quête:super sometimes

Formed in the mid-eighties Midlands, they are still not only eating pop but spewing it up in a chaos of thrilling ideas on new album ‘Delete Everything’. Their eighth record sees them further refine, define and deconstruct their melange of industrial rock, loop da loop techno, gonzoid hip hop and punk rock into a series of captivating sci-fi anthems. The band still look and sound like they have stepped out the pages of 2000 AD magazine with Graham Crabb and Mary Byker trading vocals like bouncing Duracell bunnies to the itching, compulsive beats surrounding them. Davey Bennett brings the bottom end and Cliff Hewitt plays the beats whilst Adam Mole delivers guitar aggro and sometimes waves his keyboard around with a delinquent glee. Still creative, still in a world of their own Pop Will Eat Itself have deleted everything and started all over again.

Tech-Nology was launched in 2003 specifically to make records with the artist Bjorn Svin. Bjorn was the first Danish artist who made underground crossover into commercial hit territory via "Mer Strom" - but still keeping respect in the "real" music world for his enthusiasm, non-compromising style, persona, and sweaty live performance skills - his musical understanding and need to explore new directions took the crowd on a personal musical journey from jazz and classical musicians to early electronic pioneers - but always in a tone of his own. Bjorn always felt a need to escape norms, to grow and not to repeat, but investigate and create. The first record on Tech-Nology was born under the alias - El Far: Couples of lonely dancers. "Bjorn is maybe the most talented electronic producer ever in Denmark" and he was celebrated as a wonder kid by the media back in the 90's. An insider with new knowledge of Bjorn told us: "Yeah I think its good music.. It's not for everyone I must add, but it's definitely quality music for those who dig this sound.. sometimes a bit too deep.. which kind of works against it, cause you really need to listen to it.. you cannot just skip through it, cause then you don't really grasp the soul of it.. so this is what makes it more difficult to sell - but if a guy like this was a bigger name he would sell much better.."

We love Bjorn and we agree - We have tried to sell Bjorn and his music for over 2 decades now - But you can't capture Bjorn, you can't own him - he is only making music for himself - and you can get on the ride if you want to, but don't expect all the rides to be fun - sometimes it hurts! Bjorn is difficult to sell, but we don't think Bjorn really would like to sell much better if he had the option to do a more commercial approach to his music - because Bjorn is about not selling out, he's a purist at heart, making music documents for the few. Bjorn is bigger than superficial success and streaming numbers. He made jingles for Nokia, toured and played Roskilde's main stage, the biggest Festival in Denmark, but he still doesn't care... and that is important if you want to make interesting music that last for the future. When Bjorn met Mester Jakobsen, label boss of Tech-Nology, he has been releasing on numerous underground labels, made the jump to a major label, and everything more or less turned out as a big disappointment, so Bjorn presented a completely experimental album to the Tech-Nology label under the moniker Prinz Ezo - The Body Offset. We loved it then - we still love it now - and a truly collectors item and a secret DJ tool.

Today, Bjorn is still breaking all habits and rules, still doing the same thing - just in new ways, but he has gained insight on another level, adding even more nuances and textures to his post-genre compositions.

Welcome to the second album by Prinz Ezo on Tech-Nology: KURIER Why Kurier? Because Bjorn left to explore the Berlin Underground, shortly after the first two releases on Tech-Nology - he left his roots to search for a bigger meaning, a bigger understanding, to compose real mature sounds and understanding his skills, at the point where you understand why you have to cross borders, still incognito, doing smuggler-sounds, always in transit - between cities, between cultures, between worlds, time and space. Not Restless nor rootless, just forever on the move, always discovering new landscapes! But now Bjorn is settling down - accordingly with the music - to find - not inner peace, but to be completely in balance with the music inside of him. Prinz Ezo is raw, narrative, minimalistic electronic storytelling that refuses to freeze. Tension builds and releases - feel the energy and the drama for the last 2 decades if you dare to take the journey?

Almost twenty years after the first Prinz Ezo album, it has now been possible to make the music for those who never arrived.

"The restorations of The Lost Recordings are worthy of those devoted to master paintings." — Le Journal du Dimanche

"We discovered these previously unpublished tapes in the archives of the RBB — the Berlin radio. This discovery is absolutely major because these two incredible musicians had recorded too little together and because this recording offers us the possibility to listen to them in works that were unpublished so far in their discography — notably an extraordinary sonata by Prokofiev! And what can we say about this Bach sonata, with an Andante that brought tears to the eyes of everyone present in the studio at the time." — Frédéric D'ORIA-NICOLAS, Musical treasure seeker

János Starker, cellist, and György Sebok, pianist, were both born in Hungary early in the 20th century. They were welcomed into the formidable Franz Liszt Academy of Music in Budapest, and emigrated to the USA, where they both held the title of Distinguished Professor at the Indiana University School of Music in Bloomington. Both heavy smokers and sometimes reputed — unjustly — to be harsh, austere and insensitive to trends, they were drawn to music in all its varieties and fascinated by its many colours. They had one aim only, one noble objective: to showcase the works all composers, as evidenced by this recording made in the legendary Studio 3 of Berlin Radio on 24 October 1963.

Starker and Sebok were fully imbued with the aesthetics that Prokofiev proclaimed: "I cultivate melody and strive to introduce feeling and emotion into my works. No matter that some call me a cubist, adding that I systematically avoid any emotional or romantic elements in my quest to reach only objectivity."

Next, and at the opposite end of the spectrum, is the Spanish passion of the two pieces by Granados and De Falla, pieces that nevertheless also convey melancholy. Starker and Sebok launch into the works with enthusiasm and intensity.

The last piece, Bach's Sonata in G Major, BWV 1027 for Viola da Gamba and Keyboard, is one of three he composed, probably in Köthen. Because they may have originally been written for other instruments, they can easily be transcribed for the cello and piano. They reveal the rich influences that pervaded the German region during the first half of the 18th century. The two musicians give us a sublime interpretation of the beauty of the counterpoint in this Sonata.

These recordings attest to the importance that the two superb musicians attached to working in the service of the composers. We wonder if, in that enchanted studio in Berlin in 1963, they knew how much further they went to bewitch us and touch us so profoundly.

"Chasing the funky symphonies that filled my head and my dreams..."

December 25th, 2023 - an Instagram post. Stimulator Jones shared half a dozen FIRE tracks from his beat tape archive. We were immediately drawn to the rough hewn boom bap.

"I'd release that", Rob commented.

Hours of material was shared and the result is this: Cool Green Trees (1999-2005). A collection of beats and loops Stimulator Jones created between the ages of 14-20 at home in his basement, bedroom and computer room in Roanoke, Virginia.

You will not believe the profound soulful genius contained within these naive schoolboy melodies.

December 25th, 1998 - 25 years ago to the day and his much-coveted Yamaha SU10 sampler was finally bestowed upon young Stimmy AKA Sam Lunsford: "I immediately hooked up a CD Walkman to the input jack and looped the beginning two bars of Grover Washington Jr.'s "Mercy Mercy Me". I don't know what exactly was so thrilling about hearing two measures of music repeating over and over but it was so infectious and hypnotizing and enthralling to me. I'll never forget that ecstatic rush of making my first loop - an uncontrollable, gleeful smile plastered all over my face." When you hear the pocket breakbeat symphonies featured here on Cool Green Trees, you'll feel the same sense of frisson.

In the wake of his Stones Throw breakthrough - Exotic Worlds & Master Treasures - Stimulator Jones was pegged by many as a 90s throwback artist. However, he literally IS a 90s artist. He's been recording music most of his life and he's now 40. He created the bulk of Cool Green Trees as a teenager. Everything before 2004 was recorded when Sam was still in school. He was in 8th grade when he made the 1999 tracks - he didn't even have his learner's permit. This album is a snapshot of a young man in a simpler time. Things were still mysterious back then and he was flying blind, relying on his ears and having to figure things out for himself: "I had no road map for becoming a beatmaker. I have been collecting music since I was a kid, I am a lifelong digger and seeker of cool and interesting sounds. I was there in the golden age of Hip Hop, and while I may have been a suburban white kid in Roanoke, Virginia, I was tuned in and I bought so many classic albums when they came out. I was attracted to Hip Hop because of the musical and poetic quality. I was hypnotized by the rhythms, partially because I was a drummer. I didn't brag about collecting my breakbeat records or making beats - it was something I did in isolation. It wasn't something I generally wanted to bring attention to and it didn't really score me any cool points. I certainly wasn't flexing on social media about it."

Hell, he can do that now!

Opener "Pharoah Jones" was inspired by Yesterday's New Quintet and Madlib's ability to capture that classic 70s sound whilst playing all the instruments. Sam created this one stoned afternoon by laying down a 2 bar loop and a shaker loop on his Yamaha SU700 sampler. He hung a microphone from the ceiling and played his Yamaha Stage Custom drum kit over the top before adding ender Rhodes and playing his dad's Selmer tenor sax through an Electro Harmonix Memory Man echo pedal. Yes! Up next, "Ghost Gospel" utilises a dope loop from a gospel record and adds some soul-funk drums overtop, whilst working that filter knob. Says Sam: "The loop reminded me of something Ghostface would rap over. The sample was in 3/4 waltz time but I flipped it for a 4/4 groove, a technique I picked up from RZA. "Ill Feeling" uses sped-up pieces from a dusty old funk record and putting them over a classic NOLA drum loop; gain chopping up a slow, bluesy 3/4 time signature and bending it to a 4/4 groove. Classy shit. "Capital Punishment" features drums tapped in live, inspired by MF Doom's Special Herbs series. "Do Not Adjust" consists loops found on a compilation of 70s French music at Happy's Flea Market, a classic Roanoke digging spot.

The sublime, evocative title track, "Cool Green Trees" was created when Sam was still living at home. He dumped samples off his SU10 into the family desktop and arranged them in a demo version of Pro Tools: "This track was sort of my ode to the DJ Shadow style of sample based production. Super spacey, slow, and moody. The heavily filtered drums were inspired by Alec Empire's 'Low on Ice' album. I later added some scratches and sounds from a Spider Man storybook record." "Chill Scratch" snags the final bit of a bossanova record and pairs it with a drum loop before adding experimental scratching run through an Electro Harmonix Memory Man echo pedal. "Poisonous Fumes" was made using a sampler, mixer and a turntable; a kind of mixtape beat collage with added scratches and sounds from various records. Using dialogue from superhero records was a nod to Madlib. "Welcome Aboard The Starship" is dark, downtempo trip-hop with a spooky bent. Sam paired a slow, hard drum loop with a guitar sample grabbed off a psychedelic rock record. To finish, he added various backwards sounds and weird atmospheric effects and a little scratching. Swoon.

Side B opens with "Keep On Runnin", made on a borrowed Roland SP202 sampler. Having always loved the sound of the Lo-Fi filter on those machines, reminiscent of the Emu SP1200, Sam always imagined Del or another of the Hieroglyphics crew rapping over this beat. You can certainly hear why. "Sounds Impossible" sees Sam experimenting with layering multiple kick samples at different volumes to create patterns similar to those heard by Showbiz and Lord Finesse during their God-level 1995 period. "Painted Faces" was made by chopping up a REDACTED record which he had gotten from Happy's Flea Market and paired it with a REDACTED drum loop. By the time Sam recorded "The Knew Style", he had acquired a shitty old 1960s portable turntable off eBay. It didn't function properly when he bought it but his brother opened it up, cleaned it out and got it working: "I remember he told me that there was a bunch of sand inside of it when he opened it up, as if its previous owner had taken it to the beach. I would take that turntable on my Happy's Flea Market digs so I could preview records...that's how I found this loop."

"Chicken Wing Blues Sauce" loops up a classic blues joint and pairs it with some REDACTED drums. A bit of filtering and arranging et voilà! "Kool Breeze", from 1999, is one of Sam's oldest surviving beats, as is "Sexx Bullets". The Roots sampled the same record, leaving Sam frustrated yet vindicated. "Soul Child" was an early SU10 creation, looping a dusty old Soul Children 45 and pairing it with 70s rock drum loops to great effect. "Take Off Runnin" was another loop found digging with a portable turntable. Paired with some boom bap drums it makes for a hypnotic head-nod groove. "Centurian" was intended to be a little beat interlude a la Pete Rock. The sample is from a sun-dappled soft-psych record and it's paired with a Robin Trower drum loop that just happens to fit perfectly. Sometimes you slap things together kind of haphazardly and magic happens. "Bozack" was the first beat Sam made using Pro Tools, his first foray into using chopped sounds instead of loops, an exciting new world. "Church" is beat interlude using a Phil Upchurch loop with the "Long Red" drums - a favourite break of Dilla et al. Sam was really on a tear in late 2004, probably because he was unemployed and phoneless and able to just make beats all day. He made "Splash One" on a borrowed Yamaha SU700 and again was experimenting with tapping the drums in live with his fingers, instead of using a loop or sequenced pattern. Channeling 9th Wonder, Sam used a water splash sound effect from a Batman record as a percussive element, hence the title (also a 13th Floor Elevators reference). The main loop is a backwards portion of one of his favourite Roy Ayers songs.

"Hank" is another fun little beat interlude thing, created on a borrowed Roland SP202 sampler with the fantastic Lo-Fi effect that resembled the Emu SP1200 at a fraction of the price. "73 goatee", from 99, is another of his oldest surviving beats, created in his bedroom with his Yamaha SU10 and his brother's Vestax MR-300 4-track recorder: "This one will always feel special. I can remember having a feeling all the way back then on the night that I created it that this was a solid beat with a catchy loop. There was something in the Fender Rhodes melody that resonated with me emotionally, and I had never heard a producer sample that portion before. I felt like I had found my own unique sound, my own unique loop. It came from an Ahmad Jamal '73. I actually even recorded myself rapping and scratching over this beat way back then, I still have that version in all its imperfect sloppy glory."

Sam explains just how much these tracks mean to him: "They all have immense historical and sentimental value and I'm proud of them. These beats come from an innocent, simple time when I was just figuring out how to craft these sounds. They're something very personal to me. They are the initial part of a journey that I really was taking *alone*. There was no YouTube. I couldn't Google shit. I didn't even know any other beatmakers, producers or DJs in my town that could teach me anything. It was always just me, alone, in a room with some equipment - chasing the funky symphonies that filled my head and my dreams. What I was doing wasn't cool. Most of my peers thought I was a weirdo and couldn't care less. Creating these sounds was an anti-social endeavour. In a sense, I felt like it was me against the world, and all I had to instruct and assist me were the recordings produced by my heroes - RZA, DJ Premier, Erick Sermon, Beatminerz, Showbiz, Diamond D, Beatnuts, Prince Paul, The Bomb Squad, Pete Rock, Q-Tip, E-Swift, Mista Lawnge, DJ Shadow, Cut Chemist, Peanut Butter Wolf, El-P and so many more...I dedicate this collection to them, and to my older brother Joe who has always been a musical and technical guiding light for me.

This was a time before every kid was a self-described producer and beatmaker, before everyone had a DAW, before Kanye and "chipmunk soul", before Red Bull beat battles, before there was any social media beyond chat rooms and AOL Instant Messenger, before Soundcloud, before SP-404 mania, before lo-fi beats to study to, before Splice, before targeted ads for MIDI chord packs, etc. In 99 when I told people that I had a sampler and made beats I was mostly met with bewildered confusion and indifference. Kids and adults alike would wonder why I got this weird machine for Christmas instead of something worthwhile like a Playstation or a mountain bike or even a guitar for that matter because at least that could be used to make "real music". Back then, sampling was still not widely respected as an art form - it was seen as lazy, talentless and unoriginal at best and outright criminal theft at worst. I had gotten respect for playing drums and guitar and things of that nature but this was a step in the wrong direction in the eyes of many."

The cover photo is a picture of Sam standing on his back porch in the latter part of 1998, just before he got his first sampler. He was 13 years old, in 8th grade. His dad took the picture with his 35mm film camera: "I actually wanted to be pointing my dad's .22 pistol at the camera lens but he wouldn't let me. He gave me an old walking cane to use instead. The Tommy Hilfiger puffer jacket came from the lost and found at William Fleming High School where my mom worked as a secretary. I was thrilled when she brought it home because we never spent money on expensive name brand clothing like that - we were for the most part strictly a sale rack, bargain bin, thrift store, yard sale, flea market kind of family when it came to clothes. My watch is some cheap off-brand fake gold department store watch." Mastering for this vinyl edition was overseen by Be With regular Simon Francis and it was cut by the esteemed Cicely Balston at Abbey Road Studios to be pressed in the Netherlands by Record Industry.

2023 Repress

DJ Koze - with his friendly and sometimes slightly melancholic take on the world - is one of the greatest auteurs of club music today, and one of the few internationally active DJs who dares to make music that has relevance beyond the dance floor. During the 70-minute journey on his DJ Kicks - the 50th edition - Kosi
Kos manages to establish a uniform color even though genres alternate in a way that is rarely heard on a mix CD: the stripped down hip hop of Madlib, brutalist Berghain techno, timeless songwriting, floating indie-pop and outlier numbers that oscillate between absurdity andmelancholy. Koze's disregard for the stylistic yoke presents him with an immense challenge. Hence, almost all the tracks are more or less edited, and one is fully rhymed (Session Victim: Hyuwee).Koze rambles on here himself: "I didn't want to kick around ophisticated knowledge, but rather try and weave together some good gems that would make sense to anyone, even people who aren't necessarily music nerds". But this is blabbing that you can count on, also because he approaches the term "mix" from a different angle and doesn't even try to make something fit that doesn't fit: "During the day, I don't need to hear anything that's mixed on the beat. I put the focus on making sure that it works harmoniously - the idea is more to create the impression of a radio show, like people such as John Peel did so uniquely. There is a giant cosmos of music and it runs through my filter".

Over the decades, the image of Kompakt as a pirate ship has taken root in our minds, braving the dangers of the seven seas of the music market. Sometimes it glides with a tailwind through calm waters, sometimes it has to survive violent storms. When we set sail in 1993, we never would have dreamt that our journey would still be going on after more than three decades and with 500 releases to date.

In our fast-paced business, the 500 mark is rarely reached, so we want to celebrate it with a lavish 5LP box set. In a democratic process, we have selected 50 pearls from the thousands of tracks released over the last 33 1/3 years and pressed them onto 5 brightly coloured vinyls. Alongside many Kompakt evergreens, there are also some real rarities from the early ‘Kompakt Sound of Cologne’, which have been lovingly remastered here to shine in new splendour.

The box also contains a 144-page book that tells the story of Kompakt from 1993 to today with detailed texts and images. In addition to the manifold musical and graphic achievements of Kompakt, the multidisciplinary links to the visual arts are also highlighted here.

The Bonus Picture Disc opens with the symbolic tolling of 500 bass drums, followed by 50 locked grooves from the 5 Kompakt founders, looping into infinity at 133 1/3 BPM, and the ‘33 1/3 Years Loop Opera’ – in which the loops are combined into one track that, in its reduced essence, is more than the sum of its individual parts. The magic of groovy loop minimalism and the ‘art of omission’ are once again brought to the proverbial point.

On 23 May 2025, the big KOMPAKT 500 art exhibition will open at the venerable Kölnischer Kunstverein to coincide with the release. The entire visual cosmos of Kompakt will be shown here in an unprecedented way on three floors, with the participation of many renowned artists. Of course, there will also be dancing and partying at the vernissage party, with DJ sets and live shows by the Kompakt Allstars.

The last one turns off the bass drum.


Im Laufe der Jahrzehnte hat sich in unseren Köpfen das Bild von Kompakt als Piratenschiff festgesetzt, das den Gefahren der sieben Weltmeere des Musikmarktes trotzt. Mal gleitet es mit Rückenwind durch ruhige Gewässer, mal muss es heftige Stürme überstehen. Als wir 1993 die Segel setzten, hätten wir uns nicht träumen lassen, dass unsere Reise nach über drei Jahrzehnten und mittlerweile 500 Veröffentlichungen immer noch andauert.

Die 500 ist in unserem schnelllebigen Geschäft eine selten erreichte Katalognummer und soll daher mit einer üppigen 5LP-Box gebührend gefeiert werden. In einem demokratischen Prozess haben wir aus den tausenden Tracks der letzten 33 1/3 Jahre 50 Perlen ausgewählt und auf 5 knallbunte Vinyls gepresst. Neben vielen Kompakt-Evergreens finden sich auch einige echte Raritäten des frühen “Kompakt Sound of Cologne”, die hier liebevoll remastered in neuem Glanz erstrahlen.

Die Box enthält außerdem ein 144-seitiges Buch, das mit ausführlichen Texten und Bildern die Kompakt-Geschichte von 1993 bis heute erzählt. Neben den mannigfaltigen musikalischen und grafischen Errungenschaften von Kompakt werden hier auch die multidisziplinären Vernetzungen zur bildenden Kunst beleuchtet.

Die Bonus Picture Disc wird mit einem symbolischen Glockenschlag von 500 Bassdrums eröffnet, gefolgt von 50 Endlosrillen der 5 Kompakt-Gründer, die sich bei 133 1/3 BPM in die Unendlichkeit schleifen sowie der “33 1/3 Years Loop Opera”, in der die Loops zu einem Track zusammengefügt werden, der in seiner reduzierten Essenz mehr ist als die Summe seiner Einzelteile. Die Magie des groovenden Loop-Minimalismus und die “Kunst des Weglassens” werden einmal mehr auf den sprichwörtlichen Punkt gebracht.

Am 23. Mai 2025 eröffnet parallel zum Release die große KOMPAKT 500 Kunstausstellung im ehrwürdigen Kölnischen Kunstverein. Der gesamte visuelle Kosmos von Kompakt wird hier unter Beteiligung vieler namhafter Künstler*Innen in nie gesehener Form auf drei Etagen gezeigt. Selbstverständlich darf zur Vernissagenparty auch getanzt und gefeiert werden zu DJ Sets und Liveshows der Kompakt Allstars.

Der Letzte macht die Bassdrum aus.

Full throttle from Vancouver, BC to wherever the open road takes them The Vicious Cycles are BACK with their new LP Get Wrecked on Pirates Press Records! Before you even get the shrink wrap off the gatefold jacket, you can guess what kind of party you're in for. "Our pal Shakey Deal is the cover model," says Cycles head honcho Billy Bones. "A tuff looking scrub on a minibike says a lot about who we are." And who is that exactly? "We play garage/punk rock and roll songs about motorcycles. We like to have a good time." The promise of debauchery carries over into song titles like "Naked On a Beach," and "On Fire in the Hot Tub." As rip-roaring, danceable party music goes, it's second to none, and rest assured there's plenty of bike enthusiast inside baseball, but the lyrics often go deeper than a superficial glance might indicate. For example, the lead single, "Hold On Tight," is about, as Billy puts it, "the physical feeling of riding with your favorite person on the back of your motorcycle - easily one of the best feelings a human can have." So, a classic biker anthem? "But also," he's quick to add, "a metaphor for life and relationships. We're gonna make it." Waxing philosophical with motorcycles as allegory over chrome-plated punk rock 'n roll? That's The Vicious Cycles' songwriting in a nutshell. Another album highlight, "Daddy Was a Gambler" references Billy's father - an ex-preacher who regularly hauled his kids to Circus Circus in his '57 Chevy - and his mother, a nurse and, as Billy puts it, "as close to an actual saint as anyone in the world. The song is an appreciation for the two of them, and how their differences made me who I am." "Naked On A Beach" sounds like a party, but Billy explains it's "a critique of capitalism and the tiny lives we're expected - and sometimes content - to live." Even the title track, "Get Wrecked," is more than just a statement of defiance; it's a message to Billy's son about dealing with the conformist naysayers of the world. Longtime fans & newcomers alike will be stoked for the straightaways, but stick around for the twists and turns, just like any good ride. The band brings in pals on strings & saxophone for a 60s Wall of Sound-inspired production on "Black Boots, Black Leather Jacket," and try their hands at their first murder ballad on "Pretty Hands." There's an instrumental tune ("Blowing Smoke") and hell, there's even a deep cut cover of "Trouble Again" - originally performed by Stewart Copeland of The Police - which only the biggest nerds of a certain age will recall as the theme song to the 80s Star Wars animated series Droids! In the end, no matter the detours, the band - along with Jesse Gander (Territories, Comeback Kid), & Mariessa McLeod at Rain City Recorders - kept their eyes on the prize: sing-along choruses, handclaps, and short songs that get the job done and don't overstay their welcome. "I didn't want us to write a record that you could dance to." quips Billy. "I wanted us to write a record that you couldn't not dance to."

Listen to This.” As the original working title for Bitches Brew, the instruction and invitation remains to this day as the best way to approach a record that shattered conventions, altered music history, and, 55 years later, still sounds far ahead of its time. The template for jazz fusion, Bitches Brew is rightly ranked by virtually every significant outlet among the 100 greatest albums ever made. Sewn together with vibrant colors, voodoo textures, and ethereal moods, the 1970 landmark emerges with supreme detail and nonpareil feeling on Mobile Fidelity’s UltraDisc One-Step 180g 33RPM 2LP vinyl set.

Sourced from the original master tapes, strictly limited to 5,000 numbered copies, and pressed at Fidelity Record Pressing in California, this definitive-sounding 55th anniversary reissue enhances every element of a double album that established new possibilities for studio recording techniques. You’ll hear wide and deep soundstages, separation between instruments, and an extremely broad dynamic range. If ever a jazz album can be said to have gone to outer space and back, this is it.

Sourced from the original master tapes, strictly limited to 5,000 numbered copies, and pressed at Fidelity Record Pressing in California, this definitive-sounding 55th anniversary reissue enhances every element of a double album that established new possibilities for studio recording techniques. You’ll hear wide and deep soundstages, separation between instruments, and an extremely broad dynamic range. If ever a jazz album can be said to have gone to outer space and back, this is it.

Davis conceived Bitches Brew by having the musicians stand in a semi-circle. There, he pointed at them with vague directions for tempo, solos, and cues. The collective improvisation and interplay spawned a galaxy of melodies and grooves that were later spliced together by producer Ted Macero. Benefitting from the ultra-low noise floor and superb groove definition of this pressing, these distinct creations take shape with utmost realism. Compositions stretch across jet-black backgrounds and paint canvases laden with millions of colors and shades. Juxtaposed percussion, loose jams, and melodic segues explode with impressionistic verve.

Bitches Brew also boasts visionary artwork. By design, the lavish packaging and gorgeous presentation of the UD1S Bitches Brew set call attention to such matters. Housed in a deluxe slipcase, it features special foil-stamped jackets and faithful-to-the-original graphics that illuminate the splendor of the recording. It is made for discerning listeners who desire to fully immerse themselves in everything surrounding the album, from the images to the tones. And this is one effort where every last detail matters.

Gathering a Hall of Fame-worthy lineup of musicians and tweaking it according to his desires, Davis follows through on his idea to “put together the greatest rock and roll band you ever heard.” Central to his proposition is the presence of two (and sometimes three) drummers and two bassists, a tactical move that makes rhythms a central focus. Akin to the futuristic album cover art, the drum-driven suites head toward distant universes and uncharted territories. At once hypnotizing and grooving, they chart maverick adventures via quixotic rock, funk, and R&B elements.

A without-a-net experiment involving interchangeable double-quintet lineups, Bitches Brew explores the previously unimaginable with electrified instruments — Fender Rhodes piano, processed trumpet, dissonant guitars, and bass among them — and an emphasis on feeling over composition. Mesmerizing and soothing, jarring and smooth, overt and subtle: The music seemingly covers an entire map of emotions and sensations, and like no record before, ties together the groundbreaking creativity of the multiple disciplines that were changing popular culture at the end of the 1960s and dawn of a new decade.

Conceptually, Davis described Bitches Brew as “a novel without words” and “an incredible journey of pain, joy, sorrow, hate, passion, and love.” The vast psychedelic expanses of warped echoes, liquid reverb, and tape loops confirm such ambitious contrasts of light and dark, fear and hope. Yet the most absolute characteristic of the watershed effort lies in how it resists definitive interpretation and encourages free thought — the very principles Davis used to conceive Bitches Brew.

More About Mobile Fidelity UltraDisc One-Step and Why It Is Superior
Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab’s UltraDisc One-Step (UD1S) technique bypasses generational losses inherent to the traditional three-step plating process by removing two steps: the production of father and mother plates, which are created to yield numerous stampers from each lacquer that is cut. For UD1S plating, stampers (also called “converts”) are made directly from the lacquers. Since each lacquer yields only one stamper, multiple lacquers need to be cut. Mobile Fidelity's UD1S process produces a final LP with the lowest-possible noise floor. The removal of two steps of the plating process also reveals musical details and dynamics that would otherwise be lost due to the standard multi-step process. With UD1S, every aspect of vinyl production is optimized to produce the best-sounding vinyl album available today.

1990's Recurring, the fourth and final studio album by Spacemen 3, is often considered the introduction of two brilliant solo projects (Spectrum and Spiritualized) rather than the work of a functioning band. While Spacemen 3's departing statement surely reveals a deep divide within the S3 camp – each side of the LP was written by Sonic Boom and Jason Pierce separately and, unlike previous releases, the two do not play on each other's songs – Recurring maintains a cohesive, dreamy feel with its chief sonic officers backed by fellow travelers Will Carruthers, Mark Refoy and Jon Mattock.

Opening saga "Big City (Everybody I Know Can Be Found Here)" marries ambient haze with narcotized indie rock, while "I Love You" manages to arrange a beautiful flute alongside a defiantly throbbing bass track. "Hypnotized," a reimagined fuzz-pop hymn, would become the group's first entry in the UK Singles Charts. Recurring lays bare the essence of Spacemen 3's persistent sound, rooted in both aural expansion and phenomenal songwriting.

Includes download card and new insert with liner notes by Marc Masters.

Mr Bongo is proud to present 'The Original Sound of Mali', compiled by Vik Sohonie & David Buttle.
Malian music is arguably deeper, more sophisticated and lyrical than any other form of African music. Those of us deeply entranced by Malian culture, and, in particular, the immense hypnotic beauty of Malian music, have put together a
selection of songs from across the country.
Compiled by Vik Sohonie & Dave 'Mr Bongo' Buttle, the story of this release began in 2015 when Dave happened upon the Soul Bonanza blog. A treasure chest of rare finds from around the world! One mix in particular stood out and totally enthralled Dave - le monde à change: a tribute to mali 1970 - 1991. He
already knew of Malian legends such as the Rail Band, Salif Keita, & Les Ambassadeurs du Motel de Bamako, but this mix was something else! Deep & culled from the collections of some of the heaviest African music collectors in the world, legends like Vik Sohonie, Hidehito Morimoto, Philippe Noel, Gregoire
Villanova, and Rickard Masip. Dave immediately contacted Vik and a journey of discovery tracking down the rights-holders began. He also turned to the font of Malian music knowledge, Florent Mazzoleni. Florent has written the definitive book about Malian music - 'Musiques modernes et traditionnelles du Mali'. He
proposed some incredible tracks to include and provided the back bone of the sleeve notes and photos that are used in the album. No Malian album would be complete without a striking front cover photo, and ours is sourced from the late great Malian photographer Malick Sidibé.
On this album you will find well-known artists sitting next to rarer
discoveries. The Rail Band, who are one of the best known of all the big bands in Mali, gave us the stars Mory Kanté and Salif Keita. Les Amabassedeurs du Motel de Bamako were another big act that had Idrissa Soumaoro, Kanté Manfila, and for a while Salif Keita in their ranks. Sometimes Salif would play in both bands in one night, quite a feat considering the bands were fierce rivals. As an albino Salif has had to face considerable prejudice from society, focussing on his musical career to help overcome this.

A major discovery on the album has been Idrissa Soumaoro et L'Eclipse de L'Ija. L'Eclipse de l'Institut des Jeunes Aveugles was a Blind teenagers institute and their record was produced by the German association that took care of blind Malian teenagers in Bamako. It was never properly released commercially and was the first recordings by the legends of Malian music Idrissa Soumaoro, Amadou Bagayoko and Mariam Doumbia. Amadou & Mariam later got married and became household stars, including making an album with Manu Chao.
This album is a concerted global effort to showcase the most vital cornerstone of Malian culture in an attempt to preserve its reputation in the face of its current, grim reality. We hope our highlights of Mali's rich history of musical innovation will serve as a starting point for reclaiming an image tainted by unnecessary conflict. May peace and music return to Mali soon.
Dedicated to Malick Sidibé.

T. Gowdy returns with a major statement and luminous stylistic expansion on his third album for Constellation. Trill Scan is an exquisite suite of songs literally and figuratively about alchemy, where Gowdy melds his background in choral and medieval music with his trademark analogue electronics. Following the acclaimed Miracles (Bleep Album of the Week / Albums of the Year 2022), Gowdy's bar-raising new LP centers human voice for the first time. Choral set-pieces and solo lead vocals, along with his own lute playing, are novel elements in Gowdy's work, and draw on strains of Middle Ages polyphony and the Baroque "broken style" to further distinguish Trill Scan from anything in his discography to date. Gowdy sees "the modal language of medieval Europe as a less distant cousin to indigenous traditional music practice" compared to a Classical-colonial "patriarchal order of tonality that honours a system of domination." The 12th century Notre Dame School of choral music and 17th century style brisé each carry tonal materiality, heterodox technique, and cultural-historical symbolism central to Trill Scan's conceptual and compositional alchemy. Gowdy coheres these beautifully into his palette of serpentine slowburn electronics, a minimal analogue-driven techno shaped by aleatory strategies and tinged with post-punk grit. Gowdy's sound has been aptly described as "gently transportative, flickering like a busted halogen lamp" and his overriding pursuit of psychoacoustic immanence likened to "getting your brain massaged" and praised as "blissful work that bristles with effervescent energy, like brain waves coming in and out of focus." Trill Scan expands this sonic sensibility with more conspicuous harmonic complexity, stylistic variety, and humanistic narrative arc. Alternately sacramental and intimately personal vocals, sometimes wordless and sometimes lyrical, are worked into superlative instrumental tracks, yielding a warmly immersive concept album that's equally Gowdy's most musical. Gowdy sings explicitly of alchemy on the hypnotic album centerpiece "Novus Lumen" with lyrics that gesture at these medieval processes of material investigation. The tension between the scientific and esoteric is crucial; the separation and synthesis of physical substances in medieval alchemy maps onto his fixation with the interplay between the materiality of sound and psychoacoustics. Gowdy follows the Jungian interpretation of classic alchemical texts as an historical bridge to theories of the psyche, where consciousness itself is treated as materiality and similarly subjected to methodical analysis and experimentation, to deconstruction, dissolution, transformation, reintegration, metamorphosis. Song titles like "Arislei Bone" and "Materiadiscipuli" further reference these mythopoetic throughlines from medieval alchemy to modern psychology. Gowdy chooses disruptive forms from the history of Western music that symbolize and prefigure the modern psychological subject and its struggle for/against order, even as they also evoke liturgy and the Renaissance court. The sacramental adds a potent dimension to his pursuit of psychoacoustic activation, meditation, and transcendence, as choral passages intersperse with electronic drone and pointillism throughout the album. His gorgeous Fennesz-meets-lute rendition of the Baroque composition "Courante" by François Dufault offers idiomatic salon-secular counterpoint. Album closer "Strewn" is bookended by a final recurrence of choral invocation, with pulsing earworm motorik techno in between, over which Gowdy whisper-sings a dreamlike vision quest of mythic-alchemical imagery: "as I washed my eyes they turned to metal / and the memories melted to the metal / the metal of my heart." A mesmerizing final song that explicitly invokes Gowdy's search for materialized abstraction and substantive musical immanence wrought from his own psycho-therapeutic subjectivity, and encapsulates the album's turn towards more harmonic, historicized, and humanistic elements. Trill Scan commingles empyrean and earthly electronic songcraft to genuinely original and absorbing effect. Thanks for listening. RIYL: Coil, Nicolás Jaar, Alessandro Cortini, Pantha Du Prince, Fennesz, Visible Cloaks, Actress,

“BLADE N” is the long-awaited new album from Japanese rapper Karavi Roushi, who appeared on the Japanese hip-hop scene with his debut solo album “Kiyosumi Kurokawa”. This, his second solo album, is a collaborative release with Aquadab, the Japanese track maker/sound designer who co-produced “Kiyosumi Kurokawa”. The album showcases the preternatural mind-meld between rapper and track maker.

Karavi Roushi came before the public as a member of Nagoya hip-hop collective Hydro Brain Gang on Nero Imai's album “Return Of Acid King” (2017). He then launched the label Super Lights with Aquadab and released his first solo album “Kiyosumi Kurokawa” in 2019 with graphic design by Takara Ohashi. Although an unknown newcomer, the album reached #15 on the iTunes Hip Hop Japan album chart and received plaudits not only for its music but also for the artwork by Ohashi. After the album, Karavi Roushi dropped his first collaboration tune with Aquadab on “S.D.S =Zero=” (2020), a compilation of Generation Z Japanese underground artists produced during the Covid pandemic. That tune, “Tokyoite”, became a favorite of the participating artists.

"BLADE N” was created by the three-person team of Karavi Roushi, Aquadab & Ohashi. Consciously developing their musical methodology, they intentionally use instrumental tracks to interrupt the rappers' voices and flows, something which has traditionally been avoided, and explore the possibility of creating a style that puts the rapper and track maker on equal footing in complex, woven tracks. On the album, Karavi Roushi's paranormal voice, which sometimes sounds like a mutant synthesizer, adds incisiveness, and in the artwork Ohashi visually extracts the story world hidden in “BLADE N”, giving the cover art the same impact as that of “Kiyosumi Kurokawa”

„Life has never been easy, so keep moving“ is the opening line of Making moves, the title song of SANTROFI‘s new album. Four years ago their celebrated debut ‚Alewa‘ introduced this 8 piece Highlife collective powerhouse from Accra to the world.

After five solid years on the road, SANTROFI is now ready to release some fresh material. co-produced and mixed by four-time Grammy Award winner Jerry Boys (REM, Ali Farka Toure, Buena Vista Social Club, Orchestra Baobab, Kronos Quartet). The band has continued an intense tour schedule, with 2024 seeing their first shows in the USA as well as a Japan tour of with 13 sold out shows 2024. where.

Making moves is both a celebration of SANTROFI’s roots and a leap into the future of Highlife. The opening track Amina is a Ghanaian childhood game turned Highlife Funk. It draws from the past, pushing it into the future. The title song Making moves sees Santrofi team up with the current booming Afrobeatscene in Ghana: It features Ghanas Newcomers Kofi Jamar and Arathejay. The song talks about trying to survive on the sometimes crazy streets of Accra without loosing your mind. Su nkwa sees Santrofi celebrating their love for typical Sikji Highlife music. And the nostalgic No money, no honey sums up yet another common truth from the streets of Accra. From the opening Highlife funk of Amina to the Ghanaian-childhood-game-turned- boogie-banger Gyae me how, this record will get you dancing.

Led by producer-bassist Kojo Ofori, SANTROFI unites 8 of Accra’s most gifted musicians with a passion for both vintage highlife grooves and a hip hop sensibility. Members of the band have played with leading Ghanaian artists including Ebo Taylor, Pat Thomas, Ambolley, AK Yeboah and highlife pioneer AB Crentsil with whom they recorded just before he passed away - watch out for that!

SANTROFI have shared stage and studio with rising stars of Ghana’s vibrant urban music scene such as Kidi, Yaw Tog, Black Sherif, AratheJay and even Nigerian superstar Wizkid (who has made Accra his second home). The upcoming album sees the band teaming up with some of the most exciting talents in Ghana‘s such as AratheJay and Kofi Jamar.

If you think it is impossible to play a funk groove (or even drill) over a pulsing Highlife clave: SANTROFI will prove you wrong. Listen to the phrasing of SANTROFI‘s horn section, hear the Highlife clave running through every bar of their music. Santrofi are pushing Ghanas Highlifegrooves into the future without loosing its sweet soul. And don’t forget to come and see them Making moves live in your city.

F.U.N. Is Now Available In A Limited Frosted Shadow Colored Vinyl Pressing!

The latest full length album from Detroit mainstays Slum Village, F.U.N., has now made its way to vinyl. The 12-track project is their first album in nearly ten years and includes fresh collaborations with Larry June, Cordae, Eric Roberson, Robert Glasper , Karriem Riggins, Abstract Orchestra, Sango, Phat Kat, Daru Jones, Earlly Mac, The Dramatics and more. 2015's critically acclaimed Yes! further cemented T3 and Young RJ's ability to effectively carry on the legacy of the seminal rap group, retaining its essence while evolving its sound with fresh new energy. However, with last year's sold out tour in Europe, and the release of the Larry June and The Dramatics-assisted "Just Like You", it was revealed that the duo was back in the lab together working on a new Slum Village album. F.U.N. finds Slum Village expanding on their signature certain sound, but still staying close to their hometown roots: Young RJ explains- “We wanted to just try something new, so we focused on making Disco-inspired music,” and T3 notes that the recording process all “began with collecting old Disco records.” For fans who wonder why the sonic shift, and why the long hiatus between proper albums, T3 says “Slum is still here. We’re still relevant and we’re still trying to push the envelope. Sometimes people put too many rules on music, and without sounding cliche, we wanted to just have fun with this album.” F.U.N., indeed.

The genius of Lord Kitchener has been the mainstay of our series. In this volume devoted to his post-war London recordings, Kitch plays his many roles with signature aplomb and poised subtlety. First there is the hooligan chantwell, up for anything in the hurly-burly of carnival proper; and then the casual reporter, firing off postcards to Trinidad about taxis, flashy booze, fast women and football in Manchester, with homesickness and grievance nestled just behind the optimism, pride and tentative senses of belonging. There is the bearer of news from home, in detailed accounts of murders, tales of stupid local coppers, and reminiscences about food and particular mango trees; the political thinker, considering racism and Africa; and the diarist, with his vivid tales of infidelity, and disclosure of the break-up of his marriage, and his desire to get away. One foot in the UK, the other in Trinidad; but the man himself somewhere in-between. Kitch In The Jungle, nobody around. A ‘diasporic explorer’; a key twentieth-century witness, alongside such hallowed figures as Samuel Selvon and Edward Kamau Braithwaite. Though in frustration Kitch would sometimes take over double-bass duties himself, the musicianship of Rupert Nurse, Fitzroy Coleman and co is top-notch. The original glorious sound is down to Denys Preston, recording for Melodisc, often at Abbey Road Studios (where we transferred and restored the 78s compiled here). Presented in a lovely gatefold sleeve, with a full-size booklet containing superb, specially-commissioned sleevenotes by Kitch biographer Anthony Joseph, and fabulous, previously-unseen photographs.

The Norwegian indie-pop super-group with members from Making Marks, The Little Hands of Asphalt, Mildfire, Flight Mode and Elva return with a third album of original Christmas songs.

Get into that alternative, Nordic Christmas spirit! Christmas III at its heart is an alt-Christmas album: the songs are firmly rooted in December’s festivities, albeit not usually relying on the season’s traditional reference points. The songs hone in on the more ambivalent sides of Christmas - family, customs and the passing of time - with a keen eye towards the holidays’ most obvious function in countries close to the Artic circle: getting through the cold and dark times to celebrate the winter solstice and the turning of the sun. Drawing from Sufjan Stevens’ epic indie Christmas compendium and Phil Spector’s wall of sound classic A Christmas Gift From You, Christmas III is built on shimmering guitars, snow filled piano lines, gentle strings, springy vocals and dynamic drums - all steadily conducted by Sunturns’ own Sjur Lyseid (Flight Mode, The Little Hands of Asphalt) in the producer’s seat at his Globus studio in Oslo. With 3 songwriters (Ola Innset, Einar Stray & Sjur Lyseid) contributing to Christmas III, there’s an ever shifting sense of reflections. Parenthood and the struggles of the dark Norwegian winter is behind Ola’s track First Winter. “Sometimes I feel bad about bringing children into such a difficult world. Not so much with respect to daylight and the seasons, they’re just going to have to learn how to live with it, but with many other things – like war, poverty, climate change and even just death.” Back In Town might have been inspired by a discussion over whether Thin Lizzy’s “The Boys Are Back In Town” is a Christmas song or not, but it’s written about his youngest daughter Klara, to his elder daughter, about taking holidays with your family in a town you once lived. Einar pulls in Phoenix and Mew by the way of Jesus and Mary Chain on Crash Course Christmas, resulting in a seasick wave of a pop tune. “It’s a song about the guilt of not prioritizing your relationships. It’s been year of rainchecks and Christmas finally gives you some time to reflect. You’ve experienced so much and changed so much as a person that you almost forget your origins. Coming home for Christmas can then be a ritual of finding your way back to what you left behind." Drawing on the knitwear from the film Love, Actually, Turtle Neck, taps into the Backstreet Boys by way of Mac Demarco, with a sneaky reference to the legendary Norwegian Christmas hit En Stjerne Skinner I Natt. Album closer This Christmas / Next Christmas leans in on the hook for the Norwegian Christmas TV show Jul i Blåfjell, a multi-generational seasonal staple (essentially a daily children’s advent calendar kids show). “The song is about your parents ageing and needing your help – possibly really far away - while at the same time having your own children to take care of”. The cover artwork is a homage to Christmas dress codes for Norwegian men. Suits and shirts are a rarity in day to day life, but there are a handful of occasions that require some form of formal attempt at a suit: New Year’s Eve, National Day, weddings & funerals, and Christmas Eve: resulting in various degrees of sartorial elegance on the day (and on this instance, a hot summer’s day stifling the Christmas vibes, with ambiguous apparel instructions ahead of the photoshoot!).

Merry Christmas! Sunturns are Ola Innset – vocals, guitars, banjo. Sjur Lyseid – vocals, guitars. Einar Stray – vocals, keyboards, guitars. Eivind Almhjell – guitars, bass. Simen Herning – guitar. Jørgen Nordby – drums.

This 20th Anniversary Limited Edition 8LP Super Deluxe Collectors Boxset celebrates the critically-acclaimed album ‘How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb’ – which won all eight Grammy Awards for which it was nominated, including ‘Album of the Year’. The original album - now remastered for the first time – includes the global hit singles ‘Vertigo’ (winner of three Grammy Awards), ‘City Of Blinding Lights’ and ‘Sometimes You Can’t Make It On Your Own’. This unique boxset also includes the shadow album, ‘How To Re-Assemble An Atomic Bomb’, featuring new, unreleased songs recently rediscovered in the archive of the original HTDAAB album sessions.

This 20th Anniversary Limited Edition 8LP Super Deluxe Collectors Boxset celebrates the critically-acclaimed album ‘How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb’ – which won all eight Grammy Awards for which it was nominated, including ‘Album of the Year’. The original album - now remastered for the first time – includes the global hit singles ‘Vertigo’ (winner of three Grammy Awards), ‘City Of Blinding Lights’ and ‘Sometimes You Can’t Make It On Your Own’. This unique boxset also includes the shadow album, ‘How To Re-Assemble An Atomic Bomb’, featuring new, unreleased songs recently rediscovered in the archive of the original HTDAAB album sessions.

Ltd White Vinyl, DL card. 1992's 'Untitled' brought the band's third album that re-cemented the duo once again as the progenitors of the "lo-fi" genre. This breakthrough set transitioned "The Trux" into a never ending all-inclusive rotating cast of musicians. Continuing Fire Records' series of classic remastered albums from Royal Trux, 'Untitled' is released on white vinyl and features updated monochrome and silver artwork. As unpredictable as ever, Neil Hagerty and Jennifer Herrema shook off the next level layering and noise of 'Twin Infinitives' to embrace the history of rock 'n' roll in all its deformed grandeur. Utilizing their ever present mind set of macro-inclusivity, they allowed the subconscious "radio stations" of their lives to infiltrate, lead, and dictate. Culling from their collective minds and memories twisted tunes that touched them. After the blood rush of their much-hailed avant-garde masterpiece 'Twin Infinitives' (1988), this eight-song opus added to the lo-fi genre that originated on 'Twin Infinitives'. On 'Untitled' Hagerty uses his 5-string blues roots and hails rock's twisted potential, while Herrema slurs and snarls in ecstasy. They sound like they're locked in a fourth-floor boudoir at the Chelsea Hotel; bottles clink, an album clicks on its run-out groove, the band plays on. In the mix are the characters and casualties of the 90s, a roll call of swaggering misfits. These aren't superficial sketches, the Trux cut much deeper than that_ "'Junkie Nurse' isn't just about addiction; it's about the twisted hope that even the most broken people can somehow mend others, even when they're falling apart themselves." Jennifer Herrema, Royal Trux. With 'Untitled' Royal Trux justifiably increased their coterie of convicted followers, becoming the cult heroes for a transgressive generation, and the Rosetta Stone for male/female duos (ie:The White Stripes, The Kills etc... ) over the years inspiring everyone from The Silver Jews (David Berman) & Sonic Youth through to melodic blue-eyed soulsters like Hot Chip - "I urge and encourage you to enter the harmolodic multiverse of their music." Alexis Taylor, Hot Chip. "Royal Trux were nothing if not fearless." Pitchfork.

The wait is over, Return To The 37th Chamber is El Michels Affair's highly anticipated follow up to 2009's underground cult classic Enter the 37th Chamber. Churning out classic records since then for the likes of Lee Fields, The Arcs, The Shacks, and tons more, it is clear that EMA's signature sound is stronger & sharper than ever. This time, in addition to re-interpreting the Wu compositions for a live band, EMA pays homage to the production and sonic fog that makes a RZA beat so recognizable. Producer and bandleader Leon Michels recorded the album completely analog, sometimes hitting 6 generations of tape before it was ready for mixing, giving the Return to The 37th Chamber it's own hazy sound. Adding to the unique fidelity, the record is laced with psychedelic flourishes, John Carpenter' synths, heavy metal guitars, triumpha0nt horns, and traditional Chinese instruments that make up for the lack of the Wu's superlative vocals. From start to finish it's a dark trip that walks the line between RZA's timeless hip-hop aesthetic and the cinematic soul EMA has become known for. El Michels Affair tackles some classics like 4th Chamber and Wu Tang Aint Nuthin to Fuck Wit, as well as some deeper cuts like Ol Dirty Bastard's Snakes, Raekwon's Verbal Intercourse, and Shaolin Brew, Wu-Tang's contribution to the St. Ide's Hip Hop endorsement campaign from 1994. This time El Michels brings some of the Big Crown family along for the ride. Lee Fields handles vocal duties on Snakes and is joined by Shannon Wise of The Shacks for their version of Tearz, which pays as much homage to the Wendy Rene sample as it does to the Wu-Tang Clan. Lady Wray makes an appearance on the cover of Method Man's hit, All I Need, lending her vocal prowess to what gave the Wu one of their biggest hits of all time. Interspersed throughout the record are some original interludes that are like the rug that ties the room together,' giving Return To The 37th Chamber a cinematic narrative that makes it a proper El Michels Affair record and not just a collection of covers. From the music to the presentation, this album is a perfect example of what can only be achieved through diversity. The end result is as much a kaleidoscope of influences and multiculturalism as the city it was recorded in. El Michels Affair is once again, sounding out the city' that raised them, pulling elements of art and culture from across the country and around the globe to create an album truly unique in it's own right.

Pia Isa is the solo project of bassist, guitarist and vocalist Pia Isaksen from Norwegian heavy psych/doom rock-band Superlynx. As much as she loves playing with Superlynx (already formed in 2013) and other people, Pia’s ideas for her solo-albums seemed more right to work through on her own mostly. Pia´s music is rooted in slow heavy drones, but also has a lighter, dreamy and hopeful side. She is inspired by massive soundscapes, heavy psych, meditative moods, desert vibes and Eastern scales as well as her Nordic coastal surroundings. Superlynx-listeners may recognize her slow, heavy and minimalistic riffs, and haunting sometimes chanting voice. Pia has an open mind to a lot of different music. Not caring about fitting to any genres but channeling honest and heartfelt music in her own way. The lyrics are deeply personal and stretches from the very inner self and throughout nature. On her new album Pia has worked more with layers of vocal harmonies and has given an old dark sounding nylon acoustic guitar more space in her massive distorted soundscape.

Oliver Coates' Throb, shiver, arrow of time is a portal into somatic chiaroscuro, aglow with the embers of imperfect memories and smudged with the plumes of internal echoes, which augment in vast, mercurial dimensions. For his third album on RVNG Intl., the British cellist, composer and producer offers a capsule of personal resonance and remembrance, assembled over the past six years. Throb, shiver, arrow of time traces the familiar metallic anatomy and viscous string modulations of his 2020 release skins n slime, while recentering his inner compulsions following a procession of lauded score writing projects, including the films Aftersun (Charlotte Wells, 2022), The Stranger (Thomas M Wright, 2022) and Occupied City (Steve McQueen, 2023). While working on Aftersun, Wells asked Coates how music could signal that someone is going on a trawl through their memory_a question that has stayed with him ever since and fosters a heartbeat running through the record. Throb, shiver, arrow of time is "all about inaccurate transmissions from our memories, overlaid with emotions from other sources," says Coates. The release is imbued with the ache and glow of recollections mulched together, where the guttural dissonance of misremembering is shrouded by strange orbs of sentiment. At the record's inner core is "Shopping centre curfew," a swift yet cavernous track that emerged five years ago when two real world events, both occurring in South London during the pandemic lockdowns, became fused in a dream: the demolition of Elephant and Castle shopping center, and the discussion of a curfew as a real possibility for all men following a violent crime. A strange simultaneity occurred with this piece of music and Coates built the album out from there, a sense of temporal entropy refracting shimmers of lurking convulsions into lucid sonic topologies. The ten compositions of Throb, shiver, arrow of time find weightless melodies soaring across after-image gradients, magnified and compressed. Misted tones within "Please be normal" and "90" soften drone-soaked shudders of inner acoustics messing up. Vocal invocations appear from long-term collaborators Malibu and chrysanthemum bear, as well as drifting synth radiance from Faten Kanaan. Throb, shiver, arrow of time furthers Coates' reach in collapsing the digital into the analogue and vice versa, allowing serendipity to reorganize the material and push out against the confines of flatness. This sculptural approach to sound is deeply influenced by the intricate installations of artist Sarah Sze, whose permutations of visual matter with its own after-image form kaleidoscopic epitaphs for ephemera and emotion. Coates' thinking about Sze's work and processes flowed together with his own playing and editing techniques, superimposing the textural relief of a live take back into a composition, and allowing the sound to succumb to a dream of itself. As Coates expands, "The cello is a kind of melancholic instrument with a light ethereal spirit. When the sound is flattened into digital processes, with shifted frequencies and time stretching I'm trying to give it even more of those qualities. Sometimes I'm distancing myself from it, so it becomes a piece of discarded debris that has soul in it, a down-sampling. Or other times, it's trying to maximize the present tense in the act of playing, and collapse that vivid color into a burnished, photocopied kind of sound. So the music acts like weather, weathering the listener, or as flames licking at the sides of objects." As the record unfurls, the compositions swell in duration, until the granular glimmers of its finale "Make it happen" persist in almost violent delight. "There's a feeling of not wanting to let this album go, trying to defy the extinguishing sound at the end of the music, trying to push the colors beyond the confines of the structure, to defeat the silence." In the scramble to resist denouement, Coates suspends the arrow of time in its eternal flight, just for a moment, to reveal the solace of the dust settling in the afterglow. Oliver Coates' Throb, shiver, arrow of time will be released on vinyl, Japanese import CD, and digital editions on October 18, 2024. On behalf of Oliver and RVNG Intl., a portion of the proceeds from this release will benefit The Traditional Music and Song Association of Scotland, an organization fostering opportunities for people of all ages to participate in the traditional music and culture of Scotland.

Fohn brings connection, displacement and new identities into the moment, on pastoral debut album Seanteach - informed by island life, marine folklore and musical tradition.

Connection to the land, the severing of earthly ties, explorations of environment, mythos and generational memory: under the moniker of Fohn, English violinist and producer Tom Connolly (Quade, AD93) takes to the fiddle on which he learned his craft as a child. Forging new bonds with his family’s island home off the coastal west of Ireland, their story is retold in Seanteach (Irish for ‘old house’), released on Odda Recordings.

“Seanteach explores the nature of my relationship with Ireland, and Connemara in particular, where my dad’s family is from,” explains Connolly, speaking on a long-form work that blends new compositions on traditional Irish fiddle with ambient electronics and evocative field recordings.

“It explores how the island of Maighinis became an almost mythological space for me, growing up in England - we would spend every summer there, but it felt equally present for me when we were back in the UK, a sort of mental solace that I found through music especially.”

Each track on the album is a reflection of aspects of that relationship to island life - where physical features intersect with mythology. Such as, ‘Boreen’, named after a colloquial term for rural byroads sometimes shared with otherworldly neighbours. ‘Aisling at Sea’ draws on the primal, unstoppable momentum of the water, while the folklore of ‘Immram’ reflects on generationally-kept tales of marine bravery and supernatural accomplishment.

“The compositions often sit at the fraying edges of memories I’ve inherited from my own experiences, that of family lore, or from stories that I have come across. I wanted the compositions to tread the space between documentation and fantasy that feels so reflective of my relationship with this place.”

Tying these worlds together is the presence and memory of Connolly’s ‘Mamó’ (Irish for grandmother), Bríd. Despite passing during Connolly’s childhood, this “larger-than-life character” shaped his imagination with anecdotes and stories, representing both a familiar figure, and the poignancies of potential and regret.

“Even at a young age I sensed a sadness emanating from her. Through a series of unfortunate and fortunate circumstances, she found herself leaving Ireland and settling in Boston like so many others. Under the impression she was an illegal immigrant in the US she didn’t return to Ireland for decades.”

‘Between the Shoreline and the Gorse’ channels her early childhood, born to a large Catholic family in the island’s ‘Seanteach’, and cast adrift from her old life - a severance of ties that Connolly attempts to make ethereal amends for, with the album named for her family home.

“It’s something that feels so visibly prominent in Connemara with its landscapes charcoaled with deserted ruins. It’s a feeling I also experience, despite never having lived in Ireland, which prompted me to want to explore the idea of longing for something/somewhere ‘un-experienced’, and to a certain extent, fictionalised.”

Forgetting You Is Like Breathing Water, the self-titled debut from the duo of trumpeter Will Evans and guitarist, synthesist, producer and multi-instrumentalist Theo Trump, arrives like a vault revelation. It feels like a decades-old yet newly unearthed masterwork of gorgeous ambient improvisation, the sort of thing scholars live to research and shepherd into deluxe reissue.

The patient, crystalline chords that swell and resonate like a series of confessions; the textured brass murmurs that suggest a ’60s or ’70s Fire Music master at their most poignant. Provocative found-sound experiments threading arcane religious recordings through dystopian soundscapes. Ear-shattering free-noise tumult. Where and when did this music come from? Who are these voices?

As it turns out, Forgetting You Is Like Breathing Water springs from an engrossing human story, though it isn’t necessarily the one you’d expect. This work of stunning maturity is in fact an entrance by two little-known explorers in their early 20s, who grew up together in Virginia, in the shadow of the Blue Ridge Mountains. It documents one of those perfect, sparkling moments in post-adolescence when big decisions and responsibilities are right around the corner, but for a spell, two young artists are able to create among the comforts and nostalgia of their shared past.

It also represents a reunion of sorts, as Evans and Trump connected as toddlers, became inseparable as boys, then pursued independent lives and creative paths as young adults. “Theo is my oldest friend,” Evans says, “and I feel like that’s what this band is — us meeting right in the middle of our interests.”

Now, having conjured this magic, they’ve detached once again: Evans, whose other works include the indie/avant-jazz unit Angelica X, is currently based in New York City. Trump recently moved to England, where he’d participated in his family’s theatre company, to go to school and further his solo ambient project. “This album didn’t start out as something super ambitious,” Evans explains. “It was more just an excuse to spend time together again and make music.”

***

In conversation, Evans and Trump are a delight, especially for cynics who might think that Gen-Z is only capable of doomscrolling. They come across as kindly young intellectuals who grew up using the internet as it was intended, for exposure to ideas and art across genres and generations. Trump points to indie-folk and the oracular post-rock of late Talk Talk, Bark Psychosis and Gastr del Sol. Pressed for his guitar heroes, he cites Bill Orcutt, Mary Halvorson and Marc Ribot, and mentions his devotion to alt-country. Heyday electro-industrial stuff like Skinny Puppy and Nine Inch Nails also meant a lot to him.

Evans is equally intrepid, though his background has a greater jazz focus. Ambrose Akinmusire, among today’s most thoughtfully commanding trumpeters, is a favorite. As for the soulful murmur he offers throughout Forgetting You, Pharoah Sanders’ wistful and lyrical contributions to Floating Points’ work is a touchstone.

The two grew up down the street from each other in the northern Piedmont town of Batesville, Virginia. Their families were friends, holidays were celebrated together and they became the most loyal of pals. As children they had a pretend band.

Then life unfolded, they attended different schools and their paths diverged. Evans discovered John Coltrane and became a jazz obsessive, as Trump found punk and hardcore and later began making ambient music. As a dedicated jazz trumpeter, Evans studied formally and widely; Trump was an autodidact, teaching himself guitar and absorbing synthesis and production techniques. The late teens and very early 20s brought moves away from home and back to home, as well as plenty of listening and learning. The Covid pandemic meant an opportunity to reconnect on long walks. Through it all, together and apart, they remained reverent of each other.

By early 2023, they found themselves living again among the Blue Ridge Mountains. In the evening, after giving trumpet lessons in Charlottesville, Evans would make the eerily beautiful trek “over the mountain” to Trump’s home in Staunton, Virginia. They’d talk and eat and begin to improvise, deep into the night. Evans played trumpet and sometimes drums. (Given the wee-hours recording schedule, the neighbors didn’t appreciate the latter.) Trump plugged a rickety, junk-store Telecaster-style guitar into a cheap solid-state amp and explored open tunings; he also layered on lap steel, electric bass, synths and electronics.

They locked in and relished each other’s gifts. In Trump, those include patience and intentionality and sonic decision-making; for Evans, a distinctive trumpet sound that both musicians think of as a singer’s voice. “Will’s playing is so thoughtful and well placed,” Trump says. “My goal from a producer’s mindset is that the trumpet will occupy the space that vocals would take.”

Often, they got lost in the best way. “The thing I look for most when I’m playing is that feeling of disappearing into what you’re doing,” Evans says. “Usually when that happens, the music is good.”

By the same token, they didn’t pursue free improvisation as an ethic, or as a pure process. Their goal was something closer to spontaneous composition. “We were trying to make good songs,” Evans says simply. Later, Trump did brilliant post-production work, expanding a modest setup into an enthralling soundworld. Under his judicious editorship, music that was wholly improvised sounds at times like a carefully composed new-music commission.

The results speak for themselves. “A Happy Death” summons up a swath of American desolation through the viewfinder of Wim Wenders. “Flesh of Lost Summers” and “Partings” are highlights from an essential ECM LP that never was. “A Collapse of Horses” infuses those seminal post-rock influences with the plod of doom metal or slowcore. The album’s final track, “The Mountains Are a Dream That Calls to Me,” was in fact the first thing the duo recorded, as an evocation of those twilit drives across the Blue Ridge Mountains. “Looking back at what we chose to name the songs,” Evans says, “and some of the sounds and how they make me feel, there is an air of impermanence and loss to this album.”

“I’m excited for everything that’s to come,” he adds, “but I recently thought, ‘Damn — that’s not going to happen again.’ It was a privilege for us to have that time together.”

Deejay-turned-produced Jah Thomas’ Midnight Rock helped shift roots reggae to dancehall in the late 1970s and Thomas continued producing in the new millennium, sometimes revamping Roots Radics tracks from Channel One, and alternately cutting fresh work at King Jammy’s, Black Scorpio, and Mixing Lab. Secret Tapes has stellar guests like roots messenger Luciano, dancehall don Super Cat, supreme crooner Courtney Melody, Jah Thomas himself, and a collab between Pinchers and Josie Wales; Tony Curtis, Ghost and Mitch are courtesy of a Buju Banton co-production. Special request to all dancehall fans!

The latest full length album from Detroit mainstays Slum Village, F.U.N., has now made its way to vinyl. The 12-track project is their first album in nearly ten years and includes fresh collaborations with Larry June, Cordae, Eric Roberson, Robert Glasper , Karriem Riggins, Abstract Orchestra, Sango, Phat Kat, Daru Jones, Earlly Mac, The Dramatics and more. 2015's critically acclaimed Yes! further cemented T3 and Young RJ's ability to effectively carry on the legacy of the seminal rap group, retaining its essence while evolving its sound with fresh new energy. However, with last year's sold out tour in Europe, and the release of the Larry June and The Dramatics-assisted "Just Like You", it was revealed that the duo was back in the lab together working on a new Slum Village album. F.U.N. finds Slum Village expanding on their signature certain sound, but still staying close to their hometown roots: Young RJ explains- “We wanted to just try something new, so we focused on making Disco-inspired music,” and T3 notes that the recording process all “began with collecting old Disco records.” For fans who wonder why the sonic shift, and why the long hiatus between proper albums, T3 says “Slum is still here. We’re still relevant and we’re still trying to push the envelope. Sometimes people put too many rules on music, and without sounding cliche, we wanted to just have fun with this album.” F.U.N., indeed.

Previously Unreleased Recording. Limited to 1200 copies on transparent cherry vinyl. Tip-on jacket, Download code. Insert featuring LP sized original art by Grungie O'Muck. Includes the original recording of Richard Tucker's "Are You Leaving For The Country", later covered by Karen Dalton, and the only song co-written by Karen & Richard, "Sleeping In The Garden". "Richard, Cam & Bert seem to have grasped The Great Harmony. That is, ensemble singing that is at once sweet, precise, funky and a bit sardonic..." -Mike Jahn / New York Times (1970) "For a few years in the late sixties and early seventies Richard Cam & Bert ruled MacDougal St. walking a fine line between the increasingly commercialized demands created by groups like Crosby Stills and Nash and the fierce integrity of earlier folk performers, the generation to which Richard belonged. They managed this with great aplomb, producing original tunes of great integrity and obvious folkloric origins, as well as those which expressed the anarchic omnipresent psychedelia of the moment. They also never abandoned the idea of including some traditional material in their performances. But for the usual random application of luck they could have been very big." - Grungie O'Muck / Artist, Bluesman, Cover artist for their first album and contributor to this one. Richard Tucker, Campbell Bruce, and Bert Lee coalesced as a trio in the spring of 1968, and by the end of that year had become regular performers at fabled Greenwich Village nightspots - The Gaslight, The Bag I'm In, Cafe Feenjon, among others. But mostly they were street singers, busking regularly in Central Park. Their only LP, Limited Edition, was released in 1970, and sold mainly at gigs and on the street. Somewhere in The Stars compiles earlier, previously unreleased recordings, when all three members were signed with Peer-Southern Music publishers as writers and began using their studio to make demos and experiment musically. Beautifully recorded by house engineer Charlie Mack (supervised by Jimmy Ienner), the demos capture a back room casualness and rustic, homespun quality. For me, listening to their songs and harmonies is like entering a world you always hoped existed but had never experienced. Some of the songs were re-recorded the following year for Limited Edition, but many are heard here for the first time. Among them is the original demo for Richard Tucker's song, "Are You Leaving For The Country", which Karen Dalton covered on her seminal 1971 release, In My Own Time. Richard and Karen were husband and wife for much of the 1960s, performing as a duo (initially as a trio with Tim Hardin), and navigating their time on the Village scene while alternating living in a small mining town outside Boulder, Co. before splitting up in 1967. Also making its debut, is the only song Richard and Karen ever wrote together, the haunting "Sleeping In The Garden". Also contains two epic songs by Cam "One Of These First Nights", and "Stockholm") not on their LP, but staples of their live performances, and noted in a gig review by The New York Times, and in a column by future A&R hero, Karin Berg, who was an early champion. Another rarity is the only cover of "Sweet Mama" by Fred Neil we've ever heard. Campell Bruce came to New York in 1967 as lead singer with a band from Washington, DC, The Natty Bumpo. They'd recently signed a record deal with Phillips, but were falling apart. Cam landed in the Village with an acoustic guitar and first started playing and singing in the basket houses, and shortly thereafter at The Gaslight, as the "Cam Bruce Trio" (which included Collin Walcott). After opening for Mose Allison, Cam's hero, the trio went their separate ways, and Cam returned to regular solo gigs at The Flamenco, and the basket houses on Bleecker. Richard and Cam met up on that scene and quickly found a musical kinship as well as becoming best pals. Bert Lee arrived in New York as a runaway the following winter, and began playing and sleeping wherever he could. His sometime accompanist, Ron Price, introduced Bert to Richard and Cam just as Bert's own songs were garnering attention from publishers. According to Bert, "I arrived on the New York scene during a time of great change, and it was the notion of change that influenced me. All around me I saw there were two sorts of songwriters, on the one hand dedicated to the traditions that had inspired them, folk, jazz, the American songbook. On the other hand were songwriters influenced by the wave of experimentation that The Beatles were the perfect example of. Mixing genres, writing lyrics that weren't just about ordinary love and loss. Richard Tucker was a country blues player, with a relaxed and melodic approach to the craft. Cam wrote something more akin to soul songs, with a hint of jazz in the changes. I was writing tunes that sometimes drew on classical structures with a tendency toward what I suppose would be known as prog-rock. But I was rather adamant about not being pinned down stylistically, and so I would write, for example, a song based on some complex classical chord structure, and then go right ahead and write a simple folk song, like Evelyn. Our band was popular locally, and it was this variety that made it distinct." Delmore is excited to present this unearthed treasure, fifteen years in the making. In the words of Richard Tucker, "Tap on your knee, roll on the floor; if you aint free, what's it all for?" "The trio's singing, playing, and writing have all withstood the test of time. Believe me, because I was there. In 1969 R,C&B, myself, Charles John Quarto, David Bromberg, Ron Price, and Keith Sykes were just a few of that year's crop of song-slingers. We were young turks back then, out on the prowl in New York's Greenwich Village for record deals, gigs, and beautiful young women to sleep with and maybe even write a song about. I've lost the names and numbers of those lovelies and I'm not sure what happened to Ron Price, but Richard, Cam, and Bert are back! - Loudon Wainwright lll

FFO: Melvins, Big Business, Torche, Karp, Lightning Bolt, Red Fang. Super limited vinyl, first press is transparent-y orange. Based in Sheffield, POHL is a stunning and brutal noise rock duo, featuring former Hey Colossus axeman Will Pearce on guitar/vocals, and drummer Dr Linda Westman of Toronto-based death metal two-piece, Old Hope. This July the band releases their debut album Mysteries; a sonic tome which draws as much from MF Doom as it does doom metal. It’s a swirling, cosmic onslaught of heavy motorik riffs and offhand musings about everything and nothing in equal measure. New single ‘The Whale’ summons the glorious thunder pop of Torche, the pithy lyricism of Karp and the DIY derring-do ethos of Guided by Voices. As guitarist/vocalist Will Pearce explains: “I suppose you could say that Mysteries is an album about grief. How we live with grief, and how we overcome it. When you’re trapped in the belly of the beast, and all seems lost - how do you come back from that? All I can say is that sometimes you eat the whale, and sometimes the whale eats you." Pearce, who played with Hey Colossus on their 2019 album Four Bibles and 2020’s Dances/Curses is thrilled to be teaming up once more with former bandmates Joe Thompson and Chris Summerlin and their Wrong Speed Records imprint. Recorded at the band’s own Cool World studio and mixed by serial collaborator and producer Wayne Adams, Mysteries is many things, often all at the same time. Veering from biblical allusions to fragmented Burroughsian cut-ups, it is at once mystical, profane, sacred, and scatological. Profoundly stupid, perhaps? Or just stupidly profound… either way, Mysteries demands your attention

On his new album, Samurai, Lupe retreats inward to give fans one of his most personal albums in his deep catalog. “I sometimes get tagged by my fans as not doing personal records,” Lupe says, “but I always tell people there's me in there if you listen closely enough. This album is one of my more personal records to date. It's not a full biography, but my personal experiences are tied up in all of my music. A lot of the records are me. Some are from the POV of a character. and some are me. The album weaves things from my life as an artist, touching on things other artists go through.” The narrative follows a battle rapper through various moments in his career, starting with how they honed their battle rap skills, following their career through different moments. Musically, the new album finds Lupe delighting in the simple pleasures of assembling assonant syllables into playful and poignant narratives. The 8-track album is smooth, yet cerebral, brimming with ideas, but always radiating Lupe’s pure love for the art of emceeing and committing himself as a servant of the rap game. The album was produced in full by longtime collaborator and friend, Soundtrakk (“Superstar,” “Kick, Push,” “HipHop Saved My Life”), their second time linking up on a full album after 2022’s DRILL MUSIC IN ZION, and is also the first time Lupe, Trakk, and longtime manager Charles “Chill” Patton were in the studio together since Patton’s release from prison in 2023. “It felt great to be back in the studio again as a family,” Lupe says. It’s the first time they’d worked together in the studio since Lupe’s seminal album, The Cool in 2005. “The word ‘samurai’ means to serve,” Lupe says on the album’s title. “My relationship to that word has always meant that you need to be at the service of other people, either in the overall community, or in this instance, the rap community at large that I’ve been a part of for years. You have some duty, some purpose to serve. The title alone is very important to me. Before rap even, martial arts was my whole life, and it still plays a huge role in my life. The album is me, but also inspired by a quote I heard from one of my favorite artists. The overall themes of the album speak to the constant fight and the battle one goes through being in the entertainment industry. Some of the things we need to defend.”

Samosa Records cranks up the summer groove with another sizzling release in the outstanding (Re) Funk+Head series – a collection of juicy tracks from the Samosa back-catalogue selected and re-edited by the man himself, De Gama.

This sumptuous vinyl cut of ITALO Funk and Boogie kicks off with Mexico’s finest, The Funk District and the enigmatic ‘La Rapina’. This is pure, unfiltered Funk District chemistry from the first bar. Snake hips guitar, rolling bass and that super-solid 4-4-4 beat pound into your consciousness whilst the hypnotic chant and Latino-infused vocal tempt you into sin.

Next up on the A-side is Samosa head honcho DeGama and his deliciously refreshing ‘Piňa Colada’ - a new edit of the original 2011 version never previously released on Samosa. And what a mystery box it is. Tight beats, punchy bass, looped synth and house-tinged high-hat lead us to a haunting, melodic vocal breakdown. There’s a subtle Afro flavour to this one, definitely for sipping cocktails in a hammock or Caribbean beach bar.

On Side B Italian Maestro Paul Older takes the beats down several notches with the explosive ‘Daboom’ – the DeGama Re-Groove of Paul’s first vinyl release way back in 2019. This is a straight up, mid-tempo peacock strut down Funksville Boulevard. Possibly wearing a Zoot Suit. Imagine having breakfast with Herbie Hancock and you might get an idea of just how funky this tune is. He’s passing you the eggs and you’re buttering the toast.

The last track sees DeGama delve into his dark magic box for the mind-melting, film noir themed ‘Higher’. The tempo is scaled right back to 92bpm for this portrait of pain, joy, lust and hallucinogenic dreams. ‘Higher’ reveals a side of DeGama that we know lurks in there, but only sometimes makes it to the surface. Smokey, sassy and sultry, this is definitely one for the dimly-lit after party.

The latest episode in the (Re) Funk+Head has set the Samosa bar even higher. This simply has to be in your summer record box and don’t you dare leave home without it.

Repress.

Irish supergroup Princ€ss arrives to wherethetimegoes.

The first signee to Conway The Machine’s Drumwork Music Group imprint, Jae Skeese helped usher in Drumwork’s 2023 Spring Takeover with his collaborative project with Conway, Pain Provided Profit, the labels first compilation album, Conway The Machine Presents: Drumwork The Album and Skeese’s own Drumwork debut album Abolished Uncertainties.

After releasing focus tracks “Skyscrapers” & “Cantonese Characters” featuring Rome Streetz and Ty Farris, Jae Skeese and Superior have officially released their new collaborative project Testament Of The Times.

Testament Of The Times is produced in its entirety by Superior and features guest appearances from Rome Streetz, OT The Real, Ty Farris and Kota Savia.

“Testament Of The Times is an encapsulation of my current plight in striving to carve out my own unique space in hip-hop; starting from ground level” Jae Skeese testifies. “Anyone that has accomplished anything had a starting point, and different things motivate individuals to push forward. I want to be the voice that helps guide people through the “figuring it out stages” by letting them know they are not alone; sometimes that’s all the reassurance you need to make it to the finish line.”

Repress!

HERBERT HUNTER will be forever worshiped by the UK Northern Soul scene for his anthemic 45 'I Was Born to Love You', recorded in the home of country music, Nashville, in 1967. Sometimes things are just meant to be and they collide in perfect harmony. 'I Was Born To Love You' is a case in point. The perfect lyric - 'I Was Born To Love You, You Were Born To Tear My Heart Apart' - the perfect beat, and perfect timing as it crashed onto these shores in the summer of '76 when Northern Soul was at its zenith and Wigan Casino owned the All-Nighter scene! But, Hunter is no one-trick pony, as his list of collectable 45s bears testament, not least 'Happy Go Lucky', also on Spar. Hunter was part of Ted Jarrett's roster of artists and, under Jarrett's stewardship recorded a string of cover versions under the pseudonym Leroy Jones for the neighbouring budget label 'Hit'. He learnt much of his trade from established artists and label mates such as Gene Allison who he toured with as minder and nursemaid, due to Allison's drink problem. Often, when they arrived a venue, Allison was too drunk to perform and Hunter would step in for him.
For our B-side we've chosen a lesser known, but no less wonderful and gritty Northern Soul dancer 'I Know The Feelin'' by THE JADES. Currently very much in demand with a mint copy selling earlier this year for over $900. We know little about The Jades who recorded this incredible slab of up-tempo soul for Ted Jarrett's Poncello label in 1964 featuring, of course, Herbert Hunter's booming lead vocal.
Many thanks to Fred James for making this superb double-sider possible.

New album by rock supergroup Fantastic Cat.

Strawberry Wind, produced by Richard Swift (Nathaniel Rateliff and The Night Sweats, Foxygen, The Shins) not only delivers on a promise to create an honest album for kids and parents but it represents what Baylin calls the “beautiful divide,” of juggling family life with her creative life, a difficult task by any measure. “The divide in me is easy to feel because I invest 100% of myself into my family and often the creative gets put to the side,” she explained, “so when I decided to begin writing for this album it just poured out of me.” Now singer / songwriter Jessie Baylin shares that creative outpouring on her debut children’s album, ‘Strawberry Wind’. Throughout the album, Baylin doesn’t hold back on telling it like it is. Weaving through lyrical themes of dream life, supermoons and summertime vibes are some gentle doses of reality. “I don’t want to lie to my kids. Life is hard sometimes and you need to find a way to deal with it... there will always be things in life you can’t control. But, you can dream of a better world and make your own refuge,” says Baylin, who is mom to 4-year-old Violet and is expecting her second child with her husband. Baylin, who’s released four critically-acclaimed albums over the years, says the seed was planted for this album after recording a cover of Harry Nilsson’s He Needs Me from the kids’ film Popeye. “The song has a childlike sense, but the message is very deep. It’s magical, it’s dark, and it hit all the right notes. I wanted to do an album that feels like that” she says. “Since becoming a mother, I found myself being around the house a lot and I started gravitating to these wonderful albums I remembered from my own childhood - The Beatles, Harry Nilsson’s The Point!, John Lennon, Roger Miller’s Robin Hood and Carole King’s Really Rosie." The magic of those iconic 1970s records she mentions is that they’re all grounded in solid songwriting and were never dumbed down for the audience. “Those records felt very honest and that was my mission here. I also wanted it to feel magical and remind people of the child inside of all of us that is filled with a sense of wonder and pure joy and hope.”

Composed by Jim O’Rourke and pieced together by Jim together with longtime collaborator and trumpeter Eivind Lønning at Jim and Eiko Ishibashi’s home in the Japanese mountains, this engrossing new album blows brass wails and tense fanfares across O'Rourke's manipulated Kyma tapestries for a deep, captivating trip into the aether.

Eivind Lønning has been sharing ideas with O'Rourke for several years: the duo collaborated on music for the Whitney's 'Calder: Hypermobility' exhibition, and Lønning played trumpet on O'Rourke's brilliant 2020 album 'Shutting Down Here'. For this new work, Lønning headed to O'Rourke and EIko Ishibashi's home studio in the Japanese mountains, where he teased unfamiliar, alien textures from his trumpet to open the labyrinthine three-part composition. O'Rourke took the material and subsequently funnelled it through his Kyma system, transforming it into a swirl of sound that hums alongside Lønning's original takes. The album was composed, mixed and mastered by O'Rourke, with everything's based on Lønning's virtuosic performance.

The album begins by cautiously introducing us to its sonic palette: wavering, bird-like horn wails that O'Rourke contorts around quiet synth oscillations and computerised swarms. Lønning's spittle-drenched blasts are given the spotlight, but O'Rourke's manipulations - often gentle and illusory, and sometimes utterly lacerating - lift the sounds into completely new territory. When Lønning begins to turn rhythmic cycles using the trumpet keys, popping with his mouth to compliment its leathery timbre, O'Rourke replies with dense, hallucinatory drones, juxtaposing unstable electronics with Lønning's breathy, sustained notes. All these sounds coalesce into a dizzy vortex, but O'Rourke is careful not to overwhelm the senses, dropping to near silence as the first act transitions into the second. O'Rourke pelts Lønning's vertiginous wails, steadily mutating them into Xenakis-like stabs until they sound like cybernetic strings and icy tones that extract the tension from Lønning's brassy harmonics.

The third act is more screwed, with O'Rourke allowing Lønning's improvisations wail into cathedral-strength reverb, accompanying the sound with glassy penetrations and throbbing subs. Here, Lønning sounds as if he's heralding the arrival of a celestial being, piercing the atmosphere with bright, sustained tones and muted, jazzy flourishes. O'Rourke hangs back, carefully spinning the notes into naturalistic fibres and orchestral drapery, before he allows the electronics to subside completely and the trumpet to echo into the imposing negative space.

'Most, but Potentially All' is a dumbfounding piece that shifts the dial on contemporary experimental music; dizzyingly complex but never showy, it's the kind of record you can spin repeatedly and hear something different each time. As an exploration of the trumpet, it's a unique expression, and as a progression of electro-acoustic compositional techniques, it draws a deep trench in the sand, setting a new standard.

Sam Cooke’s SAR Records Story 1959-1965 gathers significant recordings of SAR Records – the label Sam Cooke co-founded, produced the majority of records for and was instrumental in operating. Groundbreaking artists such as The Soul Stirrers, Johnnie Taylor, Billy Preston, and Bobby Womack’s group The Valentinos are all featured, in addition to Sam himself. “The whole SAR Records Story is infused with Sam Cooke’s rapturous sense of how sacred gospel and sexual soul flow together, unbroken,” stated Milo Miles on NPR’s Fresh Air upon the set’s initial release almost three decades ago. In an era where black-owned labels were a rarity, Los Angeles based SAR Records was founded at almost exactly the same time as Motown, its Detroit counterpart. SAR was established in 1959 by Sam Cooke, music publisher J.W. Alexander, and S. Roy Crain, Cooke’s road manager and founder of gospel group The Soul Stirrers. The acronymous name standing for Sam Alex Roy, SAR sought to keep gospel music alive while simultaneously crossing over to pop audiences in the secular world. LPs 1 and 2 of the set focus on the former, while LPs 3 and 4 encompass the latter. From choosing talent, to writing a great number of songs, to producing, SAR was entirely the fulfillment of Cooke’s vision on a musical/creative level. The superstar singer, who had already crossed over from the gospel world himself, tirelessly coached the vocalists during SAR recording sessions, emphasizing diction. His methods are heard throughout the collection, as he is heard speaking to artists between takes. “And by Sam being there with you and just giving you that special attention, you wanted to give it to him like it was supposed to be. I think that’s what made SAR, SAR. Because he was selling himself through different artists.” – Bobby Womack. VERY LIMITED 1-2 COPIES ONLY PER SHOP

Demon Music are happy to present – Electribe 101 - ‘Electribal Memories’, this stunning half-speed master vinyl edition cut from the original tapes by Barry Grint at Air Studios. Formed when Hamburg-born / London-based, sometimes S’ Express member Billie Ray Martin hooked up with four musician / producers from Birmingham, Electribe 101 instantly hit upon a sound heavily influenced by the de rigueur deep house sounds of Chicago and Detroit but with a distinctive European twist. With Billie Ray up front, with a voice like ice on fire and looking as if she’d stepped forward in time from a circa-1966 Mary Quant catwalk, the band were instantly snapped up by Mercury Records, and taken under the wing of Pet Shop Boys manager Tom Watkins. The band released five singles in the UK, and all featured on their debut album ‘Electribal Memories’ – ‘Tell Me When The Fever Ended’, ‘Talking With Myself’, ‘You’re Walking’, ‘Lipstick On My Lover’ and an incredible cover of Odyssey’s deep soul classic ‘Inside Out’. When the album arrived in 1990, it was an instant hit with critics – immaculately produced, poised, luxurious and soulful, it was difficult to believe it was a debut record at all. After ‘Electribal Memories’, Electribe 101 called it a day. Since then, the album’s reputation has grown in stature and many of its’ singles’ attendant remixes have become sought-after rarities. The cultural earthquake prompted by the late-1980s arrival on these shores of house, acid and rave prompted many a legendary club night and a generation of superstar DJ / producers. While there were a myriad of great club tracks produced in that heady period between 1988-1991, classic albums from the scene were rather more of a rarity. One towering exception was the debut by Electribe 101…

Available on super ltd edition pink vinyl with obi strip & download code. Only 300 copies pressed.

London based shoegaze three-piece Holy Springs are Neil Atkinson Jr, Maria Bellucci and Suzanne Sims. The band blend psychedelic influences with their love of lo-fi guitars and keyboards. In 2020 they self-released the cassette mini album 'Indoor Tapes'. Shortly after the incredible EP 'Camera' and, we are delighted to be releasing their debut full length E.A.T on ltd edition vinyl.

Debut albums can sometimes feel a bit disparate as bands fling all the songs they’ve been working on together with no real thought as to how they all hang together as an album. Not so with E.A.T. The effort and thought that has gone into writing a cohesive and well-structured album is evident on every note played. I particularly enjoyed the instrumental interludes which play a pivotal role in neatly segueing between tracks. If this is the band just starting out imagine what their next album will sound like, and the one after that. I hope Holy Springs are ready, because this album is about to blow up.’ Static Sounds Club

Stuntbike, fronted by Truls Haugland, were formed and based in Flekkefjord, Norway. They started as many of their peers with a handful of seven-inch releases wich gave them recognition in both the Norwegian and international pop underground. The debut album was later released on the local label Smalltown Supersound. A label run by Truls' brother Joakim, and that is now one of the most renowned labels for electronic music in the world. When the album came out in 1998, the press were quick to draw parallels to bands like Sebadoh, Seam and Sonic Youth. This is the first time is available on vinyl.