TEMACHII creates immersive worlds where music, visual art, nature, and emotion blur together. Evoking the hazy surrealism of a once forgotten dream, the San Antonio-based multi-instrumentalist has built a devoted global audience through ethereal soundscapes, hand-crafted visuals, and songs that feel both deeply personal and universally comforting. Her music pairs ambient textures and dream-pop charm with an intimacy that feels like eavesdropping on an artist in conversation with herself—absorbing influences like Radiohead, Fiona Apple, Mitski and Aphex Twin while remaining less guided by genre than by feeling.
Her 2023 debut, flora maniia, was anchored by the 50 million-streamed hit “may you never forget me,” blending hypnotic acoustic guitar, lilting synths, and airy vocals into a reflection on love, memory, and the desire to leave a lasting impression. The follow-up LP, akrasiia, arrived later that same year, revealing a more stripped-back side of her sound while preserving the wonder at the heart of her work. Together with 2024 single “not/lost,” the releases have brought Temachii's art to fans around the world, a reach that feels especially meaningful given her Puerto Rican heritage. More importantly, they have transformed that audience into something more meaningful than simply streams and likes: a space for listeners to feel both safe and seen.
A channeling of restless spirit and ritual movement, knowledge that travels beyond its origin, pressed into black wax. An imprint of a hidden world, where soundscapes and movement are celebrated. A living archive, carried forward.
Sudanese rising star and oud player Sulaf transforms her refugee exile into ABA — blending Nubian roots with modern soundscapes in collaboration with producer Maxime Kosinetz (Imarhan, Tinariwen, Gruff Rhys). Drawing on the Sufi poetry of her great-grandfather, she captures loss, identity, and resilience, carrying Sudan’s spirit across borders with haunting power and emotional depth
Mystica Tribe and Scopeotaku have formed an international dub alliance. Taking their sounds into melodic experimental electronic dub territory. Previously, both have fused their own cultures and personalities into numerous dub releases. Now they are expanding their parameters by collaborating on a project that encompasses both their love for psychedelic and electronic audio combined with heavyweight dub reggae rhythms.
Mystica Tribe is the musical alias of Tokyo, Japan based producer Taka Noda. Drawing on a wide range of influences from dub, soul, bass and rhythm & blues. Mystica Tribe has been developing a very distinctive sound that exists in a weird freaked out zone, between dub and techno. Noda is especially interested in deep psychedelic music and this is reflected in his productions. Which are equally suited for late night listening sessions or on bent broken dancefloors.
Scopeotaku is the alter ego of Scott Prentice, a Glasgow, Scotland based artist. Scopeotaku has experimented with audio since purchasing a sampler and a four track cassette deck many many moons ago. His love for left-field dub and eccentric sounds have led him to create a variety of output, from industrial ambient, illbent electronics to mutant dub.
The track blends the popular disco and funk sounds of the late '70s while incorporating the growing popularity of rap and hip-hop and remains a quirky addition to Pickett's spooky legacy. The b- side features Edgar Winter's "Frankenstein," which blends elements of progressive rock, blues, and jazz fusion, creating a dramatic and otherworldly sound. This 7" single come on a Frankenstein-shaped vinyl.
a A1 Monster Rap (feat. Bobby Paine) Radio Edit
[a] A1 Monster Rap (feat. Bobby Paine) [Radio Edit]
[a] A1 Monster Rap (feat. Bobby Paine) [Radio Edit]
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Ronen Sabo aka Nenor has dropped his rough and ready blends of soul and house on labels such as Moodymann's Mahogani and UK powerhouse Defected. Having already found his way into top-level record bags with the first volume of this series on Fossils, he is now back on new label Mumtak with more fully re-imagined interpretations. 'Klock It' is a humid and steamy house sound with a throbbing low end and exotic vocals, while 'Clayers' rides on lovely claps with breezy vocal sounds, ensuring a smooth cruising vibe. 'To Be Free' is a jazzy laced and late night sound with dusty drums and scruffy samples adding up to something loveably rough around the edges and 'El Gato' then brings a more freewheeling sound with big percussive hints and darker bass.
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The latest release from Rainbow Disco Club’s label imprint, Beyond Space And Time, is the debut compilation from The Melting Hours, a live project by Wata Igarashi and Kuniyuki. WataIgarashi continues to make his mark on the history of techno, whilst Kuniyuki has long been revered as one of Sapporo’s greatest treasures. The two artists, who have long held mutual respect for one another, met whilst performing at the Draaimolen Festival 2025, and this encounter gave rise to The Melting Hours.
‘Blue Sun’ is imbued with a freshness reminiscent of the ambient jazz masterpieces released by prestigious labels such as ECM and Windham Hill. ‘Liquid Dunes’ sees the organic tones of the flute and percussion melt into over ten minutes of abstract sound textures, whilst the breathtaking ‘Cloud Touch’ awakens amidst a swirling vortex of pulsating downbeats and arpeggios. It is said that ‘Blue Sun’ was created by reconstructing studio rehearsal recordings, whilst ‘Liquid Dunes’ and ‘Cloud Touch’ were crafted from live recordings at Draaimolen 2025. The essence of these works—and indeed of the project The Melting Hours itself—lies at the heart of their improvisational nature.
It brings to mind the Rainbow Disco Club event back in 2026, where they wove their sounds amidst fresh greenery and surrounded by listeners under a clear blue sky. It felt as though the pulsating energy was spreading across the dance floor, guided by a session from The Melting Hours that seemed almost like a living creature. The organic breath one senses in this work not only evokes precisely that scene but also allows us to feel the unique, ephemeral nature inherent in this project—and, consequently, the boundless possibilities that stem from it.
Rainbow Disco Club のレーベル・ライン'Beyond Space And Time'から放たれる最新作は、Wata IgarashiとKuniyukiによるライブ・プロジェクト、The Melting Hoursによる初の音源集だ。テクノ史に残る実績を現在進行形で刻み続けているWata Igarashi、長きに渡り札幌の至宝として尊敬を集めてきたKuniyuki。兼ねてよりリスペクトを送り合ってきた両名がDraaimolen Festival 2025への出演を契機に邂逅し、始動したプロジェクトがThe Melting Hoursである。
快晴の元で新緑とリスナーに囲まれ音を紡いでいった、去る2026年のRainbow Disco Clubを思い出す。まるで、生き物のようなThe Melting Hoursによるセッションに導かれ、脈動するエネルギーがフロアに伝播していたようだった。この作品から感じられる有機的な息遣いは、まさにそんな情景を思い起こすものであると同時に...このプロジェクトが宿すその場/その時限りの唯一無二性と、それ故に広がっていく限りない可能性をも感じさせてくれる。
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Phonogramme presents Sascha Dive’s inaugural EP, “My Definition of House.” This 4-track gem features the legendary Mr. V and arrives in a limited-edition marbled vinyl format. Dive’s deep understanding of house music merges seamlessly with Mr. V’s soulful touch, resulting in a captivating blend of classic grooves and modern flair. From infectious rhythms to rich, soul-stirring soundscapes, each track takes listeners on a unique journey through the essence of house.
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Blueprint ARchives presents a reissue of Dark Llama?s Tuned In E.P., originally released in the UK by Aura Surround Sounds in 1993. Four direct techno cuts: The Ghost, Circular Motion, Certified and Force 4.
'Quiet Pieces' initiates Abul Mogard’s personal imprint Soft Echoes with a definitive self-portrait of calm, contemplative, and discreet inner landscapes made audible. It is the first solo album on vinyl in four years. RIYL Alessandro Cortini, William Basinski, The Caretaker.
While sifting through archived material left idle from earlier projects, a chance encounter with a late uncle’s trove of beloved 78rpm classical and opera records prompted the reworking and completion of what would eventually become the album. Spinning dusty records at 33 and 45rpm, Abul Mogard recombined their enduring spectres with unfinished sketches from his archive. The resulting soundscape blurs distinctions between his memories and those of another, exquisitely short-circuiting the senses with its waking, dream-like lucidity.
This was a process I hadn’t explored in my earlier works. I began sampling brief moments from these records, altering them with studio effects and playing them at slower speeds. In many cases, I wasn’t entirely sure how the original music sounded. These fragments, once further processed, became a source of inspiration for my new compositions. Over time, I realised that the old pieces from the archive and the new material derived from the samples naturally complemented each other.”
The resulting pieces hover over a threshold, a liminal space that harmonises the old and older material. Voluminous waves of quiet and loud undulate between consonance and dissonance, conjuring imagery of a decaying grandeur that humanity’s decadence has surrendered to the elements. Abul Mogard’s seemingly abandoned yet vast landscapes are nevertheless intimate with timbral frissons of red-lined distortion. Elusive, yet as tangible as sea spray or smog, they affect the olfactory senses with a rarified, synesthetic quality that modestly engages one’s emotional register – a hypnotic, distinguishing feature long hailed as one of the hallmarks of his work. A fidelity to memory and dream recall is sensitively probed in the journey from the stately symphonic stasis of 'Following a dream' to the almost industrial, untethered brutality evoked by a looming silhouette that’s never fully visible in 'Constantly slipping away', culminating in the foreboding coda of 'Like a bird'. Those pieces appear to shield the album’s sentimental core, where the tempestuous play of light and shadow of 'In a studded procession' escalates to breathtaking, panoramic climax, while 'Through whispers' evokes an out-of-body-like experience encountered with visceral poignancy.
Looking back, Mogard notes an unexpected influence: “I realise being inspired by Phill Niblock, whose work I had barely known at the time but explored after his passing in 2024. His album 'Boston Tenor Index' changed the way I approached dissonance. It encouraged me to push my sound further, to the edge of a space where I began to feel uncomfortable.”
The album artwork, created by longtime collaborator Marja de Sanctis, features a photograph taken at the Temple of Jupiter Anxur, an archaeological site overlooking the Mediterranean Sea. Captured with an iPhone, the image traces the residual presence of construction techniques and architectural forms of the Romans, where material history is transcribed through contemporary tools. The convergence of ancient and modern technology aims to reverberate the site’s lasting spiritual presence – an echo persisting in what is now perceived as a quiet, emptied space. The spiral gestures towards infinity and light. Past and present dissolve into one another, reflecting 'Quiet Pieces' meditation on sound, memory, and time.
RIYL Alessandro Cortini, William Basinski, The Caretaker
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Scott Monteith makes his debut on Berlin's own Bright Sounds under his DEADBEAT alias, bringing three unreleased dub tracks steeped in the deep, cavernous low end he's known for. A pioneer of the Canadian dub techno scene, DEADBEAT has spent over two decades shaping the genre's darker, more spacious corners, and this EP marks a fitting first outing for the label. Pressed in a strictly limited deep blue vinyl edition, it's a must for collectors and dub heads alike.
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»Baby Ghost« is the debut album by double bassist and vocalist Jordan Sand. Released through Hallow Ground, it blurs the lines between different genres and modes of expressions, improvisation and composition and showcases the unique playing style the composer has developed. Sand blends her voice with the bowed harmonics and subharmonics of her double bass. At once conceptually rigorous and musically open-ended, Sand’s wordless meditations on death and what comes after are both visceral and explorative.
Sand is a boundary-crossing instrumentalist, performer, and session musician who has worked in folk, free jazz, pop, classical and new as well as experimental music. In 2020, she took a hiatus. When she picked up the bass again, she began stripping down the relationship to her instrument to its core elements, searching for a way to melt the sounds of bow and voice together. This resulted in the appearance of ghost notes, tones emerging from the addition or subtraction of two frequencies, and harmonics that she adds with her falsetto.
On »Baby Ghost,« Sand utilises this acoustic sound and the spontaneous precision of her improvisational practice for pieces that deal with the subject of dying. They move from more polyphonic improvisations toward abstraction, touching upon harsh noise and minimalistic bow-chants before returning briefly to a melodic soliloquy, and finally landing on an extended subharmonic drone. This progression reflects the journey of the spirit after death; the experience of visions, memories, ecstasies and terrors before the dissolution of the self.
Sand performs this process physically, blending her voice with her instrument to explore how the senses might dissolve and merge when they enter a state between life and beyond-or-between-life. Born out of the moment and dedicated to a lost friend, »Baby Ghost« is quite literally an otherworldly achievement.
Lily Juniper's debut album, 'Bloom Gloom' is set for release via Friends of Friends. Co-written and produced by long term collaborator and partner yours.truly, the record holds a mirror up to ourselves and the world around us. Inspired by sounds of the early 2010's post dubstep and indie scenes and written with feelings at the forefront, the album explores themes of self discovery, nostalgia and the endless battle between light and dark, with each track telling a story of what it means to be human:
EverEve - "Seasons", "Stormbirds" & "Regret"The first three masterpieces of Germany's EverEve, (Their name is taken from a poem out of "Lord of the Rings") "Seasons" (1997), "Stormbirds" (1998), and "Regret" (1999), are deeply emotional works of art, forged in darkness, melancholy, and poetic introspection, standing today as some of the most compelling statements ever produced within the Gothic Metal movement.In the late 1990s, while countless bands attempted to define the boundaries of Gothic Metal, EverEve effortlessly rose above convention Their music was never confined by genre limitations. It drew equally from Doom Metal's oppressive weight, Gothic Rock's romantic desolation, and the emotional grandeur of Dark Wave, creating a soundscape that was uniquely their own. "Seasons " marked the beginning of this remarkable journey. A debut album rich in atmosphere and emotional depth, it introduced a band already possessing a mature artistic identity. Its songs unfold like chapters from a forgotten gothic novel, where every melody is wrapped in shadows and every lyric resonates with profound emotional sincerity.
EverEve - "Seasons", "Stormbirds" & "Regret"The first three masterpieces of Germany's EverEve, (Their name is taken from a poem out of "Lord of the Rings") "Seasons" (1997), "Stormbirds" (1998), and "Regret" (1999), are deeply emotional works of art, forged in darkness, melancholy, and poetic introspection, standing today as some of the most compelling statements ever produced within the Gothic Metal movement.In the late 1990s, while countless bands attempted to define the boundaries of Gothic Metal, EverEve effortlessly rose above convention Their music was never confined by genre limitations. It drew equally from Doom Metal's oppressive weight, Gothic Rock's romantic desolation, and the emotional grandeur of Dark Wave, creating a soundscape that was uniquely their own. "Seasons " marked the beginning of this remarkable journey. A debut album rich in atmosphere and emotional depth, it introduced a band already possessing a mature artistic identity. Its songs unfold like chapters from a forgotten gothic novel, where every melody is wrapped in shadows and every lyric resonates with profound emotional sincerity.
Valley of the Sun's sixth studio LP, "The Blacklight Sessions", is a deep dive into the sonic roots of the band who continues to defy genre norms. With tracks ranging from blues jam to psychedelic desert trip to driving stoner riffage, the band continues to demonstrate that their music knows no bounds, nor should it.
Hot Pink Vinyl. Valley of the Sun's sixth studio LP, "The Blacklight Sessions", is a deep dive into the sonic roots of the band who continues to defy genre norms. With tracks ranging from blues jam to psychedelic desert trip to driving stoner riffage, the band continues to demonstrate that their music knows no bounds, nor should it.
Since the release of DAMAGED in 2024, Michael Fiedler aka GHOST DUBS has been surfing intensifying waves of adulation, earning praise from such diverse underground legends as Justin Broadrick (Godflesh/Jesu), Regis, Stefan Betke (Pole) and Steve Von Till (Neurosis). With second album Oblique, his mastery of sculpting sound waves results in a spellbinding set of alien soundscapes: larger in scale, richer in tone and considerably more cinematic than its predecessor. Lower, deeper and moodier, its cloudy abstractions, shadowy pulsations and submerged rhythms find Fiedler reaching further into his own sonic void, crafting blurred melodies and addictive narco loops into something simultaneously heavyweight and hypnotic. Album opener "Low Times" sets the atmospheric pressure to maximum, resembling a dream date between prime dirt-house era Andy Stott and Berlin dub-tech pioneers Basic Channel. From there, Oblique descends into a series of enchanting mood scenes: the furtive, balletic gyrations of "After All", the haunting ambience and buried heartbeat throb of "Soft Collapse", and the noirish atmospherics of "Blackout Dust", which worms its way into the mind like some forgotten David Lynch scene. The spirit of reggae is more distanced here than on DAMAGED, but the ghost of Jamaican dub still permeates these foggy soundscapes, particularly on "Bombed Suburbs", where Augustus Pablo-style melodicism is chopped, screwed and slowed into a magnetic lock groove. Superficially minimal but maximal in its minute detail, Oblique is a record of contorted reflections, mesmeric echoes and tantalising audio mirages. By the vaporous mist of closing track "Almost a Structure", obvious rhythm has been craftily filtered away, leaving a blurred and blunted residue full of mystery and implied narrative. Dense in the best possible sense and crushing when played loud yet equally potent played quiet, Oblique imagines dub techno burning its own rigid rulebook: sensual, funky and concussive rather than dry or alienating. "Second album from electronic producer Michael Fiedler's GHOST DUBS project. "Follows up from the highly-acclaimed 'Implosion' album with The Bug from 2025. "Debut album 'Damaged' sold out its three initial pressings and has just been repressed "Michael Fiedler recently scored 'Sound of Falling' which won a Cannes award in 2025 and made the shortlist for an Oscar, too.
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First Principles marks the debut release on Groove Disciples Series, a new DJ-focused vinyl catalogue from 80147, created as a natural extension of the Groove Disciples Podcast. While the podcast has connected DJs and selectors from local scenes across Europe through guest mixes and conversations, the new series continues that mission through carefully curated vinyl releases from artists who are both DJs and producers.
Opening the catalogue, Bloody G delivers four dancefloor-oriented cuts that explore the space between deep house and Detroit-inspired techno edges. From the melodic and melanchonic "Message in the Sound" to the driving "Regroup Reclaim Rebuild" and "Machine Funk" with a reinterpretation by Southbound Sounds, the EP is built with club functionality at its core, favouring groove, analogue warmth and musical restraint over passing trends.
First Principles establishes the philosophy behind the series: music first, DJs at the centre, and vinyl as the medium that continues to connect local clubbing scenes through music, collaboration and community.
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The practice of dub techno and its tendrils is a fundamental for me, both aesthetically and from an engineering perspective.
I start every recording session with a dub inspired jam, the first piece I ever recorded in 1996 was an effort to recreate Phylyps Trak with only a Korg X3 and an Ibanez PUE5 (borrowed from Gary Howell). It was an awesome introduction to jamming, and the footing stones of noise, delay and saturation were explored with my foot hard on the enthusiasm pedal.
These practice jams are in some sense cathartic, the first step taken again & again, which helps me move forwards each session and additionally helps to 'warm the circuits' both of myself and the machines.
After realising the genius of Basic Channel is akin to the genius of peasant food, using every ingredient with nothing left to waste, (up to and including the oft maligned working noise of the machines themselves), this was a watershed moment for my own subjective progression. No longer tied to just emulation of something inspiring, but taking these learned tools into other areas of music helped to break free from a strong current of influence and also to progress into other areas with the new toolbox.
Dub:
The importance of the dub pioneers should never be understated, in modern music and my own practice. Yet with my initial inspiration being two german dudes issuing extreme techno variants with obscured label designs, who then signposted their listeners to their own inspirations (via their Wackies re-issues or nodded to on their Rhythm & Sound/Burial Mix sub-labels), meant that I started late and travelled backwards.
Learning to notice the live mixing of Mikey Dread or Lee Perry when the faders are bleeding through even when turned down, (echoed in BC's Quadrant Dub), or the brash send effects literally thrown into the mix also taught me that 'rough' mixing can inject a recording with life, uniqueness and the most right wrongness. Looking back Basic Channels very few elements helped me realise that the rules to be understood, are also the best ones to be broken.
Push the mixer into the red.
Amp that noise up from the tape delay cos it sounds sick.
Pseudo side-chain effects cos the kicks are way too loud and the mixer can't sum it nicely.
Spam the send knob into the delay units now, now and now.
Carelessness.
Noise:
Once I wrapped my head around the intrinsic 'noise' element that set those records apart, this became a torchlight into the alt noise movements which I was tentatively exploring at the time, and also is evidently a connection or thread into them.
Whether the Industrial/Post Punk UK scene (This Heat, TG, A Tent, F.E.) or the prolific output of the US Noise scene (Wolf Eyes, Live & Shave in LA, and subsequently following the lineage all the way back to Chrome's Alien Soundtracks), I had finally discovered a connection from techno to this 'free for all' corner of music.
This input from the Noise arena of sound is, in my experience, an all important step for a sonic artist, taking it's roots and extending out from Stockhausen/Pierre Henry and utilised/warped/mangled by thousands of adventurous pioneers ever since, I now see the line separating the high brow and the low brow is actually an artery carrying information from the head to the heart.
Vault is a selection of these jams that precede each of my solo recording sessions, for 30 years I've recorded hundreds of these 'workouts'. They are never intended as serious statements, just moments of naive enjoyment, yet most importantly they are time & space captured as practice.
The objective is always a warm up exercise, but sometimes those exercises turn a different corner, with a certain focus or direction dependent on what random samples are left in my machines from the previous session, instead of conscious choices, these unconscious elements can facilitate those 'positive mistakes' that make a piece of sound retain a different feel or colour and thus become special, or at least special to the creator.
I am quite conscious that the 'record everything' aspect of my ethos has been invaluable in cataloguing and saving these jams, while the attitude of carelessness during this process (after all, it's only a warm up jam) invites more enjoyment than seriousness ever could. Even if you don't feel the piece at the time, record it, because some years later it may well fit, or become relevant in a way you never intended.
-Miles
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Label boss Alessio Collina is finally here with his first E.P on the limited series! “Shades of me E.P” is one of the most personal work he ever made until now because it touches different styles of House, rooted always from the same school. We start from the A side where we find “Bloom in the garage” as first track: Old-school groove, fat bassline, dirty drums and some Garage stabs with the hot swing by MPC1000. The second track is “Back to the real”: a sexy, mental Deep/Tribal tune which can be fit in a warm up set or during an intimate Afterhour. In the B side we have “Spring Equinox”, a Techy roller with an absolute killer bassline, some dreamy melodies and a dynamic stab: dancefloor weapon. We close the record with “The Party” on the B2, which sounds like an old dark Chicago House record but revisited in an alternative way.
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Modern Apartments arrive on Dark Entries, with Light on Water, an LP featuring 8 cuts of instrumental cosmic-kosmische analog synth workouts. Modern Apartments is Ryan Ambridge, the musician and producer best known for his work with dark synth projects Linea Aspera and Lust Pattern. While both of those outlets lean towards the greyscale and robotic, Ambridge wanted to explore a more colorful palette with Modern Apartments, a livelier, looser sound. The medium of film plays a major role here; Ambridge works as a projectionist, screening archival prints of 35mm and 16mm films, and the textures and temporality of the medium fed directly into the Modern Apartments aesthetic. But it isn’t all blurry edges and fuzzy optimism on Light on Water. Says Ambridge, “Regular beats from old rhythm boxes and the sharp angles of post-punk found their way in. The contrasting imagery from those old film prints, of dense cities and open countryside, is reflected back in the dialog between looser sounds and rigid stylistic choices.” This tension shines through on tracks like album opener “Completely,” which pairs the icy minimalism of John Foxx with the meandering grooves of Cluster, or the eponymous “Light on Water” which leans even further into the sun-bleached vibes of Roedelius. Artwork for this record was designed by Eloise Shir-Juen Leigh. Light on Water is perfect late-summer listening, as the last gasps of seasonal radiance fade into autumnal splendor.
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Japanese crossover and fusion are hot again now. As either an outgrowth of, or a spin-off phenomenon from, the global reappraisal of
city pop, Japanese fusion has been rapidly rising since around last year.
Widely known as a support member for YMO and also popular on the overseas club music scene through Colored Music, her cuttingedge dance-pop unit with Atsuo Fujimoto, keyboardist, composer, and vocalist Ichiko Hashimoto released this, her second solo work, in
1985. Released on DOMO, the label headed by Kazumi Watanabe, and naturally produced by Kazumi Watanabe himself, who also plays
guitar on the album.
A truly crossover work of remarkable freedom, moving across fusion, techno, piano pieces, danceable music, classical, Japanesque
sounds, bossa nova, ambient, and more. Her fleeting singing voice is wonderful as well.
The Yummy Fur’s first album of new material in over 25 years is seductive and ambiguous; a fast-paced flip through scenes from art, myth, life and fantasy; a witty whole made from glittering scraps. The band’s original incarnation – fronted by singer, songwriter and guitarist John McKeown from 1992 to 1999 – morphed from making quick-hit cartoon-art songs to Eno and Cale-influenced creepers, populated by characters from McKeown’s life in Glasgow and the films, books and poetry that he lived a parallel life through. Everybody Talks About The Weather delights in using every past iteration of the band as potent collage material: a melee of sounds and ideas existing at once, revealing themselves then dipping back into hiding.
Recorded by the original core trio of McKeown, Brian MacDougall (guitar) and Paul Thomson (drums), Everybody Talks About The Weather comes 17 years after the band reformed for sporadic live shows, and seven years after the release of their sorta-greatest hits compilation Piggy Wings (Rock Action). Ten tracks long with nothing to spare, it is as condensed and vital as their best songs, with a new clarity of sound that allows their ambiguities to come into the light.
The album begins with “Cogs”, a taunting inquisition from within. As McKeown stages a fight between his id and ego, the tension heats up between conversational guitar lines and minimalist repetition; threatening sing-song melody and real, palpable menace. The band members are forced in tandem only to break apart, sustaining a genuine sense of just-hidden danger throughout the whole record – except, arguably, “Headphones”, a looser moment which sees McKeown make an existential something out of nothing while waiting for someone in the car (“I should have brought a book.../My ears are bleeding from the compression on your album”)
The songs are riots of reference: “Unity Over Europe” is a slyly complex two act play about the Mitford sisters – Diana, Unity, and Nancy, in a wink to the YF canon – smashing tragic biographical detail together with allusions to Thomas Pynchon and Francis Bacon. Pynchon is also lifted to serve “Blue Sunshine”, a collision of school shooters, serial killers and fictional fuck-ups (“Fast forward to Compton/Fast forward to Pynchon/Fast forward to Columbine'”) whose buzzy guitar lines are taunting and confrontational like a smarmy teenager. The innocuous title of “My Lasagne” belies a song that exists in several time periods at once: a visit to see Guernica, 50 people with their backs to the portrait of Dora Maar; the time that Picasso painted from; the Reina Sofia and the dirty streets of the Malasaña; myth-making musicians and the myths they’re riffing off overlapping and leering at each other.
All this could be laboured in lesser hands, but cultural verbosity is second nature to The Yummy Fur, who transform all this source material into songs that are weird, sexy, funny and absurd. Meaning is not happily understood or flattened. Susan Sontag's essay Against Interpretation accompanied McKeown as he wrote this album, and she’s paraphrased in “Semolina Ballerina”, the album’s justification of artistic ambiguity. Thomson’s motorik beat leads a gathering of back-and-forth instrumental phrases – including a wiry contribution on saxophone – embodying the futility of trying to parse something definitive from repeated action. “Listen to the very first thing that’s in your head,” Sontag-via-McKeown commands directly, then slinks sideways: “Interpretation is a conversation in an unmade bed”
The album features two more focused portraits, or at least The Yummy Fur’s version of such a thing. “Wanda” merges the life of filmmaker Barbara Loden and the title character of her semi-autobiographical 1970 feature film, with Loden’s then-husband Elia Kazan joining the fray of no-good men in her film. It’s a mix of adaptation and avant-criticism, with McKeown’s wordplay and mannered pronunciation mirroring the way that non-fiction and fiction twist around each other in the song. The title track is a series of vignettes and impressions from the lives of the band’s ‘90s inner circle, positing painter Mac McNaughton as a kind of Falstaffian ringleader. As with Piggy Wings and the recent single “New T-Shirt”, McNaughton painted the cover of Everybody Talks About The Weather – like the album’s music, the image of a coy girl in a white dress is an uncanny amalgamation of styles, suggestions and references just out of reach, as though seen in an art museum in a dream.
The album ends with two reads of the same frustration. “King of Nothing” is the closest The Yummy Fur will ever get to sludge-rock: the band melts together into a dusty, dreary haze as McKeown drowns in a drudgery of personal struggle (“Two jumpers on in Babylon/And only cats to talk to”) and the rhythmic toppling of heroes (Rowlands, Duvall, Munro). The majority of visible dirt is cleaned off for “Say Hello”, an uncharacteristic depiction of throwing the windows open after a dark night of the soul. Here, the situation is still cold and hard (“When the sun burns gold, but the heat never reaches your fingertips”) but it feels surmountable. Everybody Talks About The Weather is an unpredictable album from an unpredictable group, but ending on a moment of almost uncomplicated light is maybe its biggest surprise. - Claire Biddles (2026)
The Yummy Fur’s first album of new material in over 25 years is seductive and ambiguous; a fast-paced flip through scenes from art, myth, life and fantasy; a witty whole made from glittering scraps. The band’s original incarnation – fronted by singer, songwriter and guitarist John McKeown from 1992 to 1999 – morphed from making quick-hit cartoon-art songs to Eno and Cale-influenced creepers, populated by characters from McKeown’s life in Glasgow and the films, books and poetry that he lived a parallel life through. Everybody Talks About The Weather delights in using every past iteration of the band as potent collage material: a melee of sounds and ideas existing at once, revealing themselves then dipping back into hiding.
Recorded by the original core trio of McKeown, Brian MacDougall (guitar) and Paul Thomson (drums), Everybody Talks About The Weather comes 17 years after the band reformed for sporadic live shows, and seven years after the release of their sorta-greatest hits compilation Piggy Wings (Rock Action). Ten tracks long with nothing to spare, it is as condensed and vital as their best songs, with a new clarity of sound that allows their ambiguities to come into the light.
The album begins with “Cogs”, a taunting inquisition from within. As McKeown stages a fight between his id and ego, the tension heats up between conversational guitar lines and minimalist repetition; threatening sing-song melody and real, palpable menace. The band members are forced in tandem only to break apart, sustaining a genuine sense of just-hidden danger throughout the whole record – except, arguably, “Headphones”, a looser moment which sees McKeown make an existential something out of nothing while waiting for someone in the car (“I should have brought a book.../My ears are bleeding from the compression on your album”)
The songs are riots of reference: “Unity Over Europe” is a slyly complex two act play about the Mitford sisters – Diana, Unity, and Nancy, in a wink to the YF canon – smashing tragic biographical detail together with allusions to Thomas Pynchon and Francis Bacon. Pynchon is also lifted to serve “Blue Sunshine”, a collision of school shooters, serial killers and fictional fuck-ups (“Fast forward to Compton/Fast forward to Pynchon/Fast forward to Columbine'”) whose buzzy guitar lines are taunting and confrontational like a smarmy teenager. The innocuous title of “My Lasagne” belies a song that exists in several time periods at once: a visit to see Guernica, 50 people with their backs to the portrait of Dora Maar; the time that Picasso painted from; the Reina Sofia and the dirty streets of the Malasaña; myth-making musicians and the myths they’re riffing off overlapping and leering at each other.
All this could be laboured in lesser hands, but cultural verbosity is second nature to The Yummy Fur, who transform all this source material into songs that are weird, sexy, funny and absurd. Meaning is not happily understood or flattened. Susan Sontag's essay Against Interpretation accompanied McKeown as he wrote this album, and she’s paraphrased in “Semolina Ballerina”, the album’s justification of artistic ambiguity. Thomson’s motorik beat leads a gathering of back-and-forth instrumental phrases – including a wiry contribution on saxophone – embodying the futility of trying to parse something definitive from repeated action. “Listen to the very first thing that’s in your head,” Sontag-via-McKeown commands directly, then slinks sideways: “Interpretation is a conversation in an unmade bed”
The album features two more focused portraits, or at least The Yummy Fur’s version of such a thing. “Wanda” merges the life of filmmaker Barbara Loden and the title character of her semi-autobiographical 1970 feature film, with Loden’s then-husband Elia Kazan joining the fray of no-good men in her film. It’s a mix of adaptation and avant-criticism, with McKeown’s wordplay and mannered pronunciation mirroring the way that non-fiction and fiction twist around each other in the song. The title track is a series of vignettes and impressions from the lives of the band’s ‘90s inner circle, positing painter Mac McNaughton as a kind of Falstaffian ringleader. As with Piggy Wings and the recent single “New T-Shirt”, McNaughton painted the cover of Everybody Talks About The Weather – like the album’s music, the image of a coy girl in a white dress is an uncanny amalgamation of styles, suggestions and references just out of reach, as though seen in an art museum in a dream.
The album ends with two reads of the same frustration. “King of Nothing” is the closest The Yummy Fur will ever get to sludge-rock: the band melts together into a dusty, dreary haze as McKeown drowns in a drudgery of personal struggle (“Two jumpers on in Babylon/And only cats to talk to”) and the rhythmic toppling of heroes (Rowlands, Duvall, Munro). The majority of visible dirt is cleaned off for “Say Hello”, an uncharacteristic depiction of throwing the windows open after a dark night of the soul. Here, the situation is still cold and hard (“When the sun burns gold, but the heat never reaches your fingertips”) but it feels surmountable. Everybody Talks About The Weather is an unpredictable album from an unpredictable group, but ending on a moment of almost uncomplicated light is maybe its biggest surprise. - Claire Biddles (2026)
»Pipe Dreams II & III« presents two new, side-long organ works by Mary Jane Leach, extending the sonic investigations of her 1989 landmark »Pipe Dreams«. Recorded in Ghent and Cologne, the two side-long pieces use shifting stops, resonance and beating tones to turn the pipe organ into a vivid, physical field of sound.
When »Pipe Dreams« was issued on vinyl for the first time by Blume in 2017, it was effectively the first time many of us encountered Mary Jane Leach’s music, finally placing her work in its proper historical context amid the searching Downtown milieu of Julius Eastman, Arthur Russell, Arnold Dreyblatt, Ellen Fullman, Philip Corner, Daniel Goode, and Peter Zummo. Leach collaborated with most of these artists at one point or another, either in Downtown Ensemble or as a guest on their records.
Now »Pipe Dreams II« and »Pipe Dreams III« arrive, recorded in 2023 and 2024 at Miry Concertzaal in Ghent, Belgium, and Kunst-Station Sankt Peter in Cologne, respectively.
»When I was a young child, my family lived next door to a church, where my mother was the organist. I spent many hours lying on the floor of the sanctuary listening to the music, letting the sound of the organ envelop me. I also liked to play the piano loudly with the pedal down, producing clouds of sound, much to my family’s annoyance. These two organ pieces explore some of my earliest musical interests and aesthetics.
In 1989, I lived in a tower attached to St Peter’s Church in Cologne, where I had access to its organ. It had two sets of pipes, front and back, which could create antiphonal effects. I spent countless hours exploring the possibilities of all the permutations of notes, space, and the resulting sound phenomena. I wrote »Pipe Dreams« for that organ. Fast forward to 2023, when I was asked to create a piece for organ for a concert at the Miry Concertzaal in Ghent, Belgium: »Pipe Dreams II«. I had a few days to familiarise myself with the organ, its available stops, and the layout of the console. I choreographed stop changes for a volunteer, as I couldn’t reach them myself. Some amazing sounds began to happen, and at one point the sound was so visceral that I felt as though I were taming a wild beast.
»Pipe Dreams III« was performed in 2024 on the organ that I had spent so much time playing in 1989–90. One big difference, though, was that the console was totally new and computerised. Having access to the organ for only a few hours before the concert, I decided that I did not have enough time to feel comfortable with the console and should not attempt to recreate the piece I had written in 1989. I would instead use the same sequence of stops and perform an improvised piece. I loved the sounds that were being created, and I was having so much fun that at one point I even started to laugh quietly. I began to visualise the beating notes as if they were atoms, opening them up to expose their innards, with the beating, higher-pitched notes — neutrons and protons — shimmering at the top, and the lower notes — the electrons — throbbing away at the bottom. I was playing notes not so much for their pitch value, but for how they affected the notes and sound phenomena already being played. Instead of a time signature, I timed the entries by listening to the beating patterns, waiting for the right moment to enter. And no, I wasn’t hallucinating.«
Rochester, NY's The Jet Black Berries existed at the strange and fertile intersection of post-punk restlessness, roots-rock mythology, psychedelic revival, and science-fiction dread. Emerging from the band’s earlier incarnation as New Math, the group refocused in the mid-1980s with a new name, a new vision, and a sound that moved beyond the limits of punk rock and new wave. What followed was darker, stranger, and more ambitious: country-rock ghosts, rockabilly swing, western balladry, psych-punk atmosphere, and beat-inspired storytelling fused into one singular vision. After feeling stymied in their previous form, the renewed band set its sights on breaking out to other countries and, conceptually, other planets.
Recorded in two days in August of 1984, Sundown on Venus was originally released by Enigma/Pink Dust after the newly reconfigured band signed with Enigma. The original 1985 release, however, arrived with complications. Enigma wanted additional material included, so the album was packaged with a bonus 12-inch featuring extra tracks, including a song written for the film The Return of the Living Dead, ill-chosen cover songs, and re-recordings of older New Math material.
Now, the Sundown on Venus Definitive Edition restores the album to what the band originally envisioned it in 1985. Released on CD for the first time with 12 songs newly remastered & re-presented with focus, this "Definitive Edition" brings attention back to the album’s dark narrative arc & unusual genre chemistry. Though the original album received press coverage on both sides of the Atlantic in outlets including Cash Box, Billboard, CMJ, Interview, and the UK’s SOUNDS, Sundown on Venus never found the commercial audience its ambition deserved. What once slipped through the cracks of underground rock history now stands as a missing link between cowpunk, psych revival, rockabilly, goth, post-punk, Americana, & cinematic sci-fi storytelling.
Errands is the first duo recording from Marja Ahti, Swedish-Finnish sound artist and electroacoustic composer, and John McCowen, a native of Southern Illinois, now residing in Iceland, whose work centres on a radical exploration of clarinet multiphonics. Working without the aid of electronics, McCowen has spent years finessing performance techniques that allow him to layer beating patterns and split tones that belie their source in a monophonic instrument. Ahti, in contrast, has built up a stunning body of work in recent years using a classic electroacoustic palette of electronic, field recordings and instrumental sounds. Sharing a bill at the 2024 iteration of Stockholm’s Edition Festival, the pair discovered a sensibility shared across their different sonic means, beginning the collaborative process that would eventually result in the mercurial side-long pieces heard on Errands.
The word ‘errand’ suggests something purposeful but routine, and Ahti’s and McCowen’s work is suffused with the everyday. Meeting with McCowen to record in Iceland, Ahti used the opportunity to gather field recordings, capturing not the natural sublimity often associated with the country—think Chris Watson’s shifting glaciers—but everyday life in Reykjavik. Snatches of bustling streets and what could be humming engines thread between static sinewaves, stretches of clarinet resonances and fleeting textures, the latter often at once visceral and impossible to identify. Errands: we are a long way from the grandiose framing devices favoured by the pioneers of electroacoustic music, yet many of their principles are at work here. The gradual metamorphosis of one sound into another, the carefully achieved ambiguity between the acoustic and electronic, the treatment of the stereo field as a compositional element: all of these link Ahti and McCowen’s music to the electroacoustic tradition, yet their sensibility is radically different. The overall effect is a kind of stillness, but one at peace with continuous change. Like the unwieldy but somehow stylish everyday forms captured in the Hertta Kiiski photographs that adorn the record's sleeve, the music seems to prize a kind of deliberate awkwardness, interrupting static held textures not with an abrupt cut, but with a quick fade, suddenly revealing background as foreground.
Ahti and McCowen’s world is everyday and unornamented, but also shadowed by the numinous. Halfway through 'Chorales', we hear an arrangement for overdubbed recorders of an early motet of Messiaen’s, O sacrum convivium! Played on recorders, the piece shrinks into delicacy and dim memories of childhood music lessons, while at the same time its harmonies retain the grandeur of their liturgical origin. This double quality inflects much of what follows on Errands, including snatches of field-recorded water or air, which seem at once elemental and domestic. Enlivened with countless details that repay repeated relistening, Errands is a record that leaves the listener ready to open their ears anew to their own sound environment.
Jason Dungan (aka Blue Lake) and Johan Carøe find beauty in the rhythms
and repetitions of domestic life for collaborative album, 'Routine' - out September 25
Copenhagen-based multi-instrumentalists Jason Dungan and Johan Carøe didn't set out to make an album. Instead, as the title 'Routine' suggests, they found their way there through a process of habitual making and listening, developing an intuitive musical language to reflect the dreamlike meanderings and creative play of life's quiet moments. 'Routine' blends pop orientated sounds, Avant-garde minimalism, folk and new age with the emotive depth of film-score.
Their meeting was not entirely coincidental. Previously in bands such as Squares and Triangles, Jason Dungan has since recorded multiple albums under the moniker Blue Lake, including the lauded 'Sun Arcs', pursuing his passion for self-built percussion and multi-string instruments. Johan Carøe meanwhile is a composer whose film soundtrack work has seen him collaborate with Angelo Badalamenti, Arp, and Sofie Birch, at whose Andersabo residency (curated by Dungan) the pair first met, resulting in the highly praised album 'Repair Techniques' written by Birch and Carøe.
'Routine' emerged organically over many years against the backdrop of great personal change. As Carøe said goodbye to his father and welcomed his first child, the pair sent each other fragments of melodies and patterns, working up responses when time allowed to assemble a sonic palette that combined acoustic instrumentation of zither, clarinet, cello, saxophone (among others) with the textures of tape, drum machine and Yamaha DX7 synth. Inspired by the vulnerability and DIY ethos of Arthur Russell's home recordings, the vision of labels like Disques de Crepescule, and the art pop, experimentation inherent to late '70s and early '80s recordings from NYC and Japan alike, Dungan and Carøe conjured new forms for their folk, leftfield pop and avant garde influences from the low-lit living rooms of Copenhagen and rural Sweden. "I'm very interested in the ways in which music and art emerge from our wider experiences as people, workers, parents and in the daydreaming activity of making music," Dungan explains of a process which allowed the duo's individual styles to drift apart and merge together seamlessly. "I think the process was definitely capturing moments in time, but over a long time," Carøe adds. "It was a bit like improvisation, but with time stretched."
The music floats with grace and humility, remaining sophisticated yet acutely introverted.
Whether on 'Clouds', where soft layers of zither and clarinet are moved along by a featherlight bass riff and the hypnotic clip-clop of the primitive groovebox, or the gentle grandeur of cello rising and falling through 'Routine 1', the album reveals itself over 10 instrumental tracks, evoking the ineffable calm that descends when the light changes and the world turns inwards. The act of time passing became a key creative ingredient to the evolution of the album, enriched with the exciting challenge to transform their passing rounds of home recordings via a slow release musical dialogue. Jason found creative moments in the twilight hours to lay down zither, melodica, acoustic guitar to name but few, while Johan utilising "line-in and headphones" would manipulate, stretch and pitch Jason's melodic pathways during newly born naptimes.
Carøe rhythmically plucks and slides the stringed cello instrument, leaving palpable foundations on 'Hymn' and 'Chords', in a treated, stylistic approach akin to Mabe Fratti, while 'Silence' draws to a close with a gospel touch. Dungan's harp-motion zither flourishes reveal more classical connotations on 'Reunion' with inspiration of Bedroom Community's Nico Muhly as organs rise with Moogs, culminating with a climatic choral outro from friend, mezzo-soprano Anna Caroline Olesen.
'Routine' then is their first collaboration, an album of deep and sincere reflection with inviting overtones that gesture with unrushed authenticity. A document of a new-found friendship that opens a window into the most personal of spaces, where the daily practices of music and life exist side-by-side to wondrous effect.
Montréal-based sound artist Steve Bates expands his strategies and stylistic influences on An Infinite Antenna, his second solo album for Constellation, giving freer reign to melodic components and textural dynamics: leftfield synth work, deconstructed drum machine, pointillist electric guitar, and radiostatic blur are all part of the new brew swirling around his bruitist signal-bending and field-recording sensibility. Arguably a more ambient album than his acclaimed 2022 Constellation debut, An Infinite Antenna is at the same time more densely packed with ideas, dynamics, evocations and earworms. Coming out of the anarcho-punk scene of the Canadian Prairies in the 1990s, Bates founded Winnipeg’s experimental sound festival Send + Receive in 1998 before moving to Montréal to become Sound Coordinator at Hexagram (Concordia University), delving further into sonic research and theory, tape-based composition, and installation work. Alongside the curatorial arc of his own sound art label The Dim Coast, Bates released several solo and collaborative albums on ORAL_records leading up to All The Things That Happen, the 2022 Constellation debut praised by Boomkat for its “grittily iridescent ambient billow rendering maximalist panoramas” and by Backseat Mafia as “extraordinary soundscapes of unstable, destructive cacophony and tender calm, echoes of the threat of power.” Where that album was noisier and single-minded, made with the self-imposed limit of a Casio SK-1, Bates plays more widely with instrumentation and atmospheres on An Infinite Antenna, also drawing on his post-hardcore roots in seeking a sort of track-by-track concision nonetheless driven by the album’s coherence as a seamless work. “I was trying to set durations I associate with punk rather than the longer, sprawling music coming from more ambient styles (that I very much love), and while I wasn’t able to quite pare it down to Minutemen durations, I had that reduction to essential elements as a sort of whisper over my shoulder.” Incorporating source recordings made throughout 2023-2025, including at artist residencies and site-specific sound installation visits in Bosnia and Herzegovina (the album’s cover photo was taken in Sarajevo), Austria, Greece, and Saskatchewan, An Infinite Antenna combines Bates’ “idea of slowly scanning a radio dial” with a soundworld of recurring timbral and textural touchstones that forge an integrated whole.
The album’s 12 tracks work effectively as stand-alone pieces, replete with shifting undercurrents, buried melody, and stuttering kinetics, and as a sequential flow where the brief interstitial silences between them are like short pauses to flip the next page in a sketchbook of perspectival studies of a wide but singular tableau. The glistening atonal synth expressionism of opener “Pink pink pink pink…pink pink” drifts gently toward submerged ambience, darkened by the noised rumble and static interference of “Green as a ghost”, which introduces broken beats and piano chords in its denouement. Tracks like “Battles and sieges and street trees” and “Easier sad than done” work the foundations of low-end field-recording resonance, but dappled with lovely melodic droplets of treated guitar and synth. “Waste, songs of the world” and “Disaster loans” are among the album’s most explicit stylistic references to posthardcore, with distorted ambient bass and gently abrasive drum sampling. Closing track “Swamps and factories”, the album’s longest piece, is perhaps most reminiscent of Bates’ previous record with its sustained dissonant glimmer-drone, but the journey An Infinite Antenna traces to get there is Bates at his most dynamic, diverse, distinctive, and engaging. Thanks for listening.
Montréal-based sound artist Steve Bates expands his strategies and stylistic influences on An Infinite Antenna, his second solo album for Constellation, giving freer reign to melodic components and textural dynamics: leftfield synth work, deconstructed drum machine, pointillist electric guitar, and radiostatic blur are all part of the new brew swirling around his bruitist signal-bending and field-recording sensibility. Arguably a more ambient album than his acclaimed 2022 Constellation debut, An Infinite Antenna is at the same time more densely packed with ideas, dynamics, evocations and earworms. Coming out of the anarcho-punk scene of the Canadian Prairies in the 1990s, Bates founded Winnipeg's experimental sound festival Send + Receive in 1998 before moving to Montréal to become Sound Coordinator at Hexagram (Concordia University), delving further into sonic research and theory, tape-based composition, and installation work. Alongside the curatorial arc of his own sound art label The Dim Coast, Bates released several solo and collaborative albums on ORAL_records leading up to All The Things That Happen, the 2022 Constellation debut praised by Boomkat for its "grittily iridescent ambient billow rendering maximalist panoramas" and by Backseat Mafia as "extraordinary soundscapes of unstable, destructive cacophony and tender calm, echoes of the threat of power." Where that album was noisier and single-minded, made with the self-imposed limit of a Casio SK-1, Bates plays more widely with instrumentation and atmospheres on An Infinite Antenna, also drawing on his post-hardcore roots in seeking a sort of track-by-track concision nonetheless driven by the album's coherence as a seamless work. "I was trying to set durations I associate with punk rather than the longer, sprawling music coming from more ambient styles (that I very much love), and while I wasn't able to quite pare it down to Minutemen durations, I had that reduction to essential elements as a sort of whisper over my shoulder." Incorporating source recordings made throughout 2023-2025, including at artist residencies and site-specific sound installation visits in Bosnia and Herzegovina (the album's cover photo was taken in Sarajevo), Austria, Greece, and Saskatchewan, An Infinite Antenna combines Bates' "idea of slowly scanning a radio dial" with a soundworld of recurring timbral and textural touchstones that forge an integrated whole. The album's 12 tracks work effectively as stand-alone pieces, replete with shifting undercurrents, buried melody, and stuttering kinetics, and as a sequential flow where the brief interstitial silences between them are like short pauses to flip the next page in a sketchbook of perspectival studies of a wide but singular tableau. The glistening atonal synth expressionism of opener 'Pink pink pink pink_pink pink' drifts gently toward submerged ambience, darkened by the noised rumble and static interference of 'Green as a ghost', which introduces broken beats and piano chords in its denouement. Tracks like 'Battles and sieges and street trees' and 'Easier sad than done' work the foundations of low-end field-recording resonance, but dappled with lovely melodic droplets of treated guitar and synth. 'Waste, songs of the world' and 'Disaster loans' are among the album's most explicit stylistic references to posthardcore, with distorted ambient bass and gently abrasive drum sampling. Closing track 'Swamps and factories,' the album's longest piece, is perhaps most reminiscent of Bates' previous record with its sustained dissonant glimmer-drone, but the journey An Infinite Antenna traces to get there is Bates at his most dynamic, diverse, distinctive, and engaging. Thanks for listening
After regular appearances at Berghain since his debut two years ago, Altinbas now presents his contribution to Ostgut Ton, tying together five tracks that outline an expedition through celestial bodies in ‘Beyond the Veil’. Deepening his research on intricately crafted ambiance, the EP strikes a balance between commanding rhythm and blossoming synth work that reaffirm his inimitable style. ‘Beyond the Veil’ is a conceptual collaboration between an artist and a room; describing the dancefloor as an organism and the architecture of its surroundings.
Over the years, harmony has become synonymous with the Belgian artist’s sound. Deeply tuned and cohesive, Altinbas’s productions walk the boundary between insistent anticipation and unparalleled warmth. Although dancefloor effect remains a central theme for him, ‘Beyond the Veil’ is the latest chapter in a long study of obscurity in music that qualifies almost as ritualistic. Tracks like ‘Beyond the Veil’ and ‘Charming the Cosmic Snake’create tension in the keys that resonates like an expedition into new soundscapes. With weight and stability in the percussion, airy textures and hypnotic synth lines roll off the rhythm to mesmerize the listener. Sculpting his arrangements around the development of rich, dubby and atmospheric tones, Altinbas capitalises on the natural flow of his elements to provide an organic touch to tracks that are tuned especially for high pressure sound systems. ‘Entanglement’ and ‘Winter’ are both examples of this : soulful techno that ebbs and flows with each transition. Dimension is pushed dramatically into each of the five pieces of the EP as a direct response to the current climate of tool oriented techno. Keeping a safe distance from this approach, Altinbas invites listeners to explore the shape of his sound in an embrace rather than submit to its abrasion. The project concludes with ‘Antichamber’ - the fifth track of the EP that announces a departure from strict club codes. Dampening the rhythm from a pulse to a sway, a dreamlike landscape rises from deep within the record, smoothing over any of the rougher residuals from the preceding tracks. The descent that is ‘Antichamber’ is the result of an accumulated euphoria, gently guiding the listener back to consciousness.
‘Beyond the Veil’ represents a checkpoint for Altinbas in his research of moving a dancefloor not only physically, but emotionally. Carving out his own space in dancefloor-oriented music, he offers highly expressive compositions in defiance of the status quo. Altinbas offers this EP as a personal statement of where he stands; five tracks of carefully tended tone and harmonic glow create an emotional urgency for the collective experience.
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A Flower to Water, the staggering new album from Greek Progressive-Post Metal outfit Playgrounded, finds the five-piece pushing their boundaries even further; welcoming the unquantifiable depths of loss, grief and finitude into their meticulous, fractal process as friends in defiance of neglect. Hailing from Athens, Greece but predominantly based in Rotterdam, Netherlands, Playgrounded have never ceased to push the envelope of Post Metal with genre-defying contemporary electronic and cinematic neo-classical elements since the band's inception almost two decades ago. A Flower to Water is Playgrounded's third full-length offering and sees the band thriving in their creative relationship with Pelagic Records. Recorded and produced by the band across multiple studios back home in Athens and Rotterdam, Playgrounded enlisted the help of longtime collaborators C. Cederberg (Leprous, Anathema) who mixed the album at Cederberg Studios in Kristiansand, Norway and George Tandero (Madrugada, Satyricon, Jaga Jazzist) who mastered it in Oslo. A profound sense of patience is keenly felt throughout the album. The deliberate spaces between each hammerblow guitar riff, pulsing bass line or hypnotic drum groove; each heavy, breathless pause and fizzing glitchy whisper all tell of unspoken loss and absence as an indelible part of A Flower to Water and indeed of Playgrounded forever more. In marking this absence however, in embracing loss head on, Playgrounded reify memory in defiance of neglect. By extracting such a colossal, breathtaking piece of work from a seemingly unassuming collection of sounds, clips and sonics; the quintet slow time to a standstill to present grief in bloom; a beautiful, perpetual flower with its roots in loved ones lost. FOR FANS OF Karnivool, Katatonia, Nine Inch Nails, Deftones, Moderat, The Ocean, Vola, Leprous, Skyharbor, Anathema
A Flower to Water, the staggering new album from Greek Progressive-Post Metal outfit Playgrounded, finds the five-piece pushing their boundaries even further; welcoming the unquantifiable depths of loss, grief and finitude into their meticulous, fractal process as friends in defiance of neglect. Hailing from Athens, Greece but predominantly based in Rotterdam, Netherlands, Playgrounded have never ceased to push the envelope of Post Metal with genre-defying contemporary electronic and cinematic neo-classical elements since the band's inception almost two decades ago. A Flower to Water is Playgrounded's third full-length offering and sees the band thriving in their creative relationship with Pelagic Records. Recorded and produced by the band across multiple studios back home in Athens and Rotterdam, Playgrounded enlisted the help of longtime collaborators C. Cederberg (Leprous, Anathema) who mixed the album at Cederberg Studios in Kristiansand, Norway and George Tandero (Madrugada, Satyricon, Jaga Jazzist) who mastered it in Oslo. A profound sense of patience is keenly felt throughout the album. The deliberate spaces between each hammerblow guitar riff, pulsing bass line or hypnotic drum groove; each heavy, breathless pause and fizzing glitchy whisper all tell of unspoken loss and absence as an indelible part of A Flower to Water and indeed of Playgrounded forever more. In marking this absence however, in embracing loss head on, Playgrounded reify memory in defiance of neglect. By extracting such a colossal, breathtaking piece of work from a seemingly unassuming collection of sounds, clips and sonics; the quintet slow time to a standstill to present grief in bloom; a beautiful, perpetual flower with its roots in loved ones lost. FOR FANS OF Karnivool, Katatonia, Nine Inch Nails, Deftones, Moderat, The Ocean, Vola, Leprous, Skyharbor, Anathema
Bilal Hassani, aged 25, a singer-songwriter, actor and producer, shares his daily life with over 3 million loyal fans around the world. He is the symbol of a new generation and champions the values of tolerance, acceptance, self-love and respect for all. Bilal is ranked among the world's 20 most influential LGBTQ+ figures by Vanity Fair. Regarded as a pop icon by Les Inrockuptibles magazine, Bilal Hassani has three albums and one mixtape to his name. With *Bonsoir Paris*, Bilal Hassani has released a twelve-track album entirely dedicated to partying, nightlife and the freedom to be oneself. Produced by himself and Sutus, the record revives the unapologetic pop and French Touch of the likes of David Guetta, Bob Sinclar, Daft Punk and Martin Solveig - that 90s house music that shaped his childhood - which he blends with bolder electro sounds and even a touch of Romanian pop. The album is mainly mixed by Nathan Boddy, whose work features on tracks by New Jeans, Mura Masa, Oklou, Olivia Dean and Shygirl, guaranteeing a production that is both pop and resolutely contemporary. In 2019, after representing France at Eurovision with his song "ROI" - a powerful message of self-acceptance - he released his debut album, KINGDOM, and won the NRJ Music Award for "Francophone Breakthrough Artist of the Year". In 2022, his third album, *Théorème*, was released, produced by the king of French pop, GrandMarnier of the group Yelle. With an average tempo of 124 BPM, the new album is made for dancing, conceived as a breath of fresh air for himself and his audience.
There are some first times you never forget. The first time one hears Syd Matters’ captivating voice is one of them.
From “End & Start Again”, his first single in 2003, Jonathan Morali’s warm, soulful vocals and timeless melodies revealed an artist in a league of his own. Success in France and abroad was immediate and has never waned.
Four albums followed between 2004 and 2011, along with a host of unforgettable songs: “Black & White Eyes”, “Obstacles”, “To All Of You” or “I Might Float” left their mark on an entire generation, racking up nearly 200 million streams and 100,000 physical sales. Drawing equally from the songwriting of the 60s, the creativity of the 70s and the modern synthetic era, Syd Matters has developed a unique musical universe, building a loyal and ever-growing audience over the years.
On stage, accompanied by his band, audiences recall intense concerts where the artist and his musicians deliver performances that were at once epic and intimate. Lush and spectacular on stage, their music never lost its center of gravity, gaining even in depth. Syd Matters toured France and Europe (England, Germany, Scandinavia...) for nearly ten years, as well as in the United States and Latin America. In 2011, the tour for his album Brother Ocean culminated in Paris at the mythical venue l’Olympia.
Jonathan Morali then took a step back from the spotlight but remained just as prolific, writing for film, theater, radio, and television and collaborating over the years with directors such Éric Rochant, Rémi Chayé, Thomas Litli, Patrick Mille, and Mélanie Laurent to name but a few. When scoring for films, the musician gives free rein to his desires and intuitions. He works with the very fabric of sounds and their underlying emotions, as if freed from the constraints imposed by the song format.
Between 2015 and 2019, he also composed the soundtracks for the remarkable video games Life Is Strange and Life Is Strange 2, which were massive global hits. Several Syd Matters tracks appeared in the game, and the success was such that it revived the band’s career, introducing their music to a new audience.
After an extended hiatus, Syd Matters will make a major comeback with a new album - their fifth - set for release in September 2026 on Créature - also home to Flora Fishbach and Chassol. They will then tour France and Europe, returning to the legendary stage of the Olympia on November 17, 2026, where they will perform their new songs. And others that we know by heart and haven’t forgotten.
“Music for me, is rarely complete,” says GODFLESH mastermind Justin Broadrick, “but it has to reach a point where enough is enough. Creatively, there has to be self-discipline. One has to end it.” Broadrick is primarily referring to the nebulous process of writing and arranging songs into their various potential shapes, but he could just as easily be describing GODFLESH’s imminent conclusion. Just three years after the hypnotic crunch of Purge, 25 years after an uncertain hiatus that nearly scuttled the band, and 38 years since GODFLESH’s inception, Broadrick and bassist-at-arms Ben Green set out to mercilessly crush this cold world with their tenth and penultimate album, this year’s Decay. “Decay was born from the same sessions as Purge,” Broadrick declares of the new record’s six tracks. “It was one huge pool of songs. I picked what I felt was appropriate for what I wanted to achieve with Purge, with the intention of releasing the songs that didn't fit as a new album within a year of Purge being released. Unfortunately, two years passed whilst considering external labels, so that I didn't have to self-release GODFLESH anymore, but it took an awful lot of time to establish a comfortable home for me. The recordings were done, but as usual for me, I did change a lot of stuff once I came back to it.” Now, GODFLESH is ready to unleash an even bolder, bleaker series of sounds in Decay. These songs arrive shortly after Broadrick released a public statement about major abdominal surgery he underwent earlier this year.
Intentions, the debut of LA-via-Chicago beat maker, composer, and multi-instrumentalist megiapa, is a 40 minute master class in synth-heavy, jazz-informed Neo-soul.
megiapa's lush and emotionally layered album feels less like a collection of songs and more like a living archive of transformation. Across its warm synths, fluttering basslines, meditative voice notes and spiritual grooves, the Los Angeles-based producer, vocalist and composer maps the uncertain terrain between heartbreak, healing, fear, and surrender.
The album's title is genuine.
"The record is literally my intentions," she says. "It's a representation of my intentions, my dreams over the last five years or so."
Those years carried the weight of upheaval: the pandemic, the collapse of a long-term relationship, a move away from Chicago, and the disorientation that follows when the structure of your life suddenly disappears beneath you. But Intentions never sounds defeated. Instead, it radiates the quiet confidence of someone learning to trust herself in real time.
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Originally released in 1978. A Classic Reggae album re-released on 180 gram vinyl and produced by Linval Thompson with extensive sleeve notes.
Recorded at Channel One Recording Studio & Harry J's Recording Studio.
Cornell Campbell is one of an elite group of Jamaican reggae singers who has weathered the changes throughout the music's development - in his case, from the ska era to right up to date - whilst retaining their relevance. Witness his recent alliance with UK Afrobeat/reggae band The Soothsayers or Jazmine Sullivan's R & B hit Need U Bad, which sampled his classic 'Queen Of The Minstrel' -a song that still sounds fresh more than thirty years later.
Sweet Baby was pressed on bright red vinyl, which only added to the excitement when you saw the selector position it carefully on the deck.
On the LP cover was a painting of Cornell wearing an emerald green shirt and framed by a lurid sky, which might have left some people wondering if it was a soul album. It wasn't, although there is certainly soul in the grooves, and especially on R&B covers like Gonna Take A Miracle - first recorded by the Royalettes -and Darling You Send Me, which Sam Cooke had introduced to the US Billboard charts some twenty years earlier.
Both are among the highlights but then the whole album is good in truth, and a heartfelt I Need Somebody and My Sweet Baby, plus the two-step favourite Just Enough were regularly played on sound system. Blinded By Love, I Didn't Know and Can't Hide My Love are tinged with melancholy and like the seductive Whenever You Need Me, display all the hallmarks of a classic Cornell Campbell side -swooping vocals, a driving rhythm and seductive lyrics included.
Nearly forty years later, it is gratifying to know there is still no mistaking him when his records are played in a dance. That relaxed vocal style draws you in but it's his falsetto, quivering with understated emotion that hooks you and turns you into a lifelong fan.
For acclaimed folk artist Martin Simpson, this release reflects not just a remarkable 50-year recording career, but over six decades shaped by song, tradition, and continual artistic growth. Yet this is not a retrospective, it's a forward-looking work, carrying the depth, skill, and passion of a lifetime into the present. Marking 50 years since his debut album Golden Vanity, Simpson describes Some Kind of Jubilee as "my best work to date." To realise this landmark project, he brings together an exceptional group of collaborators drawn from across his long and distinguished career. Among them are renowned pedal steel guitarist Greg Leisz, guitarist Zac Hobbs, cellist Liz Hanks, guitarist Louis Campbell, and double bassist Ben Nicholls. Together, they create a rich and textured soundscape that honours tradition while embracing fresh perspectives. Recorded at Groovemaster Studio in Santa Monica and completed in Yorkshire, the album blends newly written songs with reimagined traditional material and inspired reinterpretations from Simpson's own catalogue. The result is a deeply rooted yet vibrant collection that reflects both heritage and innovation. As Greg Leisz puts it, "This music has some profoundly deep roots - so dig in." With Some Kind of Jubilee, Martin Simpson honours his past while continuing to shape the future of folk music, reaffirming his place as one of the genre's most respected and enduring voices.
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