quête:the cut

Bill Withers was a modest, gentle, and yet towering musical figure responsible for some of the most important, universally known soul hits ever written. It’s no wonder that “Just the Two of Us” and “Ain’t No Sunshine” won him two Grammy awards and undoubtedly played a huge role in getting him inducted into both the Songwriters and Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Live at Carnegie Hall is Withers' only live album, recorded on October 6, 1973 but not released until April 21, 1973. The fact that Bill got to play his heartfelt and honest soul at one of the most prestigious venues for both classical and pop music speaks volumes: his first two records Just As I Am and Still Bill were really that influential.

Bill Withers' Live At Carnegie Hall was recorded more than 50 years ago on a rainy Friday evening, but it is still regarded as one of the best live performances in the history of Soul music. Withers appears on stage with an ensemble of only the best session musicians the 1970s had to offer: Melvin Dunlap, Ray Jackson, James Gadson, Benorce Blackmon, and Bobbye Hall, at the time one of the few female session percussionists. They all had worked together on Still Bill and had the knack for expanding Bill's intimate songs to fit a hall of that size and stature. And as far as the recording goes, no corners were cut; it really feels like you're up there with them.

The set features evergreens such as "Ain't No Sunshine", "Lean On Me", "Grandma's Hands", but also tunes that are only available as part of this live set, such as "World Keeps Going Around" and "I Can't Write Left-Handed".

Bill Withers Live at Carnegie Hall is available as a limited edition of 5000 individually numbered copies on magenta vinyl, and includes printed inner sleeves and a 4-page booklet featuring liner notes on Bill Withers written by Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson and reflections by Aloe Blacc.

ROCK JUSTICE is a new hard rock/metal act featuring singer Maggy Luyten (Ayreon, Beautiful Sin, The Prize, ex-Nightmare) and guitarist Bas Maas (Doro, After Forever).

The upcoming debut album, You’ve Been Served, is the result of Bas Maas’s long-held dream. He teamed up with Maggy Luyten to shape the powerful, driving sound of ROCK JUSTICE. The album blends varied song styles, tied together by a nostalgic vibe and well-crafted production.

“The idea came to life when I was still playing in After Forever, where I didn’t get a serious chance to contribute to the songwriting. I had written a couple of songs that didn’t make the cut and realized that if I wanted to get my own music out there, I’d have to do it myself, or at least with other people,” says Bas. When he decided to form a band, he had two rules: he wouldn’t sing himself, and it wouldn’t be a female singer. Finding the right guy proved impossible and after several try-outs, one name kept coming up: Maggy Luyten. “Mag’s voice completely blew me away. I thought, ‘This chick sings like a dude and she delivers.’ Not long after that, we met at an Ayreon album presentation in Utrecht. She wanted to hear my songs to see if they inspired her. They did.” The rest is history. Maggy recalls with a smile: “When Bas came over to hear what I’d worked on, we both knew we had something. I still picture him driving back home: window down, our demo blasting, arm out, metal horns up, huge smile!”

DJ Support: Chris Coco, DJ Morpheus, Alexis Le-Tan, DVS1, Afterlife, Ally Tropical, Alex Ruder (KEXP), Andy Wilson, Bill Brewster, Makossa

Dawn Again continues his masterful run on Hell Yeah with a third new album in consecutive years. The Aussie "pubwave" architect this time serves up Pints Of Ambient Nectar, an eight-track collection of new ambient works and remixes of album tracks from 2024's Every Dog's Hotel and 2025's Lost In The Front Bar.

Melbourne producer Nick Verwey has spent the last decade quietly refining a sound that's loose, lived-in, and made for real moments rather than peak-time theatrics. With releases on Houseworx, Enjoyment Division and Hell Yeah, his sun-faded, lo-fi grooves drift between breaks, downtempo and hazy house. His “pubwave” sound is music born from lockdown nostalgia, communal pints and the romance of places where time slows, conversations linger, but the jukebox keeps things moving.

The scene is set with bird calls and saw synth awakenings on 'Backyard Paradiso', 'A Day in the Life of Pond Algae' is a quiet ode to hope and revival, while 'Slow Motion Goal Celebration' smudges chords like rays of sun cooled by a breeze. 'Kneverending Knockoffs' teases acid murmurs amongst floating melodic clouds, and new cut ' A Pub With No Beer' has sugary lines piercing sustained ambient drones. 'Hard Earned Thirst' is mellow magic for horizontal afternoons, 'Hair Of The Dawg' shimmers like heat waves on the horizon and 'Vanilla Sky' is a cathartic drift bathed in soft light, unfolding in slow, weightless waves.

This sun-dazed ambient sidestep from Dawn Again stretches pubwave nostalgia into hazy, unhurried pieces made for slow afternoons where your woes dissolve and your soul warms.

Side A begins with CEM3340 & 2030’s “I Don’t Know”, a Detroit-inspired electro cut merging crunchy basslines, warm strings and raw energy, showcasing the nostalgic yet forward-thinking music crafted by two key figures of the Italian electro underground. Lake Haze keeps the electro narrative moving with “Modular Processed Data”, a melancholic broken-beat piece that balances softness and strength with timeless poise. Closing the side, 3KZ unveils “Step Into Light”, pushing the emotional range further through radiant melodic layers and harmonic clarity: high-impact, luminous, and built for those rare moments on a big system when everything clicks.

The journey ends with three shape-shifting cuts on the B Side that refuse to play it safe. Passarani 2099 (an alias of Marco Passarani) warps the frame with “Golden Valley”, channeling dubstep tempo, neuro-basslines, and haunting sequences into mutant rhythmic territory. Peryl’s “Res Affair” follows as a modular techno bomb—wobbling bass, broken patterns, alien textures, riding the edge between chaos and control with surgical intent. Finally, Nothus closes the compilation with “Tango”, an uncompromising finale of gritty rhythm work and experimental propulsion: the perfect full-stop to a decade mapped in sound.

4 carries on the celebrated series, showcasing selections from the legendary Sub-Urban catalogue, bringing together a selection of classic garage house cuts from some of the scene’s most respected names.

Featuring standout tracks from Tommy Musto under both his Tribute & Unifunkation guises, Kenny Dope as well as Matthias Heilbronn & Mike Delgado as Lift, the release captures the soulful, groove-led sound that helped define New York and US garage house throughout the 90s.

Including favourites such as Kenny Dope presents James Rouse’s Dance and Unifunkation featuring Alexander East’s Feel Me, this fourth volume brings together a selection of proven club records in one DJ-friendly vinyl package.

Gold Panda returns with TON UP, a brilliantly stubborn new album for Studio Barnhus: eight rough-hewn dance tracks and two cozy little service-station interludes, all crafted with the robust determination of a producer who knows that 140 bpm is not so much a tempo as a way of life.
Made with Derwin Dicker’s unmistakable sampler-bashing touch, the tracks on Ton Up carry the raw knock of old-school hip-hop instrumentals, pushed through pumping house-music machinery and ready to cause absolute trouble on any half-decent sound system.
Here you’ll find zero of that dreaded, over-explained “maturity” usually demanded of beloved electronic artists several albums deep into the game. Instead, Gold Panda just sounds as happily locked in as ever, carelessly chasing the physical joys of pressure, swing and repetition.
TON UP is functional, funny and oddly tender club music, arriving just when the world needed it the most (June 26 that is.)

SYD001 | Casio the Calculator’s Elementary Calculations

After years of scrounging the dark corners of Discogs, contributing a small piece to this vast ocean of music is a huge milestone.

Casio the Calculator steps up for this double debut with 3 cuts in an attempt to reconcile the dusty sound of the past with today’s polished acoustics. Describing music with words can only say so much, so we’ll leave the rest for you to hear.

Bass and Guitar on A1 and B by Loarcangelo

Thrill by name, thrill by nature, Will Howard christens a new alias on his Kalahari debut.

Spitting venom straight out of the gate, this is boisterous sci-fi dramatixxx delivered with chest-out conviction. Dancefloor accelerators built for big rooms and planet-ending cataclysm. Fully letting the handbrake off.

An unfurling odyssey with noirish narrative and cybernetic detail woven throughout. Triumphant and exhilarating, yet an ominous thread runs beneath. The end times are nigh but we dance to ignore the coming storm.

Not your cookie cutter stuff. This is proper character – raw, fronted up and packing vigour for days. A boiling tempest throughout.

Turbulent velocity, but brimming with nuance and explorative detail. Afterburners deployed as we escape orbit at the last possible moment. Pure rocket fuel.

Are You Alien's first vinyl missive, a compilation style affair showcasing the work of four label affiliated artists, is genuinely packed to the rafters with cuts designed to be played loud on "deep dancefloors and late-night transmissions". HearThuG kicks things off with 'Relax', a post-punk/dark disco inspired slab of early morning hedonism inspired by DFX's 'Relax Your Body' (which itself borrowed heavily from the KLF's 'What Time Is Love'), before Light Blue File charges towards darkened warehouses on the tactile tech-house/stab-happy rave fusion of 'Guante El En Mic'. Over on side B, Briki opts for squelchy acid bass, trippy vocal snippets and spacey sounds on 'Droppin The Pressure', before Ahmet Mecnun adds spoken word vocals and French Touch flourishes to a deep tech-house groove.

Cromby delivers a four-track EP built for the dancefloor, each cut hitting a different shade of club energy. On the A-side, Love on Tenderhooks kicks things off with a high-octane bassline, euphoric builds, driving organ and haunting vocal hook. It's followed by All Night, a deeper, darker roller driven by sub bass, dubby textures and a relentless groove. Flip it over and On Target takes a more trippy turn, riding a warm, bumping bassline with swirling, psychedelic vocals drifting across the mix. Closing things out is The Beat, a percussion-led groover that locks into a hypnotic rhythm and keeps the floor moving.

pdqb shows no signs of slowing down. Relentlessly productive and constantly locked into transmission mode, it delivers 13 tracks of its unmistakable Electro-Cognition sound. Sharp, futuristic, body-moving music wired straight into the nervous system.

From precision electro workouts to mind-bending synth transmissions, every track hits with purpose, style, and identity.

However, the remix lineup is equally heavyweight. Four elite reworks from four serious operators, each one twisting the source code into new dimensions.

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Half pinball table, half neural reactor, wired directly into a wall of aging synthesizers. The so-called Transient Witness (aka Preconscious Data Quantum Buffer) records not what people did - but what they almost did: Every flash of hesitation, every thought that vanished before becoming real, every dream erased at sunrise.

At its center pulses a synthetic brain, decoding impulses too brief for language. These signal transients are micro-events that appear and disappear in milliseconds.

When activated, the table will not play sound. It remembers it. Each collision of steel ball and sensor triggers forgotten futures, lost timelines, phantom rhythms from decisions never taken. Basslines from parallel selves. Melodies from unrealized lives. Percussion patterns from collapsing probabilities.

The 13 original tracks featured on this release are a transmission recovered from one of its sessions. Electro pulses, synaptic breaks, machine funk, and signals from thoughts that never survived long enough to exist.

Fiscal man of mystery, Clive From Accounts is back!
Fresh off the heels of his well received debut album on Razor N Tape, “The Very Best of Clive From Accounts” comes his new concoction, “Income Trax Vol. 1”.
The 3 track EP kicks off with “I’ve Been Waiting“, a 90s piano laden up-tempo house track with a twist of soulful sampled flute and vocals.
“Every Time” is a filtered deep disco house roller built around lush string samples, live bass and soulful vocal cuts. It’s sleek, assured and festival-ready.
“Superfine” clocks in and turns the energy up. A snappy pop-disco number powered by punchy strings, big vocal hooks and catchy synths. Operating somewhere between the dancefloor and the stationery cupboard.

We bring a definite label favorite Eddie Leader from Huddersfield, whose label Hudd Traxx is based out of Manchester UK.

Excellent timing on the Need To Pivot EP as it’s kicking off Eddie’s 20 Years of Hudd Traxx Summer Tour!

The title track “Need To Pivot” starts off with an ode to Chicago House in form of a funky, swinging, banger laced over the top with clever spoken words from a voice any dance floor will surely recognize!

For those wanting more banger and less words, we included the “Need To Pivot” Dub version on A2.

The flip side drops the vibe back to what we come to love from Eddie! Deep driving baselines and synth based goodness for both B Side cuts on “Close To You” and “Listen To Me”.

A decade into life, Secret Society marks this notable milestone year with a release that stays true to its ethos of depth and groove. Ewan Jansen started producing in the early 90s in Perth, often with the same hardware he used in his live shows. He's back on the label with two driving cuts built squarely for the dancefloor: 'Hydroid' is bright mid-tempo techno with pixelated synth charm, and 'Bodywash' is a deeper, more syrupy sound for late-night cruising. Alongside them sits a more introspective collaboration with Italian producer Luca that trades peak-time punch for texture and restraint. On remix duties, John Dimas adds his trademark crisp momentum and understated flair, a fitting choice given his long-standing connection to the camp.

Detroit Legend, Rick Wade joins Collect Records for the first time with Just Beneath EP. A key figure in Detroit's second generation of house producers and founder of Harmonie Park, Rick Wade delivers three deep and hypnotic cuts rooted in jazz, soul and classic machine funk. Warm, stripped-down and functional, with one acid-leaning track adding extra tension to the EP. Underground house music for late night hours. Collect Records operates from Collect, the Lisbon-based record shop and radio located in Cais do Sodre, a meeting point for DJs, collectors and the local underground scene.

Hotshot producer D*v*d J*cks*n heroically revives the legendary Puss label, home to some of the most enticing, scandalous and straight out illegal dance music released across the
last 13 years, all supposedly masterminded by K*rn*l K*v*cs of St*d** B*rnh*s fame. Three reasons for this sudden revival: One trancetastic take on a deep cut from the queen of
Swedish pop, an instantly engaging UKG flip of an eternal dance hymn and, lastly, a rugged faux-Baltimorean nugget for all the Kittenz out there.

A cult electronic artefact from 1999 resurfaces here as DHS's 'From Outer Space' lands once more on wax. Ben Stokes' project has always thrived on the fringes of breakbeat and acid experimentation. Stretching across 12 minutes, 'From Outerspace' is a patiently unfurling trip built on hypnotic loops, eerie atmospherics and a restless low end that never quite settles. Fairground oddities, UFO signals and disembodied shrieks drift in and out of focus to tease the floor before locking into a rugged, heads-down stride. On the flip, 'DHS Theme 2014' and 'Voodoo Breaks' extend the sampledelic ritual with squelch and understated menace.

Few names carry as much weight in German techno as Alexander Kowalski. A producer and live performer since early 90, his work has shaped the sound of an era, from his early days at Tresor through to releases on Kanzleramt and MORD, and a live reputation that has held firm across three decades on stages worldwide.
Now Kowalski opens his own imprint. Cycles Music launches with Live II, and the choice of format makes perfect sense. Two sides, two cuts, no detours. Techno built from the same instinct that has made his live sets a benchmark in the underground for as long as most people can remember.
CYC001 is not an introduction. It's a continuation, and a clear statement of what Cycles Music is here to do.

"Songs Album II" is LA musician Aaron MF Olson"s Country Thyme Records debut, the second "sung songs" album from the L.A. Takedown architect in just over a decade of releasing music. Mixing satiric, confessional and experimental lyric modes in his songs, Songs Album II is an overwhelming show of Aaron"s compositional gifts and pop sensibilities, cut from a fine cloth of head-informed, classically sweet and soft pop/rock modes. "Songs Album II" is a collection of widescreen, hi-def songs and sounds. With moments of sound laced into song, functioning both as toe-tapping sweet melodies and near-Joycean full-function index of personal reference, Aaron MF Olson"s music is meant for listening to in the spirit of listening, and higher calling.