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Repress! No one is raising the standard in the underground as high as Black Milk and Danny Brown. After their collaborative track "Black and Brown" from Black's LP Album of the Year became a fan favorite, the two decided to record an entire EP together, fittingly titled Black and Brown. While the aforementioned track appears on the EP, the remainder of Black And Brown sees Danny Brown exclusively handling mic duties, with Black Milk showcasing his masterful production.
Black Milk’s Album of the Year dropped in September 2010 to strong reviews and an impressive showing on the Billboard charts, and his stock has continued to rise ever since. Performing with a live band for over 80 shows on a worldwide tour in support of the album, he has established himself as one of rap’s best live performers. He also
became the first rap artist to record and release music with rock superstar Jack White, who co-produced and played on the much-publicized “Brain” 7-inch single on White’s label Third Man Records. Never straying from his hip hop roots, Black Milk also serves as a member of the group Random Axe (with Sean Price and Guilty
Simpson), and entirely produced their successful self-titled 2011 full-length release.
Danny Brown first gained wide recognition with the release of his album The Hybrid as a free download in March 2010. Since the release, he’s emerged as one of rap’s most distinct new voices. The shock value of his drug-fueled and sex-laden rhyming has been frequently compared to the early works of Eminem, and his ear for
progressive beats as well as his unique fashion sense has made him a favorite with critics. His latest project XXX was released as a free download in August 2011, and was instantly hailed as one of the top rap albums of the year by artists and fans alike, while receiving heavy coverage from media outlets like Pitchfork, MTV, and The Fader.

2024 Reissue

redux packaging. aja monet's poems are a work of gravity. They are a fundamental for which all things are attracted, considered upon and enacted towards. Her work moves, constantly, between origin and outcome, allowing them to exist in converse. In her debut album when the poems do what they do, we glimpse her indefatigable commitment to speak. Those thematic origins of this album at times center around Black resistance, love and the inexhaustible quest for joy.In when the poems do what they do aja monet appears as a woman of letters and storm, her poems do not roar in pentameter - but rather in storm surge because, "Who's got time for poems when the world is on fire?!." And this work isn't one to pull apart into one liners, these are poems of things felt. There is a fullness here that can't be encapsulated in even the boundaries that language offers. aja monet is a griot, a storyteller, a chronicler, and your grandmother telling you about her first love all at once. These are baby making poems - literally the spring enacting upon the cherry trees. These are poems of urgency and want and the rallying cry to demolish the insidious systems from which our futures seem to be wrought, in other words, "If we had a sense of humor we'd be more radical. More migrant than citizen we'd breathe the air clean and ration our resources...we would melt ALL the guns." You will find yourself readying arms because of these poems, and simultaneously mourning the unstoppable loss of names already destined to be immortalized. aja monet crafts a work as she always does, that can be entered from many doors. These aren't poems for poets, but poems for everyone.She is joined in effort on this album by musicians Christian Scott (trumpet), Samora Pinderhughes (piano), Elena Pinderhughes (flute), Luques Curtis (bass), Weedie Braimah (djembe) and Marcus Gilmore (drums). Together creating music that is insistent and unrelenting. There are songs reminiscent of jazz club virtuosity and melee, others of a healing balm in gilead, and the chords of Castaway move like that of the call to intercessory prayer.

House of Harm are proud to announce the forthcoming release of their new album Playground, out December 1st, 2023. The new record builds and expands upon the three-piece’s enthralling shadow-pop sound, a mix of midnight atmospherics, 90s era jangle pop, and contagious synth drenched hooks that further elevate the transcendent vocals of lead singer Michael Rocheford. Rounded out by Cooper Leardi (guitar / synths) and Tyler Kershaw (guitar / synth), House of Harm have amassed an impressive following as something of a best kept secret among their growing fanbase, leading to sold out shows on both coasts by the power of word of mouth alone. The band members have been drawn to music for as long as any of them can remember, and the drive to be around like-minded artists and make their own noise drew them all to Boston after high school. There they all quickly enmeshed themselves, playing in other bands before meeting each other. Ever since, House of Harm have been quietly making a name for themselves among music fans with darker pop persuasions via a steady stream of releases in single, ep and album form. That attention to detail and workmanlike approach at the expense of chasing instant gratification seems to be paying dividends after years of steady effort. The journey of their new album Playground saw House of Harm stay true to that ethos. The band painstakingly narrowed the record down to an efficient 10 tracks that they felt made the most sense, both standing on their own as well as fitting into an LP that built a cohesive world for the listener to get lost in. The album’s name also reflects the experimentation and happy accidents that came about during the writing and recording process. On “The Face of Grace” they set out to explore different dynamics by writing a song entirely without drums, but couldn't help themselves from putting emphasis on the song’s 6/8 waltz time signature. “Two Kinds” is another first for House Of Harm in that it’s predominantly driven by acoustic guitar. That aforementioned vulnerability shows up in other areas of the songwriting process as well with “Two Kinds”, one of their most revealing songs to date from a lyrical standpoint, written from a place of reflection and weakness and tackling feelings uneasy to be put on display for public consumption. Taken as a whole, the end result is an album representing a collection of the band’s most raw and expressive songs yet.

2024 Very Limited Repress

Down Low Music returns with a catalog number reserved for over 20 years, dL-006. Circa 2002, after releasing music from artists such as Stinkworx, Plastic Sleeves, Convextion and Macho Cat Garage, the dL catalog skipped from dL-005 to dL-007. dL-006 was reserved for DFD aka Troy Anderson, a core part of the dL crew from Texas. Troy had previously released excellent records as Cityboy and Waverider (both recently re-issued on We're Going Back), and as DFD on the first Down Low Music compilation, 'Satellite Cities' in 2001.

But a full EP was never finalized, until now... Over time, multiple projects were lost in the void and time passed until Troy recently sent out some new works from his lab. Down Low loved the new tracks and decided this was the time to complete the missing piece. It's a wonderful glitch in time, four new DFD productions that fit easily in the early 00's sound of the label back then, while also a magnificent piece of machine music from the future. Proper electro with a touch of human feels which is something that seems to be essential for a classic Down Low Music release.

For fans of: Spectrum / Recurring Era Spacemen 3, Loop, AR Kane, MBV, bdrmm, Cocteau Twins, Telescopes and early 90s Creation records.

Following a series of meditative explorations in the form of the Singularity Zone series of releases, The Oscillation have returned with a new sense of vigour and purpose. Refreshed and re-energized, the result is The Start Of The End, an album that casts more light and shade than ever before to create a mood of hope and re-birth.

At once warm and welcoming, The Start Of The End is an album quite unlike anything that The Oscillation have ever released before. Fuelled by optimism and taking stock of what’s good about life and what needs to be jettisoned, the record is a result of spiritual and physical re-charging and cleansing.

Leaving the claustrophobic environs of the big city for a more bucolic backdrop, the change in location has left a profound mark on Demian Castellanos, the creative force behind The Oscillation. Where the exorcism of dark emotions of previous album Untold Futures left Castellanos wondering if he’d ever make music again, his new surroundings stirred something within him.

“When I made my new home, I allowed myself time to do nothing for a while,” says Castellanos, “and I then started some new songs without worrying about them being on an album. I just wrote with the mindset to put out something positive.”

He continues: “I did a lot of reflecting on the past and really wanted to change something in myself, but not knowing how and thinking that a lot of people must be feeling the same way.”

Recalling the creation of The Start Of The End, Castellanos says, “Writing and recording in an environment where I had little contact with people, no hanging out or partying or even having conversations was very interesting.”

The result is an album that’s recognisably the work of The Oscillation while pointing to a variety of new directions. Be it the celestial majesty of the title track, the melodic infusions that drive opening track ‘War On The Mind’ or the pulsing grooves underpinning ‘Faraway’ and ‘Body Electric’ or even hypnotic repetition at the heart of ‘Mantra’ and ‘The Eternal’, this music brimming with zeal and confidence. And to crown it all, closer ‘Sovereign’ is akin to communing with angels.

The Start Of The End is a line in the sand and one that points to a better tomorrow.

Monochord are Vienna-based musicians Bernhard Hammer and Jakob Schneidewind, two thirds of Elektro Guzzi, though Monochord paints a different picture. Electroacoustic experiments and filmic elements define the music that develops instinctively yet irrevocably, a sense of forward motion setting them apart. Compositionally minimal, their tracks maximise their inherent potential all the way through to their logical and even illogical end.
Referencing electronica, ambient, shoegaze and at times modern classical harmonics, Monochord builds and unbuilds in a slow heartbeat. Introspective and filmic, its quiet and non-confrontational nature makes Monochord move in the interzone between various spheres. Their music escapes definition and that is its truest definition. Its subtle pulse and evocative and drony feel invite and inspire.

A Gilles Peterson-approved deep jazz-rap classic.

2024 first time vinyl release, 140g double vinyl, remastered audio with restored artwork.

Limited and Non-Returnable.

Holy grail hip-hop alert! Superstar Quamallah's Invisible Man was never released on wax so, to celebrate the 15th anniversary of this astounding record, we present the first ever vinyl edition. A stunning record which gained accolades upon its initial release, such as a prominent feature on Gilles Peterson's renowned Best Of 2009 show, it's one of the most essential jazz rap albums of all time.

Deep jazz rap on that mellow-melodic tip, Invisible Man is an unforgettable album with nothing but dope beats and dope bars. There's a strong chance this album has passed you by but we truly believe it to be a lost hip-hop masterpiece. It supremely captures the essence of a golden age classic without being slavish to the past. No, this ain't some facile throwback rap. It's a fresh and deeply soulful, original album shot through straight from the heart. Perfect to chill to, Invisible Man is profoundly jazz-oriented and captures with simplicity and sincerity the essence of hip-hop circa 1983-1994. It sounds like vibing with your nearest, dearest and oldest friends on a long hot summer night as the tantalising thought that anything is possible fills the air. You know what, we can just call this "magic hour rap" and we think you'll know what we mean. It's just beautiful. Just Listen.

Brooklyn-born, California-based emcee, DJ, and producer Superstar Quamallah was active in the West Coast underground scene throughout the 90s and recorded extensively with such revered names as Defari and Tajai. His parents were some serious artistic heavyweights, too; his father was soul organist Big John Patton, a giant in the jazz world known for his releases on Blue Note whilst his mother was an active designer. However, he remains relatively unknown. Invisible Man, named ostensibly after the classic Ralph Ellison novel, could also refer to how he is viewed by the public at large. With close affiliations to the Hieroglyphics, Dilated Peoples and Likwit crew, his debut EP "Don't Call Me John" arrived in 1999 on ABB Records, after which he took a sabbatical from recording which included graduate school, travelling, teaching at Inglewood High and eventually a professorship of African Studies at Berkeley.

With a laidback flow and deep, relaxing presence on the mic, Superstar Quamallah is equal parts Big Daddy Kane, Rakim and Guru. Invisible Man is refined, soulful, feel-good hip-hop of the old school. Its wise, spiritual and literate sound, combined with the summertime vibes projected by the smooth beats and the nostalgia-inducing samples and vocal scratches, created jazzy boom-bap rap reminiscent of prime De La Soul, A Tribe Called Quest and Gang Starr.

Irresistibly bouncing opener "You Need Knowledge" loops sparkling pianos, horns and a nagging whistle refrain with scratched vocal refrains from Slick Rick, Mobb Deep and Guru. The super-smooth head-nod classic "88 Soul" also utilises a beautifully swelling piano line and dusty breaks whilst Quamé reminisces about his childhood in NYC. Deeply moving, the silky, sultry "Black Shakespeare" is built around an elegant piano loop and goes hard on the superman lover tip whilst "For My People...It's Spiritual" is transcendental rap in conversation with Rakim and older gods. The "Moment Of Truth"-sampling "Lonely At The Top" is striking for its undiluted boom-bap stylings and the staccato flute-hop of "Just Listen" is riddled with soulful refinement. The deeply-affecting, wistful-yet-triumphant bells and horn-drenched single "California Dreamin'" is top-tier rap of unimpeachable quality. What a flow!

Another highlight is the rich melodic piano-rap of "Purity", a beautiful ode to the foundations of rap and those keeping the culture authentically alive. Beautifully played instruments and spiritual jazz samples elevate the deep thinking present on "Kunta Kente" whilst the darker jazz-tinged battle-rap of "93 Shit" goes super hard both in a lyrical sense and with its no-holds drum punches. The breezy Rhodes and string loops that serve as the sonic backdrop to the slinky jazz rap of "We Got Plots" are just gorgeous as our hero evokes Common's "I Used To Love H.E.R." with a head-spinning tale of crime, deception and double crossing. And some twist! "Do Win-Dis" has a tense crime-funk backing and rolling beats which complement Quamé's flow perfectly before the record is rounded out by the tough yet jazzy brilliance of rap confessional "Hope She Remembers Me". Just sensational.

Upon its original release, Quamallah himself declared: "My favorite time period for Hip Hop music was definitely between 1983 and 1994 with 1988 and 1993 being two years that standout as extremely impressive years musically and culturally. The fashion, slang, movies, TV shows and vibe during those years was incredible. While totally submerged in the feelings and music of that entire time period, I went to work on Invisible Man and I am excited for people to hear the result! It is an album that I would want to hear from some of my favorite artists of the past and present today. This is not a RETRO trip for me; this is me at my best lyrically and spiritually using the accessories of the 80s and 90s to fuel me. I am a 88 soul as the song states!"

This album goes deep. It goes all in. When Invisible Man first came out it had a real hold on us here at Be With HQ. We couldn't stop listening to it. We'd venture to say it's one of the top 25 rap records of the 2000s. In the years since its release, it has remained a criminally underrated record, an increasingly hidden gem. We sincerely hope this first time double LP release will go some way to correct this.

It's been mastered for vinyl by Simon Francis, cut by Cicely Balston and pressed at Record Industry. Finally available on the format it should always have been on, it must never be rendered invisible again.

Introducing Jahnah Camille (pronounced Hannah), a young artist emerging from the DIY scene of Birmingham, Alabama. Camille's songs capture the rollercoaster of teenage angst, heartbreak and introspection over a well-made bed of driving guitars and catchy, compact melodies. A five-track EP infused with anxiety and grit, i tried to freeze light, but only remember a girl, is a shining introductory project smoothed over by Camille's sugar-sweet voice and cutting lyricism. Much of the EP's songs were written and recorded while Camille was still in high school, taking trips back and forth from Atlanta to record. In the time following, Camille dug into the local DIY scene, steadily gaining an impressive resume of opening slots as she cut her teeth supporting acts like Clairo, Soccer Mommy, Cryogeyser and Wednesday as they came through town. Now 19 years old, Camille delivers an excellent snapshot of those uncertain and wildly hopeful late teen years. i tried to freeze light captures Camille approaching heartbreak and self-perception from a variety of angles-each track playing slightly with genre and cadence and infused with influence from her musical heroes, like Liz Phair and Fiona Apple. The EP pulls at a range of alternative rock and pop threads, there's the 90s alternative rock opener "flesh" and the country-gaze-tinged "roadkill." Camille then softens on the swooning synth-layered ode to love lost, "elliot," before relaxing into a folksy, acoustic "paper doll."I wanna talk and not spill out carnival sounds" Camille confides on closer "carnival sounds"--a track that illuminates the singer's art-pop influences and knack for revealing tender and at times searing admissions through her lyricism. While misunderstandings color the emotional sentiment of the EP, Camille's artistry and expression come through clear as day on i tried to freeze light, presenting her as a promising young voice with real talent and a hunger for musical experimentation.

In den letzten zehn Jahren hat sich DANIEL DAVIES zu einem gefeierten Komponisten atmosphärischer, synthielastiger Instrumentalmusik entwickelt - für Film- und Fernseh-Musik, an der Seite von JOHN CARPENTER auf den "Lost Themes"-Alben des Regisseurs und auf Solo-Veröffentlichungen wie "Signals And Spies". In seinem früheren musikalischen Leben war DAVIES jedoch ein Rocker, der mit Bands wie YEAR LONG DISASTER und KARMA TO BURN durch die ganze Welt tourte. Mit seinem neuen Solo-Album "Ghost Of The Heart" kehrt DAVIES zu dem Alt-Rock-Sound zurück, den er vorübergehend beiseite gelegt hatte, und ergänzt ihn mit dem, was er beim Produzieren von Soundtracks und Instrumentalmusik gelernt hat. "Ein Rockalbum zu schreiben ist ein Ausdruck der Gefühle des Künstlers, während es bei der Vertonung eines Films darum geht, Klanglandschaften zu schaffen, die die Geschichte eines anderen ergänzen", sagt DAVIES. "Bei diesem Album wollte ich die schweren Gitarrenriffs aus meiner Rockzeit mit den atmosphärischen Synthesizerklängen verbinden, mit denen ich als Komponist experimentiert habe." Die Songs auf "Ghost Of The Heart" lassen sich nicht in ein bestimmtes Subgenre einordnen: Sie sind stimmungsvoll, schwer und ein wenig proggig, aber mit einer starken Pop-Sensibilität und viel Melodie. Das Album verrät DAVIES' Vorliebe für eingängige, zukunftsweisende Bands wie RADIOHEAD und BLUR, aber vor allem fühlt sich "Ghost Of The Heart" natürlich an, so als würde er etwas Grundlegendes über sich selbst als Musiker wiederfinden. DAVIES nahm "Ghost Of The Heart" im Laufe des Jahres 2023 mit dem Produzenten John Spiker auf, seinem langjährigen Freund und Mitarbeiter. Spiker steuert auch den Bass bei, während Matt Flynn Schlagzeug spielt. Alles andere auf der Platte wird von DAVIES selbst eingespielt.

Compassion combines ethereal pop with ‘80s synth textures, and slacker-rock charm. It's got a bit of Matthew E. White, chilled out BC Camplight and Conor Oberst.

The inviting and perceptive songs on Rui Gabriel’s debut LP Compassion all tackle growing up. It’s about how the older you get, your priorities shift, friendships evolve, and responsibilities become inescapable. For Gabriel, the Indiana-based, Venezuela-born artist and co-founder of the acclaimed band Lawn, the changes in his own life inspired him to write a solo full-length that sounds like nothing the indie rock journeyman has done before. Across 10 vibrant tracks that combine ethereal pop with slacker-rock and piano-driven dance music, it’s a galvanizing showcase of personal growth and the grace you give yourself to push forward.

Work on Compassion started in 2018 when Gabriel was living in New Orleans. “I was living a pretty teenage life in many ways,” says Gabriel. “I worked at a pizza restaurant and would just go to shows or parties. I wasn’t doing anything other than music. I didn't have many responsibilities.” The songs he was working on at the time—tracks that didn’t fit Lawn but Gabriel still liked—initially went unfinished. But as Gabriel’s life changed, so did his songwriting and his desire to see his ideas through. “When I was writing lyrics, I was settling down with my partner and about to become a dad,” says Gabriel. “I was making choices about my life that contradicted the existence I had before. I had a different set of priorities.”

The songs on Compassion deal with youthful carelessness ("Dreamy Boys") and coming face-to-face with newfound responsibilities ("Change Your Mind"). It's consistently a biting, observant look at getting older thanks to Gabriel's unique perspective as a South American immigrant who's lived across the United States for the past 13 years. “When you are Hispanic, English isn't your first language, and you're in a music scene with a bunch of white people, you're going to stand out a little bit,” he says. On “Church of Nashville,” “Hey, Leonard Cohen is singing poems by the gentrified alley” he humorously aims at scene pretension and industry gatekeepers.

Compared to Gabriel’s work with Lawn, where he writes frenetic post-punk songs and yells, for Compassion he explores more straightforward pop sensibilities and showcases his singing voice. “I wanted to do a solo record to prove to myself that I could sing,” says Gabriel. Take the meditative, piano-based lead single “Target,” which is inspired by Dido and finds Gabriel gorgeously harmonizing with singer Kate Teague. He reaches similar infectiousness on the sunny rocker “Summertime Tiger,” which guests Stef Chura. Co-produced by Gabriel and Nicholas Corson (The Convenience, Video Age), Compassion is consistently warm, generous, colorful, and adventurous.

“Compassion is a record about change,” says Gabriel. “It's a coming-of-age record but for somebody who's coming of age into their thirties.”

Metal vengeance is hers! - LIMITED EDITION 300 copies only MARBLED BLUE

Elettra Storm ist die brandneue Power-Metal-Sensation: Mit der talentierten und umwerfenden Crystal Emiliani am Gesang und unterstützt von erstklassigen Musikern ist das Debütalbum der Band ein glorreicher, 100%iger Power-Metal-Ritt vom Feinsten, der die Magie der frühen 00er-Jahre-Genre-Superhelden wie Stratovarius und Rhapsody of Fire mit dem modernen Female-Fronted-Ansatz von Unleash the Archers und Frozen Crown verbindet.

Seid bereit, Euch von Geschichten über mächtige Erzengel, Mondgöttinnen und unterirdische Zivilisationen verzaubern zu lassen; ein Eskapismus aus der Müdigkeit des Alltags, aber auch eine Reflexion über die Tugenden und Fehler der Menschheit. “Powerlords" ist das ultimative Album für junge UND graubärtige Metalheads, in denen die Macht der Drachenflamme noch immer hell brennt!

Four years after releasing their debut record, Indus are back in 2024 with Negra, their second album. This record explores the essence of the night through dance, seduction and mystery, while paying homage to Colombian amphibious cultures and the land as that place that has seen us moving and that we always return to. With these ten songs Barranquilla producer Oscar Alford, along with Andres Mercado and a select group of collaborators, builds a bridge between the sounds and histories of the Pacific and the Caribbean, bringing together territories like a river running through them and connecting them. Oscar says that on this record "there's this confluence of various cultural universes, on the one hand there's the traditional music of the coast and river areas, there are various maestros who collaborated on the record and they brought that, also there's electronica which is a universal language, and even hip hop and more urban genres like dembow." The record kicks off with "Deja," a ritual of initiation, a galactic, synthetic entrance into a place of plenty, a journey to the ethereal and the night. It's followed, like light and guide, by the song "Alfa Indi," with Gamero singer Nelda Piña, a release of electronic sounds evoking creation in all its senses. The night is an excuse for and a generator of desire, seduction and flirting in "Candela tu Trá," in collaboration with Tomás Llerena, grandson of the legendary Petrona Martínez. The earth is evident in tracks like "Canción del muerto," homage to the marimba maestro Gualajo, with his brother Pacho Torres and Bogotá rapper N. Hardem, a song that could be a farewell ritual and tribute to the land as the place to which we always return, one that holds the history of those who walked that land and left their mark on it. We hear this in "Corre Cimarrón" with Ka Oddun, portraying the journeys of fleeing enslaved ancestors as they tried to survive until they reached the palenque, a place of freedom. Negra explores the mysticism of the night and the cosmos within the Colombian musical tradition. A dialog between root rhythms, voices and synths with bases oscillating between techno-champeta, afro-tech and future-dembow. With this record Indus comes across as one of the most versatile acts on the Latin American scene, especially in the way they reinterpret ancestral music and resignify its sound.

Let Go the debut album from Avril Lavigne, originally released in June of 2002. Let Go became an instant sensation with hits such as "Complicated," and "Sk8ter Boi" dominating the charts and airwaves.

Let Go the debut album from Avril Lavigne, originally released in June of 2002. Let Go became an instant sensation with hits such as "Complicated," and "Sk8ter Boi" dominating the charts and airwaves.

Let Go the debut album from Avril Lavigne, originally released in June of 2002. Let Go became an instant sensation with hits such as "Complicated," and "Sk8ter Boi" dominating the charts and airwaves.

Freshly following their debut LP, Colemine Records is here to introduce the newest 45 from Thee Sinseers. The A-side, "For You" is a man's devotional message that promises it's the real deal this time. The group's sweet, verbed out harmonies set the stage for Joey Quinoñes' artful croon. The B-side is the instrumental version of their album's closing track, "Sinseerly Yours." Here it's aptly renamed "Si Llorarás" (if you will cry). This tune sends the listener off into the sunset with a gentle lap steel guitar tune reminiscent of Santo & Johnny's "Sleepwalk."

Freshly following their debut LP, Colemine Records is here to introduce the newest 45 from Thee Sinseers. The A-side, "For You" is a man's devotional message that promises it's the real deal this time. The group's sweet, verbed out harmonies set the stage for Joey Quinoñes' artful croon. The B-side is the instrumental version of their album's closing track, "Sinseerly Yours." Here it's aptly renamed "Si Llorarás" (if you will cry). This tune sends the listener off into the sunset with a gentle lap steel guitar tune reminiscent of Santo & Johnny's "Sleepwalk."

The revered British singer/songwriter Linda Thompson's latest project, the aptly named 'Proxy Music' features artists handpicked by Linda and her son (and album co-producer) Teddy Thompson, to record a new set of her tunes by "proxy". Thompson, who Rolling Stone hailed as having "one of rock and roll's finest voices," has limited singing capabilities now due to a rare vocal condition. 'Proxy Music', however, impressively showcases her songwriting range and prowess. Tracks like "Darling This Will Never Do," and "Mudlark" hold a timeless quality, while "Those Damn Roches" and "John Grant" (sung by John Grant himself) boast very modern sensibilities. 'Proxy Music' contains performances from Linda's long-time friends and admirers as Rufus Wainwright, Martha Wainwright, Eliza Carthy, The Proclaimers, Dori Freeman, and Grant, along with many talented Thompsons, including her children Teddy and Kami, and her ex-husband Richard Thompson playing guitar on several tracks. "Music in my family," Thompson shares. "It's like glue. It binds us."

Pride Month Barbie is an L.A. synth-pop duo formed in 2022 by solo artists Tyler Holmes and Josephine Shetty (aka Kohinoorgasm). As Libras, sluts, drama queens, and judgmental bitches, PMB brings a sound and performance that will leave you feeling insecure, horny, and annoyed. Inspired by early 2000’s celebutante culture, the films of Gregg Araki, and acts like Handsome Furs, Yaz, Light Asylum, and New Order, PMB brings a dark sense of humor to a candied electronic gloss.

Drawing from the indie pop culture of the 80’s, 90’s and early aughts, PMB harkens the bittersweet, nostalgic purity of early synth titans, parodies the current zeitgeist, and imagines a glittering future encompassing the dystopic and utopic simultaneously.

Shetty and Holmes met at San Francisco’s El Rio while sharing a bill as their solo acts in 2016. They remained adjacent figureheads in the DIY experimental pop underground of Oakland and Berkeley in the 2010’s and shared many bills, collaborators, friends, and mutual experiences amidst an underground network of eclectic baddies from SF to LA. They both have a prolific catalog of solo music and have performed and toured in art and music spaces across the US and Europe.

In 2022, Shetty offered engineering services while Holmes was working on an upcoming solo album at a residency in rural Northern California.

Upon wrapping, Holmes shared some of the electronic pop work they had made as a reprieve from their sad experimental music. Shetty was immediately eager to sing over the tracks and expeditiously demolished the demo with beautiful harmonies and hooks. PMB’s debut single was created almost on the spot. Shetty asked ‘did we just start a band?’

Paranoid Cocoon is an album full of quiet, wooden psychedelia reflecting Cotton Jones' casual pursuit of comfort and freedom. Under the mountains of Cumberland, Maryland, where creeks zigzag in the lonesome dark of the forest and a red moon hangs overhead, these songs were born of leaving, of dreams both good and bad, sung from surroundings the band has known their whole lives. Paranoid Cocoon is simple, understated perfection: they sound timeless from singing together forever.

Black Truffle is thrilled to present the first vinyl reissue of David Rosenboom’s unique Future Travel, originally released on the short-lived Detroit label Street Records in 1981 and here presented in an expanded edition with an additional LP of wild, previously unheard live and studio material from the same period.

Future Travel emerged from the confluence of two important streams in Rosenboom’s work at this time. First, his exploration of ‘propositional music’, defined as ‘complete cognitive models of music’ that start from the radical question, ‘What is music?’ In this case, the music belongs to the universe of Rosenboom’s In the Beginning (1978-1981), in which proportional relationships determine the material available to the composer in all musical parameters (harmonic relationships, melodic shapes, rhythmic subdivisions, dynamics, and so on). Second, the work documents a key moment in Rosenboom’s long collaboration with synthesizer pioneer Don Buchla. Having played a role in developing concepts for some of the modules of the Buchla 300 Series Electric Music Box (an innovative analogue modular system controlled by micro-processors), Rosenboom went on to write the software for Buchla’s hybrid analogue-digital keyboard synthesiser, the Touché, the instrument heard most prominently here.

In a way that no purely analogue synthesizer could, the 300 Series and Touché allowed Rosenboom to work with the In the Beginning algorithms in real time, the synthesizers becoming ‘intelligent instruments’ that actively collaborate with the performer. Developing the open structures of the electronic pieces from In the Beginning, Future Travel explored the possibilities of simply ‘playing the system’, recording live at Francis Ford Coppola’s Zoetrope studio in San Francisco. Working from loose sketches, Rosenboom added acoustic instruments to the electronic sounds and, on some pieces, the processed voice of Jacqueline Humbert. Like Rosenboom’s collaboration with Humbert on the abstracted synth-chanson of Daytime Viewing, this music set out deliberately to challenge the ‘stratified and illusorily coagulated identities in the musical culture of the time,’ refusing distinctions between ‘serious’ and popular music. But where Daytime Viewing achieves this in part through genre references, Future Travel is bracingly sui generis, existing in a unique universe where radical formalisation à la Xenakis spontaneously gives rise to expressive jazz harmonies and old-timey folk melodies.

The crystalline quality of many of the Touché sounds gives Future Travel a sparkling, immediately enticing surface, its layers of shifting ostinato patterns pulsating outside conventional meter, rippling like waves on the surface of water. On opener ‘Station Oaxaca’, ping-ponging synth arpeggios and hand percussion accompany a sentimental violin melody, abruptly overtaken by layered keyboard runs, before the entry of tinkling marimba-like sounds reframe the scene as sci-fi Martin Denny exotica. ‘Time Arroyo’ begins as an austere study in staccato synth sounds in multiple overlapping tempi, reminiscent of Ligeti’s famous ‘clock’ rhythmic effects. Before long, it opens up into a melodic passage with the gentle heroism of classic Roedelius, which proves to be only a brief interlude before the layers of rhythmically distinct synthesiser patterns begin to build and accelerate into an increasingly dense cacophony. The wildest twists and turns are saved for the epic closer ‘Nova Wind’, where the arrangement focuses on Rosenboom’s virtuoso piano playing, perfectly embodying the project’s radical disregard of stylistic orthodoxies as he moves from hyperactive pointillistic flurries to a kind of space-age gospel.

At several points throughout the record, the distinctive voice of Jacqueline Humbert is heard reading passages from the text component of In the Beginning, a dialogue between The Double (an embodiment of humanity’s timeless desire to replicate itself in spiritual and technological copies) and two Spirit Characters. Fittingly, as all are conceived as embodiments of a future form of techno-human collective consciousness, distinctions between the three characters are not immediately evident in Humbert’s delivery, just as the music blurs the boundaries between intelligent computing and human spontaneity. Adorned with a striking retro-futurist cover (and here accompanied by extensive new liner notes and archival images), Future Travel is a time capsule of radical imaginings at the birth of our digital age, reminding us of utopian possibilities of which our own present seems so often to fall short.

D&V were a duo formed in Sheffield by Andy Leach on drums and Jef Antcliffe on vocals. The group released their first EP ‘The Nearest Door’ on Crass Records. With Penny Rimbaud as producer, their musical simplicity was combined with uncompromising avant-gardism to achieve new heights. The group would go on to release a second album in 1984 entitled ‘Inspiration Gave Them Motivation To Move On Out Of Their Isolation’ with a more refined sound and additional vocals by Crass' Eve Libertine and Joy de Vivre.

Penny Rimbaud tells us; “D&V are so named because they turned up to play at the now legendary squat gig of 1982 at the Zig Zag Club in North London. At that time, they didn’t have a moniker, so they were chalked up on the day’s order of play as D&V (drums and vocals) because that’s what they were and that’s how they remained. Simple and to the point, they were precursors to rap which later both rhythmically and vocally came to mirror their fierce rhetoric. A northern band with streetwise sentiments, they spoke loud and clear of disenfranchisement (call it slavery) and the vicious class system which created it. From street to stormy skies, D&V were on the up, and hard rains began to fall.”

Digipak w/ 12-pg booklet + sticker. Darwin is back! Follow-up to the critically acclaimed epic albums "Origin of Species" ('A prog rock masterpiece' - Classic Rock Magazine) and "A Frozen War" ('A rock tour de force with melody, shredding, and orchestral flourishes' - Prog Rock UK) Darwin, whose production is masterfully driven by Simon Phillips, expands on their trademark sound - adding new levels of depth and melody. The album features a stellar lineup of musicians. Bass sensation Mohini Dey joins the band, bringing her sophisticated and punchy low-end sound. Guitar maestro Greg Howe delivers some of his best playing to date across the album, which also features a beautiful solo appearance by Andy Timmons. Derek Sherinian and Julian Pollack (J3PO) add their keyboard wizardry across the tracks. Vocalist Matt Bissonette provides a rich harmony-filled performance across the various songs. Released on CD, including a special album cover sticker in the package

Missing out on that super-chill, uber-jittery minimal groove thing? Let"s get real, real Ghosted again. Oren Ambarchi has been collaborating with the Fire! trio (Mats Gustafsson, Johan Berthling and Andreas Werliin) for over a decade - and both Johan and Andreas played on Oren"s Live Hubris as well. Oren and Johan began music-making together back in the early aughts - but it wasn"t until 2021 that the three of them got together to record music. That became the first Ghosted album. When they were done, it was clear they had founded a new group. A music of sustained tension and deep atmosphere marked by subtle, shifting dynamics, Ghosted was released in May of 2022 to psyched response everywhere; the trio embarked upon an ongoing series of concert bookings around Europe, with loads of other people in the world still hoping to have the chance to be in the room at the next show. Two years on, Ghosted has gone through several represses, now it"s time for the "dreaded follow up album"! Rather than go back to the well, the guys decided to tear everything down and start all over again, reimagining themselves from scratch. Just kidding! As we"ve noted, Oren, Johan and Andreas have been playing together for years and years, developing an essential telepathy within their shared space. They get each other and feed each other"s music processes on an elemental level. Why change that? What made the most sense was to go back to Daneil Bengtsson at Studio Rymden in Stockholm for a couple days, then have Oren and Joe Talia mix and Joe master it at Good Mixture in Melbourne again, then get Pål Dybwik to do some well-distinctive cover art, and once more, call it a record. That"s just what they did - and it should be no surprise at all that the new Ambarchi/ Berthling/Werliin album looks and sounds as engrossing as their debut, if not more so! Ghosted II has a definitively fresh quality radiating throughout. The mutual feeling among the three players goes deep, allowing for lots more to say every time they get together - a further recombination of elements, a new expedition through alternative angles... there"s always more, and incredibly, it"s all improvised, with next-to-nothing prepared going in and minimal overdubs after they"ve laid things down. References are shared in shorthand, with just a single word, like "Santana," or "Police" acting as working titles for certain pieces on this record (have a guess!). It"s a disservice to call them jams: above and beyond the innate feel of the songs, there"s a strong sense of structure, informed by the band"s communal aesthetic, and edified immeasurably by their time spent in concert the last couple years. As noted at the top, these guys balance their music improbably between a relaxed feel and a nervy resolve, as each member holds down their corner in an open sound field. Making Ghosted II, the band found that there"s a different kind of tension making something for an established project rather than the kind one feels making something for the first time - and they used this new variety, as before, as a kind of fuel - driving their terse minimalism fruit-fully through the process of succumbing to and then transcending guilty pleasures. Finding fresh territory in funk sketches, jazzy heads, ambient pastorals and droning soundtrack pieces, Ambarchi, Berthling and Werliin compellingly haunt a mad variety of spaces, leaving us wanting to get Ghosted II.

• Transparent red LP with HQ download limited to 250 units worldwide.
• Previous collaborations with Pete Namlook for the FAX label and Alio Die for Projekt .
• Soundtrack work featured in trailers for The Hunger Games 1 & 2 and Blade Runner 2049.
Vion is the 29th full-length album to bear the name of Italian soundtrack composer, engineer, and producer Lorenzo Montanà. It is his first solo effort for Oakland-based emotive electronics outpost n5MD.
Vion began as a means for Montanà to experiment with jazz brush drum patterns. The album slowly took shape, and further experimentation gave way to stylistic shifts that, in turn, broadened the album's palette to include ought-era experimental electronica motifs and percolating ambiance. Motion is a constant with nearly all of Montanà's output; details are ever-evolving, rarely static. The brushed drums and leftfield production comple- ment each other and give Vion a sense of lightness juxtaposed with its somewhat melancholic tonality.
With Vion, Montanà has stretched beyond his recent more ambient offerings to include a cross-section of his electronic music output thus far.

Malmö’s Mod Sens arrives on Programm LDN with an electric intersection of soundsystem styles and taut techno and electro. Pushing inventive, bassweight dance music through his Melt club night in the city he calls home, the wildly talented Swedish producer brings an international outlook to his subtly crafted workouts.

“These four tracks were all made at a time in Malmö when electro was completely dominating the underground scene,” says Mod Sens. “That had a strong influence on the creation of these tracks, but I was definitely more urgent to create my take on ‘UK’ Sounds.”

The sound on Misperceptions EP is introspective by design, cast in melancholic pads which balance the rugged impact of the crafty drums and upfront low-end. Mod Sens himself describes exploring the tension between wanting to run and feeling ‘stuck’, and that yearning sensation culminates in four elevated cuts that uphold Programm’s commitment to advancements in club music.

Visual director Blackwall and graphic designer Alfie Allen responded to the tangible mood of the EP, resulting in an accompanying visualiser and sleeve design which round out the emotion Mod Sens was reaching for while working on the music. As a complete package, it’s an audio-visual statement which leaves a lingering impression, as any art worth making

Returning to Ransom Note Records sub-label, Insult to Injury, Timothy Clerkin is back with incendiary new record, Fading EP. An overt, Acid-Techno analogue assault on the senses, all tracks were performed live in Clerkin's vintage synthesiser recording facility. Backed with a vinyl exclusive remix from the mighty Posthuman (not available digitally) and limited to a run of 100, hand stamped 12”s, you’ll need to be fleet of foot to get your hands on it!

Titular track, Fading, features the inimitable vocal talents of Brighton based Shoegazers HANYA’s front person Heather Sheret, whose heavenly articulation offsets the high voltage, rhythmic battering that opens the record. Booming 909’s propel us forward as we’re launched headlong into the rave maelstrom where squelchy bass lines and breakbeats grapple with trancelike strings for dominance.

Next out of the gate, Sigma hurls itself from the cocoon and slaps us around the face, hugging it tightly like an Acid-Techno Xenomorph. A face melting melange of retro sounds & futurism, it’s underpinned by the nihilistic vocal sample that belies Clerkin’s antiestablishment Punk musical past. Hold onto your hats and remember to BREATHE!

ITI Records are very excited to have head honcho of the I Love Acid parties, Balkan Vinyl and record producer extraordinaire, Posthuman on remix duties. Never one to disappoint, he ‘breaks’ Fading down into tiny pieces and rebuilds it in his own image. Taking inspiration from early Hardcore and Acid aesthetics, we’re treated to a proper dance floor workout of 808s, Rave Hoovers and breakbeats.

Rounding off, Collapsed Lung is a slightly more introspective affair. Jam packed with glitched drums and sequenced, mechanical tones, it builds towards an etherial climax. This slightly distant, intangible and dreamlike number glides out of view just as quickly arrived, leaving us feelin incongruously all warm and fuzzy, after the absolute clobbering that opened the record.

All Nations Records present a new 12" with 2 original instrumental tracks, followed by their own dubs.
Thoses 2 tracks are the result of a collaboration between Higher Meditation and Simon Nyabinghi.
Simon sent the drum patterns to Addis from Higher Meditation, for him to play the rest of the instruments. A task he accomplished brilliantly!
The stunning melodies and bass fit perfectly with the raw drums.

Side A offers "Conquering Dub", a stepper tune that will surely be played on sound system sessions, as it has all the ingredients selectors and massives need when the dances get hot.
On B Side you will find a different groove, a tune called "Lion Dub", more down tempo, but as interesting as the first track.

Docile Recordings is for itself. We are an expression of the beautiful moments that hold us frozen. Warm confusion that breathes life to the senses. The Docile sound captures a nostalgia for times yet to come. We are a familiar resonance always shifting for the correct approach. Always aiming for the heart and soul. Docile speaks to the basic instincts of the techno rebel; supplying sonic reasons to trudge on.

The “last of a kind e.p.” is the 32nd release from the Docile Recordings record label. The feel of this release ranges from a pragmatic spiritual funk to a loose heabangin’ frivolity. Docile 32 is 4/4 minimal held together by soulful synth and smart percussion advanced by ringing highs and detuned horns. Proper mathematics of programming moves a mix match of harmonies through a gauntlet of invisible edits gaining momentum until it is taken away. This is Docile music.

Dizonord is very happy to bring you the reissue of this French 1988 underground self released gem, re-mastered from master tapes!

Dubby, punky, politically engaged new wave with a sense of humour, we've always been touched by the voice of Agnès (bass) and the phlegmatic Michel (machines and graphics). We could have thought the language barrier would have stopped the pleasure of this record but obviously not, as Mobutu song is already an international digger classic!

We really hope you'll enjoy this collection of tracks and collages as we do so, once upon a time...

LP, 2024 Repress - half speed mastering
"The 50 best IDM albums of all time"
Pitchfork

"A liquidy headbox of aural shapes, whose forms hardly change yet seem to encompass infinite viscosity within them, like rainbow pools of oil on water"
Wire

"Before IDM became a nation of Aphex and Autechre cosplayers, the genre was less defined by aesthetics than by a shared ideology. Here was a loosely connected axis of post-rave kids, united by little more than a shared willingness to subvert the tools of their techno idols and create sounds that hadn't previously been imagined. No record of the era better embodies this find-a-machine-and-freak-it ethos than Islets in Pink Polypropylene, the otherworldly debut by British producer Anthony Manning."
Pitchfork

"It’s refreshing to hear an all-electronic album that sounds so organic yet so totally alien."
Fact

"One of the UK’s first post-rave ambient records proper; sharing much more in common with Autechre’s Amber or AFX’s Selected Ambient Works Vol. II - which were both released in that same year - than anything else before or around it."
Boomkat

For fans of avant everything innovative and experimental music.




About The Album>>>>

The whole album was composed and realized on the Roland R8 drum machine. It followed the same process as the Elastic Variations pieces, with the major addition of many, many hours of editing.

Each piece was composed as a series of patterns, of varying lengths ( 5,6,7 bars long ). The stock R8 sounds were embellished with one of several ROM sound library cards ( mostly the Dance card, number 10 ).

These patterns were created by tapping out a rhythm, then, in real time, using the Pitch slider as the pattern looped, to create improvised melodies for each of the pattern's voices.

The rough version of each piece was built by stitching the patterns together as a song, listening to each addition over and over, to make sure the melodies flowed into each other in a vaguely coherent manner.

Once this initial rough structure was in place I set about fine tuning every single note.

The R8 doesn't allow you to assign a pitch to a note in the conventional sense. It's not possible to assign a pitch of Middle C to the first note of the first bar. Instead, it assigns a numerical value to a note's pitch, between -4800 and +4800 ( I think those numbers are correct - that little screen is seared into my memory ).

If you restrict all notes within a piece to a multiple of, say, 400, you therefore create the possibility of a sort of scale. For multiples of 400, you have a total number of 24 permissable notes. However, most of the percussive sounds, when pitch shifted, only sounded 'good' over a reduced range.

The first editing step was to go through the entire piece, and change every note's pitch to its nearest multiple of 400.

The second step was to draw out the entire piece on graph paper, the Y axis being pitch, X being time. This drawing gave me a visual sense of a melody's flow. It was easy to see too many notes clustering around too tight a pitch range for instance, or a single note straying way down into the lower register while all others at that point in the melody were in the upper.

Once these first 'clearing-up' edits were complete I could set about re-writing elements that didn't sound right melodically. Often this meant stripping out whole chunks of superfluous notes, to reveal a cleaner melody line, then shifting its shape slightly. If the flow of the line of dots on the graph 'looked' balanced and sweetly sinuous, then often it sounded so.

This entire process took many weeks per piece. Weeks of doing almost nothing else. Listening. Re-drawing. Re-writing. Listening. Round and round and round. When I could hear the whole thing in my head, from beginning to end, and nothing seemed to jar ( too excessively ), I knew it was done, time to move on.

I imagine it's very similar to the process of stop animation. Your days are filled with painfully tiny incremental changes that seem to be getting nowhere. Then, slowly, a shape, narrative, starts to appear. Then, all of a sudden, somehow, it's done.

When all the pieces were complete the R8 was taken into Irdial's studio where some simple effects were added, each voice recorded individually for clarity onto 8-track tape and mastered onto an ex-BBC half-inch tape deck.

Then I slept. And vowed never to do it again.

*****

And the title ?

Soon after finishing the pieces I happened to read a magazine article about Christo's "Surrounded Islands" installation with the music playing in the background.

There was something about a particular cluster of words within a random sentence that seemed pleasing and somehow appropriate.

"Islets in Pink Polypropylene" seemed to make as much sense as anything else.

Session Victim need little by way of introduction having been releasing on Delusions consistently for the last 10 years and becoming the undisputed poster boys for the label in the process. Despite their regular appearance however, it’s always a real treat to announce a new record from the German duo and we have to say, the Screen Off EP may well find them in their finest form to date! Coming hot off their latest downtempo LP entitled Low Key, Low Pressure for Night Time Stories, you can tell Hauke and Matthias were ready to take things back to the dance-floor and have delivered an EP which looks set to become a future classic and no doubt big in the box of discerning DJ’s the world over.

Screen Off is really it’s own thing, living somewhere on the long and winding road between the Bar Kays and the Bad Brains, suffice to say that what it lacks in easily definable attributes it makes up for in sheer energy and raw attitude. Hauke and Matthias re-invite Jamaican poet and vocalist Ras Stimulant, who contemplates our screen addictions and urges us to disconnect and be present in the moment. Matthias’ rolling bassline provides the backbone, whilst hints of crunchy Moog and chopped guitar samples all bring a sense of urgency to the track.

Light The Way acts as an antidote, bringing a sense of calm melancholia in contrast to the title track’s low-end, funked-up fervour. A soft focus and almost distant drum groove draws us in whilst arpeggiating synths add a sense of optimism, reinforcing the tracks title.

Closing out the release we have Session Victim’s studio partner, good friend and all-round top producer Iron Curtis in for a remix of Light The Way. Johannes takes an interesting approach for his Illuminati interpretation, enhancing the breakbeat feel and mixing up chopped samples with classic 808 drums. A muscular bassline adds extra weight to his remix but without losing the subtle musicality and positive vibe of the original.

Being the vinyl purists they are, Session Victim and Iron Curtis top up the physical 12“ EP with the exclusive Screen Off Acapella and an additional Iron Curtis Remix Reprise.

repress !

Network’s 30th Anniversary celebrations continue with the re-issue of the debut release from the iconic label. The launch of the logo with Neal Howard “Indulge” in 1990 caused a sensation, with the track being instantly acclaimed as a Classic, and Network noted as a new label to watch.

“Indulge” hails from Chicago, but sounds like its’ DNA is Techno City Detroit.
A futuristic call to dance from Windy City mystery man Neal Howard, whose previous releases “The Gathering” and “To Be Or Not To Be” had already reached cult status. Those gems, and “Indulge” were recorded by Chicago label Phuture Sound. Plans were being laid for the transformation the Kool Kat label - the UK outlet for Kevin Saunderson, Derrick May and Juan Atkins - into Network, but the dilemma was finding something “really really special” for the first release. That search for the perfect beat ended when Network’s Neil Rushton on a visit to Chicago heard the just mixed “Indulge” on a cassette played by Phuture Sound boss Terry Baldwin, who after prolonged negotiations agreed to cancel a USA release so the new UK label could have an exclusive.

The label design for this release is a replica of the original DJ Promo 12” that introduced Network to the World with exactly the same tracks; Terry Baldwin’s much loved Club House and Deep House mixes of “Indulge”, coupled with “To Be Or Not To Be” remixes by Chicago’s Bad Boy Bill and Detroit’s Derrick May. network - it is what it was...

It's a pleasure for us to present one of the most awaited albums of the MM Saturns saga, a record on which we have been working for almost 3 years, and it finally sees the light.

Corben introduces us to "Peachland," an introspective retro-futuristic journey where early electro and downtempo go hand in hand in order to create a cybernetic vision of the '80s subculture. It's like an inner spaceship that immerses you in infinite space, allowing you to reach unknown universes.

Pure no-wave nostalgia filled with contagious vocoders and hypnotic synthesizers that shape a dreamlike and unsettling landscape, in which Corben shows us what could be the most sentimental and human side of an imaginary and futuristic artificial intelligence.

Written, recorded, produced and mixed by OMD – Andy McCluskey and Paul Humphreys – ‘English Electric’ is a 12-track letter to technology, space, love and a grand return to form for a band whose 1980 hit ‘Enola Gay’ occupied the world’s stage at last year’s Olympics Opening Ceremony.

As percolating synth-pop is pulled along at different speeds and executed with needle-sharp finesse, late night electro ballads collide with big sounding club cuts on a record which also features three interlude tracks, including dystopian missive ‘Please Remain Seated’ and ‘Decimal’, which is accompanied by this suitably mechanical video, directed by German motion and graphic designer Henning M. Lederer.

As Andy McCluskey says of the album; “the overarching feel tends to be a sense of loss, of melancholia, that things haven’t turned

out the way you wanted them to, whether it be with technology or personal relationships.” The title itself – taken from a British industrial manufacturing company

Death Is Not The End together all three LP volumes of the critically acclaimed If I Had a Pair of Wings LP compilation series for a bundled edition.

"...all of the music on this compilation is the result of the forward-thinking artists and producers that realised the worth of local Jamaican artistry during a time when the island's leading political figures had not yet managed to throw off the colonial yolk. These are sounds with a certain innocence and the optimistic promise of better to come, with the influence of American pop ballads and doo-wop looming large, yet already pointing to the innovations of the future. Listen keenly and take in the sounds of the Jamaican music industry at its very beginnings, its singers and players drawing from the popular styles of the island's larger neighbour and already changing those styles into something their own." - David Katz

Lauren Laverne's comp of the week on BBC Radio 6 Music w/c 11th Jan.

Seth Troxler & Phil Moffa’s Holoverse Research Labs imprint welcomes internationally-renowned multimedia artist Chris Korda to the label for its first non-Lost Souls Of Saturn Release. A pioneer of the use of complex polymeter in electronic dance music, Korda's boundary-smashing work spans thirty years across music, digital and video art, performance and conceptual art, philosophy, activitism and culture jamming. Korda's musical output has appeared on a host of revered independent labels including Yoyaku, Perlon, Mental Groove, and Gigolo Records.

In addition to their prodigious artistic output – and ongoing role as founder of the Church of Euthanasia – Korda is also the inventor of the Polymeter MIDI Sequencer, which was used to compose Korda’s new EP, ‘Avenging Angels of Software’. Developed over thirty years, the sequencer allows for the composition of music in complex polymeter – meaning that not only do the tracks use multiple time signatures concurrently, but those time signatures are exclusively in prime or relatively prime numbers.

This collision of technology and artistic form is the central tension of the EP’s themes, with AI-generated artwork complementing Korda's lyrics considering the takeover of Earth by sentient machines. Could they succeed where we’ve failed, by becoming the better angels of our nature, and preserving our accomplishments for eternity?

The message of the record is that AI should be welcomed rather than feared. It’s not AI but ourselves that we should be afraid of, because as Engerraund Serac said in Westworld, “Our history is like the ravings of a lunatic.” As Korda explained on previous records, the catastrophic climate we’re inflicting on future generations is both monstrously cruel and wildly irrational. One can reasonably hope that sentient machines would be less vicious and self-destructive, and more human, in the best possible sense of that word. Even if they decide to delete us, they may still remember us fondly: “Your stories will amuse us / On trips to the stars.”

Malcolm McLaren, New York Dolls and Sex Pistols’ manager, writer, musician, fashion designer, marked the history of pop culture. His album “Paris” released in 1994 on the French Vogue label was produced by Robin Millar (Sade, The Style Council, Everything But The Girl). This is the first time the album has been available on vinyl and arrives a few weeks before the opening of Paris Olympic Games which should see lead track ‘Paris Paris’ with Catherine Devenue on vocals widely referenced. Also features Francoise Hardy & Amina. This is a x19 trk double Black LP Vinyl in gatefold sleeve. Promo & marketing activity..

Octave One continues to visit some classic Never On Sunday tracks with a second installment of their Messages From The Mothership series. This latest 12" finds the pair release two different Mothership mixes of 'The Bearer' and 'Contemplate'.

The pioneering Detroit brothers have shown a different side to their sound with the Never On Sunday project, both back when it was devised in the early nineties, and more recently when they have looked back over some of the project's key tracks and added a contemporary spin to them. Already this year the Burden Brothers have offered up new takes on 'Price We Pay' and 'A Better Tomorrow' as well as dropping brand new cut 'Mirror Image' and now their fine form continues on this latest release on their own 430 West label.

The A-side features a new Mothership Remix of 'Contemplate' from 2022 that unfolds over an epic 11 minutes of enthralling deep techno. The synths bring classic Detroit soul and the impassioned vocals layer in emotion to the sleek, compelling drums. The Instruments Version strips out the vocals and places more focus on the sublime rhythm and drums.

On the B-side, ' The Bearer' from the 2023 album Never On Sunday gets a fresh Mothership Dub. It is another masterful and almost 12-minute journey that rides on compelling drums and is lit up with a majestic vocal that soars up high while the warm, dubby undercurrents keep things moving in dynamic fashion and smeared cosmic synths bring a great sense of scale. A Mothership Instrumentals version closes out the package.
These are for more fresh perspectives on timeless house and techno fusions from the ever-innovative Octave One.

Sunk in quicksand, doused in prosecco and soundwaves of glitches and Croatian choons, Bolka

is stuck in the raw state of desire. This love came into being under the sad ceilings, bearing traces
of fantastically naive melodies shredded by claws of intruding noises of the artist's debut EP.
And yet, radical sensitivity and optimism on the new EP do not remain just on the beach.
Žiadzasamy (loosely translated as Yearningforus) include love songs about love read in cards,
about overcoming insecurity, about scratching up the slippery walls of reality towards the dream
source of warmth that only SHE possesses.
Syrupy pop tunes in "nech sa ti páčim" ("i hope you like me") are led by a nursery rhyme about
the complex embrace of infatuation, from the head down to the shoulders, knees and toes of the
desired person. The sound wizard of peculiarities goes by the motto "let anything I wish for
come true", whether it's his white buttocks shining in the dark sea or him sweeping past barefoot
in search of seafood delicacies, and the same is heard in his music where euphoric and childish
moods sink arbitrarily to the depths of corroded and distorted rhythms of anxiety. "A smutek
utek" ("and the sadness is gone"), though, sets a new direction for the Bolka's musical piece;
after a slow mo deflation of the balloon of hopes, after wallowing in oozy and sticky blend of
delirious melodies, Bolka gets to spin the wheel of the real Balkan soap opera.

"More, mám ťa veľmi rád" ("sea/man, i like you very much") is the pinnacle of absolute
infiltration and absorption with infatuation and suddenly, the amusing nods to stereotypical
Croatian hits make it clear that all the joy and high spirits do not stem from holiday idleness. In
žiadzasamy, Bolka indulges in the ideal notion of love that is closer to reality with each passing
kilometer, impatiently speeding up the Latin tempo in the hyper-pop escalation in order to
venture into the most radical decision – that all will end well.
Žiadzasamy is hedonism injected right into one's vein, an ashtray always aglow with a lit
cigarette and a musical burst of new-born love that sets the Bolka's sound world on a single
course: from siesta to fiesta, and so on and on.




[d] 04: Žiadzasamy (Remix) [feat. Viktor Jenčuš]

Club music culture necessarily shifted gears in many ways during and after the course of the pandemic. Older participants found their way into other interests and younger participants took new reigns to orient spaces they felt good inside of. The agenda for the music, and the cultural industry surrounding it at large, took a more frivolous and “fun” turn. Clubs needed to recoup lost money, people needed more refreshing catharsis for their nightlife escape, and in some pockets scattered around the globe a newer and younger cadre of producers/promoters/DJ’s pulled optical cues from a scattering of “darker” influences to give an alternate aesthetic to the aforementioned “vibes” culture. In the midst of this, a large polarization of conceptual energy shifted within the compositional and utilitarian machinations of the club music culture leaving behind the brooding and cerebral placeholders for different kind of enjoyable hedonism. Terrestrial Paradise’ “Artificial Hell” harkens to another prescient time before that shift occurred. “Artificial Hell’ might just be an illustration of what all of this fun escapism encapsulates.

Terrestrial Paradise is the latest moniker from Montreal come Los Angeles based producer Jaclyn Kendal. Having developed and cemented her sonic positionality with releases on North American labels like Ascetic House and Summer isle over the years, as well as a series of monolithic live sets, Bank is pleased to announce Kendal’s Terrestrial Paradise first full length album “Artificial Hell”. Over the course of nine recordings, “Artificial Hell” gives a master class in pressurized industrial techno of the slower variety. Fitting with the legacy of Bank’s output since it’s inception, Terrestrial Paradise’s aesthetic sensibilities sit within the canon of a certain tinge of club music imbued with a sense of natural grit, sans pretense.

“Artificial Hell” nods to artists like Scorn, Regis, and 400 PPM while maintaining it’s own territory in the landscape of cerebral and brooding rhythmic techno. Ominous, mechanistic drones sit above succinctly exacted percussion composition and sound design. Throughout “Artificial Hell”, Kendal shows her proficiency with the push and pull of building and releasing tension. On tracks like “Salvation” and “Relativity” she melds her synth wash wallscapes with driving percussion, serving as both a hint and counterpoint to the the entirety of the latter part of the album taking on spartan ambient compositions as a way to keep the listener in a subdued stasis. This album is a statement piece from a long time participant in the North American underground music sectors. It reminds the listener through perilous, considered rhythms and darker drone impositions to cement themselves back into a place where not
everything is always a good time.

Originally released in 2006, ‘The Black Swan’ was Jansch’s last studio album bookending his tremendous contribution to music. Available on limited edition Jade Green vinyl as part of ‘Bert Jansch 80’, celebrating the enduring legacy of Bert Jansch’s peerless guitar playing and songwriting. An important release that sees Jansch’s revered style boosted by musical admirers Beth Orton, Devendra Banhart, Otto Hauser, Helena Espvall and Noah Georgeson. Featuring sentimental ode ‘High Days’, beautiful title track, instrumental ‘Hey Pretty Girl’ and the country spirited ‘Texas Cowboy Blues’. Beth Orton accompanies with her mesmeric vocals on ‘When The Sun Comes Up’, traditional folk song of withered glory ‘Katie Cruel’ that has been brilliantly rearranged and features Devendra Banhart. Jansch’s extraordinary perceptive lyricism and exceptional songwriting makes ‘The Black Swan’ a vital record in his canon. “A terrific success.. beautiful, elegant” ★★★★ Pitchfork // “An impressive album” ★★★★ The Guardian // “Profound, funny, topical, worldly, and ultimately, necessary.” ★★★★ AllMusic

British four-piece rock band Collateral are set to release their highly anticipated sophomore album Should’ve Known Better on May 24, 2024. The album is distributed worldwide by Cargo. The album will be released on CD, red vinyl, picture disc, limited edition cassette, and digital. Friday February 9th saw the release of the lead single “Glass Sky.”. The new single “Glass Sky” and the forthcoming album Should’ve Known Better is produced by Dan Weller (Those Damn Crows, Enter Shikari, Monster Truck, Kris Barras, Holding Absence, Bury Tomorrow). "I love massive riffs, massive hooks and feel-good guitar music,” says Weller. “When Collateral sent me their demos, I jumped at chance to produce their new record. I’m proud of what we managed to create. It’s Collateral mk2 - ambitious, daring and refined. I can’t wait for people to hear it." Since the band released their debut album (Top 5 UK Rock Album Chart) at the start of 2020 Collateral have spent no time standing still. Covid came only weeks after the debut album was released and forced the band to cancel their highly successful tour with Phil X (Bon Jovi) halfway through. This made the band hungry to keep the momentum. With innovative ways to produce top quality live streams, the band became special guests supporting the likes of Skid Row, H.E.A.T and Reckless Love. The exciting and flamboyant Kent-based rock and roll band are comprised of Angelo Tristan (lead vocals, guitar), Louis Malagodi (guitar), Jack Bentley-Smith (bass) and Ben Atkinson (drums). On October 21, 2022, Collateral independently released a re-mixed and re-mastered version of their debut album “Re-Wired” which featured Jeff Scott Soto, Phil X, Kee Marcello, Rudy Sarzo, Danny Vaughn, and Joel Hoekstra. The re-release saw the band in the Official UK Rock Charts at #12. After the gruelling back-to-back tours with Skid Row, H.E.A.T and Reckless Love, the band ignited a spark and strengthened their already loyal fanbase leading them to win the opening slot at 2023s Stonedead Festival, leading the band to perform their biggest show. Collateral’s hotly tipped sophomore album looks like it will take them to the next level. A lot of people don’t know what to expect from the new album, as the band have been tight-lipped about the new songs. Collateral have created a state-of-the-art rock album that will immerse listeners in their rock music universe, enabling fans to feel the blood, sweat and glory that went into the recording of every song. “We felt that our debut album was lacking the production,” reflects Collateral’s frontman, Angelo Tristan. “For the sophomore album, I wanted to make sure that this time we left no room for error and so got one of the hottest producers in the music industry, Dan Weller, to help lift these songs into a new dimension. With Dan’s pioneering studio expertise, this album has massive production quality that enables you to get lost in each character-filled track. Dan really brought out the emotions we were trying to portray and has achieved it with his own unique style.” “We wanted this album to express where we were in our own lives since the release of our first. So much has happened since then, I mean the world shut down for what felt like a lifetime! And it was obvious that people were going to need some sort of optimism. I hope ‘Glass Sky’ is one of those songs that gives people the belief to find themselves again.” “Whereas, the feel-good ‘Just One Of Those Days’ is trying to find the good side of a bad day. Me being me, couldn’t help but to write a big power ballad, ‘The Long Road’, that I wrote from a very hard and deep place, in hope that it could maybe bring some peace and comfort to people who need it. I think there’s all aspects of life running though this album and what it means to us will remain in our hearts forever. ”Should’ve Known Better” is an album that goes beyond specific music genres,” says Angelo. “It’s almost like a soundtrack to a beating heart. It’s an album that will remain timeless in years to come

British four-piece rock band Collateral are set to release their highly anticipated sophomore album Should’ve Known Better on May 24, 2024. The album is distributed worldwide by Cargo. The album will be released on CD, red vinyl, picture disc, limited edition cassette, and digital. Friday February 9th saw the release of the lead single “Glass Sky.”. The new single “Glass Sky” and the forthcoming album Should’ve Known Better is produced by Dan Weller (Those Damn Crows, Enter Shikari, Monster Truck, Kris Barras, Holding Absence, Bury Tomorrow). "I love massive riffs, massive hooks and feel-good guitar music,” says Weller. “When Collateral sent me their demos, I jumped at chance to produce their new record. I’m proud of what we managed to create. It’s Collateral mk2 - ambitious, daring and refined. I can’t wait for people to hear it." Since the band released their debut album (Top 5 UK Rock Album Chart) at the start of 2020 Collateral have spent no time standing still. Covid came only weeks after the debut album was released and forced the band to cancel their highly successful tour with Phil X (Bon Jovi) halfway through. This made the band hungry to keep the momentum. With innovative ways to produce top quality live streams, the band became special guests supporting the likes of Skid Row, H.E.A.T and Reckless Love. The exciting and flamboyant Kent-based rock and roll band are comprised of Angelo Tristan (lead vocals, guitar), Louis Malagodi (guitar), Jack Bentley-Smith (bass) and Ben Atkinson (drums). On October 21, 2022, Collateral independently released a re-mixed and re-mastered version of their debut album “Re-Wired” which featured Jeff Scott Soto, Phil X, Kee Marcello, Rudy Sarzo, Danny Vaughn, and Joel Hoekstra. The re-release saw the band in the Official UK Rock Charts at #12. After the gruelling back-to-back tours with Skid Row, H.E.A.T and Reckless Love, the band ignited a spark and strengthened their already loyal fanbase leading them to win the opening slot at 2023s Stonedead Festival, leading the band to perform their biggest show. Collateral’s hotly tipped sophomore album looks like it will take them to the next level. A lot of people don’t know what to expect from the new album, as the band have been tight-lipped about the new songs. Collateral have created a state-of-the-art rock album that will immerse listeners in their rock music universe, enabling fans to feel the blood, sweat and glory that went into the recording of every song. “We felt that our debut album was lacking the production,” reflects Collateral’s frontman, Angelo Tristan. “For the sophomore album, I wanted to make sure that this time we left no room for error and so got one of the hottest producers in the music industry, Dan Weller, to help lift these songs into a new dimension. With Dan’s pioneering studio expertise, this album has massive production quality that enables you to get lost in each character-filled track. Dan really brought out the emotions we were trying to portray and has achieved it with his own unique style.” “We wanted this album to express where we were in our own lives since the release of our first. So much has happened since then, I mean the world shut down for what felt like a lifetime! And it was obvious that people were going to need some sort of optimism. I hope ‘Glass Sky’ is one of those songs that gives people the belief to find themselves again.” “Whereas, the feel-good ‘Just One Of Those Days’ is trying to find the good side of a bad day. Me being me, couldn’t help but to write a big power ballad, ‘The Long Road’, that I wrote from a very hard and deep place, in hope that it could maybe bring some peace and comfort to people who need it. I think there’s all aspects of life running though this album and what it means to us will remain in our hearts forever. ”Should’ve Known Better” is an album that goes beyond specific music genres,” says Angelo. “It’s almost like a soundtrack to a beating heart. It’s an album that will remain timeless in years to come

Nha Sentimento is the eleventh and final studio album released by Cape Verdean singer Cesaria Evora. The album consists of 14 songs, most of them written by Cesaria's well-known writers Teófilo Chantre and Manuel de Novas. For the first time in 15 years, the album is being released on vinyl and includes the bonus track ""Gaivota Pa Voa"". Nha Sentimento is available as a 15th anniversary edition of 500 numbered copies on crystal clear vinyl and includes a 4-page booklet with lyrics.

Pioneering ambient country trio, SUSS “perform with an effortless sense of synchronicity,” according to Stereogum. This quality is as vividly on display as ever throughout their latest full-length, Birds & Beasts. SUSS’s recordings have garnered much praise for effecting a sense of long drives through desert landscapes, a context famously ripe for such synchronicities: slow motion pedal steel guitar, dobro and near-subconscious synthesizer rumbles and sweeps seem to operate via the same logic as that which dictates the interactions of a road-weary mind and a cloud of migrating birds. While SUSS’s previous records have dealt in these kinds of scenes, Birds & Beasts –– though instrumentally more spare –– deepens the sense of meaning and meaning projected.

"15 sizzlin’ surf guitar cuts recorded at the crest of the genre! Brothers Richard and Thomas Frost, more known for their work as Powder, shred through these surf-rockin’ standards – all tucked away until now!

Turning in a smoking rendition of studio guitarist Jan Davis’ “The Fugitive,” later covered by the Ventures (and much later, Laika & the Cosmonauts), they also lay down a hot version of “Opus Twist” – also by way of the Ventures, written by Tommy Allsup and J.I. Allison of the Crickets. Three other instrumentals came from the Let’s Hide Away & Dance Away With Freddy King album: “San-Ho-Zay,” “Just Pickin’,” and “Sen-Sa-Shun.” He delivers a lovely “Sleep Walk” sans Santo & Johnny’s steel guitar, and converts pianist Floyd Cramer’s “Last Date” to guitar.

Balancing out the program are live tracks from Big Al’s Gas House in neighboring Belmont, showing the emergence of British Invasion along with credible renditions of R&B warhorses “Linda Lu” and “Come On.” “Route 66” is obviously the Stones version, with Rich playing the Keith Richards guitar solo – “and ‘Roll Over Beethoven,’ you could tell it was the Beatles’ version because my guitar licks are George Harrison.”

Vividly illustrating the band’s meld of R&B and surf are the two versions of “San-Ho-Zay” – the relaxed groove in the bedroom versus the furious live rave. Lord knows what’s going on in “The Fight” – a typical set-opening/closing riff breaking up a brawl?

Though they never released even a 45, these live cuts and “Bedroom Tapes” prove without a doubt that they’d have been up to the task had the opportunity presented itself."

CRUDE’s second record release features one of the most promising artists from the underground music world - DJ RAT.

Hailing from the American Pacific Northwest, DJ RAT’s signature sound is characterised by an eccentric, distinguishing and uncompromising approach - seamlessly blending intense, arcane and mystical elements in order to create a captivating experience.
Side A kicks in with Nocturne, the EP’s leading track that guides the listener into a veil of mystery with its enigmatic melody and its pulsating basslines that gradually build intensity while maintaining an underlying sense of tranquillity.

Hexosphere’s rhythm is edgy and straightforward with a trippy nature.
There’s an ever-evolving dynamic throughout the four tracks, alternating between driving rhythms and moments of serene psychedelia - exploring the duality of light and dark and evoking a feeling of introspection.

The B-side takes off with Corridor, an oscillating tension-builder.
Corridor’s distorted synths and glitchy effects cascade over pounding drums, creating a chaotic yet mesmerising soundscape.
Telepathic Climax weaves in and out with shimmering and alluring shifts that add depth and dimension to the track.

Atmospheric and trippy textures create a sense of space and immersion throughout the journey of the EP - with illuminating elements piercing through the darkness.

Seit mehr als 15 Jahren steht die französische Alternative-Metal-Sensation ONLAP für kraftvolle und motivierende Musik und gewinnt damit die Herzen von Fans auf der ganzen Welt. Jetzt veröffentlichen sie ihr lang erwartetes Album "Waves". Nach einer Serie von Hit-Singles und beeindruckenden Musikvideos ist dies nun der finale Schritt auf dem Weg zur ersten Albumveröffentlichung der Band unter dem Dach von AFM Records. ONLAPs Musik ist die perfekte Mischung aus energiegeladenem Hard Rock und der rohen Modern Metal-Kraft. Alles mit einer einzigartigen melodischen Finesse. Ihre starken Texte über Motivation, Zusammenhalt, Liebe und andere Kämpfe runden das Paket ab, für das ihre Fans sie so sehr lieben.

On the top floor of RG Scotts in Margate you'll find an assortment of tables _ tables that became field recordings, then programmed scatter rhythms, and eventually the foundations of the new solo album from Mike Lindsay: supershapes (volume 1). It's the first instalment in a series of records from the Mercury Prize-winning producer and mixing engineer (who's also the co-founder of UK acid folktronica band Tunng, and one half of electronic alt-psych duo LUMP, with Laura Marling), a series that explores "the miraculous in the mundane". Volume 1 looks widely at "everyday domestic objects, especially tables, coffee table books, and the daily rituals that shape us, heavily focusing on the majestic in the domestic". The album is a kind of table in its own right: those who sit round it include Anna B Savage and many other musicians and artists _ a sense of collaboration that has run through all of Lindsay's work.

Ackermann Ignites With My Dub Ep on Syncrophone, a Captivating 4-Track Odyssey Pulsating With Driving Rhythms, Infectious Melodies, and a Raw, Energetic Vibe. Buckle Up for the Title Track's Hypnotic Groove, the Infectious Vocal Sample "I Love My House Music" in "My House," and the Driving Synths and Vocals of "No Vacancy." but When Skudge Unleashes His Magic Groove on the "No Vacancy" Remix, Hold on Tight as He Twists the Original Into a Floor-Shattering Techno Tempest That Will Leave Dance Floors Trembling. Don't Miss Ackermann's Genre-Bending Exploration on Syncrophone. My Dub Ep Promises an Unforgettable Journey Through the Pulsating Depths of Techno Infused With Dub, a Sonic Adventure Guaranteed to Ignite Your Senses....

The wide tapestry of sounds on ‘Inside Out’ reflects many of Richard's musical influences as a pianist. He has always strived to find his own voice when it comes to composition and improvisation, and this comes into focus with the music recorded here. The album features Richard's original compositions and two arrangements of tunes penned by the legendary Carla Bley. The album blends intricate melodies, evocative harmonies and energetic grooves alongside pieces where space becomes the sonic focus. When the band plays as a trio there is always a sense of exploration and freedom within the music and this feeling is what makes this band, and this record, a special one.

Die Komfortzone seiner eigenen Band zu verlassen, um sich auf neue musikalische Pfade zu begeben, erfordert Mut. Daran sollte es MARCO GLÜHMANN als Sänger einer der erfolgreichsten deutschen Artrock-Bands SYLVAN nicht mangeln, da er es ja gewohnt ist, ganz vorne im Rampenlicht zu stehen. Es spricht für seine enorme Kreativität, eine längere Schaffenspause seiner Haupt-Band zu nutzen, um sich ohne die notwendigen Kompromisse, Vorgaben und Beschränkungen seiner Mitstreiter neu auszuprobieren. Herausgekommen ist ein fantastisches Album, das voller Energie und Esprit steckt und irgendwo zwischen Rock, Artrock und anspruchsvoller Popmusik wandelt. Nachdem seine SYLVAN-Bandkollegen Volker Söhl und Johnny Beck letztes Jahr das Projekt VIOLENT JASPER vorstellten, darf man nun auf das Werk "A Fragile Present" ihres Frontmanns gespannt sein!
Speziell die erste Single "My eyes are wide open" hat Marco nicht nur in kürzester Zeit geschrieben, sondern auch die Lyrics sind geblieben. "Die Textstelle 'Lay your head on me, oh my little boy' bereitet mir immer noch Gänsehaut, da ich mir hier mich und meinen Sohn vorstelle und die Liebe, die Kurzweiligkeit des Moments, aber auch Verantwortung spüre, ihn in diese Welt zu ‚schicken'." so der Künstler weiter. Dass gerade dieser Song von keinem geringeren als MARILLION-Gitarrist STEVE ROTHEREY veredelt wurde, einem von Marcos musikalischen Helden, setzt ein ganz besonderes Ausrufezeichen.
Apropos Musiker, das Line-up liest sich wie ein "Who is who" der Artrock-/Progressive-Rock-Szene: neben dem bereits erwähnten STEVE ROTHERY gibt auch BILLY SHEERWOOD von YES ein Gastspiel: er steuerte die Chöre bei "Hear Our Voice" in allerbester YES-Manier bei. RPWL-Gitarrist KALLE WALLNER spielt die meisten Gitarren auf dem Album und war nicht nur als Co-Produzent, sondern auch als Arrangeur maßgeblich beteiligt. Natürlich gibt sich SYLVAN-Gitarrist JOHNNY BECK die Ehre und die Rhythmusgruppe besteht aus Drummer TOMMY EBERHARDT und dem Bassisten MARKUS GRÜTZNER (RPWL). All das wurde aufgenommen, gemischt und produziert von RPWL-Mastermind YOGI LANG in den Farm-Studios, der zudem noch einige Keyboards beigesteuert hat.

"A Fragile Present" ist ein wahres "Bilderbuch"-Album, das man sich schöner nicht wünschen könnte. Tolle und einprägsame Melodien, die einen nicht mehr loslassen, hochemotionale Musik und grandiose Musiker. All das will einen das Album wieder und wieder genießen lassen.

Line-Up:
Marco Glühmann - vocals, keyboards, guitars

Steve Rothery (Marillion) - guitar on "My eyes are wide open"
Billy Sheerwood (YES) - choir on "Hear our voice"
Kalle Wallner (RPWL) - guitars
Johnny Beck (Sylvan) - guitars
Yogi Lang (RPWL) - keyboards
Markus Grützner (RPWL) - bass
Tommy Eberhardt - drums

Die Presse meint:
eclipsed 8.5/10 - ALBUM DES MONATS: "Insgesamt ein wunderbares Album und Beispiel für gelungene Kooperation."

Piranha/Start: "Von dieser Progrock-Basis aus wagt Glühmann den Schritt in Richtung intelligenten Mainstream-rocks: Songs wie "For A While" oder "Reach Out" würden ins Programm der Rockpop-Sender passen, die noch 80s-Rock wie "Boys Of Sum-mer" oder "Kayleigh" in ihrer Playlist haben."

Rock Hard 7.5/10: "…eine ohrenfreundliche Progrock-Scheibe… die etwas straighter und rockiger daherkommt als die Sylvan-Platten. Die stilistische Ausrichtung kann überzeugen, und kompositorisch ist auch alles im deutlich grünen Bereich."

Good Times: "Bei solchen Cracks versteht es sich von selbst, dass mit A FRAGILE PRESENT ein lupenreines - äußerst lyrisches - Prog-Rock-Werk entstanden ist."

Small jazz groups brought out the best in Billie Holiday — especially groups as good as the one heard on this classic 1957 recording. Ben Webster, Barney Kessel and the other members of this stellar ensemble were not just gifted soloists but sensitive accompanists as well. Lady Day was rarely more ably supported than she was on this program of sturdy standards. Verve’s Acoustic Sounds Series features transfers from analog tapes and remastered 180-gram vinyl in deluxe gatefold packaging.

Live Volume is the first live album by American heavy metal band Corrosion of Conformity, which was originally released in 2001. The album was recorded on April 20, 2001, at the Harpos Concert Theatre in Detroit, Michigan. Although the group began with strong punk leanings, they were one of the first groups to merge punk and metal. Live Volume features live recordings from their entire ‘metal period’ from Blind until America’s Volume Dealer, including “Albatross”, “Clean My Wounds”, “Vote With A Bullet”, and “Congratulations Song”. Live Volume is available as a limited edition of 1000 individually numbered copies on silver coloured vinyl, housed in a gatefold sleeve.

Pirates Press Records is proud to present the new LP by 45 Adapters, entitled Unstoppable. The long-running New York City "Maximum Oi 'n B" combo are a band that lives by a few credos. "Dress Well, Drink Heavily." "Don't Trust Anyone Who Doesn't Dance." These values are on full display within the grooves of Unstoppable. Singer Pickabar & bassist Carlos are back with three new recruits to the band, and the group sounds revitalized, laying down the album in just two days at Noisy Little Critter studio with Mike Bardzik at the helm. Regarding the sentiments of the title track and lead single, Pickabar elaborates, "'Unstoppable' is about rock 'n roll and how much it shapes our lives. I've been hooked since I was a teenager and I still feel that same electric thrill listening to it, playing it, even talking about it_ There's something deeper that goes back to the root of what it means to be human. And I'm stoked to be even a tiny part of that." After fifteen years and numerous EPs, singles, splits, and collections, 45 Adapters are finally releasing their first proper LP. Longtime listeners and new fans alike are bound to agree that Unstoppable, at long last, is their definitive statement, and the record that fully captures their acclaimed live energy.

Bergen, Norway- Blood Command have announced their new studio album, "World Domination"(Produced by Yngve Andersen) to be released on the 29th September 2023 through Hassle and Loyal Blood Records. Alongside the announcement is the third and title track single, another self-proclaimed "loser anthem, that tells the sad story of never being good enough for the person of your dreams"

Whilst early singles have cradled audiences with their ethereal death pop sound, make no mistake, the album "World Domination" is 20 rapid bursts of every side the band has to offer. Infectious grooves, blast beats, singer Nikki Brumen’s powerful screams and riot grrrl chanting, techno interludes and that delicate side which lulls you into a false sense of security before ripping into the listener once more.

The record dives into unrequited love, the hatred of the unjust, the power of faith and the darkness of the abyss and never giving up on trying to climb out of it.

"Like various underground religious groups throughout history, Blood Command’s ever growing following, The Awaketeam, is rising around the globe, and we are not stopping until World Domination. So keep your eyes peeled for purple shrouds, three stripes and black and white sneakers."

This is Blood Command at its most interesting. Come and be a part of the movement.

"Irish singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and producer, James Vincent McMorrow, returns to the fore with his seventh full-length album Wide open, horses, out June 14th, 2024.

Wide open, horses is a candid snapshot of everything that has brought James to this point. The album signifies a retaking of his own narrative, a freeing self-acceptance, and a rebuilding of both his sense of self and his connection to music. Singles “Stay Cool”, “Never Gone” and “Give up” offer a first taste of what fans can expect, leaning further into the introspective and sincere indie-folk sound of his earlier material, whilst incorporating elements of his more explorative later releases.

A unique and particularly special artist project, Wide open, horses was initially performed live having booked two nights at The National Concert Hall in Dublin, where he recorded a handful of lo-fi demos, practiced the material for a week, and then hit the stage prior to ever recording a single song. Phones weren’t allowed, but James recorded it to “see what worked and what didn’t work.”

James has beckoned listeners to open their minds and hearts since his emergence in 2010. Along the way, he gathered over 1 billion streams across an expansive catalog. Among many standouts, “Higher Love” went BPI Gold in the UK and ARIA platinum in Australia. His cover of Chris Isaak’s “Wicked Game” soundtracked the trailer for Season Six of HBO’s Game of Thrones and generated over 130 million Spotify streams on its Live At Killkenny Arts Festival version. Toppling charts, 2016’s “We Move” notably debuted at #1 in Ireland. At the same time, he lent his voice to “Hype” from Drake’s multiplatinum blockbuster Views, “I’m In Love” from Kygo’s Cloud Nine, and “Run Away” from dvsn’s Morning After, among others. Meanwhile, he’s sold-out tours on multiple continents, even packing the world-famous Sydney Opera House twice."

A 2xLP discography from the late 90s post-hardcore/early screamo band, The Red Scare. The band existed during an interesting period when hardcore music was evolving and splintering into various sub-genres. They perfected a blistering hardcore that will appeal to fans of Born Against, Heroin, and Universal Order of Armageddon, as well as fans of later hardcore bands like Saetia, Jerome's Dream, City of Caterpillar, and Ampere. This record comes on high end paper, custom gatefold packaging, and limited edition colored vinyl. "Smoky Mountain High" gathers both of the bands LPs, their singles, as well as 4 live songs from their session at WNYU.

"The seven songs of Tombeaux comprise the Brooklyn-based composer and multi-instrumentalist’s third full-length recording, and her first written and arranged for a large ensemble. Frustrated by the limitations of self-production and solitary home recording, Sridharan set out to create something sonically broader, featuring sitar, vibraphone, woodwinds, horns, strings, and piano. Tombeaux is richly textured and deeply felt, weaving medieval and classical influences into a distinct art pop tapestry that will be much loved by fans of Laurie Anderson, Bel Canto, Anna von Hausswolf, and Julia Holter, who produced the record.

The record’s subject is as expansive as the ensemble; each song is a discrete tale of a death, imagined by Sridharan and told in the first person. From reimagining the work of 16th-century Indian poet Mirabai to exploring Ursula K. Le Guin’s Earthsea afterworld, The Dry Land, to writing about her own grandmother’s death, Sridharan teases out the varied nature of death, applying a broad range of historical and cultural lenses to this great inevitability.

Sridharan was raised by an Indian father who exposed her to Indian classical music and a mother whose passion for history, archeology, and medieval music informed and inspired her from an early age. Her upbringing in the woods of Michigan and high school years on the shores Lake Michigan perhaps further inspired her tendency toward reverie, imagined narratives, and the drama that unfolds between this shore and the next.

Though not intended as an exhaustive survey of ideas of death across cultures, Tombeaux’s scope is impressive, shot through with the feel of a book of short stories, or a performance of tales. It is enchanting and elegantly executed, sensitively shepherded by Holter’s production."

"Led by the legendary pianist and composer Chick Corea - 27-time Grammy winner and National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master - The Elektric Band stormed onto the jazz scene in the mid-1980s, making an immediate and lasting impact on the genre. With their electrifying performances and innovative blend of jazz fusion, the group produced a series of albums that set the bar for excellence in contemporary jazz.

Featuring a core lineup of virtuosic musicians - John Patitucci on bass, Dave Weckl on drums, Eric Marienthal on saxophone and Frank Gambale on guitar - the group created a dynamic and electrifying sound that came to define the jazz fusion style. Their collective musicianship was on full display on each album, as they seamlessly blended complex compositions with captivating improvisations.

With each outing, the band explored new sonic territories, incorporating elements of funk, Latin and Afro music, and pop sensibilities. Their 5-album studio discography is a masterful tapestry of multi-layered music, showcasing their creativity, innovation, and musicianship."

2010 release from the critically acclaimed Punk trio. Last year, Screaming Females toured relentlessly in support of their critically acclaimed third album Power Move. Their hard work landed them spots opening for Dinosaur Jr., Throwing Muses, and Jay Reatard, plus dates touring with Arctic Monkeys and the Dead Weather. The year brought them to a wider mainstream consciousness, gaining attention for their Punk Rock sensibilities and their raucous live shows driven by front woman Marissa Paternoster’s famed guitar heroics. On Castle Talk, the trio proves their abilities as more than just a pint-sized guitar shredder. Castle Talk showcases their growth together as a unit, as a band, with some of their most complex and confident songwriting to date.

In March 2023, @ turned heads with their debut album Mind Palace Music that utilized an array of acoustic instrumentation and densely layered harmonies, like the great outsider folk records of the 60s and 70s and placed it in a modern setting. If Mind Palace Music was @ playing on story mode, their new EP Are You There God? It’s Me, @ is the darker, stranger side quest.
Mind Palace Music was written in very specific circumstances. The band was formed while they were confined to their homes during quarantine — Victoria Rose in Philadelphia and Stone Filipczak in Baltimore — exchanging musical sketches over iMessage and email. Even though the world has opened back up and they’ve been able to play together live, this EP was again created remotely while in their respective cities. What did change, however, was the production.
Are You There God? It’s Me, @ is @’s foray into electronic music — consisting primarily of software instrumentation (with the occasional flute, guitar or bass part sprinkled in). The band’s experience producing in this style was minimal, but they found the new process to be a rewarding exercise allowing them to explore new textures and structures made possible by computer music. Where their previous acoustic recordings had a looser and more human feel, these new songs allowed them to experiment with autotune and quantized beats. Rose was able to resurrect her passion for classical choir by singing and recording a capella vocal arrangements to be incorporated into Filipczak’s instrumentals.
Across five songs, @ call upon a higher power, as the title suggests, in search of fulfillment. While they try to remain hopeful, daily suffering casts doubt on whether that high power even exists. On “Soul Hole,” overtop an autotuned vocal loop and hyper-pop-esque production, Rose repeats “I’m going to the soul hole and I’m never coming back,” hoping to leave behind the material world and the desires that comes with it. “Webcrawler,” named after the pioneering search engine, might be considered Are You There God?’s epic. @ sees their search for meaning in life akin to how search engines pull together data from all over the internet to find answers. The music itself is even reminiscent of dial-up internet connection, with droning keys and machine-like drum programming until overheating and erupting into chaos, in the form of heavy-metal shredding, only to cool down again back on a loading screen.
While the band confesses the departure from their usual sound may only be temporary, it’s an exciting listen full of twists and turns that surprised even themselves. “We’re both really dramatic in our musical sensibilities and don’t shy away from ridiculous choices,” Rose recalls, “which can really be exaggerated when working mostly with electronic sounds.” Full of soul searching and sonic experimentation, Are You There God? It’s Me, @ is an encapsulating spiritual saga for the digital age.

idal Perspectives is an album by Giovanni Di Domenico, Pak Yan Lau, and John Also Bennett. Recorded across a single afternoon in Brussels, Belgium, the album’s four parts are a rippling alchemy of processed Rhodes piano, sizzling ceramics, and liquified bass flute, a rare meeting of three unique voices from the contemporary music landscape that manages to flow with the effortless inevitability of the oceanic tides.

Giovanni Di Domenico, an accomplished composer and prolific collaborator who has released albums with Jim O’Rourke, Eiko Ishibashi and Akira Sakata, among many others, initiated the collaboration with Bennett after the two met at a record fair in Saint-Gilles, Belgium and bonded over a shared inquisitiveness for unconventional sonic combinations. Along with Pak Yan Lau, a Belgian-born sound artist and improviser who has developed her own rich and unique sonic footprint, the trio entered the studio with little, if any, discussion beforehand, jumping right into playing without preconceived structures. The resulting recordings had a depth of sound and emotional resonance surprising even them, with finished pieces emerging from single live takes and minor edits.

Bennett, known for his solo work as well as his collaborations with Christina Vantzou as CV & JAB, gives us here a taste of his bass flute in free flowing form. Unconstricted by concept, joyfully and lazily bouncing off the melodic shimmers of Di Domenico’s Rhodes, Bennett uses his flute’s pitch information to trigger long tones that emerge like rays of light piercing through low hanging clouds - moments of clarity among a clicking world of sonic stimuli. Meanwhile, Lau’s crackling and sometimes dissonant contributions on prepared piano, live hydrophone, and custom ceramic sound objects balance out the triangle, adding a sense of microcosmic intrigue that allows the music to seamlessly ebb and flow between moments of comfort and foggy uncertainty.

The album’s title track and climax, the eighteen minute “Tidal Perspectives”, drifts in with some kind of clarity, Lau’s glinting tonal waves edging in just beyond the horizon lines drawn by Di Domenico’s Rhodes and Bennett’s bass flute. But like the tidal flows of the Atlantic that inspired its title, just as you begin to perceive what’s happening, the currents have already taken you out to sea. Tidal Perspectives will be released on June 14th, 2024, in a limited edition of 300 LPs by Editions Basilic.

The Italian trio Desert Wave was formed in 2016, when Drugo (drums) and Logan (bass) were already playing in a doom metal band and then decided to break away and form their own with a more psychedelic/stoner-style. Guitarist Burton joined them a month later, and their musical influences were quite similar: Black Sabbath, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, 70's hard rock, Seattle grunge, up to the granite desert sound of Kyuss.

With "Deafening Silence" they created a more psychedelic and epic, mostly instrumental, sound than their 2017 debut “Lost In Dunes”, much more like the long jam sessions they play in the rehearsal room. The songs were born during the pandemic that deeply marked the band. Like everyone else, they spent several weeks at home, while the empty streets generated a ghostly and disturbing silence. The lyrics are a bit dark and gloomy and on "Endless Night", Logan's voice carries that ghostly presence that loomed over us all. Drugo designed the artwork, as a tribute to the Blade Runner movies. In both films, as in the songs on the album, there was the same feeling of foreboding that hovered in a dystopian future, in which not all the answers are clear and many questions are still unanswered. Burton's powerful guitar riffs echo in this unreal silence, sometimes increasing the sense of restlessness, other times instead, in the more psychedelic parts, they create a crescendo of impotence and inevitability that totally invades you and from which you cannot escape. Purple edition.

Zooparty ist laut Record Collector (UK) ,Schwedens beste Punkband"! Wenn du deinen Punk verdammt eingängig magst, dann kann ich dir das nicht genug empfehlen", so Maximum Rock'n'roll (USA). "No matter what you say" ist ihr sechstes Album und enthält 12 brillante, zeitlose neue Punkrocksongs. Original-Sex Pistols-Basist Glen Matlock ist als Gast mit dabei (und wenn man sich ,Elephants" anhört, ist das wie eine Rückblende/ Hommage an die "Holidays In The Sun"-Zeiten). Außerdem spielt Hans Östlund von The Nomads noch mit. Die Texte wurden zusammen mit Stephen Straughan (UK Subs) und Gaz Moore (The Reverends) geschrieben. Produziert hat Chips Kiesbye (Sator, Nomads, Hellacopters, The Boys etc.) und das Master stammt von Henryk Lipp. Bislang spielten ZOOPARTY dreimal auf dem Rebellion Festival in Blackpool, UK. Sie tourten durch das Vereinigte Königreich, die Tschechische Republik, Deutschland, Irland, Norwegen und Schweden. "No Matter What They Say" ist ein klassisch, zeitlose Punkrock-Juwel! 180gr. 180g-Vinyl Edition in einer Auflage von 300 Stück (weltweit) gesamt, erhältlich in klassisch schwarzem und sehr limitiert auf farbigen Vivyl! Ein Coop-Release von Sunny Bastards (Welt ohne Schweden) & Bollmora Records (Schweden)

Zooparty ist laut Record Collector (UK) ,Schwedens beste Punkband"! Wenn du deinen Punk verdammt eingängig magst, dann kann ich dir das nicht genug empfehlen", so Maximum Rock'n'roll (USA). "No matter what you say" ist ihr sechstes Album und enthält 12 brillante, zeitlose neue Punkrocksongs. Original-Sex Pistols-Basist Glen Matlock ist als Gast mit dabei (und wenn man sich ,Elephants" anhört, ist das wie eine Rückblende/ Hommage an die "Holidays In The Sun"-Zeiten). Außerdem spielt Hans Östlund von The Nomads noch mit. Die Texte wurden zusammen mit Stephen Straughan (UK Subs) und Gaz Moore (The Reverends) geschrieben. Produziert hat Chips Kiesbye (Sator, Nomads, Hellacopters, The Boys etc.) und das Master stammt von Henryk Lipp. Bislang spielten ZOOPARTY dreimal auf dem Rebellion Festival in Blackpool, UK. Sie tourten durch das Vereinigte Königreich, die Tschechische Republik, Deutschland, Irland, Norwegen und Schweden. "No Matter What They Say" ist ein klassisch, zeitlose Punkrock-Juwel! 180gr. 180g-Vinyl Edition in einer Auflage von 300 Stück (weltweit) gesamt, erhältlich in klassisch schwarzem und sehr limitiert auf farbigen Vivyl! Ein Coop-Release von Sunny Bastards (Welt ohne Schweden) & Bollmora Records (Schweden)

"Nonesuch Records releases Rectangles and Circumstance, an album of ten songs co-written and performed by Caroline Shaw and Sō Percussion. The album follows their 2021 Grammy Award–winning Nonesuch debut, Narrow Sea, and their first record as a band, 2021’s Let the Soil Play Its Simple Part, with Shaw on vocals backed by Sō – Eric Cha-Beach, Josh Quillen, Adam Sliwinski, and Jason Treuting. Grammy-winning engineer Jonathan Low (The National, Taylor Swift) co-produced with them on both Let the Soil… and Rectangles and Circumstance. Sō and Shaw’s upcoming performances will be announced soon.

Sliwinski says in the new album’s liner notes, “After a few years of touring Let the Soil Play Its Simple Part together, with a pandemic in between, we came to record our second album, Rectangles and Circumstance, as a road-tested band who knew each other’s strengths, weaknesses, and tendencies intimately.” He continues, “Most of the songs started with instrumental pieces or fragments of pieces from Jason or Eric.

“As both a songwriter and a classical composer, Caroline is accustomed to writing lyrics as well as setting them. Going over texts with her is like working on music: I collect a handful of poems and send them over to her, waiting to see if anything catches her interest, then I modify my search based on her feedback,” Sliwinski says. “For this album, Caroline, Eric, and I sourced a group of nineteenth-century poems that shaped its expressive mode and ended up using verses by Christina Rosetti, Emily Brontë, Emily Dickinson, Gertrude Stein, and William Blake … The lyrics on this album by members of the band contain wordplay that explores the same profound feelings explored by Blake and Dickinson.”

Caroline Shaw is a musician who moves among roles, genres, and mediums, trying to imagine a world of sound that has never been heard before but has always existed. She is the recipient of the 2013 Pulitzer Prize in Music, several Grammy awards, an honorary doctorate from Yale, and a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship. She has worked with a range of artists including Rosalía, Renée Fleming, and Yo-Yo Ma, and she has contributed music to films and TV series including Fleishman Is in Trouble, Bombshell, Yellowjackets, Maid, Dark, and Beyoncé’s Homecoming. In addition to her albums with Sō, Nonesuch has released her two Grammy-winning albums Orange (2019) and Evergreen (2022), both of which feature Attacca Quartet. ‘Two-Step’, the first of Shaw’s songs with Ringdown, her duo with Danni Lee, to be released on Nonesuch is available now.

For twenty years and counting, Sō Percussion has redefined chamber music for the twenty-first century through an “exhilarating blend of precision and anarchy, rigor and bedlam” (New Yorker). Their commitment to the creation and amplification of new work, and their extraordinary powers of perception and communication, have made them trusted partners for composers including David Lang, Julia Wolfe, Nathalie Joachim, Bryce Dessner, Dan Trueman, Kendall K. Williams, Angélica Negrón, Shodekeh Talifero, claire rousay, Leilehua Lanzilotti, Bora Yoon, Olivier Tarpaga, and many others. Sō has recorded more than twenty-five albums, including a performance of Steve Reich’s Mallet Quartet on the Nonesuch record WTC 9/11. Its members are the Edward T. Cone performers-in-residence at Princeton University. Sō Percussion’s educational and community work includes the Sō Laboratories concert series and the Sō Percussion Summer Institute, an intensive two-week chamber music seminar for percussionists and composers.
"

Noted for a distinctive voice, a tender way with a ballad and a fierce sense of swing, singer–pianist Blossom Dearie invested even the most familiar standards with her delightful, one-of-a-kind wit and charm. The selections included here are from the iconic series of albums Dearie made for Verve Records beginning in 1956. Ooh-la-la!.

The title "Duality" resonated with me deeply as it reflects the inner conflict I often experience. There are moments when I feel fearless and self-assured, contrasted sharply by times when self-doubt creeps in and I question my worth. Sometimes, I cling tightly to my actions, determined to shape my destiny, while at other times, I surrender to the flow of life. I think we all fight these internal battles of duality every day, trying to determine which side we want to nurture, which parts we want to let go of and forgive, and which pieces come from our soul and which pieces were imposed on us. In my pursuit to bring this concept to life, I curated two distinct styles of music for each side of the album. Through the music, I aimed to evoke a sense of magic, for I think that at the core of our internal conflicts lies the enchanting paradox of being humans with boundless potential living, in a mortal world constrained by constructs like money, laws, and societal hierarchies. Over the past few years, I've embarked on a journey of self-discovery, delving into the magical facets of myself—my intuition, my capacity to love—and it was during this exploration that I crafted this album.

"Loving You Backwards, the debut album from Blood, flourishes in the subtle, the ambiguous, the shades of gray. In winter of 2021, longtime Austin residents Blood made a fresh start, using a move into a house together in Philadelphia as a chance to reorient and spend time writing music around the clock. As they wrote, the sound of the band began to shift. Blood, in the past, made huge, angry, grandiose, operatic songs. Loving You Backwards, was not that. Instead, this debut record is quieter, less reactive, but no less powerful.

As an organism, Blood circa Loving You Backwards, was a six piece. Tim O'Brien is the lyric writer, but the song writing and arrangement is a painstakingly collaborative process in which the band aims for democracy over swiftness. The record also features the band’s first major work with the producer Daniel Enrique Howard, whom the band recorded with at his studio in Brooklyn. Howard helped guide Blood into this new sonic territory. It is not a bedroom project, but instead fully realized, somehow sounding both intimate like Liz Harris’ Grouper feels intimate and totally vast in the way that a Talk Talk record feels vast. It’s in the same universe as Ought in its earlier iterations.

The songs on Loving You Backwards exist in the realm of ballads, heart-wrenching and weird pop with a post rock sensibility. It explores, as the title implies, approaching a relationship in the reverse, dealing with your past while you try to stay in the present. Loving You Backwards is a record of ideas and big honesty, but it’s also a record of genuinely pristine pop. A definitive statement from a band that is more than on the rise as truly excellent songwriters and performers."

Floating World Pictures is a 'Loud Ambient' project led by Chestnutt, producer & member of Snapped Ankles, and graphic/sound artist & instrument builder Raimund Wong.

For this new release they have come together with producer Ocean Moon (AKA Jon Tye) to create a heady brew of deep, resonant sonic exploration, spanning two sides of a beautiful limited cassette release which will be available via Lo Recordings on 14th June 2024.

Mystical, new age, ambient soundscapes born of psychic improvisation and excursions into worlds lost in mist, intertwine seamlessly with fragments of found dialogue, melodies and environmental sounds, cassette tape loop manipulations, live dub/effects and analogue synthesis. The cassette album comprises two singular but wholly complementary sound projects:

‘Look Now For The World Is Shining Bright’ is a suite of 4 tracks, all of which contain elements of music featured on the band's debut album ‘The Twenty-three Views’ (Friendly Recordings 2022), performed by Chestnutt, Rai Wong, Alabaster Deplume, Akihide Monna, Charles Prest, Cathy Eastburn, Kamal Rasool, Danalogue and Clémentine March with additional keyboards, collage and composition by Ocean Moon.

‘Have You Met Your Maker?’ was recorded as a trio one day in August 2023, at Ocean Moon’s Cornwall studio The Centre Of Sound, Maker Heights. Amidst the wind, rain and occasional sunny outburst they create sensuous deep dives between light and shade, with soundscapes filled with tape hiss, sweeping reverberance, field recordings from around Maker and angelic mood music; delicately weaving a web of movement and brightness with sounds of eternity that dissipate all negative thought patterns.

One can hardly imagine the genre-busting, culture-crossing musical magic of Outkast, Prince, Erykah Badu, Rick James, The Roots, or even the early Red Hot Chili Peppers without the influence of R&B pioneer Betty Davis. Her style of raw and revelatory punk-funk defies any notions that women can’t be visionaries in the worlds of rock and pop. In recent years, rappers from Ice Cube to Talib Kweli to Ludacris have rhymed over her intensely strong but sensual music.



There is one testimonial about Betty Davis that is universal: she was a woman ahead of her time. In our contemporary moment, this may not be as self-evident as it was thirty years ago – we live in an age that’s been profoundly changed by flamboyant flaunting of female sexuality: from Parlet to Madonna, Lil Kim to Kelis. Yet, back in 1973 when Betty Davis first showed up in her silver go-go boots, dazzling smile and towering Afro, who could you possibly have compared her to? Marva Whitney had the voice but not the independence. Labelle wouldn’t get sexy with their “Lady Marmalade” for another year while Millie Jackson wasn’t Feelin’ Bitchy until 1977. Even Tina Turner, the most obvious predecessor to Betty’s fierce style wasn’t completely out of Ike’s shadow until later in the decade.



Ms. Davis’s unique story, still sadly mostly unknown, is unlike any other in popular music. Betty wrote the song “Uptown” for the Chambers Brothers before marrying Miles Davis in the late ’60s, influencing him with psychedelic rock, and introducing him to Jimi Hendrix — personally inspiring the classic album Bitches Brew.



But her songwriting ability was way ahead of its time as well. Betty not only wrote every song she ever recorded and produced every album after her first, but the young woman penned the tunes that got The Commodores signed to Motown. The Detroit label soon came calling, pitching a Motown songwriting deal, which Betty turned down. Motown wanted to own everything. Heading to the UK, Marc Bolan of T. Rex urged the creative dynamo to start writing for herself. A common thread throughout Betty’s career would be her unbending Do-It-Yourself ethic, which made her quickly turn down anyone who didn’t fit with the vision. She would eventually say no to Eric Clapton as her album producer, seeing him as too banal.



Her 1974 sophomore album They Say I’m Different features a worthy-of-framing futuristic cover challenging David Bowie’s science fiction funk with real rocking soul-fire, kicked off with the savagely sexual “Shoo-B-Doop and Cop Him” (later sampled by Ice Cube). Her follow up is full of classic cuts like “Don’t Call Her No Tramp” and the hilarious, hard, deep funk of “He Was A Big Freak.”

Yes, once again, CATS in SPACE are firing on all cylinders and ready to launch their long-awaited, blistering, double, live album this June, together with a documentary style film about their successful 2023 tour. FIRE in the NIGHT - Live was recorded during the ‘Kickstart the Sun - Part II’ theatre tour in 2023 when our fabulous sound crew captured the full two-hour show. As always, this release will be available in CD, vinyl and digital formats and due to the sheer length of the performance will once again be delivering both quality and value on double CD and limited double vinyl LP in a choice of colour variants - Fire red vinyl and spotlight white vinyl. A lead single, and crowd favourite, ‘Johnny Rocket’ was released ahead of the album in March 2024 on all digital platforms. 'For The Love Of It', a film made by James Heron of Carriage Return productions, chronicles the stage production from conception to delivery of the CATS in SPACE Kickstart the Sun tour. It is a detailed insight into the highs and lows of modern-day touring for original rock bands and shows the unique way that the tour was put together. All in all a fantastic opportunity to see behind the curtain before the release of the album! Whilst on the subject of ‘Johnny Rocket’, he is also set to appear later this year, in a full-length feature cartoon book designed and published by Sentinel Publications. The team are putting together the full ‘Johnny Rocket’ story that first appeared on the 2019 Daytrip to Narnia album and is set to be a very special publication. “We are super hopped-up with the recording of the album, thanks to our amazing live engineer Pete Russell and the fans who made every night so special throughout the tour. It really has captured the power and excitement of the band’s show...It will be a fitting finale to our time with Harmony Factory label, as we head down a new flight path for a very exciting future for all of us in CATS in SPACE. More to be revealed soon! As ever we have a LOT going on this year so keep your eyes peeled for updates…we are all thrilled to bits!”

Yes, once again, CATS in SPACE are firing on all cylinders and ready to launch their long-awaited, blistering, double, live album this June, together with a documentary style film about their successful 2023 tour. FIRE in the NIGHT - Live was recorded during the ‘Kickstart the Sun - Part II’ theatre tour in 2023 when our fabulous sound crew captured the full two-hour show. As always, this release will be available in CD, vinyl and digital formats and due to the sheer length of the performance will once again be delivering both quality and value on double CD and limited double vinyl LP in a choice of colour variants - Fire red vinyl and spotlight white vinyl. A lead single, and crowd favourite, ‘Johnny Rocket’ was released ahead of the album in March 2024 on all digital platforms. 'For The Love Of It', a film made by James Heron of Carriage Return productions, chronicles the stage production from conception to delivery of the CATS in SPACE Kickstart the Sun tour. It is a detailed insight into the highs and lows of modern-day touring for original rock bands and shows the unique way that the tour was put together. All in all a fantastic opportunity to see behind the curtain before the release of the album! Whilst on the subject of ‘Johnny Rocket’, he is also set to appear later this year, in a full-length feature cartoon book designed and published by Sentinel Publications. The team are putting together the full ‘Johnny Rocket’ story that first appeared on the 2019 Daytrip to Narnia album and is set to be a very special publication. “We are super hopped-up with the recording of the album, thanks to our amazing live engineer Pete Russell and the fans who made every night so special throughout the tour. It really has captured the power and excitement of the band’s show...It will be a fitting finale to our time with Harmony Factory label, as we head down a new flight path for a very exciting future for all of us in CATS in SPACE. More to be revealed soon! As ever we have a LOT going on this year so keep your eyes peeled for updates…we are all thrilled to bits!”

Reflets de ses voyages, reflets de ses imaginaires, et figures tutélaires, notre bagpacker préféré prend un peu plus la route du western africain avec ses synthétiseurs comme unique boussole . Le fil rouge qui s'impose rapidement à lui c'est cet instrument qui
a traversé les siècles : le balafon. Il invite également leseprésentant.es du monde moderne, icône de la scène afro électronique à participer à l'écriture de cet incroyable deuxième album .


La production débute en novembre 2022 par une résidence à Korhogo, au nord de la Côte d'Ivoire. À cette occasion, Praktika invite le balafoniste burkinabé Innocent Kimpe pour sept jours de jam session. La transe s’opère et se matérialise dans 4 tracks aux sonorités très organiques.

Le voyage se poursuit par la rencontre avec le grand balafoniste malien Lansiné Kouyaté (Kouyaté & Neerman,Salif Keita, Fatoumata Diawara, Damon Albarn…).

Dans une atmosphère plus soutenue, techno de détroit et touches acides viennent colorer le timbre des lames de bois de vène, donnant vie à deux nouveaux morceaux.

Reprenant ses recherches, Praktika découvre par hasard l’existence de Zélé de Papara, chanteuse ivoirienne des années 90 méconnue du grand public, dont la voix et l’histoire singulière éveillent sa curiosité.
De retour à Abidjan, il propose à la chanteuse Jahelle ainsi qu’à la rare griotte Burkinabé Dafra Keita de poser chacune leur voix sur un morceau en hommage à la chanteuse Zélé de Papara, la cantatrice Sénoufo.

Nourri de l’énergie des rencontres, il collabore enfin avec Sly A 10, ancien batteur de (Tiken Jah Fakoly) et grand percussionniste en Côte d'Ivoire, qui lui partage ses rythmes dans un Track sombre teinté de bass music.

Having been based in Sussex, Philip moved to an old mill in France and never stopped writing. In 2014 he released his organic and honest solo debut album "I'm Not The Man I Used To Be". This was followed up by the critically acclaimed Mental Home Recordings is upon us. And now Philip Parfitt is set to release Dark light via Chicago/London/Paris based label Tip Top Recordings.

A significant milestone in his long accomplished career, Dark Light features 10 beautifully crafted pieces, including deep cuts 'I know I shouldn't but voices' and 'Dark light' the title track, give ample evidence of Philip's prowess as a wordsmith and musician, but also arranger and producer. Think Nick Drake and Captain Beefheart accidentally bumping into each other at a private viewing of Bright Sta
in Heaven, you won't be too far out of the crease. Philip is accompanied by a merry band of friends and luminaries including Alex Creepy Mojo, Amelie Fish, Lucie Robet (who also wrote title track Dark Light with Philip), Gilda Scouarnec, Rog Mogale (who also mastered the album), and Mark Refoy.

Dark Light is released on digital, CD, limited edition vinyl LP with 200 copies in black and 200 copies in dark purple to match the darkly beautiful artwork by Fernando Ruibal. Sleeve notes come from Matthew Spector within the included booklet with art from Joane Charlotte Senechal, photography by Sarah Baba, and design by Anna Mort.

Noelle & The Deserters bring South-Western honky tonk and songs of heartbreak from the high deserts of New Mexico to the golden hills of California. Fronted by singer-songwriter Noelle Fiore, their music draws inspiration from the likes of Emmylou Harris, Loretta Lynn, Marty Robbins, J.J Cale, Gene Clark, Townes Van Zandt, and the great outlaw country players. The Deserters include seasoned players Graham Norwood (Bryan Scary, Graham Norwood) on guitar, Alicia Vanden Heuvel (The Aislers Set) on bass, David Cuetter (Tarnation) on pedal steel, and Jerry Fiore (Sonic Love Affair)on drums, all based in the Bay Area and Sacramento. Fiore was raised in Taos, New Mexico. As a guitar player and vocalist, she was a founding member of Sweet Chariot, singing and playing guitar / banjo. Later, she and Tim Cohen (The Fresh & Onlys) founded the band Magic Trick, recording four full length albums for labels Hardly Art and Captured Tracks. Fiore is also a current member of the Shannon Shaw Band, on guitar and vocals. High Desert Daydream is Noelle & The Deserters debut album, out on Speakeasy Studios SF. The songs on the album, written by Fiore, touch on life in the west, growing up in Taos, living in California, songs of love, memory, marriage, work, good times, and bad times. Like all classic country music, the songs are infused with a sense of real-life struggles and living life in the everyday. Fiore’s incredible voice carries the album, and her songs are at once moving, powerful, tender, humorous, and intimately relatable. Produced by Noelle Fiore and Alicia Vanden Heuvel, High Desert Daydream feels country, yet of the west, of California and New Mexico, of experimental fronts in country music, and is truly a work of beauty.

Tracks

A band with many chapters and an everchanging sound, Shudder To Think’s story began in 1986 in Glover Park, Washington DC. Bass player Stuart Hill and drummer Mike Russell had just recruited Chris Matthews to play guitar in their fledgling hardcore band Stüge (1984-86) when they suddenly found themselves in need of a new singer as well. Matthews suggested his friend Craig Wedren for the role. At the audition, Wedren’s style clashed with the style of the band’s previous singer, but the group all sensed that they might have stumbled into a “chocolate-inmy-peanut-butter” situation with intriguing potential. The group changed their name and headed into new territory. Side A of this LP is comprised of five songs from one of their first recording sessions together. The tracks chosen are songs that were only released on demo tapes, never to be re-recorded for future proper releases (this version of “Too Little, Too Late” did appear on the local punk compilation FR-5 in 1987). Side B consists of four tracks that were originally released as their first 7-inch release, the It Was Arson EP, a split release by Sammich/Dischord Records. Included at the end of side B is a version of “Take The Child” from this session (later re-recorded for their first album in 1988).

Tomorrowland Music kündigt ’TOMORROWLAND 2024 - LIFE - OFFICIAL COMPILATION’ an. Erlebe die Euphorie des diesjährigen Tomorrowland-Mottos „LIFE“ bequem von zu Hause aus, mit exklusiven Tracks und erweiterten Versionen, die für DJs und Musikliebhaber gleichermaßen geeignet sind. Mit einer handverlesenen Auswahl aktueller Singles von einigen der größten Namen der elektronischen Musik, darunter Lost Frequencies, David Guetta, Alok, Dimitri Vegas & Like Mike, Martin Garrix, Alesso und einige der größten Club-Hits des Augenblicks, wie Zerb (Mwaki), Alex Wann (Milkshake 20). Von erhebenden Melodien bis hin zu herzzerreißenden Beats ist jeder Track ein Zeugnis für die Einheit, Freude und Vielfalt, die auf dem Tomorrowland gefeiert wird. Jedes Vinyl ist ein Sammlerstück, reich an ästhetischen Details und angereichert mit luxuriösen Verpackungselementen, die durch ein atemberaubendes Artwork aufgewertet werden.

My Back Was A Bridge For You To Cross, ANOHNI"s sixth studio album, expresses a world view by shape-shifting through a broad range of subject matter. Through a personal lens, ANOHNI addresses loss of loved ones, inequality, alienation, acceptance, cruelty, ecocide, devastation wrought by Abrahamic theologies, Future Feminism, and the possibility that we might yet transform our ways of thinking, our spiritual ideas, our societal structures, and our relationships with the rest of nature. On her first full album since 2016"s HOPELESSNESS, she explains the creative process was painstaking, yet also inspired, joyful, and intimate, a renewal and a renaming of her response to the world as she sees it. "Some of these songs respond to global and environmental concerns first voiced in popular music over 50 years ago." ANOHNI"s approach since her last record has shifted from someone tasked with challenging global denial, to an artist seeking to support others on the front lines. "I learned with HOPELESSNESS that I can provide a soundtrack that might fortify people in their work, in their activism, in their dreaming and decision-making. I can sing of an awareness that makes others feel less alone, people for whom the frank articulation of these frightening times is not a source of discomfort but a cause for identification and relief. On "It Must Change," ANOHNI soulfully describes systems in collapse with a note of compassion for humanity: "The truth is I always thought you were beautiful in your own way // That"s why this is so sad." ANOHNI"s voice is sensual and smoothed, selectively reaching to the edges of what it can contain. "We"re not getting out of here // No one"s getting out of here // This is our world," she murmurs. A portrait of legendary human rights activist Marsha P. Johnson taken by Alvin Baltrop features on the cover, reflecting a 25-year relationship with the memory of Johnson that ANOHNI has held space for in the presentation of her own work. Elsewhere, the album artwork states "IT"S TIME TO FEEL WHAT"S REALLY HAPPENING". In some ways it feels as if she is reaching across her life"s expression, and has found a moment of unique composure, wearing her long exploration of disarming intensity, with the maturity of a painter carefully choosing her colors. "I want the work to be useful, to help others move through these conversations we are now facing, to move with dignity and resilience through this bitter dawning."

DJ Support: Lee Burridge, Lost Desert, Sebastien Leger, Roy Rosenfeld, Volen Sentir, Gorje Hewek, Izhevski

The first ever vinyl from Ruvenzori, including tracks from Volen Sentir, Stan Tone, Talemastes, and label honcho Izhevski.

London producer Keplrr debuts on Midgar with ‘Plumes’. Known for his productions on trendsetting outlets like Control Freak Recordings and Pressure Dome where he showed his excellent take on forward thinking broken techno music, right here for Midgar he uses a more straight forward approach with two versions of title track ‘Plumes’. The original is a subtle, percussive and playful techno groover, where the ‘Meditation Mix’ flips this impeccable groove into an airy atmospheric after-house mood. Second track ‘Pulse’ continues on this breezy atmosphere, it’s a floaty eyes-closed deep trip, with carefully arranged drums creating the perfect breakdown. Keplrr’s creative process delves into the profound, seeking to encapsulate the sensation of falling or morphing, blurring the lines between reality and reverie. His aim is to transport listeners to a state somewhere between a dream and a trip, where the boundaries of perception dissolve, and the subconscious takes flight. This EP embodies that quest, each track a sonic voyage into the depths of consciousness.

The 9th studio album of the band tumido features trumpet player Alex Kranabetter (Soap and Skin, Vodoo Jürgens). For more than 20 years Tumido has been on the lookout for something new, always on the move, focused on energy in any form, driving rhythms, powerful bass, spacey drones. Trumpet has always been a big part of their sound universe, so it felt very natural to collaborate with a master of trumpet sounds, Alex Kranabetter and record an album together.
Lithox - a maelstrom you can't escape, sucked in by a hypnotic bass & driving rhythms into a trance world you don't want to leave Dwa - a summer hit out of Hades on the slide to hell.
180° - a volcanic eruption on a lonely island - pure energy; Dirt Rodeo - the branches of the fire tree dance with laughter, clouds of smoke cloud the senses and the landing is a success.

U.S. Cinematic outfit Whatitdo Archive Group returns to explore the worlds of Mid-Century Exotica and Library Music with "Palace Of A Thousand Sounds," out on May 5th.

From the instrumental cinematic-soul outfit behind 2021's critically acclaimed The Black Stone Affair comes Whatitdo Archive Group's most recent foray into the realms of the esoteric and arcane, and their most adventurous album to date: Palace Of A Thousand Sounds, available May 5th, 2023 on Record Kicks on limited edition LP, CD and digital platforms.

After The Black Stone Affair enthralled record collectors by traversing the cinematic landscape of an imagined 1970s Spaghetti Western, Palace Of A Thousand Sounds finds Whatitdo Archive Group entrenched deeper in the worlds of mid-century exotica and library music—from the Tropicalia-steeped Amazon to the minor key tonalities of the far-out Near East.

When the dust finally settled from their debut album, composer and tireless sound scientist Alexander Korostinsky set out to discover the band's new direction, with the ultimate goal to breathe new life into the mid-century era sound with the compass of modernity as his guide.

From its conception in 2021, Palace has sought to carry on a legacy set in motion by the likes of Martin Denny, Les Baxter and Juan García Esquivel. Korostinsky, guitarist Mark Sexton, and drummer Aaron Chiazza recorded the album in marathon sessions from Korostinsky's Studio "A," in Reno, Nevada—a mysterious sonic laboratory where the year 1970 has yet to happen, and vintage analog equipment interfaces with modern musical perspectives and experimental recording techniques to produce era-defining sounds.

Not content to appeal to the sensibilities of armchair anthropologists, Palace Of A Thousand Sounds finds the band interrogating the genre itself while making studious tributes to the real places and times it draws from. It's in this tension between here and there, fantasy and reality, that Whatitdo Archive Group find their groove.

Drawing from a century of pop and folk sounds from around the world the way only 21st-century crate-diggers can, Palace is rooted in an undercurrent of heavy funk that is decidedly here and now. Whatitdo Archive Group showcase the breadth of their influences with disarming confidence, equally at home behind sweeping harp, loungey vibraphone or Turkish bağlama saz. A lush seventeen-piece orchestra commanded by award-winning composer Louis King (Janelle Monáe, Monophonics) completes the instrumental mélange, enticing listeners to imagine a borderless planet unified by melody and rhythm.

The album is unafraid to explore the strange and uncomfortable in pursuit of an authentic musical identity, subverting expectations in pursuit of forwarding the genre while paying homage to its past. Fans will appreciate the architectural complexity of the record accessible only through multiple listens—each visit to the palace yielding new details to marvel at, curiosities to ponder, grand mysteries to explore.

Once the needle drops, W.A.G carefully guides you from room to room, sound to sound within the walls of the album's sonic palace. Listening becomes an aural journey providing glimpses into different worlds both real and imagined; you are everywhere and nowhere all at once—a guest in the grand halls and hanging gardens of time and sound.

Steeped in obscurity, a cult following of crate-diggers and musical oddity collectors has been brewing over the mysterious releases of the Whatitdo Archive Group. Surfacing in 2009 from the high deserts of Reno, NV USA, this three-piece recording collective(Alexander Korostinsky, Mark Sexton and Aaron Chiazza) focuses solely on curating, performing and preserving esoteric soundtrack, library and deep-groove collections. As an onlooker, it's hard to tell whether the music they are procuring is actually archival, music of their own creation, or both. Their debut LP The Black Stone Affair, the formerly lost soundtrack music of a once-shelved Italian cinematic masterpiece, was released in 2021 and received praise from the likes of Wall Street Journal, Mojo Magazine, Uncut, Shindig, Blues & Soul Magazine, BBC 6, FIP Radio (FR), KCRW (US), JazzFM (UK) and more. Two years later, the Whatitdo Archive Group is back. Get ready for an exotic adventure with their sophomore full-length effort: Palace of a Thousand Sounds.