of great personal change that led the composer to a feeling of newness and nurture. The magical, winsome Desert Ride is inspired by many rides through the grandly cinematic Mojave Desert. You can experience how incredibly full of life it's harsh landscape is if you slow down to its tempo. The gentle, sublime Mama is a tribute to mothers of all kinds, beautiful and heroic. Drum Talk was largely improvised, Ford-Young and the band agreed on a topic and recorded their conversation. Choosing their notes based on how Josh's drums were tuned. Like Glass is named for the special properties of Glass. Like some music, glass is delicate, yet has structure. The first of the two bonus tracks Still Dancing was written during the early days of 2020 in response to the challenges we all were facing then. It's a reminder that the figurative dance continues and that real dancing is essential. And the second, The Searcher, also written as a response to 2020, is a gently hypnotic song about the introspection and growth that can spring from a difficult situation.

This then is The Cradle, a quiet self-contained masterpiece, life-affirming and elevating in equal measure and the first offering from a wonderful new voice in spiritual jazz and the latest members of the global Gondwana Records family.

Phantasy are proud to present the vinyl re-issue of Mystery Jets’ seminal 2008 album ’Twenty One’. Produced by Erol Alkan, the beloved LP includes hit singles ‘Young Love’ and ’Two Doors Down'.

The LP is available to pre-order now on deluxe coloured vinyl. The deluxe edition features a bonus disc of previously unreleased demos and rare B-sides.

“Of all the messages we’ve received from our fans over the intervening years, the single question that has come up more than any other, is ‘When will Twenty One will be released on vinyl again?’. Much to our frustration, our response has never been anything more than a helpless, resounding shrug. That is, until now.

The year being 2021, and all the band being firm believers in the powers of numerology, we felt there would be no better time of telling you that for the first time since its release, Twenty One will finally be available to own on vinyl again. As well as reissuing the original album, we have also dug through the archives and compiled a special selection of never-heard-before outtakes, demos and rarities from that era to accompany the deluxe version of the album.

We are delighted to be reissuing the record via Phantasy, the label founded by Erol Alkan, who produced Twenty One and mentored us to make an album we’re still immensely proud of. This is the record you have been asking for, and the one we always wanted you to hear.

Phantasy are proud to present the vinyl re-issue of Mystery Jets’ seminal 2008 album ’Twenty One’. Produced by Erol Alkan, the beloved LP includes hit singles ‘Young Love’ and ’Two Doors Down'.

The LP reissue is available to pre-order now!

“Of all the messages we’ve received from our fans over the intervening years, the single question that has come up more than any other, is ‘When will Twenty One will be released on vinyl again?’. Much to our frustration, our response has never been anything more than a helpless, resounding shrug. That is, until now.

The year being 2021, and all the band being firm believers in the powers of numerology, we felt there would be no better time of telling you that for the first time since its release, Twenty One will finally be available to own on vinyl again. As well as reissuing the original album, we have also dug through the archives and compiled a special selection of never-heard-before outtakes, demos and rarities from that era to accompany the deluxe version of the album.

We are delighted to be reissuing the record via Phantasy, the label founded by Erol Alkan, who produced Twenty One and mentored us to make an album we’re still immensely proud of. This is the record you have been asking for, and the one we always wanted you to hear.

'All That's Been Lost' is the debut album from Glasgow based singersongwriter Steve Grozier.The album's title, chosen before the pandemic, has turned out to be strangely prophetic
Recorded at 'The Ranch', home studio of friend, producer and bandmate, Roscoe Wilson.Grozier was all set to record before being abruptly halted by lockdown.

When it was safe to continue, the dynamic of the recording process had changed dramatically. Given the size of the studio, the musicians playing on the record all had to record their parts separately or remotely.
Despite the constraints, 'All That's Been Lost' is a fully realised piece of work. The themes of loss, darkness and emotional pain find parallels in the work of Phosphorescent or Richmond Fontaine.
'Sam, I Know You Tried' is a dark, layered rocker, featuring excellent guitar work from producer and multi- instrumentalist Roscoe Wilson. It was written in response to losing a close friend. 'Blue and Gold' and 'When the Darkness Comes' are Grozier at his best,his effortless vocal sitting in contrast to the heart-breaking lyrics. The beautiful 'I Miss My Friend' is dedicated to Neal Casal and is a touching tribute to one of Grozier's heroes.

The two singles taken from the album, 'Memories' and 'Power in the Light', showcase Grozier's range as a songwriter. On 'Memories' we find Grozier coming to terms with ageing and the pain and beauty in doing that with someone you love, but at the same time aware of all that has been lost along the way. It features some intricate dobro work from Nathan Golub (Mandolin Orange, Mountain Goats). On the second single 'Power in the Light', Grozier is at his most hopeful. He sings,"I'm strong in the fight, there's grief and anger, but there's power in the light". Grozier says that light is "whatever you need it to be or wherever you find the strength to go on. To keep trying"
.Ultimately, this is the underlying theme of 'All That's Been Lost'. Hope.

Previous album released on Dead Oceans. Previous album was a collaboration with Brian Eno. Past press coverage from Pitchfork, SPIN, The Guardian, Drowned in Sound, Dusted, The Quietus, and many more. Since the release of his last album 2017’s Finding Shore, a collaboration with Brian Eno pianist and singer-songwriter Tom Rogerson’s life has undergone a number of dramatic transformations. While writing his new album Retreat to Bliss, Rogerson had a child, lost a parent, and received his own diagnosis of a rare form of blood cancer. The new decade brought him from Berlin to the Suffolk of his childhood, composing profound pieces of minimal songwriting in the church next to his parents’ home. Rogerson studied composition at the Royal Academy of Music under mentors like Harrison Birtwistle, and he made his live debut as an improvising pianist in 2002, before releasing an improvised record with Reid Anderson (Bad Plus) and Mike Lewis (Happy Apple, Bon Iver) in 2004. He formed the band Three Trapped Tigers in 2007, expertly blending elements of electronic, jazz and noise rock into a cohesive whole. The band earned a reputation for innovative live shows and went on to perform and collaborate with artists like Brian Eno, Deftones, and the Dillinger Escape Plan. It was working with Eno, another Suffolk native, that eventually led Rogerson back to his roots and back to a place where he could write Retreat to Bliss, his solo debut album. “All my life, the piano has been my constant companion, my confessor, my best friend, and my worst enemy,” Rogerson explains. “I’ve always written music on and for the piano, but it felt too personal, too private to release.” Indeed, listening to Retreat to Bliss feels almost like eavesdropping, as though you’re crouched in the belfry of a Suffolk church, bearing witness to a form of musical bloodletting. For the first time in his noteworthy career, Rogerson has combined masterful piano playing and subtle electronics with the texture of his own voice, an attempt to express deeply private emotions that were difficult to articulate using instrumental music alone. “The last few years have brought some struggle, some joy, and a lot of change. My response has been to retreat to what I trust the most: the piano, my voice, and the landscape I grew up in. That’s how the album got its title, and how I came to be ready finally to release a solo record.” The eleven tracks that make up Retreat to Bliss were recorded by Leo Abrahams (Brian Eno, David Byrne, Grace Jones) over the course of just a few days, a process that emphasized spontaneity and the artist’s own commitment to improvisation. Secular yet devotional, intensely personal yet profound, the experience of listening to Retreat to Bliss seems to evade characterization. It’s physical and emotional, a glimpse into the mind of an artist who has chosen exposure over withdrawal, who uses his command of the piano to chart an unflinching path forward, never looking back. UK press campaign by Someone Great. Press Quotes "A meeting of minds that is full of rewarding surprises, challenging and surprising one another, and their listeners, with music that feels alive and wondrous…” Pitchfork // "Both mournful and dazzlingly optimistic, a taste of the conflict found so ofen in nature and reflected so elegantly across the course of the record.” The Line of Best Fit // "Many avant-garde instrumental albums exist to craf a mood; Rogerson and Eno merge these moods, sounds and themes together efortlessly and radiantly on Finding Shore” Exclaim // Track List 01 Descent 02 Oath 03 Buried Deep 04 Toumani 05 Drone Finder part 2 06 Chant 07 Rapture 1 08 Open Out Span Wide View 09 A Clearing 10 Retreat To 11 Coda

‘American Foursquare’, Denison Witmer’s 10th - and best - album finally receives its long-awaited physical release.

Written after relocating his family to his hometown of Lancaster, PA, it’s a response to these major life changes - a meditation on empathy, on love and on the meaning of home.


“An album of extraordinary beauty and emotional force… His Songs are like exquisite miniatures” -The Sunday Times

“American Foursquare’ is a breath-taking, humble outpouring of reflection capturing growth, change, longing, and contentment: In other words, it’s the soundtrack to a life lived.” - Atwood Magazine
Tracklisting

P.E.’s sophomore album, ‘The Leather Lemon’, ushers in a new era for the New York band. A wild ride through chewy bubblegum pop, sweeping synthetic orchestrations and mutant club beats, the album slides ever closer to the fully-realized pop sensibility only winked at with their debut album, ‘Person’ (2020), and subsequent releases.

 Recorded primarily at Schenke’s Studio Windows in Brooklyn, NY, ‘The Leather Lemon’ was cultivated from a fertile creative period between spring 2020 and summer 2021, which also yielded 2021’s acclaimed ‘The Reason For My Love’ EP.

 Digging into mystery, romance and sex appeal, the album centres its sound within a Bermuda Triangle of dance music, electronic composition and experimental rock. Members Jonathan Schenke, Bob Jones and Jonny Campolo play within pop parameters, building upon free-form collaboration to create a fluorescent groove machine that harnesses the energy of their frenetic live shows.

 Singer Veronica Torres explores her softer side, expanding her vocal repertoire from spoken word and jagged growls to cherubic and sensuous psalms.

 Sax virtuoso Benjamin Jaffe’s chiseled experimental tone is heard in an extended solo of true romance in ‘Tears in the Rain’, a sombre surrealist duet penned by Torres and Andrew Savage, singer/guitarist of Parquet Courts.

 It is a reckoning record for the times; an album of psychedelic resurfacing, real-time response to world events, and soft, sympathetic magic. This is a collection of songs shaped by five individuals who embrace music-making as a way to centre themselves in times of uncertainty; it’s resilience and imagination given shape. ‘The Leather Lemon’ is a true sweet-and-sour listening experience, an album as bright and clear as it is fractured and fun.

REDSHARK was founded in 2012 in Barcelona - Spain, by Philip Graves (guitar) with the aim of delivering Classic Pounding Heavy Speed Metal. Their traditional 80s metal influences may plunder the nostalgia circuit but REDSHARK are ruthlessly carrying the torch with great attitude, and powerful melodic songwriting. The band had their full line up fixed in 2013 with Javier Bono on 2nd guitar, Mark Striker on drums, Chris Carrest on bass, and Pau Correas on vocals. Their debut official release "Evil Realm" ep came out in 2019 and showed the band pushing the velocity further. Those intense five songs drew a roaring response and helped to spread REDSHARK name nationwide and abroad. REDSHARK have since honed their gloriously raw yet precisely incisive, dark, catchy and addictive speed heavy metal crunch staying faithful to their original influences taken from undisputed metal legends like Judas Priest, Savatage, Exciter and Metal Church. The band's albums front cover concepts look entertaining with their comic book type of artworks depicting a mad red human shark on a killing spree. It also represents the band's out for blood impulse in churning out those hard hitting riffs and also refers to their energetic live performances. That redshark is obviously the band's mascot. In 2021, they composed and recorded their full length debut album 'Digital Race’. It was produced by Jaume Perna (Jack Dark) and mixed & mastered by Gonzalo Vivero in In The Red Audio. As always, the cover art was by Jose Antonio Vives. LG Valeta , guitar player from the much acclaimed ‘77 guests on the track 'Pallid Hands' with a stunning Flamenco guitar solo. REDSHARK is pursuing their heavy speed galore with 'Digital Race', sticking to their traditional and catchy melodic sound that has been associated with the band 80s tinged Metal since their early days.

Conduct's focus is firmly on the juxtaposition between electronic and acoustic instrumentation, with a cinematic approach to composition influenced by the likes of Hans Zimmer and Jesper Kyd. Conduct strive to create an emotional response in the listener, aiming to create a timeless body of work.

Following up to their acclaimed "Hold" EP from last year, German duo Alma reemerge on Definition with their new transmission, "Mother". Through four cuts dropping anchor down the most remote nooks of our dance-friendly galaxy, Alma move the cursor from proper floor-focused 4x4 grooves to kosmische-informed pop excursions with dextrous style and seamless elegance. Crafting their own blend of emotionally whelming club music, it's material primed for extended use whether you are sitting on some high-rise, towering rooftops at sunrise or enjoying a freeze-dried cocktail on Alpha Centauri. Presented in both original version and remix form courtesy of label head Definition himself, title-track "Mother" is the epitome of a slo-burner, rolling at low speed but gaining tension, weight and impactfulness as it runs. Circuits sizzling and piano stabs blazing, Alma dish out a compelling sample of their cross-dimensional wares, sure to take any dancefloor in the zone without further ado. Definition's Remix revamp trades the original's steady swing for a further syncopated, newbeat-infected swagger, laying further emphasis on the synth leads and lashing drumwork as poetic, bleached-out pads keep painting the sky all shades of pastel. A more Italo-inflected affair at first, the tear-jerking "Lost In The Stars" has us gliding in a parallel universe of its own, where epic-sized synth combers and muscular bass onslaughts avalanche over brittle lines of soft-tongued vocals. As concretely submerging as it is designed to trigger off deep emotional response from the ravers, this one is tailored to weave instant communion between the jockey and his audience. Flinging in the breaks and cross-cutting delays, Kiel outfit Avidus shift the angle of approach towards harder, faster EBM firepower, binding their rowdy, FX-soaked chords with the chorus to create a wholly distinct dancing and listening experience.

A decade ago, the static signal of “Terminal” booting-up sounded and Galactic Melt launched into the atmosphere for the first time; Seth Haley’s Com Truise project arrived in full. A graphic designer based in New Jersey at the time, Haley found a sound on his synthesizers that sparked an immediate nostalgia response, tapping into classic sci-fi and proto-electro in a way that felt early ‘80s in scope, but also remarkably weird — stutter-step proggy and intoxicatingly psychedelic. Unknowingly he had stepped into a genre prism; suppose we know it now as synth-wave though the tag never landed squarely. To Haley, this was a space to explore and a story to tell, which he’d do across a saga of releases that would resonate with a legion of fans and send the producer touring the world in perpetual orbit. His full-length debut on Ghostly International, Galactic Melt delivered on the promise of Haley’s Cyanide Sisters EP as well as high-profile remixes for Twin Shadow, Neon Indian, and Daft Punk. Bold, imaginative, and unapologetically cosmic, the set occupies a beloved coordinate in the Com Truise catalog, considered the gateway for many. To celebrate its 10th

anniversary, Haley and Ghostly have repressed the long-sold out 2xLP and added five unreleased tracks to the expanded digital edition, giving this classic its due treatment as it passes the milestone.

From the keyed-up, skyscraping machine love of “VHS Sex” and “Cathode Girls” to pulsing cuts like “Air Cal” and “Ether Drift,” the music on Galactic Melt is mathy, forlorn, funky, and mighty in technical ambition. That they’re all noticeably cinematic is, of course, by design. Haley envisioned Galactic Melt as a “sort of film score...from the mind,” chronicling the life and death of Com Truise, the world’s first synthetic/robotic astronaut, from his creation and time on earth to his subsequent mission to a newly discovered galaxy called Wave 1 (released in 2014).

Spaceship is Mark S. Williamson, a musician, sound artist and educator based in Todmorden, West Yorkshire. His work is often made in response to his environment, working on location, combining field recordings with electronic and acoustic instrumentation, usually recorded outside, amid the landscape and weather. Mark has recorded for wiaiwya, Apollolaan, the Dark Outside and his own Forged River Recordings. His work has been reviewed by The Wire, Electronic Sound, Shindig and The Quietus and he was recently one of the fourteen artists featured in Electronic Sound Magazine’s ‘field recording special’. His collaboration with Luke Turner on series of readings from Luke’s book ‘Out of the Woods’ has seen performances at Cecil Sharp House, Port Eliot Festival, The Trades Club in Hebden Bridge, Krankenhaus Festival and the Horse Hospital and he recently collaborated with the artist Michael Powell on his Calderfolk project. A direct sequel to 2019’s Outcrops (also on wiaiwya), Ravines moves its focus from the uplands above Todmorden to the narrow, steep sided ravines, known as cloughs, that contain the streams that flow down the valley sides to feed the River Calder. These valleys, formed over hundreds, if not thousands of years can be peaceful sanctuaries, their stepped pools and waterfalls a shelter from the windswept moors. In time of heavy rainfall though, they become the conduits for the rapidly descending overland flows which reach the Calder and, in extreme circumstances, cause the floods which remain a part of valley life. These cloughs also saw the beginnings of industry in the area. Colden Clough and Jumble Hole Clough contain the ruin of small water fed mills which would evolve into the much larger steam powered facilities in Todmorden and Hebden Bridge. Mostly recorded in the field using portable equipment, these pieces are intended to reflect all three of these aspects; the peace, the violence and the beginnings of humankind’s ultimate separation from the landscape brought on by the industrial revolution. The sleeve is by Maxim Peter Griffin, an artist, illustrator and writer based in Lincolnshire. A fine art graduate and former stonemason, over the past few years he has been building a body of work that echo his experiences on foot between the North Sea and the hills. "...a luminous soundtrack to the passage of geological time." Shindig // "Williamson is building desire tunnels, churning through the layers of rock and soil to find his conclusions." The Wire // "These rumbling synth drifts and ominous drones transport you to entirely different places-like being cast adrift in a cosmic void" Electronic Sound // "...the droning synthesizer waves conjure up something spectral and eerie, stretching out like the wide horizon..." The Quietus // "Beautiful." Hannah Peel

Spaced Repetitions is the brand-new label by veteran producer Manuel Tur. Following his most recent releases on Running Back and Lossless, the German digs deeper on the “Alphalpha EP”, fusing hints of sampled house grooves and bleepy techno synth work. With the lead track reminiscent of classic Parisian dark chemistry à la Motorbass, things get more driving on the B-side: the percussive “La Terre” leads us to the magnetic acid groove of “Immune Response”, rounding off this hypnotic three-track EP.

2LP with a 4-page colour insert

As Guadeloupean vocalist and composer Marie-Line Dahomay writes in her liner notes to the compilation, gwoka is more than a style of music, it is “a way of living and thinking.” Rooted in the social, musical and ritual practices of enslaved African people and their descendants on Guadeloupe, gwoka has always sought to express the spirit of independence and resistance authentic to the island.Building on its traditional call-and-response form and the ideas of pivotal figures like Gérard Lockel and Christian Laviso, modern gwoka evolved throughout the second half of the twentieth century to include funk, jazz and electronic influences.

Defined by its propensity for innovation and experimentation, this compilation charts the most radical changes to modern gwoka, capturing a sensory riot of traditional répertoires, rhythms and makè techniques fused with genre-defying experimentation.Whether heard in the deeply cosmic, spiritual music of Dao, Freydy Doressamy and Gaoulé Mizik, or the jazz funk inflections of Gui Konket and Horizon, the music here is united by the feeling of santiman ka, crucial not only to gwoka music but the identity of Guadeloupe at large.

As co-curator Cédric Lassonde (Bueaty & The Beats) writes: “What unifies these selections is the depth of the compositions, the experimentation around the santiman ka, and the spirit of resistance and liberation against slavery, be it modern or ancestral. With a thirst for innovation typical of the island’s creole culture, the ka spirit is deeply rooted in collective history and in a quest for identity.”

Co-curator Brandon Hocura (Séance Centre) continues: “The creative energy of these musicians is powerful and demonstrates a universal pursuit of resistance, freedom and identity. Their voices are distinct, but the chorus rises high and carries their message far across the sea.”

Lèsprit Ka: New Directions in Gwoka Music from Guadeloupe 1981-2010 is the first compilation of its kind to bring the sound of modern gwoka to a wider audience, with many of the featured musicians still active today. Presented as a double LP, the release features a specially commissioned essay by Guadeloupean musician Marie-Line Dahomey, and extensive liner notes from Cédric Lassonde and Séance Centre’s Brandon Hocura.

True to the hybrid nature of the music, the compilation seeks not to provide a definitive sound, but express the variety of contemporary forms that have evolved from gwoka. Just as Guadeloupean trailblazers Kassav fused gwoka with funk and cadence to create zouk, so did the musicians on this collection push gwoka in new directions rarely heard beyond its shores.

In the words of Gérard Lockel, “gwoka is the soul of Guadeloupe”

Red Vinyl

In 2021 Bristol Hip-Hop duo Ree-Vo released two singles from their forthcoming album ‘All Welcome On Planet Ree-Vo’. The first was the Electro-Hop, LFO-surfing ‘Combat’ with a remix by SURGEON. The second -dropped as a digital double A-side in December - was the dark, submersive ‘Groove With It’ remixed by New Jersey’s legendary Dälek and ‘Protein’ remixed by The Bug (who released what many considered to be 2021’s album of the year ‘Fire’). smartURL.it/EDDA56

Ree-Vo begin 2022 in contrast with this their hookiest track on their album, a party throwing chorus spinning tipsy visitors around the intergalactic control booth of mission control.

“Lift off, blast off, shirt off, pants off, bra off, Dance off! Naked in the dance hall SPACE BOX!”
is the beamed mantra, rapper Relly transmitting to all occupants of the galaxy.
“We wanted to make a hedonistic and colourful dancehall track, a bold response to the suppressive circumstances of the last two years”.

Helping them on this seven’s mission are two remixes, one by NØISE (the musical collective of Joe Cassidy, Shepard Fairey, Merritt Lear and John Goff) and BATBIRDS (the duo of Joe Cassidy and Aaron Miller). Common to both of course is Joe Cassidy who recorded for Dell’Orso (as well as Rough Trade and Dedicated) as Butterfly Child. These mixes were made at the end of 2020, the record sent off to print in February 2021, five months before Joe’s incredibly sad departure from this planet, at least physically. So for all of us involved it’s a very bittersweet release, but another piece of art that Joe was undoubtedly thrilled to be involved with.

On a balmy Brazilian night in February, 1981, a crowd gathered in Rio de Janeiro's Gávea neighbourhood under the iconic dome of the city's Planetário (Planetarium). Alongside musicians like Helio Delmiro and Milton Nascimento (who were in the audience that night), they were there to see the great "Bruxo" (sorcerer) Hermeto Pascoal live in concert, with his new band formation which would become known simply as "O Grupo" (The Group).

Growing up on a farm in Brazil's northeastern state of Alagoas, Hermeto has always been deeply in tune with, and inspired by nature. In his youth he would make his own flutes to play call and response with the birds and frogs. He would build scrap-metal instruments in his blacksmith grandfather's forge, and sit for hours by the lake listening to the sounds of nature. On the Planetário Da Gávea recordings though, Hermeto is cast as the "sorcerer" or the "cosmic emissary" (as the great Brazilian guitarist Guinga once called him), exhibiting an intuitive sense of harmony and melody beyond that of our own world.

"Tudo e Som" (All is Sound). It's a phrase Hermeto regularly returns to, and it points to the fact that not only can music be made from anything, but also alludes to something much more profound. It's an understanding of the universe as being in a state of constant movement, forever vibrating at the quantum level, like the string of a guitar, or a saxophone's reed. "Tudo e Som" is a declaration of the mystical and spiritual power of sound, as a fundamentally vibrational force.

The series of concerts at the Planetário marked the birth of "O Grupo" which would last with the same line-up (apart from Zé Eduardo Nazário) for the next eleven years. Every member of O Grupo was a phenomenal musician in their own right. It was one of saxophonist/flautist Carlos Malta's first gigs with the group, and the concert unusually featured two drummers, Zé Eduardo Nazário and Marcio Bahia. Nazário, from São Paulo, had played with Hermeto during the mid-70s (as well as with Milton Nascimento, Egberto Gismonti and Toninho Horta, to name a few). Bahia though had just joined the group. Acclaimed keyboard player Jovino Santos Neto was on keyboards, piano and organ, and the great Itiberê Zwarg (who remains in Hermeto's band to this day), played bass. Rounding the group off was the percussionist Pernambuco. During this period (up until the early 90s) the group would rehearse for hours on end, virtually seven days a week, with a total dedication to music and Hermeto's musical vision.

Most of the compositions performed that night at the Planetário had never been recorded before, and many are unique to this album, including the wild 'Homônimo Sintróvio', the exaltant 'Samba Do Belaqua', 'Vou Pra Lá e Pra Cá' and 'Bombardino', which features Hermeto's wonderfully absurd call and response mouthpiece soliloquy. Then there's the stunning 7/4 Samba 'Jegue' which builds with inventive dissonance, before releasing yet another celestially colourful, celebratory refrain. The show also features the first recorded performances of 'Era Pra Ser e Não Foi' and 'Ilza na Feijoada' (inspired by Hermetos' wife Ilza's famed black bean and meat stew), which Hermeto later recorded on his 1984 studio album "Lagoa Da Canoa Município De Arapiraca".

Dubbed by Miles Davis as "one of the most important musicians on the planet", a Hermeto Pascoal live show was (and still is) an experience like no other. Across the recording of the Planetário concert, wild improvisation meets groovy, virtuosic vamping on progressive, extended psychedelic jams. The tracks are generally built around a beautiful, transcendent melody; instantly recognisable as being Hermeto's, and for the most part, the musicians then solo over extended two chord vamps. There's a plethora of powerfully delivered rhythms, wild solos and the performances are punctuated by Hermeto's unpredictable, at times comical sonic antics.

Over forty years since this historic happening, Far Out Recordings is overjoyed to release this magical recording of Hermeto Pascoal e Grupo Live at Planetário Da Gávea, on double vinyl LP, CD and digitally for a February 4th 2022 release.

FFO: Arthur Russell, Stealing Sheep, Neu!, Agar Agar, Galaxians
Holodrum are a new disco-infused synth-pop group, who feature members of Hookworms, Yard Act, Cowtown, Virginia Wing, Drahla and more.

Maybe Holodrum were destined to start at this point. This might be the first time they’ve all officially worked together, but between Emily Garner (vocals), Matthew Benn (synth/bass/production), Jonathan Nash (drums), Jonathan Wilkinson (guitar), Sam Shjipstone (guitar/vocals), Christopher Duffin (sax/synth) and Steve Nuttall (percussion) they’ve shared bands, mixed each other’s records, promoted live shows and made music videos together in and around Leeds. As Holodrum, this is the 7 piece’s debut album, but the interlocking grooves and hot headiness of their repeato-rock-via-CBGBs dopamine hits have in one way or other been fermenting for years.

“When it comes to doing music most bands fall between two extremes of doing it for some goal or as an end to itself” says Shjipstone. “I think Holodrum is about the joy and complexity of living, and I just hope to god everyone gets to have a good time doing it.”

Ultimately the core of the group comes from Shjipstone and his former Hookworms bandmates Benn, Nash and Wilkinson. After their abrupt dissolution in late 2018, the four of them spent six months apart; Benn still had Xam Duo, his ongoing project with Virginia Wing and some-time James Holden & The Animal Spirits live member Duffin, Nash remains vocalist and guitarist of long-running DIY rockers Cowtown and helms his solo project Game_Program; and Shjipstone plays guitar with Yard Act. However, the four of them missed the sixth sense synergy they’d built-up playing together over a decade and soon enough demos were being swapped and new ideas were discussed.

The vision of a large live electronic ensemble formed quickly. Friends were added: Duffin and Nuttall – who was keen to resurrect the double percussion interplay that he and Nash had been exploring as part of motorik trio Nope joined first. Then animator and VIDE0 singer Garner crystallised the line-up by joining on vocals.

“Apart from Emily, all of us had actually played together before in a covers band at a New Year’s Eve party at the Brudenell Social Club a couple of years ago, so we knew we could have fun together” says Benn. “So we set up to be a live party band early on. We wanted lots of people on stage having fun, playing for people that also wanted to have fun. It makes sense we take inspiration from bands like Tom Tom Club and Liquid Liquid; they were trying to help people to party at a point when New York was quite a scary and dangerous place we’re doing the same, albeit in the face of a decaying world and a global pandemic.”

Covid-19 hasn’t given them much opportunity to do that yet, with two fledgling shows in late 2019 to their name before festival appearances at the likes of Bluedot, Sounds From The Other City and Gold Sounds were scuppered last year. However, the 6 tracks on Holodrum crackle with the energy of the dancefloor. Opening cut 'Lemon Chic' described by Garner as her “workout track” starts out sparsely, with tight drum claps and burbling synths holding a teetering suspense before the whole thing’s prised open, allowing beaming saxophone skronk to shine in. Garner’s vocals bob and weave around the syncopations of the track’s building cacophony.

It sets the stall for an album heavy on euphoria, built atop crisp interplaying percussion and acid-flecked grooves. At times Shjipstone provides a raw counterpoint on vocals, while elsewhere - like on the strutting, swirling disco of 'Free Advice' and 'Low Light'’s late night ping pong synths - the pair indulge in playful call and response as the instrumentation builds and contorts around them. 'Stage Echo' provides a respite of sorts halfway through, a swirling, fever dream of a track that peaks with big squelchy frequencies and cavernous reverb, before the album returns to its repetitious exercises in body-moving catharsis underpinned at all times by a relentlessly propulsive rhythm section.

But like a sunbeam peering through a haze of wildfire smoke, Early Eyes have
somehow persevered through dashed dreams, fractured relationships, historic
social justice uprisings in their own hometown, and a society tearing apart at the
seams to make an album that is both responsive to the chaos and wearily
optimistic."It almost feels like Look Alive! is a direct response to the pandemic,"
bandleader Jake Berglove reflects. "It was like, oh, my goodness, all of our
capitalist anxieties just came true! We took all of that anxiety and angry energy
and put it into making a really f***ed up album." Look Alive! vibrates with angst,
punctuated by computerized glitches and disintegrating threads of abandoned
melodies that echo in the distance before roaring back to life. With the assistance
of producers Caleb Hinz and Jake Luppen (of the band Hippo Campus), Early
Eyes felt more liberated stylistically, and Look Alive! looks ahead to a post-genre
future where emo, post- hardcore, Japanese city pop, and musical theater can
coexist peacefully on one album. "We ran with so many different influences," John
says. "I mean, like, half the songs on the album just sound like a completely
different band. We were just more unafraid to commit — like, alright, we're just
going to make a punk song right now."

Exploring hybrid music styles and outernational, borderless musical influences, DJ soFa’s Elsewhere compilation series continues with a sixth instalment, and the second to appear on Kalahari Oyster Cult.

Always ahead of the tide, the Kalahari Oyster is a fine specimen when it comes to the discipline of next-level sound-snooping. Meticulously curated by Belgian sonic globetrotter soFa, Elsewhere XX showcases a dozen outstanding tunes, each dwelling in their own personal space between the imaginary worlds of post-kraut, DIY synth-punk and odd-pop ballads.

Melting these genres with contemporary club music is the mission here. Doused in a thick fog of arcane machine talk, tribal rhythms and cosmic synths, Elsewhere XX is an invitation to escape the hall of LED-backlit mirrors that we’ve so mistakenly come to call our “reality”.

Gathering artists from all corners of the globe – including Radio Hito, Anatolian Weapons, Eylul Deniz, Dame Area and Electronic Body Girl – soFa’s curation lays the groundwork for a unique and thoroughly immersive listening and dancing experience. Through a carefully selected suite of like-minded, yet diverse joints, we run the gamut from distorted funk (“Anita”, “Confiture") and cross-pollinated electroid blueprints (“Walk Away”, “An Abhainn Mhor") to oddball synthpop (“Credo” & Twin Peaks cover "She Can't Die"), reverb-soaked audio safaris (“Fifty Fifty (Anatolian Weapons Dub)") and static-filled postpunk (“Umani”).

soFa's Elsewhere series started in 2017 and this is the sixth compilation to date. Shifting focus with every new instalment, the compilations have previously appeared on labels likes Music For Dreams, Emotional Response and Crevette Records.

"Black Truffle proudly presents The Refrain from Melbourne-based artist Francis Plagne, whose growing catalog of collaborative and solo releases range from song-based work to abstract audio collages.

Closely aligned with Plagne's Moss Trumpet LP (released by Penultimate Press in 2018), The Refrain’s two side-long tracks mix sounds of the mundane with the otherworldly; rising, receding and overlapping. The result feels like being led through a series of scenes devoid of context or direction. Furthermore, it’s hard to define the scenes as either inviting or disconcerting, as they’re often both at the same time. As the record progresses sounds reappear and are juxtaposed so as to only hint at the familiar. A hall of mirrors, perhaps?

Completed in 2020 using material recorded from 2012-2020, the record uses tapes of shelved, unfinished, and forgotten projects that featured field recordings from various locations, domestic sounds of plastic bottles, bubble wrap, creaking chairs, voice, and instrumental recordings, including an appearance from crys cole on Casio. These pieces were re-amped, processed and edited, then additional instrumental pieces featuring synths, guitars, plastic saxophone, melodica, and percussion were added, the results shaped into drifting, episodic assemblages.

Although essentially a tape piece, The Refrain presents as a crude, non-idiomatic composition that feels both timeless and transitory. It’s a million miles from the polish and rigour of GRM, perhaps more in line with Jacques Bekaert’s eponymous Igloo LP, or Costin Miereanu’s Luna Cinese. The Refrain could be read as a psychedelic Krapp’s Last Tape; one man’s response to listening through forgotten and discarded tapes, reflecting, reconciling, and forging a new path. A potent tonic for these absurd times."

-- Nick Hamilton, August 2021

Minimalism, Simplicity and Functionality.

Inspired by Bauhaus, created for music.

- semi clear white vinyl -

Spread across 4-tracks, the producer offers fanciful instrumentation and production while conveying a narrative of preservation for mother nature.
The theme of Mother Land is inspired by one of Nohan’s main interests: nature. In response to ongoing climate change and global environmental degradation, he opted to craft a project that captured the planet's beauty - with a message of sustainability.

The EP is a faithful representation of Nohan the producer - packed with his love for the piano, ipnothic synths, and suspended ambient compositions. The project opens with the title track - kickstarting the subtle, yet palpable production rooted in tangible instrumentation. “The world’s on fire… It’s calling out for you and me” are the opening lines from the vocalist, reminding listeners that earth’s fate revolves around us.

“Heavenly Sing” presents a more upstart offering, with loose shakers and scintillating keys leading. This more tropical take provides optimism in sound, serving as prose for uplifting introspection in headphones as well as the ADID dancefloor. “The Sun in December” reflects its title - somber piano leads the way through a serene, melancholy soundscape. The EP also includes an ambient take on “Mother Land,” which strips its electronic backing in the intro to draw focus to the words and theme of the project.

Noahn makes a perfect fit with this emblematic imprint.

Tripe. It’s what graces the cover of Cassels’ third album, A Gut Feeling. It looks gross. And Cassels are a rock band who’ve often sounded gross. You know the adjectives. ‘Discordant’. ‘Angular’. ‘Cynical’. Shellac quickly mentioned. I’ve done it already, see?Listening to A Gut Feeling, though, Cassels sound different. Not too different – the molten riff of advance single ‘Mr Henderson Coughs’ puts paid to the idea that the London-based duo have taken a hard 180. But instead of writing as quickly as possible, riding the churn forced on DIY bands by an indifferent ecosystem, the Covid-19 pandemic gave the brothers Beck (Jim, guitar/vocals, and Loz, drums/BVs) some time to mull things over. Instead of sticking with the stripped-back recording approach of previous LPs, Jim and Loz spent time at Tom Hill’s Bookhouse Studios in South London, considering tone, layering tracks, and bringing new instruments into the fold. Lyrically, the approach has changed too. Rather than presented as personal experience, Jim notes that his words this time around “are an intentionally muddy mix of experience, opinion, red herrings and fiction,” adding, “I found that setting myself the brief of writing character pieces offered a nice way of sneaking quite personal things into the songs without being explicitly autobiographical.” The result is the most satisfying and unexpected collection of songs in the Cassels catalogue. Instruments at turns razor-sharp and bludgeon-blunt provide the backing track to a savage, hilarious, and tender collection of short stories. Jim notes that “writing can be a great way of unearthing hang-ups and becoming acquainted with your own anxieties”. Hardly new ground for a rock band, but presented in this third person format – unbiased and filled to the brim with human warmth – these songs are more empathetic than anything the band have written before. You might have been Michael on his daily commute. Perhaps you’re Sarah, or have a mum like her. And many of us will recognise ourselves in the heart-breaking ‘Family Visits Relative’. It’s clear that the band still aren’t afraid to tackle weighty subjects too, with A Gut Feeling picking up where their previous album, The Perfect Ending, left off. ‘Charlie Goes Skiing’ pulls a similar trick to Future of the Left’s ‘Goals in Slow Motion’ – setting a screed against consumerism to one of the most propulsive, catchy tracks on the record. It’s followed by ‘Dog Drops Bone’, a rustling loop overlaid with sad, simple chords reminiscent of a Sparklehorse tune, which uses the internal monologue of a beloved canine companion to question the true depth and sincerity of human relationships. This kicks into the breakneck ‘Beth’s Recurring Dream’ – a track exploring a sexual identity crisis which owes as much to early Los Campesinos! as it does Steve Albini. Of ‘Your Humble Narrator’, the album’s punishing, pulsing opener and A Gut Feeling’s thematic frame, Jim explains: “I liked the idea of introducing an unreliable narrator who frames the album as an exercise in manipulation for personal gain. When a person engages with a piece of art they are invariably being manipulated by the artist to some degree – that’s part of the fun. The artist aims to elicit some sort of emotional response, the audience buys into the conceit at the promise of experiencing some form of escape.” as listeners, we experience that manipulation first-hand on A Gut Feeling. But the fact Cassels have packaged it up as offal feels like another bleak wink. This is far from a stinking by-product, salvaged and sold to maximise profit. It’s nothing less than the most complete, relatable, and fully realised piece of art the duo has produced to date. Emotional response elicited. Conceit embraced.

Mimsy describes himself as someone with many interests and few skills, and sure, you can put it that way. But more precisely, he is a seeker and finder who has always felt more at home in the intermediary spaces. Since his first releases on Karaoke Kalk under the names Saucer, Motel and Wunder in 1997, he has mostly been active as Wechsel Garland, working with samples beyond recognition and thus blurring the lines between his own songwriting and the musical material he uses.

In 2011, he ended the project with the album »Dreams Become Things« and is now opening a new chapter as Mimsy with »Ormeology.« The album was ten years in the making and saw the producer work with sounds, voices and text fragments that were gathered over time. The twelve pieces—based on guitar pickings, looped textural sounds, rhythm boxes and shimmering organ sounds—install themselves in the unconscious through sound, melody and subtle rhythmic shifts to send the listener’s perception on a journey into the unknown.

The name Mimsy is a nonce word coined by Lewis Carroll in his famous nonsense poem »Jabberwocky,« a combination of »miserable« and »flimsy,« while the term »Ormeology« refers to the Italian film »Le Orme« (»Footprints on the Moon«), in which the main character is haunted by memories of a fictional film of the same name. While this alone creates a rich thematic frame of references for the album, it does not at all define its themes. Instead, the references are reflected in the methods with which the pieces on »Ormeology« were designed—sound and language orbit freely around one another, images within images are being layered, following their path unconsciously. In »Sans mobile apparent,« the lyrics get to the heart of this: »die Widersprüche aushalten / die Folien übereinanderlegen« (»enduring the contradictions / laying the foils on top of each other.«) Creative frictions emerge not out of binary decision-making patterns, but from additive layering.

Mimsy followed traces forth and back through time and space, collaborating for a few tracks with set designer and musician Lydia Schmidt and letting Wolfram Wire record various lyrics based on automatic writing that were gathered by Mimsy. Furthermore, he asked the photo blogger Lilia Katherine from Brazil and the Canada-based Andrea Hernandez to translate and record his lyrics in their own respective languages. Human global coincidences resulted in collaborations which are presented as discrete and thus make the album as a whole and even more complex meditation on the interplay of the concrete and the abstract. This is best exemplified by the song »Ginster,« throughout which Schmidt and Mimsy’s voices overlap more and more until they enter a sort of call and response pattern, although they never seem to address each other directly.

»Ormeology« is an album that whirrs and flickers, seeking to mediate between the tangible world and the intangible by blurring the boundaries between words and sounds and space. It is an archipelago that is in many ways connected to what surrounds it, while at the same time opening up a space of its own.

Berlin’s NIKK drops ‘Paradize EP’ on Radio Slave’s Rekids this January.

Fresh from releases on FJAAK’s Spandau20 and Unknown To The Unknown, Berlin-based DJ/producerNIKK prepares to release ‘Paradize EP’, his latest collection of funky yet hard hitting techno cuts for Radio Slave’s Rekids.

Leading the release, title track ‘Paradize’, played to a raucous response at Printworks by Radio Slave,combines meaty drums, emotive chord stabs, and floating breakdowns for a track sure to cause many more memorable club moments. ‘Mylove’ brings punchy bass and sizzling percussion alongside subtle vocal chopsfor a chunky 4/4 number to round off the A side.

On the flip, ‘Flakes’ brings bubbling low end, pumping drum work, and choppy stabs for a pacey slice of breaks-laden techno, before ‘Give A Funk’ brings together swinging percs and rolling synth lines atop glistening pads and leads to close out the release.

Watford quartet The Spitfires are extremely pleased to announce that their second album ‘A Thousand Times’ will be released on 26th August 2016 via Catch 22 Records. The album is the follow-up to the critically acclaimed debut ‘Response’ which saw the band enter high in the UK Album Charts and reach #6 in both the independent and vinyl charts, with their recent single ‘So Long’ charting at #1 in UK Vinyl Singles Chart. Building on the success they’ve managed to establish so far, ‘A Thousand Times’ looks certain to cement their reputation as one of the most vital young bands of their generation. Their work ethic and powerful song-writing mixed with their acute social commentary and lack of mainstream industry support has made this fiercely independent band one of the most popular underground success stories in the UK today. This DIY attitude and independent spirit has earned them a dedicated following and sold out shows across the whole of the UK and Europe. Across the 10 tracks on ‘A Thousand Times’ it’s possible to detect a sharper, deeper vision for the band and a more honed song-writing craft than we’ve previously seen.

“Sunlight to blue … Blue to blackness” - This was one of the more upbeat title suggestions for the very bare, back to basics, reflective album from The Durutti Column. Originally released in June 2008, Sunlight to Blue… was a conscious response to the previous two polished and ‘studio-based’ releases. Here he created some sparse, simply beautiful 'sketches' as he once called them, more reminiscent of his work from the early eighties. Many of the pieces are instrumentals played on his Juan Montero flamenco guitar, and he returns to 'Without Mercy' for the last track 'Grief' whilst reinventing 'Never Known' from LC. Now, for the first time, the LP is available remastered and re-packaged as a gatefold double 12” 180gram vinyl release.

This album also saw the debut of the then talented young pianist and singer, Poppy Morgan, who co-wrote the melancholy Ananda as a duet with what Reilly dryly called 'intrusive guitar'. For the uninitiated, Vini was the first artist signed to Manchester’s influential Factory Records, co-wrote and played on Morrissey’s first solo album ‘Viva Hate’, and was heavily featured in the Manchester music culture film, ’24 Hour Party People’. Vini Reilly has recorded under the name The Durutti Column since 1978 and has a rich portfolio of work, releasing over twenty albums in this time. Ever critical of Vini’s voice, but ever a fierce champion of his talent, the late Tony Wilson would surely appreciate this return of The Durutti Column.

Written and recorded over the past year, Penny and Sparrow’s remarkable new album, Olly Olly, is a work of liberation and revelation, a full-throated embrace of the self from a band that’s committed to leaving no stone unturned in their tireless quest for actualization. The songs here are fearless and introspective, embracing growth and change as they reckon with desire, intimacy, doubt, and regret, and the arrangements are similarly bold and thoughtful, augmenting the duo’s rich, hypnotic brand of chamber folk with electronic flourishes and R&B grooves. The duo — Andy Baxter and Kyle Jahnke — produced Olly Olly themselves, working on their own without an outside collaborator for the first time, and the result is the purest, most authentic act of artistic self-expression the pair have ever achieved. “Andy and I talk about the process of making this record like a sort of musical Rumspringa,” Jahnke says. “It was an opportunity to truly become ourselves, to evolve outside of the roles we’d been put in — or put ourselves in — because of the way we’d grown up.” Texas natives Baxter and Jahnke first crossed paths at UT Austin, where they developed a fast friendship and a deeply symbiotic musical connection. Jahnke was a gifted guitarist with an ear for melody, Baxter, an erudite lyricist with a mesmerizing voice and crystalline falsetto, and the duo quickly found that their vocals blended together as if they’d been singing in harmony their whole lives. Beginning with 2013’s ‘Tenboom,’ the staunchly DIY pair released a series of critically lauded records that garnered comparisons to the hushed intimacy of Iron & Wine and the adventurous beauty of Bon Iver, building up a devoted fanbase along the way through relentless touring and word-of-mouth buzz. NPR praised the band’s songwriting as a “delicate dance between heartache and resolve,” while Rolling Stone hailed their catalog as “folk music for Sunday mornings, quiet evenings, and all the fragile moments in between.” The duo’s most recent album, 2019’s Finch, marked a turning point in their career, pushing their sound to experimental new heights as it wrestled with notions of masculinity and religion and transformation in deeper, more personal ways than ever before. The record debuted at #2 on the Billboard Heatseekers Chart and was met with a rapturous response from critics and audiences alike, racking up more than 40 million streams on Spotify and earning the band their biggest headline tour to date.

The third entry in Lucy's trio of adventurous full-lengths is visually introduced by artwork of a pearl-bearing shell, designed by Stroboscopic Artefacts' resident visual artist (and Lucy's brother) Ignazio Mortellaro. This drops a subtle hint as to the nature of its contents: just as a pearl slowly forms within its enclosing body in response to organic challenges, Lucy's work is also a kind of crystallization of memory and experience into an artifact of great value.

Listeners to this album will be struck immediately by how different it sounds from past Lucy productions, while still retaining the feel of relentless questing that defined his previous two solo LPs Wordplay for Working Bees and Churches, Schools, and Guns (or, as Lucy himself defines the feeling, the equal valuation of precision and exploration'). Initially feeling like Lucy is guiding his listeners on a slow and slightly apprehensive down-river trip through the Amazon, or some similarly thriving but as-of-yet undiscovered terrain, the album is enriched by several layers of ambience and by the wordless, improvisational (yet still somehow narrative) vocals and flute of Jon Jacobs. Without a doubt, it's an album with an initiatory' atmosphere that listeners should commit themselves to hearing in one sitting, with as little interruption as possible. However, unlike many initiatory rites, this is no arduous ordeal at all: great care has gone into connecting each chapter of the album with the same silver thread of entrancing story-telling. On standout pieces like She-Wolf Night Mourning,' electronic arpeggiation and persistent synthetic flutters perfectly merge with the unique tone colors of resonant acoustic percussion and pensive woodwind. Elsewhere, pieces like A Selfless Act' reconcile technoid pulses with melancholic, yet intoxicating echoes of Mediterranean musical traditions.

Interestingly, many of the tracks on Self-Mythology refer to old legends and well-known fairytales (e.g. the opening track which references Baba Yaga's magical hut), or to more broadly defined states of consciousness ( Samsara,' which features an especially strong, sustained choral interplay between glassy synth sequences and earthy flute sonorities). This is where the album is truly unique and relevant in its ambition. The interplay between the graphic design, the vocal and flute performances of Jacobs, and the sound design chosen by Lucy aims to be an intimate audio autobiography of its creators while also referring back to the stories that have shaped human destiny for millennia. This work is a meditation upon the reciprocity between personal hopes and fears and collective dreams and nightmares, an exploration of the endless interplay between the universal and the deeply individual. It is the tale of that uncanny process by which our own conscious experience draws from the pool of archetypal information, while also contributing to it.

HOUND is proud to present its first Various Artists compilation available on 12” vinyl, featuring tracks by OTHR, Poison Point, Ćyan ID, and BLUSH RESPONSE.” ” HOUND is an Industrial / EBM techno vinyl label and podcast channel based in Georgia. The main idea of the project is to support underground culture and create the first Georgian podcast channel, with a unique VA feature. Accordingly, not only do we provide rare podcast compilations but release VA of the same artists that took part in podcast compilation as well. We believe this is the best way to create and spread a full range of sensations from underground music and leave it in history.”

"Of the records Ayler made during 1964, the LP New York Eye and Ear Control...is probably the most important link between the epoch-making collective improvisation Free Jazz by the Ornette Coleman double quartet, and John Coltrane's Ascension. Apart from that, it is—in my opinion—one of Ayler's very best recordings. New York Eye and Ear Control owes a large part of its success to the contrasting temperaments of the three musicians used by Albert Ayler in addition to his trio, namely, trumpeter Don Cherry, trombonist Roswell Rudd and alto saxophonist John Tchicai. Don Cherry improvises in broad melodic lines or places sharply accented staccato passages. Roswell Rudd interposes fragmentary flourishes in the highest register, or growl sounds and glissandos in the manner of the old tailgate trombonists. John Tchicai presents the polarity of a slightly 'cool,' linear style and offers motivic linkage by insistently repeating melodic patterns. All three inspire Albert Ayler to a breadth of expression which is too often missing in his improvisations with smaller groups. There is less limitation to his sound-span playing, more contrast, more punch and rhythmic accentuation, and with quick response Ayler takes motives from Cherry, Rudd and Tchicai, transforms them
into his own musical idiom, and in turn gives a new direction to the flow of ideas." - Free Jazz by Ekkehard Jost

"The music is fiery but with enough colorful moments to hold one's interest throughout." - Scott Yanow, All Music Guide

"...a valuable window into the music's early history as well as what might have happened outside record dates, more than one is usually privy to." - Clifford Allen, AllAboutJazz

H- side is etched
The American cable-television industry exploded in the 1980s, pushing broadcasts of diverse programming and emissions of low-laying cultures into homes. Community stations piggybacked on the digital developments of the time, extending their existence through telephony and broadcast a iliates. For those growing up in this time, in locations such as New York City, the localized communications beamed into their homes exposed them to an impressionable array of disparate sounds and visions.
Move into the 1990s and New York was filled to the brim of emergent cultures drawing from this ebullition of communication. From Rammellzee’s shapeshifting to the late Judy Russell and Frank and Karen Mendez’s Nu Groove imprint fusing reggae, poetry and house, nascent ideas emanated from the city walls, from within stores such as Sonic Groove store and on VHS releases such as Stakker’s The Evil Acid Baron Show, a legendary technicolor psychedelic trip along the wildest frontiers of acid house. As scenes expanded and identities developed, such individuals weather the events of the visceral now, expressing themselves right into an unpredictable future.
Function’s long career has seen him uncover a vast range of sonic identities, a mainstay through house, techno and industrial with collaborations with the likes of Regis, Damon Wild alongside his highly influential Infrastructure imprint. With influences deeply tied to pop art, rave and gay scenes, and early memories of block-parties emitting Kraftwerk and Strafe, he found himself seeking out the undercover illegal nights of the 90s on a quest of sexual unearthing, mixing the ever-yearning escapology mission of disco with the influential DJ sets of Jeff Mills.
For his new album Existenz, he marks a clear step away from the corporeal techno of his recent releases. Pivoting around themes of religion, sexuality, trauma and healing, it is a work expansive and celebratory, a clear liberation from a deeply internalized past. Formed from a collection of recordings made in a period from late 2016 to mid 2019, Existenz takes the form of a creative outburst in reaction to a number of traumas - recent, childhood and throughout Function’s life. Life partner Stefanie Parnow assisted the production process in its entirety, providing inspiration, spiritual healing and featuring vocal contributions.
Cosmic synths soar and swoop in ‘Pleasure Discipline’ through towering stacks of rhythm that stutter and creak to a halt before rebooting, a firm robotic response to human intervention. ‘Zahlensender’ reflects a spatial tetris of urban life, as digitalization set within an XYZ matrix confronts the sprawling city. Constant arpeggiated meditations echo synaptic transmissions, e ecting a dissolution of boundaries. ’The Approach’ recalls the unification of the self, a state of delirium non-subjective and smooth, as all connections and functions give way to simple intensities of feeling, crossing the threshold into spirituality. ’Golden Dawn’, featuring Stefanie Parnow, marks a further elevation of dubbed-out euphoria, as once more positive rays emerge. His ode to the effortless short-trip urban navigation 'Kurzstrecke' finds Function in motion, upfront and bold, snapshots of conversation and flickers of light. 'Ertrinken' finds metallic bass jabs swamping snipped synthetic voices, with hidden stores of emotion set as a nod to the history of vocoders as a tool for encrypted military communication. House icon Robert Owens features on 'Growth Cycle' and 'Be', entrenching a celebratory atmosphere over Function's clubwise leanings. Closing track 'Downtown 161' reflects the unmistakeable filtered and squashed interjections of television, and sampled dance vocals - a sound for the curious, dreamers and dancers.
With Existenz, Function reveals an essential body of work, spread over 4LP - thought experiments on the role of identity and spirituality after a lifetime of upheaval and trauma. Leading up until the release date, Function will undertake an album promo tour with select dates - A/V shows at Berlin Atonal and Rural festival in Japan, and three dates as part of his Bassiani residency.

Salute to the Sun: Live at Halleì St Peter's documents a very special concert recorded at the iconic Manchester venue during lockdown.

Released in November 2020, Matthew's Halsall's Salute to the Sun was the trumpeter's first album since 2015's Into Forever, and marked the debut of his new band. A hand-picked ensemble featuring some of Manchester's finest young musicians. The album drew it's energy from the band's weekly sessions and was inspired by Halsall's love of nature. Lush and spiritual it received universal praise, but Halsall and his band were frustrated that they were unable to share their beautiful new sound live with an audience.



On November 25th 2020, Halsall took his band into the iconic Manchester venue, Hallé St Peter's, for a concert recording in aid of the charity Mind, that was streamed on January 21st 2021 to a global audience in the thousands. The concert was also recorded for posterity.



"When we recorded Salute to the Sun, I wanted to create something playful but also quite earthy and organic that connected to the sounds in nature. It seemed to strike a chord with people and I was blown away by the response to the album. Our concert film, recorded at the height of last winter's lockdown was a special moment for us all and I feel that the concert recording captured something beautiful that we wanted to share".



Salute to the Sun: Live at Halleì St Peter's features Matthew Halsall– trumpet, Matt Cliffe- flute & saxophone, Maddie Herbert– harp, Gavin Barras– bass, Liviu Gheorghe– piano, Alan Taylor– drums and Jack McCarthy- percussion



The recording has been mixed by Matthew Halsall and George Atkins at 80 Hertz and is mastered by Peter Beckmann at Technology Works. The vinyl was cut at Calyx in Berlin and the album is pressed at Optimal in Germany. It is presented in the form of a limited edition 2LP set with artwork by legendary designer Ian Anderson of The Designers Republic.



Spread over three sides of the vinyl LP for maximum fidelity the fourth side of the LP (side D) features an etching of Daniel Halsall's now iconic artwork for the album Salute to the Sun and copies are strictly limited with just 3000 available in total. The album will also be available for download and on streaming platforms.

**LIMITED BLACK VINYL** Rival Consoles returns with a resonant
and explorative soundscape of original
music, composed for renowned
choreographer Alexander Whitley’s
contemporary dance production
Overflow.

Exploring themes of the human and emotional
consequences of life surrounded by data, the piece
echoes the concept of social media, advertising,
marketing companies and political factions
exploiting our data to gain wealth, political
advantage and sow division. Key reading for the
project was based around the contemporary
philosophical work Psychopolitics: Neoliberalism
and New Technologies of Power by Byung-Chul
Han.
“The piece opens with Monster which has a kind of
drunken madness to it, highly repetitive to mirror the
repetitive nature of how we as humans engage with
technology such as social media. It’s sometimes
edging towards chaos but yet always returning back
to the same starting point, but eventually giving way
to exhaustion. I wanted to create a bold opening
piece for Overflow,” states West.

I Like features the mapping of data from dancer Tia
Hockey’s personal monologue, which allows chords
to be heard - but only based on the activity of her
voice, drawing attention to things happening behind
the curtain, invisible systems, algorithms.
The album also features the previously released
standalone slice of euphoria, Pulses of Information
— described by UK mag Clash as “typically
entrancing, Pulses of Information seems to
encourage a form of internal dialogue, between our
inner and outer selves.”

Overflow was premiered by the Alexander Whitley
Dance Company in May 2021 at the Sadler’s Wells
in London and is scheduled to tour through theatres
in Europe in spring 2022. The score will be released
by Erased Tapes on limited edition vinyl and CD as
well as digital formats on December 3.

Fine Place is a new duo comprising Frankie Rose (Vivian Girls, Crystal Stilts, Dum Dum Girls) and Matthew Hord (Running, Pop. 1280, Brandy). Based in Brooklyn, NYC together they’ve crafted a crystalline full length of nocturnal, electronic pop music that charts a way out the post-global, cyberpunk dystopian environment it was crafted in. Their debut album This New Heaven drenches minimalist song structures in post-industrial washes of sixstring delay and gothic post-punk synths. Presiding over it is the most evocative, emotive vocal performance Frankie
Rose has committed to tape to date.

Following Hord’s relocation from Chicago, the pair wanted to explore new avenues apart from their respective bands or solo projects. “The sound we were going for was an attempt to capture the dystopian feel of New York during a period of desertion by the wealthy. It was produced in a time-frame saturated in both uncertainty and serenity, and the soundscapes we created felt fitting and almost organic as a response to our surroundings. The title also reflects this in an arguably literal, maybe even satirical way.” Sonically, Fine Place references the pioneering mid-to-late 80s pioneers of icy melodrama The Cure and Cocteau Twins, while reflecting both the individuals’; music trajectories thus far. Modular synthesis triggers rhythm boxes and fluttery arps chirp around clanging 808-patterning as Rose’s reverb-laden vocal layering envelops the remaining headroom. The result is massive; a towering, shadowy music that embraces darkness while offering Rose’s bright vocal as chinks of light in the cracks; the production filling the head space of the beholder with preternatural imagery and emotional resonances that are real but not quite defined.

The title song propels forth out of the fog, scintillating with delayed guitar before the reverb-immersed vocal injects the human drama. The chorus constantly teases a big release but holds back creating a taut, dynamic tension. Cover Blind’s slow march makes full use of Rose’s layered vocal sinking and emerging from Hord’s bank of synths. Stand out It’s Your House is pure honey pouring from the speaker on a bank of of arps and near-hymnal vocal layering, a syrupy light offering in the mist. It’s an emotive highlight that only increases as the album progresses; Impressions Of Me is the Lynchian ballad that glides onward into the sunset. The album finishes on a choice re-interpretation of the 1989 track The Party Is Over by Belgian group Adult Fantasies, one of the great over-looked ballads of the era given an almost ecclesiastical makeover by Matthew Hord and Frankie Rose in 2021.

Says Hord: “This record was an incredibly challenging endeavor to make, as I had just come home from a European tour with another music project and wanted to invest into and focus on this collaboration with Frankie. I essentially reimagined how to approach writing basic sequences with the synthesizers I had been rehearsing and performing with for months prior to make something more accessible and pop- like for Frankie to build upon. Frankie is an unsung hero when it comes to mixing, and she was constantly mixing down and processing elements of the tracks to create different atmospheres as we forged forward with every song.”

This New Heaven is an ecstasy of sorts, a half-dream in the border between sleep and daylight.

Best Record Italy presents a reissue of Model 11-29's "Wot Times," a particularly inspired work by the legendary Sangy that transforms "Rapper's Delight" into a slice of Italo-balearic ecstasy. On the vocal version, drums sit between disco and electro as they boogie down to a breakdance beat, with greasy funk basslines slapping and sliding in support. Solar dub chords pulsate through anthemic pattens, pads blow across the mix like a warming ocean breeze, synth leads sparkle in coral colorations, and those classic Sugar Hill Gang lyrical flows are reconfigured into an ebullient spoken word rap, which is then morphed by futuristic fx and interspersed with shouts, grunts, and call-and-response chants. On the flip, the instrumental version walks with more of a sexual disco strut, resulting in a summertime seaside cruiser overflowing with dazzling synthesizer displays, as organ chords generate mirage visions, gemstone leads shimmer through swells of tropical mist, and acid-laced Italo pulsations work the spirit into euphoric beach dance hypnosis.

Honey Soundsystem Records (aka HNYTRX) is pleased to present its final twelve inch of 2016, the 'Sensual Works' EP by Beesmunt Soundsystem. Unbeknownst to each other, the Honey crew in San Francisco and the Beesmunt duo in Amsterdam have been brothers from another mother working away in their respective zones for years. A bit of internet sleuthing and the two entities found each other, perplexed by the similarities in namesake and good vibes. Before exchanging a single word, earlier this year David and Luigi of Beesmunt sent Honey some demos. They were a declaration of peace and understanding of sorts and both "sound systems" immediately fell into one. The three tracks romanced all the Honey sensibilities including references to San Francisco 80's Hi-HRG synths, early House drum machine workouts, and melodic lines you can make-out on a dancefloor to. To make the marriage official, Honey enlisted its own Jason Kendig to remix the A-side into a no-nonsense thumper with a heart of gold. We think these tunes are going to become as reliable on the dancefloor as the Sequential Circuits drum sounds and DX7 patches they employ. Whether it be ending sets with the euphoric Blissed Out' or peak-time banging call and response of Playin' Myself', Honey finally shares its best kept secret weapons of the year with the eager public.

The Ethiopians are one of the great vocal groups to come out of Jamaica. Singing songs of life and times as they found them, themes that resonated with the people of the Island that made them such a treasured group. Lenard Dillon (b. 9 December, 1942, Port Antonio, Jamaica) the founding member of the Ethiopians began his singing career at Clement 'Coxonne' Dodd's Studio One. Initially he recorded under the name of Jack Sparrow, and backed by the Wailers, cutting 'Ice Water' and 'Suffering In The Land'. Under The Wailers encouragement, he went on to form his
own vocal group. Recruiting singers Stephan Taylor (b.1944, Portland, Jamaica) and Aston 'Charlie' Morris to become The Ethiopians. They cut 'Live Good', 'Why You Gonna Leave Me Now' and 'Owe Me No Pay Me'. Although receiving favourable response, Aston Morris decided to leave the band and the remaining pair carried on and cut 'I'm A Free
Man' and 'Don Dead Already' and 'For You'. On meeting contract builder Leebert Robertson who had recently returned to live in Jamaica, ashad he wanted to get into the music business, a session was booked for Treasure Isle Studios. The session produced their seminal 'Train To Skaville' track, which became an immediate hit in Jamaica and in the UK, when in 1967 it reached number 40 in the charts. They also cut 'Engine 54', which became the title of their debut album. Its
follow up 'I Need You / Do It Sweet', did not fare so well and the band moved over to Sonia Pottinger's stable, where they cut 'The Whip / Cool It Amigo' which revived their fortunes and proved another big hit for the band. Two more hits followed 'Stay Loose Mama' and 'The World Goes Ska', after which the band decided to return to a trio, adding
Melvin 'Mellow' Reid to the line up. The band now hit another run of successes with producer JJ Johnson 'Everything Crash, 'Gun Man', 'Hong Kong Flu' and 'The Selah'. Many hits followed leading the band to work with a variety of Jamaican producers. Such tracks as 'I Want To Be a Better Man, ' Conquering Lion', 'Fire A Mus Mus' Tail', and the timeless 'Reggae Hit The Town' to name a few. Two albums 'Reggae Power' (1969) and 'Woman Capture Man' (1970), pulled a lot of these tunes together. Sadly Taylor was killed in 1975 after been struck by a van in a road accident. Dillon returned to Port Antonio till 1977, when he was persuaded to return to Treasure Isle studios with producer Niney The
Observer and cut the Rasta based album 'Slave Call'. Additional members who joined for this album were Bro Fatty, Bro Ewing, Bro T, Mello and Hychi Dread. An album that showed all the Ethiopians magic had not been lost.
For this release we have included the full 'Slave Call' set, 'Ethiopian National Anthem', 'Slave Call', 'Guilty Conscience', 'Hurry On', 'Mus Follow Babylon'(on CD Edition), 'Train To Skaville (1977 version, on CD Edition), 'Culture', 'Obeah Book', 'Let It Be' and 'I Love Jah'. Alongside some of the bands early hits including the original version of 'Train To Skaville', 'Engine 54', the great and poignant 'Everything Crash', 'Reggae Hit The Town' and 'The Selah'. An interesting set to remind us what a great group the Ethiopians really were.

Giving form to a broad personal project of continuous inquiry and existential expression, A World Of Servicemarks the Ostgut Ton debut of Spanish producer, DJ and artist JASSS aka Silvia Jiménez Alvarez.

The evolution of A World Of Servicehas curved around genre collapsing and unexpected metamorphoses. Formerly the name of the monthly radio show JASSS hosted in Berlin, and soon to be the title of her expansive multi-sensory touring concept in collaboration with Ben Kreukniet, here A World Of Serviceis powerfully concentrated in sonic form. Throughout the album JASSS muses on the especially current human and technological barriers to interconnectivity; both lyrically and musically she deconstructs the self, unmasks anxieties and interrogates the insufficiencies of language as applied to gender, identity and interpersonal relationships. Forming her own fluid, nuanced lexicon in response, JASSS seeks a deeper understanding of her multiple selves, emerging through unbridled adolescent rage and the wisdom of maturation, traversing liminality with abstract electronics and baroque industrial pop. Visually this is underscored by Matt Lambert’s uncanny floral cover portraiture, as well as the record’s distinct scent of wet earth, flower and woods developed for the album by Meri Bonastre and applied to the vinyl innersleeve.

Following the imaginative nostalgia of Weightless, her 2017 debut album for iDEAL Recordings, as well as her series of blistering dancefloor 12”s for Whities/AD 93, A World Of Servicefolds personal and societal concepts in on themselves, not seeking answers but rather luxuriating in the unique friction that questions create. JASSS is intensely focused yet musically unbridled; this is reflected in tonal shifts of A World Of Service. Through the computerised yearning and bruising of a heartbreak on “Luis”, to the jagged and wordless tundra of “Vapor Dentro”; the intriguing juxtaposition of warm, alluring Spanish vocals against rigid pillars of industrial heft and bass grind (“Camelo”), and the soaring maximalist industrial popof the album’s closer, “Wish.”

As intensity rises through the pandemic-era trip hop of the album’s title track “A World Of Service”, JASSS sings: “Pleasure / Is nowhere to be found inside this world of service / I call to be my life.” Pleasure may remain elusive to her, but in the determination to make peace with her various identities in this technological age, JASSS offers a compelling glimpse into an essential type of artistic voice.

LIMITED ICE BLUE VINYL

On Delta, a dozen artists across four continents freely interpret Fountain across a double LP, again featuring Donna Huanca’s surreal artwork, and the unearthly graphic manipulations of Nufolklore Studios. Remaining faithful to Fountain’s presentation, Lyra’s curation reflects her commitment to stylistic diversity, with the old guard and the next wave alongside each other. Where some artists chose to rework existing works, others composed new material from fragments found across the record. The results showcase the very themes of wordless identity conflict and technological concerns that Lyra and her foremothers have projected.

the limitless highs of Sigur Ros and the steady pulse of The Knife. KMRU cloaks Lyra in a hazy film, soundtracking the depths of space embedded within the ghosts of jungle past. Gabber Modus Operandi expose the realities of artificial nature in a multicoloured rave dystopia. Eris Drew’s double opus takes the tenets of her philosophies into both ambient and peaktime expressions of the trip, the things that lead to the decision before, and the portals that can open up after.
Ben Frost dissolves Cradle’s deep and tremulous hymn in analogue warble, distressed tape spooling out of control and breaking up over the heavens, while remaining oddly serene. Heaven In Stereo conjures up post-rock with trap drums out of Gossip, buried in bass weight and dub space. Nailah Hunter and Tygapaw transform New Moon into an earthbound ode to nature and a pounding trance state induction, while Caterina Barbieri and Hudson Mohawke extract and amplify Tendril’s mind and soul. Vessel takes what feels like the entire album and builds it up to a frantic climax before subsuming into Enoesque pastoralia.
Alongside Delta, Lyra has collaborated with Spitfire Audio to develop Siren Songs, a free plug-in for their LABS series made from playable samples from Fountain, able to work across DAWs in multiple formats. By removing barriers to access, the listener can craft their own responses to the album’s themes, or use its language to express their innermost feelings in their own works.
Life and society emerge where water tessellates over land and provides fertile soil. The chances of evolution that made them interact as they did could have had meaningful environmental consequences had things developed differently. For Lyra Pramuk, that fertile geology provides the ground for her albums. Fountain was that burst of water and swell of energy that propelled her to critical acclaim. Delta is a new take on a traditional remix album, centred on transgenerational dialogue and global storytelling, and will be released again via Iceland’s Bedroom Community label. Projecting Fountain through prisms, wordless songs fractalize into lush creations that blossom with new life.
The ability to have such sheer diversity of material in one place is thanks to the global increase in accessible technologies, fueling an explosion of creativity and genre exploration that was thought of as unthinkable in our lifetimes. Like its namesake, Delta is a point where creative flows meet and triangulate, where global and personal folk histories are presented in novel ways, where transcultural collaboration is celebrated, where many worlds emerge from the depths below.
RIYL: The Knife, Spacetime Continuum, Lorenzo Senni, the soundtrack to Planete Sauvage, 3:45 AM by the front left speaker, 7:45 AM as light pours in and everything winds down.

All Detroit Techno, taken from the album DnA

After a monster year for Vince Watson, with releases on Get Physical, Tronic, SushiTech, All Day I Dream alongside his own Everysoul Audio and a host of remixes, he now ends 2021 brining his label’s biggest and most adventurous release to date: ‘DnA reSequenced’.

After the massive response to his 18 track ‘DnA’ album in 2019, Vince had a vision of having some of the tracks remixed by his favourite Detroit ‘flavoured’ artists from the 3 places that musically have made it all possible for him: Scotland, Amsterdam, Detroit.

So it is with great pleasure that Everysoul can announce remixes by none other than Carl Craig, Claude Young, John Beltran, Jon Dixon, Shawn Rudiman, Stephen Lopkin, Steve Rachmad and Stephen Brown.

Planet E boss Carl Craig is no stranger to Vince’s work, having released 4 of his singles on Planet E and previously remixing his track ‘It’s Not Over’. His remix of ‘Holographic’ takes the heavy synth lines into typical C2 remix territory, building and building with layers into a crescendo.

Jon Dixon may be one of Detroit’s rising stars as a solo artist, but as a band member of Underground Resistance and Timeline, he plays with some of the best Detroit Techno groups around: Galaxy2Galaxy and is a classically trained pianist. Jon’s releases over the last few years now showcase his personal styles and Vince was desperate to work with him, with a keen respect for his musicianship. His Remix of

John Beltran has been one of Vince’s favourite producers for over 25 years and his Pan Am remix is a journey of blissful Beltran fusion styles.

Claude Young takes his remix into a completely new and different direction, moving from the Electro of the original into an experimental masterpiece, respecting the tricky chord programming of the original and adapting into sounds that only Claude Young is able to extract.

Steve Rachmad is one of Vince’s closest allies in Amsterdam and having worked together on many projects over the years, Steve was the first name on the list. His 4/4 edition of Second Wave takes the deep Detroit chords and harmonies into a much darker and groovier direction, with early Transmat character and the funk that Steve Rachmad is known for.

Shawn Rudiman’s remix is a no nonsense straight to the floor banger, taking all the elements of the original into a much more streamlined and live improv version for the floor rather than the head.

Stephen Lopkin is one of Vince’s favourite Scottish producers and his remix takes the original into his own unique style and identity. The original had very unique chord progressions and timing and Lopkin was able to successfully extend this to make it even more complex but with a seamless flow that keeps the groove flowing.

Stephen Brown is also a top Scottish producer who Vince has been supporting and spinning for over 20 years, and his remix of Immersion removes the fluffy jazzy elements from the original and opts directly for the dancefloor, taking Immersion into new territory.

DnA

Portico Quartet announce Terrain, a three-part suite drawing on American minimalism and ambient music alongside their own rich heritage as they explore new musical vistas

When Duncan Bellamy and Jack Wyllie – the driving force behind Portico Quartet got together in their East London studio in May 2020 and started work on the music that would become their new album, the world, or most of it, was in the midst of the first lockdown. The unique impact of the events of 2020 became the backdrop to their time composing and recording; causing them to take stock, re-think, and plot a new musical path.

Indian novelist Arundhati Roy expressed the sense of grief and rupture from the pandemic as "a portal, a gateway between one world and the next", and as they created the music that would become Terrainthey were drawn towards longer, slowly unfolding pieces, which are perhaps the most artistically free and also the most beautiful they have ever made.

These are compositions more in the lineage of Line and Shed Song (Isla/2009), Rubidium (Portico Quartet/2012) and Immediately Visible (Memory Streams/2019). Wyllie expands: "We've always had this side of the band in some form. The core of it is having a repeated pattern, around which other parts move in and out, and start to form a narrative. We used to do longer improvisations not dissimilar to this around the time of our second record Isla. On Terrain we've really dug into it and explored that form. I suppose there are obvious influences such as American minimalism, but I wasparticularly inspired by the work of Japanese composer Midori Takada. Her approach, particularly on 'Through the Looking Glass', where she moves through different worlds incorporating elements of minimalism with non-Western instruments and melodies were at the front of my mind when writing this music".

Terrain I, II & III are all subtly different, but a short rhythmic motif that repeats is the starting point in all three movements. There is a sense of a shared journey to all these pieces, they move throughdifferent worlds, with a sense of horizontal movement that lends the music real momentum. Terrain I was the first piece they worked on and it started with a hang drum pattern, improvised by Bellamy, who added cymbals and synthesiser. From there on it grew, Wyllie adding saxophone, another synthesiser section, strings. For Bellamy "It felt more like filmmaking than music making, a bricolage of conflicting, shifting signs, subtle tension and multiple narratives. Andrei Tarkovsky's 'Mirror' and British artist John Akomfrah's incredible 'Handsworth Songs' were pivotal points of reference for me." Wyllie expands the point. "There is a sense of conversation between us both, in that someone presents a musical idea, the other person responds to it with something else, which would then be responded to again... until it feels finished. These responses are often consonant with each other but there is also a dissonance to some of this work. The music slowly evolves through these shared conversations."

It is this sense of dialogue, both between the composers, and between tranquillity and a subtly unsettling melancholy, that makes Terrain such a powerful statement. One that speaks to both our interior and exterior worlds, to our own personal landscape, to our Terrain.

Biffy Clyro will release the surprise new project ‘The Myth of the Happily Ever After’ on October 22nd. The record is a homegrown project that represents a reaction to their #1 album ‘A Celebration of Endings’ and a rapid emotional response to the turmoil of the past year. It is the ying to the yang of ‘A Celebration’, the other-side-of-a-coin, a before-and-after comparison: their early optimism of 2020 having been brought back to earth with a resounding thud. It’s the product of a strange and cruel time in our lives, but one that ultimately reinvigorated Biffy Clyro.

“This is a reaction to ‘A Celebration of Endings’,” says vocalist / guitarist Simon Neil. “This album is a real journey, a collision of every thought and emotion we’ve had over the past eighteen months. There was a real fortitude in ‘A Celebration’ but in this record we’re embracing the vulnerabilities of being a band and being a human in this twisted era of our lives. Even the title is the polar opposite. It’s asking, do we create these narratives in our own minds to give us some security when none of us know what’s waiting for us at the end of the day?”

‘The Myth’ has been launched alongside the new track ‘Unknown Male 01’. In six adventurous minutes, the band explore every facet they’re renowned for, taking in the unguarded emotion of its introduction, a skewed off-kilter breakdown, and a jagged, spiralling riff that builds towards a cataclysmic crescendo. The song reflects on friends who have taken their own lives.

Biffy Clyro will release the surprise new project ‘The Myth of the Happily Ever After’ on October 22nd. The record is a homegrown project that represents a reaction to their #1 album ‘A Celebration of Endings’ and a rapid emotional response to the turmoil of the past year. It is the ying to the yang of ‘A Celebration’, the other-side-of-a-coin, a before-and-after comparison: their early optimism of 2020 having been brought back to earth with a resounding thud. It’s the product of a strange and cruel time in our lives, but one that ultimately reinvigorated Biffy Clyro.

“This is a reaction to ‘A Celebration of Endings’,” says vocalist / guitarist Simon Neil. “This album is a real journey, a collision of every thought and emotion we’ve had over the past eighteen months. There was a real fortitude in ‘A Celebration’ but in this record we’re embracing the vulnerabilities of being a band and being a human in this twisted era of our lives. Even the title is the polar opposite. It’s asking, do we create these narratives in our own minds to give us some security when none of us know what’s waiting for us at the end of the day?”

Grounded by lockdown, Biffy Clyro recorded ‘The Myth’ in a completely different way to how they approached ‘A Celebrations’. Rather than spending months in Los Angeles, they traded one West Coast for another by recording for just six weeks in their rehearsal room (converted DIY style into a fully functional studio by rhythm section brothers James and Ben Johnston) in a farmhouse closer to their homes.

The trio went in with the intention of completing some unfinished songs from ‘A Celebration’, but instead ‘The Myth’ took over as it started to take shape late in 2020, with everything written and recorded within a ten-mile radius. Traditionally, 90% of Biffy songs have been written in Scotland before the band head to London or Los Angeles for recording, but this represented the first time they’ve ever recorded in their homeland. As Simon jokes, “It’s our first full-on tartan album!”

‘The Myth’ blends experimental flourishes with flashes of old school Biffy. ‘Existed’ is the moment that shaped the record an elegant expression of self-doubt that redefines the sonics of the band’s catalogue of vulnerable slowburners, while ‘DumDum’ is an even bigger departure, having been constructed primarily around soft synths sampled from Simon’s voice. And ‘Slurpy Slurpy Sleep Sleep’ is just as audacious a closer as ‘Cop Syrup’ from ‘A Celebration’. It also represents one of a selection of “easter eggs” or “turns of phrase” that subtly complement and contrast the two records.

At the other extreme, devoted fans will connect with the feral anger of ‘A Hunger In Your Haunt’, the arena-scaled drama of ‘Errors In The History of God’ and the sheer catchiness of ‘Witch’s Cup’.

‘The Myth’ has been launched alongside the new track ‘Unknown Male 01’. In six adventurous minutes, the band explore every facet they’re renowned for, taking in the unguarded emotion of its introduction, a skewed off-kilter breakdown, and a jagged, spiralling riff that builds towards a cataclysmic crescendo. The song reflects on friends who have taken their own lives.

“When you lose people that you love deeply and have been a big part of your life, it can make you question every single thing about your own life,” he says. “Like a lot of creative people, I struggle with dark thoughts. If you’re that way inclined you realise you’re staring at darkness, but you don't want to succumb. Those moments don’t stop. As the song says, ‘The devil never leaves.’ There’s never a day where you wake up thinking, ‘I feel great, it won’t cross me ever again.’”

A recurring concept of the album is the power of personal convictions, which have taken on an almost religious fervour via the echo chambers of social media and news platforms. But that idea has the nuance to rise above contrasting sides of an argument, arguing that greater unity and open-mindedness is the only way forward. Elsewhere, it spans everything from gaslighting to the ultimate devotion of cults and the beautiful failure of a Japanese racehorse.

‘The Myth of the Happily Ever After’ is now available to pre-order here, with ‘Unknown Male 01’ provided as an instant download. It will be released on CD and digital formats, as well as a limited edition red vinyl which is packaged with a must-have bonus CD for fans: full audio of the acclaimed livestream show that Biffy Clyro performed at Glasgow Barrowland in August 2020 to commemorate the release of ‘A Celebration of Endings’.

After headlining Reading and Leeds in August, Biffy Clyro will also play further large-scale outdoor gigs this summer at Cardiff Bay and Glasgow Green. Plans for 2022 are also taking shape, with April’s long sold-out ‘Fingers Crossed’ intimate tour and a huge Saturday night headline set at Download. Please see the band’s official website for a full list of shows and ticket information.

Over nearly 20 years, Howlin Rain may have become the quintessential independent American rock ’n roll band: a steam-spitting Hydra of cranked guitars, kicking asphalt dust through a kaleidoscoping travelogue of desert motels and dives, volleying forth transmissions of sci-fi poetry from the blacktop veins of this cracked and aching country.

Now, in America 2021, capping these strangest and sorest of times, the band returns with The Dharma Wheel, a six-track, 52-minute dive into a joyous fantasy realm of exaggerated present.

“I wanted The Dharma Wheel to be a portal from our everyday world, the one from which you stand on hard ground and hold the album in your hands and peer into the artwork, and into another universe,” says songwriter, guitarist and vocalist, Ethan Miller. “You enter into that universe with your eyes and ears and mind and take a ride through free-form meditation on these ideas — from big, fundamental concepts about our existence right down to the grease that rolls down the arm of a pulp novel killer as he eats a gas station hot dog in an old Dodge in an alleyway.”

Lyrically, Miller has completed his evolution into a mushroom-plucking Whitman of the West, singing outlandish tales in a topographic blend of Humbead’s Revised Map of the World and an inverted U.S. where downtrodden bodhisattvas roam the back streets and moonless country roads.

“Down in Florida swamps, run by nature’s law, standing in the water, Eden gone. Two men loading rifles, beasts making time, they shot a boy from an orange tree and watched the colored birds take flight, watch the colors as they soar and dive.” — ‘Under the Wheels.’

The band, Jeff McElroy (bass, backing vocals), Justin Smith (drums/percussion, backing vocals) and Dan Cervantes (guitar, backing vocals), again sounds hardwired into Miller’s vision, building tracks that swagger and sway in response to his verse. Lending a hand this time around is the legendary Scarlet Rivera (Bob Dylan’s Rolling Thunder Revue) on violin, and the endlessly inventive Adam MacDougall (Chris Robinson Brotherhood, Circles Around the Sun) on keys.

Songs were shaped via the blast furnace of endless gigs, then recorded often mere hours after the band slipped the stage.

“The captured sonic fact about this record is that it’s the sound of a band that rehearsed this material a lot and put a ton of work into its construction and was on the road a lot and recorded on days off in the tour schedule,” Miller says. “In some cases we were on stage on Saturday night playing these songs at quarter-to-2 in the morning and by Noon the next day we were sipping coffee in the studio playing them for the machine.”

Rivera’s violin is the first sound heard as the album dawns on the instrumental “Prelude.” Soon, the band joins, twirling the theme into a psychedelicized awakening. “Don’t Let the Tears” brings the boogie, with MacDougall’s madcap synth work and wah-wah guitars showering 70’s glitter upon a parquet dance floor of the mind. “Under the Wheels” and “Rotoscope” center the album with taut, compositional epics populated by murdering drifters and fuzz pedal explosions. The blue hour comedown of “Annabelle” meditates upon the weariness of lost love, with Rivera again amping the heartache via her violin strings.

“In the evening the trains go by, and shake the dust from dirty walls, sometimes I feel like a spider in an old mason jar, who threatens only convex light from down the hall. I’ve been lost to the world since the photos of the black hole, landed on my desktop screaming, perhaps the all and nothing all-in-one is just too much to take, for particles and matter that never found their way.” — ‘Annabelle’

The record closes with the 16-minute title track, a multi-movement suite which cycles from Crazy Horse-meets-Traffic jams through colossal, mass-moving funk stomp, eventually cresting and washing into a sing-along gospel lament.

The Dharma Wheel is an album of great depth, and one steeped in good vibes: a rich, glistening world of the ultra-vivid. As illustrated in Arik Roper’s cover art, the grand dharmachakra has been set in motion, churning off the California coast.

“We were trying to build a world big enough that the imagination won’t go soft on you after just a few listens and where our love for this music, and music in general — along with a good dose of audacity — create a magic carpet ride through the world of The Dharma Wheel,” Miller continues. “In pursuing that I think we also managed to make a record that has a lot of joy in it: the joy of playing music, the joy of experiencing music, the joy of storytelling and poetry, the kind of singular joy and extended ecstatic moment that only a real ‘band’ can express in just that way.”

And it’s this joy, this exuberance and dedication to the lines of cosmic expression — all centered in the exalted art of the everyday — that constructs the heart of the record. At its core, The Dharma Wheel is the triumph of a working band, a transmission from a never-paused before arriving for our strange, bruised, spectacular now.”

Over nearly 20 years, Howlin Rain may have become the quintessential independent American rock ’n roll band: a steam-spitting Hydra of cranked guitars, kicking asphalt dust through a kaleidoscoping travelogue of desert motels and dives, volleying forth transmissions of sci-fi poetry from the blacktop veins of this cracked and aching country.

Now, in America 2021, capping these strangest and sorest of times, the band returns with The Dharma Wheel, a six-track, 52-minute dive into a joyous fantasy realm of exaggerated present.

“I wanted The Dharma Wheel to be a portal from our everyday world, the one from which you stand on hard ground and hold the album in your hands and peer into the artwork, and into another universe,” says songwriter, guitarist and vocalist, Ethan Miller. “You enter into that universe with your eyes and ears and mind and take a ride through free-form meditation on these ideas — from big, fundamental concepts about our existence right down to the grease that rolls down the arm of a pulp novel killer as he eats a gas station hot dog in an old Dodge in an alleyway.”

Lyrically, Miller has completed his evolution into a mushroom-plucking Whitman of the West, singing outlandish tales in a topographic blend of Humbead’s Revised Map of the World and an inverted U.S. where downtrodden bodhisattvas roam the back streets and moonless country roads.

“Down in Florida swamps, run by nature’s law, standing in the water, Eden gone. Two men loading rifles, beasts making time, they shot a boy from an orange tree and watched the colored birds take flight, watch the colors as they soar and dive.” — ‘Under the Wheels.’

The band, Jeff McElroy (bass, backing vocals), Justin Smith (drums/percussion, backing vocals) and Dan Cervantes (guitar, backing vocals), again sounds hardwired into Miller’s vision, building tracks that swagger and sway in response to his verse. Lending a hand this time around is the legendary Scarlet Rivera (Bob Dylan’s Rolling Thunder Revue) on violin, and the endlessly inventive Adam MacDougall (Chris Robinson Brotherhood, Circles Around the Sun) on keys.

Songs were shaped via the blast furnace of endless gigs, then recorded often mere hours after the band slipped the stage.

“The captured sonic fact about this record is that it’s the sound of a band that rehearsed this material a lot and put a ton of work into its construction and was on the road a lot and recorded on days off in the tour schedule,” Miller says. “In some cases we were on stage on Saturday night playing these songs at quarter-to-2 in the morning and by Noon the next day we were sipping coffee in the studio playing them for the machine.”

Rivera’s violin is the first sound heard as the album dawns on the instrumental “Prelude.” Soon, the band joins, twirling the theme into a psychedelicized awakening. “Don’t Let the Tears” brings the boogie, with MacDougall’s madcap synth work and wah-wah guitars showering 70’s glitter upon a parquet dance floor of the mind. “Under the Wheels” and “Rotoscope” center the album with taut, compositional epics populated by murdering drifters and fuzz pedal explosions. The blue hour comedown of “Annabelle” meditates upon the weariness of lost love, with Rivera again amping the heartache via her violin strings.

“In the evening the trains go by, and shake the dust from dirty walls, sometimes I feel like a spider in an old mason jar, who threatens only convex light from down the hall. I’ve been lost to the world since the photos of the black hole, landed on my desktop screaming, perhaps the all and nothing all-in-one is just too much to take, for particles and matter that never found their way.” — ‘Annabelle’

The record closes with the 16-minute title track, a multi-movement suite which cycles from Crazy Horse-meets-Traffic jams through colossal, mass-moving funk stomp, eventually cresting and washing into a sing-along gospel lament.

The Dharma Wheel is an album of great depth, and one steeped in good vibes: a rich, glistening world of the ultra-vivid. As illustrated in Arik Roper’s cover art, the grand dharmachakra has been set in motion, churning off the California coast.

“We were trying to build a world big enough that the imagination won’t go soft on you after just a few listens and where our love for this music, and music in general — along with a good dose of audacity — create a magic carpet ride through the world of The Dharma Wheel,” Miller continues. “In pursuing that I think we also managed to make a record that has a lot of joy in it: the joy of playing music, the joy of experiencing music, the joy of storytelling and poetry, the kind of singular joy and extended ecstatic moment that only a real ‘band’ can express in just that way.”

And it’s this joy, this exuberance and dedication to the lines of cosmic expression — all centered in the exalted art of the everyday — that constructs the heart of the record. At its core, The Dharma Wheel is the triumph of a working band, a transmission from a never-paused before arriving for our strange, bruised, spectacular now.”

Emboss Star is the new album by Kochi-born, Kyoto-based artist Kazumichi Komatsu, the first to be released under his own name following a prolific run of material as Madegg.
Informed by a range of earlier work including EPs, installation works, video works, as well as live appearances at fashion shows, parties & raves, the material collected on 'Emboss Star' has been prepared and refined over the past four years, its final collation described as like arranging the pieces on a chess board; every piece strategically placed.
In its entirety Emboss Star is intended to emphasize the fundamental aspects of sound, and its relation to the material processes of playback; the grain of a rough recording, the jump and skip of a needle, the backwards gargle of a rewind. Individual parts shift suddenly, mirroring the abrupt transitions of everyday life. In this Komatsu attempts to reconfigure our response to sound, and the associations it often evokes; to reconsider the exchange of information and image, to alter perceptions.
Inviting a state of subconscious reverie – a mood often linked with ambient music but rarely matched as it is here – Komatsu adds an element of resistance to Emboss Star, as if depicting the tranquility of a dream, as well as its inevitable disturbance.
With creativity now compressed into a form of contemporary communication often ruled by vanity, redundant hashtags and tiresome jargon, Komatsu navigates the noise, recognizing technological ennui yet finding beauty, folklore & imaginative possibility.

Emboss Star is a collection of folk songs for lost connections. A vivid form of refuge.
3 vinyl only bonus track included. Mastered by Sean McCann.
The artwork for Emboss Star depicts an object created by Kazumichi Komatsu using 3D printing.












l 12: Umi Ga Kikoeru (Extremely Raw Version) [feat. Dove & Le Makeup]

Odd, Ordinary & Otherwise,’ the third full-length record from New Orleans
country-folk songsmith Chris Acker, is a collection of songs brimming with
true tales, eloquent songwriting, and fearless honesty.
During his decade-long songwriting career, Chris has explored musical terrain
tread by contemporary folk music’s greatest champions: Prine, Dylan, Guthrie,
etc. With ‘Odd, Ordinary & Otherwise,’ Acker has forged an unmistakable lyrical
style that’s truly his own, containing more reverence than reference to those
who came before him.
The songs of O-O-O are equally as influenced by months of isolation during
COVID quarantine as they are by Chris’ place in the New Orleans dancehall and
busking communities in years previous.
The album’s thirteen tracks flow gracefully from introspective, quiet tunes worthy of the modern Folk Music cannon, to downright barn burners ready for
the dancehall and all the space in between. Acker’s creative response to the
heartbreak and anxiety that defined the year 2020 is primarily one full of life.
The vividly painted scenes and stories that define the record are his and no one
else’s. Paired with his signature pop sensibility, playful and sometimes humorous language, and a professional sonic presentation, ‘Odd, Ordinary & Otherwise’ is a compelling record that merits close investigation.

"Kazakh artist Galya Bisengalieva’s debut album was released by One Little Independent in September 2020 and is a concept record about the shrinking of the Aral Sea, which has been called one of the “20th century’s more jaw-dropping ecological catastrophes, a consequence of the Soviet-era policy of diverting the two tributary rivers to irrigate cotton plants across Central Asia” (NY Times)
Now, roughly a year later, Galya is releasing Aralkum Aralas. In Kazakh aralas means mixed/reworked. Galya has thoughtfully curated a remix album of artists to respond to her work having previously commissioned new work for her label NOMAD Music Productions. Those musicians are; Coby Sey, Jing, Moor Mother, Jlin, CHAINES and Nazira. Galya approached artists whose practise she judged would resonate with her source material and bring new light to the narrative. She was interested in getting responses from artists from diverse backgrounds for their insight into her voice."

Sound Wonders: A Series of Epics is the second compilation from Touchtheplants, the imprint and multidisciplinary creative environment founded by Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith and Sean Hellfritsch (aka Cool Maritime). Following 2020's Breathing Instruments, the new collection features sonic responses to a new prompt. Like its predecessor (which explored music as an extension of the human body and the natural world), the medium of focus here dates back to ancient civilizations. Smith invited artists to compose music based on the idea of epics: the long poems and narrative verse works that have detailed deeds and adventures since the dawn of storytelling. The musicians — some of today's most exciting practitioners of experimental sound design, instrumentation, and synthesis — took this directive loosely, realizing a series of vibrant and transportive songs evoking wondrous visions, subjects, and locales.
From Elori Saxl’s chamber piece to Olive Ardizoni’s ode to the strange and beautiful phenomenon of starling murmurations with synth and xylophone tones the album splays out like chapters in a panoramic account of all that surrounds us.

After humble lo-fi beginnings in the Australian Art-Pop Underground, Donny Benet has expanded his cult-like following across the Globe with a resonant Array of danceable Repertoire dealing with Love- and Affection. New album "Mr Experience" marks a new chapter, informed by a wealth of musical- and personal development.

For Mr Experience, Donny envisioned a Soundtrack to a Dinner-Party- Set in the late 1980's. While his earlier Recordings drew Inspiration from DIY Pop Conspirators such as Ariel Pink & John Maus, Donny channelled the Stylings of Bryan Ferry & Hiroshi Yoshimura as the Impetus for new Material, evident on the Intimacy found on ‘Girl Of My Dreams’ and it's lush production- with a soothing whistle-along Chorus for good Measure!

Sincerity has been a key component of Donny Benet’s output since the beginning. His songs deal with genuine Emotion served on a kitsch Platter. An alter-ego manifested in the beginning of the 2010's, Donny has blurred the Lines of Artifice to create a back- Catalogue that can embrace- and challenge, often simultaneously, - the notion of Irony in Art.

"Mr Experience" moves further away from ironic Notions as Donny explores lyrical- and musical themes which embody Observations of Maturation in his audience, his tightknit musical Community- and himself. While ‘mature’ is a term that often rings hollow as an album descriptor, the term couldn’t be more apt for Mr Experience.

Previous album The Don was created with the luxury of time. The phenomenal Response to that Album across Europe- and the United States - fuelled by accompanying Music Videos clocking in Views in the Millions- meant that there were scant Windows of Opportunity to write- and record a follow-up.

With a legacy in Sydney’s music community, working with Sarah Blasko, and tightknik collaborators Jack Ladder & Kirin J Callinan, Donny Benet is accustomed to collaboration on the Stage- and in the Studio, mostnotably on the 2014 full-length release Weekend At Donny’s.



“There is such immense talent evident in every aspect of the Donny Bene experience - the vision of the character, the steadfast adherence his narrative and the musicality of Benet himself all combine to makesomething truly genius.” - Double J, Australin.

“Donny Benet makes feminine music for everybody” - Vice, Netherlands.

“The Don does not sound like amusical copying machine”. - 3voor12 National, Netherlands.

“The set was punctuated with virtuosic solos and exquisite harmonies, and added another layer of genius to the show.
We almost couldn’t handle it... Donny for president!" - Indie Berlin.

“Everyone loves Donny Benet” - Feature in Gonzai, France.

“Phenomenal Australian Showman... Offers Top-Class Dance Music with Virtuose-Bass Guitar- and Keyboard Parts & incredible Sound-Colour feel.” - Podujatie.sk, Slovakia.

Donny has toured Europe five times since the start of 2018 and has played in the UK, Austria, Germany, Slovakia, France, Netherlands, Spain, Portugal, Belgium, Denmark, Switzerland, Czech Republic, Greece and Sweden. The Don will revisit Europe twice in 2020, once for his own headline shows in May then back again in August for festivals!

Luxembourg based Persian producer SCARLIT PORT delivers a new EP of uncompromisingly violent power electronics techno titled HIGHNESS HOMA for Megastructure_

Creating an aggressive counterpoint to his previous releases, “Highness Homa” features 4 racks of aggravated industrial body techno with massive sounds for listening both on and off the dance floor.

The record starts with the 145 bpm pounder “Highness Homa”. The intensity continues melancholically with the transcending As it Shall, driving the beats and hypnosis further with heavy-hitting percussion of “Haevenbeas”. The record ends with the bludgeoning track Mina’s Doom, created together with Blush Response – a smasher that keeps you at the edge of your seat!

Originally released in 1992, Brutal Truth’s ‘Extreme Conditions Demand
Extreme Responses’ was produced by the legendary Colin Richardson and
is widely regarded as one of the most important and influential grindcore
records of all time.
Reissued for the first time ever with ‘Full Dynamic Audio’ this release is a must
have for any fan of Grindcore.
Pressed from the original master tapes. These albums have been specially recreated using ‘fdr’ - full dynamic range mastering - allowing the music’s nuances
to shine through and giving these classic albums a more ferocious and dynamic
sound, enabling the listener to immerse in the full audio heaviness like never
before

Contemporary and historical Porest recordings channelled from behind the somnambulistic event horizon. The now sound... The bleak oblique. The minimal and the maximal. Filmic chamber drones, meditative radio massage and forged spiritual violence bury pop ephemera into the swirling murk of de facto instrumental nihilism and orchestral context-free drama.
Side A: A harmful journey into sickness and despair. You get sick and die.
Side B: You are healed. You stand erect and live forever.
Layered field and radio recordings back electro-acoustic experiments via electric saz, strings, balypso, reeds & synths. Big drones, small ensembles and mood-anthems recorded by Porest and friends between 1995 and 2020 in West Oakland, Germany, Sumatra, Syria, Hanoi and London.

Georgian DJ and producer Vulkanski returns to BITE with his first full length album Skeptical Answers. Serving as a longtime resident at Tbilisi club KHIDI, he’s also known as one of the key figures pioneering the local electronic music scene. Achi Tabukashvili stands for rich, vibrant techno and grinding, metallic soundscapes that are elegantly arranged through his high fidelity productions and singular dj sets. Vulkanski’s Skeptical Answers traverses over 10 tracks the infinite ranges between tectonic club techno, to UK-inspired IDM and broken beat, while reaching to contemporary weightless and electro territories. Producer Tabukashvili describes and questions a period of a deeper esoteric search through the labyrinth of contemporary viewpoints on instrumental sonics and its unexpected answers. In addition, Vulkanksi is known as one half of duo Greenbeam & Leon who began DJing and performing throughout Georgia in 2002. They notably appeared on Boiler Room in response to the police raids at Bassiani and Cafe Gallery 5 years ago. With Vulkanski’s debut BITE EP Science Gardens in 2018, he illustrated his detailed vision of his own dense soundscape productions culminating in a memorable Berghain debut for label cofounder Phase Fatale’s Ostgut Ton album release party in 2020. Now, Skeptical Answers examines a wider spectrum of sonic possibilities, aimed towards the most daring of dancefloors existing between the liminal bounds of club music and its deconstructions. A dissection of his focused elements in heavy electronics. ALSO INCLUDES DOWNLOAD CODE….

White Marbled Vinyl

Georgian DJ and producer Vulkanski returns to BITE with his first full length album Skeptical Answers. Serving as a longtime resident at Tbilisi club KHIDI, he’s also known as one of the key figures pioneering the local electronic music scene. Achi Tabukashvili stands for rich, vibrant techno and grinding, metallic soundscapes that are elegantly arranged through his high fidelity productions and singular dj sets. Vulkanski’s Skeptical Answers traverses over 10 tracks the infinite ranges between tectonic club techno, to UK-inspired IDM and broken beat, while reaching to contemporary weightless and electro territories. Producer Tabukashvili describes and questions a period of a deeper esoteric search through the labyrinth of contemporary viewpoints on instrumental sonics and its unexpected answers. In addition, Vulkanksi is known as one half of duo Greenbeam & Leon who began DJing and performing throughout Georgia in 2002. They notably appeared on Boiler Room in response to the police raids at Bassiani and Cafe Gallery 5 years ago. With Vulkanski’s debut BITE EP Science Gardens in 2018, he illustrated his detailed vision of his own dense soundscape productions culminating in a memorable Berghain debut for label cofounder Phase Fatale’s Ostgut Ton album release party in 2020. Now, Skeptical Answers examines a wider spectrum of sonic possibilities, aimed towards the most daring of dancefloors existing between the liminal bounds of club music and its deconstructions. A dissection of his focused elements in heavy electronics. ALSO INCLUDES DOWNLOAD CODE….

Dark Star Safari is a musical entity comprised of Jan Bang, Erik Honoré, Eivind Aarset, Samuel Rohrer and John Derek Bishop. Their second fulllength offering Walk Through Lightly is the first to feature all five musicians together in the studio from the outset, making for a more organic refinement upon their already established methodology: gradually sculpting distinct songs out of collective improvisations, or using the raw material from initial recordings as the basis for more carefully articulated compositions. The final mix is one that invites few stylistic comparisons to other musical peers, and in fact few comparisons to existing genres. Though this second offering from the project is frosted over with a Scandinavian sense of spatiality and
melancholy, it’s best listened to without considering any origin points, geographic or otherwise: from the opening moments of “Walk Through Lightly,” listeners will feel as if teleported directly into the middle of an enigmatic film-in-progress.
The album opener immediately and successfully sets the table for what is to follow. The electronic and acoustic instrumentation is pensive, but not passive, with restrained scrapes and stridulations in the background combining with backwards-looped passages and perlescent or granulated sound effects to better emphasize the carefully arranged latticework of guitar, percussion, strings, and bass. In some places, such as on “Father’s Day” and “Measured Response,” the silences or breaths between passages are pronounced enough to be an instrument in their own right (and an elegant confirmation of the fact that silence is also a conveyor of information). This nuanced production, which wisely opts for intimacy instead of relying on overdone "instant atmosphere generators" like lengthy reverb, provides just enough tension to contrast with the sense of elevation provided by Bang’s vocal contributions: smoky, evanescent, and impressionistic recitations offering not snapshots of specific events, but rather complete emotional environments for the listener to hover through and explore.
Within these environments, the lyrical imagery focuses upon coming to grips with sudden transformations on both micro and macro levels (the opening “this was a perfect place / till we lost our way” from “Patria” or the foreboding “Poems that explore / Their silence / Crush their violence / Now their time ends” from “Measured Response.”) It focuses as well upon coming to thresholds or crossings, be they physical crossroads or internal states of mind, or both (see especially the striking turns of phrase from “Murmuration.”) With such things in mind, it’s only natural that there would be consideration of dreaming as well, and indeed four different titles on the LP make different reference to a dream or dream state, seemingly valuing dreams as part of the continuum of consciousness rather than something totally cut off from waking experience.
Given the sense of foreboding, anticipation, and even unease that these kinds of subjects often bring with them, the spare and un-hurried music is all the more intriguing, especially when the eponymous finale arrives and the percolating sound bed seems to hint at a coming resolution, but then leaves the listener with more questions than answers. By competently fusing a mature, economical approach to sincerely romantic lyrical themes, Walk Through Lightly is a rare accomplishment.

Detroit, in the 1960s the home of both soul and punk rock. Smokey Robinson and the MC5. In it's small satellite town of Flint lived Rick Hickman, a blues guitarist influenced by both these traditions. Rick channeled these influences into cutting his own 45 on the private press Special Edition Records label. And that’s where he expected it to end.

Fast forward to 2020 and the cut is re-discovered by a rare soul and jazz connoisseur Des Cridland who immediately alerts the Acid Jazz crew, knowing they’re always on the lookout for super rare cuts to reissue. Eddie Piller span the record on his Eclectic Soul Show and the response was phenomenal so much so Acid Jazz jumped at the chance to put this out again!

Rick Hickman's fantastic blue-eyed soul single Time Is Long / Closer To Me Now is now set for release on the 3rd April.

The Allergies are back with a new album – Rejoice! And the feel-good funk, hip-hop swagger, and dusty vintage loops, is everything you need right now.

Across the 13 tracks, producers Rackabeat and DJ Moneyshot dig deep into their souls, as well as their record collections, serving up a day-glo blast of super positive sampledelia that'll have you smiling from ear to ear.

Built from scratch during lockdown, each song offers up a world to lose yourself in, free from any and all dark clouds. It's their Promised Land, and everyone is welcome to bask in the sunshine.

Along for the ride is LA rap legend, Andy Cooper Ugly Duckling, soul sensation Marietta Smith, dance music heavyweight, Dynamite MC, and the unmistakable voice of hip-hop royalty, Lyrics Born.

Everyone got the memo, as career-best performances roll one after the other. And each singer, rapper, scratcher, and sampler, unites through the power of good good music.

Highlights on the LP include the swamp blues meets half-time hip-hop monster, 'Lean On You'. The Latin funk bomb, 'Move On Baby'. Soul rollers 'New Thing' and 'Are You Ready', and the show-stopping and stirring Moby-ish beat banger, 'Promised Land'.

Almost a concept album, the idea of fresh starts, strange new worlds, loss, solidarity, freedom, and the communities we find in clubs, festivals, and making and sharing music, began to come out, organically, through the song-writing process.

"In a weird way the album wrote itself," says DJ Moneyshot. "We'd be lost in our own little world of hypnotic loops as days passed, and samples jumped out of the shelves, and just started to make sense as they got chopped and layered into these tracks."

Early support for the singles, and response from fans across the globe, suggests that this, their fifth album, really could be something special. Come on in…