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Way back when, Upgrade & Afterlife was the umpteenth release from the individual and collective forces of David Grubbs (known then for Bastro, The Red Krayola, Codeine, Squirrel Bait) and Jim O"Rourke (known for O"Rourke), whose further history has since numbered at least another umpteen or so essential listens. What is it though, wrapped up in delectable sonic amber here, that defines this Upgrade? To be sure, we hear these young men dashing through the joys of youth-their actual young youth-as well as a version captured in memory and relived with a performative touch. Time remembered as tones, with gravity gained via perceptions. The stuff of memory and sentiment as selective and potentially deceptive in their nature. Who needed "em? As part of its time-traveling function, Upgrade & Afterlife is a return to roots, but not always necessarily Gastr"s. They were more than happy to stand on branches up above other folks in order to see any next thing worth leaping for. In addition to the elder-statesman Conrad, Gastr del Sol drew upon a memorable spectrum of players for the sounds of Upgrade & Afterlife, including Anthony Burr, Steve Braack, Gene Coleman, Mats Gustafsson, Terri Kapsalis, John McEntire, Günter Müller, Jerry Ruthrauff, Ralf Wehowsky and Sue Wolf. When issued, this combination of players, parts and play - packaged in an impressively broad tip-on Stoughton gatefold sleeve emblazoned with Roman Signer"s instantly iconic "Wasserstiefel" image - became the fastest-moving Gastr del Sol record to date. A delightful result, to our way of thinking, of the band"s ability to push at the far boundaries of their music while consolidating upon pleasure points within sounds and songs. Gastr used these polarities to compulsively draw the listener intimately close with sudden injections of g-force and an uncanny interpolation of space.

Far Out Recordings continues its reissue campaign of the late Argentinian guitarist Agustin Pereyra Lucena's work with the first-ever vinyl reissue of his singular 1988 private press album, Puertos De Alternativa, now his most sought-after LP. The album features some of Agustin’s most uniquely beautiful compositions, including “Luces de Valeria” and “Preparativos Maritimos,” alongside Baden Powell's “Pequeño Vals” and “O Cego Aderaldo (Nordeste...),” and “Tema Barroco” by his longtime collaborator, Guilhermo Reuter.

By 1988, Agustín had established himself as one of Argentina’s foremost interpreters of Brazilian music. The seventies saw success with his group Candeias, and he gained recognition in Brazil, forming friendships and collaborations with luminaries such as Vinicius de Moraes, Baden Powell, Dorival Caymmi, Toquinho, and Maria Bethania. Following the era of dictatorship in South America, Agustín spent the late seventies and early eighties, living and touring in Norway as part of his European travels with his group Agustín Pereyra Lucena quartet.

Recorded after returning to his native Buenos Aires, Agustin Peyera Lucena’s Puertos de Alternativa emerged from this confluence of diverse experiences and influences, revealing an artist deeply connected to his environment. The album's title, meaning "Alternative Harbours," reflects Agustín's particular affinity for water. He observed that much of his favourite music originated from places with rivers and seas nearby, noting, "There is a flow near water that influences guitar playing for sure."

With a profound connection to both instrument and environment, Agustín’s music is often difficult to place. The album begins rooted deeply in South American soil, drawing clear inspiration from Brazilian guitar masters like Heitor Villa Lobos, Garoto and Baden Powell. But, as it progresses, a sense of journey unfolds, evoking new landscapes and horizons – from the crystalline beauty of glacial Norway to the gentle currents of the Rio de la Plata.

The ensemble on Puertos de Alternativa features notable Argentinian musicians, including drummer Osvaldo Avena, flautist Rubén Izarrualde, and saxophonist Bernardo Baraj.

Mastered by Stuart Hawkes at Metropolis Studios from the original master tapes which had been lovingly kept by Agustin’s nephew José Lucena Perreyra


Tracklist & Credits:

A1. Luces De Valeria (Agustin Pereyra Lucena)
Guitar, Vocals – Agustin Pereyra Lucena
Piano, Bass, Drums, Vocals – Guillermo Reuter
Tamboril – Julio Said

A2. Pequeña Valsa (Baden Powell)
Arranged By Flute – Lucho González
Drums – Osvaldo Avena
Flute – Alejandro Santos
Guitar – Agustin Pereyra Lucena
Tambora – Eduardo Avena

A3. Planicie (El Llano) (Agustin Pereyra Lucena)
Arranged By Flute – Lucho González
Flute – Rubén Izarrualde
Keyboards, Acoustic Bass, Percussion, Arranged By Keyboards – Guillermo Reuter
Guitar – Agustin Pereyra Lucena

A4. Tema Barroco (Guillermo Reuter)
Guitar – Agustin Pereyra Lucena
Percussion – Guillermo Reuter

A5. O Cego Aderaldo (Nordeste...) (Baden Powell)
Guitar – Agustin Pereyra Lucena

B1. Tres Que Quedaron (Agustin Pereyra Lucena, Andrés Laprida)
Drums – Osvaldo López
Flute – Rubén Izarrualde
Piano, Keyboards, Bass, Directed By – Guillermo Reuter
Soprano Saxophone – Bernardo Baraj
Electric Piano, Arranged By – Andrés Laprida
Guitar, Electric Guitar, Vocals – Agustin Pereyra Lucena

B2. Preparativos Maritimos (Andrés Laprida, Agustin Pereyra Lucena, Guillermo Reuter)
Guitar, Vocals – Agustin Pereyra Lucena
Keyboards, Acoustic Bass, Percussion, Arranged By – Guillermo Reuter

B3. Puertos De Alternativa (Agustin Pereyra Lucena)
Guitar, Effects – Agustin Pereyra Lucena

B4. Casi-Numbe (Luis González Cárpena, Agustin Pereyra Lucena)
Bass – Lucho González
Bass Flute – Rubén Izarrrualde
Berimbau – Horacio Veros
Keyboards, Piano, Vocals, Drums, Arranged By – Guillermo Reuter
Guitar, Vocals, Arranged By – Agustin Pereyra Lucena

Dune Castle presents - From A Darebin Cave by Cantrips, an acid folk odyssey. Recorded live with a 7-piece band over two days, "From a Darebin Cave" features members from Surprise Chef, Don Glori, Karate Boogaloo, and more.

Centered around the nylon guitar and voice of Patrick Ryan (Cantrips), this album draws inspiration from late 60s/early 70s acts like Nick Drake, Terry Callier, and Donovan. The album also incorporates string arrangements reminiscent of Frank Sinatra's "Watertown" and late 60s psychedelic pop. This unique sound was crafted by two keyboardists emulating a string quartet with synthesizers, complemented by drums, percussion, double bass, and pedal steel guitar.

The lyricism delves into themes of isolation, loneliness, regret, and joy, inspired by the natural beauty of the Darebin Parklands surrounding the Dune Castle studio, and takes influence from Romantic poets such as Mary Oliver, William Blake, and Pablo Neruda.

EB-REX, a Berlin-based Techno label founded by Estella Boersma in 2024, stands as a testament to versatility and artistic freedom. Drawing inspiration from the halcyon days of old-school rave and the relentless drive of Techno's present, each release embodies a synthesis of the past and the future. The Sophomore release, EB002, delivers a driving, high-energy techno experience - taking you on a journey through rolling grooves that culminates in a surprising ambient rework. Written and Produced by Estella Boersma. Mastered by Manmade Mastering. Pressed by Intakt!.

With releases on Underground Status London, BaDumTish, Fresh Milk and Statewide Swing, among others, S.R. has been helping to define the US-based UK Garage scene over the last few years. S.R. Volume 3 marks the 5th anniversary of this white-label series and his first 4-track 12" release. Conceived in the early months of 2025, S.R. Volume 3 draws inspiration equally from UK Garage and techy Drum and Bass to create a dancefloor-focused record that firmly captures 21st century tension.

Repress!

In the mid-1970s, a force of nature swept across the continental United States, cutting across all strata of race and class, rooting in our minds, our homes, our culture. It wasn’t The Exorcist, Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, or even bell-bottoms, but instead a book called The Secret Life of Plants. The work of occultist/former OSS agent Peter Tompkins and former CIA agent/dowsing enthusiast Christopher Bird, the books shot up the bestseller charts and spread like kudzu across the landscape, becoming a phenomenon. Seemingly overnight, the indoor plant business was in full bloom and photosynthetic eukaryotes of every genus were hanging off walls, lording over bookshelves, and basking on sunny window ledges. The science behind Secret Life was specious: plants can hear our prayers, they’re lie detectors, they’re telepathic, able to predict natural disasters and receive signals from distant galaxies. But that didn’t stop millions from buying and nurturing their new plants.



Perhaps the craziest claim of the book was that plants also dug music. And whether you purchased a snake plant, asparagus fern, peace lily, or what have you from Mother Earth on Melrose Avenue in Los Angeles (or bought a Simmons mattress from Sears), you also took home Plantasia, an album recorded especially for them. Subtitled “warm earth music for plants…and the people that love them,” it was full of bucolic, charming, stoner-friendly, decidedly unscientific tunes enacted on the new-fangled device called the Moog. Plants date back from the dawn of time, but apparently they loved the Moog, never mind that the synthesizer had been on the market for just a few years. Most of all, the plants loved the ditties made by composer Mort Garson.



Few characters in early electronic music can be both fearless pioneers and cheesy trend-chasers, but Garson embraced both extremes, and has been unheralded as a result. When one writer rhetorically asked: “How was Garson’s music so ubiquitous while the man remained so under the radar?” the answer was simple. Well before Brian Eno did it, Garson was making discreet music, both the man and his music as inconspicuous as a Chlorophytumcomosum. Julliard-educated and active as a session player in the post-war era, Garson wrote lounge hits, scored plush arrangements for Doris Day, and garlanded weeping countrypolitan strings around Glen Campbell’s “By the Time I Get to Phoenix.” He could render the Beatles and Simon & Garfunkel alike into easy listening and also dreamed up his own ditties. “An idear” as Garson himself would drawl it out. “I live with it, I walk it, I sing it.”



But as his daughter Day Darmet recalls: “When my dad found the synthesizer, he realized he didn’t want to do pop music anymore.” Garson encountered Robert Moog and his new device at the Audio Engineering Society’s West Coast convention in 1967 and immediately began tinkering with the device. With the Moog, those idears could be transformed. “He constantly had a song he was humming,” Darmet says. “At the table he was constantly tapping.” Which is to say that Mort pulled his melodies out of thin air, just like any household plant would.



The Plantae kingdom grew to its height by 1976, from DC Comics’ mossy superhero Swamp Thing to Stevie Wonder’s own herbal meditation, Journey Through the Secret Life of Plants. Nefarious manifestations of human-plant interaction also abounded, be it the grotesque pods in Invasion of the Body Snatchers or the pothead paranoia of the US Government spraying Mexican marijuana fields with the herbicide paraquat (which led to the rise in homegrown pot by the 1980s). And then there’s the warm, leafy embrace of Plantasia itself.



“My mom had a lot of plants,” Darmet says. “She didn’t believe in organized religion, she believed the earth was the best thing in the whole world. Whatever created us was incredible.” And she also knew when her husband had a good song, shouting from another room when she heard him humming a good idear. Novel as it might seem, Plantasia is simply full of good tunes.



Garson may have given the album away to new plant and bed owners, but a decade later a new generation could hear his music in another surreptitious way. Millions of kids bought The Legend of Zelda for their Nintendo Entertainment System back in 1986 and one distinct 8-bit tune bears more than a passing resemblance to album highlight “Concerto for Philodendron and Pothos.” Garson was never properly credited for it, but he nevertheless subliminally slipped into a new generations’ head, helping kids and plants alike grow.



Hearing Plantasia in the 21st century, it seems less an ode to our photosynthesizing friends by Garson and more an homage to his wife, the one with the green thumb that made everything flower around him. “My dad would be totally pleased to know that people are really interested in this music that had no popularity at the time,” Darmet says of Plantasia’snew renaissance. “He would be fascinated by the fact that people are finally understanding and appreciating this part of his musical career that he got no admiration for back then.” Garson seems to be everywhere again, even if he’s not really noticed, just like a houseplant.

Black Truffle is pleased to announce a new edition of Kassel Jaeger’s Fernweh, returning François J. Bonnet’s electroacoustic project to the label five years after the acclaimed Meith (BT069). Originally released on Giuseppe Ielasi and Jennifer Veillerobe’s impeccably curated Senufo Editions in 2012, Fernweh stands near the beginning of the gradual expansion of Bonnet’s approach after the austere acoustic textures of Aerae and Algae (both released on Senufo), leading to the lush, layered environments of recent solo works on Shelter Press and the epic electronic expeditions undertaken in duo projects with Stephen O’Malley and Jim O’Rourke.

A major work in the Kassel Jaeger oeuvre, stretching over two LP sides, Fernweh draws together synthesized and musique concrète materials into a drifting assemblage. Its title’s meaning is close to the concept of ‘Wanderlust’, fitting for this music that moves freely and unexpectedly between what Bonnet calls ‘climates’. Beginning with fizzing electronics whose rhythm of gradual approach suggests breaking waves, the clinical atmosphere is soon haunted by intangible traces of lived reality. Textures call up wind, water, insects, the crunch of feet on sand or the clinking of glasses, yet they can never be identified with any certainty. At times these concrete elements possess a vivid ‘closeness’; at others, the sounds shade into a formless distance. Though the listener forms no clear picture from the concrete sounds, these elements aerate the music, lending it their space.

Drawing from the rigorous formal language and conceptual apparatus of the French musique concrète tradition—with which Bonnet, as director of the GRM and researcher into its deepest archival recesses, is intimately familiar—the music of Kassel Jaeger is equally informed by how underground experimental music has rethought electroacoustic techniques, with Fernweh at times calling up the grit and grime of para-industrial eccentrics like Maurizio Bianchi or the Toniutti brothers, and at other moments suggesting the slow-moving grandeur of early Olivia Block. Subtle features of dynamics and rhythm act as connective tissue between the numerous ‘scenes’, with wave-like envelopes, rapid pulsations, and short, tape-loop patterns all recurring throughout the piece, shared ambiguously between electronic and concrete sounds. Amid these shifting, often inharmonic textures, the electronic elements sometimes cohere into melodic shapes and chordal patterns, cutting through the fog in distorted arcs or underpinning the layered surface with slow-moving harmonies. Like his friend and collaborator Jim O’Rourke, Bonnet displays a radical openness at odds with academic tradition, allowing unabashed emotion to coexist with rigorous experimentation. As Fernweh dies away with mysterious shudders, listeners are left at once moved and unsure of exactly what they just heard.

LA-based producer Real Bad Man and Detroit artist ZelooperZ release their joint album Dear Psilocybin via the pro-ducer’s own Real Bad Man Records. The album marks the duo’s first collaboration, culminating in a full-length project that also features guest appearances from Boldy James, MAVI and a verse from The Alchemist. On Dear Psilocybin, ZelooperZ invokes unconventional production out of Real Bad Man to match his own unpredictable and outlandish delivery, working outside of traditional song structures and existing in a lane of his own. The Detroit multihyphenate, who is an integral part of Danny Brown’s Bruiser Brigadecollective and also an accomplished visual artist, painted the album’s corresponding cover artwork as well.

“I definitely haven’t made anything like this before, it’s a very subtle version of my music as far as tone, ” ZelooperZ explained in a conversation with Real Bad Man for his RBM Radio show. He elaborates on the off-kilter approach to the way he recorded to say, “the album feels like a movie soundtrack for a film about a man losing his mind and getting spurts of memories along the way. ”

Speaking about how the project differs from the rest of his collaborative catalog, RBM says, “It’s trippy and it’s a little different – but the main goal was for it to be authentic to Z and his process. ” That dedication to authenticity rings true across his catalog, drawing back to the foundations of his beginnings as a producer, learning the fundamentals of sampling, experimenting with chords and learning to piece songs together by ear. RBM builds a cohesive production arc around each artist he works with, catered to their strengths as artists, working with a variety of lyrical stylists includ-ing Memphis rapper Lukah, Pink Siifu, Blu, Kool Keith, Elcamino & more.

Real Bad Man is the production moniker of visual artist and designer Adam Jay Weissman. A designer and visual artist first, he made his foray into music through his On High Alert series of imaginative, multi-generational compilations, which have featured the likes of Roc Marciano, ROME STREETZ, Pink Siifu, Maxo and more. In the years since, he’s partnered with some of hip-hop’s most talented and adventurous artists on full-length projects, refining and shaping the trajectory of some of rap’s most exciting independent artists.

Since first forming in 2016, London's High Vis have steadily polished their palette of progressive hardcore with shades of post-punk, Brit pop, neo-psychedelia, and even Madchester groove, mapping a middle ground between hooks and fury, melodies and mosh pits. Singer Graham Sayle describes their third album 'Guided Tour' as an axis of competing forces: "It's trying to be a hopeful record, while also being incensed." Rounded out by drummer Edward 'Ski' Harper, guitarists Martin MacNamara and Rob Hammaren, and bassist Jack Muncaster, the band's deep roots in the UK and Irish DIY hardcore scenes have kept them grounded but growing, inspired equally by restlessness and righteous anger. As Sayle puts it, "Everyone's scratching, everyone's working all the time, and their idea of relaxing is just getting fucked and avoiding reality. This album is an escape from that."From its opening seconds of a cab door slamming, a car revving away, and a baggy rhythm swinging to life, 'Guided Tour' sounds like a band reaching for new heights, bristling with energy. Recorded across a few weeks at Holy Mountain Studios in London with producer Jonah Falco and engineer Stanley Gravett, the results feel dynamic and dialed-in, like anthems burned into sense memory through sweat and repetition. Harper cuts to the chase: "We had a clear idea going in, every moment got used. Maybe when we're 60 we can sit around and get a drum sound right, but for now it's about getting things done."The album's 11 songs span the spectrum of contemporary guitar music, sharpened by experience, camaraderie, and societal frustrations. From swaggering street punk ("Drop Me Out," "Mob DLA") to jangling indie sneer ("Worth The Wait," "Deserve It") to heavy alt ("Feeling Bless," "Fill The Gap") to shoegazey spoken word ("Untethered"), the group's chemistry transmutes any style to their unique intensity. Sayle champions this evolving fusion: "For years coming from hardcore, we had pretty clear boundaries - other scenes were separate worlds. Now things are getting more blended, drawing from different places."Nowhere is this sentiment flexed more boldly than on "Mind's A Lie," a dance- punk anthem inspired by Harper's love of house, garage, and pirate radio. Stabs of sampled female vocals (by celebrated South London singer and DJ Ell Murphy) build into a razor wire rhythm of low-slung bass, tense drums, and sparkling guitar before Sayle's staunch voice starts barking harsh truths ("Face to face with all I've known / I can't call these thoughts my own"). After a sudden breakdown, the track regroups and takes off, cruising into the horizon in a haze of chiming guitars and Murphy's ascendant voice, from the streets to somewhere beyond.

After making their mark with their debut album, The Risen Dread returns with their highly anticipated second studio album. Produced, recorded, mixed, and mastered by Marco Mastrobuono at Bloom Studios in Guidonia, Rome, Italy. This new record showcases the band's evolution, delivering an even heavier, darker, and more intense sonic experience. While not a concept album, death looms large as the central theme, weaving through the lyrics with raw emotion and unsettling storytelling. From existential dread to violent ends, each track explores different facets of mortality, drawing the listener into a visceral journey through the inevitable. The music delivers heavy riffs, dynamic drumming, and a mix of intensity and melody, further refining the band's identity while pushing their sound forward.

Emerging from the fertile chaos of Düsseldorf’s Salon des Amateurs scene, Sequence of Events, the collaborative project of Deniz Saridas and Joshua Gottmanns, presents The Art of Memory, an album that feels both intimate and ungraspable, like recalling a dream that fades upon waking.

Rooted in the post-industrial landscapes of West Germany, The Art of Memory channels the bleak resilience of these environments into its sound. It’s a collage of kraut-infused electronics, shoegaze textures, and industrial pulses, filtered through a lens of introspective psychedelia. “We don’t consciously break down or combine genres,” they explain. “Everything is interwoven, like chemistry. Some reactions happen immediately, others take years under pressure.”

From the opening track TAR, with its stoic vocals and drum-heavy propulsion, to the robotic Meagre Gardens, where autotuned chants coil around unconventional drum programming, the album moves like a fever dream through fragmented memories. Soul Divider unfolds like a cinematic journey through yearning and desire, its repetitive pulses echoing the ache of unfulfilled longing, while Nature Hates Life distills pop music through the eyes of a killjoy: “Kurt Cobain on an AKAI MPC2000,” as the band describes it. Even moments of tenderness, like the drifting Becomings, shimmer with absolute sensuality: a seductive exploration of presence defined by absence. We lift each other up and hold each other down.

The creative process behind The Art of Memory is as fluid as the music itself. Saridas and Gottmanns, both self-taught musicians with backgrounds in fine art, worked intuitively, drawing from a shared pool of samples, text fragments, and images. Operating somewhere in the space between fin de siècle aesthetics and occultism, it’s a dream wedding with a continuous stream of meaningless (moving) images generated by human and non-human entities.

Ultimately, The Art of Memory is not an escape but an immersion. A meditation on the sensory overload of the present and the ghosts it leaves in its wake. In a world where music is often reduced to background noise for consumption, Sequence of Events offers something more elusive: a record that lingers, unsettles, and demands to be remembered.

Sparkling Attitude revisit from stems poured from the original tapes two underground Italo Disco classics in crispy way, enriching them with arrangements and more nu disco-house drumming.

In ‘Dance My Dance’ conga and percussion give a driving beat and the synth solos of the last drop are the happy ending. ‘No Secrets’ by Gioia, which already contained very strong and modern elements in the original version, draws inspiration in the remix from ‘Company B – Fascinated’.

So, No Secrets …. Dance my Dance!

Efficient Space charts Ghost Riders’ North American roadmap, crashing into 1973 New York to ignite the unfiltered teen dreams of Dennis Harte.

In the late ’60s, 11-year-old prodigy Dennis Harte was handed a Sears-bought Silvertone 1448, its in-case amplifier primed for street-level incantations. Recruiting two neighbourhood friends, the trio hammered out raw rhythms, drawing in Brooklyn’s wandering bohemians, keen to glimpse a prepubescent Alex Chilton in the making.

Also jamming with his older brothers, Bart and John, a family friend introduced the siblings to budding music exec Carl Edelson, who had spent the better part of two decades hustling through a string of local labels. A father figure of sorts, Edelson backed them immediately, facilitating sessions at the famed A-1 Sound Studios and Sanders Recording Studio and pressing four 7”s on his newly minted Roundtable Records. To maximise his chances of courting major labels, he strategically assigned each release a different artist name - Dennis Harte, Pure Madness, Harte Brothers and the wryly titled Harte Attack.

Dennis’ emotional maturity and sheer talent bleed into the defining ‘Summer’s Over’, penned by Edelson and once recorded by mid-'60s New Jersey garage vocal group The Wouldsmen. Morphing into an unfathomably teenage, blue-eyed soul/psych lament, it aches for a season slipping away forever. Its Harte Attack edition counterpart - the candied ballad ‘Running Thru My Mind’ - delivers unison harmonies and kinetic guitar interplay with a streetwise punch, channeling the spirit of NYC-area icons The Rascals, The Lovin’ Spoonful, and The Youngbloods.

Roaring like the Spencer Davis Group, Pure Madness’ organ-driven bruiser ‘Freedom Rides’ screams of biker gangs, yet its true subject - ’60s civil rights activists the Freedom Riders - looms as another towering theme for an adolescent perspective. Meanwhile, the loose, bluesy ruckus ‘Treat Me Like a Man’ digs back into Edelson’s catalogue, covering the Beatles-inflected Levittown group The Shandels.

Though Dennis later found success touring with Wilson Pickett and now doubles as a piano tuner to the stars, these four snapshots frame ambition on its outer edge - a heartfelt homage to an unbreakable brotherhood.

"OKU" – An Introspective Journey through Sound and Playfulness
With his fourth LP, Martin Merz invites you on a journey into personal moments and memories. Through the playful and experimental lens of electronic soundscapes, OKU explores various moments of interaction, capturing the innocence, wonder, and depth of the bond shared between a father and his son. From spontaneous moments of laughter to quiet, reflective exchanges, OKU paints a sonic portrait of a pair navigating their world through sound.
The compositions are filled with vibrant textures, dynamic beats, and intricate layers, drawing the listener into a world where the boundaries between sound and emotion dissolve into a thrilling exploration. OKU is a record that reminds us of the simple yet profound beauty of our relationships and the music that exists between the spaces of our everyday lives.
Immerse yourself in the captivating soundscapes of OKU!

After several killer EPs and tracks on labels such as Tresor, Multi Culti, Hard Fist, or Playground Records, Antonio De Oto aka A-Tweed finally delivers "Spring Music" his first solo LP via Abstrakce Records, changing perspective on his music and way of producing. A minimal approach, where echoes and reverbs become some of the main characters of the full journey, mixing up weird acid, experimental downbeat, electro, dub, and tribal vibes across a wide range of tempos.

Slow-motion beats pulse beneath swirling acid lines, while dubby echoes and reverberations sculpt a landscape that is both immersive and mysterious. A-Tweed’s meticulous production draws from the label’s tradition of organic textures and ambient vibes, yet carves a distinct path balancing deep bass, shimmering synths, and a subtle sense of psychedelia that lingers long after the needle lifts.

A cohesive journey, crafted for those who seek introspective voyages without giving up new forms of dancefloor communion. A manifesto about the power of slow rhythms, dub sensibilities, and acid-tinged experimentation, out of any hype and trend, aiming for a distinctive sound. An essential addition to the ever-evolving Abstrakce catalogue. The spring has just arrived.

This 15-track project cements BigXThaPlug's status as one of hip-hop's most authentic and compelling voices. Executively produced by Bandplay—the mastermind behind "The Largest"—alongside longtime collaborators Tony Coles, Charley Cooks and others, Take Care offers a raw and unfiltered reflection of BigXThaPlug's rise to stardom. The album showcases his electrifying energy while exploring new sonic territories, all while remaining true to his signature sound.

BigXThaPlug's artistic evolution is evident in his lyricism, a masterful blend of melodic instrumentation and commanding beats. Drawing inspiration from the sounds of '70s and '80s hip hop, Take Care features a powerful tracklist that includes viral sensations "Mmhmm,” and “Change Me,” along with fresh tracks like "Lost The Love," "2AM," and "The Story of X." Throughout the project, he crafts an innermost narrative that speaks to his journey, proving that success hasn't clouded his vision or altered his core values.

The album announcement arrives with a compelling trailer and the launch of pre-orders, igniting anticipation among BigXThaPlug's devoted fanbase. Masterfully directed by creative director TreySoulss, the intimate trailer features his grandmother's voice guiding viewers through precious family footage and pivotal moments, revealing the forces that shaped his meteoric rise. This project not only promises to further establish him as a leading voice in hip-hop's new generation but serves as testament that his success is no fleeting moment—it's the foundation of an enduring legacy.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

There are imagined landscapes we all carry within us—dreamed,
half-remembered, or just beyond reach. Lofoten, the new album by
Cate Francesca Brooks on Clay Pipe Music, is a musical reflection on one such place.
Located above the Arctic Circle, Norway's Lofoten Islands are known for their dramatic peaks, open seascapes, and distinctive red fishing cabins dotting the shoreline. Though Brooks has never visited this remote northern region, it became an unexpected source of inspiration.
The project began when Cate listened to a narrated "sleep story" set in the islands. Intrigued, she researched the region and found herself drawn to its stark beauty."I fell in love with creating an impression of somewhere I would probably never visit, but felt a real affinity with," she explains.
This ambitious album translates that connection into sound. Through carefully crafted electronics, melodic themes, richly layered textures and big production, Brooks captures the essence of Lofoten—its icy light, vast horizons, and profound quiet."The other thing that happened around the same time was the first lockdown here in the UK. I had taken the opportunity of having some extra time to learn a new (to me) method of synthesis; that of the Synclavier, which uses one aluminium wheel and an array of buttons to control every parameter of the sound.
"I took to it with intrigue and before I knew it, I had built up hundreds of original sounds, many of which were perfect for the textures I could hear in my head for Lofoten. So that (along with a Prophet synth and a TR-808) became the sound world." Lofoten stands as an evocative testament to how music can transport us to distant places, transforming geographical limitations into imagined creative possibilities.

"Polymath artist, musician and iconoclast Raed Yassin releases Eternal Ghost, two long-form pieces of modular minimalism via Fourth Sounds. Drawing on influences of Terry Riley, Suicide, no wave and synth pop, the double A-side 12” reverberates with urgent, high-octane loops, repeating patterns and distorted vocal frequencies, each track unfurling over 15 frantic Minutes of maximalist electronics.

Born in Lebanon and based in Berlin, with a musical practice that spans free improvisation, Arabic pop and sample-based cultural archaeology, Yassin is an artist who refuses to be contained, working across disciplines to interrogate ideas of personal identity, collective memory and consumer culture.

Eternal Ghost is the latest addition to a shape-shifting body of work, released to accompany Yassin’s debut London exhibition of the same name at Cedric Bardawil in June 2025."

Already supported by Don Letts on BBC Radio 6, NTS, KEXP, Radio 3 and featured on Mixmag and Les Yeux Orange. Celebrate marks the beginning of a new chapter in PIEK’s artistic evolution.

Eight years after his debut LP "Despertar" , he returns with a radiant, emotional, and dancefloor-ready album that explores the uplifting power of electronic music. Celebrate is liberating. It’s also spicy, at times irreverent, emotional, and brutally honest. Above all, it’s a celebration and a beautiful journey through decades of dance music, drawing inspiration from 70s Latin and tropical sounds, 80s Disco, 90s Dance and even 2000s R&B and Hip Hop

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

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

"I'd release that", Rob commented.

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

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

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

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

Hell, he can do that now!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This is an album made during a crucial period in South Africa’s history during which there was a palpable feeling of a slow turning towards the collapse of the apartheid state side by side with an increasingly well-organised culture of resistance through the formation of the United Democratic Front (UDF) and various affiliated bodies. However, as a result, there was increased pushback from the state security establishment, a turning to dirty tricks and the formation of hit squads whose members murdered and tortured many of our friends and created chaos throughout South Africa as well as neighbouring countries.

This album is situated in this political environment however it took advantage of the new do-it-yourself music technologies available at that time. Technologies that made it possible to make and release records without interference from traditional record company executives. Two musician friends of mine pooled their resources after their respective bands had broken up. Ivan Kadey (National Wake) and Lloyd Ross (Radio Rats) built an 8-track recording studio control room and fitted it out in a second hand caravan and called it Shifty. They parked it in a garage attached to the only house left in a demolished and derelict mining village near Soweto on the outskirts of Johannesburg.
All the work on this album was completed there, mainly after hours and mostly alone where I enjoyed an exhilarating freedom to develop a whole new set of musical skills and ideas, incorporating my love of a wide range of music I’d grown up with. Influences of 1970s progressive/kraut/and psychedelic rock combined with mbaqanga bass styles, early reggae/dub and Indian tabla rhythms. Stockhausen, early Zappa and Holgar Czukay were radio text and shredding influences, and Chris Cutler’s band Henry Cow & Art Bears helped me see a way to political expression. Mostly though was the exciting post-punk and no-wave music coming through to us from Europe and America: bands like This Heat, the Mekons, Raincoats, Sonic Youth and Pere Ubu were immensely important to me as was my reading from the period: J.M.Coetzee’s first 3 novels are strong influences on Free State Fence; the stark landscape, superstition, ritual, and sexual repression are in many of his settings. JG Ballard was a constant presence throughout that period, especially whilst living in such a surreal environment, surrounded by mine dumps, but mostly I think the whole French post-modern philosophical movement—Derrida, Foucault and of course, Baudrillard’s Simulacra and Simulation—set out a new sense of possibilities, possible ways to express oneself, ways to think, and ways to try and analyse the political intersection of public and private life. Most important at that time was the influence of sound recordings I had made and experiences garnered from working as a sound recordist on documentary films. These financed my work and later the studio and were consistent employment throughout the 1980s. Film work also enabled me to experience much of South Africa that was hidden from most. The track Independence Day is a good example; drawn from some time spent in the rural homeland of Venda. This then was the first full length Kalahari Surfers album, completed in summer of 1984 it was taken to EMI pressing plant but rejected by the cutting engineer as being ""political, pornographic and anti religious"". Chris Cutler at Recommended Records took up the challenge and released the album through his label. He wrote the original liner note

Named after a (US) West Coast grocery store chain, The Whitefronts started out in 1982 as a quartet of art and theater students attending UCSB. The band quickly mutated into a sextet. In 1984, they moved north to establish themselves as part of the SF DIY culture. Live shows usually consisted of open jams drawing from what the band was obsessing about at the time—free jazz, The Velvet Underground, Caribbean music, improv noise—as well as their own unheralded genres that popped in and out of existence like subatomic particles. Shows with local bands like Slovenly, Camper Van Beethoven, Caroliner Rainbow, Vomit Launch, Barnacle Choir and Barbara Manning provide some context as to their eccentric position within the indie scene of the era.

In 1985, the band released their sole LP, Roast Belief, on their own Bogden label. This was an ambitious attempt to document the various ideas that were happening live. Though practically unknown today, it’s an extraordinary record—a mid-80s classic serving up eclectic derangement on a par with contemporaries like the Butthole Surfers, Meat Puppets, Sun City Girls, Tuxedomoon and Eugene Chadbourne.
The Mamo Waves LP was compiled from recordings made between 1982-1987. As with Roast Belief LP, it’s a mind-melting jumble of the genres explored by Whitefronts throughout their existence. It was originally supposed to be released by Camper Van’s Pitch-A-Tent imprint, as a couple of WF members were touring with CBV in 1987, but the release fell through the cracks when CBV was airlifted to Virgin Records in 1988. Today, it’s clear that Mamo Waves belongs to the same 1980s Californian sub-underground aesthetic that nurtured mythical 80s bands like Departmentstore Santas and Prominent Disturbance. It’s a real WTF m.o. that still sounds like the future.

SofaTalk is an Italian producer known for his eclectic and genre-blending approach to electronic music. Drawing inspiration from the global underground, nu-jazz, and his roots in Italy, his sound is rich, experimental, and difficult to categorize, yet always engaging. Alongside running his label Cognitiva Records and curating events and radio shows, he continues to refine his style through remixes and collaborations.

His latest project, *The Soul's Code*, released via Oathcreations, is an 8-track album that further explores his unconventional sound. Featuring collaborations with Veezo and Zopelar, the album fuses house, funk, broken beat, dub, and jazz in imaginative ways. Tracks like "Dub Lush" and "The Truth" highlight SofaTalk's ability to craft deeply textured productions, while "Paradiddle," "Complex Journey," and "Around" showcase his playful, lo-fi sensibilities and love for rhythmic experimentation. The album closes with "Magpie Rules," a dreamy, breakbeat-driven finale that captures the surreal energy of the entire release. With support from artists like Fred P, Carista, and Bradley Zero, *The Soul's Code* is another bold step in SofaTalk's constantly evolving musical journey.

Suburban Architecture continue their series of sought after 4 track EP releases with their 7th offering, 'Vivid'. This latest release once again draws heavily on influences from the jazzier, atmospheric strains of mid to late 90s Drum & Bass. Putting a contemporary spin on sounds rooted in this golden era of dance music, this new 4 track collection spans sounds from jazzy atmospherics to slightly harder edged sonics.

Opening track 'Vivid' sets the mood with atmosphere by the pound. Deep, melancholy keys drowned in reverb underpin cycling chimes and haunting vocal samples before giving way to a tearing drum track. 'Waiting' meanwhile is all about layers and texture. Lush textured vocals marry with atmospheric pads, shimmering arps and flutes before releasing into punchy, intricately programmed drums.

Over on the flip 'After All' is led by a powerful vocal refrain which carries lush pad work into crashing breakbeats and a bassline that delivers matching energy. 'Rising' closes out the release with a jazzy roller that continually shifts gears, from horn-laden atmospherics and complex drum arrangements to rowsing vocals and strings.

Prism Shores are Montreal janglers with one foot planted in ramshackle C86-indebted indie pop and the other in the shimmer of early English shoegaze. While their sound is reminiscent of perennial genre reference points (Sarah, Creation, Flying Nun), the band leaves their own idiosyncratic stamp. Out From Underneath, their new record due out January 17, 2025, on Meritorio Records, tackles young adult ennui and the adjustment of settling in an unfamiliar city, its lyrics dealing with the growing pains experienced during a time of upheaval. It is contemplative and chock-full of emotional depth; a nighttime album that channels self-reflexive melancholy into some form of catharsis.

Repress!

Wonderwheel recordings is proud to present the first full-length album from

producer Robin Perkins, aka El Buho. Balance represents a meeting of different currents that make up Buho's music: a fascination with the natural world, and its protection, a fascination with the rhythms, traditions and sounds of Latin America and a fascination with modern electronic music and production aesthetics. The album is peppered with Cumbia, Son Jarocho, Andean instrumentation & Afro-Colombian rhythms. Mixed with this, Robin integrates this idea of "nature music" - putting the sound of a misty forest, the songs of birds, of crunching leaves under foot or the rhythmic tapping of rain alongside synthesized sounds, electronic clicks or claps, deep basses. Trying at once to give them their own space but in a new, surprising perspective - it draws electronic music into something more soft, natural, different and appealing.

Balance is also an album that celebrates community and collaboration, showcasing collaborations with ten different artists form Latin America and beyond, both producers, instrumentalists and singers. Including more of a lyrical presence than his previous EPs, Perkins solicited the participation of talented singers like Dina al Wedidi from Cairo, Luzmila Carpio from Bolivia and the incredible decimas of Mexican poet Citlaly Malpica. The album also features the likes of harpist Veronica Valerio, Argentine multi-instrumentalist Rumo Tumba, jarana player Pablo Emiliano from Mexican Son Jarocho group Semilla and members of the Shika Shika family (the global collective he co-run's) Uji, Barrio Lindo, Kaleema, Minük and Jhon Montoya.

El Buho's music has an incredible power to convey feelings, atmospheres, memories or messages. The message that sits behind this music is to value on the one hand the power of community, of collaboration and of our modern, globally, connected world but also the remembrance, protection and celebration of the very earth we depend upon for our existence.

Rhiza Semar returns with Scarlet Cloak, the second instalment from Dutch-Indonesian producer and label founder Hitam. Emerging from the depths of sonic experimentation, Scarlet Cloak continues Rhiza Semar's mission - blending club-oriented tracks with a left-field approach. With three tracks from Hitam and a remix by Nawaz, the EP offers a subtle nod to early 00's mental tribe, reimagining it with a sleek, contemporary, edge. Pulsing tentatively, Scarlet Cloak opens with delicate drum patterns, paving the way for gritty, heady sonic immersion. Meticulously crafted, faint and distant synths emerge on the horizon, orchestrating an ambience that conjures quiet anticipation - a peaceful wonder drifting through the shadows. Blissfully snaking into the next production, Nawaz remixes the track with a razor-sharp switch in tempo, locking the mental trip. Setting the pace for deep introspection, fast and obscure aquatic layers ripple, submerging the listener into dark, murky textures. Flashes of club lights dissolve into a distorted memory, intangible yet electrifying as Future Kill seizes the mind. Pangs of liquid acid spread through an aphotic tunnel of sound, while percussive elements pump the heart, mirroring the adrenaline rush before stepping into a cavernous rave. In Your Head spins forward, stripped-back minimal layers congregate, spiraling the EP toward a hard climax. Rough-cut textures and skittish vocals lay on a soft bed of snares, creating psychedelic dissonance. The atmosphere thickens and breaks with permeating, rolling kick drums, drawing this 10-minute odyssey to a close. Lose yourself in a sonic labyrinth as Hitam masterfully crafts Scarlet Cloak - a volatile minefield seeping with rude, mental, teeth-gritting energy. credits Words by Charlotte Hingley

The Advent a.k.a. Cisco Ferreira has a firm footing in quality techno DJs' bags - as well as in dance music history - and today we announce a special treat for the heads: Paraiso is releasing three never before heard tracks, rescued from a DAT lost sometime in the 90s. Titled 'Passado Distante' - you probably guessed it, it means Distant Past - we're talking about a trio of no-frills yet creative and highly energetic technoid ammunition. Classics that never were but now are given a new chance to grace our dancefloors. Opening this record, 'Driven' gifts our ears with syncopated claps and percussion while relentless rushes of hi hats and snares create a steady rhythmic core, creating a funky as hell piece that has the original spirit of techno inscribed in it. Things remain fast-paced and to the bone in the following track 'Circulate', a rolling bassline supporting snare rolls and a cheeky, minimalistic bleep reminiscent of sci-fi worlds. Dense yet concise, like techno bangers ought to. Closing this triad is the irresistibly rhythmic 'Tres Trax', a geeky but powerful closing act that shows Cisco's early wide-eyed aura, blending complex percussion and a bassline so soaked in swing it will have your hips drawing rave sigils as they naturally learn the groove. Dubby details add mystery to this incredibly imaginative Detroit-tinged wonky banger. Cisco did it again.

Brownswood Remix Editions 006 continues the label’s tradition of outstanding remixes, revisiting its archives with a spirit of exploration and reverence. This latest edition focuses on Como Como by Mala featuring Dreiser & Sexto Sentido—originally featured on Mala’s acclaimed 2012 album Mala in Cuba—and presents both the original track and a striking reinterpretation by Theo Parrish. Together, they offer two essential cuts that embody Brownswood’s dedication to pushing musical boundaries.


Theo Parrish, a key figure in Detroit’s house and techno scene, is renowned for his deeply soulful, genre-blurring productions and DJ sets. His remix of Como Como draws on his signature style, combining raw grooves, layered percussion, and an expansive sense of space that reframes Mala’s original with hypnotic intensity and depth.

REVOLT hits double digits with a special release from Athenian underground veteran Other Reality—aka Alex Psaltakis—a figure deeply rooted in the rave culture of the ’90s. His journey began in the late ’80s via the Amiga demoscene, inspired by the raw energy of acid house and hardcore breakbeat. By the mid-’90s, he was DJing at raves, clubs, and open-air festivals, fueled by a passion for psychedelic trance, ambient, Goa, and experimental acid rock. His dedication to the underground has remained unwavering ever since—fed by records, synthesizers, and a deep love for sound exploration.

Still Thrill EP is a 4-track release shaped by a wide musical range, bringing together elements of Detroit techno, trance, house, Goa, ambient, and progressive. More than just a debut on the REVOLT label, this is Other Reality’s first-ever release on vinyl—a deeply personal milestone shaped by years of dedication to his craft and the support of close friends and peers.

Crafted with a mix of hardware and software, the EP draws from years of studio sketches and archived musical ideas. A hidden detail runs through it: a fragmented sample from a rock track that deeply marked Alex in the past—a line that never fully completes in the track.

Each piece carries emotional weight and narrative depth, blending analog warmth with timeless dancefloor energy. The EP moves effortlessly through moods—nostalgic yet forward-looking, playful yet deeply personal.

Ohm ’95—with a name that subtly hints at the Goa trance soul—delivers acid basslines, trance elements, and dreamy pads. A transcendental, unifying experience. Kinda Free pulses gently like a groovy caress at dawn, with dreamy layers, steady rhythm, and acid touches that feel both tender and elevating. More Than Advice embraces movement, disorder, and acceptance, rolling through intricate percussions, hypnotic loops, and a cosmic atmosphere. Emotional and raw. Still Thrill closes the EP with slow-motion energy, submerged in flowing textures and a fluid, nostalgic groove.

Vinyl only. Limited edition.

Glasgow-based Effective Dreaming—the solo project of Scottish artist and musician Iain Ross—unveils Dream Catalogue Vol. 1, arriving June 21st, 2025 (Summer Solstice) via Swedish experimental label Fluere Tapes.

Issued as a limited run of 50 cassettes, each adorned with hand-worked, corroded copper sheet inserts and labels, Dream Catalogue Vol. 1 feels less like a release and more like an unearthed artefact: weathered, humming, quietly alive. The materials echo the music’s exploration of fragile impermanence and erosion: oxidised metal, magnetic tape, hiss, hum. A tactile world where sound wears its decay like a patina.

Across its length, the album unfolds in a series of flickering vignettes—drifting, dissolving, reappearing. Shaped by synths, environmental recordings, tape loops, and soft drones, the pieces move like glints of light on water—never fixed, always in motion. Achingly beautiful melodies rise and vanish, tracing fragile pathways through a landscape of shifting sensations. Some moments glow with a gentle warmth, like sunlit glass or breath on a fogged mirror. Others slip into shadow: slow, submerged passages feel closer to memory than music. The album feels loose and weightless, yet dense with feeling—a presence more sensed than held.

There is no fixed narrative here—only fragments and artefacts, half-remembered places, echoes of dreams. Each track hovers just at the edge of clarity, evoking not specific stories, but moods, textures, and the quiet drift of time. It’s music that feels both intimate and remote, like overhearing a distant signal only you can understand.

The name Effective Dreaming is drawn from Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Lathe of Heaven, where a dreamer's visions alter the very fabric of reality—past and present reshaped, histories rewritten, unnoticed by all but the dreamer himself. In a similar spirit, Ross’s music inhabits a space where memory, perception, and matter blur—where each sound carries the residue of something once real, now transformed and dissolving as one drifts through the seams of the world.

Dream Catalogue Vol. 1 is a meditation on texture, transience, and the quiet resonance of what slips away.

For listeners of: Wave Temples, Dolphins Into the Future, Guenther Schlienz"

Black Truffle is thrilled to announce Spilla, the second album from Nantes-based Ensemble Nist-Nah, 48 minutes of music for Gamelan, drum kits, wood and metal percussion instruments, and plucked strings that will surely count as one of the most electrifying records you hear this year. Founded by the Australian drummer/percussionist Will Guthrie in 2019, continuing the explorations begun in solo form on Nist-Nah (Black Truffle, 2020), the ensemble (eight or nine core members with occasional guests) has been consistently active in the half-decade since: composing, rehearsing, recording and touring Europe (with a mass of equipment in tow) to great acclaim. Spilla tracks the continuing evolution of the project since the recording of their first album, Elders (Black Truffle, 2022). The two sides of this record document two different iterations of the group, and the members' compositional input has increased: each side contains one piece by a member other than Guthrie. It has become clearer than ever that Ensemble Nist-Nah is not an attempt at a European Gamelan ensemble but rather a hybrid percussion ensemble that uses instruments from a Javanese Gamelan alongside other percussion to perform original music informed by a variety of South East Asian music but also by everything from free jazz to contemporary hip-hop: while Nist-Nah and Elders both featured traditional Javanese pieces, on Spilla the only tune not generated by a member of the group is by Guthrie’s long-time musical hero and occasional collaborator Roscoe Mitchell.

The two short pieces that open the record could almost be the two sides of a wild 7” selected to show off what the Ensemble can do. On opener ‘Gerak Maju’, intricately skittering open-snare patterns bounce over clanging metal, chiming bell-like tones and deep gong hits, adapting the rhythm-register connections heard in traditional Gamelan musics—where the lowest pitched sounds are heard least frequently—to a cut-up breakbeat straight off Feed Me Weird Things. ‘Strollabout’ then moves into an entirely different realm of meditative repeating patterns, performed entirely on Chinese, Javanese and Vietnamese gongs. The remaining seven pieces, ranging from three to twelve minutes, offer up a wealth of different percussive, compositional and arrangement possibilities. On ‘Ghostly Klang’, two drumkits mirror each other’s moves, bouncing hats and snares across the stereo field in a way that recalls On the Corner and the jittering hi hat patterns of trap, while slow moving melodies on the tuned instruments add a sense of majesty contrasted by scurrying details in resonant wood. The epic closing track presents a take on Roscoe Mitchell’s ‘Uncle’, performed by the Art Ensemble of Chicago on their classic Urban Bushmen live album. Where the Art Ensemble used Mitchell’s dirge-like melody as a jumping off point for virtuosic improvisational flights, Ensemble Nist-Nah rethink the piece as a near-static dialogue between the monumental, slow-moving sequence of unison tuned percussion notes and a textural cloud that grows in richness and intensity from whispering cymbal rolls into a mass of gong overtones and bowed metal.

Beautifully recorded and mixed, Spilla arrives in a sleeve decorated with core member Charles Dubois’ drawings of cymbals and gongs. Against the backdrop of a wider musical landscape dominated by over-produced electronic slop and bland harmonic wallpaper, Ensemble Nist-Nah stands out as a reminder, vital and unpretentious, of the joys and possibilities of human beings playing instruments together.

Limited edition white vinyl (800 copies) The self-styled ritualistic electro-mechanical ensemble OSMIUM is a veritable supergroup. Made up of Oscar-winning composer and instrumentalist Hildur Gudnadóttir, veteran engineer and producer James Ginzburg, Senyawa's idiosyncratic vocalist Rully Shabara and Grammy-winning sound designer / producer Sam Slater, while each member brings along a laundry list of accolades, the project is far greater than the sum of its parts. Alloying burnished electroacoustic soundscapes with dense, metallic drones, barbed rhythms and buckled, bio-mechanical vocalizations, OSMIUM's eagerly awaited debut album doesn't try to cast a rigid future. Rather, it tempers a viscous flow of unorthodox speculations that smolders through the distant past, blazing a trail all the way to the frontier of fate. Absorbed by questions about the relationship between humans and technology, tradition and progression, the individual and the group, OSMIUM channel their experience and expertise into a set of forward-thinking sonic interrogations that skewer established cultural preconceptions. And although genre is acknowledged - the album draws from folk, doom metal, 20th century minimalism, industrial music and extreme noise - there's never a sense that it's riveted firmly in place. Widely known for her soundtrack work (including `Joker' and `Chernobyl') Gudnadóttir plays the halldorophone, a unique cello-like electroacoustic instrument designed by Halldór Ulfarsson that allows the performer to harness unstable feedback loops. Taking his cues from this process, Slater (who has worked alongside Jóhann Jóhannsson, Ben Frost and others) generates rhythms using a self-oscillating drum he designed with KOMA Elektronik and Subtext boss and Emptyset member Ginzburg responds in kind, producing booming tambura-like sonorities from a device he developed himself based on the monocord, an ancient single- stringed resonator. OSMIUM synchronize the three unique instruments using a custom system of robotics to generate basic rhythms that underpin their improvisations and experiments, and Shabara's alien tones supply the band with their conceptual fulcrum. The vocalist is one of South Asia's most recognizable underground artists, and the sounds he's able to create using exhaustively rehearsed extended techniques are so distinctive that he's been studied by scientists back home in Indonesia. Never weighed down by needless sound design or modish ornamentation, it's music that feels authentically experimental; OSMIUM have figured out an awkward symmetry between their discrete approaches, concentrating their gaze on the outcome rather than the process. The result is a work of science fiction that's driven by interaction, conversation and sensation.

Depth.Request proudly announces the debut full-length album from French electronic artist Pierre Berge-Cia - a culmination of two years of dedicated experimentation and creative exploration. This inaugural LP represents a significant milestone in Pierre Berge-Cia's musical journey, showcasing his innovative approach to electronic music.

Crafted through experimental processes and delving into themes of tension, control, and movement, "If You Do, Then When?" unfolds as a visceral journey through the complexities of bodily and sensory experience. Each track is designed to reflect the human body in all its shapes and forms, using innovative sounds and structures to evoke physicality and movement, and aiming to resonate with listeners on a deeply corporeal level.

The album was produced using a combination of the Elektron Digitone synth, a Mackie CR1604 mixer, a Shure SM57 microphone, and a limited selection of digital plugins to maintain sonic consistency. Mastering was handled by Pierre's close friend, Stefan Brown - also known as "Lesser Of". His expertise as a top-tier sound engineer at Abbey Road Studios helped shape the LP's pristine and powerful sound identity. Additionally, the tracks were tested and refined using some of the electronic scene's most beloved sound systems, ensuring an impactful club experience.

The album's artwork, created by Pierre Berge-Cia himself, is a reinterpretation of one of his favorite art performances: "Rest Energy" by Marina Abramovic and Ulay. The tension of the drawn bow and the close-up framing of the subject evoke a palpable sense of danger and emotional intensity, mirroring the physical and psychological strains within human connection. Pierre used his own hands as the model, infusing the artwork with a deeply personal and intimate touch that amplifies the psychic gravity and thematic cohesion of the album.

Pierre Berge-Cia's debut LP is a multi-sensory experience that challenges listeners to feel sound in its most physical and affective form.

Grown through collaboration, Samuel Savenberg’s EP As Bright as a Burning Star stands for a music that evolves and becomes newly tangible in the very moment of performance.
The live EP captures a concert by Savenberg and his band, recorded at the 2024 B-Sides Festival on Sonnenberg near Lucerne. In this setting, the concert with his close musical companions takes on a life distinct from the studio recordings it draws upon, casting the music in a new light: more immediate, vibrant, and warmer.
As Bright as a Burning Star features newly interpreted pieces from Unsung—Savenberg’s 2023 album released via Präsens Editionen—alongside two new songs. The title track had existed in a similar form since 2016 but had never been released—until it was rediscovered by chance during preparations for the concert. The second new piece, "Expressions of Regret", features vocals by Remo Helfenstein, a longtime friend and fellow Präsens Editionen artist.
As Bright as a Burning Star is a labor of love—shaped by shared musical histories and lasting friendships. It is available on cassette tape, for streaming and as a digital release via Präsens Editionen.

Samuel Savenberg is a composer and producer based between Lucerne and Berlin. Following the release of Unsung in 2023, he has presented selected remixes and live performances—the latter mostly in a band setup—and collaborated with other artists, taking on a variety of roles.

Founded in 2011 in the process of launching zweikommasieben, Switzerland-based publishing house and music label Präsens Editionen has released music on vinyl, cassette, CD, and digital formats—alongside magazines, books, and other printed matter. Audio releases include works by Anna Homler, Robert Turman, Belia Winnewisser, Samuel Reinhard, Martina Lussi, and Magda Drozd & Nicola Genovese’s Sopraterra.


* Edition of 66 professionally dubbed cassette tapes (colored)
* Special artwork by Denise Haeberli at INTR in custom snapbox
* Free DL

Easy Beat is the second album from Dr. Dog originally release 20 years ago this year. The band self released the album in 2005, burning CDs themselves as a means of manufacturing and hand making CD artwork as they filled orders. Early mail order purchases of Easy Beat where shipped wrapped in discarded pizza boxes that were adorned with drawings and stickers. Dr. Dog spent all of their money at the time ($1000) to make the album which was later rereleased by Park The Van / Devil In The Woods.