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Powerful trio music by pianist Takehiro Honda, known for his strong touch and bluesy feeling, together with an American rhythm section. The album features a line up of compelling originals, including the overwhelmingly powerful "Minors Only" and the title track "Salaam Salaam," whose title means “peace” in Swahili.

,Prophetic Perfect Tense" ist das neue Album von Oren Ambarchi bei Kou Records. Der australische Gitarrist und Komponist gilt als eine der unermüdlichsten und einfallsreichsten Persönlichkeiten der experimentellen Musik der letzten drei Jahrzehnte. Als Gründer von Black Truffle Records und versierter Kollaborateur, der bereits mit Keiji Haino, Jim O'Rourke, Johan Berthling und Andreas Werliin - präsentiert sich Ambarchi hier in seiner reduziertesten Besetzung: Solo-Gitarre, zwei Seiten, zwei Takes, minimale Effekte. Während seine Studioalben typischerweise konzeptionelle, vielschichtige Werke mit Gastmusikern waren, bricht ,Prophetic Perfect Tense" dieses Muster vollständig - nach seinen eigenen Angaben ist es das konventionellste Soloalbum mit Gitarrenklang, das er je aufgenommen hat, und das, was im Studio der Live-Energie seines ,Ghosted"-Trios am nächsten kommt. Aufgenommen im Studio Dede in Tokio im Januar 2026 und produziert von Randall Dunn, begann das Album als Akt hartnäckiger Zurückhaltung - irgendwo zwischen Joao Gilberts leisem, selbstbetiteltem Album von 1973 und Alemu Agas ,Bägänna"-Sessions. Doch sobald das Band durch eine Leslie-Box, einen Fender Twin und einen Ampeg B-15 in einen Telefunken-24-Spur-Recorder lief, entstand etwas ganz anderes: ein lockerer, abstrakter Shuffle, warm und dreidimensional, bei dem Verstärkerbrummen, Saitenquietschen und Raumgeräusche unverändert blieben. Beide Seiten in einzigen Takes. Ein Gitarren-Overdub wurde auf Randalls Drängen hin hinzugefügt. Eine Platte, die wie ein Raum klingt, nicht wie ein Studio. Aufgenommen, abgemischt und produziert von Randall Dunn. Gemastert von Ben Greenberg. Dolby-Atmos-Mischungen von Ben Greenberg. Lackschnitt von Paul Gold bei Salt Mastering. Cover-Artwork ,Untitled, 1977" von Kazuko Miyamoto, Foto mit freundlicher Genehmigung des Nachlasses von Kazuko Miyamoto / Zürcher Gallery, NY. Porträt auf der Rückseite von Ken Langraf

Industrial noise terrorists LARD, the legendary collision of Jello Biafra and Ministry masterminds Al Jourgensen and Paul Barker, return with the long-awaited repress of their 1990 full-length masterpiece, The Last Temptation of Reid.


A vicious fusion of industrial metal, punk rock, political outrage, and black humor, The Last Temptation of Reid remains as relevant, confrontational, and sonically devastating today as it was when it first detonated over three decades ago. From the opening assault of “Forkboy” (later featured on the Natural Born Killers soundtrack) to the twisted brilliance of “Pineapple Face,” “Drug Raid at 4 AM,” and their unhinged reinvention of “They’re Coming to Take Me Away,” (originally performed by Napoleon XIV), LARD created a collection of songs that still sounds unlike anything before or since.


This new edition has been worth the wait. After production setbacks and multiple rounds of test pressings, Jello Biafra personally halted the project to completely remaster the album, ensuring it finally received the sonic treatment it deserved. The result is the best-sounding vinyl edition of The Last Temptation of Reid ever released. As a special bonus, this edition now includes bonus one sided 12” vinyl of “I Am Your Clock.” Originally a UK exclusive 12”, it’s never been repressed until now.


Originally released on Alternative Tentacles in 1990, The Last Temptation of Reid captured the paranoia, hypocrisy, corruption, and media madness of its era with razor-sharp wit and a patented wall of noise and sonic wizardry. The unsettling truth is that it may hit even harder today.

Industrial noise terrorists LARD, the legendary collision of Jello Biafra and Ministry masterminds Al Jourgensen and Paul Barker, return with the long-awaited repress of their 1990 full-length masterpiece, The Last Temptation of Reid.


A vicious fusion of industrial metal, punk rock, political outrage, and black humor, The Last Temptation of Reid remains as relevant, confrontational, and sonically devastating today as it was when it first detonated over three decades ago. From the opening assault of “Forkboy” (later featured on the Natural Born Killers soundtrack) to the twisted brilliance of “Pineapple Face,” “Drug Raid at 4 AM,” and their unhinged reinvention of “They’re Coming to Take Me Away,” (originally performed by Napoleon XIV), LARD created a collection of songs that still sounds unlike anything before or since.


This new edition has been worth the wait. After production setbacks and multiple rounds of test pressings, Jello Biafra personally halted the project to completely remaster the album, ensuring it finally received the sonic treatment it deserved. The result is the best-sounding vinyl edition of The Last Temptation of Reid ever released. As a special bonus, this edition now includes bonus one sided 12” vinyl of “I Am Your Clock.” Originally a UK exclusive 12”, it’s never been repressed until now.


Originally released on Alternative Tentacles in 1990, The Last Temptation of Reid captured the paranoia, hypocrisy, corruption, and media madness of its era with razor-sharp wit and a patented wall of noise and sonic wizardry. The unsettling truth is that it may hit even harder today.

The songs of Jules de Corte are condensed, folky gems with an almost effortless charm. Poised between the intimate and the universal, between lightness and darkness, they touch on religion, love, loss, and the small dramas of everyday life. Yet they resist easy translation. Packed with wordplay, de Corte’s signature alliterations, humor, and local cultural references, the songs inevitably lose something in another language. Still, when a Belgian quartet of improvisers takes them on, joined by American songwriter Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy, the songs are reborn rather than merely transposed: literal fidelity gives way to interpretation, and what is lost in words is often gained in spirit.

Even without tracing every change, their overall effect is fascinating. Songs are slowed down, often doubled in length, and filled with unexpected musical intrusions. They gain fuller arrangements and are placed in an entirely new context. Replacing de Corte’s piano with guitar can create a radically different vibe, as in “Mariska.” An added solo can heighten the contrast between childlike perspective and the almost matter- of-fact brutality of “Little Anita.” In “The Stranger,” another use of contrast unsettles the everyday harmony, transforming it with a subtle, disorienting twist.

Ultimately, these performances show that interpretation is not successful simply because it is literal. With the groundwork laid by Linus, Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy further liberated the songs from their original versions. Lyrics and melodies become malleable, shaped by his recognizable cadences, timbre, and personal quirks. Like his collaborators, he allows himself the freedom to bend the material to his own approach. There is no radical break between this performance and his other records. Listeners familiar with the originals may be puzzled at first; for those new to de Corte, it is a wholly different experience.

Does it really matter that the original “Little Jesus, Mighty God” is a 100-second nugget combining playful naivete with biblical fervor? In the hands of these five explorers, the song becomes an intriguing contemplation, with subtle musical shades and a recitation in which every syllable carries a maturity that offers a new perspective. Then there is “The Outsider,” which feels as genuine as any original American folk song. The musicians’ process is more than reinterpretation—it is reimagination, bringing new musical compatibility and emotional depth. Whether that depth was there from the start, waiting to be uncovered, or created in the process is beside the point. What matters is that Linus and Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy have made the essence of these songs their own, paying homage yet dancing to their own tune.

Linus is the Belgian duo of guitarist and banjo player Ruben Machtelinckx and reedist and synthesiser player Thomas Jillings. Across five previous albums — Onland (2014), Linus + Skarbø / Leroux (2015), Felt Like Old language at the crossroads of folk, jazz, minimalism, chamber music and free improvisation. Their music is adventurous, shaped by a particular sensitivity to texture, timbre and the subtle interaction between musicians.

What began as a duo gradually grew into a flexible musical world, bringing Linus together with musicians such as Nils Økland, Ingar Zach, Niels Van Heertum, Øyvind Skarbø and Frederik Leroux. Yet each new constellation has remained recognisably Linus: music in which carefully considered forms leave space for intuition, interaction and the unexpected.

For their sixth album, Linus takes a new step by moving into the world of song and text. Inspired by a shared love for the late Dutch songwriter Jules De Corte, the album is a reimagining of De Corte’s unique repertoire. More than simply interpreting De Corte’s songs, they absorb and reshape them, bringing them into dialogue with their own musical language. In keeping with this open approach, they are joined by celebrated vocalist Bonnie “Prince” Billy. With albums such as 1999’s I See a Darkness appearing on several greatest album lists, Bonnie “Prince” Billy is a cult figure in the alternative folk scene, and his highly intuitive way of singing seamlessly matches the subtle interplay Linus has developed over more than a decade.

With his last three records all landing within a calendar year (2024-25), enigmatic Swedish producer Civilistjävel! (aka Tomas Bodén) is on a hot streak of releases, his singular vision increasingly ambitious and expansive. There are few artists working at this level so consistently right now, reinventing, revising and continually developing their language. Following on from 2025’s radically re-worked ‘Versions’ (of Mayssa Jallad’s ‘Marjaa…’), Bodén returns to break further fresh ground with his new album, ‘Älvgång’. Featuring contributions from Soccer Committee, Carrier and guest (aka Jabu’s Jasmine Butt), ‘Älvgång’ foregrounds a more brittle and insistent rhythm-based sound, whilst comprising his most broad-ranging collection of material to date.


‘Älvgång’ grew out of a series of sketches made from late ‘24 and throughout the whole of ‘25 at Stockholm’s renowned EMS Studios, which gave Boden free rein to its extensive collection of vintage analogue equipment and rare modular synthesizers such as the Serge and Buchla systems. As a loose framework of tracks began to take shape, so did a reflection of sorts, on family and foundations, underpinned or influenced by sounds that drifted into Tomas consciousness around this time - ancient Swedish pastoral music, Georgian lithurgical chants, gongs, chimes. An idea settled into place, a dedication to his Grandfather, as the earlier release Fyra Platser (tr. ‘Four Places’) was to his Grandmother. Älvgång is grounded with the sense of time and place of an old family photograph, with the tracks over each side bearing one of two names that are more or less the same location - Strinne was the old name for a this loose collection of villages. These days it is more commonly known as Bjärtrå. Metaphorically speaking, the river runs through both.


Civilistjävel! conjures so many adjectives and descriptors, ‘glacial’ and ‘ambient’ frequently among them - but while not altogether untrue, such terms belie the tension and drama so often present in Tomas’ music. Listening to ‘Älvgång’ is not a passive experience. The eight tracks here feel like a patchwork of memories that bathe in the same ethereal, otherworldly glow of Tarkovsky’s polaroids’.


The machine pulses that dominate this landscape are reigned in and tempered by a human hand; lithe, untethered coils, breathing in and out. ‘Strinne Ett’ sets out with purpose, sensing awe and wonder through the murk, but as the final tone unfurls like a question mark, another chapter begins, unfolding/building like a Tarjei Vesaas novel. These lyrical, abstract miniatures combine to reveal a wider context, fragile humanity standing alone against nature.


Guest appearances on Civilistjävel! records have become a regular occurrence (including recent collaborations with Mayssa Jallad, Laila Sakini, Cucina Povera, Thomas Bush, Eldon + Withdrawn), but are used sparingly and with increasing precision. On ‘Strinne Tre’ Mariska Baars’ (Soccer Committee) voice feels like a balm, a clearing. But as her simple, three-word incantation drifts further into fog, the meaning changes, and her words seem to curdle. Carrier’s beats widen the parameters on ‘Strinne Fyra’, a skittering promise that builds tension then refuses to release it; all false starts, Photek gongs, and trinkling modulars. Jabu’s Jasmine Butt pulls all the threads together for the final track, Thomas Tallis’ ghost walking over offset machine impulses, that work against their own symmetry.


Side two begins inquisitively, scanning bleached, alien surroundings, its sparse pads recalling Aphex Twin’s ‘Selected Ambient works Vol 2’. 'Bjärtrå Två’ picks up the baton from ' Strinne Fyra’ with a ruptured Simmons SDS200 analogue drum synth set free from its shackles, the rhythm eventually slotting into the spaces that were hiding in plain sight. What follows seems like an epiphany; ‘Bjärtrå Tre’ is achingly beautiful, a euphoric, winding ascent that leads to devotional plainsong. ‘Bjärtrå Fyra‘s final unheralded shift feels both tragic and haunting.

“My Love” is one of its key tracks on “Summer End”, the current album by French singer & songwriter Al Sunny. Now that summer really has ended, Al Sunny asked a few producers and DJs from all over France to deliver their interpretation “My Love”. Featuring a wonderful organic take by Ludovic Llorca aka Art of Tones this EP is available digitally and as limited four track 12inch vinyl edition including the Art of Tones, Hugo LX and Jared mixes.

Art of Tones

Art of Tones is the house and disco project of acclaimed French producer Ludovic Llorca. Launched in 2006, the alias quickly earned international recognition through its distinctive combination of soulful musicianship, powerful grooves and dancefloor energy. His catalogue includes releases on respected labels such as 20/20 Vision, Local Talk, Glitterbox, GAMM and Toy Tonics, establishing him as a highly regarded producer and remixer within the global house scene.

Hugo LX

Hugo LX is a Paris-based DJ and producer whose musical universe moves effortlessly between deep and soulful house, downtempo beats, jazz, hip-hop and ambient influences. Known for his refined production style and wide-ranging musical knowledge, he has released music on respected labels including NDATL, MCDE, Balance and People of Earth, alongside projects on his own Doma Music imprint. Both behind the decks and in the studio, his work is defined by warmth, subtlety and a deeply personal approach to electronic music.

Jared

Jared is a French DJ, producer and event curator based in Bordeaux, with a strong connection to house music and club culture. Over the years, he has performed at a wide range of events and international stages, including Tomorrowland, developing a reputation for energetic and carefully constructed DJ sets. His musical approach combines a deep understanding of the dancefloor with warm grooves, contemporary production and an enduring passion for house music.

Early DJ Support: Massimiliano Pagliara, Paranoid London, Logan Fisher, Terry Farley, James Holroyd, Rocky (X Press 2), Francois K, Marcel Vogel, Sean Johnston, Austin Ato, Ron Basejam, Richard Rogers, Oliver Dollar, Crazy P and many more

Creating an international name for itself over the past decade as a sample pack label, Samples From Mars made its inevitable venture into the music world originally as a home for founder Teddy Stuart’s work. Long before making samples, Stuart garnered credits working as a grammy-nominated recording engineer in the hip hop world, and DJing / producing with Justin Strauss as A/JUS/TED, for labels such as DFA, Domino Records and Southern Fried Records. Now the label is set to release a variety of genres - house, disco, techno, ambient, all with a vintage tinge and a focus on high quality, analog production.

Enter Salt Queen. Visual artist and musician Magali van Caloen together with Samples From Mars founder, Teddy Stuart. Based in New York, the duo combine hardware dance aesthetics with dry, salty takes on familiar club moments into music that sits somewhere between funny, raw and unpredictable.

Salt Queen’s debut ‘ARE U OK’ is an acid-laced, deadpan spoken word track with an opening line that snaps any room to attention. A disorienting club encounter unfolds over Italo-inflected 808s and a relentless 303 bassline. There are no chords and no melodies - just a skeletal groove and an intimate voice circling the dancefloor. Drifting between concern and provocation, the vocal runs through cliché club conversations before destabilizing completely into a siren-laden crash out. The ‘Freak Nasty Club Mix’ ditches the plot and lets the hardware breathe, with a thick SH-101 bassline anchoring the first half before a sudden switch into an unrelenting acid pattern that refuses to settle. Two versions of the same wild night out.

Fishtailing across a trimmed sod lawn, the parking lot of a box-store strip mall, a fast food drive-thru––it’s a hyperreal Americana fantasy that calls Caroline Rose (she/they) home on 'Gentling the Horse at the Walt Whitman Mall'. The release doubles as the debut of SUCK records, the LA based artist’s own imprint—a fitting next form for an enigmatic musician whose work resists settling into one shape.

'Gentling the Horse at the Walt Whitman Mall' stretches the ordinary into the uncanny. The record pairs sharply observed, memoiristic songwriting with expansive guitar textures that render the everyday with violent clarity and mythic scale. Beneath its melodic sweep and signature hooks runs a current of violence and American dream leakage.

It’s Ennio Morricone with an AR15: surf guitars, spaghetti westerns, and suburban dread colliding until they become their own sharp vernacular. Reality is unstable, so we’ll keep telling stories—and for Rose, the sinister slickness of the everyday grows a new head.

Working with producer John Congleton, Rose built the record through humor, layering, and instinct rather than polish. Songs like “Conversations with Shiv,” “Goddamn Train,” and “Everything in its Right Place” were recorded in studio for the first time, with sessions that prized first impulses over perfection. The result is panoramic but never precious—songs that feel meticulously constructed while always threatening to mutate.

Over the last six years, Rose’s music has evolved alongside their work organizing around stronger labor protections and collective bargaining rights for musicians and crews. Creative and political practice have increasingly become the same project as Rose’s career has taken on its hyper-independent form. Those concerns echo throughout 'Gentling the Horse'. Its landscapes are populated by inherited systems that feel absurd yet inescapable, where humor becomes a survival tactic and satire reveals the quiet violence embedded in everyday Am

Fishtailing across a trimmed sod lawn, the parking lot of a box-store strip mall, a fast food drive-thru––it’s a hyperreal Americana fantasy that calls Caroline Rose (she/they) home on 'Gentling the Horse at the Walt Whitman Mall'. The release doubles as the debut of SUCK records, the LA based artist’s own imprint—a fitting next form for an enigmatic musician whose work resists settling into one shape.

'Gentling the Horse at the Walt Whitman Mall' stretches the ordinary into the uncanny. The record pairs sharply observed, memoiristic songwriting with expansive guitar textures that render the everyday with violent clarity and mythic scale. Beneath its melodic sweep and signature hooks runs a current of violence and American dream leakage.

It’s Ennio Morricone with an AR15: surf guitars, spaghetti westerns, and suburban dread colliding until they become their own sharp vernacular. Reality is unstable, so we’ll keep telling stories—and for Rose, the sinister slickness of the everyday grows a new head.

Working with producer John Congleton, Rose built the record through humor, layering, and instinct rather than polish. Songs like “Conversations with Shiv,” “Goddamn Train,” and “Everything in its Right Place” were recorded in studio for the first time, with sessions that prized first impulses over perfection. The result is panoramic but never precious—songs that feel meticulously constructed while always threatening to mutate.

Over the last six years, Rose’s music has evolved alongside their work organizing around stronger labor protections and collective bargaining rights for musicians and crews. Creative and political practice have increasingly become the same project as Rose’s career has taken on its hyper-independent form. Those concerns echo throughout 'Gentling the Horse'. Its landscapes are populated by inherited systems that feel absurd yet inescapable, where humor becomes a survival tactic and satire reveals the quiet violence embedded in everyday

Seven years after the haunting resonance of Voids, electronic pioneer Martyn returns to the album format with Music For Existing. Arriving on 15 May 2026, the record is more than a collection of tracks; it is a profound exploration of what it means to remain devoted to a craft in an era of relentless noise.

The album’s announcement is heralded by the lead single "Heavy Sound." The track serves as the perfect bridge between Martyn’s past and present - a masterclass in tension and release that previews the album’s dialogue between the producer, the musicians, and the audience. We live inside a culture that has prioritised and monetised restlessness. The modern apparatus runs on the continuous production of "next," driven by algorithms that value novelty over depth.

Music For Existing serves as a love letter to the communal act of making music - something that is both healing and inherently defiant. For Martyn, a musician often finds solace in musical conversation with others; in the moment we press record, we simply exist together. This record is an invitation to build human infrastructure around what we love, leaning into the fluid nature of community and seeing exactly where the music takes us when we choose to listen.

The album is a sprawling, "off-the-grid" tapestry that echoes Martyn’s profound appreciation for jazz - free, instinctive, and bursting in every sonic direction. This collection features an expansive cast of collaborators, including Duval Timothy, Dan Only, Lucinda Chua, and Mark Cisneros. The record is further elevated by the contributions of jazz talents Mischa Porte and Cees Bruinsma, alongside the evocative words of writer and poet Musa Okwonga.

While the acoustic textures and improvisational spirit of this record may feel like a departure, they represent a homecoming. Jazz has always been ingrained in Martyn’s work; even in his most stripped-back club tracks, the DNA of swing, syncopation, and free-form structure was always present, if not always visible.

Music For Existing marks the beginning of an exciting journey that will continue from the studio to the stage, celebrating the radical act of existing in the moment.

XAMAN is the collaborative project of Dino Sabatini and Luigi Tozzi, where two distinct artistic paths converge into a shared musical language shaped through years of independent research and mutual exchange.

Across eight compositions, XAMAN takes shape through gradual transformation. Every element is introduced with intention, allowing subtle shifts in density, tension and space to shape the music over time, revealing its full form through uninterrupted listening.

Released as a double vinyl on Outis Opera Series, the curated imprint of Outis Music, XAMAN reflects a process shaped through listening, exchange and time.

DJ Support: Harvey, Balearic Mike, K Andrews, Apiento, Joe Morris, Idjuts, Piers Harrision, Flo Dill, James Holroyd, Andy Wilson, Kenneth Bager, Phil Mison, Colleen Murphy.

Following the success of the Lovehandles ‘Reworks’ EP, Oswego Music returns with a second volume of reinterpretations via the mysterious ‘Love from the Archipelago’ the alter ego of a renowned European digger, dj and producer.

First up here ‘Endless Ocean’ sees our island hopping hero reimagining an underrated antipodean 80’s track. Its pulsing synths and wistful vocal working as equally on a dancefloor as at the after party, or indeed the morning after the night before.

Track Two on side A ‘Carica’ takes us to South America recalling to some extent the west coast fusion of mid eighties artists like Pat Metheny. Brilliant percussion, vocals and synths combining into a heady, hazy workout- permed hair and tiny shorts optional.

First on the flip ‘En Route’ continues our journey (via the local library) with a gritty, synth heavy piece of post disco experimentalism extended here for your listening pleasure

Lastly, ‘A Grain of Sand’ reinterprets a folky aor number- long overdue in making it to vinyl- remaining (until now) a favourite digital secret weapon for the more ‘horizontally inclined’ dj.

Rounding out the EP, 1900-Isla provides a brief meditation on what it is to be free. A beautiful island in the middle of nowhere, with friends, as the sun sets…

By the time Michael Nau completed Popfly, the songs felt less like compositions than companions. Arriving in fragments, notebook lines, and fleeting observations, these pieces kept company for years until taking their final form. The result is one of Nau's most openhearted, expansive records, both homespun and otherworldly at once. Radiant folk melodies, tape-warped textures, and flashes of everyday wonder coexist in perfect balance on Popfly. Nau has never been a songwriter who forces songs into existence. Instead, he follows them, trusting intuition over agenda and allowing songs to gradually reveal themselves. Writing and recording often blur together, with melodies evolving before lyrics are finished and stray recordings forming the basis for new songs. Popfly showcases these creative detours: thoughtful folk songs, sonic experiments, and accidental beauty transformed into fully realized compositions. Many songs began at home, growing in meaning. Since he entered the Vermont studio, Little Jamaica, with longtime friend and collaborator Benny Yurco, many of them had already lived several lives. "Studio recording feels like covering my own songs," Nau says. This idea flows throughout: performances are lived-in, feeling effortless, as if assembling itself. The title track carries a flicker of wonder in its simple observations. "New Slack" moves with the loose confidence of a song content to follow its own path. On "Lost Station Hideaway," soft static and fading signals become something strangely comforting, as if the song itself is being broadcast from somewhere just beyond reach. Family and friendship are deeply woven throughout the record. Nau's children contribute vocals, bringing warmth and spontaneity to the album's communal spirit, with longtime collaborator and wife Whitney McGraw lending her serene voice. The harmonies that drift from them extend the album's central impulse of people gathering to make something beautiful. Across Popfly, loose-limbed folk songs mingle with homespun psych-pop, porchside country-folk, dreamlike atmospherics, and quietly profound observations. The record moves with the ease of conversation among old friends, finding beauty in tiny revelations, strange coincidences, and everyday mysteries. The record is full of transmissions from different moments in Nau's life, stitched together by instinct, affection, and time. Taken together, they form a portrait of a life spent paying close attention to the world and its small miracles.

Early in 2018 he unveiled Zoning Out, Volume 1, an album intended for chilling while deep in thought, or for getting into that crucial head-nod zone, like when the DJ drops the dopest beat. With listeners ready for more rhythmic brain-food, Emapea provides with the anticipated next installment: Zoning Out, Volume 2. Developing the theme of Volume 1, Emapea takes his jazzy sensibilities and fresh drum patterns and ups the ante, delivering 18 mandatory cuts that swerve and shimmy while exhibiting pure dopeness. Take "Last Cypher," which is an infectious funk- hip- hop hybrid that flows with more than a few surprise embellishments. There's also the low-rider spy-hop of "Big Small Talks"; "Tantra" with its smooth, old school ride; the sensual boom bap of "Blue Almonds"; and the infectious, latin-lounge-tinged "Rainy Day". These are no- nonsense beat compositions, perfect for thinking, for grooving, for dreaming, for zoning out. Emapea and Cold Busted come correct once again.

Pablo Volt and J.G.G. make dub-folktronica the unpolished way: guitar, horns, drums and synths, recorded loose, drenched in echoes and tape saturation. They met in Barcelona over a shared love of experimental beers and even more experimental sessions, determined to see how far their musical chemistry could take them. "Mordida", their 2023 tape, spent months on repeat at the Pingipung office. Now comes the debut LP: Aqui me quedo. It's a record built on the gap between two childhoods. Pablo Volt (aka Pope, as producer) grew up in Mendoza, Argentina; Jordi Gege aka J.G.G. in a suburb of Barcelona. What they share is a language and a curiosity about each other's memories and musical roots - the studio is where they embrace their different origins in improvisations. A ditch from Pablo's childhood becomes "Zanjon". A mountain Jordi used to roam becomes "Emisora". An ice cream shop, a Sunday market, a football club: small doors into a past the other never lived, but somehow recognises. Aqui me quedo, "I'm staying here", is also the name of the Barcelona bar where they toast after a good session. Two friends, tracing their way back through the past, decide the present is where they'd rather be. Handmade, melodic, unashamed of a smile as they greet from the LP sleeve: this is the spirit in which Pingipung was founded 24 years ago and these two guys, muy simpatico, are living proof of it.

There's a moment during every great dance floor experience when the music takes over and everyone becomes part of something bigger. "SHOUT!", the latest release from 2SoulFusion Presents Ascension, captures that feeling in its purest form. Featuring the powerhouse voices and ad-libs of Dames Brown and Dawn Tallman, along with an all-star ensemble of master vocalists including Josh Milan, Rahsaan Patterson, Lisa Fischer, Cindy Mizelle, Audrey Wheeler, Ramona Dunlap, and Lea Lorien, this joyful anthem is an invitation to let go, lift your spirit, and celebrate through music.

Produced, written, arranged, and mixed by 2SoulFusion—Louie Vega and Josh Milan—"SHOUT!" draws inspiration from the communal spirit of gospel while embracing the energy and freedom of house music. Driven by simple yet powerful affirmations—"Shout," "Sing," "Move," "Love," "Get Up On Your Feet," "Listen Up," and "Let This Music Take You Higher"—the song transforms into an experience where every voice becomes part of the celebration. It's a journey of anthemic hooks, soaring harmonies, infectious grooves, and unforgettable melodies designed to ignite dance floors, uplift hearts, and remind us that music has the power to unite people through rhythm, joy, and love.

The inspiration for "SHOUT!" was born from a creative exchange between Louie Vega and Charaf Tajer, founder and creative director of the internationally acclaimed fashion house Casablanca. Introduced by longtime friend Joseph Capriati, Charaf shared a bold vision—to bring together the worlds of fashion, gospel, and house music for one unforgettable Casablanca runway presentation in Paris.

Louie Vega recalls: “Charaf was introduced to me by my friend Joseph Capriati, who said Charaf was looking to meet me about an idea he had. His vision was to marry fashion, gospel, and house music within Casablanca's collection. At first, he wanted me to DJ and play gospel house music. I said, 'Instead of playing existing music, why don't I create an original song with a gospel house flavor?' I immediately got together with my 2SoulFusion partner Josh Milan, and together we came up with 'SHOUT!'”

That vision came to life during Casablanca's spectacular Paris presentation inside a breathtaking cathedral, where Louie Vega premiered the original twelve-minute and nine-second composition live. As the music echoed through the cathedral, Dames Brown joined the London House Gospel Choir in a soul-stirring performance while the models walked the aisle on Casablanca's carpet made of their signature green color and a dashing vibrating giant mirror echoing the runway visually. Renowned DJs Luciano and Chloé Caillet were among those who walked the runway, while friends of Charaf Tajer and special guests—including Jaden Thompson, Folamour, Dimitri From Paris, Kapela, and many others—were in attendance, making it an unforgettable gathering where music, spirituality, fashion, and culture merged into one extraordinary experience.

Inspired by that magical evening in Paris, Louie Vega and Josh Milan returned to the studio to expand the original composition into the powerful recording heard today. Built around rich live musicianship, Josh Milan's keyboards, organ, piano and synth bass provide the foundation alongside Axel Tosca's expressive grand piano recorded live, Sherrod Barnes' soulful guitar, and Gene Perez's unmistakable bass groove. Together they create an infectious, organic driving sound that allows the vocals to soar while delivering the unmistakable musical depth and musicianship that define 2SoulFusion.

Leading the celebration are Dames Brown and Dawn Tallman, whose commanding performances are elevated by an extraordinary choir of world-class vocalists. Dames Brown's spirited sermon and ad-libs, and Dawn Tallman’s powerful ad-lib vamping out together with the soaring harmonies of Lisa Fischer, Cindy Mizelle, Audrey Wheeler, Rahsaan Patterson, Ramona Dunlap, Lea Lorien, and Josh Milan, recreate the feeling of a joyful gospel congregation—not confined to four walls, but alive on dance floors around the world. Every chorus encourages listeners to get up, listen up, feel it, sing, move, love, and become part of the experience. Recorded between Honeycomb Studios in Pennsylvania, The Hub Ibiza and Manhattan Center Studios, New York City, and mixed at The Hub Ibiza, "SHOUT!" reflects the continuing vision of the Ascension project, where spirituality, musicianship, community, fashion, and dance music become one.

UK experimental multi-instrumentalist Oli Heffernan (aka Ivan The Tolerable) returns to independent label Riot Season Records on October 23rd, 2026, with The Planets, a fierce, tension-fuelled reinterpretation of Gustav Holst’s iconic orchestral suite tailored for the modern age.
Originally composed over a century ago to capture the astrological characters of the cosmos, Holst's masterpiece receives a radical, uneasy update. Where the original composition leaned on grand symphonic sweeps, Ivan The Tolerable strips away the comfort of the orchestra, replacing it with fracturing analog synthesisers, claustrophobic tape loops, and the hypnotic, nervous pulse of modern kosmische music and avant-garde noise.
The Planets is an album forged in the specific dread of 2026—a year defined by geopolitical instability, climate weariness, and pervasive societal tension. Rather than looking up at the stars in awe, Heffernan turns the telescope back toward a fractured Earth. From the staggering, industrial-tinged dread of "Mars" to a hollow, melancholic take on "Jupiter," the album transforms familiar motifs into an immersive exploration of collective psychological fatigue.
Recorded in isolation by Heffernan, the project captures the signature solo vulnerability seen on his recent landmark releases like Psychogeography. It balances moments of deep, meditative stillness with sudden, jarring eruptions of noise, offering listeners a space to both confront and process the overwhelming static of the everyday world.

The Liber series was always about the dancefloor. Dark rooms, loud systems, repetition, pressure and the point where the machinery takes over. Liber Eleven continues that idea. The tracks have been remastered and are now available again on CD, vinyl and download.

This is The Black Dog in full techno mode. Hypnotic, physical and built for big systems, with enough strange corners to keep things interesting when the lights go down.

The Liber series started with Liber Kult, Liber Temple and Liber Nox, followed by Liber Dogma and Liber Chaos. Eleven picks up that thread and carries it forward.

No nostalgia trip. No archive dusting for the sake of it. Just The Black Dog making techno...

Quiet, from the Latin quies, evokes a state of being still. In its verb form, quiet means to clear so that something can gradually come into focus. Kind Stranger by Amedeo Cappelletti is where quiet materializes in a more transient, even foreign, way. Each track takes a step back from noise, borne out of a slow return to music, a different pace, and a familiar place left behind for years.

Kind Stranger, released on Aurora Edition on July 24th, is about the strangeness of a return. Cappelletti's melodic scores work their way between faint noise and disquiet, and sonically muse upon the familiar. That is, when given enough time and distance, the familiar can become unrecognizable, demanding stillness to resituate oneself within it.

The album began taking shape when Cappelletti performed at Aurora Edition at Silent Green, just after he had returned to music following a three-year hiatus. In one month, he wrote forty-five minutes of new material from scratch. Then Cappelletti left Berlin after eight years and returned to the Tuscan countryside where he had grown up, back into slowness.

The album develops as an atmosphere in the truest sense. Resampled voices, found sound, and years of sound design practice converge as compositions form by overlapping texture with spatial depth. Kind Stranger cultivates a quietude that envelops the listener.

Vocal recordings made with Matthew Walsh and Sarah McInerney, collaborators Cappelletti met by chance in a Berlin ice cream shop, appear throughout the album like a current, shaped during a residency at MONOM, Berlin's spatial sound institute. Thematically, the record moves through digital addiction, fragmented attention, and the grief of work done in the darkness.

Kind Stranger is an offering to whoever finds themselves here within the quiet, in this particular quality of sound between return and lingering.

Weirdos Inc. share five chuggy heaters from Glaswegian via London producer Adam Low, aka Pigeon Steve. Leave Some Trace traverses a cinematic palette across five tracks. Euphoric acid, palmy Balearic touches, prog heavy nods to Goa trance. All fused influences shape an original and unique take on club music primed for a proper basement session. Perfect material for any dancefloor moment.

Adam Low has been turning heads over the last couple of years with his DJ sets and finely dialled productions. This EP spins our heads a full 360 on itself. This marks Weirdos’ first release of the year. Hope you enjoy.

UK Garage has ridden a new wave of hype and exposure over the last few years. Artists like Sammy Virji and Interplanetary Criminal have crossed over to the mainstream, while dancefloors across the world have shaken to a switched-up version of the sound that defined the UK underground either side of the millenium.

Hidden beneath a pink balaclava, the mysterious DJ Jackum has lurked this rejuvenated scene while dropping some of the most defining bangers of the period. Often surfacing in the form of moody edits released on Soundcloud, Jackum productions inevitably demolish dancefloors whenever dropped, as they frequently are in the sets of Virji and the other big guns.

Landing on Hotflush, a storied label of UK underground music, ‘Context’ is his most substantial work to date. Six tracks covering the full spectrum of the Jackum sound, from 4/4 heaters to dubstep-adjacent eyes-down bass pressure.

And in the form of opening track ‘Floo’, Jackum spreads his wings into a place that transcends the narrow confines of genre definition. From the UKG building blocks of bass, drive, cut-up vocals, and melody, the track emerges as something both familiar and wholly unexpected - the mark of a producer at the peak of their powers.

‘Clip Empty’ is another highlight of this standout EP. Showing a flair for the cinematic, a breakdown of militaristic snares gives way to a trademark rolling bassline and earworm vocals.

Away from the 4/4 bangers, ‘Take Your Body Higher’ is a guaranteed half-step rewind, while ‘Step Up’ recalls memories of smokey Plastic People sessions of the mid-2000s.

Ma Ze Music is just seven releases deep but is already overdelivering on expectations. This latest offering is a second from Yanuka, which is the solo project of acclaimed keyboardist, composer and producer Tomer Zuk. Here he hooks up with Elran Dekel on 'Where Is My Love' for a gently psyched-out and global soul and downtempo fusion that pairs textured guitar riffs with cartoon boings, conscious vocal musings and a blend of romantic and heart-aching moods. It's warm and intimate and then Ma Ze's regulars UV & Nenor take care of the flip with 'Where Is The Dub' which strips the original to a hazy, slow-motion dub.

Following on from the highly anticipated Rebirth 20 anniversary project, Rebirth return with the first of two limited-edition bonus 12"s, digging deeper into the label’s catalogue with four killer remixes and previously overlooked gems.

Kicking things off with Leon Feat. Corrina Joseph – I Follow You (Darryl Baalki Remix), a soulful and deeply grooving house cut with Corrina Joseph’s beautiful vocals riding over a warm, hypnotic groove. Darryl Baalki adds his signature touch, making this one a serious late-night house weapon.

Next up is Gianluca Pegoiani Feat. Ann Saunderson – Numero 5 (Rough Ride) (Nick Holder Trackheadz Remix). Nick Holder’s Trackheadz take the original into deeper territory, delivering a classy, rolling slice of deep house with that unmistakable Detroit/Chicago-inspired feel.

On the flip we have Mata Jones & Mikey V – Funky (Elado Remix), bringing a more energetic and playful edge to proceedings with a seriously infectious groove, chunky drums and plenty of dancefloor funk.

Finishing off the EP is Psycho Radio Vs LC Anderson – Bad Reputation (Red Axes Remix). Red Axes work their magic on this one, twisting it into a dark, psychedelic indie-dance workout packed with attitude and hypnotic momentum.

Another essential selection from Rebirth as they continue celebrating 20 years of the label with some seriously choice cuts.

Limited Press — act fast!

Fred Peterkin releases a lot of music but rarely hands his work over to other artists to remix. This EP, which sees a trio of artists deliver their interpretation of the Berlin-based New Yorker's strings-and-piano-drenched 2023 deep house number 'Someone', is therefore an interesting development. He kicks things off with his own smooth, bass-heavy 2026 'Interpretation', an even deeper and more sensual take that blends dancefloor weight with light-touch jazziness, before Juliet Mendoza takes over with a more locked-in interpretation smothered in warming Rhodes motifs and snippets of soulful, eyes-closed vocal. Dave Aju's take is more weighty, psychedelic and propulsive, while Korea Town's 'Acid' interpretation is darker, faster, tougher and altogether more thickset - the kind of revision tailor-made for peak-time moments in dark basement clubs.

What happens when bassweight electronic beats meet the abstract world of one of the most uncompromising MCs on this planet?

Get ready for a special listening experience as Abu Ama and Sensational take you deep into a world of heavy bass, fractured rhythms, strange frequencies and completely unpredictable flows.

Abu Ama is known for his unique production style, combining Dub, Ambient and Industrial soundscapes with Middle Eastern sound structures. His productions create vast, atmospheric spaces where bass pressure and subtle details constantly collide. Over the years, he has developed his signature sound through releases on forward-thinking labels such as Bokeh Versions and Accidental Meetings. With Ringing In Your Ear, Abu Ama presents some of his most adventurous and forward-thinking productions to date.

On the microphone, we are proud to present a true underground legend straight outta NYC: Sensational.

Born Colin Julius Bobb in Guyana and raised in Brooklyn, Sensational became one of the most distinctive and unpredictable voices to emerge from New York’s experimental hip-hop underground. Originally performing under the name Torture, he was already connected to the Jungle Brothers in the early 1990s before developing the completely unique style that would become synonymous with Sensational.

In 1997, he released his debut album Loaded With Power on the influential Word Sound label. Built from dusty beats, unusual samples and lo-fi textures, the record established Sensational as an artist who seemed to operate completely outside the established rules of Hip Hop.

Over the following decades, he continued to explore the space between underground rap, experimental electronics, noise and abstract music. His long list of collaborators included artists such as Spectre, Kouhei Matsunaga, Kid 606, Cardopusher, Handsome Boy Modeling School and many others. His work with Kouhei Matsunaga was even remixed by Autechre.

Sensational was never interested in fitting into a particular scene. His rhymes were surreal, his flows unpredictable and his approach completely his own. For more than three decades, he remained a true outsider — a cult figure whose music connected underground Hip Hop with some of the strangest and most adventurous corners of experimental music.

After Abu Ama and Sensational’s heavy 2023 single International Rokkaz left us wanting more, the two decided to take things much further. What started as a single collaboration evolved into a full length soundclash.

We were already incredibly hyped about this collaboration from the moment we heard it. But while we were preparing for the release of the single MOZZ, the terrible news reached us: Sensational had passed away.

The news hit hard. It is still difficult to believe that we will never hear a new Sensational verse again.

What makes Ringing In Your Ear even more special is that it captures Sensational doing what he did best — completely free, completely unpredictable and completely himself.

We dedicate this record to Colin Julius Bobb aka Sensational, in loving memory of an extraordinary artist, MC and true underground original.

Rest in power, Sensational.

WHIMM formed around the shadowy heart of the Toronto post-punk underground over a decade ago. The partnership between Mounir Al Shami and Andrew Matthews has emitted sporadic musical shards over time, while slowly evolving into something so much bigger than its beginnings. Ideas seep out of every corner of No Promotion, showcasing a burning desire to explore and challenge while delivering very direct sonic offerings. The result is an album that feels as if you took the entire Coil discography and smashed it into pieces, assembling these precious songs from the fragments. Or as if Vangelis beckoned Section 25 to the studio in hopes of recording the score to a seedy film. The resulting LP is in a state of flux – equal parts motion and decay.

Patrick Flegel, of Cindy Lee, welcomed Al Shami and Matthews into REALISTIK Studios in Montreal to engineer half of the tracks for the album, including lending guitar to the opening track "Five in Decline." That influence is evident early on, as the first three songs are taken from those sessions. "Five in Decline" throbs and barks before racing through the hallways closing in around it. "Another Labour" slows to a spidery waltz as anxious melodies call out to one another. "Returnal" pulses, floats through the night sky and haunts you forever. "Rye" carves a percussive pathway toward similar travellers like Terry Riley and Jon Hassell, before the lament of "A Death Remembered" forms the perfect midpoint for the record. A slow build countered by twitching drums and blanketed by organs recorded at Metropolitan United Church in Toronto, it feels like emotion right on the edge of resolve.

"Rhymes of December" screeches through on a solitary train under the towering cityscape as the flickering lights blur past, its doors opening to the candlelit altar of "After the Last Sky" (those beautiful organs again) with an operatic swirl. "K'20" throws you into a claustrophobic and chaotic cab ride (Who is talking? Are those sirens?) until you finally find the quiet of the early morning, waiting at the window for the sun to join you once again as the first notes of "No Promotion" are delicately plucked. The final song from the Flegel sessions, it is over eight minutes of contemplative beauty. A restless heart that is ready to rest. Closing with a final apparition in the key of The Caretaker, "After the Last Sky (Reprise)" is a return to melody when words lose all meaning.

Al Shami and Matthews weave their lyrics throughout, words describing a search for lucidity, and of reactions and reflections. Al Shami – speaking from the Palestinian diaspora – ruminates on displacement, both personal and collective. His journey from having "been without a land and I can still see clearly" in "Rhymes of December" to a more defiant "we will be back again, no matter how it ends or where we've been" in "Returnal" takes a very insular turn on No Promotion. That sense of alienation pulls at the very center of a relationship when land and circumstances separate: "And after our last breath, all that's left in me is our flesh and fears, your last words would swim for years, you'll never find a home in me." Hearts on the outskirts that know the direction.

Spain's celebrated deep house outlet Mate comes correct again here with an EP that deals in rich musicality and mature emotions. HITTO aka Alberto Alba is the Mallorcan producer behind the music and his childhood love of jazz really shines through. Opener 'Beyond Words' has singing synths that speak to the soul with lovely ambient chords. Then, 'Take Me Away' brings groovy percussion and cosmic synth transmissions that make it feel all the more profound. Glenn Underground is the perfect remixer to dial up the sunshine with his astral rework of 'Beyond Words' before 'Swish' shuts down with a mix of smeared chords that radiate sun over a grittier bassline. Four accomplished cuts.

Just over halfway through 2026 and Craig Bratley’s ‘Return to Bass’ has already been cited as one of the albums of the year and a future classic. Here, two of the album’s standout tracks return in a variety of guises.

First up is “Everybody Pushing”, featuring the vocal talents of Thomas Gandey. Recently described as a “proper blissed out Balearic rave tune,” this release pairs the original with an instrumental version and a remix from the ever reliable 40 Thieves. Their remix takes Everybody Pushing somewhere considerably more psychedelic, pushing the track into late-night territory while retaining the spirit of the original.

Bratley takes care of the title track “Return to Bass” with the Ashigaru Flashback Dub. Hitting harder than Anthony Joshua, the remix strips the track right back, ditching the trumpet in favour of sirens, vocal samples and tougher drums. The result sounds like what might have happened if N.W.A. had got their hands on some Purple Ohms and a TB-303.

This is the sound of dream Texas, the cinematic Texas conjured in film and 20th century literary and art myth… big dark blueing horizons swallowing the infinite distance, a lonely poetry of sound, but also a stock taker of the iconoclastic, psychedelic, art rebel side of Texas… the cracked rock music side of Texas, the avant-garde in concrete cracks, the recklessly used, mind expanding drugs Texas, the dripping eastern swamps, the Houston house parties with the sounds of records blasting down the block and becoming musique concrète in the hot summer night.

Chrome Chasm’s debut album Interpreter is ambient, minimal in feel, maximal in texture, beautifully disorienting, vastly spacious— until it isn’t. It's a naturalistic shapeshifter, taking majestic form in the aforementioned elements and then dissolving back to raw genetic material to form anew. Spiritual jazz overtones, pedal steel moans and buzzing, noisy ambient visions are upended by grey-folded psychedelic unveilings. Interpreter’s three expansive tracks present a most detailed performance by its three deft musicians and the outcome often feels like a gorgeous collage in real-time.

Chrome Chasm was formed in 2024 by three of Houston’s brightest underground stars: Mlee Marie (Hearts Of Animals) on alto saxophone, flute and voice (whose long-form experimental sax performances helped inspire the formation of the band), Will Adams (Lower Dens/ Ka-Nives) on pedal steel, synth, percussion and voice, and Tom Carter on guitar. Carter has been casting a long shadow over Texas psychedelia and American underground music for over 3 decades, most notably with the Houston based Charalambides, a powerful creative force of the pre-new weird America era of experimental and avant psychedelic music, and most notably since with his solo guitar magnum opus Long Time Underground (which was deemed among the best experimental albums of 2015 by Pitchfork).

Interpreter’s opening track “The Star,” recorded almost completely live in one room and one take, is a 16-minute manifesto on ‘Dream Noir.’ An astute scholar of cross-genre connectivity and the through-lines of kosmische and spiritual-leaning sonic realms can hear echoes of Cluster, the skronk and beauty of Rahsaan Roland Kirk, and the architectural ambient flow of Harold Budd and Philip Glass in the tidal lapping of distorted guitar, mantra-like saxophone and pedal steel flow. From its deconstructed, pastoral opening moments to its proto-electronic center that crests into a bombastic polytonal climax, Chrome Chasm never neglect narrative arc for experimentation and avant technique. In fact, as a group, they effortlessly control, open, fill and contract space in abeyance to emotional vibration. “The Star,” and indeed the album as a whole, feels more like a communion or extended poem, in direct communication with the listener, than it does a ‘captured experience.’

Across the three longform tracks of Interpreter, Chrome Chasm conducts a masterclass in fusing real time performance energy with an abstract, cut-up master’s reimagining of the literal. They demand the listener meet their music with dream logic and then, like the best dream peddlers, they present a labyrinth to fall into and experience, a place where explanation and conclusion become obsolete, and engagement and immersion become sublime.

To celebrate another year around the sun, we’re proud to present our second vinyl release: Formulation — a 4-track EP that perfectly captures the label’s output over the past year while continuing our commitment to physical formats and attention to detail.

Like its predecessor "Foundation" is a various artists release featuring some of the key names from our latest catalog. The formula goes like this:

A Side: Iron T.C. and Hor-G take control of the slower side of the record with aggressive drums, distortion and the raw energy that defines their sound. Epic atmospheres and humanoid vocals introduce a heavy breakbeat assault from two of the strongest names in the Iberian underground. A perfect blend of dirty electro and industrial breakbeat built to turn the dancefloor upside down.

B Side: Heathen, The Egg & No Rules push the BPMs higher in the other side. Dark landscapes and metallic drums twist into a spiral of tension and halftime rhythms. Three experienced explorers of the niche taking techstep sound beyond its usual limits — for those into density, introspection and long blends

Another solid step into the physical format — and a glimpse of what’s still to come...

Once again, huge thanks to everyone involved in the project and to all our supporters who make this possible.

To celebrate another year around the sun, we’re proud to present our second vinyl release: Formulation — a 4-track EP that perfectly captures the label’s output over the past year while continuing our commitment to physical formats and attention to detail.

Like its predecessor "Foundation" is a various artists release featuring some of the key names from our latest catalog. The formula goes like this:

A Side: Iron T.C. and Hor-G take control of the slower side of the record with aggressive drums, distortion and the raw energy that defines their sound. Epic atmospheres and humanoid vocals introduce a heavy breakbeat assault from two of the strongest names in the Iberian underground. A perfect blend of dirty electro and industrial breakbeat built to turn the dancefloor upside down.

B Side: Heathen, The Egg & No Rules push the BPMs higher in the other side. Dark landscapes and metallic drums twist into a spiral of tension and halftime rhythms. Three experienced explorers of the niche taking techstep sound beyond its usual limits — for those into density, introspection and long blends

Another solid step into the physical format — and a glimpse of what’s still to come...

Once again, huge thanks to everyone involved in the project and to all our supporters who make this possible.

Hanne Lippard and Renato Grieco's Today's Special is a suite of language works synthesising melody and diction that integrates the literary and the audible in a repertoire of songs that bask in the melody of voice and the punctuations of structured composition. Working with methods of reduction rather than opulence in both tonal composition and rhetoric, each piece pegs the poetic to the musical with compositional schematics and methods. It is important to state that there is little to none improvisation here, instead, the duo set up matrices, rules and structural links that facilitated meaningful locus of exchange between their two practices. Lippard's texts are a collection of new and previously completed works. In these, as is typical for her work, she enjoys the easy pleasure of wordplay, iterative language, and decontextualised anecdote, as in opener Portrait of a Betrayal, a piece about the loss of a phone and the way it haunted the owner who dropped it, based on a lived experience. Grieco's instrumentation works with Lippard's language art as a form of acoustic typography. "I studied graphic design and I think about how you can express typography through voice," she says. "Renato's use of the viola da gamba becomes like an underline, or a font's brushstrokes, in ways that feel typographical." In this, the classically-trained composer Grieco often finds and echoes the pitch movements of Lippard's voice, intonation mirrored and revealed, linguistic meaning doubled and shadowed by plucked, strummed or bowed strings. His main instrument is the viola da gamba, the instrument considered closest to the human voice for its tonal range and ability to mimic inflections and timbre, and here he brings it even closer to the voice, building systems by which it moves with and around Lippard. He also plays piano and Wurlitzer, and joins her in speaking on Receiver and in conversation for final track The Black Rose. "Hanne's voice is an artist's voice, embodied as the artwork itself," he says. "But where my approach is from the perspective of a composer, hers is around rhetoric and language. We worked towards each other in this sense, Hanne finding a space to welcome my voice, and me designing an acoustic space to enhance her vocal persona." In some tracks the structural connections are obvious - the matched tumbling delivery and stepped pitches of voice and piano in Aficionado sounding like two tipsy friends descending a staircase. In others, like the triptych of tracks Three Rungs Ladder, structured with rules derived from nursery rhymes, or cumulative song (akin to the 12 Days of Christmas). For the Colour 1 and Colour 2 pieces, the duo worked from palettes of colours connected to clusters of harmonies, which underlined the power of the word and its articulation. The absurd Labradorable personifies a people pleaser, A Story About Being Blue is an imagined playful monologue from the Deep Blue supercomputer - requesting in sing-song stop motion to be called Debbie, and Larry - as Grieco echoes in factual reportage. Hurtbeat unpacks and recomposes a tweeted non-apology by a Russian art collector about owning a piece of racist art, Grieco shadowing Lippard's generating a third `drop-shadow' performer from the resonances between the duo, typographic re-articulation of the source material. The Receiver includes lines from Robert Ashley's Improvement (Don Leaves Linda), Ashley existing as a spiritual parent of sorts to the practices contained on Today's Special, and here interpolated as if he is being quoted and written through within the audible world of the piece in a palimpsest of borrowed sentences. Closing track The Black Rose contains its own self-aware comedy, a lightly distorted conversation sourced from a Reddit thread about whether black roses exist, recorded as if it were an internet radio or a low budget podcast, the casual exchange stilted in the delivery of platitudes as scripted speech. Today's Special was developed in person over the course of a series of small residencies - at Deutsche Akademie Rom Villa Massimo, Rome; Fondazione Morra, Napoli; Callie's, Berlin. In these limited periods that rarely stretched beyond a week, Lippard and Grieco developed strategies for the works, keeping tightly locked to musical concepts. This, for Grieco, is about maintaining a solid, meaningful connection within the compositions, and committing to everything having a purpose for existing within the work. Each element pulls its weight; has something to say, literally and metaphorically speaking. In the same way that Lippard's work leaves nowhere for her to hide, he wants the music to exist with its own naked purpose: "It's is about exposing nudity via reduced materials," says Grieco. "This is a form of courage we want to embrace. Once we take off everything, it needs to be extremely precise to maintain a connection with the audience. We have a lot of tools to hide behind now, to protect ourselves and our identities as artists, performers, and in life more generally. It's something I don't want to do. I want extreme reduction: no hiding."

As Eerie Enterprise, upsammy and Piezo have funnelled their singular styles into a classic-feeling but ultra-modern album of elegant, angular electronica. With a strong melodic sensibility and a highly developed palette of playful sound design in their toolkit, the unexpected pairing grew spontaneous jams into a considered collaboration, and Places Remember Events is the end result.

Individually, Thessa Torsing and Luca Mucci have carved out strong identities within contemporary electronic music. As upsammy, Torsing has applied a delicate precision to ambient and uptempo approaches alike, building up a striking catalogue of releases including her 2020 LP for Dekmantel, Zoom. Meanwhile, Mucci has taken a wayward path through contemporary bass music and techno that matches edgy sound design with playful unpredictability. As Eerie Enterprise, both artists tap into their respective creative instincts while arriving at a unique sound with a nurturing quality they were both missing from modern dance music.

Having appreciated each other's work for some years, in July 2024 Torsing and Mucci seized an opportunity to carve out two days in the studio. There was no expectation of an end product, but the sketches conceived during those open-ended, hardware-oriented sessions felt worthy of a deeper exploration developed and finalised over the following year-and-a-half.

Places Remember Events has an unapologetically nostalgic streak, calling to mind the warm glow of melodically-charged, golden-era electronica. The twitchy rhythmic make-up of tracks like 'Decay + Collapse' and 'Folding Origin' speak to the duo's shared affinity for ravey energy, but even within faster frameworks they lean into half-time space to maintain a light-footed agility that allows the relatively busy arrangements to feel grounded and patient rather than frantic.

There's an appreciation for mystery in the emotional make-up of many of the tracks, not least in the slithering textural exploration and spatial tension of 'Capsule', but elsewhere fragile melancholia guides the melody direction of 'Superradiance' and 'Things Fall Upwards'. The final impression is crisp and modern while delivering an accessible experience that seeks to soothe rather than shock when so much contemporary club music tips towards uneasy intensity.

Finding malleable approaches to their chosen sonics and applying them to intentional song structures, Eerie Enterprise collectively land on a sound that promises a lasting reward for the repeat voyager — satisfying headphone gear in the grand tradition of introspective electronic music, but also with a physical immediacy that will manifest in the live set upsammy and Piezo have put together to perform later in the year.

“Cue Blue”, the latest and fifth studio recording from Australian down under, gritty jazzfunk grooves ensemble Kerbside Collection sees a return to a more classic, stripped back, meat-and-potatoes, home-cooked, quartet formation sound of guitar, bass, drums and brass.


A sound formed on previous, recent recordings (incl. Golden Rules compilation tune “Fleet Streak” etc), seemingly harking back to the approach of the group’s first recordings (2013’s “Mind The Curb”, “Night in Tunisia” etc), whilst embodying inspirations from more ‘true school’, classic, bluesy New Orleans funk and soul groove flavours à la early Meters, Boogaloo Joe Jones, Melvin Sparks, Billy Butler etc. But it’s not all completely ‘retro’ and ‘looking back’, the album definitely taps into some of the current exponents and leaders of the contemporary deep funk sound – The Greyboy Allstars, Eddie Roberts, The New Mastersounds, The Mighty Mocambos, Breakestra and fellow Aussie funksters Cookin’ on 3 Burners, Lance Ferguson and The Bamboos etc.


The lead single and first tune “Shivers” gives us a clear, picture and definitive opening statement to the record with all the characteristics you’ve come to expect from the Kerbside gritty jazzfunk sound: silky guitar line phrasing, rubbery bass-lines, tight crusty drum breaks, and sweet brass arrangements. Then it’s straight into a frenetic, jangly, mod-funk workout complete with Northern Soul & Motown inflections in the surging B sections. “City Park Avenue” conjures up classic New Orleans funk flavours with its strutting brass, slinky guitar and swinging tambourine groove. There’s classic, b-boy funk territory covered in “Coffee Grinder” (a breakdance move) with its razor-sharp drum break groove and chunky riff complete with sizzling trombone solo. Before the pace of the record changes up with the finger-clicken’, hand-clappin’ boogaloo, reminiscent of early 60s Harlem x Puerto Rican Bronx sounds (à la Willie Bobo, Mongo Santamaria, Ray Barretto) loaded with a scintillating baritone sax solo from long standing part of the collection ‘Papa Joe’ Roberts.


“Sittin’ On The Porch” cools the temperature down even more, delving into slight Southern Louisiana Delta blues territory, while suggesting some of the hot and muggy atmosphere and imagery of their home town location in suburban Brisbane Australia, complete with kooky Casio percussion representing familiar yard sounds such as sprinklers (spinning lawn watering devices) and ‘mozzies’ (mosquitos), passing cars indicated by trombone, and guitarist TC Tyler, channelling some bluesy John Lee Hooker, R.L. Burnside guitar flavours - you can almost feel the humidity on your skin.


Then it’s time for a stroll down memory lane, with their version of a People Under The Stairs hip hop classic “San Francisco Knights”, bringing the tune full circle back into band mode, also with another tasty guitar solo. The album then enters its final stages with a mesmerising, soulful, jazz ballad “Shimmer”, complete with Elliott Parker’s sultry upright double bass, and trombone taking the melody for a gentle stroll down the street. The album finally closes and arrives at its title “Cue Blue”, a classic blue-eyed soul number (penned by bassist Parker), emitting the scent of true school, vintage R&B and soul (à la Donny Hathaway, Marvin Gaye).


An album of funky arrangements and refined compositions, mostly penned by recent new-ish member, guitarist Tyler (for fans of Tower of Power & John Scofield guitar playing) taking the ensemble through their paces with all the usual characteristics of the Kerbside sound, on top a groove that will take you round-the-block-and-back :P Gritty jazzfunk and rustic soul grooves with definite bluesy overtones, some classic 60s, 70s flourishes and down-home funk flavours.

Second Storey launches new record label High Canopy - with Ladakh EP, 20 years since the artist's first vinyl release. Storey's working template has always been to take on the observations of his inner and outer world experiences, folding them into his expertise as a highly skilled drummer, knack for dream-scape sound design and love of rave and soundsystem culture. High Canopy promises to be an environment that platforms full artistic freedom and homes the mechanised, cerebral dancefloor workouts of Second Storey's studio life alongside his deeper, more experimental terrain. The EP's first stop is 'Blue Eye' named after the spring source of the Bistrice river in Albania. Crystal-clear sound design that echoes the flow of this natural water and sits alongside softly distorted low end. Contrasting 'Urban Hermit' was written in Berlin, during a bout of cabin fever and is a heavy case of gnarled up, spat out, paranoid machine funk. 'Post Columbia' - recorded after an eye opening trip to Bogota- then shifts the tone for the B side into more heady melodic territory with luminous, floating synths evolving throughout the track. ' ABC Conjecture' builds an intense atmosphere as it crawls and morphs across growling, distorted bass with a creeping shuffle of layered elements building overhead. Title track 'Ladakh' completes the EP, inspired by the remote town in the Indian Himalayas on the border of Tibet, AKA snow leopard country. It takes on a special and expansive ambient quality of this deeply precious and spiritual mountain land.

Impossibly rare slab: a capital-C-cult bit of millennial business from perhaps the most enigmatic member of the Gush Collective crew, who in the early 00s not so much redefined, but refined UKG… and then some. Alongside folks like Herb-LF and Lorenzo, Yoshino was a stalwart: releasing and remixing on the legendary but somewhat overlooked German labels Draft Recordings and Gush. It was here these cats smoothed out the UKG sound with a spliffed out vibe that fucked with the raw warm herby sounds of Tyree Cooper and QX-1; Yoshino, more than most though, flirted with sounds you wouldn’t expect to find in the UKG realm: think ethereally stuff man, I’m talking Placid Angels with the pseudo Japanese pop sensibilities of Faye Wong - but when when the cards fall down, his productions equally bang. So: splice in a bit of Serious Danger and Makesome Breaksome, light a phat one or zwei… & welcome to the wheelhouse.

‘Back to Basics' is a celebration of Yoshino as an artist: featuring a repress from our favourite Gush Collective stash (which is now so dear it makes me wish I’d better taken care of my records at after parties); three first time cuts of his on wax that we’ve curated from over the years that feature appearances from Peaky Beats and Miss Angel - and of course, there’s a killer remix from deep digging DJ and producer, Enchanted Rhythms (whose Youtube archive is packed to the veritable rafters with the most overlooked gems and updated with such frequency that it is hard to keep up). Apart from being a head’s head, Rich is also part of the Pace familia, so we're happy to welcome him to the catalogon a terrain he has endlessly kept fresh since day dot - he knows his shit here, and of course, he taps into that Yoshino flava big time.

Songs of Joy and Peace is a Christmas music album by cellist Yo-Yo Ma, originally released in 2008. The album features collaborations with many other artists, including vocalists Diana Krall & Alison Krauss, James Taylor, Dave Brubeck and Chris Botti.

This holiday disc doesn't exclusively stick to traditional Christmas songs, but covers a wide scope of material in a very ambitious manner. Ma opens with a lovely take of the traditional favorite “Dona Nobis Pacem (Give Us Peace)”, playing both the melody and counterpoint via overdubbing.

Jazz pianist/vocalist Diana Krall is superb in a swinging rendition of Jerome Kern's unjustly obscure "You Couldn't Be Cuter", adding bassist John Clayton. An arrangement of “Joy To The World” features pianist Dave Brubeck and cellist Matt Brubeck (his son). Chris Botti has never sounded better in the warm arrangement of “My Favorite Things”, playing both open and muted trumpet. James Taylor is featured on vocals on the Beatles cover “Here Comes The Sun”.

New York-based Japanese jazz and electronic music polymath Takuya Nakamura presents his debut album Shape The Future - almost 35 years into his storied musical journey.

An expansive double album, the album’s first LP documents a spellbinding live performance by Nakamura recorded at fabric. A hybrid set combining DJing, live electronics, vocals, and trumpet, the set also features studio versions of special collaborations with Shigeto, Currency Audio and Tim Reaper. The second LP complements the first by assembling studio recordings of select album tracks. Altogether the two volumes make for a definitive display of Nakamura’s exceptional musicianship across jazz, DnB, jungle, broken beat, deep techno and more.

Across his career, Nakamura has played Brazilian music, merengue, salsa and straight-ahead jazz. He’s opened for Sun Ra Arkestra, performed with David Byrne, Laurie Anderson, Lee “Scratch” Perry, Wu-Tang Clan, and Arto Lindsay, appeared on sessions with Terry Riley, ASAP Rocky, Goldie, and TV On The Radio, and remixed the likes of Quincy Jones, Sun Ra, Billie Holiday, and The Streets. He’s also played under director and playwright Robert Wilson.

Although the musical past and present of the Tokyo-born, New York-based DJ and trumpet player is undoubtedly eclectic, Nakamura is abidingly steeped in the sounds of jazz and jungle. This’ll be obvious to casual observers who may have seen any viral videos of him. But there’s more to this. The depth of Nakamura’s engagement with these kinds of music, the way they’ve made him into the person he is, the decades-long path they’ve taken him on; to now arrive at the summit of a solo album is all truly remarkable. Shape The Future resonates with every chapter in this story.

In high school, Nakamura’s friends started listening to jazz and jazz fusion, which piqued his interest, especially when they started going to clubs to see it live, where they managed to see US legends like Sonny Rollins play. Eventually he began to play jazz every day and his musical skill emerged early. He soon became obsessed with getting closer to the source of this music, which led to his studies at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston with George Russell, an influential figure who had taught Miles Davis and John Coltrane. Nakamura drank it in: not only the technical aspects but the sense of a direct connection to “a music culture where Russell and his friends changed harmony forever. I wanted to know how that was possible!”.

This was a radical experience in itself, but then another revolution happened for Nakamura. He was playing in a venue called The Western Front, near Boston and discovered that the elderly owner had his own soundsystem and was playing what was then - in 1992 - only just becoming known as jungle. This was as freeing a musical revelation as his proximity to the giants of jazz was, and in that instant the two things fused. He understood that using technology to fill a dancehall with sound and a jazz musician’s reflexes are all working to the same ends: “You’re always making decisions,” he says, “but it doesn’t have to be really difficult. It’s the truth of the frequencies, and how they’re affecting people’s minds.”

From that moment on, his life path was set. Moving to New York City, he sought out jungle and its offshoot sounds wherever he could find them, gigging and collaborating relentlessly, and gradually developing his own live and hybrid live/DJ shows. Through regular appearances at New York fixtures Zebulon and CBGBs, and continual shows elsewhere in the city, Nakamura developed his live performance and DJing and it was in these environments that he gradually weaved together his twin loves without compromising either, building an international reputation in the process.

It’s only fitting then that his first album, almost 35 years after he first found his musical direction, should be a live one: a window into this never-ending process. Even here, he had to be persuaded that he should make a record. A member of the fabric team got turned on to his music after their daughter saw him play. Of course, as a jungle lover, Nakamura knew fabric – which has a special place in the history of jungle and drum’n’bass – and “had wanted to play there since I was very young.” You can hear the club in the record: this isn’t just a live show, in keeping with his jungle roots, it’s Nakamura duetting with the soundsystem, and you can feel how the emotions in the room would have ebbed and flowed.

This dynamic translates to a transfixing record. Setting the tone with lushly textured ambient and reverberant jazz, Nakamura segues into cinematic breakbeat and stellar fusion, infusing it all with intoxicating low end and hypnotic rhythms. The LP’s midway point locks into mesmeric percussion heightened by resonant echoes of piano and trumpet. There’s an endless pull to this music. Nakamura adjusts the levels for maximum impact throughout, and the overall effect begins to evoke some harmonious hybrid between a jazz ensemble, a classic Metalheadz 12” and a Theo Parrish DJ set. His electric form continues through surreal jazz, intricate electronics and rolling sub-bass velocity, right up to the subtly devastating final cover of Peter Gabriel and Kate Bush’s ‘Don’t Give Up’, with Nakamura’s fragile vocal sitting in the heart of a huge sound.

From Tokyo jazz nights to formative studies and encounters in Boston to his artistic development in New York, Nakamura reaches another milestone with his monumental debut album. It’s a release that happened just the way a Takuya Nakamura record should. In the same way his instincts led him to musical revelations, taking his own sweet time has led him to make one of the most extraordinary debut albums imaginable, all executed in his own singular style. In Nakamura’s world, the universe finds a way.

Finnish-American guitarist Raoul Björkenheim and Norwegian drummer Paal Nilssen-Love join forces on their new album PING, released by We Jazz Records on 30th October on LP, CD and digital formats. Recorded in Helsinki, the album finds the seasoned duo firing on all cylinders and delivering a remarkable set of contemporary free music.

PING brings together nine excursions beyond “guitar + drums” and way beyond “free jazz”. That being said, those are still good touching points for the music that is wild, imaginative, raw, yet also at times delicate and introspective. Friends and collaborators for decades in groups such as the lauded Scorch Trio, Raoul and Paal have the history and the trust to create memorable and original improvised music that stuns and moves the curious listener.

Raoul Björkenheim (b. 1956) is a Finnish-American guitarist and composer who has been creating original music for the past four decades living in New York City and Helsinki, where he is presently based. Describing his on-going work as investigative guitarism, he is best known for an expressionistic and lyrical guitar style. Björkenheim’s eclectic discography numbers 50+ albums, ranging from ambient soundscapes to visceral free jazz, from duo to big band. His large-scale works for symphony orchestra have yet to be recorded, and he has also composed scores for over ten films and dance productions. Björkenheim has collaborated musically with Bill Laswell, Toshinori Kondo, William Parker, Mats Gustafsson, Hamid Drake, Ingebrigt Håker Flaten, Gerald Cleaver, Henry Kaiser, Lukas Ligeti, Morgan Ågren, Paul Schütze, Edward Vesala and Juhani Aaltonen, for the labels ECM, Rune Grammofon, Cuneiform, Tum Records and Long Song records. Björkenheim has been awarded various prizes including the Emma prize for best jazz recording of the year, and been nominated three times for the Nordic Music Award.

Paal Nilssen-Love (b. 1974) is a Norwegian drummer, composer, bandleader, and producer known for his central role in Scandinavian free jazz and improvised music. Since the mid- 1990s, he has appeared on more than 280 albums, including 70 released through his label, PNL Records. He has performed with influential groups including Atomic, The Thing, Peter Brötzmann’s Chicago Tentet, Scorch Trio, and Frode Gjerstad Trio, and collaborates regularly with artists such as, Ken Vandermark, Akira Sakata, Otomo Yoshihide, David Murray, Arto Lindsay and more. Paal Nilssen-Love’s fascination with traditional and experimental music has taken him around the world. Since his first visit to Ethiopia in 2009, he has built strong connections with musicians and artists in Addis Ababa, leading to collaborations, performances, teaching, and artist exchanges with Norway. Since his first trip to Brazil in 2013, he has returned regularly, developing collaborations with artists and musicians across the country. His musical explorations have also brought him to Tsugaru and Aomori in northern Japan, where he has developed an interest in the region’s traditional music. Nilssen-Love is also an active organizer and educator. He started both Oslo’s all-Ears festival, the Blow Out festival and FRAM Kunstfest, and has led workshops internationally and in Norway.