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For its 25th anniversary, Cocoon Recordings returns to its roots with an elaborate vinyl LP box set, marking the first part of a two-volume anniversary project. 25 Years Cocoon Recordings – Volume
One brings together exclusive contributions from international artists who have defined the sound and diversity of the label over the past two decades, complemented by fresh talents who are helping to shape its future.
Over the span of 25 years, Cocoon Recordings has created a catalog that now comprises hundreds of releases, 12-inches, albums, mix CDs, and iconic compilation box sets, always bridging past, present, and future. While firmly rooted in techno and house, the label has also provided space for electronica,
ambient, and other evolving genres.
25 Years Cocoon Recordings – Volume One is more than just a compilation. It is both a homage to the label’s history and a glimpse into what lies ahead. With exclusive tracks that embody the Cocoon sound in all its depth and complexity, this release marks a milestone in the legacy of one of electronic
music’s most influential labels, arguably the strongest compilation in Cocoon’s history. To mark this special occasion, Sven Väth’s label presents the first of two carefully curated volumes, uniting 15 exclusive tracks from international artists in celebration of nearly three decades of Cocoon
Recordings. The luxurious 5x12" box set features a spectral-reflective foil finish and includes contributions from renowned names such as Butch, Robag Wruhme, Josh Wink, Guy J, and Dino Lenny, alongside longtime companions of the label including Extrawelt, Harvey McKay, Johannes
Volk, and Raxon. New discoveries of recent years, Jonathan Kaspar and Riccardo De Polo, enrich the release in their own distinctive ways. The compilation is completed by the unmistakable talents of Damiano von Erckert, Fedele, and ja:ck, who provide the perfect conclusion to the first of two parts.
This release sets the stage for what's next: a daring diptych where musical voices emerge, shining with originality and passion, carrying the spirit forward. The story is just beginning. Something special is on the horizon. One can only wonder which artists will shine on the second chapter.

2025 REPRESS ON TRANSPARENT GREEN VINYL


Compiled by Philip King “And then came the rise of synth pop : blokes with dodgy haircuts hunched over keyboard-operated machines stuffed with wires and do-it-yourself tone oscillators making sounds like a brood of geese passing gas in a wind tunnel. Whoopee! This is the way the ‘70s ended : not with a blood-curdling bang bang but with a cheap, synthesized, emasculating whimper.” NICK KENT, NME. All The Young Droids: Junkshop Synth Pop 1978-1985 is a new compilation that charts the underbelly of the epoch-defining sound of the synthesiser in 80s popular music. Compiled by Philip King (previously seen compiling All The Young Droogs, Glitterbest and Boobs - The Junkshop Glam Discotheque), the music here connects the dots between DIY synth enthusiasts grappling with new, cheap synthesisers at the tail-end of punk and wannabe, jobbing songwriters enthral to the new music pioneered by Gary Numan, Depeche Mode and Daniel Miller’s Mute Records. Featuring rare tracks of auto-didactic progressive pop music, proto-techno punk, shoot-for-the-stars-land-in-the-gutter chart flops and heralded, underground synth classics, School Daze paints a picture of beautiful failure. Complete with extensive sleeve notes written by King and never before seen imagery, all 24 tracks were remastered by RPM in-house engineer Simon Murphy, many from vinyl copies due to lost master tapes. The story told on All The Young Droids is one of the dawning opportunity presented by both the emergence to the market of cheaper analog synthesisers and the distribution networks plus indie labels that exploded with the advent of punk music in 1976. While the music that sprouted out all over the globe in the wake of these factors was decried as fake, plastic, a refutation of punk’s guitar-led revolution, it’s telling that much of the music on All The Young Droids.. was created in bedrooms, ramshackle studios and home-made set ups with often borrowed equipment. In the era of record labels jumping to capitalise on the success of The Sex Pistols, The Clash (both on major labels, of course) these artists struggled to stand out from a new gold-rush with next to no budget or PR team. With radio and labels desperate for the new Yazoo, what resulted was a testament to necessity being the mother of invention. At the time, the synthesiser was the music of the future, a shiny new machine that could paint like an orchestra with a single finger and a 4-track. In the hands of Manchester avant-pranksters Gerry & The Holograms it’s a pulsing, sardonic weapon.. the only instrument on the Messthetics classic lampooning of New Wave fashion. In Hamburg, a 16 year old Andreas Dorau used it to write and record (with his female classmates on vocals) a global smash in Fred Vom Jupiter (later licensed to Mute Records). The hard-to-find English version (Fred From Jupiter, natch) is included here. Many artists with alreadystoried careers caught the bug and recorded synthesiser-fuelled peons to space, computers, the future and, of course, love-interests. Harry Kakoulli, late of Squeeze, recorded a solo album in 1979 that included the incredible power-synth-pop smash-that-never-smashed I’m On A Rocket. Similarly, Ian North of Neo and American Power Pop stalwarts Milk ’n’ Cookies bought a Korg MS20 and used a tape machine to record We’re Not Lonely, an absolute lost-classic of minimal synth pop. We’re Not Lonely also features on the Junkshop Synth Pop sampler 7” twinned with John Howard unreleased track You Will See, released April 12th 2025. There are plenty of compilation debuts in evidence. Sole Sister were a mysterious trio who were featured on the Scaling Triangles compilation of female-fronted, queer-adjacent post-punk / underground music that also featured The Petticoats. Selwin Image were from San Francisco and featured members of the recently defunct power pop/punk group The Pushups. Their stupidly catchy The Unknown fizzes with New Wave energy - think XTC to Sparks but remains unreleased until now. Dream Unit’s A Drop In The Ocean is an early synth wave cut, positively teaming with Joy Division instrumentation, previously only released on a long-forgotten and super rare, self-released EP. Incandescent Luminaire’s Famous Names belies an archetypal struggle of a small-town trying to make it in a cruel industry but is a thrilling New Romantic-Synth Wave cross over with a OMD gloominess that’s a joy to hear. Feminist Minimal Wave track I Am A Time Bomb by performance artist Peta Lilly and Michael Chance is a revelation destined for new found cult status. It was released on 7” and lost until now. The flipside to the subterranean, never-made-it synth pop mentioned above are the ambitious, even fruity attempts at success that have a perennial elegance to their confidence. New Jersey-ite Billy London (real name Ed Barth) tried to cash in on the synth boom with Woman, released by a major label, a lurching new wave track built on the Louie Louie rhythm and a wonderfully camp Lou Reedstyle sleazy vocal before exploding in the synthesised chorus. The song bombed but with a chorus like this, you have to wonder why? Ex-Glitter Band member John Springate’s My Life is truly epic, with doomed chord progressions and massive sounding drums turning into at least 3 different songs in the course of the track. Before you wonder what’s going on the song resolves with a glorious return to the main refrain. The dry-ice-dressed dance floor is well catered for too. Design’s Premonition and Vision’s Lucifer’s Friend are stone-cold minimal synth bangers, well loved but given a new lease of life here. The Warlord’s The Ultimate Warlord was released in 1978, a homespun proto Hi NRG banger that was later re-recorded by The Immortals in Canada who had a club hit with it. One-man- band Disco Volante’s No Motion was re-issued by Synth wave label Medical in 2012 but makes its first vinyl compilation appearance here. Close your eyes and you can imagine what Lawrence of Felt would have sounded like with some cheap Korgs a little earlier in his career. Gibraltar-based trio The Microbes imagined a computer programming people to dance - how prescient - and ended up with a propulsive, robo-funk track with splendid rubbery bass playing over a tectonic drum machine. Previously picked up by Belgian label Stroom TV, Dee Jay Bert & Eagle’s heavily Euro-accented I Am Your Master demands the listener to “come to paradise!” In a frankly terrifying manner. All The Young Droids is the first compilation to peel away from the narrative that dour, Minimal Synth and Cold Wave were the only musical children of the first rush of synth pop. Philip King and School Daze Records describe a much more complicated world: along with the austere, Brutalist children of Daniel Miller (who produced Alan Burnham’s Bowie-Low-influenced Science Fiction here) was a plethora of desperate cash-ins, accidental mainstream hits, ambitious pop dramas and major label punts that went nowhere. Crucially, the compilation blurs the line between junk and treasure. What if the two things are interchangeable. What if it’s all science fiction?

Schneeweißes Vinyl. Zum ersten Mal seit seinem viralen Weihnachtsalbum ,A Joyful Sound", das 2020 rausgekommen ist, ist Kelly Finnigan (Monophonics) mit zwei neuen Original-Weihnachtsliedern zurück. ,I Can't Wait (For Christmas Time)" ist ein schwerer, aber entspannter Song mit einem geradlinigen Pop-Arrangement. Es ist dieser Rust-Belt-Soul-Sound mit den Harmonien, die südkalifornische Cruiser beflügeln: tief und emotional, mit genau der richtigen Instrumentierung, um Finnigans zarte Stimme in den Vordergrund zu rücken. Der Song wird auch von seiner Labelkollegin Kendra Morris und ihrer Band im Hintergrundgesang begleitet. Ähnlich wie frühere KF-Veröffentlichungen oder Perlen von The Escorts oder The Four Mints ist diese Platte für dich und deine Lieben gedacht, verpackt in hübsches Papier unter dem Baum bis zum Weihnachtsmorgen. Dann lass noch etwas Platz für Plätzchen und die B-Seite... ,Snowy Night In Ohio" fühlt sich an wie ein langsam fahrender Mitternachtszug, der sich von Cincinnati nach Memphis auf den Weg macht. Inspiriert von Finnigans erstem Winter in Ohio, seiner Liebe zu Gospelplatten und den Hornarrangements von Isaac Hayes. Dies ist ein wirklich herausragendes Instrumentalstück, das eiskalte Seele versprüht. Es enthält eine kurze Gesangsbotschaft von Finnigan, die sich wie ein Zeugnis und ein Herzensanliegen anfühlt. Mit dabei sind Terry Cole und Jimmy James von Colemine sowie Billy Aukstik und Morgan Price.

Announcing Perseverance Flow, the latest album from acclaimed Chicago-based ensemble Natural Information Society (NIS), release date 2024-10-24. After a trilogy of double LPs by expanded manifestations of the band that began in 2018 with Mandatory Reality & continued through Since Time Is Gravity (a Pitchfork Best Jazz & Experimental Album of the Year selection & Mojo’s #1 Underground Album of 2023), NIS returns to its core formation of Lisa Alvarado on harmonium, Mikel Patrick Avery on drums, Jason Stein on bass clarinet, & composer/multi-instrumentalist Joshua Abrams on guimbri for one continuous 37 minute composition across a single LP. As the rocket boosters on spaceship earth sputter closer to burnout, lower your stylus into a soundfield that grows stronger the deeper you travel into it; a dose of the medicine many of us look to music to deliver awaits you inside.

One of the deep contemplations of this natural information (thanks Bill Callahan) is the wide range of source materials Abrams draws from over the band’s more than 15 year history: Ideas from minimalism, modal jazz & traditional musics are regularly reimagined in these compositions. The 2021 double LP descension (Out of Our Constrictions), with guest soloist Evan Parker, reflected aspects of Abrams’ love of party music, Chicago house, & John Coltrane. *But even veteran travelers with the NIS best brace themselves for the Perseverance Flow.

Speaking to the history & the inspirations behind the album, Abrams offers: “We played the piece for a year in concert before the recording. At Electrical (Audio Studios, Chicago) we went in at 11 & were done in time to pick our kids up from school.” Abrams continues: "In a reference world, I imagine Perseverance Flow like a live extended realization of a Jaylib lost instrumental as remixed by Kevin Shields. Or vice versa. I also think it has sympathies to some of the more rhythmically intricate dance musics out of Chicago & Lisbon.”

The core NIS ensemble heard on Perseverance Flow always address Abrams’ writing with the discipline of orchestra musicians & the creativity of improvisers. But this time around, instead of inviting living legend status musicians Evan or William Parker or Ari Brown as honored guests to solo freely over the composed materials, Abrams’ invited guest collaborator was the medium of the recording studio itself. Situated at the board with engineer Greg Norman, Abrams pushed post production techniques found only sporadically on earlier NIS records deep into the heart of the music, distorting & reshaping instruments to subtly &, at times, aggressively mutate timbre & texture, color & time.

Refracting the band’s signature mesmerizing chains of overlapping rhythmic patterns through the sonic funhouse of dub makes Perseverance Flow the most formally experimental NIS album to date. Now a soundworld fully unique to itself is listening to itself, consoling & humoring itself, & consoling & humoring you. A destruction myth & a creation myth of a soundworld together at once —”energetically nutritious” (October 2025 Issue 500 The Wire) supernatural information society.

“Perseverance Flow is skipping rope in slo-mo. A dance of co-operation to rally guts & humors & keep marching through pouring tears” (Abrams).

For AI-41 Astral Industries presents a vinyl reissue of Robert Henke’s multifaceted concept album ‘Layering Buddha’. An erudite masterclass on sampling and composition, ‘Layering Buddha’ encapsulates the material process of metamorphosis and a well of nascent, ever-present potentialities. This new edition comes remastered by Henke himself. 

Originally released in 2006, ‘Layering Buddha’ began with a curious encounter with the ‘Buddha Machine’ - a pocket-sized, battery powered playback device that, over the past two decades, has quietly achieved a cult status around the world. Conceived by the Beijing-based group FM3 (Christiaan Virant, Zhang Jian), the machine takes inspiration from Tibetan Buddhist prayer boxes and consists of nine sound loop compositions of varying length, which can be toggled with a single switch. Due to low production cost and manufacturing imperfections, each Buddha Machine is unique, giving slight variations in sound, pitch and duration.

Using a state of the art A/D converter Henke made high quality recordings from a single machine, providing the source material for the album. Through various processing and arrangement methods, new pieces emerged, most of them all deriving from a single source loop. The pieces were then set up on the computer as generative arrangements, living as continuously permutating structures that could theoretically go on forever - just as the loops do within the Buddha Machines… 

The final pieces featured on the album are rendered excerpts of these infinite permutations, and therefore exist as momentary views on a perpetual machinery, as opposed to closed works. Upon initial exploration, it also became a natural development to format the work into an immersive multi-speaker performance - which premiered on January 31, 2007.

Within the music, subtle artefacts and idiosyncrasies are transmuted into new realms of texture and timbre. Through the extractive hand of subtle augmentations, an array of ethereal dimensions emerge from the vast unseen ocean. Suspended in a sense of timelessness, their undulating rhythms point to a pool of endless mysteries. 

Few producers have had the same seismic impact on techno and rave music as Joey Beltram. Hailing from Queens, New York, Beltram was a key architect of the early '90s rave explosion and responsible for some of the most influential electronic records of the era - and it was Belgium’s R&S Records that gave many of these tracks their first home.

Originally compiled and released by R&S in 1996, Classics brings together the core of Beltram’s groundbreaking early output - namely the Beltram Vol. 1 (1990) and Beltram Vol. 2 (1991) EPs, alongside the legendary Second Phase productions ‘Mentasm’ and ‘Mind To Mind’ (1991), plus a selection of aliases and collaborative work from the same period, including tracks under Mental Mayhem, Open Mind, and Disorder.

Now remastered and reissued as a 2LP set for 2025, Classics is available on vinyl for the first time since 2006, offering a long overdue opportunity to own these timeless cuts in their purest form. Across the 13 tracks, you'll hear the sheer force and innovation that made Beltram a household name in underground techno.

Integral to this collection are ‘Jazz 303’ and ‘Psycho Bass,’ co-produced with Norwegian techno innovator Per Martinsen (aka The Alien), which stand out for their experimental, forward-facing sound - highlighting a futuristic edge even within Beltram’s already pioneering catalogue. Elsewhere, his Second Phase project with Mundo Muzique delivers the seminal ‘Mentasm’ and ‘Mind To Mind,’ two foundational tracks that introduced the infamous “hoover” sound to dancefloors worldwide. Rounding out the set are deeper cuts under his aliases Mental Mayhem, Disorder, and Open Mind, capturing the breadth of Beltram’s restless creativity and technical command during his peak R&S years.
Classics’ by Joey Beltram is available on R&S Records from 25th July 2025.

The 2 Smooth World Vol. 1 Album broadcasts a highly addictive tale of electronic frequencies. A whole universe of musical explorations, ranging from twisted electro to more dubby compositions, beatless ambient ballads, classic house nostalgia - naturally flowing into oceans of acid & bass.

El Elektro Compilado Padrísimo Vol. 1 is a double 12” compilation curated by Spanish artist Elektro’s Grandfather, Dark Vektor featuring his personal selection from today’s scene. A fearless snapshot of the Spaniard national electro scene. Established figures stand shoulder to shoulder with new blood, generating a current where tradition and innovation collide in sparks. Every track is a charged fragment of a collective identity, soldered into one unstoppable groove. A declaration that the Spanish electro underground is alive, mutating, and absolutely padrísimo. Presented in ONE-OFF truly limited edition of 300 copies lacquered pressed on 180 gr. high quality solid BLACK vinyl. All tracks have been specially remastered for vinyl by Daniel Hallhuber at Young and Cold Studios (Germany).

Rooted in electronic music yet fueled with organic sounds of nature and acoustic instruments, Late Present explores sonic landscapes beyond Mirlaqi’s signature dance moves. Journeying between jazzy hip-hop, psychedelic downtempo and colorful ambient, the twelve-piece work aims at a thorough and sincere representation of the Swiss artist’s musical soul. With simple themes such as love and loss as well as a poetic approach to the inexorable coming of our end, the double LP is a reflection on the unicity of consciousness.

As always with Mirlaqi, talented and caring friends bring their energy and craft to the project. Antoine “Favi” Favennec’s sense of melody adds another level of emotion to Passager de la Terre, Velvet Love and Riddimer. Thomas “Nips” Abbet’s soft as silk trumpet sound delves deeper in the jazzy horizon of Caucasian Tree and Inter Lux. Augustin “Gus” Von Arx’s various percussion turns the heat up on Prendre le Soleil. Finally, Tim Spoerli’s uncompromised trumpet experience overwhelms Prendre le Soleil in glitters.

On the vocal level, Mirlaqi explores various dimensions of expression through spoken words and processed singing, as well as French and English vocals. In Passager de la Terre, Velvet Love and Prendre le Soleil, he receives passionate support from Alice Moeschinger and her touching yet strong crystalline voice.

Once again, fainek’s graphic and conceptual talent turns sound into vision with style. A true masterclass of artistic depth combined with visual clarity.

A multi-layered project to be savoured over and over again.

Alpenglühen starts 2026 with two close friends working together in the 11th one
Atàvic is the collaborative project between Estrato Aurora and Absis, merging two distinct yet complementary approaches to electronic music. The project is rooted in texture, atmosphere, and subtle narrative, allowing sound to evolve organically and without excess.
They together bring a refined sense of space and detail, working with ambient layers, restrained rhythms, and melodic fragments that unfold slowly. Here is a 4 track release with a more tactile and material approach, focusing on timbre, resonance, and sonic density, blurring the line between abstraction and structure.
The alignment between Atàvic and the label lies in a shared appreciation for subtlety, patience, and sonic storytelling, where each release is conceived as a complete and meaningful statement.
With this reference, Atàvic contributes a work that resonates with alpenglühen’s aesthetic ethos while reinforcing the collaborative project’s own identity: music that invites close listening and reveals its nuances slowly.
If you’re looking for a peak-time, dancefloor-driven banger to keep you moving until sunrise, this is not that record.
But if you’re after a mind-blowing experience that challenges and expands your listening (and dancings), this one’s for you. Don’t overthink it.

On »Empty Room,« David Granström works with slow transformations, cyclical and isometric patterns as well as just intonation as a way to create harmonic stability, allowing his long-form pieces to develop their own unique temporal and spatial qualities. A prolific figure in Stockholm’s experimental drone scene and a collaborator of Hallow Ground label mates Maria W Horn and Mats Erlandsson, the Swedish composer navigates through moments of quietude and crushing volume on these five tracks. Sonically and atmospherically, the pieces on »Empty Room« simultaneously call to mind Fennesz’s most meditative work or the physical experience of seeing Sunn O))) live, blending guitar recordings and synthesised sounds with forceful effects similar to those of Mario Díaz de Leon’s Oneirogen project while still being as moving and delicate as Alessandro Cortini’s solo work. The album is marked by melodies and harmonies that are the product of a peculiar working process that turned the composer into an intent listener collaborating with, rather than simply using technology.

Having been invited by the self-organising artist group The Non Existent Center for a residency to Ställbergs Gruva, a defunct iron ore mine in Sweden’s Bergslagen region, Granström took his guitar as a starting point for his compositional work that heavily relies on real-time sound synthesis. »I seldomly use the instrument as a sound source in the final compositions and rather transcribe and orchestrate the harmonic structures using sound synthesis,« he explains. »On this album however, I chose to include the actual recordings of the guitar in order to extend the spectra between non-referential synthetic sounds and embodied referential sounds.« Working with precise tunings in order to blend the timbre of the synthesis with the harmonic structures of the composition, he created composite sound objects in which the harmonic elements blend into each other.

Through the re-amplification of synthetic musical materials from the inside of the abandoned mine, his original compositions were enriched with site-specific sound qualities before he further refined them in a singular working process. Granström works with algorithmic and generative processes, using the SuperCollider programming environment and thus blurring the lines between generative and creative forms of composition. »One of the things that I like about this way of working is that it creates a distance between myself as a composer and myself as a listener of the music that is produced entirely by the system,« he says. Granström’s technologically aided eschewing of the conventions of composing doesn’t make the end result any less personal, however. By listening again and again to the newly generated output, Granström simply took on a different role in the process of finalising the music, with the technology and the sounds becoming his co-authors.

By creating systems that generate music, he gains a new perspective on (musical) time, says Granström. »There doesn't have to be a fixed length to the music at all,« he explains. »And by writing music with this in mind, my focus tends to shift towards writing cyclical structures that gradually change and transform over time.« Simple parts, in other words, that emerge as the five complex wholes that form »Empty Room,« a record that itself seems to take on different forms with every new listen.

Naive Melodies is a bold and visionary tribute to the music of Talking Heads, reinterpreted through the lens of Black musical innovation. Curated by Drew McFadden — the creative mind behind BBE’s acclaimed Modern Love (David Bowie tribute album) — this new collection dives deep into the Afro-diasporic rhythms and experimental soul roots that helped shape Talking Heads’ unmistakable New Wave sound. Inspired by artists like Fela Kuti, Parliament, and Al Green — whose influences loomed large in the band’s rhythmic DNA — Naive Melodies shines a light on the Black music traditions that underpinned their artistry. Far from a conventional tribute, Naive Melodies reframes the band’s catalog through the voices and visions of a new generation of genre-defying artists. These interpretations illuminate the foundational grooves and sonic textures that fueled Talking Heads’ rhythm-forward aesthetic, bringing them full circle with authenticity. “With Naive Melodies, I wanted to spotlight the deep and often overlooked influence of Black music on the sound of Talking Heads, drawing from the rhythmic foundations of Afro-diasporic traditions, soul, gospel, Latin, and spiritual jazz. This project is a chance to reimagine Talking Heads’ legacy through the lens of the very innovations that helped shape it, bringing those influences to the forefront through the voices of today’s most forward-thinking artists.” — Drew McFadden The album features a globally minded lineup, including Liv.e, Bilal, Rogê, Miguel Atwood-Ferguson, Aja Monet, Georgia Anne Muldrow, Theo Croker, Kenny Dope, Rosie Lowe, Pachyman, W.I.T.C.H., and more — spanning Afrobeat, jazz, soul, funk, gospel, dub, electronica, orchestral, and Latin styles. It reflects not only the boundary-pushing ethos of Talking Heads, but also the influence of Black music as a cultural force that helped shape it. This is not just a tribute album — it’s a recontextualization. A cultural conversation. A rhythmic reawakening.

NEW VERSION ON WHITE VINYL! After turning heads with the relentless 2024 EP Råtner på rot, Jordsjuk are back with their full-length debut: Naglet til livet (translates to 'Nailed to life'). Across twelve tracks and 36 minutes, the band delivers a visceral strike of raw, uncompromising metal - free of gloss, gimmicks and nonsense. Naglet til livet is a kaleidoscope of destruction, decay, and ugliness, the band states. From the thrash-fueled chaos of "Grovt skadeverk" and the suffocating aggression of "Parasitt", to the punk-driven decay of "Rennestein" and the gloomy introspectiveness of "Svikter den neste", this is the sound of filth, concrete, ruin, and rage. Twelve tracks of in-your-face, riff-driven and organic metal. Jordsjuk consists of Renton (drums), Mannevond (vocals), Sagstad (guitars), and Larsen (bass) - seasoned musicians from the Norwegian underground. Their sound sits somewhere between black, death, thrash, punk, and rock, forging a sonic identity as raw as it is deliberate. The lyrics, written in Norwegian, dive into personal collapse, trauma, and apocalyptic despair, delivered with uncompromising honesty. Drums were recorded at PhatCat Studios (Rygge, Norway), with the rest captured at various locations in Oslo. Mixing was handled by Kurt Ballou (Converge) at God City Studios (Salem, MA), while Brad Boatright took care of mastering at Audiosiege Studio (Portland, OR). The result is exactly what it needs to be: dirty, sharp, and heavy. Jordsjuk is necro music for necro times, says the band, and after hearing Naglet til livet, it's hard to disagree. The band were booked to by:Larm festival and Midgardsblot in 2025, and it's on stage that their sonic violence truly takes over. For those who've seen them live, expectations are high. For everyone else - prepare to be run over.

In March 2025, "On the Love Beach" performed solo shows in Shanghai and Beijing with Toushi Naoki to great success.

2025 marks the 30th anniversary of their memorable debut album, "On the Love Beach," and the band's first three albums are being reissued on CD and vinyl!

All three albums use the original master tapes, and each has been thoroughly remastered under the supervision of Shinji Shibayama for high-quality sound!

"On the Love Beach"'s third album, released in 1999, is a two-disc masterpiece that holds a unique position in the band's history, and many fans secretly cherish
the original LP version.

Shibayama's motivation for recording this album was to explore whether the concept he experimented with with Hallelujahs—"pursuing the uniqueness and
improvisation of the performance itself within the format of a pre-written song"—would work in a fixed band format rather than a session, and what the results would be.
It was a bold (and reckless) production approach: all basic tracks, including the lead vocals, were recorded live in the studio in one take, with no re-recordings allowed,
and overdubs like the chorus were kept to a minimum.

Although there are discrepancies between the punk-inspired performances and vocals due to the unedited concept, this is a rare example of the wild energy of a
band captured so authentically with such high sound quality in Jap-rock, and, regardless of its merits or demerits, it is undeniably compelling.

The raw sound quality, capturing the irreversible, fleeting interplay, demonstrates the outstanding engineering sense of Peace Music's Nakamura Soichiro,
and the pride of the rock band "Nagisa Nite" is evident throughout.

It's also noteworthy that this "Nagisa Nite" album contains the most solo works by Masako Takeda. Naturally, it's meticulously remastered from the original
master tapes for exceptional sound quality!

Holen Sie sich den Original-Soundtrack zu „Avatar: Fire and Ash“ auf Vinyl mit nach Hause, darunter
die Filmmusik von Simon Franglen sowie „Dream As One“ von Miley Cyrus. Mit „Avatar: Fire and Ash“
entführt James Cameron das Publikum zurück nach Pandora in ein neues, fesselndes Abenteuer mit dem
Marine Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), der zum Anführer der Na’vi wurde, der Na’vi-Kriegerin Neytiri (Zoe
Saldaña) und der Familie Sully.
Der Soundtrack zu AVATAR: Fire & Ash ist ab dem 23. Januar 2026 auf Vinyl erhältlich

DIN SYNC DUB is an exploration of communication through sound. Six tightly packed experimental dub tracks use bass-heavy vibrations to rattle both body and mind, pushing the limits of self-expression in the hope of fostering deeper human connection.

The drive for more efficient and precise communication tools—whether between man and machine or machine and machine—has been a foundational force in the evolution of technology. This duality, the way we interface with computers and the way we speak to one another, is at the heart of DIN SYNC DUB. For this album, N1_SOUND looks back to 1980, drawing inspiration from Roland’s Din Sync—a 40-year-old synchronization technology once used to link musical machines in perfect harmony. While connecting machines to produce precisely sequenced music is nothing new, it’s the tension between perfection and imperfection—the mistakes of both man and machine—that gives DIN SYNC DUB its voice, its emotional rawness.

The journey begins with “Horizontal Hang”, which crashes through the door with a relentless bassline and crystalline synths. “Such Love” introduces a throbbing, guitar-driven groove, while “Intuition Dub” channels the spirit of Jah Shaka, offering a rhythmic pulse that echoes dub’s deep roots. “Us All” provides a moment of introspection with its sparse, three-dimensional melodies, before “Joy” reintroduces chaos, creating a post-dubstep soundscape that dismantles everything in its path. The album closes with “Mauzy” , a hopeful yet fragmented conclusion, reflecting the ever-evolving nature of technology and connection.

By the mid-to-late 1980s, Din Sync was superseded by the more widely adopted MIDI, yet obsolescence is built into the nature of all technology. Just as our relationship with machines shifts and fades, so too does our understanding of how those changes shape us. Before we can grasp the impact, the world has already moved on.

DIN SYNC DUB, the first full-length LP from Spiritual World, pulses with energy, on the edge of malfunction—a manifestation of the tension between the digital and the organic, the past and the present.

Mit ihrem zweiten Album "Endless" tauchen Ov Sulfur noch tiefer in die düsteren Klanglandschaften ein, die das Quintett aus Las Vegas schon auf ihrem 2023 erschienenen Debüt "The Burden Ov Faith" auszeichneten. Angetrieben von der Stimme von Frontmann Ricky Hoover verschieben Ov Sulfur die Grenzen ihrer Deathcore-Ursprünge, indem sie gleichzeitig Black Metal ('Vast Eternal') und ein überraschendes Maß an Melodie ('Wither') erforschen, ohne dabei ihren Genre-dezimierenden Ansatz zu verwässern. Nachdem sie sich bereits als beeindruckender Live-Act erwiesen haben und mit Bands wie Lorna Shore, Signs of the Swarm und Nekrogoblikon auf Tour waren, ist mit "Endless" klar: Ov Sulfur sind hier, um zu bleiben.

Soul Visions is an instrumental journey into the world of Deheb, who, after several years of continuous sound research, continues to draw inspiration from jazz, soul, funk, and progressive rock records, first discovered through his father and then through his fellow collectors and DJs, including his partner DJ Marrrtin from Funky Bijou.
The Breton artist is renowned in the beatmaking world for his collaborations in New York in the mid-2000s (Moka Only, Sean Price, Torae, Tye Phoenix, Apani B, etc.) and for his album “LEAF”, released in 2015 with Swiss producer Chief. He is best known for producing classic Funky Breaks in the global breakdance scene with Marrrtin under the name Funky Bijou, whose tracks have been played at the world's biggest breakdance events since 2011 (Battle Of The Year, Red Bull BC One, etc.). All their tracks have been listened to more than 30 million times on various platforms and social networks.
A prolific artist who draws much of his inspiration from funk and jazz, he is based in Nantes and has collaborated with groups from the French Neo Soul scene, such as J-Silk from Bordeaux, Jo Wedin from Sweden, and Keysuna from Nantes. Close to the dance scene, he has also collaborated with dancer and choreographer Mackenzy Bergile, which led him to join the CCNRB's choreographic project “Earthbound” by choreographers Saïdo Lehlouh and Johanna Faye in 2023.
Deheb has also been composing for documentary projects since his first collaboration with director Shyaka Kagamé in 2015 for “Bounty”. In 2024 and 2025, he worked on two critically acclaimed projects: “Boulevard du village noir”, produced by Radio Television Suisse, and “IMIHIGO, le pacte rwandais”.
This year, 2025, he brings us “Soul Visions”, a journey through the cinematic sound of the early 1970s to the soul funk and jazz funk of the late 1970s, a pivotal period in his own musical identity that contributed to the funk sound of his guitars and the texture of his synthesizers and electric pianos.
Soul Visions is first and foremost a tribute to the artists and composers, the geniuses of that era, such as the Mizell brothers in “Larry and Fonce”, the Bell brothers in “Ron and Don”, and giants of the genre such as Isaac Hayes, Yuji Ohno, Roy Ayers, and Clarence Reid. All these masters of the genre had their own distinctive sound and arrangements, which were easily recognizable and which are among Deheb's major inspirations.

With her new album, Spira (Sprout), Olof Arnalds has found her joy in writing songs rekindled. In many ways it harkens back to her debut: it is exclusively in Icelandic, the arrangements are markedly stripped back compared to her last two records, and it is mostly recorded in single takes in the control room of Sundlaugin, much like Vio og vio. Although a classically trained singer and violinist, Olof has been an active practitioner of popular music for thirty years, the watershed moment was the 2007 release of her debut solo album Vio og vio (Now and Again, wider international release in 2009), produced by Sigur Ros' Kjartan Sveinsson in the band's converted swimming-pool studio Sundlaugin. It seemed to appear fully formed out of the ether, and became a local classic almost overnight, winning accolades such as 'Best Alternative Album' at the Iceland Music Awards, named 'Record of the Year' by Iceland's principal daily newspaper and recognised as one of the decade's 100 best albums by eMusic. Spira is produced by Skuli Sverrisson, who also contributes bass and guitar. His mind-melting resume includes musical direction for Laurie Anderson, recordings with Blonde Redhead and work with artists such as David Sylvian, Jon Hassell, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Bill Frisell and Arto Lindsay. Davio por Jonsson contributes piano and guitar to the record-much as he did during Olof's busiest touring schedule nearly fifteen years ago when the two of them toured the world for months on end. There is hardly a jazz musician in Iceland he hasn't played with but lately he is perhaps best known for his close collaboration with Ragnar Kjartansson, one of this century's most celebrated visual artists.

Stormzone were formed in Northern Ireland in 2004 as a heavy metal band. In 2007 They released “Caught in the Act” on the Escape Music label, and it was met with critical acclaim. They have since released another 3 albums on different labels, all of which have firmly put them on the map. In more recent years the band have taken a heavier direction and attracting fans of the NWOBHM genre. Stormzone have played at many festivals including Sweden rock, Firefest and Wacken open air to name but a few, as well as playing many shows. They have also played as support to many big names, such as Saxon, Y & T, Stryper, Tesla and White Lion. They have always had a loyal following which continues to grow. Their debut “Caught in the Act” featured artwork by the Rodney Matthews art studio, who have worked with album covers by YES, Bob Catley, Magnum and many others. The distinctive style of art is a firm favourite with many, and it is with great pleasure that we announce that “Immortal Beloved” shall also enjoy such outstanding artwork. This latest Stormzone chapter boasts 13 tracks of classic heavy metal, and it will be a much anticipated release to start the new year..

Mit ,A Constant Charade" nimmt der Künstler und Produzent Elujay aus Oakland die Maske von seinem facettenreichen, genreübergreifenden Schaffen ab. ,Einer der talentiertesten Singer-Songwriter der Bay Area" (Hypebeast) gibt sein Solo-Debüt beim kunstorientierten Indie-Label drink sum wtr mit einer risikofreudigen LP, die auf fast ein Jahrzehnt einzigartiger Arbeit in der zeitgenössischen Pop-Landschaft folgt. Er sieht seinen Stil als eine Fusion unerwarteter Einflüsse: R&B gemischt mit Rhythmen aus Yacht Rock, Sophisti-Pop, Dancehall, Al Jeel, Lovers Rock und den Klängen seiner trinidadischen Wurzeln. ,A Constant Charade" ist eine dynamische Sammlung, die von Verletzlichkeit und Ehrgeiz geprägt ist. Die Themen berühren soziale Signale, Verhaltensmuster und die Art und Weise, wie wir uns anderen gegenüber verhalten, ,einfach beobachten, wie ich mich fühle, wenn ich unter Menschen bin", sagt er. "Ob ich nun den Code wechsle oder mich anders verhalte ... wir alle tun das, es ist eine Farce." Mit seinem charakteristischen Gesang und den bisher stärksten Arrangements, zusammen mit einer Reihe von Mitwirkenden und Co-Produzenten, durchbricht Elujay die Spielchen, um echt zu sein. Aufgenommen an verschiedenen Orten über einen Zeitraum von drei Jahren, krönt "A Constant Charade" ein bahnbrechendes Jahr 2025, das mit der zweiten Folge von GEMS IN THE CORNERSTORE von JEMS! begann, seinem von dsw unter Vertrag genommenen Projekt mit J. Robb. Wie GEMS lehnt sich das neue Album stärker an den Einflüssen karibischer Musik und Leftfield-Elektronik an, von Dance bis Ambient und einem Dutzend Stilrichtungen dazwischen. ,Ich denke, es ist wichtig, einfach zu erkennen, dass diese Leute, mit denen man zusammenarbeitet, den neuen Sounds, die man entdeckt, eine gewisse Glaubwürdigkeit verleihen", sagt Elujay. Er schreibt einen Großteil der nostalgischen Qualität von "A Constant Charade" Nicholas Creus zu: ,Er ist Jazzgitarrist und ein großer Fan von The Police und Yacht Rock, er ist einfach überall auf diesem Album zu finden." Ebenso wie den langjährigen Mitstreitern Martin Rodrigues, Jaden Wiggins und Ben Yasemsky, die Elujay seit seiner Kindheit kennt. ,Benji ist einfach ein stiller Killer, ein großartiger Gitarrist, Produzent und Finisher, der immer in letzter Minute alles aufräumt." Wenn es um die Zusammenarbeit mit anderen geht, ,habe ich kein Ego, es geht nur darum, dass die beste Idee gewinnt. Letztendlich geht es um die Menschen, wir wollen einfach nur die bestmögliche Musik machen."

Infinity Gradient ist eine einstündige Komposition in sieben Sätzen für Pfeifenorgel und 100 Lautsprecher in 1-Bit-Audio. Aufgenommen wurde das Werk in der Royal Festival Hall in London, wo Organist James McVinnie 2024 als Artist-in-Residence tätig war. Die Lautsprecherinstallation - bestehend aus vier Subwoofern, 24 mittelgroßen und 72 kleinen Lautsprechern - bildet eine visuelle und klangliche Einheit mit der imposanten Orgel des Saals. Komponiert von Tristan Perich, verbindet das Werk die klangliche Direktheit seiner 1-Bit-Elektronik mit der archaischen Kraft der Orgel. Beide Instrumente basieren auf einem binären Prinzip: Ton oder Stille. Diese strukturelle Gemeinsamkeit schafft eine emotionale Tiefe, die trotz technischer Komplexität unmittelbar berührt. McVinnie, bekannt für seine genreübergreifenden Kollaborationen mit Künstlern wie Philip Glass und Squarepusher, initiierte das Projekt nach dem Hören von Perichs "Surface Image". Die Orgel der Royal Festival Hall - ein visionäres Instrument der 1950er Jahre - bietet mit ihren 7.866 Pfeifen eine ideale Bühne für dieses außergewöhnliche Werk.

One of the leading Japanese alternative rock band, GEZAN’s leader, MahitoThePeople’s director debut film, i ai was released in March 2024, and it is an atypical coming-of-age film decorated with tinge of red.

　The film takes place in Akashi and Kobe, Hyogo prefecture. This film’s main characters are Ko (Kentaro Tomita), a rookie member of a band and a brother-like figure of his, Hee (Mirai Moriyama) who Ko idolizes and the story of this movie is based on their struggles with life and death. The story is also based on Mahito's real-life experiences and while reality and fiction are duplicated, the boundary between them slowly melts away. The film co-stars Honami Satoh, Kazuki Horike, Mitsuru Fukikoshi, Eita Nagayama, Kyoko Koizumi, K-BOMB, Ichi Omiya and many other unique personalities. It should also be noted that the transparent images filmed by photographer, Masafumi Sanai gives the film, a special emotional quality.

　The film is not bound by any film theory but it poses a theme common to GEZAN's recent works and Mahito's writing activities: How can we live in a crumbling society while interacting with others? We can never live alone but living with others is also never easy. How can we overcome this time of extreme division of the world?

What left quite a strong impression in this film that not only Mahito personally directed but also wrote the script and composed the soundtrack as well was the main theme song, entitled “i ai”. This new piece of GEZAN is an extension of the work that this band has continued doing over the last few years. This 12" single, contains the song, “i ai” and it will be the first time released on vinyl.

Led by soft guitar arpeggios, the song gradually builds to a fever pitch, condensing the mood of the film which encompasses both tranquillity and intensity. The chorus of ineffable, multiple voices united together sounds like a lament that has spilled out of society or a cry of joy. GEZAN's collaboration with the 15-member chorus group, Million Wish Collective has been in development of late and the cultivated sensibilities through their activities are put to use in this song.

The song can also be considered a slow, relaxed dance track that lasts 9 minutes and 8 seconds. It has something in common with organic dance tracks from South America and other regions, and it is significant that GLOCAL RECORDS which represents glocal music from around the world in Japan are releasing it as a DJ-friendly 12-inch single.

The B-side features a remix by COMPUMA who is also closely associated with GEZAN. The song starts with an African styled percussion, with a thumb piano in the middle of the song and then returns to that memorable chorus. This song feels like a 18 minutes and 18 seconds long short movie like suite, with some dizzying changes from the beginning to the end. It is remix filled with enormous drama!

The cutting and mastering of this 12” was done by TOREI who is also active as a DJ and the artwork was created by jvnpey, a visual artist and graphic designer based in Tokyo. Their loving work also makes this 12" very special.

When I asked AI to find a synonym for the word, “division,” it displayed in succession, a series of words: “integration,” “consolidation,” “unification,” “unity”, and “reconciliation". All of these phrases are somewhat whitewashed and embarrassing but the mirage-like chorus echoing in the song, “i ai” seems to be trying to find a new word, that is a synonym for the word, "division. In this film, “i ai”, the message, “Let's live together after the end roll” was thrown out but included in this 12-inch, the message, “Let's live together after the music stops”, emerges.

Blues and Soul Award winner and double MOBO Awards nominee Ronnie Herel is back with his 2nd volume of his excellent compilation series Neo-Soul Sessions. Ronnie, a massively important figure in the UK Black music scene, is a radio presenter with Mi Soul and includes BBC 1xtra in his broadcasting credits. He is a DJ of international renown and was one half of the Quartz production duo which scored memorable hits with Dina Carroll. His undisputed love for and knowledge of the Neo-Soul genre shines through in the Neo-Soul Sessions and this latest, volume 2, is no exception. Featuring tracks from artists such as Vula, Terri Walker, Aname Rose and Slakah the Beatchild, among others, Neo-Soul Sessions volume 2 is a brilliantly curated and pieced together selection of twelve tracks that absolutely nails the beauty of the later releases in the Neo-Soul genre. Played from start to finish the track selection and order is a pre-made DJ set that flows in a way that would soundtrack a dancefloor, a house party and an excellent backdrop of tunes for any time and day of the week. Ronnie's passion for championing independent artists is also evident in his selections here and the compilation serves as a platform for those voices who deserve to break through. The decision to choose six of his favourite tracks to sit alongside six exclusive and unreleased gems means that a light is now shined on every artist featured on the compilation. An absolute must for serious lovers of Neo-Soul, RnB and Black Music, Neo-Soul Sessions volume 2 is released on double vinyl LP and CD formats.

Mit Calling melden sich The Busters eindrucksvoll zurück - neun Musiker, ein Album, das kollektive Kreativität hörbar macht. Entstanden in zwei Studios - den atmosphärischen Waldstudios bei Berlin und "Der Raum" in Waltrop - verbindet Calling emotionale Tiefe mit musikalischer Klarheit und der typischen Leichtigkeit der Band. Die Songs entstehen basisdemokratisch, ohne Hierarchie - aus Vertrauen, Präzision und Spielfreude. Das Ergebnis: ein Album voller Dynamik, Wärme und Atmosphäre. Man hört den Raum, die Luft, das Miteinander. Statt digitaler Perfektion steht das Gefühl im Vordergrund. Highlights wie der Titeltrack "Calling", das melancholisch-leichte "Champagne", das bissige "Freak Show" oder das hoffnungsvolle "Geschichte schreiben" zeigen die Band in ihrer ganzen Bandbreite - nachdenklich, ironisch, berührend. Live entfaltet sich die volle Kraft: The Busters gehören seit über 35 Jahren zu den besten Live-Bands Deutschlands. Calling fängt diese Energie ein - als klingendes Abbild einer Band, die weiß, wer sie ist, und trotzdem immer wieder neu aufbricht. With Calling, The Busters make a powerful return - nine musicians, one shared language, and an album that showcases the vibrancy of collective creativity. Recorded between two studios - the atmospheric Waldstudios near Berlin and "Der Raum" in Waltrop - Calling blends emotional depth with musical clarity and the band"s signature ease. No mastermind, no hierarchy - just a democratic process built on trust, precision, and joy. The result is an album rich in dynamics, warmth, and atmosphere. You hear the room, the air, the connection. Feeling takes precedence over digital perfection. Tracks like the floating opener "Calling," the subtly melancholic "Champagne," the biting "Freak Show," and the uplifting "Geschichte schreiben" reveal the band"s full emotional range - thoughtful, ironic, and deeply human. On stage, The Busters truly shine: with over 35 years of live experience, they are one of Germany"s most seasoned and beloved live acts. Calling captures that energy - a sonic reflection of a band that knows who they are, yet continues to explore new paths.

Clammbon, who have performed numerous tribute albums for artists such as Yasuyuki Okamura, Fishmans, and YMO, have released their first covers album, including
all of their classic covers. From Akiko Yano to Bow Wow Wow, the selection and arrangements show the band's depth, and the loose and casual recordings of
the Magokoro Brothers' "Summer Nude" and the Beatles' "Across the Universe" featuring Takashi Nagatsumi are particularly captivating.

The second cover album, released in 2013, is now available on vinyl for the first time! It features songs from a variety of genres, both Japanese and Western,
arranged in Clammbon's signature style.



[c] a3. U & I (After School Tea Time [Yui Hirasawa, Mio Akiyama, Ritsu Tainaka, Tsumugi Kotobuki, Azusa Nakano])

For over six decades, Charlemagne Palestine (b. 1947, New York) has been a pioneering composer, performer, and multimedia artist, celebrated for his ecstatic sonic explorations and ritualistic, metaphysical performances. Emerging from the cross-disciplinary New York art scene of the 1960s and ’70s, he helped shape a heretical edge of minimalism alongside figures like Conrad, Riley, Niblock, and Glass. Trained as a Jewish cantor and later as the carillonneur at St. Thomas Church, Palestine cultivated a deep fascination with resonance and overtone—an obsession that evolved through his use of percussion, early synthesizers, and monumental piano works, influencing artists from John Cale to Nick Cave.

Animated by a spirit of ecstatic play and what he calls his »meschugge« (Yiddish for »crazy«) sensibility, Palestine’s universe blends the sacred and the absurd, filled with soft toys, ritual gestures, and immersive sound environments. Rejecting the »minimalist« label in favor of a maximalist, »spontanimalist« approach, he creates long-form, resonant performances that transform spaces into vibrating, living organisms—opening portals into the nature of time, sound, and devotion.

In the same vein, the aptly titled live record »The Organ is the World’s Greatest Synthesizer« – performed during the Sonic Acts Festival at Amsterdam’s Oude Kerk in 2025, and taking its title and cover art from a drawing realized by Palestine himself during the concert – adds to his opaque yet vibrant personal mythology and intimate transcendence, marking a return to the Staalplaat catalog after »Fffroggssichorddd« (2020) and »Music for Big Ears« (2001).

Beginning with a resonating bell and his falsetto overtone singing, then surrendering to the endless, wild soundscapes of tone-feeling and beat frequencies generated by the church’s organ, across 40+ minutes, single sound sources evolve into clusters, entangle fully with one another, and establish their own spatial existence and aural architectures. We witness the traces of something that can be described as a perpetual performance, a test for the ever-changing interaction between artist, instrument, space and, ultimately, us.

Since Palestine has always defined his execution as a form of anti-composition - of simply »being in the music« as if inhabiting a space - the true power of »The Organ is the World’s Greatest Synthesizer« lies in encapsulating a moment of Palestine’s practice in its most authentic, live dimension. Sound becomes at once subtle substance and strange telluric force, animating physical forms from some unknown channel beyond and within, accessible only through our sensorium. The point in this liminal temple of tone, timbre and frequency is not to learn anything but to simply enter. Palestine earns once again his self-given title of contemporary shaman by keeping this sonic portal open, allowing us to witness and make it last.

»I have always felt and heard and mixed the sounds in my world as liquids not as solids. Sonic liquids are material that is endlessly transformable. But I’m not crazy about people who go around defining stuff.«

First Word Records are proud to bring you 'Penny Ballads', a 5-track EP from Royce Wood Junior. Royce Wood Junior is a Grammy & Mercury Award-nominated musician, songwriter and record producer from London, currently based in Brighton. As a multi-instrumentalist, he's collaborated with a litany of brilliant artists over the years, such as Jamie Woon, Nao, Disclosure, Jessie Ware, Olivia Dean, Joy Crookes, Jamie Lidell and Jordan Rakei, additionally to touring with the likes of the legendary Thomas Dolby. He's released two acclaimed solo albums to date ('The Ashen Tang' in 2015, and 'No Two Blue Ticks' in 2021). 'Penny Ballads' demonstrates RWJ's varied talents, with a collection of alternative soul compositions, each one as unique as the next. It includes the first two singles, the Poplife-Prince era flavoured 'Go Get Your Money', and the double-time future funk adrenaline shot, 'Clean Up', along with three previously-unreleased tracks. 'Beretta' is low-slung soul funk, beginning with quirky squelchy synths, before the soulful lead vocal of feature artist Lucey Way breezes in to melt everyone's hearts. 'Things' sweeps in next, an infectiously soulful midtempo heavy soul bop, with an instant earwork of a hook, like a modern-day Steely Dan / Doobie Brothers, complete with a head-nodding string section to end the track. The collection concludes on a more melancholy downtempo tip with 'Rolling'; an almost-folktronic anthem, with a key refrain that wouldn't be out of place on a 70's Stevie piece. RWJ (aka Jim Wood) says of this project… "Back in the 17 and 1800's Troubadours and minstrels would go from Tavern to Tavern selling Penny Ballads, single sheets of music and lyrics written quickly and frivolously to make a quick buck.. It strikes me that we're in a similar phase in the way we value music in 2025. An old Penny Ballad was cheap and dog-eared, ink-smudged, sung aloud by firelight, Now songs live in the digital ether, dissolved in the air, a ghostly breath paid in micro cents. The new era of Penny Balladry is here, and weird. This EP is a snapshot of my writing over a two year period. Focussed on minimal recording styles, one mic on the drums, generally first or second takes on parts and vocals, I wanted the music to feel like small moments with lyrics that talk about the weird nuances of being alive as a latter stage human on the cusp of the Ai revolution. Culturally so evolved, but physiologically still just a bunch of mammals walking about with primitive fears and needs. Just trying to reconcile it all moment to moment…" Previous support for Royce's music has included Radio 1's Future Sounds, BBC 6 Music's New Music Fix, Annie Mac, Clara Amfo, Jo Whiley (BBC Radio 2), Mary Anne Hobbs, Jamz Supernova, Tom Robinson, Huw Stephens (BBC 6 Music), Zane Lowe and MistaJam. There have been sessions previously for the likes of Red Bull and press from Huck, Line of Best Fit, Clash, Aesthetica & DIY magazine. Entirely self-written and self-produced, this EP gives a solid taste of RWJ's talents. A deeply funky diverse set of music from an immensely talented individual. 'Penny Ballads' is due to be released on vinyl & digital, 24th October 2025. The vinyl version also includes an exclusive additional mix of the first single 'Go Get Your Money'. TRACKLIST: 01: Clean Up (EP Mix) 02: Go Get Your Money 03: Beretta (feat. Lucey Way) 04: Things 05: Rolling 06: Go Get Your Money (B-Sharp Mix) Deconstructed Mixes

Already fifteen years that Cléa Vincent has been stepping on stage with that childlike fervor, that passion for pop and its elasticity, from her early days in Parisian bars to last year’s show at the Bataclan for the release of her third album Advitam Æternamour. You could say she needs no introduction, her name being inseparable from some of the most exciting work to emerge in contemporary French independent music. From the very beginning, she asserted her taste for spontaneous, candid, sunlit music, turning her songs not only into spaces of introspection but also into small capsules for dialogue. She collaborates constantly, with Kim Giani, Jeanne Balibar, Alison Wheeler, Jacques, NUSKY & VAATI, João Selva, Les Clopes…driven by a desire for sharing, for visions that meet and collide across genres. Alongside her work as a composer, she dedicates herself to giving a voice to the artists around her, notably through her show Sooo Pop, broadcast on YouTube in 2018 and 2019, where she welcomed guests as varied as Christophe, Moodoïd, Mathilde Fernandez, Katerine, and The Pirouettes. Like others of her generation, she claims the influence of francophone pop from the 1980s, but rather than being a successor to Jacno, Cléa draws from everything that shapes her era, fully plugged into the present, its faces, its energies, its collisions. She travels too, a way of reshuffling the cards of her inspiration, and her discovery of South America, of bossa nova and samba during her tour dates, became the catalyst for her series of EPs Tropi-Cléa.

Die japanische Metalcore-Band Crystal Lake wird ihr neuestes Album "The Weight of Sound" über Century Media Records veröffentlichen. Das Quintett ist seit langem ein bekannter Name in der internationalen Metalcore-Szene. Mit Einflüssen sowohl aus dem Metalcore als auch aus dem Hardcore verschmilzt ihr Sound die Intensität beider Genres zu einem einzigartig schweren und mitreißenden Stil, der besonders bei ihren elektrisierenden Live-Auftritten zum Tragen kommt. Während die Band intensiv auf Tour war, wurde das erste Stück ihres neuesten Albums, "BlüdGod" (feat. Taylor Barber), bereits im Mai 2024 veröffentlicht.

Die aus Japan stammende Band hat sich eine globale Fangemeinde aufgebaut, tourt weltweit und gewinnt durch ihre kraftvolle und energiegeladene Musik an Zugkraft. Das Quintett, das seine Musik in englischer Sprache veröffentlicht, hat es geschafft, sich im Laufe der Jahre eine internationale Fangemeinde aufzubauen und seit 2002 insgesamt 6 Alben zu veröffentlichen.

Ihr neuestes Album, "The Weight of Sound'", ist weniger von bestimmten Aspekten inspiriert als vielmehr eine Reflexion über die Reise der Band und ihre Lebensweise im Laufe ihrer Geschichte, wie Gründer YD erzählt: "Bevor ich es realisiert habe, war Crystal Lake 23 Jahre lang aktiv. Die Leute sagen oft: "Die Zeit vergeht wie im Flug", aber die Wahrheit ist, dass wir eine lange Geschichte mit Freunden, Bandkollegen und anderen Musikern aufgebaut haben, die Blut, Schweiß und unzählige Kämpfe geteilt haben, um diese Band aufzubauen. Das ist eine unbestreitbare Tatsache und mein Stolz. Jede Note, die wir spielen, wird zur Harmonie, und diese Harmonie wird zur Musik. Diese Musik gemeinsam mit Kameraden zu spielen, das macht eine Band aus. Und die Musik, die eine Band macht, kann eine neue Kultur hervorbringen. Unser neues Album 'The Weight of Sound' ist ein Spiegelbild dieser Lebensweise."

Das Gefühl von Gemeinschaft und Zusammengehörigkeit spiegelt sich auf dem Album auch in den verschiedenen Beiträgen wider, an denen die Band mitgearbeitet hat - vom Eröffnungstrack "Everback" feat. David Simonich von Signs of The Swarm bis hin zum düsteren, aber verführerischen "Dystopia", bei dem Jesse Leach von Killswitch Engage mitwirkt. Mit "BlüdGod" (feat. Taylor Barber), das ursprünglich im Mai 2024 veröffentlicht wurde, spiegelt das Album eine ziemlich lange Reise und einen langen Entstehungsprozess wider, der das Warten für Fans und neue Hörer gleichermaßen wert war. Gemischt und gemastert von Jeff Dune (Knocked Loose, Make Them Suffer, Currents), enthält "The Weight of Sounds" alle Elemente der Härte und bleibt dabei den rohen Emotionen, die die Band in ihren Texten ausdrückt, treu. Mit insgesamt 11 Tracks wird "The Weight of Sound" von Crystal Lake sicherlich schwer sein - musikalisch und emotional.

Multi-platinum, BRIT Award-winning, and GRAMMY®-nominated global pop visionary MIKA ushers in a bold new era with his seventh studio album, Hyperlove. Produced by MIKA alongside Nick Littlemore (Empire of the Sun) , with additional production by Peter Mayes (PNAU), Hyperlove is a vibrant and emotionally charged collection that embodies MIKA’s signature fusion of theatricality, honesty, and irresistible melody. The album captures the sound of an artist forever redefining and transcending pop on his own radiant terms. Written almost entirely by MIKA, Hyperlove also features select co-writing collaborations with Nick Littlemore, Renaud Rebillaud (GIMS), Matthieu Jomphe (Billboard) (Madonna, Dua Lipa, Ariana Grande), and Amy Wadge (Ed Sheeran’s “Thinking Out Loud”). Adding a distinctive cinematic flair, Hyperlove includes narration by the legendary American filmmaker John Waters, bringing his unmistakable wit and presence to the album’s world. With Hyperlove, MIKA continues his lifelong mission to craft pop music that is as bold and heartfelt as it is timeless, a celebration of emotion, identity, and imagination in their most vivid forms.

L. Eugene Methe is an Omaha based singer-songwriter and musician with a discography spanning over twenty years. His last two lyrical based albums were released on Grapefruit Records. As a studio musician he has contributed violin and piano on a diverse group of albums by Simon Joyner, Refrigerator, Mountain Goats, the Renderers, Naturaliste, Expensive People and many more.

Dennis Callaci from the band Refrigerator has released collaborative records with John Davis, Heimito Kunst, Simon Joyner and others as well as a myriad of solo LPs over the last 35 years. He runs the Shrimper record label. His fourth book is out in 2025 on Bamboo Dart Press.

The Last Chance Lottery is a collaborative record featuring the music of Methe and the vocals/lyrics of Callaci. Cinematic and outre in tone, the record does not forsake melody or tunesmithery, but strips much of it bare to paint it with surprising found sounds, abstraction and a balance between what these two fellas do best. The album was mastered by Al Jones as Marginal Frequency to further tightrope those two worlds. Features cover art and liner notes by Callaci.

**2010 Grammy Award Winner: Best Traditional Folk Album **

‘Marvelous…exuberant’ - Rolling Stone

Nonesuch Records releases a fifteenth anniversary edition of Carolina Chocolate Drop’s 2010 Grammy Award-winning album Genuine Negro Jig, featuring founding band members Dom Flemons, Rhiannon Giddens, and Justin Robinson. The reissue includes the original album and nine bonus tracks: seven previously unreleased tracks plus a 2025 remaster of ‘City of Refuge’ and a 2025 mix of ‘Memphis Shakedown’. This release marks the album’s first time on vinyl since its original pressing in 2010.

Genuine Negro Jig was released on February 16, 2010, reaching the top ten on the Billboard Folk chart and the top of the Bluegrass chart. It won the 2011 Grammy Award for Best Traditional Folk Album. Produced by Joe Henry, it was the first of three releases on Nonesuch followed by The Carolina Chocolate Drops/ Luminescent Orchestrii EP (2011) and the Grammy nominated album Leaving Eden (2012), produced by Buddy Miller. Widely acclaimed as one of 2010’s best, Genuine Negro Jig appeared in year-end lists of NPR, Paste, and more, and was featured in Rolling Stone’s 25 Best Country-Soul Albums in 2024.

“Genuine Negro Jig remains fresh fifteen years later not only because of the Carolina Chocolate Drops’ influence on American popular culture but also because it’s an excellent record in itself,” says Dr. Dwandalyn Reece and Dr. Steven Lewis of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture in the album’s liner notes.

Carolina Chocolate Drops formed after band members Dom Flemons, Rhiannon Giddens, and Justin Robinson met at the Black Banjo Gathering in Boone, NC in 2005. All three trained in the Piedmont banjo and fiddle musical tradition under the tutelage of Joe Thompson, who was one of the last musicians of his era and his community to carry on the southern Black string band tradition. While old-time Southern string music is often associated with Caucasian musicians from Appalachia, Giddens pointed out in an NPR interview that “it seems that two things get left out of the history books. One, that there was string band music in the Piedmont, period. And that Black folk was such a huge part of string tradition.” Carolina Chocolate Drops sought to not only correct this misunderstanding but also to keep the centuries-old string music tradition alive and developing.

The members of Carolina Chocolate Drops, who came from diverse musical backgrounds, shared singing duties and swapped instruments throughout their sets. The band recently reunited for a single show at Rhiannon Giddens’ Biscuits and Banjos festival in Durham, North Carolina in April 2025. In celebration of the 20th Anniversary of the Black Banjo Gathering, the documentary Don’t Get Trouble In Your Mind: The Carolina Chocolate Drops’ Story by Filmmaker John Whitehead was released on Amazon Prime, Apple TV, and YouTube Free4all streaming platforms.

After three decades of musical escapades as both a solo artist and 1/4 of The Four Owls, Verb T returns with his most ambitious offering to date in the shape of ‘To Love A Phantom’.

Reuniting with Canadian producer Vic Grimes on the follow up to their 2023 LP ‘The Tower Where The Phantom Lives’, the duo leave the traditional ‘rapper + producer’ stereotypes at the door on an insanely adventurous LP; Vic Grimes expertly soundtracking Verb T’s low fantasy across a double album 26-tracks steeped in suspense and intrigue.

Picking up where the previous album left off, ‘To love A Phantom’ sees the duo expand upon their collective love for the language of cinema; each track expertly blurring the everyday with the supernatural; spectres and spirits swirling around our protagonist as he exits the tower and extends his arc…

A deeply emotive, visceral and visual listen, the plot thickens with the help of a supporting cast of featured artists from across the UK underground, each adding their own distinctive flair to the wider narrative.

A truly unique universe of sight and sound, ‘To Love A Phantom’ is a shining example of Verb T & Vic Grimes at the height of their collective powers

After three decades of musical escapades as both a solo artist and 1/4 of The Four Owls, Verb T returns with his most ambitious offering to date in the shape of ‘To Love A Phantom’.

Reuniting with Canadian producer Vic Grimes on the follow up to their 2023 LP ‘The Tower Where The Phantom Lives’, the duo leave the traditional ‘rapper + producer’ stereotypes at the door on an insanely adventurous LP; Vic Grimes expertly soundtracking Verb T’s low fantasy across a double album 26-tracks steeped in suspense and intrigue.

Picking up where the previous album left off, ‘To love A Phantom’ sees the duo expand upon their collective love for the language of cinema; each track expertly blurring the everyday with the supernatural; spectres and spirits swirling around our protagonist as he exits the tower and extends his arc…

A deeply emotive, visceral and visual listen, the plot thickens with the help of a supporting cast of featured artists from across the UK underground, each adding their own distinctive flair to the wider narrative.

A truly unique universe of sight and sound, ‘To Love A Phantom’ is a shining example of Verb T & Vic Grimes at the height of their collective powers

After three decades of musical escapades as both a solo artist and 1/4 of The Four Owls, Verb T returns with his most ambitious offering to date in the shape of ‘To Love A Phantom’.

Reuniting with Canadian producer Vic Grimes on the follow up to their 2023 LP ‘The Tower Where The Phantom Lives’, the duo leave the traditional ‘rapper + producer’ stereotypes at the door on an insanely adventurous LP; Vic Grimes expertly soundtracking Verb T’s low fantasy across a double album 26-tracks steeped in suspense and intrigue.

Picking up where the previous album left off, ‘To love A Phantom’ sees the duo expand upon their collective love for the language of cinema; each track expertly blurring the everyday with the supernatural; spectres and spirits swirling around our protagonist as he exits the tower and extends his arc…

A deeply emotive, visceral and visual listen, the plot thickens with the help of a supporting cast of featured artists from across the UK underground, each adding their own distinctive flair to the wider narrative.

A truly unique universe of sight and sound, ‘To Love A Phantom’ is a shining example of Verb T & Vic Grimes at the height of their collective powers

Our director, Joe Stephenson, was looking for a bold, gothic, and dramatic score mixing traditional Hammer Films tropes with a modern sensibility.

Much like Jekyll and Hyde, this is a score of two parts, recorded with two different orchestras - the Budapest Art Orchestra and The Royal Scottish National Orchestra.
This helped to emphasise the split personality of the score: switching from sparse, haunting horror to the operatic gothic explosions we hear towards the end of the film.

A 30-person choir helped achieve a sense of scale where needed, and Hyde’s textural effects are performed on a variety of rare archaic instruments such as the Viola Da Gamba and Stroh Violin which help to evoke the sense of an ancient evil.

With a gorgeous smoky coloured vinyl, and Sean Longmore’s stunning bespoke artwork, this is a limited release that I’m eagerly awaiting to display on my own shelf.
The future of Hammer Films is bright, and I’m thrilled that fans can celebrate its rebirth with a score that honours the past while eagerly stepping into a new era." - Blair Mowat

The Final Album recorded by Nikki Sudden release posthumously by friends o Now after consultation with all band members and producer John Rivers the album has been re assembled re mixed and re mastered to create the best sound it's ever been o Lavishly designed by Dave Twist includes notes by band members and photos from the sessions o The Lp comes in de luxe gatefold sleeve with printed inner bags o Contains bonus tracks and has been reordered to the last email nikki sent on the subject

Zombie Club presents a re-edition (new sleeve art) of "Mambo Calypso" another volume of sonic Caribbean Cruise. Following the approach of the first volume and understanding the Caribbean as a region is not limited to a strictly geographical demarcation but rather a demographic and cultural space where countries, islands and coastal areas may fall into a common Mare Nostrum even arrives in New Orleans. The influence of African drum and the "Cuban clave" makes different music beyond its specific components be they Latinos, Anglos or Frenchie's - look at themselves and recognize a certain family. This is not a coincidence, since the slave trade brought African music from the port of Havana to Cartagena de Indias, Nassau, Port-au-Prince, Salvador de Bahía and the southern United States. The same Blackness, the same rhythm, the same festive mood, spirit of resistance and struggle. And so, Arsenio Rodriguez can be heard without jumps next to a Calypso of Blind Blake, or a tasty Pacho Galán's coastal Cumbia crossover with Dave Bartholomew's Mambo or a Latin Swing of Lalo Guerrero, where the Dominican Merengue sounds Joseíto Mateo in line with that of its Haitian neighbor Nemour Jean Baptiste. A very spicy musical "melting pot," a gumbo of percussion and languages, to enjoy and dance. Re-board the Zombie Club Cruise, mixing different genres of Caribbean music with a high dance and rhythmic component. This selection designed for collectors, Dj's & calypsofied zombie dancers.