Galcher Lustwerk's 'Vestibule EP' is one of the best of the year if you ask us, (and the remix package by some genuine heavyweights is also worth seeking out). That the leftfield US producer is now back with another outing is literal and metaphorical music to our ears. This one strips away his usual muttered vocals and opens with the stuttering, dubby rhythms of 'North Coast Nostalgia' before 'Cat Video' suspends you in uneasy synths and a skeletal minimal rhythm. 'Thick Description is a deeper, more insular sound for the afters and 'Mock Tudor' is dusty, beautifully imperfect analogue house that is scuffed up and soulful in Lustwerk's signature low-key style.
Hidden Sounds Record store – with the help of Emotional Recordings – launches the Dark Times label with the first of two club orientated EPs from Canadian brother-production duo Lex and Rew MacCrimmon and their project Alkahest.
Released on their own Post Contemporary label between 1994 – 1996, Alkahest contrasted with the spacious electronica of their influential and still on-going project, Legion Of Green Men.
Growing up in suburban city life in Burlington, Ontario, the MacCrimmon brothers’ interest in music and collecting records started early, always looking for interesting sounds in new places. With a limited local music scene or record stores, the alternative and college radio stations were the only way to discover new music or the type of music they sought.
The German electronic sounds of Kraftwerk, Klaus Schulze and Tangerine Dream were early obsessions, alongside Neu, Cluster (& Eno) and the post punk and synth pop emanating from Britain. The Flying Lizards, John Foxx / Ultravox, Gary Numan and The Normal were favourites, before diving into the 80s industrial experiments of Cabaret Voltaire, Severed Heads, Nurse With Wound and Throbbing Gristle.
Making their own music soon followed, first experimenting with 4 track cassette and digital delay, drum machines and synths soon followed, steadily building their own studio. All these influences merged in the early 90s with the dawn of house and techno and the progression to start the Post Contemporary label launched in 1992.
With the project Legion Of Green Men achieving early success, their diversion with Alkahest explored a post-industrial techno hybrid. Unsubtle, night music, the rhythm and sonic textures are more prominent over melody.
Contact High covers this Alkahest sound, from the 133 bpm trippy, psychedelics of opener Black Tabs, the acid breaks of Ground Zero or the charging nature of closing Séance 333, where all bets are off – together this 4 track EP perfectly captures the early spirit of Canada’s electronic music scene finding its place in dance culture, from the raves of the Toronto’s outer rim to the beaches of Anjuna.
However, in the title cut Contact High, there is something else happening, as electronic dub is explored, where the space in the music, between the beats, is as important at what happens on the surface. A love of this ethereal feeling would lead the brothers to head further in this direction and here is a perfect example of that early journey.
Send Noods Records is a new label from South Africa's Reagan Ruler, who makes house so sensuous it should come with an 18+ age rating. 'Cosmic Desire' is his latest saucy number and it's buttery deep house with a cooing vocal that swirls through the mix like caramel in a galaxy bar. 'Fly' has a more jazzy, ougnehy melodic vibe to it but the drums remain cuddly warm and 'For A Moment' dials up the energy just a touch. The drums are more upright here, but the chords are still resolutely molten and the vocals are soulful accents in the mix. Gorgeous stuff that's got us keen to hear more from this label already.
"I’m very excited to work with deep medi again. I was buzzing to be releasing topper top with them on their 10th anniversary and it’s even better to be back for their 20th". Sir Spyro
Kicking off our 20th anniversary year, and arriving 10 years after his iconic release ‘Topper Top’, grime, dubstep and UK bass pioneer Sir Spyro returns to DEEP MEDi with his new dancefloor rattling EP, 2ND SQ.
The EP opens with the unrelenting ‘2ND SQ’, the track’s stuttering hi-hats and all consuming bass cut through by an icy, industrial-sized snare. The desolate ‘Be Afraid’ creates a sense of vastness via its minimal production, resulting in an eerie and energised track designed for dark warehouse raves.‘Diagonal’ continues in the same dark vein, the track’s brooding,looping production sure to send listeners into a mystified trance. Closing the EP is ‘Patch Bae’, a glitchy joyride that calls to mind the16-bit era of gaming, leading listeners on an exhilarating, kaleidoscopic journey.
Compiled onto one vinyl album for the first time, Landlocked (Numbers, 2026) presents Hallucinator’s 1999 debut album originally released under Mark Ernestus and Moritz von Oswald’s label Chain Reaction. Writing much surrounding the culture of what would be later considered ‘Dub Techno’ and its’ primary distribution center, Hard Wax, leads one down roads of shifting primary sources and decades old overheard smoke break recollections. Maybe brevity primes the listener to the paralinguistic to approach the sound on its terms; focusing on how things are uttered and not what.
This theory will remain unconfirmed. Hallucinator original press release left us with three or so gestures to consider over the years since:
“A new act on CHAIN REACTION”s distinct productional thesis. HALLUCINATOR are 3 people from he UK/London and this their first release ever- that’s all what the artists want to let us know…. This record is dedidacted to the memory of Stephen Lawrence!”
The first gesture is one of personnel. Since ’99, we’ve gotten to learn a bit more about the artists behind the Hallucinator project. All London-based, all writers, composers, and sound-designers— Anna Piva, Edward George, Trevor Mathison. These three seem to flow between parameters as aesthetic tactic and tacit structure to the work itself. For example, other collaborative shapes have come from this lineup including Flow Motion (Piva, George and Mathison) as well as the now defunct Black Audio Film Collective of which George and Mathison are founding members.
The second gesture is in the second line of the previous press release, “distinct productional thesis.” Much of Landlocked’s affect and sequencing seems to suggest an emotional study of entropy at the level of sediment. Rhythms play with space and capacity through polyvalence. The production chose subtractive vertigo, often switching and bringing back in elements that vanished from the track 6 minutes ago. Dubbing out so much of a track, one begins to associate sound akin to memories held in the experience of running your hand across a concrete block as a child. Felt (re)memberance in lieu of narrative tale. Using textures that flicker between colour and percussion, Hallucinator’s 12-tracker of loudspeaker perception music might be a mediation on the psychic wake of the Cold War. Intermittent strata of ambience and groove convects an active margin rifting event underneath a scorched geology of power in Western Europe. Again, this is all grapevine hearsay.
But it’s silence that voices the third gesture. The album’s sparse application of the written word touches on the ennui paradox of being landlocked on an island. Stuck. Trapped in the psychosis of occidental hypercentricism. A looping silence of Black British tragedy: “to the memory of Stephen Lawrence”. 18 year-old Lawrence was stabbed to death at a bus stop in southeast London by six white men in 1993. The rift of grief and implicit reiteration of modern subordination left by this hate act went legally silent for almost two decades until Lawrence’s killers were ultimately sentenced to virtually life in jail in 2012. Only six years removed at the time of Hallucinator’s initial invocation of rememory, the mind-numbing accretion of what Black Studies Professor Denise Ferreira da Silva might call “unpayable debt”, finds demonic ground across Landlocked, forming an aural sense of what continues to be refused.
The album ventures through spaces of overactive non-happenings: ‘Red Angel’’s factory floor dub flashes between smokestack and jungle visions, or the halfway mark’s stilted breath of ‘Dusk’ lending its mood to the sort of sedated dreams built from daily life under colony rule for instance. That linked rhythm links us back to our linked fates across Black and Brown folk is real, thus the syncopated signals through this work behave on the level of transnational radiotelegraphy, sounding out its windswept tension of a body negotiating a meat-grinder schema of linear production and wage for others to know that unspeakable thing can be broadcast in every drum tongue.
As the silence continues to reverb, we return to the sort of meaning-making that cannot be told but felt. Soothing to some, disturbing to others. Landlocked, a Rorschach test for a crumbled empire.
Deep, deep stuff on the debut album from K Wata. Long and dubwise, dark and detailed. With bass that fills and warms a space.
All noir. Cast shadows against the wall. Weight being shifted and distributed with singularly delicate poise, like a knife being balanced on the end of a finger.
There’s a silvery, loose flow state to this record that maybe reveals the way some tracks were first written to be deployed live at Sustain Release 2025. Then taken back to the lab and tightened up further into the album’s final form, with beautiful mixing work between Kenzo and Chris Botta.
With that in mind, Give U Space unfolds slowly and fluidly, giving the listener the chance to access and open up to the deepness of the sound, being led down a path. It rolls and builds momentum and groove, and ratchets tensions up toward peaks of energy "Whisper Dub" and "There Will Be Love".
The tunes feel architectural. Rooms to be in and settle into. Simultaneously stripped back and then etched with neat little details and characterful or atmospheric sound choices. The silhouette of slo mo Memphis and Houston trap is a leading influence, especially with the drums. Mixing with bits of click’n’cut sampling and psychoacoustic tricks, the penumbra of dub techno and drowsier dubstep, and SG’s soft vocals rising in the ether.
The presence and inspiration of the sound system is obvious in all of Kenzo’s work, the music can rattle when spun up louder or blended into the club. But K Wata’s uniqueness and signature comes from an often equally inward facing quality, touched by distance and longing and a sort of chiaroscuro incandescent light set up.
Written and produced by K Wata.
Mixed by K Wata and Christopher Botta at Fer Sound Studio.
Als Post Animal ihr neues Album IRON aufnahmen, waren zum ersten Mal seit fast einem Jahrzehnt alle sechs Originalmitglieder wieder zusammen im Studio. Das Ergebnis ist die Verkörperung von 30 Tagen voller Kameradschaft und grenzenloser musikalischer Entdeckungsreise – ihre erneuerte Verbundenheit ist unerschütterlich. Das Album nutzt die neue Schärfe, um Genregrenzen zu überwinden und erweitern, von Synthpop über Folk und Vintage-Radiorock bis zu spannungsgeladener Psychedelia. IRON versetzt den Hörer direkt in den Raum der Band – freizügig und experimentell, aber dennoch präzise gespielt. "Das Zusammentreffen all dieser kreativen Kräfte war wie geschärftes Eisen," sagt Sänger/Bassist Dalton Allison. "Wenn wir nah beieinander sind, machen wir uns gegenseitig besser."
Pascal Moscheni debuts on Limousine Dream with a double 12" featuring 8 stunning representations of the modern tech house sound. Ultra functional, but with plenty of character, and hard-driving but never overbearing - these are tools for DJs working with high-energy dancefloors.
Polarity Records returns with its eighth release. After years of experimentation with live performance, new technologies and evolving setups, Luca Piermattei returns his focus to studio production.
Natural Recording Vol.2 marks a new phase in his artistic trajectory: a more essential and distinctive sonic language, balancing emotional depth, harmonic sensitivity and a stronger focus on musicality, dynamics and performance-inspired arrangements. A refined approach where every element finds its place with intention.
Killer Groove Records presents a new 7" by Electric Circus, pairing "High Fever" and "Ogres": raw, hypnotic funk built on obsessive bass lines, sharp horns, dub delays and wah-wah guitars.
Both tracks are taken from Rites, the band's second studio album, out November 27 on limited-edition LP, CD and digital. The 7" is limited to 500 copies worldwide and is out September 25.
On the A-side, "High Fever" maps Electric Circus's territory: '70s funk, Afrobeat and psychedelia meet in a steady build toward a climax of synths and groove. The track grew from a bass line written over one feverish weekend and runs as a single continuous rise in tension.
The groove takes its cue from The Meters, locking syncopated accents into place while a punchy horn section cuts through from the opening bar. Dub delays and layered textures then open the arrangement out, trading space with wah-wah guitars and a treated clavinet that sounds vintage without dating the mix. After a darker, nocturnal passage, the saxophone rises over percussion and synths for the climax.
On the B-side, "Ogres" was the first track conceived for the album and the last to be completed. It began as a bass-and-percussion ostinato in an Ethiopian pentatonic scale, modelled on a war march, and grew into a dense groove with psychedelic and trip-hop textures. Its rhythm conjures a twilight bestiary of dark, menacing or perhaps merely curious creatures, building to a tense climax before resolving into a smooth, dreamlike finale that suggests awakening, or re-emergence.
Like the rest of Rites, both tracks started in jam sessions and were recorded in stages: live takes of the core arrangements first, then dedicated sessions for synths, horns and overdubs. Marco Sirio Pivetti engineered at Metrò Rec Studio in Riva del Garda, Gio Solo at Sberdia Studio in Turin. Overdubs were reamped through tube amplifiers and analog outboard. The band co-produced with Pivetti, who also mixed; Riccardo Ricci mastered at Velvet Room Mastering Studio in Brighton.
Electric Circus are based in Turin. They released their debut album, Canicola, in 2018 and have toured the U.S. Scoring Contrecourant (2021), a documentary series shot in Senegal and Mali, led them to Sahel Roots, a duo from the north of the country. The two groups recorded On est ensemble (Mieruba, 2023) remotely between Turin and Bamako, each writing two pieces for the other to finish.
For fans of The Heliocentrics, Calibro 35, BADBADNOTGOOD.
Though Scratch may have at times seemed crazy, it is worth noting that creative
genius appears so because geniuses see things others do not see and inhabit
realities unseen. As the music on this album reveals, Lee Perry's Black Ark creations
re-arrange the familiar into something new and magical.
Lee spent his early days working with legendary producers Coxsone Dodd, Duke Reid,
Joe Gibbs, Clancy Eccles and Prince Buster, and by 1968 he was an independent
producer, naming his studio musicians The Upsetters and scoring instrumental hits
with innovative rhythms that helped forge the new reggae style. In 1970-1971 he
produced what many consider the greatest works by the Wailers; in 1968 one of his
Upsetters productions hit #5 on the UK pop chart and more hits followed. That gave
him the funds to build his own studio and in 1973 the legendary Black Ark was born.
Among the many landmark classics cut at Black Ark are such incisive political
commentaries as Max Romeo's "War Ina Babylon," and Junior Murvin's "Police and
Thieves" (covered by the Clash). The Congos' "Heart of the Congos" album is a roots
classic and there are many wonderful obscure singles such as Carlton and the Shoes'
"Better Days." Many dub creations made innovative use of Scratch's sonic wizardry via
echo, phasing, reverb, fanging, wah-wah and various sound effects.
It all came to an end in 1978 as Lee, besieged by extortionists, freeloaders, religious
fanatics and assorted pilgrims, let the studio lapse. And then he set it on fre, some
say due to frustration, others say from mental collapse. He left Jamaica, collaborated
with musicians around the world, toured as a sort of mystic trickster/ shaman and
prospered. But his work at Black Ark will always stand as his ultimate creative
achievement.
Drop the needle on this latest dispatch from the tape vaults, and we are back in Chicago at The Curtom Studios in 1977. For instalment number five in the "Hutson Sevens" series, Home of The Good Groove Records are so very honoured to deliver this previously unreleased cut from Leroy Hutson—a true titan of soul music and an absolute master of his craft.
"Betting On My Love" carries that signature smooth orchestration we have come to expect from Hutson’s finest hours. It moves with a wonderful, breezy optimism. Hutson’s joyful, velvet lead tones skip effortlessly across the groove, wrapped in lush backing harmonies that instantly evoke the feel of the Hutson II
classic, "I Think I’m Falling in Love".
Now, a brief confession of pure, crate-digging indulgence: if tailored strictly for the dancefloor, the track arguably hits its logical peak and fade just past the three-minute mark. But to cut it there would strip away the raw human magic of the session. If you let the wax ride to the very end, the arrangement dissolves into a wonderful, lingering instrumental outro, culminating in the studio players purposely "clattering" their instruments in a moment of pure creative release. It is a brilliant, candid studio artifact that was fortunately preserved on the original master recording. Essential listening for the global soul family—do not sleep on this debut pressing.
For the flip we present Leroy Hutson’s 1979 cut “ So Nice”, a masterclass in late-70s soul music. A stand out track from the “Unforgettable” album and a vital reminder of Hutson’s unmatched ability to inject sophisticated romanticism into the bleeding edge of that disco era.
Slightly edited for the 7-inch pressing, up steps our remastering and editing maestro Mr Phil Ward. Phil always has the utmost respect when remastering and editing original content, ensuring that every second of the groove is fully respected and preserved. His stellar work here includes the studio recording of the three-count drum intro, never heard before now, leading into that meditative smooth groove layout.
It is an exquisite arrangement of simmering electric keys, nimble basslines courtesy of the legendary Keni Burke, and subtle bongo accents that collectively deliver a timeless masterpiece. Now available on 7-inch vinyl for the first time.
When the first JIM album Love Makes Magic was released in 2023, it was the end product of an experiment that had begun during the strange days of the pandemic. Cooped up in his studio, James Baron started fiddling about with an as-yet unnamed new album idea. It became Vicious Charm’s first LP release. Labelled variously as Balearic, folktronica, blue-eyed soul and Laurel Canyon, Love Makes Magic was perhaps all and none of those things: a record rooted less in Californian mythology than in Baron’s own musical world, somewhere between Sherwood, Nottingham, classic songwriting, electronic soul and the no-nonsense good times that have long run through his work under his other monikers (principally the anagrammatic Ron Basejam and, of course, Crazy P) One thing was indisputable, it connected with people... and still does.
The album was a minor hit, appearing in many a Best of 2023 chart and voted Album of the Year in Bill Brewster’s Furtive 50. A tour and a few memorable festival appearances – his 2024 We Out Here Festival being one of those wonderfully timed ‘moments’ - perfectly captured the horizontal vibes on the album, while injecting some live energy into its delivery. While there was a follow-up remix album for Love Makes Magic, JIM was already preparing a sophomore LP: “I wrote the majority of The Curious Case Of Existence in a couple of months at the beginning of 2024, then it was just a case of making the record over the next couple of years in between everything else.”
Fasme and Quadratschulz join forces for a very special record: Ghost in the Machine. Finding cacophony and harmony through their blinking music boxes, these two knob-twiddlers melt genres. Through live jam sessions, a week of braindance shenanigans, the pair emerged from a Hamburg studio with five spur-of-the-moment cuts. Bubbles of acid pop, dreamy notes float, keys dash and race as robotic voices slice through this helter-skelter interplay of melody and percussion. A celebration of impromptu experimentation where analogue alchemy reacts with impulsive energy.
Battlefield sees No Ice Cream Sound knock on the door of the real foundations of Roots Reggae and Dancehall culture with a heavyweight, riddim-focused multi-vocalist release.
The release perfectly balances a bold and fresh contemporary sound while retaining the spirit; energy and rawness of the classic riddims we all know and love. Battlefield creates a sturdy platform for the carefully curated selection of vocalists to showcase their respective styles and patterns.
At the heart of the release is a unique vocal link-up that reflects the ever-growing globalisation of the Reggae Sound-system culture. Each of the men behind the microphones invites us to embark on a journey; connecting the dots on the map that represent the places they call home. We start in The South West of England and track across country to Southend-on-Sea; from here we make the mission all the way down to Madrid before taking a bearing on the North Star to guide us over hills and valleys to Scotland.
Where the riddim creates a constant, the vocals provide variety. Made by design the track allows them a spacious environment for the individual styles and messages to come across with precision and clarity.
Hailing from different backgrounds; accents of different origins, insights and perspectives drawn from their own stories all come together over one sound. This could be seen as an analogy of the ethos and motivation behind Reggae music itself. Reggae music as a genre tells the same story, Reggae artists tell their version of the story. Via this timeless format we are always building on the teachings of yesteryear while simultaneously learning something new. The gift that will forever more continue to give!
On My Way is a forthcoming photo memoir that follows Larry Heard to over 30 countries across 40 years, performing in Fingers Inc, The It, Mr. Fingers, and Larry Heard Live. Published independently by Alleviated Records, this 380 page book draws from Mr. Heard's extensive archive of thousands of photographs, event flyers, and historical documents, many of which have never been seen before. On My Way contains excerpts from over 8 hours of interviews, but the journey is primarily visual: the photographs taken by Mr. Heard and his collaborators serve as a personal and artistic odyssey, documenting almost every single one of the over 350 gigs Mr. Heard has performed in his career. On My Way also presents a history of technology in the arts. We see music equipment evolve, become sleeker, sexier, the studios housing the gear more grandiose. Personal cameras transition from 35mm to digital, first declining in quality as the world embraced the freedom of lightweight yet low resolution lenses, eventually arriving at the contemporary DSLR. The designs of rave flyers begin with photocopied images and hand drawn text, evolving with the genre through the 90s and 00s to take on a futuristic, utopian quality. We watch trends in fashion and art become referential as the 21st century embraces nostalgia. Institutions rise up to support this scene, most notably Red Bull Music Academy, a significant patron of electronic music in the 2010s that sought to connect new musicians to their roots by hosting visionary global festivals and panel discussions. Along this journey we see familiar faces: singers, DJs, club kids, and music industry professionals, as well as the enigmatic gaze of the man whose work has inspired millions.
This is the reissue of original 1993 Rephlex double vinyl album, completely remastered from DATs by Beau Thomas, with the original artwork, and photography by Richard James. µ-Ziq's Tango N'Vectif was released in 1993, a classic year for auteurist electronic music that didn't always fit on the dancefloor. Written by Mike Paradinas in his late teens with some help from Frank Naughton, it still stands up really well today and its influence on electronic music in the decades since is obvious. Across an expanse of ideas, taking influences from early Aphex, Detroit Techno and UK Hardcore, Mike created this spirited, funky, jerry-rigged, lo-fi version of rave; with crunchy drums and a knack for melody that fell somewhere between John Barry and classic TV themes. Without owning a computer, Mike had been writing techno, house and industrial tracks on and off since 1990, playing live keys alongside drum machine rhythms on his 4-track recorder. µ-Ziq started when Mike linked up with Frank who was also writing dance-influenced music, and importantly owned an Atari 1040ST computer with Cubeat software. They pooled their equipment and Mike would travel up to Frank's house a couple of miles away in Wimbledon to record together. By 1992, and after a false start when a proposed EP for Mark Pritchard and Tom Middleton's Evolution label got shelved, Mike had started at Kingston University where he deejayed and met like-minded people including a couple of guys who knew Aphex Twin who was also a student at Kingston too, and they passed Aphex a demo of Mike's material. A few days later Mike got a message from his mum to 'call Aphex Twin' and he gave Mike some advice, and seemed interested in releasing something. So when Frank and his family went on holiday that summer Mike borrowed his Atari and synths and wrote the majority of the Tango N'Vectif album during that 2 weeks. By the end of 1992 a release with Aphex Twin and Grant Wilson Claridge's Rephlex label had been agreed - Aphex had moved to the house in Clissold Crescent where he recorded a lot of his early classic albums and Mike went over to collect his advance, in the form of his very own Atari computer.
The Thompson Sound x Dubquake Records series returns for another trip deep into the vaults!
Joe Yorke joins O.B.F on record for the very first time with 'Danger In My Eyes'. Unearthing a 70s reggae gem, rebuilt in the O.B.F studio, they make the song their own with a nod to the legacy of The Paragons, Coxsone Dodd and Linval Thompson.
Flip the record and Rico O.B.F takes you straight into the realms of dub with a spaced-out version excursion.
Guillaume & the Coutu Dumonts has always been a maverick. The Quebec native draws on his electroacoustic studies and love of Latin and classical percussion to cook up left-of-centre sounds that still work well in a club setting. On this latest for Soundrive, he brings a tender, spectral vocal to 'Big Bird's Roll' that tugs at the heart as the phased percussion rides a dubby house groove. The Nail Remix brings more defined drums and his signature crispness, then 'Chiens De Chasse' has an off-kilter swagger and freaky melange of vocals and 'Argos' explores deep, subterranean techno.
Hector Ram and Ricky Ramirez are starting to celebrate ten years of Short Attention Records and it's US house stalwart DJ Aakmael they've enlisted to pop the champagne cork and cut the cake. He's one of those artists who turns out plenty of music, much of it sounding within the same consistent deep house framework. But there's always a little something to his tunes that keeps you coming back for more - a perfectly chosen sample, a nagging bassline, a sense of melancholy that you cannot escape. All of that is true on his latest. 'Things Always Happen' has keys that convey beautiful pain, then 'If You Believe' is a deep house haze with smudgy samples and blues-y ache. 'Free' is more light with trilling jazz-funk keys and earthy guitar frets sprinkled into the mix. 'Stopmotion' shuts down with a signature Aakmael bump. Just timeless stuff.
