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Repress of the 2010 classic “The Jazz Files” by Dexter from the legendary Hi-Hat Club series. Jazz is the subject!

Dexter is taking an new look at the long going love affair between hip-hop and jazz. From Stetsasonic to Gang Starr to Madlib, it is not an easy path to follow, but the 26 year old producer is adding a new and fresh style to it. The sound design of Dexter's "Jazz Files" is dusty but with an unmistakable 2010 twist. As much inspired by Wes Montgomery and Ramsey Lewis as by Sun Ra and Dave Pike, Dexter's tracks are never just "jazzy". They live and breathe jazz by combining the freedom and artisty of jazz with the craft of a free-thinking beatsmith.

And the "Jazz Files" are fun too. By implanting quotes an samples from interviews and tv shows such as the classic NBC program "The Subject Is Jazz", Dexter is telling his own little story of jazz. One that had it's starting point in the massive record collection of his father and grew into shape during a long hot summer blasting nothing but Ahmad Jamal and Sun Ra.

About Dexter: The 26 year old producer, DJ and MC is part of the Wortsport collective from Heilbronn. He has made beats for Morlock Dilemma, Damion Davis, Jaques Shure, Audio 88 & Yassin and Retrogott. He likes Flylo, Madlib and Oh-No as much as libary music, psych rock and Amiga Schlager. Dexter is one of the founding member of the Generation Tapedeck blog and has just started a new project with Suff Daddy.

About the Hi-Hat Club: MPM have teamed up with photographer Robert Winter to take a look behind the beat, into the bedrooms and makeshift studios of today's beat generation. Every Hi-Hat Club volume consits of an LP packaged with Rob's photos and accompanied by more pics on the Hi-Hat Club blog plus additional infos, free beats and drinks. Exhibitions in records stores and galleries are in the making too. Hi-Hat Club parties have been taken place in Cologne and Berlin so far. Watch out for more nights in 2010.

Musically the Hi-Hat Club promotes total artistic freedom. We are not bound to any sound or school. A Hi-Hat Club record can be anything from boom-bap to aqua crunk or whatever is fresh and dope.

100% GALCHER was by all accounts a game-changer when it landed in 2013 as an hour of original music from a relatively unknown producer ushered in by the beloved mix series Blowing Up The Workshop. Galcher Lustwerk's signature sound — a smoky stream-of-consciousness baritone shadow-boxing with beats, informed by funk, rap, rhythm, and blues — felt like an epiphany, impossibly hypnotic and complete. Resident Advisor writes, "100% GALCHER laid out a louche, lysergic and resolutely black take on deep house." Pitchfork remembers the music's immediate impact: "It's the sort of gem you felt inclined to pass around” — and by year-end list time, word-of-mouth intensified. It was Resident Advisor and Juno's mix of the year, and earned a top-ten placement in FACT Magazine's albums list, as well as Philip Sherburne's personal rundown for Spin." Since then, select songs from 100% GALCHER have seen small-run pressings, while the album has lived primarily on SoundCloud and YouTube as a low-key cult legend. The gateway into Lustwerk's now well-established catalog, known for its reliability as a late-night listen and its prophetic vision for the near future of underground dance music. RA would later name it a mix of the decade, citing its influence and imagination: “Original in every sense — unknown, unheard and unbelievably good.” In late 2022, marking ten years since he first recorded the material, Lustwerk returns to Ghostly International to release 100% GALCHER as a remastered limited-edition double LP.

Lustwerk is a product of the Midwest. Growing up in Cleveland, he'd tape over his parents’ cassettes and spend hours at his family computer recording loops and designing artwork for the jewel cases of burned CDs. In high school, he turned to Ableton Live and absorbed every electronic music magazine he could find at the local Borders Books store. In excerpts from the 100% GALCHER liner notes, Lustwerk looks back: "My dad drove me to this shop on the westside Bent Crayon, where I would get anything the blogs told you to get + whatever the clerk recommended. CDs stayed in their packaging, there was always an overflow of vinyl stacked on the floor. I was too shy to listen to anything before buying."

As a college student at RISD, he played in noise bands, plugged into Providence's DIY scene via Myspace, and started DJing weeknights at bars downtown. There he connected with Young Male and DJ Richard, who would go on to found White Material Records and offer their third release to Galcher Lustwerk, an alias realized via CAPTCHA test, a perfect artifact of its internet age. By 2012, Lustwerk had drifted to New York City and settled into a graphic design job, quickly growing disenfranchised by office culture. "Some days I felt like a token, other days I felt invisible." At night, he and his friends were carving out their own space

On in february, Isik Kural works like a photographer of sound, documenting the passing and returning of time as if material snapshots of life's temporality. Across the album's twelve songs, each composed from chance loops and cocooned within the soft container of Isik's memorable voice and melody play, time is held on to hopefully, impossibly, eternally.
Born in Istanbul, Isik studied music engineering at the University of Miami, alighted in New York City, and eventually settled in Glasgow, immersing in a sound design masters and audiovisual practice. While these paths guided him between different projects and cities, a voice was simultaneously growing inside the artist, informed by a vision of the world in its everyday luminosity. This voice was expressed in the lyrical and instrumental waves of 2019's As Flurries, a cassette collection for Italian label Almost Halloween Records.
Isik Kural's in february will be released on October 15, 2021 on vinyl, cassette, compact disc, and digital formats. On behalf of Isik, a portion of the proceeds from this release will benefit Turkiye Egitim Gonulluleri Vakfi, an organization that creates and conducts workshops, educational training programs and after school programs for children across Turkey.

Many Worlds Interpretation is a collection of cosmic Americana for electronics, guitar, and percussion culled from Jon Iverson’s extensive home-studio archive. 1984, Los Osos, California. In a small cinderblock cottage, hand-painted with bright psychedelic flora, Jon Iverson created vibrant new worlds. He spent long days and nights immersed in sound, perfecting home recording on his 8-track reel-to-reel, combining his love for kosmische and Berlin School electronics with an infatuation with ethnographic sounds and expansive guitar music. In a duo with fellow sonic traveler Thomas Walters, Iverson released missives from the studio on a self-titled LP released on country legend Guthrie Thomas’ Eagle Records. That release featured
three electro-acoustic compositions (“Naningo”, “River Fen”, and “Fox Tales”) as well as a gathering of guitar duo tapestries. Many Worlds Interpretation re-imagines those interplanetary works alongside several unreleased compositions that also feature synthesizer, guitar, and percussion, creating a re-visioned album which leans into Iverson’s electronic studio wizardry.

All songs have been carefully transferred from analog tape to high resolution digital, retaining their vintage studio warmth, but mixed and mastered for modern ears and audio systems. The album is pressed at 45rpm, further enhancing the audiophile experience.

Artist Statement

I worked in a Harley Davidson parts warehouse in the summer of 1976 in the San Francisco Bay Area. The goal was to save enough money to buy transportation for college and a Teac 4 track 1/4" reel to reel tape machine. By September there was a rusting monkey-vomit green car in the driveway and shiny new Teac with a Sony condenser microphone in the bedroom. At this point I had been playing guitar for a dozen years and like most children of the sixties, dreamed of joining
a band.

Went to college instead to study business.

But all was not lost. 1978-1979 was spent as Weird Al Yankovic's roommate and we recorded and created enough songs to play shows around San Luis Obispo, California, where we were attending college. Many of those recordings have yet to be heard by the public, including the first performances of My Bologna and many other parodies of pop songs of the day. We sent tapes to Dr. Demento, we auditioned for The Gong Show and were barred from playing at the local college after one memorable performance. Wild times.

I, however, was more intent on working on "serious" music, with albums from Vangelis, Tangerine Dream and Jean Michel Jarre providing inspiration. DJing at the local college radio station and then public radio outlet provided exposure to an endless stream of obscure albums (Sky Records from Germany was a particular favourite). Most of them would never make it to the air, but my buddies and I would pass them around like exotic treasure.

Fast forward a couple more years and I had picked up a Mini-Moog and eventually a Prophet V synthesizer as well as starting a collection of instruments from around the world. The Teac and synths formed the basis for a growing DIY studio that had taken over a modest-size garage (pictured on the cover) that had been converted into a two room cottage in Los Osos, California.

The Teac was eventually joined by a rented Otari 1/2" 8-track and then finally a vintage MCI JH-100 2" 16-track. The compositions on this album were recorded on these three machines between 1982 and 1989. At some point an Apple II computer with Alpha Syntauri sound card and keyboard were added and then later the first personal computer sampling hardware/software kit, the Decillionix DX-1. The DX-1 forms the rhythm track for “Fox Tales” and the Alpha Syntauri was programmed to create the pulsing synth for “Naningo”. “River Fen” was tracked with both the Alpha Syntauri and the Prophet V.

I knew this music wasn't commercial, but didn't care. It was inspiring working with the first computer-based synths and semi-pro gear. Home studios were still rare in the early 80s until the Tascam Portastudio blew the DIY door wide-open. But I was more interested in sound quality so stuck with reels of tape instead of lower fidelity cassettes.

During the time these songs were recorded, I was also collaborating with my good friend and mandolinist, Tom Walters. “River Fen”, “Naningo” and “Fox Tales”, were solo recordings that also ended up on the first Iverson & Walters album, First Collection. The other four pieces on this new LP were never fully finished or released until now.

— Jon Iverson, September 2022

Since he first emerged at the end of 1999 with instant UK garage classic Re-Rewind, Craig David has scored 25 UK top 40 singles (16 of them top 10), nine UK top 40 albums (five of them top 10) and amassed over 5 billion (!) streams worldwide. In fact, over 1.5 billion of those came via his most recent releases, 2016's chart-topping comeback album, Following My Intuition, and 2018's career consolidating The Time Is Now. If you're more used to the old school metrics, that's 20m global sales. And speaking of global, he's played sold out tours everywhere from America to Australia, Japan to Germany. Across his twenty-plus year career, he's collaborated with the likes of Sting, Kano, Diplo and KSI, while also becoming one of the biggest DJs in Ibiza via his TS5 soundsystem. Award-wise we're talking 14 Brit Award nominations, two Grammy nominations, four MOBO awards and three Ivor Novellos honouring his songwriting. It's impressive, sure, but that's the past. It's ephemera. “I always feel like you need to be more real-time and present in the now,” David confirms.
That present involves an excellent new album, his eighth, in the shape of next year's 22. “It's 22 years since the first album, it will be 2022 when the album drops,” he explains of the title. This month sees the arrival of 22's glorious, MNEK-assisted lead single Who You Are, which cocoons a feel-good pop lyric about being present in a pristine UK garage casing courtesy of producer Digital Farm Animals. Like all Craig David classics it feels both box fresh and warmly nostalgic. “It will live in the world this song,” David says. “It feels so authentic, it has intention. Put on Who You Are to try and talk to someone that needs help.”

The idea of putting a smile on people's faces is at the heart of 22, an album whose title itself reflects myriad different themes. “There's also a spiritualism in the number 22 and what it represents,” he says. “In numerology it's a very powerful number and in terms of angel numbers it's bringing balance and equilibrium to my life. We're in a world where there's a lot of me against you, and so it's bridging the gap.” The title also represents distance; it's a date stamp that marks his career longevity. So what does the album's contents say about Craig David in 2022? “At its core it's still very much everything I've honoured since I was a kid, but in some ways I'm being more playful,” he says. “Loosening up the chains of my history. My debut is probably the most clear expression of who I am because it was my first outing – it's everything you are. So on this album there's that energy mixed with the wisdom and experience I can bring to the world. I've not mastered anything yet, I'm a newcomer still.” Still very much born to do it, just older and wiser.

First trained in his church choir, Print played in R&B bands in high school and later developed a reputation as a standout rapper. On Adventures in Counter-Culture, he experiments with the synths, keyboards, and drum machines that connected the musical dots of those early days.

Print began pursuing his career as a musician in 2001, working on several hip hop projects including his collaborative project Soul Position with DJ/Producer RJD2. Releasing The Unlimited EP & 8,000,000 Stories on Rhymesayers Entertainment with RJ, Blueprint began work in 2004 on what would become his first solo album, 1988. The success of that album allowed him to tour extensively
throughout North America and Europe, before returning home to focus on writing and recording his next album. When he sat down to work on this sophomore effort, Print began with the dark, soulful and sample heavy hip hop of the early 90's, but soon found himself

hitting a creative wall. What shook him loose was a new mission: to create an album that encompassed every facet of music he knew, blurring genre lines and bringing it back home as one cohesive listening experience. The more he worked to pair new found interest in rock & electronic music with his love of hip hop, the more he was able to break down that creative barrier.

Thus began his Adventures in Counter-Culture, a monumental undertaking that would involve reinventing himself as a musician and person. His growing cynicism with the world, his disdain for pop culture, the state of politics, and an apathetic, uninspired society, all worked as fuel to inspire this sophomore album. Moved by the impact that sampling lawsuits were having on the music community, Blueprint also decided to return to his roots and began writing and producing his own original content.

First trained in his church choir, Print played in R&B bands in high school and later developed a reputation as a standout rapper. On Adventures in Counter-Culture, he experiments with the synths, keyboards, and drum machines that connected the musical dots of those early days.

Print began pursuing his career as a musician in 2001, working on several hip hop projects including his collaborative project Soul Position with DJ/Producer RJD2. Releasing The Unlimited EP & 8,000,000 Stories on Rhymesayers Entertainment with RJ, Blueprint began work in 2004 on what would become his first solo album, 1988. The success of that album allowed him to tour extensively throughout North America and Europe, before returning home to focus on writing and recording his next album. When he sat down to work on this sophomore effort, Print began with the dark, soulful and sample heavy hip hop of the early 90's, but soon found himself hitting a creative wall. What shook him loose was a new mission: to create an album that encompassed every facet of music he knew, blurring genre lines and bringing it back home as one cohesive listening experience. The more he worked to pair new found interest in rock & electronic music with his love of hip hop, the more he was able to break down that creative barrier.

Thus began his Adventures in Counter-Culture, a monumental undertaking that would involve reinventing himself as a musician and person. His growing cynicism with the world, his disdain for pop culture, the state of politics, and an apathetic, uninspired society, all worked as fuel to inspire this sophomore album. Moved by the impact that sampling lawsuits were having on the music community, Blueprint also decided to return to his roots and began writing and producing his own original content.

“Arguably his generation’s best lyricist” – Mojo // “The year’s stand-out album for me” – Stewart Lee // “A sort of modern-day pastoral” – Simon Armitage, Poet Laureate // The follow-up to last year’s first volume, English Primitive II continues the themes introduced previously in a harder, more electric and psychedelic style. The songs were mostly recorded during the same sessions but, if EPII showcased the ‘songs of innocence’, this new set comprises ‘songs of experience’. Callahan's lyrical themes here are frequently the sleaze and corruption of our ‘betters’, the intentional and unintentional brutality meted out on those weaker and the sometimes perverse ways in which this happens. There are moments of reflection among the broken mirrors, but they allow scant solace or reassurance. Dressed in another of Scottish artist Pinkie McClure’s witty and detailed stained glass creations and recorded at home and under a railway arch, EPII rises above its origins and invades the wider world, in all its colour, gritand glory. Each song serves as a monument to its internal tale – in fact, the whole LP is as much a collection of musical short stories as it is an album of songs. Opening with Invisible Man, the impression of a regular person with hidden grievances, biding his time and waiting to lash out is given. Waves of distant samples ebb and fall as the warped guitars swell and crash behind the main themes. We don’t know when this explosion will happen – we only know it will. A sleazy celebration of Britain’s position as the laundering capital of the world follows in the form of Beautiful Launderette. It’s good that we keep everything nice and clean for the whole planet, isn’t it? Business as usual, keeping the globe turning – that’s our role and we love it. The Parrot rocks like only a prolonged evisceration of governmental mouthpieces and their court stenographers can. It’s a thankless task making sure that the powers that be retain their authority in all things and patrolling the borders of what is allowed to be said and believed, but somebody’s got to do it. If you’re providing a service, you’ll need to present a united front against the grievances of the public, so you’ll need The Scapegoat. Mistakes and accidents can’t be the company’s fault, so you’ll need to pay someone to be publicly and repeatedly sacked to make it appear as if you’re solving problems and getting better. Lessons will be learned, going forward. The disturbing tale of Bear Factory begins side two and is the real-life story of the murder of one of the singer’s primary-school classmates in the 1970s, and true in every detail. The victim’s body was never found but the killer justifiably imprisoned for life. A more ancient scent of death pervades The Burnet Rose. This ground-hugging plant covers the graves of the victims in a seventeenth-century plague village on the Yorkshire coast to this day, commemorating their sacrifices when all around have forgotten. It’s this particular songwriter’s favourite flower. Orgy of the Ancients describes the intimate intricacies of ageing politicians and the press as they decide whether to go to war. In grotesque scenarios worthy of Caligula, they decide the fates of our children. And it’s not even half the truth. To finish, the songwriter looks back to an admired predecessor, when he sets William Blake’s famous poem London in a groovier setting than we’re used to – in the form of London by Blakelight. If London swings, it’s from the Tyburn tree. Tracks: Invisible Man / Beautiful Launderette / The Parrot / The Scapegoat / Bear Factory / The Burnet Rose / Orgy Of The Ancients / London By Blakelight

Bad Colours is back with his sophomore album, "Always With U," out on Bastard Jazz Recordings in November, 2022. The London-born, Maryland-raised, Brooklyn-based DJ, songwriter, producer, and multi-instrumentalist - aka Ibe Soliman - continues to build on the well-deserved acclaim from his 2021 debut LP, "PINK," as well as a slew of standalone singles and collaborations with the likes of Shabazz Palaces, Jarv Dee, and Stas THEE Boss.

"Always With U" sees Ibe further develop his talents as a songwriter and producer, while maintaining the signature balance of banging dance music and dense bars that he's quickly becoming known for. The album expands Ibe's role to a collaborator, band leader, and all-around star-of-the-show; it's certainly still a dance record, but there's also so much more. Live instrumentation accompanies every track, with the notable contributions of Nigerian bassist Akin-Alade Ogo heard across the album, as well as the NY-based saxophonist Carras Paton on the jazzy, upbeat house number, "Heartache + U."

The lead single, "Maybe I Should Move to LA," sees the proudly Brooklyn-based Bad Colours contemplate a move out West – an idea that came about following a trip to LA for the 20 Years of Bastard Jazz anniversary party (which he DJed) in November last year. Bright pads, a thumping four-on-the-floor beat, and a catchy vocal line make it the perfect accompaniment to a top-down joy-ride up PCH. The album's second single, "You Don't Know," features frequent collaborator and PNW darling Jarv Dee, as well as KAS and JVDE who have both been making waves in the Brooklyn scene (KAS for his work with Grammy- nominated producer Harmony Samuels featured on BET, and JVDE as the lead-singer of alternative band Blind Benny). "You Don't Know" turns up the heat with Jarv and KAS trading dense, rapid-fire verses over a high-tempo beat and detuned vocal; the kick cuts out for the bridge, replaced by syncopated keyboard stabs and JVDE's stacked vocals. "You Don't Know" is high-energy hip house at its finest: Super catchy and irresistibly dancey.

The two singles are emblematic of the rest of the album, which largely alternates between vocal and hip house, sometimes jazzy, other times touching on R&B or dancefloor influenced pop. Dave Giles II and Cor.Ece (who recently both contributed to Beyoncé's chart-topping "Renaissance" LP and Honey Dijon's "Work" single) feature on "Flow," while Toribio (of the acclaimed Brooklyn band Conclaves) provides vocals for "Do Better;" both tracks are on the mellower side, reminiscent of late-90s New York mid-tempo garage. Rising artist N.O.V. features on the second track, "Ready," rapping over a bass-heavy beat; MarcusHarmon makes a return after appearing on "PINK," with smooth vocals on the romantic "Come Closer." Aforementioned JVDE can be heard throughout the album, contributing to "You Don't Know," "Flirtation Avenue," and "Easy Come, Easy Go."

While Ibe's career has spanned nearly two decades - as both a DJ (alongside the likes of James Murphy, Mark Ronson, and Q-Tip) and producer (for Kendrick Lamar, Faith Evans, Keyshia Cole, and Rick Ross, among others) - the Bad Colours name only came into being in early 2020, with the debut LP, "PINK," being released in February, 2021 on the Brooklyn tastemaker label Bastard Jazz. By tapping into his deep network of artist friends, Ibe compiled a treasure-trove of vocal samples, snippets, sketches, and fresh instrumental loops into a beautiful debut record that touches on hip-hop, house, and left-field electronic, while remaining danceable.

A slew of singles throughout 2020 and 2021 included "Feelin' Like," featuring the Seattle rapper Jarv Dee, has become an underground hit, popping up everywhere from Best Buy ads, Hulu's "Woke," celebrity Peloton instructor Emma Lovewell's playlist, and even as a soundtrack to the Mayor of Madrid's TikTok video. Most recently, "Feelin' Like" had a prominent placement in the #1 Netflix film "Spiderhead," directed by Joseph Kosinski ("Tron: Legacy;" "Top Gun: Maverick") and starring Chris Hemsworth, Miles Teller, and Jurnee Smollett. The breakout success of "Feelin' Like" further led to a collaborative EP with Jarv Dee, titled "BLAKHOUSE," which saw additional features from fellow PNW natives Shabazz Palaces ("Clouds," featured in Hulu's "Shoresy") and Stas THEE Boss ("Black Skin"). This year, Bad Colours dropped the early Summer banger "Hit The Breaks," and served as the musical director for the influential MADE New York festival, a two-day fashion, music, and arts event presented by Public School NYC and Paypal, that saw performances by Nas, Heron Preston, and Bearcat among others.

"Always With U" is a testament to Bad Colours' versatility as a producer and artist, which has allowed him to bring together such a diverse group of friends and collaborators. Yes, the house and hip-hop roots remain, but "Always With U" shows an evolution of the Bad Colours sound into masterfully crafted dancefloor sounds. It's a truly stunning follow-up from an artist undoubtedly on the rise. The album is out on all platforms, via Bastard Jazz Recordings, November 11th, 2022.

Born to a Frafra father and an Akim mother, he grew up in the rainforest of southern Ghana before moving up to the land of the Frafra in the savannah of northern Ghana as a young boy. Growing up in Namoo, his father's village of origin, he was deeply impressed by the glorious moments he experienced during the services at the village's church. All that singing and drumming ensured he was thefirst at church every Sunday, long before the service even started.

His only wish at the time was to be old enough to join the church choir. When he turned thirteen his wish came true and he instantly had hisfirst studio experience, as the choir recorded a series of cassettes on which he performed.

After he hadfinished school he focused on his own career as a Frafra-Gospel artist. In 2007 he released hisfirst album, but it took anotherfive years for him to have his break through as a leading singer. Since the release of his third album in 2012, which contained the original version of "Mam Yinne Wa", he was booked for almost all of the festivals and celebrations in the region and was also invited to almost all of the countless Frafra communities which exist all over Ghana.

In 2013 Max Weissenfeldt visited Bolgatanga, the capital of the Frafra for thefirst time. When he stepped out of the bus at the main market a song by Alogte was playing loudly through some big speakers. He was immediately captured by the music and arranged to meet with Alogte. After a short introduction they both agreed to do some recordings.

Weissenfeldt had some instrumentals with him, so he charged his laptop well, packed his microphone and Alogte drove with him through the savannah into the backcountry of the Frafra land. When they had arrived in Namoo, Max set up his studio and Alogte assembled the Sounds of Joy. The result was "Zota Yinne", which became Oho'sfirst single released on Philophon in 2014. For some reason the song became a hit in Reggae sound system circles and is already a very sought after collectors item.

The same year Weissenfeldt returned to Ghana from Germany with some fellow musicians to play an extended tour through Ghana alongside Alogte Oho & His Sounds of Joy and Kologo master Guy One (Guy One - #1, released on Philophon in 2018). During that tour he learned a dozen songs by Alogte. Following this, 2016 saw the release of the follow up single "Mam Yinne Wa". In the same way as the locally released version pushed Alogte to the top of Frafra- Gospel singers, this newly produced version made him a global player.

Mam Yinne Wa - God, You Love Me So. It looks like that somebody has heard him!

Cosimo and The Hot Coals represents the very
roaring sound of 20s, a time machine will drag
you to the New Orleans infamous jazz clubs
where history was made.
This new record is a journey on the early
American railways.
A journey made by an Italian emigrant
discovering the American dream and looking
forward to meet the love of his life. One of the
most liked "new school" band by Michael Bublé
with over 3 milions views on TikTok.

Green Vinyl

Föllakzoid are nearly unparalleled in the hypnotic lysergic drenched neo-psychedelic experience. On their debut it is mostly a rather bulky one, determined by the downright dirty, distorted electric guitar, which is also usually accompanied by a spacey, howling and herbaceous howling one. In addition, there is fat bass and powerful drums. During the prolific post-napster musical era dominated by myspace, the Chilean musical field opened up so that many bands could broaden their creative spectrum by taking global and timeless references as an aesthetic holy grail. This experimentation had the internet and specialized forums as a search engine, which not only provided the world parameters in trends, but also allowed to find true hidden gems, bands that were adored by a few connoisseurs of the real quality left behind by the record labels. In this context, a group of university students who have known each other from school began to rehearse in the Caracol Vip underground (Santiago, Chile), in a room owned by a local heavy-metal legend, Juanzer. Equipped with tube amplifiers, Marshall and other custom made, the members of that time: Gonzalo Laguna on vocals, Juan Pablo Rodriguez on bass, Domingo García-Huidobro on guitar, Diego Lorca on drums and Francisco Zenteno on second guitar, they began to play endless jams without a strict sense of songs or directed compositional notion. The rule was to follow the noise in a journey through valleys and peaks that allowed the spontaneous appearance of textures, lyrics, phrases and some invented chords that did not resemble anything that had been heard at that time. The rehearsals were transformed into true live performances without an audience, which were only seen by a few curious, among alcohol, smoke and deafening noise, which could only end when the owner of the room (Juanzer) entered to turn off the equipment. Over time he himself stayed as an auditor, witnessing how the musicians stripped themselves in their rehearsals. Considered at that time as play or fun, the idea of forming a band with a name came with the real live performances to which they were invited, without yet having songs made, at the end of 2006. The myth of their first live performance alludes to a numerical superstition, on July 7, 2007, in a small bar in Providencia (Santiago), which also provided the band with an upward recognition for the psychedelic-punk music they were doing, with a voracious vocalist who destroyed everything on stage and a band that stood firm on the endless songs they built. The name that was invented for that occasion was the result of a nonsense about the German word feuerzeug brought to the group by their close friend Alfredo Thiermann (who would later make the cover of the first album and become keyboardist), which the members of that time took and Spanishized at will. This neologism represents the second founding myth of the band since the interest in bands like Can, Neu! and AMON DUUL II and the characteristic motorik rhythm would soon arrive, in the form of kosmische musik. By 2008 the band had already added several live performances and some songs appeared, among which were Directo al Sol and Loop (nod to the English band), which allowed a greater deployment of ambient-noise resources, almost close to the 'concrete' music. The deconstructed rock of Spacemen 3 was also present in the form of repeated sequences on the bass and drums, as the layers of shrill guitars formed the foam of the tide bursting in the darkness of space. With the ideas and general feeling of the sound that they already had, the band made the decision to record their first album with the sound engineer and Juan Pablo's brother, Ignacio 'Nes' Rodríguez, who later together with JP would form the BYM label to make the first CDs of the forthcoming debut of Föllakzoid and other bands that Nes was recording. Sheltered that winter in the studio that Nes had built in an old house in Recoleta, the band recorded the bulk of the songs on the album with a new jam that emerged in that room composed of 1 note and moments of rising intensity: Sky Input I and II appeared to complete a set of songs that came from rock but were slowly passing to a level of trance and cacophony typical of orchestrated and atonal music. With three takes per song but only one take of the jam, the album was finished with a few extra takes and overdubs, some made in the house of Nes himself, who contributed a guitar to Loop, although it does not appear in the credits, and additional takes of "Pelao" Zenteno with delay and reverse for almost all songs. The names of the songs came from the lyrics that Laguna had worked from the live versions to the studio finals, except for Loop, Sky Input and El Humo. The cover of the album, which as mentioned was made by Thiermann, represents well the spirit of those days, when creative magma looked for an outlet through the instruments without any restriction or explicit direction from any of the members of the group. The image of the tree towards the sky speaks of the roots that rise towards the immensity, the nature projected towards the stratosphere. Ideas that the neo-psychedelia of those years seemed to capture well, echoing in the Chilean bands that at that time were gathering around the BYM label. Both the creative fluency and the lack of a musical director ensured that Föllakzoid was an original band that did not impose themselves a way of doing things or sounding, collective music took shape in the most wonderful way, without characters, without a record name, without faces. Just an instant in space. 2022 GALAXY GREEN coloured vinyl

"Hey, there's this new guy around that plays like Herbie Hancock!!". When Chilean pianist Matías Pizarro arrived in Argentina fleeing Pinochet's dictatorship, word spread like wildfire in the local jazz scene.

In the two short years that Pizarro spent in Buenos Aires, he became one third of the Viejas Raíces project alongside local jazz heroes Jorge López Ruiz and Pocho Lapouble, recorded with famed Italian trumpeter Enrico Rava and released his own solo album, Pelo de Rata ("Rat's hair").

Pizarro was no beginner though. Whilst in Chile he had already participated in several music projects and worked as a producer and arranger for the IRT label, and was connected to influential bands such as Los Jaivas and Blops. He had also studied in the Berklee School of Music where he not only met and lived with the cream of an emerging new wave of musicians, but he also had the chance to attend live performances of giants such as Miles Davis or Thelonious Monk.

In the recording of Pelo de Rata Pizarro is joined by fellow Chilean Alejandro Rivera (Sacros, Grupo Sol) on quena and charango, Swedish bassist Bo Gathu on bass, Uruguayan saxophonist Finito Bingert and an impressive percussion team featuring Pocho Lapouble, "El Zurdo" Roizner and the mighty Domingo Cura. The album draws from the US jazz fusion currents of the time (think Chick Corea and Miles Davies), adding an undeniable Latin American character, all projected through Pizarro's own musical prism which displays his acute sense of harmony and a musical intimacy that reminds of those sincere, dreamy moments in Viejas Raíces.

The 8-page booklet that accompanies the vinyl edition will give you a deeper insight into the story of Matías Pizarro, with previously unseen pictures and liner notes by Argentinean journalist Humphrey Hinzillo (La Nación , Rolling Stone Argentina).

Charly Records presents THE BEST OF THE YARDBIRDS The Yardbirds blend of blues, rock and pyschedelia paved the way for heavy rock… The definitive introduction to one of the UK's most successful and influential groups of the Sixties. This comprehensive band overview draws on the hugley important Giorgio Gomelsky recordings that defined the sound of The Yardbirds during their pivotal period 1963 through 1966. The distinctive and groundbreaking blues style of Eric Clapton features on half these tracks, whilst Jeff Beck and his pioneering brand of swaggering, ear-bending, psychedelic rock takes lead guitar duties on the rest. The compilation features the group's hits from the era, including the top 10 singles “Shapes Of Things”, “For Your Love”, “Still I'm Sad” and “Heart Full Of Soul”, as well as “Stroll On” from the soundtrack to the cult 1960’s film ‘Blow-Up’ scored by Herbie Hancock. Part of a new and lavish “Best of” series highlighting the key artists in the Charly Records catalogue.

If you're among the legions of Widespread Panic fans, you already know
that the band is legendary for never playing the same show twice or the
same song the same way twice - What makes this performance that
much more special is the inspiring presence of founding member
Michael Houser (whose nickname Panic inspired the band's name), who
died of pancreatic cancer less than two years later
As much as anything, this is a celebration of Houser's life and the sheer joy he
brought to a band that became one of the biggest draws on the international
concert circuit and created a vibe that makes the Panic experience unique in the
pop rock world.
But anybody who knows anything about them knows that Widespread Panic is so
much more than just a jam-happy rock band. From the time Houser and John Bell
(JB) began playing duets around Athens, Georgia, in the early 80's, their repertoire
ranged from early covers of the Grateful Dead and Bob Marley to a host of
original songs (among them Space Wrangler , included here) that demonstrate, as
The Village Voice wrote, a willingness to dip their collective toe into just about any
genre. This is classic Widespread Panic, including David Schools on bass, John
Hermann on keys, Todd Nance on drums and Domingo Ortiz on percussion.
One look at this show and it'll quickly become obvious there was something
strange going on in the house that night. Yes, it was Halloween, 2000, and the
rabid fans went beyond even their usual hard-core delirium. This was one time the
audience almost threatened to steal the show!
-Terry Lickona (Producer Austin City Limits).

MP3 album download included. Best New Music… 9.2 // ‘Dear Science’ cuts through genres like a laser through a music encyclopaedia, making strange connections, but always with pop clarity as the ultimate aim. — NME // Dear Science reprograms old‐school rock thrills for an ear‐budded nation, using surprising juxtapositions to explode familiar sounds. — Rolling Stone // (Dear Science) boldly took guitars where no album had gone before. And it did so with more creativity, daring and flair than any record since Radiohead's OK Computer. — The Guardian // The band’s third studio album released in 2008, Dear Science, opened with vintage TVOTR, but the nostalgia does not last. With Dear Science, the band continue to push the limit with sonic experiments that fill out the rest of the album. Track Listing: 1 Halfway Home 2 Crying 3 Dancing Choose 4 Stork & Owl 5 Golden Age 6 Family Tree 7 Red Dress 8 Love Dog 9 Shout Me Out 10 DLZ 11 Lover’s Day

MP3 album download included. Best New Music… 9.2 // ‘Dear Science’ cuts through genres like a laser through a music encyclopaedia, making strange connections, but always with pop clarity as the ultimate aim. — NME // Dear Science reprograms old‐school rock thrills for an ear‐budded nation, using surprising juxtapositions to explode familiar sounds. — Rolling Stone // (Dear Science) boldly took guitars where no album had gone before. And it did so with more creativity, daring and flair than any record since Radiohead's OK Computer. — The Guardian // The band’s third studio album released in 2008, Dear Science, opened with vintage TVOTR, but the nostalgia does not last. With Dear Science, the band continue to push the limit with sonic experiments that fill out the rest of the album. Track Listing: 1 Halfway Home 2 Crying 3 Dancing Choose 4 Stork & Owl 5 Golden Age 6 Family Tree 7 Red Dress 8 Love Dog 9 Shout Me Out 10 DLZ 11 Lover’s Day

Twisted and irreverent, The Rabbits combined ear-splitting guitar shrapnel with one of punk’s greatest-ever snot-nosed vocalists. With hints of PIL or Chrome, but beamed in from a parallel dimension and filtered through the warped lens of visionary loner Syoichi Miyazawa. First-ever vinyl release, fully remastered from the band’s original early ’80s cassette releases, and housed in a sturdy tip-on sleeve. Includes a double-sided, printed insert. Edition of 500

Singer-songwriter Syoichi Miyazawa’s tale is a confounding one.

He grew up in a small town in Yamagata Prefecture (in northern Japan), loved Dylan and The Beatles, and had very little exposure to, or interest in, underground music. And yet, shortly after 24-year-old Miyazawa arrived in Tokyo in 1978, he began performing solo shows at tiny clubs in the city, singing and playing guitar. His performances quicky devolved from brisk acoustic jaunts to lengthy, heavy dirges sung in a snot-nosed wail over a blown-out electric guitar detuned to produce a kind of sonic sludge.

At one of his earliest gigs, a mutual friend introduced him to Endo Michiro, who would soon become the legendary front man of Japanese punk icons The Stalin. It turned out Miyazawa and Endo had attended Yamagata University at the same time just a few years earlier, but hadn’t known each other at school. In Tokyo, they became fast friends, moved into the same apartment building, and for years were inseparable. Endo played guitar and drums on Miyazawa’s debut release, the “Christ Was Born in a Stable” flexi disc. But while Endo was social and outgoing, Miyazawa preferred to be alone, avoiding concerts unless he was performing.

Despite these antisocial tendencies, Miyazawa came to despise playing solo. In 1982, an eccentric high school student named Chika introduced herself at one of Miyazawa’s gigs, and Miyazawa asked if she’d play bass. She agreed and drafted two of her friends to play second guitar and drums. The Rabbits were born.

Miyazawa wrote the tunes, and had a clear vision for the group, but struggled to get the sound he wanted from the other members. His second guitarist was more of a fusion player, and Miyazawa took great pains to get him to tone down the shredding. The group quickly went through multiple line-up changes. Frustrated with the sound of their first proper recording (self-released as the “X1(x)” cassette), Miyazawa spent a full year mixing their second cassette, “Winter Songs,” on his own.

The hard work paid off — the sound of “Winter Songs” is striking, and unlike anything the band’s peers produced. There’s liberal use of delay on the vocals, giving the music a psychedelic feel, but the guitars are caustic, cutting through the mix like metal shrapnel. The rhythm section seems on the verge of teetering out of control throughout, an overdriven and pummeling current below abrasive slabs of guitar and vocals. Even at their most aggressive, though, The Rabbits had strong pop sensibilities, complete with cooing backing vocals and the occasional harmonica solo. Miyazawa delivers his borderline nonsensical lyrics with equal amounts of menace and gaiety, consistently riding that fine line as only a natural oddball can. At times, the band sounds like a distant cousin of PiL, Chrome or The Homosexuals, but beamed in from a parallel dimension and filtered through Miyazawa’s warped lens.

Although The Rabbits briskly sold all 500 copies of the "Winter Songs" tape, live audiences at the time seemed dumbfounded by the group, and would stare at them in silence. After two years together, The Rabbits called it quits in 1984.

When asked if any of the many legendary groups (Les Rallizes Desnudes, G.I.S.M., etc.) he shared stages with left an impression, Miyazawa recently revealed that he always left the venue as soon as he finished performing, so he never caught any of the other bands…

All of which is to say —

The Rabbits are one of the great punk bands of the early ’80s, but their leader had no interest in the punk scene and always thought he was making “normal” music. They rubbed shoulders with a slew of notable groups of the era, and their singer was best friends with arguably the most famous Japanese punk of all time, but Miyazawa shunned fraternization and purposefully distanced himself from his peers.

Could this be why so few underground music fans are familiar with the group, even in Japan? Why they seem to have been written out of the official history of Japanese punk? One can never know for sure, but Mesh-Key hopes to remedy this travesty by offering this compilation, the first-ever official LP by The Rabbits, to a new generation of punk and psychedelic music connoisseurs.
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Enjoy the major musical themes from Disney movies: from "Frozen" to "The Jungle Book", this collection will take you deep into the marvellous and fantasy worlds imagined by Disney.

Laila Sakini's new album 'Paloma' arrives via Modern Love and is her most striking and ambiguous to date - a pointed and timely meditation on hope and hierarchies that riffs on Zbigniew Preisner's magical "The Double Life of Veronique" score and enduring outsider music tome "The Langley Schools Music Project". Subtly transcendent, fathoms-deep music.

When Laila Sakini's debut album ‘Vivienne’ arrived in 2020, it felt like the record we were waiting for to map out our tangled reactions to an uninvited reality. Never self-consciously strange, it revealed itself slowly and cautiously, like a shadow in the corner of the eye, or an alchemical symbol in a bowl of alphabet spaghetti. This time around Sakini has worked her unique world-building to an even finer point, forming six tracks around a theme that's so close to our heart it's almost beating in time. Initially inspired by Krzysztof Kieślowski's 1991 arthouse classic "The Double Life of Veronique", the cult Polish director's enduring modern fairytale that serves as a cosmic rumination on identity and choice. Detailing two identical women - both singers, both in love - the film lets one live as the other dies, forcing us to consider the implications of art and endurance in the face of life's myriad challenges.

Sakini takes Polish composer Zbigniew Preisner's influential score for the film and uses it as a jumping-off point for ‘Paloma’, bending the more grandiose moments into baroque awkwardness on opening track 'Fluer D'Oranger' and evoking the mood of scene-setting cues 'Weronika' and 'Véronique' on the recorder-led 'The Light That Flickers In The Mirror'. And while Preisner's score zeroed in on the musical virtuosity of the film's lead characters, Sakini reinterprets that as a metaphor for self-discovery. Playing piano, violin, glockenspiel, timbale, recorder, and occasionally singing, Sakini captures a mood of innocence that immediately transports the listener back to simpler times. Her music isn't self-consciously simplistic, but forcing herself to interface with instruments impulsively rather than studiously, her sounds are all heart, no filigree.

In spirit, it reminds us of cult Canadian album "The Langley Schools Music Project", a collection of 1970s recordings of school kids singing rudimentary renditions of pop songs in a school gymnasium. That album's genius was in the bottling of hope and innocence: the feeling of joy from hearing and wholesomely interacting with music that's known and loved without a sense of hierarchy or desire for cultural clout. Sakini subtly subverts this by evoking the amateur spirit in the most bewitching way; instead of sourcing her ideas from Bowie, Fleetwood Mac and the Beach Boys, her stock is the established art canon, and by reforming those sounds she makes an insightful comment on intellectualism and access. European classical music is all too often trapped behind the frosted glass of respectability and assumed skill - craft replaces spirit, and technique replaces soul. By approaching these gestures from a different angle, Sakini softens the edges sonically and intellectually, finding music that bubbles with emotion, and most strikingly - hope.

Her choice of instruments and the way she interacts with them allows us to feel as if we're not only listening but contributing. It's a bottom-up way of absorbing art that's traditionally been top-down, and a reminder that we're all part of the experience, whether we're humming along to the remnants of a theme as it dribbles out of an ear in the shower, or dreaming of spotlights in a parallel life that may or may not be real. Sakini's music is nostalgic in a sense, but nowhere near the buttered popcorn and high-fructose candy migraine of the Netflix/Spotify algorithm generation of regurgitated churn. She makes sounds that remind us of what time and experience may have stolen from us, and how we might recover it.