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For the 33rd release of the Acid Avengers series, we invited two projects made by four veterans of the french electronic scene. Fondzyo, a new duo composed of John Lord Fonda and Kazyo (half of Teenage Bad Girl), is delivering here its first release. Nomenklatur, the pair formed by the founders of Elektrofon, is already known for bomb releases on Module, Space Factory and their own imprint. On this new split EP, both projects offer a 303 journey made with mental groove, deep rythms and of course some pure acid techno. 5 tracks designed for the floor that are gonna kick your ass !

Dead Heat ist eine Crossover-Hardcore-Band aus Oxnard, Kalifornien, die 2016 gegründet wurde und für ihre energiegeladenen Live-Auftritte und ihren aggressiven Sound bekannt ist, der Einflüsse aus verschiedenen Subgenres von Punk und Metal vereint.Die Musik von Dead Heat zeichnet sich durch schnelle, thrashige Riffs, treibende Rhythmen, harmonische Leads und intensive Vocals aus, die oft ins Geschriene oder Gebrüllte übergehen. Die Texte der Band behandeln typischerweise soziale und politische Themen sowie persönliche Kämpfe und Erfahrungen.Im Laufe der Jahre hat Dead Heat mehrere EPs, ein Split mit den New Yorker Heavyweights Mindforce und zwei Alben veröffentlicht, darunter ihre neueste EP "Endless Torment", die 2023 über Triple B Records und Tank Crimes mit kritischer Anerkennung erschien. Sie haben auch ausgiebig getourt und Konzerte in den Vereinigten Staaten, Europa und Japan gespielt.Neben ihrer Musik ist Dead Heat auch für ihren DIY-Ansatz zur Punk/Metal-Kultur und ihre Beteiligung an der breiteren Hardcore-Szene bekannt. Die Bandmitglieder waren an der Organisation von Shows und Events beteiligt und unterstützen verschiedene soziale und politische Anliegen.Sales Points/Treiber (Karriere-Highlights/Fakten/Marketing-Info):• Shows und Tourneen mit Drain, Exodus, Cavalera Conspiracy, Mastodon, Harm's Way, Terror• Produziert von Paul Fig (Deftones, Alice in Chains)• Verfügbar auf Digital/Streaming, CD und LP• Authentischer Crossover-Sound mit Thrash-, Punk- und Hardcore-Einflüssen• DIY-Ethik und starke Verwurzelung in der Hardcore-Szene• Starke Live-Reputation mit Shows in USA, Europa und Japan• Kritisch gefeierte vorherige Veröffentlichungen

Jackie Mittoo’s ‘Reggae Magic’ is a new collection from the great Jackie Mittoo. The album features a mixture of classic tunes and rarities from the period 1967-74, when Mittoo was at the height of his musical powers. Mittoo’s solo career began after the end of The Skatalites in 1965. He began pushing new musical boundaries, creating a uniquely identifiable organ-led funky reggae sound that owed as much to Booker T and The MGs, Jimmy Smith, Stax and Motown as to the post-ska and emergent rocksteady island rhythms of Kingston, Jamaica. His solo work at the legendary Studio One spanned seven albums and hundreds of singles.

Aside from producer and founder Clement ‘Sir Coxsone’ Dodd, it’s hard to think of anyone more central to the sound and success of Studio One than Mittoo; keyboard player extraordinaire, songwriter, arranger, musician, truly the Keyboard King at Studio One. Jackie Mittoo had been the youngest founding member of The Skatalites (at age 16), probably the most important group in Jamaican music. After they split, he became leader of the three pivotal groups at Studio One – The Soul Brothers, The Soul Vendors and Sound Dimension. He also became musical director for Studio One, helping create countless hits for singers Ken Boothe, Bob Andy, The Wailers, John Holt, Delroy Wilson and more – unforgettable tunes like Alton Ellis’ ‘I’m Still in Love with You’, Marcia Griffiths’ ‘Feel Like Jumping’, The Heptones’ ‘Baby Why’ and others. Between 1965 and 1968, many of the tunes created at Studio One can be attributed to Mittoo – timeless instrumental tracks, recorded either under his own name or those of The Soul Brothers, Soul Vendors and Sound Dimension, that have become the basis for literally 1000s and 1000s of Jamaican songs over many decades, giving the music an unsurpassed longevity.

The endurance of his music was as a direct result of significant developments in Jamaican music in the 1970s, namely the creation of three important new styles: Dub, Deejay and Dancehall. In the early 1970s Mittoo’s instrumental tracks were used as the musical source for a series of classic Studio One dub albums. At the same time Deejays at Studio One, including Dillinger, Prince Jazzbo and Dennis Alcapone, began toasting over these same popular rhythms to create their own new songs. In the mid-70s, a new generation of Studio One singers and deejays, including Sugar Minott, Freddie McGregor, Johnny Osbourne, Michigan & Smiley and others, began once again creating new melodies over these original instrumentals, signalling the birth of a new Jamaican style that became known as ‘dancehall’.

As dancehall swept across the island, rival producers copied these now classic rhythms. These original Jackie Mittoo-driven tunes spread like a virus throughout Jamaican music; be they the instrumental cuts to tunes such as Alton Ellis’ ‘Mad Mad’ , ‘I’m Just A Guy’, Larry Marshall’s ‘Mean Girl’, Slim Smith’s ‘Rougher Yet’, and instrumentals such as Mittoo’s classic ‘Hot Milk’ or ‘One Step Beyond’, The Sound Dimension’s ‘Real Rock’, ‘Heavy Rock’, ‘Full Up’, ‘Drum Song’, ‘Rockfort Rock’ … and the list goes on. These tracks became a constant soundtrack to the island, emitting from the ever-present sound of speaker boxes strung up around dancehalls. This recycling travelled even farther afield; The Sound Dimension’s instrumental ‘Real Rock’, updated by Willie Williams on his classic ‘Armageddon Time’ was in turn covered by The Clash. Lily Allen sampled Mittoo’s debut solo single ‘Free Soul’ for number one hit ‘Smile’; Dawn Penn’s ‘You Don’t Love Me (No, No, No)’, accompanied by The Soul Vendors, was revived by Penn and producers Steely & Cleevie in 1994, since covered by Rihanna, Ghostface Killah, Stephen Marley, Damian Marley and Beyonce. And so it goes; an endless time-leaping, continent-hopping diasporic musical map of the world with all roads essentially leading back to one man – Jackie Mittoo.

"Recorded in 1959, Gerry Mulligan Meets Johnny Hodges is heralded as one of the best of Mulligan’s recorded pairings with fellow instrumentalists. On this date, the two saxophonists are joined by a solid rhythm section of Claude Williamson (piano), Buddy Clark (bass) and Mel Lewis (drums), splitting the repertoire across three originals each from Mulligan and Hodges. The two complement the other throughout with the exception of Mulligan’s ‘What’s the Rush’, where the baritonist sits out altogether in favour of Hodges’ alto taking the spotlight.
Verve’s Acoustic Sounds Series features transfers from analog tapes and remastered 180-gram vinyl in deluxe gatefold packaging."

Honour's debut album is a ligament stretching from Lagos to London and to New York, curling across the diaspora and brushing the darker hues of blues, hip-hop, free jazz, ambient, gospel with Christian mythology and Yoruba folklore. As cinematic as it is painterly, Alàáfíà is a meditation on themes of life, death and love that pulls inspiration from the unexpected poetic profundity of casual conversations, field recordings, literature, ephemera, or personal archives. The result is an impressionistic vision in Black and Blur that both exhausts and implicates language_substantiating a mythos proposed by Fred Moten that sublimates boundaries between everywhere and nowhere; history and the present; the individual and the universal. Alàáfíà delineates a gothic landscape cut by overdriven beats, swooping orchestral blasts, choral bursts and ear- splitting fuzz, where the fleshly and spiritual realms commune. Dedicated to Honour's late grandmother, the title track began to take form after their last embrace and remains steeped in her influence and spirit_a tape-saturated composition that starts in Lagos and ends in London's smoke-stained cityscape, the song's dream-like quality developed out of the artist's grief and PTSD coping with this loss. Beneath the stretched guitar drones and stuttering loops, their grandmother's shared faith bubbles to the surface. "When Angels Speak of Love," borrows its title from two works by Sun Ra and bell hooks, respectively. Sculpting echoes of praise music into disorienting spirals perforated with syrupy DJ Screw-inspired breaks and sharp splinters of melancholic guitar, "When Angels Speak of Love" engages a conceptual dialogue with the spirits of both late thinkers, folding them into Honour's pantheon of ancestral guides. The album's ninth track, "Giz Aard ($uckets)," is a dirge of regimented drums which anchor this somber melody as it whirls into a blizzard of heartache, uncertain if its consequence will be death or eternal joy. The album's sole lyrical offering, "Pistol Poem (Lead Belly)," begins with a darkly humorous bar, "He went thru hell and back/ came back/ 2 get the strap," that swells into a haunting allegory based on the life of Philip "Hot Sauce" Champion. A modern take on the Blues, Honour's lyrics reify the artist's status as a student of both literature and popular culture, crossbreeding the artist's clever wordplay with additional references to Richard Pryor, Robert Johnson, Kelly Rowland & Bryon Gysin. Setting core principles of hip-hop, R&B, jazz and gospel music to atemporal soundscapes and compositions, Honour crafts a record that marinates in its own knotty contradictions. The ghosts that sit on the artist's shoulders have never been more tangible than with this emotive debut.

A new label is born. With artists based both in Barcelona and São Paulo, CAMPANA Records' first release showcases the personalities of two of its members with a split EP. On the A side, Villaça brings two techno-trance tracks made in 2023 for his live act, and after two years of testing these tracks all around Latin and North America, he arranged these high-energy pieces for this release!

And on the other side, we have the always evolving, fresh, and intelligent dark grooves from Trajano - two tracks made with care that showcase his unique vision for dance floors. Above all, this release is about resilience, friendship, and dedication from two Brazilian artists who have a deep love for making people dance with underground music.

Phantoms bahnbrechendes Debütalbum „Handed to Execution“ von 2023 erscheint nun mit der Klangqualität, die es schon immer verdient hat. Unter der Leitung von Patrick W. Engel wurde es sorgfältig neu abgemischt und remastered, sodass diese definitive Edition den Speed/Thrash Metal der Mexikaner endlich in seiner ganzen knochenbrechenden Pracht präsentiert.
Mastermind, Sänger und Gitarrist J.C. erklärt: „Damals wussten wir noch nichts über Recording, wir haben es während der Arbeit an der Platte gelernt. Es war auch etwas unglücklich, da sich unser anderer Gitarrist Harel den Arm gebrochen hatte und ich schließlich das gesamte Album ohne Hilfe aufnehmen musste, während wir den Schlagzeuger wechselten. Es war eine Herausforderung, aber wir haben es geschafft.“
Was als ambitioniertes DIY-Projekt begann, wurde schnell zu „einem sehr beliebten Album, das uns Fans auf der ganzen Welt beschert hat“. Phantom wurden 2021 in der Underground-Szene von Guadalajara gegründet und etablierte sich mit drei Demos und einer Vierer-Split-LP, bevor sie „Handed to Execution“ herausbrachten.
High Roller Records freuen sich nun, diese unverzichtbare Neuauflage zu veröffentlichen, die die minderwertigen früheren Pressungen vergessen macht, die J.C. als „ziemlich chaotisch“ beschreibt. Jeder donnernde Drum-Schlag und jedes messerscharfe Riff ist nun perfekt ausbalanciert, um maximale Wirkung zu erzielen.
Phantom werden im September/Oktober 2025 mit Evilcult aus Brasilien durch Europa touren.

High Roller Records, bone vinyl, ltd 350, 425gsm heavy cardboard cover, insert.

Phantoms bahnbrechendes Debütalbum „Handed to Execution“ von 2023 erscheint nun mit der Klangqualität, die es schon immer verdient hat. Unter der Leitung von Patrick W. Engel wurde es sorgfältig neu abgemischt und remastered, sodass diese definitive Edition den Speed/Thrash Metal der Mexikaner endlich in seiner ganzen knochenbrechenden Pracht präsentiert.
Mastermind, Sänger und Gitarrist J.C. erklärt: „Damals wussten wir noch nichts über Recording, wir haben es während der Arbeit an der Platte gelernt. Es war auch etwas unglücklich, da sich unser anderer Gitarrist Harel den Arm gebrochen hatte und ich schließlich das gesamte Album ohne Hilfe aufnehmen musste, während wir den Schlagzeuger wechselten. Es war eine Herausforderung, aber wir haben es geschafft.“
Was als ambitioniertes DIY-Projekt begann, wurde schnell zu „einem sehr beliebten Album, das uns Fans auf der ganzen Welt beschert hat“. Phantom wurden 2021 in der Underground-Szene von Guadalajara gegründet und etablierte sich mit drei Demos und einer Vierer-Split-LP, bevor sie „Handed to Execution“ herausbrachten.
High Roller Records freuen sich nun, diese unverzichtbare Neuauflage zu veröffentlichen, die die minderwertigen früheren Pressungen vergessen macht, die J.C. als „ziemlich chaotisch“ beschreibt. Jeder donnernde Drum-Schlag und jedes messerscharfe Riff ist nun perfekt ausbalanciert, um maximale Wirkung zu erzielen.

Maggid Tewfik – Mazzika Nicab Parts 1 & 2:

Released in 1973, Mazzika Nicab by Egyptian film director and iconic figure Maggid Tewfik is a trippy instrumental journey into the experimental realms of baladi music. Known for his prolific career as a director and DOP in over 30 Coptic films, Tewfik’s composition, split in two parts, presents a moody yet undeniably cheeky tune that is unlike anything found in Egyptian music over the ages.

The track is a hypnotic blend of Eastern rhythms and Latin grooves, featuring an early drum machine that guides the track through its jubilant and stormy atmosphere. This mechanical beat is paired with funky garage sounds, creating a psychedelic fusion that evokes images of an epic cinematic score, where belly dance meets the raw energy of late-60s experimental rock. Belly-dance sci-fi perhaps..?

Muhammad Al-Najjar
London, April 2025

credits
Audio restoration and vinyl mastering: Colin Young
Lacquer cut: Timmion cutting lab
Sleeve and label artwork: Grotezk Studio
Under License of Sono Cairo

Last chapter of Alliance Split Series.

An EP packed with classic sounds and dance-floor-ready creations.

Sticking a dirty thumb in the eye of fate, our third collaboration sees this marrow deep family malarky turn official as Pace Yourself teams up with YS’s own imprint ERF REC for a split release. As if our status as minor celebrities and footnotes of the underground could level off no further: the unification no one asked for is here. Sticking it to the man, handing your arse to ya on plate; cauterising infected suburban minds world over.

Burn is the second YS album and written as a direct follow-up album to Brutal Flowers. If their first album was an exercise in the incremental, a construction of poise and patience, Burn, should be taken way the fuck at it’s word: it quite literally finds catharsis in twisted reverse. Birthed out the malignant kick found in deconstruction and chaos. Evil twin, psychotic younger sibling, call it what the hell you like. It might take you a moment to get the lay of the land in this darkly mutated world. Like a bug eye’d native first confronted with a zippo, the hit is radical and instant: a new way for the world to go up in smoke.

Splice the Seattle slacker scene with the spliffhead soundsystem culture of the 90s Bristol trip-hop scene, then cross-breed that with the DIY optimism and glee in creation found in the cut-and-paste worlds of skate, graffiti and hiphop, now run that through the skitzo basement mind of John.T. Gast and you’re close to the kind of scorched earth and spiked suburbia that birthed Burn.

Dunno quite what YS have been ingesting of late but this massively twisted LP touches on a host of gloriously fucked totemic underground sources while not sounding much like any of them. It has the ballsy swagger and hard flipping of the script as Massive Attack’s seminal Blue Lines. Indeed, the eponymous album tracks sound similar - the opener ‘Burn’ is like a hard nosed jammed out redux of ‘Blue Lines’. Getting into a kind of slow-spinning overdubbed maximal euphoria ending with mumbled downer vocals, struggling to conceal their tongues in their cheeks there’s an air of paranoia and proto-conspiracy theory. It’ll leave you scratching your head, feeling like you’ve stepped into a New World Order governed by a cacophony of drop outs, dope fiends and apocalyptic stoners. A cracked out world somewhere between Richard Linklater’s movie Slacker (1990) and Marc Singer’s Dark Days (2001).

The rest of the album parts like a tongue on a wine glass: Smith and Mighty, Bandulu, ambient Luke Slater records, Wah Wah Wino, Nurse with Wound, Land of the Loops, Placid Angels, Adrian Sherwood, Urban Tribe and DJ Shadow can all be heard in momentary splatters - but Burn like other works by YS, is its own ritual beast. ‘Moth’, a track which has been knocking about the underground deejai circuit for many moons, is a real raw chopped and screwed slice of stoner erotica that reeks of obsession and unrequited desire. Elsewhere, on tracks like ‘Switch’, ‘Trying’ and ‘Drift’ the throughline from Brutal Flowers can be heard. Underneath the driving heavy gravity the trademark emotional intimacies of YS linger: eternal recurrence, ghosts of static and shortwave, worn memories of the playful and painful sort. The brief moments where flashes of orchestral ambience get out from underneath the swagger are so pure, personal and unguarded that for a moment they leave you completely lonesome. In the album’s closer ‘End’, you can hear the fleeting promise and DIY possibilities of an analogue world and embers of ash that flutter in its wake: where it seemed, for a brief moment, that collective of DJs, engineers, rappers, graffiti artists and skate crews were emerging from the streets, giving the middle fingers to the system, before just as quickly disappearing back to the doldrums of obscurity. ‘End’ is a bittersweet ode to early soundsystem culture, MCs and pirate radio - an out of step time where for a moment the underdogs and weirdos seemed to be kicking on the door of something bigger.

A veritable teenage doof suite dosed with desire, claustrophobia and deviance. Burn is a good old howl at the moon: lonely, raw, and out for blood; basement style exegesis at its best. A thump to the gut, a stud through your blood. A dubbed-to-death classic straight out of the annals of nowhere. A perfect post card from oblivion. A bleak, bold and personally ferocious vision of tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow.

This is everything that record collectors skip dates for. Fuck the scene and keep that shit underground. That’s what it is all about. Know what I mean, if you do? You’re in…

Schwarz-weiße Galaxy-Vinyl in Gatefold-Hülle mit gedrucktem Textheft und Download-Karte

Schwarz-weiße Galaxy-Vinyl in Gatefold-Hülle mit gedrucktem Textheft und Download-Karte

In the smoggy orange light of a new millennium, the young Deb Demure would take the bus, once a week, from his home in crumbling Hollywood to his grandmother's apartment, nestled in the pastel pristineness of Beverly Hills. During these visits, Deb couldn't help but notice the disconnect between the glow of his grandmother's temple, and the downtrodden, alienated figures that populated the seats of the mass transit that took him there. Week after week, he would observe these characters: fading B-movie starlets, leisure-suited alcoholics and forgotten civil servants. But one fateful commute home, as the twilight waned to the purple Los Angeles night, he realized these figures were not as lost as they appeared - there was a nobility in their failure, reflective of the dignity of the city's vanishing golden era. They were survivors, in need of a voice: a spokesperson for every color of hope and hopelessness, transcendent of gender and time; Drab Majesty became Deb's musical podium for this undertaking. Raised in a music-centric household, Deb would find the time to teach himself to play his father's right-handed guitar upside down and left-handed; an unorthodox fashion from where his earliest understanding of chords and harmony were conceived. Exploring the bins of discarded vinyl in his neighborhood thrift stores, his toolkit expanded with the subterranean sonic gems of the recent past. Influences range from the virtuosic arpeggiated guitar work of Felt's Maurice Deebank and the grittier pop progressions of Red Lorry Yellow Lorry's Chris Reed as well as Steve Severin from Siouxsie and The Banshees. He also studied the harmonic oscillations and utilization of the occult power of vibratory frequency present in New Age sounds of Greek artist, IASOS. In terms of orchestration, he consciously culls from the seaside maximalism of Martin Dupont and mechanized grooves of early Depeche Mode. Like a dualistic pendulum, his vocals swing from a preistly baritone to a choir boy's falsetto reflecting the sepulchral ambiance of church visits with his grandmother. Currently the drummer for Los Angeles lo-fi rock ensemble Marriages and having honed an unorthodox home recording style, Deb sources his sounds from a repository of "mid-fi" synthesizers and other lesser-quality instruments. Following the release of his debut cassette EP, "Unarian Dances", he also shared a split 12" with synth pop forefathers, Eleven Pond. During the Spring of 2015, Drab Majesty signed with Dais Records and released his first single, Unknown to the I, as a introduction for his first initial foray into the album format, romantically titled Careless. Written over the course of 2 years, "Careless" is a compendium of songs that have outlasted a malicious burglary of his studio, his struggles with substance addiction, and most recently, the death of his beloved grandmother.

In the smoggy orange light of a new millennium, the young Deb Demure would take the bus, once a week, from his home in crumbling Hollywood to his grandmother's apartment, nestled in the pastel pristineness of Beverly Hills. During these visits, Deb couldn't help but notice the disconnect between the glow of his grandmother's temple, and the downtrodden, alienated figures that populated the seats of the mass transit that took him there. Week after week, he would observe these characters: fading B-movie starlets, leisure-suited alcoholics and forgotten civil servants. But one fateful commute home, as the twilight waned to the purple Los Angeles night, he realized these figures were not as lost as they appeared - there was a nobility in their failure, reflective of the dignity of the city's vanishing golden era. They were survivors, in need of a voice: a spokesperson for every color of hope and hopelessness, transcendent of gender and time; Drab Majesty became Deb's musical podium for this undertaking. Raised in a music-centric household, Deb would find the time to teach himself to play his father's right-handed guitar upside down and left-handed; an unorthodox fashion from where his earliest understanding of chords and harmony were conceived. Exploring the bins of discarded vinyl in his neighborhood thrift stores, his toolkit expanded with the subterranean sonic gems of the recent past. Influences range from the virtuosic arpeggiated guitar work of Felt's Maurice Deebank and the grittier pop progressions of Red Lorry Yellow Lorry's Chris Reed as well as Steve Severin from Siouxsie and The Banshees. He also studied the harmonic oscillations and utilization of the occult power of vibratory frequency present in New Age sounds of Greek artist, IASOS. In terms of orchestration, he consciously culls from the seaside maximalism of Martin Dupont and mechanized grooves of early Depeche Mode. Like a dualistic pendulum, his vocals swing from a preistly baritone to a choir boy's falsetto reflecting the sepulchral ambiance of church visits with his grandmother. Currently the drummer for Los Angeles lo-fi rock ensemble Marriages and having honed an unorthodox home recording style, Deb sources his sounds from a repository of "mid-fi" synthesizers and other lesser-quality instruments. Following the release of his debut cassette EP, "Unarian Dances", he also shared a split 12" with synth pop forefathers, Eleven Pond. During the Spring of 2015, Drab Majesty signed with Dais Records and released his first single, Unknown to the I, as a introduction for his first initial foray into the album format, romantically titled Careless. Written over the course of 2 years, "Careless" is a compendium of songs that have outlasted a malicious burglary of his studio, his struggles with substance addiction, and most recently, the death of his beloved grandmother.

In the smoggy orange light of a new millennium, the young Deb Demure would take the bus, once a week, from his home in crumbling Hollywood to his grandmother's apartment, nestled in the pastel pristineness of Beverly Hills. During these visits, Deb couldn't help but notice the disconnect between the glow of his grandmother's temple, and the downtrodden, alienated figures that populated the seats of the mass transit that took him there. Week after week, he would observe these characters: fading B-movie starlets, leisure-suited alcoholics and forgotten civil servants. But one fateful commute home, as the twilight waned to the purple Los Angeles night, he realized these figures were not as lost as they appeared - there was a nobility in their failure, reflective of the dignity of the city's vanishing golden era. They were survivors, in need of a voice: a spokesperson for every color of hope and hopelessness, transcendent of gender and time; Drab Majesty became Deb's musical podium for this undertaking. Raised in a music-centric household, Deb would find the time to teach himself to play his father's right-handed guitar upside down and left-handed; an unorthodox fashion from where his earliest understanding of chords and harmony were conceived. Exploring the bins of discarded vinyl in his neighborhood thrift stores, his toolkit expanded with the subterranean sonic gems of the recent past. Influences range from the virtuosic arpeggiated guitar work of Felt's Maurice Deebank and the grittier pop progressions of Red Lorry Yellow Lorry's Chris Reed as well as Steve Severin from Siouxsie and The Banshees. He also studied the harmonic oscillations and utilization of the occult power of vibratory frequency present in New Age sounds of Greek artist, IASOS. In terms of orchestration, he consciously culls from the seaside maximalism of Martin Dupont and mechanized grooves of early Depeche Mode. Like a dualistic pendulum, his vocals swing from a preistly baritone to a choir boy's falsetto reflecting the sepulchral ambiance of church visits with his grandmother. Currently the drummer for Los Angeles lo-fi rock ensemble Marriages and having honed an unorthodox home recording style, Deb sources his sounds from a repository of "mid-fi" synthesizers and other lesser-quality instruments. Following the release of his debut cassette EP, "Unarian Dances", he also shared a split 12" with synth pop forefathers, Eleven Pond. During the Spring of 2015, Drab Majesty signed with Dais Records and released his first single, Unknown to the I, as a introduction for his first initial foray into the album format, romantically titled Careless. Written over the course of 2 years, "Careless" is a compendium of songs that have outlasted a malicious burglary of his studio, his struggles with substance addiction, and most recently, the death of his beloved grandmother.

Das zweite Album von Runnner, A Welcome Kind of Weakness, entstand aus einem gleichzeitigen Riss im Körper und im Leben des Songwriters Noah Weinman. Während der Monate, die er im Bett verbrachte, um sich von einem Achillessehnenriss und dem drastischen Umbruch einer Trennung zu erholen, schrieb er die 11 Songs auf diesem Album, die Weinmans stärkste sind und die vermeintliche Verletzlichkeit des Albumtitels bereitwillig aufnimmt. Aber zur gleichen Zeit sind diese Songs die präsentesten von Runnner, trotzig und selbstbewusst, eine Erinnerung an die Entschlossenheit, die aus der anmutigen Unterwerfung entstehen kann. Langjährige Fans von Weinman haben sich wahrscheinlich in seinen unverkennbaren Indie-Rock verguckt, der fast ausschließlich in Schlafzimmern und Heimstudios aufgenommen wurde, wo seine ergreifenden und selbstironischen Texte über Banjos, Gitarren und hallenden Bläsern schweben, die sich zu kathartischen Gipfeln steigern. Aber auf A Welcome Kind of Weakness erhebt sich Weinman zum ersten Mal in High Fidelity. Das erste richtige Studioalbum von Runnner erinnert an die überlebensgroßen Höhen des Rocks der frühen achtziger Jahre, mit dem Weinman aufgewachsen ist, an Bands wie Coldplay, Radiohead und Snow Patrol, mit ihrer unverfälschten stimmlichen Präsenz, ihren schillernden Gitarrenriffs und ihrem astralen Synthesizer-Glanz. Das ist Rockmusik in ihrer köstlichsten Form, Musik die Weinman etwas gab, worauf er sich freuen konnte, als er endlich wieder live spielen konnte. Aber so hoch die klanglichen Höhen auf A Welcome Kind of Weakness auch sein mögen, wir sehen Weinman auch, wie er anmutig mit den Fragen kämpft, die sich aus Momenten des körperlichen und emotionalen Verderbens ergeben. Es erfordert eine gewisse Tapferkeit, lange genug in der trüben Mitte zu sitzen, um darüber zu schreiben. Und in seiner Bereitschaft, diesen transitorischen Raum zu bezeugen, scheint Weinman uns zu beruhigen: Du magst denken, dass du nicht mehr laufen wirst, aber mit der Zeit, könntest du es.

Habibi Funk is more than happy to announce our 31st release which happens to be our 3rd various artists compilation. The album is dedicated to the cassette tape scene in Libya from the late 80s to early 2000s, from disco to reggae to pop. All songs previously unreleased outside of Libya and not available on any DSP platforms.

This compilation isn’t a sweeping history of Libyan music — it’s a personal journey into the sounds we fell in love with while digging through tapes, conversations, and stories across Libya and beyond. Rather than spotlighting the country’s most famous musical exports, the compilation brings forward a mix of overlooked gems and local classics of the cassette era: artists whose work thrived despite political limitations, and scarce international exposure. The music featured here blends reggae rhythms, synthy disco grooves, gritty pop, house, and funk, a vibrant collision of genres that reflects Libya’s unique sonic landscape from the 1980s to the early 2000s. Many of these recordings were recovered from the TK7 cassette factory in Sousse, Tunisia, a now-demolished site that once played a quiet but vital role in distributing and manufacturing Libyan music. Other tracks were digitised in a Cairo hotel room in 2021, where we transferred nearly 100 tapes over the course of three days, on-site using a high-grade cassette deck brought into Egypt with us. From that trove emerged artists like Ahmed Ben Ali, Cheb Bakr, and Najib Alhoush & The Free Music, who have already featured on our earlier releases. Their sounds sit alongside contributions from this release from the likes of Khaled Al Melody, Fathi Aldiyqz & Sons of Africa Band, City Lights Band, Libya Music Band, and Group Hewaya. During this era, Independent artists relied on makeshift home studios or travelled abroad to record in Tunisia and Egypt, gradually building their own infrastructures for creativity. By the 90s and early 2000s, as access to digital equipment increased, a few of the artists began setting up their own studios — a shift that gave rise to a more self-sufficient recording culture across the country. The resulting sounds are anything but homogeneous. They reflect Libya’s geographic and cultural crossroads: North African rhythms meet Arab melodies and deep African roots. Reggae, in particular, took on a local Libyan flavour — not just musically, through the slowed-down cadence of traditional shaabi beats, but socially, as a vehicle for expressing identity and pride. What ties all the artists on this comp together is a boundary- pushing approach to genre and style: recorded in small studios, exchanged by hand, and shaped by a cross-pollination of influences, from Benghazi to Tripoli and beyond. All tracks are licensed from their creators and in the case of the artists being deceased from their estates. All profits are being split 50:50 between us in the licensors and ownership remains with the creators, we only licensed the music.

Itara is the debut solo album by Paul Pèrrim—guitarist, composer, and anthropologist—featuring a set of guitar-driven compositions that blend hallucinatory acid folk, abstract blues, mutant Eastern jazz, surreal ambient, and free improvi-sation into a vivid and distinctive sonic tapestry.
With a background in ethnomusicology and a degree in Music Education, Pèrrim’s work bridges popular and experi-mental music. He contrasts the acoustic guitar’s austerity with the expansive possibilities of the electric guitar, drawing from late ’60s folk traditions, contemporary fingerstyle, sound collage, drone, psychedelia, and improvisation.
A key figure in the Canary Islands’ experimental scene, he released two albums in the 2010s under The Transistor Arkestra, a Catalan collective merging free jazz and psychedelia. As Transistor Eye, his solo project, he merges ana-log electronics with guitar, using vintage synths and effects.
In 2022, Pèrrim gained wider recognition through his appearance on Manos Ocultas (Philatelia Records) and the in-ternational tribute Solstice: A Tribute to Steffen Basho-Junghans (Obsolete Recordings). That same year, he founded GUITARRACO, a contemporary guitar festival in Tarragona, where he has shared the stage with Joseba Irazoki, Buck Curran, and Raphael Roginski.
Itara will be released in July 2025 via Keroxen. Recorded and produced by Pèrrim, the album features liner notes by critic Bill Meyer, who writes:
“While it’s common to call music cinematic these days, Pèrrim goes split-screen. One might say he composes econo, jamming scenes and sounds to psychedelic effect. But economy does not equate with poverty. Pèrrim draws upon a rich bank of musical notions, all of which he makes his own through the alchemy of recombination and transmutation.”