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»Downriver« unfolds like a dérive through obscured geographies, echoing the psychogeographic journeys of Iain Sinclair. Just as Sinclair’s writing blurs the tangible and the imagined, Sequences, the project of Antwerp-based artist Niels Geybels, drifts into spaces where memory and environment overlap. Single-take recordings stretch into slowly mutating drones, fractured textures, and ghostlike voices that seem to seep in from unseen thresholds. The atmosphere is one of decayed grandeur, evoking disused monuments, neglected warehouses, and corners of the landscape where centuries of history accumulate beneath the surface.

This is music shaped by wandering without a map: a patchwork of distortion, hidden detail, and abrupt rupture. The sense of time loosens, the everyday unravels, and new contours emerge out of drift and delay. Downriver situates itself between sound art and environmental music, drawing listeners into liminal zones where place becomes porous, haunted by what has been and what might yet be.

Written and recorded by Niels Geybels Mastered by Jacob Calland

"Ingredients In A Recipe For Soul proved that Ray Charles didn’t so much ignore genres, but, by the ’60s, had become a genre unto himself. An academic might want to separate this stack of songs into neat little buckets—country, jazz, standards, blues, pop—but those are just the ingredients. Ray Charles sings whatever he likes and whatever he sings comes out as a Ray Charles song, with a flavor all its own.

Two hit singles, “Busted” and “That Lucky Old Sun,” made Ingredients In A Recipe For Soul an instant Top Ten when it was released in 1963. Bootlegged across Europe for decades, this is the fi rst and only legitimate reissue of this essential album on vinyl (and its fi rst appearance on CD since the 1990s), now fully restored and remastered with the full cooperation of the Ray Charles Foundation."

Indie exclusive Peak Edition on Orange & Black Swirl Vinyl, in a gatefold cover + poster.



It's spring of 2023 in the North Carolina Piedmont, and songwriter and singer M.C. Taylor - leader of the band Hiss Golden Messenger - is feeling alive. Joyful. Eternal, he might say. For the Grammy-nominated musician, whose albums have traced an internal path through adulthood, fatherhood, spirituality, and depression for well over a decade, this is something new. "The tunes on Jump for Joy were composed in free moments throughout 2022, a year during which Hiss was on the road more or less constantly," explains Taylor. "And perhaps because the post-pandemic energy out in the world felt so chaotic and uncertain, I found myself thinking a lot about the role that music has played in my life and how exactly I ended up in the rarefied position of leading a band and crew all over the globe through dingy graffiti-scrawled green rooms, venerated music halls, dust-blown roadside motels.

Sometimes playing in front of 5,000; sometimes 200. Sleeping sitting up. Laughing until my stomach hurts. Not being able to fall asleep at 3 a.m. in some anonymous bed because my mind is spinning with anxiety or depression or adrenaline, or because my ears are still ringing. Robbing Peter to pay Paul, then robbing Paul to pay Peter back. Over and over again. It's an outlaw life but one, I'm coming to realize, that makes me happy." The songs that make up Jump for Joy - the sharpest and most autobiographical that Taylor has written under the Hiss name - read as a sort of epistolary, postcards between the present-day songwriter and his alias Michael Crow, a teenaged dreamer very much like Taylor himself, who trips his way through the 14 tunes that make up the record. In this way, Jump for Joy is a meditation on a life lived with art, and the ways that our hopes and dreams and decisions bump up against_ and, with a little bit of luck, occasionally merge with real life. "Creating this character became the way that I could explore these vulnerable, tender moments that were so decisive in my life, even if I didn't know it at the time," explains Taylor.

Produced by Taylor and engineered by longtime Hiss compatriot Scott Hirsch over two weeks in the late fall of 2022 at the fabled Sonic Ranch studio in Tornillo, TX, just a short walk from the Mexican border, Jump for Joy dances with joyful, spontaneous energy that feels like a fresh chapter in the Hiss Golden Messenger oeuvre. Taylor is accompanied throughout the album by his crack live band: guitarist Chris Boerner, bassist Alex Bingham, keyboardist Sam Fribush, and drummer Nick Falk, a collection of musicians that have helped make Hiss Golden Messenger's live performances legendary affairs

Herb Rhythm has long been kicking out brilliantly garage and house sounds and now he is back with something a little deeper on GLBDOM Classic. 'True' is a smooth and soulful garage house sound, but it's not overly produced - there are still some nice frayed edges to the drums while the vocal is an r&b gem. It comes in various mixes from bumping for the club to more cut-up and 2-step from Ease Up George. On the flip is the fresh dub garage delight 'So Many' with plenty of nostalgic throwbacks and liquid chords, then 'You Can Do It' closes with a more direct sound but still plenty of warming pads. A mighty useful EP, for sure.

After the conceptual depth of "Parallel Traces of the Jewel Voice" (2021), dj sniff returns to Discrepant with a more direct and visceral document: Turntable Solos.

Composed from live recordings made during the latter half of 2024, Turntable Solos captures dj sniff’s improvised performances in their rawest form. At the core of his setup is Cut ’n’ Play, a software sampler he originally built in Max / MSP in 2007. Since then, he has continued developing custom tools and instruments that extend what Derek Bailey called the “instrumental impulse” — the tactile, responsive relationship between musician and machine that defines improvisation.

Following a summer 2024 tour of Japan with Gonçalo Cardoso, sniff was encouraged to document and release a selection of his live sets. Not long after, a performance at 20α (Alpha) in Hong Kong would become the emotional and conceptual anchor for the project.

In the liner notes, sniff reflects on the eerie parallels between recent footage of protestors in Los Angeles — assaulted by police using so-called “less-lethal” weapons, and civilians being abducted into detention centers — and the 2019 Hong Kong protests. A place once filled with personal nostalgia began to feel like a grim foreshadowing of what might unfold in Western societies.

In this turbulent context, 20α stands out as a space of resistance and renewal — a beacon for a new generation of experimental musicians, growing in defiance of increasing censorship and surveillance. "Turntable Solos" is both a personal statement and a public act of sonic resilience.

On the cover of 8 Tips for Full Catastrophe Living, the new album by Asher White, The Statue of Liberty is in pieces but not destroyed - in progress, being built, not yet complete. Her torch is on the ground, her head somewhere out of frame. Before she was a symbol, she was metal, and living, sweating people riveted her together. The spirit of de/construction characterizes 8 Tips, White's 16th LP overall and first since signing to Joyful Noise. Like White's previous albums, 8 Tips for Full Catastrophe Living darts boldly among varied musical styles. Doom metal splits open into bossa nova; psychedelic rock and power pop flip into industrial techno. Each song emerges from its composite parts in the studio: White doesn't draft or demo before recording, but builds out her pieces sculpturally, sound by sound. "It's forever collage, forever assemblage," she says of her music. "To me, it has more to do with J Dilla, L.A. beat, and musique concrète than pop songwriting." The record's quick turns and vivid contrasts reflect White's cultural voraciousness. A writer, painter, and sculptor as well as a musician, she gathers materials constantly, always digging for new ideas in every possible form. The films of Claire Denis, the novels of Clarice Lispector, and the memoirs of Eve Babitz all funnel into White's reflection of 21st century disaster capitalism. 8 Tips is also White's first album to have been mixed outside her Providence studio; after recording it herself, she brought tracks to Seth Manchester (Lightning Bolt, Battles, The Body) who gave the album its brawny, unruly charge. "I was interested in making something that serves dually as a self-help book and a chronicle of self-destruction," says White. Overlaying autobiography onto character vignettes, 8 Tips for Full Catastrophe Living wrenches open the idea of apocalypse - an abrupt disaster rained down on uncomplicated innocents - and peers inside at its bursting, devastated particulars. Apocalypse is slow and uneven. Nations falter as do individual people, clinging fast to their old, dilapidated self-preservation strategies. What saved you in the past might destroy you in the future. Flip it around, shake yourself loose, ruin the person you've known yourself to be, and you might get the chance to become something else. "There have been so many end times, many other apocalypses." White says. "People were writing self-help tips, and people were partying." We have survived catastrophe before. Out of the ruins, people made work - art, books, culture. "I was interested in making something that sounds like a self-help book, but it's actually about self-destruction," says White. "In full catastrophe living, you just have to do a bunch of whippets. This album is mostly about doing whippets. I'm not even kidding."

Sticking a dirty thumb in the eye of fate, our third collaboration sees this marrow deep family malarky turn official as Pace Yourself teams up with YS’s own imprint ERF REC for a split release. As if our status as minor celebrities and footnotes of the underground could level off no further: the unification no one asked for is here. Sticking it to the man, handing your arse to ya on plate; cauterising infected suburban minds world over.

Burn is the second YS album and written as a direct follow-up album to Brutal Flowers. If their first album was an exercise in the incremental, a construction of poise and patience, Burn, should be taken way the fuck at it’s word: it quite literally finds catharsis in twisted reverse. Birthed out the malignant kick found in deconstruction and chaos. Evil twin, psychotic younger sibling, call it what the hell you like. It might take you a moment to get the lay of the land in this darkly mutated world. Like a bug eye’d native first confronted with a zippo, the hit is radical and instant: a new way for the world to go up in smoke.

Splice the Seattle slacker scene with the spliffhead soundsystem culture of the 90s Bristol trip-hop scene, then cross-breed that with the DIY optimism and glee in creation found in the cut-and-paste worlds of skate, graffiti and hiphop, now run that through the skitzo basement mind of John.T. Gast and you’re close to the kind of scorched earth and spiked suburbia that birthed Burn.

Dunno quite what YS have been ingesting of late but this massively twisted LP touches on a host of gloriously fucked totemic underground sources while not sounding much like any of them. It has the ballsy swagger and hard flipping of the script as Massive Attack’s seminal Blue Lines. Indeed, the eponymous album tracks sound similar - the opener ‘Burn’ is like a hard nosed jammed out redux of ‘Blue Lines’. Getting into a kind of slow-spinning overdubbed maximal euphoria ending with mumbled downer vocals, struggling to conceal their tongues in their cheeks there’s an air of paranoia and proto-conspiracy theory. It’ll leave you scratching your head, feeling like you’ve stepped into a New World Order governed by a cacophony of drop outs, dope fiends and apocalyptic stoners. A cracked out world somewhere between Richard Linklater’s movie Slacker (1990) and Marc Singer’s Dark Days (2001).

The rest of the album parts like a tongue on a wine glass: Smith and Mighty, Bandulu, ambient Luke Slater records, Wah Wah Wino, Nurse with Wound, Land of the Loops, Placid Angels, Adrian Sherwood, Urban Tribe and DJ Shadow can all be heard in momentary splatters - but Burn like other works by YS, is its own ritual beast. ‘Moth’, a track which has been knocking about the underground deejai circuit for many moons, is a real raw chopped and screwed slice of stoner erotica that reeks of obsession and unrequited desire. Elsewhere, on tracks like ‘Switch’, ‘Trying’ and ‘Drift’ the throughline from Brutal Flowers can be heard. Underneath the driving heavy gravity the trademark emotional intimacies of YS linger: eternal recurrence, ghosts of static and shortwave, worn memories of the playful and painful sort. The brief moments where flashes of orchestral ambience get out from underneath the swagger are so pure, personal and unguarded that for a moment they leave you completely lonesome. In the album’s closer ‘End’, you can hear the fleeting promise and DIY possibilities of an analogue world and embers of ash that flutter in its wake: where it seemed, for a brief moment, that collective of DJs, engineers, rappers, graffiti artists and skate crews were emerging from the streets, giving the middle fingers to the system, before just as quickly disappearing back to the doldrums of obscurity. ‘End’ is a bittersweet ode to early soundsystem culture, MCs and pirate radio - an out of step time where for a moment the underdogs and weirdos seemed to be kicking on the door of something bigger.

A veritable teenage doof suite dosed with desire, claustrophobia and deviance. Burn is a good old howl at the moon: lonely, raw, and out for blood; basement style exegesis at its best. A thump to the gut, a stud through your blood. A dubbed-to-death classic straight out of the annals of nowhere. A perfect post card from oblivion. A bleak, bold and personally ferocious vision of tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow.

This is everything that record collectors skip dates for. Fuck the scene and keep that shit underground. That’s what it is all about. Know what I mean, if you do? You’re in…

If any album could conjure up the revolutionary spirit of Jamaica in the mid 1970’s, Tapper Zukie’s invincible M.P.L.A. set would surely be a fighting contender. The coming together of great rhythms and meaningful lyrics in a time of unrest in the country seemed to have made the album all the more urgent and relevant. As time would tell it would also prove to be a lasting success, not only with the hard core reggae fans but also their punk counterparts. Who embraced its militant themes and crossed the album over to a whole new audience. Tapper Zukie (b. David Sinclair, Kingston, Jamaica.) had already returned from a trip to London England by the mid 70’s .Initially sent with help from his parents, brother Blackbeard and producer Bunny ‘Striker’ Lee to remove the youth from his troublesome ways on the streets of Kingston, Jamaica. He had performed some live shows in London and made some recordings for Larry Lawrence, that produced his debut ‘Jump and Twist’. Alongside other recordings that would emerge as his ‘Man A Warrior’ set. But feeling homesick he had returned to Jamaica in 1974 to work with Bunny Lee. His work would consist of arranging sessions and collecting payments to bodyguard, the now very successful producer. His frustration of Bunny Lee’s reluctance to record him led him cutting ‘Judge I Oh Lord’ for producer Lloydie Slim. Bunny Lee’s then recording of Tapper’s ’Natty Dread Don’t Cry’ and its subsequent release aboard, led to an altercation between Tapper and producer. The police had to be called and an offer to provide the singer with a set of rhythms put this matter to rest. The eight rhythms and a further two from Jo Jo Hookim and Ossie Hibbert alongside some free studio time at King Tubby’s Studio would result in the M.P.L.A album.

The rhythm provided by Jo Jo Hookim was a Channel One studio cut by The Revolutionaires based on Little Richards ‘Freedom Blues’ and provided the backdrop to M.P.L.A. The Ossie Hibbert rhythm again cut at Channel One based on The Royals ‘Pick Up The Rockers’ would provide the backdrop to Tapper’s ‘Pick Up The Rockers’. These and the remaining Bunny Lee rhythms, were all cut in a one hour session, at King Tubby’s Studio. ’Don’t Get Crazy’ cut on a rhythm based on the Joe Frazier rhythm to Tony Brevett’s ‘Don’t Get Weary’. ‘Go De Natty’ cut on Cornell Campbell’s ‘Please Be True’, originally a cut to Alexander Henry’s ‘Please Be True’. ‘Stop The Gun Shooting’ runs over Horace Andy’s ‘Skylarking’.’Ital Pot’ cut on Johnny Clarke’s version of Burning Spear’s ‘Creation Rebel. ‘Marcus’ see’s Tapper professing over Johnny Clarke’s ‘Poor Marcus’ .’Chalice To Chalice’ pulls on Johnny Clarke’s ‘Give Me a Love’,’ Don’t Deal With Babylon’ answers Junior Ross and The Spears ‘Babylon Fall’ and ‘Freedom’ rides on the great rhythm of Junior Ross and The Spears ‘Liberty’. An outstanding album cut by one of Jamaica’s finest DJ’s and producers the mighty Tapper Zukie. We hope you enjoy this now timeless set.

When NYC-based experimental dance punks Guerilla Toss, active since 2011, were in Vermont recording their new full-length album You're Weird Now, frontwoman Kassie Carlson would prepare what she called 'punk lunch': a communal meal made by raiding the studio fridge for whatever was left and assembling a sandwich from the most random ingredients imaginable. Regularly joining punk lunch were two legends from their own corners of the weird music world: Stephen Malkmus (Pavement, The Jicks) and Trey Anastasio, Phish guitarist and owner of The Barn; the recording studio where Guerilla Toss were making You're Weird Now, with Malkmus in the producer's seat. Engineer Bryce Goggin, who has worked with Malkmus since Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain, and Ben Collette, Phish's longtime engineer at The Barn, were also part of the crew. While the idea of the guy from Phish and the guy from Pavement sitting around with Guerilla Toss, congenially assembling sandwiches from random foodstuffs dug up from the depths of a studio fridge, might seem absurd, it also makes total sense. Because really, if there's any band that serves as the natural bridge between slacker punks who saw Pavement way before you did, wild-eyed wooks who've seen Phish more times than you ever will, and even the eccentrics in '90s drip following former GT tourmates Primus-it's Guerilla Toss. A band so imaginative and unapologetically themselves, they're basically the real-life manifestation of a utopian, post-snob world where all musical ideas are worthy of expression and everyone is welcome. You're Weird Now powers this message. Guerilla Toss' fifth album and second for Sub Pop is a hugely creative and joyful statement about the joy of creativity. With You're Weird Now Guerilla Toss reclaim the word "weird" for everyone brave enough to let their freak flag fly and stay true to their artistic vision no matter what-a way riskier act than it's ever given credit for, and one that requires a certain amount of serene self-confidence that it takes time and effort to cultivate and sustain. And they do so with the enthusiastic support of their musical predecessors: a standout moment arrives with "Red Flag to Angry Bull," which builds to a campfire sing-along-worthy outro featuring Malkmus and Carlson duetting over a chatty, classically Phish-y (there's really no better word for it) solo from Anastasio. The band hopes the message of You're Weird Now will resonate not only with music heads but anyone who struggles with feeling weird in a world where it will always be hard to be different. At the end of the day, it's all about the spirit of punk lunch: there's room for everyone because music is for everyone. "Everyone loves and appreciates music," says Carlson. "If you don't like music, you're kind of an asshole." That's not weird-that's just true.

Star Feminine Band, hardest working women in Beninese show business, are releasing their third album on Born Bad, who went all out for their first. Some get malaria at the sight of that sticky world label : rest assured, the world is all they deserve after nine years of hard work. These eight young women, from a village that even Beninese can't quite place, started out in hard mode.

They had to convince themselves that it was worth a shot, but also their family, their village and an entire continent.

André Balaguemon, composer, manager and lyricist, does a lot, while remaining in the background. He put the group together, included his three daughters, houses everyone with his wife Edwige who also manages dances and costumes. He gave them a musical training, and created the framework for them to continue school while rehearsing hard. From local heroes to UNICEF ambassadors, the group has made it. The very existence of this new album is a testament to the perseverance of Grâce, Anne, Urrice, Bénie, Angélique, Sandrine, Julienne and Ashley. The personnel of this family affair has changed a bit : two new women have joined the group, which conquered bigger stages (Glastonbury in the summer, the X-mas BBC special).



This new album brings simple joys : watching them grow from Benin's first girl band to a band in its own right. And never forgetting why they took to the stage in the first place. Star Feminine Band makes straightforward music, taking no detours to express what's missing in the country. When Grâce advocates for kids getting a chance to get to school it's because there's nothing else more important to say that day. Teachers, don’t leave the kids alone, after all.



As they said on their first album, « music is our job », let them be that : musicians having a lot of fun on this album. It wanders through the vast territory of the countless West African styles. They even make a quick foray into reggae to talk about marriage (with a little rap thrown in), and interweave their voices in multiple languages (Waama, Ditamari, Bariba, Fon, Yoruba). And boy do they have hits. To each is own, but “L'enfant c'est un don de Dieu » (Child is god’s gift) is a mighty steamroller, methodically smoothing out the ground for dancing together to its final chorus, singing « debout-les-en-fants / get up, kids ! » along.



Smoother than the first two albums, supported by fine arrangements, ambitious keyboard parts and more complex vocal harmonies without losing any of their spontaneity, this third opus quietly adds to Benin's musical heritage. As they make clear in « Jusqu'au bout du monde », clever little number that we can already hear swelling up on stage: « oui, c’est Star Feminine Band qui a gagné - o / Star Feminine Band won».

Brooklyn-based artists Leslie Graves and Toby Goodshank have joined creative forces on their album Between Worlds (BB*ISLAND), Toby Goodshank (The Moldy Peaches, The Pizza Underground) of the OG New York Antifolk scene, is known for his precise and acrobatic vocals over nuanced acoustic guitar in songs that have been described as "a zesty thumb of the nose at domesticated bullshit." (Myles Manley) Leslie Graves (GOLD, Endless Arrows) is a performing songwriter and recording artist who takes folk subgenres into evocative and intriguing directions, including "sounding like something you could hear Donna Hayward dancing to at the Bang Bang Bar." (Ronan Conroy, "Hidden In the Days" album review) Her voice has been described as "darkwave-meets-folk" with comparisons to Lana Del Rey, Cat Powers, Mazzy Star and Julee Cruise. Acoustic guitar and vocal harmonies make up the core of their music. a slightly psychedelic, at times dream pop-like folkrock. It just draws from a variety of folk and rock. You might hear hints of Sybil Baer, Judee Sill, REM, Linda Perhacs, and Jessica Pratt, but the intersection of Toby and Leslie is truly a place of its own, warm and enchanting, or perhaps a glimmer from the spaces in between worlds. Many instrumental threads are interwoven throughout with the invaluable skills of Jake Nicoll (The Burning Hell) who lovingly engineered and embellished the recordings. Ariel Sharrat of The Burning Hell assisted him and is also featured on saxophone or bass or on some songs here. Speaking to their process, Leslie writes, "Toby is great at composing song structures quickly. It was fun to feel into the emotion of the chords and write from there. The process was like chiseling away at a stone to reveal the sculpture underneath. I like when songs come like that - when it feels that they are teaching us as they are revealed."

The album introduced a lush, complex dream world that the singer, composer, and producer created and inhabited largely on her own. She produced all the songs, and wrote and performed everything on the self-released collection outside of a re-imagined cover of Pink Floyd’s “Green is the Colour” and 2 other tracks (“The Time,” “Give It Back To You”), which started as instrumentals written by Survive’s Kyle Dixon (who composed the Stranger Things soundtrack with his bandmate Michael Stein), to which Ainsworth wrote melodies and added lyrics. Ainsworth, who’s relocated to Los Angeles from Toronto since 2017’s Darling of the Afterglow, explains that the collection revealed itself to her “as a play taking place in Mother Nature’s vanishing home,” aka Phantom Forest, and that she’s singing from 3 perspectives: herself, Mother Nature, and Greek Chorus. For instance, of the album’s opener, “Diamonds Cutting Diamonds,” she explains: “The Greek Chorus sets the scene, narrating and offering direction on how to enter Phantom Forest. It’s my hope that the listener will imagine the narration to be directed to them as well, as they begin the journey of the album.” You’ll get a sense of this from the collection’s edenic cover art and the playful, pastoral video for the album’s first single, “Can You Find Her Place.” Its inspiration came from Ainsworth’s love for Italian Renaissance painter Botticelli’s 15-century masterpiece “Primavera,” an allegorical representation of the burgeoning fertility of the earth in spring. She notes: “The video features the Greek gods of the painting in a choreographed Baroque style dance.” Keeping with the personal feel of the collection, her sister Abby Ainsworth directed the clip. In line with the classical and historical depths of Phantom Forest, Ainsworth, who holds a Masters Degree in film scoring composition from NYU and studied composition as an undergrad at McGill, notes that although the album might be considered pop, she approached it as an orchestrator. “Even if I’m dealing purely with synths,” she says, “The songs are like a score, each one an evolving journey. I love to use strings so I’ve included my string arrangements on ‘Tell Me I Exist’ and ‘Can You Find Her Place.’ I recorded live musicians on drums, bass, and guitar on ‘Edge of the Throne,’ ‘The Time,’ and ‘Floating Dream,’ and wove those live elements into my programmed elements.” Phantom Forest is a beautiful, vast collection that mixes the historical and the hands on, with hooks about the apocalypse and people obsessively using face-recognition software to see what paintings their face match with, in search of some kind of connection. It’s a journey that holds up to close listening (and lyric reading) and to dance floors, but that can also exist on a purely emotional plane. In all cases, it asks that you listen, and take some kind of action.

Within the nine carefully composed tracks of Young Bones, Mel D’s characteristic voice stands out in all its facets, varying from fragile to powerful, haunting to playful, but most of all soulful. With a voice that’s both extraordinarily clear and melancholic, Mel D is something surprisingly rare: a singer whose artistic expression goes beyond the mere use of her voice. On Young Bones, Mel D uses contemporary figures, rephrasing them into timeless formulas. Her unique musical language embodies references to genres like Indie or Alternative. In other moments, her sound leans baroque, then jazzy, soulful, and contemplative. Each song represents an ode to being connected: to the world, other people, and most of all to the beauty of music. Mel D draws her inspiration from struggles felt in the current world climate: “I have felt overwhelmed by the world we live in and its countless challenges,” said Mel D. “As if we’re all a bit directionless in our own lives.” Nevertheless, Mel D uses her musicality as a tool for resistance - using it to transform sadness and anger into creativity, and to give world-weariness a voice that seduces, comforts, and inspires. On Young Bones, Mel D sings us to a place where we might find hope - with songs rooted in concern, solidarity, humanness, and empowerment, inviting the listener to lean into those feelings. Bring the Witches Back, a hymn to witchcraft, is a quiet song that summons the return of witches with feminist urgency, for more love and magic to open ourselves towards each other and the world. Soft, a soulful song with a tender melody, gently lulls the listener into an in-between dimension, full of opportunities. Meanwhile, in the coming-of-age ballad, Slowly Growing, she raises questions about belonging and identity, pointing directly at our emotional core. Where Do You Look When It Hurts? speaks to the sensation of exhaustion and emptiness, offering musical warmth and a sense of community in moments of lethargy. Finally, listening to the album, one always feels in good company. Playfully working in folk and electro-pop elements, Mel D takes us on a ride toward love and a sense of belonging, particularly on the track We win. Young Bones was recorded in Zurich and Paris with two outstanding producers of our times: Renaud Letang, who has previously collaborated with Feist, Chilly Gonzales or Lianne La Havas, and Dino Brandão. The latter recognized Mel D’s artistic uniqueness during their first meeting, inviting her to a recording session in his studio and bringing her into the band of Swiss superstar, Faber. Mel D’s solo project was more a product of coincidence than planning, as she says, even though an undisputed talent and passion for music had always been apparent throughout her youth. During her studies in fine arts in Zurich, she founded the electronica-duo mischgewebe, and composed soundtracks for theater and movie productions, as well as for exhibitions. Long before forming her current artistic identity, she went by the nickname Mel D, in a humorous reference to the Spice Girls. Although her personality and musical language suggest thoughtfulness and a melancholy touch, Mel D acknowledges that an honest laugh is never out of place, making her sympathetic and approachable.

Local Philadelphia singing sensations Al and Tyrone Chestnut self produced the classic 12" single "Sweet Little Rita” mixed in New York in 1983
by the highly regarded Steve Goldman, who was the chief engineer for Mighty M productions and whose mixes for Kashif, Evelyn Champagne King, Melba Moore, George Benson and others, became radio staples. Like most Street Level releases,
"Sweet Little Rita" was recorded inPhiladelphia, mixed in New York, and originally released in Canada. Presented here is the original 12" version plus bonus instrumental version.

Wenn es darum geht, seinem eigenen Meister zu folgen, haben die PSYCHIC ILLS aus New York das seit ihren Anfängen 2003 perfektioniert. In den frühen Jahren gab es einige Veröffentlichungen bei Social Registry, und die Band verbrachte seitdem viel Zeit auf der Straße und kollaborierte mit so unterschiedlichen Künstlern wie Gibby Haynes von den BUTTHOLE SURFERS und Sonic Boom (SPACEMEN 3 / SPECTRUM). 2011 machte sich ,Hazed Dream", die erste Platte für Sacred Bones, über verdrehte Synthesizer her und wurde zu einer Platte sonnenverbrannten Psych Pops voller warmer Töne und Blues Songwriting. 2012 erledigte die Band zwei komplette US-Touren inklusive eines Stops auf dem Austin Psych Fest und einen Trip nach China. PSYCHIC ILLS nahmen ,One Track Mind", ihr viertes komplettes Album, im Herbst 2012 auf. Das Album wartet mit Kollaboration und Produktion von Neil Michael Hagerty von ROYAL TRUX und THE HOWLING HEX auf. ,One Track Mind" ist das direkteste Rockalbum, das die PSYCHIC ILLS jemals aufgenommen haben.

Marja Ahti is a Swedish artist living in Turku, Finland. She works with found sounds, objects and electronics, creating auditory assemblages that reveal a profound sensitivity to sound’s tactile potential. This new record sees her palette expand to include more recognisable acoustic instrumentation, albeit working in collaboration with musicians who are already reconfiguring how those instruments can sound.

Touch This Fragrant Surface of Earth has its roots in a tape piece presented at Lampo in Chicago. Ahti then started working with Isak Hedtjärn (clarinet), Ryan Packard (percussion) and My Hellgren (cello) at the electronic music studios (EMS) in Stockholm. Incorporating recordings from those sessions, Ahti presented a new iteration of the work at the Seventh Edition Festival for Other Music in February 2024 with the trio performing live on stage whilst Ahti helmed the mixing desk, spatialising a specially made tape part through the INA GRM’s Acousmonium speaker orchestra. The piece has since gone through several further iterations before arriving at the version we have here on the LP's B-side where immense bass pressure and high frequency tones buffer restless amplified breath and scrape that folds over itself with extraordinary dynamics and subterranean activity before giving way to gorgeous resonant forms and passages of ritual purpose and sheer, unmistakeable beauty.

The A-side is Touch This Fragrant Surface of Earth’s gentle double. Still Life with Poppies, Mirror and Two Clouds offers a companion reconfiguration of Ahti’s resynthesised percussion sustain and the same recordings of Hedtjärn and Hellgren from EMS, but here they’re nestled in a sonic landscape of calm and restraint that gives them a wholly other character. Ahti also draws on older recordings she’d made of Sholto Dobie’s diy pipe organs and uses these to create repeating patterns and flourishes of sliding pitches that emerge unexpected out of cycling passages of Ahti’s clear struck metal, destabilising electronic interventions and minimal piano figures.

Marja Ahti: “I’ve been fascinated with the kind of elemental quality the sounds I'm using have such as airy sounds or earthy, wooden sounds. These qualities can also be found in wind instruments and percussion and the musicians I worked with on Touch This Fragrant Surface of Earth are really good at enhancing these qualities in their playing. I wanted to have this connection between found sounds, field recordings, or pre-recorded sounds, objects, and material, and see where these sounds might meet each other, and hopefully blend is a natural way without a divide between instrumental music, or acoustic music, or electronic music. But also, when you bring in people they come with their personalities and their ideas which is also energizing and brings surprising things into the collaboration that I couldn't come up with myself. I was really interested in making this a proper collaboration and not just coming up with the piece and giving it to them. We had the sessions at EMS where we could share ideas and Isak, Ryan and My could bring in their own ideas. Making recordings there gave me time to process these ideas and to also approach them in the same way that I would work with any other sound.”

* 180 gram audiophile vinyl
* Includes insert
* Guest performances from Slash, Ozzy Osbourne, Vinnie Moore, Joe Satriani, Steve Vai, Nikki Sixx and Mick Mars (both of Mötley Crüe) and many more
* Featuring the hit-singles "Hey Stoopid" and "Love's a Loaded Gun"

Hey Stoopid Is The 19th Studio Album By Rock Singer Alice Cooper, Released In 1991. After His Smash 1989 Hit Album Trash (movlp1862), Cooper Continues His Success With This Follow-up Album, Which Features Guest Performances From Slash, Ozzy Osbourne, Vinnie Moore, Joe Satriani, Steve Vai, Nikki Sixx And Mick Mars (both Of Mötley Crüe).

Hey Stoopid Was The Last Music Album To Feature Bassist Hugh Mcdonald Before He Joined Bon Jovi As Their Bassist In 1995.

The Song "feed My Frankenstein" Features Famed Guitar Duo Steve Vai And Joe Satriani Playing Together, Accompanied By Nikki Sixx On Bass. In 2014, "dangerous Tonight" Was Featured In The Video Game Watch Dogs.

Back by popular demand! Dive deep into the depths of the underground with Waterworld, the singular and legendary collaboration between two of hip-hop’s most innovative minds — Cage and Tame One — operating together as Leak Bros. Originally released in 2004 on Eastern Conference Records, Waterworld has remained a cult classic: a surreal, grimy, and conceptually bold record that transforms the world of PCP (aka “leak”) into an immersive sonic hallucination.

Woozy textures, gritty East Coast production, and vividly warped lyricism, earned the album its iconic status among underground heads. Across tracks like “G.O.D.,” “Dead Out,” and “Got Wet,” Cage and Tame One embody fictional leak fiends navigating an absurd, paranoiac landscape of drug-fueled delusion. The beats, handled by producers like Mighty Mi and Camu Tao, are hypnotic and lo-fi, dripping with eerie samples and warped loops that match the narcotic haze of the lyrical content.

Both a conceptual experiment and a raw snapshot of early 2000s hip-hop’s shadowy edges, Waterworld remains as strange and captivating today as it was two decades ago. This repress preserves the original tracklist and aesthetic, with newly remastered audio pressed on high-quality vinyl — perfect for longtime fans and new listeners ready to get wet.

After a two-year hiatus from recording, the OC based band reconvened in 2023, returning to where it all started: drummer Lucas Ovalle"s garage. It was in this familiar environment that Ovalle, guitarist lead singer Josiah, guitarist Corbin Jacques,and bassist Seth Thomson learned how to be friends again and shared all the anxieties and revelations they"d endured on hiatus through crafting songs. The 13 songs that make up Big Smile are the band"s emotional champions that track the tumultuous period between the start of their break and the peace they found on their way back to each other. In the studio with fellow California legends Rob Schnapf (The Vines, Beck) and Matt Schuessler (Kurt Vile, Cat Power), GREER grew up again, taking more ownership over their sound and learning to speak producer-ese. Big Smile is the sound of a band exorcising their demons, learning to trust themselves, and asserting themselves with newfound earnestness and maturity. It"s the sound of a band that"s fallen in love with rocking out again. It"s the sound of friends rediscovering each other and the magic that they can create together when they embrace each other"s vulnerable side. With Big Smile, GREER has arrived as a serious, and seriously fun, alt rock band with diversity of sound and unity of vision.

"This digitally re-mastered version of ""Generator"" contains two bonus tracks for ""Heaven Is Falling"" and ""Fertile Crescent"" that originally appeared on the split 7"" with Noam Chomsky put out by Maximum Rock"N Roll in "91. ""Generator"" knocks about stirringly with a steadfast, mid-tempo punk roar, keeping the songs simple but continually on the upsurge. Brett and Greg Hetson"s guitars piggyback to ever-rousing heights, utilizing the essential chords and keeping limits on flashy things like solos or effects, never letting the enthusiasm or sentiment wane. With all players striving to turn each listening experience into a placard-waving melee, Bad Religion emblazons honest, dissatisfied-with-the-status-quo lyrics with an Uberpunk spirit, Greg Graffin"s vocals growing more gravelly and endearing with each record. With the implicit understanding that strength lies in brevity, Bad Religion hew mighty exhortations to action out of a well-trampled happy-punk base, and the sheer motivational impact of ""Generator,"" ""Only Entertainment,"" ""Atomic Garden"" and ""No Direction"" sweeps clear any charges of oversimplification or sameness. Generator is a brutal noise that is louder, faster & angrier than ever! A plethora of power punching punk pedagogy."

Chip Wickham made a splash in the UK scene with 2016's La Sombra and 2018's Shamal Wind, garnering attention from all the right people in the jazz scene. Chip's back for more, partnering with Lovemonk once again to enchant and heal with his cosmic, spiritual jazz.

* RIYL: Alice Coltrane, Yusef Lateef, Sons of Kemet
* Genre: Jazz, Spiritual Jazz, Rare Groove, Soul

The mighty Ron Sexsmith, will release his wonderful new album Hangover Terrace. Ron is one of Canada"s most accomplished singer-songwriters. He has collaborated with Daniel Lanois, Mitchell Froom, Ane Brun, Tchad Blake, and Bob Rock. His songwriting appears on albums from Rod Stewart, Michael Bublé, k.d. lang, Emmylou Harris and Feist. Film-maker Doug Arrowsmith made an acclaimed documentary about Ron in 2010 called "Love Shines". In 2017 Ron published his first book, a fairy tale entitled "Deer Life".

Opener “That’s Magic” features a magician talking us through a convoluted magic trick, to a mysterious synth theme that a celebrity conjurer might use to help the pyramids disappear. It’s probably one of the only pieces of music to draw influences from Paul Daniels. “Carpet Squares” is a hefty slab of squirming machine bass, acid squidges and clanking industrial drums, its samples extolling the virtues of fitting comfortable flooring, with a voiceover recorded on a Canadian golf course. “Vanja & Slavcho” tells the odd story of twins who have an extraordinary ability to a bustle of spiralling arpeggios and comedic sound effects, while “Tiktaalik” has a glam rock beat, guitar twangs, wild synth runs and dance music drum rolls that build to nowhere, plus processed dolphin noises and a vocal about evolution. Then there’s “Piccolo’s Travels”, a spellbinding mix of classical strings and... is that a malfunctioning Clanger?

“Album Titles” lists rejected names for the record to hilarious effect, with outlandish blips, accordion riffs and bubbling percussion setting the scene, “The 38th Parallel” is a wonky slab of electronica, while “Push It” has everything from rock guitar interjections to explosions and birdsong. If “Customer Services” imagines the bewildering experience of dealing with a sentient automated phone call, then the following “Nothing To Write Home About” is a waltz-time organ piece with a nostalgic, bittersweet air. “Ready?” lists practically every genre under the sun and gives you a burst of it, from drill to country & western, hardcore to Miami bass, and the final track, “The Void”, is an AutoTune-laced R&B track with a deep, emotional core.

That’s the genius of Wevie Stonder: their ability to make you laugh one minute, and the next transport you
to an atmospheric reverie.

A new release on Keinemusik is coming up, and ‘if you want it’ might be a bit of a rhetorical question to ask. The groundwork for „Crazy For It“ came together when Rampa and Boys Noize were exploring project ideas, and it was only a matter of time until things fell into place. Jack-of-all-creative-trades Vinson stepped in, and laid down those heartfelt vocals. The production was refined exclusively within the Keinemusik circle, and was premiered live together with Vinson at Coachella, showcasing „Crazy For It“ to be the most soulful, passionate, and driving tune you’ll be dancing your heart out to this year. Chances are you might even go crazy for it.

Are you ready for seconds? Feed LA are back once again with their sophomore full-length album, "More Feed’.

With each release, Feed LA lifts away from familiar forms, offering listeners both inventive improvisations and unexpected harmonic textures. Based in Berlin, the band weaves freely across experimental jazz, punchy funk, and low rock treadings. Sidestepping neat categories and market gridlines, the group leans into the joy of jazz music—rich in wandering detours and pivoting surprises. Feed LA's tracks unfurl before our ears, inviting listeners to the intricate conversations between players, where every murmur, pause, and sudden spark waits to be discovered.

They describe their style as "Free Pop”, a blend of jazz, funk, and pop instrumentation, with a touch of vocal accompaniment.

Get a second helping of Feed LA's unique musical sounds with their newest album, "More Feed,” now available on black vinyl LP and compact disc. Only on Mighty Eye Records!

Recorded from late 1996 through early 1997, Hold Onto I.D., The Shadow Ring's fourth album, marks the apogee of the trio's experimental rock epoch - their last record clinging to their factitious bandness before they let all song and structure go awash in sonic malaise for their final run of releases on Swill Radio. The surrealist dreams of City Lights and Put the Music in Its Coffin give way to pseudo-expressionistic lyrics mired in the banality and bleakness of the everyday, set against the backdrop of the Coombe House (as pictured on the album's cover). While Hold Onto I.D. is the group's most overtly autobiographical release to date, Lambkin's lyrics obfuscate his expressionist tendencies filtering them through the codes and languages of officialdom, linking the "inner self" with documents of the state_identification cards, National Insurance numbers, and British passport numbers. Having moved out of their parents' homes and into the top floor of the famed Coombe House, Graham Lambkin and Darren Harris set out to rework material drafted over the previous year, aided by Tim Goss, still safely in residence at the "Valebrook Inn." While the familiar sounds of Harris's deadpan recitation and Lambkin's electric guitar, amateurishly strummed, dominate the album, the emotive interludes of Goss's keyboards populate the record along with of home-cooked tape experiments and dime-store concrète. Originally released on CD and supported by a US tour with friends Scott Foust and Karla Borecky's Idea Fire Company, Hold Onto I.D. is perhaps the band's best-known and most accessible album. (The Shadow Ring's sole representative on a streaming platform, it was once acknowledged by the Guardian as one of "the 101 strangest records on Spotify.") Offered here for the first time on vinyl, Hold Onto I.D. is an essential album for both completists and the uninitiated alike. Throughout their legendary, decade-long run, the Shadow Ring were an enigmatic force on the international musical sub-underground. Before their disbandment in 2002, this shambolic rock outfit, formed by a group of rowdy teenagers in southeast England, left behind a mighty run of eight LPs, a handful of 7"s, and a spate of raucous live shows and cryptic zine appearances on both sides of the Atlantic, all which have bolstered their enduring word-of-mouth mystique. Beginning in 2023 with the first-ever vinyl pressing of the self-released pre-Shadow Ring tape The Cat & Bells Club (1992), Blank Forms Editions has been conducting a systematic retrospective of the storied group. Wax-Work Echoes and Hold Onto I.D. are the latest releases in a multiyear reissue effort that includes several LPs, a comprehensive CD box set, and a nearly five-hundred-page book.

Originally conceived as a compilation of outtakes and live recordings from The Shadow Ring's 1995 stateside tour, Wax-Work Echoes takes its name from the first line of "Put the Music in Its Coffin," the title track of the group's breakthrough release. Lambkin abandons the bitsand- bobs approach, advancing the Shadow Ring concept with entirely original material that builds on the unit's self-mythologizing lyrics, celebrates the clicking of horse hooves, ponders on the sociability of rats and mice, and warns of the dangers of poultry. The first Shadow Ring album to officially include Tim Goss in the main lineup, Wax- Work Echoes reveals the group in its final and lasting form, awash in the outer bounds of atmospheric exploration, with Lambkin's familiar wry and morbid lyricism and the stripped-down angularity of amateurishly detuned guitars fully intact. While Klaus Canterbury and Tony Clark seem all but forgotten, and the shrugged off S. Fritz is listed on the liner notes as performing only "when required," Lambkin did solicit contributions from outside the inner circle. A bit of "Mambo Twist," lifted from a tape of unreleased Vitamin B12 material sent to Lambkin by Alasdair Willis, found its way into "V.E.R.M.I.N.," while an extended epistle contribution from Richard Youngs (and, technically, Brian Lavelle) would be employed in the second half of "Catching Sight/Of Passing Things." Released on CD in 1996 for Bruce Russell's newly minted Corpus Hermeticum, Wax-Work Echoes was recorded concurrently with intense rehearsal periods, in anticipation of the forthcoming "Rose Watson Tour," and was supported by a celebratory fanzine media blitz. The album seemingly absorbs the frenetic excess of the band's transatlantic travels; Wax-Work Echoes channels the trio's wilder instincts into an unresolved catharsis, not yet free of frustration or restlessness. Out of print for almost three decades and available here for the first time ever on long-playing disc, Wax-Work Echoes is a classic from the outer eddies of The Shadow Ring's sound, a must-have for any aficionado's collection: "A window slides, glass slips from frame / And canvas carcass breathes again." Throughout their legendary, decade-long run, the Shadow Ring were an enigmatic force on the international musical sub-underground. Before their disbandment in 2002, this shambolic rock outfit, formed by a group of rowdy teenagers in southeast England, left behind a mighty run of eight LPs, a handful of 7"s, and a spate of raucous live shows and cryptic zine appearances on both sides of the Atlantic, all which have bolstered their enduring word-of-mouth mystique. Beginning in 2023 with the first-ever vinyl pressing of the self-released pre-Shadow Ring tape The Cat & Bells Club (1992), Blank Forms Editions has been conducting a systematic retrospective of the storied group. Wax-Work Echoes and Hold Onto I.D. are the latest releases in a multiyear reissue effort that includes several LPs, a comprehensive CD box set, and a nearly five-hundred-page book.

ULURU is a large sandstone rock formation in Australia. It's sacred to the Anangu, the local Indigenous of the area. For many years it had been deprived of its spiritual significance, due to mass tourism, capitalism, as well as greedy and selfishness of people who just want to make money out of it. However, as a result of the Anangu’s resilience, care and staunchness, huge changes took place in the national park around Uluru as well as in the broader public's consciousness, giving again to the Uluru the sacred identity that had been lost.
You might be reading and thinking now: so what's the point? Actually, there's no real point. I would rather say, there’s hope. The hope of seeing humans all around the world following the example of the Anangu. The hope of seeing humans finally stopping to treat the earth and all what’s part of it, what’s on and what’s in it, as a slave without soul. The hope of changing today, and if not today at latest by tomorrow. This system is failing. It's no longer sustainable, and there's no much time left. So everybody, don't sleep, be critical.

Itara is the debut solo album by Paul Pèrrim—guitarist, composer, and anthropologist—featuring a set of guitar-driven compositions that blend hallucinatory acid folk, abstract blues, mutant Eastern jazz, surreal ambient, and free improvi-sation into a vivid and distinctive sonic tapestry.
With a background in ethnomusicology and a degree in Music Education, Pèrrim’s work bridges popular and experi-mental music. He contrasts the acoustic guitar’s austerity with the expansive possibilities of the electric guitar, drawing from late ’60s folk traditions, contemporary fingerstyle, sound collage, drone, psychedelia, and improvisation.
A key figure in the Canary Islands’ experimental scene, he released two albums in the 2010s under The Transistor Arkestra, a Catalan collective merging free jazz and psychedelia. As Transistor Eye, his solo project, he merges ana-log electronics with guitar, using vintage synths and effects.
In 2022, Pèrrim gained wider recognition through his appearance on Manos Ocultas (Philatelia Records) and the in-ternational tribute Solstice: A Tribute to Steffen Basho-Junghans (Obsolete Recordings). That same year, he founded GUITARRACO, a contemporary guitar festival in Tarragona, where he has shared the stage with Joseba Irazoki, Buck Curran, and Raphael Roginski.
Itara will be released in July 2025 via Keroxen. Recorded and produced by Pèrrim, the album features liner notes by critic Bill Meyer, who writes:
“While it’s common to call music cinematic these days, Pèrrim goes split-screen. One might say he composes econo, jamming scenes and sounds to psychedelic effect. But economy does not equate with poverty. Pèrrim draws upon a rich bank of musical notions, all of which he makes his own through the alchemy of recombination and transmutation.”

Repress!

Bristol music Godfather Rob Smith (Smith & Mighty) was a major force in the 1st wave Bristol Dubstep scene, not only as a huge musical influence on the likes of Pinch and Peverelist but also as a producer in his own right. This typically dubwise 12' is one of his best from that era, repressed for 2016.

Zur Feier des 10-jährigen Jubiläums ist Chris Stapletons von der Kritik hochgelobtes Debütalbum Traveller jetzt erhältlich. Das 7-fach mit Platin ausgezeichnete Album wurde mit zahlreichen Preisen ausgezeichnet, darunter die Grammy Awards 2016 für das beste Country-Album und die beste Country-Solo-Performance für den Titeltrack. Jetzt auch zum ersten Mal als coloured Vinyl!

Emerging from the Sydney punk scene alongside bands such as Gee Tee, R.M.F.C., and Tee Vee Repairmann, and with large side of Egg punk accompanying their NWOBHM bacon (also maybe the beans in this messy breakfast are AOR?… I think we might be overreaching with this metaphor). Steröid are ready to rock the main stage with more thunderous aplomb than an atom bomb, hard-boiled and clad in chainmail ripping blisteringly hot rockin’ riffs all night long. Brought to you by rock and roll savant Lord Gordith also known as (at least some of the brains) behind Gloomy Reflections and Quest Master proving once again that he might very well be the most exciting act to follow in heavy underground music these days.
This is a record about rocking, and never stopping, and then rocking some more. You can rock with friends at a gig or a show. Sometimes you have to rock alone, but thats okay. Just give it your best, and never miss your chance to rock.

LTD. CLEAR BLUE VINYL

New York painter and musician exploratory industrialist Tor Lundvall initially envisioned his 14th album, Beautiful Illusions, as an entirely instrumental affair, "inspired by memories of sitting in a church or cathedral watching the shifting sunlight through stained glass." Although he ultimately chose to wreath the majority of the tracks with hushed, poetic vocals, his original muse still resonates. These are certainly songs of shadowplay and vaulted skies, the quiet grandeur of dusk deepening on the horizon. Lundvall characterizes the lyrical subject matter, too, in ways both specific and surreal, exploring "the doubts, the anxieties and even the bleak fantasies the mind spirals into during moments of isolation, separation and distance." Tricks of the eye, mind, and ear, magnified by silence and the looming long winter. Shivering pulses and muted bass lines tread the twilight while icicle synths and wiry guitar map the melody until the voice enters, narrating oblique moods of essence and absence, tenderness and truth. Glimpses of dark humor flicker in the wordplay but the greater sonic landscape is one of falling leaves and failing light, small gestures rendered as revelation, cloaked in reverb and spatial fog. Lundvall's mastery of nuance and negative space continues to heighten, whispered brushstrokes of the invisible and the unsaid, what lies beneath and what lies beyond: "Behind the shields and false fronts is usually a sadness. The heartbreaking reflections of what might have been."

Zur Feier des 10-jährigen Jubiläums ist Chris Stapletons von der Kritik hochgelobtes Debütalbum Traveller
jetzt erhältlich. Das 7-fach mit Platin ausgezeichnete Album wurde mit zahlreichen Preisen ausgezeichnet,
darunter die Grammy Awards 2016 für das beste Country-Album und die beste Country-Solo-Performance
für den Titeltrack. Jetzt auch zum ersten Mal als coloured Vinyl!

“The Mighty Tiny & The Many Few have released their debut Album ‘Be The Good People’

A life- and love-affirming record crafted with vintage techniques and timeless principles.

Walshy Fire (Major Lazer) bridges cross-continental connections in collaboration with Grammy-winning composer and writer Randy Valentine, a South London-based artist hailing from Clarendon, Jamaica. Joining them is Copenhagen-based improvisational jazz visionary Steven Jess Borth II, aka CHLLNGR (I Am An Instrument) along with the crème de la crème of Danish jazz talent, including Morten McCoy, Jonathan Bremer, Rumpistol, Mikkel Hess, Laurits Qwist Bilén, Frederik Scharff and more.

For over two decades, Randy Valentine has cultivated a distinctive voice in music, and his latest work with the concept band The Mighty Tiny and the Many Few brings this artistry to life in a fresh, vibrant way. Brought together by Steven Jess Borth II and Walshy Fire, the band unites over 15 musicians from three continents, celebrating collaboration and shared joy. Alongside Ånd&, the team has crafted a musical masterpiece that resonates with a global perspective and a collective spirit of creative expression.

"Be The Good People" is both a statement and a declaration of revolutionary love—a bold call to action. This seven-track album blends soul-drenched, horn-driven, and timeless instrumentation with forward-thinking, insightful lyrics inspired by life’s triumphs and challenges. The result is a powerful musical journey, promising to be a rewarding ride for every anchoring ear.

‘Be The Good People’ is released independently on new label imprint Ånd&.”

The quietest voices can be the most durable.

American Football’s original triumph, on their 1999 self-titled debut, was to reunite two shy siblings: emo and post-rock. It was a pioneering album where lyrical clarity was obscured and complicated by the stealth musical textures surrounding it.

Like Slint’s Spiderland, or Codeine’s The White Birch, even Talk Talk’s Laughing Stock, American Football asked far more questions than it cared to answer. But there wasn’t a band around anymore to explain it, anyway. The three young men who made the album – Mike Kinsella, Steve Holmes, and Steve Lamos – split up pretty much on its release.

Fifteen years later, American Football reunited (now as a four-piece, with the addition of Nate Kinsella). They played far larger shows than in their original incarnation and recorded their long-anticipated second album, 2016’s American Football (LP2). The release was widely praised, but the band members still felt like their best work was yet to come.

‘I feel like the second album was us figuring it out,’ says Nate. ‘For me, it wasn’t quite done. I knew there was still more.’

Enter American Football (LP3). ‘We put a lot of time and a lot of energy into it,’ says Mike. ‘We were all thoughtful about what we wanted to put out there. Last time, it was figuring out how to use all of our different arms. This time, we were like – Ok we have these arms, let’s use them.’ The band used the same producer, Jason Cupp, and recorded the album at the same studio (Arc Studios in Omaha, Nebraska) as its predecessor – yet they approached it in a markedly different way. There was a determination to let the songs breathe, to trust in ideas finding their own pace. The final result is a definite, and deliberate, stretching of the band.

As a result, LP3 is less obviously tethered to the band’s past than the second album. An immediate contrast between LP3 and its two predecessors is its cover. The two previous albums featured the exterior and interior of a residence in the band’s original hometown of Urbana, Illinois (now attracting fans for pilgrimages and photo opportunities), by the photographer Chris Strong. But American Football knew that LP3 was an outside record. Instead of the familiar house, this time the cover photo (again by Strong) features open, rolling fields on Urbana’s borders. It is a sign of the album’s magnitude in sound, and of the band’s boldness in breaking away from home comforts.

American Football also joked that LP3’s genre was ‘post-house’, because of this very conscious visual break. But, in a strange way, there are links in LP3 with an actual post-house genre: shoegaze. The more exploratory members of the original British shoegaze scene were inspired by the dreamtime and circularity of house music (ambient house in particular), cherishing its sonic possibilities. That spirit drips into LP3, most obviously on ‘I Can’t Feel You’, a collaboration with Rachel Goswell of Slowdive.

The album also features Hayley Williams from Paramore on the album’s catchiest moment, ‘Uncomfortably Numb’, and Elizabeth Powell, of the Québécoise act Land Of Talk. Mike wrote lyrics in French especially for her.

LP3 is contemplative, rich, expressive, yet with a queasy undercurrent. It is heavy with expectancy, revealing its ideas slowly, eliciting the hidden stories people carry around with them. ‘I feel like my lyric writing has changed a lot over the years,’ says Mike. ‘The goal is to be conversational, maybe to state something giant and heavy, but in a very plain way. But, definitely in this record, I keep things a little more vague.’ As on the first album, the lyrics on LP3 may seem confessional and concentrated, but the more you scrutinize them, the further their meaning slinks away. Or, as Mike tellingly sings on ‘I Can’t Feel You”: I’m fluent in subtlety.

‘Somewhere along the way we moved from being a reunion band to just being a band,’ says Steve Holmes. American Football is now a bona fide ongoing focus, and they are making some of the best music of their lives. American Football (LP3) stands with two other rare reunion successes – Slowdive and My Bloody Valentine’s mbv – as a fine example of how a band refinding one another can augment, rather than taint, their legacy.

‘I think that there are those albums, or the music that you heard when you were younger, and they imprint on you,’ says Nate. ‘And no matter where you go, or what you do they’re always there.’ He is talking of Steve Reich – an early and ongoing influence on American Football – but he might as well be reflecting what is said of his own band, and the ardent following they inspire. American Football stands as an enduring symbol of elusive emotional landscapes, where introspection can be as dramatic as confrontation

MEMOTONE, aka Will Yates, has announced details of a new 12-track album, smallest things, set for release on World of Echo on 1 August 2025 on vinyl and digitally.

The album launches today with first track, ‘Time Is Away Theme’, a live favourite that is finally available on album. Watch the video HERE Talking about the release, Will has said, “Staring at a square inch of neglected concrete, I recognise the beauty of existence. Quietly hysterical. While humanitarian catastrophes bubble across the planet, the tides remain in constant and disinterested motion. Your money is worth less than the dusty moss that powders this pavement.

It's certainly not worth a life. We are the smallest things, along with everything else." Will Yates has made music as Memotone since 2007. He operates in the tradition of what Robert Fripp has called 'a small, independent, mobile, and intelligent unit.' If you book him, he will come. When he arrives, he will have everything he needs to make his complex, engaging music: a clarinet, a guitar, synths, samplers and pedals, quickly unpacked in the corner of a club, gallery or village hall. Starting small, he will build layer upon layer of melody, accompanying himself and cutting across himself, creating a music that avoids cliche and moves beyond easy description. His recordings have followed the same trajectory. Moving quickly, he has released fifteen or so albums across various labels (including Trilogy Tapes, Discrepant, Soda Gong). Taken together, these recordings are the sound of a skilled, inventive composer pushing at the edges of what he wants to listen to himself. It is possible to hear a variety ofinfluences in his music: folk and jazz forms, the textural inventiveness of British DI electronica and Chicago post-rock and the blurred sci-fi brass of Jon Hassell are all discernible. But mostly, Will's work seems to stem from a constant drift between long hours in his home studio, and time spent outside in the woods and hills around his home in Wales.

Listening to the album, lushness creeps in at the edges, tiny green shoots appear on what might at first appear to be bare soil. smallest things sheds the skin of Will's previous recordings, removing the electronics and the looping and layering of previous work, to create something almost entirely acoustic. But don't be fooled into imagining music that's folksy, pastoral or twee. Opening track 'I Could See the Smallest Things' is a statement of intent. Widely spaced guitar is underpinned by earthy cello and sleepwalking clarinet, making a gorgeous threadbare pattern, which recalls a Morton Feldman miniature or a Morandi still life.

Beyond the skill involved and the years of self-taught music making that have gone into putting this record together, it is Will's close, careful attention and his talent for existing, observing and creating in the moment that make his work special. Memotone will perform at World of Echo’s annual birthday celebration on 8 Nov Expected Music, when they take over Walthamstow Trades Hall for an inter-genre, day-long investigation into some of the more outré manifestations of the contemporary worldwide underground.

CATCHY, MESMERIZINGLY BEAUTIFUL, DREAMY CHAMBER POP WITH A FOLKY TWIST

Music can have a multitude of emotional impacts and can create inner worlds out of voices, sounds, and moods.
If you open heart and ear to the mesmerizing, hauntingly beautiful soundscapes of AURI, you might find a beacon of light inside a sonic realm untouched by today’s often scary, grim realities; a dreamscape that can be profoundly uplifting.
On their third studio album, III - Candles & Beginnings’ the stars have aligned yet again. Propelled by the unique and celestial voice of Johanna Kurkela, the magical textures of Nightwish mastermind Tuomas Holopainen and the almost unlimited musical palette of Nigtwish multi-instrumentalist Troy Donockley, Auri have presented a world to be unlocked with the senses, blending folk, progressive and symphonic elements, world music, pop and avantgarde.
Right after completing Nightwish’s 2024 monument Yesterwynde, the songwriting for the third chapter in Auri’s musical adventures started in 2023, with Troy writing in Yorkshire and Tuomas and Johanna working their creative magic in Kitee, Finland. By Autumn 2024, a 10-song demo was complete, setting the stage for what would become another breathtaking Auri journey. The band and their trusted engineer Tero “Teecee” Kinnunen took the mixing process to sunny Spain, letting the Andalucian vibes infuse the music whereas in March 2025 mastering was wrapped up by Tim Oliver at the legendary Real World Studios - a ground-breaking recording complex started by Peter Gabriel in 1989.
The album is a tapestry of emotions - each song a world of its own, touching on childhood memories, vivid life experiences, and even a nod to one of the group’s most beloved places on Earth - The Lion Inn at Blakey Ridge, a historic spot nestled in the North York Moors and one of the most remote pubs you will ever find.
Visually, the cover artwork by Pete Voutilainen, layout and watercolors by Mikko Pankasalo plus calligraphy by Johanna Kurkela provide wonderful illustrations perfectly capturing Auri’s unique musical visions.
With guest musicians like Frank Van Essen (strings), Jonas Pap (cello), Juho Kanervo (basses), and the incredible drumming and percussion courtesy of Nightwish’s Kai Hahto, Auri III - Candles & Beginnings is as lush as it is atmospheric and provides astonishing dynamics.
Having been a studio endeavor in the past, Auri is finally going on tour with their first-ever live European trek kicking off in August 2025, followed by summer festivals in 2026, allowing you to hear, see and feel songs from their previous two albums, as well as brand new pieces from III - Candles & Beginnings.

With Vermilion Hours, Melaine Dalibert offers a condensed rereading of his Musique pour le lever du jour, still exploring minimal variations and subtle piano resonances. This new version, enriched by David Sylvian's discreet electronic textures, retains the atmospheric magic of the original while offering a new density. Sylvian, best known as the singer of Japan, is also an important figure in ambient music, collaborating with Czukay, Hassell and Sakamoto. Their collaboration, born of a sincere artistic affinity, acts here as a transmission between generations. The two tracks on the album - Musique pour le lever du jour and Arabesque - evoke a soundscape where each note is reflected and diffracted infinitely. The electronic work acts like a halo, a vibrant aura. Dalibert speaks of a desire to humanize his theoretical processes, to touch through the organic. Like a Klee painting, each stratum of sound builds depth. This is, indeed, "landscape music," where, if you listen closely, you might hear birds singing in the background. And that is the true essence of these suspended harmonies, these vermilion hours-which transport us, as only the contemplation of nature can, into another space-time, a sonic bath that is also a renewal of the senses. Since his career with Japan began in 1974, David Sylvian has explored a wide range of musical territories, collaborating with the likes of Robert Fripp, Jon Hassell, Readymade FC and Ryuichi Sakamoto - venturing as far as ambient music, which he further develops here in tandem with Melaine Dalibert. While continuing to teach at the Rennes Conservatoire, Melaine Dalibert regularly releases albums on various labels and performs both his own works and those of other composers - most recently, a reworking of Keith Jarrett's Köln Concert. He also co-curates the Autres Mesures festival. The two pieces forming Vermilion Hours feel like transcending the generations. Between Melaine Dalibert (born in 1979) and David Sylvian (1958) lies the same generational gap as between Sylvian and Czukay (1938-2017) or Hassell (1937-2021). The CD versions adds two edit versions of both long tracks.

Among My Swan ist das dritte Studioalbum von Mazzy Star. Es wurde 1996 veröffentlicht und ist der
Nachfolger des Multi-Platin-Albums So Tonight That I Might See. Das Album setzt den verträumten Pop
und die ruhigen Vocals der Band fort und enthält die Hits „Rhymes of an Hour“ und „Cry, Cry“. Das
Album erscheint auf schwarzer Vinyl.