Suche:sad ghost

Land of Talk is still here. That wasn’t always a guarantee. Over the multi-faceted twenty year history of their project, Lizzie Powell has drifted from and back to music, always interrogating their role as an artist. In the time since 2023’s Performances, they found themselves utterly worn down by the vicissitudes of the music industry and wracked with worry around their aging parents. Yet the music didn’t stop: Powell heard songs in traffic and in birds chirping, in their downstairs neighbor’s daily prayers and in the babble of children on the street. Melodies slowly cohered over time. “Life can become so unbearable, and music is where I go to metabolize it,” they explain. “I know the music was the only thing that was going to help me.” Soon Powell reemerged with the sixth Land of Talk album, LASTS.

LASTS is full of double meanings — both resilience and finality, acting as a noun and a verb. Though LASTS is haunted by crises including climate collapse, political upheaval, and genocide, the mangitude of global turmoil led Powell towards smaller, humane depictions of suffering and grief. As both their parents became ill, Powell reflected on the last time a person might walk, might talk to a loved one. Yet watching their parents near the other side of life’s arc also made Powell consider all they had survived across their own decades on this earth, their new songs channeling both gratitude and rage. LASTS became a phrase, honoring Land of Talk’s circuitous route and all Powell’s reckoned with through the years. “I think of this record as a love letter to life,” they say.

The end result is an album both lean and winding, allowing Powell’s words and melodies to take centerstage, uncrowded in visceral, shot-no-chaser arrangements. LASTS jumps right in with “Broken Tongue,” a wiry track built on thrumming electric guitar and ghostly synths as Powell rails against the lack of justice for victims of abuse. The trio’s interplay is readily evident in “Saffron” and “4:44,” two earworm songs that also allow themselves to unspool into extended instrumental codas. Early in the record, there are seething tracks like “Dogs” — “Just your basic instinct / Even dogs know better,” Powell growls in the chorus, before the song quiets into a plaintive plea of “Leave us alone now” — and later there are more vulnerable, wandering moments. In “Projections” and “Cedars,” Powell ventures deep into their head, inviting their co-conspirators and listeners alike to follow the songs wherever they meander.

Berlin-based Dutch-Italian composer and musician Aimée Portioli aka Grand River presents the new album Temporary, returning to the renowned Editions Mego label with her most expansive and focused LP yet.

Rooted in existential ideas of impermanence and flux, Temporary is a deeply emotive work centred on the rich interplay between resonant guitar work and innovative electronics. Written in the wake of profound personal grief and loss, the album sees Portioli infuse her music with a raw, expressive intensity anchored in this experience. Across eight strikingly melodic and affecting soundscapes, Portioli powerfully embodies a dramatic encounter with mortality.

Temporary reprises Portioli’s exceptional streak of material across acclaimed labels including Donato Dozzy and Neel’s Spazio Disponibile, Caterina Barbieri's light-years, Ghostly International, Tresor and Umor Rex. The LP represents the latest tour de force in her distinctive electronic practice. Alongside a raft of lauded releases, Portioli has devised visionary multichannel installations which dissolve the boundary between the art gallery and the performance space.

Her new album signifies a culmination of her work, imbued with the depth of Portioli’s artistry. Shaped by a paradigm shift rising from loss, the record reflects a contemplation of the human condition and the ephemeral nature of existence. Ruminating on the thoughts and experiences that have fed into the record, Portioli reveals a consequential recognition underpinning the record:

"Sometimes, when travelling in places far from home that I know I will most likely never return to, or while accompanying someone I loved towards the end of their life, I become intensely aware of the singularity of the moment, and of how precious and sad this feels at the same time. It carries a particular weight because it will never happen again in quite the same way. Through experiences like these, I have gradually come to understand the temporary nature of all things. They taught me that to live is to experience the present while already feeling the trace of its disappearance, something both painful and blissful." - Aimée Portioli, Grand River

The album is invested with a potent mood and momentum from the outset. Establishing an evocative tone with the subtle, pulsating synthesis, rustling undertow, and oceanic low end of 18 circles to heaven, Portioli gradually ascends through the incandescent modular majesty of Come to stay, and the turbulent, brooding guitar figures of The crossing of the body, the crossing of the mind. The album progresses through the rapturous electronic phasing of The little we last into the coruscating synth grandeur of Let me know when you’re pure, before a thrilling endgame.

Closing with the wavering harp runs, heavy percussive thud, and cataclysmic guitar discordance of Maybe I am dead and this is paradise, and the evanescent atmospherics and beautiful acoustic refrains of Work of ending, Portioli takes the listener through vast landscapes of sound and mercurial emotional states. Intimate and immersive in equal measure, the record traces a compelling sensory journey.

Each part of the album is part of a larger poetic sentence, with track titles forming fragments that together articulate a meditation on transience. From 18 circles to heaven and Come to stay through From the other side and Work of ending, they read like quiet statements about being human, about loving, losing, remembering and eventually fading. The record moves through these states as a continuous passage, depicting a poignant soundworld guided by temporality.

The awareness that our time is limited sharpens the value of what remains. Each encounter, each gesture, each fleeting moment becomes more vivid. Temporary lingers in the space where presence and disappearance coexist, where everything is already passing away and therefore becomes infinitely precious. Things matter because they do not last. Mortality does not diminish life; it intensifies it. In confronting these ideas, Temporary feels irrepressibly alive.

Composed, produced and mixed by Aimée Portioli
Production and mixing assistance by Luca Sammartin
Acoustic piano on Maybe I am dead and this is paradise by Andert Tysma
Mastered by Rashad Becker
Cut by Marta De Pascalis at Schnittstelle, Berlin
Artwork by Nicola Tirabasso
Layout by Riccardo Piovesan

Yes folks, it's time to take it back to the roots...GAMM style.

Our very first release was a beautiful gem from Red Astaire titled 'Follow Me' - a track that defined GAMM's identity and helped pave the way for everything we've achieved since.
Now, 23 years later, GAMM has reached its landmark 200th release.

To celebrate this anniversary and honour our dear friend Fredrik Lager (aka Red Astaire), who sadly and unexpectedly passed away three years ago, we are re-releasing 'Follow Me' alongside remixes from some of our favourite producers. The remixes will be released across three separate 7 inch EPs featuring Soul Supreme, DJ Spinna, Ukokos and Kampinos.

The second instalment of the 'Follow Me' remix / rework series comes from GAMM's finest ghost producers, Ukokus & Kampinos. It doesn't matter who is behind the names; what matters is the quality of the production. The Ukokos version transforms 'Follow Me' into a killer Bruk / UK House monster that is guaranteed to make noise in the clubs, check that mad bass-drop!

On the AA side, Kampinos throws 'Follow Me' into a blender of percussive samba and 90's drum'n'bass rhythms...and it's a beautiful marriage.

The Spoiled is an Italian post-punk project led by Giovanni Santolla, blending electronic beats, distorted synths, and reverb-soaked guitars into a dark, romantic, and nostalgic sound.

In 2024, the project self-released the debut EP Time distributed by Manic Depression, followed in 2025 by the full-length Living Ghosts via Swiss Dark Nights—an album that firmly established The Spoiled within the contemporary post-punk scene. Following the album’s release, Giovanni collaborated with international acts including This Eternal Decay, Darkways, Corlyx, Chaos International, and Hinfort, while maintaining a dense touring schedule across Europe and sharing the stage with artists such as Traitrs, Hinfort, Darkways, and Ductape.

The new album When It Rains, set for release on Avant! Records on April 17, 2026, expands The Spoiled’s artistic vision with a focus on intense, romantic soundscapes that delve deeply into human intimacy and interpersonal relationships. Embracing a warmer and more personal sonic direction, the record blends elements of indie rock and electrogaze music that enrich and revitalize the dark, melancholic palette that has defined the project’s earlier works.

Still playing homage to the forefathers of the genre such as Clan of Xymox, The Sound and Pink Turns Blue, When It Rains opens the path of The Spoiled to new soundscapes, exploring broader emotional territories while preserving the atmospheric depth and introspective tone that have become its signature.

FFO: Twin Tribes, Clan of Xymox, She Past Away, Mareux, The Soft Moon, Pink Turns Blue.

Guests is the home recording project of Jessica Higgins and Matthew Walkerdine. Vaguely named as such to avoid any problems with the poster if they pull out of a gig (which has only happened once, about a year and half before any songs were actually written to be fair) but also to capture a sense of reverse hospitality. That is, arriving at your door with a bottle of good wine (can’t turn up empty handed) or a fist full of savoury or sweet snacks (time of day dependant); oversharing at the afters (and then passing out on your couch); reading to your toddler while you make their lunch or put everything back where it was meant to go (only to get torn apart again). So, something about what happens when private worlds meet each other, making or having been made a space for. But at times, it’s a different kind of intimacy, a temporal or material one, like the feeling of crisp fresh sheets, and abundant and soft, body-part appropriate towels in a hotel in a city you’ve been to before and love to go back to.

Their debut record, “I wish I was special”, was variously described as “a collage of concrète experiments and outerzone pop gestures, music that sounds as if it’s been written from the depths of a dream”; “music for people who love music but also hate it too”; “something like chasing ghosts or befriending a wild animal”; “pulling apart nervous sensations with haphazard ease and requisite humour”; and “a melody of refusal, of being all-in (…) finding the exact right WRONG sound to express the discontent”. Common Domestic Bird continues in this vein, layering synthesiser, keyboards and samples over rudimentary drum rhythms and field recordings, which are in turn sung or spoken with to create nine new songs.

Written and recorded between autumn 2024 and summer 2025 in Reading, Berkshire, the music has matured since its last outing, in a way, leaning less into collage and more toward structured composition and melodic depth, yet retains a healthy dose of indeterminacy and off-kilter rhythms for the forever-amateur. The songs on Common Domestic Bird hint at some “about”-ness through a series of discrete vignettes which sound a bit like architecture or end of year lists, gossip or over-thinking subjectivity, like disappearances and impressions, the support structure of the spine, letters and signs offs, things you could really do without and where they should go, hoping you’ll see something that isn’t there, pretences and performance. At times they feel kind of funny, others kind of sad or a bit angry and annoyed, a bit like you really.

Following Parnell March’s Back Bar Grooves EP in February and November’s release of the Dust Tears (lead song from Sarah/Shaun’s debut) remixes, Edinburgh’s Hobbes Music label returns with a second EP of dream pop from husband-and-wife duo Sarah/Shaun (pronounced simply Sarah Shaun), alias Sarah and Shaun McLachlan (pronounced McLochlun), who wooed hearts and wowed critics with debut EP ‘It’s True What They Say?’ last year.

‘It’s True What They Say?’ attracted fans across the board: Artist Of The Week in The Scotsman, rapturous reviews from The Skinny and Tokyo's Ban Ban Ton Ton blog, BBC 6Music airplay courtesy of Nemone (Mary Anne Hobbs' Morning Show), more radio play from Radio Scotland's Roddy Hart & Vic Galloway, plus Simone Butler (Primal Scream) and Jim Sclavunos (Bad Seeds) via their respective Soho Radio shows, not forgetting ringing endorsements from the likes of David Holmes, Youth, Kevin Bales (Spiritualized), Brent Rademaker (Beachwood Sparks) and Julian Corrie (Franz Ferdinand).

They played gigs supporting Glasgow's huge Glasvegas, at festivals (Kendall Calling, Dunbar Music, Hidden Door), plus a slew of venues across the Scottish capital, ending the year with a trio of shows supporting Glaswegian 80s pop legends The Bluebells at Aberdeen’s Tunnels, Dunfermline’s PJ Molloys and Edinburgh’s Liquid Rooms, while The List magazine tipped them among their Ones To Watch For 2025, with journalist Fiona Shepherd suggesting they were “blending the starry-eyed pop of Sonny & Cher with the electronic experimentation of Chris & Cosey.”

Very much the companion piece to the debut EP but arriving a full twelve months later, Someone’s Ghost is emblematic of the duo’s desire not to rush things or release anything half-baked.

“I’ve always wanted to create the perfect pop record and I do really feel that we’ve achieved that with this one,” says Shaun. And he’s clearly not the only person who thinks so.

REVIEWS, FEEDBACK ETC:

"I LOVE that! Dreamy dreamy pop." ROY MOLLOY (Marvellous Crane/Alex Cameron) on BLAST RADIO, Sydney
“the Scottish music scene’s cream of the cool... buzzy drum beats, high, distant chimes, and heavenly electronics…. very ethereal.” THE SKINNY

"Listening to Sarah/Shaun is like eavesdropping on a noir dreampop, long-distance phone call between them both, across two separate sonic locations. On this stunning 4-song EP, Sarah’s voice, effortlessly mesmerising, draws you into these big beautiful and haunting passages of perfect dream-pop. All beautifully produced in a multi-layered-scape of low-fi analogue textures, epic cinematic crescendos, intense electro-pulse grooves and warped psycho-pop guitar riffs. Within the songs lurk a sense of unresolved emotions, longing and pathos. There are shades of classic Lee Hazelwood & Nancy Sinatra but also Post-Punk Electronica and Beach House. But what a unique sound they’ve created of their own. I love it" DAVID MCCLUSKEY (The Bluebells)
"Absolutely beautiful" SEAN JOHNSTON (A Love From Outer Space)
"Lovely stuff here! Total quality." MARTYN 'MASH' HENDERSON
"Ooooh. Everything the last record promised is here. Well done" GEORGE T aka George Demure (Accident Machine)
"Vince clark Era Depeche Mode in places" KEVIN BALES (Spiritualized)
"Sounds cool. Well done" PETE KEMBER (Sonic Boom, Spacemen 3)
"Glorious, it (Debbie Harry) grabs hold of you and doesn't let go." IAIN DAWSON aka RAVECHILD (Everyone Wants To Play The Hits Podcast)

SOMEONE’S GHOST

Born out of an incredibly anxious, stressful time, the songwriting process for these recordings has been something of a personal tonic for Shaun…

“There was a period when I was having nightmares,” he reveals. “Apparently I was saying there was someone in the room, I was talking to that person and Sarah was seeing all this while I was still asleep.

So, I was thinking that this was my ghost. I started writing songs because I was going through something and I was dealing with something and writing songs was a comfort. My ghost was a comfort, whether it was real or not. The idea of it was a comfort.”

“I firmly believe that everyone has someone who watches over them but all of the songs are essentially about being there for someone,” he says. “Everybody needs someone but also everyone needs to stay real and keep what you have, keep it close, never let it go. If you don’t have it, continue to tell people you’re there for them. It’s about loving and hoping people will be good to you in return.”

While Shaun took the songwriting lead on Filter Of Love and EP closer The Sound Which Stresses The Sound Of My Ears, Debbie Harry was originally instrumentally conceived by producer Jaguar Eyes, alias Ali Chisholm, later lyrically completed by Shaun, and the EP’s lead track, Anhedonia, and one of its stand-outs (much like Starbed on the debut) was conceived by Sarah, as a result of experiencing a bit of a spiritual epiphany of her own.

“When I first heard the word Anhedonia, I didn't know what it meant but when I found out I thought about it quite a bit. How sad it would be to have no enjoyment in anything,” she explains. “This song is really about my own personal beliefs. When I have been down, that's one of the things that helps me the most. It talks about trying to make amends but realising, for some things, you can't. But I think with any kind of faith comes hope… which is always a good thing.”

A record about hope, truth, honesty, a belief in something bigger than oneself… and all set to a soundtrack that wouldn’t feel out of place in a David Lynch or Eighties feature film. What more could anyone ask for, really?

There’s equally a desire to offer something universal and positive to anyone who tunes in. The labels for the 12” edition reveal the dual mantras “Who just wants to survive?” and “It’s about time to live a little”, with both messages also engraved in each record’s run-out grooves. T-shirts accompanying debut EP It’s True What They Say? bore the slogan “Kill Them With Kindness” - leading caps intentional. Shaun carries the acronym KTWK everywhere he plays, as a reminder: it’s stitched into his guitar strap. And this particular wee pebble has already caused a few ripples: people have been approaching him at gigs to acknowledge their appreciation and respect for it.

"We feel we have made an honest, open, colourful, body of work,” say the duo. “We hope to go out and play the songs with the guys (our band) and then potentially make more records. We are taking things as they come. Everything has been organic so far, after all. We are looking forward to whatever this brings."

The short, mysterious career of the female French duo Deux Filles is bookended by tragedy. Gemini Forque and Claudine Coule met as teenagers at a holiday pilgrimage to Lourdes, during which Coule's mother died of an incurable lung disease and Forque's mother was killed and her father paralyzed in an auto accident. The two teens bonded over their shared grief and worked through their bereavement with music. However, after recording two critically acclaimed albums and playing throughout Europe and North America, Forque and Coule disappeared without a trace in North Africa in 1984 during a trip to visit Algiers. The short and terribly unhappy lives of Forque and Coule are at the root of the small but fervent cult following the mysterious duo have gained since their disappearance, not least because the placid, largely instrumental music on the duo's albums betrays no hint of the sorrow that framed their personal lives.

This would be a terribly sad story if a word of it were true. In reality, Deux Filles were Simon Fisher Turner, former child star/teen idol and future soundtrack composer, and his mate Colin Lloyd Tucker. Turner and Tucker left an early incarnation of The The in 1981 to pursue another musical direction. Turner claims that the idea of Deux Filles came to him in a dream, and he and Tucker strictly maintained the fiction throughout the duo's career. Not only did they pose in drag for the album covers, the duo once even played live without the audience realizing that the tragic French girls on-stage were actually a pair of blokes from south London. Deux Filles released two albums through Turner and Tucker's Papier Mache label, 1982's Silence & Wisdom' and 1983's Double Happiness'. Both albums are included here and blend watery piano, occasionally ghostly vocals, sheets of synthesizers, heavily processed guitars and the barest minimum of percussion. Drifting and wistful, they're a pair of lost ambient gems from a time when the genre had yet to mature, an excellent example of post-Eno, pre-Orb ambient music.

All songs have been remastered for vinyl by George Horn at Fantasy Studios in Berkeley. The vinyl comes housed in gatefold sleeve with original front covers of both albums, and a centerfold of archive images and the original liner notes. Each LP includes a sticker of the Lino cuts by Adrian Gill that was included with the original pressing.

"Like an early French film soundtrack with melodramatic overtones, the sound is jagged and disjointed but never harsh. Lilting guitars and ample use of echo smack of Vini Reilly, relying on the hypnotic qualities of the sound rather than abrasive noise" (Sounds, 03/1983)

Pingipung proudly introduces Iko Chérie, the experimental pop project of French multiinstrumentalist Marie Merlet. The 7"" single "Ghosted Ghosters of the Holy G" offers a first glimpse into her forthcoming LP, Soft Centre (Nov 2025) - a hypnotic blend of dub-infused songwriting and blissful noise. On the flipside, French electro-dub visionaries Froid Dub unravel the track into a shadowy, slow-motion version, with a solid sub-bass, flickering delays and half-heard whispers. Trained in classical piano as a child, Marie Merlet shifted to teaching herself the guitar when she discovered the DIY indie punk scene. She then studied jazz singing and electro acoustic composition in Bordeaux before moving to London to play bass in Monade alongside Laetitia Sadier (Stereolab). With her solo project Iko Chérie, she crafts a surreal sound world of woozy incantations, Casio drones, and reverb-drenched guitars, woven with processed spoken-word samples. Beyond Iko Chérie, Marie Merlet tours globally and records with Gina Birch (The Raincoats) and is the guitarist in psychedelic cumbia outfit Malphino. She also hosts a monthly Soho Radio show championing women in music and curates a film & performance series at London"s Cinema Museum.

Parsley Sounds was the glorious debut album for Mo Wax by Parsley Sound. The album was one of the iconic label’s final releases before it closed in 2003 and locating a clean copy has been extremely tricky of late, unless you're flush enough to drop 150 notes on it. Mercifully, the Be With reissue, put together with invaluable assistance from the group, should remedy this situation. It's a lo-fi, bass-heavy, blunted beat treat, warped with heat haze and dreamy soft-psych and has been criminally under-heard for far too long.

As with most cult-like records, Parsley Sounds has many influential fans, far and wide. From Four Tet and Caribou to NTS's modern day breakfast hero Flo Dill, its reputation has only grown in stature. At the time, the notoriously hard-to-please Pitchfork garlanded it with a scarcely achievable 8.8 whilst, just recently, the Numero Group's Rob Sevier described it as a "visionary bit of proto-Salvia Palth (or Steve Lacy)" via a Ghostly International missive.

Parsley Sound comprised super-talented duo Preston Mead and Dan Sargassa. They released an early single (the perfect "Twilight Mushrooms", featured here) on Warp Records as Slum, before signing to Mo Wax. Hidden behind a wall of sound - fuzzy layers of beats, bleeps and symphonic synths - they were convinced they made mainstream pop music. And, in many respects, Parsley Sounds really is a beautiful pop album. It overflows with memorable, gorgeous melodies and inspired songcraft. As the contemporaneous Pitchfork review correctly had it: "Parsley Sounds is one of those rare records that manage to sound modest while frequently pushing the sonic envelope."

Killer opener "Ease Yourself And Glide" is a thing of aching, soft-psych, wonky beat-beauty. A melodic masterpiece, part Crosby, Stills & Nash, part proto-Koushik, it presents a melancholy falsetto, surging bass and blunted lead guitar. As it climaxes, gorgeous strings are ushered in to see us out. Sublime. "Twilight Mushrooms" is up next and it's an acid-drenched, strung-out acoustic-led campfire wonder. Amid layers of tape-hiss and beautiful, sun-dappled strings, its understated vocal track provides a haze of wistful innocence.

The breezy "Spring's Near" is a krautrock-inspired chiming instrumental of heavenly excellence, its warm, skipping, motorik groove and dreamy synths completely infectious. Another total highlight, the technicolour "Yo Yo" initially presents itself as a more abstract, bleepy offering but as it organically swells into ever more beautiful places, with the addition of a choppy insistent drum loop, flute bursts, horns and sweeping strings, it puts one in mind of early Manitoba and Four Tet releases. Shimmering, blissed-out greatness.

The celestial harmonies and glistening harps of the wonderfully beatless, serenely sullen "Ocean House" are very much in conversation with late-60s meditative psych whilst, closing out Side A, the jaw-dropping, lushly experimental effort "Find The Heat" comes on like Arthur Russell meets Brian Wilson. Yep, *that* good.

Side B opens with the warped, bleepy "Stevie", a brief but beautifully wonky, soulful and intricate instrumental. The more upfront vocals that propel the fuzzy "Platonic Rate" have a refreshing swagger to them, the heavy bass and neck-snapping in-the-red beats too much for any system to deal with whilst the guitars and strings have a sweeping, cinematic feel which just beguiles. The slow, urbane soul of "Candlemice" will stop you in your tracks, no matter what you're doing. It carries a delicate sadness, as does much of the album in that classic "down lifting" style we so love here at Be With.

The fuzzing, buzzing "Templechurchmansions" is a searing, soulful dubwise detonation. Heavily stoned with slow-burning jazzy snatches and a tense, moody atmosphere, it's a Tricky-adjacent gem. The album rounds out brilliantly with the ominous instrumental "Neon Breeze" before giving way to the propulsive, almost incongruous punk-funk / disco-dub of secret "untitled" track "Caution", a scratchy, smacked-out groove-fuelled workout with a female vocal dripping with 'tude. Just sensational.

Under the watchful eye - and attentive ears! - of Parsley Sound themselves, the audio for Parsley Sounds has been carefully mastered by Be With regular Simon Francis, with a few much needed tweaks here and there, according to the artist's wishes. Cicely Balston's expert skills have made sure nothing is lost in the cut whilst the records have been pressed to the highest possible standard at the always stellar Record Industry in Holland.

Preston and Dan always thought the colours on the first vinyl pressing looked a bit "washed out" vis-a-vis the original artwork which was way more vibrant. We feel we've got it popping back to the original intention with the restoration work here at Be With HQ. So with the audio and artwork now approaching completeness after 20 years, this long overdue re-issue could be considered its definitive vinyl release.

Theme: collaboration. Or how to remain creative in the modern world. Nanocluster started as a bespoke one off pop up gig that turned into an album series. Built around Colin Newman from acclaimed UK post-punk band Wire and his partner in life and sound Malka Spigel from Minimal Compact with various guests, they define collaboration. Colin met Malka when he produced her band in 1985.The collaboration started there. They became a couple and created their own projects like the instrumental electronic duo Immersion in 1994 and Githead in 2004 - spaces where they both 'feel really comfortable.' Growing out of Immersion, Nanocluster was birthed as a series of one-off gigs at the Rosehill in their new hometown of Brighton in 2017 with an added cast of influential and cutting edge musicians. These were not ad hoc jams. The songs had been written and rehearsed prior to each performance. This adventure led to a debut album, Nanocluster Vol 1, released in 2021 with Stereolab singer/guitarist Laetitia Sadier, German post-rock duo Tarwater, electronic musician Ulrich Schnauss and experimental artist Robin Rimbaud (Scanner). Released again as double 10 inch with each collaboration taking up each disc, the new album Nanocluster Vol 2 has further developed this idea with a stark beauty that sounds like a future pop with sleek lines and unexpected great melodies. Disc one is built around Thor Harris, the charismatic percussion player from Swans and many other projects, who they met and performed with at South By South West in Austin, Texas in 2023. Thor adds ideas, his tuned percussion instruments, clarinet and trumpet to the sessions. Disc two is built around Cubzoa (Jack Wolter from the band Penelope Isles) who brings his musical craft, beguiling voice, guitar and much more. Meanwhile Matt Schulz from Holy Fuck plays drums across both combinations helping the resulting music become a third entity. What results is a true collaboration that, enhanced via Immersion's production, merges its elements to develop a new harmony. Key to the process is Colin and Malka's radio show for Slack City radio, 'Swimming In Sound' with its entertainingly diverse playlist that has widened their horizons. It's also helped build relationships not only with these collaborators but also musicians like ambient country masters SUSS, with whom they plan an extended Nanocluster tour in the USA with in 2025 and Brighton via Falmouth's "jangly pop punk" Holiday Ghosts with whom they will perform the next Nanocluster event in their hometown, as well as many more in the pipeline. Malka: 'Nanocluster is collaboration but in a very specific form. We don't have rules. It's a series of creative snapshots. We start as the gig with our collaborators with tracks that we rehearse because this is not a jam and where it stops is an album.' Colin: 'It's chemistry & music. Malka & I operate as a team and now we've taken it to another level. Malka comes from a band where they would stand in a room together and work out the material. In Wire, I would present the songs, so when Malka and I first started working together, we had to find a third path, and that was the concept behind our collaboration.' Nanocluster Volume 2 is a 21st century collusion of shared ideas, creating a momentary extended musical family. It's about musical and personal relationships and the meeting place in the middle. A temporary band of house guests. The place where Immersion happens.

Jazz music has more than its fair share of overshadowed figures that whilst contributing much to the music have little presence in its collective conscious. One such musician is the talented multi-reedist, Sahib Shihab. Born Edmond Gregory, as he was known before he adopted the Muslim faith in 1946, Sahib Shihab's music background shows a deep and significant evolution, influenced by Thelonious Monk, Dizzie Gillespie (his experience in Dizzie's band marked Sahib's switch to Baritone, the instrument he became most readily associated with), and above all by Charlie Parker's Bop. Had it not been for the post-war migration of many top American jazz musicians to Europe, it is quite likely that the legendary Clarke-Boland Big Band might never come into existence. Sahib, one of this musicians disillusioned with the politics and racism of the United States, accepted to join the band of Quincy Jones for an European tour in 1959. When the tour ended, Shihab he remained in Europe where he joined, in 1961, the Clarke-Boland Big Band. The collection 'Companionship', whose line up consists of seven elements which derives from this original band, spotlights the consummate musicianship and individuality of Sahib Shihab and is testimony to his special musical gifts - not only as a top-rank flautist and baritone saxophone but also as a composer. Furthermore, it provides a welcome reminder of the high quality of the Clarke-Boland Big Band's rhythm section, the lively style of vibraphonist Fats Sadi and the power and personality of two of the C-BBB's horn-playing stalwarts, Benny Bailey and Ake Persson. Here's a real rarity, surely a desert island disc. This double album has it all from frantic banging percussive workouts to modal numbers to beautiful ballads. It's a staggeringly good piece of music and worth every penny of the price tag it commands. Let's have a look to the most significant pieces. Francy Boland's "Om Mani Padme Hum", taken from a Tibetan prayer, shows Shihab in exuberant mood, playing against a vigorous percussion background and making dramatic use of his special technique of combining voice and flute. Boland contributes an incisive, effervescent solo. "Bohemia After Dark", a classic original by bassist Oscar Pettiford which he first recorded back in August 1955, finds Shihab in exultant form on baritone. "Companionship" has a Bossa Nova beat and features Bailey on flugelhorn and Shihab on flute, playing with a limpid, floating sound. Bailey's minor-key original, "Stoned Ghosts" was, he says, inspired by listening to some music written by Bela Bartok before he emigrated to the United States. The piece has an infectious back-beat pulse and showcases the superb walking technique of Jimmy Woode. In "Con Alma" Shihab's mellow flute set against a churning 12/8 beat in this stylish Boland arrangement. Woode's performance of the superb Mei Torme ballad, "Born To Be Blue", reveals his great affection for the song. "lt is the perfect combination," he says, "a beautiful melody married to a great lyric. I really love that tune." It is a song of rueful resignation, putting a brave face on the blues. "Balafon" is an up-tempo Francy Boland original written for the French mime artist, Marcel Marceau. The rhythm section really cooks on this track with Kenny Clarke's cymbal work outstanding. Boland's solo here is notable for its neat, left hand punctuations. "Calypso Blues" has been written by Nat King Cole and Don George. lt tells the wry and wistful tale of a Trinidadian in New York desperately homesick for the land where everything 5 so much cheaper (in New York "a dollar buy, a cup of coffee and a ham on rye") and the girls more natural than the artificial, painted beauties of New York. Woode's composition, "Sconsolato" is a haunting theme in A minor and it brings to a close a truly fascinating album. This is dynamic music played with vigour, verve and vitality - and it is an enormous pleasure to rediscover it. A shadowy fugitive from his home in the land of jazz, Sahib Shihab remains a true unsung figure, worthy of more attention. With his equally expert technique on Baritone, Flute, Alto and Soprano saxophones and his capacity to adapt easily to a variety of musical settings. His warm, individual, singsong sound in improvisation and his unusual and interesting compositions mark him out as a hidden treasure in the dusty corners of jazz archive.

Montréal-based sound artist Steve Bates expands his strategies and stylistic influences on An Infinite Antenna, his second solo album for Constellation, giving freer reign to melodic components and textural dynamics: leftfield synth work, deconstructed drum machine, pointillist electric guitar, and radiostatic blur are all part of the new brew swirling around his bruitist signal-bending and field-recording sensibility. Arguably a more ambient album than his acclaimed 2022 Constellation debut, An Infinite Antenna is at the same time more densely packed with ideas, dynamics, evocations and earworms. Coming out of the anarcho-punk scene of the Canadian Prairies in the 1990s, Bates founded Winnipeg’s experimental sound festival Send + Receive in 1998 before moving to Montréal to become Sound Coordinator at Hexagram (Concordia University), delving further into sonic research and theory, tape-based composition, and installation work. Alongside the curatorial arc of his own sound art label The Dim Coast, Bates released several solo and collaborative albums on ORAL_records leading up to All The Things That Happen, the 2022 Constellation debut praised by Boomkat for its “grittily iridescent ambient billow rendering maximalist panoramas” and by Backseat Mafia as “extraordinary soundscapes of unstable, destructive cacophony and tender calm, echoes of the threat of power.” Where that album was noisier and single-minded, made with the self-imposed limit of a Casio SK-1, Bates plays more widely with instrumentation and atmospheres on An Infinite Antenna, also drawing on his post-hardcore roots in seeking a sort of track-by-track concision nonetheless driven by the album’s coherence as a seamless work. “I was trying to set durations I associate with punk rather than the longer, sprawling music coming from more ambient styles (that I very much love), and while I wasn’t able to quite pare it down to Minutemen durations, I had that reduction to essential elements as a sort of whisper over my shoulder.” Incorporating source recordings made throughout 2023-2025, including at artist residencies and site-specific sound installation visits in Bosnia and Herzegovina (the album’s cover photo was taken in Sarajevo), Austria, Greece, and Saskatchewan, An Infinite Antenna combines Bates’ “idea of slowly scanning a radio dial” with a soundworld of recurring timbral and textural touchstones that forge an integrated whole.

The album’s 12 tracks work effectively as stand-alone pieces, replete with shifting undercurrents, buried melody, and stuttering kinetics, and as a sequential flow where the brief interstitial silences between them are like short pauses to flip the next page in a sketchbook of perspectival studies of a wide but singular tableau. The glistening atonal synth expressionism of opener “Pink pink pink pink…pink pink” drifts gently toward submerged ambience, darkened by the noised rumble and static interference of “Green as a ghost”, which introduces broken beats and piano chords in its denouement. Tracks like “Battles and sieges and street trees” and “Easier sad than done” work the foundations of low-end field-recording resonance, but dappled with lovely melodic droplets of treated guitar and synth. “Waste, songs of the world” and “Disaster loans” are among the album’s most explicit stylistic references to posthardcore, with distorted ambient bass and gently abrasive drum sampling. Closing track “Swamps and factories”, the album’s longest piece, is perhaps most reminiscent of Bates’ previous record with its sustained dissonant glimmer-drone, but the journey An Infinite Antenna traces to get there is Bates at his most dynamic, diverse, distinctive, and engaging. Thanks for listening.

Montréal-based sound artist Steve Bates expands his strategies and stylistic influences on An Infinite Antenna, his second solo album for Constellation, giving freer reign to melodic components and textural dynamics: leftfield synth work, deconstructed drum machine, pointillist electric guitar, and radiostatic blur are all part of the new brew swirling around his bruitist signal-bending and field-recording sensibility. Arguably a more ambient album than his acclaimed 2022 Constellation debut, An Infinite Antenna is at the same time more densely packed with ideas, dynamics, evocations and earworms. Coming out of the anarcho-punk scene of the Canadian Prairies in the 1990s, Bates founded Winnipeg's experimental sound festival Send + Receive in 1998 before moving to Montréal to become Sound Coordinator at Hexagram (Concordia University), delving further into sonic research and theory, tape-based composition, and installation work. Alongside the curatorial arc of his own sound art label The Dim Coast, Bates released several solo and collaborative albums on ORAL_records leading up to All The Things That Happen, the 2022 Constellation debut praised by Boomkat for its "grittily iridescent ambient billow rendering maximalist panoramas" and by Backseat Mafia as "extraordinary soundscapes of unstable, destructive cacophony and tender calm, echoes of the threat of power." Where that album was noisier and single-minded, made with the self-imposed limit of a Casio SK-1, Bates plays more widely with instrumentation and atmospheres on An Infinite Antenna, also drawing on his post-hardcore roots in seeking a sort of track-by-track concision nonetheless driven by the album's coherence as a seamless work. "I was trying to set durations I associate with punk rather than the longer, sprawling music coming from more ambient styles (that I very much love), and while I wasn't able to quite pare it down to Minutemen durations, I had that reduction to essential elements as a sort of whisper over my shoulder." Incorporating source recordings made throughout 2023-2025, including at artist residencies and site-specific sound installation visits in Bosnia and Herzegovina (the album's cover photo was taken in Sarajevo), Austria, Greece, and Saskatchewan, An Infinite Antenna combines Bates' "idea of slowly scanning a radio dial" with a soundworld of recurring timbral and textural touchstones that forge an integrated whole. The album's 12 tracks work effectively as stand-alone pieces, replete with shifting undercurrents, buried melody, and stuttering kinetics, and as a sequential flow where the brief interstitial silences between them are like short pauses to flip the next page in a sketchbook of perspectival studies of a wide but singular tableau. The glistening atonal synth expressionism of opener 'Pink pink pink pink_pink pink' drifts gently toward submerged ambience, darkened by the noised rumble and static interference of 'Green as a ghost', which introduces broken beats and piano chords in its denouement. Tracks like 'Battles and sieges and street trees' and 'Easier sad than done' work the foundations of low-end field-recording resonance, but dappled with lovely melodic droplets of treated guitar and synth. 'Waste, songs of the world' and 'Disaster loans' are among the album's most explicit stylistic references to posthardcore, with distorted ambient bass and gently abrasive drum sampling. Closing track 'Swamps and factories,' the album's longest piece, is perhaps most reminiscent of Bates' previous record with its sustained dissonant glimmer-drone, but the journey An Infinite Antenna traces to get there is Bates at his most dynamic, diverse, distinctive, and engaging. Thanks for listening

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

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

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

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

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

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

-David Stubbs.

Obsidian rock is igneous, frequently dark, yet opaque. Hard edged and brittle, it’s often been used both for weaponry and alchemical pursuits. Therefore when Lorena Quintanilla – the Mexican-based artist from the group ‘Lorelle Meets The Obsolete’ and also known as J. Zunz – was searching for psychic inspiration for her next musical venture, she need have looked no further. “Once I chose the title, everything I read, saw, listened to, and thought about began to interconnect” she relates. “Obsidian became like a magnetic field.”
“In Mesoamerican cultures, it was used in many different ways – obsidian mirrors, for example, were tools for divination and spiritual vision". Thereafter, Lorena set about creating an album entirely on her own terms. Driven by both the ghost and the heart of the machine, ‘Obsidiana’ open up a portal whereby forbidding drone, ethereal ambience and insistent repetition intertwine elegantly to form a seamless whole.
A study in balance, its emotional charge remains strong and intact whether on the eerie, almost Radiophonic ambience of ‘Imago’ or the dancefloor-adjacent, Chris & Cosey-esque ‘Osiris’. Lyrically meanwhile, ‘Obsidiana’ intersects deep personal explorations with the conflicts and contradictions of life in the unforgiving realm of 2026 – as Lorena says; “he process behind ‘Obsidiana’ was very abstract, yet I wanted the lyrics to stay grounded in the present and in reality".
Ultimately however, ‘Obsidiana’, in all its sharp yet amorphous glory, is catharsis manifest. “Each song carries a clear and deliberate intention” Lorena emphasises. “To conjure, to exorcise, to strip away fear, to rediscover myself, to heal inherited sadness, and to reclaim the night that was taken from us.”

KITCHEN. LABEL is proud to present AGATE, the latest album by Japanese artist MEITEI, marking a deepening of the world he first shaped through his Kofū trilogy released between 2020 - 2023.

Named after the mineral agate, a stone formed through slow accumulation, pressure, and time, the album reflects MEITEI’s patient approach to sound. AGATE brings together extended and newly rearranged works from across the Kofū cycle alongside new compositions and passages, refining material developed through years of performance and sustained practice.

The album presents seven tracks:

HAŌ (Previously unreleased track)
SHIN-OIRAN (Remodeled from Oiran I, Kofū 2020)
SHIN-SADAYAKKO (Remodeled from Sadayakko, Kofū 2020)
SHIN-WAROSOKU (Remodeled from Wa-rōsoku, Kofū III 2023)
KYŪGEKI (Remodeled from Shinobi and Akira Kurosawa, Kofū II 2021)
SHIN-OIRAN II (Remodeled from Oiran II, Kofū 2020)
SHIN-EDOGAWARANPO (Remodeled from Edogawa Ranpo, Kofū III 2023)
Across these works, MEITEI expands the musical vocabulary first introduced in Kofū, a sound he once described as “lost Japanese mood.” While Kofū drew from fragments of folklore, theatre, ghost stories, and forgotten urban memory, it was never an act of historical reconstruction. Rather, it reflected a sensibility of the past observed from the present. With AGATE, this worldview is clarified as Shinpu, a process of discovery in which historical awareness becomes a foundation for contemporary creation rather than a constraint.

During five years of Kofū tours across Japan, Europe, and Asia, MEITEI performed this material in a wide range of spaces, from underground live houses and listening rooms to culturally significant sites. These environments influenced pacing, dynamics, and structure, shaping how the material evolved over time. AGATE is therefore not only a studio album, but the result of material refined through repeated performance.

If the Kofū albums were windows into forgotten eras, AGATE explores what lies beneath, sediment and strata formed through time and pressure. MEITEI’s approach to sound mirrors the nature of agate itself. Grains become texture. Texture becomes narrative. Voices drift through decaying layers of sound, while ancient instruments are used in non-traditional ways, forming distinctive percussive rhythms and melodies that appear and vanish without fixed resolution.

The album’s visual materials were developed under MEITEI’s direction through physical art-making processes. The cover artwork originates from a letterpress print created by Kamisoe, a Karakami atelier in Nishijin, Kyoto, using Kyo-karakami paper. The original artwork, produced through traditional woodblock techniques on handmade washi, was subsequently reproduced on print for the album edition. Kamisoe continues to reinterpret this historical Kyoto craft with a contemporary sensibility.

The title calligraphy was created by Bio Xie, whom MEITEI personally invited to participate in the project. During his performances abroad, MEITEI encountered in Taiwan a lingering atmosphere reminiscent of “Shitsunihon” — a sense of old Japanese memory that quietly endures beyond time. He was deeply drawn to Bio Xie’s distinctive use of Chinese characters, which resonated with this experience, and asked him to contribute to the visual expression of AGATE.

In parallel, MEITEI continues to reinterpret Japanese sensibility through his concept of “Shitsunihon,” presenting it as a contemporary musical language. The refined Kyoto motifs envisioned by Kamisoe and the distinctive calligraphic expression by Bio Xie intersect with MEITEI’s singular artistic direction, weaving together a newly articulated worldview.

The accompanying visual imagery, including the liner photographs, was created by photographer Hiroshi Okamoto, who was also responsible for the visual direction of MEITEI’s previous work, “Sen'nyū.” It draws from MEITEI’s lived experiences of winter seas, solitary cliffs, and breaking waves. These scenes symbolize the inner conflicts of the ten years he spent living in Hiroshima, and his confrontation with solitude and the sounds he creates.

AGATE will be released on 17 April 2025 via KITCHEN. LABEL on 180g vinyl, CD, and digital formats. The album is mastered by Kelly Hibbert, known for his work with Flying Lotus, Madlib, and J Dilla.

With AGATE, MEITEI returns to the material of Kofū with greater focus and discipline, continuing an ongoing process of working forward with inherited material.

You probably have at least one friend who is completely obsessed with Marnie Weber. Her dark, punk-infused humour and fearless embrace of eccentric feminine power archetypes combine with gut-punch viscerality and a strange beauty that is anything but pretty.” Village Voice “This neo-gothic fairytale wavers between happiness and sadness, amusement and tragedy, attraction and repulsion.” The White Review “Weber reaches a new scale for her work…The sentimentality and romance at its root fearlessly sets it apart.” BOMB “Wild multimedia works that often dwell on the ghostly and the monstrous. Think: Fairy tales gone seriously awry.” LA Times Acclaimed LA multidisciplinary artist and musician Marnie Weber collects highlights from a long and storied career on Returning Home: The Music of Marnie Weber, a collection of neo-goth art-pop that steers between kankyō ongaku pop songs, noise-rock, and haunted fairytale darkness. The career of Marnie Weber (b. 1959) began with gigs paid in beer at an LA trucker bar in 1977. Her band, Party Boys, formed when Weber was then 19 and had just left home. By the early 80’s, the band began regularly performing at LA’s fabled Al’s Bar, sharing the stage with generational talents that passed over its beer-drenched floors. L7, Beck, Arto Lindsay, Ry Cooder, The Fall, Fear, Hole, Hüsker Dü, Social Distortion, Nirvana, The Residents, Sonic Youth, Urge Overkill, Jesus Lizard, the Misfits, among plenty more, played to audiences that included Bret Easton Ellis, Steve Buscemi, Tommy Lee, Bill Murray, Al Pacino, Sean Penn, and Chloe Sevigny.

Das 2020 erschienene Album ,I Feel Alive" markiert das fulminante Comeback der Indie-Pop-Band TOPS aus Montreal, die ihren charakteristischen weichen Synthesizer-Sound, ihre hellen Gitarrenriffs und Jane Pennys emotional direkten Gesang zu ihrem bisher lebhaftesten Werk verschmelzen. Das Album schafft eine Balance zwischen glänzender Pop-Wärme und introspektiver Lyrik und beschäftigt sich mit Themen wie Sehnsucht, Verwandlung und Selbstverwirklichung. Mit einem Sound, der sowohl nostalgisch als auch erfrischend modern wirkt, zeigt ,I Feel Alive" die Band auf einem neuen kreativen Höhepunkt - üppig, intim und mühelos cool, was TOPS erneut als eine der überzeugendsten Stimmen des zeitgenössischen Dream-Pop bestätigt. ,Die Melodien sind durchweg so sanft und wunderschön wie die Traumschiffe, denen Penny zuzwinkert oder über deren Polaroids sie weint. TOPS sind jetzt zusammen mit Phoenix die Meister des modernen Softrocks." - The Guardian ,TOPS haben mit ihrem bisher klarsten Album ihre Berufung gefunden. Vollgepackt mit glitzernden Melodien, blitzsauberem Vintage-Pop und sehnsüchtigen Texten hält sich das Quartett aus Montreal nicht zurück." - Clash

Rough Trade Records freut sich, die Veröffentlichung einer neuen Single von Lankum anzukündigen. Ursprünglich für die Tanzshow "Specky Clark" von Oona Doherty im Sadler"s Wells Anfang des Jahres komponiert, ist die Single eine eindringliche, fast übernatürliche Interpretation des Nummer-eins-Hits "Ghost Town" von The Specials aus dem Jahr 1981. "Ghost Town" erscheint als 12"-Vinyl mit einer kunstvollen Gravur auf der B-Seite. Zur Entstehung des Stücks erklärt die Band: "Ghost Town kam unter ungewöhnlichen Umständen zu uns. Oona Doherty, deren Arbeit wir bereits aus dem Video zu Gilla Bands 'Shoulderblades" kannten, erzählte uns von einem neuen Stück über ihren Ururgroßvater, der als Kind nach Belfast geschickt wurde, um bei seinen Tanten in einem Schlachthof zu arbeiten. Sie wollte für eine Halloween-Party-Szene ein Musikstück, das zunächst verschwommen und unkenntlich beginnt und sich dann in den bekannten Song von The Specials verwandelt. Anfangs waren wir zögerlich - ein Ska-Cover war nicht unbedingt unser Stil -, doch schließlich entschieden wir uns, es zu versuchen. Dabei entstand eine spannende Studioerfahrung, in der wir begeistert mit Synthesizern und Drum-Machines experimentierten, um einen rauen 90er-Techno-Sound für das Outro zu schaffen. Wir sind sehr zufrieden mit dem Ergebnis und dankbar, dass Oona uns ermutigt hat, neue Wege zu gehen. Es ist uns eine Ehre, diese ikonische Nummer neu zu interpretieren, deren Themen - städtischer Verfall, wirtschaftliche Not und Frustration der Arbeiterklasse - heute so aktuell sind wie damals."

Mj Lenderman is the project of Asheville native, Jake Lenderman, whose 'Boat Songs' was released to wide acclaim on Dear Life Records in 2022. Now Dear Life is proud to offer a vinyl reissue of MJ's 2021 label debut, 'Ghost of Your Guitar Solo,' a collection of nine songs recorded and performed entirely by
Lenderman, and one live band track. The record was written and recorded quickly, songs often being fully constructed and recorded within frenzied single day sessions. Songs were born out of freewheeling jam sessions with his roommates, with Lenderman often freestyling lyrics that would later become the
foundations of the finished songs. Lenderman would write 20 disconnected lines a day, scrapping most of them but preserving a few to be used later. This process aided in what became an extremely prolific writing period for the artist in the spring of 2020. The record sounds like country music being played by a noisy punk band, unkempt and imperfect like the characters in his songs. Here, Lenderman broadened his lyrical scope beyond solemn introspection, adding humor to scenes larger than his own life. He points to authors Harry Crews and Larry Brown as inspirations, both of whom were southern, self-taught writers who balanced empathy, humor, and darkness. This leads to the erosion of the line that separates humor and sadness. The resulting songs are about over-
indulgence and drug/alcohol abuse, full of self-loathing and pity while celebrating the absurdity of it all.

Psychic 9-5 Club marks the beginning of a new chapter for HTRK. It's an album that looks back on a time of sadness and struggle, and within that struggle they find hope and humour and love. It's Jonnine Standish and Nigel Yang's first album recorded entirely as a duo— former band member Sean Stewart died halfway through the recording of their last LP, 2011's Work (Work, Work).
Though the record is instantly recognisable as HTRK—Standish's vocal delivery remains central to the band's sound, while the productions are typically lean and dubby—they've found ample room for exploration within this framework. Gone are the reverb-soaked guitar explorations of 2009's Marry Me Tonight and the fuzzy growls that ran through Work (Work Work). They've been replaced with something tender, velvety and polished. This is HTRK, but the flesh has been stripped from their sound, throwing the focus on naked arrangements and minimalist sound design.
The album was recorded at Blazer Sound Studios in New Mexico with Excepter's Nathan Corbin, who had previously directed the video clip for Work (Work Work) cut "Bendin." Inviting a third party into their world was no easy decision, but in Corbin they found a kindred spirit. The LP was then refined and reworked in Australia at the turn of 2013, before the finishing touches were applied in New York during the summer.
Of all the themes that run through Psychic 9-5 Club, love is the most central. The word is laced throughout the album in lyrics and titles— love as a distraction, loving yourself, loving others. Standish's lyrics explore the complexities of sexuality and the body's reaction to personal loss, though there's room for wry humour—a constant through much of the best experimental Australian music of the past few decades.
Standish explores her vocal range fully—her husky spoken-word drawl remains, but we also hear her laugh and sing. Equally, Yang's exploratory production techniques—particularly his well-documented love of dub—are given room to shine. They dip headlong into some of the things that make humans tick—love, loss and desire—with the kind of integrity that has marked the band out from day one. Psychic 9-5 Club is truly an album for the body and for the soul.

The neon "pdqb Arcade" sign in Port Astra flickered with the same chaotic energy it had decades ago. Six men, now with more gray hair and worries than they once had, stood at the entrance. They were the "Lucky Six," reunited after years of scattered lives and separate paths.

"I can't believe this place is still here" said Noise, who had flown in from Tokyo. "It hasn't changed 8 bits, haha". CEM, now a father of 3340 synthesizers from Bari, replied with a grin. "We have. Look at Galaxian, he's unrecognizable!"

Each of them held a single, precious coin. Their plan, born of a wave of nostalgia and the understanding that they couldn't stay forever, was simple: one coin, one game, one last chance to be a legend. Each man would choose the game that meant the most to him and play the round of his life…

At the end, pdqb, the arcade owner, came up to the guys. "Don't be sad", he said. "Even if it was your last credit, there's always one more somewhere in some game". He then walked through the arcade and played four different machines that just happened to have an extra credit on them. "See?", he said.

Synaptic Cliffs proudly presents pdqb together with six black belt gamers (PRZ, Noise&Noise, Galaxian, CEM3340, Dark Vektor, Mesak), each a legend in their own right. They don't just replay pdqb's 8 1/2 Bit album; they become it. Together, they embark on a journey through legendary worlds, creating a place filled with soundscapes and challenges that blur the line between music and game. They move with the rhythm of the music and face the challenges within, weaving their own stories into the fabric of the iconic work.

Three part journey into an imaginary Amazon from three artists working on the fringes of field recording.

Stories del Tibur​ó​n Llor​​​​​​​ó​​​​​​​n del Amazonas picks up where the previous, Stories of the Indian Dotted Whale trilogy left us. This time, the same three artists, Giovanni Lami, Hannibal Chew II aka Gonçalo F Cardoso and Bardo Todol aka Pablo Picco return to riff on an imaginary crying shark, known to swim in the amazon river. The sad and melancholic shark has never been seen but its weep and sob can be heard all over the region. Here are three works of sympathetic howls for a lonely and misunderstood creature.

First part from Giovanni Lami is made of ghost recordings made during 2020 in Iquitos, Perú, in the amazon forest during the film shoot of “Tras el Barco de Fitzcarraldo”. Second part from Hannibal Chew II is a collection of re-assembled recordings and jams gathered from a trip through the Amazon in late 2017 to early 2018. Later assembled during various improvised recording sessions during the long hot summer of 2023 in Tenerife, Canary Islands. The third and final part comes from Bardo Todol and features abrasive tape and digital field recordings manipulation made by Picco in Iquitos in 2020 during the shooting of “Tras el barco de Fitzcaraldo”.

All three feature sounds of: people talking, static radios, saturday night churches, river people, shawi people, dolphin people, shark people, market people, vibrating insects, zombie insects, giant insects, giant motors and of course various weeps of a crying shark.

Soft Centre is the new album by Iko Chérie, the solo project of French-born, London-based multiinstrumentalist Marie Merlet. She blends dub-inflected textures, pop tinged vocals, reverbdrenched guitars, Casio drones, and warm experimental noises - creating her own intimate, fragile sound. Self-produced and largely performed by Merlet, the album grew from an introspective process, with many sketches recorded in transit between tours. The result is a deeply personal work, balancing light and dark in a Lynchian dream-pop haze. Songs such as We Smoke That Peace Pipe and Bilbao shimmer between vulnerability and resilience, while the single Ghosted Ghosters of the Holy G captures the immediacy of a one-take dub bass. Some pieces retain the quality of improvised snapshots (Intelligent Women, Half a Metaphor) while others reveal her meticulous production process and songwriting craft (Tears in the Sea, Luciférine). Merlet defines Soft Centre as alive in radical tenderness, unguarded, open, and vivid. Influenced by Clarice Lispector"s prose, Diane di Prima"s poetry and Rachel Carson"s environmentalist writing, as well as Marie"s fascination with a vintage Roland Space Echo, the album is an invitation to connection that she describes as "... hopefully a meditation into healing." A versatile musician trained in classical piano, jazz, and electroacoustic composition, Merlet has long moved between different worlds of sound. She has worked with Laetitia Sadier in Monade, performs with Gina Birch (The Raincoats), Malphino, Yama Warashi, and several other groups. She recently appeared as guest singer on the latest Stereolab album. Her debut solo LP, Dreaming On (Elefant Records, 2015), revealed her singular melodic instincts; with Soft Centre she ventures further inward, shaping her own distinctive voice in experimental pop.

The Scunthorpian partners-in-crime Rupert and Henry Stansall, mythologized in wanted posters as Ruen Brothers, are back in the saddle with their fourth studio album: Awooo. Titled after the lycanthropic howling chorus of their melancholic track “Sitting at the Station,” Awooo finds the duo on the road again, full of ruminative wanderlust and exploring sprawling, dark deserts, carrying with only their songbook of western-inspired folklore. The meditative, building desire of “The Cabin on the Hill,” the pensive yearning etched inside “Poison Down the Wire,“ and a tasteful reimagining of the tried-and-true traditional “Mama Don’t” that could easily pass as an original, all exhibit the creative growth that these young troubadours have established over their decade-long career. This limited first edition pressing of Awooo is pressed on frosted shadow color vinyl and is limited to 800 copies worldwide.

The Scunthorpian partners-in-crime Rupert and Henry Stansall, mythologized in wanted posters as Ruen Brothers, are back in the saddle with their fourth studio album: Awooo. Titled after the lycanthropic howling chorus of their melancholic track “Sitting at the Station,” Awooo finds the duo on the road again, full of ruminative wanderlust and exploring sprawling, dark deserts, carrying with only their songbook of western-inspired folklore. The meditative, building desire of “The Cabin on the Hill,” the pensive yearning etched inside “Poison Down the Wire,“ and a tasteful reimagining of the tried-and-true traditional “Mama Don’t” that could easily pass as an original, all exhibit the creative growth that these young troubadours have established over their decade-long career. This limited indie exclusive pressing of Awooo is pressed on frosted shadow color vinyl and is autographed by both Henry and Rupert Stansall and is limited to 200 copies worldwide.

»I Feel Alive« ist das 2020 veröffentlichte vierte Studio-Album der aus der Indie-Szene Kanadas stammenden Tops. Der Tops-Sound mit grandiosen Melodien über federleichten Indie-Grooves und einem Hauch von 80er-Jahre-Sophisti-Pop klingt kühner und weitläufiger denn je und gilt inzwischen als unverkennbar. Neben den hochfliegenden Melodien und der knackigen Inszenierung setzt sich »I Feel Alive« inhaltlich mit der Qual auseinander, alte Dinge hinter sich zu lassen. Es ist eine introspektive Platte, zu der man tanzen kann, Musik die zuschlägt und wie die Erinnerung an eine perfekte und gleichzeitig dem Untergang geweihte Liebesbeziehung, samt all ihrer Freude und Schmerz, für immer ein Teil des Lebens wird. Das Artwork zu »I Feel Alive« gibt den Ton an! Inspiriert von der Arbeit des Fotografen Thomas Ruff, starrt die Tops-Sängerin Jane Penney mit bloßem Gesicht in die Linse - einfach und ungestellt, aber auffallend starr und verletzlich. Attribute die sich auch auf die Musik übertragen lassen.

Hardcore Rap music is still here! Mike Redman is considered a cult legend known for his unorthodox music production in various genres. He's well known as an artist in the Jungle and Hardcore scene, as a renowned movie score composer and made a name for himself as organiser of the infamous 'Redrum Hip-Hop' events since the 90's which hosted international artists from Guru to Cannibal Ox, Public Enemy, Beatnuts and many more. He also set up Redrum Recordz, a pioneering independent record label focusing merely on anything musically unpolished. Even though Mike Redman (which is his name of birth by the way) was often linked to many Hip-Hop success stories and produced records for artists such as Public Enemy and Big Daddy Kane, Mike has just recently, after many years, decided to produce a solo record featuring the Rap artists he admires and form the foundation of his legacy. With great respect towards his mentors, in a non-profit manner, Mike now releases 'Redrum Relics' featuring Rap icons such as Kool Keith, Chuck D, Schoolly D, Sticky Fingaz, Young Zee, Chino XL, O.C. and many more. This album is truly exceptional and is not made with the intention to be commercially successful, but is a love-letter to a period in time where passion was the motivation. 'Redrum Relics' brings Rap music back to the golden era with a contemporary touch and keeps it unpolished and unyielding as ever. People that tend to say that Hip-Hop is dead might want to reconsider.

Hardcore Rap music is still here! Mike Redman is considered a cult legend known for his unorthodox music production in various genres. He's well known as an artist in the Jungle and Hardcore scene, as a renowned movie score composer and made a name for himself as organiser of the infamous 'Redrum Hip-Hop' events since the 90's which hosted international artists from Guru to Cannibal Ox, Public Enemy, Beatnuts and many more. He also set up Redrum Recordz, a pioneering independent record label focusing merely on anything musically unpolished. Even though Mike Redman (which is his name of birth by the way) was often linked to many Hip-Hop success stories and produced records for artists such as Public Enemy and Big Daddy Kane, Mike has just recently, after many years, decided to produce a solo record featuring the Rap artists he admires and form the foundation of his legacy. With great respect towards his mentors, in a non-profit manner, Mike now releases 'Redrum Relics' featuring Rap icons such as Kool Keith, Chuck D, Schoolly D, Sticky Fingaz, Young Zee, Chino XL, O.C. and many more. This album is truly exceptional and is not made with the intention to be commercially successful, but is a love-letter to a period in time where passion was the motivation. 'Redrum Relics' brings Rap music back to the golden era with a contemporary touch and keeps it unpolished and unyielding as ever. People that tend to say that Hip-Hop is dead might want to reconsider.

Repress now on 140 gram black vinyl comes with download code. SLOW AIR is the fourth album by Still Corners. Evoking the atmospheric sounds Still Corners are known for, SLOW AIR continues the band's journey with an album full of tension and brooding all the while wrapped in a reverb laden dream. Written in the hill country in Austin, Texas, Slow Air nods towards a classic sound with emphasis on the guitar, both acoustic and electric, combined with the alluring and ghostly voice of Tessa Murray.

Following ‘No Closer To Heaven’, The Wonder Years released ‘Sister Cities’, their most transformative work to date.
Recorded at Sunset Sound with Joe Chiccarelli (Manchester Orchestra, The Shins, Spoon) and Carlos de la Garza (Jimmy Eat World, Paramore), ‘Sister Cities’ is an album about distance, connectivity and the way humanity towers above boundaries.

What The Wonder Years do so effortlessly on ‘Sister Cities’ is no small feat; through poetic lyricism, ambient guitar swells and Jimmy Eat World-levels of crashing momentum. On ‘Sister Cities’, they take a massive, unexpected leap forward both sonically and thematically, now speaking confidently to the world at large.

Vocalist Dan Campbell on the inspiration behind ‘Sister Cities’: “It started with journals and photos. We started by documenting. We didn’t know where it would go or if it would go anywhere at all, but we wrote it all down. We took photos of everything. And
then when it came to put it altogether, we had this catalog of how we felt and what it looked like and sounded like and we built from there. Figuring out what the moments were that stayed with me the most. When did I feel most connected to the people around me and why? What did being in this place during this moment teach me? It was a difficult year personally and globally and we experienced that through this lens of being everywhere but home, kind of floating through places and seeing how being there altered our perspective.”
The album is housed in a 200-page, 13”x13”, full-colour book that includes photos, artwork, journal entries and lyrics. LP pressed onto Shinjuku Street Splatter coloured vinyl.
An overpowering sense of earnestness and vulnerability.” - Pitchfork
There is a lifetime yelled in every punk song, captured in the desperate and catchy ‘Sister Cities’.” - NPR MusicFrom the first notes, it’s already clear that The Wonder Years are stepping into uncharted territory.” - UPROXX

On their most explicit venture into music for moving image, Miles Whittaker & Sean Canty rudely fracture piano and vocal recordings by US filmmaker-musician Kristen Pilon in a short-circuiting of style and pattern.

Shredding up definitions of electro-acoustic opera, spectralist chamber musique and concrète rave, Demdike hit square between the eyes/ears of film music vernaculars on a startlingly strong addition to their unique oeuvre, now in its 16th year of elusive psychoacoustic strafes and jump-cuts across putative borders. The 13-part, hour-long album dislodges source material made for the experimental film ‘To Cut and Shoot’, by Kristen Pilon, an NYC-based musician and filmmaker, to farther refract the film’s themes of serendipity and the nature of ghosts and dreams with a flickering flux of sound-imagery and aleatoric weirdness appropriate to her original meditations, but also freely messing with their forms.

Situated just a few miles north of Houston, Cut and Shoot is a relatively insignificant Texas town with an unforgettably bizarre name. Pilon grew up not far from Cut and Shoot, and it's there where she ran into 65-year-old machinist and motorcyclist Robert Lewis Stevenson, better known as Bobbo, who's pictured on the album's cover. The meeting occurred a few months after Pilon recorded her improvisations on piano, strings and voice in the basement cellar of the Halle in Manchester, with Bobbo providing the necessary narrative heft the trio needed to inspire an experimental film and its accompanying soundtrack.

Responding to Kristen’s initial piano and operatic vocal recordings, Demdike return a volley of discrete parts tilting from typically cantankerous mayhem to quieter, more clandestine buzzes sliced with crazed interstices of the imagination, all marbled with the plasmic contrails of the paranormal which have long been peculiar to their work. With a poetic flair reflecting Pilon’s own phrasing and melding of mediums, Demdike unfold and expand her melodic fragments into temporal mazes, variously resembling the most messed-up ends of The Caretaker in ‘A Grave Fall (January)’, but also liable to skew into buckshot club turbulence, as with ‘Belly Up’, or the bittersweet bruk contortions of ‘Twist’.

The storyline wickedly frays and loops into itself with a non-linearity that recalls the mid-to-latter stages of Lynch’s ‘Mulholland Drive’ or waking from a sweaty fever dream only to pitch back into its thorny bush of ghosts, often within the space of one track. It’s testament to the ever-tighter binds of Demdike’s symbiotic vision that the results nevertheless hold a thread of logic that weaves in everything from their Jon Collin jams to reams of mixes and Gruppo edits with an unresolved, open-ended quality that still keeps us on our toes, perhaps more so than ever here.

Fresh from beasting the end-of-year charts with her 'I Miss Your Love' remix project, Ghost Assembly, aka Manchester DJ and writer Abigail Ward, is back with a double A-side: RESIST! / I Keep on Making the Same Mistake.

RESIST! (Extended 12" Mix)
Laid down quickly and angrily after attending a demo in Manchester city centre, RESIST! aims to capture the galvanising spirit of protest and put it on wax.
A 111bpm acid chugger that will leave dancefloors of an ALFOS or Optimo persuasion begging for more, this is uncompromising machine funk at its crudest.
Duelling 303s twist around each other whilst a taut, snaking 707 groove underpins unexpected blasts of Arabic rhythm, almost as if DJ Pierre had remixed 'Get UR Freak On', relocating it to the Middle East.
As a stuttering Harper Hay vocal sample urges us to RESIST!, the track climaxes with an ice-cold acid house string coda banged out on a disobedient synth. Please note: the sub on this record may trouble your duodenum.

RESIST! (Utter Kunt Mix)
The Utter Kunt mix is a sparse and daring Sleng Teng-inspired avant-dub affair strictly for discerning dancefloors only. Improbably combining hints of the Mission Impossible theme, Les Negresses Vertes' 'Zobi La Mouche' and the rough-hewn sampling of 'Duck Rock', this is a radiant obstacle in the path of the obvious. Warning: collectors of On-U, EBM and New Beat could experience a spate of nocturnal emissions upon purchasing this record.

The A-side closes with a BONUS BEATS version of the Utter Kunt Mix: a must-have DJ tool.

I KEEP ON MAKING THE SAME MISTAKE
Picking up the pace to 120, 'I Keep on Making the Same Mistake' sees Ghost Assembly returning to her string-drenched sad banger comfort zone, pairing a chilly breakbeat with a bass riff reminiscent of Joey Beltram having a gut-wrenching cry wank. Keening vocals supplied by Hazel Grove are chopped up, tormented and eventually hurled down a K-hole as the strings build and the drama escalates.
When the credits roll on this cinematic masterpiece we hear a wistful French lesbian talking about 'borrowed bliss'.

A future comedown classic; also sounds good slowed down to 33rpm.

The E.P. signs off with a stunning string-a-pella that will linger long after the needle hits the run-out groove.

Lucero lead singer Ben Nichols and keyboardist Rick Steff spent a day at Grammy Award winning engineer Matt Ross-Spang's Southern Grooves Studio in Memphis, TN recording acoustic versions of Lucero songs. Spanning the band's career, the songs range from some of Lucero's most popular crowd favorites to more obscure rarities and were all recorded live in the studio featuring grand piano and acoustic guitar. The double album, Lucero Unplugged, presents 20 stripped down tracks that offer fresh takes on the band's exceptional catalogue.

The long-awaited second full-length from San Francisco band Girls is spontaneous and stripped-down in a gorgeous, largely minor-key record. Father, Son, Holy Ghost is enlivened by flashes of innocent pop and given depth by its wealth of influences and will to face sadness. Peaking at Billboard #37 after its release in 2011 and claiming #82 on Pitchfork’s “200 Best Albums of the 2010s,” Father, Son, Holy Ghost both comes alive and cements its legacy with the timbre of Christopher Owen’s voice.

The long-awaited second full-length from San Francisco band Girls is spontaneous and stripped-down in a gorgeous, largely minor-key record. Father, Son, Holy Ghost is enlivened by flashes of innocent pop and given depth by its wealth of influences and will to face sadness. Peaking at Billboard #37 after its release in 2011 and claiming #82 on Pitchfork’s “200 Best Albums of the 2010s,” Father, Son, Holy Ghost both comes alive and cements its legacy with the timbre of Christopher Owen’s voice.