Search:she

Heralding the release of Memoirs of Hi-Tech Jazz, the forthcoming album by Detroit-born-and-based artist, Waajeed, the 12” features further examinations of the track’s motifs by the vaunted Detroit collective, Underground Resistance, Zambian producer SHE Spells Doom, and a special reimagining by Waajeed himself featuring live drums.

Alongside the LP version the three remixes further explore the links between Techno and Jazz, styles both founded on African traditions that make commentary on the present but are always oriented to potential hereafter.

On the People Mover Remix, Waajeed enlists the talents of Zo!, Tall Black Guy, Michele Manzo, and more to explore one extreme of the track’s musical heritage. Syncopated drums, driven by a full and bright snare drum, firmly place this version in the sphere of contemporary Jazz emanating from Detroit and cities across the US.

Coming from an album inspired by revolutionary efforts against oppression in Detroit and in Black locales around the world it is entirely fitting that Underground Resistance should provide their take on Motor City Madness. UR’s Mike Banks follows the lead of the original’s melange of genres. By thickening the bassline, peppering the mix with extra brass from the Mad Brass Horn Section, and adding strings courtesy of Six Mile Strings, UR further explore the dynamic intersection of music, history, and geography.

SHE Spells Doom closes the remix package with his second release on Tresor after his contribution to 2021’s Tresor30 compilation. The Zambian artist trims Motor City Madness down to the bones of the brass section and infuses them with a gqom beat, simultaneously referring to Jazz and Techno’s deepest roots in Africa, as well as suggesting where they might be headed in the future.

PUBLISHED: 6TH OCTOBER 2022

Special 10th Anniversary Edition In Brown Card Artboard Sleeve With Additional Lyric Print Insert

Slowdive singer and songwriter’s third solo album, which was originally released in November 2012. It is a stunning record and one which, upon its release, underlined the claims that Neil was one of the finest and most underrated British songwriters of recent times. It’s also a very special release in the Sonic Cathedral catalogue; the shoegaze label licensed the record from Jack Johnson’s Brushfire imprint for the UK and Europe and it was the start of a relationship that also gave us the Black Hearted Brother album in 2013 and, ultimately, brought about the reformation of Slowdive in 2014. But Palindrome Hunches is a very different beast. Both stately and understated, this moody and mesmerising collection of peculiarly British folk songs was made with the Band of Hope, a Wallingford, Oxfordshire based collective consisting of Ben Smith (violin), Drew Milloy (double bass), Paul Whitty (piano) and Tom Crook (guitar). Together with producer Nick Holton, banjo player Kevin Wells and backing singer Aimee Craddock, they recorded the album to tape over a few weekends in the music room of their local junior school. “At first we were going to record in a studio, but everything seemed too clean,” said Neil at the time. “We just went through the songs and recorded them live without very much rehearsal. We wanted to be spontaneous and simple and to keep the little mistakes that sneaked in.” This goes a long way to explaining the album’s humanity and intimacy, and also why it has had a quiet life of its own over the past decade, gradually growing in stature alongside Neil’s more high-profile activities with Slowdive; copies of the 2012 original and even the 2017 repress currently fetch up to triple figures on Discogs. The stunning opener ‘Digging Shelters’ was used to devastating effect in the posthumously released James Gandolfini movie Enough Said – a fitting home for a song that rubs shoulders here with ruminations about love and loss such as ‘Tied To You’ and ‘Spin The Bottle’ and, on ‘Wittgenstein’s Arm’, an Austrian pianist who had his right arm amputated in World War I and lost three of his brothers to suicide. The wordplay of the title track is almost light-hearted in comparison; “I wanted to write a song that was the same forwards and backwards, but it didn’t quite work out,” explained Neil, adding that he also chose ‘Palindrome Hunches’ for the album’s title because “I like the idea of things being reversible”. A couple years later, by reforming his old band, he proved that. And now, ten years on, it’s the perfect time to rewind to this understated, underrated classic. Side A 1 Digging Shelters 2 Bad Drugs and Minor Chords 3 Wittgenstein’s Arm 4 Spin The Bottle 5 Tied to You Side B 1 Love Is a Beast 2 Palindrome Hunches 3 Full Moon Rising 4 Sandy 5 Hey Daydreamer 6 Loose Change. Praise for Palindrome Hunches on its original release: ““Nope, it ain’t shoegaze as it's been codified and re-codified. But why be disappointed in someone following his muse to a logical conclusion when that path was always the one he walked on?” – Pitchfork An exquisite set of dark folk music” – The Times “Draws from the same understated, reflective well as John Martyn” – MOJO “‘Tied To You’ doesn’t merely evoke Nick Drake but withstands the comparison – evidence of the songs’ quality” – Financial Times “Halstead’s songs breathe the sort of honesty and goodness that’s harder and harder to find in the iTunes age” – The Independent “Given the chance, they could be songs that continue to enchant for many years to come” – The Line Of Best Fit

The Isley Brothers “Knowledge is power. I’m a witness to that. Our parents wanted us to have a complete musical education. They exposed us to everything, classical to country, standards, show tunes.” Ronald Isley, Mojo Magazine, 2000 The Isley Brothers have delighted audiences since the 1950’s and are celebrating their eighth decade in show business. Morphing from their roots in gospel and doo-wop through funk, rock and then, finally, into slow-jam R&B, the Isley Brothers remain one of the most fascinating groups of all time.
This album contains some of the most life-affirming music ever recorded: Ronald Isley’s keening yelp offering strength and sensitivity as it is supported by brothers Rudolph and O’Kelly. Our collection picks up their story in 1969. By this time, they had been recording for 12 years for many legendary labels, from RCA, to Atlantic, to Motown.
The brothers decided to go it alone on their own label, T-Neck. The repurposed Isleys broke onto the scene with the US R&B No.1/Hot 100 No. 2, ‘It’s Your Thing’. The album of the same name was a Top 30 smash and the group’s decision was vindicated. ‘It’s Your Thing’ marked a meeting point of influences: Sly Stone, James Brown, gospel and one-time group member Jimi Hendrix, laying the template for the Isleys’ next decade, from the gritty rock covers of Givin’ It Back to the era-defining ‘3 + 3’ (with the formal addition of the two younger Isleys, Ernie and Marvin, plus brother-in-law Chris Jasper).
After the 1972 release of ‘Brother, Brother, Brother’ (featuring the classic ‘Work To Do’) T-Neck moved to CBS leading to their first Platinum-selling album (1973’s ‘3+3’). Produced with Malcolm Cecil and Robert Margouleff, ‘3+3’ was practically prescribed to every soul boy in the UK (witness Wham’s cover of ‘If You Were There’). For the Isleys to take their old R&B hit, ‘Who’s That Lady’ and turn it into hard-rocking psychedelic soul was a blazing statement of their
intent. Their version of Seals and Croft’s pretty ‘Summer Breeze’ became one of their biggest hits, with Ronald and Ernie stamping their authority on the ballad. A period of phenomenal success followed. For every standout ballad (‘For The Love Of You’, or ‘The Highways Of My Life’), there was strident, take-no-prisoners political funk - as typified by ‘Fight The Power’, a US R&B No. 1 in 1975.
It was written by Ernie on the same day as another of their greatest moments, ‘Harvest For The World’.
This collection is a beautiful overview to the group, a most fabulous re-introduction to old friends. This era is affectionately known by the Isleys as the ‘gold and platinum years’ - one listen and you will understand why.

Caution alert! On the volume 3 of the Resurrection series, Simoncino teams up with one the greatest & biggest voice in House Music: the great Robert Owens. The voice behind Mr Fingers and so many other timeless titles. He alone sums up our history, all the greatest tracks that paved the way for our sound & community (yes still though instagram & the self worships) since 40 years. The master sang for Larry Heard but also Frankie Knuckles, Satoshi Tomiie, Photek, Layo & Bushwacka!, Mr. C, Quentin Harris, Marshall Jefferson, Michael Watford, DJ Spen, Gene Hunt, Soul Clap, K' Alexi Shelby, Sandy Riviera and so many others! He is simply the greatest soulful underground vocalist for a generation of househeads. The Italian prodigy simoncino gives us a daunting ep of 6 tracks (!) which navigate between deep techno (that could be a easily played in Berghain) and the purest original house where he excels. Its inimitable style is a clever mix of chicago house tinged with the most classy techno touches. The A side composed of Riccione Part I, Riccione Part II & Masonry is completely dedicated to this kind of techno sound, very pure, very mental and at the same time incredibly funky. It's a total trip. The B side explores the more house influences of the genius of peruggia, notably on All my soul & All My Soul (Riviera Ambient Mix) in direct homage to the italo dream house sound. Pure gold. An absolute marvel. I'll Be Your Friend 4 Ever, Skylax 4 Ever ! Note that on the label's bandcamp, with the purchase of the vinyl, you can get 1 exclusive bonus track : Simoncino "Love Me Forever Or Love Me Not"

Fantasy Life boss Alinka readies ‘Numbers EP’ for Rekids this November. Following releases on Permanent Vacation, NeedWant, and HE.SHE.THEY, Ukraine-born, Chicago-raised and Berlin-based DJ/producer Alinka returns to Radio Slave’s Rekids with ‘Numbers EP’, bringing three tracks of inspired and colourful house tracks for her second release on the imprint.

Leading the release, the title track ‘Numbers’ brings robotic vocals, bright leads, and bouncing basslines together for a sharp and energetic opener. ‘Better Days’ follows with chunky drum machines and dubbed-out chords before ‘80’s Baby’ closes the EP in fine style with soaring leads atop pumping kicks.

Formidable psychic warriors, channelers of the mystic and proponents of a spiritual quest that transcends this realm, Goat remain a band shrouded in mystery. Travelling from their inscrutable origins in the Swedish village of Korpilombo across the stages and festivals of the world in the last decade, this band has created their incendiary music entirely according to their own co-ordinates. With all this in mind, the casual observer might have guessed from its title that ‘Requiem’, their beatific and melancholic album of 2016, was to be their last. Yet the ancestral spirits summoned by their art are always restless. Thus the eternal cycles of rebirth have triumphantly produced ‘Oh Death’ - a ceremonial conflagration as powerful as any this band has made. Invigorated by forces we can only guess at the origins of, ‘Oh Death’ is a party to which all are welcome. Blithely waving away easy classification, these heat-hazed serenades are just as comfortable in the headspace of vicious ‘70s funk as they are in zesty ZE records post-punk. Folk-haunted incantations and free jazz skronk here find common ground, buoyed by relentless forward motion and raucous energy. Yet all of the above is locked into a delirious gnostic groove that threatens to throw the whole shebang spiralling into orbit. ‘Oh Death’ is driven by a supernatural charge that unifies, invigorates and transcends borders, whether geographical, musical, or between this world and the next. In the hands of these sages and soothsayers, this is just the beginning.

Timmy Regisford’s discography reads like a virtual timeline in the evolution of House. He’s been a central force since the genre first began in shaping the sound and helping it to become the worldwide cultural phenomenon it is today. Recently inspired by the afro-centric musical movements that have become increasing popular, he has gone back into the lab and created a collection of songs that are destined to move the genre once again.

Highlights of this essential double pack vinyl collection include “Good Morning,” which is an homage to his legendary Shelter parties that always last deep into the morning hours, “Hamballla” which features an inspired vocal performance from future star Toshi and the memorable “Hotel Cali” amongst many others.

Emanating from a ‘prehistoric’ existence near the end of the last millennium, Andy Votel and his slightly older college mates were once best recognised in Mancunian clubs and bars as teenage vinyl nerds and bum-fluffed battle rappers under the collective name Violators Of The English Language (which in acronymic form explains Andy’s own exotic pen-name).

As steadfast supporters of the 1980s / 90s Brit-core rap scene coming out of London, the multicultural Violators’ Mancunian accents were perhaps a bridge-too-far to secure dream job contracts for humble labels like Kold Sweat and Music Of Life. An unlikely constructive meeting with Gang Starr’s DJ Premier (while Andy helped out at a radio station), plus playing warm up DJ sets for countless US rap heroes might have temporarily added inspirational fuel to the fire, but after an active period combining graffiti, rapping, scratching, obsessive record digging and beat making into their daily operations, adulthood eventually began to rear its unwelcome head.

A decade later, Andy Votel and his digging skills would begin to provide direct sample material for the likes of Madlib, Mos Def, Jay Z, Nas, Dr Dre, Ghostface Killa and Action Bronson, amongst others, and the Violators’ black book of breakbeats and catalogue numbers soon began to feed a same-butdifferent rap beast.

For a project that has taken thirty years, it would be totally inadequate to call the formation of Hypocritical Beatdown Records a lockdown-project. There’s a deep history and psychology in these records by Violators Of The English Language and their spin-off groups Magnets (Rap Group) and ProVerbs, that combines stage-fright, loss, pride, creative-schizophrenia, racial inequality, surrealism, personal politics, brotherhood, artistic-constipation, better judgment, love, anti-love, soul searching and much more.

As well as Andy Votel taking care of both production and part of the microphone duties, some might recognise fellow MC and solo recording artist Figure Of Speech as a prominent voice here. The trio of Magnets (Rap Group) sees Andy also joined by local B-Girl legend Jeni Chan aka Penny Chew, and rapper and DJ Benjamin Hatton who has previously recorded with Kid Acne, The Mongrels and Sheffield’s Invisible Spies’ long-running squadron. Widely respected visual artist Rick Myers (now living in Massachusetts) also contributed scratches for many of these recordings via file sharing and custom dub-plates to keep the Violators’ authentic line-up intact, as well as galvanising the crew’s semi-reluctant art-school roots.

Extra production credits for the label also go to Sean Canty from Demdike Stare, and the late great Dan Dwayre aka Black Lodge (Mo Wax) who sadly passed away during the completion of these recordings. The members of Violators Of The English Language who you’ve not yet heard of will quickly make themselves known as the needle drops on this long-mooted debut vinyl release.

In 'Christmas Morning', a song recorded for the 10th edition of the Snowflakes Christmas Singles Club, California folk singer Annie Jay remembers how special Christmas mornings were to her as a child. It was a magical moment. When she got older, the mystery of Christmas slowly disappeared. But not everything is gone. There is still the gathering together with loved ones every Christmas. And there are still children who wake up on Christmas morning and feel the same excitement that she felt when she once felt as a child. Annie Jay sings it all in a soft and sweet voice that is very easy to fall in love with and accompanies herself with the instrument that she fell in love with: the banjo. ‘Blue Christmas’, the song on the B-side of the single, has been covered by thousands of other artists since first recorded in the late 1940s and especially since Elvis Presley recorded it for his 1957 Christmas album. It only takes Annie Jay two minutes to make the standard hers - as if Billy Hayes and Jay W. Johnson wrote ‘Blue Christmas’ with her banjo and her vocal harmonies in mind.

Annie Jay lives in Upland, California and grew up with the music of Kenny Loggins, James Taylor, Carol King and Fleetwood Mac. After first teaching herself to play ukulele and guitar, her life changed when she discovered the banjo. It was then that she decided to follow the path of music. It brought her a BA of Arts in Music from the University of La Verne and it made her travel to Europe to play her music. Annie Jay formed the folk duo Your Companies and debuted in 2016 with the solo album 'Love Is All Around'. Earlier in 2022, she released the 6-song EP 'Time And Space' and a split 7" with California indie act Eatpianokeys, to which she contributed the beautiful song 'Talking To Plants'.

Fleeting configurations of piano, wind, strings, synthetics, and field recordings, inspired by the Greek isles.
Previous albums adored by the likes of The Quietus, Exclaim, Drowned In Sound, etc.
For fans of Angelo Badalamenti & David Lynch soundtracks, Bohren & Der Club Of Gore, and Global Communication.
While on the island of Syros in the Aegean Sea for a film festival performance, Christina Vantzou experienced what she characterized as “a moment of focus”—a specific vision for the sprawl of raw recordings she’d been amassing for her fifth album. Upon relocating to the Cycladic island of Ano Koufonisi, she situated herself outside at a patio table with a laptop and headphones, taking brief breaks to swim, and began the “reductive process” of shaving and shaping the source material into uneasy but lyrical movements, alternately austere and adorned with strange inflections: glottal groaning, cavernous water, glittering eddies of modular synth, languorous silences. Mixing the pieces herself without outsourcing to an engineer compounded the intimacy and autobiographical dimension of the music; she refers to No5 as “almost like a first album.”
Drawing on sessions staged in February 2020, Vantzou’s editing instincts emphasize process and isolation, spotlighting resonance and restraint, liquidity and long tails. Fleeting configurations of piano, wind, strings, synthetics, and field recordings, these are spaces as much as compositions, surreal grottos of shifting light, suffused with a sense of invisible divinity. Although seventeen musicians appear on the record, the proceedings feel minimalist and malleable, sculpted from interstitial moments and oblique synchronicities. The definition of a composer as “one who joins things” is here both plumbed and proven; Vantzou describes No5 as “a letting go,” a place of “soft borders,” unfixed and undefinable.

The sound company operating under the project name "Noiseshaper" is poised to release a very special vinyl album into record shops worldwide. The band received great acclaim for their first albums, which were released on the legendary and famous Rockers Hifi label Different Drummer. They later became celebrated for their musical contribution to the US television series CSI - Miami ! The Viennese coffeetable boys Axel Hirn und Florian Fleischmann achieved cult status with their 12-inch single "The Only Redeemer", which was later released in the US by Quango (Island Records /Palm Pictures) and fast became a permanent fixture on the playlists of the best and most popular DJs in Berlin, Vienna, Tokyo, Paris, London and New York. The next dancefloor filler followed with "All A Dem A Do", sung by Juggla, which was the band"s first release to get heavy rotation on many European and US radio stations. Next up were remixes by and for heavyweights such as Sly & Robbie, Outkast, Seven Dub and Carl Douglas. Noiseshaper"s defining sound has been distilled and condensed an utterly distinctive blend of "housey downbeats with a fat reggae flavour" has brought the Noiseshapers international acclaim and popularity. The very special VINYL release is the essential of what NOISESHAPER has ever done all over the years with a special focus on HEAVY bass remixes by Adrian Sherwood & Paolo Baldini. It is another very impressive display of how a musical style has progressed. Dub as a style with all its reference points between commerce and innovation ! 8 pounding dub flavour tunes all are best for bringing the dancefloors of the dub universe to boiling point. Heavy bass for heavy dancing!

"Ramblin' Soul was inspired by the new appreciation I had for the freedom to travel around the country and perform," explains lifelong wanderer Melissa Carper of her forthcoming album. Carper was relieved and energized to be back on the road, on a familiar pilgrimage from Texas to Arkansas and back to meet and collaborate with musician friends. "I had taken for granted the ability to interact with audiences and friends and how much it feeds my soul and my creative process," she adds. Feeling inspired by time on the road and time with other creative minds, she penned the title track on the way back home, and the Ramblin' Soul seeds were planted. From its conception and throughout the recording process, Ramblin' Soul seemed to take on a life of its own. "It wasn't what I had first planned," Carper recalls. "A couple of the songs we recorded I'm now saving for a future album, and there are some brand new songs I decided to add, including one that was written during the week of recording. Thematically, I had a handful of songs about rambling around and living a free life that I wanted to weave through the album. I also knew I wanted Ramblin' Soul to have a different feel than my previous release, Daddy's Country Gold, with more upbeat and diverse styles and grooves," she says. Ramblin' Soul features a co-write with friend Gina Gallina, a song penned by friend and frequent collaborator Brennen Leigh, a reimagined classic from folk pioneer Odetta and 10 Carper originals--venturing into her blues, early rock 'n roll, and soul influences, blended with her signature flavors of country, western swing, and jazz. There is something for everyone on Ramblin' Soul.

Repress in soon, note new price. RIYL Steve Gunn, Hiss Golden Messenger, Ryley Walker, Itasca, Bill Callahan, Kurt Vile, Angel Olsen. “Timeless ... Measured, perceptive storytelling. A singer with an unmistakable and communicative voice, able to convey hope and hurt with equal clarity.” Pitchfork / “She writes literate songs with unusual precision and sings them in an understated, open-hearted way that lends good poetry the directness of conversation.” Uncut / On her fourth album as The Weather Station, Tamara Lindeman reinvents, and more deeply roots, her extraordinary, acclaimed songcraft, framing her precisely detailed, exquisitely wrought prose-poem narratives in bolder and more cinematic musical settings. The result is her most sonically direct and emotionally candid statement to date. The Weather Station is her most direct and candid record, and the first one to include tracks one might characterize as pop songs. Throughout, the record grapples with some of the darkest material Lindeman has yet approached: it is, according to her, the first album on which she touches on her personal experiences of mental illness. And yet the gesture inherent to the record is one of unflinching embrace. Despite it all, the characters “fall down laughing, effervescent, and all over nothing, all over nothing.” “Well, I guess I got the hang of it” she sings wryly, “the impossible.” By saying more than ever before, The Weather Station seeks to reveal the unnamable, the unsayable void that lies beneath language and relationships. It’s willfully messy and ardent and hungry. Tracks : A1 Free A2 Thirty A3 You and I (on the Other Side of the World) A4 Kept It All to Myself A5 Impossible B1 Power B2 Complicit B3 Black Flies B4 I Don’t Know What to Say B5 In an Hour B6 The Most Dangerous Thing About You

To listen to Sarah Mary Chadwick's music is to be a quiet observer to her
thoughts on love, death and mental health - Sometimes anguish bears
itself in sullen, dreamy vs dreary moments, but more often torment
manifests at the break of Chadwick's voice as she sings painfully
vulnerable, self-aware lyrics
Chadwick is a singer/ songwriter and visual artist, based in Melbourne. After
moving to Australia from New Zealand to pursue a career in music, Chadwick
spent a decade fronting the grunge band Batrider. In 2012 she shifted focus to
her now prolific solo career. Essentially Chadwick's work is basic reportage of
events and observations from her own life, creating something exactly realised
yet completely relateable. Chadwick's performance remains singular and complex
as she simultaneously savors and is repelled by the podium that her creativity
affords her, acknowledging that it's a position of power being on a microphone
and how ..it's a desperate demand to be seen. It's funny and really sad. These
days, I just want to be an entertainer.''
I always write a lot so I love it when songs can find homes in the outside world.
Track one 'Flipped It' was recorded in the "Me and Ennui" session, and I couldn't
find a comfortable place for it on that record. Track Two 'All the things...' was
recorded during the "Please Daddy" sessions, earlier that same year in 2019.
Pressed on 7" White Color vinyl.

Miet, the solo project of musician Suzy LeVoid, was born out of a form of absolute urgency, to make music at all costs Self- taught, when she started playing bass in 2013, the desire to compose and perform on stage quickly led her to create this one-woman band, where the bass
and the voice are the foundations of a raw, sincere, skin-deep music.Only backed
by a looper, she writes and performs alone, and quickly made her way onto the
French stages, appearing alongside Jeanne Added or Shannon Wright.
Although she's always alone on stage or in the studio, Miet expresses how much
the discovery of otherness nourishes her creation, to the point of having chosen
for this second album, still in English, a title in German 'Auslander'. For the
Nantes-based singer, this term means the magic of an unexplained but familiar
word. This "foreigner", or more exactly this "other", seems to take on the
appearance of a character that we learn to discover throughout the ten tracks of
the album.
Suzy LeVoid's newest offering is full of her unique signature sound : abrasive
rock, a deeply personal blend of sound loops, hypnotic rhythms and powerful
distorted bass lines. Strongly inspired by the work of Walt Whitman, Miet, like the
American poet, subtly uses repetition to give a hypnotic character to her lyrics.
This feeling of hypnosis is largely accentuated by the sequence of sound loops,
creating a perception of an infinite cycle and thus giving birth to an almost
mystical atmosphere.

A double shot of Y2K digi thrillers from Sydney via Bromley electro-dub producer Jeff Dread. Part of the city’s burgeoning network of blunted bass and sound system culture, Dread worked in parallel with the likes of Sheriff Lindo, Andy Rantzen and Ali Omar, issuing two dynamite albums on Creative Vibes in 1999 and 2001.

Utilising the Atari 1020 Ste, Dread would frantically live mix up to 9 tracks direct to CD-R, echoing the same rough and ready low tech intuition as Jamaican trailblazers King Tubby, Scientist and Jack Ruby and their UK-based disciples Jah Shaka, Adrian Sherwood and Mad Professor. While unmarked discs of his indulgently durational sessions litter the archives, this plate showcases versions immortalised by two crucial compilation CDs. Wicked stepper ‘Dub The Farmer’s Daughter’ burrows the ear canal with its addictive melodica and tightly coiled acid synth lines, edited for high impact by Sheriff Lindo for his volume of Dub For the Masses (Dread would curate its successor), while ‘Out On A Limb’ hails from Just Is, a double album sequenced by legendary Sydney queer party crew Club Kooky. A bass bin creeper that was extended with horns for his second longplayer Return From Alpha One, it’s this unembellished work in progress that really stings.

With Dread’s allegiance to local sound system heavyweights Firehouse, these totally brained studio jams are tried and tested weapons, finally blasting on the sacred 7” format.

True concept albums are actually few and far between. While it can be said that The Who’s Tommy and Quadrophenia, or Pink Floyd’s The Wall were designed from the ground up, that’s not necessarily the case for equally mythical, yet composite, albums such as Bowie’s The Rise And Fall of Ziggy Stardust…, or Lou Reed’s Berlin. In France, the genre established its pedigree in the 1970s with Serge Gainsbourg, then in the early 1980s with Léo Ferré. Cri d'amour by Mélanie Chédeville adds to this list of albums that tell a story through characters.

Cri d'amour was produced in a seaside setting, which may explain its flowing, organic character. It is all by herself that the violinist-by-training composed, wrote and arranged this collection of string-drenched songs that recall Jean-Claude Vannier’s work for Serge Gainsbourg. The latter would undoubtedly have been impressed by Mélanie’s fine-cut lyrics and melodies that are as raw as they are sophisticated, vocalized in a sprechgesang recalling his own. The deliberately retro palette, up to the bass sound so typical of 1960s English rock, betrays an artist indebted to the creator of Bonnie & Clyde and Initials B.B. through a sensual, clear tonality. Yet, polyrhythms borrowed from the late afro-beat legend Tony Allen, and the touches of guitar, piano, percussion and synthesizers distilled here and there by Éric and Mélanie, end up giving the whole affair a resolutely atemporal color.

Mélanie was sixteen with a head full of Beethoven and Brahms when she succumbed to an unexpected fascination for the world of Éric, a pianist, composer and sound engineer, who regularly delivered scores for Marc Dorcel’s X-rated films. She evokes him in L'Alpha-bêta and Le Pornographe, through whispered choruses that would suit the late Julee Cruise or Vanessa Daou to a tee, and explicit allusions to a “sword of Damocles” of “XXL” dimensions.

These are not the only texts on this album that remind us of the Franco-American author Anaïn Nin’s erotic poems, a model that Mélanie willingly takes on, adding to the list of her literary influences alongside Apollinaire and his Debauched Hospodar:

Some may find this album old-fashioned, which, far from being a flaw, is a credit to the fine musician that Mélanie is. Others will call it a charming album, which is not a bad way to describe it, provided that it is a powerfully relentless charm.

LAVENDER Coloured Vinyl. Recommended If You Like: Cocteau Twins, Julee Cruise, Antena, Young Marble Giants, The Pastels, Mazzy Star, Norma Tanega. A cinematic ocean of sound. EERIE WANDA's Marina Tadic draws you into her inner worlds on these 11 new songs produced by Kramer (Galaxie 500, Unrest, Ween, Daniel Johnston.). On Internal Radio, the new album by Eerie Wanda, visual artist and musician Marina Tadic welcomes you to her inner world. Guided by intuition, Tadic's songs use haunting, ethereal space, growing whole universes from the seeds of ideas. Internal Radio documents Tadic becoming the artist she wants to be, working through some things, and even exorcizing a few demons. The result is the most realized Eerie Wanda album yet, building on the project's guitar pop past for a more experimental, other worldly, serious grown-up affair that ventures into sensitive, motional territory. "Pet Town is delightfully airy; a set of songs that have drifted in on a breeze from some strange and foreign landscape you won't find on any map.” Gold Flake Paint // “Tadic’s melody here is part of that Brian Wilson lineage … she sets those notes adrift with a casually graceful minimalism… It evokes a pleasant stroll through a city at the moment when night begins to fall on a daydream.” Stereogum // Tracks: 1 Sail To The Silver Sun 2 NOWx1000 3 Long Time 4 On Heaven 5 Confess 6 Nightwalk 7 Someone's In My House 8 Sister Take My Hand 9 Birds Aren't Real 10 Puzzled 11 Bon Voyage

Following the release of Barbie Bertisch’s debut album Prelude in June 2022, Love Injection is thrilled to announce Prelude Remixes via Love Injection Records, which features six artists new to the label, kicking off with a two-track 12” single followed by a full digital release. Love Injection is the label and fanzine Bertisch runs with her partner, Paul Raffaele. The duo are romantic about remixes as an artform and always intended to have reinterpretations be the next phase after Prelude. Often reduced to ways to extend a hype cycle, or disjointed add-ons, Love injection’s remixes exist in dialogue with the artist’s songs.

The 12 inch single will inaugurate the project, with Montreal’s Gene Tellem on the A side, and Panorama Bar residents Lakuti and Tama Sumo on the flipside. On the “GT Remix”, Bertisch gushes that “Gene is very good at creating and sculpting atmospherics in her productions. She really grabbed the song and took it to a different place.” Tellem's version of “After The Storm” is faster, elastic and pulsing with an almost primordial intensity.

Creative and life partners Lakuti and Tama Sumo take on “Fertile Garden (Emerge)”. Lakuti, originally from South Africa, got her start DJing in the Johannesburg house scene of the ‘90s. She is now based in Berlin and often DJs with Tama Sumo, who grew up in Bavaria and moved to Berlin in 199x and has been a staple in the scene there since. The duo, both residents of Berlin's Panorama Bar, turn “Fertile Garden” into an ecstatic, unrelenting beat-down, best fit for peak time.

Deca’s streak of entrancing releases continues with Smoking Gun, an album that deftly blends psychedelic, raw production with sharp insights and clever lyricism. But it’s also much more than that. Smoking Gun is a sonic representation of an artist grappling with living in America, a country with a network of broken systems that leaves Deca questioning when and if it may turn around. To say this all makes for a compelling listen would be a vast understatement, because the New York City-based rapper/producer knows the key to presenting this material. He does it in a way that’s both refreshing and new, but never isolating or simply too oddball. There’s a left-field quality to his work, but Deca knows exactly what he’s doing. To prove that point, he enlisted fellow outside-the-box thinkers like Blu and Homeboy Sandman to appear on some of the album’s standout cuts. “Shelter,” which features Blu, is a jazzy, dusty piece of thoughtful hip-hop with crazy flows and lyrics to match. It’s so good you’ll wish these two would record an entire project together, and the same goes for Boy Sand’s appearance on “Dawn Wind.” Backed by Deca’s own low-key funky production, both he and Homeboy Sandman go verse for verse, each offering their own take on how to liberate yourself from the machine that aims to surveil and control both our outer world and inner peace. Other tracks embody a similar energy, including the justifiably cynical “St. America (feat. DJ Stan Solo)” and stunning “Tuning.” The latter track may just be the most impressive piece on Smoking Gun, thanks in part to the mind-melting beat-switch. It’s a thrilling musical journey that furthers Deca’s narrative about mankind’s ethical plight, and the problems we collectively face. TRACKLIST: 1. Smoking Gun (Intro) 2. St. America (feat. DJ Stan Solo) 3. Tuning 4. Blight 5. Flight Path (feat. Ichiban, DJ AWHAT!) 6. Hive of Industry 7. Crab Apples 8. Shelter (feat. Blu) 9. Tunnel Under 10. Dawn Wind (feat. Homeboy Sandman) 11. War Heads 12. The Eagle's Descent

Nikki Lane's remarkably dazzling third album Highway Queen, sees the
young Nashville rebel emerge as one of country and rock's most gifted
songwriters.Produced by Lane and fellow singer-songwriter Jonathan
Tyler, and recorded in Denton, Texas and Nashville, Tennessee, Highway
Queen is an emotional tour-de-force
Blending potent lyrics, unbridled blues guitars and vintage Sixties country- pop
swagger, Lane's new music will resonate as easily with Black Keys and Lana Del
Rey fans as those of Neil Young and Tom Petty. Highway Queen starts with the
whiskey-soaked restlessness of € 700,000 Rednecks, a rowdy call to action, and
ends on the profoundly raw Forever Lasts Forever, where Lane belts freely,
mourning a failed marriage, the lighter shade of skin left behind from her wedding
ring. Lane's journey to heartbreak takes exquisite turns. Companion is pure Everly
Brothers' dreaminess ( I would spend a lifetime/ Playing catch you if I can ).
Elsewhere, she goes on a Vegas bender on the rollicking Jackpot, fights last-call
blues ( € Foolish Heart ) and tosses off brazen one- liners at a backroom piano
( Big Mouth ). Lane, a Greenville, South Carolina native, is a unique songwriter
who didn't take the traditional country artist path. Her backwoods roots are
undercut by her chosen career as a fashion entrepreneur (she's the owner of
vintage clothing boutique High Class Hillbilly) who has lived " and been
heartbroken in " Los Angeles, New York and Nashville. So it's no surprise that her
music seamlessly crosses musical genres with lyrics steeped in the doomed
perseverance only a true dark horse romantic knows. Lane's rapid rise in music is
thanks to the fervent critical acclaim of her debut record Walk of Shame and
2014's Dan Auerbach-produced All Or Nothin'. Pressed on Blue Jean Color vinyl.

With Maternity Beat, Hedvig Mollestad has surpassed herself, most significantly as a composer and arranger, and delivered her magnum opus so far. And with Trondheim Jazz Orchestra she found the perfect ensemble to perform it. They have a long tradition for collaborations like this, we can mention Chick Corea, Jason Moran and Marius Neset among many others. And as always, Hedvig truly shines as a guitarist. Maternity Beat is Hedvig’s third “solo” album. It was commissioned by Molde International Jazz Festival and premiered in July 2020, later the same year streamed at London Jazz Festival. The recording took place in Athletic Sound in Halden in October 2021. Since she received the festival’s talent price in 2009 and signed to Rune Grammofon the following year, we have had the great pleasure to release seven albums by her trio as well as two solo albums, all receiving wide international acclaim in both jazz and rock camps. To complete the circle, Hedvig has been chosen as next year’s Artist in Residence at the festival, a most prestigious institution in Norwegian jazz, held by John Zorn this year and initiated by Chick Corea in 2000 and Pat Metheny in 2001. Tracklist, all formats 1. On The Horizon, Part 1 2. On The Horizon, Part 2 3. Do Re Mi Ma Ma 4. Donna Ovis Peppa 5. Little Lucid Demons/Alfons 6. All Flights Cancelled 7. Her Own Shape 8. Maternity Beat 9. Maternity Suite

With Maternity Beat, Hedvig Mollestad has surpassed herself, most significantly as a composer and arranger, and delivered her magnum opus so far. And with Trondheim Jazz Orchestra she found the perfect ensemble to perform it. They have a long tradition for collaborations like this, we can mention Chick Corea, Jason Moran and Marius Neset among many others. And as always, Hedvig truly shines as a guitarist. Maternity Beat is Hedvig’s third “solo” album. It was commissioned by Molde International Jazz Festival and premiered in July 2020, later the same year streamed at London Jazz Festival. The recording took place in Athletic Sound in Halden in October 2021. Since she received the festival’s talent price in 2009 and signed to Rune Grammofon the following year, we have had the great pleasure to release seven albums by her trio as well as two solo albums, all receiving wide international acclaim in both jazz and rock camps. To complete the circle, Hedvig has been chosen as next year’s Artist in Residence at the festival, a most prestigious institution in Norwegian jazz, held by John Zorn this year and initiated by Chick Corea in 2000 and Pat Metheny in 2001. Tracklist, all formats 1. On The Horizon, Part 1 2. On The Horizon, Part 2 3. Do Re Mi Ma Ma 4. Donna Ovis Peppa 5. Little Lucid Demons/Alfons 6. All Flights Cancelled 7. Her Own Shape 8. Maternity Beat 9. Maternity Suite

Fresh off the back of a sell-out spring tour celebrating the 10 year anniversary of the bands much lauded third album Men's Needs, Women's Needs, What-ever (which saw them headline their largest show to date at Leeds First Direct Arena), The Cribs release their new record 24-7 Rock Star Shit. Recorded live to tape in just 5 days by venerated underground engineer Steve Albini (Nirvana, Shellac, Pixies) 24-7 Rock Star Shit marks a return to the bands early roots with it's raw, rough-around-the-edges approach and sonic aggression. Originally conceived during recording sessions for the bands fifth album In The Belly Of The Brazen Bull these recordings were elevated to quasi-mythical status amongst the bands famously dedicated fan-base, with excitement building for a "punk album" flipside to 2015's more pop-leaning For All My Sisters. Originally intended as an EP, once sessions were completed the band found that they had recorded enough material for an album and decided it should be released that way instead - "That approach just really suits us, we were just having too much fun I guess" laughs the band.

Over the better half of a decade, Time is Away, the London-based duo of Jack Rollo and Elaine Tierney, have made tender and heartfelt transmissions through countless mixes, sound works and radio. Exploring deeply human themes of memory, persistence and resistance using an assemblage of source material, the duo's unique mode of storytelling culminates in Ballads, a new suite of songs and, significantly, their first officially licensed compilation.

From the opening notes of Horvitz Morris Previte Trio's jazz romanticism to Gilles Chabenat and Frédéric Paris's lively reimagined standard, the haunting vocal seance of Tanto Pressanto and the mesmerising swirls of The Unthanks, Yuko Kono and Rachel Bonch-Bruevich, the spirit of Ballads roams through generations of affectionate songwriting and conjures images both candid and surreal. The voice of poet and longtime collaborator Christina Petrie appears briefly and contemplates the "sighs and replies… the space between verses" of the Ballad, its beauty, its place in our lives. What is the Ballad but a reflection of our soul? "Perhaps I'll wander in search of it", she bittersweetly concedes.

At the suite's cusp is an alternate version of David Lang's 'Just (After Song of Songs)', a thirteen-minute meditation on devotion which featured in Paolo Sorrentino's Youth (2015). The track's universal themes of faith and desire radiate throughout and elucidate Time is Away's peerlessly precise yet gossamer touch.

Green Vinyl

Föllakzoid are nearly unparalleled in the hypnotic lysergic drenched neo-psychedelic experience. On their debut it is mostly a rather bulky one, determined by the downright dirty, distorted electric guitar, which is also usually accompanied by a spacey, howling and herbaceous howling one. In addition, there is fat bass and powerful drums. During the prolific post-napster musical era dominated by myspace, the Chilean musical field opened up so that many bands could broaden their creative spectrum by taking global and timeless references as an aesthetic holy grail. This experimentation had the internet and specialized forums as a search engine, which not only provided the world parameters in trends, but also allowed to find true hidden gems, bands that were adored by a few connoisseurs of the real quality left behind by the record labels. In this context, a group of university students who have known each other from school began to rehearse in the Caracol Vip underground (Santiago, Chile), in a room owned by a local heavy-metal legend, Juanzer. Equipped with tube amplifiers, Marshall and other custom made, the members of that time: Gonzalo Laguna on vocals, Juan Pablo Rodriguez on bass, Domingo García-Huidobro on guitar, Diego Lorca on drums and Francisco Zenteno on second guitar, they began to play endless jams without a strict sense of songs or directed compositional notion. The rule was to follow the noise in a journey through valleys and peaks that allowed the spontaneous appearance of textures, lyrics, phrases and some invented chords that did not resemble anything that had been heard at that time. The rehearsals were transformed into true live performances without an audience, which were only seen by a few curious, among alcohol, smoke and deafening noise, which could only end when the owner of the room (Juanzer) entered to turn off the equipment. Over time he himself stayed as an auditor, witnessing how the musicians stripped themselves in their rehearsals. Considered at that time as play or fun, the idea of forming a band with a name came with the real live performances to which they were invited, without yet having songs made, at the end of 2006. The myth of their first live performance alludes to a numerical superstition, on July 7, 2007, in a small bar in Providencia (Santiago), which also provided the band with an upward recognition for the psychedelic-punk music they were doing, with a voracious vocalist who destroyed everything on stage and a band that stood firm on the endless songs they built. The name that was invented for that occasion was the result of a nonsense about the German word feuerzeug brought to the group by their close friend Alfredo Thiermann (who would later make the cover of the first album and become keyboardist), which the members of that time took and Spanishized at will. This neologism represents the second founding myth of the band since the interest in bands like Can, Neu! and AMON DUUL II and the characteristic motorik rhythm would soon arrive, in the form of kosmische musik. By 2008 the band had already added several live performances and some songs appeared, among which were Directo al Sol and Loop (nod to the English band), which allowed a greater deployment of ambient-noise resources, almost close to the 'concrete' music. The deconstructed rock of Spacemen 3 was also present in the form of repeated sequences on the bass and drums, as the layers of shrill guitars formed the foam of the tide bursting in the darkness of space. With the ideas and general feeling of the sound that they already had, the band made the decision to record their first album with the sound engineer and Juan Pablo's brother, Ignacio 'Nes' Rodríguez, who later together with JP would form the BYM label to make the first CDs of the forthcoming debut of Föllakzoid and other bands that Nes was recording. Sheltered that winter in the studio that Nes had built in an old house in Recoleta, the band recorded the bulk of the songs on the album with a new jam that emerged in that room composed of 1 note and moments of rising intensity: Sky Input I and II appeared to complete a set of songs that came from rock but were slowly passing to a level of trance and cacophony typical of orchestrated and atonal music. With three takes per song but only one take of the jam, the album was finished with a few extra takes and overdubs, some made in the house of Nes himself, who contributed a guitar to Loop, although it does not appear in the credits, and additional takes of "Pelao" Zenteno with delay and reverse for almost all songs. The names of the songs came from the lyrics that Laguna had worked from the live versions to the studio finals, except for Loop, Sky Input and El Humo. The cover of the album, which as mentioned was made by Thiermann, represents well the spirit of those days, when creative magma looked for an outlet through the instruments without any restriction or explicit direction from any of the members of the group. The image of the tree towards the sky speaks of the roots that rise towards the immensity, the nature projected towards the stratosphere. Ideas that the neo-psychedelia of those years seemed to capture well, echoing in the Chilean bands that at that time were gathering around the BYM label. Both the creative fluency and the lack of a musical director ensured that Föllakzoid was an original band that did not impose themselves a way of doing things or sounding, collective music took shape in the most wonderful way, without characters, without a record name, without faces. Just an instant in space. 2022 GALAXY GREEN coloured vinyl

Pink Vinyl

Molly Lewis's compositions seem to float into our ears from distant shores. They're otherworldly, drawn more from landscapes of dream than from anywhere you could find on a map. Lewis is a unique presence in music today. Her trademark whistle, which brings to mind the great Peruvian soprano Yma Sumac, has graced recordings of everything from Schumann lieder and Brazilian jazz to Spaghetti Western ballads and noir lounge. Lewis's collaborations are diverse: La Femme, Sébastien Tellier and Dr. Dre. She's performed around the globe, at Shanghai's Yuz Museum, the Cannes Film Festival, Mexico City's Salón Los Angeles, and across the whole of New Zealand. Lewis's 2021 debut EP, The Forgotten Edge, was produced by Tom Brenneck (Charles Bradley, Amy Winehouse). It was a critical success, drawing praise from The New York Times and NPR, and landing Lewis a spot on CBS Sunday Morning. Now, Lewis and Brenneck have teamed up again for her second EP, Mirage, bringing aboard Brazilian guitarist Rogê, as well as percussionist Gibi Dos Santos and keyboardist Roger Manning. Capacious and atmospheric, Mirage is Lewis's most hypnotic effort yet. Like Eden's Island (1970) by eden ahbez_whose "Nature Boy" is covered in one of Mirage's standout moments_the album is based on Lewis's visions of an imaginary island. The lush, oceanic textures of Mirage transport us to the sands of an unknown beach_all alone or in the company we've always dreamt of keeping.

White Vinyl

Technological agitation. Narcissism fatigue. A galaxy of isolation. These are the new norms keeping Weyes Blood (aka Natalie Mering) up at night and the themes at the heart of her latest release, And in the Darkness, Hearts Aglow. The celestial-influenced folk album is her follow-up to the acclaimed Titanic Rising. (Pitchfork, NPR, and The Guardian admiringly named it one of 2019's best.) While Titanic Rising was an observation of doom to come, And in the Darkness, Hearts Aglow is about being in the thick of it: a search for an escape hatch to liberate us from algorithms and ideological chaos. "We're in a fully functional shit show," Mering says. "My heart is a glow stick that's been cracked, lighting up my chest in an explosion of earnestness." And in the Darkness, Hearts Aglow opens with the wistful, winsome "It's Not Just Me, It's Everybody," a song about the interconnectivity of all beings, despite the fraying of society around us. "I was asking a lot of questions while writing these songs. Hyper-isolation kept coming up," Mering says. "Our culture relies less and less on people. Something is off, and even though the feeling appears differently for each individual, it is universal." Other tracks follow in kind. The lullaby-like "Grapevine" chronicles the splintering of a human connection. The otherworldly dirge "God Turn Me into a Flower" serves as allegory about our collective hubris. "The Worst Is Done" is an ominous warning, set against a deceivingly breezy pop melody. "Chaos is natural. But so is negentropy, or the tendency for things to fall into order," she says. "These songs may not be manifestos or solutions, but I know they shed light on the meaning of our contemporary disillusionment."

Technological agitation. Narcissism fatigue. A galaxy of isolation. These are the new norms keeping Weyes Blood (aka Natalie Mering) up at night and the themes at the heart of her latest release, And in the Darkness, Hearts Aglow. The celestial-influenced folk album is her follow-up to the acclaimed Titanic Rising. (Pitchfork, NPR, and The Guardian admiringly named it one of 2019's best.) While Titanic Rising was an observation of doom to come, And in the Darkness, Hearts Aglow is about being in the thick of it: a search for an escape hatch to liberate us from algorithms and ideological chaos. "We're in a fully functional shit show," Mering says. "My heart is a glow stick that's been cracked, lighting up my chest in an explosion of earnestness." And in the Darkness, Hearts Aglow opens with the wistful, winsome "It's Not Just Me, It's Everybody," a song about the interconnectivity of all beings, despite the fraying of society around us. "I was asking a lot of questions while writing these songs. Hyper-isolation kept coming up," Mering says. "Our culture relies less and less on people. Something is off, and even though the feeling appears differently for each individual, it is universal." Other tracks follow in kind. The lullaby-like "Grapevine" chronicles the splintering of a human connection. The otherworldly dirge "God Turn Me into a Flower" serves as allegory about our collective hubris. "The Worst Is Done" is an ominous warning, set against a deceivingly breezy pop melody. "Chaos is natural. But so is negentropy, or the tendency for things to fall into order," she says. "These songs may not be manifestos or solutions, but I know they shed light on the meaning of our contemporary disillusionment."

(REMASTERED)

Strut continue their work from the archives of Idris Ackamoor & The Pyramids with a first ever vinyl release of Ackamoor"s debut avant-garde / Afro-jazz recordings from 1971 with The Collective, based out of Yellow Springs, Ohio.

High Roller Records, black vinyl, ltd 700, lyric sheet, 4 page insert, poster, A5 photo card, 425gsm heavy card board cover, mastered for vinyl by Patrick W. Engel at Temple of Disharmony in March 2021. Cutting by SST Germany on Neumann machines for optimal quality on all levels... The ultimate reissue of this eternal Thrash Metal classic! FOR EUROPE ONLY!

High Roller Records, black vinyl, ltd 700, lyric sheet, 4 page insert, poster, A5 photo card, 425gsm heavy card board cover, mastered for vinyl by Patrick W. Engel at Temple of Disharmony in March 2021. Cutting by SST Germany on Neumann machines for optimal quality on all levels... The ultimate reissue of this eternal Thrash Metal classic! FOR EUROPE ONLY!

High Roller Records, black vinyl, ltd 700, lyric sheet, 4 page insert, poster, A5 photo card, 425gsm heavy card board cover, mastered for vinyl by Patrick W. Engel at Temple of Disharmony in March 2021. Cutting by SST Germany on Neumann machines for optimal quality on all levels... The ultimate reissue of this eternal Thrash Metal classic! FOR EUROPE ONLY!

High Roller Records, black vinyl, ltd 700, lyric sheet, 4 page insert, poster, A5 photo card, 425gsm heavy card board cover, mastered for vinyl by Patrick W. Engel at Temple of Disharmony in March 2021. Cutting by SST Germany on Neumann machines for optimal quality on all levels... The ultimate reissue of this eternal Thrash Metal classic! FOR EUROPE ONLY!

The Person is back on the dancefloor and she brought the delicious Australian version of a good old Italian recipe - ITALOZ DISCO. Mouthwatering rhythms spiced with everyday hustle, cosmic boogie and the extra dose of synthesizer! Changing the Meatballs for Oddballs to worship the Magic $ properly. Sull' alto lato (aka on the B-Side) we're changing the Oddballs for the Mothballs as the one and only Hysteric warms up the magic ragout in his unique steam-powered kitchen. Now go to work!

You still need to be convinced? Take these great lines by Patrick:
"Magic $" beams into the discotheque direct from deep space; a shimmering body of squelching bass, nebulous pads and snapping percussion which hosts Minna's bewitching vocals. The arch delivery and vintage sequences flirt with kitsch, but that playful genius particular to The Person pushes this into wonderfully wonkier territories. Basslines climb, keys collapse and the whole thing chugs and bubbles through a flawless arrangement. We thought they didn't make them like this anymore, but we were wrong. Stepping in on remix duty, renowned (Moth)baller Hysteric turns out a treatment that's worth a million bucks, boosting the bottom end with an acidic sequence, supercharging the percussion and punching in some strange sampler fun to guarantee utter club chaos.
Every superhero needs a theme song, and "The Person" sees Minna step away from the dancefloor to deliver a synthetic ballad for lucid dreamers everywhere. Jamming on top of a malfunctioning Jomox, Minna channels chimes, piano and a gentle chug into the classiest chord progression this side of Mike Francis. Closing cut "Go To Work" gives us neon lights and nighthawks as The Person indulges in a little Antipodean electro, proving once and for all that Australians Do It Better.

Felix Laband’s The Soft White Hand is the masterwork of an artist who expresses himself through musical and artistic collage acting together to reinterpret his sources and to express significant elements of his own personal story.

Released by Munich-based Compost Records, the 14-track album is Laband’s first full-length offering since the critically acclaimed Deaf Safari in 2015. It is heralded by the single “Derek and Me”, and is being pressed on vinyl for distribution globally.

In The Soft White Hand Laband works with source materials that will be familiar to those who know his previous four records – Thin Shoes in June (2001), 4/4 Down the Stairs (2002), Dark Days Exit (2005) and especially Deaf Safari which reached deep into the South Africa scene and its political culture to inspire its vocal and music sampling. However, the disengagement he felt from his homeland during his latest album’s creation – an abiding sense of untethered-ness to place and space, exquisitely rendered in tracks like “Death of a Migrant” – is perceptible in Laband’s desire to illuminate instead aspects of his own life.

“For this album, my source material became almost autobiographical as opposed to African statements I’ve worked with previously,” says the artist. “I have sampled a lot from documentaries from the 80s crack epidemic in impoverished African American communities and believe my work speaks unapologetically for the lost and marginalised, for those who are the forgotten casualties of the war on drugs. In the past, I have had my issues with substance abuse, and I know first-hand about the nightmares and fears, what it feels like to be isolated and abandoned.”

Few artists have managed to air these intimate aspects of their life so luminously as Laband does in tracks like “5 Seconds Ago”, “They Call Me Shorty” and in the strange and meditative “Dreams of Loneliness”. “I’ve been building this weird, autobiographical story using other people talking. It’s kind of humorous but it is also sad and beautiful,” says Laband.

Yet, as in all of Laband’s recorded output, the delineations between emotions are never starkly drawn and The Soft White Hand is also shot through with beauty. Nature appears in recordings made in his garden in the intimate early morning hours, whether as in the calls of the Hadada Ibis and other birdsong in “Prelude” or of the vertical-tail-cocking bird in “Derek and Me”. The last is a wonderful track with Derek Gripper, the South African experimental classical guitarist of international renown, whose 2020 song “Fanta and Felix” imagines a meeting between Fanta Sacko and Laband.

Laband’s eloquence in reinterpreting classical composers such as Beethoven in “We Know Major Tom’s a Junkie” is another thrilling aspect of the new record. “I’ve been properly exploring classical music on this album,” explains Laband, “taking melodies from classical compositions and reinterpreting them”. A fresh quality comes to his work through this sonic adventuring: the tender manipulation of the mundaneness of the computer’s AI voice to reimagine and reinvent iconic lyrics and melodies in strange and unexpected configurations.

The Soft White Hand is Laband’s most cohesive body of work to date. Yet it remains, in its sheer artistic scope, impossible to describe fully. Darkness abuts the gossamer light. A song that summons the sunrise and all the hope of a new day could also be about the final dipping down of the sun that portends a troubled night ahead. Interludes are invitations to expand outwards or shift inwards. Mistakes and “weird fuckups” in the sound are cherished as convincing statements against what Laband calls the “grossness” of perfect sound in modern music.

For this world-leading electronic artist, the boundaries are unfixed. He is inspired by the German Dada artist, Hannah Höch, who memorably declared: “I wish to blur the firm boundaries which we self-certain people tend to delineate around all we can achieve.” His music consequently reflects a primal artistic impulse that is also visible in Laband’s considerable visual art output as seen recently in several solo exhibitions such as that held in the No End Gallery in Johannesburg in 2019 and in the works he produced during his 2018 Nirox Foundation Artists Residency. “My music is always about collage, as is my art,’’ he affirms. “Everything I do is collage. It is a medium I find very interesting because you are taking history and distorting it and changing its meaning and turning it upside down and back to front.” In her book Recollections of My Non-Existence, Rebecca Solnit calls collage “literally a border art”; it is “an art of what happens when two things confront each other or spill onto each other”.

With The Soft White Hand, Laband is confirming his singular ability to achieve this in both art and music, melting the divisions between the two creative disciplines until they become one. He is also affirming his belief that an album of music should be more than a collection of unrelated tracks, but should unfold a fully integrated, cohesive story as in the song cycles of the great classical composers. In doing so, he claims his position as one of the most significant artists working today.

Artist Statement – Felix Laband – August 2022

When the Khmer Rouge took their captives for processing, they identified their class enemies by looking at their hands. If they were sunburned, rough and calloused, they were those of a peasant, a proletarian to be spared. But if they were soft and white, then they were those of a city-dweller, an intellectual or bourgeois, an adversary to be liquidated.

In calling this album The Soft White Hand, I was reflecting on the Cambodian genocide and how it resonates in contemporary South Africa. The apartheid era is over, and gone with it is white political domination. Yet economic and social privilege is still held in soft white hands. But those who grasp it know just how tenuous is their hold, how it singles them out, and my music reflects their subconscious fears, the stress and guilt of clinging on to what others envy and desire.

The soft white hand of the title suggests to me a further image, one that relates to all of postcolonial Africa. In my mind’s eye, I see the soft, duplicitous handshake of the smooth representatives of the superpowers making deals and promising gifts that benefit only them, and not their African dupes.
Yet, soaring above the wailing of sirens sampled from the first day of the invasion of Ukraine, my music is also about love gained and passion lost. It is about the tender caress of a soft white hand that conducts you into a place of dreams to be enfolded by nocturnal melodies.

RIGHTFUL RULER returns the legendary Jamaican vocalist Earl 16 to the center stage of international roots reggae music. This four song showcase style ep demonstrates that matching an A-class veteran singer/ songwriter with the sounds of the Zion I Kings (ZIK) production team serves to revitalize the musical forces long associated with the classic reggae tradition- roots, reality, and culture!

Earl 16's career now spans five decades and is marked by hits and highlights throughout. HIs Jamaican recordings from the cornerstone studios (Studio One, Black Ark, Channel One) are still sought after gems from the golden age. But, unlike many of his peers, Earl 16 successfully adopted the changing sounds and styles of reggae in the U.K.(where he resides) and collaborated with top producers like Mad Professor and Nick Mannaseh. He has remained current into the new millennium with "Release The Pressure", a notable vocal to LeftField's breakthrough drum & bass hit.

The all star lineup of musicians on RIGHTFUL RULER is anchored by drums provided by ace producer and multi-instrumentalist Roberto Sanchez (A-Lone Productions). Keyboards by Pau "Nattykeyz" Dangla Valls and trumpet by Patrick "Aba Ariginal" Tenyue complement the rhythmic foundations set by ZIK core players David "JAH David" Goldfine (bass) and Laurent "Tippy I" Alfred (rhythm guitar, piano, organ). Sheldon Bernard's flute and Errol "Blacksteel" Nicholson's background vocals are heard on the title track and lead guitars by David Prout and Andrew "Moon" Bain appear on "Find A Way", a feature with the dynamic toasting of Mr. Williamz. All dub mixes are done by JAH David with cover art by Ato K.D. Roberts .

Since 2018, BBE Music has been leading the field in reissuing rare modern jazz from Japan’s golden period spanning the late 60s to the early 80s. The J Jazz Masterclass Series continues to present the finest in Japanese jazz with Planets by Masaru Imada Trio + 1. Originally released in 1977 as a private press album, Planets showcases the refined playing and sophisticated compositions of one of Japan’s leading pianists, Masaru Imada. In a fifty-plus year career he has released over 40 albums, including several that have won awards from some of Japan’s leading music publications and has recorded with leading US jazz artists such as David Sanborn, Brecker Brothers, Steve Gadd, and Grover Washington Jr. Imada’s Bosendorfer piano is joined by the drums of Tetsujiro Obara and the bass of Kunimitsu Inaba, augmented by Yuji Imamura on percussion. The opening title track on Planets (featured on J Jazz vol 3) is a wafer-thin modal waltz, beginning with gentle bells and shells, followed by Obara’s deft brush work and Inaba’s hypnotically pliant bass that gives a discrete yet steady support to the gossamer melody from Imada-san’s piano. The other standout track is the suite, Sea's Pasture, an epic piece that undulates and heaves, like the dark endless ocean, rich with mystery and each side of the album ends with a solo piece on the haunting Bosendorfer. Planets comes with full reproduction of the original artwork with obi strip, extra photos, a translation of the original sleeve note and a 3000 word new sleeve note by Tony Higgins including an interview with Masaru Imada himself. The J Jazz Masterclass Series is curated by Tony Higgins and Mike Peden for BBE Music.

Celebrating almost 40 years of doom metal mastery, Swedish Grammis award-winning and US Grammy- nominated doom metal legends CANDLEMASS commemorate the release of their 13th full-length album, Sweet Evil Sun, with the epic third single ""When Death Sighs”, featuring Jennie-Ann Smith of Swedish progressive rock/doom metal unit Avatarium. She accents the song’s shimmering, blood-freezing chorus lines before the haunting atmosphere is highlighted by an amazing guitar solo that reads like a story!"

Minas-cover Minas is a world music duet comprised of Orlando Haddad and Patricia King. Minas reflects a perfect musical marriage with a stage presence and chemistry that only a lifetime can produce. Drawing on the passionate styles of Brazilian and American roots music, the two create a fresh and innovative sound. With a catalog of 8 recordings released on their label Bluezul and a collection of over 100 songs, they have been building their reputation. Multi-talented as composers, vocalists, and instrumentalists, and equally comfortable in Brazilian jazz, folk, and classical genres, Minas is now bringing their world music approach to the Beatles with their latest album titled Beatles in Bossa. This re-imagination of fourteen Beatles' songs is infused with American Jazz and Brazilian styles of Bossa Nova, Samba, Choro, Partido Alto, Afoxé, Marcha Rancho, and Frevo. "Blackbird" has a nylon-strung guitar and vocal intro that sets the tone for this Brazilian-themed arrangement. Minasminas-1 transforms the melody to something new while still keeping the theme recognizable. The male and female vocals of Haddad and King blend beautifully as the band builds a relaxed Brazilian feel. John Swana plays an expressive Evi solo, adding a modern color while still being vivid. Haddad wrote this creative arrangement with a fresh approach to this classic Beatles melody. "With A Little Help From My Friends" is another Brazilian arrangement that is all Minas. The concept came from Haddad and King with the horn arrangement provided by Andrew Neu. Haddad's nylon-strung guitar keeps a Latin pattern as the horns accent the two vocalists trading phrases of the melody. Neu plays an exciting solo. The arrangement is rewarding, enabling us to hear the melodic lines, harmony, and orchestration from a different perspective.minas-2Minas' Beatles in Bossa impresses with its natural, vibrant, and heartfelt presence, allowing us to hear and appreciate the colors and textures of the exceptional music of the Beatles through a Brazilian perspective and thoughtful performances.